‘C’mon, Blaire!  Let’sgolet’sgolet’sgo!’ Isabell’s body language said to me as I walked behind her to the lifts.  I had promised Isabell that we would run outside today, a week and a half after I had woken up for the first time.  I was able to control the Wolf part of me now, just like Kayn, but it was closer to the surface than the raven that gave Kayn her body.  At unexpected moments, I would do something very wolf-like, and would startle everyone.  I would growl when frustrated, snap at people with my teeth when they startled me, and actually yelp if something hurt.  But it wasn’t just the sound that I made and the way I acted that made people uncomfortable.

My tail had grown out to its full length.  When I straightened it out, it would reach to my upper calf, and the fur would reach down a little further.  It was a pure, beautiful white, and even Isabell was jealous.  However, the puppy was happy to know what color she was going to turn when she became an adult.  ‘I’ll be called Snow by the pack if your tail is any sign!’ she had said when she first saw it.  However, because of my new appendage, it was very hard to wear anything other than skirts.  I was already having my dress uniform altered so that I could wear the slacks that were the standard issue, but still.  It was very awkward seeing holes in the butt of my pants, and even more uncomfortable to wear skirts all the time.

We had reached the lift shaft by the time I pulled myself away from these thoughts, wanting only to have some fun with my Sister.  Kayn was waiting for us on the ground level, and when she saw us she puffed her wings out a little in greeting.  Smiling, the both of us greeted one another, and we followed Isabell to the titanium-reinforced doors that opened to my palm print.  

It was a beautiful day outside, the sun was high and the wind was coming from the residential section of the microcity of S’Lous.  I had seen pictures of what it looked like several hundred years ago when the Arch was still standing.  It had been a magnificent city with a history to be marveled at.  The Gateway to the West it had been called, the home of the extinct red birds called Cardinals, and before that, to homesteaders trying to find their place in the untamed lands.  I had always wondered what it would’ve been like in the Westward Expansion era, to live off the land and to live with your faults as they were.  Now, however, most of the continent was great Cities separated by boundaries to make them into separate districts and microcities.  S’Lous was now one of those microcities, and we were positioned on the boundaries in one of the last remaining areas of grassland.  Farms, as I had read, used to be built in areas similar to this, but now all meat was grown in labs by the ton, and produce in hydro-gardens on the top floors of buildings, and sometimes on the rooftops.  Pets were nearly non-existent thanks to laws prohibiting them in public areas besides the domed parks.  You could kennel dogs and cat there, and I had even seen a few horses stabled there, but not enough to really say that it was a common occurrence.

Isabell shot out of the doors, and quickly disappeared into the knee-high grass that was off of the normal road that everyone walked.  I heard her moving the grass with her body as she ran, but nothing else.  Kayn looked to where she thought the puppy might be, and looked at me with a mischievous grin on her face.  With a great leap and a huge downburst with her wings, she became airborne, even more silent than Isabell.  She was looking around high above me, when she suddenly tucked her wings back in what any Raven would’ve called suicide.  Normally, ravens didn’t dive like the falcons, but from talking to the other birds she had learned how to do it properly so that she didn’t snap her wings from the stress.

She brought her booted feet out, and hit the ground while rolling, and was rewarded by a startled yip from Isabell who came running out of the grass to me, hiding behind my legs.  ‘She’s gonna get me!’ her body language was saying, her tail tucked between her legs.  I laughed, and was rewarded by a nip on my tail.

I glared at Isabell for a moment, before I continued to laugh at her forlorn expression.  About then, Kayn came out of the grass, laughing harder than I was.  “That was fun.  Sorry to startle you so bad, Isabell.  You should’ve seen it comin’.  You’ve tried to pounce on me enough times as it is!”  Isabell yipped and howled, her way of laughing and expressing joy.

We stayed outside for a while, Kayn and Isabell playing together while I stood back and watched.  I was healed for the most part, but my lungs and legs still hurt if I exerted them too much.  With the kind of playing that the other two were doing, I would quickly wear out and they would complain that I was no fun.

When my genetics changed to incorporate the wolf, my stamina had increased and my lung capacity suddenly enlarged which was the reason for my aching lungs.  The muscles in my legs gave me a kind of speed that most thought was impossible for the human body to sustain unaided.  Then again, I was being helped along by the wolf’s genes, so I shouldn’t have been as surprised as I was the first time I tried to run all out.  My lungs and muscles started to hurt before I had even reached top speed, what my wolf instincts knew was top speed.  The reason why nearly everything else had started hurting was because my senses had grown to the wolf’s normal standards.  

