Not that she was meant to know any of this, of course, but Christine was nothing if not smart, and her years as a cleaner in the lab had taught her much. Snippets of overheard conversation, glimpses of reports...and the monsters themselves, of course.
The hybrids stared at her as she passed. A few hissed and growled, baring their teeth while others cowered in fear. Another threw itself at the window with a scream of primal rage as she passed, and Chris flinched despite being used to it. Subject 302 was a lost cause. An incoherent gibbering horror. All of them only vaguely resembled the people they used to be.
A guard sauntered past, his fingers caressing the stock of his automatic rifle. He shot her an appraising look but didn’t stop to question her. She was a familiar face by now. With casual ease, he pushed a button on the panel of Subject 302’s cage. Acidic vapor blasted from the ceiling onto the enraged creature.
It screeched in agony and scuttled into the nearest corner where it enveloped its head in its arms. Its pitiful wails followed Chris and dug sharp claws into her heart. Whatever 302 might be now, it used to be human once and didn’t deserve such torment.
Chris lowered her head to avoid looking at any more of the captive beings. She didn’t know how much they understood, these creatures, how much of their humanity they still had left. She did see that they viewed her as prey and that they’d rip her to pieces given half a chance. All except...
Her feet slowed as she neared his cage. Subject 306.
An unfathomable spring of emotions welled up inside her breast, a bubbling mixture of sorrow, heartache, and longing. She tried to ignore these feelings, tried to remind herself what he was. A monster, that’s all he is. A bloodthirsty beast.
He hadn’t always been a monster, though. He’d been a man once, albeit a desperate one, and ever kind to her. From the start, there’d been something there. A recognition of sorts? Kindred spirits, perhaps?
To her shame, she’d witnessed the changes the lab’s serums wrought, seen the way his body warped and his mind grew feral. It was the same with all of the subjects, and the cause of the guilt and misery she carried around with her, day after day.
Chris swallowed and halted in front of the glass unit. Her eyes searched the dim interior for a glimpse of Ada...No! That’s not his name anymore. His name is Subject 306.
Something stirred in the corner. Pale limbs unfolded from a crouched position. Arms and legs, human in appearance but for the razor sharp claws at the ends, crept closer. A face, still vaguely recognizable as the man he was before, emerged from the shadows. He had no hair, and his eyes were like inkblots.
Cold.
Dangerous.
Emotionless.
Except around her.
Around her, Subject 306 acted differently. The scientists viewed her as a calming influence, surmised that she reminded him of someone from his past. Chris knew it was more than that, felt it in her bones. They were connected.
Ada...Subject 306 sidled up to the glass, braving the bright fluorescent lights of the hallway to get closer to her. His mutation meant he couldn’t tolerate sunlight and hated even artificial light. Today, he did not appear to care and pressed both hands to the glass. His eyes bored into hers, swallowing her soul.
“Please,” she whispered. “Step back. They’ll hurt you.”
His gaze flickered from her to the guards who lounged a few feet away, but he ignored them and stood fast.
“Subject 306...Adam, please. Move away,” she pleaded. There. She’d said it. Adam. Not Subject 306. A man. Once a prisoner, now a test animal. A being with a soul. A beautiful soul. Tears welled up. “I can’t bear to see you hurt.”
Adam blinked then sidled away. He moved back into his cage and slipped into an even smaller container. Once he was safely tucked inside, she pushed a button, automatically sealing him in. Only then was she permitted to proceed.
After a quick glance at the camera pointing down at her, she released the locking mechanism. The door opened with a swish, and she stepped inside. With methodical precision, she began to clean.
Each moment was spent in painful awareness of his regard, for Adam watched her every move like a hawk. As she scrubbed the floor, a headache began to form. She shook her head, but it persisted. Like a scratch at the back of her mind.
Christine.
She paused, frozen in shock.
Christine.
Her eyes shot to Adam’s. His mouth was closed. He uttered no sounds that she could see, yet…there it was again.
