Beginnings: Story. (Patreon)

Deep underground in a former Amanathine mine was the facility Aeryn had been born into.

Wall to wall, two foot thick reinforced hybrid steel insulated the tunnels and hallways from the plague that had taken their lands.

It was clear that the facility had been hastily cobbled together.

Massive beams and struts of metal towered above every few yards and sloppy, crude, but thick welds were joining the metal plates and brackets. There were no air vents or ducts, as those would pose a threat, points of entry for the virus should it find them; so the air was thin and dank. Air circulators were physical stand-alone objects that sucked in toxic air and pushed out clean, breathable air. There were no windows, only walls.

Not even holo technology existed here. There was no pleasure. No coating on the floor, only crude, ridged metal plate beneath their feet.

There were no comforts, no beds, no blankets. Techs and officers and political leaders all slept on the floor in designated rooms together for warmth and protection. No paint graced the facilities walls, so the various metals all stood out from each other in stark contrast. Every two hundred yards was a bulkhead. One that compartamentalized each section of hall into it’s own pod.

Should one section be infected by chaos, the grid would lockdown all sections and everyone inside would be cleansed. That is, they would be instantly incinerated along with the technology. For this reason, each chunk of tunnel would house its own growth chambers, that way even if infection spread underground, not all the embryos would be lost.

Dead center in the former mine was a massive airway where dozens of rockets lay dormant, buried under thousands of feet of rock, waiting to carry tens of thousands of civilians to space.

Hundreds of scientists and engineers congregated to build maturation and incubation chambers for their planetary project. It was never silent or still here, because these survivors were working to the bone to save a fraction of their history, their species.

One such scientist was in charge of the careful process of injecting Chaos virus cells with liquid amanathine. She wore a full body suit and respirator as she worked, requiring the aid of tiny limbed robots to guide hundreds of needles into puncturing the membranes of hundreds of individual cells. Her job was the single most important in the facility, she had developed the augmented gene therapy and therefore created chaos resistant embryos. With dna encryption, other scientists could then sequence the artificially fertilized eggs with the subconscious knowledge of their people. Passing on memories and experiences.

But this wasn’t her duty, her duty was to effectively kill an unstoppable virus. The only treatment they could find could only work on developing embryos, so no living drake would ever be immune to the virus, only their children would be. It was bleak, but it was all they had. Without this small victory, nothing would be left of their world. Nothing at all.

"Injecting round one thousand forty-seven now," she said into a recorder as the device with rows of syringes swung on an arm to the other side of the room, injecting the already splitting cells she'd just inoculated, into pre-fertilized drake eggs. Within moments of injection each egg developed a spider web of black veins on its shell, signifying it was infected with chaos. Inside of the growing fetus however, the virus latched on to the spinal column of the fetal drakes and would begin it’s replication process there.

The entire process had to be done in mere seconds, as the chaos virus had to be frozen in it’s cellular form, far beneath freezing, in order to stop its replication. It was after each cell was confirmed to have not split that they were cleared to be injected with the amanathine.

In the time it took to inject the radioactive crystal isotope to the virus, the virus had defrosted and begun to replicate itself. By the time the arm swung across the room to inject the eggs there was already a teaspoon of the virus in the syringes. If the machines were too slow or miscalculated, the virus would outgrow the syringe and break it. And while the amanathine effectively neutered the sentience and kill capacity of the virus, it did not stop it’s replication. No one wanted to deal with incinerating billions of virus cells as they climbed over equipment and spilled onto the floor, so the entire process was done with expert precision that only robotics could provide.

Unknown to the virus however, it was no longer transmitting a deadly sentient pathogen, it was transmitting a highly radioactive crystalline matrix that would infuse the embryos with strength and resilience to the mother virus.

"Injection complete, transferring rack one thousand forty-seven to maturation chambers."

Each cylinder containing each soft shelled egg in a viscous protein solution was then transferred to a larger row of cylinders, ones so large they would house an adult drake. As the eggs were injected into the pre-filled chambers, heat lamps and radiation lamps activated, further speeding up the growth process of both the egg and the crystalized amanathine within the chaos cells.

Within minutes the semi-transparent egg shells with their black veins would swell in size, as if absorbing nutrients from the environment around them, and a pup within would begin to squirm. Simultaneously, the black spurs of the chaos virus would sprout from whatever point in the spinal column the virus had attached. It wasn’t uncommon for pups to die at this point, as several from each round would have spurs shoot out from the front of their bodies, through their throats or chests, instead of their backs. These pups were exterminated immediately and would be replaced in the next round with new incubations.

