#ourwriting

“Injury?” Jeremy asks him. He notices sweat starting to bead on the other man's forehead.

“I don’t think so. It’s not that kind of pain. It’s… I don’t know how to describe it. It’s…”

“Like a dull ache?” Matt asks.

“Exactly!” Gavin says. “How’d you know?”

Matt rubs at the side of his head. “I got it too. Must be something to do with whatever they’ve done to us.”

Now that it's been brought up, the rest of the group can feel an aching sensation in different parts of their bodies. Ky wonders if what she's feeling at the base of her back is the same thing they're talking about. It's hard to focus on the current conversation though with the aching on her head growing more and more.

The others fall back into conversation, this time the focus is on which video game hero would be the best to rescue them. Some pipe in with their opinions, but it has mostly come down to Link for Michael and Master Chief for Jeremy, both men arguing their points across the room. Watching the two go back and forth is entertaining for Alfredo until realizes that the ache that had developed in his gums isn't fading with time like he’d hoped. Rather, it's growing worse. Soon enough, he can taste the bitter iron taste of blood.

He prods at one of his upper canines, where the pain is the worst, with his tongue. He jolts upright from his bed when the tooth moves.

In the cell beside him, the movement catches Trevor’s attention. Despite his own agony in his head and his lower back, he still pulls himself up to check on Alfredo. “Are you okay, Fredo?” The nickname falls easily from Trevor's mouth as if he hadn't just met this man only hours ago.

Alfredo spits, and it isn’t just bloody saliva that escapes him. A tooth clatters onto the floor of his cell. For a while, he just stares, uncaring of the blood in his mouth. Trevor doesn’t speak either - there isn’t much he can say. None of this makes sense to him.

Alfredo licks at the new gap in his teeth, and then he jolts again, his hands finally coming to his mouth to feel inside. Then he makes a soft whimpering sound.

“What?” Trevor asks him. “Fredo?”

Alfredo is shuddering, and his finger is still in his mouth when he whispers something Trevor can’t make out. Trevor scoots closer to the glass between them and motions to his ear. “I can’t hear you.”

Alfredo withdraws his finger, shaking his head in disbelief. “I think there’s another tooth,” he repeats.

“That… you’re losing?”

“No!” Alfredo wails. “I mean, yes, but… There’s another tooth growing! There’s one underneath!”

If Trevor could take his hands to steady him, he would right now. “That’s not possible.”

"Well it's fucking happening, Trevor!"

Alfredo's panicked yell halts all conversation around them. Trevor places his hands on the glass separating them wishing that he could reach out to the other man. Another tooth joins the first on the floor when Alfredo spits it out, this one just as bloody as the first. Trevor can feel nausea start to curl in his stomach. There's no way this is real. There's just no way.

A scream of pain from Gavin's cell yanks his attention away from Alfredo. Trevor moves to the door of his cell to try and get a better view of what's happening. He sees Gavin turned in on himself and he swears he can see the muscles on Gavin's back spasming, rolling and twitching in a way Trevor has never seen before. Not outside of a movie anyway. Gavin lets out another pained yell and Trevor can hear Michael freaking out next to him.

"Gavin, what's wrong?" Michael shouts, the worry evident in his voice.

Gavin is completely curled around his stomach with his arms wrapped tight around him. His legs give out and he falls to his knees, the floor of his cell offering no comfort. The noises of pain he's making fill the cell block as everyone watches in horror at Gavin's rapidly deteriorating state.

Michael slams his hands against the glass, a question resting on his tongue when he feels a sudden stabbing pain in his lower back. Although turning away from Gavin is the last thing he wants to do, Michael's body arches suddenly and he lets out a scream of pain while the others watch on helplessly. The pounding in his head is growing more insistent by the second. Without warning, Michael falls to his knees and starts to convulse. Though his body is fully occupied in trying to fight off whatever this change is, a rush of activity pulls his attention to the door of the cell block. Two lab-coated men bustle into the room with a gurney in tow and immediately go to the door of Gavin's cell. Michael watches in shock as the men grab Gavin by his arms and lift him to lay flat on the gurney, paying no mind to the pained noises coming out of the man's mouth.

"Where are you assholes taking him?" Jeremy shouts from across the hall. Ignoring Jeremy's question the two men strap Gavin onto the gurney. Gavin’s body arches in the restraints trying to alleviate the pressure from his back as he screams in pain. All Michael can do is watch in horror as Gavin is wheeled through the cell block door with no explanation as to where they are taking him. It seems most of the others are too occupied with their own transforming bodies to pay much mind to the group's missing member, but Michael yells out Gavin's name one more time before he's rendered speechless from the pain, so the word comes out more as a hiss than a cry.

--

The pain is almost unbearable by the time Gavin is dragged into a small laboratory. There’s a large, metallic table in the center of the room - it doesn’t look the most comfortable, but when they shove Gavin on top, they don’t allow him to lie down. Harsh lights from overhead are directed onto him and he swears he can feel the heat of the fluorescent lights on his back. They strip his shirt away from him and in a kneeled position, hunched over thanks to the agony of his back, they take his wrists and bind them before him in stiff, cloth cuffs.

“What’s happening?” Gavin sobs, asking for the dozenth time since they snatched him from his cell.

Just as before, there's no response. One of the men speaks into a recording device: “September 13th, batch 32, subject 1. Crested Lark. Subject has taken initial DNA recombination well. Phenotypic results to follow.”

“What’s happening to me?” Gavin begs once more, before he lets out a blood-curdling scream and drops against his elbow. He can feel tears prick in the corner of his eyes and release to run down his cheeks. The muscles in his back spasm, and between his collar-bones, his bones begin to shift in an unnatural way. It isn’t long until skin begins to break and blood spills, pushing the heavy scent of iron into the air. Something is pushing its way out of the wound.

Whatever it is pushing out of Gavin’s back, it’s blood-coated. No, there’s two things, each pushing out in a different direction. The two things grow and unfurl. They’re bony things, with something pushing out of the fresh, pale flesh stretched over them. Whatever grows out of these new bony structures pushes down through the new flesh. They're feathers. Long, golden-brown feathers. Through gritted teeth, Gavin roars in agony again. As he does, the things, the wings on his back, draw together, rising high as they grow. By the end of his anguished cry, the final feathers are pushing against the high ceiling, until Gavin collapses onto the table and faints from shock. The wings fall to the floor around him, sprawling, and finally stop growing.

Beside the table, Dr. Rhodes wears a smile of unbridled pride. “Beautiful,” she coos, stepping forward to touch the soft, fresh feathers of Gavin’s wings. She bites her lip and tips her head, assessing them like a thing of curiosity, and checks Gavin’s pulse only as an afterthought. “Initial change looks good. I think we’ve finally cracked it. Call the sponsors. If the next few subjects survive, I’d like them to witness one of the changes. I’m sure they’ll be thrilled with the progress.”

--

“Something’s wrong…” Lindsay says quietly as they try to stand. “I… Oh no…”

Their body shudders, and their legs give way. They catch themselves with one arm, while the other clutches at their stomach. What little food they had managed to retain, they wretch up.

