Your name: Dulcea
IC parent's name: D-Tech 182
Child's name: Ericha, experiment 363
Child's DNA: Short-tailed shrew
Why this DNA? The short-tailed shrew is the only poisonous mammal in North America, and tends to max out at about 4.25in. With its small size, it is defensive and usually has a bad temperament. The poison is not in fangs like a snake, but instead in its saliva, and is both a neurotoxin and a hemotoxin. Ericha will be one of the ones with a particularly bad temper and smell, and would have been hard to place with someone outside of D-Corp. As such, with Alan’s passing she would have defaulted to the sole care of a “useless” tech, to make room in the labs. She would be fine in the odd man’s care because her DNA would allow her to mostly fend for herself being able to keep warm if he sent her out, rarely get sad, and eat whatever fungus or bugs she might find around the grounds.
Prompt letter: A
Prompt Response: Despite her small stature, Ericha, clad in her finest grey clothing and hidden behind her thick glasses, was a force to be reckoned with. And as she grew older, her bad attitude was turning more toward a criminal one. Having no particular model for a functional family, she seemed to believe that it was every person for herself, and as such, saw nothing wrong doing exactly what she wanted when she wanted it; even if it included breaking a few laws. Though she had the outward appearance of a bookworm, she bore no great intelligence and rarely thought before she acted. In her ventures around the building, she had encountered a shark boy by the name of Jekel, and had taken to following him whenever she could. She found it interesting to find someone who understood her view of rules, even if she didn’t always see eye to eye with them. She didn’t so much want friendship as she did entertainment.
On this particular occasion, her entertainment came in the form of a broken amphitere egg. The tank of the egg hadn’t been guarded because of the recent chaos, and on her suggestion, Jekel and his gang had decided to see what exactly was inside one of the eggs before it hatched. However, fortunately it was not close enough to hatching as to be fully formed, all that they found inside was goop and an odd lump of something. A boring sight. However, to a tech that wandered by shortly after it happened, it was horrific. The woman starting screeching, something about costs and precautions and all sorts of droll that really didn’t concern Ericha in the least. So, instead of staying to listen to this woman, as the others seemed to be doing, she turned on her heel, stuffed her hands in her pockets, and headed for the door. The woman didn’t call her back, but then, even if she had she wouldn’t have returned.
Something strange happened later that night, when Ericha eventually returned to 182’s sparsely furnished room. The tech was there. She frowned, asking shrewdly, “What the hell do you want?”
The grey bearded man simply looked up from his mess of papers on the floor, staring her down as if she were one of the aliens he often babbled about. “I want that egg back,” he snapped, “And you get to earn it back.”
“Nope,” she replied, strolling into the kitchen to get a drink, “Make Jekel or one of them do it, because I don’t wanna.”
For once, the tech didn’t back down to her stern attitude, instead holding his hand up, pointing at her, “You don’t want to, but you will, because you have to.”
“Says who?” she snapped, dribbling a bit on the counter from the poison concentrating in her saliva as she often did when she was angry.
“Me,” he answered bluntly, returning to his papers with her left in a short termed state of awe.
“Excuse me,” she gasped finally, more than a little hatred in her eyes, “You don’t tell me what to do. No one does.”
“Well, I did,” he retorted, keeping his voice at the same uninterested tone, “And you stay away from that boy. You don’t want to be around anyone like them.”
“Well, maybe I do,” she scoffed, mimicking his tone as she grabbed a can of pear juice from the fridge, “May I like people like that. How would you know?”
“Who says I need to know,” he said, the usual hint of paranoia slipping back into his voice. “363,” he continued, using the number she only ever heard from doctors and when she was in trouble, “I’m telling you that you don’t want to be around them. Listen to me!”
“Too bad,” Ericha said with a shrug, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose, “Because I’m going to hang out with Jekel.” As the tech went off into a round of babbling about conspiracies to drive him insane, as if he wasn’t already, Ericha marched out the door and into the main building of D-corp. Some of the labs were always left open, right? No one would mind if she just hung out in one of them for a while.
On that note, she was wrong. Unfortunately for the shrew, the first unlocked door belonged to the tech who had been there when the egg was broken. Early morning, she was woken by the screech of the woman from the dragon labs. "Damnit..." she mumbled sleepily as the woman came at her, not allowing an explanation for why she was there.
Instead, she was dragged down to the lobby with a rag stuffed in her mouth and her hands tied behind her back, bristling the whole way. When they reached the front desk, the tech in charge of it seemed startled. “Well Ashley, who’ve you got there?” he asked, starting to pick up the phone. “Some brat that was hiding in my lab and she took part in the destruction of a very valuable egg, I want her arrested.” The tech behind the desk hesitated, glancing sideways at Ericha, “Um… She’s just a kid, cut her some slack. Can you at least take that thing out of her mouth?” Ashley frowned, holding up her right arm, which sported a fresh burn-like rash and a few cuts, “Be my guest if you want to do it, but the brat’s poisonous. It’s lucky she doesn’t have her dragon with her or I might be dead right now!” While the two were talking, Ericha took a shot at getting the rag out herself, spitting and shaking her head until only the scraps stuck to her sharper teeth remained. With her mouth free, she spoke up, “What the hell’d you do that for?” Ashley turned to look at her, still scowling, “You attacked me!”
“I did not,” Ericha retorted, blushing pink at the truth, “You startled me.”
“Regardless,” Ashley continued, turning back to the tech at the desk, “I want her arrested for assault, call her guardian on file and tell them where she is, I don’t want any of this crap making me look bad.” With that, Ashley left, leaving Ericha stuck with the other tech, hands still tied behind her back.
“So Mike,” she said, knowing the man fairly well, “What was that? Why didn’t you stand up for me?”
Mike shrugged, “It’s not worth the fight with her, especially not with your record recently, you just nod and shut up and hope she goes away.” He paused, then hesitantly added, “You know I still have to call the cops, right? I could lose my job if I don’t.”
Ericha groaned, falling back into one of the lobby chairs, “Oh come on, you know I didn’t mean it. I’ve never done anything like that before.”
Mike laughed, holding up his hand, “Except for 182, that boy in your skill class, the kids on the playground, not to mention that egg, shall I go on?”
She frowned, “That’s not the point! Can’t you just, I don’t know, make it go away?”
“I already toned down that whole egg thing, Ashley was wanting you to be taken out of the program.”
Ericha seemed startled, and then cracked a smile, “Really? People were talking about it?”
He shook his head, dialing the number for the local police station, then stopped, “Actually, I’ve got a better idea, I’m going to call 182.”
“No! No way! You might as well just stick me back in the labs,” she yelled, but Mike ignored her and paged the older tech to come down from his computers.
After a few minutes more of Ericha’s useless complaining, a blustery chaos of ranting about alien locating devices and the yelps of several young interns signaled 182’s arrival. At this bizarre entry, Ericha had covered her face with her hands, hoping he would just storm past her and go back to his terminals. But no, sadly she wasn’t that lucky.
