The world was a symphony of pain, and I was its only instrument.
Cold. The first and most constant memory. The chill of the reinforced steel table seeping through the thin fabric of my medical smock. The brighter, sharper cold of the needles. The invasive cold of the scanners that hummed and whirred, mapping the monster they had built.
I was Project: Chimera Prime. Designation: Cade.
My earliest conscious thought wasn't of a lullaby or a smiling face. It was the sterile, antiseptic smell of the Lab and the sound of my own claws scraping against the floor as I was led back to my cell.
The cell wasn't a room; it was a cube. Four walls of transparent, reinforced polymer so they could always watch me. On the other side was the ever-present, silent darkness of the Cadmus sub-levels. I was eight years old, and my entire world was twenty square feet of cold floor and the observation window where faceless men in lab coats took notes.
"Subject demonstrates elevated heart rate. Aggression protocols are advised."
Aggression protocols. A nice word for torture. They would release sonic emitters that made my teeth vibrate, or flood the cell with the scent of a rival predator to send me into a blind, territorial rage. They wanted to weaponize my instincts, to sand away the fragile human parts of my mind until only the perfect predator remained.
My body was a battlefield. The lean, powerful muscles of the raptor, coiled for bursts of speed. The dense bone structure and crushing potential of the Rex, a constant, heavy pressure in my limbs. A crown of jagged scales ran from my forehead down my spine. My feet were twisted things, built for digitigrade movement and ending in the retractable killing claw that was both my greatest weapon and the source of my deepest shame.
And my eyes… they were a luminous, predatory green. They glowed when I was scared or angry, a beacon of the monster within.
"Focus the energy field on the subject's spinal column," a voice would order, cold and clinical.
The pain was a white-hot fire, searing along my nerve endings. It felt like my very DNA was being torn apart and stitched back together. I would thrash, my tail smashing against the walls, a guttural roar tearing from my throat that was part boy, part nightmare. During these sessions, my green glow would illuminate the entire cell, a frantic, bioluminescent scream.
I learned to hate my own reflection in the polymer wall. I learned to curl into the corner, trying to make myself small, to hide the claws, to stifle the glow. I was a monster. They told me so every day.
But sometimes, in the deepest, quietest hour of the night, a different memory would surface. A fragile, fleeting thing. A feeling of… softness. Of warmth. A hummed tune with no words. A human memory. My memory. It was the ghost of what I was before, and the proof that I was somehow, still, a boy. That memory was my secret, the one thing they couldn't take, couldn't dissect. I clung to it in the dark.
Then, the world exploded.
It started not with a bang, but with a tremor. The lights flickered. A distant alarm blared. The usual, bored posture of the guards at the observation window snapped into alertness. Shouts echoed down the corridor, followed by the distinct crump of an explosion.
My instincts took over. My head snapped up, eyes wide. The glow ignited without my consent, casting the cell in an eerie green light. I dropped into a crouch, claws extending, a low growl rumbling in my chest. This was new. This was danger. This was… opportunity.
The door to my cell block hissed open. Instead of a lab coat, three figures stood silhouetted in the doorway. They weren't Cadmus.
One was a hulking silhouette, broad-shouldered and tall, with a familiar, grim set to his jaw. Another was smaller, clad in red and yellow, sparks of electricity dancing at his fingertips. And the third… was a girl with green skin and a shock of red hair.
"Whoa," the boy in red said, his eyes locking onto me. "They weren't kidding about the dinosaur."
"Focus, Kid Flash," the big one grunted. His voice was a low baritone. He looked at me, and for the first time, I didn't see cold assessment or fear. I saw… recognition. "We're here to help."
Help. The word was foreign. A trick? Another protocol?
Before I could process it, a squad of Cadmus security forces rounded the corner, weapons raised. "Contain the asset!" one yelled.
The fight was a blur of motion. The big one—Superboy, I'd later learn—tore through them like paper. Kid Flash was a scarlet tornado. The green girl, Miss Martian, used telekinesis to disarm them effortlessly.
In the chaos, a guard fired a energy net launcher. It enveloped me, the charged wires sizzling against my scales, triggering a fresh wave of agony. The glow from my eyes flared, blindingly bright. The rage, the T-Rex's primal fury, surged up, threatening to drown me. I roared, thrashing against the net.
"No!" Miss Martian's voice was in my head, a calm, warm presence amidst the storm. "Let me help."
A soothing pressure pushed against the rage. It felt like that old, half-remembered warmth. My struggles slowed.
Superboy ripped the net away as if it were tissue paper. He looked down at me, his gaze unwavering. "Can you walk?"
I just stared, my breath coming in ragged pants, my body still thrumming with pain and adrenaline. The glow from my eyes began to dim.
"We have to go, now!" Kid Flash urged.
As we fled the sub-levels, a final, searing jolt of pain shot up my spine—a residual effect of the energy net or perhaps the stress of the escape. It was a pain I knew well, the pain of my body being rewritten.
But this time, it was different.
We burst out into a service tunnel. I stumbled, falling to my knees. A strange, cool sensation washed over me, starting from my core and radiating outward. The heavy, familiar weight of my tail… vanished. The rough texture of scales against the inside of my clothes smoothed away. The constant, low-level ache of my digitigrade posture dissolved.
I looked down at my hands.
They were human. Small. Pale. With short, blunt, clean nails.
I touched my face. It was soft. The crown of scales on my head was gone, replaced by a shock of messy brown hair.
A small, cracked cry escaped my lips. I scrambled towards a puddle of water on the tunnel floor, ignoring the calls of the heroes behind me.
I stared at my reflection. A boy. A human boy. My eyes, wide with shock and disbelief, were a simple, human shade of green. They didn't glow.
For the first time in as long as I could remember, I looked… normal.
Tears I didn't know I could still produce welled up and spilled over, tracing clean paths through the grime on my brand-new cheeks. I was free. But the scars of the Lab, the memories of the cold and the pain and the monster I had been, were etched far deeper than any scale ever could be. The journey to become Cade Rex, the person, had only just begun.