FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

(This is a reposting of an old story I did. I made a few changes and spruced a few details. Hopefully it's better than it was, though I admit it's still a tad bit sappy, I still like it.)

All Through the Night

Ken sighed and leaned his elbows on the papers scattered over his desk, rubbing his head gingerly. The DNA sequences just didn't work out. Genetic codes and combinations flung themselves wildly around in his brain, trying to find some order in the chaos.

"nothing, Nothing NOTHING!!" He slammed a fist down, driving the tip of the pencil he was gripping into the desk's surface. For months now he and his two partners had been trying to find the key to the mutation virus's code. Terrorists who had launched an attack had made use of it to horribly murder hundreds of people, and it had begun to spread. Eventually it had been brought under control, and the cases were isolated, but it was getting harder and harder to contain it, and incidences of it seemed to be increasing. Ken glanced at the red LED of his alarm clock: 2:31 AM. He sighed and mumbled to himself . . .

"Time for bed . . . oh, drat, gotta call Steve . . ." His hand paused over the phone when he remembered the time, and then continued to pick it up. "He'll kill me if I don't . . ." Tiredly he held the receiver up to his ear and dialed the number. It seemed to take forever for the phone to ring, but finally it did, and someone on the other end almost immediately picked up.

"Ken? That you?"

"Yeah," he moaned back "How'd you know?"

Steve chuckled and sighed "Who else would call this late eh? Hey, how did work go tonight? Find anything?"

"Nothing, not a darned thing. I dunno Steve, I'm beginning to wonder if this thing even HAS a base code."

"Hey, buck up, we'll find it. This just takes time. Oh, speaking of which, good news. I talked to Jake tonight (earlier of course) and he said he might have found something."

Ken nearly jumped out of his chair. "He did??? When did you talk to him? Was he at home?"

"Calm down, he isn't sure yet. He was still at the lab just around closing time when I was talking to him - said he would spend some extra time tonight researching what he found and would meet us when we came to work tomorrow."

"Ah, good . . . I sure hope he has found something. I've been losing too much sleep over this stupid thing."

Steve chuckled again. "Haven't we all."

"Besides, if he comes up to me with that black notebook of his again, I'm gonna be sick."

"Was he asking you questions about dragons again?"

"Yep" Ken answered, glancing at the dragon posters that covered his apartment walls, one section of his large dragon collection that was famous throughout the lab he worked at.

"Heh, that makes at least a year now he has been bugging you with this stuff, if not longer. I can't even remember when it started. I'm beginning to think _he_ is the dragon fanatic."

Ken laughed and shoved his chair back, propping his feet up on the desk. "Well, time for me to say goodnight buddy."

"Yeah, take care. Night."

"Night."

The receiver clicked decidedly as he set it back on the hook, then he spun himself around on the chair and marched comically to the bathroom. After brushing his teeth, getting undressed and everything else, he flopped himself onto his long craved bed, with the unhappy thought that he had only 4 hours to sleep. He sighed and looked over at his bedside table, where sat a picture of him and Steve that had been taken a long time ago. He smiled. They had been friends from the start. Both of them were interested in biology, both of them had dogs, and in general, they had a lot in common. Steve had always been the more active of the two however, getting into trouble, getting scolded by a concerned Ken, getting Ken into trouble, etc. The two were just like brothers, but unlike brothers, they had never fought. Not once in all their friendship had one been angry at the other. Most people didn't believe them when told, but the two were satisfied and happy to know it was true for themselves.

One day, just after Ken had gotten into college, their parents went off on a camping trip together in the big Motorhome that the two families often shared. It was a rainy day, and not good for driving . . . and somewhere along the line, an eighteen wheeler had slammed into the side, killing all of them. Steve had no where to go, and Ken took him under his wing, the mutual support helping them both along through their grief. Their friendship only got closer from there. When Ken needed help with work, Steve was by his side. When Steve needed support, Ken was there. Now Ken was 26 and Steve was 25. Jake was a mutual highschool friend who was renowned for his nerdity and uncanny love of rose bushes. Unlike the other two, he generally managed to be the angel of the trio, his innocent and somewhat absent-minded demeanor lending itself to his obliviousness in most cases of risk. Steve and Ken still manage to draw him into several of their schemes, however.

The three of them had gone to college and gained degrees as geneticists. Through hard work and extra elbow grease, they had gained publicity as accomplished professionals in a relatively short time, and after the terror attack, had been commissioned to analyze the virus in order to stop it ---- Ken's mind clicked as he glanced at the clock again and dropped his head in disgust. "3:01 . . . I've gotta stop letting my mind wander . . . ."

