Subject 305-b

Chapter 3

"Take hold of yourself, I know you have lots of questions", said Cassandra. Questioning his sanity, Nic sits upright trying to differentiate his thoughts from reality. Gasping for air, Nic frantically tries to tell Cassandra something but fails at making a telligible word.

"What is it, Nic?" asks Cassandra bringing herself closer to him.

Scratching at the irresistible itch at the back of his forehead, he mutters "Can you get me a glass of water?" After Cassandra headed to the kitchen, Nic noticed eruptions at the back of his head, and, funnily enough, it was almost as if something was written there. Slowly moving his finger across the scalp, he tried to imagine what it could have spelt; it was almost as if was written "305-b". As Nic tries to collect his thoughts, he takes a quick glance at Derek's face.

"What the..." whispers Nic when he swears, for a split second, Derek's face was like Jake, containment suit and all, only the person inside wasn't Jake, but some non-human like creature.

"Ok, here's your water," says Cassandra in a slightly excited tone. As Nic takes a sip of water, he feels a burning sensation as the water goes down his throat. He immediately throws up right beside his bed, where Cassandra and Derek are just observing him.

"WHO ARE YOU?! *cough* WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME?!" Nic says in a panicked tone. Derek and Cassandra look at each other with grins before looking back at Nic and manically cackle together. Through Nic's eyes the room began to quiver and blur before violently shaking; he felt as though his head was in a tightening vice. Nic's vision is now nothing more than a smeared pastel painting. He hears a deep sadistic voice before passing out: "The stupidity of you astounds me, human; you don't even know what's real and whats imaginary do you?" It was Jake.

Nic wakens and sees Jake, and immediately asked, "Why do you call me subject 305-B?"

"Because you are the 305th person to be chosen by us for reasons that I will make clear to you later," said Jake, "I see that you have made tremendous progress. Water...you will not need that anymore. Your body has been changed for the mission, and liquids will only hurt the project. Wasn't that your project at Cybernetics Industries--perfecting the evolutionary biology project, being able to go months without water in hostile hot environments? "Wake, up Nic!" I heard a faint voice in his head.

"Of course, we spent 6 months for the research," he replied, keeping in mind that the research was trashed by his team at a point where the effort proved to be unyielding.

"Then you must know what you're going through right now is standard procedure," Jake said as he smiled comfortingly.

"Wake up, Nic!" the voice repeated, seemingly fainter.

Assuming that the research was covertly finished, he lifted his right arm to observe it, knowing what exactly would happen in the next few hours. "Wake up? I never slept", he muttered.
First they would drain all the fluid from his body, replacing it with a thick fluid-like substance that would be 10 times more efficient in carrying oxygen through the body, infused with nanobot technology that would allow him to self-heal faster and allow him to survive wounds that would usually be fatal. They were going to accomplish this using something they called George, a generating enhanced organism that would refurbish genes "ethically." Nic had helped design it, so he knew what he was going to go through, and he knew it was not going to be fun.

The process was going to be long and painful because they would have to alter his DNA and there was a chance he was not going to make it. Every cell in his body needed to be changed, and changing each cell individually would be near impossible within a reasonable amount of time. To accomplish this they would genetically alter some of his cells to reproduce rapidly, latching on to other cells and changing them as well and repeat the process, and then his outside cells would be destroyed so that the new ones can take their place.