NightTide: The Girl With Red Eyes

“I need to put this on you, it’ll make the others feel more comfortable around you.” She then put another collar on my neck. “This one isn’t armed so please don’t give me a reason to put an active one on.” I nodded and we walked out of the room.

As we walked down the halls she kept her hand on my shoulder while the guy trailed slightly behind us. Even though I didn’t know who she was when she put her arm on my shoulder I felt safe; While I liked the feeling, I didn’t like how much trust I was feeling for someone I had just met. While we walked she looked down at me.

“I understand that you’re nervous, I think anyone would be in this situation... I’ve been doing this for thirty-four years. I’m forty-five and have no children; it pains me to see this done to a young girl like yourself… well physically you’re a girl; but mentally you’re something else. One of our gaurds found you in an alley. We found a rather unique virus in the tropics. the exact location is unknown, but this virus is somewhat sentient. It has the ability mutate at an unprecedented rate, we’ve called it NightTide. What you’ve been infected with is strain Z Seven Eight Three this strain doesn’t do much to its hosts, but when it does do something it creates a symbiotic relationship with the host. What happen with this strain is unique to say the least; we’ve never seen it happen before with this particular strain... Now for the reason I said mentally you’re something else. That head injury you… er well the girl suffered from caused her to go brain dead; the way her skull was smashed caused all the shards of skull to stab into the left hemisphere of her brain, and the resulting blood loss caused her brain, liver, stomach, and kidneys to shut down by the time we found her. We had no intentions of helping her because she was too far gone, but that’s when I thought to see what would happen if we put that strain of NightTide into a dying host. It was a great success, you survived… though you’re not the same person. The virus moved rather quickly through your body once injected; it first started helping the body clot the blood to stop the bleeding, it then went to your heart and started mutating a portion of its population into making a second heart, it didn’t work very well at first but over time it improved upon itself. After that it caused a speed up in blood production and made its way to your brain. What it did there; it had to be most interesting thing I’ve seen in my whole life. The virus started further mutation to replace the dead portions of your brain; the first was repairing basic motor functions; it could get those working properly after about two weeks of steady mutation. Once that was done it consumed the dead portion of what it took over; it did this with all your internal organs. This includes bones; from the tests, we’ve run you; ideally your skeletal structure could withstand up to two tons of weight, though we haven’t tested this; even still that was the least significant change throughout your body. Basically, what the virus did was make a copy of most of your body; got it working properly, and then consumed the dead portion. The case with your heart was different; since the was saved it left the old one there. You have two hearts, one with four chambers, and another with six chambers. When you sleep your four chambered heart works while the six chambered one rests. When you’re awake the virus copy works while the old heart rests. When you first awoke it was almost done with your brain, it may have been why you were unable to speak. You were in and out of consciousness from that point on for another two years. It’s been two years eight months and twenty-three days from the time we found you. You appeared to be around thirteen years of age when we found you; once the virus was injected you stopped showing signs of aging around the age of sixteen. We can take a guess and say that you’re about sixteen now. You are not a human anymore; you are a virus that mutated to appear human. You defy everything we know about evolution, and a lot of people don’t like that, at least the ones that know about you in particular.”