*****-*****-*****-*****

The next morning was hectic as expected. Ken woke up to a obnoxious blaring alarm that had already been running for 20 minutes and had successfully roused his neighbors who were now banging at the door. He had enough time to slurp down some cereal and throw on a pair of jeans and an overshirt, just barely remembering the paperwork he had done last night. He arrived at the lab 15 minutes late and got several skeptical looks from the secretaries in the lobby. Steve was waiting for him.

"Hey Ken . . . my my, don't we look nice and tidy this morning."

"Aw, cut me a break Steve, I was up till three last night," He scratched his head, "at least I think it was three . . . in any case, have you seen Jake yet?"

"Yeah, but he was acting kinda weird - then again he always acts weird - but I mean more strange than usual. He had this kind of victory grin written all over his face."

"'Victory grin'? That's an odd way to put it."

"Yeah I know . . . but there isn't really any other way to describe it -- You'll see what I mean. He's busy back in lab 23."

"All the way back there eh? Isn't that where the virus samples are stored? He must've found something to be fumbling around in there."

Steve nodded. "Well, let's go see what he's up to."

The two made their way through the white double doors that led to the restricted labs area, passing through different zones and checkpoints. The inner labs were heavily guarded with metal detectors, body scanners and finger print pads. Only a select few were allow in, and even then those people were closely kept to certain times. The only ones allowed in at free will were the 3 assigned to work on the virus: Ken, Steve and Jake, who were under constant surveillance outside the lab. As Ken and Steve walked into lab 23, they found Jake hunching over the megacomputer's control panel, at least 3 dozen different DNA sequences up on the large overhead screen. Ken reached Jake first.

"Jake? I-"

"Ken! Steve!" He whirled around to face them, a grin spreading from ear to ear, "I found it! I found the virus's base code!" He shoved a stack of papers into Ken's hands and began pointing wildly all over them at nothing in particular or perhaps everything at once, but neither Ken nor Steve could really tell.

"We had it all wrong, we reversed section A of the code, and that itself should have been in section B!"

Ken stared in disbelief at the diagrams in front of him, and then the test runouts from the computer.

"I . . . I don't believe it. Jake you-you actually did it . . . Ya-ha-ha-ha!"

The three jumped around acting like little kids, high-fiving and doing little dances -- certainly not what you would expect a bunch of grown-ups to do in a lab, but this was a special occasion. Jake turned serious though, as fast as he had become ecstatic.

"Hey guys, I need you to take a break for today though. There are some more tests I need to run on this, and I'd kind of like to take care of it myself."

"Uh . . . oh-kay . . . any particular reason?" Steve asked, raising an inquisitive eyebrow.

"No no, just rather get it all done myself," He grinned and then went back to tapping away at the keys, "I know you guys would mess it all up anyhow."

Ken chuckled and patted Jake on the shoulder.

"Well, if you really wanna stay here and do more work on your own, goodness knows you've earned the privilege. I'll take these runouts and send them to MarcLabs if you like. I can tell you they're sure gonna be happy to see this."

"Sure, sure, that'd be great Ken. Now you guys go on, and I'll meet you here tomorrow."

"Hey, just be ready and packed with your tux handy. We wanna be ready to get that Nobel Prize handed to us." Steve said laughing. Jake didn't respond, already engrossed in the computer screen, still tapping numerous combinations madly into the computer. Ken shook his head smiling and motioned for Steve to come with them. After they were out of the lab Steve turned to him, looking half-worried.

"Did you see that? His eyes were almost glazed with excitement."

Ken shrugged and grinned. "Would you be insane with happiness if you had found it?"

"Yeah . . . yeah I guess so. Heh, man he sure is lucky."

"Yep, he sure is. Let's be happy for him," Ken poked Steve in the ribs with his elbow smiling.

"Aww c'mon Ken, you know I'm not like that."

"Oh no?" Ken grinned wider.

"Hey, I'll treat you to breakfast, interested?"

"I've already had breakfast, but thanks anyway."

"Puh, nonsense. Knowing you, you only scarfed down some sugar-loaded cereal or something on your way out the door. Come on, I'll get you something healthy."

Ken shook his head and smirked at his friend, following submissively. A while later they sat in a nearby restaurant. Ken was busy putting away 5 fried eggs and 4 pieces of sausage, and Steve had just finished eating a stack of pancakes. On the way there however, Steve had seemed changed a bit, darker and graver than he normally was. It had been growing on Ken's mind and finally he decided to speak up.

"Hey, Steve? Steve, listen . . . Jake is a great geneticist, we both know that. But just because he found the code first doesn't mean that you ar-"

"No, no, it isn't that Ken. Don't worry about that . . . it was something else . . ."

"What?"

"Well, I just happened to think . . . did you see all those sequences he had up on the screen?"

"Yeah, why?"

"Didn't there seem something a little . . . out of place about them?"

Ken sighed, thinking . . .

"Hmm . . . sorry, I didn't really look all that closely. What did you see? Was it bad?"

