CHAPTER 4 – A NEW FIELD OF SCIENCE?
If had to find two words with which to describe Marie, they would be incredible and effective, though to actually describe her I would probably pack the two words together. While she was effective, even incredibly so, I wasn't certain that I would really call her incredible. On one hand she continuously showed skills and abilities that had not been in her resume nor could any of them be found in her personal-files, which by itself already raised questions. But on the other hand she displayed a disarming cheekiness that I wasn't used to from her. It made me wonder if irritatingly effective would be a better and more fitting way to describe her?
“You know Dr. Foster, I was wondering, we are in a clothing store, so maybe you would like to get some pants or maybe a shirt?”
“Excusse me?”
“Sure, I can understand the need to flaunt your newly touched up assets, but still . . .”
She even had the gall to grin and let her eyes wander down my body. While I had been too stressed to really notice it before, with her around I was painfully aware of my lack of clothing. Instead of even dignifying this with an answer I only glared at her and went to the closest displays. The first t-shirt went straight into the nope pile. Glitter and unicorns were so not something I would wear, ever! Before I’d wear something so undignified I think I would rather strut around naked.
After a short while of searching during which I constantly felt Marie's gaze on my back, I had finally found a more or less decent outfit: a black print shirt and dangerously low riding olive shorts that just barely fit underneath the damned tail. Apparently my choice was funnier than I had intended, as Marie could barely hold back her laughter. Insolent woman, I had impeccable taste in clothing!
“Doctor did you honestly choose to wear a Jurassic World shirt?”
“What!? It'ss a classic, and the movie serriess inspirred me as a child. And even ignorring that, the orriginal book might be old but really good! It wass one of the first bookss to heavily featurre genetic manipulation, and thereforre deservess to be honoured.” I didn’t quite understand her mirth, it was one of my favourite movie series and despite being old and highly inaccurate it was rather fun to watch.
“Okay, as you apparently really don't understand what I'm laughing about, how about a little favour for me?”
I wasn't quite sure what she was getting at, but it couldn't be that much worse than getting turned into a reptile person.
“Surre, what iss it that you want?”
“Hold your arms like this!” She held her arms in a kind of T-Rex position. To say I was confused would be an understatement.
“And now say Rawr!” ‘What? Why?’
I didn’t really get what she was on about and so was more than a little suspicious, but despite this I couldn’t see the damage to fulfilling her wish, hesitantly I raised my arms and spoke the word, “Rawrrr!” Despite trying my best it was still hard to pronounce the “r” sounds, it always sounded like a little growl.
“Oh, ja! This simply the best, just look at it!” She started smiling and closed her eyes, after a few seconds she opened them again and came towards me.
“Here, take a look; that is what I meant.”
Marie had once more that sleazy grin on her face, as she produced a tablet from somewhere on her person. I hadn't even realized from where she took it and even so, from what I had seen so far it should have been impossible for her to even have a functioning electronic device. After all everything around the area with an electrical current inside had been sucked dry, so why would hers be any different? And yet with a tap of her finger the heavy looking tablet came to life. While I was indeed surprised by the working device I was even more so by what was playing on it.
It was a gif; a gif of a blue scaled female lizard-human hybrid in a Jurassic World shirt. She stood in a badly illuminated store, while doing a stupid pose and saying the word ‘Rawr!’. To top it off there was even a cartoonish font visible when I spoke depicting my speech. I think I got what Marie was going on about though; the shirt was so on point with my new body features that it made me look less like I was promoting the movie, but instead me wearing the shirt came of more like a rather sarcastic take on my own situation. Oh, and of course that it was really humiliating to see myself pose like this.
“Marie this iss serrving no purpose and might be interpreted as being linked to the events thiss evening, sso if you could please not upload it and instead delete it, that would be favorrable.”
‘If I ask her like this she will never expect that I am actually deeply ashamed right now!’ I really hoped she couldn’t tell, because I had the distinct feeling that she would hold it over me forever. I certainly preferred the meek version of her to the cheeky one, the one that didn’t look at me with laughing eyes!
“Really Doctor? Is that what this is about? I have the fe-” I interrupted before she could go one.
“Anyway, farr more interesting should be, why you have a functioning tablet, when everything else iss dead?”
To make my point come across I held up the smart-display of the teenager in front of us. I of course hadn’t stolen it only borrowed it for scientific purposes. But just as I could have expected from the woman she played coy and the grin that never seemed to leave her face grew even wider.
“That, dear Doctor, is for me to know and for you to wonder about. Okay no seriously, I merely invested in a device protected from electromagnetic interferences. Nothing weird about it right?”
There was definitely something weird about this! Something so small that could resist an EMP strong enough to knock out the public streetlights in a wide area, simply reeked of military tech. No normal electronics producer would even consider putting so much protection in their tech; after all the faster it broke the faster the customer had to buy a new one. With something like this she either had to have rigged it herself, or she had seriously good connection to some shady or wealthy people. Both options again shone a very different light on the meek Marie I had known before. Of one thing I was now certain, she wasn’t who she said she was and she had to have very good training to hide her true self from even our employer Spears-Industries. There was one question I simply had to ask, one thing I had to know. My eyes narrowed in suspicion and an unintentional hiss escaped my throat.
