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Description

Virgil

Part 7: Lost Control

I sighed in relief as Darius made it safely into the air vent and I returned my attention to the huge spider I had just thrown across the room.

Suddenly the spider let out a deafening screech that forced me to cover my ears. The monster paused the horrible noise a moment to take a breath and began screeching again.
I watched confused as it continued to make such a painful noise and it made no attempt to attack me during this.

‘Why is it screeching like that? Why has it stopped attacking!?’ I wondered in pain as the noise made my ears ache.

I couldn’t stand it any more. My ear drums felt like they were going to burst and so I jumped into the air and came down hard on the spider’s back.

The monster stopped screeching instantly and it shook about violently trying to shake me off. I won’t deny that I was quite disgusted just touching the Spider’s hairy abdomen shell, but I quickly rammed my claws into its sback and held on tight.
The spider continued to shake about until it suddenly stopped moving. It then lowered itself to the ground and before I realised what it was doing, it jumped, launching high into air and smashed me into the ceiling.

The tarantula fell gracefully back to the ground while I remained embedded in the smashed concrete of the ceiling. I wasn’t badly hurt, simply dazed. But then the concrete gave away and I fell back to the ground with a thud.
A few seconds later a pile of debris collapsed onto me and buried me.

I could hear Trask above, laughing as a laid there underneath the rubble, but I pushed my way out non-the worse for wear.

As I emerged from the rubble however, a strange sensation fell over me, like an outer body experience and my will and control seemed to fail me.

I lost control of myself and I roared with such ferocity that no human could mimic.
The spider backed away in fear, but then I could hear something coming.
I watched as about a dozen smaller spiders (each about half the size of the large one) emerged from the broken doorway.

I could only guess that they had come because of the noise the larger one had made earlier.

I wanted to run but I couldn’t. Instead, I growled and charged at the large spider.
Any of the small spiders that got in my way, I easily knocked aside.

I grabbed the giant spider’s two front legs and with a swift jerk, I ripped them off with ease. The spider screeched louder than ever in pain and staggered back clumsily. It’s green blood splattered across the floor from the messy stumps of what used to be its forelegs. I wanted to stop my attack but I couldn’t.
The Spider clearly had no intention of fighting back now, I wanted to leave it alone but instead I moved closer.

I slowly walked up to the giant tarantula as it backed itself into a wall. The other spiders didn’t seem to know what to do and didn’t attempt to intervene. I gave up trying to regain control of myself and relinquished my will to this monster inside me.
I could do nothing but watch as I took a deep breath and released a wave of fire from my mouth.

The spider was engulfed in flames and shook about madly trying to extinguish the fire spreading across it’s body, but my continued barrage of flame prevented it.

Soon it collapsed to the ground still burning, it let out one final, painful screech and it was dead. The fire had gone out and an unusual burnt smell hung in the air. The smaller spiders scattered in fear as I turned to face them, they ran out of the hall as fast as they could, leaving me alone with the charred remains of the giant spider, Trask however watched in surprise and then smiled darkly.

“Wonderful, wonderful!” he yelled maniacally, his voice snapped me back to my senses and I gazed at the burning corpse of the giant spider I had just mercilessly killed.

I breathed deeply as I realised what I had just done. I didn’t want to kill that creature but my body seemed to act of it’s own volition.
I suddenly fell to my knees in exhaustion and couldn’t seem to get back up.

“You have truly surpassed all expectations” Trask said very pleased “I can barely wait to test your abilities further, but unfortunately, we must wait until your transformation progresses to its finality. I’ll put you somewhere safe until then!” as he finished I felt a rush of air blowing around me and then the ground suddenly gave way.

I realised at that moment what this huge hall was for, it was some kind of disposal chamber and I had been standing on a trap door this whole time.
The spider corpse and the broken rubble fell down into the hole that had just opened, but I managed to grab the edge of the trapdoor before I could fall down too.
I hung on but I was too weak. I felt my grip loosen and then I fell into the darkness below. The trapdoor began to close and I lost consciousness.

“A dragon, I can’t believe...my eyes”

I awoke to a voice and I was laying face down on a pile of junk and debris. I looked around and I appeared to be in some kind of dimly lit underground junk yard.

