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Past Dues** (Part 3)**

by K9 Lupus

Deep within the underbelly of bustling Los Angeles, a burgeoning secret was readying itself to soon be revealed to the world. Richie Grimaldi had been thankful for the elevator access leading down to this new network of dimly lit hallways. Stairs wouldn't have been a possibility for him right now in his current state, but hopefully that would change if the messages he had received were true. He glimpsed again at the set of instructions he had been provided with, linked to cryptic signs strewn about the city. How anyone else could manage to decipher their order without the guide was beyond him. After a full day of traversing through city streets, back-alleys, and parks he had been relieved to finally arrive at the unassuming sporting goods storefront with the red and white "CLOSED" sign dangling at its front. Having found the large, rusted doors at the back for receiving cargo ajar, curiosity tinged with a distant fear led him the rest of the way inside.

Paired with the quiet buzz of the lights, Grimaldi's hands against the metal bracing of his wheelchair were the only other sounds present in this isolating space. He came upon a heavy steel door, bracketed with metal hinges and an electronic lock. Placing the keycard he had located along his journey on the scanner, a welcomed "ACCESS GRANTED" message announced from a discreet set of speakers embedded within the chrome walls. The door slid back into a hidden recess and now before him was a large clinic. Everything inside from tools and supplies, to the bland, patterned drapery separating partitions for patients was pristine. Grimaldi scarcely breathed in fear that a single cough would trigger some type of contamination procedure.

Hunched over a desk on the other side of the room was a peculiar sight. The man seated there looked to be a mix of both humanity and the ocean itself. He was much larger than any other person Grimaldi had ever seen before with jet black skin. Stretching out behind him was a powerful, muscular tail ending in two lobed flukes, and rising up through an opening in the back of his enormous lab coat was an unmistakable, dark dorsal fin. Outside of the buzzing of the lights above and the faint _phwoo_sound of the creature's breathing through the blowhole atop its head the room was silent. When he finally lifted his head from his clipboard, the orca-man fixed a steely blue eye on Grimaldi, then smiled, revealing his set of pointed, ivory teeth. With his brain overwhelmed by the image of the creature standing, then plodding forward towards him on his pair of elongated feet, Grimaldi was without words.

The orca-man extended out a large, webbed hand in Grimaldi's direction. "I'm Dr. Lewis Carter. Welcome to Facility V." Despite his hulking appearance, the doctor's voice was calm and flowing like the shadowy realm of the deep sea. "We've been expecting you. Don't worry, I can help you get back what you've lost."

********

"All right. Now press down on this block for me with the palms of both hands. Give it as much effort as you can and hold that position for at least fifteen seconds."

Grimaldi readied himself and pressed his hands against the bolted wooden block. Carter quickly circled around him, noting the pulsing vein at his temple. A quick glance towards the monitor gauging his blood pressure was followed by more scribbling of notes on Carter's clipboard. Grimaldi finally relaxed, shaking the lingering tingles out of his arms.

"How much more of this is left?" Grimaldi inquired with an exasperated off-pant to his breath. Carter was silent. More notes were jotted down on the clipboard.

"Good. Your vitals are showing that you'd be a good candidate for the procedure."

Carter nonchalantly carrying out his work despite his overtly different appearance was beyond Grimaldi. To think such a strange creature like him would be able to resolve his plight was like some of the comics Grimaldi had read when he was younger now brought to life.

"Doctor, where is everyone else? I thought you were part of a group, but I've only seen you this whole time that I've been in here."

"Just Carter is fine. No need for formalities. And there are plenty of others. You'll meet them if you decide to go through with the procedure. This space we're in right now is made to keep both you and them safe should anything unexpected happen."

Uncertainty wasn't what Grimaldi had come this whole way for. He wanted results. Carter checked off a few more boxes on his chart and scribbled in some additional notes before Grimaldi

"Can I feel your arm? I need to be sure it's not just some well-made fish costume."

Carter stifled immediately correcting Grimaldi's comment on the nature of cetacean life, but acquiesced to his request, remembering similar ones from some of the other potential patients in the past.

"You may. Be my guest."

Carter offered his forearm to which Grimaldi then ran his hand across the orca-man's skin. It was smooth, but not quite as slick as he imagined it would have been. Seeing Carter's eyes carefully studying him all the while was unnerving. He's real._Grimaldi realized with the idea of his potential future solidified within his mind. _He can help and then this can all go away.

"Will I be the same as you when it's said and done?" Grimaldi asked, now looking directly at the orca-man's face. Carter looked momentarily to his notes before he answered.

"It reacts differently for everyone so that I can't say. I've seen all manner of creature emerge after the change."

Grimaldi wondered if ending up as a slug, a cockroach, or some unrecognizable beast would really be worth the chance to try and start a new life for himself.

He pressed further. "What will you do to me if I say no?"

