FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

The map Jacob sent me may as well have me wandering around the entire Biosphere Complex. By the time I finally found the new base, it was 4:17 in the afternoon. The corridor where the lounge was located was similar to the one we had left, minus the fact that there were huge, bullet proof glass windows letting in the light from the outside world. From outside the lounge, Mike and I were able to see the vast, rolling forest and the super highway that connected the labs to Ransol. The light that was coming in trough the windows was a golden orange color and the sky was a deep pink and gold. I could see the blue sun starting to dip below the mountain in the distance. The clouds had turned a swirl of pink, orange and red as well as light blue. Holy hell did Ios' star put on one hell of a show.

"Damn", I said pausing to look out the window, "are the sunsets always this nice?"

Mike nodded, "yep, this is just summer, in fall in winter it looks 4 times as cool."

"Hope I live to see it", I said as we stepped inside the lounge. It was set up basically the same as ours as far as the furniture was arranged. The couches, gaming console and kitchen area was on this side, while the security room, the bathroom and the sofa were on the other side. The duffel bags were piled up in the space between the couch and the walls and Sarah was at the stove cooking something. Allen was in the security room in the back and Jacob was sitting at the table working on something. Matt was playing something on the Xbox and James was sitting on the couch, looking at his PDA .

"Where's Tyler?", I asked, 'I don't see him around."

"He's with Alcatraz setting up shop for me in a nearby lab", Sarah said.

"I take Al's feeling better", I said as I set down my rifle and vest.

"He is", Sarah said, 'I've got him up and around because I wanna find any damage the fever might have done to his systems, I'm hoping that he'll agitate any damage so I can fix it."

"I'm not a tech expert", I said, "but I'm fairly certain that any damage done to Alcatraz would require a tech expert like Tyler."

"Ah-ha", Sarah said, "that's where you'd be wrong. Sure, Alcatraz's computerized systems run cold, but so does his biology. When he was rebuilt after the Mega Quake, his brain was modified to work at the low temperatures of his mechanics and computers. If the fever has done any damage, it would screw up his biology first, a Hydraulic strut isn't exactly as heat sensitive as your heart."

"Good point", I said taking my jacket off.

"Speaking of hearts", Sarah said, "I wanna have a look at yours."

"And you lost me", I sighed, "what for?"

"For one", Sarah said, "I saw you come back from your mission in the black rain with that slash on your chest that looked fairly deep. Secondly, I wanna make sure that all the DNA Mods you've got spliced into your genetics haven't screwed up your systems."

"Makes sense", I said, "but I think your gonna run into a fairly challenging problem."

"Which would be?", Sarah asked as we stepped out of the lounge.

"Acidic blood", I said, "you said it already hit you once when Martin threw me off the tower."

"X-Ray's and TEHS's don't exactly need to slice you open", Sarah smiled.

"TEHS?", I asked, "I've never even heard of that."

"Transmitting Electron Heart Scanner", Sarah said as she swiped a card through a security reader, "they were designed by Allen Ransol way before the turn of the century. He had been plagued with heart problems from the time he was born and since MRI's could never take a truly accurate picture of what was going on underneath your skin, he and his dad decided to put their know how to use. What a TEHS does is take a picture of every single atom in your body as well as run through your genetic code with a bio-scanner. It then uses the picture of the cells and atoms in your body and then uses your DNA code to produce one, low quality 16-Color Monochrome Bit Map image, or 1000, extremely High Res JPEG images. It's an amazing piece of tech really. It's 130 years old and even the best Coding Expert in the universe was scratching his head trying to figure that shit out. They were designed to take pictures of the cardiovascular system, but before he died Allen adapted it for use on other major body systems."

"Sarah", I sighed.

"Yeah", she answered.

"Your ranting again", I said, "a simple, "it takes a ridiculously detailed picture of your insides would have worked."

"Yeah", she smirked, "I forgot you have the brain of a opossum."

I shook my head, "Xenomorphs have large brains, K-Classes are the same size and much more complex, so I'm not exactly a dumbass."

"Yeah yeah", Sarah said as we entered. The lab was about the same size as the one she had back at the old hide. There were three long counters, one against each wall and one in the middle with sinks, beakers, one of those centrifuge things and a couple of lab coolers as well as a HUGE white machine that had a "Ransol Medical Research", logo on it. It looked like an MRI, the style of it was a big give away to it's age, or at least the age of it's design. It essentially looked like three, giant white magnets wrapped around a bed in the middle of them. The three arcs were connected by glass tubes that were filled with a dim blue glowing gas and arcing sharply contrasting very bright blue electricity. Tyler was underneath the machine doing something to it while Alcatraz, who was looking a hell of a lot better, was simply admiring it.

