Chapter Text

Prologue: The Doctor's Mistake

??/??/45

A lone figure worked hurriedly at the countertops of the laboratory, beads of sweat dripping down from his forehead as he exerted the most of his patience that he could. The hum of the centrifuge that he loomed over, spinning and cycling rapidly, was drowned out by the blare of alarms from just outside the lab’s door. Had he the time to ponder the irony of the situation, he might’ve found a grim humor in it. All the ridicule he’d received over the years for his loner tendencies, and if he succeeded here, he’d be vindicated in his mannerisms. If.

Gunshots rang through the hallway, making the doctor flinch and turn his head to stare at the metal door with dread. The rioters had been surprisingly good at evading the lab security if they’d made it all the way up to Laboratory K… and though he would have hoped he could rely on the door to stop them, he knew that was naïve. They’d gotten this far, and while they certainly weren’t the top minds of the surviving world (if they were, they’d have already been inside), they certainly would be able to figure out the armed guards they’d just gunned down had the keycards to get inside the laboratory proper. If this was going to work, it’d take a miracle…

His thoughts were interrupted by the whirring of the centrifuge slowing down, and a small musical chime sounding. The device’s top unlatched with a small hiss, and raised the internal structure which held five now empty glass vials… and one vial of a viscous, white liquid. The fruits of three years of research, at last within the palm of his hand. He quickly swiped the vial out, carrying it over to a table where numerous pieces of medical equipment lay haphazardly. In the panic, he’d forgone his styles of organization in favor of brutal efficiency. That now came to bite him as he swiped past numerous flasks, tools and papers, desperately hoping for a needle somewhere in the mess. His search paused briefly as he heard shouting from outside the door, and more gunfire… though, he was confused. It sounded like the gunfire was shooting away from where the rioters were coming from… he shook his head as he resumed the search. If he died now because of that, he would never forgive himself.

After what felt like far too long, his hands finally grazed cold glass, and he yanked it back, pulling with him an unused syringe. Shaking hands brought the needle into the vial, extracting the ferrofluid from within. At the same time, he began to briskly walk across the room, the only reason he wasn’t running being to not drop the precious concoction he had. If he hurried now, he might be able to outrun the rioters, and get to the test subjects. Humanity might still have a future ahead of them if even just one could be preserved and immunized…

”HOLD IT!”

He froze, his heart skipping a beat as the gruff voice rang out. He whirled around, his red eyes no doubt flashing with fear as he took in the sight of three or four unsightly, pale figures, breathing heavily. The clothes they were wearing bore evident signs of where they’d been residing, plant residue and dirt smeared and deeply permeating the garments. He focused little on that, however, as their loaded weapons, the barrel of one pointed right at him, took precedence to him. Stupidly, he’d also ended up rotating his right hand, which held the syringe, with the rest of his body and into their sight, immediately drawing their eyes, which he saw nothing but desperation within at the sight of it.

”HE’S GOT A CURE!” One of the figures yelled immediately. The doctor had only enough time to turn around again and curl his arms protectively around the syringe before he heard a loud bang and felt a sharp, burning agony tear through his back. He let out a cry of pain as the unmistakable feeling of warm, sticky blood escaped through the wound, staining the back of his clothes. Another bang sounded out, and he sank to his knees this time as it tore through the muscle in his shoulder, each minor movement making him cry out more, his vision blurring with tears, high-pitched ringing overwhelming his sense of hearing. So close to his vision… and yet, this is where it ends. Most of him wanted to give up at this point. Let his body collide with the steel flooring, and just hope for a quick death to escape the agony. Yet… he felt his right arm move, pulling back the sleeve of his left arm. Through the agony, he felt defiance. He didn’t want it to end here. He couldn’t let it end here. Humanity had to have a survivor… and even if this serum was untested, it was the last hope they all had. He would have to be their last hope.

The needle pierced his skin and the vein he stabbed into, and he pushed down onto the injector with the last of his strength. He watched as it went halfway down, before he felt uneven, hard rubber press against the back of his head and send him crumpling down to the ground, the syringe clattering against the floor, mercifully not breaking. Try as he might, he couldn’t turn his head, couldn’t move, couldn’t even say a word as fog invaded his peripherals. All he could do was close his eyes, and hope… hope that this would work. Hope that humanity wouldn’t have just killed its own chance to survive. Hope that a future remained…

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??/??/50

Dr. K had a rather fine morning. He woke up on the fine, soft yellow cushion he’d made into a bed in his main office, his muscles cramping from having to curl up so much and a migraine beginning to set in from sleeping way too much. He trudged about to make his usual breakfast of whatever can he happened to pick (some sort of chunky meat soup today, lucky him) out of whatever number of supply box this was, along with a steaming cup of coffee that he had to remake twice thanks to getting the sugar and cream portions wrong. Like most meals to him nowadays, even with his elevated senses, he barely tasted or acknowledged the meal until the caffeine hit, by which time he had already finished it.

Now with his usual amount of energy--just enough to get him through the day mentally—he fell into the rest of the routine. Trimming and watering the plants he’d taken in from the balcony, inspecting all the cameras around the warehouse and library for signs of the bastard lurking there, typing up another report on the status of the towers and the latex beasts inside to assure those in the bunker that the outside world was soon to be ready for recovery… it was all the beautifully maddening mundanity that he loved as much as he loathed it.

