Adrian ran.
The first few steps were upright.
Then his balance shifted, one foot landed badly and his hand struck the wall hard enough to hurt.
He didn't bother trying again.
Adrian dropped onto all fours and kept moving.
Behind him, something hit the security door.
The sound travelled through the corridor.
Distant already.
Not distant enough.
Adrian moved faster.
The corridor ahead was darker than the laboratory section behind him. Only every second emergency light seemed to work, leaving long stretches lit by a dull red glow.
His hands slapped against cold tile.
The lab coat dragged around him.
His hair kept falling into his face.
None of it mattered.
Distance.
That was all that mattered.
He passed two closed doors.
Then an open one.
Storage.
Shelves.
Boxes.
Nothing worth stopping for.
Another impact echoed from somewhere behind him.
Quieter.
Adrian kept going.
The corridor turned.
He followed it.
A body lay around the corner.
Adrian saw it too late.
His right hand came down beside the man's shoulder. He twisted instinctively, his weight shifted and his tail snapped in the opposite direction.
For one second, it almost worked.
Then his knee caught the man's arm.
Adrian went sideways.
His shoulder hit the floor.
“Fuck.”
He scrambled away and looked back.
A man.
Dark uniform.
Security, probably.
He lay face-down with one arm beneath him. Something had torn through the back of his jacket.
A rifle rested less than a meter away.
Adrian looked at it.
Then toward the corridor behind him.
For one moment, the thought was tempting.
A gun.
Something between him and whatever was back there.
Then he remembered the woman firing round after round into the creature.
He remembered what every shot had done to his ears.
More importantly, he remembered that the last time he'd fired anything larger than a service pistol had been—
Never.
Actually, never.
Mandatory training had been a pistol.
More than twenty years ago.
With different hands.
Different arms.
A different body.
Adrian left the rifle where it was.
He moved around the man.
There were more signs of fighting beyond him.
Spent casings scattered across the floor.
Blood along one wall.
A cracked ceiling panel hung by its wiring.
One door had been ripped halfway from its frame.
Another remained sealed.
Adrian didn't check either.
He had officially reached his lifetime limit for opening suspicious doors.
The corridor split.
Adrian stopped.
Left or right.
No signs.
No helpful glowing arrow marked EXIT.
Of course not.
He listened.
Ventilation.
Electrical humming.
A faint alarm somewhere deeper in the facility.
Nothing useful.
He looked left.
Dark.
Right.
More dark.
“Great.”
Adrian chose right.
He made it perhaps twenty meters before the corridor ended at a locked security door.
A red indicator glowed beside it.
Adrian stared.
“No.”
He pushed himself upright against the wall and pressed the panel.
Nothing.
Again.
Still nothing.
He looked around for another control.
There wasn't one.
Behind him, the facility remained quiet.
That somehow made it worse.
Adrian dropped back down and went the other way.
The left corridor sloped upward.
Barely.
But definitely upward.
He noticed because his arms began complaining.
The white wall panels ended first.
Painted concrete replaced them.
Then came pipes.
Cable trays.
Heavy doors marked with things that made considerably more sense than SUBJECT HOLDING.
ELECTRICAL.
WATER TREATMENT.
MAINTENANCE.
Good.
Maintenance meant infrastructure.
Infrastructure meant access.
Probably.
Adrian was willing to build an escape plan on worse logic.
He kept going.
His body had settled into a rhythm now.
That was becoming harder to ignore.
Hands.
Feet.
Push.
Balance.
The tail moved constantly behind him, adjusting whenever his weight shifted too far to one side.
Adrian wasn't controlling most of it.
Not consciously.
He was simply trying to move forward and his body handled parts of the process on its own.
That should probably have bothered him more.
At the moment, being alive was winning most arguments.
The slope grew steeper.
Eventually Adrian stopped.
He sat back against the wall.
His breathing came too quickly.
His heart hammered.
Now that he wasn't moving, everything hurt.
Palms.
Knees.
Shoulder.
Feet.
His ears still felt sensitive after the gunshots.
The lab coat was torn along one side and smeared with enough blood that Adrian had stopped wondering how much belonged to him.
