Chapter 1 *Edited*

Chapter 1

What is a Shifter? A Shifter is a person who has been injected with animal DNA. Although one could be injected with the DNA of an animal, it does not make them a Shifter: only when that DNA becomes one with the person’s own does that person become a Shifter with the ability to change into the selected animal. “That’s impossible and unethical,” one states. “Why would someone be injected with animal DNA in the first place?” another asks. Well…as unethical and highly improbable as it is, it did—for better or for worse—happen.

It all started as a military project in the higher-ups of the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics in the year 1989 when a sadistic general, Ivan Tolbanov, tried to create a soldier unlike any other: a soldier with the various qualities, specialties, and abilities of animals. In that same year, orphans from all over Russia ranging ages 5 to 17 years of age were taken out of orphanages and were promised a home and parents. Instead of the warmth and love that they deserved, the children were treated to the luxury of being strapped to a cold, hard, cruel table with their arms outstretched and secured with unpadded belts: needles attached to fluid-filled syringes assaulting their tender flesh and veins every day that they endured. The conditions that the children were kept in were atrocious. Each room was nothing but a nine foot by nine foot, concrete cell with a small window far out of the reach of most children under twelve. In these cold cells, three children were packed in with only a pillow and blanket for them to share. They were randomly chosen to be in a room with no regard to sex or age: this sometimes resulted in the younger children having what little innocence they still had being ripped away from them.

The U.S.S.R. reported that the large-scale experiment was unsuccessful when they were placed in the hot-seat for their heinous crimes against their own children. Officials didn’t stray far from the truth, but what they had omitted was that there were a handful of children—or “units” as they called them—that showed signs of two sets of living DNA. The men had no way of knowing if the desired effect was achieved until an incident was reported from a lab deep in Siberia. The incident that was sealed away so deeply in their records involved a boy aged fourteen. He was the first success the project had seen. Not only did this boy have live free-floating animal DNA, he was the first case of it binding to his own.

Note-takers were only trusted as far as one could throw them, so it was protocol to confiscate all notes taken the moment the people were no longer needed, were to be transcribed into print after twenty-four hours, placed under lock and key, and finally destroyed after thirty-six hours to prevent leaks. Majority of the notes taken during the entire experiment were modified for four types of eyes to see: nation leaders, directors, agents, and soldiers. The last known copy of the incident involving the fourteen year old boy was modified to be viewed by soldier eyes—majority of it redacted—and is as follows:

███ ████, 28 November 1998, 10:41

Unit 109, age 14, was brought into L0065 for treatment at 10:30 and secured. Dr. ███ ██████ began the standard procedure of injecting ███ ████ ███████ into the veins and muscle tissue of Unit 109. The unit, unlike the others, does not cry out though this procedure is extremely painful.

[REDACTED]

Dr. ██████ administers the fourth injection of ███ ████ ███████. A low growling noise is emmitting from the unit. Such a guttural noise should not be coming from such a small larynx. The unit’s body temperature has risen to a low-grade fever of 38 Celsius, and the body hair appears to be darkening. Unit 109’s teeth are changing rapidly in size; they are starting to resemble the teeth of an animal. The unit is now screaming for the first time since its treatment began. The body is growing rapidly; fur is growing from the unit’s skin; the unit’s mouth has elongated to resemble a muzzle; the unit’s hands and feet sprouted claws and calloused pads are forming in its palms. The piercing scream has changed to the guttural roar  ██ ██ █   █ █ ██   █   █ █ █   █ █ █   █ ██ ██   █ █ █ █   ██ ██ ██   ██ █ █   █ █   █   █ █ █   █ ██   ██   ██   █ █ █ █   █   █   ██ █   ██ █ █. The desired effect has been…

The observation was never finished; rather, it was covered in blood when the guards found the room stained crimson. Officials deduced that the boy surprised the malicious scientist by transforming into the Kamchatka bear so much that he stared in awe a moment too long. Before his comrades could intervene, the boy—now bear—swung his massive paw across the man’s face, partially skinning him. The man had lived for a good five minutes, long enough to dial for security even though his face lies in a pile behind him: gurgling rather than speech coming from his throat. While the lead scientist called for help, his associates—a man and a woman—attempted to sedate the animal in vain. The male associate suffered deep bite to his neck—so deep that they nearly cleaved his head off of his shoulders: an upper canine tooth was found embedded between his C5 and C6 vertebra. The professional note-taker suffered the most visually gruesome death: claw marks stretched from her sternum to her legs, her entrails in a heap beside her body. When the guards arrived to find the sight, bloody bear tracks were found leading from the scene, out a demolished door, down the short hallway, and out the wide open emergency exit.

Deafening air-raid sirens wailed trough the freezing Siberian afternoon. Blood coated bear tracks tainted the unbroken snow making a distinct trail leading directly to the large animal even through the thicket. Howling, growling, snarling dogs were released from their confinements and quickly caught a whiff of the bear’s trail. Panic shot through the bear’s being as he tried to run faster, but the body of a bear isn’t meant for running, so he was forced to remain at an awkward gallop. He was running out of steam even as the vicious killing machines neared ever closer. A quick glance over his thickly furred shoulder was his undoing. Out of nowhere, a tree halted the barreling beast allowing the smaller hounds to latch onto his thick appendages. A roar rattled out from his thick vocal chords out of fear more than anything else. Soon, armed men surrounded the bear, successfully sedating him. When the bear lost consciousness a discovery was made: subjects cannot remain in the animal state while unconscious.

