Part 4: Despair and hope

I looked so different, I couldn’t take it in, and I just stared at this reptile in the mirror.

“Are you okay?” asked the cat.

I snapped out of the daze I had apparently fallen into while staring in the mirror and I nearly dropped it.

“Huh, what?” I replied.

I felt so confused that I couldn’t keep my thoughts together.

“Breathe deep and slow, the transition will cause disorientation but you will adjust,” said the cat and I dropped to my knees and took deep breaths.

“I guess I should tell you my name, I’m Darius Rian”

“I’m Virgil,” I answered as I began to feel better.

“Virgil huh, is there a second name?” he asked.

“It’s just Virgil” I answered, “I don’t have a second name. I was orphaned when I was a baby.”

As I said this Darius looked at me worried.

“An orphanage!?” he exclaimed. “Those heartless bastards! I can’t believe they’re using children for the D-Series experiments!” He cursed angrily.

“Wait, are you saying that they’ve been bringing my friends here?” I asked “I knew there was something wrong, but I was told that they had all been adopted”

It all made sense. These people must have been taking children from the orphanage under the guise of them being adopted and no one would suspect a thing… Excerpt me.

Back at the orphanage, kids were being adopted much more then usual and within a week five of us were gone.
The strange thing about it was that they all left before I could even say goodbye to any of them and I was told each time that they left early in the morning.

That is until Jack, my best friend was taken and I was told he had been adopted, but he would not have left without telling me. We were inseparable and he had been in the orphanage since birth too.
We were like brothers and had promised each other that we were both going together or not at all. That was when I knew something was wrong.
At midnight I snuck into the records room, it wasn’t difficult for me to pick the lock on the cabinet and I quietly searched for Jack’s file.

I found it and it had an address and phone number of his new home.
I tried the number, but I got nothing but a wrong number tone on the other end of the line.
I then used the phone in the room to contact an information line and asked them to check the address.
I waited a moment and as I had expected, the address did not exist.

“What have they done with him?” I wondered.

I was about to head back to my room when the lights in the records room turned on suddenly. I saw an old bald man with a scar on his left cheek, but then…a sharp pain in the back of my neck…and I blacked out.

”Wait! That old man was the same guy who I saw before, when I woke up!” I realised.

“That must have been Trask, he’s the weasel who locked me up in here?” said Darius.

”So that means Jack must be here somewhere!” I said hopefully. “I’ve got to find him and the others now”

“Whoa hold on kid!” Said Darius suddenly “We need to get out of here as soon as possible”

”I can’t just leave!” I argued “I need to find my friends!?”

“It’s too dangerous. The whole reason for all this is to create dragons for military purposes, they’re creating bio weapons here and you are the key to their success” he said seriously. “So far your transformation is progressing without any flaws, and when it’s complete, all they would need is your blood to copy the procedure and they would be able to make as many dragons as they want” he explained

“I don’t care!” I yelled “I’m not leaving without my friends, so you can either help me or just stay here!” I said sternly as I got to my feet and headed for the door.

“Alright! I’ll help you,” said Darius reluctantly.

“Thank you…” I smiled and opened the door out of the room.

We headed out of the room and into a hallway lined with cables and wires and as I expected, there was no one else around.

“Hey, do you know where the cyrostasis chamber is?” I asked and Darius looked worried and nervously replied.

“Yeah…but you don’t want to go there” he grimaced.

“Yes I do! So where is it?” I demanded.

Darius hesitated and reluctantly he showed me the way.
We soon came to a large mechanical steel door with the number eight on it.
I found the door’s opening mechanism next to it and as I was about to push it Darius spoke up.

“Virgil…I’m asking you one more time, please just walk away, you won’t like what you see” he said almost begging, but I was determined to know what they were doing down here.

I pushed the button and the locking mechanism clanked off and the door slid open.
I slowly stepped in and a flow of condensation blew over my feet and over Darius, obscuring the floor.
Darius jumped onto my shoulder and I continued on, it was dark inside but not so dark that I couldn’t see. I entered into a large chamber and inside was what appeared to be six large cylinder shaped water tanks standing upright and had machines attached at the bottoms of them.
Each tank was dark and coated with condensation but I could see there was something floating inside each of them.
I slowly walked up to one of them and I put my hand against it. I wiped the condensation away and what I saw put a chill down my spine.

I gasped as I found a kid named Alan, his face was half deformed and he appeared to have limbs growing out of his body in odd places, his skin had patches of blue scales and spikes protruding from it too.
I fell backwards onto the floor from the shock and I quickly got up and I looked into the other tanks as well.
Mich, Lisa, Terry, Simon… They were all here and they had been mutilated and deformed, but worst of all, they were all dead.

I felt nauseous, Darius jumped off of my shoulder as I ran into the corner and
I proceeded to throw up.
I burst into tears at this point. All my friends were dead and there was nothing I could do about it. I walked back over to Darius and fell to my knees in front of him.
The tears were flowing down my face now and I covered my eyes.

“I’m so sorry Virgil, I didn’t want you to see this” he said comfortingly, he looked at the tanks and looked despairingly at them.

“Trask is insane and he used me to achieve this!?” said Darius with hate in his voice.

I felt so angry, so furious that I was growling, I stood up and wiped the tears from my face.

“I won’t let him get away with this! I’m going to make him pay!” I spat with hate and rage in my words.

“Come on, we’d better get out of here” said Darius.

I got back to my feet but then I suddenly realised something that gave me hope.

”Only five of these tanks are in use. Jack isn’t here, so he might still be alive, I have to find him” I said hopeful that there was still time.

I walked out of the room with Darius close behind and the door closed behind me. Suddenly my back became warm and was getting hotter, I knew instantly what was about to happen.

“It’s happening again!” I said frantically.

Darius kept his distance as I collapsed to the floor. My shirt was getting tight as something in my back was pushing its way out.
My shirt stretched and soon I could hear it ripping apart at the seams and then a sudden surge of heat flowed out of my back and into whatever it was that was growing from it.
I was nearly choking from the tightness of my own shirt when finally it ripped apart and fell to shreds on the floor.
I now realized what was happening. I was growing a new pair of limbs from my back and I could hear new bones cracking and popping into place.

They continued to grow and then a thin layer of membrane began to grow from them.

“Wings!” I realized.

I was growing wings and it excited me for some reason.
Something else was happening now as the muscles across my body began to tingle and grow slightly.
Soon it was over and I stood up somewhat dazed and I looked at my new wings in awe.

“I’ve got wings!” I said almost proudly as I stretched out one of my new limbs.

“This is bad!” said Darius worried.

”What’s bad?” I asked confused

“From what I can tell you’re at about seventy-five percent complete in your transformation, which means you’ve got about thirty minutes till it’s complete” he explained and as he said this I looked at him and said, “So?”

“Once the transformation is complete there’s no way to reverse it!” I stood quiet for a moment as this information sank in and I found the thought to be quite disconcerting… at first.

To be continued