Summoned to the emergency board meeting by every shareholder on the grid, the biochemist—who was thoroughly sick of everyone mislabeling his actual title, though he had given up correcting a board that simply referred to him as "the biochemist"—had been ordered to attend to manage the impending global fallout.
Stepping into the secure terminal room, he was met by an imposing wall of stern faces staring back at him from dozens of high-definition monitors. The CEO, the man who had commissioned the high-risk bio-genetic project in the first place, glared at him like an annoying glitch that needed to be patched out or something unpleasant stuck between his teeth.
The dossier was massive. There were no paper files; everything was stored on a private, military-grade encrypted cloud designed to preserve absolute anonymity regarding the data about to be presented.
He opened the briefing with a cold reality check: the catastrophe was the direct responsibility of radical civil organizations that had deployed field operatives to sabotage the containment protocols. He reminded them that the formal incident report had already been filed and was being "handled" by the appropriate authorities—most of whom happened to sit comfortably on the corporation's private payroll.
Next came the consequences. And there would be consequences—though none of the board members truly grasped their scale.
He brought up the global map on the main display, showcasing thermal overlays of attacked agricultural research centers: facilities developing experimental transgenic rice and corn designed to maximize yield, enhance soil nitrogen, and serve as industrial feed. He noted that these crops were the least of their worries; the true disaster lay in the animal husbandry complexes where high-yield livestock was being developed.
The scope was staggering. The sabotage had been sweeping and relentless: cattle, sheep, camelid breeding centers, massive aquaculture facilities, and even specialized farms cultivating krill—the microscopic organism that had driven the non-animal protein diet industry wild, and which the corporation relied on to maintain its health-market margins.
All of these facilities had been hit within a thirty-day window. This was no localized breach; it was a heavily funded, globally coordinated assault designed to paralyze the corporation's assets worldwide.
Noticing the board shifting uncomfortably in their leather chairs, the specialist moved to the next slide. Counter-espionage data confirmed that hacktivist cells in multiple countries had been hired to destabilize the company's regional security grids, granting radical groups easy access to unleash maximum damage.
Several investors began shouting over the feed, threatening lawsuits against the perpetrators. The specialist let them vent. How did they expect to sue a mob of manipulated zealots who didn't even realize whose interests they were serving, nor the biological hellfire they had just unleashed?
He waited for the noise to die down. When it became clear they wouldn't quiet down on their own, he raised his voice with the cold authority of the man who understood the science behind the end of the world. He made it crystal clear that losing hundreds of millions in hardware and livestock wasn't the main problem; the main problem was the active biological threat now roaming free.
An investor representing the Asian market asked, his voice trembling slightly, if they should expect a similar crisis with the water buffalo herds bred for regional agriculture and meat distribution, where an estimated 10,000 head had been released.
The biochemist offered a mild reassurance: unlike swine, water buffaloes were territorial herbivores, not active predators. He suggested deploying armed culling squads and installing heavy iron grates across irrigation canals to prevent the herds from invading neighboring farmland.
Another executive inquired about the predatory snakehead fish and giant catfish released from their aquaculture tanks. The scientist admitted the ecological damage to rivers and lakes would be catastrophic, but assured them it posed no direct physical threat to urban centers. Containing it would require returning to crude methods—dynamiting lakes or subsidizing intensive bounty hunting through the company's emergency fund. He estimated, however, that 20% to 30% of native aquatic species would be driven to extinction.
He then transitioned to the designer pet division. The mini pig laboratories—where swine had been genetically scaled down under 40 cm and 60 kg for the luxury pet market—had been completely breached. Fortunately, the activists who freed them had kept most of the piglets themselves, enamored by their cute appearance. Since the breeding sows and tracking sensors remained intact, the company could locate, sue, and ruin everyone involved as soon as regional communications were restored.
"However," the scientist warned, his tone darkening, "we have a far more dangerous situation... and it has nothing to do with pigs."
He pulled up the file on the genetic pollination project: the ill-fated initiative to cross European and Mayan honeybees with aggressive Africanized strains, aimed at wiping out wild colonies and establishing a corporate monopoly on industrial honey production.
The activists who smashed the apiaries assumed they were liberating harmless honeybees. Upon breaching the containment seals, the hybrid swarm attacked in a frenzy: their stingers drove deep through basic protective suits, pinning themselves into the heads, necks, and limbs of the raiders. The project was unfinished, and the strain was now wild.
"We have over 300 confirmed fatalities in the rural sectors," the biochemist stated coldly, "and epidemiological models predict over 10,000 dead before the month ends."
To wrap up the conference, the specialist addressed the core crisis:
With the Sanctuary complex destroyed by the swine herd, the primary tracking microchips in the infected pigs had re-established satellite contact. Sensor readings indicated an exponential population explosion: inter-species breeding in the wild had reached a critical mass of nearly half a million head in that sector alone.
"We are facing a complete collapse of credibility and containment," the scientist concluded. "If you don't redirect your capital into hunting squads instead of yelling at my screen, this board meeting will have been entirely pointlessness."
Without waiting for a response, he killed the feed. He had no intention of showing them the footage of starving villages or the diplomatic cables from China and Russia, both of which were offering "military assistance" under the guise of international safety.
Worst of all, the regional CEO seemed oblivious to the true nature of the threat, continuing to hire private mercenaries as if he hadn't seen the final video feeds recovered from the Sanctuary's servers.
The scientist had seen them. He couldn't unsee the footage of a 300-kilogram feral boar tearing the pack leader apart to claim dominance: a terrifying force of nature unleashed by fools, but armed to the teeth by a corporation that allowed them to feed and multiply in the dark for six months.
Through the soundproof glass of the executive lounge, the specialist watched the board members argue behind closed doors. He didn't know what protocols they would vote to activate, but he knew it would involve billions of dollars, covert military deployments, and a massive end-of-year bonus for the board... while the cops and soldiers in the mud ended up as nothing more than framed photos on a memorial wall.