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This is the sixth chapter of a Writing Challenge hatched in the twisted mind of @blockurator called, "Exquisite Corpse: A Perfect Day For A Murder." The story is told in the form of a story-telling relay. Block wrote the first chapter then handed it off to a different author, and the process continued ... until now. 

This is Chapter 6. Although this is the last Chapter of the Challenge, it may not be the last chapter of the story. Where it goes from here, well, that's up to Block to decide.

As Shakespeare said, "Only a clay-brained, knotty-pated starvelling full of bull-pizzle and with a wit as thick as Tewkesbury mustard would even consider reading Chapter 6 without first reading Chapter's 1-5." 

That was spicy language back then. The reason I bring this up is because I know you guys and I know your tricks. Despite the blatantly obvious hyperlinks, all of which are astonishingly easy to click upon, some of you are thinking about not clicking on them, aren't you?

Instead, you're hatching a plan: "I'll read Quill's Opus Magnum and then just BS in the comments section. No one will be the wiser." For those of you not familiar with my comments section, perhaps you ought to go have a look at a previous post. I WILL KNOW ... because I will bloody well give you a quiz.  

Chapter 1: This is where it all begins. @blockurator creates a chap named Vinnie who has serious "issues" and a nasty pastime that results in corpses.

Chapter 2: Vinnie meets his match when @calluna introduces him to Katie. 

Chapter 3: Typical of modern-day dating, @blueteddy suggests Vinnie can't commit, and yet, he and Katie end up in the facilities together! I'd say get your mind out of the gutter but ...

Chapter 4: The Battle of the Sexes has been going on since time immemorial and, sure enough, @foxyspirit reminds us that "opposites attack." 

Chapter 5:  Whatever you were expecting to happen next, doesn't. @fromage proves that you cannot judge a book by its cover as both Vinnie and Katie are not what they appear.  

Exquisite Corpse: A Perfect Day For A Murder ... Chapter 6

11:27 AM, Fort Meade, Maryland 

“General, we’ve got a bogey in London!” 

“Everybody … conference,” bellowed General “Chuck” McMaster as he moved swiftly towards the conference room. “Tommy, let’s see what you’ve got.” 

McMaster, slid into the Captain’s chair at the end of the long rectangular conference table as the rest of his crew scrambled for their seats and the multiple screens on the far wall started coming to life. McMaster glanced around the table. His team was the crème de la crème, each member an exemplar of professionalism.  

McMaster focused on the wall of flat screens. The large central monitor was showing firetrucks and the London police blocking off a street as smoke billowed in the background. “Tommy, volume.” 

A local television reporter was ad-libbing with a near-hysterical 20-something dressed as a waiter. Local restaurant … gas explosion … and two “cat-like humanoids,” one male and one female, battling it out in the men’s bathroom.  

McMaster let loose with an expletive, something he would do more than once over the next hour as more UK television channels interrupted their normal programming with Breaking News, and cellphone videos of the street carnage started going viral on the Internet.

“Scotland Yard just uploaded a bunch of fingerprints from the restaurants. TWO are matches. They were both there,” interjected a lieutenant with a mid-western accent.    

“Both! In the same restaurant! How the Hell did they find each other?” McMaster rhetorically demanded of no one in particular. Each of McMaster’s team members had their heads buried in their laptops, furiously tapping away at keyboards, accessing the multitude of intelligence sources at their disposal. Not surprisingly, no one had a response. The back-and-forth chattering intensified as his well-oiled machine kicked into high-gear with no need of orders or orchestration.  

“Where’s the nearest Pegasus Team,” McMaster demanded. “Pegasus-3’s at Ramstein in Germany,” came a quick reply. “They’re on Alert-20 and scrambling.”  

“Get them airborne NOW,” McMaster needlessly seethed as he pushed back his chair and moved towards the door. “People, game on. We need intel and we need it now. And Tommy, get some assets on that fucking waiter. By the end of the day, I want that guy to be known as the Bob Marley of hallucinogens. Get him tripping on acid and reminiscing about aliens. YouTube.” McMaster strode out the door on his way to the awaiting C-20 on a tarmac at Andrews Air Force Base.             

