A sharp, stinging sensation shocked my consciousness from the depths of its slumber moments before I slapped my right arm, hopefully killing the perpetrator, and groaned.
-"I fucking hate mosquitoes."
I could never work out why, but for some reason, the blood suckers were attracted to me like a wasp to a BBQ, ignoring everyone else as they dined on me.
It infuriated me, often resulting in me 'purging' the local water supplies of their young, buying dragon fly lava and releasing them into the ponds and streams, mainly because tipping oil into them would get me a one-way ticket to a jail cell, or drinking my body weight in Guinness. Apparently higher iron count in your blood made you an unattractive meal.
Nothing worked. In the end, I could only fantasise about my blood becoming poisonous, evilly cackling as they took a sip, only to scream in tiny bug voices as they fell to the floor and expired.
Yes, that might seem a bit vindictive, but I am who I am. Somebody who completely ignores that fact that there are the multiple symbiotic organisms living in my body, enabling me to live, as I find the idea of something feeding off me repulsive.
Like the little guys in my gut, I learnt the hard way that if you kill them all off, you are in for a bad time for around four months as you try and digest your food. It was an accident, but one I would never repeat again. Mainly due to the fact I had lost the part that was responsible for my four-week hospital stay.
My mini rant was gradually bringing me to full wakefulness and, just as I was about to curse myself for leaving the curtains open as the warm, comforting sunlight fell upon my body, I realised two important things.
The first was that I was laying on the itchy grass, which seemed very familiar, and the second was that I didn't have any covers.
-"Ahh. Not on Earth anymore."
The dull ache of my muscles and a headache, so painful that would make a hangover dip its hat in respect, slowly greeted me as I started my morning, pre getup checks.
I grimaced, clenching my eyes tighter, the red piercing the back of my eye eyelids feeling too bright, as my tongue traced the insides of my mouth, tasting a strange, metallic iron-like flavour.
As if in response to the somewhat familiar flavour, my stomach rumbled, demanding its due while my mind finally started to put everything together.
I had been dropped on an alien world and started stalking some weird, cow-like creatures before being attacked by Spike which resulted in one hell of a death ma-.
My eyes shot open, only to immediately slam shut as I pressed the palms of my hands over them, rolled onto my chest and curled up into a fetal position, releasing an agonised hiss that would make any snake green with envy.
A variety of multicoloured squiggles danced around the inside of my eyelids as the intense, burning pain slowly receded. It felt like someone had stabbed a soldering iron into each eye socket before mixing its contents and penetrating my brain.
Only when my eyes had stopped feeling like they had taken a personal tour of the Sun's surface did my mind start to try and work out what had just happened.
Firstly, I was still alive. One hell of a bonus if just a little surprising.
The second was that it seemed that opening my eyes at the moment was a bad idea and more worryingly, I had just hissed in a similar way to my recently defeated opponent.
The first seemed the most pressing as, even though I wasn't even remotely qualified to diagnose someone's health, I am pretty sure that the wounds I had suffered the previous night were fatal or at least would leave me bedridden for a few months.
'Like generational evolution, adaptive evolution has its pro's and cons. These will respond to the...' The female voice's words echoed in my mind, causing an uneasy feeling to ascend from deep within.
Tentatively, much to the protest of my muscles, I rolled onto my back and felt my body only to find that it felt... completely normal. No horns, spikes, tail, foot long genitals or fur. I felt like, well, me.
The only difference I could find was small hardened lines of skin that I recognised all to well from my younger days, scars.
My body was littered with minor injuries probably a result from rolling around with all the small sharp stones hidden in the grass or Spike's, err, spikes.
-"I really need to come up with a name for his kind. Can't call the whole species Spike can I? Actually, I wonder if they are all the same of if their adaptations made them unique?"
Realising that I couldn't put it off any longer, even if the questions I was using to distract myself were valid, my right hand moved to my left arm, afraid to discover what had happened to it.
Though I did not have the chance to get a good look at it during the fight, just like my shoulder, which I should check as well, I am pretty sure it was in a bad way.
Hard, twisting scar tissue rippled beneath my hand, running from my elbow to wrist. The flesh had sunken and withered as if I were malnourished but after flexing my fist, lifting the arm, it's only protest being a small bout of pain, everything moved as I wanted it to.
Sighing in relief that I wasn't reduced to a single, working arm on a hostile alien planet, I would have released the breath that I had been holding, but there was something else.
It wasn't the impressive scar on my arm, or the fact that I could move it normally that bothered me. It was that it had already healed.
Small droplets of sweat began to form on my brow, whether from the sun or my predicament, I did not know.
Either I had developed a miraculous healing ability over night, or I had been unconscious for a significant amount of time. Unfortunately for me, it was probably a mixture of the two.