“Lindsay!” Ky cries, crawling to the glass that separates them. But she is helpless, just as the others are. A sheen of sweat shines on Ky's forehead and she can feel the aches throbbing through her own body. Fear makes her tremble at the thought that she has lost all control of the transformation her body is about to go through. If any of the three transforming before her indicate anything, it's that this is going to be nothing short of painful.

The rest of them watch on in horror, their own pain momentarily forgotten about, as Lindsay’s body begins to seize and writhe, and they scream. Their head feels like it's about to explode from the pressure building inside it. Blood begins to mat their hair, and they cough and splutter. Like Alfredo and Trevor before them, teeth clatter to the floor - forced out by newer and sharper inhuman teeth.

The bottom of their spine begins to morph and push out, stretching taught skin over it. The sounds of bones breaking and rearranging fills their cell. Brown fur forces its way out along the length of it, hiding much of the blood and the horror of the transformation. Something similar happens atop their head, as new forms push out from beneath their hair. Two round things, covered with the same brown fur as their new tail.

It’s around that point that Lindsay blacks out.

--

When they wake up a couple of minutes later, the transformation is over, and the pain is mercifully dulled. They release a groan, which morphs into a strange, not quite human whine.

“Lindsay?” Ky whispers. She sounds so afraid.

Lindsay feels something atop their head flicker in response to the noise. They reach up with a hesitant hand and immediately feel something small and soft shifting back and forth at all the noise in the cell block. They're ears. Lindsay lets out a gasp at the realization. They have fucking animal ears.

Like a bolt, Lindsay is upright. “Oh, my god!”

“Linds, try not to panic,” BK says slowly, like she’s trying to subdue her own terror. But at least she can speak - most of the others are shocked into silence. Though Lindsay doesn’t notice through their own fright, Matt had passed out while they were unconscious and remains slumped on his bed. Alfredo doesn’t look so great either.

The situation is so unexplainable, so terrifying, so fucked, that Lindsay simply can’t process it. To the others, they may appear that they’re holding it together well - BK even gives them a small smile of approval - but inside, Lindsay’s mind is a mess. If they calm down a little, they might find the clarity to scream. It doesn’t help that everything is so loud, and every scent is so prominent, giving Lindsay a nauseating sensation of contradictory normalness and gross unnaturalness. “What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck?!”

Through the stench of fear, and the obvious scent of human, one other scent catches Lindsay’s attention. It catches it because it’s a smell they know - one that is not only familiar but somehow greatly comforting. It takes a moment for them to put their finger on what exactly it is, but almost no time at all for them to realize that the scent is coming from the direction of Michael’s cell.

But Michael has yet to emerge from beneath his blanket. Perhaps he’s asleep. Perhaps he’s too afraid to look at what has happened to Lindsay - they wouldn’t blame him if that was the case. Perhaps there’s a good reason for it.

They lean towards his cell, tipping their head in concern and curiosity as they eye the mass beneath the blanket, looking for anything unusual. “Michael?”

The mass under the blanket makes no move to answer Lindsay. But that doesn't mean he doesn't respond at all. There's a flicker of something - the muffled sound of something soft brushing against the blanket that Lindsay's new hypersensitive ears have no trouble picking up. Now they're certain.

"It happened to you too, didn't it?" Lindsay asks quietly, softly, like speaking to a frightened animal. "Michael, look at me."

A few moments of silence pass before the blanket starts to shift and two brown eyes filled with disbelief stare out at Lindsay. He takes them in for a long time. Their ears, their tail, their strange scent, the way their body still trembles from fear yet they don't let it show on their face for Michael's sake. They know. There's no point hiding.

His quivering hands pull back the blanket entirely from his head, and there's a collective gasp from the others. But he goes no further than that. His new brown ears are on display, but he's not ready for them to ogle at the black and brown striped tail he has curled around his leg.

The silence is deafening, and Michael is just about to retreat into his blanket again when a smile breaks across Lindsay's face. Their nerves and fear are still clear to see, but they manage to laugh sweetly. "Michael, you're part cat! I love cats!"

Michael doesn't retreat underneath the blanket, but the scowl on his face could curdle milk. It just makes Lindsay smile even more. They can see the movement of his tail twitching back and forth underneath the blanket in annoyance. Their plan seems to be working when they see that some of the panic has faded from Michael's eyes. Lindsay would rather him be annoyed than terrified.

Michael opens his mouth to hiss some harsh retort when the group's attention is pulled yet again to the entrance of the cell block as Gavin is placed back in his cell. His restraints are quickly undone and he is unceremoniously dumped onto the floor. Gavin’s return does little to calm the rest of the captives. Though he does his best to hide these stupid things, pulling his blanket from his bed to bury himself beneath, he can still feel the shocked stares of his companions. He stubbornly dries his tears and deals with it. He’d probably stare too, if he was in their situation. They must be petrified.

Sure enough, Jeremy’s voice is shaking when he speaks up. “What’s happening? Fuck, what’s happening to us?!” Gavin can hear him across the aisle through the blanket pulled over his head, pacing repeatedly in his cell.

“You should sit down, Jeremy,” Matt’s quiet voice says. “You don’t look so good.”

Jeremy’s response is a scream. Maybe it started out as one of frustration, but it soon morphs into one of agony. Others begin to cry out his name, and Gavin hears him fall, but he can’t bring himself to watch. It will only bring back the pain of his own transformation.

The pain from his wings is still a constant ache, but thankfully it has dulled from the sharp pain that it was before. He can’t bear to watch someone go through the same agony that he had. He doesn't understand what they all could have done to deserve any of this. And why this group of people in the first place? Tears well in his eyes, but he squeezes them shut, draws his limbs close and waits it out.

But Jeremy’s screams are hard to block out. By the time his body halts its morphing, Jeremy is crumpled on the cell floor, curled up tight with his hands around the fluffy light gray ears now sitting on his head. His cries of pain continue, and it takes Matt a moment to realize that it isn’t the change anymore. Jeremy is tugging on those ears as if he could rip them off if he pulls hard enough.

“Dude! Hey, Jeremy, STOP!”

Matt smacks his hands against the glass between them trying to grab Jeremy's attention. All it does is send shocks of panic through Jeremy’s body. He wants to take the ears off, to prove to himself that this is just some fucked up prank, but the ears remain firm against his head, and the pain makes it all too real. He can feel tears prick in his eyes as the reality of his situation sets in. “Oh god. Oh god, what the fuck, what the fuck…”

"Jeremy you've got to calm down man," Matt pleads as he watches the man curl further into himself. It's hard to keep the tremor out of his voice as he tries to calm Jeremy down as he can feel the ache in his head begin to grow. He never signed up for this; none of them did. All he had wanted was to get money to stop his family's business from being repossessed by the bank, not to become some lady's fucked up science project.

It seems some of Matt's words have finally gotten to Jeremy because the other man has stopped tugging at his ears. He just lays there on his knees with his head in his hands as a quiet sob escapes him. Matt wishes he could at least place a hand of comfort or something on Jeremy's shoulder. All he can do is murmur quietly, “It’s alright. It’s over now. Breathe, okay? Just… just breathe.”

