FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

A hazy figure appeared out of the refracted fluid surrounding them. It pressed a hand to the glass of their tank. “Yes,” a voice reverberated through the fluid surrounding them. “You’ll make an excellent instrument.”

Lev?

Lev’s eyes sprang open and she rapidly scanned her surroundings. She laid underneath a fluffy purple blanket on top of a mattress the size of a Uhaul truck. Right where she’d lain down last night. The cyborg rat sat up, wondering about the strange dream she’d just had. “VR,” she said out loud. “Do you have any idea what that dream was about?”

I’m not sure which dream you’re talking about, VR answered. You asked me not to access your implants until 7:00 am.

Lev looked over at the clock on the wall of the bedroom she’d claimed for herself, just in time for the display to change to 7:01. “Oh, right,” she mumbled. “Well, thanks for that.”

Glad to hear that, they answered. Would you like to talk about your dream?

“Maybe,” she considered. “I was in some kind of glass tank full of fluid, and there was this guy standing outside of it. But I couldn’t make out any of their features or anything.”

VR paused for a few moments. Do you think it could be a recovered memory?

Lev shrugged. “Maybe, it doesn’t make much sense though. They were saying something about an instrument?”

That is strange, VR conceded. Any idea what it could mean?

“Would I be asking you if I did?” Lev retorted. “I’m getting a shower, don’t watch me.”

As you say.

The augmented rodent walked over to the dresser where she’d deposited her clothes from the previous day. Whoever had lived here previously had cleared out their clothes when they left, so all she had was the tube top and leggings she’d found in the lab. She gathered up the sparse clothing she had and entered the bathroom.

The personal bathroom wasn’t as well-equipped as the apparently public toilet she’d hidden in the previous day, but it had a bathtub and shower with a complicated-looking head. Air nozzles for drying off were embedded in the aluminum walls around the tub. After setting her clothes aside she gingerly stepped into the tub and turned the knob, fortunately the basic controls looked simple enough. Chilly, but tolerable water streamed out of the faucet for a few moments before she switched to the shower head.

Cold, refreshing streams flowed out of the head onto her grimy body, washing the dirt she’d slept in away. Her fur started to mat up, but she gently pulled it apart with her fingers. And then, she noticed something that didn’t feel like dirt. Instead it was sticky, jelly-like, and smelled a little fishy. Lev looked up at the shower head, realizing that the water flow seemed to be slowing down.

A large, clear, blob of… something splattered against her face. Frantically she shook it off and jumped out of the bathtub. While trying to scrape the slime off of her body she saw strings of clear gel slipping out of the shower head like spaghetti noodles through a colander. “VR!” she shouted. “What the Hell is that?”

What is what? VR asked in response.

“The…” Lev stopped, remembering that she’d asked VR not to watch while she was showering. She closed her eyes tightly for a moment. “I’m going to let you see through my eyes again for five seconds,” she stated. “Starting, now!”

Lev leaned towards the bathtub and opened her eyes wide, trying to focus on the slime still streaming out of the showerhead. Huh, yeah, I don’t know what that is.

“Do you have any idea where it could be coming from?” Lev blinked and turned away as she turned on the blowers, conceding that she probably wasn’t getting a shower this morning.

The water purifiers and reservoir appear to be on Floor 3, the inverted pyramid map appeared in Lev’s field of view again, with a blinking light on the floor beneath her. The elevator still isn’t working but you could take the stairs. A room on her current floor was highlighted, far from the stairs headed upwards.

Lev let the air blowers dry her off as the map rotated before her. “Any idea what else we might find down there?” she inquired, shaking moisture off her right arm.

Unfortunately the cameras on that floor are offline, VR explained. The schematics show a number of chemistry and biology labs in addition to the water treatment plant.

“Do you think that maybe something leaked out of one of those labs?” Or escaped, Lev didn’t voice that last thought out loud.

It’s certainly possible. Based on what was in the labs on Floor 2 I’d suggest arming and armoring up.