"I hope you guys weren't tearing that thing apart", Sarah said, "Skyline and I need to use it."

"Nah", Tyler said, "I was checking the circuits and all that, finishing up the Install. Serial Number is 0005, the second one to be installed in Biosphere and it was still wrapped when we got here."

"Does it work?", I asked, "that thing looks like a death trap."

"Nah", Alcatraz's said, "these things work wonders for anyone who gets hurt. After I got burnt in the Quake, one of these kept me alive until the Synthetic parts got here. Depending on what they have installed, these things go from just scanners, to therapeutic...almost mystical recovery chambers."

"How the fuck do you turn a scanner into a healing device?", I asked.

"Well", Alcatraz began.

I sighed, I was in for another long rant, very little of which I was sure I'd understand.

"In 2077", Alcatraz started, "a few years after TEHS's went into first run production, Allen Ransol began experimenting with his own technology. What he found was that he could use certain lengths of radio waves to manipulate everything from heart beat, to lung and digestive tract function. He even found that when tuned correctly, he could repair damage from the inside without ever taking a knife to the patient. What happened with me was seeing as how the damage to my body was too severe for even the TEHS to try and repair, they used it to keep my heart beating and keep me breathing while they waited for the new body to arrive. And seeing as how it has more than enough capacity to run the mods, they also used it to stop the pain from the burns. I was in one of these for almost a month with charcoal for skin and unable to move at all, and I was able to sleep through most of it, without having to be on pain killers."

I shook my head.

"Like I said before", Sarah said from behind a computer, "120 year old piece of Human technology we still can't comprehend, oh and Sky, for this to work correctly, you have to strip."

I sighed, "of course I do."

"Hey it's true", Alcatraz said, "fabric disrupts the readings."

I sighed and started unlacing my boots.

"You know she's playing you Skyline", Tyler commented, "she just wants to see what you got to offer."

"She's gonna be disappointed then", I smirked, "there's nothing to see on a male K-Class unless he's in heat, and I'm not."

"Haha", Sarah said sarcastically, "I already see all you had once when I had to close up that tear at the base of your tail after Martin threw you off the tower, toss in the fact that I'm the nurse in this lab and I've seen enough dudes to last forty lifetimes."

Tyler, Al and I couldn't help but burst out laughing.

"forty lifetimes is a specific number", Alcatraz said.

"No shit?", Tyler said.

"Fuck you Al", Sarah said, "in my defense, less than 2% of the guys I had to strip to patch up were hot. Shiiit, most of them were fat hairy dudes."

"How the hell did this conversation go from intelligent to...this?", I asked as I got my boots off.

"Who the hell knows" Tyler asked, "be careful with that TEHS Sarah. I had no idea what I was doing with it besides connecting it to the power supply and it's not like it came with an instruction booklet."

Tyler and Alcatraz left.

"Sarah", I said as I took off my shirt, "call Magellan and have him make sure this thing is working, I'm not about to get in that thing and get fried."

"It's fine", Sarah said, "I may be a biologist, but I have some experience with this equipment, everything is working fine."

"I hope your right", I said, "how am I supposed to get in this thing?"

Sarah pressed a few buttons on the computer console and a bed slid out from in between the magnetic coils.

"That's how", I said laying down on it. Sarah pressed a few more buttons and the bed retracted inside the machine. It began to emit a low pitched hum as a small strip of light crossed over me a few times. I could hear Sarah mumbling to herself, but couldn't make it out. Then, after about five or so minutes, she asked.

"Skyline, did you ever get hit by a car or something?"

"No", I answered, "why?"

"Cause you have this massive scar right above what I'm guessing is your heart", Sarah answered, "the only thing I know to cause a tear of this size is a massive force trauma that causes the heart to stop beating in the middle of a contraction. This should have killed you."

"Probably from one of the beatings they inflicted on me when I was little", I said, "I wouldn't worry about it."

"No", Sarah said, "given the density of the scar tissue, it happened recently, hang on a second and I'll fix it."