As the fetal drakes grew they burst through their transparent eggs, though they'd remain partially coiled in a fetal shape until they were finally mature.

These particular drakes were a mixed lot, northern and tropic embryos. The lead scientist scribbled on her pad and walked down the row, checking vitals on each specimen. When she came to Aeryn's she noted the larger size and put a note that this would pup was a candidate for intellect injections.

Over the next theee months the pups had become full blown adults, nearly ready to exit their growth chambers. Several more had died in a blackout that happened about two weeks after incubation began and due to unstable temperatures, many of these drakes would be born as androgyns if they hadn't been flagged and terminated.

When it was finally time to release them, a male tech stood outside of Aeryn's chamber and a snarl of disgust marred his face. This drake was faulty, she had slipped through the androgyn scans earlier in incubation but there she was, fully formed, floating suspended in a pale gold slime that was both breathing fluid and thousands of antibiotics and inoculations and foods all at once. An anomaly. A freak. He stared at the nude form, the toned masculine muscles, but the inherently female genitals. He was about to hit a large red valve on her cylinder to terminate her prior to release, when her eyes opened.

"S-ser!" Called the young male tech and an older female drake followed by two younger male techs ran over.

"What is it?!" Practically yelled the old female. She appeared tired, sagging fur beneath her eyes and a formerly bronze coat peppered in grey signaled she had been alive since long before the war and calamity, she was one of the only seniors left alive, and anyone could tell she'd seen her fair share of horror.

"I-it’s awake ser. I was about to press the extermination valve and it-" he paused, nervous anxiety rushing through him, "it-the anomaly, look!" He pointed dramatically at her face where her eyes were indeed open.

The old female hobbled over to lean across the tank, shining a flashlight in Aeryn's eyes. Her pupils constricted to narrow slits and the nictitating membrane all drakes had slid over her eyes in response. "A very unusual anomaly this one is. Notice it’s eye color, how did that occur do you think?" She asked the techs, none of the young men had any clue.

"Let's keep this one. After all, missur (name) spent quite a large sum of money inoculating it with additional add-ons. It even appears there have been ocular modifications. I suspect missur (name) was trying to blend our nanotechnology with the hybridized chaos virus. It would be a shame to incinerate such an interesting specimen. Let's get it out of there and see just how much those nano-bugs augmented it."

"Yes messer, but, what should we call it? It’s not male, though it appears to be."

"For now, address it as male. And the knowledge of its true nature will not be recorded in the record logs, understand? What we are doing is technically forbidden, we cannot leave a paper trail. However," she rest a paw on the warm glass of the tank, and Aeryn placed her own on the other side, a much, much larger paw. "We no longer have the resources to be as choosy as we want to be. Begin the extraction process, I want this specimen on it’s feet before the day is out, understand?" She pulled her paw from the glass but kept eye contact with the blue drake.

"Yes messer" said the techs. The old woman cracked her neck and began to walk away, muttering to herself as two of the three techs paired off to begin extracting Aeryn. The tank vacuum started with a churn and began sucking the fluid from the tank at a rapid pace, gurgling and bubbling as it drained.

Golden slime clung to the now visibly blue fur covering Aeryn and she began coughing. For the first time since being created, her lungs were seeking air, rather than nitrogenated and oxygenated fluid.

As the tank lid depressurized Aeryn shot up into an upright sitting position then violently puked fluid up, still coughing.

"It takes a few days for it to all drain out of your body. Don't worry, you won't get any infections and the discomfort will fade. I know it’s very itchy right now, but try to not claw at your throat during this time." He reached a hand out for Aeryn to take. "Do you understand me?"

She coughed again, a mixture of breathing fluid and saliva dripping from her maw and down her chest. When she attempted to reply she found her vocal chords unable to function.

"You've never used your eyes or voice, let alone your legs. This will take some adjustment. Nod your head if you understand. We need to know if the knowledge input was successful."

Aeryn nodded. She took his hand and nearly pulled him over as she climbed out of the maturation chamber, looking back down at it, the tube that had been her home for nearly three months. Then down at the male speaking to her. Her brain already deemed him weak, subservient and unworthy as prey or otherwise. She already disliked this male.

"Follow me please," the tech said, extending a paw palm up in front of him to gesture in the direction they'd be going. Aeryn stumbled at first, but like a baby deer, soon found her footing and walked side by side with the two techs, the other remaining silent.

They walked into a bright white room with a large cushioned table and many devices Aeryn recognized as computers and imaging scanners. She was told to sit atop the table and multiple anodes were attached to her still wet fur.

