Chapter 1

Viper's POV

I glared out through the metal bars of my cage, at the Whitecoat in front of me, opening the door and reaching for my arm, probably to run more tests. How can fast I can run, how strong I am, how fast I can change my appearance, how strong my jaws were, measure my fangs, how deadly my venoms were… deadly. Yeah. How deadly I was. That's the word. And dangerous. Dangerous works too.

"Come along now Subject 1283. We need to see how your problem solving skills are developing." He grinned. The sicko. I stifled a groan as I crawled out of the cage. That was translated as: "I'm going to make you run through miles of plastic mazes, give you only a 5 minute break while we build a new maze and, oh yeah, electrocute you and burn you if you stop or slow down because I don't give a shit about you AND I hid in my mom's closet on morals and ethics day!"

But whatever. Better get you caught up.

The Whitecoats are a group of scientists that work at a huge laboratory called The Mountain, where they experiment and torture children. Some they kidnap, others they make called Test Tube Babies. I'm part the Recombinant-DNA division, where they splice your DNA, take so much, and replace it with an animals' DNA. In my case, that would be reptilian DNA. Don't ask what kind, I have no clue. I'm also about... 18, I'd say.

"My name's Viper." I snarled, making the Whitecoat and the Erasers flinch.

Now you might be asking yourself 'Why the hell is an eraser flinching?' well my dear reader, you see, I'm not talking about an eraser that you erase the doodles on your math notebook. I'm talking about a lupine-human mix, which, for those of you who pretty much just zoned out 3 seconds ago (you know who you are), means that they're a wolf-human splice. So, a werewolf. Anyway those things are way strong, way fast, way bloodthirsty but way stupid. Seriously. They're the Mountains' guards, soldiers, and executioners, but again, soo stupid. They are one of the few successful Recombinant-DNA experiment.

The Erasers dragged me out of my crate with the Whitecoat leading away checking his notes on a clipboard. He started talking about how it was nice to see me again *cough bullshit cough*, that I've had a 5% muscle increase since the last time he's seen me two weeks ago. 'Whatever that meant" I thought standing to my 5'10 height and stretching my arms over my head. Smiling ever so slightly as my joints popped satisfyingly. I glanced down at the small crate next to mine. There was a small figure curled up inside. I sighed. At least he was getting some sleep.

A jolt of electricity from my dog collar (yes folks, they do put dog collars on all of their experiments, including Me.) making me spaze in pain. I was then shoved down the rows of dog crates, filled with creatures to grotesque to describe, when I was able to stand by a heavily built Eraser.

After walking through endless concrete hallways, we came into a giant gymnasium-type room with a maze going the whole length.

'Why am I doing this again? I did this yesterday for god's sake! They normally give me a few days to cool off." I thought sighing, getting ready to sprint through the maze.

It went like that for the hours until they injected me with some sort of sedative and brought me to a room to a white, square room that reeked of chemicals, bleach, and some sort of metallic scent. It made my skin crawl. They laid me on a steel operating table and started strapping me down.

"Why are they doing this? How do they not know everything about me down to the cellular level?" I screamed in my head. "When will this be over?"

Although I'm glad that they were being careful of me and taking precautions. Sedating me, strapping me down… feels nice. Being feared. I thought back to when it happened. When they started to fear me…

~Flashback~

I started being dragged into one of the many laboratories in the Mountain. "Not again." I thought, "Why can't I just relax and sleep? I'm exhausted…" I closed my eyes trying to rest as much as possible before they stuffed me into my room. Read as 'cage' or even 'dog kennel' would suffice.

15 minutes later we stopped in front of a white door. I heard my escorts type in a code in the keyboard jutting out from the wall and the door slid open silently. I looked up expecting darkness and rows of cages sacked on top of each other, instead I saw spotless white walls, bright lights, metal operating tables, and lots of and lots of knives and needles with red, blue, and ugly brown color, purple, magenta and something in two metal syringes. My eyes spotted one of the knives on a tray. The blade itself was about the length of my hands stacked on top of each other.

I hadn't realized I was trembling until I was thrown onto one of the tables rather roughly. I franticly whipped my head around, trying to figure out what was going on. My hands and ankles were being bound with leather straps.

"What's going on?" I asked scared. My voice was rough from not talking for weeks.

"Oh, don't worry, Subject 1283. Everything will be fine. We're just going to inject some things into your arm." A voice said from behind me. A man with white receding white hair and white mustache walked in my line of sight.