“Agreed,” Lev replied, pulling her gloves on tight.

—

Lev stalked carefully down the stairs to Floor 3, a narrow spiral staircase seemingly carved into the bedrock. She held her gravity mace in both hands, ready to strike at anything that came out of the shadows to attack her. A bandolier hung with assorted grenade-like devices she’d found in the armory was slung across her shoulders. Her outfit had one major addition from the previous day, a skirt, cobbled together from pieces of the armor worn by the troops she’d killed yesterday, held up by a tight steel cable. It wasn’t fancy, but it covered her a bit more than the scant clothing she’d worn previously.

She came to a door at the bottom of the stairs, silvery metal outlined with magenta stripes. There was no handle or doorknob, just like the doors upstairs, but the augmented reality controls didn’t appear until she touched the surface of the door. The wifi is a bit… VR took several seconds to continue their sentence. …weak here.

“I see,” Lev swiped across the control surface and it blinked green. Bolts clanked and the door gently swung open.

Immediately Lev felt a wave of intense humidity soaking her fur. She peered through the opening doorway to evaluate the room beyond. A hallway, walls covered with spots of mold and the floor with many puddles of standing water. The overhead lights were dark, but she could still see clearly with just the glow of her mace. A stray thought brought up a data reading labeled “light enhancement.”

“You seeing this?” she asked, gingerly stepping out into the hallway, her boots splashing in a puddle of stagnant water. “It looks like quite a bit leaked.”

Agreed, VR confirmed. With the amount of moisture I’d hypothesize that the reservoir was left open, it should be at the end of the hall.

The rat strode further down the hallway, sweeping her enhanced vision from side to side, keeping watch for potential monster attacks. Her ears, still tattered from the gunfire she’d soaked yesterday, twitched at every sound. She took a sniff of the dank air, and nearly gagged on the moldy smell.

Wait, what was that? Lev swung her gaze onto a flicker of motion out of the corner of her eye. She slammed her mace down on something sticking out of the shadows, crushing a small box. She shrugged, relieved that it was nothing after all, before a gelatinous mass leapt out at her.

Lev struck blindly at the creature, her mace sliding through its cloudy body. A blob of slime went flying but the main body of the ooze slammed into her torso, knocking her back. She tried to kick the indistinct monster off of her, but to no avail. “What the Hell is this?” she shouted.

It would appear to be some sort of gelatinous slime creature, VR answered, unhelpfully. Maybe some sort of heat or cold effect could neutralize it?

“And I’d be in the blast radius wouldn’t I?” Lev objected.

Oh, right, you would.

She glanced down at her grenades, some of them had fire or snowflake symbols but they weren’t exactly helpful when she was already covered by the thing. She tried to scrape it off with her mace again, but it flowed around the weapon’s head instead and kept clinging to her.

Her thumb slipped over the trigger to the gravity function and the head started glowing. Lev felt the pull of gravity up towards the mace, and so did the slime. A large glob of slime peeled off of her body and surrounded the glowing mace head. The separated glob started to climb up the shaft towards her arm, thinking quickly Lev swung the mace hard and let go of the trigger as it reached the farthest point of her swing. The blob went flying and splattered against the wall.

She felt a burning sting as she started peeling the slime off of her, using the gravity mace to fling more globs at the wall. But a thin sheet of slime continued to cling to her lower body, threatening to digest her. And the globs she was flinging at the wall were starting to merge back with one another, reaching out towards the main body.

Lev looked down at the grenades hanging across her chest again. Reluctantly, she unclipped a grenade with a snowflake symbol from the bandolier with her free hand and pulled the pin out with her teeth. As she tossed another glob of slime with her right hand she chucked the grenade after it with her left.

The grenade bounced off the wall and landed on the blob with a wet “plop.” For several seconds, nothing happened as the two largest pieces of the slime reconnected. Lev was starting to worry that she hadn’t armed the grenade correctly, and then there was a flash of light and a muted “pop” as the grenade separated into two pieces inside the blob.

