Assimilation Chapter 1

A/N: Hello, everyone! It's DaedricEclipse here, and I have a new story! I (as far as I know) wouldn't expect very many of you to remember "The Thing," whether it be the 1982 or the 2011 version. Those who have seen these movies know what happens when you come into contact with the Thing. But have you ever thought what would happen if someone could fight the infection? This is what would happen (at least in my eyes). In addition, the Adam in this story is in NO WAY related to any character named Adam in the movies.

Disclaimer: I do not own The Thing. The Thing and all related content belongs to John Carpenter and Universal Pictures. The only things I own are my OC's.

Nothing. That was all he could feel at first. Seconds later, he felt that he was floating around in what he could only guess was purgatory. His body was unresponsive, and his mind barely active. As the seconds passed by, his senses came rushing back into his body with the force of a freight train. Pain surged throughout his entire body, setting his nerves and body aflame with agony. Then, almost as quickly as the pain had come, it disappeared.

He opened his eyes with difficulty, blinking in slight discomfort as light filled his vision. After a few moments, he could see again, his eyes moving around and taking in his surroundings. It was snowing. The ground beneath him was frozen, and his body was partially covered with the white powder. His body felt exhausted, almost completely drained of energy. He tried moving his fingers, all of his focus on trying to get his fingers to twitch, even if for just a second.

The man's fingers responded, the half-frozen digits slowly curling inwards. As the rest of his body began to reboot, he finally took the time to notice the state of his own body. His clothes were soaked with blood, his shirt almost completely stained red. He had little to no feeling in his left leg, and his right arm felt a little numb, whether from the cold or blood loss, he didn't know. He tried to make his right leg move, the results being only a slight twitch of his leg.

He laid there in the snow for what seemed like days, his strength slowly coming back to him. Soon, his limbs had fresh blood circulating through them, and he could finally move his limbs properly. With a deep breath as preparation, he pushed himself backwards. Searing pain ran through his upper arms, his muscles screaming bloody murder. Thankfully for him, he felt his back bump into a wall, his arms no longer having to carry his weight.

With his arms still burning with agony, he slowly turned his neck to take a good look around. His vertebrae snapped as they lost the stiffness that they had accumulated from all of the time they had been inactive. He was surrounded by the remnants of what used to be walls, and the snow that he had been laying in was painted red with his blood. Pieces of broken pipes and machinery were strewn around the snow, and he could see the vast ocean of snow that surrounded his current position.

His mind now fully awake, he remembered his name. "Adam...," Adam flinched when he heard his voice. It had grown raspy and quiet from disuse, and his vocal cords hurt with every syllable. Adam slowly breathed in the frigid air, his lungs feeling some discomfort as the cold air rushed through them. He breathed out, his breath freezing the moment it left his mouth.

Adam slowly raised his right arm, wincing slightly as a large cut on his lower arm re-opened. Shrugging off the fatigue that he was feeling, he slowly got to his feet, leaning against the wall for support. He inched his way along the wall, his legs gradually recovering with each step he took. Adam knew that they still weren't ready to carry his full weight yet, so he continued clinging to the wall, his feet kicking up snow as they were dragged along. He could see the faint outline of a structure that was half-buried in the snow, a thin column of smoke coming out of the roof.

His legs now feeling sturdy enough to carry him, Adam slowly walked on unsteady legs towards the building. His mind still trying to piece together what had happened before he had woken up, he came up to the entrance. A door was hanging by its hinges in the doorway, and there was a flickering light coming from somewhere inside. He cautiously pulled the door open, the hinges creaking eerily.

Adam walked inside, his eyes nervously darting around the faintly-lit room. A rancid stench began to fill his nostrils as he walked further inside. He gagged from the stench, covering his nose and mouth with a hand before continuing on. He saw a long trail of blood leading from the middle of the room to a closed door, the smell getting even worse the closer he got to the door. His rational side was screaming at him to not investigate any further, but he paid it no mind as he kept walking towards the door. Bracing himself for what may be on the other side, he opened the door.

The moment the door opened, the source of the stench was made clear to Adam. There were multiple mutilated corpses strewn about the room, most of them missing an arm or leg. The rib cage of one of the bodies was completely torn apart, fragments of rib embedded in his clothes and flesh. The head of another body was almost completely turned inside-out, and his face, or what was left of it, permanently wore a look of sheer agony and terror. All of the corpses were half-decayed, as if they had been left like that for days. The smell of burnt flesh also filled the room, and Adam saw that almost all of the cadavers were completely burnt to a crisp. Adam just barely managed to keep himself from vomiting, clamping a hand over his mouth to keep in the contents of his stomach.

