They played for more than two hours and when the clock struck two in the morning the receptionist Linda came, the man stood up and went to check how everything's going, "So the operation was done with no complications but we still don't know if it was successful or not, it would need to stay for 24 hours for observation and we will give you a call if any developments happen" Linda said "You'll need to fill out a form with your contact information".
The man double tapped his watch and a holographic screen appeared on top of it, he then entered Mike and pressed call, a man's rough voice sounded "Yes sir"
"Come here to fill out the information form and get Suzie to send me tomorrow's schedule" the man said "and bring the car"
"Yes sir" the call disconnected and four minutes later, Mike filled out the form and came to report "the car is ready and everything is in order"
"Good" the man said "Honey we're leaving now, do you mind getting the game and our daughter, I'll just have a word with the doctor really quick"
"Sure, come on Kate we're leaving" the woman said as she picked up a small cube at the corner of the table and the holographic map disappeared, she then put it in her purse and took her daughter and followed Mike outside.
"Doctor the owner wants to talk to you" Linda told the doctor as he finished washing, "They're still here?" he said "Fine, show me the way"
Linda then took him to the resting area then left, leaving the two men standing alone, the man stretched his hands for a handshake "Hello doctor, my name is Richard Lawrence, I work in IT" the doctor shook his hands "Hello Mr. Richard, I'm Dr. Edward Anderson, how may I help you"
"I was wondering if you could tell me what exactly caused this" Richard said.
"Well the cat was beaten with a something hard repeatedly and then cut with a sharp object on multiple places of its body, it lost a lot of blood and there were multiple bone fractures and damaged organs, it also had quite a few small things that I'll spare you the details of, but quite frankly it should've been dead" Dr. Edward said
"Who would do that to a little kitten?" Mr. Richard said, "Well I wouldn't know that but if I had to take a guess, jealousy would be my top of the list" the doctor said "That cat is worth a lot of money, so it should be someone who found its worth but couldn't get it, so he opted to destroy it"
"Worth a lot, I'm not following you" the man said.
"Well it should be worth a couple million Stroms at least" the doctor said, "A COUPLE MILLION!!" the man exclaimed "A small kitten?"
"As you might or might not know, our world went through multiple phases of evolution, the old era had two of them, the first went from no life or simple life to a diverse array of animals and plants and that happened around 570 million years B.C., the second one is when our species came to exist and the plants were more diverse and more hospitable that also happened around couple thousand years B.C.,
the third is when most of the human race nearly went extinct from the harsh environment they tampered with and from all the chaos in the ecosystem balance so it was more of a forced evolution to lighten the load if you might call it and that happened around the year 2100 separating the old era from the new one,
the forth is when humans started to learn how to adapt, when the environment became slightly better however a mutation happened, that mutation killed a lot of life on earth but it also made a whole lot more and we experienced that, more than 1500 years ago around the year 4640, only a scant few of our human race survived but all the knowledge remained from the beginning of the race's existence till our present day on an organic storage device that they developed in the second evolution in the year of 2043 and that is why we don't restart every time an evolution happens, we just keep updating,
anyway that mutation affected most of the animals and caused massive damages to our cities and turned the humans from the top of the food chain into one of its lowest and from the more than 100 countries that were in existence, less than 60 survived with a few thousand in each country from the mighty 14 billion we didn't even have a million so you could imagine the massacres that happened affected our mentality and the few that survived were extremely united or else they would have died.
They started clearing one patch of earth after another till they had a city for themselves and that is how our cities came to be, they were mere shadow of the past but our technology surpassed them by leaps and bounds as after every evolution new ores appear in the earth and old ores are replenished but we learned one thing, that no matter what we do, we cannot stop it, it will keep happening we can just prepare and delay it by adapting the human race to extreme conditions and preparing shelters,
so we turned to our DNA and how to improve it, and the first thing we noticed is that mutated animals have way more adaptability and strength that the normal ones that didn't mutate, but it was too diverse, even siblings from the same species became different after the mutation, some would be good and some terribly bad and on the course of the next four hundred years the week mutations were eliminated and only the strong survived so they became incomparably precious as they were more adaptable but as you know the more powerful a species is the harder it is for it to give birth and the longer it has to recuperate.
So cross breading happened and the genes diluted in the long history of time as our race started to revitalize from mere thousands we are now more than 7 billion, we only tapped to less than a tenth of what we would have had if we had the technology and manpower we have now but sometimes cross breading happens in minor percentages so we have a relatively pure mutated species on our hands that survived from more than one thousand years ago, and they sell for millions every time one actually appears and your cat is precisely one of them.
Whoever tried to kill it either took what was needed and discarded the rest or was simply jealous. So you should take care of it if it survives and when it is near its death give it to science or you could sell it to the institution and they will be more than happy to take it off your hands for at least 16 or 17 million Stroms, I'm just giving you normal public information that anybody has access to if they have a smart watch, so I'm neither helping you nor cheating you as that would be easily discovered. So you should hope for its survival Mr. Richard" the doctor smiled "do you have anything else that you want to ask me"
"What are the odds of its survival and if it does survive am I allowed to erase its information from your system" Mr. Richard said
"Why would you need to erase it, it is not beneficial to you, the more people that know you have that cat the better it is for you as you can raise the price so why?" Dr. Edward was puzzled as that was unwise
"I'm just asking if I can erase the information and the odds for its survival" the man said with a serious tone.
"Well I'm giving it a 30 percent chance of survival as it is a pure mutated species but for the data, I'm not at liberty to make that decision as it is above my paygrade" the doctor said "but I could ask my superiors"
"Please do as I don't plan to sell it if it survives" Mr. Richard said. "Sure will, but it is a pity" Dr. Edward said
"Have a good day Dr. Edward" The man said as he shook the doctor's hand and left.
The doctor woke up his boss and told him about the cat and that the owner said that he wants to erase the data as he doesn't plan to sell if it survives and he doesn't want trouble. His superior said "Well he doesn't have that right as every case that comes to this building could be used for science and we have complete authority to sell it to whomever we want but without the contact information as that would violate it so all we can do is not say his name to anybody and we would be in the clear", the doctor said "Wont that give us a little trouble if we were sued", "You don't have to worry about that" his superior said as he said to not call him again if it is not extremely urgent and he went back to sleep.
The couple were sitting in the car as the husband had his headphones on and heard everything the doctor and the superior were saying just a moment ago. He looked unperturbed as he sent a few messages then looked at his sleeping wife and daughter lying on the couch in the car holding each other, he took a photo and put it as his watch's homescreen, smiled and dozed off the window thinking about that cat and the way it looked at him, it might not have showed back then but he was really shocked not because of its history but because even with all the damage that kitten was inflected with, it never stopped fighting, not when his daughter came near it and she let out a threatening meow or what it wanted it to be a threatening meow and not when he tried to hold it and it struck back even though moving its eyelids was excruciatingly painful.
The car cut the rain as it moved on the dark streets of the city and the rain kept pouring down like it would never end.