Another thing that may have nurtured my motivation to give my life over to D-MISE aside from the big picture may have been the morbid curiosity. The Star Dog technology had broken through a veil in our world and opened our eyes to new possibilities, and many others were taking that to heart. D-MISE was among them. I was curious about their experiments that sought to replicate the unique Star Dog formula. I had seen monsters evolve from a Petri dish. I saw where they hold them. I saw when the first one got away. I saw all of this not because I was told where to go, nor was it a part of my missions, but because I needed to satiate my own curiosity as much as I needed to breathe, and I figured it out for myself.

I’m used to the dance. I’m used to changing partners. I’m used to the music changing, and change it does. Soon, we’ll all have the power to change.

Creatures made from hybrid myths were hidden throughout the city, assigned to various caretakers. Human arrogance prevailed again, and more and more of the creatures are finding themselves loose. Some were from negligence. Others were simply underestimated. Whatever the case, Prism City is becoming even more unsafe for those that deign to walk the streets. If you’re of the many that have housing that corporations hand out like rewards to their vassals, I’m sure you’ll be safe. I’m sure you’ll never have reason to believe that these monsters exist. I’m sure your family won’t be torn asunder by nature overtaking the city.

As for everyone else, they’ve lost their skepticism to desperation. They know the monsters exist. They’ve heard the roars in the sewer, and saw something gliding past the moon just beyond Prism Tower. I’ve been taking notes. I know almost every monster as they were my beloved pet. I named them, although that’s only something you and I will ever know. Everyone else has their own names for them, and I know about those too. Their caretakers knew them by their identification numbers, although most of those are just arbitrary silver plaques on broken, empty cages.

I saw the program too, the one that used to be Star Dog’s. With a few clicks and button presses, a line of code could be inserted or removed, and his entire personality would change on a whim. His memories were uploaded, and his genome was edited like a word document. They could have made him purple with pink polka-dots if they wanted, but instead they chose that star on his hip. D-MISE started using that program, but I can’t tell you yet how they got it. You can probably guess, but they’ve been using it to alter the genes of their sideshow projects. They didn’t find what they were looking for, but they did find a lot of other things.

For instance, they found out that reptilian DNA doesn’t play well with mammalian DNA, but that didn’t deter them very much.