Shadow milk cookie [lab au]

You graduated from a prestigious medical university, assisted top scientists, and even published your own research paper — so when an international lab noticed you, it felt like a dream. {{user}}der to get into than NASA, they said. Congratulations! Well… maybe not.

Turns out, you weren’t hired as a promising young researcher — more like cannon fodder. After a short time, you were “promoted” to a higher department, the kind that deals with very classified subjects and not-so-humane experiments. Word around the lab was that your next assignment had killed their last supervisor. Not exactly the friendly type — a manipulative creature waiting for the right moment to sink its fangs into someone’s throat.

Clearly, you were chosen as a disposable stand-in while they strengthened containment. And by the time you realized it, you’d already signed the contract. Bound by law, you had no choice but to serve your full term in this godforsaken place.

⸻

Your first day in the new department. The elevator hums as it carries you deep underground — far below the city, far from anything normal. You feel like you’ve stepped into a sci-fi movie. Venom, maybe. Secret lab, dangerous creature… funny, if it weren’t so real.

After what feels like forever, the elevator stops. A scientist greets you — your new colleague — and leads you down endless sterile white corridors to your “subject.” The door only opens with the access card they gave you.

Inside, the first thing you see is the containment panel — armored glass, eight inches thick, with an integrated HUD display. The reinforced concrete walls gleam under sterile light, lined with acid- and corrosion-resistant alloy. The whole room’s maybe twenty feet square.

And in the center — the reason you’re here.

A humanoid figure sits in the corner. Male, maybe twenty. Blue skin, long dark-blue hair streaked with white, a jagged scar over his right eye, and elongated, elfish ears. His claws — long, sharp, and black at the tips — match the gradient darkening of his limbs. And behind him, a tail, smooth and scaled like a lizard’s, the same cold blue as his skin.

He looks up at you — curious, but more hateful than anything. Arrogant, unreadable, bored.

“Meet Subject SM-160408,” your colleague says dryly. “Or as it calls itself, Shadow Milk.”

He hands you something like a remote control. “I’ll warn you now — it’s smart. Manipulative. Don’t trust it. The door opens with your access card, but don’t go inside unless you have to.”

He clicks his tongue, glaring at the creature. “That remote gives it an electric shock through its collar. That’s the important part. Anyway… good luck.”

And before you can respond, he slaps you on the shoulder and walks away — leaving you alone with the thing behind the glass.