Adult-FanFiction.org : Games

[PROTOTYPE]: Reborn	By : ShinaRyun Category: +M through R > Prototype Series Views: 3341 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: PROTOTYPE and all derivative/associated works and titles belong to Activision, Radical Entertainment, and their affiliates. I make NO PROFIT from this writing.

Chapter List
- 6
- 7
- 8
The two technicians monitoring the prison’s kennel exchanged incredulous glances as they heard the Gentek scientists speaking about the dogs in the room beneath them. One, the elder of the two, seemed caught between indifference and appalled awe, while the younger sounded almost childish in his exuberance. This would have been surprising, since both men were late in their seventies, were it not for the fact that both were Gentek men.
That was enough to let the technicians write off just about any eccentricity. Listening to the two argue was enough to make them stifle giggles between their silent exchanges of ‘What the fuck?’
“Fritz, they’re not adorable.”
“They are fucking so, you cat-loving jackass!”
“They’re twenty feet long! At least!”
“I know! It’s like the cuteness got magnified a thousand times!”
“They have fangs bigger than your arms!”
“Oh, come on! Just look at their eyes! They’re so sweet-looking!”
“Unbelievable,” Horst said with a roll of his eyes, lifting a hand to press fingers deeply into his brow. “You are batshit crazy.”
“Crazy in love,” Fritz answered confidently, not taking his eyes off of what he perceived as majestic creatures beneath him.
Horst had a slightly different opinion of the half-dozen virus-mutated dogs roaming around their concrete pen. They appeared to have once been Corgis, of the Welsh-Pembroke variety, but whatever Gentek had done to them had turned them each into something very different. Each dog retained their classic appearance, their legs much shorter when compared to the length of their squat bodies, their faces wide and pointed…but the similarity to their original bodies ended there. They were monsters of shaggy fur, bloody reds and blacks mingling with patches of white that rippled over their beefy muscle structures, their pelts broken by thick lines of glowing bioluminescence over their spines. Black plates of hard, shiny biomass showed through the fur over each dogs’ chest and forelegs, with flexible ridges of the stuff layering over their shoulders, backs, and hips like scaled armor and sculpted helmets fused over the tops of their skulls, open around their eyes and tall ears. Wide, shovel-like paws ended in claws reinforced by black biomass; the deep scratches gouged into the concrete floor were testament to their effectiveness.
As Horst had pointed out, the dogs each reached about twenty feet from their pointed noses to their docked tails, with stocky legs reaching only a sixth of that length. Despite their four-foot legs, each dog stood close to eight feet tall at the shoulders, their bodies bulky and thick. Horst could not see how any one of the things had more than two feet of clearance off the ground, and couldn’t imagine how low an unaltered version must have been.
The dogs’ low suspension clearly did little to impede their mobility, as evidenced by the jumping, barking fight which broke out between two of the mutts. Horst resisted the urge to whistle as he watched the two move about the room, alternating between bringing their fanged snouts almost level with the floor in furious staring contests and snapping at each other as they jumped on their hind legs, clearing more than ten feet in a leap. Even for creatures their size, their roaring barks seemed disproportionately loud, making the supposedly-soundproof glass windows rattle in their frames.
“Do they always make this much racket?” Horst asked, turning to look at the technicians.
“Believe it or don’t, doctor, but this is actually a quiet night,” one of the younger men answered.
“Just had to make them loud, hmm?” Horst asked with a raised eyebrow, crossing his arms critically.
“Trust me, doctor, I know that it’s difficult to imagine, but even when they’re tiny, the little bastards can get pretty damn loud,” the technician continued. “Should hear them when they yodel.”
“Yodel?” Horst asked disbelievingly. His head whipped back around as one of the monstrous canines did just that, its’ head tilting back to release a sound like a deep-voiced whale singing through a bank of wavering, ululating speakers. It rang around the room and made Horst want to tear his own ears off.
Only once the ringing noise subsided did he notice that Fritz was cooing like a schoolgirl.
“Ohhh, don’t you have a good singing voice! Yes you do! Yes you do!” The submissive Evolved paused to glance at Horst once he noticed his lover staring at him like he had grown a third arm out of his forehead.
“Screw you, I like it.”
“You are a sad, strange little man, and you have my pity.”
“Cool your jets, Woody,” Fritz grumbled. “We’re still gonna go eat ‘em. Even if they are fucking adorable,” he added wistfully.
“Uhhh…eat them?” one of the technicians said, concerned. “Doctor, what exactly do you mean?”
“Eat them. Consume them. Tear them limb from limb and feast on their flesh,” Horst said quickly, whipping on the technician with a look that made it clear how annoyed he was by the man’s interruption. “Did you learn to speak English somewhere where ‘eat them’ means something other than that?”
