rayzrreptile lived up to his username and created this phenomenal piece of art of a poor, poor inferior human giving in to Lizard Serum... they have that in GAS FORM now?! A big shout out as always to the artist, because the writing wouldn't exist without the juicy art to go along with it! Click or tap !!HERE!! to view more art from Ray!

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The stench hit him first. Wet copper, burning wires, all mixed into the damp, putrid air of the sewer. Max Keller pulled the collar of his jacket up over his nose, not that it helped much. The flashlight attached to his chest rig flickered across old concrete walls, streaked with algae and lined with thick cables snaking toward the shadows.

He stepped carefully along a narrow catwalk bolted above sluggish green water. The sound of his boots echoed in the massive chamber, bouncing off curved walls that vanished into blackness. Up ahead, a dull electric hum cut through the silence. That was what brought him here. That, and the rumors.

People whispered about strange lights seen beneath the city, bizarre creatures stalking alleys near the river, and a corporate name that kept coming up in Freedom of Information requests.

Max had seen enough dead ends in his career to know when a story was just a story. But this?  This was different. He'd hacked into a forgotten municipal archive and found blueprints for a subterranean testing site connected to old research tunnels.

Then came the leaks, photographs showing huge, lizard like figures. Aliens? At first he thought it was someone playing with props. Now, with every step echoing down this dank corridor, he wasn’t so sure.

He came to a rusted service hatch, partially open. Max crouched, pried it wider, and slipped through into a cavernous chamber.

Rows of humming machines lined the walls, blinking with lights in alien patterns. Tubes the width of tree trunks pulsed faintly with a green glow, leading into a central device that looked more like a meat grinder than anything from a physics lab. The walls were covered in displays, jagged graphs, and high speed footage of something moving far too quickly to be seen clearly.

Max raised his camera. A quick snap. Another. He muttered notes into his recorder, voice hushed.

"Underground chamber. Power systems online. Machinery operational. This isn’t abandoned. Someone’s still using this place."

A click made him freeze. Then a thud.

Something rolled into the room, bounced twice, and hissed.

Max's heart skipped. A canister, matte silver, no label. He took a step back as it began spewing a thick, greenish vapor that curled low to the ground like fog on a poisoned moor.

His instincts screamed to run, but before he could move, the gas washed over his boots and began to rise. He yanked his shirt up over his nose and stumbled back toward the hatch, but something shifted behind him. Not a noise exactly, more like the pressure in the room changed. He turned, eyes watering, and squinted through the haze.

A sound like wet leather dragged across the concrete floor.

Then he saw it.

A tail. Huge, thick, ridged along the spine like a crocodile's, but smoother and longer snaked past the open door. It moved slowly, curling inward then pausing, the tip twitching. Pale steam hissed off its surface where the gas met its flesh. Max didn’t breathe.

He ducked beneath the nearest workstation, crawling on his elbows into the narrow gap under a table bolted to the floor. His gear clinked against the metal and he winced, trying to hold it still. Above him, rows of monitors buzzed softly, casting green light in rhythmic pulses that lit the undersides of the table and flickered on his face.

His camera was still in his hand, but his fingers were frozen. From the raw instinct that told him one wrong move would get him killed.

The tail paused again near the door, then slowly slithered further into the chamber. It was followed by a massive silhouette, mostly obscured by the lingering gas. But Max could see the shape of it, broad shoulders, a hunched posture, arms too long, hands curled into claws that glinted wetly with every step. Not just claws. Talons. It moved on its toes, digitigrade like a raptor, each footfall making almost no sound despite its bulk.

Max pressed his back to the wall beneath the table, heart pounding so loud he was sure it would give him away. His camera lens caught a brief flicker of the creature’s reflection in a monitor’s glass. The thing’s head was elongated, crested, like a dragon sculpted out of wet obsidian. No eyes. Or maybe they were just covered, shielded by some kind of membrane. But it was aware. It tilted its head slowly, sniffing the air, nostrils flaring.

The gas was almost gone now, and so was his cover.

Max resisted the urge to cough. His lungs itched with the chemical fog, but he gritted his teeth and stayed still. The creature took another step, closer to the table now, claws dragging lightly along the floor. It was tracking something. Him. No doubt.

He could see the thick, scaled fingers curl around the edge of the table above, nails clicking gently on the surface.

