**Saurian Shift**
1 Points
0
Title: **Saurian Shift**
---
## Prologue
If memory were as old as the bones buried beneath the city, they’d tell you about the day everything changed. Not for the world, not yet. Just for us. I could claim to remember it clearly—that cold snap of scientific curiosity, the snap-sizzle of strange energies, the hiss of pressure in glass containers—but I only recall the dizzying harmony of new instincts, an itching behind my eyes as the world twisted. I remember the hunger and the fear.
I remember claws where hands should be.
I’m Jack Everett, currently a six-foot-three, exhausted grad student with a keen appreciation for molecular biology and a mild fish addiction. I am also, on occasion, a multi-ton Spinosaurus—a walking, swimming, apex predator with a sail on my back and a penchant for evading government capture.
I didn’t choose any of that. But I sure do have to live with it.
---
## Chapter 1: Saurian Awakening
The change always starts at the edges—fingertips tingling, spine prickling, vision narrowing as everything becomes deeply, urgently real. I remember that first transformation far better than the lab accident that caused it.
The accident itself? August 3rd. We—me, Vanessa, Jeri, Paulo—were prepping cultures for the CRISPR project, late and punch-drunk on caffeine and fried onion rings. My PI, Dr. Komarov, had forbidden us from splicing the retroviral vector with unknown sequence 1138-X, but you know what curiosity does to cats and grad students.
“Jack, it’s not going to explode,” Vanessa said, steady hands pipetting emerald serum into the petri dish.
Jeri cocked an eyebrow. “You actually want to see what this does? ‘Unknown’ has a way of being code for ‘please do not die.'”
“Come on," Paulo grinned, his usual bravado shining through. "It'll just accelerate cell division. We won't grow third arms.”
Except, y’know… we sort of did.
Something short-circuited when we spliced that sequence—a bursting pulse of blue-green light, the lab’s metal benches warping in my vision. Our bodies jerked and spasmed as the air hummed with invisible electricity. I remember the heat—like being microwaved inside out—and then the blackout.
Waking was raw sensation: a sharp, briny scent, limbs longer and heavier, muscles knotting with new power. The world sharpened into focus. I looked down.
My hand was a claw. Thick black scales covered what had been my arm. I shrieked—except the sound melted into an unearthly roar, resonating deep in my chest cavity.
Chaos erupted in the lab. People were changing—shrinking or growing, skins hardening or shifting hues. Vanessa screamed, Jeri howled, Paulo—my eternal optimist—grinned through a mouthful of teeth no human should ever have. The four of us were the lucky ones. Lab security didn’t make it out.
We shifted back after an hour of animal panic, shaky and gasping on the floor, skin prickling, hearts still caught in reptilian rhythms.
We would soon become better at the changes. But that night, the world outside became infinitely more dangerous.
---
## Chapter 2: The Agency
If you’re a graduate student who just became a dinosaur in the middle of a world-renowned genomics lab, you might assume the moral high ground is to immediately report what happened. Maybe you’re braver than I am. But when a van with blacked-out windows pulled up less than twelve hours later, our survival instincts kicked in a lot harder than our academic honesty.
That’s FIRA: Federal Intrusion & Research Authority. Nice logo, brutal tactics.
We scattered—Vanessa and me ducking into the steam tunnels beneath the campus, Jeri vaulting a fence on all fours, Paulo disappearing into the rush-hour maze. Surveillance birds followed, drones sleek and silent, their lenses always a glint away. FIRA agents in dark armor sealed off the perimeter.
I learned something about being a Spinosaurus then: you can swim like a shark, and when you’re scared, it feels less like transformation and more like a lunge into another skin. I barreled into the murky sewage, my limbs reshaping, my mind split between terror and an exhilarating need to run.
The Agency wasn’t prepared for that. Not yet.
---
## Chapter 3: Saurian Sidekicks
After escaping, the four of us reunited in the abandoned power plant on the city’s edge. Old graffiti, rusting metal, the hum of power lines above—it was more home than anywhere else now.
We learned what we had become. Vanessa could sprint and leap as a Velociraptor, eyes glittering. Jeri—a T. Rex, all muscle and ferocity—nearly broke the loading dock when he shifted. Paulo, always chill, was a Quetzalcoatlus, a sky-high escape artist with membranous wings that barely fit through broken windows.