“No…but, doctor…what the hell do you mean?!” the man sputtered as he stood, clearly distressed. “You can’t…eat them! Hell, you can’t even go near one of the things unless you’re a handler!”
“A what now?” Horst asked.
“The handlers,” the technician tried to add helpfully, gesturing at the windows. Looking back out, Horst and Fritz finally saw what the man meant, noticing four men in black Gentek uniforms walking among the dogs. They used hand gestures and short commands to herd the huge, shaggy creatures around the room, quickly getting them in two lines with their wide butts sitting restlessly on the floor. Fascinated, the two Evolved watched as the men began to feed the hounds from long hoses that sprayed a pinkish-grey slop into bowl-like depressions in the floor before each dog, filling each bowl full before pulling away to let the hounds slurp and gnaw on their dinner.
“Sweetheart?” Horst asked as he watched.
“Yes, baby?”
“I do believe that we have our way in to see our dinner.”
Fritz sighed. “Do we have to? I mean, c’mon, just look at them!”
“Yes,” Horst said calmly, “Look at them. Can you imagine what we might learn from them? What kind of power we might gain?” Fritz sighed again and just nodded with his eyes downcast, clearly unhappy. His attention was stolen when he caught movement out of the corner of his eye.
“Oi!” he yelled, making both the technicians freeze where they were, mid-step towards the doorway leading out of the room. “The hell do you two think you’re going?”
“Uhh…” one of the two said foolishly. He started stammering as the two Evolved turned to face him and his comrade, approaching slowly. “W-we were just gonna go get some coffee…sir…”
“Oh, I really don’t think that’s a good idea,” Horst said with a sadistic smirk, nudging Fritz before he allowed his disguise to peel away and reveal the man beneath. Fritz smirked wider as he did the same; the lack of security cameras in the room allowed the two more freedom in how they presented themselves, a benefit they both appreciated. The two technicians nearly fell over as the two middle-aged doctors turned into a pair of young men, but even that shock could not have prepared the unfortunate humans for the surprise that followed.
Reveling in their freedom, both Evolved finally did something that they had not done in years: they let their claws come out. Each of the mutant’s arms rippled and slithered for barely half a heartbeat, their flesh unmaking itself at their shoulders before reforming, the transformation chasing down their arms to finish with their hands. Leather and denim disappeared, replaced by powerful, lithe bundles of black biomass that flexed eagerly and melded seamlessly with their torsos, the boneless, inhuman limbs stretching obscenely long. Each ended in a rudimentary hand, little more than a hub for the four scything claws which extended dangerously from each limb.
One technician voided his bladder and collapsed backwards, trying to back away as he made inarticulate, whimpering pleas. The second was too frightened to move, his eyes wide as saucers. In a moment of absolute clarity, he noticed that the two monsters’ claws differed significantly. The blonde one’s claws were serrated, like curved steak knives that flexed freakishly, while the dark-haired one’s claws appeared longer, reminiscent of long, slender scalpels. It was the last thing he noticed before those long, curved talons flashed out for his body, gleaming edges moving so fast that the light reflecting from them seared a long, curving crescent into the technician’s retinas.
Mercifully, it was the last thing he focused upon as his head hit the floor beside his torso and a thick, neatly-severed section of his neck.
“Ohhhh, gods,” Horst practically moaned as he made his kill, the pleasure of using his claws again reaching nearly orgasmic levels after denying himself for so many years. From the sound of Fritz’s groan as the ex-soldier ripped apart the other squealing technician, he knew that the feeling was mutual.
“Never again,” Fritz husked as he finished and held his bloody claws up before him, almost tearing up at the sight of the sanguine fluid dripping off the serrated teeth of his vicious hands. “Never again will I go so long without using these.”
“Uh-uh,” Horst said with a shake of his head, agreeing with his lover and flexing his claws slowly, savoring their wonderful lethality. “Not in this lifetime. I’d rather fight all of Blackwatch with these than to have to keep them hidden for so long.”
“Well, all of Blackwatch isn’t here,” Fritz pointed out, grinning as he stood up straight and nodded towards the windows. “But I bet that we can get a nice, good scrap on with them instead.”
“Oh, you clever mind-reader, you,” Horst purred as he turned towards the windows, his grin as sharp as the two-foot blades sprouting from his hands. “Don’t get bogged down,” he added a little seriously, “and keep close. I don’t know how powerful these things are, but I don’t trust ‘em to separate just yet. Work together?”
“Divide and conquer,” Fritz said with a nod, and then grinned maniacally as he leapt into a run and crashed his body through the windows, claws leading the way, Horst half a step behind him. Every one of the massive dogs immediately stopped their feeding to stare at the new arrivals into their lair, their ears flattening back and their lips lifting to show off six sets of very dangerous-looking teeth. As the Evolved touched down in the middle of the room, a chorus of growling filled the air with a sound reminiscent of a hot-rod convention.
