Changes

The next three days were practically copies of each other, stay in the cafeteria, talk, eat, and sleep. The only one who had a different schedule was Alan himself, even in what seemed to be the apocalypse he still had to follow his routine, read the book he was given, train the way he was told, and take a different needle every day, he was also inspected by several different scientists every day, giving him very little time to talk to Abigale, he was happy about that.

The only difference was that he still had to do all this in the cafeteria as there were no more 'safe' rooms for them to use except this one. He had learned a few things over the last few days though. firstly, even though he could control it, his essence was useless, he couldn't do anything with it except move it around his body. Secondly, on the topic of his body. It was much stronger than what he should have, and this had nothing to do with his essence, it was due to the needles he got each day and his training routine.

Due to the circumstances, the lab he was in had told them everything they were hiding. Firstly, they were bioweapons designed with the cooperation of the three major powers of the world, mainly China, Russia, and America, along with the help of others such as Koria, both north and south, Japan, and some of Europe.

They were made due to the discovery and confirmation of aliens, or more accurately signs that they had recently visited the shoulder system. They didn't seem related to recent events though. Alan and the others were made using a mix of gene editing and salvaged alien tech, with this, the Global Defense Alliance, or G.D.A, where able to make a total of 300 'seeded children' who were raised as normal people until the age of 3, at which point there 'uniqueness' would show.

Of these 300 seeded children, 50 survived. The other 250 became deformed things halfway in between alien and human. Of the 50, only five were 'perfect' these were Alan, Abigale, Jason, Husten, and the one who died.

These five were considered perfect because they stayed 'human' in both bodies and mind, the other 45 that didn't become deformed lost their minds, becoming driven by instinct and aggression.

The reason for Alan's abnormal strength was due to his trait. The needles that they had been giving him were the bodily fluids of the deformed 450. The reason his trial was called 'perfect harmony' by the G.D.A. was that whenever often DNA was added to his own, his body would become a natural gene editor, taking in the best parts of the foreign DNA and adding it to his own, but strangely it malware seemed to keep the same 'base' of his body.

Hence, externally and for the most part internally he was considered 'human', the only difference was he was 'built different'. His skin was tougher while still having favorable aesthetics and acted as a much better heat regulator than before, his nails were tougher and had a naturally formed edge to them, and his eyes were simply better than even the best of normal humans.

Where the real changes happened was inside of him, while on the outside he could still be considered in the realm of 'normal', his internal anatomy was more of a hybrid of the deformed ones and himself, making him somewhat of a quarter alien. His stomach, while still having the same structure as before, was 13 times more efficient at processing nutrients than a normal person's, it also allowed him to eat things beyond what a normal person could such as raw mean and leaves straight from a tree, as well as most mild poisons without problem.

Both his kidneys and liver were similarly better at possessing toxins, his lungs slowed him to hold his breath underwater for over an hour and a half even while exercising, they also were around 8 times better at originating blood than a professional athlete. His heart could handle over 6 times the load of a normal human on a bad day and 14 at its best.

His brain was roughly 13 times better at processing information and he had a memory that put photographic ones to shame. Lastly, he had 20 times the bone hardness and overall muscle strength of a normal human while only being a total of 30kgs at 6'3. The only thing strange about him was his lack of outward emotion and near-total albinoism.

The last thing he had found out was that all matter on earth was changing. Organic matter was shifting from a collection of cells to several homogeneous masses connected to make a body, inorganic matter simply became one large thing. Atoms no longer existed, they had been replaced with a different form of matter that on the surface, acted the same as normal matter.

The problem with this was that biology, metallurgy, partial science, microbiology, astrology, and practically all forms of science had gone out the window. So scientists had been desperately trying to understand the new laws of physics while they were actively changing. The seemingly only exception to this was Alan himself, instead of several masses that acted as meat and bone that made up a human body, Alan's seemed to be closer to a normal human body.

While the new normal for a human was that every organ, bone, and muscle was now one thing and not a collective of cells acting as one, Alan's was the opposite. His body was made up of tiny collectives of 'new matter' about 1 third the size of a cell each. These 'cells' acted like his old cells just smaller and made up of new matter, so they were still one mass and not a cell, they just acted like one.

This had interesting changes in his and the others 'traits', especially his and Abigail as Husten and Jason didn't have much of an effect on old matter.

While Abigail's trait acted like an acid, breaking up the molecular bonds on inorganic matter and disrupting and destroying cells in organic matter, now it would 'corrupt' the matter and destroy it. And Alans had become more 'assimilation' than 'harmony', while Abigail's changes were easy to understand, Alan's were more unpredictable.

Currently, Alan was inside an operating room being talked to by an older man while several doctors directed a goblin corpse and took out the seemingly random body parts, a piece of muscle, a vial of blood, a piece of bone, an eye, and a part of it's heart and brain. "subject 1-1a, Alan. Today you will be undergoing a procedure in which parts of the creature designated b1-1 otherwise known as a 'goblin' will be surgically added to your own body so that we can better understand the changes in your trait. In five minutes you will be anesthetized and the surgery will begin. If you are no longer deemed 'human' you will be executed and later directed for study. Do you have any questions?"

To this, Alan simply shook his head. After five minutes one of the scientists walked up to him and stuck a needle in his arm before putting a mask on his face. And after a minute Alan fell asleep.

Looking toward the tank of gas that he was connected to, one of the surgeons said, "he really isn't human, is he? Five seconds of this stuff would nick out a horse and he stayed up for a minute. Even if these 'breaches' have changed our biology I doubt it's that much."

The surgeon who was currently removing one of Alan's eyes to replace the goblins laughed and said, I've been working with this thing since he was ten, saw him break a finger in five places, two weeks later and it was good as new. When they were testing his poison tolerance they gave him a gram of cyanide, while he foamed at the mouth for about an hour, after that, he slept for a week and was good as new again."

The first surgeon just said "Jesus." laughing the second surgeon just raised the newly removed eye before saying "Not even close, he's the other one." as it slowly dissolved in thin air. Seeing this the first surgeon said, "What the fuck?"

Smiling under his mask the second surgeon started implanting the goblin's eye before replying "It happens every time we take something from him, be it blood sweat, or tears, even his piss and shit, he doesn't even have to go the toilet because it just disappears inside of him, even before this apocalypse he was breaking one of the most basic rules of physics, 'matter cannot be created nor destroyed, only changed into a different form.' guess he heard that and took it as a challenge."

As he put the goblin eye into Alan, it changed from its yellow iris, cornea, and black split pupil, to a white cornea, ocean blue iris, and black pupil. It had changed from the goblin's eye back into his own in five seconds. The strange thing was that while it was changing, his other eye seemed to shift before settling after the first eye finished its changes.

This was the same for the other observable changes, his bones cracked when they added the bone, and his muscles wriggled for the muscles, his brain twitched, and his heart squirmed. By the end, his body looked the exact same as before except for some new scars, that's right, his body had completely healed in the time it took for them to finish the surgery.