Song to listen to: Ninth Wave
Strong white fluorescent lights stream in rainbow like beams from long bulbs set in a grid like pattern in the ceiling, there is undergrowth in my enclosure and I can smell that the plastic plants giving off a smell from the constant light constant light, what used to be a hint from when I was smaller, is now another presence in the room. A human taps the glass window, thick and with small scratches from when I was younger and more violent. I sigh and arch my neck backward to look at them, they lift an unappealing looking piece of bloody meat.
The meat would've looked tasty, if I were still an inch or two smaller then I am. For whatever reason, the dead meat no longer made my mouth water. It's been so long since I've eaten, I flex my neck back into the position it was in before the human had attempted to temp me with the food.
"It doesn't make sense." They say to their... colleague, "It was eating fine just last month, what changed?"
A tablet is sifted through, notes on my every breath and behavior, the unending lights make it easier for them to study me at every angle, and the humans switch off in shifts to watch me.
Before I was capable of thought, this had once bothered me, but I'm mostly able to ignore them now.
"Maybe it's stumach works more like an alligator's? It could be that zed no longer needs to eat weekly, like when it stopped eating daily, and hourly before that?" Hair shifting over what I assume is white fabric,
"But Zed looks hungry, it's eyes still have that look." Nails on a scalp, scraping through hair. "Keep working on it." A hand subtly smacks to the owner's hip, feet shift as they continue to stare.
I stretch out my arms and stare at my claws, I consider chewing on them to shorten them, then considered chewing on the humans instead. I'm taken by surprise when my stomach twists hungrily. I lurch up to lean on one of my arms, and eye the humans.
I see it, the blood in their throats, in their hands, the fresh nutrients pumping into their muscles, their cells. They must smell so good.
Without conscious thought, I had stood on all fours and have taken a few steps towards them. The black haired one looks at his colleague nervously with wide brown eyes. He's a little larger than the aged brown haired female beside him, her hair dyed a bright blonde, the chemical treated hair was a little bit of a dietary turn off. The male looked all natural, if not a little plain, or so his female colleagues had thought.
"I don't like the way zed's looking at me, it's almost like, it wants to eat me..?"
The female jots down the note, 'Possible food source for subject: humans' and pushes on of the buttons on the thin counter on her side of the window. I'm mesmerized on the muscles and tendons as they pull and contact over his skeleton, my stomach squishes painfully with hunger. Sweat beads on his temple.
I let myself stare a second longer and turn away. There's no point in fantasizing, I know I can't break through the glass.
I lay down facing away from the window and chew on on the claws of my right hand, beating down the hollow hunger pains pulsating in my stomach. The male human sighs softly and tries to read the words written on his tablet. His thoughts uncomfortable and trying to think of ways to excuse himself. He knows as much as me, that only one of us is disposable. The female is one of the few constants that study me, he was already nervous to be working with her, people get relocated if they don't perform well with her.
Only one has been terminated, that I've 'heard' of, the clumsy female dropped a vial of my blood just after retrieving it. It was a shame, she was the first human that had been in charge of feeding me, I think I'd grown attached, but I don't miss her, like how the older female behind the glass misses another cup of coffee.
Another, shorter man enters the room,
"You paged?" He asks in a weak tone, I can see his face in her thoughts, bags sag under his eyes, his skin looks worn and pale.
"Another day and no interest in eating this kind of meat." She points at the bloody morsel on the counter, "But, Zed looked interested in something else."
Her eyes flicker to the younger male co-worker, he pretends not to notice, fixating on his tablet, typing gibberish in, erasing it, then rewriting more, but the blood drains from his face. The older male isn't as sly as the female, and openly stares at the younger male considering then slowly nods.
"Let's try a living animal first and if that's not what he wants, we'll do it your way." She clears her throat, "Zed, sir." The older male huffs and thinks to himself,
'Dang prick'.
Something living? I think about the meat, only trying to imagine the animal it came from, with skin and working veins pulsating underneath it. My mouth waters again, yes that sounds good, it's hard not to be impatient as the older male moves out of range of my hearing to procure a living creature.
