As night long settled in, Dr. Spencer Wyrmbane walked into the examination room, his labcoat still holding unnecessary amounts of debris from messing with a few powdery and unstable materials and chemicals. The other nurse attendants and scientists, upon seeing Spencer come into the room, gave respectful nods and greetings, despite their tired expressions saying otherwise. Most of them were quite preoccupied…and frankly, Spencer was not surprised since everyone was on high alert from their most recent and time-consuming project:
Project: Cancierous Finale, potential cure for cancers.
With Dr. Wyrmbane leading the charge, there’d been a newfound sense of motivation as the rise in victims suffering from a variety of strains of cancer skyrocketed within the last decade. Recent news reports had it rising to the tens of millions, in fact, and still growing at alarming rates. For nearly ten years, the team at Verdant Lives had been toiling away at their desks, workstations, and test tubes to tackle the staggering mortality rates. Nine of ten would not survive, and it would only worsen from here. Luckily, with the help of his two closest friends, Apothecarian Allison Sylvia and Nathaniel Sr., they were coming quite close to changing that and closing in on a potential cure. All that was left was for the testing of the chemicals. If Verdant Lives managed to get this right, the entire project would have massive ramifications for the entire world. And it started with the mixing process…
With a snap of his fingers, Spencer heard Nathaniel Sr. call out to him. The Geneticist’s longer brown hair reached down to his shoulders with spectacles that completely encompassed his eyes. As a man of extreme tidiness even under these stressed conditions, Spencer even swore that he could see some kind of hair straightening shampoo glisten a bit under his hairlines. His own labcoat was meticulously tidy and entirely consistent with his OCD personality tendencies. And that same personality really showed in how he enthusiastically kept everything on track.
“Mornin’, Spense!” He cried out. “The Artificial Gyros are all lined up and ready for us to inspect, just waitin’ for your word to give it a spin.”
Spencer answered with an impression of confidence. “Great. Let’s get this going; the sooner we get this done, the sooner we can all go home and get some much-needed headrest. Allison!”
He scanned the room, searching for his girlfriend amongst the crowd of researchers. Only a few moments passed before Allison showed herself frantically stumbling over from one of the corner tables. Her auburn hair, despite having strands that practically glistened from the bright lights illuminating the entire room, was in disarray as it was forced to be put into a single ponytail, with many of her bangs still haggard and strewn across her eyes. The work was getting to her, even though he warned her about it ages ago that it would be a massive undertaking. But he knew that her stubbornness would get the best of her, as she thought she was more than capable of handling anything.
Allison frantically responded while out of breath. “I’m here, sorry! Sorry…I was zoned in on something else. I think I have something from the concoctions we’ve tested. We’ve got…are…are you okay, Spencer?”
Her question kind of came out of nowhere. No prompt, no lead up to it, just confusion, from Spencer.
“Yeah,” he said, “yeah, I’m fine. Why do you ask?”
The Apothecarian from her stressed state then looked him up and down. After taking a couple of deep breaths, she turns over to Nathaniel, nearly whispering in his ear, “Hey Nathaniel, can you give us a moment? I need to discuss something about the procedure in private.”
Nathaniel Sr. simply nods, and with a flourish of his wrist, he whisks away to his own immaculate desk to continue working. Allison pulls Spencer toward the entrance with a lone desk piled high with an assortment of test tubes and junk.
“Hun,” she says, her voice evidently lowered, “you’re doing it again.”
“What?” He asked, perplexed by what she would be mentioning.
“The shakes, dear…”
Spencer looked down to see that his hands had indeed been spasming under his labcoat. He frankly hadn’t even noticed until now, as he had gotten so accustomed to the pain that he failed to acknowledge that it was even happening. He put them inside the small pockets of the coat before looking back up to Allison.
“I said I am fine, Al.”
“No,” she asserted, gesturing over to grab his wrist, “this is not how you look when you’re fine. You know you need to be taking care of yourself! I thought you said that—”
“I know what I told you about my…condition…but I can take care of it.”
“Not like this!” Allison is now spitting her retorts through her teeth, desperately holding herself back from yelling at him. “This is now what we would call desperate. You’re scaring me with your lack of care in this.”