Lev felt an intense chill as the slime slowed and stopped hard. A reaching pseudopod hung stiffly in the air above her. The burning was replaced by a numbness that blocked all feeling below her waist.

Ice, she realized. The slime monster had frozen solid. She lifted her mace to try and smash it, but hesitated. Thoughts of her legs shattering stayed her hand. “VR, what do I do now?”

You’re half-frozen, VR answered. That’s not good, those cryo grenades use liquid nitrogen. Try to warm yourself up quickly.

Lev lifted up her bandolier and examined the other grenades hanging from it. She started to pull loose a grenade with a symbol of a campfire on the side. Not that one! VR interjected. It’s an incendiary, you’ll set everything in the room on fire, including yourself! Try a hot point instead, they’ve got a red sphere symbol. She picked out a grenade that had a symbol that looked like an orangish-red filled circle. Carefully, she pulled the pin, aimed for a point at the far edge of the ice patch, and threw.

The grenade landed, bounced, and rolled across the slippery ice. With apprehension, she watched it slide further and further away… and then it finally detonated. It exploded in a flash of heat and light, shattering a bit of the ice nearby with just the force of the explosion. And then she heard the cracking.

Ice breaking and snapping, cracks creeping closer and closer to her. Finally the ice covering Lev’s legs split open, and she breathed a sigh of relief. She flexed her legs to finish breaking her perfectly unharmed legs free and carefully stood up. “Now,” she said. “What the hell was that and are there any more of them out here?”

If I were to guess, some sort of colonial unicellular life-form. VR seemed to be thinking out loud as they explained. Like an unusually aggressive slime mold. There could definitely be more of them out there. Keep watch for any signs of movement and a hand on your grenades.

“Is it dead?” Lev asked, looking down at the thawing ice.

Probably, but I wouldn’t count on it.

On reading that comment Lev picked her mace back up and started running, carefully avoiding stepping on the ice for more than one reason.

Lev continued on down the hallway, avoiding shadowy patches as much as possible. A couple times she spotted something moving and backed away swiftly before a blob could snake out towards her.

After several harrowing minutes of dodging slimes Lev came to a closed door with a sign that read “Microbio Lab 3” in Korps chisel script. She would have passed it by, but something seemed a bit off. Cautiously, she slid a hand over the surface of the door, noticing a dent in the middle, as if something had slammed against the door from inside the door.

Huh, you don’t normally expect to see large organisms in a microbiology lab do you? VR noted.

Lev looked around the edges of the door, finding places where the door separated from the frame by mere centimeters. “Could it have been one of those blob creatures?” she asked.

Maybe, the one you fought had enough mass to knock you flat. Wait, what are you doing?

The rat tried to wedge her gloved fingers into the small gaps in the frame and pulled hard. “If it came out of here, we might be able to find out something about it here.”

Lev pried, and pried, but even with her enhanced strength she couldn’t get the door open any further. So she took a step back, hefted her mace, pressed the power stud, and slammed the blunt weapon into the door. The steel buckled under the impact, collapsing inwards, but still stood. She took a look inside through the gaps that opened between the door and frame, a cryo grenade held at the ready. She didn’t notice any signs of movement, but what she did see took the breath out of her.

“VR,” she whispered. “Is that what I think it is?”

If you mean an anthropomorphic skeleton, they answered. Yes, it would appear so.

The white rat pounded on the door again until the top half was bent down far enough for her to climb in through. She scrambled over the broken door and the overhead lights came on, triggered by motion sensors. In a moment she was next to the bare white bones she’d spotted, wearing nothing but a few scraps of nylon. Lev cautiously reached down to the skull and turned it over, noting a long pair of chisel-like incisors. A rodent, like her, or maybe a lagomorph. She leaned over to examine what was left of the skeleton’s clothing, but felt something crunch under her knee.

Surprised, Lev backed up and looked down to find a twisted pair of glasses with almost comically-large round pink lenses, one of which was badly cracked. “These look a bit like that visor we found upstairs, right?” she inquired.

