Eric ran until his legs buckled under him, his hands slapping the floor to keep from falling face-first into cold steel. His vision twisted.
Kale blinked repeatedly, but he could see lines bending where they shouldn't, shadows twitching like they had breath. Every heartbeat pounded like a drum inside his skull, each thud echoing louder than the last.
He tried to blink the haze away. It didn't go, in fact, it only made his vision worse. Blurry and bleak.
Eric had never run like that before. Not from a fight, not from his past, not even from the streets he grew up learning to navigate like a second skin.
This was different.
He wasn't running to survive. He was running to protect. From himself. The thought was fucking messed up, but he kept running.
His legs carried him through corridors he didn't recognize, his breath sharp in his chest, too fast, too loud. Every footstep echoed behind him like he was being hunted. But he wasn't. Not yet.
He was the hunter.
His skin itched like it was too tight. His vision flashed between normal and nightmare, veins glowing, lights pulsing, distant heartbeats visible through walls. He could smell things he didn't have names for. Taste the air like it had color.
His hands weren't hands anymore. His nails had curved, thickened. His jaw ached with pressure he couldn't explain.
This isn't real, he told himself. It was just another dream. And he would wake up soon. But it was not. It was all real.
He had seen it in her blood.
He stumbled into a maintenance wing, it had very low ceiling, exposed piping, walls slick with old condensation. It was colder here, darker, it almost looked abandoned. It was so cold, his breath steamed in the air.
He collapsed against a wall, body shaking, chest heaving. His mind screamed get up, but his muscles were locked in place. His reflection stared back from a broken sheet of plastic along the wall tinted violet, skin damp, pupils wide and black.
"Not real," he said under his breath. "Not real. Not me."
The corridors stretched on forever, turning in on themselves, metal and pipes groaning with age and pressure. The air tasted stale, recycled, but beneath it... blood. Not fresh. But not old enough to forget. He could smell it now. Not just as scent, but identity. AB-positive. Male. Mid-teens. Someone was bleeding nearby.
His stomach knotted. The hunger was back,
He couldn't speak.
He couldn't breathe.
The hunger slammed into him like a wave. He dropped to his knees, eyes wide, claws halfway formed.
Eric continued to stumble and he ran, his vision hazy.
He made it three corridors before they found him.
He heard Mr Arthur's voice without seeing him due to his greying vision.
"There! Over there!! Don't loose him again."
The tranquilizer dart hissed as it hit Eric 's shoulder. The effect was instantaneous as his knees immediately gave out. The hallway blurred.
He hit the ground hard, mouth open in a silent scream. He tried to move, but he couldn't. The cold sank into his bones. Muscles locked. Limbs heavy.
He saw three sets of boots approaching him.
The last thing he saw was Mr. Arthur standing over him, expression blank. Calm, as he spoke to a lady behind him.
"I told you," Arthur murmured. "He wasn't ready."
Eric tilted his body so he could look at Mr. Arthur, He looked pristine. His suit still clean. Shirt pressed. Calm eyes like polished stone.
He crouched and knelt down beside Eric . "You weren't ready," he said quietly, like he wasn't even angry. Just… disappointed.
Eric tried to speak, but his mouth wouldn't work. Something cold spread through his bloodstream like ice.
"I wanted this to be painless," he said. "But you made it violent."
He reached out, brushing a thumb across Eric 's temple like a father comforting a fevered child.
"But you'll understand soon. You'll see." Eric 's eyes fluttered.
Darkness swallowed him whole.
Eric woke up in chains.
Cold steel around his wrists, his ankles, his torso and his neck. A metal table beneath his back. Lights above him, too bright, white and humming like flies. His body felt too heavy. Like he'd sunk into himself.
He tried to scream and found the collar around his neck tightening.
"You're not dying," Mr. Arthur's voice said from somewhere behind the glass.
"You're transforming." Eric 's body convulsed as shockwave after shockwave raked his body. Snapping his teeth against each other.
The pain was back. The hunger. But louder. Worse. Deeper.