Spencer’s eyes widened in response as he shook his girlfriend’s hand away. “Lack of care?? Of course I care! It’s happening to me; I’m practically cursed with limited time. Why else would I choose to be a part of this fucking project?!” Spencer threw his hand onto a nearby table, his fist clenched with furor as dozens of vials and some binders go flying off. He heard a number of gasps as the idle chatter suddenly came to a halt. Spencer’s very breaths now evened out to become more slow-paced, just as he had always learned to control when on the knife’s edge. His head dropped down to look and see that his shakes were now taking hold of his entire arm. The Doctor grasped hold of his tricep when he felt Allison’s hand gently padding down his back, her nails making the hairs across his entire body adjust to the sensation. His trembling slowed until they were finally manageable.
Allison then let out a long exhale. “Yes. Yes, you are. Just…be careful, dear.”
As a swift end to the conversation, another assistant by the name of Wren stopped them by trying to get their attention with a louder cough.
“*Ahem!* Excuse me, Doctors, we’ve got the tests ready, we’re just waiting on your call.”
Spencer gave a small sigh of relief as he recollected himself by clearing his throat before responding. “Thank you, Wren. We’ll, uh, we’ll get the sample tests squared away shortly. Let me just finish things here with Allison before we continue.”
“Of course.” She then turned away back toward Nathaniel Sr.’s direction near the testing chamber. Allison then firmly grabbed hold of Spencer’s shoulder. Her teal eyes pooled into his gaze.
“I do love you. Don’t hurt yourself.”
Spencer grinned solemnly. “I know.”
The two of them turned and walked over to the testing chamber. Nathaniel Sr. was waiting for them as they came up to a glass window to look in and see a few researchers inside making finishing touches.
Nathaniel stated, “Ah, here we go! Ol’ chap of mine is back in business, aha! We’re finishing up as we speak. The test sample should be ready by now.”
“Very well.” Spencer replied. “Let’s begin. Initiate the cell replication procedure! Everyone else inside the chamber, finish what you’re doing then head to the safe room.”
The center pedestal rose in the center of the testing chamber, with a small glass dome on its top. At its base, a piece of flesh rested where it has been thoroughly tainted with cancer cells, looking almost necrotic in nature. As the final scientist inside the chamber mixed several chemical compounds together into one vial—which immediately starts reacting upon the liquids meeting one another—he set it down on the robotic arm’s hand and promptly exited the testing area to the safe room. The vial itself settled after a few moments, leaving what looked to be just a mysterious, viscous blue liquid remaining. Just what they had done in the last three weeks.
Spencer mused. Let us just hope that it works now…we haven’t much time or resources left to spare to keep trying.
Spencer waited a moment before moving over to the speaker, using a microphone stand to speak out with everyone in the entire vicinity. He bent down a bit, as he was a bit taller than the podium itself looking out to the testing chamber’s window.
“Ladies. Gentlemen. Doctors. Geneticists. Nurses. Assistants. Researchers. Friends…we have all come and gathered here today for a very special purpose right now. I have had the greatest of pleasures working with you all these last few years, all the tedium and stress over getting this right certainly has had its toll on each of us. But I believe that we are now on the brink of a breakthrough—a discovery that will radically alter the very foundations of modern medicine. The days when we feared of our own loved ones dying due to the sheer lethality of these strains of cancer. But here we are now! We have a chance to rewrite history for billions on this earth, for millions that are impacted by this epidemic, for thousands that stay up endless nights giving their own lives in search of this cure. Today…”
A second pedestal opened from the floor to reveal a robotic arm that jutted out in preparation for taking the test vial and applying it to the flesh sample. Its hinges and “finger-like” appendages contort and readjust consistently as a form of calibration before finally setting in its final resting state. Spencer paced a bit to give the machine time to ready itself, leaning in once more to the microphone.
“…we make a great step forward for humanity. Just as we have with the discovery of penicillin; for the eradication of dozens of diseases like measles, tuberculosis, polio, smallpox, and the like; for all that we stand for to ensure that cancer will never affect another creature on this Earth ever again. Wren, begin the sequencing procedure!”
