I don't know how, but I woke up.
The first thing through my head was Who am I?
Everything was black. My back felt colder than the rest of me, as though I was pressed against something metal. I felt different, as though everything was in the wrong place. I felt warmer, even though I didn't have any clothes on. I felt stronger, yet I knew I was weak.
I opened my eyes for the first time to see my rebirth.
Gasping, I saw black fur covering a muscular yet limber body. My legs were divided into three segments, resembling a cat's legs. In between my legs, I saw a sleek black tail waving. Glancing at my arms, I noticed that I was strapped to a morgue table. Suddenly, the straps restraining me sprung loose and I sat up, raising my hands to my head. Gazing back at them, I noticed the razor sharp claws protruding from my fingertips.
I stepped off the table, feeling light headed. The world seemed to spin around me, threatening to sweep me off my padded feet. Reaching to my head, I felt delicate fur-covered ears.
"Well, well, well," someone boomed in a strong English accent. "Look who's just come back from the dead!"
The man's voice echoed around the chamber, and I covered my ears against the harsh noise. "What do you mean, dead?" I growled in a strong voice. "Where am I?"
"It seems as though you have lost your memory. I have simply improved your genetics, and brought you back from the dead!" He shouted, matching my tone. The man stepped into the room through a hidden door, and my tail lashed in anticipation "I am Grand Coordinator Bullock Pyarith, commanding officer of Sector Twelve. Slaughter Zone, as my wonderful creations call it, is used by the worldwide government as a top secret research facility."
"When I brought you to the lab, you had bled out and died before I even picked you up." Pyarith started to talk more calmly now. "Strangely, we felt piteous that you had to die. So we gave you a second chance at life by reconstructing your body."
"Fixing your limbs was the first step." He continued. "Using the strands of cat hair that we found on your clothes, we changed your genetics to where your cells would begin respawning at a faster rate. If you look at your left shoulder, you'll notice that we placed a microchip into your arm. This is to ensure that you don't try anything particularly stupid."
"The new DNA not only healed you, but it strengthened you. It did so much more than we anticipated." Pyarith stated, his voice rising steadily. "You have become as limber and as agile as a cat, yet retained human ingenuity. You are a new species that steps out above the world of mankind, slaughtering everything in your path. You will have forgotten everyone you once cared about, but you are among valuable new friends. Now, you will be truly tested in arena combat, where you will prove your usefulness in this organization." He was shouting now. "Go, and fight with every instinct you have!"
Suddenly, I felt the floor rising beneath me, slowly elevating up through the roof of the small chamber. As I passed through the hole that had suddenly opened in the ceiling, I looked out and noticed that I had risen into the arena. The night sky shone crystal clear in the artificial atmosphere above, and the air blew cold on my fur. The platform was no more than thirty feet in diameter, and the air warbled with heated molecules at the edge of the platform. Tail lashing in anticipation, I looked around to see a large crowd starting to gather around the outer edge of the pit. Creatures of many shapes stood around the raised platform, held back only by the swirling heat that I later came to realize as boiling magma. As one, they started to growl and scream with bloodlust, hatred so tense it became palpable within seconds.
Suddenly one of the creatures on the opposite side of the arena leaped over the gap and stood on the opposite side of the platform. It was three times my size and was covered in silver razor sharp spines and claws, and under that was just russet fur. Red eyes gleamed over sharpened tusks that jutted out of its mouth at dangerous angles.
The beast roared with fury, then charged at me. I jumped out of the way just as its claws slashed through the air where I had been a second ago. Unsheathing my claws, I sprung onto the creature's back. As I struggled to maintain a steady grip, the thing reared up suddenly and slammed my body under its immense weight. Blackness threatened to drown me, and I fought back against it. The creature rose off of me, then prepared to deal the killing blow.
Shaking my head I recovered quickly from the sudden onslaught and rolled out of the way of the blow, then slid underneath the beast's belly. I dug my claws into its soft stomach and dragged my hand from his chest to his rear and sliced the skin open. Fresh blood poured out of the new wound, soaking the ground swiftly
The creature roared with rage. It slipped in the massive crimson puddle pooling from beneath it and stumbled, floundering in its own blood, growing weaker by the minute. Taking the advantage, I leaped onto its back, and aimed for the creature's neck- perhaps the only unprotected spot on its back- and lunged for the spinal cord with long sharpened canines. They stuck tight into the skin, and I ripped its central nervous system out, spine and brain. The beast howled in agony, then dropped dead a second later, blood spilling out of its mouth.