Christine.
“A...Adam?” she whispered, casting a fearful glance around. Their every interaction was being monitored. She had to be careful. By slow increments, she shifted closer to the bars that encapsulated him and spoke beneath her breath. “Is it you?”
Yesss.
The word echoed throughout the corners of her brain.
Impossible.
“How?”
Stronger.
Christine remembered that the latest rounds of experimentation he’d undergone had something to do with a serum meant to boost brain function. The scientists had high hopes for Adam, even though he was severely anemic and had to feed on blood to survive.
“What do you want?” She kept her eyes fixated on her work-worn hands, the knuckles red and raw.
Set me free.
“What? No!” The words came out in a fierce whisper.
Yesss.
“You’d...you’d…”
Never hurt you. Mine.
His? Was that how he viewed her? As his?
“I can’t. They’d kill you.” She looked up as another guard walked past, his eagle eyes sweeping over her and Subject 306. Hatred of the ISC and their henchmen welled up in her breast.
Escape. Together. Usss.
Chris gasped as a vision flooded her mind, playing off in front of her eyes. An image of her and Adam together, forever, far from here. Happy.
She shook her head. It felt so real; she wondered how many times he’d dreamt of it before showing it to her. “No, it’s not possible. You and I are too different. I’m human, I...”
Not so different. Become me. Be mine.
“I can’t.” Christine clenched her hands to hold them in place.
Pleassseee.
Her eyes fixed on the fine hairs that covered her forearms. She thought of her life, thirty years of pain and misery, all for nothing more than a drab flat and a handful of credits each month. She thought of Howard and what he had planned for her. She thought of growing old like this, still toiling for the ISC, her days spent observing the perversion of nature for profit.
A compulsion she could neither control nor stop took hold of her. She got to her feet and exited the cell without resealing it. Her hand reached out and pushed the button that would free Adam from the smaller cage. A red light flashed, and a message appeared on the monitor.
“Cannot comply with command. Main cage door still open.”
She pushed another button, and a second message appeared.
“Override?”
She typed in a rapid yes, all the time aware of Adam’s black eyes fixed on her face with unwavering focus.
“Enter password.”
Her finger hovered across the keypad. She knew the code, had seen it written in her superior, Mr. Robert’s, notebook. It was supposed to be a secret, but no one ever minded her. She was invisible, after all.
“What are you doing?” a guard shouted.
“Stop!” another guard cried as he joined the first.
Her lips curved into a smile. Perhaps I’m not so invisible anymore.
A high-pitched ringing emitted from the alarms fitted to the ceiling. Someone had noticed her actions on the monitors and called Upper Security. They’d be here within minutes.
More shouts reached her ears but didn’t penetrate the haze she found herself lost in. Instead, her life played off in front of her eyes. A moving picture of hate and neglect, sorrow and sadness. Abusive parents who sold her to an orphanage, rig
orous discipline, grinding poverty, soul-sucking labor. A life of pain and misery. One that was about to end.
Chris punched in the code.
The gate preventing Adam’s escape whirred softly as it slid across its smooth metal track, opening to allow his release.
She sighed. A soft exhalation of relief. It’s done.
Lights flashed as Subject 306 leaped from his cage with a roar of triumph. He crossed his cell floor in one bound and grabbed her arm, flinging her to the floor. Bullets cut the air above her head, missing her by mere inches.
Screams sounded as he ripped out the guards’ throats, tossing their guns aside like mere toys. He tore down the corridor, his quick hands opening each cell he passed with swift movements, plucking the code from her mind like a ripe cherry from a tree. More hybrids flooded the hall.
Christine pushed herself up on one elbow to watch the horror unfold. Armed reinforcements ran inside only to be met by a wall of teeth and claws. Chris covered her ears with her hands to shut out the cries of death. Blood spattered the walls, covered the floor, spotted the ceiling. “I did this. I did this.”
Yesss.