The creature froze. For one horrifying second, Max thought it was about to flip the table and expose him. But instead, it leaned in, nostrils flaring again, head pivoting slightly to the left as if listening. The hum of machinery continued, a soft droning counterpoint to the building thump in Max’s chest.

Suddenly, a distant clatter echoed from the far end of the chamber. A panel falling? Another pipe groaning loose? Whatever it was, it drew the creature’s attention. Its head twitched toward the sound, and it let out a slow, rattling exhale that smelled faintly of ozone and rot. Then it turned, each step unnervingly smooth for something so large.

Max didn’t move. Not yet.

He watched its back as it crept toward the disturbance, tail sweeping behind it like a wrecking cable. As it passed a column of glass cylinders filled with sloshing green fluid, Max caught a better glimpse of its profile: double jointed legs, a ridged spine running from shoulder to hip, and strange mechanical elements embedded in its flesh. Cables. Ports. Its shoulder had something like a junction box screwed directly into the skin, wires trailing down the arm and disappearing beneath armored plating. It wasn’t just a creature. It was built.

When it reached the far wall, the creature paused, crouching low to inspect the source of the noise. It tapped a claw against a vent cover. Listening. Testing.

Max used that moment to move.

Carefully, inch by inch, he slid out from under the table and crawled along the base of the workstation, keeping low and in shadow. The green lights overhead pulsed slower now, dimmer, like the power grid was straining to hold. He knew better than to make a break for the hatch yet. The thing was still too close, and the echo in this place could carry the sound of a footstep across the chamber like a gunshot.

He made it to a row of tall cabinets and crouched behind them. The stale air was thick with machine oil and metal dust. He risked raising his camera again, angling it between two steel panels to capture a grainy image of the creature hunched by the vent. The shutter click was nearly silent, but Max’s breath caught all the same.

The creature's head jerked toward him. Not a full turn. Just a twitch. Max froze, finger on the lens, barely daring to blink.

It didn’t move further. Instead, it seemed to wait. Testing him.

Max slowly lowered the camera. This wasn’t just a mindless beast. It was thinking. He could feel it. Not in any way he could explain. It was more like a pressure behind the eyes. A presence.

Then, the thing stood and turned away again, moving toward one of the tubes on the wall. It reached up with both arms and placed its claws into a recessed control panel. The wall opened. A panel hissed free, revealing a darker tunnel behind it, slick with condensation and lined with cables. The creature stepped inside without hesitation, vanishing into the dark.

Max waited. Thirty seconds. A full minute. No return.

Only then did he breathe again, air sharp in his throat.

He shifted his weight, pushing up to his knees. A low pop cracked from his spine. Then another. He paused, confused. His joints felt stiff… no- tight. Tight like he’d been running, he had. Tight like he slept badly.

Like his body wasn’t quite sitting right inside his own skin. His hands trembled slightly as he reached for the camera, and his fingers brushed the casing with a strange texture. His fingertips felt numb, slick almost.

He pulled his hand up to inspect it.

The skin was darker. Faded black, with a matte finish. He rubbed at it, thinking it might be grime or residue from the gas, but it didn’t come off. Worse, his nails had thickened. They were longer, harder, curling downward into dull claws. His palms had become rough, with calloused ridges forming along the pads of his fingers.

His pulse spiked. He reached for his recorder with both hands, but his grip was clumsy. The recorder slipped, clattered to the floor.

Max staggered, dizzy. His balance tipped forward, his vision swimming in a sickly green haze. He blinked hard, trying to focus, but the air felt thick and syrupy in his lungs. Every breath made his chest feel tighter.

His skin itched.

He reached up to scratch his neck but froze as his fingertips scraped something rough. His throat was dry, cracked, but more than that... it felt different. He looked down and watched in stunned horror as his pale skin darkened before his eyes, veins disappearing under an encroaching black. The tone deepened to charcoal, then shifted again to a smooth, dark greenish black sheen.

Scales.

They weren’t just a rash or texture change. They were real, thick, overlapping plates forming in patches. The skin around his shoulders cracked open slightly as the scales pushed through, growing denser, wider. His fingernails throbbed, then split, lengthening into sharp, curved claws. They gleamed faintly in the green light, deadly and foreign.

Max cried out, but his voice was hoarse and low, slipping into a growl halfway through. He stumbled, knees hitting the ground hard. His short, shorts jeans ripped at the seams as his thighs ballooned with muscle. Black scales followed the expansion, crawling across his legs like armor plating growing on their own.

