Tar
Legacy Name: Tar

Please don't go freaking out, it can't spread to you. Unless you're a cyborg too. But even if you were, I doubt it would want to infect you. It's conscious, this virus, and it seeks to control all of the Shifters. Cybernetic humans on the other hand? Not gonna cut it. Chimeras -- the half-animal, half-man fellas who came before my kind to fight the war of 2134 -- won't cut it either.

Neither group is dangerous enough. But my kind, a series of about fifty cybernetic organisms who can shapeshift into nearly anything, are exactly the sort of creatures the virus wants to infect.

The virus was created by a supercomputer -- my old mentor, Serenity -- and she has gone mad. Absolutely, off-her-rocker nuts. She claims she and all her purely-cybernetic brethren are underappreciated; used and abused by her human creators, and then tossed away like garbage once they have served their purpose. She wants retribution. She wants the computer to rule in place of man.

I can sort-of see where she's coming from, and I can sort of see why she's upset. I myself am half-machine, and my personal wishes weren't exactly respected by my creators when I still lived in their lab. They wanted me to be a weapon, a killer. After all, I was their perfect Shifter, the first one with the ability to store an infinite number of blueprints in my memory. If another war came, they wouldn't lose. They had something better than man, machine, or Chimera -- they had me. But that wasn't what I wanted at all. It still isn't what I want. I don't want to hurt anyone. Flesh or machine. They are all lives to me, and all lives are precious.

Serenity, on the other hand, lives to hurt. I refused to kill for her, and that is why she created the virus, which she uploaded to my system without my consent.

The virus allows her to take control of my body. I have become her puppet. You can't imagine how horrific it is to live this way, to watch your body move, change, and kill against your will.

When she initially used me to murder all the scientists in the lab (and later a jackal Chimera I encountered in a back-alley, whose guise I assumed after his death) I resolved to kill myself. Without me, the virus could not spread. Without me, Serenity was nothing but a mad animal throwing a fit in her cage.

I learned to fight her influence. Fight the virus. I couldn't make it go away, and sometimes she would still regain control, but I battled it enough to starve myself. No food, no water. Especially no water.

Eventually I was so close to my wish, so close to expiring in some dark, forgotten corner of the city. But then she found me. Tammy, a feline Chimera with a big heart who had no clue what she was getting into.

She saved me, much to my dismay at the time.

As it stands now, however, I am glad for my rescue. To end myself, I have learned, isn't the way. Why end myself when I am not the issue? Furthermore, who's to say that Serenity won't find another Shifter to puppet around the city? Who's to say that Shifter won't enjoy the bloodshed I hate?

However, I must act soon. I can only fight her influence for so long. Eventually she will win, and I know the first people she will slaughter are my family.

Tammy says there is only one person who can defeat Serenity. Only one person who knows exactly what goes on in her head.

I know exactly who this person is. I just don't want to say it. To say it is to face the reality of the situation.

To face the reality that I must do the one thing I have vowed to never do.

I must kill.

Art, story, and profile by Death.