“I couldn’t wait to get started” I could hear the voice again and it sounded familiar.

As I tried to get up I stumbled and collapsed to the ground. I felt so weak that I could barely move, I managed to crawl over to a pile of rubbish and broken tools and I could hear the voice coming from within it.
I dug into the rubbish pile with my hand and grasped my claws on something. I pulled my hand out of the pile and found an audio recorder.
I turned it off and crawled over to a nearby old mattress and climbed onto it to rest.
Just crawling about left me gasping in exhaustion, I assumed that my transformation was the cause of my fatigue and my only choice right now was to rest and regain my strength.
As I laid there, I turned the recorder over in my hand and written on the side of it was ‘Property of Darius Rian’.

‘Darius? Why would this be down here?’ I wondered

I reset the audio recorder to the beginning and pressed play.

April 3rd… Well I’ve finally done it, I’ve made a successful splicing experiment and I have successfully transformed a human DNA sample into cat DNA.

I’m so excited about this, finally I have proof that my splicing virus works, I don’t have the funding to do this on a full body scale yet. The materials and equipment needed to perform such a transformation are quite expensive after all, but with proof that it does work I can certainly find someone willing to fund my research.

Being a palaeontologist, I’ve had a strong desire to bring extinct creatures back to life. For so long I’ve wanted to see them with my own eyes and finally I have a way to do so.
I remember when I tried to use cloning at first, I tried to create an artificial surrogate but it failed and so I turned to other, more unconventional means.
I worked feverishly for weeks trying to find a way, and then I came up with an idea.

I admit, when I first considered splicing DNA in such a way, it was a somewhat radical idea.

I could apply this to a canine or a cat, but then I thought “what better way is there to study prehistoric creatures, then becoming one” My next task is to go to the Science Centre and obtain a sample of dinosaur DNA that they keep frozen in the archives.

I paused the recording a moment.

“Darius…he was the one who started this!?” I was very concerned by this revelation but I resumed the playback and listened carefully.

April 5th… I can’t believe they refused my request! I showed them my research and the proof that it works, but they still said no! How could they just dismiss me like that…*sigh*…Well it seems that my research is going to have to wait for another day.

“They refused his request?” I wondered why.

April 6th… Today, an old colleague of mine at the university contacted me. Doctor Trask asked me to examine a creature’s remains. Apparently some big supermarket company began digging on a protected site without telling anyone, they were probably trying to get away with it by saying-

“Whoops! Oh well we’ve already started so we might as well finish the job”
But not this time, they’ve caused quite a lot of trouble with this and a monetary fine is the least of their problems from what I heard, but I wonder what they have found…

‘A creature’s remains? Could it have been a…..’

April…*gulp* April 6th continued… I’m looking at what I believe… is a dragon, I can’t believe my eyes. The strange thing, is it’s body is encased in some sort of crystal, but the crystal has been broken (probably by the construction vehicles when they started digging) and now the crystal covers only half of it’s lower body.
It’s definitely dead, but it’s body is in perfect condition, as if it had just recently died.
Hold on... ah…I’m holding a blue scale, it’s magnificent. I need to get my equipment and get a DNA sample of this thing; this could be the greatest discovery of all time!

‘Trask was his friend!? So he found the dragon too? But what was it doing there?’

April 7th… Something is very wrong. I ran back to my car yesterday to get my equipment but when I got back to the site a few minutes later…The dragon was gone.
I asked around as to where the body had gone, but they all said the same thing

“What body?” I left the site soon after and headed home.

I’m holding the blue scale I took from the dragon, in my hand right now. This is proof that it wasn’t just a figment of my imagination! Someone is hiding the truth… But what can I do now?

April 8th ….. I had an unusual run in with a young woman today in my lab at the university. While I was using my equipment to analyse the dragon scale, I was also searching for any leads on the dragon’s disappearance as well. But then, this woman entered and approached me in the lab, she said something like-

“Don’t dig any further, some things are meant to remain secret” and then she suddenly left.

I was about to continue my work when the computer suddenly broke down and the scale was gone.
I went after her but she had vanished. I’m smart enough to know that someone is trying to undermine my search and I will continue on.

