Worth The Risk
Worth The Risk
Worth The Risk
By Sovandar
This little tale was written as my half of a story trade with Shereth a damned good writer who I silently admired for many a year in my lurker-days. It's been a real treat swapping stories with him, and I hope he likes this even half as much as I've enjoyed his work!
Now, drop by and give his stories some love!
*PRODUCT SAFETY WARNING* May contain traces of peanuts. Do not use if allergic to any of the following: Science Fiction, Dinosaurs, Transformations, Female-to-Male Gender Shifting, or Graphic Male Homosexuality. Not suitable for persons under 18 at stated dosage. Consult a physician immediately if you experience any unexpected side effects from the use of this product.
No copying without permission lest the wrath of the great god Copyrictus strike you down, all characters are fictional, and no resemblances to actual persons are intended.
* * *
11th December, 2018
"Are you sure you're alright, sweetheart? You're still looking quite pale..." observed Richard's mother, suspiciously. "If you're still feeling ill, darling, no-one's forcing you to go..."
Richard shook his head. "I'm better today. Really", he lied.
Five days ago, the seventeen-year-old student had been out at a friend's eighteenth birthday and Christmas party combined; Richard had been very pleased with himself at managing to persuade the class beauty, Rose, into a quick kiss under the mistletoe. It wasn't until the next day, when he started feeling ill, that he remembered Rose had not long ago recovered from the seasonal round of influenza.
Richard was desperately looking forward to today's class outing to the laboratory complex owned by AGI - Accelerated Genomics Incorporated. AGI was world-famous; they specialised in 'resurrecting' extinct species, reconstructing them from the level of DNA upward - their research projects had already paid for themselves many times over, with zoos all across the world paying through the nose for iconic, extinct species like Woolly Mammoths, Polar Bears, Dodos, and Tigers. There were even suggestions that dinosaurs might be on the company's project list.
The company was planning to build its own zoo and theme park, open to visitors, filled with still more exotic extinct species that it was not going to offer for sale. Richard hoped to become a veterinarian, and to his mind, working for AGI, tending to species that nature had removed from the world, only for human hands to bring them back - it was the best possible job he could dream of. If he could impress the company on this trip, maybe he could ask for sponsorship through University; or even if he could just make a few contacts, a few people to ask a favour from later...
So nothing, not even the last dying gasp of the 'flu, was going to stop him from attending today's trip. He'd taken a few more paracetamol and aspirin than was probably safe, strictly speaking, but he was sure his liver would take one for the team - just this once.
* * *
"So", Chief Embryologist Samantha Gardener addressed the fifteen teenagers, "there's only one place left in the labs to see - the hatchery!" She watched the flagging interest of the gathered students suddenly sharpen.
She led the small group past the heavy set of doors into the laboratory beyond, nodding to Mike Lancer, who didn't look pleased at the sudden interruption of his work. In fact, he looked rather nervous; she made a mental note to have a word with him later.
"Everyone, this is Doctor Lancer, one of our virologists." She gestured to Mike, who forced a smile.
"This room," she intoned, gesturing at the surroundings, "is our new dinosaur embryology room. We use chickens as our baseline, and use specific genetic switches to regress the embryos when they're at the four-cell stage..." a pupil put his hand up. "Yes, over there?" she asked.
"Did you say chickens?"
She nodded. "Yes. Modern birds, I'm sure you know, are descended from dinosaurs; it's easier to work with a similar genome, than a very different one."
"How do you turn a chicken into a dinosaur, then?" asked the same pupil.
"Well, we use a DNA cassette based on a non-LTR CR-1 retrotransposon." She laughed, seeing that had gone right over their heads. "Now, that needs a bit more explanation... first off, does anyone know what a retrotransposon is?"
Mike, half-forgotten, chuckled, and shouted an answer. "An endogenous retrovirus?"
"Mike, please, I'm looking for *help* explaining it!" Sam protested, good-humouredly, watching the class's confused expressions deepen.
"Okay, okay", he relented, and turned to the assembled crowd. "A retrotransposon is what we call a 'jumping gene'. It's a piece of DNA that, when activated, makes a copy of itself, and inserts the copy somewhere at random in the genome. It's like a virus, except it can't leave the cell to infect other cells, like a virus can."
He paused, letting it sink in, rubbing his smooth-shaven head nervously. "We like to use 'em because we can easily replace the DNA in a chicken with our dinosaur genome, and add the virus to the embryos we want to alter. The cells get infected, but the disease can't spread because the DNA doesn't code for a virus any more, you see? All it can do it copy itself dozens of times over until the host's original genome gets lost in the background 'noise'; then, when the chick grows up, it's a dinosaur, not a chicken."
The class all nodded; the teacher apparently understood, but most of the kids looked like they were only nodding so as not to look stupid.
"But what sort of dinosaurs do you make?" interjected a girl, excitedly.
Sam answered her. "For the moment, only deinonychus; at stage two, we hope to include allosaurus, tyrannosaurus, and velociraptor; after that, who knows?"
"Hey, you ever seen 'Jurassic Park' miss?" asked one gum-chewing boy. He'd been irritating Samantha with his offensive attitude, ever since he arrived.
She suppressed a scowl. "Yes, I..."
"Don't you worry they'll get out and kill you all, miss?"
She shook her head with a faint smile. "Not re..."
"The scientists are always the first to go in the movies, miss."
The teacher belatedly intervened. "Robert - button it."
The boy blew a bubble in his gum, and grinned mischievously before insincerely replying, "Sorry, sir."
The teacher met Sam's eye and gave a helpless shrug. Evidently a problem pupil.
Sam took a deep breath. "So far, the specimens are only the size of a chicken; we've deliberately retarded their growth. They could give you a nasty scratch, but that's about it. So no, there's no danger to us."
A quiet pale-looking boy near the back of the group coughed, blew his nose noisily, then raised a cautious hand. "Yes, at the back?" she acknowledged.
"What happens if they escape into the wild?"
"Nothing. There's no risk of a breeding colony being established; the specimens we've created so far don't have the genes that trigger puberty. They don't mature sexually - and we've only used a male genome so far."
The teacher spoke up again. "I appreciate Hollywood isn't exactly accurate, but all the literature says sterile females are easier?"
Sam oscillated. "Well, yes and no - females are genetically simpler and tend to be less aggressive, but they're harder to sterilise, thanks to parthenogenesis." She paused as she saw the blank expressions of her visitors. "Parthenogenesis is... well, it is possible for a female, even an infertile one, to lay an egg that's a clone of its mother. It's rare in vertebrates but some of reptiles can do it; the process is called parthenogenesis..."
"Like, a virgin birth or something?" asked the interested young girl who'd spoken earlier.
"What, some sort of Raptor Jesus?" laughed the disruptive bubblegum-chewer. The class fell about.
"Settle down, settle down!" said the teacher, loudly. "Robert, I'd like you to come and see me afterwards." The impudent youth gave no sign of having heard, instead blowing a satisfied bubble with his gum.
Mike, thankfully, interrupted the awkward scene that was developing. "Anyone want to see a real dinosaur? Wait here a moment, and I'll fetch one."
That grabbed everyone's attention; and suddenly robbed of his audience, Robert stopped playing up in a heartbeat.
Mike walked out of the laboratory a moment through a side door, and the class heard an enticing series of high-pitched, hissing barks from the far side - alien sounds, inhuman sounds.
He was gone barely twenty seconds before he strode back inside, with a birdlike form the size of an iguana held securely in his arms. It was clearly a dinosaur; its scales were a mottled, dirty greenish with patches of brown, its rounded snout sniffed curiously at the air, and its waving, feather-coated forearms ended in a trio of long, sharp talons. More feathers, soft and downy, coloured a dull brown, ran in a crest from the top of its head to the tip of its long tail.
It gave a screech as the crowd of people moved over, surrounding it, pushing close; the little creature was clearly uncomfortable at all the attention it was suddenly getting.
"Oh, it's so cute!" cried one of the girls.
A chorus of 'wow', 'awesome', 'cool', and one 'holy shit!' followed by a shout of 'Kevin! Language!' from the teacher, echoed for a moment around the room.
