David's heart skipped a beat. He moved closer, his face just inches from the relic, but this time he just looked, not daring to touch it...
The relic slowly turned on itself, swimming in the jar filled with green substance. The rest of the monster was a dark greenish black, and the thing looked more like volcanic rock than a scale. But what really caught the eye was the sharp edge that covered its surface and rose above it.
The tip that protruded like a rocky knife glinted slightly, reflecting the light in the room, as if the thing not let anyone the need to imagine how sharp it was...
It was not a protective mechanism born of evolution, but more like a defensive measure turned into a weapon, as if every inch of the Apex Titan's body had been designed... for pain.
'(Godzilla...)' he thought, that monster, the beast that terrified the world...
Hailed as the being who saved us or as the one who will bring about our end.
'(Such a small piece...)' David knew that this piece had been recovered during the battle that destroyed the city of San Francisco, with an estimated 1,300,000 human casualties, a fateful day known as G-Day...
David knew that this piece was not the result of a battle with humans, but with a other Titan. Apart from the absurdly destructive few weapons that humans possessed, few could truly hurt the Titans, and even less who could hurt Godzilla...
He got up and looked around. There were dozens, hundreds of samples... trophies in the room.
'(But how many have been win by humans?)' What percentage of this spoils were from their own hunting...
'(Humans in this new world no longer have their throne at the top of the food chain...)' His aquamarine eyes scanned the room...
And his eyes stopped in one direction, drawn to a strange object...
Everything here was crazy, but this object was strange in the sense that it was the only one covered with a veil, a black cloth, making it look like a huge spherical object.
"What's that, Admiral?" said David, pointing.
"What is it...?" he continued.
Admiral William Steinz looked at the object for a second and turned his gaze back to the boy, scrutinizing him.
The commander took a few seconds to look at David and then walked toward the object, reaching out his hand... and tearing off the cloth that covered it.
And David's brain stopped...
'(Huh...)'
He quickly approached with agitated steps and checked what he was seeing.
The object was a skull... a skull measuring 4-5 meters, but what disturbed him was that all his anatomical knowledge learned during his training at the academy, all his instincts...
His entire brain, despite the madness of it all, screamed that this skull was human, a human skull the size of a car...
Two green eyes scanned the skeleton, and he recognized
the frontal bone at the front of the head, the large, empty eye sockets, the slightly raised and straight nasal bones.
In the jaw, the maxillae were solid, an organ rarely found in other species because they were designed specifically for speech as well as for chewing.
The dental arch, the cranial sutures, the coronal and sagittal sutures, even the lambdoid suture were ALL there, exact, visible like fossilized scars.
The structure of this face... was that of a human, but on a gigantic scale...
"Is this a Homo sapiens skull? This size? How is that possible... Am I mistaken?" The boy's question echoed through the room. He was confused, stunned...
And the label underneath read only
KJ-??: Complete Skull ??
'(No number, just '?')' wondered the boy.
Are there Homo sapiens titans?
He turned to the admiral and saw his commander with the same look he had seen many times that day, two black irises observing his reaction, as if checking its authenticity or his intention...
After a few seconds, during which David said nothing, confused and extremely annoyed by this piercing gaze and by the whole day, which was becoming stranger by the second, David began to get fed up with all the mystery and strange behavior. He stood up and prepared to question Admiral Steinz firmly and directly, when the latter suddenly turned to him and said, "David, come with me."
David was getting tired of all the mystery and strange behavior. He stood up and was about to question Admiral Steinz firmly when the latter took a small gadget out of his pocket.
He pressed the button on the remote control, and the wall opposite lit up and turned into a screen...
And the soldier began to speak,
"The experiment you participated in involved 5,327 test subjects," he said in a calm, firm voice, pointing to the monitor.
"Men and women, all volunteer soldiers under the age of 30." The screen flashed through the files of each of the soldiers.
The file of a man appeared, an African-American man in military uniform with decorations, cap in hand, standing straight, his facts appearing on the screen.
"Mickael Kyle, 26, lost his fiancée on the G-day."
Another file appeared with a photo of a young red-haired man in uniform and his accomplishments written next to it.
"Ronald Mcallay, 23 years old..."
"Sophie Turner, Lucas O'Donell..." The admiral spoke, giving the names of a small portion of the more than 5,000 soldiers who had participated in this experimental operation, a succession of service records with personal reports and mission reports appearing alongside them.
David's eyes were fixed on his colleagues. He recognized some of them, all participants in the program with him.
"And you see..." began the admiral, who had spoken and scrolled through the register of about thirty soldiers.
"Of the 5,327 volunteers..."
Admiral William's voice was still calm, but the young boy sensed his tone... lower and deeper.
