FANGS: The Monster They Made

A Howl In The Distance

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.

Everything felt… sharp. Every crack of a twig, every rustle of movement in the dark, it cut. He could hear things he wasn’t supposed to. Bugs crawling under bark. A fox padding across grass twenty feet away. Water dripping inside a rotting log.

His senses had sharpened into weapons. This was what happened when he consumed blood. He was sure of it.

And yet, the hunger was still there. Pressing in behind his teeth like a second heartbeat.

“Elara,” he rasped without turning. “Where are we?”

“I think we’re in the south woods,” she said softly. “There’s a road about two miles out. We just need to follow the ridge until we hit it.”

Kael’s fingers dug into the dirt. “And then what?”

“Then… We would figure it out. I could take you somewhere safe. Somewhere they won’t find you.”

He let out a dry laugh, shaking his head. “Safe doesn’t exist for me anymore.”

“You don’t know that.” she argued.

“I do.” He finally turned to look at her. Her eyes were still wide—tired, scared, but steady. “You saw what I was turning into down there. You felt it.”

She didn’t answer. She didn’t have to.

“You’re not just… mutating,” she said finally. “You’re adapting. Your body’s changing fast, yeah. But it’s not all bad.”

“Tell that to the part of me that nearly tore your throat open. The part of me that killed and drand drank blood from a guard”

Elara flinched. Not from fear, but from truth.

Kael looked away again. “You should’ve left me. I don't know what I am becoming. You should have left me there.”

“I couldn’t.” Elara said, squaring her shoulders.

“You should have.”

“I know.” She finally admitted

They stood there in the silence for a moment longer, the night humming around them.

Kael’s hand brushed over his own skin. His arms were hotter than they should’ve been, veins bulging faintly, twitching under the surface. His skin looked darker than usual, not from the night or his complexion, but like something beneath it was shifting. A glow trying to push through. A warning.

“Elara… do you have any idea what he was trying to make me into?”

Elara hesitated but finally let out a deep breath and answered.

“I think so,” she said. “My dad talked about ‘reclaiming potential.’ He never said exactly what it meant. Just… something about sharpening evolution. Building soldiers that didn’t burn out.”

Kael scoffed. “Soldiers.”

“He thinks he’s saving the world.”

“And what am I?” Kael looked at her. “His perfect weapon?”

“You were never supposed to survive it. He had high hopes for your survival, yes, but you also had a huge chance of being another failed project."

That made Kael go still.

He turned slowly, locking eyes with her. “What?”

She swallowed. “There were others. Kids who came through the foster program before you. I thought he was helping them, rehabbing, detoxing, healing. But none of them came home after they visited the lab. Not one. He said they were ‘too weak.’”

Her voice shook at the edge.

“Then you came along. Strong. Smart. Perfect candidate. He called you a breakthrough. I read it in all his earlier journals"

Kael felt like something cold had wrapped around his spine.

“I was the control group,” he muttered. “I was the one he was betting on.”

Elara said nothing.

He stepped back from her. Just one step. But it said everything.

"You knew,” he whispered. “Some part of you knew.”

"I didn’t want to believe it.” Elara whispered

"Doesn’t make it less true.”

“I tried to stop it.” Elara was really getting tired of arguing with him. It showed in her voice as she responded. "I tried all I could"

He laughed bitterly. “You didn’t try hard enough. You told me we were family. You told me you were happy I was part of your home. All the while you knew something was off. You knew he would take me to the lab the way he took the others. You knew...”

Her face cracked at that.

He turned away again, walking a few feet toward the ridge. The moonlight carved his features into sharp lines, his face older, harder than it had been a week ago.

The silence dragged.

Finally, he said, “He’s going to come for me.”

"I know.”

"And I don’t think I’ll be able to stop myself next time.”

“You will,” she said, too quickly.

“You don’t know that.”

“I have to.”

Kael crouched, hands in the dirt again, breathing slow and shallow.

There was something alive inside him. Something that liked the hunger. That wanted to be free of all the fear and shame and guilt. That told him he’d never be vulnerable again.

That thing was louder now.

He knew it had a voice. Soon, it might have control.

“I’m not scared of dying,” Kael said. “I’m scared of becoming something worse than him.”

Elara moved beside him and knelt down too, her voice quiet. “Then don’t.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“Yes, it is,” she said. “Because you haven’t hurt anyone who didn’t deserve it. Because you ran when you could’ve attacked me. Because you’re still here. And that’s your choice.”

He looked at her.

She met his gaze, unwavering. “He didn’t break you. That means something.”

Kael nodded slowly. “I don’t know how long I can keep it up.”

“Then we figure it out together.”

He let out a breath. “You always this stubborn?”

She smiled faintly. “Only with people who almost eat me.”

A weak laugh escaped him. The first real one in days.

The wind picked up again. A howl in the distance, it sounded like a coyote, maybe. Too far to be a threat. But Kael still listened to it like it meant something.

“We need to keep moving. Come on. Let's go"

“Alright.”

They turned toward the woods, steps slow but steady, the darkness folding in around them like a shroud.

Kael didn’t feel safe.

But for now, he wasn’t in chains.

That was enough.