Hybrids: A New Species

Cole lays down on the dusty bed, staring at the ceiling. The plain dirty white color has faded over time, and there are multiple water spots spread across. He wipes the sweat of his forehead. He is burning up. Cole rolls himself out of bed, stretching his legs. His cracking joints give him a feel of relief. He just sits there now, thinking about the transformation he has gone through. He can recall the pain. The unbearable pain. He wishes to never go through anything like that again. No person should have to go through that. He holds his glasses in his right hand. He can remember needing glasses since he was twelve years old, and as the years progressed, his vision would get worse. Kids would make fun of him, but kids were just being themselves. Cole first resented wearing glasses, but he grew to love them over time. It was just a part of him he needed to get used to. But now everything has changed. He doesn’t need his glasses anymore. Ever since he took the cure, Cole’s vision was one of the many things that were altered. He feels physically stronger, has more energy, and he feels his senses have enhanced greatly. Cole folds up his glasses and places them on the nightstand next to the bed. He doesn’t need them anymore.

Cole walks out the room and stands out in the hallway. The house is quiet. This was his home, a place he come too immediately after school, to work on research for Dr. Mori. His mom would be on the couch reading one of her favorite romance novels, and his little brother would be in his room, playing video games. Now it’s just an empty house of memories. Cole walks to the closed door across the room he was in. It was his brother’s room. He opens it, hoping to see his brother on the floor, concentrated on his game. The fill of death hits his nose, and Cole almost vomits from the smell. He’s forgotten that all his senses were enhanced, including his sense of smell. Cole pinches his nose and scans the room. Nothing. Just the rotting corpse of Rick on the bed.

He never turned. He thinks.

Cole comes into the room to get a closer look at Rick’s body. He releases the pinch on his nose and tries to embrace the putrid smell of rotting flesh. He examines the body. His skin has gone gray, dark bags under his eyes. Cole grabs his gun, holster in the back of his pants and points it to Rick’s head, in case he “wakes up”. Cole slowly opens Rick’s jaw to look at his teeth. His heart is beating fast, Rick could wake up last minute and bite Cole’s hand. He opens it slightly until he can see the teeth. Cole suddenly becomes relaxed. Rick’s teeth are yellow and dirty, but they are not rotten. One of symptoms the Fallen have are rotting gray teeth, along with black gums, and hazy white eyes. Rick seems to not have any of these. But he is still dead.

Did the cure kill the virus? A little voice in Cole’s head says.

Cole walks out the room and closes the door behind him. He plans to check up on him later, just be sure the cure didn’t just prolong the effect of the virus.

Cole walks into the living room. He gets flashbacks of him on the floor yelling in pain. He cringes from the thought and shakes it off. He stands there for a few minutes, shuffling through his thoughts. He feels lost now. He has the cure in him, and now there are two people in the world who are cured from this virus. These are the first steps of curing humanity. This is what his mentor Dr. Mori wanted to accomplish.

This cure is too dangerous. His inner voice tells him.

But it’s the world’s only hope in surviving.

Maybe? But at what cost?

People are dying! The cure will save them!

It could kill them as well!

It’s our only choice!

It needs to be fixed!

Cole argues with himself, like his conscious has split into two, one realistic and the other senseless. Cole sits down on the couch and rubs his temples.

“What should I do?” he tells himself.

“It seems the cure ends the effects of the virus, for now. However, the process of it can kill the patient.”

He ponders more on it.

Until his thoughts are interrupted by a loud bang on the window. Cole jumps from the sudden racket. He investigates. A grotesque Fallen is stationed at the window. Cole watches it as it repeatedly bangs its head, trying to break into the house. It growls when it notices Cole and tries harder to break the window, leaving a stain of blood and filth smudged on the glass. Cole walks to the door and opens it, drawing his small knife.

The bright sun blinds Cole as he steps outside. He covers his eyes and looks off to his left to see the Fallen slowly turn its attention to him. It gurgles and begins limping its way to Cole, arms out and ready to rip into him. Cole’s heart rapidly beats, he takes a few deeps breaths and tightly grips the handle of his knife. The Fallen lunges forwards. Cole quickly dodges the attack and pushes the Fallen against the brick wall of his house. It becomes furious and attempts another attack. Cole swiftly dodges it again. His reflexes are quicker now. Cole smiles. He never had this feeling before. A feeling of power over another being. The Fallen is infuriated now, as it fails to grab a bite of Cole’s soft flesh. Cole stops torturing the hungry creature and grabs it by the hair. It swings its arms wildly. Cole thrusts his knife into the Fallen’s skull and it stops flailing around. Cole’s excitement has ended.

