The laboratory smelled like hot copper and bad decisions. Professor Morlock’s laugh bounced off the tile walls like loose change in a tin cup as he flipped open Boris’ skull with the smug precision of a butcher who knew he’d already been paid. Under the surgical lights, the pug’s gray matter glistened—every wrinkle a promise of genius Morlock had chased across continents and crime scenes.
He lifted a chrome ice-cream scooper from a tray of wicked-looking instruments and thumbed the lever like a gambler testing a loaded die.
“Finally,” he rumbled, voice deep enough to shake the beakers. “Boris’ beautiful brain meets Jonny’s scandalously perfect chassis. Homo Sapien Perfecto. After that, I run the mold through my cloning rig and stamp out a thousand flawless operatives. Imagine it—an army that never sweats, never doubts, never says no. God, I love progress.”
The scooper hovered over Boris’ exposed thoughts, one heartbeat away from turning brilliance into spare parts.
Then the lab door exploded inward.
A jet-black Tom Ford boot landed first, stiletto heel biting into the tile like punctuation at the end of a threat. Linda stepped through the smoke with twin silver Glocks steady in her hands—one aimed at Morlock’s forehead, the other at a part of his anatomy that didn’t enjoy sudden surprises.
“Show’s over, Professor,” she said, voice cool as a morgue drawer. “Drop the toy.”
Pussy slipped in behind her, eyes sharp, tail twitching with contempt. “You missed a detail,” she said. “Sure, Boris has the perfect brain. But you forgot the primordial goo sloshing around inside that skull.”
Linda smirked without lowering her aim. “A few hours of Boris’ galaxy-level intellect tangled up with Jonny’s… unique cranial sludge? Your super-soldiers wouldn’t conquer the world. They’d be glued to cheap editing software, cranking out ridiculous pulp covers and binge-watching black-and-white panel shows on YouTube at three in the morning.”
Morlock froze, the scooper trembling in his hand. The fantasy drained out of his eyes like liquor from a cracked glass.
“An army of Jonny M.’s that can THINK,” he whispered, horror creeping into his voice. “Sweet mercy… I’d have doomed civilization to endless bad ideas and worse fashion. History would’ve called me the second-greatest monster alive, right after Donald Trump.” He swallowed hard, shoulders sagging. “Forgive me. I nearly made the world an even stranger place.”
The lab lights hummed. Boris snored softly under anesthesia. And for once, even a madman looked relieved that someone had kicked the door in before the scoop came down.