eugenesis-text

Nothing made sense. Why would Xenon pick an unconscious Decepticon as a test subject Why
inject just one, and why in the leg and not the back of the neck For someone who hated questions, who
resented doubt in any form, these vagaries were excruciating.
He’d relished his Decepticon body and the new lease of life it offered him, but at what cost had he
been resurrected What else had Xenon done to the vulnerable, brainless Decepticons before the transplant
What other tics and tricks did these new forms conceal Had Xenon downloaded an electronic virus into
their CPUs, to be activated the moment their mission was accomplished Were they tagged and remotecontrolled,
their every move and thought relayed to the Imperial Majestrix He suddenly felt as helpless as
the prisoners downstairs.
When these thoughts had first entered his head, he’d felt the urge to attack everyone and everything
around him: Sevax for discovering the anomaly, Jolup for downplaying the implications, and every dumb
red Cybe for simply taking up space. Now he directed his hate at more worthy targets: Quantax and
Xenon.
Nevertheless, he wanted to exorcise his aggression, and when the alarms went off he knew they
promised an opportunity. He ran to the entrance hall, where a scuffle had broken out. They newly arrived
Quintesson prisoners had somehow slipped their electro-chains and instigated a sloppy jailbreak. The
chipping squad had tackled the rebellion head-on, disturbing a box of Inhibitor Chips in the process. It was
difficult to distinguish between guards and prisoners, but Ryknia didn’t care. Without prejudice he severed
limbs, tore heads from shoulders and, when necessary, used his arm-mounted pulse gun to cripple fleeing
prisoners. Gradually, his numerous targets realised that he was killing both guard and prisoner alike, and the
lines of battle were redrawn. The tide turned. He flinched as someone stabbed a syringe gun into his open
leg wound. This was getting out of hand.
Jolup stepped onto the upper balcony, balanced his rifle and picked off the Quintessons one by one.
Just for fun, he killed them in numerical order: Q-37 first, then Q-111, Q-178, Q302…
Ryknia waited for the last shot to fade and pulled the syringe from his leg. The needle came out
reluctantly, black and bent.
‘They must have gone for the wound,’ said Jolup, dropping to floor level. ‘Why did they turn on
you’
‘I was a little reckless in battle.’ Ryknia dabbed the oil on his thigh. ‘Ouch. That syringe went pretty
deep.’
‘You think it was loaded’
‘Who cares I’m going to patch myself up. Then I suggest we find Sevax and see if any other lowlife
guard wants a fight.’
Throughout his life, from enrolling in medical school to running the Ark’s medi-bay, Ratchet had
always had a problem with time management.
As a naïve Kranian youth, he would roll into download lectures halfway through; as the head of the
International Medical Foundation he would miss board meetings because he was too busy swotting up on
invasive nanotechnology (like how to implant an artificial singularity inside someone’s cerebral cortex) or
CG inoculations (his test subject, Starscream, had popped out to attend a Decepticon recruitment rally and
never come back); as a tool-or-die man on Earth he would continue futile surgery rather than move on to
the next patient. ‘You break it, I’ll remake it,’ he would say, trundling across the battlefield in his mobile
repair bay.
He lived in Medical Time, a rushed and hazy world of flexible deadlines. It was a doctor’s
prerogative. Life-saving miracles always happened ‘at the last minute’, patients were always seen to ‘in the
nick of time’, and he always rolled onto the battlefield ‘not a moment too soon’. He followed his own
internal clock, one that was set a few minutes behind everyone else’s.
And so it was now. He bolted through Delphi trying to recall the quickest route to Siren’s office. He
ducked downstairs, sidestepped a couple of bored Triggercons and – not for the first time – concluded that
he was genetically predisposed towards tardiness: the more important the meeting, the later his arrival.
He slowed down outside an innocuous door and waited for his ambulatory systems to adjust: there
was no way he was going to barge in and let the others hear his whirring motors.