April 9th….. Trask came to see me today and I couldn’t believe what he told me. It seems that he managed to get some of his colleagues to extract blood samples just before the body vanished.
He then offered to fund my research to use the blood samples to create a living dragon.

Trask was aware of my experimental research and I guess my project presented him with the perfect opportunity. The thought of using my research to prove the existence of dragons was too good to pass up. I can’t wait to get started and show those ignorant buffoons who refused me before that I was right all along, that my invention does work!

April 15th …. It’s taken nearly a week but it’s finally ready, I have chosen to make the first test on myself, I will not ask others to risk themselves if anything goes wrong, though I am certain it will not. Before I try using the Dragon DNA I will try using cat DNA first.
We don’t have much Dragon blood to work with so I want this to be perfected.
I’m injecting the viral serum now… ow!... Ah! There we go, now in order to accelerate the serum’s mutagenic properties I must send a burst of electricity into my body. Otherwise I’ll be waiting for close to three hours before anything happens. It has to be a controlled burst otherwise it can cause unexpected mutations.

‘So he willingly used it on himself first, I guess I understand what happened now, when that guard tazered me' I thought, remembering the security guard from before.

April 15th continued… its working! I’ve already grown a pair of black furry ears and a tail (which felt really weird when it grew out) I’ve got fur growing out all over my body and now... Whoa... *gasp*… It’s happening again…

April 15th continued… I’ve grown some feline claws. My human features are vanishing and I’m getting shorter, heh! My clothes are getting slack and for some reason I find myself enjoying this unusual experience.

April 16th … it’s nearly done, I’m still standing upright but I’m the size of a full grown cat now. It’s time to reverse the transformation. Unfortunately I haven’t yet found a way to reverse it once the transformation is complete.

The reversal process is actually quite simple, the virus still in my system is feeding off of the electricity in my body, so I simply cancel out the electricity using a focused electromagnetic pulse and my original human DNA reasserts itself though my own human immune system, but it is going to take a few days by my calculations. Now... damn it… I can’t hit the stop button on this recorder properly with these paws!

‘An Electromagnetic pulse? I assume there must be a machine in this facility capable of creating one’

April 16th! I’ve been double crossed! My transformation was completed nearly ten minutes ago… The virus as completed it's function and has be absorbed into my immune system, I’m stuck like this! but it doesn’t matter now.
Trask has been playing me from the beginning! I think his true goal is to create dragons for bio-weapon purposes.
They’ve already started experimenting on other people, prisoners, refugees, psychopaths... anyone who won't be missed.

but they are having difficulty since I managed to wipe the main hard drive of all previously recorded data and I also destroyed most of the dragon blood samples.
Unfortunately they still have a little Dragon DNA left, but at least I’ve slowed them down.
It’s only a matter of time before they find me… to whom ever finds this… This facility must be destroyed, if they succeed in creating another dragon they’ll have all they DNA they need to create more, they must be…*click*

The recording came to an end. Someone must have found this and dumped it down here were no one would find it
Despite Darius’ invention being the cause of all this, I didn’t blame him for what has already happened here. He was as much of a victim of this mad experiment as I was.

I felt strong enough to move after laying there listening to the audio recorder and I got up. I took a good look around this time and all around me was junk and rubbish and things I didn't want to know what they were.
The lighting in this place was very poor and I couldn’t see any apparent means of exit, but as if the situation couldn’t get any more difficult I could feel another change coming.
This time however I found a large slightly broken mirror among a pile of debris and watched as the new change took effect.

My neck felt hot and ached a little. Suddenly my shoulders grew a layer of dark blue plate scales and hardened like the others on my body. My new wings also grew in size and I considered that perhaps now I might be capable of flight.
The heat in my neck pushed up and my neck began to grow longer. I watched, mesmerised by my reflection's transformation and then came a click from inside my neck.
My neck column was growing extra joints, clicking with each new section and soon the heat died away and I breathed deeply.
I looked again at my reflection and I felt almost excited, I also noticed that my hair had grown a little longer too.
It was almost done… I was nearly a fully realised dragon.
But then I felt weak again and collapsed to the floor, I laid there staring at the trap door ceiling and soon I fell asleep.