The teacher cleared his throat, prompting the fervour to momentarily quieten. "Did you say it was a deinonychus? Didn't they have feathers all over?"
Mike tried to peer over the tall teenagers' heads to look the man in the face, but gave up after a few seconds' trying. "Well, really, that's believed only by analogy with Velociraptor, which we know, had feathers instead of scales; for deinonychus, the fossil evidence isn't complete. Oh, and remember, this is a reconstruction based only on the ancestral genes found in modern birds; even with one per cent accuracy, there could still be mismatches by a million years or..."
"Can I touch it?" interrupted the quiet, pale boy.
"Hmm?" asked Mike, attention switching back to the class crowding around, "Oh, best not; he might bite! Besides, it's best we minimise the risk of..."
The boy sneezed loudly, earning a startled hiss from the tiny saurian, which started flailing wildly to get away from the loud noise.
"...infection", Mike finished, followed by a yelp of horrified surprise, "Ack! Don't sneeze on him! What was I just saying?! Heaven's sakes, you're not ill, are you?"
"Um..." Richard pondered a moment, feeling embarrassed half to death at getting himself told off by a top scientist he was hoping to impress. "...no. I... just get allergies", he said, sniffing.
"You've been off school for days, Rich!" pointed out one of his classmates, earning herself an angry glare from the lad.
"I'm better now. It's just an allergy!" he protested.
Mike shook his head. "I'll put this little guy away before he does any - whoa!" he said, snatching his hand out of the way as the panicked dinosaur nipped at his thumb, "...erm, harm!"
The class made some disappointed noises as the scientist retreated into the room next door, trying to restrain the frantic creature.
From nearby there was a crash of glass, and a cry of 'Oops!', and Sam resisted the urge to shout obscenities as she saw that the bubblegum-chewer had just clumsily knocked over a row of glass vials on the lab bench, that Mike had been working on; as she watched, he stood there quite calmly, apathetically blowing another bubble, while one vial rolled slowly off the far side of the table. He made no move to catch it, and there was a loud sound of shattering glass.
"Robert, watch what you're doing! You've no idea what those are!" snapped the teacher. "Pick them up and put them back at once!"
"Ah", Sam intervened, startling the assembled throng, "No, that's okay, just leave them where they are, we can clear it up later." The last thing she wanted was the bubblegum bandit deciding they might be good in a juggling act, or something equally insane; god, the things some kids would do to get a rise out of their teacher.
Sam looked at her watch, and was relieved to see the time. "Oh, it's nearly lunch. Right, let me just show you to the canteen", she said, hurriedly ushering them out of the room. Without knowing what was in that broken vial, she didn't intend to leave half a school in the room with it while she cleaned it up. "I'll come and collect you once you've eaten, show you around the Husbandry stables outside, and go through some of our conservation work..." she pushed them back out into the corridor beyond.
She was back about five minutes later, and found Mike sitting at a lab bench, tapping away at a computer keyboard, looking a little pale. A dustpan full of damp glass shards and soaking blue paper rested on the bench beside him, next to a cardboard box into which he'd carefully placed the remaining vials to avoid further accidents.
"Mike? Everything okay?" she asked. "That bloody bubblegum bandit managed to break something; nothing dangerous, I hope?"
"No, thankfully. Bubblegum bandit, eh? It suits him." He chuckled, before his expression fell and he sighed heavily. "Although that was my stock of Vancomycin Acetate he broke. I'll have to synthesise a new batch, but I'm more irritated that he mixed up all my vials before I could write labels on the damn things," he gestured at the haphazard collection of small bottles, each holding an identical amount of a colourless liquid, totally indistinguishable, "and I've no fucking idea which is which any more; I'll have to dispose of the lot and do two days work from scratch. Plus, I've had to put our little raptor friend in quarantine; if he gets sick - or worse - it'll be my head on the block. So, no, it's not exactly 'okay', right now."
She smiled reassuringly. "You worry too much. It's not like there's anything urgent coming up until January, you'll have time to catch up, and I'm sure our dinosaur chicks will recover just fine." She scowled in mock anger. "And you know I hate you calling them raptors."
"Oh, come on, everybody calls them that."
She watched as he ran a hand over his bald scalp, suddenly sobered by a thought that might explain Mike's bad mood. She took a deep breath. "You've been looking pale and listless all week. Chemotherapy going badly?"
Mike didn't look up at her. "Very. The new dose they're trying, I either feel high as a kite or sick as a dog, all the damn time. They did a scan last week, no change, nothing."
"I don't suppose they've found anyone? You know, a donor?"
"No compatible bone marrow in the country, apparently. I..." He trailed off.
"Mike? If you want to talk about it..."
"They gave me two months", he said, flatly.
"Two months for wh...?" Sam started to ask, before the penny dropped. She gave a horrified gasp. "Oh, my god, Mike..."
There was a long pause, as if by silent immobility they could halt time itself, and leave the revelation forever unresolved.
"I... I'm sorry, I didn't.... I didn't realise it was that serious", Sam said, hesitantly. "I thought they'd caught it early enough..."
"They did, really. But these days, what with artificial blood being made, everybody's stopped donating anything - blood you can understand, but organs, bone marrow..." Mike smiled weakly. "Well, shit happens. If there was a compatible donor around, I'd be fine in a week or so, and stay fine. As it is... they can just treat the symptoms and pray."
"Is there anything I can do?" she asked, out of her depth by some way.
"No. I'm still trying to work out what it means, myself. But, um..." he paused, "Please, don't tell everyone. The last thing I need is for everyone to be fussing. I'd rather just carry on, long as I can."
"My lips are sealed", Sam promised. Then she snatched a handkerchief from her pocket, and sneezed. "Damn, Mike, sorry; I know the therapy upsets your immune system." She paused to blow her nose. "I could care less about the dino - we can make more. We can't make another you, if you get sick."
"Don't worry. Say what you like about the NHS, they know how to vaccinate. I've had so many injections recently, one of the nurses thought I was a heroin user", he smiled. "Just don't sneeze over me - too much - and I'll be fine." He paused. "Hope you're not coming down with anything."
"Hmm?" she shook her head, pocketing the handkerchief. "No... just got an itch in my nose. It's probably nothing."
* * *
15th December, 2018
Doctor Jonathon Perry, one of the lab's cell-culture specialists, ran his ID access card through the reader. The light by the door turned green, and he pushed it open.
He still felt a little under the weather; but thanks to the vaccination he'd had only a day or two before the 'flu started running through the building, his illness had lasted only two days. It could be a week before the unprotected staff were well enough to come back to work - and given how close Christmas would be, nobody would return just until after the holiday season. Being one of the junior researchers, he dreaded the prospect of trying to keep a whole set of labs running without input.
He also dreaded to think what state the place would be in already; almost every person of the 30-member staff had been feeling a little ill the day after that damned school trip.
As he walked in, he saw the large, narrow-windowed reception area was deserted - in fact, it was in virtual darkness, daylight from one window the only illumination.
"Hello?" he called. "Anybody here?"
There was no answer. He switched the lights on, then strode across to the main reception desk, and picked up the main telephone.
He tried dialling the Admin office. No reply. He tried the Embryology lab; nothing. He went through Applied Virology, Bacterial Culture, and Botany, getting no replies from any; but then, he got an answer from the Husbandry department.
"Animal Husbandry?" asked a weary-sounding female voice.
"Rebecca? Is that you?" he asked. "It's Jon."
"Jon! You're back, then? Over the worst of it?"
"Yes, thanks. Listen, where is everybody? I'm standing in main reception, and there's nobody here. Not even the lights are on."
"Well, nobody *is*, Jon, not really. We're running on a skeleton crew in the stables here, and I think the lab's doing even worse. Mike over in Embryology's been in the last few days, and said yesterday he had to abandon several experiments just because he couldn't watch them all - sounded a bit sick himself, actually. I offered to come in and help, but he said I should stay out here so I didn't catch anything off him. Oh, Doc Gardener stopped by, too."
"Sam Gardener? Already? I thought she had 'flu like the rest?"