"Who are you?" I asked a bit suspicious for some reason. I also hated him.

"My name is Dr. Jeb Batchelder. I run this facility here." He answered.

"Where is here?" at least I knew why I hated him. This bastard runs the damn place!

"We call this place The Mountain. A facility deep under Mount. Everest. About 20 stories to be exact."

Well damn. Getting outta here is gonna be hard. Let alone with Jason, my younger brother who was kidnaped with me a couple months ago.

"Now hold still." He told me, well ordered me really, grabbing a metal syringe. While we had been having our quaint little conversation, people in white coats and werewolf people came in. and began preparing for… something.

"Hello, my name is Dr. Ryder Brown, and I'm just going to do some tests." A man said pulling on some white latex gloves, taking the syringe from Jeb. He had brown hair and awesome green eyes and a friendly smile. Too bad he worked for the devil.

"Don't touch me." I cried. But they didn't listen. The Whitecoats swarmed in around me. I twisted my head around trying to keep all of them in my view, and failing miserably. While I was distracted, Dr. Brown injected both of the metal syringes. One in my neck and the other in in my heart.

In.

My.

Freakin.

Heart.

Obviously I started screaming bloody murder. My back arching instinctively, my arms and legs pulling against my restraints, the rest of me writhing in pure agony, tears running down my face. And then it started spreading, from my heart across to my right shoulder, then down both of my arms, up to my head, then my torso then my legs until I was one giant pulsing bubble of pain.

After what seemed like days the pain faded into nothing. I started to breath normally and the tears started to dry leaving my face feeling grimy, wet and weird. But of course the peace didn't stay. Soon Jeb and Dr. Brown walked into the room where I lay.

"We thought you would like to see yourself. Your appearance has changed in the last week or so." Jeb said pressing a button and the table I was lying on slowly raised from a horizontal position to a vertical position, to face a mirror. And what I saw there made me scream out loud.

In the mirror was a girl strapped down to a steel table. Any jet black hair that had once been on her body had fallen off and sat in a pile on the floor. Her eyes had gone from a beautiful sapphire blue to a demonic, soulless black. Her nails were curved, sharp, pointy and long enough to be claws. Her teeth were small, sharp and she had 2-3 times as many teeth as before. She felt something at the top of her mouth with her tongue and opened her mouth to inspect it. When she opened her mouth so far she heard popping and suddenly her jaw unhinged from her skull and hung loosely.

But that wasn't the worst parts.

The worst parts were that her entire body, once soft fair skin, were hard green scales; below her chin, her chest, stomach, and crotch were a green/yellow color, and everywhere else was a jade green. That when she unhinged her jaw a pair of 3 inch fangs extended from her mouth. That she had 5 foot tail. They gave her a fucking tail!

It was completely not possible. But that just made her heart drop more. Because that girl in the mirror, was her.

"What did you do to me?" I whispered as my table slowly went horizontal again. I wanted to scream at them, to demand why the hell they did this to me, but all I could do was whisper.

"We graphed different types of Reptilian DNA into your DNA. It had changed your appearance and should give you new abilities. It's really quite amazing, actually. You're practically superhuman!" Dr. Brown exclaimed, smiling at me. Well, you know when I said his smile was friendly? Yeah, Screw that. He's a bastard.

"We already graphed feline DNA into your brother, Jason-" Jeb started but I cut him off.

"YOU DID WHAT?!" Jason? My Jason? My poor little brother. Does he look like a cat as I look like a lizard? Does he even look the tiniest bit human? Is he even human, mentally? (A/N: does that make any sense?) Or was he insane? With only an animal's instincts to guide him?

"Relax, now, my dear Angelina. Jason is completely fine. His transformation was more... Subtle than yours." Dr. Brown explained. But I was only half listening. How dare they do this to him! Oh how much pain and suffering he must have gone through.

My blood started to boil. A Strange heat started to pulse in my core. I hated them. The devil won't let them into hell! My vision started to turn red and I started to pull at my restraints even harder than I was before. There was a strange, rapid beeping coming from somewhere next to me.

"Angelina. Angelina, calm down!" one of them cried out, but I couldn't tell which one was which because of the blood pounding in my ears. I felt the restraints starting to give.

"AAAHHH!" I screamed my war cry, just as the leather restraints finally gave.

