High Security Level 5 = Ptolemy [Open]

[Anonymous]

OoC
For until JunoZXV's plot ... Ptolemy is, for now, alone in his own little 'cell'. Feel free to mingle ... Please keep your heads intact on the ride at all times. :]

--

Containment. Was this containment? It tried to walk north and met only a blank, thick, solid block of something that hurt when it hit it. East was the same, as was south, and west ... Walls, right? Walls. Walls walls walls. One wall made a chink! when claws struck the smooth surface. It was not concrete like the other walls. Glassy. Ptolemy figured it would break when it was struck again and again, so again and again it struck. Nothing. Not even a crack. Not a whistle of whining, cracking glass - only the rebounding echo of bone against Plexiglas, yelling back that all was futile.

It made Ptolemy angry.

There were fits. Screaming fits, rage fits. Ptolemy flew at whatever was nearby in the pen - a fake tree, a mannequin ... torn to shreds. When claws no longer worked out frustration, his subjects of torture having been utterly demolished, the beast rose its maw to the ceiling and roared. It was a bestial call. Thrust from the darkest depths of his windpipe's hell, screaming past the hard and soft palates - a throbbing, vengeful shriek into the emptiness that was Ptolemy's world.

In some dismal sense it hoped for feeding time to approach. It wanted something to destroy.

[Anonymous]

OOC: Do you mind if I join? I'll have Alegra leave if you do.

Alegra carried the remains of her previous experiments to the containment facility, intending on feeding the bits of mutated flesh to the "beast" in the high security facility. Beast is such a human word to use, how can one really decide whether someone they have trouble communicating with is a beast, she thought. By many people's standards, I was a beast until they trained me. I possibly still am.

It had taken a lot of string-pulling and favours to get her to see "it" but she was determined to do so. Even Dr Wordsworth's warnings couldn't disuade her from her curiosity, she wanted to see this bizzare mutant for herself.

She accepted a high-voltage electrocuter from the guards outside the cell and relucantly pulled on an array of protective clothing. Clothing always felt strange but to be seen as a person, you had to behave like the majority of them. After dressing she was taken through a set of metal doors to a viewing chamber. The beast, a "licker" as the people in this ward called it, seemed to be shrieking at the top of its lungs. She flicked a knob on the dashboard and the room echoed with the sounds of the creature's (overly loud and annoying) lamentations.

Alegra flicked another knob, which would turn on the lights pointing to the creature's confinement. She surveyed the destruction with a sigh: toxic and violent with small chance of intelligence.

'Ptolemy. Do you hear me?' Alegra asked slowly, hoping to gauge it's communication abilities.

[Anonymous]

OoC
C'mon in, the water's warm. :]

--

The cranium of the strange and disfigured beast swung in a wide, pivotal axis. Tongue lolling out, spittle dripping from the tip to encompass whatever hard surface was within its range: floors, ceiling, the Plexiglas ... Teeming with infectious pathogens, the salivary fluid dripped and clustered into little pools of drool. The virus would not last long outside of the body, not after the saliva evaporated. Woe be the fool who touched the many fragments of one substance in the meantime ... Its roaring abated, Licker swung this way and that. Teeth gnashed. They were sharp. Impatient. Hungry. And somewhere nearby ... was the ever-growing scent of fresh flesh. No matter if the meat was human or not. All that mattered was that it was sustenance.

"Ptolemy. Do you hear me?"

Ptolemy did not recognize the name as its own yet. It was growing quickly used to the title, however, for it seemed to associate to the long-tongued beast.

The first syllable did not escape Alegra's maw before the Licker was on the move. A voice! A voice meant an enemy! An enemy meant prey! Prey meant delicious yummy red stuff ... the kind of stuff that would slide down Ptolemy's throat. Before Alegra completed her sentence, the advanced zombie was lunging at the Plexiglas at the precise location that the stranger stood. Its mass figure smashed into a hardened surface and the body rebounded from the rattling material a few feet. No matter. Ptolemy was on its feet again. Rageful, spited and smited by the fraudulent presence of what it had thought was in the same cubicle, Ptolemy slashed at the glass with its long, gnarled claws. While it did not succeed in breaking the firm material, there were now long gouges on the other side. Alegra was safe. The surface was not.

Irritation. Ptolemy wanted the prey. It wanted the prey now.

