[Redd]

Aiden breathed in deeply, taking in the sharp briny air. Behind him, equipment hummed, dials beeped and lights flashed, and the soft white tent tarp fluttered about in the sea breeze. This was the kind of field work he missed. Being out of the lab… experiencing the world…

CyberGen ran a tight ship, vacation time was hard enough to get under normal circumstances but getting Lucas to stay home over the weekend was hard enough, let alone trying to convince him to take a week off.

Sure, the world was probably experiencing some sort of disaster but he’d be damned if he wasn’t going to take 5 minutes to just appreciate seeing the ocean.

[Redd]

The dark grey ocean, lapping at the shore of an ashen beach.

“Kinda looks like Sa’fir, right?” Malone leaned on the back of an adjacent chair and followed Aiden’s eyes out to sea. “Just all wrong.”

Aiden gently nodded and picked up a nearby clipboard, trying to puzzle out the reason why they’d been stationed here of all places. “It’s… incredibly wrong. I can only imagine how Lucas would be reacting back at home. He must be going mad.”

“Lucas… oh, your partner is the biogeneticist isn’t he?” Malone piped up, snapping his fingers.

[Redd]

Malone had incredibly odd behaviours but he was charming in his own right, Aiden had thought long ago. They barely interacted though, different departments, different projects for the most part.

“Yeah, that’s him. He declined coming out here. Too much work back there I guess.” Aiden pouted, scanning down the checklist. “How about Elliot? Wouldn’t this be more his thing?”

“Mm, he didn’t think so. This isn’t biological. It’s… actually just a lack of color. Here, pass me that, I’ll start calibrating the equipment.” Malone reached out for the list.

[Redd]

“If that’s the case, why are you here then?” Aiden raised and eyebrow but relinquished the document and stood up to assist the immunologist.

Malone smiled and gave a sheepish shrug. “I guess I’m more of a glorified tech specialist honestly. With the work we’re assigned, that’s what I tend to get delegated to. It’s… it keeps me busy, I guess. Elliot tends to engineer failsafes in his projects, they don’t technically need me. Here, hop on that machine and set the dials to match this.”

[Redd]

Aiden frowned but took the note and moved down to fiddle with the dials. “C’mon, surely not? That’s my story.” Aiden sadly laughed a little. “Maybe you’ll get your time to shine. He might mess up something. I could arrange for one of our boys to get infected? I doubt your brother’s factored in infection rates in bio-synthetic organisms. Knowing Project C, he’d probably convert the virus into something incurable though...”

“Project C?”

“Oh! One of our prototypes. Absolute nuisance. He’s got a bad habit of altering his parameters,  turning off subroutines… it’s a weekly task to reset his empathy module because the tricky bastard keeps turning it off.” Aiden responded with a chuckle, like he was discussing a naughty child.

[Redd]

It was a bit like that, you spent so much time around monsters, he became immune to a lot of the moral and ethical issues of it all.

Malone was in the same boat though, from his understanding, Elliot was engineering diseases for biological warfare. CyberGen profited off the immoral, they both knew that.

“He sounds like a handful. Client work or personal project?” Malone laughed back, moving down to adjust another machine.

“Personal project.” Aiden responded. But he really wanted to change topic… oh, gossip that was a good way to start. “Hey, so this color thing. I heard our glorious CEO actually came down here to grace us with her presence in person.”

[Redd]

That perked Malone up. “No way, the alien obsessed nutcase is here?” He dropped the clipboard immediately and darted to the tent opening, hoping for a glance at their elusive boss. “I heard she actually altered her appearance to look like a damned alien. Not that anyone actually knows what they look like, is that true?”

Aiden followed Malone to the door and adjusted his scarf to fit a bit more snuggly. “I’m only level 5 but that’s what’s been filtering down the chain yeah.” He paused, mostly for dramatic effect. “But they’re also saying that it’s not cosmetic surgery. She actually ‘found’ alien DNA and integrated it with her own. Some weird shit like that.”

[Redd]

“What? That’s just sci-fi bullshit right? Upper management’s just been watching too much silly movies, right?” Malone’s face was incredulous.

Just at that moment, a woman’s face popped up in their vision. “Nope! It’s all true!” she cheerfully said, shaking her head. “Her eyes glow sometimes, it’s wild.”

“Oh! Sam.” Aiden jumped in shock at the sudden intrusion but quickly coughed and straightned himself up. Sam was Raina’s secretary. The boss’s secretary and she’d clearly heard the whole conversation. “I-I’m sorry we weren’t...”

[Redd]

“Oh shush. I’m not going to rat you out.” Samantha dismissively waved the two nerve wracked men off, shaking her head again. It was funny, how the brain worked. Even though he knew their was no color, his brain was obviously trying to fill in her colors from memory. It was weird, he kept thinking he was seeing some sort of blue on her eyes. Her hair was always white though. He assumed it was dyed. “She’s our boss, I have to put up with her crap the most.”

“No way, her eyes glow?” Malone butted in, almost elbowing Aiden out of the way. “How? Why? Is it emotion-linked?”

[Redd]

“Yeah! Like just the irises I think. You should see her working, her office is pitch black, she looks like a damn demon.” Samantha laughed, pushing the two scientists back and inviting herself into the tent. “Alien. I’d hate to see the creature, honestly. She swore it didn’t matter if she turned into some ugly bastard but still. I think she’d be a wreck if she turned into a bug or something.”

“Is that why we’re here ma’am? Aliens?” Malone piped up again.

Samantha turned to them both with a thoughtful look. “Well, Raina’s here because this isn’t a documented ability of any terrestrial life. You’re here to make sure the equipment works.” she quipped back, earning herself an exasperated sigh from both parties.
[Color Harvested]