To be continued

Description

Virgil

Part 7: Lost Control

I sighed in relief as Darius made it safely into the air vent and I returned my attention to the huge spider I had just thrown across the room.

Suddenly the spider let out a deafening screech that forced me to cover my ears. The monster paused the horrible noise a moment to take a breath and began screeching again.
I watched confused as it continued to make such a painful noise and it made no attempt to attack me during this.

‘Why is it screeching like that? Why has it stopped attacking!?’ I wondered in pain as the noise made my ears ache.

I couldn’t stand it any more. My ear drums felt like they were going to burst and so I jumped into the air and came down hard on the spider’s back.

The monster stopped screeching instantly and it shook about violently trying to shake me off. I won’t deny that I was quite disgusted just touching the Spider’s hairy abdomen shell, but I quickly rammed my claws into its sback and held on tight.
The spider continued to shake about until it suddenly stopped moving. It then lowered itself to the ground and before I realised what it was doing, it jumped, launching high into air and smashed me into the ceiling.

The tarantula fell gracefully back to the ground while I remained embedded in the smashed concrete of the ceiling. I wasn’t badly hurt, simply dazed. But then the concrete gave away and I fell back to the ground with a thud.
A few seconds later a pile of debris collapsed onto me and buried me.

I could hear Trask above, laughing as a laid there underneath the rubble, but I pushed my way out non-the worse for wear.

As I emerged from the rubble however, a strange sensation fell over me, like an outer body experience and my will and control seemed to fail me.

I lost control of myself and I roared with such ferocity that no human could mimic.
The spider backed away in fear, but then I could hear something coming.
I watched as about a dozen smaller spiders (each about half the size of the large one) emerged from the broken doorway.

I could only guess that they had come because of the noise the larger one had made earlier.

I wanted to run but I couldn’t. Instead, I growled and charged at the large spider.
Any of the small spiders that got in my way, I easily knocked aside.

I grabbed the giant spider’s two front legs and with a swift jerk, I ripped them off with ease. The spider screeched louder than ever in pain and staggered back clumsily. It’s green blood splattered across the floor from the messy stumps of what used to be its forelegs. I wanted to stop my attack but I couldn’t.
The Spider clearly had no intention of fighting back now, I wanted to leave it alone but instead I moved closer.

I slowly walked up to the giant tarantula as it backed itself into a wall. The other spiders didn’t seem to know what to do and didn’t attempt to intervene. I gave up trying to regain control of myself and relinquished my will to this monster inside me.
I could do nothing but watch as I took a deep breath and released a wave of fire from my mouth.

The spider was engulfed in flames and shook about madly trying to extinguish the fire spreading across it’s body, but my continued barrage of flame prevented it.

Soon it collapsed to the ground still burning, it let out one final, painful screech and it was dead. The fire had gone out and an unusual burnt smell hung in the air. The smaller spiders scattered in fear as I turned to face them, they ran out of the hall as fast as they could, leaving me alone with the charred remains of the giant spider, Trask however watched in surprise and then smiled darkly.

“Wonderful, wonderful!” he yelled maniacally, his voice snapped me back to my senses and I gazed at the burning corpse of the giant spider I had just mercilessly killed.

I breathed deeply as I realised what I had just done. I didn’t want to kill that creature but my body seemed to act of it’s own volition.
I suddenly fell to my knees in exhaustion and couldn’t seem to get back up.

“You have truly surpassed all expectations” Trask said very pleased “I can barely wait to test your abilities further, but unfortunately, we must wait until your transformation progresses to its finality. I’ll put you somewhere safe until then!” as he finished I felt a rush of air blowing around me and then the ground suddenly gave way.

I realised at that moment what this huge hall was for, it was some kind of disposal chamber and I had been standing on a trap door this whole time.
The spider corpse and the broken rubble fell down into the hole that had just opened, but I managed to grab the edge of the trapdoor before I could fall down too.
I hung on but I was too weak. I felt my grip loosen and then I fell into the darkness below. The trapdoor began to close and I lost consciousness.

“A dragon, I can’t believe...my eyes”

I awoke to a voice and I was laying face down on a pile of junk and debris. I looked around and I appeared to be in some kind of dimly lit underground junk yard.