Strong arms gathered her up, and she was carried away from the fight and out of the lab. She caught a brief glimpse of Howard’s terrified face before Adam decapitated him. A small sense of satisfaction replaced the horror. He deserved it.
With immense speed, she was swept through the building. Now and then Adam paused to slash at some hapless innocent. He no longer killed his victims but fed on them, leaving them lying on the floor to gasp for breath. His fangs dripped crimson fluid and a few hot drops spattered onto her face. The sounds of battle faded.
In a dark corner, Adam stopped. His eyes looked down into hers, and she stilled. “What do you want?”
You.
Adam’s incisors sank into her throat, and her life’s blood coursed into him on a tide of crimson. She struggled in vain as the vitality leached from her muscles until he finally stopped. She had just enough strength left to ask, “Why? I set you free.”
Mine.
Chris’ eyes slid shut against her will. A burning sensation spread from the bite through the rest of her body. A fire raged through her veins, changing her cells from the inside. The virus he carried, both virulent and incurable, set to work molding her into the perfect host.
Drink.
Her eyelids fluttered. “What?”
Drink. Be strong. Like me.
Adam pressed his neck to her mouth, and a sudden fierce need caused her to salivate. She tore into his flesh and took what she needed, the blood accelerating the change within her, making her strong.
All sound faded away as Adam carried her from the building, holding her tight against his chest. She clung to his shoulders, aware that she was becoming like him. A monster.
Behind them, the other hybrids wreaked havoc and destruction, only to fall victim to the ranks of guards who mowed them down in a hail of bullets. All except those changed by Adam’s bite.
They were different.
They were strong.
They were hungry.
The same bite that had turned her had turned them, for Adam was something the other test subjects had never been. He was the perfect weapon, impervious to common pain and injury. Inhumanly fast, strong, agile, but most of all...infectious. One bite, one drop of saliva was all it took.
His children, those changed to become like him, tore through the headquarters of the ISC and into the night, spreading the disease. It rippled outward like water in a pond after a stone is tossed in. Changing. Turning. By morning, the city would be no more.
They were savage. Remorseless. Driven by the need to feed, spreading the virus to the furthermost corners of the globe. They possessed neither the intelligence nor the telepathic power Adam did. Gifts he’d bestowed upon her with his blood.
On a subliminal level, Chris understood this. She knew what she had done when she released Adam. She didn’t care. Her past faded away to be replaced by a new future. One with him. For they were special. Adam was the first, and she would be his queen. All powerful.
Adam.
Her vocal chords no longer worked, but Chris found her mind expanding outward until it touched his.
Christine.
Her human thought patterns faded, replaced instead by instinct. The instinct to survive. The instinct to feed. The instinct to mate. Adam.
Mine.
Yesss.
Chapter 3 - Mike
Michael Hansen’s stomach growled for the umpteenth time that day. Ever since breakfast, a leftover meat pie of dubious quality, his innards had been unsettled.
A wind worked its way up his esophagus, bringing with it the rancid taste of old fat and gravy. Sweat beaded his forehead, and the sudden urge to vomit brought him to his feet in record time.
“Uh, Pete. I’m going to the bathroom. Cover for me.”
“Just hurry up. You know the boss doesn't like it when we’re gone.”
Mike nodded and rushed away, one hand held to his mouth to stem the nausea. The Boss was their shift supervisor, Mr. Granger, a weaselly little shit of a man who loved giving his employees hell. No doubt because he was bullied in school. Who gives a crap? He can shove this job up his ass.
But Mike knew it was false bravado. He needed this job, and there were a thousand, heck, hundreds of thousands just like him who’d kill for it. Times were desperate.
He pushed open the swing doors to the staff toilets and made it with barely a second to spare. The breakfast pie exited his body as fast as it went in, and his eyes watered as his stomach clenched over and over again.
Finally, it stopped, leaving him gasping for breath. He spat out the remnants and stumbled toward the washbasin. Water. That’s what he needed. Cold, fresh water.
