Stay calm. Think rationally.

Talia Walker was in trouble. Her brain knew this, but it was imperative her body not believe it. Not just for her sake, but for everybody else's.

The woman's fingers typed furiously away at the computer terminal, scrolling through menus, attempting desperately to find a way to disable the alarm that was blaring throughout the lab she had infiltrated. There were so many active subroutines, and Talia knew she could disable it, if only she could find the correct ones.

Disabling the system would probably not stop the authorities from showing up at this point, Talia acknowledged, but turning off the security system would give her the advantage of removing security cameras from the equation for her escape, plus unlocking her path out of the area.

Talia shot her eyes from the computer monitor to the nearby digital clock on the wall. It had been two minutes and ten seconds since she had mistakenly - and carelessly - activated the laboratory's security system. That left just slightly more than another 2 or 3 minutes before she could expect a response.

Menus continued to cycle quickly as Talia's fingers tapped against the keyboard. Pulling her right hand from the console, she quickly dragged her arm against her forehead, wiping up beads of sweat that had started to form. Extending her middle and forefinger and pacing them on her neck, the woman measured her pulse. Elevated. Not good. Stay calm. Stay calm. Talia used her fingers to push her glasses up the bridge of her nose before returning to the keyboard.

She had been so careful in her planning, so careful in her execution. One small oversight and everything Talia had planned was in danger of being for naught.

Wait! Talia ceased her typing and paused for a second, before frantically tapping her finger on the keyboard's up arrow, cycling back through her previous commands. There it is. Hitting return, Talia held her breath. Seconds on the clock ticked away, before the alarm finally fell silent.

"Yes!" she shouted, before quickly slapping a hand over her mouth. Not the time to celebrate. Quickly cycling once more through the now-unlocked system, she confirmed that the closed circuit camera system had been disabled. Yes!

She shot her hand out, grabbing a set of purple-tinged vials that sat on the table next to her, and slipped them into a backpack before flinging it onto her shoulder and dashing out of the room. Once in the corridor, Talia took a sharp right and ran as fast as her feet would carry her.

Just gotta get outside. One step at a time. Stay calm. Think rationally.

Talia had memorized the layout of the laboratory - the blueprints had been her lunchtime reading for the past few weeks. Every sharp turn, every set of doors, every staircase that she found herself running through now she could visualize in her head as her brain calculated split-second decisions that would bring her one step closer to freedom.

Her feet completing the final steps of the staircase, Talia broke into a stride and pushed through the double doors into the final corridor before she froze. Blue and red lights.

Down at the far end of the hallway were large, heavy doors - the building's entrance - and through their windows she could make out the sight of police cruisers and armed officers. The door shook emitted an angry bang as it shook from vibrations - no doubt a battering ram.

"No, no, no, the police are here too early," Talia frantically spoke to herself. "No!"

A sudden crash echoed through the hallway as the door gave way, with several officers immediately pouring in through the now open entrance. Stumbling backwards, the woman spun herself and immediately began sprinting in the opposite direction, calculating her next best route with her mental map of the facility.

"Hey you, stop!" voices behind her shouted. "This is the police!"

She needed to lose them - every step would need to be executed perfectly or she would risk arrest - or worse. Stay calm. Think rationally.

Left, left, right, left. Talia darted her way through the halls, her mind choosing paths af it were engaged in a live maze. Footsteps were persistent, if not growing slightly more distant, behind her. If she were lucky, they'd miss one of her turns and make the wrong guess.

I can cut through this door to an emergency exit, Talia thought. Hopefully it will-

As Talia pushed through the door towards her new escape route, there, too were police waiting for her. She fell to her hands and knees in a panic as she struggled to stop, before clawing her way back through the door she had just entered.

Her heart had skipped a beat, and now was beating twice as hard, she felt, to make up for it. Footsteps echoed down all the hallways and she had no idea which directions were safe, if there were any at all.

Desperately, the woman spotted an open lab room across the hall. Without any other options, she quickly dashed into the space and slammed the door shut behind her, flipping the lock and falling to the floor. Talia scrambled away from the doorway, away from the lone window the room had, in hopes that the police hadn't seen her clearly in either of their encounters thus far.

Seconds later, banging came on the door. "Open up! Police!"

Talia swallowed a lump in her throat. She hid behind one of the lab desks, her mind racing through its options. There was no other entrance or exit besides the one she had taken, and the police were now waiting right outside. In trying to escape capture, she had only delayed the inevitable - she was a sitting duck.