Jeremy nods, taking Matt’s advice. In… and out… Until his heart stops pounding in his ears - all four of them - and his body stops shuddering. The pain dulls, until the cold of the cell floor is sharper than it. He doesn’t move though. Doesn’t want to raise his head. Doesn’t want to see what has happened to him.

There’s quiet in the cell block after Jeremy's transformation. A heavy sense of dread hangs in the air as those who are awake take in the new found additions to their bodies. And those who haven't changed yet are trying in vain to keep themselves calm.

The silence doesn’t last long though when a group of guards suddenly come into the room. There's a rush of movement from the cells as the ones who have changed try to hide and the ones who are still going through the process push themselves away from their cell doors as far as possible. They are just like the scientists before and it's clear who their intended targets are this time as they make their way over to Alfredo and Trevor's cells. Two men stand at the entrance of each cell readying themselves to enter and all Trevor can do is press his back harder into the wall behind him. He's not much of a fighter, but he'll be damned if he makes this easier for them by going quietly. Alfredo on the other hand is happy to let them know how bad his stay has been.

The guards look at each other and nod and rip open the cell doors with precise synchronization. Two bodies rush into each cell and the sounds of struggle fill the block. Alfredo meets them head on trying to kick the legs out from under one of the guards, but the move allows for one of the guards to grab his leg and pull it out from under Alfredo. He falls on his back and lets out a grunt of pain as the back of his head smacks against the floor. Hands reach down to grab at him again, but this time he's ready for them. He pulls the reaching arm down and the guard along with it, landing a blow to the side of his head. The reaction is instant as the guard releases his hold on Alfredo, but it seems the other guard was prepared for that because Alfredo barely has time to think before the end of a stun baton is pressed into his stomach. He lets out a cry of pain as the skin under the baton tip burns from the electricity. His body instinctively curls around the spot to protect it, but during his distraction his arms are pulled behind his back and his wrists are cuffed.

“You sick fucks,” Alfredo snaps as the two guards pull him to his feet with vice-like grips on his arms.

In the next cell over Trevor lands a punch to one of the guard's faces as the other yanks him away from the wall. He lets the momentum carry him as he pulls the guard with him towards the now-open cell door. With another quick yank Trevor's able to free himself from the grasp of the two men and he sprints for the door leading out of the block. He's almost there, can almost taste the freedom when two sets of prongs are shot into his back coursing electricity through his body. Trevor lets out a pained yell as he falls to the floor. Before he can recover, his hands are twisted behind his back and he hears the snap of cuffs around his wrists.

“No, let me go!” Trevor yells out as he struggles against the cuffs. He had been so close.

The two guards pick him up until he's standing between them. He spits, and out comes another of his canines that had been loose for the past hour while the taste of blood fills his mouth.

"You try that again, son, and we'll kill you," one of the guards says from beside Trevor. The man’s tone holds no space for arguing. Trevor stays quiet, the fight now sapped out of him from such a close, but failed escape, and he and Alfredo are shoved out into a blinding corridor.

After being forced through what seems like a labyrinth, the two are thrust into an unfamiliar room, one that doesn’t look entirely different from a police interrogation room, with a full length, presumably two-way mirror to boot. Only this room doesn’t have a table and chairs. It doesn’t have anything at all, just the mirror and the buzzing of fluorescent lights to fill the air.

The door is slammed shut and locked behind them, startling them both. They look back at their only exit, then to each other.

Alfredo looks as terrible as Trevor feels. Beads of sweat trickle down his brow, yet his body shudders like it’s trying to break through a fever. Alfredo’s breaths are short and raspy, and one of his hands crawls through his hair to clutch at his aching scalp.

Trevor swallows. “I guess we’re next.”

Alfredo nods, casting his eyes back at the mirror, and at the two pitiful creatures reflected back. Trevor looks like he could collapse at any moment, and Alfredo… he hardly recognizes himself. He’s been here less than a day, conscious at least, but already his face looks worn, his eyes sunken, and his body feeble. Whatever is happening to him, it’s taken every ounce of strength it can from him.

Trevor catches Alfredo’s eyes in the mirror. “They’re watching us,” Trevor comments.

“Who?”

His companion only shrugs. Trevor’s not sure he’s got the strength to spare for a full conversation. Quietly, he leaves Alfredo’s side to lean against the far wall.

Alfredo paces a little, hoping the movement will at least alleviate some of his symptoms. It’ll be over soon, he tells himself. Gavin, Lindsay, Michael and Jeremy all recovered well, if not a little shaken. He just needs to get through this.

He pauses at the sound of a gasp and what he thinks is a choked back sob. “Trevor?” he asks, turning his head.

Trevor pushes back from the wall, his hands embedded in his hair. He doesn’t make it far - within three steps, he has collapsed to his hands and knees, and he screams. Alfredo watches in horror, his hands hanging in the space between them, unsure of what to do. The feeling of helplessness grips at his throat as he watches the man in front of him transform, his screams of pain echoing against the walls. He steps forward to offer something - anything to comfort Trevor - but is stopped short by a sudden pain radiating through his body.

“Not now!” Alfredo growls at the agonizing pain in his back, on his head and in his gums. “Not now! Not until Trevor’s…!” A scream is ripped from his mouth as he falls to his knees. Concerns of Trevor and the room they’ve been put into disappear when something starts to push through the skin of his scalp. He can hear the sound of coarse fur pushing from flesh, but he isn’t sure how he can pick up on such a small noise. He realizes with horror that it wasn’t the ears on the side of his head that were picking up on the sound, but the ones that are now sitting atop his head. With shaking hands he reaches up and feels coarse fur meet his fingertips. The ears twitch in response to his touch and with a yelp Alfredo pulls his hands back in fright.

“What the fuck? What the fuck whatthefuck,” Alfredo mutters to himself, trying to accept the fact that he now has damn ears growing out of his head.

“ALFREDO!”

Trevor’s scream is strained, and far, far too loud in Alfredo’s ears. Despite his own agony, he looks.

Trevor is kneeling and hunched over with his arms protecting his head, so Alfredo can’t exactly see much of his face, but he knows well enough that it must be twisted in pain. What he can see, in horrific detail, is the white tail that has forced itself from the bottom of Trevor’s spine.

“Tre…” Alfredo begins, only to hunch over and cry out at the pain in his own spine. It brings him to his hands and knees, and he is barely able to find the strength to look back at Trevor before Trevor finally succumbs to the pain and falls unconscious, crashing hard to land on his side.

The door to the room opens abruptly and in walks Dr. Rhodes, accompanied by three guards and a man in a suit. Not the kind of suit you would see someone wear in a ritzy restaurant, but the kind you would see someone in ‘Men in Black’ wear. The man has 'government' written all over him.

Alfredo is pushing himself off the floor and crossing the small room before he even realizes it, all the anger welling up inside him pushing him forward. "You did this to us, you bitch!" Alfredo yells. The doctor shows no sign of shock at the aggression directed towards her. She almost looks proud to see it.

