The first thing that I noticed when I woke up was the blaring sirens and the shouting of people in a panic. Then second thing that I noticed was that everything was bathed in a red light. I discovered that I was floating and behind some kind of glass. I could see wires floating in the water around me and people were running from console to console. I was stuck in some kind of tank in unfamiliar surroundings with some kind of emergency going on. I couldn't breathe and I could feel panic starting to set in.

I began banging on the glass, trying to break it. That seemed to get the attention of the people in the room and they seemed to grow more panicked. As I continued my attempts to break the glass something snaked into view from behind me and struck the glass with some kind of blade, cracking it.

I flinched away from the whip-blade, surprised. I saw that the blade looked to be connected to a spinal column of all things. I followed the spinal column as it snaked around behind me and, on a hunch, tried to move it. To my surprise, it worked. I shook my head. I couldn't let the fact that I had a tail distract me. Seeing that the tail-blade could actually do something to the glass I kept using it. Idly, I noticed that one of the people in the room with me looked to be using a two-way radio.

A few more strikes and the glass broke and I was free. When the tank began to empty I realized the liquid was definitely not water. I wasn't sure what it was, but it was too far viscous to be normal water.

As I tried to leave the tank I found that the mask and the wires and tubes that both it and I were connected to impeded my movements. As I tried to remove the mask I found that a set of tubes had been put up my nose and down my throat. It took a few gross moments to remove them. The feeling of pulling plastic tubes from deep within my esophageal and nasal passages was one of the most unsettling things I'd ever experienced and I was thankful when it was over. Afterward I was able to climb out. When I touched the ground I began removing what I thought were some kind of medical sensors that had been attached to the wires I had seen in the tank with me and after that my motions seemed to be completely free.

As I gathered myself up I started checking myself over. I had noticed that things were off when I was removing the sensors, but I had no idea how much. It looked like I was wearing some kind of weird black, chitinous armor over my entire body (or at least what I could see). I also had claws instead of nails and I was even lankier than I had been.

Before I could investigate any further I was interrupted by shuffling. I looked to see what caused it and I noticed one of the people squeezing himself into the corner farthest from me while hyperventilating. He had an ID card but otherwise wore non-descript clothes. He spoke into the radio. "Security, Subject Twenty-One has broken containment."

"Understood, a security detail has been dispatched to your area," was the reply that came over the radio. The man moved the radio away from his mouth and tried to move as little as possible. Looking at the other side of the room showed that one of the corners behind me was occupied by a woman who looked to be just as terrified.

I looked back to the man. "Where am I? How did I get here?" I noticed that my voice sounded strange. It sounded almost…sibilant and soft, but in a menacing manner.

The man flinched but he still managed to answer. "I-I can't tell you that."

"Then why am I here? Where's my mom?" I began hyperventilating a bit as well I had no idea what was going on

The man raised his hands in a calming gesture. "I can tell you're worried, but if you just stay calm and wait here, then some men will be here soon and they can help you."

As I thought about that I caught the scent of something pungent, but I had no idea what it was. I had never smelled anything like it before. I looked back at the tank of liquid I had been floating in and back to the man in the corner. He flinched when I did, clearly terrified of me. "Why are you scared of me?"

"W-what? What makes you think that? I'm just concerned for your safety," he reassured me.

I looked behind me to see the woman behind me was also clearly terrified and was watching my every movement intently. I turned back to the man. "She's scared of me, too."

"No," he tried to say in a soothing manner. The fear in his voice ruined the effect. "We both just want you to stay here where it's safe. In a few minutes some people will be here to take us all to a more secure location."

None of this was adding up. The last thing I remembered was waiting for Emma and her dad to pick me up from an after school art workshop. Mom and Dad both had to work late, so they had agreed to pick me up for them. All of the other kids had gone home and I had been the last one waiting in front of the school when I felt a pain in my arm and then everything went dark. Then I woke up in a tank, changed, with no idea where I was or who was here with me and one of the only two people I had seen referred to me as a subject, not by my name.

Nothing was adding up but it was clear this guy was full of malarkey and there was no way he could expect me to believe what he was saying at this point. "No they won't. I'm ten, not stupid. You've been keeping me prisoner here. That's why I was in the tank and why you called security."

The look on the man's face showed that I wasn't supposed to have picked up on that. "Why have you been keeping me here!?" The man just seemed to become more frightened. I stood up and leaned toward him. "WHY!?"

Before the man had a chance to answer I heard what sounded like metal tearing behind me, followed by a metallic thud. By the time I turned to look I also heard the woman scream bloody murder as a tail-blade that looked similar to my own had stabbed through her chest and began lifting her three feet off of the ground. I followed the spine-like structure to where it disappeared in the massive vent. In another moment I heard an unearthly screech and the woman was pulled into the vent, leaving only a trail of blood.

That was the point where the man seemed to lose his mind completely, as he hurried over to the door and swiped a key card, muttering the entire time. The door was barely open enough to let him through before he fled in terror. Not wanting to be trapped in the room with a monster in the vents I followed his lead. I also noticed that I was much, much taller, now, since I bumped my head on the top of the frame. Once I was out of the room I found myself lacking direction. I had no idea how to get out of the building.

An idea occurred to me. I didn't really like it, but I couldn't think of anything better. Besides, as I watched the man nearing a corner I realized that my window of opportunity was quickly disappearing. I didn't like the idea of following him, but if he was heading for an exit then following him was my best bet for getting out, so I did. I followed him through a twisting labyrinth of halls. I could have easily gotten lost if I tried to find my way on my own.