While a small part of me wanted to celebrate that I had avoided scavengers and other predators while unconscious, just happy to live another day, the rest was filled with a growing dread.
This wasn't a situation that was natural. The situation was artificial and had an unknown purpose in which, I am pretty sure, the early bird gets the worm, and I had just been caught sleeping in.
It was just a hunch, but my hunches had never been far from the truth.
The voice had mentioned that the adaptive gunk they had injected me with, what I am currently attributing to the weird anomalies of my body, would only work for a week before diminishing rapidly.
While a small part of me still wanted to be sceptical of her words, the results were in, and so I had no choice but to accept the truth and, if that were the case, the implications of missing the first week would be... not worth thinking about.
Simply put, I would be at an incredible disadvantage and probably die a dog's death.
In such a desolate landscape, where making weapons, tools, houses, defences, a safe place to shit was pretty much impossible; it seemed like the abilities of your body and mind were king.
The fact that the voice had mentioned it during the 'critical' part of her speech also added weight that, for what ever purpose I was here, I could evolve, or die.
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-"Hmm, I don't like the term evolve. It's more of adaptations or mutation, and I still look entirely human."
Her words echoed through my mind as her last sentence, about maybe meeting if I survived, now sounded like a mocking taunt.
-"Fucking Bitch, We will see who survives. I wonder if you have a neck that can be strangled."
Growling, knowing that lying here on my back was just wasting time, I slowly opened my eyes, squinting to try and reduce the pain as my hand traced the healed wound on my left shoulder, experiencing the same hardened, insensitive skin.
My hand fell to my stomach, only to find a similar scar as I let out a deep sigh.
-"I use to think scars were cool but being completely covered in them is going to suck if I don't regain some of the flexibility and feeling."
With stinging eyes, wanting nothing more than to be closed, I stood up as I started to theorise ideas that would hopefully answer the mystery of my new aversion to light.
If what the voice had said was true, then while I stalked the cow creatures, I had desired to see in the dark. When I had been ambushed, I had a dire need to see. However, I had not put any conditions or mental imagery on it. I just wanted, at least subconsciously, to see in the dark, no matter what.
A chill ran down my spine.
-"Surely it isn't like that, is it? That would be insane. You could trigger mutations that are completely useless just because you fancied them? What if you had a nightmare and it caused an adaptation?"
Ignoring the possibility that the other humans would doom themselves through our greatest weakness, stupidity, I focused on my own problems.
Mainly, how would whatever they injected me with know how to improve whatever it had changed to make my night vision better? I could somewhat ignore the strength, movement and the 'interesting' sounds I had been making recently, but the implication that it could intelligently modify my body, without running through the multiple possibilities through the trial and error that standard evolution would need, was terrifying.
-"Also, shouldn't your body mutating be excruciatingly painful? Appart from feeling like I have attended Mr Motivators lifetime class after a week long drinking binge, I don't feel too bad."
Sighing, I realised that I had potentially fucked myself over with not getting all the information I could at the start and wondered if I had done the right things. It seemed that every action had a consequence at the moment.
-"Great, so basically I have forced myself to become nocturnal. But what choice did I have? It's not like I intentionally willed the adaptation. Can I change it back if I will it enough? Would it just become something else?"
I thought about it for a few minutes, only to feel my shoulders slump.
-"Do I even want it to? I have always been a night owl and being able to see in the dark could definitely be useful. How would I go about making it so I could see in both the day and night?"
My thoughts ground to a halt as realisation hit me.
I had no control over the adaptations. I was at the mercy of my emotions, desires, subconscious and whatever situations life decided to throw at me.
Did that mean if someone stuffed me into a dark hole and fed me shit I would become a mushroom? Probably not, but the concept was an extremely unsettling thought.
If someone was twisted enough, they could force someone to change in ways that suited them.
Sighing again, I shook my head to clear it. I had the small issue of always looking for the worst in humanity and that train of thought was going to very dark and seedy places. Places that would just make me angry.
Trying to get back on topic, I realised that I was in exactly the same situation as when I initially work up in this world.
-"Nothing's changed. I need more information and a safe place to think things through."
A frown appeared on my face before I lifted my arm and sniffed my armpit.
-"Good, still somewhat fresh. For the moment, as the deodorant is still effective, I am going to assume this is my second day, giving me four or five days to utilise this adaptation thing."
I was pretty proud that I remembered that the deodorant tended to last around twenty-four hours unless that quick dip in the blue liquid had done something, and that I had thought to use it to guess how much time had passed, but what it implied made me feel depressed.
-"Deodorant... you will be missed. And toothbrushes, mouthwash. Scissors to cut my hair. Fuck. This is nothing like the stories I use to read. This world sucks."
An enraged hiss escaped my lips, causing me to frown, wondering why I had picked up that particular trait, as I took a step forward and, for the first time, tried to analyse my surroundings through my eyelashes.