He looked back.
Nothing.
No creature.
No movement.
No sound.
Maybe the security door had held.
Maybe it was still trying to get through.
Adrian got moving again.
A few minutes later, he found another body.
Then another.
Both wore the same dark security uniform.
One had died against the wall with a handgun still in his lap.
The other lay several meters farther on.
Adrian looked away before he could work out exactly what had happened to him.
There was nothing here he could fix.
He repeated that to himself.
It didn't make passing them easier.
Beyond the bodies, a heavy door stood open.
Not damaged.
Open.
Adrian went through.
And stopped.
Something had changed.
For several seconds he couldn't identify what.
Then he breathed in.
Cold.
Not much.
Just enough to notice against the stale warmth of the facility.
And something else came with it.
Wet stone.
Adrian inhaled again.
There was more.
Earth.
Something green.
Plants, maybe.
He had no better word for it.
The smells were faint, but distinct in a way they shouldn't have been.
Adrian stared down the corridor.
Nothing but concrete and pipes.
His ears shifted forward.
He listened.
The facility hummed around him.
Water dripped somewhere nearby.
Farther away—
There.
A soft, irregular hiss.
Adrian tilted his head.
It disappeared.
Then returned.
Rain.
He stood without thinking.
The sudden movement made the corridor tilt and he caught the wall.
“Right.”
Two legs.
Still a work in progress.
He stayed upright for a moment anyway.
Mostly because it gave him a better view.
Nothing.
Then he lowered himself again and followed the sound.
The smell grew stronger.
So did the rain.
The concrete walls changed as he moved.
At first, sections of exposed rock appeared between them.
Then the concrete disappeared almost entirely.
The facility had been built into stone.
Actual stone.
Cold, rough walls surrounded the corridor, interrupted only by pipes, cables and occasional reinforced sections.
Adrian ran one hand across the rock as he passed.
Real.
The passage widened.
Soon it was large enough for vehicles.
Transport crates had been abandoned along one side.
Several stood open.
One had overturned, spilling sealed containers across the floor.
A small utility vehicle sat nearby with its driver's door open.
The keys were still in it.
Adrian stopped.
He looked at the vehicle.
Then at his hands.
Then at the pedals.
“No.”
There were limits to how many new things he was willing to learn today.
He kept moving.
The tunnel curved.
The air became colder.
Wet earth.
Leaves.
Rain.
He could smell all of it now.
And then he saw the light.
Grey.
Weak.
Natural.
Adrian stopped.
For the first time since he'd started running, he simply stared.
Then something metallic crashed somewhere far behind him.
Adrian moved.
The last stretch climbed more steeply.
Two enormous security doors stood at the end of the tunnel.
One had opened completely.
The other had stopped halfway.
Beyond them were trees.
Adrian crossed the threshold on all fours.
Cold rain hit him immediately.
He gasped.
His ears flattened.
His hands sank into mud where tile should have been, his feet found wet earth behind them and he kept going.
He didn't stop to look around.
Didn't stop to decide where he was.
Didn't stop to appreciate being outside.
There was an opening behind him connected to a laboratory containing something that had just torn apart several armed people.
Adrian wanted distance.
The forest should have slowed him down.
It didn't.
That took him several seconds to notice.
The ground was nothing like the facility.
Roots crossed everywhere.
Wet leaves covered rocks and holes.
The terrain rose, dropped and tilted without warning.
Adrian expected every meter to send him sprawling.
Instead, his body seemed to become more comfortable.
His hands found spaces between roots.
His feet pushed against the ground behind him.
When the terrain dipped, his body lowered with it.
When it rose, his legs drove harder.
His tail moved constantly, shifting his balance through every turn.
Adrian increased his pace.
Not intentionally at first.
It simply happened.
The rhythm came easier.
Hands.
Feet.
Push.
Turn.
A rock appeared in front of him.
His body shifted around it.
A low branch crossed his path.
Adrian ducked beneath it without losing speed.
Another tree forced him sharply left.
His hand touched down.
His body leaned.
His legs followed.
