“Hey, doc, how am I doin’?”  Kayn asked, lying down on her stomach allowing her wings room to move and to grow.  It was amazing how quickly they sprouted from her back once the rest of her body had adjusted to the bombardment of animal DNA.  They had to be growing at least an inch and a half every day, and becoming stronger and more stable every time I came in to check on her.  She had been calling me doc ever since I was shoved into her room when she had awaken that first time, her new instincts panicking when she realized that she was in a very enclosed space, and she was tied to the bed.  Somehow I had managed to get her to calm down, and she had been able to control what she felt for the past three weeks.

After the inspection, we hadn’t tried to turn anyone else into hybrids, but we knew that we would have to try sooner or later in order to please the Governors and to prove this one time wasn’t a fluke.  However, after the First General himself had witnessed the transformation, he was also wary.  He had heard those screams as well, and had seen my stunned expression.  His emotional armor wasn’t as tough as he made it out to be, but I was grateful.  He wasn’t pushing for me to try it again.

I looked at Kayn’s back, feeling the joints of the wings and how the new muscles were tying into her shoulders, neck, and back.  Everything felt good and like the birds that I had handled, but I did have one problem.  Birds used tail feathers for steering, and so far Kayn hadn’t shown any evidence of growing any.  And the woman, once he wings were fully grown and strengthened, wanted to fly.

“Everything looks good, Kayn.  The muscles are strong and sturdy, the bones, though hollow, feel like steel.  And your feathers, the primaries, secondaries, and down, are growing in nicely.”  I gently pulled on one wing.  From the middle of her back, it spread out 12 feet, giving her a 24-foot wingspan, and it had only been a week and a half since her body had healed.  Not only that, but within the first four days, her toenails had fallen off and were being replaced with wicked claws, and her toes were elongating.  I still hadn’t told her that the reason why she couldn’t feel one of her toes on each foot was because they had fallen off.  “The way things look, I’ll be able to get you out in a few days to feel the wind beneath your wings.  However, that first time out, I do NOT want you to do ANY flying, got it?”

Kayn looked slightly abashed, and said, “Alright, Blaire.  Don’t worry about it.  I won’t do it the first time that I am outside.”  She pulled the wing in that I had extended, and stood up.  She was a little shorter that I was, maybe 5’ 4” tall, but the wings really added to her physique.  After the transformation, her voice had actually cleared up a little unless she was angry or indignant.  She was, after all, a raven.

I entered a few more things into the built-in computer on the wall, and huffed out a sigh.  I had been doing that I lot lately, and Isabell was the first to point it out.  It wasn’t in my nature to huff or sigh a lot.  Now yelling, screaming, crying, all of those were in my nature if I as stressed.  But sighing?  I rarely took time to breathe.

There was a beep on the panel beside the door that was the comm. system.  “Blaire?  Are you in there?” the disembodied voice of Gracia asked.

“Sure am, Grace.  What do you need?”

“There’s a call for you.  It’s from the First General’s office.  Do you want to take it in there, or would you rather take it in your office?”

Again, I sighed.  “I’ll just take it here.  Thanks, Gracia.”

The headset on the bedside table started to buzz, and I hit the “answer” button.  “Commander First Rank Blaire Woln.” I said.  There was a slight pause on the other end of the line, and then Han’s voice came through the earpiece.

“Commander Woln, I have some troubling news for you,” he said, his voice gruff as if he hadn’t been sleeping.  “The Governors want to see more results, and they want them now.  I’ve delayed them for as long as I can, but…” I heard the clothing of his uniform move as he shrugged.  “When can you have the next subject done by?”

I paused, knowing what he wanted to hear.  “Maybe within the next 3 weeks, Sir, but that is all that I can do.  The recovery time will be different with every person, or so our hypotheses go.  Tell them that they will have to wait that long, and if they do, they will be able to see their new age soldiers up close.  That is, if you will allow me and a few other officers to bring Sergeant Kayn with me as well.  In three weeks, she will be able to do everything that her new body is capable of.”

There was a pause on the other end of the line, and the First General said, “Do it.”  There was a soft, fuzzy sound, then a beep, signaling the end of the call.

I pulled the headset off, and rubbed my face.  Kayn was looking at me intently, her golden and black eyes staring right into the depths of my soul.  “They want you to do it again, don’t they?  They want to put someone else through this.”

I nodded, and Kayn swore.  “I can’t put any more of the convicts into the inhalation chamber though, Kayn.  To do so would betray the trust that all of you have in me.”  I stood up from the edge of the bed where I had been sitting, and flattened out my everyday clothing of a lab coat, white shirt, and jeans

Understanding flitted through Kayn’s bird-eyes as she saw my purposeful movements.  I saw all of her muscles tighten, and then release.  “There’s nothing that I can say that will deter you, is there?  You know what I said after I woke up the first time, how much I hurt both mentally and physically.  Besides, if the Governors want something, they always get it, don’t they?”  She looked down at her lap, tucking her socked feet under the bed like a teen who knew that she was beat.

