Entro knew he was being watched, he was a liability. No amount of coddling for the next 15 years would change how they viewed him for one simple reason.
Fear.
Entropy Voldstadt clawed his way out of poverty and built the most powerful company in history off the back of his inventions. Giving his life to fluff their pockets wouldn't make them any less wary.
No, there was only one method to avert their eyes enough to accomplish what he planned, Entro had to go mad.
But not just any mad. Too insane and he was a threat, not enough and he was more dangerous than before; a balance between insanity and docile temperament had to be established.
Having disturbed his entire floor of work to ignite complaints and aggressive calls for corporate to handle the situation, Entro was now headed home, simulating his next course of action.
At the bare minimum, something would be done about the noise and smell. However, he couldn't predict the extent to which they would. For the first time in a long time, Entro was excited; he would dedicate the next 20 years of his life to studying this if he had to.
He spent the next few hours playing around the library with Elara, deciding to leave earlier than normal to be well-rested for the next day.
Before heading to sleep, Entro poured over his notes again. He made sure everything was sorted. Every idea and hypothesis was well-detailed and formatted.
'Wolves are such fascinating creatures. The fabled 'alpha wolf' turned out to just be an amazing father taking care of his family. A wolf's physical prowess and social dynamic were far more complicated than I originally thought.
The stamina to run fast enough to outpace athletes for hours, and the hearing to detect ultrasonic cues. A beautifully structured animal; introducing a new genus to the family would be my greatest honor.'
It was ready, and he was ready.
Arising bright and early the next day, Entro was excitedly mulling over his plans, knowing he couldn't get too amped up. He hadn't even seen his office yet.
Walking into the employee building, Entro wasn't met with his usual stares he had become so accustomed to. Instead, the atmosphere was as if the workplace was normal. Not a soul acted as if they knew he was there, let alone saw him.
If before, he parted crowds of sneers, now he drifted, ghostlike and undeterred, through a sea of employees. If the plan was to give him whiplash, they may have succeeded had his mind not been fixated on one thing and one thing only.
After nearly dropping his keys, in excitement, trying to get the door unlocked, he swung the door open. What he was greeted with dulled his mood near instantaneously.
It was terrible.
Every installation, every upgrade. It was all shoddy, half-baked and more detrimental to his work space than help.
Foam-lined the walls for soundproofing and every vent was closed; the sound would escape still, but hindered his ability to test instruments using sound resonance. Not only could he not work properly, but ventilation was a pain now. If he processed anything in here, he would suffocate before the day's end.
'Should've never trusted a bunch of useless penguins'
Entro would have loved for this one thing to be handed to him. It was so simple, he felt like a child would understand what needed to be done, and yet here he was, presented with more work than he initially had.
The rest of the day, Entro found menial tasks to perform and bide his time. Staying as quiet and out of sight as possible, he holed himself up in his office and waited. Night fall, when the building was silent and the lobby clear, he got to work.
There was nothing to be done during day hours; this was the busiest building in the entire city, by employee or consumer traffic.
So, throughout the wee hours of night, Entro set to work, building his office into the perfect laboratory.
He owned his little hovel and didn't use many appliances to begin with, so the money he accrued over the last few weeks was used to make small trips with Elara to the hardware store and buy supplies.
Entro knew corporate wouldn't fully satisfy the condition his workspace needed to be in to pull this off, however, he never expected they would do such a poor job either. This may have set his plans back slightly, but it was a quick adjustment.
First, he put together his soundproofing system. This would allow him to work loudly without fear of being approached by penguins and their minions.
That was the easiest bit, the next part was repurposing the room for his plans.
Most of the equipment was old and no one made any attempt at keeping them clean or preventing damage, this left figuring out what could be salvaged and what couldn't, up to Entro.
Much to his delight, the pod only needed to be cleaned and scrubbed. But most of the other equipment needed to be tossed or replaced.
Entro sent out notes to the head of the finance department asking for the equipment he needed, each note bedazzled with smiley faces.
The finance department directly shifted money around within the company's budget, and that budget was huge. If he contacted them directly, they would indulge him simply because the company had plenty of money and it would be more of a headache to argue with him instead; every week Entro had a new toy to install into his laboratory, and something new to tell Elara.
