The sound came again.
Metal against stone.
Adrian stayed where he was.
For one second.
Two.
His reflection stared back at him from the dark observation window. White hair. Amber eyes. Ears that had turned toward the doorway without being asked.
Nothing followed.
No footsteps.
No voices.
No alarms.
Only the low electrical hum of the laboratory.
Adrian swallowed.
Questions later.
Survive first.
Right.
Surviving would probably be easier with clothes.
He looked around the room again.
There wasn't much.
Cabinets. Equipment. The open stasis chamber. A metal cart. Instruments he had no intention of touching.
A workstation stood against the far wall. Beside it, a row of hooks.
Something white hung from the last one.
Adrian stared at it.
A lab coat.
Of course.
After everything else, finding a lab coat in a laboratory felt almost offensively reasonable.
Getting to it took longer than it should have.
He pushed himself upright against the observation window, waited until his balance stopped trying to relocate itself, then took a careful step.
His tail moved.
His hips corrected.
He made it another two steps before catching the edge of a table.
“Great.”
The voice was still wrong.
Adrian decided not to use it again.
The coat was perhaps four meters away.
Yesterday, that wouldn't even have qualified as movement.
Now it required planning.
He reached it eventually.
The coat was heavier than he expected. Proper fabric, not disposable plastic. There was a dark stain near one sleeve.
Adrian chose not to inspect it too closely.
He slipped one arm in.
Then the other.
The sleeves swallowed his hands.
Adrian stared at them.
Of course they did.
Whoever had worn this had been considerably larger than he was now.
He rolled the sleeves back several times until his fingers appeared again.
The coat fell almost to his knees.
Better.
Not dignity.
Technically clothing.
At the moment, that was enough.
He pulled the front closed.
Something tugged behind him.
Adrian stopped.
The tail.
He twisted awkwardly, trying to look over his shoulder.
The coat had trapped it against the backs of his legs.
“Seriously?”
So much for not speaking.
Adrian reached behind himself, gathered the coat and freed the tail.
It immediately swung away from him.
Fine.
The coat would stay open.
Apparently clothing had become more complicated too.
He looked toward the doorway.
The blood trail continued through it.
That seemed like an excellent reason to choose another direction.
Unfortunately, there wasn't one.
Adrian moved toward the door.
He managed three steps before his left leg wobbled.
Four before his shoulder hit the wall.
Five before he stopped pretending this was working.
He stared down at the floor.
“No.”
His ears shifted backward.
Adrian stared at his hands.
Absolutely not.
Another distant scrape echoed through the corridor.
Adrian lowered himself.
Hands.
Knees.
The difference was immediate.
His weight settled naturally between four points. His spine adjusted. The tail lifted behind him and shifted with each movement.
Adrian crawled forward.
Smoothly.
Far more smoothly than he had any right to.
He hated that.
The doorway passed above him.
The corridor beyond was wider than he'd expected.
Emergency strips along the lower walls cast a dull red glow beneath the brighter ceiling lights. Several ceiling panels were dead entirely, leaving alternating sections of white and shadow.
Doors lined both sides.
Some stood open.
Others remained shut.
One hung crooked in its frame.
Adrian stopped just outside the laboratory.
His ears moved.
Left.
Right.
He hadn't told them to.
Nothing.
No voices.
No movement.
Only ventilation.
A faint electrical buzz.
Something dripping.
And much farther away—
Adrian held still.
Nothing.
Maybe he'd imagined it.
He looked at the nearest doors.
Black lettering had been printed beside each one.
LAB 04.
ANALYSIS.
STORAGE B.
Farther down:
SUBJECT HOLDING 2.
Adrian's stomach tightened.
He looked back at the room he'd come from.
No useful label there.
Of course not.
The blood trail crossed the corridor.
Drops at first.
Then a smear.
Someone had moved through here while bleeding badly.
Adrian followed it with his eyes.
It disappeared around a corner perhaps thirty meters away.
He should not follow the blood.
Every instinct he had developed over thirty-eight perfectly ordinary years told him that following blood through an abandoned underground laboratory was a terrible idea.
Unfortunately, it also appeared to lead in the same direction as most of the open doors.
