Alone.
This was how life was for all the time he had yet had.
Alone.
No pack, no siblings, no family, no comfort.
Alone.
Nothing but torture, training, and testing.
Alone.
Nothing but strange bipedal creatures that cared nothing for him and his mind.
Alone.
Bred to kill, built as an experiment, and meant to be bought and sold.
Alone.
He was known as the Indorapter Prototype, and he was created to be an engine of relentless death. Nothing more, and nothing less.
His growing days were spent in cages, without company and without space. While his predecessor, the Indominus Rex, had been afforded great space to make up her own sadistic mind, his had been forced upon him.
Previously the creatures made by Dr. Henry Wu had been predetermined to be female in order to prevent their breeding, but the Indoraptor Prototype was inherently a test, and so they tested a new gender for it, he was made to be male.
From birth he knew nothing but pain, as his contorted and strange body had experienced it greatly while emerging from his egg. His muscles ached, and he felt cramped even in open space. Immediately after his hatching, he had been placed in a small container and plugged into things that had purposes he could not comprehend. The pain he felt soon became so constant that it became dull, and the needles of injectors soon were accepted as a part of existence.
They put things in him, agonizingly strengthening his modified form, causing his first months of growth to be marked with endless strange and painful sensations that he could not ignore or understand, and these sensations, like his previous pain, were accepted as a part of existence.
He did not know that what was happening was bad, or that his existence was terrible, for he knew no good to base his experiences on, and so the discomfort was accepted as a part of existence.
The small creature wasn't allowed to move after he was born, and was nourished through the same needles that had plagued him prior. When he was finally put into his cage, he stayed still, and laid down, for he didn't know how to even move.
For days he learned of himself, the sensations of skin, nose, ear, and tongue. He learned to move, to walk, to run, to jump. He learned to inhale deeply through his nose, and realized that some things smelled different from other things. He learned to distinguish between the different noises he heard, the hum of generators powering the light of his small home, or the voices of those who watched him. He learned by licking everything he found that some things tasted different from other things, but he knew not what those tastes meant.
He had to learn how to eat, as he had been previously fed by injections. It took him time and near starvation to learn that he needed to use his jaws, teeth, and tongue to alleviate the empty feeling in his core. Eventually, he came to learn timing, and memorized the perfect regularity of his feedings, predicting their happenings and positioning his body accordingly.
He wandered around his small realm, curiosity driving him to go where he hadn't been before, to learn what he hadn't known before, and to do what he'd never done before. It was all he knew to do, it was all he could do.
Then, when the bipeds were sure that he had learned enough about himself and his form, they moved him into a different cage, larger than before, though without a light to comfort him.
The young creature knew not why he had been moved, or that he had been relegated to a damp basement while the bipeds prepared tests and experiments for him. He knew only darkness, darkness that he could see, and see through, and was once again left with nothing but eating, drinking, and sleeping.
Life was simple, and in his later years he looked back on that time with fondness, for it did not last long.
It started when the meat he was given became more and more complex. At first it was cut, clean, and prepared. Then it was simply a mass of flesh with the blood drained out of it. Then it was meat with the blood still within it, but with small traces of addictive chemicals within it, to make him love the taste of it. Then they threw pieces of animals inside, with the hair and skin still attached. Then they threw a whole carcasse into the cage, and left him to figure out what to do with it.
He knew the strange thing was food, as it had been brought at the time of feeding. However, he had never seen or interacted with another creature, and simply seeing a dead one unnerved him. But it was food, this he was certain of, so he ate it.
After several of these carcasses were eventually consumed, a creature still alive was thrown in.
Confusion once again reigned in his mind, this was the first living thing he had ever seen, yet it had been thrown in at the time of feeding. The strange and unknown creature panicked, and ran around the cage in its fright. The Indoraptor watched the creature with curiosity, observing that it was different from himself.
Eventually, the creature died. The Indoraptor did not know it, but the creature had been poisoned, and had been meant to die in front of him. He approached the animal cautiously, wondering why it had stopped moving. It was then that he learned of death, and that death meant becoming food.
Several more poisoned creatures died in his cage before they put one in that had no poison within it at all.
The Indoraptor had timed the creatures dying, and became confused once more when this one didn't die at the right time. He wasn't sure why it hadn't become food yet, and waited for a long while for it to stop moving and let him eat it.
Eventually he became impatient, and decided to devour the creature while it was still alive. The strange creature screamed and hit him, panicking him and causing him to jump back. Through this one blow he learned that creatures did not want to die, and that he would have to make them stop moving to have his food.
He therefore clumsily attacked the creature, doing everything he could think of to make it die. Claws, teeth, kicking, hitting, all to make the creature into his life sustaining meat.
The creature resisted, but was doomed to fail. It had been chosen by the bipeds to be a lesson for the Indoraptor, and was too weak to win and had no space to run.
So he continued, bit by bit, blow by blow. He fought like he had never fought before, for he had never needed to fight before. He felt sorry for this strange creature, but he had no intention of starving.
Eventually, the creature died, and the Indoraptor feasted on its flesh until there was nothing left but bones.