"I said that; apparently she had 'flu about a month ago - remember, when she was off for a week? Guess she couldn't catch it again, it was just a stomach bug. Bad timing, and all."
"You mean that the lab's been run by only two people, for two whole days?" Jon asked, incredulously.
"Erm... not exactly. Sam only came by an hour or so ago. Mike's been running the place on his own. Make sure you don't catch anything off him, he sounded really distressed!"
"I've already had 'flu. I guess I'll see how he's doing. But, thanks for the thought."
"Anytime, Jon."
" 'Bye", Jon said, putting the receiver back in its cradle.
He retrieved his laptop case from the desk, and strode over to the bulky security door that separated the reception area from the labs proper. A yellow stick-it note on the door read:
Quarantine - DO NOT ENTER!
- Dr M Lancer, tel. ext. 992
Ignoring the note, Jon ran his card through the reader, opened the door, and stepped through, letting it swing shut behind him.
It was an impulse he regretted a moment later, as he realised too late that the lights were out in here as well - and now that he was away from the sunlit windows, it was pitch black.
He cursed as he just failed to grab the door in time to stop it shutting heavily behind him, plunging him into impenetrable darkness.
"Bugger it," he muttered, fumbling around, trying to remember where the light switch was in the corridor. He'd walked through here every working day for seven years, why had he never managed to notice where the switch was?
As his eyes adjusted a little to the dark, he realised there was a thin crack of light some distance away ahead of him - the corridor around the exterior wall. That light must be daylight seeping under the connecting door. The keypad on the wall was illuminated, and with that door propped open - to hell with fire safety regulations - he'd have enough light to see where the...
He heard footsteps approaching from his left. A sharp clacking against the tiles; stiletto heels, perhaps?
"Hello? Someone there? I can't find the lights..." Jon started. He was cut off by an ominous hiss, sounding vaguely like the soft whistle of gas from his household boiler. It sounded like something large; human-sized, at least, but it wasn't any sound he could believe came from a human body.
"Uh, hello?" he said, louder, voice trembling in sudden anxiety. The primordial fear of monsters in the dark started to rear its head.
He started to back off towards the door to the sunlit passage, blindly, as the hiss turned into a deep, inhuman snarl; his hands and legs started shaking with panic. There was some creature in here with him, in the dark...
There was a sudden scraping sound; claws speeding over the tile, his mind interpreted, and in sudden terror he turned on his heel and ran.
He felt a sharp pain as the creature hit him in the small of his back, a sharp claw piercing the skin slightly through the fabric of his heavy winter overcoat. It wrapped around, gripping, and Jon knew that if not for the coat, that sharp talon would have been wrapping around his spine and ribs, killing him in seconds.
The extra weight of the creature pushed his legs out from under him, and he felt himself start to fall.
In the midst of the momentary terror, he momentarily found himself in a surreally calm state. He knew that he would be impaled if he ended the fall face-down, with the creature on his back - or vice versa, for that matter. He had to turn in the air, so that they both landed side-on to the floor, or he was finished.
With a last, desperate kick before he toppled over, he twisted his body sideways. He felt a shock of impact and heard a hard thud, an instant before he hit the floor. His overcoat tore, and he heard the creature give a pained grunt, falling away from him.
Almost before his mind could register what was happening, he was at the doorway, standing upright, pushing it open. Had he just unlocked it? He couldn't even remember standing up. His throat felt sore; he realised he'd been screaming, and was still screaming.
He glanced back, and saw his attacker, curled up and kicking feebly in a side doorway half-way down the corridor, between him and the exit; in turning himself, he must have managed to turn so that the creature - the *dinosaur*, he realised - had gone head-first into that sturdy wooden door frame. Sheer luck had saved him.
It wasn't dead; it was even now recovering, and starting to find its sickle-clawed feet, shaking its taloned feet in evident irritation to shake off the shredded remains of Jon's coat.
Was it one of the experimental deinonychi? It was larger, probably a fully-grown adult. Its skin was mostly scaly, the same mottled green-brown of the lab specimens, and like the specimens it had a crest of feathers down its spine, with a secondary wing-like crest of long feathers running between the outside edge of its wrist, back to the elbow.
But unlike the permanently juvenile specimens ion the hatchery, the feathers of this one's spinal crest were brighter, yellows and almost fluorescent greens; its arms bore feathers of bright reds and oranges.
As he watched, the feathers raised and lowered themselves by up to ninety degrees, standing on end and then lying back, flat. The brighter colours were obscured when the crest was down, he saw; conscious control, perhaps, to hide better on the hunt, but later to be revealed as part of a threat display?
His academic musing lasted only a fraction of a second, before survival instinct demanded he slam the door shut and let the magnetic lock seal. He stood alone in the sunlit corridor, his overwhelming feeling one of absurd irritation as he realised his laptop was locked on the other side, dropped and forgotten in the dark.
The adrenaline started to drain palpably from his system, and his legs started shaking so badly with shock that he slipped on the heavily buffed floor, landing hard with his back against the door. Feeling his chest tightening in a familiar malaise, he pulled his asthma inhaler from his pocket, and took a deep puff from it. If he hadn't had asthma, he thought, he wouldn't have needed a 'flu inoculation, and he would still be at home, sick - but very much safer than he was right now.
There was a floor-cleaning robot doing its rounds in here. Normally, the night watchman was supposed to make sure it didn't get stuck in a small area, and the staff would normally do the same during the day. But, the thing had been roaming up and down this short length of corridor, trapped, happily waxing and buffing the floor until it was slippery as an ice rink - how long had it been here?
Mike Lancer and Sam Gardener were around somewhere; they must know something. Unless, they'd already encountered the impossible dinosaur, and hadn't got away...
A panicked tremor ran through him at the possibility. He'd have to break into one of the nearest offices, pick up a telephone, and call someone - Becky over in Husbandry, for instance, who hard an air-powered dart rifle designed to shoot enough sleeping drugs to knock out rampaging elephants in short order. Biochemistry hadn't changed *that* much, even in a hundred million years; a big hit of elephant medication should put that thing to sleep - or worse.
He was startled by a sudden electric wail, like a microphone being put too close to a loudspeaker. Feeling a second wind surge through him, he hauled himself quickly to his feet.
"Jon? Is that you?" came Mike's crackly voice over the building's PA system, sounding hoarse and tired. "What the hell are you doing in here? Didn't you see the notice? Doesn't *anyone* see the bloody notices?"
"Mike! Thank god I..."
"Jon, I can't hear you", said Mike, frustrated. "Find a telephone and call the security office. I'm holed up here with the door locked, I can only see you through the CCTV system."
Jon looked around, hopefully, but the security locks were still engaged in the staff's absence; private offices couldn't be opened from the outside without them, or a master key which Jon didn't have.
He had the key to the lab he shared with several other researchers, of course; but, that was on the other side of the small complex, and the fastest route was down the corridor now guarded by a creature straight from prehistory.
"Jon, you're bleeding!" exclaimed Mike's disembodied voice.
He felt at the back of his shirt, slightly torn, and felt the dampness there; his hand came away with flecks of drying blood on the fingertips.
He looked up at the corridor's CCTV camera, staring at the unblinking red light, and nodded. Then he shrugged carelessly. 'Just a cut', he hoped, was the message he was sending.
"Jon, find a telephone and call me, *now*!" Mike said. Use my lab, it's right next door to you. The door code's 454599 - just don't tell Doc Gardener I told you!" With that, the PA speakers gave a slight buzz as they turned off again.
Jon obeyed, having no real idea what else to do.
He sprinted the few yards to the Embryology lab, and started to punch in the code Mike had told him; when, behind him, he heard the soft electronic 'bleep' as the magnetic lock on the fire door disengaged. But that was impossible, there was no way that...
He gave a cry of alarm as he saw that there was indeed a way - somehow, the raptor had done the impossible, unlocked the door, and was pushing past it to rush after him.
But the raptor was too late; Jon had already opened the Embryology Lab door, and was through; before the raptor could reach the door, he'd grabbed a sturdy, metal laboratory chair and jammed the leg between the door handles, jamming them solid.