[Anonymous]

Alegra furrowed her catlike face as she watched the creature's reaction. She'd heard it was hostile but this was overdoing it. Such desperation, such fury. It was a pity really, while it was like this there was not much to interest her other than the virus itself. It did not seem to be able to understand anything in its rage and would need to be calmed if she were to communicate with it. Surely the people that contained it should have sedated it by now.

She watched as it attacked the glass, raising an eyebrow as it attempted a second attack. The protective glass between the two was looking stightly bettered but it would hold. She would wait for a small while longer to see if he would calm down after accpeting her presence. 'Very well, I have leftovers for you,' she said. It was dubious that it would make any connection between what she said and the food, but it was still worth a shot. 'Perhaps the drugs in them might do better with you than my test subjects.'

She opened a shoot that led to several containment chambers and deposited the various organs inside. They fell with a squish and went through to the holding chamber. She watched to see - whatever the thing had once been - would to next.

[Anonymous]

Drugs? Perhaps it was fortunate that Ptolemy did not make much sense of human words, lest the beast would have turned away the meal with snoutless maw turned towards the ceiling, having felt a crushing loss of dignity and betrayal. However, smart though the Licker may have been in a past life - whatever that was - intelligence had been cut down for primal instincts, swarthing from the depths like ghosts looking to avenge their deaths on the lowly murderers who enabled them.

Entrails tasted delicious, even without barbecue. Down its throat they went, slithering past the thyroid and circoid cartilage ... A pointless frenzy of feeding. Ptolemy didn't seem to realize that its digestive system no longer functioned. What went in would come out without having been exposed to digestive enzymes. Blood cells would absorb directly into the body, yes. But nutrients? There was no need for vitamins and minerals when you were dead.

Once the Licker finished its meal, the blind head turned towards the spot from which they came. Some part in that large, throbbing brain decided that the meat had to have come from somewhere. A ventilation shaft, mayhaps? Eager and curious, the beast slunk to the wall ... and began to climb on it, claws striking cement with a clack clack clack. Scaling. Within seconds it would be at the vent, clawing the entrance ... prying it open ...

[Anonymous]

Alegra was starting to doubt that the creature in the pen had much intelligence. Even when calm, the creature on the other side seemed to only react on a basic level. Admittedly, so had she at first but she had also had dexderity and curiosity to aid her ability to learn. The other thing in the containment unit only thought of rage and food, without the digital finesse to enact complicated phalangeal patterns.

'Pish.' The creature started climbing the sides of it's containment. One would have thought that there would be automated measures against such an action. Having the creature able to climb to the ceiling was a hazzard, an oversight on the part of the staff who built the unit.

Alegra scanned the large desk in front of her for some sort of weaponry to stun the creautre. She found controls for a group of small blasters. Quickly studying the set-up, she deduced that one could target the object with three dimansions and multiple blasters would aim for that spot. She set the controls for the lowest level. The creature only needed to be distracted, not paralyse or destroy it.

She curled the ends of her long, furry fingers around the controls and manouvered them to target the creature's lower spine. She pressed a button with her a fingertip, sending superheated energy though the target's lumbar vertabrae and femoral nerves.

[Anonymous]

In the face of a creature that lacked any and all pain sensories, Ptolemy was not one to be bothered with superheated energies. Certainly they did their job ... in a manner of speaking. Possibly meant to shock the climbing Licker by assaulting him with unwanted stimuli, the most that happened was he lost control of its bottom half. Legs lost their grip. It hung now by the thick, brutal claws ascending from its thorax, all while the hindquarters twitched involuntarily. No pain: as noted sometime in his history, thoroughly documented in TRIM's files, Ptolemy's nerve endings were long dead and no longer reacted. One could punch the beast in the gut. It would feel noting, only a strange push against its chest. A rib could break, puncture a lung. Perhaps Ptolemy would cough up some blood, but it would continue to live without a care in the world except wondering when food would come again.

Those thick claws? They found their mark. The 'index' and 'thumb' digits pushed through holes in some sort of grating for a ventilation shaft. With a little dexterity Ptolemy pushed the rest of its 'fingers' through. There was a rough yank: screech of metal. Grating came free; Flew from grip, leaving Ptolemy hanging only by one limb. Thrown off by sudden imbalance, the V-ACT's last extremity was torn from the ceiling. Licker began to fall. A split-second reaction was triggered due to the kick of gravity. Ptolemy opened its maw. Something long and fleshy and pink shot out like a venomous serpent eager to strike the unlucky man who happened upon it while stumbling in the mountains. Quicker than a pit viper came the tongue. It struck the edge of the now-open vent, ventured further ... found metal piping, and held on.

