Subject 15

CHAPTER 1 - Seth

Pain, incredible, immense pain, wracked my body, turning my bones to stone and my blood to lava. I tried not to scream, but soon enough I threw back my head against the padded table, and my lungs emptied of pained air, shooting towards the white lights above me. The leather restraints on my wrists and ankles had rubbed my flesh raw, but that is not what I felt. My vision again began to fade, but then the pain subsided. My muscles relaxed. I felt tired, oh so tired, and I took in another breath, only to let it come screaming out again when the fire filled my veins once more.

I had to escape, to tear off the wires that connected me to the machines, feeding them information. I had to be free. Pulsating inside me was something powerful, something dangerous. An animal. Or a Demon.

I yanked my arms against their restraints, and they flew, snapped, ripped off. I pulled the wires off of my head and arms, and then broke my leg braces, rolling off my bed onto the floor, landing on my hands and knees. I looked down at my hands, and the veins bulged against my skin, my life coursing under the skin of my forearms, the tense muscles bulging, but I've never touched a weight in my life, at least, not to my recollection. I examined my body quickly, and my brain told me that the muscle mass across my entire body was 59% greater than the average human.

Pain, incredible, immense pain, wracked my body and sent bolts of lightning into my head. Voices, numbers, commands, curses flew into my mind as I screamed at the pain, the confusion, the attack in my head. As soon as it started, the attack was cut off, my mind shutting down as much as it could and focusing on just what was in the room. My mind was running at a hundred miles an hour, processing and storing every piece of information I saw in a matter of seconds. Too much, it was too much! What had they done to me? The thought cut through like a knife as blood pulsed in every area of my body, and I could feel every beat of my heart as if my chest was a drum being beaten towards nearly breaking. I pushed off the ground and flew into a wall, but something blocked my back from hitting the solid concrete. It felt as if it were a part of me, and it was attached just below both of my shoulder blades. There were two of them. My mind operated in single commands.

Reach. My hands moved behind my head. Grey in the corner of my vision. Turn. The air rushed about me, the grey becoming feathers as I looked in horror at the cracked mirror.

In the mirror, I knew I was seeing myself, but it wasn't me. My arms, my legs, my bare chest, muscle; my torso was as well defined as a statue, my legs thick and powerful, and my shoulders equally muscular. But my cheeks were sunken in, my fierce green eyes shown behind deep bags, and my brown hair was matted and roughly cut, coming down to my sharp cheekbones in some areas and my jaw in others... And on my back were grey wings that reached above my head, while the tips still touched the ground; each feather was about as broad as my hands, and just as long. My brain calculated that they were about six feet and four inches tall each, and that they stood two inches above my head.

What... have they done to me?

Panic. Mental shut down. One by one, my senses started to drain. Sound went first. A ringing replaced it, a pain bearing, ear-shattering ringing. My mouth was filled with ash, my hands cold and unfeeling. Numb down to the core.

Power. It pulsed as if unchained, and everything came back, as if by a flick of the switch. Pain, anger, hate, sense, it all flowed back in an unbridled rampage through my mind.

I fell to my knees and covered my face, and I roared into my hands. How could they have done this to me, what have they done to me!? Who are they?! I couldn't think, I could barely breath, my mind began to shut down again. I fought, with everything I had, but all I could do was scream at the realization that I didn't know what was happening to me, and that my memory, along with any of the answers it held was gone.