US Military Gulfstream C-20, Mid-Atlantic  

McMaster continued to scroll through the updates. The operational dossier was rapidly coming together as his team accessed every intel-gathering agency of the American government: Vinnie Testosteroni; Katie Lauder; addresses; cell phone numbers; bank accounts; credit and debit cards; and, not unexpectedly, an ever-growing number of suspicious deaths and disappearances of people to whom they could be casually connected. Killers kill.  

He clicked on a file entitled, “Post-Metaphoric Transformation: Theoretical Profiles.” The author was Liz Talum, the Senior Experimental Geneticist and Department Head for Project Prometheus. “Fat bitch,” McMaster mused. Short, fat, ugly and a personality that bordered upon abomination. Her naked disdain for all things military, despite it providing more than twenty years’ worth of funding, didn’t help. In typical civilian fashion, the document had been written as an exercise in Cover-Your-Ass, filled with disclaimers, subtle insinuations and dumb-downed explanations for the eyes of politicians.   

McMaster skimmed the document’s “Background” section. Project Prometheus: Creation of the Ultimate Warfighter via species-level hybridization of human DNA with a highly modified strain of the protozoan parasite Toxoplasma gondii; the discovery of the protozoan's ability to hijack the brains of mice and rats so that they became attracted to cats; the unexpected human-feline metamorphic transformations triggered by opposite sex pheromone exchange; and, of course, escape and evasion of Specimens #1067 and #1078 while in “military custody.” No mention of a Class 5 Hurricane forcing an emergency evacuation and the seven dead military personal who had perished trying to prevent the escape. God, he hated that self-serving bitch.        

The backgrounder was followed by a discourse on the effects of the un-modified strain of Toxoplasma gondii upon humans: Epigenetic remodeling of neural networks associated with a decrease in predator aversion; attraction to the scent of cat urine; elevated levels of neurological disorders, in particular, Schizophrenia, Bipolar Disorder; Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and aggression. 

McMaster shook his head in disgust … what about the effects of the billion-dollar modified strain? Psychopathic levels of cruelty; utter lack of empathy; re-wiring of the motor cortex; accelerated growth rates; astonishing rates of cellular repair; super-human strength, speed and agility? You’d think she’d been working in an outpatient clinic instead of bio-engineering the ultimate killing machine.  

Embedded in the document were a number of video files. McMaster took notice of one in particular: a TED Talk on parasitic mind-control including that of Toxoplasma gondii. For Christ’s sake, a TED Talk! That bitch really was playing to the politicians. Talum never missed an opportunity to try to get out from under military oversight and obtain autonomy. And, of course, direct funding. 

He clicked on the video just to see what they would.

"Dude, you don't know the half of it," McMaster mused to himself.

Talum’s report concluded as a tour de force of utter speculation, a word salad striving to be a soliloquy. What would the specimens do next? Flee and seek new hideouts. Go on a killing spree? Or hunt each other down to engage in carnal corruption? Talum seemed to think it would be the latter. That the urge to mate would be so strong that they’d risk self-preservation in order to procreate. He was unpleasantly struck by the irony of one of the most sexually repulsive human beings he’d ever met ruminating on romance and rutting.       

McMaster removed his reading glasses and massaged his closed eyes. His moment of relaxation was interrupted by a knock on the door of his executive cabin. He looked up. Dr. Tracey Morehouse, Talum’s second-in-command and, ironically, one of the most sexually alluring women he’d even met. Beauty and the Beast. For the hundredth time he wished he was ten years younger. And, for the hundredth time, he noted she wore no wedding ring.  

“So, you made in aboard, Doc.”

“Yes sir.” Morehouse, McMaster recalled, was the daughter of a highly-decorated Marine Corps Colonel. Yale had not managed to diminish her inherited bearing and manner of comportment. “Please come in. Forgive me for saying, but you’re looking a bit … pekid. Can I offer you a drink?” 