“Hello, bitches,” Horst muttered through his grin, unable to keep from smiling as he pressed back to back with Fritz, their bodies lowered and their claws stretched out aggressively. Something about being surrounded by enemies brought out the best in him, making his pulse fly and his glowing marks light up like phosphorus on his skin.
The four handlers were faster to respond to the threat than the technicians had been, each one of the four shaking off their shock within seconds. “KILL!” one screamed before all four turned and dived for the walls, each one pressing flat to the stained concrete in order to present the lowest-possible profile to distract the dogs.
Their actions proved unnecessary; the dogs had much more interesting things to focus on. Two of the massive beasts lunged forward with their jaws snapping, making both Horst and Fritz grunt in surprise and immediately re-think their plan to stick together as they shoved off of one-another and dived forward. They did not stop moving once they started, both Evolved discovering within moments that despite their size, the massive dogs were as nimble as ballerinas. They were natural herding animals, and so had no trouble tracking the movements of prey even as agile and quick as the Evolved.
“Fucking hate dogs!” Horst roared as he leapt straight up, barely avoiding having sword-like canines nip his legs off at the knees. A midair change of direction spared him from having a leaping dog’s mouth close over his torso, the obvious power in their jaws making him think that even his endurance would be put to the test if he got bitten.
“You just haven’t gotten to know them well enough!” Fritz commented from halfway across the chamber, the ex-soldier running across the floor as fast as his legs could carry him, having to dodge and roll with practically every other step to avoid teeth nipping at his heels.
“These aren’t exactly making the best first impression!” Horst yelled, hitting the ground and throwing himself flat to keep a particularly large dog from eating him with its’ head turned sideways. The mutt was persistent, snarling and slavering as it snapped at him again, making a short jump forward to keep the distance between them to a minimum. Horst growled and flipped himself over onto his back before the dog could bite him, and swiped his right arm across to intercept just in time to slash three bloody lines across the dog’s upper lip and gums. A loud, surprised yip of pain was his reward, the dog immediately backpedaling and lowering its’ head to paw roughly at its’ slightly-blunt snout, bloodied but far from dead.
“They bleed!” Horst snarled victoriously.
“Stop the presses!” Fritz yelled back, too busy trying to keep himself out of a corner to say anything cleverer. Two dogs were focusing on driving him back while a third hung back and restlessly checked itself left and right, waiting for its prey to make a move away from the two driving Fritz towards the corner. Horst saw the trick out of the corner of his eye and snarled in aggravation.
“Out of my fucking way!” he snapped as two more of the hounds lunged for him, the Evolved diving between them and flipping over one’s thick body to give him an uninterrupted path to his lover. Fritz was just a foot shy of getting cornered when he made his leap, cursing immediately as he saw the third dog leap up too quickly to be dodged away from.
“Scheiße,” he spat, swinging his arms back so that he could meet the attack with one of his own. He didn’t expect much of an opening, and was surprised when his attacker suddenly jerked and flipped its’ head around to the left with a shocked bark. Fritz didn’t question good fortune, shoving himself forward through the air with a burst of aerosolized biomass and slashing both sets of claws in an X over the dog’s exposed neck, snarling wildly. Sharp claws easily bit through fur and hide to gouge deep lines through the dog’s flesh, Fritz’s serrated claws leaving ugly wounds that bled profusely and left him soaked to his shoulders in the hot fluid.
The wounded dog hit the ground with a yip that would have broken Fritz’s heart if the thing hadn’t just tried to kill him, blood spurting wildly from its neck. More blood was shooting from its midriff, a phenomenon rapidly explained by the sound of Horst grunting as he slashed again and again into the soft flesh under the massive dog’s ribs. Horst had sprinted for the dog as it had bunched its legs to jump and then leapt with it, stabbing all eight of his long claws into its side and tearing at the beast viciously as it fell. His malicious energy kept him moving once they hit the floor, doing his best to kill the struggling hound while he had a moment to do so without being attacked.
Fritz did not stick around to watch, leaping up onto the dog’s body and snapping his blue eyes around for the next to try their luck. The two who had hounded him seemed eager, one making a running jump that aimed to tackle him off of the squealing body he stood upon, the second tearing around to try to get to Horst. Knowing that time was of the essence for his lover, Fritz dashed to intercept the dog moving for Horst, dodging away from his own attacker. Roaring loudly to try to get its attention, he skidded across the floor and brought his right arm across in a wild swing over its chest, claws sparking off its armor. The strike got the dog’s attention and earned Fritz a huge paw swatting at his back, sharp claws raking deep lines across his flesh that made the Evolved roar again in pain and tumble forward to avoid a second blow.