Eyes wide with panic, he looked across the lab to the wall-mounted telephone, and darted across to it.
He dialled the security office. It barely had time to ring once before it was snatched up. "Jon, thank god! I thought for a moment you were a goner when it got through the door!"
"Mike, please, what the hell's happening?" Jon asked, shuddering in barely suppressed terror.
"It's a long story", Mike began.
"Mike, I may not have long. That... thing... can open the security doors!"
"Yeah, I saw. The labs have a different locking system, though, different codes; I bet it can't get through the lab door. It's not managed to get through the external doors yet..."
"Mike, that doesn't make any sense! What's happened? That corridor's had a cleaning robot stuck in it for... well, maybe days! You're not seriously telling me this happened today?"
"Um, no..." Mike sounded a little sheepish. Then he coughed violently, hacking for several seconds. "Sorry, still feeling a bit... under the weather myself."
"When?"
"The night everyone left with the 'flu. I found the source; one of those bloody school kids on the grand tour; sneezed over everyone and everything in the building. No wonder everybody caught it. Thank god for vaccines, eh?" Mike asked, dryly.
"Mike, get to the point, what happened?"
"Damn kid sneezed over one of the raptors, too. They're based on chickens, you know? Chickens can catch 'flu. Cells full of retrotransposons, active ones, making thousands of copies all the time - and then the fucking kid comes along and throws a nice little viral coat into the mix, and let the genes escape."
"But... you can't have overlooked that, surely? You never considered that your specimens might catch a cold one day?"
"We have an off-switch; Vancomycin Acetate. We dose the hatchery regularly - but one of the other kids broke my stock vial, and this all started before I could make a new one."
"Has this spread outside?"
"I... don't think so. People with 'flu can infect other people about 36 hours after they caught it, by which time they're showing symptoms; the raptor-mutant version couldn't have been transmitted until after the staff had already got sick from the mundane 'flu and left. That thing that attacked you, though, I think it used to be Ted, the night security guy."
"Shit..."
"You're infected, Jon. You can't possibly have got away with it."
"But..." Jon thought, the situation a little too surreal to really sink in just yet. "I've been vaccinated, like you! Hell, I caught the original virus, too, straight from that kid! We're immune, surely?"
"I'd love to think so, but this is a totally new virus now, Jon. I locked myself in the security room as soon as I realised what was going on, and dosed up on anti-retroviral drugs; I've got a separate ventilation system, separate power, and a door that bolts from the inside. Thank the lord for the coffee machine, and the en-suite facilities! I'm not sick with the mutant version; I'm clean. You're a different matter now."
"You've got ARVs there? You can give me some before it takes hold..."
"Not that many; I ran out earlier today. Sorry."
"What about the off-switch you mentioned? Vancomycin Acetate? Would a dose of that stop the infection?"
"Yes; a good injection of VA might even reverse Ted's change. But like I said, the kid smashed my main stock, so we're pretty short on doses."
"But there is some left? Would it work... instantly? Or..."
"For you, pretty much yes. For Ted, there, no. Reversing it would take days, maybe even weeks. The whole point of the gene cassette was that it grew exponentially and overwhelmed the host's genetics, you see? The transformation seems to take a few hours after the initial infection, maybe shorter with a bigger dose - but shutting it all down again, mopping it up, takes a very long time."
A thought struck Jon suddenly. "Wait, Mike, you've got emergency lines to every response team in the country; why the hell haven't you called anybody in?" He shook the phone, mentally strangling his colleague. "This is *not* a yellow stick-it note situation, damn it!"
"I put those notes up before I realised how serious it was, and I've been stuck in here ever..."
"Why haven't you called for backup?"
"Erm..."
"Mike?! I want an answer!"
"Alright, you want to fucking know?!" Mike growled, angrily. "If we can't keep this quiet, the whole damn company's going down the chute. Not one investor with sense is going to carry on funding a place where... this could happen! I... thought I could fix it! I thought it would be okay... but it's spiralling out of control. God, Jon, please, this is still the best chance of us getting out of this without going down in history as the people who had AGI shut down! Even now, it's worth the risk, *any* risk!"
"At a time like this, you're worried about being out of work? What... No, forget it", Jon bit back the irate retort, "Just tell me how to fix this - but I'm not going to cover this up, okay? If nobody says anything, I won't either, but if I get asked, I'm explaining what I know."
"Shit, okay, I guess that's fair. By my computer, there's a box of vials... see it?"
Jon looked; "Yeah, hang on..." he put the phone down, stepped over, drew the box toward him, and retrieved the phone. "Right, I've got it... box of ten, seven vials, labelled one through seven, last three missing."
"One of those contains enough VA to cure you, Sam, Ted, and several other people as well, if it comes to it."
"Which one?"
"...I'm not sure."
Jon gave the phone and angry *thwack* down on the bench top before returning it to his ear. "God damn it, Mike, what the hell is this?!"
"Those kids, they knocked over the rack before I could label them all! One of those vials has a control sample, which contains some VA - that's all we've got. I was going to synthesise a new set, I swear, but I didn't have the time before it all kicked off!"
"What's in the rest?"
"You won't like it. It's... cultures of the raptor's 'flu virus."
"Not great, sure... but, if I'm already infected, being exposed again doesn't matter, right? I could just shoot up on a little from each vial, so I'm guaranteed a cure?"
"Oh, my god, no! Infections spread exponentially; inject yourself with that much, you'll be changed in minutes instead of hours! Look, VA isn't a one-shot cure-all, it can only slow down the spread of the virus long enough that your immune system can do the rest. Inject yourself with a concentrated dose, VA will do squat!"
"So what the hell do I do? Mike, help me out here!"
"I know, I know... Look, I appreciate this isn't easy; but there's a way. You've got some human cell cultures in your lab, right?"
"I see..." Jon pondered. "Take a few petri dishes, infect the cell cultures with a sample from each vial, and see which ones don't develop the disease? That'll take time, Mike, I may only have hours before..." the reality of it hit him suddenly, with a force almost like a physical punch, and he felt the blood drain from his face. "...oh, god, oh my god..."
"Then get a move on! You're the only one here who knows the code to your lab - you can lock yourself in and you can work in peace."
A thought struck Jon, suddenly. "Wait, where's Sam in all this? I could use some help."
"She's... she got knocked out, when the raptor surprised her. She's in her office..."
"What?! Is she okay? Is she alive?" Jon asked, his grip on the phone tightening.
Mike seemed startled at the question. "Huh? Oh, yes, as far as I can tell. Ted sniffed around for a few minutes, but didn't seem interested. I think it's territorial aggression, not hunting for food - hell, maybe he even recognised her once he stopped to think. He seems to remember the codes to the corridor doors, there's a man in there somewhere."
Jon exhaled slowly. "Good, but do you have her office code? I could really use her help."
"Um, I don't think you should..."
"I need her help, damn it! You want to stay cooped up in here until everyone comes back from their Christmas holidays?" Jon growled.
"Okay, okay", Mike relented, "her door's wedged open, so you won't need a code. But I'm telling you, she's out cold, she'll just slow you down!"
"I'll take the risk", Jon said, hanging up.
He grabbed the small wood box containing one cure and six raptor cocktails; then, dashing across the room, he grabbed a handful of empty, sterile hypodermic needles from a drawer there, and headed for the side door, ignoring the barricaded door where Ted the raptor might still be lurking.
The new corridor was in darkness as he stepped gingerly out into it. Mike's voice sounded again through the PA. "I'll warn you if there's anything coming; these cameras have a low-light vision mode. He's still behind you. Get to the next junction, thirty yards down..."
Jon tiptoed carefully along the length of the corridor, making for the steadfast red light and faintly glowing keypad of the next fire door, his heart practically in his throat.
Mike continued. "Sam's left her light on, so you should be able to see..." He broke off, coughing loudly again. "Sorry. Better idea; light switch just on the other side of the door, shoulder height, to your right..."
Jon punched his code into the keypad, and quietly opened the door, straining his eyes in the dark to see where that light switch was. He spotted it, and reached out for it.