Before he can take a step closer two of the accompanying guards come from behind her and grab his arms in grips tight enough to leave bruises. He thrashes around trying to knock the guards off of him before one of them pulls out their baton and promptly shocks him in the lower back. Alfredo yells out in pain, but it's not enough to dissuade him from trying to escape them. When they see that the electric shock doesn't affect him as it did before, one of the guards sweeps their foot underneath him causing him to fall to the ground. All the air rushes from Alfredo's chest at the hard impact against the floor.

His arms are twisted behind his back and the business end of a stun baton is being pressed into his neck. He watches as the suit turns his attention to Trevor, who has yet to wake up despite all the noise around him. His chest is rising and falling rapidly and there are occasional tremors running through his body.

A rumble rises in Alfredo’s throat. He doesn’t realize he’s growling for a while, and when he does, he simply doesn’t care. The sound spills into his voice when he warns, “Get away from him.”

The man pauses, staring at Alfredo not as if he is an equal, but as a curiosity. A wild animal that he’s never seen before. “Fascinating,” he says.

Dr. Rhodes couldn’t look happier. “Behavioral adaptations are just as important, if not more so, than the physical adaptations. In the wild, jackals can be fiercely protective of packmates. That sort of mentality is something we wanted to explore, and that’s why two canine hybrids were created.”

Alfredo’s growl continues. “Don’t talk like we’re fucking animals.”

Rhodes doesn’t respond. She just makes a gesture to one of her guards, and they pace around to place a heavy boot between Alfredo’s shoulder blades, pinning his head to the floor. He tries to fight back, to push up with his shoulders, but the change has sucked the strength out of his muscles. Worse, he is helpless as the man kneels by Trevor’s side.

“Don’t touch him!”

Alfredo’s demand goes ignored. The man’s fingers trace over the soft white fur of Trevor’s new tail, and then he lifts it, feeling the tail beneath the thick fur, and then lets it slump back to the ground through his hands. Watching sends a shiver of discomfort down Alfredo’s own spine and into the new tail he hasn’t even laid eyes on yet, but can certainly feel.

Next, the man’s thumb comes to Trevor’s face and lifts his upper lip to expose one of the new teeth that had grown in as Trevor changed. There’s something deeply unsettling to Alfredo about how dog-like that new canine looks. He licks at his own new canines, still bitter with the taste of iron, and winces.

Finally, the man’s hand runs over one of the small, white, pointed ears now sat in Trevor’s hair. It’s covered with the same white fur as his tail, and when the man clicks beside it, the ear twitches.

And so does Alfredo’s.

He’d shake his head to dispel the discomfort if he could. The movement felt both natural and entirely alien at the same time, and while he was certainly the one who moved his own ear, it was subconscious to the point of surprising him.

But not as much as Trevor’s sudden gasp and jolt. He wakes with a start, his eyes flashing open and around, trying to gather his bearings. The new ears atop his head pivot wildly, and while he may not notice it, his nostrils flare too.

He recoils back from the strange man and the doctor, scrambling desperately, only to fall back on his tail and let out a high-pitched yelp like a wounded animal.

His hand clamps over his mouth, then he twists and his tail flicks around his side to give him a better view of it. "Fuck!" he shrieks, scrambling to his feet and back against the wall in fright. His hands run through his hair, and sure enough, he finds hairs of a different texture sat on two unfamiliar ears.

"Fuck… FUCK! What have you done to me?! What happened…?!"

"Be quiet, mutt."

So afraid, Trevor does as commanded, only letting out a soft whine, until he notices Alfredo restrained to the floor. Caution goes to the wind at that, as Trevor moves to tackle the guard away from him. He doesn’t make it far before his arms are restrained too.

“No,” the doctor says, “Let them both go. They won’t hurt anyone. Not if they know what’s good for them.”

Alfredo’s relief is immediate, finally shoving off that boot and rolling onto his back to allow himself some deep breaths. Hardly a moment later, Trevor is kneeling over him, his head tipped inquisitively. “Are you okay?!”

Surely, Alfredo should be the one asking that question, given that it was Trevor who passed out from the shock. Then again, Alfredo feels atrocious, and for a moment, all he can do is give a weak thumbs up. “I’m good,” he pants, nodding. Then his eyes raise just a little at the flicker of one of Trevor’s new ears. “You uh…” Alfredo catches his breath, points and continues with a small smile. “You got something in your hair.”

Again, Trevor tips his head. “Is that a joke?”

“You and I just got turned part-dog. What, I can’t try and lighten the mood?”

It works - Trevor cracks, even if it’s barely a half-laugh that escapes him. But for a moment, he smiles, and that’s a victory in Alfredo’s books.

Unfortunately, Dr. Rhodes speaks before Trevor does, with the most infuriatingly proud grin on her face. “Jackals can also be incredibly playful. They…”

“Bitch, the fuck kind of stale-ass stick in the mud did you think I was before you drugged me up? You think I couldn’t crack a joke before you prodded me with a needle?” The expression of shock on the woman’s face would have made Alfredo laugh if not for the situation they were in.

--

His head is a hazy mess, like he’d been out last night and had one or two too many. Only this feeling is much worse. Jeremy tries to cast his mind back to what had happened last night - or what the last thing he remembers at all is - but to no avail.

He can barely find the strength to move, and only when he manages to persuade his arm to stretch does he realize it is bound.

And there’s a sharp, stabbing pain beneath the crook of his elbow.

Unfocused eyes open, then quickly squeeze shut against the bright lights of the room. He can hear people around him - muffled footsteps and conversation - but it sounds like he’s underwater. Whatever knocked him out clearly hit him heavily.

The second time he manages to open his eyes, he has a little more success. The sharp pain is a needle, buried deep into his flesh and connected to a tube that slowly pumps what Jeremy hopes is just saline solution into him but is more likely some elaborate concoction of drugs. At first, he comes to the conclusion that he’s managed to land himself in the hospital somehow. But hospitals don’t bind their patients down to metal tables like this.

Least of all an entire room's worth of patients. None of the others, as far as Jeremy can tell, are conscious. None look injured, either. Footsteps, still strangely echoed, begin to march towards him. Jeremy doesn’t have the strength to look up at the doctor who begins to adjust his IV, but the fluid soon runs quicker, and Jeremy’s consciousness slips away once more.

--

The next time he wakes up, he is mercifully not tied down to a table, and his head doesn’t feel so heavy and messy as before. At least, he thinks he can string a thought together. Like: ‘where the hell am I?’ or: ‘what the hell happened to me?’

There’s muttering around him. “I think he’s awake!” someone whispers.

Jeremy groans, rolls and rubs at his face, then grumbles, “Yeah. Yeah, I’m awake.”

“Take it easy,” a new voice tells him.

“No worries there,” Jeremy moans. “I feel like I got hit by a truck.”

“It… might be a little worse than that.”

Jeremy cracks an eye open at the discouraging statement. His head is pounding and he's cold, yet he soon realizes that those are the least of his problems.