This fourteen-year-old boy was Sasha Petrovoski. After his recapture, he was placed into a soldier program to begin intense military training all while being closely observed for any signs of flight. The boy was one of three children to successfully have animal DNA bind to their own; the two others were also placed in the same program. The young Sasha survived being broken down, rebuilt, and trained to suit the needs of the freshly dissolved U.S.S.R. After the last of the funding was spent, the soldier program melted into the regular military: this is where Sasha found his opportunity to flea once and for all. While being lead to the back of the looming bed of an eighteen wheeler to his military life, the fifteen-year-old boy made a promise to his only two friends that he would find a way to save them before running into the nearest thicket and never looked back.

An extremely high bounty was placed on the boy’s head—millions of U.S. dollars—so he spent the next eight years eluding bounty hunters, hunters, and Russian officials who were all looking for a bear that was missing its upper left canine tooth. In the years that he was forced to hide and live in the Russian tundra and occasional villages when he could maintain a human form. Sasha learned to control his unfortunate ability within those eight years, though it wasn’t without struggle. As a young man, Sasha tried his hardest to simply settle into a village and live amongst the peoples who dwelled there, but he’d been chased out and nearly killed multiple times for changing unexpectedly in front of villagers.

Sometime after his twenty-third birthday, Sasha came across a torn bounty flier with his animal’s description on it while passing through a town in the middle of Siberia, close to where he ran all those years ago. After much consideration and a good night’s rest, the young man set out to find a bear that matched his description with plans removing its upper left canine, letting the bear heal while keeping a tail on it, killing it, and turning the body in for the bounty. Though it took nearly a year to find a bear with a similar description and another six months for the bear to heal, Sasha got the job done. When he brought the bear’s body to the nearest police station, he was understandably nervous. Though in a cold sweat, he was awarded a hefty thirty-million U.S. dollars. Now rich beyond belief, Sasha knew exactly what he was going to do with his money.

The young man bought a car with cash only and drove from the middle of Siberia to Provideniya at the tip of the Russo-Alaskan border. From there, he left his car with the family who had forged his passport, ID card, and also taken him in while he waited for his U.S. VISA to clear: it was the least he could have done for them. The boat ride from Russia to Alaska seemed to be the longest trip of his life, but not because of sea sickness but because the excitement to finally be leaving his tortured memories behind.

Sasha settled in the largest city he could find in Alaska while he became an official United States citizen. Even though Sasha had become a citizen, more travels from Alaska were to be made before he could truly rest. He hopped around the state before deciding to settle down in a plot of sixty acres of uncleared land in Washington State and built a small home on its outskirts. It was there that he found that Russia wasn’t the only nation to try out the same military project. Ten years after Russia executed the soldier experiment, the United States also conducted an experiment of their own: only the U.S.A. was better at hiding it. So, how did he find out, then?

After five years of living a reclusive lifestyle, he found an emaciated leopard wandering on his property. Without giving a thought to how out of place the cat was, he quickly reached for his shotgun only to stop when the animal morphed into an olive skinned girl no more than fourteen years of age. Immediately he took the poor girl into his home and nursed her back to health. In the months of taking care of the girl, named Maria Garcia, the man used his military level information-gathering skills to learn that the U.S.A. had conducted the same horrendous experiment that Russia had but on a much, much, larger scale. From the years 1999 to 2002, nurses working in the delivery room were instructed to administer a “vaccine” to all newborn babies without informing their parents. This “vaccine” was truly various animals’ DNA, and Maria had been injected with the endangered clouded leopard’s DNA which adhered to her own. The U.S. government charted the experiment as unsuccessful in 2002 as they were told by Russia, so they ceased the requirement of the vaccine. If they had monitored the babies throughout their lives, rather than keeping the operation a guarded secret, officials would have known that by age 14 the animal will start to present itself.

Knowing that there could be more teens like Maria, Sasha’s caring side kicked into action making him choose to clear a 20-acre patch in the middle of his land to build a sanctuary that could house twelve teens and three adult caretakers. Construction of the massive three story—not including the basement—mansion nearly bled the man dry, but he got the job done. Sasha’s determination to provide a safe place for the possible young Shifters was great and his will to teach the youth how to control their forced power was even greater so the sanctuary officially opened in the year 2015, and now, nearing the end of 2016, majority of the would-be Shifters have aged fourteen.

How do you know what has been said is true? Well, you’ll just have to take it from the man who experienced it all first hand. I’ve sent my hired scout, Mr. Berndt Krauss, off in search of children ages seventeen to fourteen who show signs of mutation similar to my own. I know that these children would be frightened, confused, and questioning their identity so I’ve taken it upon myself to teach them that they’re not who they once were and that’s perfectly fine, but it’s up to them if they decide to be productive or destructive with that fact. I am Sasha Petrovoski: thirty-two year-old male bear Shifter: founder of the sanctuary that many will call home.

This is the true retelling of we Shifters.