~ TWO YEARS AGO ~
One lunge was all he needed to take them.
One step.
The hybrid crackled fearlessly, narrowing both orange eyes past the male's shoulder and toward the blond girl hiding behind him.
You're with them... and you'll die because of-!
A sudden screech stilled the air around them, and immediately he paused, lifting his bony head to the rafters to his right. He couldn't see anything for a moment, not until a speckled white flash of energy split the clouds into two. And, when the creature finally came into sight, Ripper's heart sank.
Blue.
No. She's not a part of this.
"What are you-"
"Get away from HIM!" she screamed, lunging right at the hybrid's back. Her weight sharply pushed against the panes of broken glass, bending them out of form until they snapped like rubber. The ground itself gave way, dropping the two creatures from the fight.
And into mid-air.
Time slowed for both of them. The indoraptor and the velociraptor twisted in the air like slithering snakes on a wire, teeth biting scales and talons raking flesh. But the time only lasted so long before reality kicked in.
And as soon as the first horn slid through his flesh, Ripper's eyes bulged, and his stomach writhed with sudden horror.
N-No...
Blue purposely aimed his body directly at the skull, shoving him down by her talons right before he made impact. Both pieces of ivory sharply rammed into his body, slashing through his organs and out the other end with a blood-curdling crunch. Blood suddenly splattered from the strike, turning the perfectly white surface into a mess of red.
A fireball of pain exploded from both ends.
And Ripper let out a painful scream. A wretched and horrible bellow into the night that only lasted a few seconds.
Only then did his body fail him, and he slumped against the horns.
Satisfied with her kill, Blue hobbled off of Ripper's side, landing with a shaky thump upon the floor, and announced her victory. She turned back only once, eying Ripper for a moment, as if considering what she did. She could see the terror in his eyes, knowing that Death was coming for him.
But all she did was snort. And rush away.
"B-Blue..." the hybrid croaked weakly, tears spilling from his eyes. He tried to inhale another breath, but only took in blood. He tried to wheeze, but his throat was drowning in it. Trying desperately to hold on, Ripper eyed the space where the raptor once stood. He attempted to look up, to sound his anger out one last time.
But he couldn't.
The pain became too great, and the mighty hybrid began to give into his injuries. He succumbed to it all -- his failure, his loss, his death -- everything. Both eyes began staring lifelessly ahead at the opened doorway, and a single whimper escaped his maw. The door was opened just for him, a single sign of the promises he could've taken.
Such promises became the very lie of his existence. There was no freedom for the ones made by man. No happiness for the ones who are born in the dark.
Only Death remains here... for all their sakes. He wished it wouldn't be that way...
He wished for a second chance... to show them why.
If only they could understand. But nobody would, for him and his kin.
Nobody knew that they were being used...
The last thing Ripper saw was a strange white silhouette moving toward him. It looked like his maker, approaching him with open arms. But as it shifted and moved, the creature began to form into something odd.
Something... he strangely knew. But he never had time to see what it was.
He twitched once more, a drizzle of blood escaping his opened jaws. Both eyes glazed over...
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"Subject is still stable... amnesia level dropping to sixty percent..."
"No movement yet..."
"Fifty percent... forty-five..."
"Drop it to ten, will you? I have to take this call."
"Aye, dropping to ten. Standby."
Ripper awoke floating in nothingness. His predatory eyes were rounded outward, unable to heed the smallest sliver of light that entered his iris. He couldn't speak -- something had clamped his maw shut. Nor could he move.
And his nostrils... they were filled with a liquid far thicker than blood. The breaths that pushed into his lungs came from a small white tube that had cut into his throat, restricting him from any chance at using his snout.
No smell. No taste. No voice. No feeling.
Was I dead?
Ripper began to wonder, trying his best to look around. Nothing seemed to enrapture him in open arms like he was promised. There was no blue skies here, no endless forest, no pile of food, no starlight -- nothing. And despite the sensationless pulses booming within his body he couldn't help but deny every intuition that he was not dead. It couldn't be possible... could it?
"Sedated and alive, yes," a muffled male voice suddenly spoke, the idle ripple of his voice perhaps tied to a phone. Then came a moment of silence.
"No, no, he doesn't know. We'll give him the good news later. You-"
Pause.
"Y-Yes sir. No trace."
Another pause.
"We're still in the clear to proceed, sir?"
A third pause. Then the shadow nodded.
"Understood. Thank you."
One final pause flew by before he spoke again.
"You can start the test."