For lack of a better word it looks like he's been put in some kind of cell. There's a large glass door in front of him, a concrete wall to his left and a glass wall to his right giving him a full view of the other people that seem to be in the same situation as him. He tilts his head back and sees a concrete wall with a poor excuse for a bed welded into the floor and what looks like a combination toilet and sink. Just like the prison cells he's seen before. But these cells hold far less privacy.

Jeremy bolts up, much to his aching body’s protest, but he doesn’t care. “There’s been a mistake. I didn’t sign up for this!”

“No shit,” the man across the room with curly auburn hair spits harshly. “None of us did, either. Who the hell would sign up to be kidnapped, pumped up with who the fuck knows what, and then thrown in a cell to wait to die?”

“We’re not going to die, Michael,” says the person in the cell to his left. “Don’t try to scare the poor bloke before he’s even come around.”

“Something tells me they won’t care too much if one or two of us drop dead because of whatever they put into us,” Michael growls.

“Can somebody please explain what’s going on?!” Jeremy snaps far harsher than he intended, but he doesn’t care. Not knowing what is going on is somehow worse than the feeling of being imprisoned.

“You signed up for a drug trial, right?” the girl in the cell at the end of the corridor asks. When Jeremy nods, she says: “Us too.”

“Your head is going to be a little foggy for a little while, but you’ll remember soon,” says a man with dark hair.

“There’s not much to remember,” adds another, who looks similar to the last. “We went to the address they gave us for the trial, and they took us. That’s about it.”

Jeremy tries to remember what happened before he got here, but the black-haired man is right. He can't seem to discern his memories from the fog hovering over his brain. Pushing the concerning loss of his memory to the back of his mind for the moment Jeremy pushes himself off of the floor. He lets out a shiver from sitting on the cold tile and notices that whoever put them in here didn't bother to give him any socks. His toes curl trying to alleviate some of the coldness in his feet.

Looking around the large room he sees that there are 8 other people in here with him, including the curly-haired man from earlier. Each of them seem to be wearing the same drab gray uniforms, and each uniform has a number on it. His own bears the number ‘305’.

“This is some real fucked up shit, isn’t it?” Jeremy asks.

“Most probably,” says the guy in the cell beside him. This one has shaggy brown hair with a striking blue streak through it. He’s sat slumped forward against his knees on his bed, yet despite the situation, he gives Jeremy a small smile. “My name’s Matt. I’d shake your hand or something, but...” he reaches over and drums lightly on the glass separating them. “Yeah, that’s a problem.”

Well, at least his closest fellow-captive isn’t an asshole, Jeremy thinks, though the jury’s still out on the auburn-haired guy. From the look of them all, this kidnapping situation has nothing to do with the fights and the debts Jeremy still owes. Well, at least, if he was kidnapped because of that, most of the others certainly weren’t. Matt doesn’t strike him as someone who would ever be caught within a mile of one of those pits.

“Jeremy, the name’s Jeremy,” he says finally. What does it matter if he gives them his real name? He probably had all his IDs on him when he was taken anyway - there’s most likely little he can tell these guys that his captors don’t already know about him. “Does anyone have any idea what they’re doing with us?”

“Nope,” the young woman beside the blonde-haired person says hopelessly. “They put something in us, and now we feel like shit. That’s all we’ve collectively managed to piece together.”

“I’ve been thinking, though,” says the paler dark-haired man on the other side of Matt. “Normally subjects for trials have something in common. I mean, in animal trials, the animals are often genetically identical to one another. When trials come to humans, there’s usually plenty of variables that they share. But we all don’t share much, at least as far as I can tell. They didn’t even keep sex controlled. Aside from all of us being relatively young and healthy, there’s not much we share.”

“No, but I can think of another thing,” the auburn-haired guy says with a grumble. “We’re all fucking broke.”

“Which just supports my conclusion here,” the dark-haired man says with narrowed eyes. “They don’t care - they’ll take anyone they can. Anyone desperate.”

“And this helps us how?” says the girl at the far side of the cells.

“I don’t think it will help us. I think it means we should be worried.”

Michael scoffs. “You must be fun at parties, Trevor.”

“I’m just trying to be realistic. Isn’t it better to be forewarned?”

His question hangs in the air as everyone in the room thinks over the possibility that they may be in a far worse situation than they could imagine. The girl next to the blonde lets out a sob and puts her head in her hands. Jeremy can hear the person next to them trying to comfort her. He lets out a sigh, his mouth thinning into a line. He places a hand tentatively against the glass door of his cell and looks around it to see if there are any breaks in the glass or any mechanisms that could possibly be picked. It looks like there are two hinges on the left to allow the door to swing out and one locking mechanism on the bottom right to hold the door in place. Without closer examination he doesn’t see any holes for screws or bolts, it’s all smooth metal.

The girl's sobs have quieted down, now she just sniffles occasionally. The silence is too much for him, he needs answers.

“Hey, what’s your name?” Jeremy asks, gesturing with his chin to the gangly guy across the room from him.

“Me?” the said gangly guy asks, “the name’s Gavin. And that guy over there,” he points to the auburn-haired man, “Is Michael.”

“I can answer for myself, dumbass,” Michael says hotly. He’s pacing back and forth in front of his cell door and rubbing at his head in an absent-minded manner.

“So, you two know each other?” Jeremy asks.

“No, he just wouldn’t shut the fuck up from the moment we woke up,” Michael answers.

The individual next to him gives a small smile to Jeremy, “I’m Lindsay.”

“Ky,” says the smaller woman next to Lindsay. Her voice is still raspy from crying, but Jeremy can detect an edge underneath.

“Well since we’re doing some fucked up version of ice breaker, I’m Fiona and apparently I get to be over here by myself,” the woman at the end of the hallway says with mock enthusiasm. Jeremy can see what she means now. Though everyone else in the room has somebody on one or both sides of them Fiona seems to be isolated with just her cell against the far wall.

“My name’s Alfredo and I would- uh like to leave now,” one of the two black-haired men says, tilting his head up as if saying it to some hidden microphone or camera.

“Yeah, you and everyone else in here pal,” Michael says from his cell.

“Hey man listen-” Alfredo shoots back but is interrupted by the man in the cell next to him.

“Well, my name’s Trevor and I think if we all would like to leave wherever the hell this place is, we need to start being nicer to each other,” he says with his hands raised in a placating gesture.

“Be nice- be nice to each other?! We’re locked up in who the hell knows where and they’ve been pumping shit into our bodies and you want us to be nice?” Michael yells as he jabs a finger at Trevor.

“I’m just saying-” Trevor words are cut off as the door to the cell block is opened. Everyone’s heads whip towards the door to see a blonde woman in a lab coat and two, assumedly, guards dressed in black behind her. From where Jeremy is he can see that the guard closest to him has a gun tucked into their hostler and what he hopes isn’t a stun baton, but just a regular baton attached to their belt.

“Subjects,” she says, speaking clearly, “Welcome to trial 32. My name is Dr Rhodes; I am the director of the hybrid program. We’ll be getting to know each other well.”

Somehow, Jeremy isn’t so sure he’d like that.

Alfredo raises a hand, cutting the doctor off before she can say more. “Um, yeah, lovely to meet you. Listen, about the whole consenting to take part thing? I take it back - I want out.”