“I couldn’t wait to get started” I could hear the voice again and it sounded familiar.

As I tried to get up I stumbled and collapsed to the ground. I felt so weak that I could barely move, I managed to crawl over to a pile of rubbish and broken tools and I could hear the voice coming from within it.
I dug into the rubbish pile with my hand and grasped my claws on something. I pulled my hand out of the pile and found an audio recorder.
I turned it off and crawled over to a nearby old mattress and climbed onto it to rest.
Just crawling about left me gasping in exhaustion, I assumed that my transformation was the cause of my fatigue and my only choice right now was to rest and regain my strength.
As I laid there, I turned the recorder over in my hand and written on the side of it was ‘Property of Darius Rian’.

‘Darius? Why would this be down here?’ I wondered

I reset the audio recorder to the beginning and pressed play.

April 3rd… Well I’ve finally done it, I’ve made a successful splicing experiment and I have successfully transformed a human DNA sample into cat DNA.

I’m so excited about this, finally I have proof that my splicing virus works, I don’t have the funding to do this on a full body scale yet. The materials and equipment needed to perform such a transformation are quite expensive after all, but with proof that it does work I can certainly find someone willing to fund my research.

Being a palaeontologist, I’ve had a strong desire to bring extinct creatures back to life. For so long I’ve wanted to see them with my own eyes and finally I have a way to do so.
I remember when I tried to use cloning at first, I tried to create an artificial surrogate but it failed and so I turned to other, more unconventional means.
I worked feverishly for weeks trying to find a way, and then I came up with an idea.

I admit, when I first considered splicing DNA in such a way, it was a somewhat radical idea.

I could apply this to a canine or a cat, but then I thought “what better way is there to study prehistoric creatures, then becoming one” My next task is to go to the Science Centre and obtain a sample of dinosaur DNA that they keep frozen in the archives.

I paused the recording a moment.

“Darius…he was the one who started this!?” I was very concerned by this revelation but I resumed the playback and listened carefully.

April 5th… I can’t believe they refused my request! I showed them my research and the proof that it works, but they still said no! How could they just dismiss me like that…*sigh*…Well it seems that my research is going to have to wait for another day.

“They refused his request?” I wondered why.

April 6th… Today, an old colleague of mine at the university contacted me. Doctor Trask asked me to examine a creature’s remains. Apparently some big supermarket company began digging on a protected site without telling anyone, they were probably trying to get away with it by saying-

“Whoops! Oh well we’ve already started so we might as well finish the job”
But not this time, they’ve caused quite a lot of trouble with this and a monetary fine is the least of their problems from what I heard, but I wonder what they have found…

‘A creature’s remains? Could it have been a…..’

April…*gulp* April 6th continued… I’m looking at what I believe… is a dragon, I can’t believe my eyes. The strange thing, is it’s body is encased in some sort of crystal, but the crystal has been broken (probably by the construction vehicles when they started digging) and now the crystal covers only half of it’s lower body.
It’s definitely dead, but it’s body is in perfect condition, as if it had just recently died.
Hold on... ah…I’m holding a blue scale, it’s magnificent. I need to get my equipment and get a DNA sample of this thing; this could be the greatest discovery of all time!

‘Trask was his friend!? So he found the dragon too? But what was it doing there?’

April 7th… Something is very wrong. I ran back to my car yesterday to get my equipment but when I got back to the site a few minutes later…The dragon was gone.
I asked around as to where the body had gone, but they all said the same thing

“What body?” I left the site soon after and headed home.

I’m holding the blue scale I took from the dragon, in my hand right now. This is proof that it wasn’t just a figment of my imagination! Someone is hiding the truth… But what can I do now?

April 8th ….. I had an unusual run in with a young woman today in my lab at the university. While I was using my equipment to analyse the dragon scale, I was also searching for any leads on the dragon’s disappearance as well. But then, this woman entered and approached me in the lab, she said something like-

“Don’t dig any further, some things are meant to remain secret” and then she suddenly left.

I was about to continue my work when the computer suddenly broke down and the scale was gone.
I went after her but she had vanished. I’m smart enough to know that someone is trying to undermine my search and I will continue on.

