At some point, a hoarse screech erupted from outside, and the creature began slamming itself against the tunnel walls. Inside, I found myself on the wildest roller coaster imaginable!
The harder Birkin smashed into the walls, the more violently I was thrown around, flailing my claws in search of anything to latch onto. But every "something" I grabbed tore free in my hands, causing the creature even greater pain—which only made it thrash harder, either trying to expel me from its body or crush me against the wall. I couldn't tell which.
I have no idea how long it lasted. It felt like an eternity. Eventually, the monster went still. I found myself floating—not in chunks of flesh or some grotesque minced slurry, but in a thick, uniform fluid that was actively trying to seep into me. Or rather, my body was actively drawing it in. After that rodeo, it had certainly sustained its share of damage.
"Is it… over?" came Kate's voice from somewhere outside.
"Сain, are you alive in there?" Yamata called.
"Stop mocking me! You know perfectly well I can't be alive!" I shouted back.
I immediately regretted opening my mouth. Before I could finish speaking, the vile substance began pouring in there as well.
After a fair amount of flailing and swallowing more of the stuff than I care to think about, I managed to absorb enough that I could stand upright inside the now-empty carcass. The remaining fluid barely reached my ankles. The body itself had shriveled significantly, once so bloated and semi-liquid.
Where all of it fit inside me, I'd rather not speculate. Let the Four Eyes theorize about that.
I carved an exit through what remained and climbed out to the girls waiting for me.
"Well… That thing really dissolved you in there," Yamata said, studying me with open surprise. "I'm not even sure anymore who digested whom now."
Kate simply stared at me in shock.
What now?
Standing beside them, I was roughly the same height—no towering over them, no craning my neck upward either. I didn't feel heavier or bulkier. So what was wrong?
I lowered my gaze—and saw it.
Inside Birkin, I had indeed been partially dissolved. Large patches of skin were simply gone, exposing muscle and tissue beneath. I resembled some distant relative of the Lickers, whose flayed bodies bore a similar look. It is worth noting that all this also resembled a burn somewhat —perhaps Birkin hadn't fully cooled after the explosion, and I had been partially cooked inside him. Or maybe it was simply a property of that fluid. There was no way to find out now..
The troubling part was that regeneration was in no hurry to mend it.
"Go to the wall and wipe off the soot—maybe then you'll be able to see yourself," advised Four Eyes, gazing at me with sympathy.What was going on?
I didn't walk to the tunnel wall—I practically flew, even though my wings were long gone. I wiped away the soot, noticing that grime and even some exposed wiring scraped off with it, revealing a surface not quite mirror-like, but reflective enough to make out general features. I wouldn't attempt to compose a police sketch from it—but it was sufficient.
Pale. As though skin had been stretched across the face, the right side much like the rest of the body—either dissolved or burned. The eyes: blood red sclera and orange white irises, set against a slightly elongated pupil. Not the kind you see in films, splitting the eye in two, but only subtly different from the usual round shape—yet all the more terrifying for it.
The hair had shortened to a small bristle, surviving only at the crown and, judging by touch, at the back of my head.
Blood filled crimson lips, seemingly impossible for the living, and beneath the upper lip, a pair of fangs.
This wasn't some elegant aristocratic vampire.
This was a true walking corpse.
And as I stared at my reflection, not a single detail changed. Nothing even attempted to regenerate.
Could it be...
"Judging by your eyes, you've figured it out," Yamata's voice came from behind me. "You've evolved again, losing your human traits and wings (and much else—your ribcage, for instance, has become entirely human once more). But this time the catalyst was Birkin's final form, literally radiating the G virus. In a sense, you've even come back to life—but at the cost of ceasing to resemble a human. And what did you expect, swimming in his blood?"
"Kate. The bag," I said, noticing that my voice now sounded like that of a lifelong smoker. Well, no wonder—my neck was nothing but an open mess, so there was little to be surprised at.
Receiving what I asked for from the still shocked girl—as though she herself had been disfigured—I pulled out a change of clothes to replace the ruined ones. Good thing I'd thought to grab spare clothes from the staff room. I pulled on a pair of jeans and a dark-blue athletic jacket with a deep hood, two sizes too large. The baggy fabric concealed most of my frame, hiding my figure entirely. As long as no one saw the skin beneath, my legs and overall build still passed for human.
"Birkin's dealt with. The survivors are safe. The lab's destroyed. Where to now?" Yamata asked, as though nothing had happened.
For that, I was sincerely grateful. Better to pretend not to notice than to cast those sympathetic glances like Kate.
"Now?" I replied, my tone sharpening. "Now we pay a visit to a certain lady carrying the Progenitor virus. I urgently need to look more human and evolve. Andd I see no other way to achieve it."
I very much did not want to remain like this forever—even if, as Yamata had said, the G virus within me had made me pseudo alive, much like Birkin himself.
(End of Chapter)
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