For a few seconds more, Ptolemy hung there in the air with his oral muscle gripping an object out of sight in the shaft. The muscle spasms in the lower extremities decreased. Control was coming back. Good - Ptolemy would need the legs. A whirr noise, and Licker was ascending: tongue grapple-pulling him up to the shaft ... and into it. Seconds later his entire visage was gone.

Seconds later his talons could be heard clacking against the metal innards of the buildings. In a few more, they would be directly over Alerga ... penetrating the ceiling above her head.

[Anonymous]

Alegra growled and initiated the lockdown sequence. Under the circumstances, it was the only thing she could do that would not risk the security of the entire institute but it also mean that she was trapped. She knew the creature wouldn't take much longer to get into the viewing room so she silently scooped up the electrocuter and began searching in the numerous cupboards below the desk. She bent her massive legs low and adjusted her weight so that she could lean forward without falling. There had to be some form of extra protection and weaponry reserved for this sort of situation.

There was also the possibility that the fools who built the containment unit had been too arrogant to see the need for extra measures when the cell was meant to be impervious to escape. Imbiciles, I hope whoever created such an imporperly designed structure is locked away as a new subject - hopefully I can claim them and teach them not to design such incapable facilities.

Finding nothing in the cupboards under the desk other than instruction manuals and weaponry that seemed far too light for their required task, Alerga set the electrocuter to killing capacity. The virus could be placed in a new host but many people within the facility would die if the creature ran rampant.

Unlike many anthro creatures, Alegra did not have the ability to manouver her ears so she had to tilt her head to locate the creature. She aimed the weapon at the approximate location of the creature and fired, sending pulses of electricity through the air. The air crackled with energy and Alegra's fur stood on end but the greatest proportion of energy moved as expected: towards the vents.

[Anonymous]

There was no doubt about it: the electrical current did what it was meant to do. Upon contacting the metal ventilation shafts, lightning conducted itself up and down, to the left and ride, side to side ... flaying out in a brightly-lit webbing of arching thunder. Striking; Zigzagging; Jumping - energy met metal and metal and metal again until the target suddenly became deep, not superficial, and warm, not hypothermic ... A fleshy being. Made of blood; Musculoskeletal system; Respiratory ... a thing that had, once upon a time, been human, with emotions and needs and feelings. Perhaps at one point the monster had had a family. Friends, maybe. Relatives, lovers, crushes ...

Negative charges filtered into its blood vessels. Ptolemy's back shot up, head bending in such a way that it might snap. Tremendous heat, a lot of pressure ... No pain, but the shock was enough to render him temporarily useless. And in that short time, images filtered in from some unseen source: blurry and dimmed, kicked forth from a dusty shelf locked in the basement and onto a dirt-ridden floor.

A city in flames.

People running. Screaming.

Flashes. Loud bangs.

Young child: blond, scraggly. Falling.

Blood.

Irresistible ...

Heat from the energy caused the metal to twist and deform. Behind Ptolemy, the ventilation shaft collapsed. The beast was in such a state of shock that it did not immediately claw at the floors and walls around itself to prevent from falling. The landing was hard. It jostled Ptolemy back into semi-competence. Aware now of the creature before it, of the rigid, delicious scent of blood ... The Licker raised its forearms, head lifting so that the exposed brain was out of reach and range, and howled with metal splinters from the vent clattering to the linoleum floor.

[Anonymous]

Alegra stood still, holding the electrocuter towards the ceiling as the metal continued to warp and buckle. The metal collapsed and along with it, the creature called Ptolemy. The creature lay amidst the wreckage of the shaft and moved to protect it's exposed brain, thus betraying its weakest point. Alegra aimed the electrocuter and powered it up once more, holding it on standby so that she could wait for the opportune moment.

Alegra's eyes flicked about the room as she tried to find some way to communicate with the outside. She needed to know what the scientists and guards in control of this unit were planning to do. Hopefully she would be able to assist them, or if they planned to destroy the unit with both of them in there, find a way to escape without contaminating the rest of the spacecraft.

'Security. Security. This is Alegra Elaine Wordsworth. Do you read me?' she called to the air, hoping there was some form of sound monitor on the area. The lower security cells that her subjects where her subjects were contained had sound monitoring that she received on her laptop but she was unsure whether the sound monitoring in this section was two-way or not.