The older female's thoughts are similarly impatient, stealing glances at the young human,
'Why wait to get an animal, when Zed has already shown an in interest in eating something'. I don't care what they feed me, as long as it's given to me soon. The rattle of a cage accompanies the sound of heavy footsteps, and the old male opens the room, it recognizes his DNA from a scanning point on the door frame in an instant. He puts the cage down on the counter. The young males holds his breath,
'Better Zed eats a bunny then me.' and shows mild relief as the long eared creature is lifted from the cage and placed under the counter into a box that extends into my side of the room. The opposite rooms box lid is closed and latched, the separating metal sheet is lifted and the wall at the back of the box (from my perspective) pushes the 'bunny' forward and it slides out of the box and awkwardly halfway hops/falls into my enclosure.
The older male takes a tablet from his pocket and sets it leaning against the window, it's functions set to the hidden cameras' in my enclosure, which automatically switch to the closest camera to wherever movement occurs. I remember with slight amusement when I used to run around, jumping off the walls causing the humans forced to watch the footage on another side of one of my walls to need pills for nausea and headaches. I eventually grew self conscious, and a little tired, after a couple hours of it though.
I sniff at the air, not yet looking at the bunny, I can hear it's tiny heart nearly destroying itself in fright, the humans are blind to the natural predatory hormones my body gives off, but I can feel them in the rabbit's nose through it's simple thoughts. My body screams danger to it, and I've learned something new about myself.
The creature smells so good, a different and new smell making my head spin a little in an equally new desire. Something the raw meat I had been eating had never inspired, but I know barely more about myself than the humans that study me. They aren't quite sure yet if I have conscious thought, and they would probably soil themselves if they knew I could hear them. Now that I have this little thing, I know other creatures can smell my intentions, which does not comfort the bunny, it can smell my hesitation, but also my hunger. How fascinating, how frustrating, I'm too hungry to let it live, my curiosity will not save it.
Standing up, I turn myself to the... is it furry? I go over the thoughts the young male had thought moments before, yes, furry morsel. It won't be enough to fill me, and what am I supposed to do with that fur? There's not a lot of nutrition in it, I can tell it's a waste of my time to eat it, and it'll only get stuck in my teeth...
It tries to hide in a corner, behind an out cropping of small fake trees cemented into the floor between me and, I take another cursory sniff, her. It's a lot easier to smell genders when the proper organs are still attached, I wonder if their flavor will be different from the rest of the meat? I crouch low to the ground, is this right? And shift myself forward around to the left side of the trees, making the bunny bolt to the right and away from cover, I course correct and leap onto the bunny, pinning it down with my left hand on it's shoulders and bite down on it's neck. I pull back, teeth clenched and shake my head vigorously. Her head rips free easily and blood sprays from the decapitated head and gushes out of her stump neck.
I drop the head and lap at the pooling blood, I feel the different sensation, the hunger I hadn't been aware of being satisfied, and the cells in my body change and twitch, my legs lengthen slightly, changing a little to mimic the bunnies', my hearing improves and I can hear the human's heart beats behind the glass. I look at them and hiss in surprise, they all misinterpret this as me being territorial over my fresh kill and the two that still hold tablets take notes on their separate perspectives. I can feel the bunny's body still twitching beneath me and my stomach demands I eat, I try pulling the fur off to get to the meat, successfully getting fur stuck in my teeth, giving up when my more primal side takes over and I rip into it's soft belly.
Each organ does have it's own flavor, I savor each one as best as I can while I devour the animal. I find that the heart is my favorite, it squishes satisfyingly between my teeth and was the last piece of meat to stop moving. I finish the whole creature, except for the few scraps of fur I was able to pull off before I had lost control of my hunger. I sit down and begin what I know will be a long process of getting each hair out of my mouth. Furious tapping goes on behind the glass,
"That was a success." States the older man, "Remarkable work noticing." Older female nods, not caring for his praise, focusing only on describing the way my body has changed, and wondering if it was a growth spurt or a reaction to the creature I'd consumed.
