Chapter 10: Second Chance
Perspective: Daniel
There was a side room next to the lab, one of many quarantine rooms, and in it there was a bed and a series of machines and hospital equipment. They’d assured me over and over that this was only a precaution, but I knew of course what the precaution was for; If I died. If this virus didn’t go as planned, if somehow these months of work only lead to another deadly virus, they had to make sure it wouldn’t get to anyone else. My life was in their hands and there wasn’t anyone else’s I’d rather it be in. I’d only known them a short while, but in that time I’d grown to trust them completely.
People kept giving me conflicting advice on my way to the lab; either "Don’t overthink it! Just pretend it’s a trip to the doctor!" or "Don’t forget this. It could be the biggest day of your life."
It wasn’t helping.
I was more nervous than I’d ever been sitting on that bed and it felt more like an eternity than any routine checkup I’d ever had before the door opened and Eddie stepped in, covered head to toe in a white hazmat suit.
"So…" he said, "… ready?"
I nodded, trying to be confident. I hoped I looked it, but I doubted it. He moved closer and I pretended to be distracted by something else as he pulled out the needle. I didn’t have a huge phobia of needles or anything, but they still weren’t my favorite. My heart was racing.
"You know," he said, "the Japanese say you have three faces. The first face is the one you show to the world. The second face is the one you show to family and close friends. The third face is the truest reflection of who you are."
There was a sharp pinch in my arm.
"Okay." Eddie said and I felt a small band-aid stick to my skin.
Then it happened. I closed my eyes, drew in a breath, and everything changed. So much happened in those few seconds I could barely process it all. I felt myself change. My body shifted, my jaw stretching, elongating in a strange but somehow not unpleasant way. My ears became pointed, turning this way and that to catch every sound. My body became covered in a steadily thickening coat of dark fur, growing out over my skin. In that one breath, everything changed. I smelled so much it overwhelmed me; the sterile air, the plastic and metal of various tools and pieces of equipment in the room. The heart monitor beeped louder and louder.
And then everything fell into place as my brain shifted to accommodate my body. It was like the satisfaction of putting the final piece in a puzzle, but a physical sensation that I felt everywhere, with every one of my five senses. I opened my eyes and saw Eddie standing there in the hazmat suit, frozen in awe.
"How do you… feel?" he asked. "Dizzy? Nauseous? Anything?"
He was a few feet away, but his voice was louder and clearer than ever, more so than it would have been if he had spoken right into my ear when I was human.
"No…" I said, somewhat startled at the sound of my own voice. "I feel… better than… well, ever! I mean that’s what the saying means, right? Better than ever? I’m… better than ever!"
Eddie chuckled with joy and pure relief and I laughed with him. I could hear the sound of the others in the observation room; Jess and Jason and Gordon and Tyler cheering with joy.
"Now, uh, we… we’re going to have to run some tests just to be sure everything else works okay." Eddie said.
"Whatever you’ve gotta do." I said, still grinning.
I admittedly had no clue how to do an actual cartwheel, but if the quarantine room were any bigger I would have done one. Once they had done an x-ray and were sure that my ribs and spine were all in the right place, Gordon put on a hazmat suit just to come into the room and hug me and I actually almost teared up.
——
I lay back on the bed in a rare moment of relaxation between the tests (after accidentally sitting on my tail for the fifth time—that would take some getting used to). After about ten minutes, there was a knock on the door that might have made me jump had I not heard the person on the other side coming. I’d picked up the sound of their footfalls from the other side of the door and noticed when they stopped outside the room—which sounded like a cool thing to be able to do until I realized I’d be hearing people pass by in the halls all the time now.
The door opened and Gordon stepped in, oddly without a hazmat suit.
"What’re you doing in here?" I asked. "I thought I was still contagious."
Just because the virus hadn’t killed me, that wasn’t a guarantee it was completely non-lethal, and although Gordon had already transformed through the first strain of the virus, the new one could still re-infect him and mess something up.
"Yeah." he said with a cocky grin. "Guess who’s test subject number two?"
I sat up.
"They infected you?" I asked. "But you’re already transformed, why would they…"
"Just to be sure it wouldn’t mess up anyone who turned during the first virus." he said. "They’re running a lot of other tests on a lot of other people. So far, nothing bad. Everyone’s gotten as smooth and painless a transformation as you did."
"That’s really great to hear." I sighed. "I’d hate for them to have put all this work into it for nothing. I just can’t believe…" I let out a breath. "I can’t believe I’m… like, at the front of this whole revolution now."
"Yeah." Gordon said. "I wake up thinking the same thing every day."
He sat on the bed next to me and added, "I’m not here to stay or anything, by the way, I’ve got my own room. I just thought I’d visit."
"So, what is it like?" I asked. "You know, being like this all the time?"
Gordon chuckled.
"Well, the first few things you’ve probably already noticed. The whole sensory overload thing dies down eventually." he said. "I mean, it doesn’t really, you just learn to focus your senses. No doubt you can hear things now; people breathing, their heartbeat."
He was right; I heard those things loud and clear from him, as well as every creak in the bed frame and every rustle of the sheets as he shifted his weight.
"You can smell what things are made of;" he continued, "the leather and plastic in our boots, the dirt and dust from the different places we’ve been. You can see more than you used to. Everything about your life will be different now."
"Good different?" I asked.
"Mostly. Listening to music is harder. Headphones are built and designed for humans, so the lowest volume you can get on most of them will be pretty loud for you now. Not that there are any types of headphones that fit your new ears."
He flicked at my left ear and it twitched instinctively—it was weird to feel my entire hearing system rotate and flip back into place so quickly.
"I mean, there are people who are working on designing headphones and stuff to fit ears like ours or to work on those who have antlers and horns," Gordon continued, "but they’re mostly crazy expensive."
"I figured." I sighed, nodding.
"It’ll be awhile before you can manage the new ambient temperature." He gestured to the air around him. "You’ll find yourself taking colder showers and you’ll need lighter clothes."
"Right." I said. "Fur. Well, that should save on the heating bill if nothing else."
"Yeah." he chuckled. "Serious tip: Avoid open flame. Fur catches like crazy. Oh, and uh, unfortunately your particular anthro form means chocolate is now off the table."
"Hmm." I said. "Well… if giving up chocolate is one of the worst parts of the deal…" I glanced over myself, looking at my arms and hands. "I think that’s a good deal. I’d give up a hell of a lot more than chocolate to be who I’ve always felt I am."
"Damn straight, brother." Gordon chuckled.
——
It would be awhile before they could let me out of quarantine. Even after they had run every test they could on me (which actually didn’t take long, with the FSF’s medical and science teams having gathered a wealth of knowledge on anthro biology), I was still infectious and the second strain itself wasn’t anywhere near done being tested. They didn’t want it getting out and hurting anyone… again.
My job as moderator of the official deep web site got more complicated too, as word spread through backchannels that we were rounding up test subjects for the new strain. As Eddie explained it, the clinical trial of the new virus would go through three phases: Phase 1 evaluating a few dozen healthy subjects to be sure it was non-lethal, Phase 2 testing the virus on anthros who were not furries to be sure it could change people back into humans if they wanted it, and Phase 3 testing hundreds of different subjects to verify that the virus was truly safe to release into the public.
We were a long way away from the end, but every day was another step closer.
No comments yet. Be the first!