“I’m afraid that’s not possible, Diaz. You signed your right to withdraw away when you formally agreed to join the study, and unfortunately, the first phase of experimental work is already underway.”

“What the hell do you mean by that?!” Michael hisses.

The doctor turns to him. “I’m glad you asked. It’s a marvel of medical engineering - I helped develop the process personally. You see, before you were placed here, each of you received an infusion of a viral vector - enough to target every cell in your body eight thousand times over. Each vector contains several thousand strands of DNA. As we speak, this DNA is being spliced into your own.”

“You’re altering our fucking DNA?!” Michael shouts. “What the hell is wrong with you?!”

“What’s it doing to us?!” Jeremy adds with a growl under his voice.

The doctor smiles. “If your bodies adapt to the change well, then these new sequences will make you superior beings, Dooley. They’ll improve your hearing, they’ll enhance your perception of your environment. They might even make you fly.”

“Fly?! What the hell does that mean?!” Michael growls.

“She thinks she’s trying to make super humans,” Trevor chides. “If they’re fucking around with our DNA, they’re going to kill us all. What kind of back-alley university handed you a doctorate?”

“The same one that spat you out, Collins. At least one of us achieved something with our qualifications.”

Trevor's mouth snaps shut and glares at the doctor. "Now as I was saying," the doctor continues on, "Over the next 24 hours you will experience phenotypic changes. As a result, you may feel a slight discomfort in certain areas of your body. Some more than others." As she speaks, her eyes gloss over and then linger on Gavin for a moment too long for his liking. He swallows his fear, but the dread must be clear on his face, because the doctor has the audacity to smile at him.

“Rest assured, we have the best medical team available to us, should you begin to suffer any adverse or unexpected symptoms.”

Michael slams the wall of his cell, startling the other captives, but the doctor doesn’t even flinch. “Bitch! You can’t do this to us! We have rights - people will know we’re missing!”

She just shrugs. “Everyone has a price for their silence.” And with a final smirk at Michael, she rounds on her heels to leave. “Try not to distress yourselves too much. It could cause unforeseen outcomes. I’ll be seeing plenty of you all in the hours and days to come. Until then, try to get comfortable.”

The door slams behind her and her companions, leaving a room of stunned, terrified test subjects. Lindsay sits on their bed with their hand on their stomach like they’re nauseous. Beside her, Ky covers her mouth to stifle a sob. Alfredo and Trevor look to one another with wide, horrified stares. Matt all but collapses against the wall.

"This is fucking insane," Fiona says to herself as she bites her lip. She's shaking her head back and forth as she paces in her cell.

Michael watches as Gavin recoils away from the door, looking at his own body and shuddering in fright. He grits his teeth, slams the cell again and retreats to the far wall. He’s never felt so angry, so afraid, and so helpless in his life.

“What do we do?” Jeremy asks.

Gavin shuffles closer to Michael. His new wings are clearly cumbersome, and will definitely take some getting used to. One of them smacks into the wall, making Gavin shriek in shock; clearly, not something he’d intended to do. Normally, BK would laugh, but this is no place for laughter.

She scratches at her scalp, where the pain is the worst - where she’s sure new ears are just waiting to burst out - and shrinks into her bed. Maybe, she thinks hopelessly, she can sleep through the oncoming pain. Maybe she’ll even wake up, and all of this will be a bad dream. Maybe she can persuade herself she’s still in her shitty New York apartment, with her shitty roommates and shitty rent due. Somehow, that is starting to look like a fantasy. How low she’s sunk, she thinks miserably.

Alfredo and Trevor both sit against the glass that separates the two, as close as they possibly can. Alfredo has his back against it, with his ears tucked close to his head like he can hide them in his hair and his tail wrapped close around his body beneath his shirt, hidden. His eyes are closed, but he isn’t asleep. How could he possibly sleep after this?

Trevor doesn’t bother to hide his new additions like Alfredo. He sits curled up with his arms holding his knees close to him, his head resting on his arms and his shoulder against the glass. His eyes are fixed ahead at nothing in particular. Occasionally, behind him, the white tail swishes. It’s conscious - an attempt to get used to the thing. It never works, and the discomforting strangeness of it makes one of his ears flicker. It only makes him feel worse, and he shakes his head to try to dispel the feeling.

As he does, he picks up a scent. Is… is that salt?

And is he really sniffing at the air right now?

Strangeness of that aside, the scent of salt is unmistakable. Except it’s not just salt - it’s tears.

“...Fredo?” he asks.

Alfredo is slow to react, but eventually his head falls to the side enough that he can look back at Trevor. There’s definitely a tear trail down his cheek. “Yeah?”

“You holding up alright?”

Alfredo turns his head back and lets it fall against the wall. “‘Bout as well as you’d expect.”

“Yeah,” Trevor sighs, glancing at the tail lying limp around his side. “It’s fucked up.”

“It’s more than that! Dude, we’re freaks. Damn freaks of fucking nature! We’re part fucking dog or something! Do you think they’ll let us go after this? See our families again?”

It isn’t like the same thought hadn’t crossed Trevor’s mind. Rather, for the sake of his sanity, he’d shoved it to the back of his mind to focus on the situation at hand. Jumping to conclusions, he’d rationalized, won’t help anyone now. “They might. We don’t know what’s going on yet,” Trevor says, sounding less and less confident with every word.

“They kidnapped us. They experimented on us. They turned us into half-animal hybrid freaks. Admit it - they’ll never let us see the light of day again,” Alfredo says bitterly. He closes his eyes, lets another tear fall, and a quiet whimper escapes him.

Alfredo’s words are true, and there’s nothing Trevor can say to reassure him, or himself for that matter. For a while, he and Alfredo sit in silence, taking the only comfort they can from each other’s presence. Eventually, though, Trevor rises and crawls under the blanket on his bed, curling up with his ears and tail pressed close. He pulls the blanket over his head and covers his mouth. Maybe under here, if he begins to whimper like Alfredo has, and like Matt has, the others won’t hear him.

‘Strapped to a cold table under the bright lights of a laboratory’ is not exactly high on the list of ways that Matt thought the situation could get better. Even his tail is pinned down by his side by two leather straps, though he’s sure that if he arched his back he’d be able to worm it free. Not that he wants to. The thought of even having a tail still feels grossly unnatural, even if his brain has wired to it well as if he has always been part raccoon.

The others are with him, aside from Ky and BK. Those two were left to their fates. Every other prisoner, every mutated, morphed hybrid, were taken, and now they surround Matt, each bound to their own table, with Jeremy directly to Matt’s right and Trevor to his left. Those two are the only ones he can see well without straining his neck. Somewhere in the room, one of the others is whining like a frightened animal. Matt can’t be sure who it is - the noise hardly sounds human.

He lets his head fall towards Jeremy, and he watches as he struggles and strains against his binds. Maybe that’s what Matt should be doing too, even though Jeremy isn’t having much luck. Maybe he should be putting these new claws to use on the leather. Maybe he could escape.

‘ And run where? ’ he thinks bitterly to himself. He’d be bound back to the table, probably in a worse state than he already is, before he could take two steps.