As my unwitting guide and I grew closer to what I assumed to be the exit, I ran across more and more people. They all seemed to take pause at seeing me and gave me the right of way without a second thought, all of them with that same look of fear on their faces. Unfortunately, that was just one more thing that I didn't have time to process at the moment.

As I rounded yet another corner I saw that the man had, in fact, been heading toward an exit. Unfortunately, it was also guarded by men carrying assault rifles. They noticed me almost immediately and raised their guns. I managed to duck back behind the corner just before they opened fire. Well, that exit was a no-go. I would have to find another way out.

I tried to back track a bit but I had no idea if I was succeeding or just going in random directions. All of the hallways looked the same. The walls even seemed to blend into each other since they were the most boring shade of egg-shell white. I could hear that at least one of the guards was following me, but they were quickly losing ground. I could feel the panic creeping back in. The only way out of this building I knew of was guarded with assault rifles and I still had no idea what, exactly, the emergency was, though I figured it had something to do with that tail that had come from the vent.

The tail-blade I had seen coming out of the vent looked eerily like my own. I couldn't help but wonder if there were more people in a situation like mine in here but, even if there were, I doubted they'd be in a helping mood. One of them had just straight-up murdered someone, which just meant someone else I'd have to watch out for in here. I was feeling more alone despite being surrounded by people.

As I tried to backtrack I became increasingly convinced that I had become lost. Eveything looked the same and I couldn't tell if I was going in circles. My movements were further restricted by what I thought to be guards looking for me. Any time I heard boots approaching I immediately ducked back around the corner and went down a different hallway

I don't know how long I wandered around but I eventually found an elevator. I honestly had no idea that there was more than one floor in this building. I hadn't even seen a set of stairs.

Without any clue about another possible way out I pried open the doors much more easily than I had expected. I quickly found the hatch to the roof of the elevator and opened that as well. Again, I was surprised at my new height, but right now I had to focus.

I climbed atop the elevator and saw that the shaft went up five stories. I decided to try and climb the cable, but I quickly found that the grease made that very difficult. I made a bit of progress only to lose almost of it when my grip inevitably slipped. After several tries I had barely gotten five feet off of the ground and I realized that I wasn't going to be making any headway any time soon. As I looked around for an alternate way up, I noticed that there were metal bars inside a small alcove that would function as a passable ladder.

I hopped off of the cable and started climbing the bars and made quick time in climbing to the top floor, though the alcove was a bit cramped for me. Just another oddity that I didn't have time to focus on.

Something else that was odd was that the door to the topmost floor was two stories above the previous door in the elevator shaft. Unfortunately I didn't have much time to dwell on this, so I pried open the door, once again with surprising ease As soon as I did, I was once again bathed in red light.

I had expected to at least see someone up here. Someone guarding the elevator door or at least someone fleeing the building or something. All I saw, though, were a pair of assault rifles lying on the ground. There was a small trail of blood as well, which led to a vent that had its grating torn off. There was also a trail of what looked like holes dissolved into the floor leading to the vent. I took a moment to look at the holes and I found that they seemed to go through several holes. I had no idea what had caused this kind of damage, but I had no intention of meeting it. The smell of blood was surprisingly strong given how little there was.

I decided to start exploring the building well away from that vent. There were large windows set into the ceiling above me, the first ones I had seen since I woke up, and I could see large pallets of boxes everywhere. I was apparently in a warehouse.

While I was exploring I found a few more trails of blood, all leading toward a nearby vent or, more often, just ended below some rafters. I sometimes found a gun near one of the trails of blood and rarely there would be another trail of holes dissolved through the floor, also leading toward a vent.

The second thing that I noticed was that this was apparently the ground floor which, meant that the entirety of the rest of the facility I had been in was underground. The warehouse was also much, much smaller than the floor I woken up on.

Soon I found a massive hole in the wall. Rubble was scattered all over the floor as though something had exploded from the other side of the wall. I had finally found my way out, so I walked out of the building and into the outside. Despite all of the dust in the air I felt a great amount of relief the moment I got a whiff of the open air. It was city air, true, but it smelled great to me.

Not long after, though, I could hear sirens approaching as well as more explosions in the distance. I could feel the relief fade away only to be replaced with anxiety. I didn't really want police or medics to find me leaving a building that had apparently been bombed, so I decided that my best option was to sneak away in the shadows. As I did I felt a brief feeling of joy, but it wasn't my own. The source had been from something else, something foreign. I looked back at the building in an attempt to find the source and I saw several large, dark figures exiting the same hole I had left just moments ago.

It was too dark and I was too far away to make out fine details, but I could tell that they were inhuman. The posture was wrong, the head was too large, and they looked to be too thin in places. They also each had a long, bladed tail like what had come out of the vent earlier and, to top off the look, they had a set of large spines on their backs. Not only that, but their posture was completely wrong. They walked with a severely hunched posture. I could also hear a light hissing, more like something I would have heard from a large snake.

None of them seemed to notice me and ran off in the opposite direction and none of them seemed to look in my direction, sticking to the shadows the entire time. After they left my field of view I realized that I had been holding my breath and had been holding completely still. I let out the breath I had been holding and began heading my own way. Before I did, though, I saw a sign in front of the building proclaiming it to be a Medhall warehouse.

I began panicking again. Why was I being held in a warehouse belonging to one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the country? And why had it been bombed? And what the hell were the creatures I had seen leaving? I hadn't found anything here that could answer my questions and I didn't have time to look with the emergency responders on their way. I had to find a safe place to think. I had to go home.