I was running. I couldn't run fast enough, my lungs were burning, my legs pumping beneath me, but no matter how hard or fast I ran I couldn't get away.

Everything was dark. When I turned to look behind me, I couldn't see my pursuers. Something felt wrong, so terribly wrong.

I could feel the heat of tears on my cheeks. Why was I crying?

Why did I feel like I'd done something terribly, terribly wrong?

"Eren."

I heard a voice, it was a voice I recognized, one I hadn't heard in a long time. It nagged at me, I felt like I should know who it was.

"Eren, I'm giving you the key. One day you'll have to find your way there, and I promise you, you'll find all the answers."

I felt something fall into place on my neck, a key on a leather string. I spun around, looking for the owner of the voice. But it was all so dark.

"Father?" I heard myself ask.

I heard a scream, a scream that went on and on, and everything bled into red. My vision went fuzzy-

-And then I woke up. I sat up, heaving in a breath, my skin soaked in sweat. I covered my face in my hands, and tried to breathe through my fear. I couldn't seem to get rid of the memory, the smell of blood. There was blood on my hands…

…What had I done?

Little by little, the panic faded. I opened my eyes, and looked around. Sterile white. I was still in that room, in the basement.

When I looked down at my chest, I saw a key hanging there, the same key from my dreams. I'd had it all along. I'd worn it as a necklace, without even remembering….

…Remembering what? I felt like I was grasping at fragments.

My stomach seized up in pain. I hadn't eaten since they'd dropped me down here. Had it been a day already? There was a glass of water on the small table, and I grabbed it and downed it like I was dying of thirst. The water hit my empty stomach and made me double over on the cot, curled up in a fetal position.

My arms were sore, and I remembered vaguely I'd been injured. My injuries had seemed severe at the time, but when I looked at my arms now, they looked nearly healed. The bruising was gone. There were only faint scars where the flesh had knitted.

I was a freak. A monster.

I couldn't decide whether to weep or rage. I wanted to pound my fists into the wall and scream at the top of my lungs - but who was I kidding - that wouldn't help a damn thing.

—

Time passed, and I stood up and paced around the room. I felt so alone. I'd never been separated from my family - Mikasa and Armin - in this way. Were they looking for me? Would they ever find me, or would I rot away down here?

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, the door opened. I wasn't prepared for who walked in.

The guy had to be over seven feet tall. He was covered in hair, hairy arms, hairy face. He looked like an oversized ape.

Behind him, in walked in the doctor, and two orderlies.

"I see you're awake," the doctor noted.

"Your powers of observation astound me," I said sarcastically. It was something Levi would have said, and thinking of him gave me an ache deep in my gut.

The doctor adjusted his glasses on his nose, and came up to me. He grasped my arm painfully in my hand, squeezing the bones, but just grunted when he found them sound.

"Beast, he is unharmed," the doctor pronounced, looking back at the tall man.

The man called Beast approached me, and looked down at me. He looked into my eyes, staring at me, but his eyes were just big and dark and ominous. I couldn't read him at all.

"We've been looking for you," Beast said in a low voice like tires grinding over gravel.

I glared up at him. I refused to speak back to him.

He cocked his head to the side, as though examining some kind of interesting plaything. "You're one of us, did you know that?"

I ground my teeth. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"You're one of us, but you're not like my other children. You're a creation of man."

I decided this guy who called himself Beast would have been better named Bigfoot. He looked like a yeti, a sasquatch. I wondered for a moment if those people who caught these elusive beasts on camera weren't crazies after all, but rather had caught this man or some kind of relative of his on camera.

I didn't want to listen to him, I didn't want to talk to him, but I did want answers.

"Why don't you stop toying with me and explain why I'm here?" I demanded.

Beast smiled, revealing a set of uneven, roughly pointed teeth. "You have spirit, child. No wonder your father kept you a secret from us."

I felt my stomach drop. "My father?" I said in a whisper.

My father had been a good man. He'd been there for me, always encouraging me. What did he have to do with any of this?

Beast made to go to the door, and when I thought he was leaving without telling me anything else, I called out, "Wait!"

Beast turned and smiled at me again, then beckoned me to follow him.

The doctor wandered away, but the orderlies stayed with us. To make sure I didn't break and make a run for it, no doubt. Beast led me down a series of corridors, out into a big open room that was set up like a theatre. There was an operating table on the centre, and rows of seats set up, and a big screen on the wall. It was a surgery.

There was a one-way glass set up at the top, and Beast gave a hand signal to whoever must have been behind it. Next thing you know, there was a movie playing on the screen.

It was my father. No doubt about it. I would have recognized him anywhere - that long hair, those glasses, the thin nose. The only difference was that lighthearted smile he had worn at home was gone, replaced by a calm assertiveness, and determination.