The entire room fell into complete silence as Spencer heard the very air about them stifle and still itself—even Nathaniel Sr. learned to shut up occasionally, until finally he fell silent as well. Spencer could see Allison out of the corner of his eye, looking in on the glass as she grasped hold of his shoulder. Immediately, his body’s tension, especially after the recent spat, finally loosened up a bit, his back relaxing while the upper body readjusted itself.
The robotic arm in the test room reconfigured some internal gears one final time before grabbing hold of the experimental substance stored in one lone vial. By this point, a massive television screen illuminated the entire room from its nestled location near the ceiling above the staff. Wren called out a “clear” as an acknowledgement to the screen coming to life, bringing a close-up image on the petri dish as the robotic arm readied itself to apply the experiment to the flesh. Spencer looked on through the camera as it then poured the liquid onto the flesh sample.
At first, there were no visible changes on the sample. A few minutes pass, and a several sighs of disappointment emanate across the room. Spencer’s heart dropped; his grip trembled as the microphone fell onto the ground with a sudden *thud*! The next moments seemed to drag on and pass endlessly, with time itself inconsequential as his eyes start to lose focus. A sudden wave coursed through Spencer, reaching out through to his limbs as he slammed his fists onto the coffee table before him, once again knocking aside the speaker and several pencils and other utensils. Tears begin to well up as he buries his face under his arms.
“Damn it all! It should have worked?!” Spencer cried out in a voice muffled under his arms. Spencer felt Allison’s hands trying to comfort him, but not long before he felt her begin to tap on him.
“Spencer,” Allison whispered, “look! Something’s happening.”
As he wiped aside the tears rolling down his fair cheeks, he looked up to see the screen’s iridescent lighting show that the sample itself was now enveloped by a sea of fog that’s actually blocked quite a bit of vision through camera and window alike. Everyone had themselves gathered and tightly packed around the table, either looking at the television above them or trying to put their hands up to the looking glass. The very air about Spencer felt vacuumed as everyone held their breaths waiting for the fog as it began to dissipate.
“Amazing! It’s done?!” Someone screamed.
As Spencer observed the smoke fade away, the sample was unblemished! No more riddled amounts of blemishes and rotten spots covering the flesh. It frankly looked a bit like a strip of pig fat just cut out and left to dry, with no evidence of any necrosis visible. Spencer’s voice just barely came back to its usual certainty.
“We…we did it. I can’t believe it. I actually cannot believe it! Someone pinch me! Bring out the test subjects! We need to replicate this immediately. Wren, NOW?!?”
Wren frantically shifted some of the levers and pressed a few buttons to initiate a secondary procedure to ensure the substance had similar effects. A second pedestal opened from the floor to reveal a container of labrats. A majority of these test subjects were already visibly covered in cancerous cells in various stages and degrees. Some were active and frantic in the cramped quarters, while others seem quite sluggish and lethargic. Almost all of them were in one way or another guaranteed to be killed by whatever various form of cancer was infecting them within the next scant few days. All of these were recent batches of rats that were engineered, and the cancer cells from humans will devastate such a small body in a very short span of time.
A simple acknowledgement of “proceed” from Spencer was all that was needed for Wren to initiate the next sequence. The robotic arm whirred and readjusted once again to compensate for the change in the container. Its “finger” appendages clicked back, then locked onto a test tube to open the rest of its sample into the drinking water for the rats.
After another few minutes pass, everyone was on their feet ready for the coming reaction. Spencer only hoped that it would produce the same reaction to a host of actual living creatures that it had on the individual sample of diseased flesh. The remaining rats inside the container were attracted to the addition of the water—given that it added a hint of pheromones to intrigue the creatures to drink sooner rather than later—and started moving to the basins. Most of the rats took little slurps of the liquid then walked away, allowing the other residents to have their share. Just the same as the flesh piece, the reaction was not immediate. Once most of them had a drink, they were seen lazily clambering over to one of the glass walls. Spencer knew that one of the symptoms could have been severe drowsiness in living creatures…or loss of vision…but it was reassuring to see the right symptom followed through in observation. One by one, they all started dozing off. Everyone waited through the glass and across the room’s camera to see what would happen next.