Cole sighs deeply. He can now understand why Ben enjoyed messing with the Fallen. The cure makes you feel powerful against them. It makes you feel unstoppable.

You’re finally strong. His little voice tells him.

You don’t need Ben anymore. You have the cure. Leave!

Cole shakes away his thoughts and rushes back in the house. There’s blood on his hands from the Fallen. He grabs a rag from the table nearby him and attempts to clean it off. It smudges. He desperately tries again. It’s still there.

“Dammit come off!” Cole cries.

He keeps at it, rubbing harder and harder, until the rough rag begins to burn his hands.

Cole throws the old rag. He looks carefully at his hands. They’re covered in dirt and dry blood.

Suddenly memories of Dr. Mori flashes through his mind. He’s standing in a small metal room with him. Cole stands behind Dr. Mori as he sits there writing down some words on a piece of paper.

“Cole! Bring me the samples!” Dr. Mori demands, his voice dry and harsh.

“Yes sir.” Cole says as he grabs some petri dishes in a fridge.

“Thank you very much Cole. We must begin human testing soon.”

Cole hands the petri dishes to Dr. Mori.

“Human testing this early?” Cole says in confusion.

“Of course! Project Hybrid is meant for humans. We can’t just always test on rats. Now get me the rest of the samples! We must prepare for the experiment.”

Cole snaps back to reality from his flashback. He looks back at his dirty hands.

It’s all your fault!

No.

You and Dr. Mori caused this!

We didn’t mean too.

Cole begins tearing up. He hasn’t come to terms for his mistakes.

You dragged Ben into this! He’s a good man!

I didn’t want this!

It should have been you!

Cole cringes and shakes his head vigorously. He feels like he’s going insane.

The voices finally stop and Cole now sits there in silence.

He takes a deep breath.

“I need to fix this.” He whispers. “I need Dr. Mori’s notes.”

Cole checks through his messy room for some notes on the cure. Trash is everywhere. He’s made copies of Dr. Mori’s research before the world went into chaos. He kept them at his house to study them and the process of splitting cells and fusing them. Dr. Mori was a smart man. The only person to have been able to successfully combine human and animal biology. The doctor’s next step was to use cells of animals that had immunity to cancer and other diseases and combine them with human cells. A small pile of crumpled papers is stacked on the bed. Cole has found a few of his notes but not all of them. He picks up a piece a paper, quickly scans it to see if it’s important, then lays it on his made pile on the bed or crumbles it up and trashes it.

After some time has passed, Cole finally has a small stack of about twenty pages of notes. Some of them are dirty and torn, showing only some legible writings. He grabs his stack of papers and lays them on a desk with more trash scattered on top. He quickly clears off the desk, throwing trash on the floor. He sits.

“Let’s learn more about this shall we?” Cole says out loud.

He looks through the papers, most have equations and hand drawn diagrams of cellular structures. Then he comes across a page with the title, “Project Hybrid”

He reads through it.

PROJECT HYBRID

This is an update for the antibiotic to cure cancer. After successfully splitting the cells of the animals with an immunity to cancer and fusing them with human cells; the newly evolved cells have survived. Past testing and updates to the antibiotic have been made to fix issues it caused. Hybrid Subjects 1-6 (animal testing is being done first) died immediately after the antibiotic was first administered. After further modification, this issue was fixed. Further tests have been done until Subject 13 begin showing positive symptoms. (Subjects 8 and 9 began showing cannibalistic symptoms. They had to be put down.) Subjects 14 -18 have also survived the antibiotic and now we will begin human testing.

UPDATE: Human testing have shown to be a success so far. Subject H1 and H2 (H=Human) have shown healthy symptoms and their cancer have disappeared. Project Hybrid has been a success and now we may commence updating this antibiotic to begin curing other diseases.

The rest of the page contains formulas and a list of animals that had their cells extracted to create the antibiotic. Cole reads through the list,

“Sharks, naked mole rats, alligators.” Cole reads off some of the animals.

He looks through more of the notes until he notices a piece of paper labeled, “Journal entry”

He quickly grabs the paper and begins reading it.

