To say shit went side way’s would be a gross understatement. It felt as if my mind was a buzz with static currents as I wormed my way through the ventilation shaft. The close quarters of the vent scraped eerily against my armoured suit. And I couldn’t help but curse and lie prone after it happened. All I could hear was the humming whir of fans as they cycled air in and out of the laboratory.

“It was either this, or the hulking beasts at the front door,” I reminded myself, and grimaced as I pushed my rifle slowly ahead of me and followed it just as slowly.

Slithering my way through the vent took time and care. Every little scrape and parcel of noise that emitted from me, seemed to be a few decimals too loud. Then I heard the heavy stomped of footfalls and laid prone in the vent. I wormed my way left around a bent, then bent my body like scorpion as it twisted down at an angle. Then a closed vent was under me, and I gently laid myself across it. I managed to wedge my fingers between the slanted bars and nudge it slightly open.

Beneath me through the vent was a storage room. It was large and filled with Dawn Sect crates, a few of which were open. Strange machinery, and a large vats filled with a pale green and yellow flowing fluid.

I looked around the vent grate trying to see some way to break through, without alerting anyone to my presence. Looking ahead I saw another vent grate and considered shuffling over to it. It was about fifteen feet away from and when I shimmied to press my face down on the grate beneath me, I caught the angle and saw that the next grate along would drop me outside the storage room.

Shrugging mentally, I thumped my fist down on the grate. It jarred but didn’t loosen, and the sound of my strike seemed to echo throughout the planes of existence.

“Might as well of gone through the front door,” I grumbled to myself and smacked my fist again against the grate. This time I hit it just hard enough to cause it to buckle slightly. My other hand clutching at my rifle. I didn’t want to drop through and leave it up here. I would likely never get it back otherwise.

Then I slammed both the fist of my left hand and the magazine of my rifle down on the ventilation grate, and it swung out from under me.

I fell through and smacked partially into a Dawn Sect crate that was beneath me. I banged onto the metallic floor with a loud clang.

I groaned and shuffled onto my hands and knees, and then felt along my side. Something hurt and I wasn’t sure what. I just felt the familiar itching of healing tingle along my side. I heard a female voice sternly bark an order and I quickly got my feet under me and hid behind a crate.

I could battle them but with only one magazine and a handgun for effect. I could chew through three of them if I were lucky. Then I’d have to swing my rifle like a club and pray it did something.

Maybe it was time to stop ignoring the oddity of that pale green energy. I knew instinctively that it was me doing it no matter how much I shrugged it off and denied it. But I was unsure how exactly it was me. My mind railed against the possibility that it actually was originating from me.

Okay, I’m certain I am the definition of stupid. Not dumb. A dumb person would see all that had happened and equate it all to circumstance or religion.

I was just in denial and being a stupid dumb idiot.

You understand my meaning.

The door to the storage room, slid aside and a knight bearing a mace and shield entered the room. It scanned the interior and roamed through. Then I heard the clipped strut of heels and saw a blonde-haired woman stroll past like she owned the place.

“Thralls,” she said in a commanding tone. “Fan out and search every inch of this place. Report if you find anything out of place. I do not want Masters’ ritual to be disturbed.”

That was the braying voice of my ex-wife.

I slid myself out from behind the crate the shuffled around to see diagonally out of the door. Through the open door I saw the tight posterior of my ex and smirked. Oh, she was a bitch, but she was still well put together. She had nothing on Nikhara or Andrea though. Put was still a fine specimen of beauty, marred by her personality and falsehoods.

What struck me the most however was the fact that she had two hands. Now wait before you jump to conclusions. Yes having two hands is obvious. But recollecting the footage Andrea had shown me, I had thought the missing hand to be hers.

Then the knight’s skull helm blocked my view and I flinched back as its mace struck the side of the crate a few centimetre away from the tip of my nose. The sound of it boomed loudly and the metal dented under the impact.

I brought my rifle up to fire, but the knight simply stepped forward and bashed it aside with its mace. Then thrust it into my gut. I folded under the blow, air exploding out of my lungs. My rifle flew out of my hands skidding across the storage room floor.

I felt a pulse emanate through my gut, and glanced to see a wave of purple energy thrum off mace’s broad bone head. Then I felt my body ripple as the pulse exploded through me and I exploded backwards. I bounced off a shelve, hit another Dawn Sect crate.

Hitting those was really starting to get annoying. My back crunched into the strange vat container. A webbing of cracks split up its glassy surface.