"They just delivered the gene sequencer last night," Entro murmured, shifting his head in Elara's lap, her fingers sifting through his scalp. Trying to stay awake and keep her updated was near impossible. "I didn't have time to install it but once it's done tonight, I can begin testing."
Going out to see the city was fun, but most nights they stayed in, just talking; she loved to hear about his plans for the future.
"Although I wasn't built with mathematical equations in mind," her fingers stilled, "I ran calculations of my own; I don't understand how this will work."
It wasn't doubt that she was expressing, Entro understood that. Elara wanted to be in the mix of whatever he was doing, if she couldn't understand it, she wanted him to explain; she was very human in that regard.
"The calculations don't make sense because of missing information," he responded, unfazed, "there's something we're not seeing that would make this work, it's up to me to find it," Entro grinned mysteriously, "or make it."
The next day, Entro stood at the door of his lab, surveying his accomplishment in a few months, the familiar hum of machinery permeating throughout his body, easing his mind.
In the time he took him to finish this personal assignment, he completely solidified his supposed madness into the hearts of those who watched.
He even started sleeping inside of the lab, just to make it a normal occurrence in their minds by the time he started working on greatness; he was finally unbothered and Entro could confidently work unhindered.
Yesterday, he made entirely about Elara. With how delicate these next steps in his plan were, he couldn't leave the lab for anything short of an emergency.
It took a lot of convincing to keep her away from the lab.
"Why can't I just come and stay with you," Elara said, pouting.
Entro stared into her longing eyes.
"Because," his hands moved the hair out of her face, "I work for the same people who stripped me of everything I've ever loved, I couldn't stand for it to happen again."
Her expression softened.
"Okay," her hands tightened their grip on his hands, "promise me you'll come back?"
"I promise"
Now Entro was moving around his lab with busy hands, never stopping to take a breather.
Filling the pod with his homemade composition of growth fluid, that accurately simulated the womb of a mother.
'This will take about 30 minutes. Time for the illegal part'
In order to bioengineer a creature, Entro needed an egg to actually tamper with a genome. Normally, he wouldn't be able to obtain one without raising some eyebrows.
These, however, weren't normal circumstances.
He slaved away for the biggest company in the history of humanity. Voldstadt Enterprises was in every household like watered-down cultist, if any place had eggs on hand for him, this place did.
Adopting the look of a crazed individual before leaving his lab, Entro walked with an irregular rhythm and swing of his arms, inciting an offputting feeling in anyone who saw him.
Luckily, he was the head, and only employee, of the very department he needed to steal the wolf genomes from.
He was basically stealing from himself.
Arriving at the storage, he found, much to his horror, there was someone already inside.
And they saw him already.
"Who are you," Entro questioned, taking control of the conversation.
The entire room was filled with drawer-like containers that kept stored items at the perfect temperature, and the one he was looking for was just over the person's shoulder.
"I-," they glanced around nervously, a young man.
Entro slowly approached, crooning his head in a bird-like manner.
He had blonde hair, relatively tall, and didn't look very well-fed. He was lanky, not in a toned way, but malnourished. His face looked baby-ish, like it was stuck in a pre-pubescent form.
There was a shelf placed directly in the center, splitting the room in half with a walkway behind it, the only escape.
"You weren't in here doing something you weren't supposed to, were you?"
The words left his mouth in a whisper, and the boy backed away in tandem.
"No, that's not... No, I was just..."
He was clutching something behind his back, and nervously shifting as he made his way around the shelving.
"So what were you doing here?"
"I... I have to go."
Without wasting another heartbeat, he scampered out of the room, still hiding his items.
'Too easy.'
A smile tugged at Entro's lips. How ironic was it that two thieves ended up in the same spot?
He would leave the boy with whatever he nabbed, Entro had bigger fish to catch.
Opening the container he was looking for, Entro found dozens of cryogenic vials filled with frozen wolf embryos.
'Jackpot, this will hold me for years.'
With a practiced hand, vials started disappearing into as many pockets as he could fit.
Entro hurried back to the lab and properly stored the vials after extracting an embryo for use.
Everything was falling into place.
The excitement that spilled off of Entro could nearly be seen, he had done it, the embryos were his, and the only thing that remained was breaking through every scientific barrier that currently exists. Stilling his shaking hands and calming his breath, he began operating on the future.