Our transformations weren’t perfect at first; our minds battled instincts. Some nights Vanessa returned from a hunt with feathers ruffled and a haunted look, Jeri chewed through a door out of frustration, Paulo nearly clipped a power line. I… dreamed of water, meat, and unending tides.
We learned together, training ourselves, pushing the limits of what we could do. Every day, FIRA’s agents crept closer, following our spilled DNA, hacking university records, tailing relatives and friends.
We made a vow: never shift unless cornered, never let anyone see all of us at once, never leave one of us behind.
A Spinosaurus is built for water and waiting. Sometimes, that’s all you can do when the hunters are closing in.
---
## Chapter 4: The Hunt
Weeks slipped by, paranoia coiling tighter. You quickly develop an eye for unmarked vans and shoppers who don’t shop. We changed phones, cities, sometimes names. Yet FIRA was always a step behind—never ahead.
But they adapted, and so did we.
I remember the night they nearly got us—industrial park, freezing rain, the reek of ozone. We’d split up for supplies. Lights cut the shadows, boots hammered steel grates, and tranquilizer darts hissed. That night, we stopped running.
Jeri shifted and held the door, buying us time with thunderous roars and a body no bullet could pierce. Vanessa darted through hallways, drawing fire. Paulo swooped in through broken skylights, talons slashing.
I slipped into the flood runoff, my body lengthening, muscles bulking beneath bristling sail. They tried to follow; I hauled three of them into the water, jaws snapping, and left the rest scrambling from my wake.
I can still taste their fear.
---
## Chapter 5: Becoming More
We couldn’t run forever. Secrets rot in the dark, and doubt nestled in all of us. What was the Agency hiding? Why hunt us, instead of studying us or offering a deal?
One night, Vanessa pieced it together—FIRA’s classified files hinted at more than a containment order. Sequence 1138-X, she’d discovered, wasn’t of terrestrial origin. It was found deep beneath the Arctic permafrost, xenogenic code. FIRA wanted us gone so their own dino-soldiers, their own weaponized shifting, would remain unchallenged.
There were others out there—experiments gone wrong, people on the run. We weren’t alone.
That knowledge turned us from prey into rebels.
---
## Chapter 6: The Final Shift
With new resolve, we began to fight—not just for ourselves, but for all the lost and hunted. We made allies in strange places—an ex-agent with stegosaurian scales under his skin, a hacker whose heartbeat sometimes thudded in the bone-chambers of a Triceratops.
It wasn’t about being monsters or miracles. It was about being more than what they tried to turn us into.
The city became our hunting ground. Rooftop meetings, alleyway skirmishes, data heists among government servers. Every so often, a terrified FIRA operative would flash across the news—babbling about monsters in the mist, denied by their superiors.
And when the time came, we made our stand. Down on the edge of the old bay, the four of us shifted as one, taking the forms nature never meant to see again. FIRA’s drones swarmed, agents advanced with toxin rounds and flamethrowers.
We let them see what we’d become. I led the charge, my Spinosaurus jaws wide in a bellow that echoed across the water, smashing through lines of men who thought they were hunting animals.
Animals don’t fight for each other the way we did.
---
## Epilogue
You never truly stop running, if you’re different. But somewhere in the summer, as cars streamed by and people lived oblivious lives, I sat with my friends on the old railway trestle and watched the city lights flicker like ancient stars.
“We’re not monsters,” Vanessa said softly, her words lost in the night wind.
Jeri grunted. “We’re survivors.”
Paulo lifted a clawed hand. “We’re legends, man. The last of a kind. Or maybe the first.”
I looked at them—my family. With a thought, I could become something prehistoric, a king of river and flood. But as I shifted back, my hands still callused and trembling, I realized the most important evolution I had made wasn’t in my DNA. It was in my heart.
I once was hunted. Now, in my own strange skin, I choose to protect.
Somewhere out there, the world will learn the truth: there are still dinosaurs walking among them.
And sometimes, they look just like us.
---
## The End
This story was generated by user kade with assistance by one of OpenAI’s large-scale language-generation model; prompts used to help generate the story are shown below.
