"The Fugitive Evolutionaries"

I never wanted to become a prehistoric monster. I just wanted to pass my biology final. Maybe if I’d skipped that extra-credit project, maybe if I’d ignored the flyer, maybe then I wouldn’t be running barefoot through muddy woods right now with claws gouging tree trunks behind me, my chest roaring with adrenaline and a hunger that felt alien until I realized it wasn’t mine at all.

But fate, and the hasty “bring your friends!” scrawl on the lab sign-up sheet, had other plans.

It started, as these things do, with the best intentions. Dr. Lyra Ashton, professor of advanced genomic engineering, had invited a group of us to her lab for “real hands-on research.” Doc Ashton was legendary. A rebel in horn-rimmed glasses, obsessive about ancient DNA. She needed extra hands. I had a C+ average. My best friends, Maya and Theo, tagged along—Maya for the thrill, Theo for the snacks. The three of us like misfits in a Jurassic escape room.

On the white, gleaming counters, strange machines whirred. A glass tank glistened with an iridescence I can only describe as dangerous. Ashton flashed a wolfish grin. “We’re pushing the boundaries tonight, kids. Blending retroviral vectors. Ancient genomes. Think big.”

I, not thinking, piped up, “Are those… dinosaur genes?”

Ashton’s grin widened. “Why settle for humdrum mammalian improvement? If we could unlock lost evolutionary traits… now that’s real science.”

The experiment was simple. Gene splicing with a custom viral carrier. Ashton insisted the vectors were inert—just a simulation in petri dishes. We needed to transfer solutions, measure the faint glow of enzymes binding to DNA. Maya, all confidence and ponytail, swirled a pipette. Theo, raiding the fridge for protein bars, distracted her. And me? I knocked a tray of samples onto the floor.

CRASH. Glass, blue fluid, a sharp acrid scent. Ashton yelling. Then nothing.

#

I woke up in a hospital bed three days later, confused and hungry enough to eat the mattress. Maya and Theo lay in beds beside me. Ashton paced, phone to her ear, staring at us with a mixture of scientific awe and terror.

The government suits showed up the next day.

“We’re with the Federal Biosafety Enforcement Unit,” announced an agent named Griggs, badge like a knife blade. “You three are under quarantine.”

I smelled something strange—something I’d never sensed before, like venom and sunlight.

That was the first sign things were very, very wrong.

#

We broke out later that night, after Maya’s hands burst into scaly talons and Theo grew a tail, barrelling through the window with a warbling shriek that shattered the glass.

I changed last.

It was agony and ecstasy: skin splitting, bones lengthening, muscles coiling up my spine. My jaw stretched into a long snout, my senses expanding. I saw the heat of Maya’s blood, the glisten of Theo’s fear. I saw myself reflected as a spinosaurus—towering, river-shade green, with a sail on my back and jaws made for tearing.

I thought I was dreaming until I tried to speak, and a thunderous bellow rattled from my throat instead.

#

We ran. Past panicked nurses and shouting agents. Through city sewers, our bodies shifting as instinct demanded—flesh, then sinew, then scale. We learned to control it with practice: calm yourself, think human. Agitation, and you slipped—talons, claws, tails.

It didn’t take long for the hunt to begin. The government wanted us alive, or maybe not alive, and not even Ashton could protect us.

We became fugitives. Headlines screamed about monsters in Chicago. Heat signatures, fleeting sightings, shattered windows, butchered livestock. Someone snapped a picture of me snatching a trout from Lake Michigan, halfway between man and monstrosity, and overnight “Dino Dudes” was trending on every feed.

But it was never a joke to us.

#

Each of us changed differently. Theo became a triceratops, broad and tank-like, horns curling from his brow when he was angry. Maya turned into a raptor, arms sleek with claws, intellect sharpened, her eyes always calculating.

Me—I was the big one. Spinosaurus aegyptiacus. Taller than a van, longer than a bus. The first time my tail swept aside a squad car as if it were a toy, I realized how dangerous we’d become.

At night, we huddled together in abandoned warehouses, scavenging. Theo grumbled endlessly—his appetite outpaced ours, and good luck explaining a missing dumpster’s worth of burgers. Maya kept us moving, hacking into city cams, rerouting traffic to mask our escape. I kept our tempers in check—barely. The government was always a step behind, but never for long.

I watched faces change on the news: terrified people, waving blurry phone footage. I heard their fear.

One night, as we huddled in the ruins of an old water plant, Maya whirled on me. “We can’t run forever, Tom. They’ll catch us, or corner us.”

Theo’s tail thumped the wall. “Maybe we should let them. Maybe they can undo this.”

But I knew better. I felt the change in my bones, in the hunger that gnawed at me every time I thought about rivers, or the taste of flesh. We weren’t just human any more. There was no going back.

“We have to control it,” I said. “Hide out somewhere. Figure out what Ashton did to us. If we go to the government, they’ll poke and prod us until we’re vivisected for science, or worse.”

Maya’s claws flexed, scraping sparks against the old concrete. “Then we get to Ashton first.”

#

She found us, not the other way around. We woke one rainy morning to find her at our hideout, flanked by armed men and women in black tactical gear—but she stopped them from shooting.

“Tom. Maya. Theo.” Her voice shook. “I know you’re scared. I can help you.”

We didn’t trust her. Maya pinned her to the wall in a heartbeat, jaws at her neck. I hissed—a sound so reptilian it echoed in my head for hours.

“I made a mistake, yes! But you have power—real, raw evolutionary power. We can study it. Harness it. Maybe even find a cure.”

But the soldiers with her were watching us like wolves, trigger fingers itching.

“Lie down,” one barked. “Hands—uh—claws where we can see them!”

We hesitated. Decided. We ran.

Guns barked, but we moved faster. Theo took a bullet like a paper cut, roaring as his thick hide rejected the lead. Maya darted through shadows, and I smashed a wall, sunlight flooding in. We charged, not as prey, but as predators.

We vanished, melting into train tunnels beneath the city.

#

Three weeks passed. We lived on the move, dodging drones, learning how to shift back and forth at will. Sometimes, especially at night, I felt the old life slipping away—the comforting flesh, the human thoughts. Sometimes it was easier to let the spino take over, to trust the instincts, to savor the raw, primordial power in running as a beast under the moonlight.

I realized something frightening, and beautiful: I didn’t want to stop. Even if it meant being hunted forever.

“We can find our own kind out here,” Maya whispered one night, curled up in a nest of blankets and broken chair legs. “Other freaks. Others like us.”

Theo grinned, his mouth somewhere between human and beaked. “Or maybe just live—long enough to make a difference.”

I listened to the city’s heart beating above us. The thrum of sirens and the pulse of a world so sure of itself, so afraid of anything that didn’t fit its rules. I flexed claws that were mine, and not mine. I felt the weight of my own hunger, and my own hope.

Who knows? Maybe we’ll find a cure someday. Maybe we’ll become legends. But for tonight, we run together, hunted and wild, more alive than we’d ever dreamed.

After all, we’re not just running from the government any more.

We’re running towards something grander—towards becoming our own lost species, roaring in the dark, finding freedom in every beating, ancient heart.

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.

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