'W-What the hell could have done this?!" Adam asked himself as he continued to look at the gruesome scene before him. He began to back away from the mess of bodies in front of him, slamming the door shut as soon as he was out of the room.

Adam knew that he had to get something to defend himself with as soon as possible, as whatever had killed those men was probably still lurking around out there. The man nervously and cautiously walked back outside, looking around frantically to see if there was any sign that the creature was still around. He didn't want to take any chances of ending up like the men he saw back there.

As he walked around in the frigid cold, Adam finally had the chance to think about how he had ended up here. He had been part of a team of researchers in Chicago for almost 3 months before an agency contacted them with a proposition. The agency wanted Adam and the rest of the research team to investigate the site of Station 4, a research outpost located in Antarctica that had mysteriously gone dark around 31 years ago.

All attempts of contacting the personnel there had failed, and, with all of their options now exhausted, the agency wanted Adam's team to go to Antarctica and investigate what had happened. They were sent with about 15 heavily-armed personnel for security in case someone or something attacked them. It took them about 15 hours to get to the outpost once they had landed about 5 miles away.

Nothing could have prepared them for the slaughter that would ensue upon their arrival at Station 4. The instant they had entered what remained of the main building, a dog-like abomination of limbs and flesh had bitten off the head of one of the researchers. Not even a second afterwards, it's bony, prehensile tail sliced one of the guards vertically in half.

Adam couldn't remember what had happened to the others because, at that point, he had begun to run for his life. Although he could hear the screams of the others, he knew he couldn't help them now. Adam knew that he had to keep running, or else that creature would kill him. Luck was not on his side, as the abomination had caught up to him and had tackled him to the ground. Adam froze up in pure terror as the creature stood over him and roared in his face, showing the rows upon rows of razor-sharp teeth that lined the beast's mouth. Without warning, the creature bit down on Adam's right arm, which brought out a cry of agony before he punched the monster in the eye, gouging the eye out and forcing the beast to let go of him with a roar. Adam watched the creature run away, howling in anger and pain as it disappeared from view.

Adam hurriedly got to his feet and ran towards the exit, clutching his injured arm and gritting his teeth from the burning sensation left by the Thing's bite. He caught sight of an emergency exit sign that was still somehow standing despite the explosion that had taken out most of the facility before their arrival, and made a wild dash for it, looking behind him to check if the Thing had followed him again.

The moment he exited the building, the cold and unforgiving Antarctic weather slammed into him, the wind and heavy snow making it extremely difficult for him to see. He could already feel his body begin to slow down as hypothermia set in, and he struggled to keep moving forward. Soon enough, Adam's body finally gave in as he began to fade in and out of consciousness, falling face-first into the snow as darkness consumed him.

The sound of something crashing into the snow behind him made him come to his senses as he quickly turned around to see that a wall had collapsed. Adam let out the breath that he had been holding in, relieved that it wasn't the abomination trying to kill him again. He walked towards the collapsed wall after noticing something reflective poking out of the snow nearby.

As he got closer, he saw that the thing sticking out of the snow was actually a pipe from the wall. Adam yanked the pipe out of the snow, holding it at his side as he cautiously looked around once more to see if there was still anything alive out there.

A horrifyingly familiar snarl from behind him gave him his answer as he turned around to face the heavily mutated Dog-Thing standing a few feet away from him, its head split into two fang-filled halves as several long, fleshy tentacles whipped around at its sides. He noticed that it had gotten grown much bigger since their last encounter, almost three times bigger than it was before. Adam could briefly see what vaguely resembled a human hand sticking out from its side before the Thing began to walk towards him, looking at him with pure hatred in its eyes.

Adam held the pipe in a clumsy combat-stance as he slowly walked backwards, the grotesque creature in front of him still advancing towards him. The young scientist, unable to see any way of evading it, shouted angrily at the beast in a virtually redundant attempt to intimidate it, "BACK OFF!"

Not surprisingly, the grotesque horror kept advancing on Adam, blood and saliva dripping from the canine's disfigured head as the flesh-tentacles began to whip at him.

With one last ungodly roar, the Dog-Thing charged at the young man, who made a silent prayer to God as he swung out his pipe...

A/N: Thanks for reading, everyone! Please leave a review if you want, and I hope you all enjoyed! This is DaedricEclipse signing out, and I'll see you all in the next chapter!