Images were generated with OpenAI's AI system, DALL·E 2, or uploaded by the user.
AI Prompts
Prompt: Write me a long novel about a person and his friends who can turn into dinosaurs at will after a lab accident and he is a spinosaurus from first person while being chased by a secret agency
Response: Title: **Saurian Shift** --- ## Prologue If memory were as old as the bones buried beneath the city, they’d tell you about the day everything changed. Not for the world, not yet. Just for us. I could claim to remember it clearly—that cold snap of scientific curiosity, the snap-sizzle of strange energies, the hiss of pressure in glass containers—but I only recall the dizzying harmony of new instincts, an itching behind my eyes as the world twisted. I remember the hunger and the fear. I remember claws where hands should be. I’m Jack Everett, currently a six-foot-three, exhausted grad student with a keen appreciation for molecular biology and a mild fish addiction. I am also, on occasion, a multi-ton Spinosaurus—a walking, swimming, apex predator with a sail on my back and a penchant for evading government capture. I didn’t choose any of that. But I sure do have to live with it. --- ## Chapter 1: Saurian Awakening The change always starts at the edges—fingertips tingling, spine prickling, vision narrowing as everything becomes deeply, urgently real. I remember that first transformation far better than the lab accident that caused it. The accident itself? August 3rd. We—me, Vanessa, Jeri, Paulo—were prepping cultures for the CRISPR project, late and punch-drunk on caffeine and fried onion rings. My PI, Dr. Komarov, had forbidden us from splicing the retroviral vector with unknown sequence 1138-X, but you know what curiosity does to cats and grad students. “Jack, it’s not going to explode,” Vanessa said, steady hands pipetting emerald serum into the petri dish. Jeri cocked an eyebrow. “You actually want to see what this does? ‘Unknown’ has a way of being code for ‘please do not die.'” “Come on," Paulo grinned, his usual bravado shining through. "It'll just accelerate cell division. We won't grow third arms.” Except, y’know… we sort of did. Something short-circuited when we spliced that sequence—a bursting pulse of blue-green light, the lab’s metal benches warping in my vision. Our bodies jerked and spasmed as the air hummed with invisible electricity. I remember the heat—like being microwaved inside out—and then the blackout. Waking was raw sensation: a sharp, briny scent, limbs longer and heavier, muscles knotting with new power. The world sharpened into focus. I looked down. My hand was a claw. Thick black scales covered what had been my arm. I shrieked—except the sound melted into an unearthly roar, resonating deep in my chest cavity. Chaos erupted in the lab. People were changing—shrinking or growing, skins hardening or shifting hues. Vanessa screamed, Jeri howled, Paulo—my eternal optimist—grinned through a mouthful of teeth no human should ever have. The four of us were the lucky ones. Lab security didn’t make it out. We shifted back after an hour of animal panic, shaky and gasping on the floor, skin prickling, hearts still caught in reptilian rhythms. We would soon become better at the changes. But that night, the world outside became infinitely more dangerous. --- ## Chapter 2: The Agency If you’re a graduate student who just became a dinosaur in the middle of a world-renowned genomics lab, you might assume the moral high ground is to immediately report what happened. Maybe you’re braver than I am. But when a van with blacked-out windows pulled up less than twelve hours later, our survival instincts kicked in a lot harder than our academic honesty. That’s FIRA: Federal Intrusion & Research Authority. Nice logo, brutal tactics. We scattered—Vanessa and me ducking into the steam tunnels beneath the campus, Jeri vaulting a fence on all fours, Paulo disappearing into the rush-hour maze. Surveillance birds followed, drones sleek and silent, their lenses always a glint away. FIRA agents in dark armor sealed off the perimeter. I learned something about being a Spinosaurus then: you can swim like a shark, and when you’re scared, it feels less like transformation and more like a lunge into another skin. I barreled into the murky sewage, my limbs reshaping, my mind split between terror and an exhilarating need to run. The Agency wasn’t prepared for that. Not yet. --- ## Chapter 3: Saurian Sidekicks After escaping, the four of us reunited in the abandoned power plant on the city’s edge. Old graffiti, rusting metal, the hum of power lines above—it was more home than anywhere else now. We learned what we had become. Vanessa could