A shuffle of noises echoed the region outside of his vision, alerting Ripper to the right and left of himself. He didn't fight whatever was happening -- he couldn't even if he tried. Confusion won him and his mind over, no matter how hard they tried ignoring it. But a sound to his left said otherwise: like an echo of whales, a strange device started sending soft beeps to muddle with his brain. Sounds that sent chills down his spine, and made his claws clench in discomfort.
"Rrrr..."
He winced at the sound, his snout tightening against the muzzle in fright, tail starting to spasm in fits of protest. The noise grew worse and worse, louder in pitch and more violent in tone. No longer did the roaring inferno of his blood become ambient, now all he heard was this, and this alone.
A neverending scream.
Ripper's hisses turned to whimpers, his brain beginning to lose control of how much it could foster. And he could do nothing but let it happen.
S-Stop! He heard his mind and maw shriek, claws jerking into the Velcro holding them down. Agggh!
Ripper's eardrums hurt like hellfire. It was as if his mind was being scrambled by a knife, the pitches splitting his skull and breaking his instincts into two. He wanted to answer the call with his own roar, to beg for them to stop. Much to his surprise, the feeling did disperse. The pain receded like a midnight tide.
Then came the silence.
Ripper's body quaked. His tail churned around the cold see-through liquid, teeth clamped tight to the pink gums of his underlying jaws. He didn't know what to do. Neither part of him did.
"Going test two," said a human voice. And the sound returned again.
Ripper hadn't time to prepare. He squeezed his jaws hard enough to rupture his fangs once it hit, feeling a warmth like blood filling his earhole. Whimpers and whines spilled from his chest just as the tears began to flow. Even his tail jerked and coiled inward, unable to take the scream any longer.
And then the pitch struck gold. A single sound made his whole body seize up, eyes dilating in an instant, and a blood hungry growl echoing within his soul. He only had a moment before the world went black, losing consciousness in an instant and returning just the same, now back in control.
Something had happened. He was certain of it.
His heart was quaking now. Eyes still squeezed shut, his quills were rattling uncontrollably, and lungs constricting to and fro as if adrenaline had hit in that very instant. Whatever they did hurt him, turning back a side of his heart that he hadn't felt since he died. It scared him, enough to finally snap his attention out of wonderland and make the notion clear.
I'm in hell.
"Three-thousand... sixty-seven Hertz..." came an echo through the ringing of his ears. "...as high... we can go..."
"And low?"
"Two-thousand, eight-hundred..."
Ripper tried to fight through the holdings, still whimpering to the ringing of his eardrums. His mind had gone mute, the sound of death now overwhelming every thought he ever had. Now he was more helpless than a hatchling on the street.
And then came a third test.
The anguish never ended. Over and over, firing blares of noise and pain shot into Ripper's skull, breaking him from the inside out. He could do nothing but squeal and cry, the chamber's liquid muting him indefinitely.
Why are they hurting me?!
Eventually, something slithered into his body the moment he began to weep, pushing into his veins faster than he could react. The pulsing in his body slowed, a sleepy sensation coasting over his mind and urging him to sleep. He tried to fight it -- it never seemed to work. And with a growl of fear, Ripper's eyes went dim and his body fell limp, too worn to go on.
Everything faded to black.
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Ripper groaned. He felt like he had run to the moon and back.
The obsidian hybrid now found himself splayed out across the beachside of a roaring river, his scales (once flushed from his victories) now strewn with wounds and bruises that seemed to come from nowhere. Claws meant to kill humans now bore a different stench; a raptor-like scent now stained each finger and bone. Ripper examined it for a moment, still confused by his return to the world, and sniffed his claws.
It smelled like him. More feminine if anything. Same size, same strength. Sweet, but churning of sorrow.
That alone made his mind wander again.
What happened to me?
He slowly rose, stumbling across the pebbles and rocks beneath him, and winced. His head rang like a bell to the soft tunes of nature, and his jaws, legs, and tail throbbed with a pain, like death. Ripper collapsed twice before finding his ground, and unsteadily trekked forward -- to where, not even he knew. Everything was cramping. Everything was hurting. And nothing was making sense.
Where am I?
That is, until his claws grazed over a metal green chip in the sand.
Ripper's stomach lurched. There was something eerie about finding something human-made hidden in the woods, something that doesn't belong. Not just because of scents or looks, but out of pure suspicions. It made his throat growl in concern.
And interest.
He took extra precaution in collecting the out-of-the-ordinary shape; it was soft enough to crush if he so willed it. It spurted and groaned like a dying radio -- the waters of the river had damaged it's inners to the point of no return. He knew, as per all things human and human-made, not everything is favorable under Nature's wrath.