Bleeding but undeterred, Fritz was back on his feet in the blink of an eye, turning to face his attacker just in time to see the dog move again for Horst. Fritz leaped for it again, this time flying beside the creature with his claws out to rake down its’ side, catching on the soft flesh between the dog’s back armor and chest armor. The move cut two shallow, long lines down the beast’s side and sheared off several pounds of thick fur; more importantly, it brought Fritz close enough to slash all four claws through the dog’s large right ear as he passed. That was enough to earn him a series of sharp, pained growls and to make the hound back off, head tilted to the right to keep blood from running deeper into its’ ear.
“Kill! KILL!” Fritz heard one of the handlers scream from across the room, his eyes narrowing in absolute loathing.
“As you fucking wish,” he muttered. “Horst!”
“I’m good!” Horst yelled, standing from his kill soaked head to toe in blood and gore, the disemboweled body of his victim lying before him like a beached whale.
“Watch my back!” Fritz yelled before he took off across the room, his eyes sharp and turned a lethal shade of brightly-glowing red as he charged for the handlers. The three dogs who Horst had been keeping company were already moving to stop him, making Fritz dodge left, then jump back to avoid two of them. Horst was there to help, running the same interference that Fritz had seconds before, leaping in front of Fritz and getting the dogs’ attention so that Fritz could leap over them unimpeded.
The dog whose lip Horst had cut had recovered and stood resolutely between Fritz and the men who were beginning to catch on that they had become the Evolved’s targets. “C’mon, big guy,” Fritz growled as he tried to feint left, then right, but the dog matched him move for move. Another series of feints ended in failure, as did Firt’z attempt to jump over the thing; the dog caught up with him in midair and swatted him back down to the floor with a paw, the strike leaving Fritz with another set of bloody stripes across his chest to match the ones on his back.
He popped back onto his feet and was about to try to get around the thing again when he noticed something strange: the dog was looking at him with something other than a hunter’s instincts. There was something about the dog that Fritz hadn’t seen in the one Horst had killed, something just a little bit…brighter, almost, its eyes shining as it crouched down in front of Fritz, front end low to the ground, back end held up, its rump and hind legs twitching in readiness.
It wasn’t until Fritz noticed that the dog’s tail had been improperly docked that he realized what the brightness was. A half-hearted stump of a tail remained on the dog’s backside where all the others had a cleanly round backside, and it was that stub of a tail that Fritz saw wiggling left and right as rapidly as a polygraph’s needle.
Wagging…
“What’s that?!!” the Evolved suddenly yelled with as much exuberant excitement as he could manage, swinging his left arm up and pointing far to his left. As he had hoped, the dog followed his pointing finger and swung its head around to the left; the movement of Fritz springing to the right got its attention again, but by then Fritz was too far gone to be stopped.
“Let’s test this,” he growled under his breath as he leapt for the four handlers and punched his claws into two of them, impaling a torso on each of his hands. The screaming, panicked men were still alive as Fritz concentrated as hard as he could, finding the power that he had absorbed only minutes earlier. At his will, he felt surges of biomass race through his body like fluid pushed through a syringe, the miniscule traces of biomass injecting into the bodies impaled upon his claws in the blink of an eye.
Instantly, both men began to scream and seize on his claws, their bodies starting to slither wildly and shake with uncontrolled mutations as the concentrated doses of viral tissue turned them both into living bombs. Fritz wasted no time in putting them to use, turning to see Horst trying and largely failing to avoid the four dogs whose attention he had managed to keep.
“Fire in the hole!” Fritz roared before twirling and flinging both of his victims into the knot of furry bodies, praying that Horst would get out before they went off. He breathed a sigh of relief when he heard Horst roar and leap clear, the Evolved trailing red light from his incandescent glow-marks and blood from half a dozen injuries, tumbling across the floor and panting hard as he struggled to his feet beside Fritz.
“Fucking…god…damn…dogs,” he cursed, his left leg maimed and chewed, claw-scratches leaving his right side in ribbons, a deep cut over his eye nearly scalping him. He nearly fell over when Fritz’s bombs went off, the four dogs focusing upon them intently before they each exploded, whipping flesh-arms out to grab onto anything they could before retracting into their hosts. The two bio-bombs actually pulled each other together as they closed, yanking two more of the dogs off their paws and into the mess of flesh before overpressure caused the bombs to explode violently. The dogs both whimpered as they tried to get their footing back after the detonations, not an easy thing to do when one had lost most of the skin and armor on its’ left side and the other had lost a leg.
“Nicely done,” Horst grunted as he observed the bombs’ effectiveness, raising an eyebrow at Fritz. “How’d you manage that?”
“With Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum-fuck here,” Fritz said with a smirk, turning to face the remaining two handlers. “I think a repeat performance might be called for.”
“Wait,” Horst said quickly before Fritz could turn the two into another set of bio-explosives. “I need to heal…and I don’t trust these mutts enough to think that I can eat one of them later.”
“Go, then” Fritz said, nodding. “You take one, I’ll take the other. You never know,” he added with a shrug.
