Four months before Zero. The happier memory emerging from a sea of monotony was the first realisation any of them had that they'd been created as better than standard human soldiers. Most of Squad Four had adopted nicknames based on their species or job. They used these nicknames to refer to each other rather than the number the Doctor had assigned to them, which some of the staff used. Each of the anthropomorphs in the squad had settled into a niche of sorts, their instructors pleased with their progress in the skills of soldiering. It was never enough for the Doctor, though. Almost a week after the unnecessary slaughter of the pigeon, th

6 A.M. A week later. The mess hall was bland, clean and full of about three hundred subjects, watched over on walkways by gun-toting guards. The imaginatively named Squad Four sat around their designated table, eating, or perhaps enduring, the soy protein that they were served up every meal. It was breakfast. Everything the body needed to exist, and nothing for the mind to savour and enjoy. Every day was the same, as the doctor's world ran around precisely timed precision. 0600: Reveille, enforced by ship siren and electroshock. 0610: Breakfast. 0625: Shower, under cold jets only. 0630: Hand-to-hand combat, including stress testing unde

Lab Rats Chapter One: Bad Memories A blue-green marble hung in the inky blackness. Surrounded by points of light. In universal terms, the events which are about to unfold are specks of sand in the desert. But, as they say, it all depends on perspective. Focus. The marble becomes a planet. Closer. Now the eye can see the lights of civilization, the faint dust around the planet of satellites, always talking, never stopping. Closer still. See the bands of the satellites, in particular the inactive, decrepit band known as the satellite graveyard. Dead, every single one. And yet, in this area, something stirs. Four years since it was consigned