Altered (Male Reader-Insert)

[1]

 The sound of a muffled voice and machine whirring slowly wakes you up. Before you have a chance to move, you're suddenly thrown onto a tiled floor. Pain flows through your front as you fell face first. While you get up, you open and adjust your eyes to the room's brightness. You realize that you're in an unfamiliar place, and you aren't wearing your clothes.

 Worrying about your body, you inspect it first alongside your clothes. Thankfully your body seems the same. As for your clothes, you're only wearing a black brief. It's not made out of cloth, being made out of some rubber-like material instead. It's not uncomfortable, albeit a little tight, so you move on.

 Thinking that this might've been a familiar place you forgot, you try to remember only to end up with nothing. You can't even remember your own name. Your stomach makes a low grumble, you hope that it's indigestion and not hunger.

 There's a clipboard in front of you, with a newspaper just ahead. You read the clipboard first.

 "If our civilization must continue, we must change our genes. There's no other choice. Is everything still too late? Either way, as long as we survive, it doesn't matter if we're human or not."

 The rest of the clipboard is full of science stuff. The phrase "it doesn't matter if we're human or not" worries you. You read the newspaper next, it's about how the new virus quickly caused a pandemic. The fact that it's yellow and dusty makes you worry more. Just how long were you asleep? And recently knowing there's a pandemic adds to it.

 You check the machine behind you for anything interesting. There's a small vent next to it, peering inside, there's a button at the end. You don't know what it does, so you leave it for now. A few boxes are lying around, and opening them is pointless as they're all empty.

 A yellow note on the wall catches your eyes. Reading it, it says, in broken English. "Come to library, I wait for you!" At the back is a skull-like signature. To your right is a group of polaroid photos. Looking at them shows a person transforming into some sort of creature.

 Your entire body stiffens at the picture. Is this what that clipboard means? Is this why you're here? You set the photos down and check the entire room again. Trying to take your mind off of what you saw.

 There's nothing left to inspect other than the button in the vent. You press it and hear a click come from the door. Just as you stand in front of it, it opens automatically, leading you to a hallway.

 You immediately stand still as you notice another person at the end of the hallway. It's a guy and he hasn't noticed anything as he's on the balcony staring out of the view. He appears to wear the same thing as you, except they're shorts. He has brown hair, pale skin, and seems to be the same height as you.

 He turns around after a while and he moves back a bit when he sees you. His blue eyes stare cautiously at you. You both stare at each other, until you finally make a move and slowly walk towards them. You assure them that you're in the same situation.

 You introduce yourself by saying that you don't know what's going on as you have amnesia, and you want to get out of here. You ask him if he knows anything and if he can introduce himself. He looks at you for a few moments before introducing. He says his name is Colin, or Lin for short, and he remembers being kidnapped and brought here.

 Recalling what you read in the newspaper, you ask if he knows anything about a pandemic. He shakes his head, but then he says that there's a clipboard in his room about "avoiding them" and "if you touch them, you'll lose yourself". You wonder if "them" refers to the creature you saw in the photos.

 You both start exploring the hallway, but before you do so, you tell Lin that there's a note in your room telling you to go to the library. The two of you agree to head there as it might be a safe place for survivors. He continues his search by turning on a recorder in the corner of the hallway.

 "Report start.

 The subjects are miraculously alive. Unfortunately, I can't find a way to open these one-way security doors. I don't know if any of them are a hidden danger. Maybe I should cut off the life support system. But I want to solve this problem without any casualties. I'll watch them for a while.

 Report finish."

 A lot of questions come up, none of which can be answered, so you continue on by entering the room beside the recorder. Lin stops you and says that's where he came from, so you enter a different one. One of them is locked so you head to another room.

 What you see inside the room is strange. There's a wall of boxes and cones separating you from a group of living white puddles. In front of you is another recorder, you turn it on and hear another report.

 "Report start.

 The bastard went upstairs again to find the subjects. But failed to open the doors. Obviously, that thing knew about the survivors. I tried catching him multiple times, but that animal is smarter than I expected. I'll block all the passages later. I don't want to play anymore games.

 Report finish."

 You feel as if the person looking for you is the one who wrote the note a while back. With nothing left to do, you exit the room. You notice a piece of paper on the wall, Lin also notices it and joins you.

 "The experiment failed again, I sealed the room, but the crisis almost blew up this floor. The floor tiles have been sent to repair. According to my design, the pattern of large square tiles is the secret. The password of the warehouse is written on the floor.

 There are rats in the warehouse so we brought a cat from outside, but it disappeared after eating one of our biological samples. There appears to be something on the balcony, but can wild animals climb such a high place?

 The new batch of subjects appears to be mixed, two of them have participated involuntarily while the other three volunteered. Two of them volunteered for the cure and the other signed up for the vaccine. They're the last five remaining subjects.

 I'm sorry for this plan, I have to sacrifice you two, life isn't important to others you know, especially in this world."

 Lin turns to look at the tiles and begins cleaning up the floor. You enter the final room only to exit quickly as there's a white blob inside it. You help Lin remove the trash on the floor as there's nothing left to do.

 There's a device on the wall where you enter the password, and as you did you hear the hallway door unlock. The locked room also unlocks and you both stand there thinking another person will come out. Lin backs away while you stand still at the sight of what came out. It's a white furry creature that appears to be dripping some white substance.

 The creature begins chasing you and you both run for the door. A white slime came out of a box and nearly blocked your path. You manage to dodge both of them and reunite with Lin in the next room.

 The door behind you locked automatically, locking both of the creatures outside. The two of you catch your breath a bit and while resting, you read a note on the wall nearby.

 "Don't step in stains, cat will hear! Hide behind obstacles because cat will get tired and only go straight toward you. I put cones to show where to hide. I hope I help! See me in library, human!"

 The same skull-like signature is at the back of the note. Looking at the room, you can see the aforementioned cat and traffic cones. You decide to go first and carefully make your way to one of the safe zones with Lin right behind you.