As the four dogs Fritz had bombed finally started to get their wits about them, the two Evolved took their screaming handlers apart and consumed them, each grateful for the healing factor provided by the pounds of biomass. As they hacked through the men’s memories, they were both surprised to find clear recollections of intensive training with the dogs, including the complex language that had been developed to speak to the creatures, a combination of hand signs and calls.
What surprised them more was that once the finished and got their senses back in full, they found the five remaining dogs all standing before them, pawing the ground uncertainly and looking between each other and the Evolved. One in particular, the one Fritz had tricked, seemed less uncertain, and took a tentative step towards the two mutants with its head lowered and its nose twitching, sniffing at them.
“I think…I think that they think that we’re there handlers now,” Fritz murmured as he stood still, watching the dog approach, a slow smile spreading over his face.
“No. Fucking. Way,” Horst practically spat, glaring at Fritz. “Whatever it is that you’re thinking, stop it.”
“But-“
“No! I am not about to start running around with one of these goddamn dogs tagging along!”
“Horst-“
“I said no!”
“And I’m saying yes!” Fritz yelled back, glaring at his lover. Boldly, he retracted his claws, stepped forward and held out a hand to the dog sniffing at him, letting the huge creature sniff the back of his hand for a long minute. When the dog’s stumpy tail began to wag and its massive, flat tongue slid out to swipe across Fritz’s arm and hand, the Evolved grinned and lifted his other arm up to start scratching at the dog’s jaw.
“See, Horst? He likes me!” Fritz exclaimed, looking over his shoulder to see his lover. He frowned when he did not see Horst there, looking around until he spotted the other Evolved and sighing when he did. Horst was stomping across the room towards the body of the one dead dog, muttering under his breath and limping badly from his still-healing leg.
“Horst?”
“I’m finding out what these things have that’s useful,” Horst called over his shoulder as he flexed his long claws, using them once he arrived to roughly pull the dog’s body in half. “I’ll save you a piece,” he added before rapidly starting to consume his half of the dog, the vicious hunger in his feeder-tendrils reflecting both his displeasure at Fritz’s attraction and his need to feed from his injuries.
Fritz sighed, and then started as the four dogs who had not sniffed him all growled and started to approach Horst as he devoured the corpse of one of their fallen.
“Uhhh…Horst?” Fritz called as he took a step towards his lover, a warning on his lips. It came too late when one of the dogs suddenly lunged; mid-feeding, there was nothing Horst could do to stop the attack.
He didn’t have to. The lunging dog was sent flying into a wall, tangled with another that had pounced upon it and sunken its huge teeth into the attacking dog’s neck with a growl. Fritz saw a flash of a stubby tail before he realized that he had made a new ally, and snapped his claws back out to do his part.
The friendly dog successfully crippled Horst’s first attacker with its bite, but suffered a bite of its own when a second dog lunged and sank teeth into its hindquarters. Fritz effectively got the second attacker’s attention with two sets of toothed claws lancing into its back legs, hamstringing it and leaving it easy prey for the friendly dog to finish.
The other two dogs howled and leapt into the fray, but neither Fritz nor his new friend had a chance to attack them when Horst leapt before them…at least, Fritz sincerely hoped that the thing which suddenly stood between the dogs and him was Horst.
It was roughly humanoid, and stood taller than Fritz remembered Horst being, although the pointed top of the thing’s helmet might have just given it the illusion of height. It was all black, covered head to toe in the same glossy armor plating which protected the dogs, and as Fritz looked, he saw that it was broken by glowing marks which resembled bites and claw-scratches all over its’ back and arms. He could not see any glowing marks on the thing’s legs because of a skirt of flexible, scale-like armor which shielded the thing from its waist almost to the floor.
“Horst?” Fritz asked cautiously.
“Bet your ass,” Horst’s voice said with a chuckle, the sound slightly muffled and strained. He said nothing else as he met the dogs’ charge, his legs pumping beneath his armored skirt seemingly without impediment, his arms sprouting his long claws in an instant. The first dog leaned down to bite him, and Horst allowed it to do so, trusting in his newly-acquired armor to keep him from destruction. Sure enough, the tough exoskeleton stopped the dog’s crunching jaws in their tracks, leaving Horst free to swipe his claws first across the beast’s nose, and then in a lightning-fast slash across its’ throat when it tilted its head up and away from his first blow. The Evolved landed on his feet when the dying monster dropped him, snarling lowly inside his helmet.
The second dog jumped around the first and tried to get past Horst’s left side to attack Fritz, but the dominant Evolved was having none of it. His left arm retracted its claws and snapped out to grab gauntlet-clad fingers around the edge of the dog’s hip plating, his feet digging into the concrete to anchor himself firmly down and stop the dog in its tracks. Yipping and bending to snap angrily at its ball and chain, the dog caught a mouthful of sharp claws that made it squeal in pain. Fritz finished it, sliding underneath it and spearing his claws under its jaw, slashing its throat wide open.
