Lasting Sense of Humanity

The news broadcast continued, with Agent Smith's silky voice detailing precautionary measures and safety protocols. Axel watched his family absorb the information, their reactions painting a vivid tableau of concern and relief. The "rabies outbreak combined with unusual bear activity" explanation seemed to satisfy most viewers, though Axel noticed how Smith's eyes seemed to look directly through the screen, as if searching for something - or someone.

"Multiple bears? In March?" Mike scoffed, but his voice lacked conviction. "Since when do bears hunt in packs?"

"There have been documented cases," their mother offered, though Axel could hear her pulse quicken slightly - a tell-tale sign she wasn't entirely convinced. "And with the weather patterns changing..."

The phone's shrill ring cut through their discussion. Their mother rose with a weary grace that spoke of years of interrupted moments, making her way to the kitchen where the ancient wall-mounted phone hung like a beige sentinel.

"Hello? Yes, this is Margaret Wilson... Yes, yes he is!" Her voice brightened considerably. "He came home just this morning. We were so worried, but he wasn't anywhere near the... Yes, I understand completely. No, he's perfectly fine..."

Axel listened to his mother reassure what seemed like half the town that her son was alive and well. Each call brought fresh waves of guilt that crashed against the strange numbness in his chest where remorse should live. He could hear the desperate hope in the voices on the other end of the line, parents clinging to the possibility that if Axel had survived, maybe their children had too.

But he knew better. The memories were fragmented, like watching scenes from a horror movie through shattered glass, but they were there. The strength in his new muscles carried echoes of how easily human bodies had torn apart. The metallic tang in the air whenever he inhaled deeply reminded him of the copper-sweet taste of...

He pushed the thoughts away, but they lingered like shadows at sunset.

The doorbell rang around three, startling everyone except Axel, who had heard the approaching footsteps and recognized the scents - the Hendersons from two streets over. He retreated to the stairs as his mother opened the door, not trusting himself to face them directly.

"Margaret, I'm so sorry to bother you," Mrs. Henderson's voice quavered. "But we thought... since Tommy and Axel were on the team together... maybe he might know where..."

Axel's enhanced hearing picked up Mr. Henderson's barely audible attempt to comfort his wife. His new senses could detect the salt of their tears, the sour edge of fear-sweat, the chemical traces of anxiety medications. But what hit him hardest was how clearly he remembered Tommy - not as his teammate, but as one of his first victims that night.

The memory surfaced with brutal clarity: Tommy's shocked expression as Axel's transformed body had lunged from the shadows near the locker room. The way his letterman jacket had torn like tissue paper. The sudden silence when his screams stopped. The way his body had...

"I'm so sorry," his mother was saying, genuine compassion in her voice. "Axel wasn't at practice that night. He hasn't seen Tommy since school let out."

More visitors came throughout the afternoon, each carrying similar desperate hopes. Each time, Axel remained out of sight, letting his mother handle the conversations while memories he wished he could forget played behind his eyes. The Patels, whose son Raj had been his lab partner. The Gonzalezes, looking for Maria who had always shared her homemade tamales at lunch. The Bradburys, seeking news of their son, Jeremy.

Names and faces blurred together, but the memories of their final moments remained crystal clear. His new form had been efficient, thorough. None of them had suffered long, at least. It was cold comfort, but it was all he had to offer their ghosts.

From his position on the stairs, he heard Tess in her room, her voice barely a whisper as she left at least fifteenth message on Brad's voicemail.

"Baby, please... just call me back. Everyone's saying crazy things, but I know you're okay. You have to be okay. Just... please..."

Axel felt nothing at her obvious pain, and that absence of emotion was perhaps more disturbing than the memories themselves. Brad had been a typical high school bully, making life miserable for anyone he deemed beneath him. Axel distinctly remembered the satisfaction of finding him trying to flee across the football field - how his varsity jacket had made him easy to spot, how his celebrated running back speed had meant nothing against Axel's enhanced abilities.

"He's probably just hiding somewhere," Mike offered awkwardly as Tess emerged from her room, eyes red but makeup still perfect. "You know Brad, always thinking about himself first."

"Shut up," Tess snapped, but there was no real heat in it. "You never liked him anyway."

"Because he was a dick," Mike replied bluntly. "Remember when he pushed that freshman kid into the pool at Homecoming? Kid was wearing a rental tux his mom worked double shifts to afford."

