
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.
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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