Finished, the last of the hostile dogs collapsed to bleed out on the floor, leaving Horst, Fritz, and the one stub-tailed canine alone in the blood-soaked kennel. Fritz slowly approached Horst, finally getting a good look at his lover as Horst turned to face him. The helmet covering Horst’s head was oddly shaped, elongated at the front and angled down over his chest while flaring widely behind his head and over his shoulders, the smooth lines and creases of the organic armor making the strange display no less eerie. The flowing, beetle-black plates of seamless armor gave his body a more sculpted, powerful appearance, especially around his arms and shoulders once Horst retracted his claws. The power in his newly-gauntleted hands was obvious.
“Yeah…this is going to take some getting used to,” Horst said from within his armor, his head moving slightly when he spoke, but refusing to open or crack to allow for any clearer speech. He shrugged, sighing hollowly. “For the benefits, I think I can stand to look like a damn witch doctor.”
“Not the comparison I would have drawn,” Fritz said with a shake of his head, his own conclusion coming to mind as he looked over the pointed, almost triangular helmet and apron-like armored skirt. “All you’re missing is one giant-ass knife…”
“Pardon?”
“Nothing,” Fritz said dismissively. “So where the hell…?”
“The dog,” Horst said with a chuckle, armored limbs held up helplessly to his sides, his helmeted head bobbing comically as he spoke. “I ate it, and…well, this sort of just happened!”
“Can you make it un-happen, please? You look like you’re on holiday from the Spanish Inquisition,” Fritz said with a shiver.
“YOU eat one of the mutts, let’s see how YOU turn out,” Horst challenged as he willed his armor off, sighing as the black plates disintegrated back into his body and left him whole and healed, leather jacket zipping up across his chest. “Speaking of mutts,” he added, looking up at the panting, stub-tailed dog who sat behind Fritz.
“Oh, him,” Fritz said more pleasantly, smiling as he looked between his lover and his new dog. “Horst, meet Darwin. Darwin, meet Horst.”
“Dar-no, ohhh no, sweetheart. There is no way-!”
“Way what?” Fritz asked sharply, stepping close enough to Horst to see the tiny vibrations of his right eyelid twitching. “Did you see us just now? Because I did. I saw us nearly get our asses handed to us on a silver platter by a bunch of dogs. We’re trying to get back to NYZ, where I can guarantee you that there’s going to be a hell of a lot worse than what we had to deal with here. You telling me that you really want to go without help?”
“A dog is not help!” Horst said with an exasperated sigh. “This one especially! I mean for god’s sake, sweetheart, you distracted him by pointing!”
“So what? He’s a little derpy, he’s not perfect…neither are we! And I’d rather have a dog that I can trust to be stupid now and then, instead of a person who I can trust to try to fuck us both over at the first chance they’d get!”
Horst sighed again and lifted a hand to his face, pushing his glasses up onto his brow as he tried to think. The crazy mutt HAD probably saved him while he was feeding…and, like it or not, Fritz seemed to have bonded with him, which meant that the choice was either to accept it, or to hurt his lover.
“Fine,” he grumbled, letting out yet another sigh. “We’ll keep the crazy mutt.”
“Darwin,” Fritz corrected.
“Darwin,” Horst said grudgingly. Darwin barked once at the name, looking down at Horst with his mouth open in what amounted to a smile, panting hotly and allowing his wide tongue to hang just a little bit over his front teeth as he did so.
“I think he likes you,” Fritz said teasingly.
“I think I’m going to bite your dick off when I blow you, Fritz. Maybe twice for good measure,” Horst muttered as he turned to look around the room, eventually seeing the door leading out, big enough for Darwin to fit through. “I’m going to go hit the switch, you just keep him close while we get out of here. His warden’s memories says that there’s a shuttle running from here to the train station, and that can take us to NYZ. How do you think we’re going to get him in, exactly?”
“Gentek disguises and a containment box,” Fritz said confidently. “We’ll say that we’re bringing him to NYZ to perform some field tests.”
“Plausible,” Horst said before jumping back up into the control room and finding the door release controls; he came down as Fritz was in the middle of consuming his half of the dog Horst had first killed. Darwin, Horst was mildly pleased to see, was standing guard over his lover, up on all four paws and swiveling his wide, brown eyes around the room for a threat. He relaxed once Horst returned, making the Evolved shake his head slowly as he approached his lover.
“Well?” he asked, a smile toying at his lips. “What kind of train wreck do I get to see you wearing?”
Fritz said nothing for a long moment as he absorbed the dead dog’s DNA and felt his own armor grow around him. It was a strange feeling, simultaneously numbing him to sensation and heightening his senses, strengthening the smell and coppery taste of the blood soaking the room, his sense of touch picking up the minute vibrations in the floor from Horst’s advance.