sprint and leap as a Velociraptor, eyes glittering. Jeri—a T. Rex, all muscle and ferocity—nearly broke the loading dock when he shifted. Paulo, always chill, was a Quetzalcoatlus, a sky-high escape artist with membranous wings that barely fit through broken windows. Our transformations weren’t perfect at first; our minds battled instincts. Some nights Vanessa returned from a hunt with feathers ruffled and a haunted look, Jeri chewed through a door out of frustration, Paulo nearly clipped a power line. I… dreamed of water, meat, and unending tides. We learned together, training ourselves, pushing the limits of what we could do. Every day, FIRA’s agents crept closer, following our spilled DNA, hacking university records, tailing relatives and friends. We made a vow: never shift unless cornered, never let anyone see all of us at once, never leave one of us behind. A Spinosaurus is built for water and waiting. Sometimes, that’s all you can do when the hunters are closing in. --- ## Chapter 4: The Hunt Weeks slipped by, paranoia coiling tighter. You quickly develop an eye for unmarked vans and shoppers who don’t shop. We changed phones, cities, sometimes names. Yet FIRA was always a step behind—never ahead. But they adapted, and so did we. I remember the night they nearly got us—industrial park, freezing rain, the reek of ozone. We’d split up for supplies. Lights cut the shadows, boots hammered steel grates, and tranquilizer darts hissed. That night, we stopped running. Jeri shifted and held the door, buying us time with thunderous roars and a body no bullet could pierce. Vanessa darted through hallways, drawing fire. Paulo swooped in through broken skylights, talons slashing. I slipped into the flood runoff, my body lengthening, muscles bulking beneath bristling sail. They tried to follow; I hauled three of them into the water, jaws snapping, and left the rest scrambling from my wake. I can still taste their fear. --- ## Chapter 5: Becoming More We couldn’t run forever. Secrets rot in the dark, and doubt nestled in all of us. What was the Agency hiding? Why hunt us, instead of studying us or offering a deal? One night, Vanessa pieced it together—FIRA’s classified files hinted at more than a containment order. Sequence 1138-X, she’d discovered, wasn’t of terrestrial origin. It was found deep beneath the Arctic permafrost, xenogenic code. FIRA wanted us gone so their own dino-soldiers, their own weaponized shifting, would remain unchallenged. There were others out there—experiments gone wrong, people on the run. We weren’t alone. That knowledge turned us from prey into rebels. --- ## Chapter 6: The Final Shift With new resolve, we began to fight—not just for ourselves, but for all the lost and hunted. We made allies in strange places—an ex-agent with stegosaurian scales under his skin, a hacker whose heartbeat sometimes thudded in the bone-chambers of a Triceratops. It wasn’t about being monsters or miracles. It was about being more than what they tried to turn us into. The city became our hunting ground. Rooftop meetings, alleyway skirmishes, data heists among government servers. Every so often, a terrified FIRA operative would flash across the news—babbling about monsters in the mist, denied by their superiors. And when the time came, we made our stand. Down on the edge of the old bay, the four of us shifted as one, taking the forms nature never meant to see again. FIRA’s drones swarmed, agents advanced with toxin rounds and flamethrowers. We let them see what we’d become. I led the charge, my Spinosaurus jaws wide in a bellow that echoed across the water, smashing through lines of men who thought they were hunting animals. Animals don’t fight for each other the way we did. --- ## Epilogue You never truly stop running, if you’re different. But somewhere in the summer, as cars streamed by and people lived oblivious lives, I sat with my friends on the old railway trestle and watched the city lights flicker like ancient stars. “We’re not monsters,” Vanessa said softly, her words lost in the night wind. Jeri grunted. “We’re survivors.” Paulo lifted a clawed hand. “We’re legends, man. The last of a kind. Or maybe the first.” I looked at them—my family. With a thought, I could become something prehistoric, a king of river and flood. But as I shifted back, my hands still callused and trembling, I realized the most important evolution I had made wasn’t in my DNA. It was in my heart. I once was hunted. Now, in my own strange skin, I choose to protect. Somewhere out there, the world will learn the truth: there are still dinosaurs walking among them. And sometimes, they look just like us. --- ## The End
Post your own comment or use AI: