The hot fur thing under Kevin's shirt clawed at his chest. Nice going, he thought. First the bum rap for weed, and now if I don't get caught stealing lab animals, I'll get rabies from this freak.
Frankenlab, at Franken U, AKA Franklin Agricultural College, was messing with animals, electrodes in their brains, cloning them like Dolly the Sheep, except not regular animals. Dead animals from frozen meat. And they were going to kill the animals.
He couldn't save them all. Those fuzzy orange-furred mice, most wouldn't make it. Those guys from Animals Our Brethren had pried open cages, and when the mice wouldn't come out, they shook them out, and when the mice squeed, cowering under lab tables, they kicked them until they ran into corners, and from there may God have mercy on their itty souls.
Kevin petted the little monster through his shirt, but it writhed around and gummed him. "I'm saving your life, dumb-ox!" He dashed out of the building minutes before alarms brought the fire department.
Kevin had been in trouble before. A year ago, his girl friend's cousin Ed and he had been cruising around in Ed's van, which had expired plates. Kevin didn't know about the baggie of pot under the driver's seat. When the state patrol started following, Ed asked Kevin to switch places. His license, like the plates, was expired, he said. They switched, veering madly, on a lonely stretch of 422. When they finally stopped and the cops asked to search the van, Kevin shrugged and said okay.
"And whose is this?" Ed said, not me. Kevin was too surprised to look properly surprised, and this was a zero-tolerance state. So Ed got off with a warning, and Kevin, stuck with court-appointed counsel, served thirty days.
)
A mysterious animal snatched from a secret cloning research lab is not a cute ball of fur, and not of this era....