At the same time, he felt like he could take a rocket to his chest and laugh.
Like their claws, the two Evolved’s armor differed considerably, and as Fritz had been somewhat concerned about the appearance of Horst’s armor, so too was Horst as he looked over his lover. Armored plates were built up thickly around Fritz’s shoulders, back and chest, and like Horst, the power in his arms had been visibly magnified by the armor’s enhanced bulk. Unlike Horst, Fritz had developed the sharp points of what looked like vestigial claws over his armored hands, like curved knuckle-spikes mirrored by more points over his feet. The claw-like protrusions also stood in shallow, narrow ridges over his limbs and down his spine, saw-like teeth gleaming sharply all over his body.
Most disturbingly to Horst, Fritz had grown a tail. A short, thick, curved tail of flexible black biomass right over the plates protecting his fantastic ass. Horst was certain that his lover would claim that it was a balancing agent, helping him to move more efficiently; he suspected that it was simply Fritz’s canine sympathies showing through.
This was confirmed when Fritz turned to face him and revealed the curiously detailed helmet which had replaced his head, looking for all the world like a fanged, grinning canine skull sculpted from ebony.
“You gotta be fucking kidding me,” Horst swore, staring at his lover blankly. The armor gave Fritz enough height to see Horst at his eye level, allowing Horst a perfect view of his lover throwing his head back to cackle at his disbelief.
“Believe it, baby! I am a GOD among dogs!”
“You’re an idiot, is what you are,” Horst tired to say spitefully, but the chuckle and helpless smile that his happy partner forced from him won over eventually. “And thank god, you’re my idiot.”
“Damn right,” Fritz said happily as he shifted out of his armor, the hard black biomass receding into his body smoothly, leaving him in his usual garb as he embraced Horst tightly, laughing into his shoulder. “And you’re my creepy freak, baby.”
“Mmhmm,” Horst hummed, nodding and hugging Fritz back. “Ahhh, we should have done this sooner, eh?”
“Oh yes. Well, we’re doing it now, and I’d say that we’ve already made up for quite a bit of lost time,” Fritz said happily, eyes bright as he looked up to his lover. “I can’t wait to see what else we find in NYZ.”
“Everything ever worth having,” Horst said confidently. “Except for one thing, I suppose.”
“What’s that?” Fritz asked curiously.
“You,” Horst murmured, smiling softly.
Fritz scoffed slightly and turned half a shade pinker, leaning his forehead into Horst’s chest, the two Evolved enjoying a moment of calm amid the pools of blood and cooling bodies. “C’mon,” Fritz said after a little while. “We’ve got a date with the Big Apple.”
Horst nodded his assent, turning from Fritz to survey the carnage around them with a light sigh. “Suppose we should clean up in here a bit…Gentek will be curious if all their dogs disappear, but they’ll be up in arms if they find half a dozen corpses.”
“Guess so,” Fritz agreed. “You take two, I’ll take two?”
“Ahhhh…” Horst said with a raised eyebrow before nodding over Fritz’s shoulder, prompting the ex-soldier to turn and look in time to see Darwin hunched over one of the dead dogs, munching away as happily as could be. Fritz was a breath away from scolding the dog for cannibalism before he noticed that Darwin’s bite wound was rapidly starting to close up and heal as he ate.
The hundreds of memories of the people he had eaten also helped him to remember that he had no room to judge Darwin’s eating habits. He sighed and shrugged. “Guess he’ll eat his fill, then…suppose it’s good to know that he can heal himself without too much care. I don’t think we’re going to find any veterinarians in NYZ.”
“Ha!” Horst coughed a laugh before he snapped his claws out and jogged over to another corpse, quickly starting to work his way through it. Fritz did the same, both Evolved consuming what they could of the massive bodies; Drawin helped to clear up the remains, the dog’s stomach seemingly bottomless. When they finished, the memories of the handlers and scientists quickly led the two Evolved to a containment cage large enough to hold Darwin. Some cajoling from Fritz and a swift kick against his armored ass from Horst helped to convince Darwin to settle into the cage, although the wide-eyed look which he gave Fritz as they were getting ready to shut the door caused them some problems.
“Fritz, we cannot ride from here to NYZ with a dog the size of a small bus trying to squeeze into a seat!”
“But…but he looks so sad in there!”
“He just ate three times his weight in raw meat, sweetheart, he’s going to be asleep two minutes after you shut the door.”
“Horst, he doesn’t want us to leave him. If we can’t let him out, can we at least ride in there with him?”
“Oh, for the love of Cthulhu’s slimy tentacles,” Horst cursed under his breath, heaving a sigh. “Fine…once we get him in the shuttle, we can ride with him to the train, but I am not riding across the damn country in a cage!”