“No,” I said.  “There’s nothing.”  I started towards the door.
Just before it closed, I head her say, “Then show them how fierce the GEn An soldiers can really be.”





All of my subordinates were around me, but no one spoke.  The room was silent besides the hum of the machinery and light fixtures.  It was the question- and my answer- that was asked a moment before by Falon that made everyone look at me with hopelessness in their eyes.

“Who are we going to use for the next soldier, then, and what species?” he had asked.

I had said, “I will be next, and you will use Canis lupus.”

And still, no one moved.

So with a growl, I started to work furiously on one of the computers.  A hand touched me softly on the shoulder, and I started to shake ever so slightly.  A nose touched my leg, and a tear fell.  I was so scared of my own procedure, but I knew that I couldn’t put anyone else through that damned chamber before I knew what they were going to go through.  

There was a soft voice in my ear that asked, “Who do you want to use?  We have a lot of the Grey’s here, and you seem to spend the most time with them…”

I paused, catching my breath before I started to sob aloud.  “If Isabell would be willing, I would like to use her.  She is as much a part of me as I will soon be of her.”

I felt the little wolf’s head nudge my leg, her way of saying, “It’s alright.”  She walked over to Falon, whose hand was on my shoulder, and he took the appropriate samples.  “This will take a few hours, Blaire.  Why don’t you sit in your office until I have the mixture prepared?”  With that, he left for his own personal office and lab area, mixing up the formula.

I was really shaking by this time, so I complied.  Isabell was walking beside me all the way to my office where I sat down and took a very shaky breath.  I didn’t really want to do this, but I knew that it had to be done.  I was not going to put anyone else through the process until I knew what was going to happen to them.

Amazingly, it was only an hour later when Gracia came to get me.  “He says it’s done, Blaire.  Are you…are you sure that you want to go through with this?”  I just looked at her in the eye, and Gracia left the room.  I was determined, and there was nothing anyone could do to change my mind.  I had even told Kayn as much.

I walked into the main lab, not looking at anyone, and stepped behind the curtain where I took off my other clothing, and put on the sports top and shorts that would best fit me.  As I stepped out, Falon was connecting the cylinder and the table was already out and ready for me to be strapped in.  His eyes held wariness and a sadness that had never been there before.  He didn’t want me to do it, but Gracia had already told him the same thing that I had to tell people over and over again.  Nothing was going to change my mind.

Everyone was still quiet as he strapped me into place, and as the table slid into the chamber.  Still silent as the gasses flooded the room, making it hard for me to breathe.

It was still silent when I lost consciousness, and dreamed of nothing but screams.







The world was very loud to my senses—the smell of antiseptic, soap, and air freshener; the sounds of talking was like an elementary band all playing in one ear.  I could hear carts rolling, the clinking of plates, groans from experiments gone wrong.  I could smell body odor, rubber, lint, trash, chemicals, food…

Food.

There was another feeling inside me when I smelled that meat wafting down the hall.  All of my senses sharpened on that one thing, and I was so hungry.  I couldn’t wait to feel the blood rush over my face as I ripped out the throat of the cow that I was smelling; couldn’t wait to fill my stomach and help bring down the kill for the others in my pack.

I opened my eyes as I heard the door open, and growled low and vicious.  He smelled of meat, of fresh blood, of my prey.  I snarled, pulling my lips back to show my teeth as a warning.  I was going to be Alpha, and there was nothing that anyone else could do about it.

“Easy, Blaire.  You need to fight it for right now, OK?  I’m recording this like you told me to, for the experiment, so that they could see everything.  But you need to calm down.”

Experiment?  What the hell was that?  I just wanted food, and I could feel saliva rushing into my mouth in anticipation of the prey that I knew had to be somewhere.  I tried to get up, to smell around to find my meal.

I couldn’t move.

I started to panic.  Something had me!  I needed to get away!  Oh, dear Lord, help me escape!  My paws were tied, al four of them, and I couldn’t reach my mouth close enough to try and chew through them.  I was thrashing now, whimpering and snarling any time he got close to me.  He wouldn’t kill me!  I was to be Alpha!

“BLAIRE!” he shouted, and for some reason another part of me paused at the sound of that word.  I knew that word…that word was…was…

My name.