Tess didn't respond, but Axel could hear her heartbeat steady slightly. She'd never admitted it, but he knew she'd been uncomfortable with Brad's crueler tendencies. She would bounce back - she always did. Her previous breakups had followed a predictable pattern: three days of crying, two weeks of angry music, then a triumphant makeover and a new boyfriend who was marginally less awful than the last.

The TV droned on in the background, repeating Agent Smith's press conference and showing file footage of police cordons around the school. A grim-faced reporter announced that classes would be suspended for at least a week as the community mourned the loss of twenty young lives - "presumed victims of the animal attack," though everyone noted how carefully they avoided showing any actual crime scene photos.

Twenty. The number hit Axel like a physical blow. He remembered most of them, but there were gaps in his memory - moments lost to the frenzy of his transformation. Twenty families devastated. Twenty futures erased. Twenty empty seats in classrooms and at dinner tables.

And he felt... nothing. No guilt. No remorse. Just a cold, analytical awareness of what he had done and an even colder certainty that he would do it again if the hunger returned. His humanity was slipping away like sand through an hourglass, each grain carrying another piece of who he used to be.

The most terrifying part wasn't the memories of what he'd done. It wasn't even the knowledge that he could - and probably would - do it again. No, what truly horrified him was how logical it all seemed now. His new form needed sustenance. Those he killed had been convenient sources of that sustenance. The fact that he had once called them friends, classmates, teammates... those designations felt meaningless now, like labels on empty containers.

He caught his reflection in the hallway mirror - still recognizably Axel Wilson, but subtly different. His muscles were more defined, his posture more predatory. His eyes held a gleam that hadn't been there before, a hint of the creature he became when the hunger took hold. The creature he was becoming, perhaps, even without the physical transformation.

From the living room, he heard the twins debating whether they'd still have to take their history test next week, their conversation a strange mix of typical pre-teen concerns and genuine grief for lost classmates. His mother was in the kitchen, going through the motions of preparing dinner while fielding another phone call from worried parents. Mike had retreated to the garage, probably to work on his car - his usual coping mechanism. Tess's door remained closed, muffled sobs barely audible to normal hearing but crystal clear to his enhanced senses.

They were all dealing with the tragedy in their own ways, processing the loss of friends and neighbors. None of them suspected that the monster responsible was sitting on their stairs, listening to their grief with clinical detachment, analyzing their pain like data in a science experiment.

The sun began to set, painting the walls with long shadows that reminded him of that night on the football field. His new senses picked up the subtle shift in the air as day turned to dusk - the change in temperature, the altered patterns of traffic as people hurried home before dark, the way his family's heartbeats slowly synchronized as they settled into their evening routine.

He should feel something about all this. Guilt, shame, horror at what he'd done. The old Axel would have been devastated, crushed by the weight of his actions. But that Axel died on the football field, replaced by something that wore his face but saw the world through very different eyes.

The hunger would return. He knew this with the same certainty that he knew the sun would rise tomorrow. And when it did, he would hunt again. The only question was whether he could direct that hunger away from those he still recognized as family.

For now, though, he would play his part. Pretend to be the Axel they remembered. Mimic the appropriate responses to tragedy. Make the right sounds of grief and shock when official notifications began arriving for their missing classmates.

After all, he was good at pretending. He'd been doing it all day.

And somewhere in the gathering darkness, he sensed other presences - powerful, inhuman awareness that brushed against his consciousness like predators testing territory boundaries. Agent Smith and his people weren't just containing a wild animal attack. They were hunting something.

They were hunting him.

The thought should have terrified him. Instead, he felt a cold anticipation, an almost eager curiosity about matching his new abilities against theirs. The part of him that was still human recognized this as further proof of his transformation - not just physical, but fundamental. The rest of him simply cataloged it as useful tactical information.

The sun set completely, and with the darkness came clarity. He wasn't Axel Wilson anymore, not really. He was something new, something that had merely borrowed Axel's memories and form. And as the last light faded from the sky, he accepted this truth with the same detached interest he now felt for everything else.

The monster wasn't something that had happened to him. The monster was what he had become. And somewhere deep inside, in the place where his humanity used to live, he wondered if that should bother him more than it did.

But his worry vanished when his stomach began to growl. It seemed that he would need to feed again.