Sterile.

Long hallways with white tiles. Long hallways with white windowless walls. Long hallways full of humans in white masks and white gowns.

A small cavalry of small robots, not unsimilar to the disc-like Roomba's other humans would find in their cramped and cozy homes. Wherever one looked a cadre of black dots whirred up and down the hallways in a tireless pursuit of cleanliness.

Urska deliberately stomped on the scurrying black specks. She felt one of them crunch under her feet and fill the otherwise pristine hallway with the acrid odor of burnt electrical wires.

The doctors and the scientists and the ̴̛̩̙š̷̻̹p̵̣͑ͅȋ̴̲̣e̴̫͊́s̸̖̿ offered her the same exhausted looks they would a petulant child in tantrum. Because she had become predictable. Because she had become too human.

"Bring it in," Urska snarled, and she stepped aside from the doorway to Petre's small room.

Its walls were white, its tiled floor white, the bed sheets w̸͇̆ĥ̷͇i̴̖͝ţ̸͗e. The chair and the desk were an oak brown, but the paper on-top! White, white, w̷̜̍h̶͙̓i̶͔͊ť̸̝e, and all she wanted was red.

They had sent a woman on purpose. She pushed a small white cart full of food into the center of the room. She wore white scrubs and a white face-mask. Her hair was brown, but Urska could see a few strands of w̵h̴i̵t̵e peak out from amidst the ruddy foliage.

"H-hungry?" the woman asked, and here she betrayed her white porcelain mask. She tried to hide her fear through courtesy and failed. Like all the others. Like all the others.

"I hate this," Urska said as she started to gnaw on her lower lip.

The woman unloaded the trays of food onto the low table that sat in the middle of the room. Petre looked on with a nervous twitch to his smile. Urska did not miss how his t̸̨̑r̵͊͜a̶͐ͅi̷̖͌ẗ̷̠́o̷̭̽r̸̩͠o̸͉̿u̵̢͂s eyes latched onto the woman's bosom as the ẉ̴̏h̸̝̐o̶̧̾r̵̤̈́e̵ bent over the white cart of food.

"I reaaaally h̵̛̪a̷̮͛â̶̮Ä̴͈́ḁ̴̈́a̴̟͝Ȁ̷̧t̸̏͜e this," Urska said.

The strangeness had begun soon after she had spat up the human, after she had been alone with Petre.

He was afraid of her. The human trembled when she dragged her claws across the soft pudge of his belly. His eyes filled with tears when she gnawed on his plump earlobes and tasted the tainted r̴̞̃e̷̫̾ḏ̴̑ that filled his oh so human veins.

And it upset her!

Urska did not want this d̴̤̀ȩ̴̔l̶̤̚i̶̞͂g̶͍̚h̸̞̔t̸̰̎ḟ̵̙ű̴͎l human to fear her, to hate her, and she did not want him to look at some tight-dressed mare with a red h̶̙͊ủ̴̪n̷͓͑g̶̼̈́er in his loins.

"Takeabite," Urska said, and she stood over the white woman in her white clothes and her f̸̦̏â̸̻k̸͙̔ȅ̵̗ white porcelain smile. "Orisitpoison?"

"E-excuse me?" the woman asked, but she turned to look at Petre. She looked to him for help.

The table was cluttered with thick slices of french toast drenched in butter and syrup.

Urska fed the poison to the woman.

There were several plates with thin slices of ham and fatty bacon drenched in grease.

Urska fed the poison to the woman.

A bowl of apples and oranges and the shrunken blue e̸͖͌y̸͝ͅe̵͗ͅs of dead fish.

Urska fed the poison to the woman, and the woman was such a messy eater.

"Look, look," Urska said with a smile that ran from cheek to cheek. "Her face looks like a blueberry."