April 9th….. Trask came to see me today and I couldn’t believe what he told me. It seems that he managed to get some of his colleagues to extract blood samples just before the body vanished.
He then offered to fund my research to use the blood samples to create a living dragon.

Trask was aware of my experimental research and I guess my project presented him with the perfect opportunity. The thought of using my research to prove the existence of dragons was too good to pass up. I can’t wait to get started and show those ignorant buffoons who refused me before that I was right all along, that my invention does work!

April 15th …. It’s taken nearly a week but it’s finally ready, I have chosen to make the first test on myself, I will not ask others to risk themselves if anything goes wrong, though I am certain it will not. Before I try using the Dragon DNA I will try using cat DNA first.
We don’t have much Dragon blood to work with so I want this to be perfected.
I’m injecting the viral serum now… ow!... Ah! There we go, now in order to accelerate the serum’s mutagenic properties I must send a burst of electricity into my body. Otherwise I’ll be waiting for close to three hours before anything happens. It has to be a controlled burst otherwise it can cause unexpected mutations.

‘So he willingly used it on himself first, I guess I understand what happened now, when that guard tazered me' I thought, remembering the security guard from before.

April 15th continued… its working! I’ve already grown a pair of black furry ears and a tail (which felt really weird when it grew out) I’ve got fur growing out all over my body and now... Whoa... *gasp*… It’s happening again…

April 15th continued… I’ve grown some feline claws. My human features are vanishing and I’m getting shorter, heh! My clothes are getting slack and for some reason I find myself enjoying this unusual experience.

April 16th … it’s nearly done, I’m still standing upright but I’m the size of a full grown cat now. It’s time to reverse the transformation. Unfortunately I haven’t yet found a way to reverse it once the transformation is complete.

The reversal process is actually quite simple, the virus still in my system is feeding off of the electricity in my body, so I simply cancel out the electricity using a focused electromagnetic pulse and my original human DNA reasserts itself though my own human immune system, but it is going to take a few days by my calculations. Now... damn it… I can’t hit the stop button on this recorder properly with these paws!

‘An Electromagnetic pulse? I assume there must be a machine in this facility capable of creating one’

April 16th! I’ve been double crossed! My transformation was completed nearly ten minutes ago… The virus as completed it's function and has be absorbed into my immune system, I’m stuck like this! but it doesn’t matter now.
Trask has been playing me from the beginning! I think his true goal is to create dragons for bio-weapon purposes.
They’ve already started experimenting on other people, prisoners, refugees, psychopaths... anyone who won't be missed.

but they are having difficulty since I managed to wipe the main hard drive of all previously recorded data and I also destroyed most of the dragon blood samples.
Unfortunately they still have a little Dragon DNA left, but at least I’ve slowed them down.
It’s only a matter of time before they find me… to whom ever finds this… This facility must be destroyed, if they succeed in creating another dragon they’ll have all they DNA they need to create more, they must be…*click*

The recording came to an end. Someone must have found this and dumped it down here were no one would find it
Despite Darius’ invention being the cause of all this, I didn’t blame him for what has already happened here. He was as much of a victim of this mad experiment as I was.

I felt strong enough to move after laying there listening to the audio recorder and I got up. I took a good look around this time and all around me was junk and rubbish and things I didn't want to know what they were.
The lighting in this place was very poor and I couldn’t see any apparent means of exit, but as if the situation couldn’t get any more difficult I could feel another change coming.
This time however I found a large slightly broken mirror among a pile of debris and watched as the new change took effect.

My neck felt hot and ached a little. Suddenly my shoulders grew a layer of dark blue plate scales and hardened like the others on my body. My new wings also grew in size and I considered that perhaps now I might be capable of flight.
The heat in my neck pushed up and my neck began to grow longer. I watched, mesmerised by my reflection's transformation and then came a click from inside my neck.
My neck column was growing extra joints, clicking with each new section and soon the heat died away and I breathed deeply.
I looked again at my reflection and I felt almost excited, I also noticed that my hair had grown a little longer too.
It was almost done… I was nearly a fully realised dragon.
But then I felt weak again and collapsed to the floor, I laid there staring at the trap door ceiling and soon I fell asleep.

To be continued