Mike ran the tap and splashed the cool liquid onto his sweaty skin. Now that his stomach was empty he felt better, though he was still weak at the knees.
His eyes locked onto his own in the mirror. It told an ugly story. One of hardship and poverty. Deep grooves lined his face, and his hair was already turning grey. He didn’t look his age. Barely forty-six. He looked old. Old and worn, like a sock washed too many times until the heel wore through and holes formed in the toes. “At least I’ve got Katy.”
Pride welled up inside as he thought of his brilliant daughter. She was smart. Smarter than either he or Maria could ever hope to be and had a big future ahead of her. Already she’d been flagged by the ISC as a possible candidate for future studies as a lab technician. Maybe even a researcher. She’ll have a proper job. A nice house. A real life. Unlike her old man.
He thought of his childhood, before the third world war that ripped the earth apart. The bright dreams that colored his thoughts in school and the plentiful food that graced their dining room table.
The war changed it all. A war to end all wars, it brought poverty and unemployment, pollution and radiation, starvation and illness. Dead zones. If it weren't for the ISC, the war would never have stopped. It was only the mutant hybrids created in their labs that saved the day and gave his country the edge it needed to win. Still, the cost was high.
Of course, he’d heard the rumors. Stories told in whispers around seedy bars. Conspiracy theories about how the ISC was not the savior everyone thought. That they’d caused the war in the first place to position themselves as a world power.
Mike didn’t believe it, couldn’t believe it. Not if Katy was going to work for them. He could never live with the thought that she’d sold her soul and her intelligence to the devil, the very people who engineered humanity’s downfall in the first place. “Bullshit. It was China. They started the shit, the war.”
A quick glance at his watch told him he’d been gone too long already, and he hurried to the door. A shrill scream froze him in place. What the hell?
More screams echoed through the bathroom’s cramped atmosphere, and he stuck his head out the door. A security team ran past him in the hall, their boots t
ramping across the tiled floors. It was Upper Security, those put in place for the worst kind of emergencies. Not low-class doorstoppers like himself and Pete.
Mike swallowed and ducked back into the bathroom. He leaned against the wall. Whatever was going on out there, it couldn’t be good. Never in his twenty-odd years of service had he seen the Uppers called into action. They were the elite; the real deal.
Gunfire crackled, the staccato beats harsh in his ears. Somewhere in the building, an alarm blared. His lip twitched when he realized the source. The laboratories. Hybrids! The hybrids have escaped!
Shouts mixed with the clanging alarm and periodic gunfire, punctuated by agonized screams. Mike thought about Katy and Maria waiting for him at home. I didn’t sign up for this. I’m getting out of here.
With his mind made up, his muscles unclenched and allowed him to move with a speed he didn’t know he still possessed. He stuck his head outside and looked to the left and right. It was clear.
He darted down the passage toward the exit, his footsteps following him like a ghostly echo. The chaos deeper inside the building grew louder. It was coming his way. Panic spurted through his veins, and he sped up. Hurry!
A security door barred his passage, and he halted for the required scan. His lungs heaved with effort, and his fear grew. The shots were now so close he could almost smell the gunpowder.
The panel slid open, and he fell through in his haste to escape. His knee collided with the floor sending a sharp pain up his thigh. A flash of movement caused him to twist his head up, and he looked into the face of a nightmare.
A man, or rather a man-like creature, stared at him with eyes that looked like twin pools of motor oil. Not a hint of white could be seen in the shiny black orbs. The thing’s skin was pale, almost albino, and the tips of ivory fangs protruded over its lower lip. Strangely, it cradled a woman in its arms, almost tenderly, as if such an emotion were possible for the monstrosity facing him.
Mike scurried backward across the floor, his hands slipping and sliding across the smooth surface. The thing advanced on agile legs. Its lips peeled back to reveal a mouth full of razor-sharp teeth.
The Hybrid Theory_Subject 306_An Apocalyptic Short Story Page 2