I watched as Kayn took off again to hover just out of Isabell’s jumping height.  It was still a week and a half before we were to present ourselves in front of the Governors, but we needed at least two days traveling time.  So in a little more than a week, I would have to leave Isabell at the AGTF building and go to Washton.  There, Kayn and I would display our bodies before the Governors and say, “Look!  Here are the creatures that you were asking for!  Now, let’s watch a little vid and see how much I scream…”

Falon had warned me about watching the vid.  He said that I wouldn’t like what I saw, but I knew that I needed to be prepared before I showed it to the Governors.  Kayn hadn’t even seen it yet, hadn’t seen what happened to our bodies as our skin dissolved to allow fur and feathers to grow in where normal human tissue once was.  Hadn’t watched as the feet and hands of the subjects bled internally to create that God awful bruising so that we now had the ability to grow talons and claws.  

I had documented everything that I felt while I was recovering, and by using the hospital wing’s security tapes, I even had a record of when my human self wasn’t aware, what we as GEn An soldiers had to deal with on a day-to-day basis.

It was noon before I hollered to the other two.  “Let’s go in,” I said, and started off towards the complex.  My calves were aching from the strain by the time we arrived, and I was slightly repulsed by the fact that I could smell that pain on my own skin.  Isabell whimpered a little, and Kayn looked at me.  They could all smell it, too.  

“Let’s get you to your rooms, Blaire,” Kayn said, pushing me towards the lifts so that I could go down two levels to my room.  Isabell pushed with her head on my side to agree with Kayn.  “I’ll look after little Isabell for a while, and go to level 17 to tell your buddies that you need your rest as much as I need mine.”

Sighing, I complied, dropping into the lift to be dropped off only a few doors away from my own.  I unlocked the doors with my voice, walked in, stripped down to my underwear and put on a tee shirt before crawling into my bed to take a short nap.  That was all I needed…just something to take the fatigue away form my muscles…









When I woke, Isabell was sleeping in her ‘den’ which was really just a pile of sheets under a desk, and I could see that only the night time lights were on in the halls from under my door.  I couldn’t figure out what had wakened me form my sleep, so I decided to investigate.  I slipped on a pair of pajama pants, still popular even thought they came into fashion in the early 21 century, and wobbled outside.  The halls smelled clean and clear of anyone for the past four or five hours.  That would make sense if it were 3 o’clock in the morning, which is what my internal clock said the time was.

I heard a noise coming from the lift shafts, so I went down them to find what had woken me.  The sounds were coming from my labs at SL 17.  It sounded like a horror movie was being played, and I wondered who would be watching things like that in my lab at three o’clock in the morning.

I quietly opened the doors to see the main lab doors opened at the end of the hall, and to see lights on in there.  As quietly as I could, I paced forward and peered inside.

  Kayn had her back to the door, her wings pulled tightly to her body while she was sitting down in one of the wheeled chairs.  Falon also had his back to her, but she knew who he was by the color and length of his hair…and now his scent.  They were watching a video that had been taken in the labs less than two weeks before.

He hit a spot on the holoscreen, and the hologram disappeared into nothingness.  “I still don’t understand,” he was saying, “why you wanted to see the vid of Blaire going through the process of the transformation.”

I didn’t think that it was possible, but Kayn pulled her wings even tighter to her body.  “You all have seen what it looks like to go through the transformation.  Since you didn’t record mine, all that I had was the one of Blaire.  All that screaming…did I also scream like that?”  I could tell that she was hugging herself, and I could smell her distress.  Falon reached a hand out to touch her shoulder, and told her the truth.

“Yes, Kayn…since your transformation was more gruesome, you screamed a lot more, and you lost skin.  It was an ugly sight.”  He pulled her to him in a hug, holding her as she shook in his arms.  “And yet, here you are, feeling better and knowing what it is to fly without any device, something that nearly every land-bound thinking creature has wanted to experience, whether they know it or not.”  He pulled her away from him so that he could look at her in the face.  I could see their profiles in the dim lights of the room.  “If it means anything to you, if I had to have this GEn An procedure done on me, I would want to become a bird.  To fly in the clouds like that, to not be constricted by the cage that is the sky…”  He sighed, letting his hands drop as he stood up.  “Here, let’s go.”  He offered his hand to her, and helped her get up.

She had just stood when I decided to make my presence known.  Stepping out of the dark hall, I simply stood there, looking at them.  Back and forth my eyes went, from face to face.  Unconsciously, one side of my lip raised in a semi-snarl.  “If you’re going to have fun watching entertaining vids in the middle of the night you two, at least do it quietly.”

I stalked out of the room, leaving the two stunned officers to their own thoughts, their hands still linked because they had been too shocked by my sudden presence to even let go.  Or, quite possibly, my presence had made and excuse for the hand-holding.  What ever the reason, I knew that I would have trouble form those two from now until either they or I died.

To think that I had already requested that they be the two accompanying me to the Governor’s Council in a week and a half, and that they already knew that they were going to have time alone together.