The young teenager, his long black hair framing his face, turned to his commander, his lips tight despite himself.
Hanging on Admiral Steinz's every word, with his gray beard and hair and his ever-serious face.
"Practically all of them died within the first seven days..." A sentence that was a simple fact, a statement.
Stated simply...
And yet the organ that pumped blood through the boy's body stopped.
His heart simply stopped beating, and his whole body followed, becoming frozen...
'(No, it's n..)' His thoughts swirled behind his ocean-blue eyes.
And the admiral continued, his voice still calm, speaking as if... it were just a fact...
"This experiment was a failure from the very first week. We certainly learned a lot about Titans and inter-species organ transplants, and thanks to this valuable new knowledge, we quickly realized that soldiers enhanced with Titan DNA were not for now... not possible... in fact, not even conceivable for decades."
(Most of them died in the first week...) The words went round and round in his head, refusing to be assimilated and then accepted, and God in His mercy might allow them to be forgotten.
When Steinz saw the boy paralysed, he felt a turmoil of emotions such as he had never felt in three wars and 20 years of service.
The admiral's fists clenched, he shared the same feelings, he hated losing men... not like that, not... in vain...
But maybe it wasn't a mistake, if this experience had never happened then...
'(Maybe not a mistake)' Steinz's eyes shone
Steinz pulled himself together and continued talking, the most important part was yet to come...
"And I'm sure you're wondering how many are still alive today? And why you didn't pay your last respects on the operating table?"
The admiral pressed a button on the remote control.
"Well... you're the only survivor, which is quite contradictory given that you were very much dead..."
David's face slowly turned toward his superior.
"What? I'm not sure..."
The admiral stopped him and pointed to the monitor. A video appeared on the screen, showing what appeared to be a laboratory, an operating room, with tools, scalpels, IV tubes, and other equipment.
It was an empty room, except for a pale young boy lying on a bed, a white sheet covering his entire body except for his face. Multiple machines were connected to the boy, all silent...
"Yesterday at 12:57 p.m., your heart officially stopped and you were pronounced dead..."
David took a step, then another, toward the monitor. The boy in the video was clearly motionless, dead. He recognized that face, that hair. How could he not?
His heart stopped beating again. He didn't even realize he had stopped breathing. His mind was preoccupied with understanding what he was seeing...
'(Am I dead...?)'
The video continued to play in fast forward, each second corresponding to several minutes passing on the screen, and even though time was passing quickly, almost nothing changed. Everything was still, dreary, including him.
The admiral, tireless, continued calmly
"You were the last... so for a few hours after your... departure... every scientist and soldier at the base came to the observation room to pay tribute to you, to all those who sacrificed themselves in this experiment..."
The thin admiral paused, his eyes closing before resuming his stoic expression.
"And when the cremation room was ready to receive you, removing any potential biological viruses as required by procedure..."
This time, the admiral turned to the boy who was staring at the image on the screen. He was silent, but there was an ocean of emotion behind his eyes.
The video continued to play at a rapid pace until it slowed down at 5:12 p.m.
"Something unexpected happened."
On the screen, the camera was still focused on the metal bed.
David's body lay there, arms dangling. There was no sign of life, as had been the case since the video began playing. The machines at his side had not made a sound in a long time, and the electrocardiogram was flat.
Then, suddenly, there was a brief jolt. The sheet lifted slightly, and in the silence of the room, the beeping of the machines resumed.
The lifeless body moved slightly, his chest rising for a second.
"I'm back..." whispered the boy softly, his blue eyes fixed on the incredible sight before him.
"Yes... but not exactly..." The commander's voice was soft, very soft.
"David... You didn't come back the way you left..."
The monitors came back to life, and the room filled with human activity.
And then everything went haywire...
A yellow flash appeared out of nowhere in the air of the room, a labotary who is deep underground, a non scientifical bright golden lightning struck David's body, which had come back to life.
"What..."
A sudden explosion, and wave of smoke escaping out of his body. One might think that it was because the boy had just been burned alive, but that was not the case.
It was an unnatural amount of steam, and it filled the entire room...
And where there had been only one man, something formed, slowly but brutally.
Thus, a mystery, an anomaly, took place on this video...
Huge white muscles covered in bright red twisting in the air, forming from the steam that rose in thick wisps, as if the smoke had been transformed into flesh by a unknow magic, the vapor serving as a substance, energy...
The bed shook and broke, sending pieces flying across the room...
A circular bone formed around David, then a second, and another, the ribs forming and in less than a few seconds a rib cage was there, as if hastily sculpted by an invisible force.
Bare bones, raw tendons, and nerves appeared in the air and stuck together, creating an amalgam of pieces, a half-formed, unfinished, almost fake body. One could distinguish the shoulder with a small, barely formed arm on the right.