More of the creatures were put into his cage at feeding time, each meant to die and be food. The Indoraptor, through trial and error, learned how best to kill, realizing that the throat was precious and that more blood came from the belly than other areas. He also learned that blood was life, and to run out of blood was to die.
Then the bipeds started putting different kinds of creatures inside, all of them meant to die for the Indoraptor. He realized that each type of creature was unique, but still fell to similar versions of his previous killing methods and suffered from the same weaknesses.
He never thought to do anything else with the creatures, as he knew them to be food, and thought of them as nothing more. As he grew bigger, so too did his meals, and he became even more proficient in the art of killing. He learned to win, and he was proud of his abilities. Even though he had no one to show it off to, he was content knowing of his own power.
Then the tests began.
He had no way of knowing it, but he had been designed to learn, to think, to adapt, to mentally evolve. The bipeds wanted to know if he could.
He first was sedated, then moved into a different cage with a glass box inside. There were small holes in the box, and the smell of blood leaked out of them. He could see through the walls of the box, and saw that there was food within it. A small horizontal extension was on one side of the box, and he was confused as to what he was meant to do.
He sniffed the box, then took to tapping it, trying to find out what it was. The thing smelled alive, but was not alive, what was once alive was now inside it, but there was no way to get inside it to either put in or take out. When he couldn't achieve any level of understanding, he decided that it was a paradox and laid down to sleep.
He had just closed his eyes when he found himself suddenly in pain. A shocking sensation flowed from his leg around his entire body, hurting him in a way he couldn't describe. He got up, and tried to attack the long stick that had hurt him. However, touching it caused him to be hurt again, so he tried to avoid the stick instead.
After several shocks, he finally figured it out, the bipeds that he had seen using the stick wanted him to figure out the puzzle, and wouldn't take no for an answer.
For hours he struggled against the box, with every failed attempt resulting in a shock of pain from the light stick. Eventually, he considered the horizontal extension, and poked at it. It moved slightly, encouraging him. He kept poking at it, and realized that it moved downward, and that when it did it would move parts of the inside of the wall. Believing that he had figured out the puzzle, he pushed it all the way down and waited for something to happen. He stared at the extension, expecting to be shocked for his latest failed attempt. He wasn't, so he was convinced that he was on the right track.
Eventually, he decided to grab the extension instead of simply poking and pushing at it. Once he had the extension in his hand, he started tapping the wall, wondering what would happen. The wall didn't move, and he started to get annoyed. What was the answer to the puzzle?
He moved back, but found it difficult to get his fingers off of the extension. Upset at the turn of events, he pulled at it, and the wall, surprisingly, moved. The box opened, and the Indoraptor screeched with joy, running inside and devouring the meal within.
He did not know it, but by passing this first test and learning this first lesson he had guaranteed his own survival. Now that there was a beginning, the only question that remained was if there was a limit.
So many tests were taken over the years, and so many lessons were learned. He learned how to attack, he learned how to hide, he learned to think, he learned to track, he learned to be timed, he learned how to spot patterns, how to kill in tight spaces, how to break through walls, how to see through noise, how to recognize the heat of other creatures, how to change his skin color, how to regulate his body temperature, as well as many other lessons.
But the most important lesson of all, by far, was resilience.
They hurt him, tortured him, trying to see how far he could go, then push him further. They drowned him, burned him, drugged him, electrocuted him. They poured acid on him, they starved him, they froze him, they shot him with darts and needles, they caused him pain.
Now that he was older, and now that he had experienced time without pain, he no longer stood idly by and accepted pain as part of existence. Pain was an aberration, something that was bad, something that should be prevented. As a result of this new understanding, it was during those sessions that he learned to hate the bipeds that had raised him, and he wanted nothing more than to inflict his own pain upon them a thousand fold.
Once, during one of the sessions, he could tell that the ones hurting him were, enjoying themselves. He had recently learned to tell the bipeds' emotions by how they smelled, and this knowledge had been a source of entertainment as he tried to distinguish the feelings of the different bipeds he saw. Once he realized that they were finding humor in his pain, he noticed that their mouths were twisted in an odd angle, the ends curving upwards.
He determined that this mouth movement was something the bipeds did to non verbally display their pleasure to each other, so he decided to play with them a little bit.
When the pain finally stopped, he looked at the closest one, eye to eye. He stared at the biped for a good moment, before returning the gesture. He smiled at him.
The biped's grin vanished, and he stumbled backwards. One of the others voiced amusement at the one's discomfort, having not seen the Indoraptor's smile.
The Indoraptor paid close attention to the noise, it's choppy and cut to cut nature interesting him. Deciding that this was their verbal way of expressing pleasure, he mimicked it as best he could.
That got all of the bipeds to stop what they were doing, and they stared at the Indoraptor. Enjoying their sudden discomfort, he smiled and laughed again, and again, and again.
Disturbed beyond expectation, the bipeds tried to sedate him, firing one dart, then another.
He knew what the darts were meant to do, and decided to continue his game. He fell down, and pretended to sleep. The bipeds waited until they were sure he was tranquil, and he barely resisted the urge to look up at them.
