Ashley sternly adjusted her glasses and sighed as her finger hit the panic intercom to all the staff in the area while the other hand deftly flew over the keys, changing the experiment's parameters. "Now hear this, we are aborting. Stay calm and remain at your stations for shut down!"
The green glow of the test chamber flared for a moment and began to ebb. All the while, the hellish demon horse slammed into the walls and raked the metal containment as it grew bigger and stronger, bone splintering through flesh in gory streaks of red, close enough to tear itself out of the chamber.
Dr. Ashley sighed, and hit abort.
The horse beast in the chamber shuddered, staggered, and then let out a terrific cry of monstrous anguish as it began to bubble and melt. Flesh liquefied, fell from still warping bone, and the entire monstrosity collapsed into a meaty mess on the riveted floor. The green glow fell away, died, and in the control room the Geiger counters clicked down to silence. The remains began to boil away too, meat sizzling away to burnt crisps, until only a fearsome bleached skeleton remained, somewhere between horse and abomination.
She sighed, covered her forehead, and wiped away the sweat. They had been lucky this time.
"Experiment aborted. Counters at 0 rads. Order clean up and report."
* * *
The smell of burning horse flesh still hung in the air as the scientists gathered around the remains.
"Fuck." The junior apprentice, Michael Cliffton stared at the beastly horns and dead smile on the massive skull.
"Like something out of a nightmare." Erin Lee shook her head. The dark haired Asian from Poly Tech.
"Look." Reid Masters, senior researcher glared at the group. "This is the way experiments work. Thank God the Doctor had the good sense to liquidate it before we all got killed, mutated, or worse.
Behind the group, Dr. Ashley entered the chamber, somber.
"Conclusions?" She asked, downtrodden.
"Possible instruction failure?" Lee asked. Sometimes the 'signal' the microwaves carried would not reach all DNA in time, resulting in unpredictable and dangerous mutation.
"Signal wasn't the issue." Mike sighed. "Carriers were my end, and I had them at 100% activity."
"Our tests on the reptiles were pretty conclusive." Masters flipped pages on the clipboard. "There might be some other factor with mammals we're missing that the herps didn't have."
There was a sudden whisper of realization and nodding.
"Perhaps." Ashley shook her head. "I must admit frustrations at taking two steps back to our one forward. But we'll try again. For now, everybody get your heads right and take the rest of the day off with pay. We'll debrief tomorrow morning, 0800. All right?"
There came a cumulative agreement from the scientists assembled.