His shirt tore next. His chest surged forward, muscles swelling unnaturally, skin stretching before hard scales erupted through the fabric. His shoulders cracked outward, arms thickening, his torso pulling into a broad, barrel like shape. His gut tightened, but not with fat, it was a wall of muscle now, rigid and segmented under the last shredded bits of cloth.

His shoes gave out with a sudden pop. His toes stretched forward, splitting through the fabric, claws bursting from the tips. The feet that emerged weren’t human. They were heavy, padded, and shaped for digging into the earth, with three thick toes and a smaller fourth curled on the side. Scales quickly swallowed the last of his ankles.

His tailbone pushed hard, painfully. Max twisted, groaning as a thick mass extended from his spine, splitting his shorts wide open. A full tail slid free, muscular, long, and lined with jagged ridges. It twitched and thumped against the ground without his permission.

He was breathing fast now. Too fast. His face was hot, flushed. Then his skull throbbed.

It began pushing outward.

A jolt of pain lanced up his spine. He arched involuntarily, mouth open but silent. His shirt shifted oddly around him. The straps of his chest rig stretched taut, then popped, one of the buckles snapped free as his torso swelled outward, ribcage expanding with audible creaks. Max scrambled back, gasping, only to fall against the workstation as his spine cracked again. His back hunched as vertebrae rearranged, his posture warping.

A lump. Growing, pushing, extending out past his belt. His shorts tightened sharply as something thick forced its way down along his thighs. He grabbed at it instinctively, fingers brushing against a slick, segmented tail. It twitched under his touch, and the sensation shot up through his back like static. He gasped, stomach clenching.

His boots felt tight. Too tight.

He looked down just in time to see them bulge at the seams. His feet swelled, toes cracking audibly as they lengthened, the bones rearranging. The boots ripped open in jagged lines. What emerged wasn’t human, broad digits, thick with knobby joints and covered in the same dark, scaled skin as his hands. The nails had become talons, sharp and slightly curved. His soles were wider now, the heels pulling upward as his legs shifted into a digitigrade stance. The pressure in his knees spiked; the joint reshaped, higher and more angled. He collapsed forward onto all fours, unable to stand upright anymore.

His tongue felt thick in his mouth.

He coughed, choking, and spat bile onto the floor, but the taste wasn’t human. It was metallic. His jaw tingled, then burned. He grabbed at his face as the bones beneath shifted, pushing forward. His nose flattened, nostrils flaring wider as cartilage warped. His upper jaw cracked and pushed out into a short snout. His cheekbones flared. His ears throbbed and slid up the sides of his head, becoming pointed, more like ridges than anything else. The sound of blood rushing filled his skull, and for a few seconds he couldn’t hear anything else.

He was no longer hiding from the creature.

He was the next one.

His voice was gone.

His shape was no longer his own.

And behind him, the figure in the smoke smiled.

The green fog churned, parting like it was afraid of what stepped through it. Max looked up, nostrils twitching at the scent of something strong and musky. Heavy footsteps echoed closer, wet and deep.

Towering nearly seven feet tall, the creature loomed, a monstrous silhouette of scales, muscle, and menace. Thick, dark green skin covered every inch of him, sinewy and tight. His head was long and reptilian, with a blunt snout filled with rows of jagged teeth that curled into a wide, unnatural grin. His eyes were yellow with vertical slits, glowing faintly even in the light. Sharp claws clicked as he flexed his massive fingers.

A filthy, torn lab coat hung from his shoulders, the sleeves barely containing his mutated arms. It trailed behind him like a warped mockery of his human past. Shreds of dress pants clung uselessly to his legs. His long, muscular tail lashed behind him, dragging through the fog and leaving a trail of clawed footprints.

The Lizard.

The real one.

He stopped just inches from Max and slowly clapped his clawed hands. The sound was sharp, wet, cruel. With his final clap, he brought one massive foot down on the discarded camera, crushing it into splinters and circuitry.

"Amazing," he hissed, voice gravelly and thick with pride. "You took to the gas faster than expected. Must be that journalistic tenacity."

He leaned down, examining Max with slitted eyes full of cruel amusement.

"You're going to make an excellent minion."

The Lizard’s clawed hand reached out and ruffled Max’s spiky mane. It wasn’t gentle. The touch scraped against his scalp, and where the claws moved, tufts of hair broke loose and drifted to the floor. More hair slid off with it, falling around his feet in limp patches. His head tingled with exposure, skin toughening beneath the remaining scales.

