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As I walked out of the gates, I pondered the new situation I found myself in. As the last agent, I knew that I wouldn't have to enter Cryo again, so I felt no remorse about leaving the town far behind. I had a bit of worry about whether or not I would be able to eat anything for fear of the recombination virus. Worse than that, I didn't know what currency was used or who was whom in this world. There were probably still some vestiges of civilization as I had known it, but there were probably also some results of the recombination virus that I hadn't heard of or foreseen. Something meant to restructure the genetic code of an entire species would surely find a hold in other species, and I was afraid of what that would do to them. Would I find feral animals that suddenly had human qualities? Or would I end up with a mono-species world with nearly limitless variation within that species?

I decided that, for the first situation, being transformed would be preferable to being starved, so I took off the mask that had kept feeding me purified air and took a nice, deep breath of fresh air. It smelled dusty, even though I was standing in a lightly forested area, with trees and grass nearby and a small brook babbling alongside where I walked. I half expected to wake up the next day with some new appearance, but put that out of my mind as I walked through the forest, searching for something edible.

My training paid off and I found several edible plants and berries growing wild along the stream that abated the hunger that was slowly growing in my gut. And from what few glimpses of wild animals that I had seen, I was glad that I didn't have to hunt. They had a humanoid cast to them, and I felt nauseous at the thought of eating anything that could be sentient.

I didn't notice the time of day until twilight came and darkness started to settle around the forest. I pulled together a camp and pulled some extra supplies out of the emergency pack, just in case I couldn't move very far the next day. In the middle of the night I was glad that I did. I felt like something was setting my body on fire and I couldn't move more than half a foot if I wanted to. The sickness progressed to where I felt something moving around me and in me, changing my genetic makeup to match whatever virus that I had caught. The pain and illness were excruciating, and I could understand how aggression could build up when someone had subjected the entire population to this pain. I had no clue how much time passed while I was ill, and was all but helpless when someone - or something - came by and picked me up.

*

I eventually woke up feeling good as new and rolled out of what felt to be a bed. A quick look confirmed that I was, indeed, in a room with a bed. I scrambled up to find out exactly what I had been changed into and was stunned with what had happened. Where before I had been a 6 foot male human, I was now a wolf, with gray and white fur covering all of my body. I was still a male, much to my relief.

A quick look around the room showed me that all my supplies had merely been taken off and placed to the side. They were all there and I quickly got dressed. The door opened before I had picked up my pack and a strong female voice said, "Well, glad to see you're up and about!" I turned around and saw an orca standing in the doorway. "So," she said, "Who are you?"

"My name's Alcham, what's yours?" I replied.

"Lilth, thank you for asking," she said with what appeared to be a smile. "So, where are ya from, Alcham?"

"A long time ago in a world long since gone," I said.

She looked at me in surprise. "You don't look like one of the oldtimers," She said.

"I've been a bit resilient to change for a while now, you could say."

She looked confused, but didn't pry. So I asked, "Where are we?"

"Welcome to my home," she said, "a lovely place just off of the continent of North America."

"Wait, how far was I carried?"

"Oh, only a mile or two out to the beach, after that it was a quick boat ride to the Island."

I thought for a moment, trying to figure out exactly where I was. The base had been in the Mojave Desert, a little ways from Edwards Air Force base. For it to be so close to the ocean meant that something had happened to sink the continents quite a ways. "What happened to San Bernardino or Los Angeles or any of the cities down there?" I asked.

She looked at me very confusedly. "How don't you know? The San Andreas fault collapsed during the Disaster and the oceanfront came right up to where you were."

"Well, me and my squad were... out of the area for quite a while with no way to figure out what had happened."

She shook her head and said, "Well, I guess that things happen for a reason. I'll give you a ride back to shore, but I don't think that we'll see each other again. I try to avoid any problems with the Coalition, and they tend to avoid me."

I had my questions about what this 'Coalition' was, but I held my tongue and nodded. Now wasn't the time to ask any questions from this woman who had saved my life. The only thing that was odd was that she sounded somewhat familiar, and I couldn't place my finger on who she sounded like.