“It’s a bit early, General, don’t you think?”  

“Yes, I do. But, having just read your boss’ masterpiece in mendacity, I feel dirty and in need of disinfectant. And, if you’ll join me, we’ll be mutually complicit, but cleansed.” 

Morehouse offered a thin smile, knowing he’d soon be inclined to pour a double. “One, General … and mix it with Coke, please. I am my father’s daughter, not his son.”  

McMaster smiled. No, you’re not, he thought to himself. “So, I suspect you knocked on my door for a reason, Doctor. What have you got?” 

“General, we have … a development. I just received an updated Physiological Attribute Simulation, specifically for the theoretical crossing of Specimen #1067, the male, and Specimen #1078, the female. The simulations predict some “unexpected” attributes for the offspring of such a pairing.” 

McMaster extended the Rum and Coke and took note of the hand that received it. Athletically proportioned, but exquisitely feminine. Nails perfectly manicured and painted with a subtle pearl-pink nail polish. McMaster eased into his chair. “Offspring? Doc, even if the two of them don’t kill each other and end up in the sack, the male will be shooting blanks. He was sterilized at birth.”  

“Actually, sir … that’s what I’m here about. He wasn’t … and that, perhaps, is why I’m looking pekid.” 

McMaster stilled like a predator gone into a defensive crouch, preparing for either offense or defense, depending upon how the situation unfolded. 

Morehouse continued. “As you know, we’ve been inseminating each successive generation of female eggs from a repository of first-generation male sperm so as to limit, and control, the genetic variations, especially those related to metamorphic transformations. Apparently, Dr. Talum has been running a side project, using sperm from successive generations of males to inseminate successive generations of female eggs. So long as the resulting offspring were not exposed to opposite sex pheromones, the metamorphic genetic adaptations remained dormant. As it turns out, both specimens #1067 and #1078 are descendants of Dr. Talum’s side project and, given what that waiter was saying on TV, the metamorphic changes appear to have been triggered.” 

“That bitch,” McMaster breathed almost inaudibly.     

Morehouse went on. “The computer is predicting that Specimen #1078’s gestation period would be approximately 67 days … roughly the upper end of the gestation period for felines. She would likely have a litter of 5-6 offspring.” 

McMaster’s eyebrows raised as his glass lowered from his lips.   

“Specimen #1067 is a 7th generation male. And so, all his genetic adaptations would be combined with all of Specimen #1078’s genetic adaptations, who is an 8th generation female. The simulations predict that the offspring would appear human unless metamorphosis was triggered by stress, sexual arousal or hunger, in which case they would temporarily morph into the hybrid human-feline form. They would have growth rates far in excess of even their parents, reaching adulthood, and sexual maturity, in roughly 3 years. Fully grown, they would have the strength of 4-5 men, cat-like reflexes and a top running speed of approximately 38 miles per hour. Both parents have IQ’s more than three standard deviations above normal and there’s every reason to believe that the offspring would possess similar levels of intelligence. And, they would be carnivores … and very likely, cannibals.” 

“Jesus. Where the Hell is Talum?” 

“She has been taken into custody by Military Intelligence. Needless-to-say, she has been relieved of authority and I have been appointed Acting Director of the Department.” 

“All this happened since we left Andrews!?” McMaster asked incredulously. 

Morehouse nodded. “Yes, sir.” McMaster sat silently, stroking his chin. “So, the ‘cats are out of the bag.’ Congratulations on the promotion, by the way.” 

Morehouse smiled despite herself. Even under pressure, McMaster managed to maintain composure and a sense of humor. “General, it took us 13 months to locate them, and even that required dumb luck. If they manage to escape and start reproducing, in another 13 months we’ll be up to our ears in psychopathic super-predators ... with a penchant for people. And, if it gets out that we were responsible for creating these monsters, we’re all going to hang.” 

Leaning back, McMaster nodded … while subconsciously caressing his neck.     

*****

Quill

You guys know the drill. Be verbose ... but articulate. 

And remember ...       

Go Love A Starving Poet  

For God's sake ... they're starving!