Somewhere above, something beeped in time with his heart. Behind a glass wall, figures in lab coats moved in and out of view.
One of them stood still, watching. Mr. Arthur.
They were watching him mutate. Documenting it.
Testing him. Finishing what they started.
He didn't know how long he was under. It could have been days or hours. Time stretched, snapped and broke over and over again. All he could see were the humming white lights as he wasted away, struggling to keep himself from turning to the thing was his nightmare.
He heard Mr. Arthur's voice from outside the glass wall again.
"I was hoping we'd never need this chamber again," he said through the speaker. "But here we are." Eric groaned in answer.
"You're changing faster than the others. Stronger. Smarter. But you still think like a human. That's your weakness."
He reached forward and turned a dial.
Pain rushed through Eric 's spine like lightning.
He screamed, voice raw, body thrashing as much as the restraints allowed.
"I'll fix that. I will fix you"
Eric didn't know how much time passed.
Hours. Days. He could not tell.
The pain came in waves. Sometimes hot, sometimes slow and dull like drowning. The hunger never left. Sometimes he thought he was screaming, but it was just the sound of his own heartbeat.
They were changing him. Mutating him. Changing him into something he did not understand, did not agree to and was scared to fave and live with and yet, he could not do anything about it. He just slept through it.
He dreamed of fire. Of sharp teeth and fangs. Of Elara.
And then Eric woke startled by footsteps. Real ones. They sounded close. No one else seemed to hear it, but he heard the faint sound of a beep indicating a key in the door. He heard whispers.
Then the click of the door. He half expected Mr. Arthur to walk in with another syringe containing black thick liquid like he always did to inject into him, but he did not walk in.
Instead, the door hissed open. And she was there. Breathless. Pale. Blood on her jacket. A stolen keycard in her hand.
"Elara," he croaked.
The alarm didn't even finish sounding before she was over him, yanking wires from his arms, breath ragged, eyes wide.
"I'm getting you out," she whispered.
Eric 's eyes fluttered. "Why?"
"You already asked me that," she said, cutting through the restraints holding him bound with a stolen keyblade. "And I'm still answering."
She pulled him upright. He staggered. She caught him.
"You're insane," he whispered.
"Maybe," she muttered. "But I'm still here."
She pulled the collar off. He gasped, body twitching as if it had been holding back a flood.
She wrapped his arm over her shoulder. He nearly collapsed.
Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw one of the guards aim his gun ringb towards Elara's head. Eric heard it before he saw it. The gunshot. He saw red.
Our of pure, unrehearsed instinct alone, Eric stood from the metal board, coving her body with his as bullet after bullet pumped into his body.
He turned with blinding rage towards the guard. The thought of what could have happened if just one of those bullets had pierced Elara doubled his already high rage.
Without much fuss, Eric picked up the guard straight from the floor. He did not feel it when he snapped his neck. He did not feel bad when he sunk his elongated teeth into the guards neck and pulled on the thick veins carrying red, hot blood.
The guard dropped. Drained and dead. But Eric was not okay. It was like he had opened up the gates of hell when he drank from the guard and now he could not close it back.
Before he could stop to process what had just happened and what was going on with him, Elara grabbed him by the hand and pulled him out of the room, running like her ass was on fire.
Together, they ran. Down through the tunnels.
Through corridors red with alarm lights. Past empty cells. Past the places where Eric had died and become something new.
Up. Out. Past the labs.
Through fire and red lights and screaming and gunfire. They didn't stop until they burst through a steel hatch and hit the open night.
Moonlight.
Eric sucked in his first breath of real air in a long time. He turned to look around.
Trees. No walls. Eric dropped to his knees in the dirt, shaking. Alive. Barely. Starving.
The blood he had drank from the guard was not nearly enough for him.
Elara stood behind him, panting. Eric didn't look back. He couldn't even bring himself to.
With a joyous giggle in between heavy pants, Elara walked and knelt beside him, still holding on.
Still not letting go.