Blast love, and blast all the torture that it created between two people.  I’d had enough trouble with it before my career, and wanted nothing to do with that feeling ever again.












A week had passed since I walked in on Kayn and Falon together, watching the vid of my transformation.  It was time for us to pack and head out to the Governor’s Council where we would present ourselves to the world and say, “Look, mommy!  I don’t have to pretend I have a doggie any more!  I am one!”  This was going to be somewhat embarrassing, I knew, but still.  Those damned governors needed to see what we created, and needed to see how.

I looked at the suitcase that was lying on my bunk as Isabell was pulling things out of my dresser drawers and my closet to lay them all on the bed.  Growling softly, I said, “Why do I need that skirt?  I hate skirts…what do you mean I look good in them!?  Yes, they hide my tail…oh.  Good point.  Yea, we don’t want this new military secret out yet, do we?  Well, what about Kayn then?  Yea, it’s cold in Washton.  Get her one of those long furs?  Oh, you mean a trench coat?  Yea, that would work…I’ll tell her about it later.”  With Isabell’s short explanations, I finally agreed to almost everything that was on the bed…besides the little nightie that Falon had given to me two years ago as a prank gift on my birthday.  “I have never worn that thing, Bell, and I don’t ever plan to any time in the near future.  Now put that back in that old bag that you found it in.”

Isabell whined once and gave me that look where her eyes got big and she would wag her tail a little.  I gave in.  The wolf rarely insisted on something, so I decided that I would give in for once.  “Fine, you win.  I’ll pack it…but that does not mean that I have to wear it!”  Isabell panted a laugh and yowled at me.  I laughed too, roughing up her fur on her head a little.  I put the lacey, black, revealing intimate inside the little bag that it had started out in, and put that inside my suitcase.  Isabell yapped once, and I smelled someone outside my door before the comm. buzzed.  

I got to the panel first and said, “What do you want, Falon?”  I opened the door, letting him in.  He walked in slowly, looking around as he did so.  “Nice room.  Bigger than mine.  Anyway, that’s not what I’m here to talk about.  Kayn is nervous about being out in public again.  It’s been five years since she’s seen the streets, and now with new appendages…needless to say, she’s worse for the wear.”

I walked out of my door, Isabell tailing me.  “You coming?” I asked, not giving him any explanation as to what I was doing.  He staggered out into the hall because I was walking so fast that he almost had to run.  When he finally caught up to me right before the lifts, I asked, “You got a standard issue trench coat, Falon?  We’ll need that for Kayn to help hide her.  Thank Isabell for the idea,” I finished after he nodded, and headed up the lift to the general quarters where Kayn had three bunks to herself.

With my access codes, I easily broke into Kayn’s room to see her sitting on her bed dressed only in a pair of sweat pants and a bra.  Normally I would’ve been jealous at her bust, but I wasn’t anymore.  The wolf in me decided that I would do away with things like that when looking at the members of my pack.  He looked up at me, slightly startled as I went through a rampage on her dressers, tearing clothing out of them and flinging the clothing on the beds.  That got her attention.  “What are you doing Blaire?!  Stop that!  I don’t’ want to go!”

I looked at her and growled deep in my throat.  “You’re going to go whether you want to or not, Kayn.  You need to see the populace again, and you need to get used to dealing with people that have NOTHING TO DO WITH THE DAMNED MILITARY!” I yelled at her, making her flare her wings from startled fear.  I searched under the bunks, and found the suitcases that I was looking for.  I started to pack for her, and was nearly halfway there before Kayn started to help me with the task.  

“If it makes you feel any better,” I started to say as I smelled Falon coming down the hall, which cut my sentence short.  Kayn looked at me, and then at the door as someone knocked on it.  “It’s open,” I said back, not giving the bird any chance to say anything.

Falon walked in, staring at the mess that I had made all over the beds before clearing his throat.  “Kayn, Isabell suggested that you hide your wings while in public.”  He held out the trench coat.  It was a midnight black color with silver buttons and a waist cinch.  “And she also suggested this.  I found the biggest I could that was still short enough for your build…” he let his sentence fall off as she took the coat form his hands.  I could barely make out the whispered “thank you” before she pounced on him in a hug.

Great.  I accidentally just made their little bond stronger by letting him bring up the dang coat.  Why did I have to do stupid things like that?

I let a little growl escape my throat, making them aware again of my presence as I was carefully folding and packing the clothing, which was much more than I had done a few moments ago.  I was trying to keep my patience about me, but that kind of thing made me mad for some reason, especially with two of my people.

I locked the suitcase I was working on, and then said aloud, “Be ready to move out in 2 hours.  The hovers will be here by then to take us to the Seat.”

I left the room, a playful Isabell bouncing along beside me.