-"Now it doesn't feel like I am going to die of thirst or starvation, it's time to find shelter. The dark green patches I saw on during my fall should have been trees. Trees will need access to water and should have ecosystems of their own. I should be able to use them to fill all my immediate needs."
I wobble slightly, my legs feeling strange, this time earning a low grumble instead of a hiss.
-"I am wasting too much time. I need to get myself sorted and then find the others. I need to know what I information I missed."
The thought of running into other people, especially in a dire situation such as this, fills me with dread. Although working in a group could be an advantage, I just couldn't imagine trusting others with my life or safety and without trust, the whole thing would fall apart relatively quickly.
-"I can always avoid or cut and run if things start taking a turn for the worse. If I work on my cardio and agility, I shouldn't have much to worry about. No guns or even arrows to hit me in the back."
As I continued to look around, I notice the dried blood covering a significant amount of the grass surrounding me and... the remains of what used to be Spike.
Remains would be a generous term in this case. There was literally Spike's, skin and bone remaining. Everything had been devoured, even the bones had been cracked in half and their marrow drunk.
-"Seems like I am lucky that there was easier meat here or-"
I looked down at my hands, then my body and sighed. I looked like I had been thrown to the bottom of a slaughter house drainage pit.
The only parts of me that weren't covered in blood were the areas that it had dried and rubbed off as I rolled around on the grass or flexed my skin as I moved.
Holding my hands up in front of me, somewhat proud of my gruesome scar on my arm, I focused on my fingernails and suddenly, the weird taste in my mouth earlier made sense.
There hadn't been any other scavengers.
I smacked my lips, feeling that instead of hungry, I should be feeling repulsed by what was obviously my handiwork.
-"What the hell did I do last night?"
My stomach grumbled as I stared at the remains, a small pang of hunger welling up.
Looking closer at the remains, I finally smiled.
-"More evidence that I have not slept long. At least it doesn't look like its rotting. Might be different here but I can't of been out too long as the insects haven't turned up."
Stumbling over to the body, I pause as I am about to pick up a bone to use as a makeshift club.
-"If I could break them in half, they are pretty useless."
Looking around, I spot that although many have fallen from Spike's hide, none of the spikes had been broken. Picking one up, I twist it around in my hand before attempting to snap it in half.
Happy that it didn't even bend, I picked up another spike, one that was a similar length and stood up.
-"Thanks, Spike. Though you wanted to eat me, I feel that without you, I would be in some serious trouble by now."
Wondering why I was feeling such sentimental thoughts towards something that had tried to kill me, or the fact I wasn't repulsed by my consumption of raw meat, I craned my neck towards the sky, releasing the tension that had unknowingly built up, had vanished.
While watching a few, small birds circling above, I briefly contemplated if they had done something else to my mind. It wasn't just that I was remaining calm where I should be freaking out, it was as if I was a completely different person. Then again, with what I had recently been through, I doubt anyone would remain the same.
-"Another question with no answers."
The birds were a sign that the results from my little fight were gaining attention and did a quick once over before shaking my head.
-"Time to get a move on, don't want to meet the locals looking like this."
Stumbling to the top of the closest hill, I rubbed away as much of the dried blood from my arms, letting it flutter away in the wind like red snow as I laughed.
"Though if I look anything like I imagine, I wouldn't want to mess with me."
My smile vanished as I raised my hand to my throat. This was the first time I had spoken since... well, in recent memory, but my voice did not sound like my own. It was cracked, harsh and extremely... haunting. I had no better word for it. It wasn't friendly in the slightest.
If I heard that voice in a dark alley, if I were in a group, I would kneecap the nearest person to buy myself some time and run like the devil was chasing me.
My thoughts were cut short as I reached the top and surveyed my surroundings.
In the light of the day, even with my over sensitive eyes, which, just by keeping them barely open was giving me a small migraine, I spotted a few worn paths in the grass, all snaking in a similar direction.
Noticing that there was a larger gap between the trails towards the sun than those on the other side, I headed in the opposite direction, much to the relief of my eyes.
-"If I assume that the paths originate from one of those clusters of trees, then this should be the right direction. I hope."
I knew it was a pretty big assumption, but apart from flipping a stone in a warped attempt of heads or tails, this made the most sense, even if it did mean I would be heading towards danger.
My fight with Spike had been too close, and even if I did feel much stronger now, I was in no hurry for a rematch but sitting out in the open was asking for trouble.
Looking ahead, I noticed that the clear blue skies were marred with black streaks.
-"Typical, I had to be heading in the same direction as plumes of foreboding smoke. And like they say, where there's smoke, there's fire. I bet my shiny new daggers that it is the other humans fucking up magnificently."
I started walking, already regretting the decision to meet up with others but knowing it was a necessary evil.
"Who knows, it might not be so bad?"