Panting hard and soaked in the vile creature's blood, I slowly rose of its back on shaking legs and dropped the torn organs beside the giant carcass. Not a sound was heard from the audience as I made my way towards the edge of the platform, prepared to jump, then sprang over the fifteen foot wide chasm. The spectators parted and made a way for me to pass through, not daring to break the silence, and as I left the crowd behind, they started to mutter to each other in their own languages. Not knowing what I was doing I dropped to all fours and ran over to the nearest tree, dug my claws into the moist bark and began to climb. I reached the lowest branch and clambered on, reclined against the trunk and closed my eyes, falling asleep instantly.
When I returned to the wakeful world, it was dawn. The sun was beating down on my face, and I blinked to adjust to the bright light. Smacking my jaws, I stood up on the branch, perfectly balanced, and stretched, gratefully letting the sun warm my fur. Looking around, I finally got a good look at my surroundings. The branch I was perched in rose maybe twenty-seven feet off the ground. I looked over to my left and saw the arena, the beast's carcass still lying in its pool of blood. I turned to my right and saw a five story building with razor wire decorating the edge of the roof. The whole complex was enclosed in a wall that rose half a mile from the ground. When I turned to examine the other end of the complex, I felt a sudden wind brush past my fur, and I realized that I wasn't alone.
Leaping to the end of the branch about ten feet away, I spun around and growled and the newcomer, but stopped abruptly when I noticed that it was just a woman. The newcomer short and slender and had a vividly red color to her hair, which was tied back in a long braid. She was dressed in a black jumpsuit, and had a switch blade tucked into her left boot.
"Relax, rookie," she started off. "I'm not here to kill you."
"Well, what are you here for then?" I asked, relaxing my ears but keeping my muscles loaded, ready to spring if needed to.
"I just came to say hello." She stated, raising her hands as a friendly gesture. "I figured you would want a nice welcome, especially after what happened last night." She nodded her head towards the carcass. "Not very many people can take down a sabre as fast as you did."
"So that's what that thing was?"
The woman nodded in confirmation. "You're still covered in its blood. That's how I found you up here."
I stared at her in shock. "You can smell the blood?"
"Well, duh. Pyarith fused my genetics with a wolf for crying out loud!"
"You know Pyarith?"
She returned the stare. "He greeted you when you woke up, didn't he? Pyarith heads all the experiments here. Genetic mutation, cloning, xenografting, you name it. All kinds of experiments on humans that would make your… well, your fur crawl. When an experiment is successful, he personally greets it and determines its level of intelligence. "
My head spun with confusion. "You don't look very wolf-like," I skeptically pointed out.
She sighed in frustration. "Do you see all the wolves walking around down there?" She pointed towards the ground. I followed her gaze.
"What about them?" I asked.
"Pyarith thought it would be interesting to give me all the advantages of a wolf without altering my personal appearance." The lady explained.
I hung my head. "Great, and I thought I had finally found a normal human being," I groaned.
"Look, do want the blood off of you or not?" she questioned impatiently, sitting down on the branch. I nodded and then crawled over to her, laying my head on her lap. My tail automatically curled around me, and I closed my eyes. I felt her tongue slide over the back of my neck, and I started to purr in instinct to the relaxing sensation. "So, where are you from?" she asked.
"I don't know."
She stopped drinking. "What do you mean you don't know? You have to have come from somewhere."
"Look, I literally don't know," I started, "I woke up yesterday in a chamber beneath the arena, and some guy named Pyarith told me I was brought back to life using cat hair from my old clothes apparently." I paused, then asked, "You got a name?"
"My name is Silvia."
Silvia finished cleaning my fur thirty minutes later, then with a hasty goodbye left the tree. I was left perched in the tree, wondering why her name kept nagging at my chest. I glanced down and saw the same creatures that had surrounded the arena yesterday, and for the first time I took pity on them. Seeing them ambling aimlessly, moping about, their eyes filled with hopelessness, made me wonder what it was that was so dangerous about these poor beings that they had to trapped in such a terrible place.