And sure enough, after the serum had its moment to take effect, most of the visible maladies looked like they started catching fire with smoke plumes coming out of their tufts of fur and skin. By the time the smoke had its time to clear the enveloped container just like before with the sample piece, most of the rats looked as unharmed as if they were just born. Spencer watched as Wren immediately ran several virtual analyses over the individual rat vitals; most had the exact same rhythmic beats of hearts all in unison. The entire room burst into a cascade of cheers and tears of joy. Assistants hugging one another, some on the floor kissing the ground, others actively dancing and throwing papers into the air. Through the chaos, Nathaniel Sr., as ecstatic as could be, jived over to one of the ends of the room passing through a containment door where Spencer immediately lost sight of him. Spencer is immediately hoisted by Allison, grasping his torso with such strength that it nearly crushed him and his shakes. Spencer was hesitant at first, but very quickly returned the embrace after breaking from the shock as tears streamed down his cheeks.
“The verification is done!” He cried out to the entire room, wiping away the fresh tears on his face. “We are saved. Cancer has a cure once and for all?! Praise be, we can finally begin resynthesizing CPB-972. Fellow coworkers, this would not have been possible without your sacrifices of time and sanity. From the bottom of my heart…thank you. Thank you for everything you all have accomplished. This shall be a standing testament of time for the history books.
“And now…go home. It’s late, you all deserve the rest.”
Everyone, still ecstatic, happily agreed and made their way out of the main entrance. The air about Spencer finally felt filled with laughter and happiness, contained until the moment the door opens—and like the vacuums of space breaching an escape pod, the joy suddenly broke open and flooded out…leaving an empty void as Spencer was left with Allison and Wren to finish cleaning up the mess and closing down the station.
* * * *
Wren finished shutting off much of the main machinery like the television and the life readings, leaving only the emergency lights and the robotic arms online. The rats were still fumbling around in their cage as they’ve awakened from their quick slumber, some even actively slapping and swatting one another with the amount of energy bundled into their tiny paws. Spencer finally shut the massive swinging doors after the last of the other staff left in the massive crowd of cheers and hoorays clambering across the streets to go to their homes. He exhaled a long-winded sigh under his breath before turning around to find Allison standing inches behind. Spencer nearly jumps from the startle.
“Sorry, babe!” She reassured. “I didn’t mean to scare you there. I just…wanted to say that I’m so proud of what you’ve been able to accomplish tonight. It’s just like you preached: Today is a landmark in history. We’ll be saving the planet as we know it.”
“Thank you, Al.” He says solemnly, almost to the point of sounding unconvinced that what she mentioned would be true. “But without anyone here, this would have taken twice or even thrice as long just from the sheer number of experiments and trial and error we’ve had to conduct.”
“And that’s why you are a good person. You are humble in your approach, and you go out of your way to ensure that your duty is fulfilled to humanity.”
Spencer scoffs, “A bit over-dramatic, don’t you think?”
“It’s true!” She screamed, and as she did, she looked over to her wrist to look at the time. “Shit, it’s getting pretty late. I’ll meet you back at the house, kay?”
“Of course.” Spencer stated.
Allison walked toward the door but turned around to say one last “love you!”
Spencer doesn’t even turn, still facing inward toward the testing chamber, with the robotic claws constantly clicking and readjusting their internal processors and gears.
“I know.” He said.
Wren was not far behind Allison, and they both headed outside into the brisk night. Spencer heard the massive doors swing shut and barely manages a “bye” as he became lost in his stupor and walked up to the glass. His hand glossed over some of the terminal buttons as he reached the window looking into the testing chamber. The testing sample that was just used, Spencer knew it was his responsibility to store it away any leftover samples back into the cryofreezer until they would return the next morning…or, in a technical case, later that day.
