FANGS: The Monster They Made

Kael's eyes snapped open.

The first thing he felt was hunger. Intense, blinding, suffocating hunger.  So intense, he struggled to swallow with his parched throat.

His eyes met with an unfamiliar ceiling. His head was pounding, but he could not dwell on that for much longer.

He instinctively knew he needed to stand up from the bed, to move, to hunt. To feed.

The thought caught him off guard, but he moved anyway.

Groggily, he sat up, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

The room he was in was in was dimly lit and quiet, the only sound the soft hum of the air purifier. He swung his legs over the side of the bed, feeling the cool breeze from the vent caress his skin.

Something felt off.

The first odd feeling was the unhinged emotions he was feeling. The strong, staggering anger. Anger. Out of nowhere, for no reason, bubbling inside him like an inferno.

Something wasn't right.

He stood up, stretching his lean frame. His muscles ached like he'd been running for miles. Kael's gaze fell upon his reflection in the mirror by the side of the unfamiliar bed. His eyes, normally a deep grey color, seemed darker, almost...haunted.

His trousers and shirt had been changed. He was dressed in all white, with a number 446c on the left breast pocket of the shirt. A shiver ran down his spine as he noticed the strange marks on his neck. It was very visible even under his dark skin. They looked like puncture wounds, but he had no memory of getting hurt. Panic began to set in.

Kael raised his hands to his face and almost screamed at the bruises on both of his wrists. They looked deep purple and gnarly, like he had been restrained with so much force.

What the fuck was going on?

His mind was foggy like he'd been drugged. He could remember his name and his age, but just not how he got there or sustained those gnarly injuries.

He tried to recall the events leading up to this moment, but his memories were hazy. The last thing he remembered was the adoption party he had been thrown.

His adoptive family, the Arthurs, were always strict about his health and well-being. How would he explain to them that he did not get into a fight or do drugs again?

He had quit everything, even dropped his old friends when they told him they would adopt him from the foster system and give him a home and a family.

Would they believe him if he came back home looking like this? Just a day after they signed his adoption papers? Was it even a day?? Kael rubbed his hand through his afro braids in frustration.

That now familiar dooming anger welled up within him again.

A wave of nausea washed over him, and Kael stumbled towards the bathroom. He splashed water on his face, trying to clear his head. As he looked up, he caught sight of something that made his blood run cold...

"What... What..."

Kael’s breath hitched.

His voice...it was hoarse and strange to his ears.

He stared at the morrow in front of him again.

It looked like his reflection was shifting right in front of him. Moving, even when he was standing still. Did his reflection just smile at him?

Kael closed his eyes and shook his head to dispel whatever was playing with his mind. He looked back at his reflection and it was back to normal. Too normal.

There was no monstrous version of himself staring back, no flicker of something inhuman behind his eyes... just Kael. Bruised. Confused. Alive.

He exhaled, shaky. Get a grip. His mind was just shaky. That had to be it.

But the nausea didn’t fade. The hunger gnawed harder. He pressed his hand against the sink to steady himself, and that’s when he noticed it... a smear of something red on the edge of the porcelain. Blood. Fresh.

His.

Maybe. He wasn't sure.

His heart raced as he backed out of the bathroom, casting one last glance at the mirror. The reflection still matched his every move. Still human. Still him.

For now.

He turned and limped toward the door of the room. It creaked open with barely any resistance. The hallway outside was dimly lit, lined with smooth white panels and a humming light strip that ran along the ceiling. It felt sterile. Clinical. Wrong.

Kael stepped out. His bare feet touched the cold floor, and he flinched. Down the hall, there were doors. Identical to the one he had just left. Some were slightly ajar.

He moved forward, cautiously. The hunger didn’t leave. It only got worse.

Then he heard it, a soft whimper. A human sound.

Kael froze.

He inched toward the sound, his heartbeat speeding and thundering in his ears. Kael folloed the soft, muffled sound till he got to another door, this one open just enough to glimpse a little of what was inside.

A figure.

A girl. She looked about his age. Strapped to a table, pale and still. Tubes ran into her arms, and a mask covered her nose and mouth. She twitched slightly, like whatever was going in and out of her was not for her health. She looked like she was caught in a bad dream.

Kael stumbled back, his hand flew over his mouth to keep from screaming.

What the hell was this place?

He moved faster now, running through the silent, eerie hallways lined with several doors just like the one he just saw.

Panic racked through him as he ran, checking each room. Some were empty. Some held young, unconscious teenagers twitching in dreamlike states. All of them like him... boys and girls, unconscious with marks on their necks and wrists, just like his.

Experiments.

Whatever had been done to him… was still happening.

He wasn’t just lost. He’d been taken.

The thought crammed I to him like a train... The hunger, the anger...

It wasn’t just a symptom.

It was a side effect.

Kael’s hands trembled as he backed away from the girl’s room.

His brain was screaming at him to run. To scream. To do something.

But that hunger…

It had teeth now. Gnawing at the inside of his skull. Chewing into the very core of his brain. Every heartbeat felt like a war drum.

He pressed himself against the wall and took a shuddering breath, trying to force his thoughts into a straight line.

This place is a lab. I’m not sick... l’m being tested.

Like a rat. Like them.

He moved again, faster now. Passed three more rooms, one empty, one filled with strange equipment, one with a boy strapped down and covered in bruises.

Then he heard voices. Faint. Male. Two, maybe three people, around the corner talking.

He ducked into the nearest room, praying they hadn’t seen him.

Inside, the lights were off. The glow from the hallway cast just enough illumination for him to see the figure in the far corner, another teenager. A boy with shaggy dark hair and pale skin. Slumped against the wall, chest rising and falling shallowly.

Kael took a cautious step forward.

“Hey,” he whispered. “Are you...can you hear me?”

The boy’s eyes flicked open.

Bloodshot. Hollow. But aware.

“You… you’re one of us,” the boy croaked, voice like broken glass. “You woke up.”

Kael blinked. “What do you mean? One of who? How did you get here? Who runs this place?”

The boy tried to sit up, wincing. “Subjects. Failed trials. You’re awake… that means it’s starting.”

“What’s starting?” Kael demanded, stepping closer.

But the boy didn’t answer right away. Instead, he turned his head slowly toward Kael—and for a split second, Kael swore his pupils shifted.

Vertical slits. Like a snake’s.

Then they were round again.

“You need to run,” the boy said. “Before you begin to change... Before the hunger wins.”

The boy coughed violently and spit out blood from his lips into his palm.

Kael’s stomach twisted violently. His jaw clenched. Something hot, acidic rose in his throat. His whole body, came alive at the sight of the red blob in the sick boys palm.

That hunger… it wasn’t just for food.

It was for something else.

For blood.