Brain Drain

Jujube had always expected that Earthling medical science was far behind what the Tuffles had managed before their descent into madness. Even so, the massive hospitals and research facilities that dotted the planet were impressive by any other species' metric. She had no real expectation that she would find much useful by paying them a visit, and yet that sliver of potential was too much for her to simply turn the opportunity down when it presented itself.

She waited until around nightfall to slip into the West City Bio-Contaminant Center. It was a civilian site, and so it was typically unguarded, but there was a sophisticated security system to slice through. She started by unwiring the locks on one of the back doors, leading into an employee's entrance. From there, she used a simple Earthling-model ion pistol to disable security cameras and tripwires on a rolling basis: shorting them out one at a time, in the hopes of avoiding the attention of any guards watching their feeds.

She was careful, but she was no trained thief. Eventually, she missed a wire where she didn't expect one, laying diagonally across a turn. There was no alarm, nor did she realize that she had just set one off: but, as she unbolted the door to one of the holding areas, the signal went out to West City's law enforcement, and perhaps further, tracking the movements of one suspicious Tuffle, poking and prodding around dangerous specimens.

What she had come for in the first place was some advance in medicine past what she had at her disposal: some new antibody or cure to the ailments she found herself unable to deal with. What she found herself doing instead was searching for any evidence that these Earthlings had begun similar experiments to the ones that had led to her departure from Plant in the first place.

It seemed to her that these Earthlings were more or less on the level, but something in the back of her head kept her from fully the evidence before her eyes.

Simple, civilian research. Well-funded, but well-intentioned.

No, that didn't make any sense. If it was well-funded...

She drew her heavier blaster up to begin searing her way through another security door. Maybe the conspiracies she feared were lying behind this door, or perhaps the door after that. Maybe, maybe...