The changes had come the moment I'd killed her, that much was obvious, and I swear that I can still hear the bunny, only now she's in the back of my mind, her terror alive and gnawing at my indifference. I can feel her emotions urging me to hide from the lights, under the trees, to dig and wait for danger to pass. She is no longer afraid of me, but she can smell what I smell and hear what I hear and it frightens her. Thinking into myself, I try to calm her, but she refuses to be placated, her fear is annoying and not something I'm enjoying feeling. So I mentally imagine putting her into a dark box at the back of my mind, and she vanishes, though not completely. I can still feel my connection to her and the box, but now I'm cut off from her irrational emotions. Relief floods over me, and I switch from picking the fur out of my teeth to licking the blood off my palm, not liking the sticky feeling of blood being all over me. This had not been a problem with the raw meat, dead meat doesn't squirt, and I mentally hit myself for wanting a meal so messy.
"Should we try another?" I pause mid lick, imaging the mess more blood would cause, both enjoying the image and being exhausted by it. The older man hms,
"The medications department is already upset that we acquired one of their only fresh subjects for this-" She interrupts, "Not another rabbit",
'Bunny' the young male mentally corrects,
"Something different, you saw Zed's body change when he ate the thing, we should test a different animal with Zed to see if he was changing to match the rabbit, or was growing with the fresh diet."
Older Male,
"Wouldn't it be better to repeat this with another similar animal subject so we can establish a constant?"
He's now noticing the look she has on her eyes, eyes staring at the young male coworker. The older male is mildly upset by this, "We're going to start him on an all animal diet, first. If you prove that he changes to match his prey, then we'll discuss changing his diet once more."
I can hear her mentally cringe each time, as she puts it, assigns me a gender, her heart mirroring each cringe with a squish of it's own.
"He's on an all bunny diet, until I approve switching to a different animal as well." He stares her down, exercising his authority over her, and she visually backs down.
'We'll see how our higher ups feel about this, he's blocking progress, who ever made him senior made a mistake, I've been with the institution longer, I shoul-.'
I stop listening to her inane mental chatter, she complains about that injustice every time the older male uses any kind of authority with her, and I'd lost interest in it the first time she had complained.
The young male's heart is racing, and irregular, his thought's twisted in fear, it's taking all the mental concentration he has to keep his hands from shaking,
'You're fine, you're not going to die, you're fine' he chants to himself.
The older Male's thoughts are satisfied, if not a little suspicious of the older female,
'She's backing down, but she always backs down. I'll need to go to Jeff as soon as I leave this room and convince him that this is the right call, with him on my side it will be easier to convince the others.'
The abrupt change of tone when he thinks of "Jeff's" name hints that they share a different kind of relationship to everyone in the room. I pull the bunny out of the box and compare emotions she's felt to the different feel of the name 'Jeff' had always inspired in the older male. The closest I can find is tied to a memory of her being a different kind of pinned under a male, the memory makes me uncomfortable and I shove her back into the box. I try to mentally shake the images out of my mind, it's an emotion I know I'll never experience myself and the thought of it gives me great discomfort. I make the mistake of looking at the older male and the bunnies are replaced with humans and now I'm trying very hard to identify how many colors are really in the white wall that has mild bloody flecks on it. I put my hands on my head and dig all six of my fingered claws into it, while plugging my ear hole with my thumbs. The pain helps and I mix it with the white wall, swirling the images into fragmented specks of color with pain having it's own hue.
The humans misinterpreted my outburst a few days ago to a negative side effect of feeding me the bunny. They are correct, of course, but not in the way they think and have recorded. There's no way for them to physically attach monitors to me, as the only thing that can penetrate my skin, also poisons me, they have to rely on "hands off" methods as well as their naked eyes. I shudder at the word and focus instead on the 2 cats they've now shoved into my room. More females, I believe I'm seeing a pattern now. The female rabbit had been random selection, I see these girls had been chosen by the older female on purpose, hoping by choosing not one, but two would help me reveal a gender.
