Kael’s breath hitched as he backed away from the bleeding boy. “Wait, what do you mean ‘before the hunger wins... You mean...I would...?” Kael whispered his eyes still trained on the boys palm. But the boy had already slumped back down, trembling. Kael didn’t wait for a clearer answer. He stumbled out of the room and shut the door gently behind him. The hallway outside was as silent as he had left it. The talking people must have walked away. The fluorescent lighting buzzed faintly overhead. He moved deeper into the facility, not knowing exactly what he was searching for. An exit? He doubted whoever brought him here would let him walk out. The hunger was still gnawing at him, but something sharper had taken root now, curiosity, fueled by fear. He needed answers. Half a dozen doors down, Kael walked down the empty laboratory hallway that smelled weirdly like a hospital corridor. He walked carefully and tentatively with his bare feet till he found what looked like a monitoring ro

Kael didn’t remember falling asleep.One second he was on the cold metal floor, still breathing too hard, still feeling her eyes on him. The next thing he knew, darkness. He knew he was asleep, he had to be, but he could feel everything. He tried to get himself to wake up, but he felt stuck in his own body. Then all he felt was heat. Eveywhere.Heavy, suffocating heat.Like fire pulsing under his skin.He stood in a hallway like the one in the lab, but the lights were red, and everything dripped. The walls… were pulsing. Breathing. As if the whole place was alive, waiting.He looked down. His hands were covered in blood. Not glowing veins this time. Not a trick of light.Blood, warm, thick, dark, and fresh.He tried to wipe them on his shirt, but the more he scrubbed, the more it smeared, like the blood was coming from inside him. Like he was leaking.He turned a corner and saw someone standing ahead of him.A girl. Small. Pale. Familiar. One of the foster kids.Kael stepped forward.

Kael and Elara could not stick around the lab for too long so they started their journey away from the lab environs. They could not go back home so their best bet was the forest.For hours, they walked in silence. Both of them tired and exhausted in different ways. The forest too, was deadly silent.Kael’s breath clouded the air in front of him, thick and ragged. His knees were planted in the damp earth, trembling under his own weight. Every part of him hurt. Not the surface-level kind, the ache that lived in the bones. In the marrow.Behind him, he heard Elara stopped walking and stand still, watching him like he might snap in half or explode.He wished he could promise her he wouldn’t.But he wasn’t so sure. Not after what he had just done to the guard. He still did not want to think about it. So he pushed it to the back of his mind a d kept walking.A breeze passed through the trees, rustling the leaves. It should have been calming. Should have sounded like freedom. It didn’t.Ever

Hunger branded Kael like a red hot iron. He wanted more. He needed more. It felt like he was going to die. Like he would fall right there to his death. But he could not let himself look towards Elara.He didn’t even let himself speak to her, afraid of what could happen if the wrong though or movement triggered him. Kael sat with his back against a rock, his knees pulled up, blood drying on his fingers like war paint. His heart had slowed, but the taste was still there, on his tongue, behind his teeth, in his head.He wanted to vomit. But more than that, he wanted more.He hated that.Elara was across from him, crouched by a nearby stream running shallow over roots. She was washing her hands. He wondered if it was her blood or his. Or the boy’s.Kael’s voice cracked the silence. He decided that he needed to hear her voice. It would ground hi.. Keep him tethered to reality. “Do you think I’m one of them now?” She didn’t turn."Like that boy?” he said again, quieter.Elara looked up, dr