"Don't worry," the Lizard said, almost playfully. "You won’t miss it."

He reached into the coat pocket and pulled out another grenade, its canister marked with the same strange green emblem as the first. He didn’t throw it this time. He popped the top with one thick claw and held it in his palm as it began to hiss.

Gas spewed upward.

Thick and heavy.

He tilted the grenade forward and wafted it directly under Max’s snout.

“Breathe deep,” he said, voice low and commanding. “Let it finish what it started.”

Max didn’t have time to pull away. The gas hit his nose hard, making his eyes water and his throat burn. His body swayed again as the last of the resistance drained out of him. The fog crept into his lungs like it belonged there.

His ears were the first to change this time. They twitched, shrank, and folded into his skull. The cartilage softened and then hardened into ridges along the side of his head.

Any remaining human softness was gone. His hearing sharpened to painful clarity. Every drip from the pipes above, every scrape of a claw in the fog, hit his brain like a cymbal crash.

His neck thickened with a crack. Muscle swelled rapidly, pushing his shoulders wider as his collarbones crunched and reset. Vertebrae bulged against the skin as the base of his neck stretched, making room for more mass.

Scales continued crawling across his chest, sealing the last patches of human skin under a smooth, dark surface. The shirt clung to him in shredded threads.

Max’s arms bulked up next. His biceps ballooned, skin stretching before vanishing beneath heavy black scales.

His fingernails curled and blackened into claws, sharp and thick. His fingers grew wider, more powerful, losing fine dexterity but gaining raw strength. His sleeves tore all the way up, falling off as his arms twisted into the tools of a predator.

His torso followed with a tight spasm that forced him onto one knee. His ribs pushed out, reshaping. His chest deepened, bones creaking as a thick plate of muscle pressed forward. His abdomen expanded into a solid wall of strength.

Every breath now made his torso flex visibly. His back popped with each new segment of scale forming down his spine.

Then came his legs.

Max cried out as his thighs swelled violently more than before, denim shorts shredding along the seams. His knees cracked loudly, legs bowing as his stance shifted. His calves thickened, bending backward at a new angle.

His feet lengthened and split, bones pushing through skin as claws tore out the front of his sneakers. His soles expanded into massive, clawed paws planted firmly against the floor. Any trace of human footwear was left in tatters around his new lizard feet.

Finally, his tail surged. The stub that had twitched earlier suddenly extended with force. Vertebrae popped into place one after the other in a rapid chain. The new limb stretched behind him, thick and strong, dragging on the floor with weight. It was fully scaled, tapering to a muscular point, flexing on its own.

Max’s breathing slowed. His eyes blinked, reptilian and alert. He stared at his claws, then at the Lizard, who stood watching with a smirk.

It was done. His body was no longer human.

He looked like the creature, The Lizard, tall, scaled, broad, and bestial. The reporter named Max was buried under muscle, claws, and instincts.

Max clutched his massive, clawed hands to his head. His breathing was ragged. Somewhere inside the thick reptilian frame, the last fragments of the man he had been trembled in panic. His long tail lashed the floor behind him. His jaws clenched.

“I’m still… me,” he growled, voice guttural, distorted.

The Lizard stepped closer, holding the hissing canister in one scaled palm like it was a wine glass. He tilted it forward just slightly, letting the green smoke curl around Max’s snout again.

“Don’t fight it,” he said softly, almost mockingly. “Breathe deep. You were born for this.”

Max tried to resist, but his instincts betrayed him. His nostrils flared. The gas flooded his lungs again. It didn’t burn this time. It felt warm. Welcome. His arms dropped to his sides.

Then came the laughter.

Low at first, bubbling up from his gut. Then louder. Hysterical. Feral. Max tilted his head back and howled with laughter, the sound echoing off the tile walls like madness itself. The Lizard joined in, voice sharp and unhinged. Their combined laughter filled the laboratory with a rhythm of chaos.

The Lizard grinned, showing jagged teeth. He spread his arms wide.

“Now, we bring evolution to the entire tri-state area.”

Max nodded, eyes wild. He didn’t hesitate. He didn’t question. He belonged to this now.

Together, they disappeared into the gas filled halls, their footfalls heavy and deliberate. They had a plan, a stockpile of grenades, and all the time they needed.

By dawn, the city would wake up to the sound of roars. The new kind. The lizard kind.