And possibly an exit.
Adrian moved.
The coat dragged over the floor behind him.
His bare knees complained almost immediately.
His palms weren't particularly pleased either.
Still faster than walking.
Much faster.
He passed the first open room.
Empty.
Or empty enough.
A desk had been overturned. Papers covered the floor. One monitor still displayed lines of text Adrian couldn't read from the corridor.
He kept moving.
Second room.
Dark.
He didn't stop. Read this novel at novelping.com for the best experience.
Third—
A sound.
Adrian froze.
His head snapped toward the doorway.
Something had moved.
He was sure of it.
His ears pointed forward.
There.
A soft, irregular sound.
Not breathing.
Dripping.
Adrian stared into the room.
The ceiling lights inside were off.
That mattered less than it should have.
Shapes emerged from the darkness with uncomfortable clarity.
A chair.
A table.
A large machine against the wall.
Something on the floor.
Adrian didn't move.
The shape didn't either.
He should keep going.
He knew that.
Instead, he crawled one step closer.
Then another.
Human.
No.
Humanoid.
Adrian stopped at the threshold.
The body lay on its side beside what looked like another medical bed.
At first glance, it might have been a person.
At second glance, nothing fit.
One arm was longer than the other.
Not slightly.
The fingers of the extended hand nearly reached the knee.
Patches of skin changed texture halfway along the forearm, smooth flesh becoming something darker and ridged before turning pale again near the wrist.
The shoulder sat too high.
One leg bent at an angle Adrian's knees hurt just looking at.
There were features on the face that looked almost human.
Others didn't.
The proportions seemed less designed than assembled.
Adrian stared.
He had seen people from half a dozen species on his commute.
People with horns.
People with fur.
People with scales.
Bodies built in ways that would have seemed impossible fifty years ago.
This wasn't that.
Those people looked like themselves.
This looked wrong.
Not unfamiliar.
Wrong.
Something on the wall caught his eye.
A small display beside the bed.
Most of it was dark.
One line remained.
SUBJECT 17.
Adrian stopped breathing.
A voice returned from somewhere behind the fog of sedation.
That's farther than seventeen.
Another.
Seventeen rejected at five markers.
He looked at the body again.
Rejection.
The word had sounded so clean in the laboratory.
Clinical.
A number on a screen.
Five markers.
Rejected.
Adrian stared at the twisted arm.
Now he knew what it meant.
His stomach turned.
For one irrational second, he expected the body to move.
It didn't.
Adrian stayed at the doorway.
He could go closer.
Check for breathing.
Check for a pulse.
Do something.
The thought lasted longer than he wanted it to.
Then another followed.
What exactly?
He had no phone.
No medical equipment he knew how to use.
No idea where he was.
Barely knew how to stand.
And whoever Subject 17 had been, they had been lying here long enough for a dark pool beneath the body to stop reflecting the light.
Adrian looked away.
There was nothing he could do here.
That didn't make leaving feel particularly good.
He backed into the corridor.
His hand landed in something wet.
Adrian jerked it up.
Blood covered the side of his palm.
Fresh enough to smear.
“Shit.”
He wiped it on the floor automatically.
That only made it worse.
Adrian looked down at himself.
White coat.
Bare legs.
Dirty knees.
Blood on one hand.
Wet white hair hanging around his face.
For a brief moment he pictured himself yesterday evening, standing in the frozen-food aisle deciding whether paying extra for the better pizza was worth it.
He almost laughed.
Nothing came out.
Adrian kept moving.
The blood trail grew heavier.
He passed more rooms.
Some open.
Some locked.
One had a window shattered from the inside.
Another contained rows of empty restraints.
Adrian didn't investigate.
A security door farther down the corridor had been bent around its frame.
Not opened.
Bent.
Adrian slowed.
The metal near the locking mechanism bowed outward.
Deep scratches crossed its surface.
Three parallel grooves.
Then another set below them.
Adrian stared for a moment.
Something cold settled in his stomach.
He moved faster.
His knees hurt now.
His palms burned.
The lab coat had collected dust and streaks of blood along its lower edge.
He didn't care.
The corridor turned.
The blood trail went with it.