But Petre did not look. He had started to tremble. Sweat poured off his arms and face and he looked unwell, and Urska gnawed on her lower lip because she did not want him to look unwell, but why did he care if this ẘ̵̢r̶͙̂e̸̦̕ẗ̷̬́c̶͝ͅh̷̠͠è̷̙d̶̲͛ ̵̬͗w̷̧̒ë̶̫́n̵͇̋c̸͙͂h died when Urska would feed him her own colour if he only looked at her without such a rancor of fear as if she would hurt him when all she wanted was for him to be whole.

"Itwaspoison," Urska said, and she let the woman fall to the room's messy floor. It was strewn with mashed-up foodstuff and the yellow puddle of human fear. "Theywanttohurtyou."

And she waited.

Because she had become excited.

And she had to be calm.

She had to be collected.

Because if she had found her Prince Charming.

"Oh my! Look at this dreadful mess," Urska said with a shake of her head. "We must talk with the Small Professor."

Petre did not rouse from where he sat, so Urska hefted him into the air. She carried him like a princess.

"I jus' don' trust 'em, is all," Urska said as she and Petre made their way down the hallway outside of his room. "They dropped tha' bomb on ya head!"

Petre said nothing. He shook like a leaf in her arms, and so she pressed him into her bountiful bosom. Human men became like animals when presented with those two mammalian sacks of milk and fat.

Nobody tried to stop her as she followed her nose towards the incubator and the worm. Nobody dared.

The facility was a maze of near identical white hallways. When Urska reached locked doors, she pulled them open and left someone else to worry about the hole left behind. The deeper she delved into the facility, the whiter its walls seemed to become until one could see each individual speck of dust left unattended.

She reached the smell of her children. The wide and thick metal barriers that barred entry to the laboratory had been thrown open as if in welcome. She did not particularly care what happened to the incubator and the worm, but Urska knew the Small Professor would be with them.

"Zero-Nine," Professor Cesaire said in way of greeting. The noisome laboratory around him had been vacated as if in anticipation of her arrival.

The Small Professor was taller than most humans. He bent forward in a pronounced hunch that betrayed the youthful lines of his good-natured face. He had a typical Le Melrouge hooked nose and pointed jowls. His hair was a shock of messy brown dashed with unnatural white lines.

"One of your people tried to poison him," Urska said, and she dropped Petre onto the floor of the laboratory. Its walls were flanked with four enormous steel vats.

"Good morning, Monsieur Predav," Professor Cesaire said with a small bow. "I had hoped to make your acquaintance later today."

"Hewouldhavebeend̶̨͗e̴̡͒a̴̲͑d," Urska said, and she heard movement from within one of the steel vats.

"He is our special guest," Professor Cesaire said with a shake of his head. "Zero-Nine, you are very excitable today."

Bang, bang, baaang.

The metal vats stretched from floor to ceiling. Dozens of tubes and electronic diodes covered them like a snake and its prey. The laboratory was entirely empty but for their metal mass.

"Such a curious reaction," Professor Cesaire said as the middlemost vat continued to cling and clang.

It started as a trickle. Urska noticed the smallest bead of wet dribble down the side of the metal vat that rang out. And then red lights flashed and flared within the laboratory as the dribble became a trickle, its color black and cloying.

"Most curious indeed," the Small Professor said as the incubator oozed out of her metal prison dribble by wet dribble. Urska could smell the desperation radiate off her as the thinnest tendril of black slime snaked towards where Petre sat, his stare resolutely on his shoes.

"This is a rotten thing to watch," Urska said, and she cut out a chunk of the cement floor with her claws.

She shaved the chunk of cement into a smaller ball and then flicked it at the metal vat.

Sirens continued to flash and flare as the trickle became a torrent. The laboratory filled with the smell of poison as the bubbly wet of the vat spilled out across the floor. And with it a shrunken slab of black goo.

"Pathetic," Urska said, but a thousand thoughts raced through her thoughts.

Because it was not safe to remain with the human male.

There was something odd about him.

He made Urska odd.

But she would not allow the other humans to destroy him.

Not until she knew why.

So until then he would need a guard dog, and it seemed the incubator had already been tamed.