Yes, VR answered. I can pick up a faint signal from them, but they’re heavily damaged.

Lev scanned the room again. Aside from the skeleton there were a couple of lab benches covered in clumps of dust and scattered plastic or metal implements. On one bench stood the shattered remnants of a fish tank, two and a half walls still standing. “We need to know what happened here,” she stated, twisting the glasses in her hands. “Just show me the last things they saw.” She nested the bent and cracked glasses on her muzzle.

A couple moments… The lenses of the glasses crackled and blurred, but slowly an image resolved its off-colored self into resolution.

She looked upon the aquarium, fully intact now, with a latched lid on top. Whoever was wearing the glasses slowly approached the tank, seemingly empty of everything but water.

“Day 6 progress report,” a high-pitched but slightly familiar voice stated. “We’re already evacuating, so we’ll have to terminate this iteration of the experiment after observations are taken.” A pink-gloved finger tapped the glass. “No sign of the organic debris provided, no discoloration, it looks like the cleaners are working as designed.” The hand reached out to lift the lid of the tank. “Now taking samples for later experiments.”

She unclasped the latch on the lid and lifted it from the tank. But as she was picking up a micropipette from a nearby rack something disturbed the surface of the water. “Wait, what was that?”

A translucent pseudopod lunged out of the water towards the viewer. Her hand slammed the lid down, splattered slime all over. A large glob landed on the viewer, who leaned back just in time to watch the ooze slither under her white coat.

MC 2272, hold on, we’re coming to get you! That soothing synthetic voice from the previous recording seemed to say in her mind. ETA ten minutes!

The side of the fish tank shattered and clear gel smacked into the viewer, knocking her flat on her back. She gurgled and sputtered, unable to speak. Lev seemed to hear her next words in her head rather than audibly. “It’s getting in me! Sterilization procedure now!”

Intense, burning indigo lights blazed down from the ceiling, water rushed over the viewer’s glasses. She leaned up, and aside from water stains on her coat there were no signs of the slime monster. Most are busy evacuating but a med team is coming, just hold on a few more minutes…

The viewer jerked suddenly, falling back and clutching her heaving chest. “It’s in my chest cavity! It…” She coughed, trembled, and collapsed. “It’s eating me from the inside!” her next cough sprayed red fluid all over the outside of her coat. “NO!”

The voice’s next words sounded heavily tinged with remorse. I’m sorry, MC 2272, the Brotherhood has started their assault, all med teams are tied up. We can’t get to you anymore.

“I…” MC 2272 convulsed again. “That’s not… I…” She paused for several moments, then finally came to a conclusion. “Seal the lab, full quarantine procedure.”

Are you absolutely sure about that?

“Do it!” more blood sprayed onto her coat. “Don’t let this thing escape!”

Order confirmed. A series of heavy clanks and thuds sounded through the room. All doors and vents are sealed. You have about an hour’s worth of oxygen left.

“I doubt I’ll last that long,” MC 2272 sighed, laying back on the floor.

Do you have any last words for your sisters?

Lev watched MC 2272 pull her arm back up to her face and the point of view rapidly lifted up from the floor before flipping around. Her vision was filled with a white-furred muzzle with trimmed incisors and a pair of large round ears nestled in a crown of blond hair draped over dark brown eyes, blood leaking out the side of her mouth. “Live for us.”

Lev yanked the glasses off with enough force to fling them across the room, where they shattered against the corner of a desk. “What the fuck!”

Something wrong? VR inquired.

“Didn’t you see that?!” Lev shouted, glancing down at the skeleton lying on the floor. “She looked just like me! How is that possible?”

VR didn’t speak again for almost a minute. There are a few possibilities, but she really wasn’t that similar to you.

“What do you mean?” Lev objected. “You saw her. White rat, blond hair, she even sounded like me!” The face flashed in her memory again. “Okay, she didn’t have my eyes, but they’re artificial.”

