“No.” My answer confused the voice as I spoke, hell the three others that were watching me were confused mostly due to the fact that I could speak. “What good did power do for Hestly?” Something was squirming inside of me, and I could feel my bones moving as pain rattled through my body.

“Don’t tell me..” The man that hit me with the bat turned to examine me, his eyes curious as he turned me onto my back. I had no power to resist him, and he slowly pressed at the place where he hit me, his eyes widening as his fingers explored my chest. “The wounds are almost gone.”

“Get away from me splicer, fuck off.” I tried to slap away his hand, and he just stared at me, his face mixing between several emotions before looking back to his allies.

“He’s been chosen by the King.” The man spit out, almost furious as he looked down to me. “Why a damn Neo?”

“Well since you don’t want power, what do you want?” The voice inside my head spoke softly, prodding me for an answer, “and answer quickly, once you are fully healed they might put you down.”

“I want… I want to survive.” I said, pushing myself up to my elbows to glare at the people staring at me, “Power can only get you so far, everyone has power and there’s always someone stronger.”

“Ha! Kids these days, fine I’ll give you what you wish, but you’ll have to give me something equivalent.” The voice seemed amused, almost impressed by his odd answer.

“Then I give you my rage, and my thirst for vengeance that’s all that consumes me right now.” I smiled in bliss, I could only hope that even without those emotions I’d still kill them. It was my only chance of doing so, I needed to get revenge for Hestly, he might have been an asshole but he was my friend.

We had both grown up together, and knew who exactly which two women they would marry there were more more women than man. Hestly even said that he’d help me get together with Evelyn who was far out of my rank by convincing the higher ups to let me go on solo missions. He knew that there was a lot underneath that was bad, but he didn’t hold it against Hestly at least not now.

“Accepted, you gain survival in exchange for your rage, but that is too much for what I’m giving you so I’ll give you something more.” Three words appeared in my mind, ‘Omega Cells Injected’, my chest immediately ripped apart as my ribs came apart like a gaping maw exposing my heart, and other vital organs. The pain took what felt like a melenia to feel as I looked into myself, when it hit my screams made my own ears ring in pain.

Things that used to be my intestines spread out, wrapping around the bodies that lay on the floor, there was cries of shock and more combat filled with more pain. Pieces of my intestines were cut from the group as they tried to make a grab at the three, as more came to take its place the three backed off giving the transformation a large radius. They saw the bodies enter that large maw that was my ribcage then a black ooze like substance consumed the mass pulling it further in.

The ooze had eyes, as it stared at the three bystanders with mockery in its eyes, and an underlying sense of hunger. The three took even more steps back through the hallway out of fear that it was lash out at them but it just went back to eating the corpses that lay around my body.

“What’s going on, this has never happened before.” The young one fearfully moved behind the older one.

“Has this ever happened with the others that died?” The other man asked, which the old one shook his head, “Then how do we explain this?”

“I don’t know, there isn’t enough data.” He pulled out some of the splicer tech, a computer that wrapped around the arm and sent out several drones into the room to see what was happening. Organs grabbed at the metal of the drones, and pulled them down as well into the ooze before it spread out a fleshy wrapping that covered most of my body.

As if in reaction the sack spread out a festering ooze that stuck to the walls and dripped from the ceiling before creating what seemed to be living flesh to close off the entrances. Blood pulsed in the skin entrance, blood curdling screams and soft wet noises couldn’t be identified. My body was growing, and twisting under the blob of body parts as it stretched and twisted like a piece of dough being turned into a pastry as my screaming turned into bubbling suction voices. My vision blackened, then was wrapped in skin as my face was to be reconfigured as well. I cried for death in the blackness but no one could hear me, and no one would bless me with a painless death now.

“What the fuck was that?” The man stared at the old man looking for some sort of answer, though he doubted that anyone beside him had actually studied their transformations. They were like the previous humans before these two factions came about, ignorant in the way that the world works so long as it worked.

The old man shook his head, and frowned at the skin covering the entrance touching the skin felt warm, cutting it let out blood but almost instantly healed itself. “I have never seen this before, nor have I heard of such an event when a splicer turned. Then again I’ve never seen a Neo turn.”

“Neos have different DNA than humans right? Splicers come from humans, so maybe the King has to change that?” The girl said hopefully.

The old man sighed a bit, “No Marcy, both of us are pretty much the same they just used science to enhance themselves, the demi-gods gave us blessings but we’re still human.”

