Pain.

  That was Viktor's first conscious sensation. Not ordinary pain—this was agony that transcended anything he'd ever experienced, as though his body was being unmade and reconstructed cell by cell. His skin burned. His muscles screamed. His bones felt brittle and molten simultaneously.

  Then came the sounds.

  The soft plink of water droplets hitting metal somewhere in the darkness. The skittering of tiny feet across the floor three rooms away. The electrical hum of emergency lighting systems struggling to function on backup power.

  Viktor's eyes snapped open, and he gasped. The dim emergency lights overhead should have been barely visible, yet every detail was crystal clear—the hairline cracks in the ceiling panels, the tiny insects crawling along the light fixtures, dust particles floating in the air. Too much. Too sharp. Too everything.

  He tried to sit up from the cold boratory floor and nearly propelled himself into the ceiling. His muscles had responded with arming strength, sending him lurching upward with uncontrolled force.

  "What the hell?" His voice sounded wrong in his ears—deeper, somehow resonant in a way it had never been before.

  Memory began to filter back in fragments. The boratory. Project Lazarus. The immortality trials. Subject 23 convulsing on the table, ftline followed by unexpected revival, then the attack—

  Viktor's hand flew to his neck, feeling the ragged wound there. But instead of the wet, open gash he expected, his fingers found smooth skin with a slightly raised scar. Impossible. The injury had been catastrophic—arterial damage, massive blood loss.

  He should be dead.

  A new sensation interrupted his thoughts. Thirst. Not ordinary thirst, but a desperate, cwing need that scraped his throat and twisted his insides. His tongue felt swollen, his mouth uncomfortably dry despite the saliva that had begun to pool. He needed...something. Something vital.

  Viktor staggered to his feet, catching his reflection in a shattered monitor screen. He froze. The face looking back was his, yet fundamentally altered. His normally pale researcher's complexion had taken on an abaster quality, bloodless and perfect. His gray eyes now held a strange luminescence, pupils contracted to pinpoints despite the dim light. And when he parted his lips in shock—

  Fangs. Two elongated canines where normal teeth should be.

  "No. No, no, no..." He backed away from his reflection, scientific mind racing to process the impossible data before him. The enhanced senses. The strength. The rapid healing. The thirst. The physical changes.

  Vampire. The word surfaced from childhood stories and horror films, absurd and yet—given the evidence—undeniable.

  Viktor colpsed into his desk chair, which groaned beneath him as though he now weighed far more than before. With shaking hands, he pulled his research tablet from the desk drawer. Miraculously, it still had power. His fingers moved across the screen, creating a new file.

  Subject: Viktor Andrei PetrovStatus: Unknown transformation following exposure to Subject 23's bloodTimestamp: Unknown. Approx. 24-48 hours post-incident based on facility conditionPhysical symptoms:

  Enhanced visual acuity, including night visionEnhanced auditory perception (estimated 10x normal range)Significant increase in muscle strength (quantification pending)Accelerated healing (neck wound completely closed)Dental morphological changes (canine elongation)Extreme thirst (non-responsive to water)Decreased body temperature (subjective assessment)He paused, scientific detachment momentarily overtaken by raw emotion. What had they done? What had he done? Project Lazarus was meant to extend human life, to end suffering, not create... monsters.

  A sudden noise from the corridor outside jolted him from his thoughts. Soft footsteps, the rustle of fabric, the steady thump of a heartbeat—

  Viktor's head snapped up. He could hear the person's heartbeat. And with that realization came a new sensation—the thirst intensifying to a savage, primal hunger. His newly enhanced vision tunneled, focusing on the doorway. His muscles tensed, preparing to spring.

  The scavenger who appeared in the doorway was young, maybe twenty, dressed in yers of mismatched clothes. He carried a backpack and fshlight, clearly there to salvage whatever he could from the abandoned boratory. He hadn't noticed Viktor yet, focused on examining equipment shelves.

  Viktor felt his body responding without conscious command. His lips pulled back, exposing his new fangs. His hands curled into cws. The hunger sharpened to an excruciating point, demanding satisfaction. The scavenger's pulse called to him, a siren song of warm, nourishing life.

  One leap. That's all it would take. One moment, and the agony of thirst would end.

  "No." Viktor forced the word through clenched teeth, driving his nails into his own palms until they bled. The pain helped—a focal point against the hunger. "I am not a monster. I am a scientist. I am Viktor Petrov."

  He repeated the words in his mind like a mantra, fighting the predatory instinct with everything he had. Slowly, deliberately, he moved behind a tall storage cabinet, concealing himself from the scavenger, who continued his oblivious search of the b.

  For fifteen excruciating minutes, Viktor remained motionless, barely breathing, as the young man collected batteries, medicine, and tools. Each second was torment, the thirst a relentless presence urging him to attack, to feed, to surrender to his new nature.

  Only when the scavenger finally left, footsteps fading down the corridor, did Viktor allow himself to move again. He slid down the wall to the floor, shaking with the effort of restraint and the horror of what he'd nearly done.

  With trembling fingers, he added a new line to his clinical notes:

  Psychological symptoms:

  Predatory instinct toward humansOverwhelming hunger/thirst, specifically for blood (hypothesis)Partial retention of human consciousness and moral reasoningViktor stared at the st entry for a long time. It was the only thing separating him from Subject 23 and the others who had turned before him—the ones who had rampaged through the facility with no hint of their former humanity. Somehow, he had retained his mind, his identity.

  For how long, though? Would the hunger eventually consume him, erase the scientist and leave only the predator?

  Outside the boratory windows, darkness had fallen completely. Through a broken section of the reinforced gss, Viktor could see fires burning in the distance, hear faint screams and occasional gunfire. Whatever had happened in this facility hadn't stayed contained.

  The world was changing. Had already changed.

  And so had he.

  Viktor rose unsteadily to his feet, pocketing the tablet. He needed to understand what he had become. Needed to find a way to control it. And most desperately, he needed to satisfy this thirst without becoming the monster that instinct urged him to be.

  The scientist in him—the human in him—demanded nothing less.