I would say she was closer to a mouse, VR replied. I was reading her biometric data, she was considerably thinner with a lighter frame than you.

Lev rubbed the exposed cybernetics embedded in her shoulder. “And how much of my build comes from the metal in my body?”

VR hesitated again, for what seemed like an even longer period. I don’t know, but we have information on the organism that attacked you. And possibly a means of killing it.

“What do you mean?” Lev looked around the lab, trying to figure out what they could mean.

Look up, at their direction she glanced upwards but didn’t see anything but the ceiling tiles and the overhead lights. Two sets of fluorescent tubes, one white and lit, the others purple and dimmed. Ultraviolet sterilization lights.

“They didn’t help her much,” Lev pointed out.

It instantly denatured the microbes still on the exterior of her clothing, VR explained. And body.

“So what,” Lev objected. “Are you suggesting we lure the remaining blobs in here?”

There are UV lamps in the water treatment center. But they’re manually operated on site, no remote functions.

Lev considered their statement. “Then we get to the treatment plant and turn the lamps on after luring the blobs there?”

Yes, VR confirmed. But you may need to figure out a way to fight your way over to the switch.

She looked up at the UV lights in the ceiling, it seemed like the lights were attached with magnets, there was no sign of any cables or wires. Lev climbed up on a table under a UV light and reached up to grab it. With a small tug, the tube came free, she flipped it around in her hands. It was solid plastic with heavy caps at either end. “Any idea how these are powered?”

I believe it uses induction power, VR answered.

Lev stepped down and approached her gravity mace, still carrying the UV bulb in one hand. With her free hand she reached down and grasped the hilt of the mace. She flicked the switch.

The mace glowed and its gravity began to pull the UV bulb towards it. When one of the end caps came within five centimeters of the mace the bulb began to glow with a hot purple light that hurt Lev’s eyes to look at it. She flicked the switch off.

As the bulb’s light dimmed again Lev held it up, allowing herself the ghost of a smile.

—

Lev stalked down the halls, UV bulb held out like a staff in one hand and her mace in another, following the map in her heads-up display. A blob leapt out of the shadows towards her, but before it could grab her she activated her mace and the bulb shone. Where the light touched the blob it melted into water.

The blob began to retreat from the light but Lev swung the bulb towards it, sweeping the light until it had completely melted into an inert pool of water. “I’d say that was a successful test,” Lev commented.

Yes, VR answered. But don’t get overconfident, we still have a ways to go and I’d bet most of the organism is hiding in the treatment plant.

“Now you tell me,” Lev carefully stepped around the puddle and continued following the map. She turned a corner, then another, and melted another blob. Before long she came to a door with a large water drop symbol and the words “water treatment plant” in chisel script.

That’s it, now there’s no working cameras in there, VR cautioned. So I have no idea what could be behind that door.

“I’m guessing a gigantic blob.” The muscled rodent set the UV bulb down so she could the mace in both hands. She braced herself, wound up for a swing, activated the mace, and swung hard.

The glowing mace head left a massive dent in the face of the door, but the thud was muted by a wet “splat.” Clear gel leaked from the gap at the bottom of the door frame, and Lev scurried back in alarm. “What the fuck?!” she shouted as the ooze began to pick itself off the ground and reach towards her. “How big is this thing?”

It… might have just been leaning against the door? Their suggestion came up far short of reassuring. I mean, it seems to be sending breakoff colonies out to hunt for food, so it would wait there right?

Lev grabbed for the UV bulb and swung it out in front of her, smacking a pseudopod on the way. She activated her mace and held the end of the bulb up to it, powering it enough to start glowing. But the blob wrapped itself around the implements even as it dissolved into water. The glow around the mace flickered and the UV lamp gradually began to fade, sparks popped on the head of the mace.

“Fuck!” Lev scrambled back as her mace shorted out. The tube slipped out of her fingers and bounced off the floor. More pseudopods reached out of the doorway to grab at her, snaring the UV bulb and dragging it in. Trying to keep a tight hold on her mace, Lev yanked a random grenade from her belt and tossed it at the door.