I snapped my head around just as the knight rushed at me. I tried to get away, to move, but the knight was exceptionally fast. It launched off the ground ten feet away and in a single bound, its mace was swinging for my head.

My left arm snapped up and took the blow. It really fucking hurt. Warmth spilled across my neck as my shoulder popped loose of its socket. I was honestly surprised my whole arm hadn’t been torn clean off.

I think I yelled in pain. I wasn’t sure.

The warmth spreading down my neck, trickled into my armoured suit. Through my lightweave flight-suit and onto my chest.

It absorbed into me. And I instantly felt my shoulder snap back into its socket. I gasped from pain and relief. The knight kicked me in the chest. I felt several ribs break and a few punctured my lungs. Blood rushed into the opening filling it, and I choked. My fear spiked like a missile.

The bones remoulded back into position, affixing themselves as if they’d never been broken. My lung resealed and the blood expelled out of me entirely in a single hacking cough.

What the hell was going on?

The knight hung its mace on its hip, and wrapped a thick chitinous hand around my throat. I tried to struggle, but my mind and body was reeling from the shock. My regenerative ability had never worked so fast, nor on anything as big as a punctured lung or fixing broken bones.

The knight lifted me effortlessly and slammed me into the vat at my back. The container shattered around me. Warm substance enveloped my face and I breathed it in. For an endless moment time stretched before me, and I thought I was going to drown. It was akin to electricity coursing throughout the internals functions of my body. It was a welcome reprieve

It was at home within me. Meant for me and no one else.

My mind instantly ascended its dizzying state and clarity thrummed through me.

My focus tunnelled into the moment. The fluid not just enveloped my face, mouth, eyes, ears, and neck but through my armour and flight-suit.

I felt it seep into the pours on my skin. My hair which had been shaved when the splicer had held me captive grew back. My dark auburn hair came back quicker and thick, to the point that it was now shoulder-length hair.

I could only imagine how awful I looked. I really didn’t like my hair being anything more than a few inches away from my scalp.

My upper jaw ached, and I felt a swelling realisation that something right and yet profoundly wrong was happening to me. Then my canine teeth cracked and crumbled away into dust. That too got swallowed down into my mouth with the fluid. The bare gums split anew, and white-hot agony blazed through me as new teeth grew in their place.

They were longer, pointier, and from a single swipe of my tongue across their tips. Were sharper as well. Then the fluid pouring over me stopped. It ended and I realised that knight that had been holding me was now dead on the floor.

A fist sized hole breached through its skull helm.

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The vat was empty with no spillage in sight.

My sight was sharper, my hearing more acute as it picked up the distance feminine bark of orders. I tried to move, and everything blurred momentarily. When my vision swam back to focus, I was two metres out of the vat and wobbling terribly.

“Uhhh,” I groaned and tried not to vomit. The fluid had done something to me. Rejuvenated me somehow, more than every regeneration I had ever felt before. Those times it had simply been my body mending small wounds. This … it ignited my soul. Not harshly, no. It alighted and hummed in concert with what had been returned to me.

At least that’s how it felt.

I stumbled back over to the vat, scanning its containment for some notifying label of what it was. I brushed my ridiculous hair away from my face. There’s no easy way to do that and not look girly at the same time.

Dawn Sect greeted me in big bold letters. And below my eyes shone on the description.

Ardenai-Prime sample B.

Destination: Lios, fringe territory.

Research agent.

“What the shit?” I hissed, and it came out as a hiss. My tongue seemed to funnel the air between my new and improve canines. “Why is a sample from my home world here?” I murmured questioningly. My hearing pricked up at the sound of boots storming down the corridor. They grew closer, and I quickly searched about for my rifle.

I found it and made sure a round was chambered and got back into my hiding spot. Where I’d been before the good knight had spotted me.

Knights swarmed into the room fanning out on either side. This could be bad. Then I heard the click of heels through the noise of their chitin boots stomping in.

Jessica entered the room behind them. I could smell her, and her scent was wrong. The knights didn’t really smell of anything, they seemed odourless.

Jessica perfume or scent smelled like rot. Like a dead tree, somebody had spent the summer stuffing equally dead squirrels inside.

It radiated off her in an almost palpable wave and I tried not to gag. It was difficult.