When I had first emerged from my shell, there was no need for my sex to show itself, I was too small to need to... procreate. They were able to be handle me safely back then, my kill response not yet established. Thermal imaging wasn't specific enough to identify, in fact, they'd still need an X-ray machine to see. All they can see now is a defined slit between my haunches, one that holds itself close without me needing to worry about it. Older female hopes it meant I was female, I almost want to reveal myself just to watch the disappointment on her face, but the humans aversion to showing their own gender has rubbed off on me and I'm too self conscious for it. At least it doesn't help her that I piss and crap out of the same hole under my tail.
The female cats have moved to the same corner the rabbit had, I prefer staying in the middle of the room, I like being able to see everything from there and I wonder to myself if the humans had designed it to be that way. I am still hungry after the rabbit the other day, but I don't feel like being bothered to put up a chase today.
'Pussys' the young male chuckles, he's very uncomfortable being back in the same room as older female, he'd temporarily been put on "other projects" while they'd tried to assign someone new to the older female. Despite her trying to prove that I'm female, she still wants to feed the poor guy to me.
Sympathy... another new emotion, I've been playing around with the bunnies' feelings, and somehow, this one isn't one of the ones I don't like, it helps me understand the feelings the other living things around me feel. Making me feel a little less abnormal, while helping me with my curiosity on this world that still feels so new to me. His heart runs a little fast, and aside from the occasional swallowing, he doesn't show this fear.
They wait with growing impatience as I completely ignore the cats. The female cats smell tasty, a little different from the bunny, I wonder if the creatures have different diets, the canines on the cats allude to it, the bunny hadn't had such accessories. the older one has a similar smell to her as the bunny and I vaguely wonder if it's because they've had a similar... experience. Her stumach does hang a little lower then the more kitten-like one. My interest in eating the older female takes a dive, I don't want more of those kind of memories. They've been washed in chemicals, but their breath still carries the faint scent of other animals, mostly other cats that they'd licked. Where would the humans have gotten these two, are they bred like the bunny? Something about how healthy their, ugh, fur looks says otherwise.
One of them approaches me now, the kitten one, her head low, taking confidence in the fact that I haven't moved since they'd been pushed into my room, and my intentions were merely curious towards them. I try not to breath, listening to her thoughts instead, trying to understand the world from how she sees it. Her head bobs lightly back and forth, her nostrils delicately flaring. The male human holds his breath, I can feel the hope in his thoughts. They'd surmised that I'd kill anything they put in the room with me, but my quiet patience has had him hoping that if the older female was successful in having him put in the same room as me, that I would spare him.
I'm not sure if his hope is warranted, I'm curious to see all his memories and emotions, they are so much more different to feel than they are to hear, I'd learned that with the bunny. Although these cats are smarter than the bunny, they don't hold a candle to the mass of intelligence humans' have, and I don't think I'd be able to stop myself from killing him out of curiosity alone.
She touches her little nose to my leg, pauses and pulls her legs under her, and sits to watch me, so close I can feel her breath on my scaly skin. I, slowly, prop myself up on one elbow, she rises a fraction of an inch, her body ready to leap and twist away from me the moment she sees any animosity. But she can smell that I'm not a danger to her, she knows I'm just as curious about her as she is about me. I briefly look into her eyes, noting how her hackles immediately raised when I did so, and gently started to sniff her. Having her this close, I can clearly smell the other animals through the chemical wash, along with multiple human hands, she'd been pet so many times and often at that, her fur was permanently growing in the direction the hands had followed. The hormones were faint, but they were similar but also very different from the sex hormones I'd come to loathe. It was a very calming and warm smell, I could sit here for hours taking it in. I want this smell, but it's so alien to me. The older female cat now inches forward, smelling the change in me, she recognizes the smell, I can almost see and feel a withered human hand in her mind, much older than any of the humans I'd ever seen, it has a comforting powdery scent. She knows the emotion I feel, but her thoughts lack words, her fear is gone and she runs her face on mine. I blink and I can smell the comforting smell coming from her now. I try to mirror it, and softly rub my face against hers. This feels familiar, like this is something I'd do if I met another one of my kind. The younger cat curls up beside me, and the older female licks my face, which oddly feels nice, it's an extension to the face rubbing feeling.