"I dunno, that's what I'm trying to figure out. I can't tell what a sequence is just by looking at it, but it certainly didn't seem like virus sections to me."

"Ah . . . now that you mention it, it did look a little odd. I remember thinking about that when we first went in. I know at least that the virus didn't have that many sequences, and he had at least 30 up there."

"Yeah . . . hmm . . . you don't think that -"

Ken broke in, whispering before Steve could go further.

"Jake? No, no way. He may be a little nuts in the head, but he isn't a terrorist. And keep your voice down, you know how rumors can get started, and Jake is a good friend."

"I know, you're right." Steve replied, nodding. "Well, I got some stuff I gotta run back to the lab and do. I'll catch ya later bud."

"Yeah. And send my congrats to Jake again."

"I will."

The two rose and walked out, getting into their respective cars. As soon as Ken was home he made a beeline for his bed.

"Ahh, 2 years of work, finally paid off. Now for sleep." And in a few moments, his mind had drifted away to dreamland.

*****-*****-*****-*****-*****

Ken slept for all the rest of that day, most of the night, then into the afternoon of the next day, finally being rudely awakened for the fifth time by his old alarm clock, which he had been planning to smash with a sledge hammer for years now. Groggily he got up and made a belated breakfast, still wearing the clothes he had slept in and looking pretty bedraggled. In about another 30 minutes, he was walking through the doors into Lab 23, finding Jake and Steve talking together and setting up a tray of syringes. Steve heard Ken and called over to him, smiling broadly.

"Hey Ken! Are you setting a new style with your clothes?" He asked, putting a few more syringes in place and picking up the tray. Ken rolled his eyes at Steve and walked over to the two.

"Oh, Steve, you got those GBA papers ready?"

"Uh hmm . . . yeah, just a sec and I'll get them." Steve set the tray on the table again and walked over to the computer, shuffling through the papers strewn over its panel. Ken examined the syringes carefully.

"Uh, Jake, what were all those sequences you had up there yesterday morning?"

"Oh those? I was testing out the virus on the DNA of different samples, analyzing the affects of it. I've already started the stage for the antidote."

"Ah! That's my man." Ken grinned and grabbed Jake, giving him a dutch rub and then releasing him with a head of frizzled hair. "So, these the results of the tests you were running?" He said, waving a hand at the tray.

"These?" He replied chuckling as he patted his hair back down. "Oh no, this is all Steve's stuff. I don't know anything about it."

"Oh . . hey St-"

Ken felt something slam into him from behind throwing him down onto the table. He sucked in a painful breath as he felt dozens of needles piercing into his flesh and injecting their contents into him. The next few moments were muddled. There was a scream as someone pulled him up and began yanking syringes out of him by the handful. He didn't know who it was, but he shoved them out of the way, pulling the rest out himself and hugging himself in agony. He stumbled away a few feet and fell to his knees. He could feel his throat flaring up, closing in and making it hard to breath as if its walls were swelling like heated sponges -- hot, close, suffocating. The inflammation spread to his head, and he felt as though his skull were full of boiling liquid, his brain turning into a melted mush. Pain wrenched through his chest where the needles had cut into him, and the feeling began to flood its way to the rest of his body, as if the needles were dragging down his skin and tearing it along the way. Everything sank into a haze, and he only caught blurry glimpses of the things around him. The large glowing computer monitor blared out a sickening bluish white, and in the background his attention was torn between sounds of screaming, things knocking over, and the fiery pain shooting through his body. His heartbeat was so heavy he could almost feel and hear it at the same time, slowly, painfully laboring at each pump. The heat in his head eventually turned into a dull headache, and with great trouble he looked around him, eyes squinting as though they were stung with sand. Smashed glass and metal lay glittering on the floor in puddles of chemicals now mixed together into a dark blue-green fluid. The table in the middle of the room had been ripped in two, and as his eyes passed from it they fell on Steve, laying unconscious, crumpled against one of the counters, and a few feet away similarly strewn on the floor, breathing heavily . . . he couldn't believe it . . . a dragon!!!! There sat a small red anthro dragon, his chest yellow, and two black horns protruding from his head. The tattered remains of black pants, a shirt and a white lab coat lay loosely about him, like a torn flag hanging defeatedly from its pole. He knew it was Jake, but how did this happen to him??? What had happened to him???

Hastily he scrambled over to Steve, pain still twining in his body. Finding him unharmed other than a large bruise on his face he crawled over to Jake. After a few moments, Jake looked up at him with large yellow serpentine eyes, taking pain-filled breaths and half dazed.

"Steh . . . . Steve-er-sh-shoved you ih-hin t-t-to the tray. "I t-tried to stop hi-him . . . . but it was too- . . . . too late -- I di-hi . . . didn't s-see what he was . . . doing . . in time. I tr-ihied to get the ni-neehid . . . . the needles out, but he-he jabbed-arh-jabbed one . . . in my back . . . "

Ken pulled Jake forward and found a large syringe planted deeply in his waist. He yanked it out and eased Jake into his arms.

