The Endgame [Part 1]

I woke up when someone bumped into pieces of metal. My eyes were sore and my body felt heavy. I wanted to brush away the hair that had fallen on my face, but for some reason I couldn't lift my arms. Had they fallen asleep? No, something was wrong. The feeling in my body was slowly getting back. As I fully opened my eyes I was blinded by a bright light.
"Where am I?" My mouth was sore and I had a bitter metallic feeling flowing on my tongue.
"Shh... It's alright, I'm here to help you!" A young girl, not much older than me, stood over my head. She had a dark blue hoodie on, just like any normal teenager. Her smile was fake and her pulse... yes, I could hear it, it was beating rapidly. She was under some kind of stress.
"What's going on?" I asked while she tried her best to free me.
"We're both in great danger, so please be quiet! What's the last thing you remember?" She freed one of my arms from a metal cuff. I pushed the hair off of my face.
"I- I remember going to bed early because of a headache. And that's about it. But hey, answer my question, where the hell are we?" She freed my other hand and we began freeing my feet from leatherstraps together.  
"You're in a facility for gene manipulation. It seems like you have something those sick scientists wants." She took my hand awkwardly and began running towards one of the doors. The room we had just been in was plain white with only one operation table, the one I had been lying on just a moment ago. I only had what seemed like a white apron on.
"What the hell do scientists want with me? I'm just a normal girl! I haven't done anything wrong!" I began protesting while she dragged me through a long corridor. The lights turned itself on with every step we took. That's why I couldn't see the end to it; the darkness was consuming everything in a range of two meters in front of us.
"You're not normal, Imber. That's what I'm trying to say!" Her voice had changed. It wasn't too noticeable, but I heard it nonetheless. I stopped running and stood before her. The hospital clothes clung to my naked body.
"I never told you my name." My voice was dangerously low, and I could hear her heart skip a beat. She turned around, her brown eyes met mine.
"Who the hell are you?" My words were amusing her, because she gave me what seemed like a diabolic smile as a reply.
"I'm just a friend. Come on, I'm actually trying to get you out of this hellhole. If you want to stay, be my guest. I'm heading out of here, and if I were you I would probably get the hell out of here. Do you even want to know what they did to you?" She turned around and began walking towards the other end. Damn, I had nowhere to go but that way.
"Have you calmed down, now?" She asked me when I came running after her.
"Just get me out of here." I didn't want to know how I had gotten here or what they had done to me. I just wanted to get home to my comfortable bed and get some sleep. It all seemed like a bad dream.
She walked fast, but not so fast that my heartbeat went too high. When we got to the other side of the corridor there was a room. A room with no windows and no other doors than the one we had just used. And it shut close and locked itself before I had the chance to launch my body towards it.
"Are you ready, Imber?" I was losing my mind now. What the hell was I supposed to be ready for and why was I so scared? She was just a girl, like me... yet there seemed to be something off with here from the start.
I opened my mouth to say something but it was too late. She leaped at me and stabbed me with something sharp and long. A needle. No, more precisely she injected something into my bloodstream. I kicked her off of me and jerked the needle out of my shoulder. It hurt like hell, but adrenaline was already rushing through my blood.
"You're one of the sick scientists, aren't you?" She just gave me a smile and I knew that she had fooled me all this time. Made me to trust her and then backstabbed me.
"Why didn't you just do that earlier while I was strapped down?" I first noticed that my muscles were sore and then I fell down on the floor. I couldn't move. It was like I wasn't the master of my own body anymore.
"Because it's more fun this way." She went to the corner of the room and opened a secret door, pushed some buttons and went through. One of the walls became black. It must have been a protective glass.
My body was hyperventilating and my mind was trapped inside of it. As soon as I could move again i gasped for air, feeling it hurt in my chest. My blood was boiling and it felt like I had a bad fever. My hands went to my head; it felt like it was about to burst.
And then something weird happened when I opened my mouth to scream in pain. My tongue fell to the floor. It didn't fall off, but it was longer. Too long. And the color had changed to a darker red. It was long and slender, but the tip was ripped in two. Like a snakes.
The pain went away when I saw my tongue and I noticed how my whole body was acting in a weird way. I didn't know how to react anymore. Was I mutating? Did I have some mutant gene that the girl activated with a vaccine?
My jaw itched and as I began massaging the surface I noticed how it was moving on its own. It was growing. How could my body grow all on its own?
Looking down on my hands I noticed a change in the skin. It was becoming harder and more solid. Scales grew out of it, like grass growing out of a mountain. You don't really know why it does so, but you  don't protest it either. It felt good. It gave me a feeling of bodily satisfaction I had never had before.
The scales were bloodily red, and on the touch they were first really hot but then they became cold like stone. I could feel veins pulsate through each and every one of them. They covered my hands first, but then went on to cover every part of my body. It tickled when it came to my neck and face.
My muscles felt stronger underneath the protective shield of scales. Was I becoming a reptile? No, there was something wrong with my whole physique. Lying on the floor I felt my whole spine twist and turn and grow inside of me, but also outside. I was growing a tail and wings!
The tail just seemed to appear, but the wings... Oh, they hurt like hell! I began coughing as my ribs burrowed into my lunges with every movement of the new grown wings. I wasn't done growing yet obviously.