Journal Entry (The number is smudged)

I did it! I finally did it! After years of research on cell biology, I’ve finally been able to successfully fuse cells to create a multicellular organism. For years’ people have been trying to find the cure for cancer. But I’ve found it. No! I created it! By gathering animal cells that have an immunity to cancer, and fusing them with human cells, I created a new cell that is a hybrid of animal and man. This opens up new opportunities for the human race! First is to cure cancer, then all diseases will be next. For the last twenty years, I’ve been working on Project Hybrid, and now that I’ve successfully completed my work, it is time to further my experiments. I’m committed to my ideology of transhumanism, and even though my colleagues only focus on the technological side to it, they’ve agreed to my belief that the human species can be improve biologically as well. Why should human senses and strengths only be limited to what they are? Humans are supposed to be the dominant species on this planet. However, how could a dominant species be outrun by a cheetah, weaker than a gorilla, or suffer from hunger pains and dehydration while other animals can outlast us? No were not the dominant species. At least not yet. Cells have a connection to the amazing skills that animals possess. The cellular structure is what makes us. What makes every breathing thing do what they do! I will gather the cellular structures of specific animals and create multiple multicellular organisms and insert them into my human test subject that were cured from the cancer. Humans will become a new species. We will no longer be humans! We will be more! We will truly be the dominant species on this Earth. We will be man and animal, a hybrid of everything. We will be a hybrid species.

Cole stops reading, his heart is racing. He doesn’t remember taking Dr. Mori’s personal note entry. But after reading it, he’s glad he did.

“Dr. Mori, why did you push on this?” Cole whispers. “You should have studied your research more.”

You should have said something.

Cole ignores his thoughts.

“There has to be more.” Cole says.

Some time has passed, Cole doesn’t know if it’s been hours or minutes. There are pages with many different scientific formulas on cell fusing, but Cole can’t figure out why the cure didn’t work on Dr. Mori but worked on Ben. He continues searching through the papers.

“Dammit! Why is this so difficult!” Cole is becoming aggravated.

He smashes his hand on the desk and it cracks. His new strength still surprises him. He looks at the damage; the dusty wooden desk has a large crack where he hit it. There’s a spot of blood on the crack.

“Blood?”

Cole looks at his hand; a small piece of wood has penetrated it. He doesn’t feel pain though. Suddenly Cole stands up from the desk,

“Blood!” Cole yells in excitement.

He quickly scrambles through the messy pile of papers to find the original formula for the Hybrid cure. He finds it and quickly scans it.

“Dr. Mori used his own blood as a sample to start the cancer cure.” he exclaims. “Maybe his blood had an immunity to the virus when it spread?”

Cole scratches head.

“Shit! I would need his blood. Back to square one.” Cole says, irritated.

Cole slumps over the desk, banging his head on it.

“Dammit why is this so hard.” He thinks more on it. There’s no way Cole would be able to determine if Dr. Mori had an immunity to the virus unless he had his blood.

Cole takes a deep breath. “Maybe if I go find his body.”

Cole thinks about the deformed monstrous creature Dr. Mori tuned into back at the drifter’s camp. His body should still be there, unless the Fallen ripped him apart. Cole stands from his desks and gathers some of the papers he’s gone through. Heading to the living room, Cole puts together his hypothesis on the issue.

“If Dr. Mori didn’t have the virus in him when taking the cure, then maybe it’s the reason it had a negative effect on him. The Hybrid cure might only work on people who were infected.” He utters.

Cole believe this might be the closest thing to the answers he need. If his prediction on the matter is true, then the only other thing he needs to learn is how to alter the cure so it is safer for people to take. He relaxes on the couch now, placing the notes next to him. This entire morning has been mind-numbing for him. Cole is still getting used to having the cure run through his blood. He’s also drained from all the thinking he had to do on the Hybrid cure. Learning a bit more about the cure, he has a new plan now. To head back to the drifter’s camp, he was held prisoner at, and gather a blood sample from Dr. Mori’s transformed body. He sighs and closes his eyes.

The front door handle shakes. Cole quickly perks up and draws his gun, pointing it to the door. It slowly creeks open. He is sweating. A man walks through.

Cole lowers his gun and reliefs a sigh. It’s Ben.

“Thank god. It’s just you” Cole laughs.

Cole suddenly feels anxious when he notices Ben’s expression.

“Ben?” He calls out to him.

Ben is giving Cole an icy gaze.

“We need to talk.” Ben mutters, disgust in his eyes.