A Chimera, able to consume a creature and copy it.

Day 1 11 PM - 0 Chimera Mature, 1 Chimera Infant, 0 Chimera Gestating

Emily Whitworth was an eighteen year old high school senior, intelligent but very shy, a natural introvert who while pretty had never felt like she fit in. She hoped that next year in college she would blossom and find her place. Right now she was doing something she knew she shouldn’t, a decision fuelled by her love for animals of all sorts and also a secret desire to defy her domineering family. Steeling her determination the teen unlocked the heavy steel door and turned the latch.

She knew the rule, keep out of her older brother’s lab. Steven never talked about what he did down there, why he couldn’t do the research in his lab at their father’s company where he worked as a senior scientist. She was sure however that he kept live animals down there, having seen him carrying different supplies and foods over the years. She had expressed concern, it being three days since the accident, but her mother and father had reacted with outrage, telling her mere animals didn’t matter when her brother lay in intensive care, still in an induced coma to relieve the pressure on his brain. She had apologized but later collected his personal effects from the nurse’s station, including his keys, and gone home.

Emily crept down the stairs, not sure what she would find. There was a powerful smell of rot, she grimaced but pushed on, worried at what awaited her if she was too late to rescue any animals within her brother’s lab. Whatever she might have feared, nothing could have prepared her for what she saw when she reached the bottom of the stairs. Various pieces of lab equipment filled the room, at it’s centre was a large gleaming stainless steal dissection table.

On the table was something that baffled her. Wings and beak, eyes, fangs, claws combined in a nightmarish patchwork that gave the scared young woman a feeling of creeping wrongness which shouldn’t exist. This was the obvious source of the stench and Emily covered her mouth as she read a notecard by the partially dissected abomination with the notation: “Chimera Specimen 7, Adult 3 species absorbed”. Exactly what kind of unnatural research had her brother been doing?

Beyond the table the young woman saw cages, she timidly crept forward. Heart pounding and mouth dry. All but one sat empty, their doors locked open. On the remaining cage there was another notecard, this one read “Chimera Specimen 8, Infant”. With shaking hands she lifted the flashlight she had brought with her and shone it into the sole occupied cage.

Green eyes gleamed in the flashlight’s beam and a creature crept forward, revealing a lizard-like creature the size of a cat. Suddenly it’s eyes changed as she looked into them, turning into deep black pools. They seemed to swirl with infinite depth and with a helpless sigh Emily’s consciousness fled. Her face fell blank, her eyes which normally sparkled with intelligence, grew blank and glazed. After about thirty seconds her hand moved slowly, reaching up and releasing the cage’s latches. She paused for only a moment before swinging the cage door open.

Obedient to silent commands she lay down on her back on the cold hard tiles of the lab floor. From the open cage the black lizard crept out and down onto it’s compliant victim. It’s tongue flicked out, tasting the soft flesh of her belly before hissing and baring shark-like teeth. When the creature began eating Emily didn’t even flinch, utterly docile and accepting. If she had still been capable of conscious thought the teen might have wondered if a more appropriate word than absorbed could have been recorded on the note, devoured or consumed came to mind.