"Oh! Watch out, behind you!" Mike shouted as Jon stepped through. Jon heard the *slam* of a door being flung open in the distance, and as he half-turned from switching on the corridor lights, he saw the silhouette of the raptor, backlit by the sunshine pouring through the opposite door it had just opened. An instant later it was racing down the corridor toward him.
"Oh, shit!" Jon yelled, slamming the fire door shut between him and the raptor He sprinted towards the lighted portal that led to Sam's office. Behind him, he heard a muffled thud of something shoulder-charging the door, followed in short order by the familiar 'bleep' as it unlocked.
He reached Sam's office just in time. He saw that it was her unconscious form preventing the door shutting. He pulled her bodily out of the way with a surge of panic-fuelled strength he didn't know he possessed, and flung himself at the door to hold it shut.
The office doors had glass panels, reinforced with wire mesh; he saw the lower pane crack, a single split from top to bottom, as the heavy dinosaur on the other side skidded to a halt and violently kicked at the door, screeching in what sounded like frustrated rage.
He panted heavily, setting down his precious cargo of vials and syringes beside him, trembling. He brushed a cold sweat from his brow.
"...You're stuck", came Mike's voice over the PA.
Jon exploded. "Tell me something I don't fucking know, you moron!"
"Phone, Jon! Phone!"
Jon decided against airing that comment again, as he stood and went to pick up Sam's desk phone.
He dialled, and Mike wasted no time in answering. "Jon! You're going to have to try a guess on it. You've got two test subjects - you and Sam. Two out of seven, that's not bad odds."
"What if it doesn't work?"
"Well... you got a better plan?"
"Fuck, yes!" shouted Jon. "I'm calling for outside help - I do *not* plan to take early retirement to be a specimen in a zoo!" He pushed the button to sever Mike's connection, and dialled for an outside line.
When he put the receiver to his ear, he heard only the dial tone still buzzing. He tried again; nothing.
Mike's voice sounded over the PA. "Jon, I've got the only connection outside. Your call won't get through."
"You... you bastard!" Jon said to the air around him, incredulous. "You fucking bastard!"
He dialled Mike again. "Mike? What the hell are you thinking?! Use the damned phone! Call for some help!"
"No!" Mike said, resolutely. "It's not worth the risk, Jon. Think about it, if a load of biohazard guys from the government turn up, they'll come armed, and they'll be shooting to kill. By then, it could be you they're shooting, Jon. Trust me..."
"Trust you?!" Jon shouted, while his mind raced. There had to be some way to signal the outside world from this office. Mobile phone, perhaps? But no, the lab walls were so heavily wired up, nobody had ever got a signal out. Internet? If Mike was blocking external phone calls, he'd surely have thought to isolate the network too.
"Yes, trust me", Mike continued. "Inject yourself and Sam with a tenth each of a different random vial. If one of you stops changing, the other can take the same dose from the same vial, and you'll both be okay. Then we can work out how to administer it to Ted, before anyone else comes barging in here unawares. Oh, I'd recommend giving Sam's first - she was exposed earlier, she'll need it the most, and... if it's not the cure... well, maybe better she's not awake, you know?"
Jon looked up, and for a moment met the eye of the predator standing outside the door. It wasn't a slitted, reptilian eye; it had a rounded pupil, a bluish colour; a very human eye.
Jon shuddered and turned away. But as he did so, a thought struck him: there *was* a way - but there was a lot of risk involved. It might give the infected and probably infectious raptor a chance to escape, and that would turn a crisis into an outright catastrophe.
So, for now, the best hope for containing the outbreak was to go along with Mike; Jon summoned his crude knowledge of first aid, and concentrated on Sam. He checked her pulse, and her breathing; both steady. No obvious sign of injury, although it was equally obvious she'd hit her head as she fell; hopefully, it was just a concussion, not a dangerous skull fracture.
He looked down at the vials and the hypodermics on the floor beside her. Ethically speaking, he couldn't inject her with an unknown chemical without her knowledge or consent; but, how long might she stay unconscious? The transformation might be complete in as little as a few hours, and she'd be rather beyond informed consent by then.
He could inject himself first and wait; if he found the cure, by some miracle, he could administer it just fine while she was asleep. Nobody could reasonably object to that.
But, a nagging, and unworthy feeling at the back of his mind told him, Mike was right; if you inject her first, you increase your odds of finding the right vial first time. One in six, better than one in seven... her, better than you.
He noticed that her short, curly hair was falling out, shedding like a housecat; on the skin of her scalp, he could see bumps, brightly coloured, like the raptor's plumage, as feathers pushed slowly up beneath the skin. That decided it; if he waited, he might be locked in here with another irate, hungry raptor before long.
He picked vial number 3; unwrapping one of the syringes, he attached a needle to it, and carefully drew one CC - a tenth of the vial's capacity - into the syringe.
He didn't have much idea where to inject a person; injecting the neck was the best way to get it into the bloodstream, he knew, but puncturing an artery could start fatal bleeding. In the arms and legs, he wasn't sure exactly where to find the veins.
His solution lacked finesse, but he hoped it would work; he simply pushed the needle into her upper arm, and pushed the plunger down to inject the needle's contents.
Sam gave a slight murmur, and stirred a little as he withdrew the syringe. He felt suddenly guilty; if she woke up now, how would he explain this to her without seeming selfish?
The raptor was looking at him through the glass, a sinister, knowing look in its eye, as if revelling in Jon's guilt. He found it unnerving, and backed away, curling up next to the leg of Sam's visitor chair, unable to look away from the creature at the door - and wondering if that was what lay ahead for him.
He wasn't quite sure how long it was - minutes perhaps - before Sam stirred, and started to sit up. "Whoa... I feel dizzy..." she muttered, before her eyes focused on Jon. "Jon?! What are you... what happened?"
Jon swallowed. "Um, apparently there's a virus loose that turned Ted - from security - into *that*..." he pointed at the creature outside the door, and Sam jumped in surprise as she saw it, "...and we're infected too. The cure's in one of these vials, but we don't know which, but... Mike thought number three might be the one", Jon lied, blushing furiously.
"Mike?" Sam asked, groggily. "Is he here?"
"In the building, yeah, hiding somewhere. I spoke on the phone..."
"W...what did he tell you? Did he feed you the line about the 'flu?" Sam asked, recovering visibly by the moment.
"Yes, he..." Jon stopped. "Wait - 'the line'? You think he's lying?"
"Oh, hell, yes. He let this thing loose - *probably* by mistake." Her tone sounded irritated, rather than angry or desperate. She turned and stared at the raptor at the door, studying it intently. "I found out he was making viral proteins for Variola..."
"Variola? I think I've heard of that..." Jon said, thoughtfully. A horrible feeling swept over him as he remembered where he'd heard it before. "Um... isn't that smallpox?"
Sam nodded, her expression blank, still staring fixedly at the dinosaur. "Yup. It's highly illegal, without a licence. He's history when this gets out. Maybe we all are, it happened right under our noses."
"We don't... have smallpox, do we?" Jon asked, feeling suddenly weak. Smallpox had once killed nearly a third of its victims in dreadful, helpless agony.
Sam shook her head, only half-listening. "Not as such. We've got Mike's mutant form of it - god knows what he was trying to do, but he managed to get the dino genome mixed up in it. That's why the 'flu didn't give us any immunity..." She put a hand to her head, and Jon was startled as much of her remaining hair simply fell off at the motion, clumped together like a crude wig. The bright, sprouting feathers were small, but clearly visible, and were growing even as he watched.
"Ooh... I don't feel so good. How long was I out?"
Jon had to shrug. "Um, I don't know. I've tried the cure, a few minutes ago - uh, it doesn't seem to have had quite the right..."
He broke off as Sam pulled off her lab coat, and rolled up her sleeve; on her arm, the skin looked discoloured, and colourful feathers had begun to sprout near her elbow.
She regarded them with an impassivity that scared Jon. "Hmm. It's faster than I expected... interesting..."
"I..." Jon began, but he literally had no idea what he could say next. "Oh, fuck this, I'm calling Mike!" he said instead, his fear turning to anger at Mike's deception.