For a few seconds, Adrian forgot how strange any of this was.
He was moving.
Fast.
Really fast.
Then a fallen branch appeared directly ahead.
Too late to stop.
Adrian's legs pushed.
Hard.
He went over it.
Not barely. Get faster updates on g.com.
Over it.
For a fraction of a second, there was nothing beneath him.
His stomach jumped.
Then his hands found the ground.
One.
The other.
His feet landed behind him.
His tail swept sideways.
Adrian continued for another few meters before slowing.
He stopped.
Looked back.
The branch wasn't enormous.
Maybe half a meter high.
Still.
Adrian stared at it.
He hadn't thought about jumping.
Hadn't prepared.
His body had simply encountered an obstacle and decided that going over it was easier than going around.
“Huh.”
Adrian looked down at himself.
Small hands.
Narrow arms.
Bare feet already covered in mud.
He had expected smaller to mean weaker.
Maybe it did.
But not in every way.
He moved again.
This time curiosity joined the fear.
Only a little.
Adrian pushed faster.
The next few trees came toward him quickly.
He changed direction.
Once.
Again.
His body leaned into each turn.
His tail countered.
There was an ease to it he had never felt in his old body.
Not effortless.
Not controlled.
But potential.
He could feel it.
Adrian pushed harder.
Which was exactly when his right hand landed on wet moss.
His palm disappeared sideways.
“Oh—”
His shoulder hit first.
Then his face.
Mud filled his mouth.
Adrian lay there.
Rain tapped against the back of his head.
His tail landed across his legs a second later.
He spat mud onto the leaves.
“Fantastic.”
Apparently potential still required competence.
Adrian pushed himself up.
He wiped his face with one sleeve.
The sleeve was also muddy.
That accomplished very little.
He looked back at the stretch of forest he'd just crossed.
There was something there.
Something he hadn't had yesterday.
Not skill.
Definitely not skill.
But speed.
Balance.
Reflexes.
And judging by that branch, considerably more power in his legs than his new size suggested.
Adrian looked at his hands.
Then at the tail moving behind him.
He still didn't recognize the body.
He still wanted answers.
He still wanted whoever had done this to explain why they'd decided they had the right to replace half of him with something else.
But for the first time, Adrian had experienced one of those changes doing something other than making his life worse.
He wasn't ready to call that a positive.
Not even close.
A distant sound came from somewhere behind him.
Adrian's ears turned toward it before his head did.
He froze.
Listened.
Nothing.
Probably a branch.
Probably.
Adrian decided not to test the theory.
He moved deeper into the forest.
This time he didn't experiment.
He simply put distance between himself and the facility.
Minutes passed.
Five.
Maybe ten.
Adrian had no idea.
Rain made everything look the same.
Trees.
Rocks.
Mud.
More trees.
He slowed eventually.
Not because he wanted to.
His arms were beginning to shake.
His breathing had grown rough.
Whatever his new body could do, it apparently hadn't come with unlimited energy.
Adrian stopped beside a tree and pushed himself upright against the trunk.
His legs held.
Mostly.
He stayed there and looked back.
Nothing.
No tunnel.
No lights.
No movement.
Just forest.
Adrian listened.
Rain struck leaves overhead.
Water ran somewhere nearby.
Wind moved through the branches.
No alarms.
No impacts.
No gunshots.
No claws against concrete.
He waited.
One minute.
Then another.
Nothing came after him.
Only now did Adrian notice how cold he was.
The lab coat had soaked through completely.
White hair clung to his face and neck.
His hands were filthy.
Mud filled the spaces beneath his nails.
Blood marked one palm.
Small cuts crossed both knees.
His tail looked considerably less impressive wet, the white fur plastered together and dripping onto the ground.
Adrian stared at it for a moment.
Then looked away.
That problem could wait.
All of them could wait.
He looked back through the trees.
He couldn't see the facility anymore.
Couldn't even tell exactly where it was.
For the first time since the van had stopped beside him, there was no locked door between Adrian and somewhere else.
No restraints.
No glass.
No researchers.
No security walls.
No creature he could see.
He was out.
Not safe.
But out.