It's funny how you somehow just accept the fact that you're going to die or that something weird is happening. When you accept it, it's the best feeling ever. It's the feeling of peace and harmony in life and everything.
I began coughing blood and fire, I growled once and then it all went quite. I lied there for a whole minute, thinking of what to do now. Was I dead? What had happened to my body? And how do I even move!?
"Imber, please stand up and face the black window." A voice said through a bad microphone. It seemed like all of my senses were sharpened. I wondered if I was still a human.
My hands were paws now, and I had claws so sharp that they made marks with no effort on the stony ground. My feet were weirdly shaped and I had problems standing. I crawled to the black window, my new tail swinging awkwardly with every little twist of my hip.
"Stand up." The voice said. I did as she told me and used the window to keep still, digging my sharp claws into it.
A red dragoness with human eyes watched me. Her eyes were purple and she seemed scared. She turned her head as if to get a better picture of me. No, it couldn't be... It was me, I was the red dragoness.
"I'm sorry to keep you waiting, but you see; you had to have a special heartbeat to be able to transform and not die. You did good. Now go stand in the middle of the room again, a guard will come in and put you in cuffs. There's no need for any resistance as the cuffs are for your own sake. You have no idea what you're capable of doing in that form." I recognized the voice. It was her, the girl that had injected the venom.
"What are you planning on doing to me?" My tongue was working against me, yet I somehow managed to say it. I did understand the part with the heartbeats, it was pure logic. If I was under too much stress, like when I woke up, the venom would either kill me or the transformation would be horrible. If my heartbeat was slow it would result in me dying because parts of my body would transform and the other part would not. She had raised my heartbeat slowly so that it wouldn't be too hard on me. Still, I would have been glad if they asked me of my opinion about the matter. My claws dug into the black glass, making cracking noises.
"Step away from the glass, Imber. We're not the bad guys here." Her voice was strong and stern, but I knew that she was scared and unsettled. I dug even deeper.
"Tell me who's the bad guy then? How can you be the good ones when you made me like this? I didn't ask for it!" What I didn't tell them was that I liked it. I loved my new form, it gave me power and strength I could never even imagine! I wasn't a human anymore, nor a dragon. I was the ultimate thing inbetween.
"The guard is coming in now. He's alone so be nice to him. Step away from the glass, Imber!" She growled through the microphone.  
"I want to know why you made me like this!" My claws went right through the glass and I fell forward. There were three people there, one doctor (obviously because of his appearance) a heavily armed guard and the girl that had done this to me. I whipped the AK47 out of the guards hands with my tail and kicked him into the room I had just been in. He lied on the ground, not moving.
The girl tried to get a new vaccine, but I tackled her to the ground before she had the time to inject it in me. It flew out of her hand and landed a couple of feet from us. The doctor escaped and I couldn't do anything about it. But it was alright, I just couldn't die without knowing what the purpose with my transformation was.
"Why!?" I growled in her face and a small fire escaped uncontrollably. It barely missed her face.
"We need more soldiers!" Tears ran down her face and I could see the desperation in her eyes.
"For what? And why did you have to transform me?" She hulked and snored and looked miserable, but I wasn't fooled. I wasn't going to feel sorry about someone that kidnapped and used people for their own purposes.
"My organization is attacking the government with what my boss calls 'übermench'."
"Superman?" I asked confused.
"Call it whatever you want. You had the gene in you and I HAD to activate it! There aren't many left with the transformational gene anymore. I just had to push you in the right direction, that's what we have to do with everyone. Look, I'm not doing this because I want to; I have to. This is bigger than both you and me, this can save the world!" She stopped hulking when we could hear someone running towards us.
"You can transform back to human anytime you want, you know that, right? This is how your ancestors looked like. They were put under a magical spell so that they could communicate with the dragons and humans at the same time. If you don't want to, you don't need to be our soldier... But it would benefit us a lot if you were. You have great strength and you seem to adapt to your new skin a lot faster than the others. But there is also a personal reason you should join us. Lagoon enlisted himself a couple of days ago." She had stopped crying and was talking normally now. She saw that I had no intentions of hurting her, I just wanted the truth.
"Lagoon is here?" His name was hard to pronounce and I felt a sorrow fall over my mind just by the thought of him. I hadn't seen him for two weeks now because we had a huge fight. I never though he would do such a reckless thing as to enlist himself.
"Step away from her! Paws in the air!" I recognized that voice. Turning around I saw Lagoon point at me with a gun, he had some funny armor on him and a heavy helmet, but I could see his eyes and I knew that was my long lost mate.
"Lagoon, it's me, Imber." I stepped away from the girl, and I started walking towards him. His eyes widened and he looked somewhat confused.
"Imber?" Oh it was good to hear him say my name again, it had been such a long. Other soldiers ran into the room and began shouting. My ears hurt like hell from all the noise. And then a deafening sound appeared. I couldn't hear anything, but Lagoons face told me something was wrong. He pulled of his helmet, sweat hair lying down on his face, and ran to where I stood.
Looking down I saw a hole between two of my scales. Oh, I was shot. I didn't feel anything though. I felt heavy so I lied down on the ground and closed my eyes to not look at the blood. I tried to close Lagoons eyes too, because I knew he didn't have a stomach for that kind of stuff.
"Silly boy." I said and fell asleep.