Somewhere, he hears the snap of gloves. Somebody sobs. It might have been him.

“Start with the basics,” the doctor commands. Matt can’t see her, but he can hear her heels echoing through the lab. And he can smell her. That perfume must have been expensive, but already it sends a wave of revulsion through Matt’s body. “Record their vitals. Check their reflexes. If there are any abnormalities, report to me immediately. Take the blood after. And I want a sample of fur or feathers from all of them.”

Alfredo begins to shout a number of colorful expletives that would make even Matt blush on a normal day. He sounds petrified - more so than Matt would expect. No one bats an eye at him though. They treat him like a dog that simply won’t stop barking - ignore him, or throw the occasional demand at him to be quiet.

Despite it, and despite everything else, Matt does his best to remain calm. He freezes when his pulse is recorded, but squeezes his eyes shut when the blood pressure cuff is fixed around his arm. Maybe if he can’t see, he can pretend he is just at a usual doctor’s office, getting a usual check up.

His imagination fails him. If only.

As his arm is released, he is deafened by a sudden alarm. Matt’s ears duck and he instinctively tries to reach up to cover them from the painful level of noise, but in doing so he yanks his wrists back against their binds so hard that he shrieks.

He is far from the only hybrid affected. His companions scream and howl and cry.

“What now?!” the doctor shouts over the din. “Turn that damn thing off before it impacts my hybrids! And find the cause! Throw the subjects in there - make absolutely certain that you lock the door!”

Presumably, she leaves, but Matt can’t see - his eyes are scrunched closed, and they stay so until three men release his binds and roughly drag him off his table, shoving him into a room at the back of the lab dotted with computers and equipment that Matt can’t even begin to comprehend.

The men shove him hard, so he trips over his own feet. At least now he is free to cover his ears - it makes the noise bearable, if still uncomfortably loud.

Gavin catches him - the only hybrid not desperately trying to block out the noise. Suddenly those wings don’t look so bad after all.

The last tossed inside is Jeremy, and the metal door slams shut behind them. Even beneath the alarm, they each hear the heavy lock click into place.

Gavin watches helplessly as the others suffer. Some are still crying out. Matt and Trevor are curled up on the floor with their hands clamped over all four ears. Jeremy, Lindsay and Alfredo have huddled together while they try to shelter their ears, taking at least some comfort from finally not being entirely physically isolated from one another. Michael has his ears sandwiched between his head and his arm, in turn crushed against the wall while his tail swishes with his anxiety and he screams.

A pair of wings are quick to enclose around him and Michael takes a deep breath at the lessened silence they offer. He still has his hands clamped over his ears, but at least it feels like his brain won't vibrate out of his skull now.

Gavin taps his shoulder, then points up at something on the ceiling. The alarm - at least, the one making this room utterly unbearable. He could reach it, claw it out, but Michael doesn't want to take his hands from his ears for even a second.

'One second,' Gavin mouths to him. Then his wings are gone from around Michael. Gavin steps into the middle of the room, his eyes fixed on the alarm. His huge wings spread, rise, and then beat down once, throwing a gust at the other hybrids as he is lifted off his feet. Gavin clumsily twists in the air, but his fingers grasp the alarm. Somehow, his feet find the ceiling, and his wings beat again, and the alarm - and Gavin - fall to the floor.

Michael is barely able to catch him - not for lack of reflex, but for how much Gavin scrambles and flails. More than once, Michael is beaten in the face by feathers until Gavin has processed that he is no longer falling.

Michael might be annoyed, if he wasn't so relieved. The alarm is silenced, aside from what continues outside that door, but the door is blissfully thick.

One by one, the hybrids sigh and groan in relief. Their hands come away from their ears, and they allow their tense bodies to relax.

Gavin scrambles out of Michael's grip, blushing. He makes eye contact, smiles awkwardly, then quickly diverts his attention.

“Are you all alright?” Gavin asks the room. He gets a few nods, a whimper, and one thumbs up.

Jeremy grabs the alarm from Gavin's grip, throws it to the floor and stamps on it repeatedly, then kicks it away. "That was nothing short of torture!"

“Your ears must be pretty sensitive, huh?” Gavin asks.

“Maybe they were, before they half-deafened us,” Jeremy grumbles, still tentatively covering and rubbing at his large, furry ears while they recover.

Behind him, Lindsay and Alfredo help Matt and Trevor up, though Trevor stumbles on shaky legs and has to be steadied by Lindsay. Matt moves to help, but finds his aid unneeded. Fortunate, as he catches sight of an unlocked computer on a nearby desk over Trevor’s shoulder. Curiosity gets the better of him, and the next thing he knows, he is in the seat, looking over a list of files.

“What the hell…?” Matt mutters to the screen. For a brief moment, he checks his back, but the alarm outside still blares, and they clearly didn’t even consider which room they had inadvertently thrown the hybrids into, let alone what t hey might find in there.

He clicks one of the files: ‘Batch 5, Subject 47’. A moment later, he is presented with a screen full of images and text that makes Matt jump back from the monitor with a gasp and his hands over his mouth. The most prominent text is the bold red ‘TERMINATED’ message at the top of the document , but beneath that are grotesque images of a woman morphed and mutated horrifically. The screen displays ‘ Canis lupus ’ under the ‘species’ heading, and Matt is aware enough to understand that means ‘dog’, but there’s nothing about the image he sees, with the swollen jaw and blackened hands and malformed eyes, that remotely suggests anything like a dog. Whatever killed this poor woman, it must have been painful.

Behind him, Lindsay screams. Someone - he thinks Gavin - gags and stumbles back, but Matt can’t even take his eyes away from the horror to check on him. Three bodies shoot to gather around him, pressing close for a better look. The one on his left, whose chin Matt can just feel at the tip of his ear, must be Trevor, if the quiet gasp is anything to go by. Jeremy appears at his other side, his shuddering hand clutching Matt’s shoulder as he murmurs, “Oh my god…” The last is Michael - Matt can see him out of the corner of his eye, crouched frowning at the laptop. Matt can hear the cat hybrid’s tail swishing in what must be distress.

He’s not sure why he does it - morbid curiosity, probably - but Matt finds himself clicking onto the next subject, and the next, and the next, all as disfigured and mutated as the last, if not worse. And every single one: ‘TERMINATED’. None have survived the sick experiments conducted on them. None, until their batch. Matt could vomit at the thought that comes next: so far.

“God, fuck, fuck, fuck!” he whimpers, his hands digging through his hair until he’s grabbing his ears in distress while he slips out of Jeremy’s grasp, scoots past Trevor and paces the room. There are hundreds of subjects in that file. Hundreds of dead. God, what happened to their bodies?! There’s no way they were handed back to family. Were they experimented on further? Dissected? Stored for research? Or simply gotten rid of? Matt can’t guess, and he certainly doesn’t want to know the answer. “Sick fucks…!”

Trevor slips into the seat vacated by Matt, scrolling through the files. “This shit’s been going on since the genome project…”

“The what?” Jeremy asks.

“The… nevermind. This has been going on for two decades. That’s when the first files are dated.”