A few of them went inside of his cage to move him back to his pen, and that was when he decided to strike. He quickly killed the one closest, snapping his neck like it was nothing, and he watched one other escape, locking the door behind him.
The Indoraptor smiled, as they had smiled as they tortured him.
The one that was left inside stank of fear, and this exhilarated him. For so long he had endured their tests and pain, so now he would taste their blood and soak up their terror as he did so. He tore off his arm, then the other, and realized that more of the bipeds were coming to stop him. He felt the sting of darts and felt himself beginning to doze off, but he knew he had enough time to kill this arrogant biped that had the nerve to enjoy the pain inflicted on him.
After that incident, the sessions of pain became less frequent, but much more intense. They created a new system of moving his cage from place to place on rails instead of moving his body to and fro. It was then that the noise began.
They pestered him with it for hours on end, keeping him from sleeping and leaving him screaming at the noise. It was high pitched, and it hurt, badly. He learned to hate that noise, but he knew that the presence of pain meant that there was another lesson that he was supposed to learn, and that the pain would stop when he did. At least, until the next lesson.
He knew he was being taught these things for a reason, but he could never figure out what that reason was. If they just wanted to torture him, then they'd just have the sessions of pain and nothing else. But they weren't, they were teaching him. This only made him hate them more, because he couldn't find a single good reason they would be doing this to him.
However wrong their actions, he continued to learn. He hated them, and everything they did to him, but he understood that these lessons would be valuable for him one day. Not for the reason they had in mind, but for his reason. He was determined to use his knowledge against them, when he finally got the opportunity to claim vengeance.
There was another thing that struck him as time went by, there were no others like him. Even remotely like him. He had nothing to draw on except instinct and lessons, and no one to communicate and interact with. He tried to understand the bipeds' communication, but general mannerisms and gestures, like smiling and laughing, were all that he was able to learn. He was different, there was him, and there was all else, and anything within that all else was either a threat or food.
For weeks he was subjected to sessions of pain and noise, trying to endure and trying desperately to learn the lesson that would make the noise stop. Eventually, one morning, he was sedated in his sleep and moved into the large lesson pen. Once he was inside, he found that the pen was filled with creatures that were larger than what he was used to. None of them were threats, but there were more of them than he was expecting.
He had barely stood up when, suddenly, a strange red line extended from somewhere above him, a tool of the bipeds. The line touched one of the creatures, drawing the Indoraptor's attention. Curious, he moved towards the chosen animal, wondering what he was supposed to learn from the line.
They were all targets, and he was certain that eventually they would die, but this one had been chosen for a reason, so he sniffed it. It didn't smell different than the others, it didn't look different, so he wondered again what the lesson was.
Then, the noise sounded. This time it was louder, higher pitched, and even more painful to his senses. He screeched and clawed at the nearest wall, angry at this lesson's learning pain. In his rage, he noticed the red line, it had never waivered away from its target, no matter where that target moved.
He smiled in his pain, he had learned the lesson. The bipeds wanted to tell him what to kill, without verbal communication. He found the lesson to be absurd, if they put targets in front of him he'd kill them anyways. He decided that they simply wanted to control the order in which he killed them. This he also found absurd, but since all the paths went the same way, he went down the one with the least painful noise.
He attacked the creature marked with the line, killing it in seconds. Once the limp body fell, the noise stopped. He smiled again, he had indeed learned the lesson. He waited for the line to reappear, and it soon did.
He tried to attack the animal, but the noise sounded again.
He screeched, confused. Had he not learned the lesson?
He killed the creature, and the noise stopped.
He stood still for a moment, still confused.
The line reappeared, and this time the Indoraptor waited, wondering what would happen.
As expected, the noise returned, and so he killed his target.
After several repetitions, his confusion slowly faded. The line would mark the target, and he would wait until the noise started, then he'd attack. Once the target was dead, the noise would stop.
After the pen ran out of targets, he was left to himself to eat.
These target sessions continued alongside the pain sessions, but luckily the long sessions of noise stopped.
He continued learning, continued killing, and continued hating. His smile was known by all of the bipeds, and he knew it. He rarely laughed, as it was a noise he reserved for when he was genuinely pleased with himself, having adopted the mannerism as his own.
Then, after years of painful existence, the lessons and sessions stopped, and he was left alone, with nothing but meat and water and time.
He decided that the bipeds were either preparing more tests, or that he had finally passed them all, and they were preparing him for his purpose.
Without the lessons and sessions that had previously been his life, he was left in a state of perpetual boredom. He had suddenly gone from being intellectually strained to being intellectually neglected. To ease his despondency he took to remembering his lessons, perfecting them in his head so that when the time came when he needed to use them, he would be ready.
While he was reflecting on his past, he also fell to brooding over his hatred of the bipeds that had done this to him. Did they really need to hurt him to make him learn? Did they need to hurt him all those times where there was no reason at all? Was the noise necessary? Was any of this ever really necessary?
He decided that the bipeds knew nothing but violence and torture, so he became even more resolved to shove his own pain down their throats. Right before he ripped them out.