That was when my human side, my intelligence, flooded and took over the feral instinct of the hungry wolf.  I started to cry.  My wrists were raw, my mouth and hands hurt as well as my ears, nose, tong, lungs, and heart.  Most surprisingly of all, however, my tailbone ached.  It felt like as if someone had broken it.  Oh, I hurt!  Somehow, I caught my breath enough to say to Falon, “Let me go…I hurt, Falon, just let my hands out of these things…”  He immediately complied, crooning to me and holding my head, being careful not to touch my ears.  He called for someone else to come, and I felt an IV stuck into my arm.  As the painkillers started to flow through my bloodstream, the pain lessened until I could almost forget that it was there.  I managed to stop crying, and looked at my new body.

They hadn’t taken me out of the sports top and biking shorts, but I could see the rest of me very clearly.  My feet, bare as they were, were purple masses of bruises, and my toenails were black.  My legs, belly, and arms had a soft dusting of white-grey fur.  My hands were in the same condition as my feet.  Aching and unable to be embarrassed by the presence of a male, I reached behind me and felt my butt where my tailbone should’ve been.  Instead, I felt a short appendage that I didn’t even have to guess what it was going to be.

Falon was blushing slightly, and was looking at my face.  I needed to pull down the shorts enough so that my newly growing tail could have a place to go, and so the raw skin wouldn’t hurt so much.  I growled at him, and for the first time realized that it really was a growl that bordered on snarling.  He jumped back towards the door before I said, “Surely you’ve seen enough females to not be embarrassed to see my ass, Falon.”  I reached over to the table beside the bed and found some cotton swabbing and medical tape to pad my tail before having to pull the shorts back up to where they were supposed to be.

He blushed even deeper than before, and said honestly, “I had never thought about you like this before, though.  I always thought of you more as a sister or a friend than as a…” he paused for a word, so I supplied one for him.  He nodded, sheepishly.  “Yes, as a mate.  We were too close before this entire project started, with my brother’s best friend informing me of your abilities.  Yes, you were a friend.”  Something inside me, just then, seemed to calm down.  I knew that it was the dominance that the wolf part of me was feeling, knowing and understanding the human concept of friendship.  I was still Alpha.

After a few moments of awkward silence, my stomach couldn’t take any more.  “I’m starved, Falon.  Could you get me something to eat?”

He smiled, nodding, and turned towards the door.

Before he opened it, I asked, “How long have I been out of it?”

A pause, and then he said, “For nearly two days.  I had to mix up the strong animal and human sedative especially for you, not wanting you to be in the worst part of the pain that Kayn had to go through.  When I told her, she breathed a sigh of relief, and thanked me.”  He left the room, leaving me to my personal thoughts.

Needless to say, the wolf was a little overbearing in its hunger, so I had to convince myself that if I waited, my prey would come to me.  I could smell Falon coming back with a tray full of food, most of it meats.  “I didn’t know what you would like because of your transition, but here is every meat product and some vegetable products along with some juice, cola, and water.”

I couldn’t help it.  My eyes were plastered to the food, and it was very hard to keep my hunger down until Falon removed his hands from the tray that was now sitting down on the table beside my bed.  Sitting up and ignoring the lancing pain my tail caused me, I devoured the food set in front of me- food for about 4 people to eat a very good sized lunch and dinner- in less than 15 minutes.  Falon looked at me in shock, seeming to reel in the chair that he had sat down in.  

After I ate, I started to pick up the can of cola, and nearly gagged.  I could smell all the chemicals in it, every single sweetener and preserve.  I held it away from me and choked.  “Get this away!” I said, and Falon took it quickly and shoved it into the hall, startling a nurse.  He asked for her to take it, and then he quickly appeared back in the room.  I had already downed the juice and water, and was lying back down on my side, nursing my bleeding fingers and a very achy tail.  Falon let out a curse when he saw my hands, and immediately started to lightly bandage them so that he wouldn’t hurt my bruises.  However, putting aside the flaring pain all over my body, the rest of me was very content to just sit and digest what I had eaten.

When he was done, Falon looked at me with a little worry in his eyes.  “Blaire, can you keep it from rising again while the nurses are around?  I think that you would scare them all to death if they saw you like I did when I came in here.”

I nodded, feeling very sleepy.  “The Wolf wanted to eat so bad…it overrode all that I was trying to think.  It’s fine now.”  I yawned, and saw a startled expression on Falon’s face that was quickly replaced by his smile.

“Well, then.  I’ll be back tomorrow, and we’ll see how you fare.  Remember how long it took Kayn’s bruises to fade?  Well, since all that you are probably going to do is grow claws, I don’t see why you can’t be up and walking around in three or four days.”

I grunted as my response.  As I started to drift off to sleep, I felt his hand on my shoulder, a whisper in my ear, and the door open and close a second later.