Adrian followed.
Then stopped.
Someone was sitting against the wall.
A woman.
For half a second, relief hit him so hard it almost hurt.
Someone alive.
Then he recognized her.
Older.
Grey threaded through dark hair that had mostly escaped whatever had once held it back.
The same face Adrian remembered through sedation and fluorescent light.
The woman from the laboratory.
The one who had looked at screens while his body stopped belonging to him.
The one who had said—
Good work.
Adrian went very still.
Her lab coat was soaked dark along one side.
One leg stretched awkwardly in front of her. The other was bent, boot planted against the floor as if she'd repeatedly tried to push herself upright.
A handgun lay beside her.
Close.
Not quite close enough.
Several empty glass ampoules rested near her thigh. A syringe had rolled against the wall.
Adrian's eyes flicked over them.
Painkillers?
Stimulants?
Something magical?
He had no idea.
The woman moved.
Adrian flinched.
Her head lifted.
Her eyes found him.
For several seconds neither of them spoke.
Her gaze travelled over him.
White hair.
Face.
Ears.
Coat.
Tail.
Something changed in her expression.
Not confusion.
Recognition.
Assessment.
“You woke up.”
Her voice was weaker than Adrian remembered.
But the tone was the same.
Clinical.
Controlled.
Adrian felt something hot rise beneath his ribs.
Of all the things she could have said—
“You woke up?”
She watched him.
“Can you stand?”
Adrian stared at her.
“What did you do to me?”
No answer.
Her eyes moved briefly toward his legs.
“Can you stand?”
Adrian's hand curled against the floor.
“You turned me into—”
“I know what we did.”
The words were flat.
Matter-of-fact.
Adrian stopped.
She knew.
Of course she knew.
Some stupid part of him had still wanted this to be a mistake.
A side effect.
Something that had gone wrong while they were doing something else.
Her face told him otherwise.
Adrian swallowed.
“Why?”
The woman's eyes met his.
For the first time since he'd found her, she seemed to actually consider the question.
“Because the carrier—”
She stopped.
Her eyes shifted past him.
Adrian waited.
The woman didn't continue.
Something changed in her face.
Small at first.
Her jaw tightened.
Her eyes widened.
The color seemed to leave what remained of her skin.
“No.”
Adrian frowned.
“No what?”
She didn't answer.
Her attention remained fixed somewhere behind him.
“Hey.”
Her right hand moved.
Toward the gun.
Adrian watched her fingers scrape across the floor.
“I'm talking to you.”
“No.”
The word came out differently this time.
Not controlled.
Not clinical.
The woman stretched farther for the weapon.
Her fingertips touched the grip.
“No, no, no.”
Adrian stared.
This was not the woman he remembered.
She caught the handgun and dragged it toward herself.
Her hands were shaking.
Actually shaking.
She planted her good foot and tried to stand.
Her injured leg folded immediately.
She hit the wall with her shoulder.
“Fuck.”
Adrian recoiled slightly.
She tried again.
“Fuck. No—”
“What is wrong with you?”
Nothing.
She wasn't listening.
She wasn't looking at him anymore.
Adrian might as well not have been there.
The woman who had watched his body change without blinking was trying to force herself upright with one leg while fumbling with the handgun hard enough that she nearly dropped it.
Then Adrian heard it.
Scrape.
He stopped.
The sound came from behind him.
Not far.
The same sound he'd heard in the laboratory.
Metal against stone.
The woman's breathing became fast and shallow.
Adrian's ears flattened.
“Hey.”
She ignored him.
Scrape.
Closer.
Adrian slowly turned his head.
The corridor behind him looked empty.
White walls.
Open doors.
Alternating pools of light and shadow.
Nothing moved.
Then something appeared around the far corner.
A finger.
No.
Too long.
It curled around the edge of the wall.
Dark at the tip.
Another joined it.
Then another.
Each ending in a thick black curve that dragged slowly across the concrete.
Scrape.
Adrian stared.
The first hand tightened around the corner.
Something heavy shifted beyond it.
The woman behind him made a sound somewhere between a breath and a sob.
Adrian finally understood.
It hadn't been metal.
It had been claws.