Essay

"Now finally hit him on the face!" Roared Mr. Keiper at his apprentice. Even from up here I could see that the bald man had a bright red head again. "Use your head, do what you've learned!"

When I heard a giggle four rows below, I fixed my gaze. There, in the first row of the stands, sat Pia and Marle, the only other girls in our year of training.

The Beluosus Academy accepted around seventy-five students each year, of which no more than ten were girls. The hunt for monsters was a man's domain after all - at least that's what the guys liked to imagine. I had a completely different opinion, which was not only due to the fact that I belonged to the female gender myself.

Pia chuckled at Bay's awkwardness. Maybe I should remind her how she looked with the Wrath last week. You could really have believed that she hadn't learned anything here in the last two years.

From the kennel I heard the angry growl of the crane when Bay finally hit him on the short muzzle. But that didn't stop the cattle from snapping at him.

That could take a while.

Bored, I let my gaze slide through the small arena in the academy's basement. The grandstand had twelve rows that were drawn in a circle around the cage in the middle. Even if the whole academy would show up here, there would still be places free. There were simply not enough people who wanted to become Venators, hunters who were only there to rid the earth of the monsters of this world. Way too dangerous. The death rate on this job was extremely high. But the alternative would be to lock yourself under the pillow in his house with a gun, hoping the monsters wouldn't find you. That wasn't mine. I didn't want to hide, I wanted revenge and that's why I was here. So not here in the sense of the arena, but here in the sense of here in the academy. I was only here in the arena for lessons. Too complicated? Yes, my head was starting to hurt too.

“Can you read through the essay?” Evangeline tore me from my nonsensical thoughts. With her big brown eyes and reddish hair she always reminded me of a collie. The narrow, slightly too pointed face also matched it.

I looked down at her writing. "You mean the essay that was due today in the first lesson?"

Without answering, she held the pad under my nose so that it was almost stuck to my face. Now I had the choice between grabbing and risking that she poked my eye out with the corner. I decided to grab it and immediately regretted it. Evangeline had a terrible pig claw and the fact that she had been writing on her knees all the time didn't really get any better. Oh man, what not to do for your friends.

I had to lean forward a little to read the scrawly script. Fortunately, I already had some experience translating their hieroglyphs. The making of the monsters was the headline. Well, I was curious..........

Almost exactly fourteen years ago a gene was developed in a research laboratory that was supposed to prevent mutations in the womb so that children could no longer be born deformed or disabled (both physically and mentally). It was tested on various pregnant dams (monkeys, dogs, cats, rats, mice, martens and even a few lizards, for what reasons I know). At the beginning everything worked quite well so far, the first test results were absolutely terrific, but the ambitious Doctor Christopher Krynick's research was progressing too slowly. Animals are not humans and the prescribed procedures until the agent could be tested on humans were forever. So he decided to use radioactive radiation to force the gene to mutate so that it could be applied to humans (I still haven't understood how one can be reconciled with the other, but I'm not a scientist either). He tried to create a gametic gene mutation. According to his theory, only two gametes (also known as sex cells or germ cells ) had to be brought together (one of which was the genetically manipulated one). By union of two gametes produces a diploid zygote , from which a new individual can develop. The union of the gametes is known as the sex process or gametogamy . With the genetically manipulated gametes, he wanted to prevent mutations after fertilization. From the resulting embryos, he took further cells for further research in order to create the mega-super medicine that would bring him the Nobel Prize. Unfortunately, the good Doctor Christopher Krynick was a little too ambitious. Something went wrong with his research and the babies ( proles ) that were created by the manipulated gene and who survived gave birth to deformed young themselves. Mutations that not only looked different from their species, but also developed strange properties. For example, there was a dog that was three times the size of normal for a dog of his breed and was a color that was somewhere between black and blue (yes, I mean real blue). He also had additional claws, which were supplied with poison by glands. If you were injured with this claw, you suffered poisoning to which you succumbed in a very short time (the poison destroyed the blood clotting. Arteries were clogged and at some point burst like a balloon, you bled to death from within). Otherwise these descendants also showed behavioral disorders. Your instincts have been reduced to three simple ones. Eating, reproduction and defense of territory. In doing so, they were extremely aggressive. And they were all intelligent above average. The intelligence of these first proles came very close to that of humans (today that is no longer the case, today they are just mindless eating machines that are geared towards reproduction. Well, most of them at least). The really dangerous part of the descendants - the proles , as they are called (yes, I know, I've mentioned it a few times above) - were killed, but the harmless part was kept for further research. Just like the dams (both pregnant and those that had already had young). At this point in time there was no danger to mankind, since all this research was carried out in secret behind closed doors in a secure research facility à la espionage. Nobody came in or out without access authorization and that was a good thing.            

I raised my eyebrows. “À la espionage?” That was almost even better than her comments in brackets, which she always wrote in the text.

"Read on," she asked me.

Well, that could be something.

At the same time, the until then little known animal welfare group Live For Animals learned about the animal experiments in this facility. They managed to smuggle in one of their people in order to get access authorization and in an illegal nightly operation they broke into the building with the intention of freeing the animals there. They not only released normal animals, but also pregnant animals that had embryos infected with the gene in their wombs. A couple of the proles were also released, some of them attacked their liberators and staged a huge bloodbath. It is not known exactly how many animals the research facility housed, these numbers were never released to the public. Only so much: Most of them were released and of those who did not kill each other, a little more than four dozen were able to free themselves not only from the cages they had brought with them, but also from the building. Through the birth of the genetically modified proles and the mating with normal animals, or with each other, the offspring multiplied with incredible speed. With their defensive abilities (such as the poison thing) and the fact that they were not only bigger than their natural counterparts, the proles had no natural enemies to stop them. Everything that stood in their way was eaten and yes, people are also on their menu. And since it was not considered necessary during the research to install a fuse (such as infertility, for example), the monsters are now reproducing fresh, happily, and have become the greatest threat humanity has ever faced. Nothing can stop them.

The End.