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“I wonder about that.” The man in the scientist outfit made his arms enhanced, then undid it raising his eyebrow at the old man, “I don’t think that regular people can do this.”

“Yes, these blessings don’t change our DNA that much according to the demigods.” The old man started to get annoyed with his brother, he knew that this could go on for hours if it wasn’t stopped now but before he could say anything Marcy did the worst thing possible.

She asked another question, “If our DNA is the same than why do we have control over our bodies and they have control over their minds?”

The man in the lab coat laughed, “At least you have a smart daughter Bruce.” Marcy blushed a bit at his comment, “You know what separates us from monkeys dear?”

She stared at him very confused for a long time, “What’s a monkey?”

“The hairy things in my lab dear. Our DNA is only one percent different than those monkeys in my lab.”

Marcy jabbed Bruce in the side and smiled, “They do look a lot like you daddy.”

Bruce frowned, looking over to the skin that covered the pathway to the creature that was being born, “It’s been quiet for some time now.”

“Just to be fair, we do share about fifty percent with most living things that we’ve met thus-”

Bruce smacked the back of his brother’s head, “Fen, do you ever shut up after someone brings up something you know?”

“Not usually,” He made a coy smile as he ducked under another one of Bruce’s smacks, then took out a metal pole from his bag. “Just let me know when, and I’ll tear a hole straight through this flesh wall.” He tapped the end of the pole against the skin covering the hallway.

“Be wary, we don’t know what’s on the other side. It shouldn’t be anything bad because the Demigods created it but we should still be careful.”

“Yes dad,” The two responded, one sarcastic, the other very serious.

Nodding, they tore their way through the skin expecting to find a mess of flesh and bones in the center, only to find a completely new environment. Lush green trees were all around them, fields of grass were there as far as the eye could see, the only thing that gave them any sense of familiarity was the pipes that were all about instead of a sky. Far off there was a large building painted red, with a white picket fence surrounding it with cows behind them grazing at the grass. It was something of a fantasy world for them as they stood there, the soft breeze of wind courting past their skin, breaths of fresh air filled with the stink of the cows and dirt.

Blood trickled down their bodies as they stood there in disbelief, their jaws hanging wide as I walked past, they never even took notice of me as I moved between them. My body felt different but I had yet been able to figure out exactly what was different about it, and part of me knew that I could do more with my powers. This was part of it, it was a scene from a book I had read as a little kid, the beauty of such a scene made me wonder if that was even possible. Now the scene that I had imagined in my head from those words were inside the three’s heads.

I didn’t want them to see me, I feared what I might look like and that I might get a glimpse of it through their mind. The imagery spread as I walked other splicers looking in awe at the scene before them as my body slithered past them leaving a trail of black ooze behind me. I didn’t know how long that the trance will last, so I went faster with each second.

Something was now calling me, and I knew what I had to do the transformation was only halfway complete and it needed the other catalytic. Moving into the room with the body, I jumped down landed on the King’s chest, strange tentacle like things were coming out of my body and impaling themselves into the creature under my feet starting the process from earlier again. I needed more of his DNA, and more of his mass, for what exactly I didn’t know, but I was growing once again. Not in the original sense of the word exactly as I felt the mass inside of me condense instead of my body expanding.

A meter appeared in my vision as I stood there telling me that my bio-mass was now reaching four thousand, my mechanical mass was sitting at around three hundred from the drones earlier but was rising as I ate this titan’s body. Electricity ran through me as I ate, wires and metal were forming into my body and condensing into my small frame. It wasn’t painful as it was before, in fact this felt wonderful, like I was eating for the first time after being starved from decades.

“You’ll need it all,” The voice urged me on, “and one day you’ll be the one that will outlast them all. Those that wished to be gods fell, and yet those that are remain.”

I couldn’t understand his ramblings, nor did I wish to understand them as they seemed to be gibberish to me. This symbiote granted me the ability to survive, and I’ll do just that because I needed to. I wasn’t ready to die, I wasn’t ready to face my mortality, not yet.

A smile came to my lips, as my flesh twisted finalizing my form as the tentacles latched themselves into the walls lifting up my body to form a giant cocoon like structure in the very center of the room. A dark ooze slowly dripped from the cocoon as the room started to be covered by my membrane. “I.. am reborn.” The cocoon of myself twitched there, “But I must sleep.” And so I slept.