“Marrrie, if that even isss yourr trrrue name, have you been a corrrporrate-sspy the entirrre fucking time!?” I felt my lips pulling themselves in to a snarl; it must have been terrifying enough, because I finally got an honest reaction from her.
It was for less than a second but I had clearly seen it, her grin had twitched. She had been lying to me the entire fucking time! Once again I could feel it, the low vibration of an animalistic growl building in my throat; apparently the beast had noticed my anger and disgust. It wanted to teach this lesser woman a lesson, she had betrayed me and it wanted revenge in blood. I fought to restrain the thing inside of me; it had no place in this discussion. This was a human matter, one between Marie and myself, that much she owed me. I had always known of the leaks, but never had I been able to stop them, and now I had the source right in front of me. It all made sense, her low-profile personality, how she had always hung around those I had just punished. She had been working against me from the beginning!
“What isss it Marrrie? Why arrrrre you not sssaying anything?” My voice became less and less human as I spoke.
I stepped closer to her, slowly, predatory, my claws clicking on the floor with each step. She put one of her hands behind her back but didn’t retreat from me. If she truly wanted to challenge me on this I would gladly provide! Even with the little light that there was I could still see her eyes first growing wider and then narrowing almost immediately. But no matter what she did, she couldn’t hide her fear from me. My tongue shot out, lapping up the scent. I could smell her pores oozing sweat into the air, it was at the same disgusting and exhilarating. ‘Such a primal and base scent, ahhhh~! It makes me want to hunt . . .’ As much as I could feel the beast crawling into my mind, I knew if she would run now I wouldn't be able to resist I would give chase. And I was almost certain that if I chased her down, it would end in blood. As much as my logical mind screamed to stop now, I couldn’t hold back in my attempted to scare her, it was simply too good of a feeling. I came even closer to Marie; my face was now mere centimetre away from hers. More out of instinct than wilful action my tongue shot out and slid across her cheek.
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“Oh~, sssuch a ssssweet sssscent you have . . .”
I was about to caress her skin when she locked eyes with me. They were steely grey and harsh, she knew what could happen but tried her best to remain defiant in the face of danger. Little good it would do her against a creature like me, I was faster, stronger, born to hunt, and yet the little human was defiant.
“Don’t. If you do this I promise you that neither of us will leave this place alive.”
“Hmmm, but I sssso want to . . .” I looked at her with a smile and raised one finger to her cheek.
The very moment I had touched her soft supple flesh, Marie grasped whatever she had been reaching for and raised her hand. Seeing this slight movement my claws shot forward and grasped her head in an iron grip. Though before I could even draw blood I froze, my breath stocked both out of anger and fear. Pressing uncomfortably against my nose was the barrel of a heavy looking pistol. I had no illusions about the toughness of my new form. A shot to the face from so close up would kill most things, no matter how sharp or quick their claws were.
“I ssssee, we ssstand at an impasse. Tell me, what do you want to do now, trrraitorr?!” I breathed in and out again; slowly my mind began to clear of the red haze that now so quickly came with the thrill of adrenalin.
“How about we speak after the threat of death is resolved?” It was certainly a valid point, but she was still a traitor, and only fools believed someone like that a second time.
“If I rremove my clawss will you fire?”
“Ha! The same question I could ask you! If I lower the pistol, will I die?” By now I had calmed enough that I could loosen my fingers, but I wasn’t sure if I really should. ‘Uhhg! Why are choices so hard!?’
“Fine, I won’t rip yourr head off and you don’t shoot me, but I want answers!” ‘Finally! I no longer sound like I want to eat babies!’
After a lot of trial and error my speech had almost returned to normal human levels. Having gotten a feel for my changed tongue, I finally had gotten the lisp under control. Instead of speaking normally, I had to press the two sides of my tongue together so they didn’t move around while talking, it wasn’t easy but doable. And honestly it couldn’t have come sooner because it had started to become seriously annoying! Regarding the growling, well I was still working on that bit, it was like an ingrained instinct of this body and really hard to suppress. Realizing the situation I was in I diverted my attention from this new achievement to the person before me.
“Okay, I’m going to let go now! Don’t shoot me!”
I slowly loosened my claws and pulled my hand away, at the same time Marie lowered her pistol. But she didn’t put it away and instead held it in her hand clearly for me to see. Apparently she had stopped her pretended trust, or she simply knew that the there was no sense in hiding the gun again. Honestly, I couldn’t fault her for it; after all I was armed even without a weapon in my hand, so it seemed only fair for her to be too. Still I couldn’t help it and eyed her up and down, weighing my chances. Now that she had lowered her weapon, any conflict between us would come down to who was faster. And I was pretty sure that my reflexes had improved far beyond human capabilities, at least those of a non-augmented human.
That was another thing, was I even still human? How much right did I, a person looking only superficially like human at all, have to call myself ever again human? I would have liked to see myself as a hybrid but despite the scientist in me rejecting the thought my animalistic mind seemed to know better. It instinctively knew no more like felt, a description for what I was. If I recalled correctly through the red haze, that so annoyingly blurred my short-term memory, then there were two things I had thought of before. The first of them being almost obviously a beast, by definition that was either any non-human animal, or if we take the more emotionally loaded one, a monster.