The humans stand in shock, the older females hand hovering over her tablet, unwilling to document that I was capable of... affection. Affection, I see, tenderness, kindness? These things aren't helpful to her, it goes against past accounts of my behavior, she's not referencing behavior that she's seen me portray. I've heard them mention a me before me, but now she's thinking a clear mental image of an aged sketch in a book she's loved, loved another new word, since childhood, it depicts a massive creature, wings blocking out the sky, spikes covering it's head and back, breathing fire on a town, with tiny people running in fear, a lot of them on fire.
'Destroyer of Humankind', she thinks bitterly.
I can almost remember the heat in my throat, the sudden visceral feeling of murder I feel shocks the female cats, they leap up and away from me, they're tails brushed up to more than twice their normal size. Hunching in the corner again, they hiss and yowl angrily at me.
I can feel it, the new hunger I'd felt when I'd killed the bunny, I can also differentiate the smell that separated them from the dead meat. Their life force, it's a shapeless mist like substance that surrounds them, changing colors with the emotions I can smell.
I feel remorse at scaring them, I'd loved the affection that they had been showing me. The rejection stings, the fear and distrust they look at me now is actually causing me... pain? This is not a feeling I want, I want them to stop looking at me like that, the murderous intent returns, like a gut reaction. It's not a gut reaction that I've learned in this life, as it's a new but familiar feeling. What kind of creature had I been before this? A thing that killed other, living things, when it got rejected? I fight the feeling, I don't want to live that way, I don't want to kill the only things to show me affection, I want them to show it to me again.
My mind is chaos, nothing feels solid, I lay my head back down on the ground, trying to get a hold on these feelings,
'Give in,' I feel myself think, 'kill them, it'll hurt less'.
I know if I kill them, they'll live on in my head, and they're fear of me will disappear, but on the other hand, I'll never feel them physically accepting me ever again.
The older female almost sounds relieved at the cats rejection of me, the young male is confused and pulls up one of the cameras that face my face and analyses the expression there and at long last it clicks for him.
'Zed is sentient, should I tell..?' He glances at the older female, who is recording her own version, 'No, I'll keep this from her, I discovered it, I'll document it, it'll give me more value as a living asset to our higher ups.'
I lean back a little to stare directly into the camera, all I see is a dark circle embedded in a fake tree, but I know I'm staring directly into the young Male's eyes. His breathing changes, and he's transfixed by my gaze, he's now registering the intelligence in my eyes.
'This is a camera, a random camera, how does Zed know?' He gets another epiphany, and goes back to when I'd hissed at them during the bunny incident and applied conscious thought to my feature that day. 'Surprise?' He edits his notes of that day, and goes back to older footage of me suddenly whipping around to stare at him,
'What had I thought about that day?' He concentrates on it,
'That day was boring, was I thinking about that cool movie scene where the main character decimates a bunch of bad guys in a gory way?'
He mentally chucked and a little smile betrays his face, 'Yeah, that would be up Zed's ally.' He goes back a couple months of footage, to before he'd been assigned to this area, in it, I jump to one side, cock my head and start to tear around the room, jumping from wall to wall.
He changes it to the recording of the 'security room'
'I've heard them complain about this day', and he watches at they're growing discomfort, and fast forwards to the end of the little event and focuses on my face, now seeing the mild sheepish tilt of my mouth. He goes back to his notes to add to them, Subject can read minds and is conscious, he adds the links to the different time zones on the footage.
I feel a little relieved at his discovery of the fact that I'm not stupid, but very uncomfortable that he's guessed that I can hear him too. I had not planned that that'd be his takeaway of me looking into the camera. He switches back to the camera on my face,
'Okay zed,' he thinks 'blink if you can hear me'.
I raise one of my eye brow muscles and get up. To walk over to the opposite corner of the cats and bury my face into the crevice.
'Not what I asked for but,' he rewatched me lifting my eyebrow, 'It's still a reaction'.
He records his thoughts, and inputs the time stamp.
The older female is oblivious to our exchange and reluctantly observes my obvious display of depression, and considers if this is a clue to me having sentience.
I don't want to interact with the world anymore, my brain hurts from fighting with myself to spare the cats, and for the first time in weeks, I force myself to sleep.