Freedom to Fail

Rolando could feel the corruption creeping up on him. In the past his father had warned him about the blood disease every magical person carries, had warned him specifically about shifters being more likely to fall prey to it specifically because the act of shifting was an intense magical ability and thus corrupted you faster than any other. How Trezlan knew this was in dealing with Rolando's mother who was also a shifter though of a lesser ability to Rolando himself. Her best shift was less than a block from her current location where as Rolando still had no idea on what his limit was. All of that was academic though, the bio humans were hunting him and he was losing his ability to get away from them with non standard means. He was also running out of bullets but the damned creatures weren't running out of themselves.

He was down to his pistol and knife, what he had started with back on the ship, but all the high tech fire power he had left behind either because the shift had shorted it out, or it had run out of ammunition. He had killed twenty of the creatures by his count, with small arms, explosives, and his knife and they kept coming. The initial ones had just bull rushed him, trying to him with numbers or their ability to surround, but the shifting kept those ones at bay. Now they had gotten craftier, he could hear them moving around him, but he hadn't seen one for hours. Which left him to explore the interior of the ship which looked like some kind of science lab gone wrong.

There were labs all over, each one more ruined and destroyed than the last. He figured the creatures must have been created here, and then got loose somehow? But what he couldn't figure is how the people on the freighter had died on the ship,but none of the creatures had been on the ship, or how the freighter had clearly landed, but been able to escape. Or how his ship had been locked in? Someone or something was still in charge, but he knew he didn't have much time, the creatures were hunting him. Rolando was passing by a dark lab when something snagged him, he was about to risk the shift when he heard a voice in his ear.

"Don't move, don't talk, come with me." He did as the voice commanded and disappeared into the dark.

****

"Gods damn it!" The technician pulled away from his console in frustration. He was a young man who knew his career had probably just gone down in flames.

"What?" Wix was still in the room, he had lived in the room since the arrival of the shifter, and they definitely knew he was a shifter now he'd done it several times over large gaps to escape the creatures.

"I lost him sir, he was there I was tracking him and five of the bio's pursuing him and then nothing. I thought maybe they had gotten him, but they weren't close enough and they themselves seem completely confused by where he is as well."

"SUBJECT 13!!!!"