Carter smiled, and his row of ivory teeth came into view once more along his snout. "No one we've brought here has declined. We are very careful with who we choose to bring here. We know you've gone through a lot already. You don't need to hold onto all that pain anymore."

Grimaldi bristled at Carter's assumed understanding. "Do you though? They said it was to be a routine mission. Get in, grab the intel, get out. But everything went wrong as soon as we arrived at the compound. The patrol changes were off, the layout we had been fed was incomplete, and that sun. It felt like it was pressing you straight down into the ground with how hot it was. We made our way through slowly enough. I wanted to prove that I could accomplish something meaningful and so I took the lead into the next room. I remember all too clearly that the target's dining room had a carpet that was red, with gold leaf rosettes framing the exterior. I went in to rush and secure a covering position and then there was a blinding flash. Then the most excruciating, searing pain for only a few seconds before everything went dark. The next time I came to I was in a hospital back in the States, but my legs had stayed there on that carpet. I still feel a twisting pain there sometimes. It's right when I wake up too. I've stopped trying to tell myself that it's only a bad dream.

After that I was rummaging around the streets trying to scrape by. The pyschographic evaluation ruled that I wouldn't be mentally stable to handle a cybernetic leg installation, so they delegated the rest of my life to living as a cripple. The VA was not willing to cover that kind of treatment and wanted to pass the costs down to my family. We're modest people, nothing too fancy, so that was out of the question. We tried to raise some funds as best we could, but fell well short of our goal. I looked for work, but no one was willing to higher someone like me. I was too much of a liability for them. My family would bury their pain in smiles, those faint, forced smiles trying to reassure me that everything was ok, but I knew I was only making things worse. This pattern of trying and failing, then failing again and again continued for months on end until I finally got fed up with the whole thing and packed what I could carry with me. I didn't want to be a burden on my family.

I've been out on the streets for almost three years now. In that time I've met all kinds of people, but hearing about your group and that you were trying to reach out to help those who had been wronged sparked something in me. I had to take one more chance to see if this could work. I don't want to stay this way."

Carter absorbed every word of Grimaldi's story, and when he was finally done sharing his tale he grabbed an empty syringe casing from the shelving underneath. He cradled the clear glass in his hands momentarily before placing it on the desk beside him.

"Before my own change I had a leg that was crippled from an accident caused by the negligence of those I worked under. Although it wasn't quite the same as what you've had to endure, I can understand how having your ability to move as freely as before taken away from changes so much. Tragedy always takes much more than you could ever envision.

I can help you, but if you choose to move forward with this then you will be altered forever. There's no going back. I won't lie to you. There could be danger to you from this choice. Humans have an uncanny ability to fear that which is different from them. And what they fear they wish to destroy. Your family, your social ties, friends, loved ones, that may all vanish. At the same time, there is a chance that we can rebuild this world together where stories like yours don't have to keep happening."

Grimaldi nodded. "I'm prepared for anything. My family would never turn me away. Even when I came back home after the accident they were willing to try for me. I was the one who had left. Now I have to try for them."

Carter filled the syringe from a canister atop his desk with the swirling blue fluid that contained the nano-virus. With a sweeping motion of his hand, Carter indicated the top of his thigh. "It's just like having a shot of epinephrine. We do ask though that you be the one to inject yourself. It's important to us that you know that you know you are in control of what happens next."

Grimaldi paused, knowing this was his last chance to back down, but he didn't want to. He could charge into this like he had at the compound. There were no carpets with hidden secrets here. Grimaldi gently grabbed the syringe and studied its contents before turning the needle down. A single blue drop formed at the tip from the nervous shaking of his hand before he calmed his nerves with a deep breath.

"I'm ready."

With a plunge of the serum into his veins, Grimaldi's body was overrun with the heat of the nano-virus surging through him. His muscles ached and throbbed as they rippled beneath the constraints of his clothing. A particularly powerful jolt trailing down his hips caused him to double over in his wheelchair. Time stopped, then slowly proceeded forwarded as to Grimaldi's mixed amazement and horror, two knobby buds were forming through the empty flaps of his shorts. New layers or bone, skin, and tissue stitched themselves together over his previous amputation in rapid succession, and soon the budding limbs gained the semblance of legs.

A new rumble rippled through his gut and knocked him to the ground as his skin began to develop a slick texture meshed into his sweat. His pale skin gave way to a rich brown, peppered with dark spots. With each heaving breath, his throat felt heavier and heavier. A sudden rush of air into his lungs caused his throat to swell out briefly with a low-bellowing _crrooooaakk_echoing through the room. The heat of the change numbed his face, and as if caught in an unyielding vice the pressure of shifting bones intensified until the pressure gave way all at once as his face lengthened out into a short, stubby snout with a pair of sickening cracks.