“Someone’s been here,” Jessica growled, and I heard a wet shlick sound and a slim black bone blade slid out from between the middle knuckles on her hands. She launched herself on the nearest knight with a feral angry scream and rammed them into its helm. It flopped backwards instantly dead. The other knights didn’t even shift or shuffle nervously.

“Find whoever it fucking is NOW!” she boomed in an authoritative command.

The knights whipped around and left. Jessica turned and surveyed the room, then her eyes—which seemed wrong to me somehow—looked up and spotted the open vent grate.

She growled deeply in her chest. Seeing her like this whirled through my mind and saddened me deeply. Had she always been some sort of monster? In league in these strange xeno’s. I didn’t know. My mind couldn’t help but return to the few instances we had had the chance to go out on a date.

Her smiles and genuine laughter, now marred by this … angered, feral thing.

What had changed to make her so? I thought about stepping out and asking her. But the sight of the black fluid and dark brain matter coating her bone hand-blades … whatever they were. Made me think otherwise.

A loud crash boomed through the facility.

“Someone’s at the entrance to the facility, Master.” I heard her mutter quietly. Her head tilted to one side, listening to something I couldn’t hear. “I shall take care of it,” she said and nodded her blonde head.

Then she darted out of the storage room.

“Someone’s at the entrance?” I repeated quietly, and dread filled me. “Nikhara…”

I sprinted out of the room and my surroundings blurred around me as I bounced off the opposite wall of the storage room. I didn’t even think, I coiled my legs and sprang at the wall. I rebounded off and shot down the corridor. My feet carrying me faster than my brain could catch up. My hyper aware senses twinge and I bounded up a wall, bursting through a ventilation grate and shot through the shaft. My whole-body thrumming with energy.

Then I exploded out of a grate and landed in the middle of a battle. My orc-dryad wife wove her sword around and decapitated foes as her other hand held a gatling laser mount. The triangular barrel spun and cut through three knights legs at her immediate proximity.

She jumped and pounced on to the back of one of the larger knights. Her sword stabbed and cleaved into its shoulder and she back flipped off of its back as the other large knight swept its massive axe through the air. It missed her and cleaved into wounded larger knights waist.

Her gatling laser spun and streamed beam fire across the back of the ankle of the twice wounded large knight. The scoring line of heat, cut cleanly through. I noticed how the barrel of the laser mount was glowing a white hot.

The large knight toppled over onto its hands and knees. The thick head of a spiked flail bashed into Nikhara’s side and send her tumbling. Clutching at the site in obvious pain.

I scanned for Jessica, but didn’t see her. Had I managed to get here ahead of them. My mind buzzed through the path and speed I’d taken, and rebelled against the notion. Yet I knew, I had done it somehow. I couldn’t deny that.

I had witnessed my own actions after all, and now it was time to aid my wife. I dropped and landed in a roll, the fall shot in a blur and I was up in an instant.

My gun barked lightly in my grip and I blasted the back of twin helms. An arrow shot for my face and I snapped my left hand out and caught it. I stared at it in shock as my hand then planted that same arrow through the throat of another knight.

“Nikhara!” I bellowed, and my voice boomed powerfully out of me. The knight before me stumbled backward as if my shout had physically pushed it.

I saw my wife’s helmeted head turn towards my direction. I pulled the trigger and my rifle spat smoke and fire at the flail knights hand as it went to swing it down on Nikhara’s head.

She rolled to her right and avoided it dropping on her. Then she swept her legs around and smashed them into the same knights legs.

It tumbled and she rolled on top proceeding to smash its head into the floor until it broke open like a cracked egg.

I jumped up as a hunter lunged for me. I flew eight feet into the air and spun, my weapon spitting rounds into its head. I almost seemed to hang there momentarily, suspended in the air. My hair whipped about and flowed like silk through molasses.

Then the moment ended. I touched down and leaned back away from a sword thrust to my face. It cut along the edge of my cheek, and I felt the slice heal as it past along my cheek bone. My fist shot up and shattered the black bone blade into a scattering of shards.

My rifle barked and rounds slammed into the thrusting knight. It folding at the waist. What had changed? I mean other than obvious enhancements. My rifle was doing permanent damage to the knights now.

Was it whatever I drank causing this? The answer to that was: obviously. But why, and how?

I would have to wait and find out.

My gun clicked empty. I reverse my grip on it and swung upwards. The stock of the rifle pummelled through the folding knights skull helm.

I hissed as my back spiked like a pin-cushion. Arrow after arrow launched and met their target. Me. I swept my hand out and caught the dying knight by it chitinous feet, and then I flung it towards the archers.

