Home, Changed

Wet footprints followed the striped raptor through the labs as he quietly padded through the halls. It was all new and he had to sit down frequently, his lungs short of breath and his legs aching. He remembered so little of life before, he wasn't sure if this was normal but something felt wrong about it. He tripped over a set of bones on the floor and lay there, staring ahead for a while before sitting himself up. The bones smelled strange, and they were shiny like something coated them, clearly inedible. A thick metal wire ran through each of them, linking them together in short chains that formed limbs. Even the small knuckle bones were joined by the wires and formed full fingers. The bones were too large to fit him, they must belong to something even larger. He tried to wrack his brain to recall anything of that size but he drew a blank, like he had been any time he tried to remember his life before. There was only one thread he could grasp and he held onto it for all he was worth.

His name was Kurotora.

He looked back to the bones and began to manipulate them, pulling the wires and making the fingers flex. Kurotora, he had no idea if that meant something, but it had been used every time he was spoken to by the humans. He lifted his head, he hadn't seen a human yet but they were one of the few things he remembered, they had to be around here somewhere. Reinvigorated, he forced himself to stand and stood breathless for a moment before he moved. He leaned on the walls as he went, relying on them to conserve his strength and allow him to make it further than before. He had to find the humans, they were the source of food around here and his stomach was beginning to gnaw at him. As he shuffled around the labs, he entered a room that seemed familiar. His mind was still muggy but it came to him fairly quickly, this was a similar room to where he had woken up. Amidst glass and thick, sticky fluid, Kurotora had taken a sharp breath and awoken, alone in the labs. He looked up at the tall tubes of liquid and peered into the dark, seeing faint shapes within. He strained to stand taller, wondering if others would hatch from these like he did.

Kurotora used the last of his strength to climb up to the platform that held one of the tubes, feeling something slide under his claws and bracing himself for a fall. Instead, the sliding stopped with a loud click and he was suddenly blinded by a bright light. The light came from the top of the tube, shining down and illuminating the shape inside. Kurotora stared at the specimen revealed, looking into its glassy eyes as it stared sightlessly back. He could see muscles peeking through peeling flesh, feathers non-existent across the deteriorating skin. It seemed like whatever this was had been frozen in a state of rot, never advancing or healing. The eyes seemed to be foggy, its pupils as pale as the sclera around it and entirely dilated. This creature, whatever it was, was dead and sitting in this tube. Kurotora could only stare as his mind ached with the possibilities.

Was he supposed to be dead?

Had he been put in his tube to die, only to hatch instead? 

Where were the humans?

That final question spurred him into action, shuffling back down onto the floor away from the dead body in its glass prison. From the moment he had hatched humans had been the ones to feed Kurotora, he needed to figure out where they went before he starved to death. All he had to do was chirp or do kind of mimic trick and the meat would follow, it always did. He leaned against the wall again and slid along it with renewed fervor, his slick feathers gliding along as he rushed through the hallways. The silence that hung in the air felt like it was squeezing in on his ears, like it was painfully pressing against his skull with the weight of it. He groaned in pain, thankful at the way it reverberating in the halls, like it was reminding him that he could hear at all. The high pitched babbling of humans had never delighted him but he would have given anything to hear it again. His foot caught on another collapsed display of bones and he stumbled again, barely catching himself before he hit the floor. As he raised his head he saw the bones had been sheltering a mouse that flattened itself to the wall, its chest heaving with fear at the sudden disruption. His eyes pinned at the sight, recognising the white fur of a treat.

He worked from memory alone, chirping a high, rapid sound that he had heard many times before. The mouse's ears flickered and its head tilted to the side, Kurotora shrunk to the ground and waited, still occasionally giving a friendly squeak. He waited until he could see the gleam in its watery red eyes before he struck.