Chapter 06 – The Other Inmates

29th May, Monday

I woke up with a violent gasp, my lungs burning as though I had been drowning in thick oil. My body convulsed against the hard, unyielding floor of the glass chamber, every muscle shivering in a strange rhythm. My throat ached, dry as if I had been screaming for hours, though I could not remember doing so.

The lights were too bright. They cast no shadows, offered no darkness to hide in.

I sat up slowly, my paper-thin gown sticking to my skin with a clammy layer of sweat. My vision cleared just enough to notice something new: the silence was not complete. Beyond the glass walls, faint noises echoed down the corridor—groans, mutterings, and something between laughter and sobbing. I crawled toward the glass, pressing my face against the cool surface. And that was when I saw them.

Other chambers, lined up in a row, like cages in a macabre zoo. Inside each one, a figure slumped or paced or clawed at the walls. I counted at least seven visible cells, each occupied.

One man sat perfectly still, his face buried in his hands, rocking back and forth in a slow, mechanical rhythm. Another banged his forehead against the glass in sharp, steady beats, his skin split and bloody, but he didn’t stop. A woman crouched in the corner of her chamber, muttering words I couldn’t understand, her lips twitching with feverish devotion.

But what made my breath catch in my throat wasn’t their behavior. It was their bodies.

Some were wrong. The woman’s skin rippled unnaturally, as though something beneath it was struggling to escape. The man who rocked in silence had claws—actual claws—protruding from his hands, long and blackened like metal forged in fire. Another prisoner’s neck twisted at an impossible angle, yet he continued to pace as though it caused no pain. They were shape shifters. Just like me.

But they weren’t like me. They were ruined.

“Beautiful, aren’t they?” The voice slithered through the room. I turned sharply. Dr. Kessler stood outside my glass cage, hands folded neatly behind his back, his grin wide enough to show every gleaming tooth. His shadow stretched across the floor, but the man himself seemed more like a shadow than flesh.

“They are the pioneers,” Kessler said. He strolled past the cages, gesturing like a maestro conducting a symphony. “Each one of them has borne the burden of transformation. Each one of them has tasted the skin of the beast within.”

He stopped before my cage, leaning close until his breath fogged the glass. “You are different, of course. The prophecy says nine. But they—” He gestured broadly. “—they are fragments. Broken vessels. Failed vessels.”

One of the prisoners shrieked suddenly, pounding against the glass with bloody fists. The sound reverberated through the chamber like a gunshot. Kessler did not flinch. He only chuckled.

I staggered to my feet, pressing both palms against the glass. “Why are you doing this? These are people!” I asked.

“People?” Kessler laughed softly, as though the word amused him. “No, no, Lars. They were people. Now they are raw material. Data. Proof that what lives in you can be drawn out, refined, controlled.”

“I don’t want this,” I spat. “I didn’t ask for this power. I don’t care about prophecies!”

Kessler’s grin sharpened. “And yet, it chose you. That is what makes you magnificent.”

He stepped back, snapping his fingers. The lights in my chamber dimmed for the first time. A mechanical hum stirred beneath the floor. My chest tightened. Then came the pain.

It started as a prickle in the spine, and then spread like fire through my veins. My muscles bulged, my bones strained as though trying to shatter through my flesh. I collapsed, clutching my stomach, screaming as the invisible force tore at me from the inside. Through blurred vision, I saw Kessler watching intently, his grin unmoving.

“Do you feel them?” the doctor asked with a voice almost reverent. “The beast skins inside you? They want to emerge. All nine of them, together, waiting for dominance.”

I couldn’t answer. I was choking on my own voice, my body convulsing against the glass floor. My hands swelled grotesquely, veins bulging, as though claws were pushing to break free. My jaw ached, teeth grinding, reshaping. My back arched violently, and for a moment, I thought wings might tear through my skin. But nothing came.

The fire subsided slowly, leaving my half-conscious body sprawled on the floor, gasping, trembling like a beaten dog. Kessler tapped on the glass once, the sound sharp and clinical. “Not yet. But soon. Each trial brings us closer.”

The other shape shifters stirred in their cages, drawn by the scent of my suffering. Some laughed, high and manic. Others sobbed in eerie sympathy. One whispered through the glass, voice cracked and broken: “It hurts… doesn’t it? It never stops hurting.”

I turned my head weakly toward the voice. A boy sat in the next chamber, no older than me. His eyes were sunken, his body emaciated, but there was still something human in his gaze. He pressed his forehead against the glass, staring at me with desperate recognition.

“You’ll try to end it,” the boy said softly. “We all did. It never works.”

Kessler clapped his hands, delighted. “Yes! Share your wisdom, my broken ones. Let him know the futility. Let him understand that death will not take him. Only transformation.”

He leaned closer, voice dropping to a whisper only I could hear.

“You cannot die, Lars McKnight. That is your gift. And also your curse.”

The words echoed in my skull, louder than the screams of the others, louder than the pounding of my heart. I realized then, with a clarity that chilled me more than the pain ever could: I was trapped in a place where suffering was not a mistake but the point. The facility was not for healing. It was for breaking. And Dr. Kessler would not stop until I was no longer myself at all.