Her nerves twitched, her body was shaking. Stay calm. Stay calm. Stay -

A loud crash echoed from the door as the entranceway's frame shook violently and Talia screamed in fright. The battering ram had arrived.

And so had a familiar, gnawing feeling in the pit of her stomach. Her heart had eclipsed racing and now was roaring inside of her chest. The rush of fear and anxiety had taken its toll on the young woman. Calm was off the table. Adrenaline firing, her whole body shook as a wave of raw emotion flooded over her.

Her new nightmare had arrived again. The change had begun.

Talia didn't want to believe it - she never did. She fumbled into her pants pocket for her cellphone and quickly activated the front-facing camera, aiming it towards her eyes. If her shaking body hadn't been enough to convince her, the sight literally staring back at her was: a pair of pale green eyes, almost glowing in their look. This was the color they took when the transformation was triggered, she had learned in her previous changes.

"No, not the change! Not now!" The feeling of fear turned into a moment of raw anger. "NO!" she shouted as she waved her arm through a line of test tubes, knocking them to the ground where the glass shattered into dozens of pieces across the sterile floor.

A wave of pain shot through Talia's body as the woman doubled over, falling to her knees as her hands shot to her stomach. A harsh chill swept over her, goosebumps rising on her skin as she could feel her heart pounding against her chest, the adrenaline pumping within her veins.

Looking back over her shoulder, Talia saw the doors continue to shudder against the battering ram. It wasn't going to last much longer. However, neither was she.

Quickly, Talia removed her backpack and fished inside for the set of vials, pulling them from the bag and quickly shoving them as far as they could go inside both of her pockets.

She felt another powerful surge of adrenaline flow through her and momentarily she lost control of her muscles, falling forward. After a second, her hands instinctively shot out to brace her from her fall, veins engorged and tinted a glowing green. With a spasm, her arm muscles began to expand slowly in pulses, spreading in a wave up her shoulders, down her back and throughout her torso, stretching the fabric of her blouse taut.

She tried to fight the metamorphosis by focusing on staying herself, no matter how futile she knew it would be. Her brain had always been the strongest muscle in her body, ever since she had been a kid, but she had found in the past few months that in these situations, no matter how much she fought, her brainpower could not stand a chance. In the end, all that she was would always be lost in the mindlessness of unchecked rage.

In these moments, Talia could always handle her body betraying her with the change into the beast. But she could never forgive her brain betraying her and turning her into a monster.

There was a raw, intense power building within her core - an endless, untapped energy aching to be released unto the world. Her struggle to remain Talia Walker, she knew, was coming to an end. Another surge of adrenaline washed throughout her body and - unable to fight it any longer - the energy exploded into her being.

Talia screamed.

The woman arched backward as her torso began to grow, stretching the covering past its very limits. Muscles tore through the fabric of her blouse with ease, shredding the sky blue coverings over her arm, chest and back. The buttons stretched tightly in the front gave out, bursting off like bullets firing from a gun as expanding breasts popped the clasp of the bra beneath.

Talia knew that her body was engulfed in agony, but beyond the initial stages of her transformation all the pain had been dulled by the massive amounts of adrenaline her body was secreting. Her mind, too, was already beginning to struggle against the explosion of raw emotion fighting its way out. There was no room for pain, only what she could describe as shock.

The woman, her body now top-heavy as her upper frame expanded, glared toward the door once more, the frame now bent and cracked, giving way bit by bit. NO! They'll be...here….soon. Must...not...hurt-

Her line of thought slowly became lost among a stream of blurry consciousness as she attempted to struggle to her feet. As Talia found her footing, her growing feet struggled to find balance in her now constricting boots. Toes burst forth through her footwear as dark denim jeans grew tight against the growth of her legs muscles. Tears began to form in the seams surrounding her calf muscles, before ripping themselves down her limbs, revealing skin that was beginning to darken into a greenish hue.

The near-transformed woman stumbled over to the wall, shooting her arms out to brace herself. Equipped with an increasing power, her right hand plunged effortlessly through the thick wall of the lab. Talia shook her head in an attempt to focus, attempting to pull out her wedged fist, and using her free hand to wipe away the lengthening green locks flowing down upon her face. She growled in frustration.

Her head was pounding, her vision blurry, her body powerful, her thoughts...her thoughts...

"I must- I must get to - get out of dang-MUST PUT AN END TO DANGER."

Talia Walker was no more. Everything went black.