"This may sting slightly, but we have to get you physically ready for training and this is the only way" he turned a dial on one of the machines and an electrical current rushed through Aeryn's body making her muscles twitch and pulse in a painful fashion. She grunted her dislike, but endured the process.

"You will return here each day, during high sun and before rest hour to participate in this. Like everything else, you'll acclimate to the pain quickly. We have to make you strong. You will receive daily inoculations before first meal, these will prevent any infections from residual fluid in your lungs from developing. After one week you will begin physical training. By this time you will move from daily inoculations to once a week until you are given a duty. Do you understand?"

Aeryn nodded.

"Missur (name) has taken a liking to you during your embryonic state, therefore you were granted specialty enhancements that will aid you in this life. You are not to be a frontline soldier."

Aeryn looked perplexed, her dna told her that all drakes were soldiers, that she too was a soldier. But now she was being told otherwise. She already knew she was different, her nose had begun to quickly adapt to real air and she smelled the difference in the sex of the other drakes. She also recognized that she should have been terminated, yet she wasn’t. Why?

"Your vocal development is essential so we will begin practicing that tonight. We need to know what level of intellect you have, it’s critical to your future role. Understand that you are not a normal soldier, you are one of a handful of pet projects. We need to know if this project is viable."

Aeryn stared blankly. Her brain was already processing everything he said and she already comprehended that he was insulting her intelligence. The speed at which her brain calculated and inferred data was phenomenal and here was a lowly lab technician trying to imply she was a waste of resources. The right side of her upper lip twitched. Annoyance. Her tailtip flicked as well, something passed down in the genetic tree all the way from the first reptiles to walk their lands.

The tech scribbled on his pad, noting the reactions and turned the dial up two more clicks. The muscles in Aeryn's shoulders and biceps were now dancing under the shocks and the pain was only putting her into a heightened agitated state. To control herself, the newly born drake grabbed the sides of the table she was on, digging her claws into the leather covered foam. It was all she could do to suppress a bubbling rage inside of her.

"Ah, this must be the augment" she mused to herself, wanting to test her strength, wanting to test her strength on this man. But cold, wet and covered in electrodes she sat, behaving. Silent.

At a certain point Aeryn had adapted to the shocks and had laid down, napping on the table. During that time, other individuals had come and gone. Some had taken blood samples, others had brought a form of clothing for her. Once the initial shock treatment had ended, she was escorted to another room and bathed. Basic hygiene was implanted in her already, so she knew how to groom herself and rather enjoyed the extremely scalding hot water that cleansed the slime from her fur. Afterward she was dried, then dressed in a simple large white shirt and loose fitting, airy, drawstring pants.

Patience wasn’t a virtue with this drake, and the techs quickly learned this when it was time for food. Everyone was lined up to get their rations and the people escorting Aeryn attempted to explain food to her, leading to Aeryn elbowing one in the face and snapping her teeth. This of course, was also written down.

"Food aggression," one of the techs wrote, noting "this seems to occur only in augmented drakes. Natural drakes incubated in the same fashion lack this tendency. Possibly due to having a higher metabolic rate.."

Aeryn had been allowed to eat in peace but the plant protein was hardly suitable to her. She wanted to hunt and kill fresh meat, but was confined in these walls, not allowed to make a kill.

After a fast meal, she was taken to a room where a nurse palpated her throat, checking for fluid buildup or swelling in her vocal chords. When Aeryn checked out the nurse asked her to repeat the words she said, starting with "Emain."

"Eeeh-" the blue drakes voice cracked and she tried clearing her throat with a few coughs. "Eeeeh-maain", she repeated like a parrot, pleasing the nurse. She was then told to say "tree, fish, gold, space, health, meat, bar," and as she repeated them her voice broke less, but certain words did have a harder time coming out. Like most drakes, Aeryn had trouble with S's and would draw the S sound out too long. This was typical and not noteworthy.

"Alright, it’s time for some basic arithmetic" said the nurse. She handed Aeryn a cube with numerous symbols on each of it’s faces. "Align the faces and the shape will change, the goal is-"

Aeryn had already begun swiping symbols on the cube with her fingers, her eyes focused on the task. Within moments she'd transformed the block into a three dimensional hexagon.

"Interesting," said the nurse, taking it away and resetting it to a cube once more. "A mechanical brain, that's rare for one of us. This is good, it means you’re less likely to be terminated."