Not even him.
Flipping it on the other side, Ripper caught the appearance of a strange logo marked beneath a dimly lit green light: three gray circles connected to a target symbol at its center. Part of him agreed to think this was INGEN's doing.
It would make sense -- Wu was still out there, he was a weapon, and no human would ignore three-million dollars lying dead at their feet.
But this... this was far from normal.
So he lifted the claw to the space between his skull and neck, noticing marks of many now drawn around his earhole. It seemed that, even in his blackouts, some part of him was tearing at the skin to remove the device. And only now did it actually work.
And he was glad it did.
Something suddenly shifted ahead of him, winning his attention to the space ahead of the river into the shadow of the woods. He tried to ignore it, but it happened again, twice in fact. Ripper growled, a soft rippling noise drifting from his maw to heed to the woods. He hadn't used echo-location in quite some time, and only now did he see a need for it. And, when the vibrations returned, Ripper's eyes dilated in shock.
Humans.
Humans everywhere.
They-
Without warning, a gunshot sounded, followed by a stabbing pain that cracked the left side of his body. Ripper let out a roar of pain, fumbling backward into the beach of the river as a warmth spilled from his side. He took one second to look upon his flank: something was lodged into his scales, but it didn't look ordinary. INGEN used real guns with metallic bullets. Whatever struck him looked longer and fluffier -- like a flying syringe.
Even that was enough to put him on edge.
KILL THEM!
Another shot sounded -- Ripper ducked as the bullet whizzed above him, and scrambled forward, alerting the seven humans hiding beneath the foliage of the forest. Their confidence turned to panic, jaws dropping and eyes bulging as prey turned predator. Still they shot on, their remaining bullets only skimming the surface of Ripper's flesh. The hybrid sprinted faster, snarling with hate and pounced-
BOOM!
Something sonic struck from his blind side. The hybrid let out a squeal, scrambling to a stop just inches from his kill, and wailing into the ground. His head shook back and forth, the siren growing louder and louder until his ears began to burst. Too pained to fight it, Ripper crashed into the rocks with a deathly thud.
Motionless. Only the dripping blood from Ripper's ear offered any sign of life.
The speaker-like weapon lowered slowly from the shoulder of the glassed male with a COVID mask, a scowl of annoyance his only response to it all. He walked to Ripper slowly, noticing the hybrid's eyes slowly open to glare upon him. But it was blurry, he couldn't make out the whole person especially with the white cloth covering his chin and maw. Ripper's injury wasn't lethal, but whatever he was struck with at the start very well turned his adrenaline down. He snorted and huffed, whining as the male pressed a hand onto Ripper's snout, a blankness crossing over his face.
"Did it break?" He heard the figure speak in a muffle. Out came an answer:
"Water got into the wiring."
"Call the hub to make a new one," he grunted through the cloth, standing back up as Ripper's eyes sealed away. "We're running out of time."
"There's something else," the same male grunted as the world started to fade. "Your other hybrid. It was spotted... in Berkeley."
"Then send a team there to handle it. And reach out to Jameson for a status update. I'm not going to take any more risks with this..."
Everything went quiet again.
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Blink knew something was wrong the moment he first saw Ripper.
It wasn't just his erratic fighting style, his hunger for hybrid blood, or the fact that his eyes were dilated consistently, but because he knew Ripper was dead.
And he knew Ripper had been taken.
It was no question that the emptiness on those horns wasn't due to his escape. Those wounds were lethal, and not even luck could spare an escapee from bleeding out on the floors of Lockwood Mansion. But seeing him that night at INGEN -- unscathed, unfocused, and unhinged... it shot a hole through his heart.
It scared him.
But that wasn't all. Ripper didn't seem to have a care over Blink: he wanted Seven and Seven alone. Was it because they were the same species? Or because she was different? No matter the reasoning, there was no question that he had marked her for death. And, if he couldn't protect her, what good would he be to her life?
Or for anything for that matter.
Sigh. Now he had to think of Seven.
Truth be told, Blink was keeping his feelings secret. He wanted her to be like him. To see the world that he saw it to be. To help him stop the plagues that have rotted his kin for nearly half a decade, and not serve as the pet to a human he feared she barely even knew.
And, deep down, he wanted to be with her when it all ended.
Scent was everything to Blink, and nevermore had he trained his snout to focus solely on Seven's perfume. Whether near or far he'd always find her, and it made his heart quiver with joy to know that she was okay. And seeing her happy made him happy. Seeing her purr made him purr, too.