Under David's eyes, which betrayed his multitude of emotions, his face trembling and his mouth open, he looked at the humanoid body whose skull pierced the ceiling, about 7-8 meters high, which had appeared out of nowhere, as if by magic.
A roughly human body the size of a small house... which had formed around him, or rather... from him...
The camera shook as the building trembled, the steam became thicker and foggier until it covered the entire room and the camera, which continued to shake more and more violently, until a few seconds later it suddenly cut out, displaying only a black screen with the words in red: "Signal Lost."
A high-pitched beep suddenly rang out in the silent room. The admiral stood upright, looking at the only other person in the room, who was frozen, as if paralyzed...
Steinz sighed and approached, pressing another button and displaying a 3D model of the thing David had turned into.
The boy was completely motionless, his face frozen, as if his entire face was contorted in agony, his mind in chaos, his eyes lost in the void, at that moment, his thoughts belonging only to himself...
"In case you're wondering if the video is fake, if this is all a joke, the skull behind me is proof that it's not..."
Another silence followed his words. David didn't answer. He felt... he knew it was real...
'(That's what I thought)," thought William. He had studied the boy closely, his behavior, his facial expressions. Throughout the day, he had seen and seen again that the soldier was just a lost and confused boy, truly unaware of the situation and his circumstances...
Admiral Steinz approached him and placed a hand on his shoulder.
"Son, listen..." He spoke in a calm, gentle voice, using a kind tone he rarely used.
"Yesterday, we were certain that this whole experiment was just a costly mistake... but that's no longer the case. We don't know if it's a success... only you can decide the outcome..."
David listened to these words and sighed.
"Fuhhh..." When he reopened his eyelids, his eyes were empty and focused. He was doing what he had always done, putting his emotions aside for the moment, deep down, well hidden, locked in a chest, which was itself in a dungeon, which was one of the rooms buried deep within a fortress.
He would leave that for later. Right now, he focused logically, becoming a mind of logic and reason.
"What do they say, Doctor?" The boy's voice was composed, restrained.
The admiral raised an eyebrow but replied.
"You are a genetic anomaly, you are an anatomical mystery, especially the part where you let steam escape from which flesh is created. This defies the fundamental law of conservation of mass, or the fact that you do not transform into... this large humanoid. Your body remains the same but is covered with this coating of flesh and muscle, like armor..."
The scientists and genetic experts had gone mad studying the samples of flesh from the titan that were scattered throughout the room, but the flesh, just as it had appeared, dissipated into vapor, leaving only bones. They could only study the blood taken directly from David.
David calmly walked toward the huge humanoid skull, his skull...
Crouching down, his blue eyes fixed on the relic in front of him
"What does this mean exactly..." The young man's calm voice echoed in the spacious room.
Another moment of silence passed, and the admiral finally said:
"You are part human and part titan, an amalgamation of the two..."
"We don't know any more at this point. That's all we can say for now..."
Steinz looked at David, who was observing what he had created the day before, and who, upon hearing the admiral's words, simply replied:
"I see..."
Another moment of quiet silence passed. David remained there, staring at the enormous empty eye sockets of the thing in front of him, his face impassive, and Steinz remained there, watching him.
After a few seconds, David felt a hand on his left arm, removing the bandages.
And when all the fabric was removed, there was not the slightest wound, blood, or scar, no mark remained from his confrontation with the bear...
David's eyes simply stared at the arm that bore no wound that should have taken months to heal... there was simply brown, healthy skin.
'(What am I...?)' His two blue irises scanned his flawless arm as he asked himself the question.
"Half human, half titan, a mixture of the two..." Those were the admiral's words...
A moment of silence passed. The admiral said nothing, giving him some time. David looked at his limb, moved his fingers, flexing his muscles and joints, gently touching his skin...
There was no emotion on his face, just a calm expression...
The admiral sighed and stood up...
"Come on..." he said, walking towards the exit.
"During this week, I have orders to put you through a series of tests to see if you can control it, or if it's even reproducible or an isolated case..." he said simply.
David looked one last time at his arm, the huge skull in front of him, and stood up.
"And after this week, if you are not recognized as a threat, many people want to meet you, the high-ranking members of monarch, the Council of Ministers, the President..."
"The President..." the young man with dark skin repeated in a low voice.
"Yes..." said the admiral before turning to the boy, looking him straight in the eyes.
"A new life awaits you, Private Blake..." The admiral stood motionless for a few seconds before turning and heading for the door.
And david after a last look on the skull, followed him...
***********************************************************************
https://www.patreon.com/c/Just_a_guy__
+ 10 Chapter/ Already 20k words