The body plummeted sideways with such a force, that the range knight I’d hit. Vanished from the waist upwards.

“Marcus!” I heard Nikhara shout to me, and I turned in her direction. She had her tower-sword back and was dealing with the last large knight. The name guardian seemed fitting somehow to me.

I caught the mace she flung at me. I mean my hand literally caught the blunt and business side of the weapon in my palm.

“Nice haircut,” she teased as she swept over to me, her back resting against mine. I looked over to see the now headless guardian fall flat atop a hunter. “What happened to you?” she asked, and I could hear the slight pant in her voice.

I didn’t even feel a sweat coming on. Whatever that fluid had been, I was sure as shit going to need more of it. My mind flashed to the description on the vat container. Ardenai-Prime. I wasn’t sure If I would travel back there to get another tasting of a sample.

That place held too many memories, and not all of them pleasant.

“I’ll tell you once the party is over,” I told her, and flipped the mace in my hand. Pale green veins of energy crawled in a spiral up the weapons shaft. They devoured very speck of purple aura within the mace they encountered.

Drinking it raw and dry, I felt that absorption flow down those the veins and into me.

The sweeping feeling of power burst through me, filling and reigniting every fading inch of my own receding boost.

It bloomed within me and I shuddered as that build-up hummed deep within. Then Nikhara and I exploded into action. My mace and limbs shots out in a blur, bashing, cutting, cleaving, and throwing the corpses of hunters and knights at their own fellows.

Then I pounced on a hunter and drove him to the ground. I shoved the broke end of the shaft of my mace through the chitinous plates on its chest and pinned it to the ground.

Then without thought and more through instinct, I drove my head into its neck. My teeth sunk through its exoskeletal skin and its dark blood filled my mouth.

It was both disgusting, revolting, and the most amazing thing I had ever tasted. Its dark blood hummed with that same purple energy and I drank it down.

Let it fill me like the fluid in the vat, and the veins of power in their weapon’s. What was happening to me? I could only hope Nikhara wasn’t watching me do this. That single thought swept me back to my senses.

My mouth broke away from the dry husk of the corpse beneath me. My hands itched and ached. I turned around and saw that only Nikhara remained. She’d killed the last knight and had apparently decided to watch me. I saw- no could feel the revulsion waiving off her for what I had just done.

“Like I said,” I started and twisted me head as my new canines shifted. My mouth had felt blocky a moment previous. “I’d tell you after the party was over.”

“M-Marcus,” she stammered, and I saw her hand nervously grip the hilt of her sword. It was planted through the neck of the dead knight at her feet.

I sighed and shrugged, “honestly, I don’t really know what happened.”

“You look different. Its not just your hair … Its- Its your teeth and eyes as well,” she told me, and I nodded. I hadn’t known my eyes had changed.

“I know,” I sighed again, “my strength and speed are improved as well. There was this vat with fluid in it, and the container read Ardenai--”

“You!” boomed a feminine screech and I twisted to see the front entrance of the facility slide open to reveal my ex-wife. Damn, I really must’ve over shot her. The fight felt as if it had gone on for hours.

“Me!” I gasped back at her in reply.

“Marcus! What. Are. You. Doing here?” she growled angrily at me.

“We got your call Jess,” I said. I couldn’t help but taunt her a little. I might’ve done it about every time we’d met since the divorce. Knowing she had betrayed her empire and position. Only made my taunts all the more sweeter. That didn’t mean I gave a shit about the Zarian empire, because I didn’t. If whatever had happen to this planet, happens elsewhere. There’s no way I could walk around with that knowledge drilling through my skull and not do anything to stop it.

Millions, if not billions of people—no matter their race or creed—would die.

“You will not interrupt my master,” she howled and the stepped back into the central facility. The doors slid closed and I heard the distinct sound of metal tearing apart followed by electronics sparking chaotically.

“Well, she was … pleasant,” Nikhara muttered to me, and I couldn’t help but nod in agreement.

An ache inside my chest mourned the loss of the woman she’d been when we had first met. Just as it boiled in anger for her part in the deaths of millions on this planet.

“Oh, she can be certainly more accommodating. It just depends on whether or not you have something that she wants.”

This novel is the work of Rhys Thomas. If you are reading this and it has not been published by Rhys Thomas, then this work has been stolen. Please report this to Amazon and me at email: [email protected]