Hybrid

Prologue

"Mom? Where are you?"

Silence.

"Dad? Are you there?"

Silence.

"Grandpa? Your lab door's open!"

Silence.

The little girl walked through the house, searching for her family. She smelled something odd, the same smell she found when she scraped her knee last week and bled.

She opened the front door to see a mass of people lying on the ground, bleeding.

"They're hurt! I should help them. Grandpa's a doctor, he can help! But he's not at home..."

She ran into the streets, looking for her family. Her parents had told her not to do that, but there were people who needed help.

It was only later that she realized she'd forgotten to wear her outdoor shoes.

She looked around the lanes in her neighborhood, stepping over the bodies and trying to wake some people up.

Finally, in one lane, she heard Grandpa's voice.

"Grandpa!" She called excitedly, seeing a bunch of people there.

She ran ahead to see her parents lying down nearby.

"Mom, Dad!"

They were bleeding as well, and seemed to be sleeping.

"Mom, Dad, wake up! If you sleep, Grandpa and me can't take you home! And Grandpa needs to take care of the other people in pain, too! Let's help him!"

She continued to shake her parents' bodies, unaware that they would never wake up.

She heard Grandpa's voice again. Leaving her parents, she walked down the lane, and turned the corner.

Grandpa was at the end, talking to someone. Or was he?

"Please, let me go! Please!!"

"No chance, old man."

"B-but I've done so much for you! D-don't any of you know who I am??"

"Don't know, don't care. I gotta obey orders. And my orders are to kill all the mortals I see. As them old pirates used to say, no quarter."

"But you were created from us!!"

"Not any more. We can give birth to our own kind now, remember?"

The old man turned to see his seven-year-old granddaughter staring at the scene from behind a wall.

He didn't see the man in front of him extend his palm and let a sharp steel blade emerge, attached to his palm.

As the old man's eyes met those of the girl's, the Hybrid stabbed him in the heart.