[Anonymous]

It noticed movement. It smelled metal. Electricity flew through the air: cracking; hissing. It buzzed past sensitive ears, buzzing. A mild dose of 'aftershock' administered to the soft flesh around Ptolemy's brain. The beast twitches, bringing its facial features to a lower level until its shimmering mandible and maxilla bones were level with Alegra's eyes. Had the eyes of the Licker beast unveiled themselves through pink globs of thick flesh and opened on the spot, Ptolemy would have been made aware of the close proximity of prey without having to smell, nor hear, nor feel. But now ... not the Licker noticed nothing. For all it knew, blank space stood opposite it and nothing more. Taloned-toes clattered against linoleum. Towards the far right wall went the mutation. Tongue extended: pressing against cold, concrete walls. Searching. For what? An entrance? An exist? The faint taste of secreted, old, dried blood? Back turned to Alregra: preoccupation clouded the brain; to search for something that may or may not exist - something common to the like of Ptolemy.

It felt like it was searching all its life for something. Something ... unseen.

Voice! Security. Security. ... Uttering that wheezing, rasping gasp that was so common for others of Ptolemy's genetic code, the viral monstrosity swung to face the source of such clamor. Front limbs struck and upturned a desk on the turn around. It broke apart, splinter and chunks of wood and busted computers sent flying in Alegra's direction along with, in just one second's time, Ptolemy ... who had lunged through the air, claws first.

[Anonymous]

Alegra stood still as the creature came up to her face. Her hackles raised as her face turned into a silent snarl. The creature’s breath reeked like all the foul things it had eaten. They remained that way even after Ptolemy turned to feel out the wall. The creature appeared to be searching for something, possibly a way out. That was until Alegra’s call enraged the beast and caused it to smash the desks.

Sound came from the desk; it was hazy but patterned enough to be detectable as speech. Alegra’s lip curled upwards in irritation when she could not make out the garbled speech coming through. Infuriating technologists! When she got out of this – and she was determined to do so – she was going to wrap her long fingers around their scrawny humanoid necks and choke them until they passed out. What she did from there depended on what she was allowed to do to them. Hopefully it would be painful.

Ptolemy threw flecks of wood and mangled pieces of computer desk at Alegra. She put her arms across her most vulnerable parts – her face and stomach – but could not deflect the majority of the technological projectiles. Alegra snarled in pain as a piece of wood pierced the upper of her two thighs. She staggered backwards and crouched with the electrocuter level with her stomach and two foot in front.

The diversion meant that Alegra was unprepared for the creature’s attack. She was starting to doubt its researcher’s reports. It seemed far more intelligent than they suggested. So far it had been able to escape its containment facility and wreck the only means to communication with the rest of the TRIM facility. Maybe she would be able to communicate with it if she could calm it down.

[Anonymous]

Ptolemy knew nothing about communication. It knew rage, and hunger, and vexation. Communication, understanding, love and friendship … they were elusive. It was a beast of wrath, pure and raw and undiluted. No pat on the head would satiate an underlying calm. Only murder. Only blood. Only satisfying that endless pit they called a stomach.

So long ago it had been a weapon for the taking: a prized beast formed by the more brutal sects of Umbrella, Inc. But that was long before the time of Aedolis and the dragons with their special pilots. No, its history was a mystery. What it was … who it may have been at one given point in the past … So much for sympathy. And Alegra, for all of her little attempts, there would be none. Ptolemy advanced with tongue floundering about outside its maw. Drool crawling with viral contaminants dripped here and there. Having vented by shattering desks … it needed now to satisfy the blatant starvation and then there would be a little time to explore before hunting for another meal. Ptolemy knew it was contained. And it wanted out. Badly. Now.

Close now, it stooped low. The bottom of the V-ACT’s chin just grazed the linoleum floor and its mouth was open wide to receive its meal, feet first. But upon stepping over the broken desk, a claw tapped at a snow globe that once rested upon it. Evidently the little metal spring had been wound up and once jostled it played a tune soft and melancholy: something ancient but so absorbed into tradition and stories that there was no way to forget it.

A Christmas song.

And the very sound of music, soft and filled with chimes … Well, Ptolemy froze. Its head tilted to one side. And suddenly the vicious beast lost all interest in Alegra. More heed was paid to the tune that was gentle ‘pon the ears.