Unfortunately for Dr. Brown, he was trying to calm me down. And I'm sure everyone knows that that's probably the best way to piss someone off even more. Still screaming my head off, I lunged at him with my claws extended and clawed his throat causing major blood lost and killed him. I swiveled my head looking for the devil himself. I spotted Jeb over at a PA system and talking frantically into it. I stalked over to him, my lips curled up over my teeth in a terrifying snarl.

Jeb cowered against the wall. He was trying to be impassive, I could tell, but his face had paled tremendously since I had gotten off the table. I sank into a hunters crouch, my tail whipping back and forth with deadly force. I was about to spring when the doors from behind me whisked open and Erasers started to pour into the room. I quickly lunged at him but was tackled from the right before I was anywhere close to him. The Eraser rolled me onto my back, straddled my waist with my hands over my head, while another Eraser secured a dog collar around my neck, sending a jolt of electric so strong I slipped into unconsciousness…

End of Flashback~

I bolted up and swiveled my head around trying to get my bearings. I was back in my crate. I turned my head to my left and saw a sleeping form curled up in the right corner farthest from the door and closest to my crate.

I replayed my dream/memory over in my head. I sighed. I felt bad after I realized and came to terms with what I did, and that was before I found out he had a wife and two kids. That was 8 years ago. utmostut whatever remorse and/or regret I felt evaporated when I found out he was there when they took me and my brother and my parents...

I automatically recoiled at the memory.

I crawled towards the front of the crate and peered through the bars, wondering what had woken me up. It was probably about 4 in the morning. Testing doesn't start until at least 7. I strained my ears to try and figure it out when I heard footsteps and voices coming from just outside the door coming into the Crate Room, as I call it. Nice name don't cha think?

Suddenly the door whooshed open and 3 Erasers came in carrying a struggling boy about my age. From what I saw, he was tall and lanky, about 6'1, but he must've been stronge if it took 3 Erasers to escort him to his crate... As he got closer, I saw that he had strawberry-blonde hair and blue-grey eyes and heard him screaming profanities and swearing and cursing his head off like no tomorrow.

Then he did something utterly and totally awesome and amazing. And that's a lot coming from me.

When he was about 5 crates away, he managed to get away from the Erasers jumped on top of the crates then jump into the air, whipped out wings, and FLEW. I've seen a lot of creatures born and die in this place, and I've also seen a lot of amazing things here. But this, this is by far the topper.

I could only gape in awe as he banked and dived trying to avoid the Erasers and trying to find way out. Too bad we were about 20 stories below ground and they had already put a dog collar around his neck, so there was no escape.

It seemed like he had been flying for hours when really it had been a few seconds. He banked to try and fly over the Erasers heads and out the door when they activated his collar, sending him to the floor in spasms. I winced. That must've hurt. They picked him up and started walking towards my crate. I scurried to the back of my crate, wondering what the hell they were doing, putting someone in my crate with me, when they opened crate empty crate to my left, tossed him in and walked away. I turned my scales into pale, fair skin and grew jet black hair and sapphire blue eyes. I retracted my claws and tail and made my teeth the least bit decent. I looked like I had before the Transformation.

"Dammit." The voice seemed to ring out loudly in the quiet room even though it was only a mutter. "They are going to be so pissed."

I wanted to know who "they" were and why they were going to be pissed, but instead I snapped "Why don't you shut the fuck up? Some of us want to get some sleep before being tortured."

He obviously wasn't expecting any one to say anything to him because practically launched himself to the opposite side of the crate from me and screeched a "Holy shit!" in by far the most girly scream I've ever heard. I tried to hold my laughter in but couldn't. Soon the room was filled with my guffaws.

"Shut up! You scared the shit out of me! You stupid bitch." He muttered the last part under his breath but I still heard it.

"No way! That was absolutely the freaking funniest thing I've ever heard!" I snickered, ignoring the 'bitch' comment.

"So, who and what are you anyway?" Iggy asked.

"Call me Viper and I'm part Reptile," I responded. 'Wow.' I usually never tell anyone what breed I am. Why am I so much drawn to this guy that I would tell him something that barely anyone knows? Weird. "You?"

"Friends call me Iggy, and I'm Avian-American." Iggy chuckled.

"So, how and why are you here?" I asked, more interested in this guy in front of me than in anything since I've been here in The Mountain.

"Well, it's kind of a long story…"

"We've got some time."

"Well, ok then. Now where should I start…"