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An ongoing commission for Aaron Blackpaw - do tell me what you think!

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The atmosphere in the conference room at the 5th floor was tense to begin with, but became even more foul when Doctor Peter Cho decided to rush over to the corner and puke into a waste paper basket. The harrowed-looking people sitting around the polished glass table, ties hanging loose around neck, jackets rumpled, uncombed hair, barely reacted to the retching spectacle.

Doctor Cornelius Ambergris dominated the table from his seated position on its head, and wondered, quietly, if it was possible to die from a simple heartburn, while clutching another takeaway cup of coffee in his paw.

They were mostly exhausted by now. The emergency meeting had been convened and carried on as more and more people showed up, things retold, again related to people who showed up at different times.

It had been a non-stop argument, with many repetitive loops of discourse and questioning.

"...is there any precedent for this in this country or anywhere?" Dianne Silberman from the Legal department asked from the gathered crowd.

The bleary-eyed doctors stared nervously across the table at the management side of things around the table. Many glanced over to Doctor Ambergris at the end, for guidance of professional, paternal, possibly even of divine kind.

"For an incident of this kind?" the lion rumbled. "No. They've done it purposefully in Japan a few times, but that has not been approved in the US as of yet. We have a research programme going on but - "

"So it can be done?" Dianne Silberman inquired.

"It is not beyond the capabilities of the procedure, certainly not," the lion replied, "but we are not dealing with a designed event here, this is a...an unexpected situation."

"And nothing like this has happened before?" the lawyer pressed on.

The lion sighed.

"Certain...intermediary forms due to induction pathway malfunctions, yes, those have been known to occur, but nothing like this. And that was in laboratory test animals, not in subjects."

"We're not talking about an intermediary form here," Doctor Flames, of generative sciences, commented, "from the viewpoint of the procedure itself, the transgenemorphic regeneration was 100% successful and complete. From what we can tell from preliminary results from the workup, it's a perfect...result."

"It's an abomination!" Doctor Clarkson of the Bio-Ethics department wailed. "I've no idea - "

"So, it's obviously the transgenomic implant that caused all this, that much is clear," Doctor Flames cut him down.

Doctor Clarkson stared at him with a flustered face and a partially open mouth.

"And it is an obvious fault in our production line?" Myles Clachan, of Public Relations, and the only one who managed to look like he hadn't woken up five minutes earlier at 2 in the morning, questioned. "Something that can be definitely blamed on us?"

"He didn't get a virus jab from a hack quack in Thailand!" Doctor Clarkson yammered.

The PR man looked puzzled. The lawyer woman seemed to perk up.

"If it's a technical error or an equipment malfunction, we can always sue the company and litigate," Dianne Silberman sounded optimistic. "Our responsibility could be...diminished."

"But if it's human error..." Dr Yang, of the neurology department, mused.

Her fellow doctors shouted up a storm of complaints. Doctor Ambergris stroked his golden brow and expected the pulsing vein he felt there to rupture in a life-ending aneurysm at any point.

"We are looking into the entire production line, of course," he said, "we'll go through every single log code from the entire process of Subject Laurie and see whatever there is to see. Obviously we are going to find out what happened, and what caused this incident to take place."

"And until that, we should maintain full media silence" Myles Clachan said. "If any word of this leaks out, it's the end of this clinic - hell, possibly the end of the entire industry in this country, if it comes to that. It would be exactly what the anti-genomics are looking for to use in the next round at the Congress."

"The bioethical questions - " interjected Doctor Clarkson.

"This is not a bioethical question," Doctor Ambergris retorted immediately. "Nothing has been done purposefully. At worst, we are talking about malpractice, maybe negligence."

"And we'll be looking at eight figures once they're through with us," Dianne Silberman spelled out what worried her most. "That on top of the lost revenue from the projects, the universities, the benefactor institutes, and of course from the actual patient revenue - "

"All of our heads are on the line," Doctor Flames said, "we caused this. We're not exactly talking about the malfunction of a single implanted gene here, I mean, what we see manifesting in the new phenotype is..."

"An entire motherfucking chromosome that just happened to slip in there?"

"Oh come on - "

"Nobody would - "

"What are we going to do about Laurie?" gasped Doctor Peter Cho, who still looked sick.

"Thank you for joining us again, Peter," Doctor Ambergris commented.

"How is the patient?" Dianne Silberman asked.

"Asleep," Peter Cho said, "sedated for now. We've tapered off the barbiturates and the patient is just...sleeping now."

"So Laurie does not know what happened?" Myles Clachan asked.