And so the weakness was found.

[Anonymous]

Ludicrous. The situation was ludicrous.

The creature in front of her, Ptolemy, stopped. It would have thought it had the advantage, that it could have eaten her. Instead it stopped at the sound of the musical toy. It had been placated, soothed by such a simple technique as music. In Alegra's mind, it was ludicrous. Even so, she hoped that there were some cameras still recording this. It could be a breakthrough in the making, one which would be attributed to her if she could get out of this unit safely.

Silently, she watched Ptolemy's behaviour, her electrocuter still aimed at it. Perhaps the toy invokes memories of its humanity. Perhaps this could be used to communicate with it, she thought. She began running through possible procedures. MRIs, CT scans and EEGs could all be done while playing various types of music. They could try and stimulate other memories. Now that they had a key, they could unlock more of the creature's secrets.

The next thing that came to Alegra's mind was the foolishness of having the thing there in the first place. With all the surveillance the should have in this unit, there would not be anyone employed yo stand and watch the creature: it would be a waste of staff. So why would anyone leave personal items in here? One of the researcher's idea of a joke perhaps?

[Anonymous]

Who knew how the snowglobe got there? What mattered was that it was there ... and it may have just saved Alegra's life! For the moment, at the very least.

But all good things come to an end. Rather abruptly, as it would happen. The music suddenly stopped, ending with a faint chrip! as the last metallic chord was plucked. That single, solitary note hung on the air, lingering for a few monumental moments. And then it was gone: ebbing into the silence that was his cage. Ptolemy stared dumbly at the mechanism that sang gloriously not a few moments earlier. Perplexed and suddenly ... saddened, if a beast like itself could feel upset ... the Licker murred. It was a deep, guttural sort of sound. Almost like a thrum from a leopard, though more raspy, more harsh, more macabre.

No response from the mechanism. Only quiet.

And Ptolemy wasn't having it. Irate and growing more and more rash, a sharp claw prodded at the glass orb. Roughly. Give a few more seconds and the globe would shatter all over its 'hands'.

Alegra, for the moment ... completely ignored.

[Anonymous]

OOC: If you want he can kill Alegra, otherwise I'll have to find a way for her to escape.

Alegra was beginning to bore with witching Ptolemy. She wanted, no, needed to get out before the creature decided to attack her. If the only reason she left was to kill whoever was in charge of this creature's unit, she would get out.

There were several obstacles in her way, however. The first being Ptolemy. Her legs were too large to move around him. She'd have to paralyse him to get to the door. Once she got to the door there would be (at least if his supervisors had ANY sense) guards waiting to put her in quarantine. If she got past them she'd have the rest of the facility's staff up against her. Her chances of getting to the fools who made this unit were bleak.

It looked like she would just have to wait to see what Ptolemy did next. She didn't want to use the electrocuter on him unless necessary. She may need it later.

[Anonymous]

Well Ptolemy was on the move again. Its attention lost, a claw flipplantly flicked the nonliving snowglobe out of the way. It smashed against a wall. Glass shattered: splinters flew this way and that; powdered 'snow' resting inside the dome took to congealing against the linoleum floor. Raspy, Ptolemy's diminished, eyeless gaze found its way to the door again. It did not know it was there visually, only by memory ... brushing up against it earlier. The beast clawed by, stepping over wood, and splinters, and warm flesh.

And here it paused.

Ptolemy'd forgotten the trespasser. It forgot the chance of a meal, of a fresh kill. Having thoughts the humanoid thing left the room moments ago, the scent recollected in olfactories and charged up whatever senses were left in the brain. An irrational hunger stirred and without thinking, without pausing, without waiting ... Licker swung on all four feet to face the stranger. Drool leaked from its maw, crawling with disease ... Sharpened teeth gnashed: the T-Virus ever-present, as always, at the tips.

Muscles tense. Like a prowling cat eager for a tasty meal ... one graceful, fluid motion of all motor appendages ... And Ptolemy lunged. The front limbs came down first upon Alegra's torso, claws ripping, tearing ... Then the hing legs upon Alegra's legs, with a crushing force. Finally, the head ... bent down, teeth sharp and jaws wide. It was short, though messy, ordeal. And if Alegra was infected with the T-Virus due to the assault, she may not be too mutilated to reanimate.

[The T-Virus is curable via serum, sooo ... ]