Kael 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. Kael 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. Kael 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 Kael'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.” Kael 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 Kael. "You weren't ready,” he said quietly, like he wasn’t even angry. Just… disappointed. Kael 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 Kael’s temple like a father comforting a fevered child. “But you’ll understand soon. You’ll see.” Kael’s eyes fluttered. Darkness swallowed him whole. Kael 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.” Kael’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.” Kael 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 Kael’s spine like lightning. He screamed, voice raw, body thrashing as much as the restraints allowed. “I’ll fix that. I will fix you” Kael 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 Kael 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. Kael’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. Kael heard it before he saw it. The gunshot. He saw red. Our of pure, unrehearsed instinct alone, Kael 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, Kael 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 Kael 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 Kael 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. Kael sucked in his first breath of real air in a long time. He turned to look around. Trees. No walls. Kael 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. Kael didn’t look back. He couldn’t. With a joyous giggle in between heavy pants, Elara walked and knelt beside him, still holding on. Still not letting go.
Latest Chapter
"KAEL!!!"
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
The Boy In The Woods
The road never came.They walked and walked for so fucking long, Kael began to feel sorry for Elara. He did not feel fatigue from the long trekk except for the strength sapping from him because of his inner battle.They kept looking forward, walking towards the road that Elara mentioned that never came into view.What came instead was silence.The kind that crawled up your neck and whispered things behind your ears. The kind that didn’t feel like peace, but like something holding its breath.Kael pressed a palm to the bark of a twisted pine tree, letting the cold bite into his skin. He didn’t trust himself to keep moving without breaking into a sprint. Not when his knees ached like he’d been running for hours. Not when the bones in his back were moving.They’d walked for what felt like forever. Elara kept behind him, quiet and watchful. Probably scared. Probably thinking of turning around. Probably realizing she should’ve left him in that cell.Kael wouldn’t blame her.He didn’t even
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.Ever
Moonlight
Kael 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. Kael 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
He Could Smell Colors, He Could Smell Her.
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.
"You can't survive it"
Immediately Kael could no longer see or smell 34C, Kael burst out if his hiding place, running towards nowhere in particular.But not fast enough.He heard the growl first, low and sharp, like a blade dragged across stone. His nose hurt, his eyes felt like they needed to close for a long while, but Kael fought to keep them open. He needed to be awake and alert if he ever planned to escape from this hell hole. He listened again from the growl straining his ears... Then out of nowhere, he felt he impact of another body colliding with his own. 34C slammed into him from behind and they both went down hard. Kael hit the floor shoulder-first, breath crushed out of him. He rolled, tried to scramble back, but the other boy was already on top of him, pinning him down like a predator that had done this before.“You run like prey,” 34C whispered, grinning. “But you smell like me.”Kael drove his elbow up and luckily caught 34C’s jaw before he bit out a chunk of his arm. The older teen barely
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