Now while being an animal was demeaning and undesirable, it looked like the better option considering the later definition, for that one played right into the second descriptor my other side had thought I was. Considering the impulses and savages desire that had come with my . . . change, it wasn’t so far off to consider myself as a monster. And apparently the kind of monster I had become was called a Drake? This really confused me because a drake was both a male Duck, and if one were to take the archaic use of the word into consideration, a being similar to a dragon. I was rather certain that I was no fricking duck, nor was I male, so that left only the second option. If I were to look at current games or other fiction that would mean a Drake was a kind of quadrupedal, wingless dragon, the problem here being, I was neither walking on all fours, nor did I look a lot like a dragon!
‘A Drake, huh?! I do have scales so . . . maybe?’ I detached myself from my current musings, and looked over to Marie, who once more watched me with a mixture of awe and confusion; apparently she had noticed my glaring lapse in attention.
“Were the heck did you just go Doctor? You were completely spaced out, are you still thinking about your work? Even in a situation like this?”
“No Marie, I wasn’t. Say, you told me that I didn’t change into my current body from the start? Would you please clarify what you meant by that? And make it short, understood!?” I finished with a soft growl to make my point come across. I had already spent too much time in this place and there was a lot of stuff I had to do!
“Sure . . .” She shook her head, but carried on. “Ah, yes, you didn’t have that body when you transformed before. But I better start at the beginning. So, right after you touched the glowing rip in space and time, it basically exploded. Half a dozen or so projectiles of weird colours, I seriously don’t want to call them magic but . . . you know” My eyes snapped towards her and I glared at the woman.
“Don’t mock me! I will not accept a thing like “It wass Magic!” as an answerr!” ‘Magic! Ha! Sure, what comes next, unicorns? But if she wants to go with it, whatever.’
“Wow! Calm the fuck down will you? You’ll soon enough see my point, but anyway back to the topic at hand. Those “lights” then went into some of the surrounding people, and I mean inside of them, not around or through, but inside their bodies and they stayed there. And obviously you standing the closest to the rift, got hit by the biggest one of them all; it was basically as if you had been struck by a lightning bolt.” Once again I interrupted her; none of this was making any sense!
“Stop! Jussst stop! You arre actually trrrying to sssell me that it wasss fucking magic!” I didn’t understand what she was thinking, I would never accept something a stupid as magic as the fault for this shit! I could feel the haze starting to cloud my mind again, ripping her body to shreds for her insolence sounded really good right now. I clenched my teeth together until it hurt; losing it now wasn’t an option. ‘Breath in and breath out, that’s right you have yourself fully under control!’ Marie watched with interest as I slowly regained control, her fingers had already found the trigger of her pistol. It was smart of her not to trust me, after I couldn’t even trust myself.
“Sorry, magic alright let’s just go with that, nothing wrong about fucking magic. So, what happened then?” My voice became more human as I calmed down. I truly needed those sedatives, or better yet straight up tranquilizers! ‘Maybe Alprazolam would work, and if nothing helps just straight up Phencyclidine, also lovingly referred to as Angel Dust, but then again that stuff would shoot my brain full of holes.’ Marie didn’t seem to mind my pondering and carried on with her retelling.
“Okay, were was I? Oh, right, so all of the people got hit by not-magic, from what I could see in the chaos it seemed that a few of them simply died, but the others, you included, started to change. As you were the closest to me, your case was the one I focused on. At first you were just writhing on the ground in pain, but then I could hear you bones twisting an breaking, and the light that went into you started to shine out, straight through your skin. All of a sudden you massively gained in volume, if I would say about four times your normal mass? At the same time your skin changed into these blue scales but all over the body.” She gestured to my arms and legs.
“Your entire body became like that of a huge lizard, but not like a crocodile, but instead more like a dragon without the wings if that makes sense? Anyway unlike with the others that changed you didn’t immediately rush of once the transformation was completed. You actually started to rampage around, rolling on the ground and clawing at your neck, you basically smashed everything nearby. And during that time all the electronics started to die, they didn’t blow up but their power was rapidly sucked dry, it was nothing like electricity should work. After that you managed to rip of the collar that was crushing your windpipe and fell unconscious. You transformed to what you look like now, and the rest you kinda already know. And that was it!” She shrugged indicating that she was finished.
I had a hard time wrapping my head around this. If what she had just told me was the truth and I indeed had “transformed” in the way she had described that would mean I was wrong? I would have to re-evaluate everything! If magic indeed existed even in this world, than I had to study it, maybe even find a way to revert the changes done to my own body. If it was real, that would mean I was saved I had just secured my ticket to a Nobel Prize, it wouldn’t even matter how i looked, it was bound to be a magnificent discovery, and I was the one to make it! And if I had to I would become the first ever mage or whatever the world had seen! A grin spread across my face as I turned back to Marie.
“Well done Marie, say how would you like the position of my personal assistant?”