Mike answered almost as soon as Jon finished dialling. "Yes, Jon?"
"You lying bastard!" Jon began.
"She's told you, then?"
"Hell yes. Now you listen here..."
"Ask him what's in these vials", Sam interrupted, calmly, rubbing at the sprouting feathers on her forearm. "Apart from our cure. *If* he's telling the truth."
Jon covered the mouthpiece with his hand, to answer. "He said they were samples of this same virus... He might have been lying, but... you seem to be changing faster, so it's probably right. Uh, sorry."
He put the phone back to his ear hurriedly, before Sam could reply. He didn't quite catch what Mike had just said. "... good would that have done? I thought it would be safe, I really did..."
"I take it you're infected?"
"Huh? No, not exactly. Not properly. I made sure I vaccinated myself first, in case anything went wrong. It was only supposed to be a short-term stopgap, a bit of DIY gene therapy... you know I had leukaemia? Well, I got given two months to live, and that was three weeks ago. Cheap and dirty, my homebrew therapy, but buying time was my only hope. I used smallpox because it was a big virus, easy to work with, and it likes to infect bone marrow; I made nine vials, with a dose scaled for one vial per week..."
Jon didn't answer; he'd had his back to Sam while he spoke, but now he turned upon hearing a clink of glass, and noticed with surprise that she was just finishing an intravenous injection with a syringe full of liquid from a now-empty, discarded vial at her side.
"Sam? What are you doing?" he asked, uncertainly. "Have you found the cu..." he broke off as the rolling vial came to a halt, the label clearly reading '3'. The same vial he'd already used - but she must have known it would speed up her transformation, surely?
She collapsed back on the ground, and of all things, she smiled. The skin on her arm was clearly becoming scaly, and taking on the randomly mottled appearance of the raptor outside.
"Mike?" Jon said, putting the phone back to his ear. "What's going on?"
"Oh, that. Uh, it happened to Ted, too; he misunderstood me, and tried giving himself a shot from vial number 9, you see... Once the really fast infection took hold, he stopped feeling ill, and started... well, the flood of hormones, growth factors, adrenaline, it's apparently quite pleasurable. Sex drive goes through the roof; loads of testosterone, you know, essential for embryonic development. It has a... different effect in a sexually mature adult, of course." Mike cleared his throat nervously. "It doesn't matter if the genome doesn't have genes for puberty, of course, if you've already been through it. The responses go into..."
"I'm going to fucking kill you for this, you know that?!" snarled Jon, interrupting, turning his back on the transforming woman, unable to watch as she spat out mouthfuls of blood and human teeth, while sharper spikes of enamel replaced them in her gums - grinning all the while.
"It wasn't intentional, honest to goodness. I expected someone else had sterilised the viral culture bath when I put my gene therapy solution in - but apparently the last thing growing in it was Sam's embryo-mutagen virus. You know, these things happen."
"That's your excuse? How could you *forget* something that basic, Mike?! It's your whole fucking job!" Jon yelled.
"I was rushing; everyone was off sick, and it was my best opportunity to work without being discovered. I was sick, too, of course, leukaemia, mild 'flu; I'd not slept in over 24 hours... when you feel sick, and tired, you cut corners, damn it! I was getting by on coffee and the painkillers my GP prescribed... I thought I was fine."
"You were half-asleep and high on drugs, while manufacturing smallpox?! Jesus Christ, Mike..."
"Yeah, hindsight's a wonderful thing", Mike grunted, irritated and unapologetic.
"You're insane! How many people know Sam and I are stuck in here, eh? How long before the suspicion starts? You have any idea how much trouble you're getting into?"
"That's my problem... frankly, if I were you, I'd be more worried about Sam right now. She's... whoa, watch out!" Mike gasped, suddenly.
"Wh..." Jon dropped the phone abruptly as a scaly, feathered arm scythed around his neck, holding him still, and he felt the sharp prick of a needle in his jugular vein, followed by a chilling rush of cold liquid straight into his blood.
A moment later, the pain was gone, and he was released, falling helplessly to the ground; he looked up to see Sam, all her visible skin now scaly and green-brown, looking down at him, grinning. In her hand, she held an empty syringe.
"Did you just..." Jon asked, in disbelief. "That's the same needle you used... that's just... not hygienic..." he mumbled, stupidly, unable to completely process the shock.
"That was a surprise for me, too, Jon", said Mike's voice over the PA, sounding nervous. "But, look on the bright side; one in six chance that was the VA sample. Uh, I'll get back to you later, if you're still... uh...."
The PA speakers clicked off.
Jon couldn't sustain his anger; he rubbed resignedly at the sore patch on his neck. "Sam, why?"
Her clothes didn't seem to fit her very well, he realised; her arms seemed too thin for her body, and her shirt seemed too tight for her chest. He realised, suddenly, that her breasts had shrunk too - the outline of her bra through her thin blouse was clearly visible, and the cups were as near empty as made no difference. Her mammalian features were rapidly fading as he watched.
She smiled, a dreadfully ugly expression with her nose looking bizarrely stretched and squashed as her face began to extend into a muzzle. "It feels wonderful, Jon... you should try... join in..."
She leaned her weight on her desk, and kicked off her high-heeled shoes with an irritated flick of her ankle. Her tights underneath were laddered badly on the rough scales, and her toes had merged down from five into three; on what had been her big toe, a bony spike had replaced the toenail, and it was visibly extending as he watched, becoming a familiar sickle claw.
His own skin was starting to itch; a crazy, maddening sensation like a whole army of ants was crawling over him. His asthma seemed to be playing up; short of breath, he pulled urgently at his tie, gasping, and grabbed his inhaler again. As he took a deep puff from it, he wondered futilely whether raptors could get asthma, and almost sobbed.
He felt something strike him on the forehead, and only narrowly avoided something flying into his eye as he looked up to see Sam's blouse literally popping its buttons as her torso barrelled outward. Growling, Sam's taloned hands grasped at the remaining fabric and tore it free, before shredding her bra as well, leaving her torso bare. There was no trace of her breasts there, not even the nipples.
Sam overbalanced onto her hands and knees, crawling away from Jon and towards the door, as a short but growing length of tail tore through her panties and tights, bunching her skirt up to one side. Brightly coloured feathers ran the length of her spine, standing erect in a formidable display.
Jon felt a strangely conflicted sense arise in him as he saw the crest of the raptor at the door also rise, as if in acknowledgement, and the creature gave a sound like a hoarse bark, bobbing its head in an excited, bird-like motion.
The itching started to subside slowly, and Jon saw that his skin was starting to become scaly now, too; the developing scales' colouration, the same as the other raptors. Feathers started to push through the skin of his arms, and from the slight twinges of pain from his scalp and down his back, he knew that more were appearing by the moment.
He thought of the remaining vials; he obviously hadn't been injected with the cure. Which meant one of the remaining vials might be the cure - his chances were down to one in five, but he didn't have long.
His train of thought was interrupted as Sam started to stand up, her feet starting to elongate to a digitigrade stance even as her increasingly bulky thighs tore through the remains of her tights. He noticed that the fingers of her hands were elongating, and merging, to form three sharply taloned digits - and one of her hands was busily reaching for the release button to open the door, and let in the raptor outside.
With a cry, Jon jumped forward, trying to stop her. Knocked off balance, she hissed angrily at him out of her saurian muzzle, an inhuman sound that spoke of anger, of danger. But, if she let the other raptor inside, it might kill them both!
Jon was desperate, but Sam was stronger; she pushed him off, and before he could recover himself, she had already unlocked the door.
Jon cried out in alarm and jumped backward, tumbling over the visitors' armchair, cowering behind it for what little protection it could offer - but only for a moment, as he realised the raptor was not coming for him, its attention was focused entirely on Sam - and it didn't seem aggressive any more.
Jon gave a start as he realised that from near the base of the raptor's jutting pelvic bone, a six-inch, slightly curved, tapered length of flesh was protruding, erect; he stared at it longer than he meant to, taking note of the evenly spaced ribs that ran widthways around it.
