The team made their way to the lab.
"Dong Jun, I, a previous employee, have returned. In an emergency situation where everyone else is dead, I'm authorized to oversee the destruction of the dangerous substances."
A hologram emerged from the ground and quickly listed the list of the dead and the cryogenically frozen. Dong Jun was the only name that was active.
"Acess granted. Dong Jun has been granted authority over the laboratory and adjacent fusion reactor."
Dong Jun turned around. She had power over the three. If one of the three stopped what she was about to do, she could hold things over them and make them submit. Warrow would be unable to move if she decided not to install that chip in him. She could hold the same thing over Dwax, too. Kahara was molded to be a slave by the catastrophe. Addiction to a designated chemical could be counteracted by making the person allergic to the same compound. Dong Jun has talked to Kahara about that, and she agreed.
"I will do some things in this lab you might not agree with. If you people try and stop me, I will not heal Warrow or save you, Kahara. I want you three to understand that."
She walked into the lab and told the three to wait in the cafeteria. She went to the top security lab and searched for the world-ending viruses so she could destroy them. There was a mostly rotten corpse on the ground, and the viruses were nowhere to be seen. The senior researcher had refused to go into cryosleep just to destroy these samples. She pulled the researcher out of his grim tomb and out of the laboratory.
"Dwax, you are a religious person, right? Can you give him a funeral?" Dwax nodded. Before sending someone away, he is supposed to welcome him to the religion with blood, ink, and ash.
First, he pricked his finger and dripped it on the corpse. He went inside and picked up a pen to break over the corpse. Lastly, he brought out the flammable liquid from the camping supplies and doused the old researcher with it. He set the corpse ablaze and started praying.
He watched until the fire went out. A man who tried to save the world and paid for it with his life deserved that much respect.
Dong Jun requested the file projects from the AI and had them projected onto the wall. She invited Dwax, Kahara, and Warrow to read it.
Project Ares: The main buyers are real estate companies. It aims to manipulate genes to increase aggression or decrease empathy, making individuals more inclined toward violence. Which in turn increases crime in a given territory. Housing prices fall, and real estate companies swoop in to buy houses for cheap.
There was a list of the researchers involved. Some of them were cryogenically frozen. She unfroze them and dragged their sick bodies for an impromptu trial.
"Ferdinand, did you participate in this project?"
Ferdinand coughed several times. He was barely conscious.
"Yes, yes, I did."
Dong Jun's face was filled with righteous indignation.
"Dwax, could you throw this bastard out to die on the dirt? The dirt is where he belongs."
Dwax threw the sickly man out. Rokar, Matil, and Zhen, you three worked on the Zeus project too. On top of that, you worked on a project called Anti-Promethous. "You," she said, gripping the tablet in her hands in sheer rage.
"have adjusted people's intelligence levels to match the work they are doing."
Dong Jun slammed her palm on the desk. She screeched.
"Dwax, throw these bastards out too."
Dwax wasn't the strongest member of the group; it was Kahara. Dong Jun was subconsciously assigning Dwax the "strongest" title because he had killed the lion.
The next batch of researchers arrived.
"You all worked on a project called [flesh automaton]. You've disabled the genes associated with free will and autonomy to create self-duplicating factory components out of people.
Dwax! Throw these bastards out too. "
The people that were already outside were sitting guiltily under the blazing sun. They weren't acting that guilty when they did all those heinous things. They looked like beaten dogs.
"Curious how that works," Dwax thought.
The only being that was showing them any goodwill was Goldie. It would act cute toward those it perceived as its new friends. After laying her judgment on the people she had problems with, Dong Jun unfroze and threw out the executives. They were the ones accepting these jobs and greenlighting them through their influence over the inner workings of the lab.
Dwax asked Dong Jun,
"Are these people the ones who caused the catastrophe? "
Dong Jun kept forgetting that Dwax was a hobo who knew nothing. She shook her head.
"The weeks before the catastrophe, the most important people on the planet left the planet at the same time. It was an event planned years in advance. There is no way a celestial biolab could be behind this. Our enemies are up there in space. Do you remember the things I accused them of?"
Dwax nodded.
"Well, those are some of the augmentations they would've tried to put into you before employing you. Do you understand the situation? They wanted to harm you and people like you. You should hate them to the core. You should want to kill them for making your life miserable."
Dwax smiled.
"They are rotting where they stand. That is the worst thing I can think of. To be frank, every bit of anger I muster will only hurt me more than it hurts them at this point."
Dong Jun felt personally attacked. She wasn't keeping her emotions in check at all. Her face went sour.
"Spare me your Zen bullshit."
Dwax lifted his hands in surrender. He didn't want to get into a stupid argument with Dong Jun.
"Do what you want. It doesn't really matter to me. What matters to me is that you keep your end of the bargain."
Dong Jun nodded in the assurance of Dwax's worries.
"That goes without saying."
Dong Jun was the one who pulled the whole trial thing into the "strictly business" dimension. She couldn't complain about the attitude Dwax was showing toward Dong Jun.
"I need some genetic samples from you. The rest of the researchers need to become immune to cancer and genetic influence. We need them to break the encryption on the genetic attack. That way, we may strike back."
Dwax was surprised. Her enemies were an entire galactic community. How and why would she be able to do anything worthwhile?
"You have a plan?"
Dong Jun smiled.
"I do. But one thing at a time. We have much work to do. Revenge isn't the only plan. Come, I have some high-end augmentations to give you. It's high time you get a taste of the good stuff."
Innocent researchers have occupied the vast majority of the pods. Dwax was able to get one too.
Dong Jun went to work. The augmentations she is about to do are collectively worth more than seven skyscrapers combined.
"AI, per emergency procedures, cleanse the following augmentations from their DRMs. Cacooning 10v1056c, Digestion 32v4638d, Quickburst 13v4322a, Axolotl Healing 56v12334t, and Metamorphosis 78v2093m. Apply them to the patient in Pod 54."
Dwax accepted the genetic code from his gene-harvesting organ and stepped into pod 54. Before long, his vision went dark.
Kahara took on the duty of taking care of Warrow in Dwax's absence. Warrow was miserable, but if he wanted to get good treatment, he needed the researchers as well as Dong Jun's help. He had no choice but to wait in pain.
The researchers from before dropped like flies. Their corpses were flung over the dirt pit near the research center.
Dong Jun didn't want to apply any augmentations to Warrow and Kahara. The unknown augmentations they suffered have put them at risk of a genetic augmentation error. The two simultaneously active augmentations had a chance to conflict with each other and cause an allergic reaction.
A base animal gene was relatively safe. They were cataloged in genetic harvesting organ genes, and the harvesting organ genes handled most of the conflicts and stopped people from implementing two conflicting augmentations.
A specialized, lab-assisted augmentation merited more deliberation. A body was a system where everything was connected with other things. One malfunction could cascade into a fatal problem that would result in total failure and death.
Dong Jun believed everything a living being needs should be crammed within their bodies. It was a philosophy named compactionism. Dong Jun was a compactionist extremist. That was the exact reason she was fired from her job at the lab.
But now she ruled the lab until the other researchers woke up. Her compactionist agenda was closer than ever. The catastrophe had given her arguments political merit. She was expecting the majority of the researchers to join her cause.
She sat in her former boss's office. She was the boss now.