Ears dissolved into the changing flesh of his head and the vice rotated towards his eyes. Grimaldi thrashed his head from side to side as his eyes bulged and swell, his pupils stretching out from either side into a new almond-shape. He found relief from the tension across his body once the seams of his clothing buckled beneath his body's growing mass and musculature leaving him bare to the world as they tore and gave way to his developing amphibious form. A strange feeling, like a memory nearly lost came back to Grimaldi then as he felt movement far behind him. Glancing back he could make out a series of patterned stripes trailing down either of his rejuvenated legs ending in webbed toes similar to his hands.

His legs quivered as he tried to control the young, uncoordinated muscles. Grimaldi couldn't recall feeling such joy ever before in his life as he saw one of his widened feet bend slightly to his thoughts. His new limbs seized entirely as a new rush of the nano-virus poured into them, accelerating their growth as new muscles thickened at his thighs. Only once the heat of the change finally ebbed back did he attempt to stand. Like a newborn fawn his body trembled, but with careful focus he slipped one long leg beneath himself. Then the other. Then with a mighty effort he stood upright only to fall back down again. Carter's hand filled his vision, and he gratefully took its support.

With the trembling through his body now quiet, Grimaldi looked over his radically mutated form, piecing together the new feeling of his skin coupled with the restrained power felt in his new legs.

"A frog...To think..I never cared much for frog legs at any of those foo-foo restaurants." Grimaldi looked at his now unnecessary wheelchair and with a grin mustered a mighty kick sending it halfway across the room.

"Welcome to the future you've seized for yourself." Carter cheerily added after witnessing his joyous destruction of the past.

"You'll want to take it easy over the next few days. Neuronal connections are still being made so you may find your movements to be a bit uncoordinated or shaky for now. The metal doors at the far end of the clinic will lead you into the main housing of the facility. At the bottom there will be a recovery room. You'll find everything you need in there."

Grimaldi followed as directed and once opening the sealed metal doors embedded within ancient, gray rock, he was baffled to see the space open up into a huge cavern with floodlights shedding light on hundreds of other mutants changed like himself carrying about their business. Upon entering the space he was immediately greeted by a parrot mutant that descended down from its perch while a snake mutant slithered across the floor and offered warm greetings to him. Overjoyed in the face of all of this wondrous possibility, he contemplated what opportunities would lay ahead for him now. He spotted a medical area in the distance, and despite Carter's advice there was no stopping Grimaldi's massive leaps across the cavern which drew the eyes of everyone around.

********

Under the light of the shining moon casting a glow over the shadowy skyscrapers of New York, Ravvik was finalizing his review of the submitted reports from the transformative clinics. Their most recent count placed the total number of mutated individuals at 4,107. Ravvik grinned with delight at his plan continuing its unimpeded course towards fruition.

A quiet fwump snappedRavvik's attention away from the reports. A quick scenting of the air didn't detect any sign of life in the room. However, at the conference room's far corner, a black and grey robotic form stood motionlessly before it emerged from the shifting shadows. It carried the semblance of a man in its shape, but was nothing more than a cold, hardened steel shell to Ravvik's eyes. These cyborgs were OSRD's latest developments, but Ravvik hadn't anticipated them already being deployed so soon.

"Ravvik, we finally meet." he answered with a dissonant tone of human emotion.

Ravvik was on guard and maintained his distance, hoping to learn more about his enemy.

"Who are you? Why did OSRD send you here?"

"I am Agent Granger. Full conversion cyborg with OSRD's cybernetic enhancement program. To answer your other question, I sent myself. I hoped you wouldn't mind."

"Granger...you're the one that's been forwarding information about the OSRD's plans to us. But why are you helping us?"

"Conversion...was misleading. I was promised to feel nothing, but in losing my body...I feel everything.The OSRD is more dangerous than you realize. They know everything. You are only alive right now because of me."

Ravvik growled, his gills flaring hard in anger at Granger's words. "Well are you here right now to try and change that?"

"Not in line with mission objective. I am here to inform you that more like me have been dispatched to end you. If they cut off the head the body will wither. That is what OSRD thinks."

"Why tell me like this instead of sending a message your usual way? Wouldn't that have been faster?"

"My presence was required to grant the best chance of your safety. E-mails can't block bullets. I am here to aid you directly now. With the enhancement program completed, a prototype like me may not be in OSRD's best interest to keep around."

Agent Granger extended his metallic hand in Ravvik's direction. The lack of any discernible emotion outside the faint red glow of his eyes was on his face-shield was unsettling. If Granger wanted to kill Ravvik, he would have done so already Ravvik thought as he tentatively shook the cyborg's hand.

"I'm not sure the others will welcome you as readily, but any help towards our goal is fine by me. You may stay with us for now, but I hope you know that you will have to prove your worth to keep it and your life as well."

"Affirmative."