Sam, grunting inhumanly with desire, tore off her skirt and, hooking her talons through the cobweb-trace remains of her panties and tights, pulled them free, too. She was suddenly naked, her scaly, inhuman body exposed as she lay on her back, joyously inviting the prehistoric hunter.
With a triumphant bellow, the male plunged forward, and Jon turned away, horrified, unable to watch. Trying anything to distract from the dreadful scene behind him, he suddenly realised his feet were really hurting.
Looking down at his feet where he crouched, he saw three sharp points protruding through the shoe leather at his right foot, and felt both feet cramping as the bones started to realign. He pulled urgently at his shoelaces, the claws on his index, ring and little fingers slicing almost effortlessly through them, before he could stop them.
He pulled the shoe free with a sigh of relief, and pulled his sock off to see the damage. His toes had merged into three, with a sickle claw starting to form already on his big toe. He quickly removed his other shoe, too, before that became painful; his left foot seemed to be changing slightly slower, for whatever reason.
He glanced over the top of the chair; Sam's ever more animalistic grunts merged with the full-raptor's eager, hissing barks as he claimed her. The copulating pair were between him and the abandoned vials; he'd have to go straight past them.
His rib cage seemed to be expanding, as if inflating further with every breath he took; he pulled at the front of his shirt, hoping only to loosen it, and was startled when three buttons pinged off, flying across the room. Muttering a curse, he tried undoing the remaining buttons; he only managed one, before his changing shape popped the remainder free entirely. His thumb felt stiffer, somehow, had less mobility; his index and middle fingers were also stiff, and he couldn't seem to move them independently any more. He realised that before long, his thumb would vanish into his hand entirely, and he would no longer be capable of fine manipulation - like injecting himself with the cure.
He paused to unfasten his belt, which was getting uncomfortably tight as his pelvis started to shift and stretch, and then started to crawl slowly out from his hiding place, aiming to pass under the distracted raptors' waving tails, out of their line of sight.
He found himself staring, even though he'd decided not to look. Sam's form was only recognisable as humanoid by comparison with the fully transformed male atop her, thrusting quick and shallow into her, as they both gave saurian hisses and squeals of pleasure.
The smell hit him as he approached; whether it was his senses sharpening and picking it up, or just that it was intensifying as time went on - or both - he didn't know. But, suddenly, his nostrils were full of the scents of sex, of pheromones, and raptors, and the lingering traces of blood from Sam's discarded teeth. He found the combination strangely alluring.
His growing instincts suddenly recognised that the male raptor's feathered crest was erect in a full, dazzling mating display - for a moment, the raw primal energy of it stunned him into immobility, and some part of him suddenly, desperately wanted to join them.
He felt a warm trickle in his mouth, and tasted the metallic tang of blood; coughing suddenly, he almost choked as his teeth started to fall from his gums. He started spitting violently, all other cares forgotten as the sharp points of carnivorous teeth painfully pierced his raw gums.
He was kneeling there, still spitting, as the male raptor gave a triumphant bellow; looking up in barely suppressed eagerness, Jon saw the male's spurting length withdraw from Sam's body, coating her protruding pelvic bone with a narrow, glistening trail of his seed. A rich, male musk filled the enclosed office.
Jon found himself staring hard at the two post-coital dinosaurs; he wondered a moment why the male had been pushing so shallowly into Sam. If he'd been the male, he would have pushed deep, claimed her as...
...he shook his head a moment, clearing the errant thought, as he saw with surprise that the male hadn't been claiming *her*.
From Sam's cloaca, a small but definite shape was starting to evert, pushing the male's watery semen aside as it did so. Only an inch long, Sam's penis was a miniature but growing replica of the male's ribbed length.
He should have realised, he thought; the genome preparation was designed to be genetically male. So, logically...
He was distracted as the original male raptor sniffed at the air, took note of him, and turned to face him, hissing ominously, its crest rising in what Jon's new instincts said was a threat display. 'I am Alpha', it translated, 'submit or fight me!'
As it backed off a pace or so, bobbing its head, crouching as if readying for a charge, Jon started to move slowly to the side, hoping he could still reach the remaining vials; on instinct, he didn't make eye contact - that would be a challenge.
He found himself instead staring at the male's still-everted, dripping phallus, and occasionally glancing at Sam's growing masculinity too, still coated in cum; for a fleeting moment, he wondered what it had felt like for Sam, feeling the powerful, virile Alpha plunging into...
...he shook his head again, but this time the thought refused to leave; he felt his penis start to swell and stiffen as the fantasy started playing out in earnest.
The male gave another bark, continuing the display; again, Jon's instincts told him what it meant. 'I am Alpha! I want to mate! Submit or fight me!' Jon licked at his teeth a moment, some new-formed instinct screaming in his head that the other male was too strong for him to fight. His cock twitched at the thought of the alternative.
Jon actually crawled a step closer before he checked himself. What was he thinking? He didn't want to approach the creature, let it claim him, stick that beautiful phallus deep inside him and take him to the brink of ecstasy, making him one with the pack...
Even as he thought that, he realised that one taloned finger was, unbidden, unzipping his fly, and he felt the developing crest on his own body rise to signal his eager submission. The smell of the Alpha's cum, the sex, his own changing scent, were overriding the last dying gasps of his willpower.
He looked down at his hands; his shrunken thumb was useless now, he realised. No way he could manage a hypodermic. He didn't feel defeat at the thought, though; he felt inexplicably elated, as if he'd been waiting for an excuse to surrender to the raptor growing within him, and to the raptor that stood just...
He hadn't realised the raptor had moved until he felt the sudden weight on his back, pushing the erect feathers of his involuntary mating display flat to his skin. He overbalanced onto Sam's prone tail, making her - no, *him* - hiss in momentary pain, as Jon's unsecured trousers pooled at his knees, leaving his soaking boxer shorts as the only obstacle remaining.
He could smell the freshly spilled cum, much stronger now; and he felt its source, the Alpha's penis, probe wetly at the back of his underwear, searching. With the last trace of a human grin, he hooked both his taloned hands under the waistband, and gave a hard tug, until he felt the elastic give way. He gave a hissing sigh of relief as his constricted, aching cock was abruptly released into the cool air of the room.
As his boxer shorts fell to join his trousers around his knees, he felt the Alpha give another triumphant bark, and thrust forward, the cum-slick length sliding over the scales of Jon's backside once, twice, before it caught in the folds of flesh and slid swiftly into Jon's exposed anus.
Jon gave an inhuman shriek of pain at the intrusion, even as the Alpha withdrew rapidly, the ribbed length pulling painfully at the abused sphincter. He gritted his sharp, saurian teeth as the Alpha thrust in again; he had signalled his submission, so he had to let the Alpha take what he wished - it was the way of things.
He sniffed at the air again, smelling Sam's male arousal tinged with a faint but fading hint of femininity and humanity; and overlaid with the powerful scent of the Alpha's pleasure. As his hips shifted slightly while the Alpha began pounding in earnest, he extended his lengthening neck, and sniffed at the prone and almost fully transformed raptor's leaking cloaca, waiting for the pain of the Alpha's intruding organ to subside.
Overwhelmed by the thick, alluring scent, his long tongue flickered out of his muzzle to lap at the fluid-slick length. His taste buds lit up with the sudden flood of information his enhanced senses provided. He tasted the remnants of Sam's feminine side, surrendering to the inevitable and fading fast; the rising power of Sam's masculine side, proud and waiting; the lingering traces of humanity, dissolving like a wisp of smoke in the breeze; and most powerful of all, the Alpha's potent seed, bitter on his tongue, but full of life, of promise, and joy.
All in all, it needed cleaning.
Sam hissed as Jon wrapped his tongue entirely around the everted organ, eagerly lapping up the Alpha's spilled seed from the sensitive, exposed skin. He felt Sam's penis throb at the contact, and his own organ, shrivelled for a moment by the pain of penetration, started to harden again, transforming to its new, improved shape while he tasted Sam's arousal expressed in precum. He sensed none of Sam's essence here; the Alpha had not brought Sam's masculine side to completion. He wanted Sam's first male orgasm to be here, now, Jon's to savour, Jon's to take.