He didn't think hybrids were capable of love. No hybrid had ever mated, it didn't seem possible if you were designed for one thing only. But he wanted to join her. He wanted to love her. To hold her and have something more precious to protect than just himself and his sanity. She was the first creature who ever gave him a chance, not like his sister or those who tried killing him for the past six years. It gave him a warming feeling inside to watch her grow, and the heat transpired from snout to tail tip, insinuating his body like livewire.
But everything seemed to spiral downhill the second she changed. Through the arguments and the fighting and the bursts of sorrow, she became more distant to him. Seven was angry, hurt, too afraid to look on the bright side. And with a killer on her trail, she was more vulnerable than ever.
A hybrid longing for man being chased by a hybrid changed by man.
And Blink was the only thing in between it all.
He knew fate wouldn't spare either one of them. Regardless of how far they go, Ripper would always chase them. Even if they did make it through the highway, who would stop a monster from slashing through every human and alerting INGEN of their whereabouts? And, even if by some miracle none of this would happen, they would be forced to fight and someone would die.
Blink knew the hybrid well; Ripper was his offspring after all. His successor. Killing him would contradict everything he stood for. He just needed to wake him up. To protect Seven.
To give her what she wanted deep down inside, even while his mind screamed to refuse.
"Keep going!" Blink called to Seven on the highway. "I'm right behind you!"
And he skidded to a halt.
Rounding back one lane, Blink crossed paths into Ripper's run, the two hybrids crash-landing beyond the second-to-last lane in a fury of scales. Both predators slashed and jabbed at one another, skinning flesh and exchanging blood. Only after the sudden honk of an incoming truck ahead of them did Blink finally sink his fangs into Ripper's neck, trapping the vicious hybrid in his clutches. He knew he didn't have time to get across -- even if he tried it would be for nothing. So his eyes flashed to the green device still holding firm on Ripper's earhole; he drew a claw up and ripped his talons straight through his cheekbone, breaking the chip.
The hybrid's dilated eyes widened, a gasp of pain leaving his jaws as the siren within his head vanished. Out of breath, and out of thought, Ripper only had a second to process what happened before noticing Blink holding him in a death grip and the truck squealing behind him. His eyes flashed, head whirling up to the Scopios Rex to force out six eerie words:
"D-Don't let them t-take you, too..."
Blink's eyes widened. The bright light behind them magnified, and Blink coiled quickly around Ripper, squeezing his eyes shut. A shockwave struck his flank, rocking his body from tip to tail, and shattering his spine in an instant. Blink didn't have any time to scream, cry, or even prepare for it. He wished he could see Seven one more time, just in case. But he was gone the moment the vehicle struck.
And he never heard his body hit the ground.
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"No, no, no-!" I bit into his scruff and shook him. "Blink, wake up!"
He didn't stir.
"Stop scaring me, get up!" I rattled his back even harder, trying to fight back tears. "Get up, Blink!"
Nothing.
"Y-You're okay, r-right?" I choked, nudging him over and over as shock took over. "Y-You're okay... p-please, wake up..."
Ripper let out a gag of pain, blood spurting from his maw and staining the asphalt beneath him. His vision was just as damaged as his bones were, only the soft ambient glow of a broken truck gave him promise to life. From there, everything began to fall into focus -- from the empty sky above, to the glass shards making his scales, to the strange albino creature that stood ahead of him.
And the limp carnivore beneath my snout. The creature that saved him.
"Blink?!" I whimpered, shaking my head. "Blink, please-"
A siren-like sound blared over the silence, me of a coming danger. I whimpered even louder, trying to drag Blink's body back with me into the town ahead. But it was pointless. I knew that by heart.
Tears burst to my eyes the more I tried to wake Blink up, feeling a shallow coldness take form beneath his scales. It was a universal sign I didn't want to accept... but it was true.
He was gone. I had to go.
I heard noises echo from behind and snarled, watching the driver of the truck weakly tumble from his seat, blood smeared across his face from a broken nose. He drew away a few more inches before his eyes sunk into my own, his own maw dropping in shock. Folding through the growing tears and snot, my mind began to grin.
You can kill him if you want.
Even if I did... What good will that do for me?
You'd feel better.
Another siren went loose, and I turned my head back to Blink in mourning. A fateful sigh drifted from my maw as I drew close to his snout, nuzzling the blunt end slowly, before licking his cheek twice.
"I'm so s-sorry..."
Just as the California Police rushed in, I dove into the thickets, whimpering helplessly through the small little forest within the town walls. Collapsing just short of a street, my body rounding back to the nearest tree to collapse upon.
And I started to cry.