Sarah played around with a few more dials and then I felt my body relax. My tail went limp, I lost the feeling in my arms and legs and the section of my brain that dealt with muscle control just seemed to click off, like someone hit me with an entire, extra large bottle of economy sized hospital grade knock out drops, even whatever Chy would do to me had never relaxed me so much. I began to feel a little warm for a couple of minutes before it stopped and I cooled off. Soon after that, the feeling in my body began to come back. My tail returned to it's normal state, I began to have feeling in my arms and legs and my senses returned to me as the bed slid out of the machine and I sat up, feeling like I had just woken up from a full nights sleep.

"Dude", I said, managing to sit up with Sarah's help, "Alcatraz didn't lie about that shit. That' was one hell of a trip."

"Yeah", Sarah said pulling up a chair, "Radio waves can do that. Now seriously Sky, what aren't you telling me?"

"What do you mean?", I asked standing up, finding the numbness wore off almost completely.

"That scar was fresh", she said, "you had to have gotten that in the past week...there's only one thing I could think of that would cause it."

"Which would be?", I asked pulling my jeans back on.

"Did your heart actually stop when...", she hesitated, "when Martin killed your mother?"

A cloud of despair set over the room. I felt...something leave. Like someone broke off a piece of me and took it with them. It wasn't a painful feeling it was just...empty, nothingness. It was the first time since meeting Martin face to face and almost dying that I had realized just what he had taken from me. There was no way it was real, there was no way she was dead.

"Skyline?", Sarah asked.

"She's not dead", I said quietly, "she can't be."

"Sky?", Sarah asked, "whose not...."

Sarah stopped herself.

"No...it;'s not possible, he didn't kill her", I said

"He did."

"No, he didn't."

"Yes", Sarah replied me, "you saw it happen, she died in front of you."

"No she didn't", I said, my heart rate began to pick up, "no they didn't!"

"They?", Sarah asked, "who is they?"

'There not dead!", I said starting to shake, "they can't be!"

"Snap out of it!", Sarah said grabbing me and pulling me close to her as the shakes got more violent. The shakes lasted for almost a minute before dying down, giving away only to tears as faces that were burnt into my brain came flooding out. Chy, the one I wanted to spend my life with, my Mom and Dad and my brother. All the grief I had worked so hard not to feel for years came out all at once.

If you thought getting stabbed in the gut hurt, I suggest you try this.

"Who is they Sky?", Sarah asked looking me in the eyes.

"My family", I cried, "the only ones I've ever loved. They can't be gone."

"They are", Sarah sighed pulling me close to her once again, "they are."

I cried into her shoulder, the tears leaking out through the cracks in my visor. Scars opening on my body were once thing. Scars opening on the inside was something else all together.

"I have something to show you", Sarah said pulling out a hologram projector and turning it on, the display was Wasp-473, a planet with an Iron surface and a molten uranium mantle with such a high gravitational pull, even black holes couldn't survive an encounter with it.

"Wasp-473?", I asked

"On the outside, a charred, rusted, black wasteland where crude oil flows in rivers and mountains of high carbon steel tower over the landscape, underneath, molten uranium keeps everything going. A scared surface, a corrosive life blood, what's it' protecting? The biggest, most pure diamond mankind ever discovered."

"I heard about that", I said, "they said that we could never do enough refinement to generate a diamond that pure."

"Do you know who I think about when ever I hear about this planet now?", Sarah asked.

I shook my head.

"I think about you", Sarah said.

I paused for a minute, not sure how to answer.

"I'll bite", I sighed after a while, "why?"

"It has a black, scarred surface", Sarah said, "a product of clashing and winning against countless black holes. It has a liquid uranium interior, corrosive enough to dissolve most anything. That scared surface and corrosive interior guard one of the most valuable treasures mankind knows."

"If your making a compassion", I said, "only the first two apply."

Sarah shook her head, "don't give me that bullshit Skyline."

"It's true", I said, smiling a little, "I don't exactly have a diamond growing inside me."

Sarah smiled back, "maybe you do, maybe you just don't know it."

I breathed in and sighed, "have you ever lost anyone close to you?"

"No", she replied, "unless my German Shepard puppy that I watched for six months while he died of cancer counts. Sweetest pup you'd ever meet....can I admit something?"

"Sure", I said.

"Okay", Sarah said, "I've...kinda been crushing on you."

I paused.

"How can you", I began, "looking like that, be attracted to me, an Acid blooded Xeno, looking like this?"

She smiled and stood up, "humans aren't attracted to looks alone. Come on, lets' head back before Tyler burns the lab down with that stove."

I smiled, "right behind you."