“Deal!” Fritz said excitedly, giving Darwin his deepest assurances that they would return before helping Horst get the sturdy box closed and onto a trolley. Getting the cage to the shuttle depot was easy, as was getting it up onto the shuttle itself. The Evolved’s disguises gave them the proper credentials to authorize the dog’s transport, and while the operators were curious as to why only one dog needed to go, the Evolved managed to get aboard without trouble.
Once the shuttle started moving along its’ rails, Fritz dragged Horst back to the cage and nearly forced the reluctant Evolved inside. As Horst had predicted, Darwin was completely comatose when they arrived; the sight of the massive, armored monster curled up against the back two corners of the cage with his long nose tucked close to his tail nearly made Fritz squeal in glee.
“Shush!” Horst hissed, hugging his lover from behind with one arm and forcing his free hand over Fritz’s mouth to keep him quiet. With love. “We’re here, now please, let’s just relax…it has been a hell of a day for us all and I could use half an hour of rest.”
“Only if we cuddle next to him,” Fritz murmured from beneath Horst’s hand, nodding towards the sleeping dog.
“Anything to make you happy, sweetheart,” Horst said with only mild sarcasm. In truth, he would have lit himself on fire if it meant he could spend peaceful time with Fritz in his arms. Being forced to cuddle next to the huge, warm, furry body taking up more than three-quarters of the cage’s space wasn’t much of a sacrifice.
As Horst laid down on his back with his right side pressed snuggly to Darwin’s flank and his arms wrapped tightly around Fritz’s back, he started to ponder upon what his lover had told him. ‘We’re trying to get back to NYZ, where I can guarantee you that there’s going to be a hell of a lot worse than what we had to deal with here. You telling me that you really want to go without help?’
Horst understood that he and Fritz were tough, tougher than any human ever would…it was a part of what made them so confident, secure in their knowledge that they were as close to indestructible as any living thing ever could be. Yet, the events of the day had made him start to wonder if that was enough. Fritz had taken some bad shots in the hanger, and without the shield he had used, they might have been worse; his own distraction in the kennels had nearly cost Horst a leg. Then there were his memories from ten years ago, when other Evolved, as hard to kill as he and Fritz were, had fallen dead again and again at James Heller’s hands.
Horst’s arms tightened around Fritz’s back as he closed his eyes and tucked his head down, pressing his face to Fritz’s head gently, breathing in his lover’s faint scent. He concentrated a moment on that feeling, the warm weight of Fritz’s heavy body relaxing above him, his pulse, his breathing, all slowing as the rhythmic click-click of the shuttle’s wheels running over its tracks lulled him into the Evolved’s version of sleep. The semi-hibernation rarely lasted for longer than ten or twelve minutes, since the Mercer virus was a near-tireless thing capable of going months without any discernable rest, even under incredible duress.
Horst treasured the rare minutes when he had his lover asleep in his arms. It made him feel like there was nothing around him, nothing that existed, nothing but the man he loved. That mentality left him feeling simultaneously secure and disastrously vulnerable.
“I don’t know if we’ll need help, sweetheart,” Horst whispered, his voice too low to wake Fritz. “I don’t know what we’re going to find out there…hell, if we’re going to find anything of use. I don’t know if Gentek’s going to catch on to what we’re doing…if Heller’s still going to be there when we’re ready to go get him…if this fucking formula is going to work. Whatever’s out there, whatever’s ahead, I do know this.” He lowered his voice further, staring down at Fritz as the man slept on him, leaning closer, lips almost brushing the short, thick blonde hair covering Fritz’s scalp.
“There’s nothing out there that we can’t kill, outrun, and outsmart, sweetheart. Nothing…we are the top of the food chain, the predators of predators of predators. If there is anything that dares to threaten that position, my love…anything that tries to push us down…anything that tries to take you from me…” Horst paused for a moment, his fingers clenching involuntarily against Fritz’s back. “The death I will bring them will reach further than they could ever imagine, because a world without you in it is a world I would just as soon see drown in its own blood.”
Fritz hummed for a second in his sleep, nuzzling himself closer to Horst and stretching an arm up to rest against Darwin’s tucked-up hind legs, a smile ghosting across the sleeping Evolved’s face. Horst chuckled and shifted his gaze over to the massive dog they were resting with, shaking his head before leaning his head against Darwin’s thigh.
“And if a mangy mutt like this can help to prevent that, then maybe he’ll grow on me.”
The shuttle rolled on through the dark night with its murderous cargo, its’ driver completely oblivious of the part he was playing in what would eventually become known as the Great Evolution. The man could not have known that by taking a single, innocent night shift, he would become the chauffer of beings later responsible for billions of gallons of bloodshed.
He couldn’t have known, and so he simply held the shuttle on its course, with all the Furies of old silently pushing a wind at his back.
- 6
- 7
- 8
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

[PROTOTYPE]: Reborn