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They kept me in darkness. My arms and legs shackled to the wall. The outbreak did crazy things to peoples heads, and this group of people was no different. From what I gathered, from over hearing the guards and my own personal speculation, they were a group of scientists that were working with the virus. They couldn’t cure it so they mutated it, and when they had that revelation the injections started. I had been lucky, I had escaped the initial outbreak without getting infected, but the scientists changed that. I don’t know if they thought they were making me immune or if they just wanted to see what the mutated nerotonin would do, but they injected me with it. Now I can feel myself slipping away, my thoughts are becoming harder to grasp and words are escaping me. I don't want to turn into one of those things.
Bright light, the door to my cell is open. A scientist approaches me and the second they are within reach I lunge for them, I don’t know why but I need to hurt them. I need to consume them! Before my teeth -when did they become so sharp in my mouth?- could sink into the scientist another man rushes into my cell and yanks him away from me. The door slams shut and the room is once again plunged into blackness.
More light, the door is open again. Before anyone even steps foot in the room -what was it I called it before?- I lunge forward, stopped only by the chains binding me to the wall. A wet gurgling hiss escapes me, a sound I didn’t know I was capable of making. Suddenly several men rush in the room, all of them grabbing at me to keep me down. The shackles are removed and a wheeled bed -there's a name for that thing right?- is brought into the room. They lift me, kicking, spitting, and screaming, onto the bed and suddenly thick restraints are on all my limbs. I can barely lift my head and torso off the bed but the rest of me is pinned to it. More sounds that I didn’t know I could make are spat at the people as they wheel the bed out of my room and through the stark white corridors to a large room with bright lights. Too bright! There is a sharp pinch in my arm and the room goes black.
When I wake up it feels like I’m under water, sounds are muffled and the lights are blurry. My tongue feels swollen, like it can’t fit in my mouth, and I can feel drool dripping down the sides of my face, though I can’t be bothered to care. More needles, more injections. My arms don’t look like my arms anymore, they’re wiry and lean but with clearly defined muscles that I can make out even though my eyes still refuse to focus. And my hands, when I try to lift them I can see the digits are longer and slimmer than my fingers should be -what is ‘should be’?- and they end with razor sharp looking claws that definitely were not there before. Before what, though? I can’t remember.
They keep me in that haze for hours, days, months? I don’t know. My mouth no longer closes, my tongue reached much farther than it should. But how far should it reach? They give me more injections than I can count, some feel like coolness running up my arm, others like fire in my veins. Time loses meaning. My own thoughts are now spoken in a foreign language. I can’t understand them nor what the scientists around me say. All I know is the hunger. It eats at me from the inside until my limbs writhe and my jaw aches. Another pinch in my arm and the world goes black.
When I wake up I’m back in my room, I know it is my room not because I recognize the pitch blackness or the feel of the cold steel shackles around my wrists and ankles. But because I recognize my own scent in the air, old and fading and slightly distorted to what it is now, but there none the less. Slowly the sensation of being under water fades, my sight clears and I can just make out the dark confines of my room. But most importantly my hunger returns. With a vengeance. I yank on the chains that restrain me, but the shackles are hard metal, sized for a wrist not like my own. If I pull hard enough I manage to squeeze my hands through the shackles, though they feel wet and I can smell blood.
The blood smells sour, not appealing to me, but it reminds me that there are plenty of clean, good smelling creatures outside the door, I just have to get there. I’m finally able to stand, for the first time I can remember. My legs feel strong, I can barely make them out in the gloom of my cell but they are thick with clearly defined muscles, there is no way I will be able to squeeze them through the shackles that could barely close around them in the first place. So I do the only thing I can do, I pull on the shackles, pull away from the wall, towards the door, towards the other creatures. I pull and kick with all my might until finally something gives. I don’t know if it is the chain or the point that attaches the shackles to the wall but with a screech of steel I am free. The door poses little obstacle, it was not meant to hold me back.
The first person I come across gets the blunt of my claws, and I feast. Suddenly a loud sound comes from behind me and dull pain erupts from my shoulder. I lick my claws, covered in delicious blood, and turn to the shaking man holding an odd looking thing in his hands. He squeezes the odd thing again and more sound and pain comes, I decide I don’t like that thing and lunge at the man. He wasn’t far away and it only took a single swipe of my claws to put him down. Before I can eat my fill I hear more boots hitting the ground, more creatures approaching. But when they come they can’t stop me. They created me to be this way, this weapon. And it only ever takes one hit.