"Jake, Jake! What do you mean Steve shoved me?"

"He . . . did it . . . on puh-purpose k-k-Ken. I tried to he-help . . . I t-tried." Jake broke down into tears, crying in Ken's arms like a lost child, and then slowly fell into unconsciousness. For lack of knowing what else to do, Ken held him close, rocking him like a mother would her child. Confused thoughts built in Ken's mind, all muddled together into one incoherent mass. Suddenly, a loud snarling alarm rang out and the computer began to go into auto-lockdown. Ken made an instant decision, and setting Jake down, dashed over to it, entering the cancel number. He grabbed a CS disk and jammed it into the slot, hitting the command to copy the computer's data. The few seconds it took stretched out, new sounds interrupting his mind. Guards were coming down the hall, he heard them and sensed them, though he didn't know how. The computer finished and he nearly tore the entire drive out in effort to eject the disk. He ran back over to Jake and picked him up with surprising ease and turned to the door to meet the guards . . . Then he saw it, in the mirrored wall opposite him. Jake was not the only dragon in the room. He had been transformed into an anthro as well, large and powerful, his eyes beaming like headlights with a white light. His body was black with a white front, but hide and not scales. Large wings hovered behind him, and silver horns adorned his horse-like head along with small wing-like ears. A long tail drew out behind him, a large snake-like limb full of power, and his entire body glowed with an intense white-blue light.

Ken's mind was snapped out of it's daze as the emergency door began to buzz slowly open. With a single leap he was over at it, grabbing it by the grooves with his free arm and jamming it shut again with sheer strength. The foiled guards screamed out orders for tools, trying to force open the now broken steel door. Instinct told Ken he needed to get out, and soon. The vents opened and a sickly-sweet smelling gas began hissing into the room as he flew up to the skylight, and pried open the metal hatch that had clamped down over it, cradling Jake's pain-ridden body in one arm. In a few moments he had smashed through the glass and stood on the roof, looking down into the room. Still gazing through the broken glass, he reached a paw to his belt and squeezed on a small device there. The computer responded immediately: "Purging all files, continue with emergency destruct." A few seconds passed, and a loud hiss accompanied by smoke emanated from the computer as it fried its harddrives with the built-in destruct system. He waited there a few more seconds, depressed thoughts going through his mind, and turned to fly away -- but he stopped dead. Armed forces personnel and their vehicles surrounded the building, everything equipped with some form of menacing weapon. He had no choice but to make a dash for it, and zoomed up into the sky as high as he could towards the sun. When he felt he had flown out of their range of sight, he made for his apartment, hoping to find some temporary solace there. Jake squirmed gently in pain, half rising from his black-out, his eyes opening a little. Ken looked down at him and nuzzled the tormented face instinctively.

"We'll be alright Jake, don't worry, we'll be alright."

With that Jake closed his eyes again and ceased to respond, and Ken had to turn his thoughts forcefully from worrying about him, to getting back home. The pain in Ken's body had gone down to a mere ache, and he flew effortlessly along now, urgently trying to get away from the scene. It took him about 15 minutes, but he reached the apartment and landed on the roof without incident, since people don't normally scan the skies for dragons and most are intent on what is right in front of them. Fortunately, his room was on the top floor and had a balcony outside. He threw the glass door open with a slam and staggered in, exhausted more from the stress and emotional strain than from fatigue. He laid Jake on his bed, and halted as he began to stand upright. Covering his entire arm was a mixed mass of dried and sticky blood, forming a large gory smear. He gently rolled Jake onto his belly and found a gaping wound where something had torn into his side, ripping through the finely-scaled flesh. Ken raced to the bathroom, the tips of his wings dragging against the ceiling and hitting the doorframe as he entered. He got in as far as they would allow him and opened the cabinet. At first he grabbed a few things, then after a second thought, grabbed a bag and dumped everything into it.

He got back to Jake and wiped away the worst of the blood with a washcloth he had soaked in hot water, Jake stirring painedly in his heavy sleep. There wasn't much that Ken could do, but he used up half a tube of antibacterial on it, and bound a folded T-shirt against it with a few winds of bandage tape. That done, he went on to pack anything and everything that might be useful into three large duffels: camping supplies, food, the bag of first-aid he had thrown together in the bathroom and anything his mind even hinted that he might need. He got it all done in amazing speed, though it all seemed to never end. Finally, he collapsed next to his friend on the bed, the frame creaking from the weight. It wasn't long before Ken had fallen into a deep sleep, his tortured mind draining away the tension from waking life, trying to fight back the nightmarish images dancing in his mind.