He felt an alien tingle as his half-erect penis everted properly from its forming sheath for the first time, followed rapidly by a surge of pleasure as his anus merged with it, forming a single orifice - his new cloaca. The pain of the Alpha's pounding was fading now, and the ribbed length felt wonderful as it slid rapidly in and out of him; each pull back, the raised ridges clung like a sorrowful parting hug; then each thrust in, they met the flesh hard, savage, like a passionately stolen kiss... But, wonderful as the sensations were, something about the angle was increasingly wrong, and getting worse as Jon's legs changed proportions; his tail lengthened and pushed the Alpha off balance; and as his pelvis expanded to saurian dimensions.
Jon hesitantly started to push himself to his feet, bending his shorter, bulkier thighs into a hunched, saurian posture. He tried to find a better position, worrying that he was not satisfying the Alpha - and feeling unsatisfied himself, wanting the Alpha thrusting deeper, roaring with primal lust, filling him...
He felt the Alpha shift around searchingly too, and he felt one of the Alpha's taloned feet press down on the small of his back suddenly, sickle claw pressing lightly on the thick hide, and rub lightly at the feathers. The Alpha rotated his hips to one side with the new leverage he'd acquired, bringing his own cloaca flush with Jon's for a moment, buried deep, and Jon arched his back, giving an involuntary bark over Sam's quivering flesh as he felt the savage pleasure of the Alpha's large phallus brushing harshly past the base of his own with each thrust into his cloaca. Then, a sudden rush again as the Alpha hit something deep in his body, something that felt *wonderful*, overwhelmingly so. He drooled around Sam's cock under his tongue, as the ridges of the Alpha's cock rubbed across that pleasure spot inside, his cloaca feeling increasingly slick and slippery as his Alpha's precum filled him, preparing him for his Alpha's gift. He could feel his own precum leaking copiously from his own penis too, and felt something was building up inside him as his arms shortened and narrowed, and his tail grew still further...
He felt Sam tremble, violently, and then the new male gave several short, growling barks as the penis filling Jon's maw throbbed. Jon knew what that meant, and readied himself as he felt the shaft buck, and Sam's first male essence filled his mouth, dripping from his teeth, again and again as he lapped harder at the spasming length, listening to Sam's pleasure-tortured growls.
He felt that alien sensation in himself centre on his loins, and he felt his leg give an involuntary kick as he shuddered, feeling something like a reservoir filling up deep inside him. His cock started to twitch, once, twice, before it erupted like a fountain, spraying his seed over the precum-soaked carpeted, and across Sam's juddering tail.
Every muscle in his body seemed to spasm with every shot that left him, and he heard his Alpha growl happily with each. Wanting to please his Alpha was the only thing on his mind as his orgasm died down, and he started to voluntarily clench and relax his cloacal muscles around the invading cock.
He had only seconds more to wait before his Alpha thrust into him so hard he almost fell over, and gave a roar as hot seed gushed into Jon's guts, claiming him for the pack. Jon, still cleaning the last remnants of seed from Sam's cock, stood still for a moment, letting the sensation of being filled wash over him, letting his Alpha give him this gift of welcome, while the last droplets of his own cum dripped from his inverting penis, onto the tail of the fresh raptor below.
There were no human characteristics left to any of them, not physically; the three dinosaurs dismounted from each other and righted themselves, cum dripping from the tailhole of the creature that had been Jon minutes before.
They yapped and barked at each other for a moment, instinctively and rapidly establishing a pecking order. That business taken care of, the thoughts of the raptor that had been Jon returned suddenly to the past. Raptors were social creatures; pack predators. Long before humans had walked the Earth, they too had possessed memories; felt complex emotions; planned for their short-term future - although alien, it was not so inhuman a mind as their body might suggest.
This form is not you, not Jon, some vague memory said. The alien, human scent in the room, that was you, it said. You were tricked and trapped, it said.
He blinked, a nictitating membrane flickering over eyes that would never shut again. He couldn't recall all the details, but he knew he'd been betrayed, and by whom, and it made him feel angry. Revenge was a complex emotion, but so ancient and primal that even a dinosaur could feel it.
Memory of his previous life in a human world had faded somewhat, and was still fading; like a recently watched film, its events were robbed of their context as the credits rolled, washing away into a new reality. But, the dinosaur recalled some things, abstractions, on what a human might have called an academic level; it remembered that he'd had an idea, to bring help here.
To save him, some memory said. He'd wanted to be saved from this.
The thought left his head as soon as it had entered. Why would he not want this? He'd hesitated before in case the pack might escape. But the pack's escape was surely paramount now.
So it was with cold calculation that his sharp eyes scanned the room, his significant intellect dulled, but a very long way from extinguished by the change.
* * *
Mike hadn't expected the raptor that had been Ted to be able to use the security keypads; that he remembered the code, and knew how to use technology, was encouraging - it meant that the man's mind was still in there, somewhere, which meant it was, by and large, retrievable.
That was why he didn't feel even slightly guilty about enjoying the spectacle he'd just witnessed.
He sighed, resignedly, and wiped the congealing semen off the security monitor in front of him. They'd given a good show - a very good show - but it was *very* disappointing they'd not managed to make any real progress. In fact, their transformation made things even more complicated than ever before.
He gazed down curiously as his ribbed, saurian penis retreated gradually into his genital slit; the sight was still new enough to be interesting. As it vanished, the half-man, half-dinosaur licked the remnants of his self-pleasure from his five-fingered, clawed hand. Waste not, want not.
He'd have been as far gone as the rest if he hadn't vaccinated himself against smallpox as a precaution. The amazing thing was that his accidental transformation had done even better for him than his original plan would have; the symptoms of the cancer that had been eating away at him seemed to have abated; the transformation, perhaps, consuming and recycling those errant cells, too. He felt fit as an ox, and he hadn't had his usual medications for nearly two days. This body had its advantages; it had been well worth the risk.
Maybe it was that feeling of health and vigour that had made the change so exciting, sexual; intense enough that he hadn't much cared if he'd attracted any attention while taking care of his libido that night.
Of course, he had brought untoward attention down on himself. He was still infectious when Ted, the night watchman Mike had completely forgotten, had come to investigate the noise. Knowing Ted could be infected just by the proximity, he'd forced the incoherent, terrified man to get a precautionary injection from the vial Mike was *convinced* contained the Vancomycin Acetate. It wasn't impossible he'd got the wrong vial... it also wasn't impossible that the virus had mutated enough, or progressed far enough in its infection, that the fairly low dose of VA wasn't enough any more.
The error had been... costly, to put it mildly. The freshly transformed raptor had seen Mike as a rival, and he'd had to flee. All he could do was lock himself in the security office, bolt the doors, and try to think of something; once there, he was trapped.
Even now, though, a good dose of VA should reverse the process completely. Mental trauma, sure, but a good psychiatrist could see to that, he reasoned, dismissively. He just needed to work out how, and who, could manage it.
Although, really, things had gone rather too far to be salvageable - maybe he should just make a break for it? He could have several days head start if he went now; he had sharper senses, better reflexes; he could get away from most any pursuit. He wasn't infectious any more, not after this long, and if he could find a way into some foreign country - Russia, maybe - where official obstructiveness to an extradition order was practically a given, he'd be home free.
He was momentarily distracted as he saw one of the raptors on the messy monitor screen jumping up, and kicking at the office wall next to it. That was weird, he thought; what on Earth could...
He sat for a frozen moment as the piercing bell of the manual fire alarm started sounding, and the control panels in front of him lit up like a Christmas tree.
Oh, shit, he thought. A fire alarm, at a major genetics lab? There'd be panic in the emergency services; fire engines by the depot-load, helicopters full of government goons in biohazard suits, the company's own emergency response people... They would be here in minutes, and they had no idea what would be waiting for them. Mike would have to warn them; it would mean his head on a platter, served to the nation as a warning to the rest.
"You little bastard!" he said, to no-one in particular. He reached slowly for the emergency telephone, and connected an outside line. No choice; it wasn't worth the risk.
He glared at the monitor, and for a moment, could swear the raptor was grinning maliciously back at him, through the unblinking eye of the camera.