Throw

Peering through the murky glass of the cell into the dim light, which never warms, but only reflects coldly off the metal walls. Your fingers clutch the handcuffs helplessly—the elongated scars on your hands are a painful reminder of all the sick nights and endless injections. Every breath feels like a heaviness in your chest, a mixture of pain and a strange irritation, as if something is growing inside you and yearning to burst forth.

A vague knowledge awakens deep within your mind—in some distant part of your memory, you were free. Free among ordinary, living, unremarkable people. But now it's a long-forgotten life, destined never to return. Lance comes almost inexorably, his cold voice scanning your consciousness like a predator studying its prey.

"Subject 734," he says, reciting my identification numbers as if you were just a collection of cells and not a person. "Today is a new phase of the experiment. You are undergoing mutations that should improve your ability to survive in an extreme environment. But you are still weak. We need more time."

You swallow, feeling the stuff in your veins heat your blood, causing your pulse to quicken. Occasionally, strange urges fill your body—as if you wanted to break free from your chains, stretch your tormented limbs, but your muscles won't obey, or obey too distortedly. Your consciousness struggles with a wave of pain and alien power that blurs the line between man and monster.

Fragments of memory flicker: laboratory walls, the cold glow of lamps, the hiss of medical equipment, shadows flickering behind screens. Lance is a complex mixture of charm and horror, a genius with eyes filled with cold calculation. His hands remember hundreds of cuts and manipulations, his mind endlessly searching for the path to perfection, oblivious to the tears and screams of those who became his victims.

Something remains of the old you—weak, but alive. The desire to survive, resistance, pierces through the murky layers of unnatural change.