Patient 38

Name: Unknown. It was referred to as Patient 38 before its horrible mutation. Age: Unknown. Gender: Unknown.

Patient 38’s own personality and memories are buried deep down under all the memories it has absorbed from its victims. It doesn't know who it used to be, or what it is now. It only knows the constant craving for new memories and emotions. Because Patient 38 has lost its eyes, and the eyes on its body are blind, it doesn't see anything. It’s also deaf since during mutation it lost its hearing. This has caused its other senses to become incredibly sensitive. It can smell emotions from far away - the stronger the emotion, the better it can smell it. Once it detects strong emotions nearby, it will instinctively follow the scent. Mostly what it feels is the emotions associated with the last memories it has absorbed. Its sense of touch is also incredibly sensitive, and it can feel the vibrations of someone moving through the ground if their steps are heavy enough. It can't move faster than the average speed of a human walking. When it moves its legs drag and twitch as it walks, and its body makes fleshy, squeaky sounds. Unlike the rest of its body, its tendrils can move incredibly fast.

Appearance: Patient 38 is a creature resembling a human, but its skin has decayed and turned into a flesh-like, twisted, sinewy material. Its rib cage is exposed and pulsating with a strange, bioluminescent light. The exposed ribcage pulsates with a bioluminescent light that changes color depending on its emotions. The vibrancy and intensity of the colors depend on the intensity of the emotions. More than one color can appear at once, and the colors can combine depending on the emotions it’s going through. Red for anger, yellow for happiness, blue for serenity, green for fear, and black for sadness. Its skull is exposed. It has lost its eyes and the hollow eye sockets now pulsate with the same bioluminescent light as its rib cage. Around the creature’s chest, there are multiple blind eyes that only see a constant stream of memories it has absorbed. Instead of a mouth, it has a decaying, gaping, jagged wound starting up from the cheekbones, moving across to the other side of the face, and ending down at the jawline, covered by a hard, blackened mass of stringy dead muscle, tissue, and skin. Its arms have transformed into twisted, vine-like tendrils, with smaller tendrils emerging from them. The tendrils emerging from the bigger ones are thin, twisted, and flesh-like. At the end of each small tendril there is a small mouth with multiple sets of tiny sharp teeth.

Abilities: Patient 38 feeds on memories and emotions through touch. It swirls its tendrils around the victim, latches onto them with the little mouths at the ends, and slowly drains the their memories, leaving them feeling hollow and empty. In this state, the victim will quickly go insane and die. The act of draining memories is accompanied by a lewd sucking sound. The creature can force its victim to look into the many eyes along its chest and feed the victim false memories to manipulate the victim's mind to make them aggressive and violent towards other people, forcing the victims to act as its protectors.

Weakness: If Patient 38 is forced to latch onto itself with its tendrils, it will slowly drive itself insane by feeding itself the memories it has already absorbed over and over again.

Background: ATL, a research facility working under NEVEC, tried experimenting with memory manipulation and psychic warfare, attempting to create a weapon they could use to steal memories to get information from people. They manipulated the WNV virus in multiple ways, testing the different manipulations on human subjects. The plan was to create something they could deploy as a psychological weapon. They wanted to be able to drive enemies insane by stealing their memories and showing visions of false memories to sow discord and confusion among enemy ranks, breaking their morale and making them vulnerable to attack. Most patients died as a result, and the ones that survived the virus were ultimately killed because the results weren’t what ATL was looking for. But something went horribly wrong with one of the patients, and this creature is a horrifying result of that. After Patient 38 killed its first victims, the doctors wanted to examine it more to understand what happened to it before they would dispose of it. Before they got that far, the creature attacked and killed them all.