Everything had been fine for approximately ten minutes. Sure, his heart was still racing from pulling a gun on a sworn officer of the law then escaping in a stolen car. But he was free and driving westward, toward his family and home — the two things that had got him through his darkest hours during the endless nightmares that had haunted his dreams. All he had to do was evade them a little longer. Maybe ditch the car and hitch a ride somehow. The sky was clear of pursuit and nothing was in his rear view mirror.

Then the earth had ruptured with a god’s fury, scant seconds before the thin steel of the car was ripped apart and his body mangled by flying shrapnel. He was spared the pain, as he quickly slipped into a near state of death. Connor’s subconscious healing ability kicked in, stemming the blood flow and repairing the rents in his skin and muscle. He kicked himself awake, his fears overwhelming his body’s natural desire to rest and recoup. As his blurry vision took in the damage to the car, the growing flames and the bloody tears along his arms and legs, the first stages of shock were beginning to cripple him. Despite the heat, he felt deathly cold. Connor stamped down the signals from his hyper-stressed brain and made a sluggish motion to open the door. His hands moved at glacial speeds, the muscles partially severed and the after-effects of shock still active.

“Come on!” he chided himself.

He reached inwards and commanded priority to healing his extremities. Whoever had shot the car to shit would likely be on him in a second. He had to escape. He owed it to himself and the others. Especially that one in the middle — the first and original. Feeling returned to his fingers. Connor snapped out of his daze and swung the door open.

He paused.

On the seat beside him was the stolen pistol. He picked it up and rolled out of the car, hands first, falling into the gritty, weed choked dirt of a bank. He heard a jet engine whine over the crackle of the flaming car. Connor pulled himself to his feet and stumbled towards the light shining from a nearby warehouse. Maybe he could find help or at least somewhere to hide until he had healed himself fully. His chest felt constricted and sore as he ran. Pressing a hand to his stomach he found a large shard of metal sticking out. It was wedged in there tightly. Pulling it out would cause him to lose a lot of blood. More than he could spare.

“Fucking great,” he grunted.

A sign hung over the access to the parking lot reading ‘Greatford Poultry Farms’. As he hobbled below the sign, he noticed a sickly aroma of death and bird-shit. The parking lot was vacant but for a few vehicles clustered around the front doors. The warehouse itself was an uninspired construction of grey concrete tilt-slabs with a sprinkling of windows and a steel roof, spanning several football fields in either direction. Connor veered toward the front doors, hoping the late-night staff had left them unlocked. Behind him he could hear a jet carrier coming into land, its cycling engines dredging up painful memories of Boise. Connor made it to the doors and pushed. They rattled against the locks. He glanced inside the empty foyer before aiming his stolen handgun at the centre of the glass panel and firing. The gunshot echoed in the concrete parking lot. The safety glass shattered and spilled onto the ground. Connor swept an opening big enough to squeeze through with the barrel of the gun and moved inside.

His plan was to hide somewhere inside the factory until he was well enough to fight his way clear and make an escape. It was a desperate, shitty plan but it was all his panicked brain could think of. Illuminated signs pointed toward the chicken pens, offices and slaughterhouse. Connor picked the slaughterhouse, thinking it would have better hiding spots and potential material to replace his low blood supply and fragile muscles. He fled down the corridor, dripping blood on the freshly buffed floor, passing storage closets and miscellaneous offices.

A cleaner emerged from a door in front of him, a tray of cleaning supplies in hand and headphones covering his ears, blasting out muffled metal music. The cleaner jumped when he caught sight of Connor, bleeding, clothes torn to shreds, visibly wounded and a gun in hand.

“What?! Who the fuck are you?” asked the cleaner, tearing the headphones from his ears.

“Do you have a phone?” shouted Connor.

“Yeah? Why? Don’t hurt me, man…”

Connor shook his head. “I’m not going to hurt you, dude. Just call the cops and hide. Some shit is about to go down. Can you do that?”

The cleaner gave him a nervous smile that suggested he’d do anything if it meant not getting shot. “Sure, man. Just let me live.”

“Don’t come out until the cops are here,” warned Connor as he strode past the cleaner.

The cleaner backed into the room he had just left, his shaking hands reaching for the phone in his pocket.

Connor reached a locker room where the factory workers got dressed before entering or exiting the slaughterhouse. Long white coats sat on pegs with rubber boots beneath. In the bins he saw disposable hairnets and gloves. He pushed through some folding doors into a large, cold room filled with conveyors and steel machinery. The smell of blood and death assaulted his senses. Connor slipped deeper into the factory, dodging under and around the silent equipment. He passed large rolling bins of discarded chicken feet, beaks and feathers, the sight making him gag. At a bin of congealing blood, he stopped running. Connor looked at his hands and the tendrils hidden within.

“I shouldn’t,” he told himself.

His shaking legs and the growing coldness in his chest told him he should. Connor groaned and extended the tendrils into the bin of smelly blood. Disgusted at himself, he slunk to the floor, placing the gun within reach and meditated. He was no medical expert, but he knew enough to understand that day old chicken blood was not a substitute for his own. Instead he’d have to fudge things a little. A fudging which would take time. Connor started on a pathway from the tendrils to his intestines, growing a thin set of veins to inject the raw blood straight into his digestive tract. With the new veins complete he increased the efficiency of the intestine itself, speeding up the extraction process. With enough time he could probably change his entire digestive system, designing a machine which cut down on the waste and delivered nutrients to his body in a much more efficient way. It was an interesting idea, but something that could wait until his life wasn’t in peril.

The flow of avian blood rejuvenated him. As his wounds healed and blood supply topped up, he moved to the other issues. Shards of glass and metal were embedded in him from waist to crown. Connor forced the frayed muscles to heal and expel the foreign matter, letting the junk fall to the cold, linoleum floor. The shard of metal stuck in his belly resisted the most, its curled and sharpened edges doing more damage as he wriggled it loose. Connor retracted what he could from the shard and pulled with both hands. It came out with an unwelcome plop. Connor threw it across the room in a mix of victory and protest.

There had to be a better way. He couldn’t just scrape through every time he got into trouble, because like it or not, this was his life now.

“For now…” he promised himself.

If Kemprex had shown him anything, it was that his ability had endless possibilities. How many organs, implants and viruses had he grown during his incarceration in their labs? He could grow a body capable of withstanding anything these assholes threw at him. If only he had enough time.

One thought stuck with him. A weapon he had not tried for himself yet.

“A virus.”