As he took a deep breath, near-silence took hold of the room now as all that’s left to him were his own thoughts. His head raced with the ramifications behind this liquid being the cure for any kind of cancer. He could even see it along the WEB newspaper headlines of NEET, or Newly-Educated Expert Times: Dr. Spencer Wyrmbane, PHD; The Cure Cancierous Finale to Save MILLIONS of Lives! And what a beautiful thought it was to go down in history as one of the most prominent figures that textbooks would have students memorize his accomplishments…
…but was that all worth it? At what cost?
He looked down to see once more that his “shakes” had returned once again, this time only after looking down to notice, did he start to feel the familiar scorching sensation begin. His muscles contorted and strained against themselves as he stifled a few grunts of discomfort. Spencer became fairly accustomed to the feeling of the burns, and he knew that Allison only wanted what was best for him.
And that’s why he had to do this.
His mind was made up. He headed down to the end of the room and punched in an alphanumeric nine-digit code to open the containment door. Taking a sharp left down the sterile hallway—no doubt, the work of Nathaniel Sr.’s germophobic and obsessive tendencies—he reached the doors to a decontamination airlock. The door revolves open upon sensing his motion leading to the door, and he steps through to the split airlock.
“Nathan?”
Spencer vaguely saw Nathaniel on the other side of the decontamination (DECON) chamber, being split by a sheet of translucent plastic as a way of ensuring that there would be safe transition between areas. Hazmat suits lied on both ends of Spencer’s side of the DECON, while empty racks housed the other contaminated suits of other assistants and researchers that would go through the DECON.
“What is up, mi amigo?” Nathaniel Sr., for the first time in a long while, actually spoke a bit more “even-paced,” for some odd reason. His words were far more measured than his typical diction. Spencer even noticed that his hair almost seemed longer than he last saw a few minutes ago…and even the facial hair had grown back, when it wasn’t there just a few minutes ago. “I’m just finishin’ up the last touches on the cure, my man. Even plan on moving it over to the Fridge.”
Spencer’s eyebrow immediately rose itself. “Nathaniel, you should be home, I dismissed everyone a while ago. I can take care of the transfer to the Cryogens. Have you gone through the DECON pro—”
“Yeah, yeah, got it all under props.” Nathaniel Sr. dismissed the statement idly. “I was about to head on through, and that’s when you walked in.”
“Right…listen, are there any samples left in the machinery? I wanted to get one last recalibration through before I sent it over to the Cryogens?”
“Uh, yeah, my dude. They still need to be drained of their juices. Have fun with that!”
Spencer stifled a chuckle. “Sure, I guess. Listen, drive safe, it’s really late out, and I’m sure you’re just as tired as anyone right now.”
“Hey,” Nathaniel Sr. steps through the sheet and with one hand still holding onto the vials, clasps his other on Spencer’s shoulder. “no sweat, Brohemian! You watch yourself too, now. Don’t want you turning into a zom-zom and have that cure go to waste from your own deprev of sleep!”
“Right…”
Spencer watched on as Nathaniel Sr. practically skipped out of the DECON and head back the way Spencer came. As the door closed behind him, Nathaniel called back, “Don’t strain yourself, mate—!” before it closes entirely. Utterly flabbergasted simply from the sheer ridiculousness of every conversation with Nathaniel, especially this weird one, he shook his head as it started to swim from sleep deprivation.
Spencer didn’t even take the effort to put on a Hazmat suit. He simply walked straight into the testing chamber as the airlock whistled open with the pressure adjustment. As the emergency lighting illuminated the space, not much was visible in the room aside from two lights hanging above that aimed at the labrat habitat and the flesh sample petri dish. Most of the rats, despite it being quite late, continued to slap one another quite awake from the recent dosages. Spencer headed over to the mechanical arm, looking down to “palm” of the hand to where the opening in it would show the tube and needle that held what was left of the serum. Sure enough, some of the liquid was indeed not drained…why Nathaniel Sr. couldn’t have bothered to take the single minute to drain it out completely baffled Spencer, but he was gone now so there wasn’t much to be done otherwise. Grabbing hold of a syringe from the inside pocket of his labcoat, he siphoned the test sample from the opening of the arm. It filled the majority of the container with what was left over after a few moments.
