A/N: Yes, I know it's been done before (Sam being responsible for the Pulse, I mean) but it just works so well =) And quite honestly, I was in a bit of a hurry trying to finish the story before the dead line set on Raising Hell (this story was written for the Dec/Jan prompt challenge in case I haven't mentioned it), so I went with the first thing that sprang to my mind -_-;

On another note: Maybe I should have warned you before now that the humor is going way down in Part Three of this story. And I hope I had at least some of you guessing at what I'm going to do about Ben and his insanity ;) Enjoy...

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Part Three: In the Beginning

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Interlude

New York, 2018~

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He liked this new body of his. It was faster and stronger than that of an ordinary human. He liked how, right at this moment, he ran so fast through the dark streets no eye could follow his movements. He had better ears, too.

"Ben!" someone in the distance called. "Leave it be! We'll get it another time!"

The gloat and relief, it turned out, came too soon. A shot echoed through the chasms of skyscrapers and no second later there was blinding, white-hot agony bursting just beneath his left shoulder blade. Barely managing to stumble around the corner, he went down to his knees, heaved open the entry to the sewers there and went into hiding.

The sewers in New York were a complete mess to navigate. An endless maze of old lines and new lines and even older tunnels built one on top of the other, criss-crossing all over the map. Many had never been properly recorded and cataloged.

It was easy to lose a trail down there even if your prey was bleeding. The fresh blood mixed with the gunk and trash, becoming unrecognizable unless you had the proper equipment and that was costly, nowadays more so than ever. The scent, too, became lost in the sharp smell of discarded chemicals and the stink of human waste.

The shape-shifter tediously made his way through the dark, abandoned tunnels that suddenly weren't so dark anymore with those new eyes. The silver bullet burned in his flesh, poisoning him from the inside. He had to get it out.

Had to get out of this glorious new skin as well, however much he would miss it. But if he didn't want to attract the hunters' attention again he couldn't head upstairs as someone they would recognize. Not until he was healed anyway.

He knew it was dark in the tunnels, but for once he had no trouble seeing in the murkiness down here. When he reached his lair he didn't even need to light the candles it seemed so bright.

Pulling off his shirt, the shape-shifter started the process of losing his current skin, stretching muscles and producing bio-chemical substances that were inherent in his kind alone. He scratched at his hips and arms in order to speed up the procedure.

For the first time in his life it didn't work.

Frantically, he scratched and tore but all he did was give himself deep wounds that hurt almost as bad as the silver in his back. The thought crystallizing in his mind let panic settle deep in his guts. He was trapped inside this skin...

Exhausted, he fell down, trying to figure out what was happening to him. He had been told, once upon a time, to never try and imitate animal DNA. And it wasn't because they were too different. It was quite the opposite. Their genes were too compatible with his own, the substance his body used to recognize the foreign DNA strands and mutate them didn't detect them. He would be stuck in a body for the rest of his life, becoming more and more the animal he was pretending to be.

But this body was human. It had to be.

Mind racing, body too weak to stand up anymore, he finally fell into unconsciousness. Memories started to surface, memories of the one whose skin he had stolen, manifesting in nightmarish dreams.

Strict, uncaring, intimidating soldiers.

Being tied down in the bottom of a water filled pool.

Nomlies in the basement. A broken body in the woods.

Bloody teeth hidden inside a cloth.

A smiling, benevolent blue lady.

When he woke up, still fighting the silver poisoning, still feverish, the Lady was the one thing he remembered not fearing. He prayed to her to not let him die.

And She answered his prayers.

He got strong again, undetected by the hunters, and with time he forgot that there was a time when he could change his skin like other people changed their clothes. He forgot that his memories weren't his own and he forgot those memories that didn't make sense anymore.

He forgot that he had ever been somebody else, someone whose designation wasn't X5-493, whose siblings didn't call him Ben, and he didn't remember much of what had happened after he fled Manticore. Those memories were hazy and unreal.

He never forgot about Her, though. He prayed to Her and She saved him. And he just knew if he gave Her the right kind of sacrifice She would continue to keep him safe, fight off the nomlies even the memories of which scared him half to death.

He was X5-493, Ben, a feline-human hybrid designed and bred to kill.

The pain in his back where a silver bullet still spread its poison didn't even register anymore.

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to be continued...