Title: "Metamorphosis: The Genex Three Chronicles"

My name’s Jordan Park. For the first 22 years of my life, I was what most people would call boring: engineering student, quiet roommate, biggest crime on my record being a library book returned six days late. Now? I can turn into a twelve-meter spinosaurus and outswim a speedboat.

It all started with a paid internship at Genex Systems, a fancy bioengineering firm nestled in some unassuming Silicon Valley suburb. You dove into the world of synthetic biology hoping for a LinkedIn boost and a pay bump, not expecting to become target number one on a government watchlist for “genetic anomalies.”

That summer, my crew consisted of Casey, the bioinformatics whiz, and Malik, the smooth-talking chemical engineer. We were working on a hush-hush project in Lab 8, decoding the biochemistry of ancient DNA and “bioexpressing” it in controlled environments. Under strict protocols, mind you—until the night we got curious.

Casey unspooled a nucleotide sequence on the holotable and said, “Look, guys, spinosaurus genome. This could rewrite our evolutionary textbooks…” and somewhere in there, Malik piped up, “Bet we could trick CRISPR into assembling a live protein strain.”

The bet turned into an experiment. The experiment turned into a camel’s-back-of-an-accident when Casey sneezed into the containment hood at the exact moment my arm slipped and knocked over three vials of proto-protein serum. As the alarms screamed, the vaporizer tried to kick in. Instead, a shockwave of electric aroma and the sensation of every cell in my body lighting up like a thousand volts flooded my senses. I remember fireflies in my blood and seeing Malik with hexagonal neon scales running up his neck before I blacked out.

When I woke up, my body was burning hot—like a fever, times ten. I glanced over and saw Casey. She blinked. Her eyes had slit pupils the color of fresh grass. “I think…something’s changed,” she rasped.

They put us under medical quarantine for two days, or at least tried. That’s when *it* happened. My hand doubled in size, nails curling into talons. A scaly ridge burst from my spine. The guards—there to help, they said—panicked. One screamed, “Dino breach!” and let loose with a stun baton. Next thing I know, I’m roaring, jaws six feet long, tail smashing into reinforced glass. I leapt for the pool–the aquatic training tank for studying prehistoric fish. Water never felt so good.

We broke out. Casey—velociraptor—sprinted beside me, the queen of lightning speed and cunning. Malik, to my shock, was a triceratops. Before the experiment, he was built like a fullback; now he was armor-plated and could bulldoze a dumpster like it was cardboard.

We ran for days, shifting back between human and dinosaur forms as needed. And the world took notice.

You ever see your face on a government alert, half-human, half-dinosaur? The “Genex Three. Extremely dangerous. Approach with extreme caution”? President’s speech one night, warning of “unprecedented biological threats.” The military C-22 Ospreys start hovering over forests. All for us. And every time we shifted, learned more—my nose picked up scents on the wind miles away, my crocodile jaws could snap metal, and in deep water, I was unstoppable.

It’s not all fun. The first time we realized shifting was tied to adrenaline? Malik almost trampled a gas station. Casey’s tail knocked out a surveillance drone on instinct. Each transformation left us gasping, our minds flooding with instincts to hunt, to run, to survive.

We learned the hard way: Shifting left a DNA trace. Even in human form, we started to ping the bio-trackers the government set up. We dodged through train yards, drainage tunnels, and cramped motel rooms, always hotwiring a way out just ahead of the black vans.

One night, Casey hacked a hidden database. “They’re calling us ‘assets’ now,” she said. Her hands shook, human pink with just a trace of claw. “If they catch us… It won’t be a prison. It’ll be a lab—forever.”

So we ran toward wildness. Redwoods and salt marshes, where satellites struggled to catch us. I led the way as spinosaurus, surging through brackish river mouths and hunting fish with my snout. Malik would guard us in the thicket, immovable as living stone. Casey would scout ahead, appearing suddenly at my side with news of patrols or food.

Sometimes at night we’d sit around a driftwood fire. Human again, shivering in scavenged jackets. Sometimes I’d laugh—sounding fifty percent hungry-lizard—over Casey’s dinosaur memes or Malik’s insistence that “it could be worse; we could be stegosauruses, have you seen what those things look like?”

But mostly, we planned. We looked for help: a whistleblower scientist who could “fix” us, a journalist brave enough to break the truth, anyone who wouldn’t sell us out for a quick payday.

After a year on the run, it wasn’t just about us. Other names started to crop up—kids who’d been part of other Genex trials, or shadowy rumors of armies being bred with our abilities. It made my blood run cold. We wanted to stop them, if we could.

The final time the government cornered us was on the muddy shores of the Sacramento Delta. Drones overhead, gunships on the horizon. Malik grinned, “Guess we make our stand, eh?” and Casey squeezed my arm, claws and all.

“Ready?” she asked.

“As I’ll ever be.”

With a roar that split my throat and shuddered the water, I shifted. Twelve tons of muscle, sail rising like a banner. Casey flashed blue as a dromaeosaur, Malik swelled into a mountain on four clawed feet.

We fought for our freedom—flashing between ancient fury and terrified youth, between roaring behemoth and desperate human. Tanks bogged in the mud. Soldiers ran. Me, I just wanted to live without being hunted.

When the sun rose, the river delta was empty. Footprints—some clawed, some human—vanished into the wild. Somewhere out there, we’d find others like us. Until then, we run. We survive.

I’m Jordan Park—spinosaurus, fugitive, and, maybe, something more.

The world’s not ready for us. But we’re ready for it.

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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