Looking to the corner of the room, he saw a low-top wheeled chair, which he swiveled over near to the labrat container and eased himself down. This is the first moment Spencer had a chance to properly rest for the last two months, for even sleep has not been kind to him. His mind and body alike had been consistently plagued. He glanced over to the syringe held in his own hand, the same one that literally would not stop shaking as the liquid itself begins to form a small reaction of bubbles from the pressure.
He took in a long, deep breath. In. And out. And with his exhale, his mind that had been constantly racing about the ramifications of this medicine finally stilled, like that of a tranquil river that settled after the ripples had passed. He knew that this was the only chance he was going to have, as it was time to act now or never to breathe again…
Without another second’s worth of hesitation, he jammed the syringe into his chest, being careful not to damage any other organs and line up right where an artery would take the sample into his bloodstream. With his other shaking hand, he frantically depressed the plunger to inject the remaining CPB-972 serum inside him. A chill filled Spencer’s blood, and he felt his entire body instantly shudder as it received the sudden change of liquid intake. The sting of the needle ran its course, and his shortness of breath followed soon after and wondered if he might have penetrated one of his lungs. But the instant gratification came within seconds, and Spencer then looked down to see that his were hands no longer shaking at all…
Spencer thought to himself. I…I’ve done it? I’m cured! I knew it! HaHAh?! I just didn’t expect such an instant reaction, all things considered since the previous sampling experiments took a bit to go through. My shakes…they’re…completely gone.
Spencer slowly rose out of the chair. He felt his paper-thin arms flex as he tests out his own body’s miraculous new capabilities. His veins almost went completely numb with cold as the entire serum coursed through him. Spencer rubbed up and down his arms to at least generate some more heat, but by this point the chill reached up to his skull. The Doctor’s head started spinning into a dazed state, and the rats themselves start to blend into a massive sea of fur, claws, and white. The coolness through his pumped blood now seemed like an uncomfortable itch pouring throughout his entire body, gradually warming itself to a level that even Spencer knew was not normal. He had to get out, had to get help! He began shambling toward the door in an utter stupor of mental and physical agitation.
A sudden shifting sound had Spencer reel back and look at the source. It seemed like it came from the robotic arm, but when Spencer dizzily moved over from the door, he saw that it was from the petri dish—or more specifically, the flesh sample itself had an unidentified reaction. As he bent down to look at what occurred, he observed that the sample itself had darkened into an opaque hue. Tiny strands emanated from the sample now, like that of small hairs or cilia, and in quite a hefty number too despite their small size. They seemed to almost have a sense of movement of their own volition, fluttering in heightened tensions. Spencer fell onto his back, confused and bewildered all at once as he immediately felt the effects of the CPB-972 accelerating to a heightened degree. In lieu of his shaking, it now appeared like there’s another…“someone”…“something”…he felt an entity running through his bloodstream. Whatever seemed to be traveling through his blood was now causing his entire body to heat up to increasingly scorching levels.
A high-pitched screech emanated from the container behind Spencer. He swore that it was his own body trying to scream in pain with no noise to be produced, but it was in fact the rats themselves. Most of them now lied motionless, but only for a split second as they were hunched over in fetal positions. Their bodies started to contort into a conglomeration of flesh and fur. Some keeled over and were instantly swallowed in their own reaction to the serum, while others simply gave out and instantaneously fell unconscious. The few that did survive morphed into something that Spencer had never seen before. Within the span of merely seconds, their bodies had grown at least three times their size. Their claws morphed into talons, and—as an athlete with muscle-enhancing steroids—their muscle mass increased to the point where skin could be seen through their coats of fur. Massive sabretooth-like canines for their newfound size protruded from each end of their wiry snouts. Spencer had not even the slightest hint of what had become of these creatures, but they were no longer the same…not anymore.