He was in a lab coat, standing next to the operating table. He was wearing long sleeved gloves that were covered in blood. There was a young child on the table - a boy, with rough-looking features and a smattering of blond hair. "I'm injecting him with the serum now," Grisha said. "This is batch 134, extracted and refined from Beast. The appropriate genetic markers have been infused into human stem cells for increased adaptability."

The boy was injured, I saw. His chest was wide open, almost like he'd been shot, or… or like he'd been punched through, just like Erd had been punched. By something or someone with superhuman strength.

As I watched, after Grisha injected the boy, he went into a seizure. I saw then that his body was held down by straps, so as he convulsed he still managed to stay on the table.

My heart cried out for him, and I was simultaneously disgusted with my father for experimenting on children, and on the other hand I was rooting for the boy to heal, to recover. Right before my eyes, I saw the wound start to close. The boy woke up, tears streaming from his eyes, and he screamed. "It hurts!" he cried out.

But he was healed.

Next the screen cut to a later time frame, this time a girl was strapped down to the table. She had dark hair, tanned skin, and a dusting of freckles on her small face.

Grisha was back again, but in a clean robe this time. There was no blood, no sign of an outward injury.

"The subject has a rare form of brain cancer," he announced as he prepared the syringe. "She has already undergone various unsuccessful treatments. Injecting her with batch 178, extracted and refined from Beast."

The girl also started convulsing, and when it finished, her eyes were turned up in her head. The frame cut again, to a later time, when the girl was sitting up on the bed. She was staring sightlessly off into space.

The other doctor was there, with a clipboard, asking her questions. He asked her many questions, such as, "Do you know your name? Where were you born? What is your favourite colour?" She didn't answer any of them, she just stared off into space.

"It seems the subject has lost the ability to communicate or understand human speech patterns," Grisha commented. "From our experiments thus far, this happens in roughly 80% of all test subjects."

"Is this considered a failed experiment then, Dr. Jaeger?" someone asked from off camera.

Grisha turned to look at them, and he smiled faintly. "No, I wouldn't go that far. After all, these children would have all died without this. No, even a 20% success rate is still a win. Though we still need to refine the serum and improve the odds."

The screen shut off, and I blinked. I'd been so entranced with watching it, I had been transported back to that time and place. My eyes felt wet, and I blinked away tears, raising my fingers to touch at my eyes. Luckily the tears hadn't fallen.

I missed my dad. I was confused, and part of me hated what I was learning of him - but I missed him, and seeing his face, and hearing his voice, it made me long for those days when his arms had been my greatest comfort in this world.

But I had to wonder… was I a monster because of him?

"That was your father, correct? Dr. Jaeger?" Beast asked me in his rumbling voice.

I nodded numbly.

When I looked over, I saw Beast smiling broadly in triumph, looking up at the one-way glass. "We've got him."

A voice pumped through the speakers, and it was female, but unremarkable apart from that. "What do you plan to do with him now?"

Beast crossed his arms over his chest, and cocked his head. "We'll have to extract the coordinate from him. It'll kill him in the process, of course, but that can't be helped."

I backed away slowly, one step at a time. No. This couldn't be happening.

Why had Annie brought me here? Hadn't we been friends? She had told me that I belonged here. She hadn't warned me that I was coming to my death. Had she known?

"We should ensure that the coordinate is within him before attempting extraction," the voice said over the intercom. "There was another with him, a girl. It could have just as easily been her."

I saw my vision going red. That haze was drawing over me, that rage seeping up from within me. I may be in a place that I didn't understand, and I may be up against people just as strong as me, but damn them all, I would not go quietly. I would not die without a fight.

I turned and ran for the door.

The two orderlies blocked my way, but I fed the rage inside me, and I roared, speeding up and crashing into them. They were strong, but with my rage I was stronger. I pushed one's head into the wall, and I heard it hit with a sharp cracking sound. The other, I pulled back and punched in the chest. Then I punched him in the face. Then I pulled back, and with all the energy I had, I whirled, and I kicked him as hard as I could. My foot sunk into the meat of his side, and he groaned and fell to the ground.

By the time I made it to the door, I was thrumming full of energy. The door was solid steel, and thick. I pulled back and kicked it, but didn't even put a dent in it. I poured all my energy into my arms, and I punched and punched at the door, at the wall next to the door, at anything I could reach. I did succeed in cracking the wall next to the door, and my fists were bleeding with the impact, but I didn't let that stop me. If only I could…

…Then I felt him come up behind me. Beast lifted me up like I weighed nothing. He lifted me up in the air, then he knelt down on one knee like a knight proposing to a princess. But instead of a proposal, what I got instead was the joy of having my back snapped over the back of his knee.

I felt the pain radiate out from within me, then everything went black.