That night Aeryn slept with other recent hatchlings on a padded mat in a large pile. Some whispered about their days, the experiments they'd underwent, the training, others were content to finally have physical contact with another warm body and were curled up innocently, simply enjoying the first sensations of platonic pleasure in their short lives. Touch. Aeryn however, wasn’t a part of that. She had already been injected with hormones to mask her gender and help present her scent and voice as male, and out of shame for her defects, she slept alone.

The following weeks she was trained and instructed on combat, though her purpose lay elsewhere. Haven been given an identification number, she was allowed to choose a name and went with Aeryn, it was, like her, androgynous. Though the techs would refer to her by her designated number, Aeryn corrected them each and every time to use her name. It took no time at all for the techs and doctors to realize she had a cold and logical personality but demanded respect.

On several occasions Aeryn outright refused to perform tasks assigned to her, stating it was beneath her intellect. These incidents amused the staff, such a young hatchling and so set in her ways. Usually the training process wiped most free thought and personality from soldier rank drakes but Aeryn had a will power stronger than most and any time she was slighted she would respond with a curled lip and aggression.

The staff also noted that despite her temper (likely linked to being an augment) that Aeryn possessed a sense of humor, and would be seen entertaining other trainees with jokes and insults. She'd rapidly rose to the status of alpha and nearly all the other hatchlings in her pod would respond to her with respect. The few who didn't resulted in several documented cases of physical violence.

Aeryn's temper and personality was a nasty mix for being insulted, and when pushed over the edge she instantly resorted to violence. It made for several trips to the clinic to repair fractured skulls and broken horns on other males who had attempted to combat her.

Unfortunately for the others in her pod, she was of a higher IQ and with the intellect augments she'd been given, Aeryn never lost hand to hand fights. Her mechanical brain and impressive reflexes allowed her to analyze a situation almost robotically, countering swings and jabs with no effort at all.

During training she'd been sectioned off from most of the pod, into different areas of expertise. They found that she was capable as a mechanic and could tear apart motors and repair them with ease. She was also gifted in circuitry and because of it, put into a program that would test her abilities with programming and data processing. Aeryn adapted quickly and was able to integrate herself into their own systems. From this she learned of the devastation of their planet, why they were under thousands of feet of bedrock. She also learned of crystal blue waters, amazing exotic life. Poisonous flora and fauna, millions of species and billions of creatures that had been infected. From the smallest insect to the largest ancestor of her race, everything above was doomed.

It made her angry, violently angry, and the team assigned to her learned that angry augmented drakes tend to spit fire. Rather uncontrollably. Aeryn felt such rage over the destruction of her home that she wanted to personally go topside and fight the demon plague, even knowing how futile it was.

Day after day her body grew stronger and the time came when she was assigned her departure vessel. A civilian transfer ship meant to rendezvous with a larger frigate orbiting the planet. Still, a bitterness remained in her heart. How could such an advanced race give up so easily. Why weren't they fighting? Why couldn't it be saved? Despite her knowledge and growing experience, she was still too optimistic and it made her vulnerable. Aeryn wanted more than anything to save her world, not to flee to other moons and solar systems while mechanics blockaded her home planet and hoped for the day when the virus would die out.

When the day came, Aeryn's face was devoid of emotion. Inside she felt only rage. Rage at the governments, rage at the virus, rage at everything that caused the downfall of her planet. She had been alive not even a solar cycle and yet the knowledge and memories of lifetimes of people lived within her and each of the civilians she was escorting. And she knew her temper, however fierce, could not get in the way of what was to be done.

When the ground shuddered and the thousands of civilians and soldiers had been loaded onto their rockets, Aeryn saw for the first time the sky, and the desolate wasteland of her world. As the launch platform opened and raised up, she could see the black ooze outside, racing along the ground, in the skies, the hive mind she learned of signaling the virus to attack the ships, find an entry point, infect, spread, leave the planet, breed.

They were prepared for this eventuality though, and with a spire of amanathine at it’s core a probe launched into the air and burst, sending shockwaves of intense blistering radiation for miles, decimating all life that wasn’t housed in a shuttle. The ships launched in relative peace, and Aeryn heard of only one transport having fatalities. A shuttle with the daughter of one of the generals imploded before clearing the atmosphere, only the pod containing the augmented drake survived. Ten thousand civilians died, because of one infected soul.

All other ships initiated burn sequences and made it to orbital rotation safely, the shuttles all went through intense quarantine before docking with the main transport ships. Aeryn was one of the first to make it to the convoy, and took a comfortable position in a small shelf of quarters, her own bunk. Crude but her own. She had enough inoculation to last a year, and need only replicate more when the time came.

Unlike so many others, she lived. And as she watched her precious world grow tiny from the small view portal her room was afforded, still all she felt was rage.