The moment that the transformation finished, Spencer saw an overtaking tone of teal hue in their eyes immediately morph scarlet. Through his scattered vision, everything turned into a sea of matted fur, torn ligaments, and blood splattering the entire container…until none of the things left themselves alive. Spencer’s stomach overturned on itself as he fell on his knees, letting loose a bit of bile onto the floor. He tried his normal methods to try and calm himself down, but no breath was easy to maintain as a white, boiling rage started to mask his vision. He took his hand try to wipe the bile away, but upon attempting to look at it, his hand began spasming out of control. Long strands pierced from inside his hand, his fingernails stretched and cracked. The serum’s warmth became an inferno, burning his veins alight in flame. The undershirt and lab coat tore at the seams as the skin itself festered until finally Spencer could not take any more of the agony. He let loose a scream—which erupted as a howl of pain—and every opening in his body exudes boiling steam until finally…
…Everything faded into darkness.
* * * *
Spencer found himself lying on his back. A piercing sensation struck his temples and he could not bring any memory to mind. His eyes fluttered open, and the autumn breeze shook some of his tattered clothing across his face. He went to swat it away, but his hand…no, it’s no longer a hand. His misshapen arm increased in length, size, and in the amount of…fur? Huge talons were in place where his nails should be, and his arm was covered in its entirety with the blackened fur strands. Spencer turned over, and he saw that this was true for most of his body. Everything on him was coated like a dog’s pelt. Even his hands as he looked further at them looked like paws…only to be covered in the red substance he already feared flowed through every human individual’s veins.
Spencer let loose a gasp of shock, but when the Doctor scrambled up, his vision finally had the time to clear and reset to witness the horror before him. He lied in a clearing amidst the center of a forest and the short grass fluttered with the breeze. An ichorous substance splotched on the forest floor, and as Spencer had a second to breath and compensate for what he saw, he effortlessly stood on his hindlegs. Six mutilated humanoid corpses lied on the ground strewn in unnatural positions, most of them with animalistic features influencing their countenances. Spencer couldn’t even identify some of their faces as their bodies were so grotesquely brutalized. Most of their causes of death stemmed from dismemberment and evisceration, though the occasional limb was seen…chewed upon to the point where marrow and bone was even visible. Spencer bent over to promptly vomit with whatever left was still inside. Even he knew that this was all a horrid omen, a terrible feat that seemed all too real to be dismissed as a dream.
Spencer knew that he had to look for someone else, to see where he was—a landmark to inform him where he might be. He staggered past the bloody scene through the tree-line, his stride carrying his newfound form in great strides. After about twenty minutes passed, he reached the forest’s edge and the shrubbery started to part in density. Spencer made his way past the remaining shrubbery to see a sight far worse than he had ever witnessed before. The entire city was in flames!
Skyscrapers were massive roadblocks covering the ruined desolation. The suburbs surrounding the outskirts of the city appeared as though someone razed an entire field of crops. Thousands of forms flooded the streets and highways, while the hundreds of others that dotted the remaining buildings that still stood literally scaled the heights effortlessly. It was an epidemic—a massacre!
“What have I become? What has become of the world? I…Did I do this…?”
You are one of us now…
* * * *
“That was less than ten years ago, Al.” Spencer looks on at the carnage of the city, its name already long forgotten to only be known now as “the Forbidding,” the place where it all started. “Look at how quickly humankind has already fallen into the fur trappings of disarray and instability. And I can’t help but know that it was all my fault for starting it all in the first place. My own cure, being the very cause for the fate of the entire world as we know it, to make such a hellscape. How can I possibly live with myself knowing that, Al? How? Everywhere across the globe feels so lost, so…empty. Just the same as my own fate to become. Lost. And empty.”
“Hey!” Allison takes her regal paw and sets it on his shoulder, inching some of her claws to scratch one of his worst spots he could not reach on his own. “Your intentions were only noble. You could never have known that our work could’ve become this. We all had a fault to play.”
Spencer continues to gaze out, his mind still lost adrift to wander, his own thoughts he can barely speak aloud on his own will.
“I still hear it, you know…” Spencer says. “…It…it never truly goes away.”
Allison suddenly rises from her crouched position. “Then let us see what we can do about it. It’s time.”
“Time for what?”
Spencer eyes his lionhearted and lioness-faced love. She growls in response as his lupine snout curls in confusion.
“Time for us to take back what is rightfully ours: Our humanity.”
To Be Continued…
J.K. Denny 