Then, the flickering began.

It began while he was monitoring the cameras around that self-proclaimed “Wolf King’s” territory, and at first, it was a mere annoyance. The coolant system throughout the tower had been on the fritz for years since the riot, and as much as he wished he could repair the transformers just beyond the balcony, he just didn’t have what he needed to do so. He was sure that the flickering would pass… until suddenly, the whole room went dark, the droning sound of electronics winding down filling the space for a moment as Dr. K sat there for a moment, utterly stunned… until the lights flickered back on, and a robotic voice began speaking over the intercoms.

"Insufficient power detected, main generator has failed.” Ah. So that answered his question of what in the world happened. Unsurprising, yet worrying. His estimates had placed at least another half a year on the main generator’s lifespan… maybe he really would have to shut down some of the lower laboratories to preserve power. Before he could ponder more, the artificial voice continued. “Elevator power is offline, office area power is offline. Library power is offline, life support will be offline soon.” Also a number of expected power losses. While life support going down would be worrying under normal circumstances, the labs didn’t have any other test subjects left… wait. As a terrible thought crossed his mind, the voice finally confirmed what he had just dreaded. “In order to ensure survival of subjects, subjects are released urgently. Backup power is online, please seek help as soon as possible."

His hands (or, rather paws) moved faster than his mind as he typed frantically on the keyboard, skipping past the dozens of cameras scattered throughout the building, nests of disoriented latex beasts and rebooting hardware, eventually coming to the cell block where those two had been held since he had come to post-transfurmation… and where there had once been two human figures floating, obscured behind glass and preserved through life support… there were now two humans laying flat on the ground, surrounded by liquid before their open pods.

He blinked, and suddenly found he was standing, his arm outstretched in some sort of tense, angry position. Confused, his eyes followed the trajectory of his arm, and found that, where there had been his ceramic mug with a big blue “#1” emblazoned on it… there was now a half-shattered mug, and pieces of ceramic now scattered on the floor. He had expected he might lose his temper to some degree if this worst case scenario came about, especially with that bastard still at large… but he hadn’t expected to find himself so blinded by rage he’d forget what he was doing as he did it. As concerning as this was, he didn’t have the time to worry about his mental health. He had to assess the situation and do what damage control he could.

Sitting back in his rolling chair, he looked over the first of the humans. Gangly, somewhat tall, clearly male, clad in only the typical black shorts that were a part of security protocols. A small, spiky bed of hair that barely reached down to his neck… but what concerned him wasn’t the unhealthy build, or the near-nude state the man was in, or even that, for all he knew, the man was dead, seeing how he was face-down, possibly not breathing (or even breathing in the very liquid that had been sustaining him for five years)…

It was the ever-familiar paleness that he had seen that day he almost died.

He leaned forward, clenching his paws. Even if he couldn’t diagnose the human, even if the human was going to be weak, disoriented, and easily disposed of… this was very very bad. The Pale virus had survived the great plan, all through this singular, damnably persistent human, sealed into a room he couldn’t access. Even if the human was dead now, a stroke of luck he wouldn’t even dare to imagine, he’d have to entirely decontaminate the room, dispose of the body, monitor all the equipment and entrances for any trace of pathogen… all while keeping this a secret from the surviving elites. His migraine, which had been fading beforehand, now flared, pounding against his skull and making him almost imperceptibly grunt in pain as he leaned forward, a paw on his forehead. So much more work ahead of him now… could he even fulfill the great plan at this rate…?

His self-defeating thoughts suddenly vanished as he heard coughing. His eyes swerved instantly to the camera he’d just been looking at… and then squinted in confusion as the image was unchanged. That human wasn’t awake? That lapse of judgement quickly subsided as his eyes fell down, and landed on the monitor for the fifth room over… where the other human had been. In his worrying, he’d forgotten about this one… though, in fairness, this cell had been under renovations by the time the riot had happened, and the camera quality was significantly worse because of it. He couldn’t quite make out many details, whether this other person was short or tall, muscular or weak, he couldn’t even be sure of their gender, the coughing sounding a fair bit androgynous… but, he could at least make out the vague colors of this human. And he let out a sigh of mild relief as the skin color, while definitely not healthy, was nowhere near the sheet white skin of the other subject. This one didn’t seem to be infected, at least not yet. Maybe they could be extracted once the hazard was dealt with…

He shoved those thoughts aside, pushing back from his rolling chair. He’d have far better control of the facilities from his side offices near the white latex jungle and main transformer. The second subject’s room, being in a state of disarray, had no emergency override for the one-way door like the hazard’s room had. So unless they were stupid enough to go jumping into some random vent or electrical equipment (which, he couldn’t put entirely past them, who knows what they might be thinking), meant they’d never get out of that room. All he had to do was focus on this one thing, do this one act, and humanity would be saved. He paced through the white latex jungle, ignoring the ire of the beasts within which had learned to fear him, and settled at the desk of his side office, beginning the process of remotely accessing the screens and speakers in the warehouse just as you began to properly rise to your feet…