“Do we have files?” Michael asks.

Trevor scrolls, until he finds what he’s looking for. The first file he pulls up has no images, but it begins with a brief description. “Michael Jones, born in New Jersey. Felis catus. ”

“What the hell does that mean?” Michael hisses.

“It’s just the scientific name for a cat. It’s the species that you were merged with.”

“So this should tell us exactly what animals we are?” Jeremy asks, his ears subconsciously perking up at the prospect of even having an inkling of what they all might be.

“In theory, I guess,” Trevor says, clicking onto the next page. “Lindsay…” Behind him, they shift forward to tentatively peer over his shoulder. “ Enhydra lutris . That’s… not helpful. Um… Oh! It says ‘sea otter’.”

Lindsay scratches at their ear. “Otter,” they ponder, and then they smile. “That’s cute!”

Trevor has already moved on. “Jeremy… says here: ‘chinchilla’.”

Jeremy wraps his tail around him, running his fingers through the dense fur. “You know, that makes a lot of sense. They didn’t have anything cooler? Mountain lion, maybe? Wait, does that say ‘arctic fox’? Dude, are you a fox?!”

“I… guess so?” Trevor says, glancing over his own file. His head tilts in curiosity and his tail perks.

“That’s pretty cool. Better than a chinchilla,” Jeremy mumbles.

Michael taps onto the next file. “Matt’s a raccoon; we knew that. Gavin's a lark, as if his wings didn't already make that obvious. Fredo… jackal. Ky… says ‘squirrel’. I’m sure she’ll be thrilled about that when her tail comes through.”

“And BK has been merged with a ferret,” Jeremy finishes off.

The group stands in silence for a moment as they're brains try to comprehend the information they have discovered. One; they all know what animal they have been paired with and two; they now know there were people here before them and they a re most definitely dead.

"We need to get out of here," Jeremy says, breaking the agonizing silence.

"No shit," Michael grumbles.

"Great, just one problem," Alfredo interjects, grabbing his tail. His voice comes out laced with a growl. "It won't solve this! "

"There's no guarantee we can reverse this at all; they've barely figured out how to do it without killing someone!" Trevor points out. "Even if there is, they're not gonna!"

"You want to be part dog for the rest of your life, Trevor?!" Alfredo demands of him. “Because I don’t!”

Trevor's ears tilt at Alfredo's tone like he wants to submit, but he doesn't. "Fox," he says calmly. "And no, but I'm just trying to be realistic. I'd rather be like this but free than waiting in here for a miracle that isn't going to come."

“Maybe it’s not so bad,” Lindsay offers, stepping between the two.

"Easy for you to say," Alfredo throws back at them. "I haven't heard you growl, or whimper like an animal! You haven't cut your own lip on new teeth! And if being part animal is so great, tell that to Gavin!"

As he speaks, Gavin is awkwardly trying to tuck his cumbersome wings behind him, but at the sudden attention, they panic and push out again, hitting the wall.

"Listen," Lindsay says pointing a finger at Alfredo, "This sucks, I'm aware of that. Half of my brain has been screaming at me to find water for the last three hours and hide myself away from the world. Last I checked there's no bodies of water in here- not even a bathtub." The expression on Lindsay's face would be described as stormy at best and Alfredo feels his ears fall under the intense stare. "And yeah, my teeth may be smaller, but they still hurt like a bitch when they came in. And the bruises from the needles are on my arms too. So maybe, even if I have grown new ears and teeth, I'm just trying to be optimistic through all of this so that I don't go fucking insane."

Lindsay lets out a deep sigh and their shoulders slump as if their anger took all their energy with it. “This is all so fucked up. But we shouldn’t make this worse by fighting with one another. I know things are messed up. I know all of this is frightening. But it happened, Alfredo, and Trevor’s right - these people aren’t going to undo what they did to us. Our best shot now is to get out of here, and maybe our best shot at that is to embrace this, or at least accept it! Why do you think they’re doing this? These assholes gave us tools and weapons through our changes. Perhaps they’re exactly the tools and weapons we need to get out of this place.”

“They wouldn’t be so careless,” Alfredo growls, though the edge is gone from his voice. Now he just sounds hopeless.

“Maybe not,” Trevor says, tipping his head in thought. “Maybe it’s like a ‘ Jurassic Park’ situation.”

Alfredo raises an eyebrow at him. “Jeff Goldblum? I get what you mean.”

“I don’t,” Jeremy says. “I was never really into movies all that much. Can someone explain?”

“I mean, what if they focused so much on whether they could do this, they never stopped to consider if they should. Or, in this case, whether it’s wise to give us all these advantages: better hearing, teeth, claws, flight! ”

Gavin yelps at the thought. "Flight?! I can't fly!"

"They'll train you," Trevor says. "Trust me."

"You don't know that for sure," Alfredo argues. "And even if they do, it won't matter. Teeth, claws, wings, so what?! They have guns!"

"They won't shoot us! They must have invested millions, if not billions, into making this happen, and we're the first successes. We're too valuable."

"Which loops right back around to we are never going to escape this place! It's hopeless! Just as fucking hopeless as hoping they'll undo this." Alfredo growls , grabbing his tail again and shaking it in his grip for emphasis . Then he rounds on Trevor. "You seem to have a hell of a psychological profile of these guys. Well if you're so smart, how the hell did you end up in this mess?"

He regrets his words as soon as they leave his mouth - even more so when they shock and shame Trevor into silence. In that, he hit a nerve. The fox hybrid turns away from him to face the computer, his shoulders now tense. Lindsay scolds him, and he doesn’t bite back. Instead, he fishes for the right words of apology.

Before they can come, his ears tune in to new sounds outside the door. He’s not the only one who picks up on them, but the first by a second or so. Multiple footsteps, and orders being dished out. Whatever emergency was going on out there is over, and the humans are back for them.

“Get behind me,” Alfredo orders the other hybrids. The sudden urge to protect the others catches Alfredo off guard, but he figures in this moment it's better to listen to his new found instincts rather than fight them.

Those that move are slow to do so. Others don’t move at all, paralysed by fear. Alfredo doesn’t have time to reassure them. “Now!” he demands, grabbing Trevor and shoving the fox hybrid behind him so that Alfredo’s body is planted between Trevor and the door. As he does, he glares over the other hybrids fiercely, trying to convey the message through his expression without repeating it again. His voice had snapped many out of their fear-induced idleness, and finally they flock to the back of the room away from the door. Only Michael and Jeremy disobey, instead opting to frame Alfredo on either side. One with claws extended and tail swishing and the other with tightly balled fists. If Alfredo wants to put up a fight, they aren't going to let him fight alone.

The door unlocks, and when the doctor finds her hybrids huddled in a corner, she rolls her eyes. “Out.”

Michael hisses, until Gavin takes his arm. He is resigned to it - fighting will only make things worse.

Gavin looks to the scientists, takes a long breath, then draws his wings close and steps past Michael. The doctor smiles proudly at him. Michael tries to reach out to him, to pull him back to safety, but this time he is stopped by Lindsay. They're both right, if solemn about it.