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War.
The race for power.
In their madness, the governments injected the population with modified strands of viruses. It infected their bloodstream and changed their DNA.
The same scientists who created the biological weapon also created vaccines to combat the unforeseen side effects.
Many people died, but the majority became something other. Humans that could take animal form.
Scared of the beasts, as they were called, the humans hunted and placed them into highly guarded camps. The governments developed secret labs below the camps to find a cure for the disease.
Two hundred years later, the battle isn’t over.
On the forest ground, puddles of dark red blood seeped into the soil. Scattered pieces of flesh and dead bodies compiled a macabre rug for Lady Death. They saturated the usually fresh mountain air with the scent of human and shifter blood. It drifted on the wind, carrying the pain and desperation of those who’d fought and were still alive to witness the destruction.
Subject A-44313, a black panther male, shifted into his human form. The human guard trashing at his feet, gurgled, drowning on his own blood. One last sigh later, he died. The subject looked down at his prey with indifference.
The male inspected his dark skin. It glistened from the blood coating it. On the left forearm, imprinted in his skin like a tag, was the lab designation A-44313. He was free now. A new start needed a new designation.
As he looked down, the male saw the label holding the guard’s name. He reached for it, ripping it off the cloth it was sewed on. The male read the letters. He was one of the few lab experiments who had been taught to read and write.
John Black.
He was John Black now. The name Black suited both his sides - the human and the panther.
John watched the forest. He listened. The voices, screams, and growls rising toward the sky seemed sorrowful enough to make the heavens weep. But the night was alight. Underground explosions shook the earth beneath his bare feet. The world was collapsing. The human world.
Shifters, the creations of humans, were free. The half-animals, half-human beings, roared in triumph.
And the world was now theirs.