It arced through the air towards the gap between the top of the bent and broken door and the doorframe, bounced off the edge of the door, and landed on the floor. Lev watched in horror as the grenade rolled on the floor, and she noticed the flame symbol on the side. A pseudopod enveloped the grenade and yanked it under the door.

A gout of flame erupted over the door from both ends. The fire crept over the surface of the blob, causing it to shrivel up on itself, and continued over the pools of water left by the UV light. Lev raced down the hall, no time to feel relief at the ooze’s death. “VR! What was in that grenade?!”

I told you not to use it, they admonished. It’s a variant of Greek Fire, water makes it burn faster.

Lev looked back and noticed the fire slowly starting to recede. She gradually began to walk back to the door, picking her mace back up and flicking it to try and get the water out of it. The flames receded back through the door. Her gravity mace flickered a couple times, then let out a steady pink glow, Lev felt its reassuring pull. She swung at the door again and pulled back on impact, dragging the door with it. Her hopes that the ooze was dead were dashed in an instant as she looked inside.

A cloudy mass filled an Olympic swimming pool in the middle of the room, pulling back burning pseudopods into itself, smothering the flames under sheer mass. Only a small space behind the door was clear, everywhere else in the room was covered by the ooze. Lev gasped as she took in the sheer size of the thing, how could she kill that?

A control console three meters to her left was highlighted by a red corona. That’s the water treatment system, VR explained. The UV lamps are controlled by a dial in the middle.

Lev looked at the glistening mass covering the floor in front of the console. “And how am I supposed to get to it?” she inquired.

Perhaps a hotpoint grenade? Definitely not an incendiary.

She found a grenade with a red sphere symbol and chucked it in the middle of the walkway between her and the console. The ooze grabbed it and began to pull it into the central mass, and then it detonated. Slime went flying everywhere from the blast, Lev held up an arm to shield her face just in time to feel strings of wet ooze hit her arm. While trying to shake it off she noticed a large circular patch of blackened steel floor, surrounded by rippling slime.

She jumped over the slime just in front of her onto the blackened patch, but the far edge of the patch was over a meter away from the console. Lev cautiously stepped up to the edge and tried to reach across to the dial, but her hand came up short.

Look out behind you! Lev turned to see the primary ooze mass rearing up, and aiming towards her. Before she had the chance to panic she grabbed the last cryo grenade on her belt and threw it at the center of the mass. It detonated, the liquid nitrogen inside rapidly freezing the ooze around it.

Almost as if by reflex the mass closed around the frozen part, causing more of it to freeze solid around it. Lev turned back to the console and the ooze still blocking off access. The slime on her arm was starting to burn.

She glanced back at the mass, she noticed that even with the large block of ice in the middle it was starting to reach out towards her again. She looked at the red marks the ooze was starting to leave under her fur. And she looked at the small patch of slime in front of the console. With resignation, she stepped onto the slime and leaned forwards onto the console. As she turned the dial all the way up she felt the ooze begin to climb up her boot.

The interior of the pool lit up, and the mass collapsed in on itself. The slime covering the walkway broke away from the main mass and started sliding towards the door. “Oh no you’re not!” Lev yelled, holding out her gravity mace.

The last bits of ooze were pulled up towards the mace, including the slime that clung to Lev’s arm. She swung it out over the pool and turned off the gravity, letting it fall into the UV-lit water. Lev looked out upon the pool of clear, but eerily lit up water. “Finally,” she said with relief. “That’s over with.”

—

Headlight blasted the screaming shock trooper with his plasma vision. They had found no sign of the Korps rat in their exploration of the second floor today, but they had discovered a transparent slime in one of the bedrooms that had attached itself to one of his men. The stag felt a twinge of remorse as the charred corpse sank to the floor, but you couldn’t be too careful with an obvious Korps bioweapon after all.