"Of course not, he's been sleeping throughout," Doctor Ambergris said. "It's the standard procedure while the patient is still in the pod. The antivirals have to be given time to work to eradicate any remaining viral load in the system."

"And you're absolutely sure that the virus couldn't have somehow mutated while in the pod?" Doctor Clarkson questioned. "Some kind of a random mutation outside in vitro. It happens sometimes, doesn't it?"

"The transcription system has been designed to be 99.999% accurate," Doctor Ambergris replied, "the enzymes work flawlessly. And since the effect has obviously been systemic..."

"So it's definitely our fault," Peter Cho said. "We put the wrong vector in his body and this happened."

"The laboratory is looking at it."

"What about the next of kin?" Peter Cho asked. "Have they been notified yet?"

"No," Doctor Ambergris said. "We were supposed to report on the patient's condition in the morning, and it is currently five thirty, so I presume that in two, three hours..."

"How long can we keep him waiting?" Dianne Silberman asked.

"We promised to bring Mister Laurie's next of kin, a Brandon Collier, up to date with him as soon as it was possible to give definite news about his condition," Doctor Ambergris said. "And I presume he'll be calling as soon as he finds it to be polite to be calling us."

"Who's going to be telling him?" Myles Clachan asked.

"I'm more worried about who is going to tell Laurie," Peter Cho said.

"And what," Myles Clachan said. "We can't let this blow up on our faces."

"I think the bomb's already been dropped and we're just waiting for it to explode," Doctor Clarkson said.

"We should've stuck to using mice genes," Doctor Flames hung his head.

"Market research showed that customers were not interested in looking like mice," Myles Clachan said.

Doctor Flames buried his face in his hands.

Doctor Ambergris cleared his throat.

"Lions don't eat mice," he said.

*

In Suite 3 at the Intensive Care Unit on the 10th floor, Andy Laurie laid on a bed, covered with sheets and surrounded by medical monitoring equipment and IV stands, lacking in the glitzy design of the patient rooms in the residence floor. The machinery was noiseless so as not to disturb the sleep of the room's only patient. Andy's chest rose and fell with breathing that the monitor told was steady and adequate. Andy's blood was well-oxygenated and circulating without trouble. The pulse was within normal limits. Neural activity had stabilized. The sleep was maintained only by a small dose of sedative medication pumped into a cannula in Andy's left wrist.

The arm with the tube in it lay over the green sheet. The fingers had changed shape, they were no longer curled, but straight, and noticeably thicker. Black and grey fur covered this limb, fine over freshly renewed skin. It looked soft, and it was brand new.

The newly formed fingers curled.

The nurse in charge of the ICU that night was distraughtly sitting in the monitoring station. She felt uncomfortable and lonely, and worried about her job. She had heard about the major clusterfuck in the laboratory, and how they were still somewhat unsure just what had happened, let alone what might take place when the wolf sleeping in the patient alcove would wake up. The nurse hoped that one of the doctors would come in soon to take charge, or even better, that her shift would end. She wanted to go home, brew some tea, and curl to sleep. It was not that she felt personally responsible for what had happened, but she had seen the angry, confused faces, heard the yelling, witnessed the doctors running with their white coats flapping like capes behind them.

The phone in the nursing station had rang only a few minutes previously to inquire the duty nurse about the condition of the patient.

"Situation still unchanged, Doctor," she had told Doctor Ambergris, the lion who made her feel uncomfortable. She'd seen many 'fangers' in her day, since she worked in a hospital that made them, so to speak, but something about the lion was particularly unnerving. Maybe even more so than the patient sleeping a few yards past.

She looked at the EEG, ECG and IV flow rate readings in her screens, and then past the console, to peer at the large panel glass that separated her from the patient room, with the ICU ward corridor running beyond another transparent partition behind her.

The wolf was sitting up on the bed and looking around with large, bewildered eyes.

"Oh, shit."

What to do? She could hit the Code Blue button and get the emergency team summoned...she could grab the phone...she could run away...or she could...

...their eyes met across the space between them, and the wolf stilled. The sheets on top of the wolf fell down, to expose more of the hospital gown. The wolf's muzzle was slightly open, gawking, it seemed.

"Oh, shit, shit," the nurse said when she grabbed the phone and hit the button to redial the latest number.

It rang once...twice...each second between them feeling like an eternity while she stared at the wolf studying the bland surroundings of the intensive care unit.

"Pick up!" the nurse whimpered.

The wolf was still looking at her. One paw had just moved to touch the wolf's throat.

Finally, a click.

"Ambergris."

"The patient's awake," the nurse gasped into the phone, "hurry."

The wolf was eyeing some of the hospital equipment. The ears were becoming flat.

"Please hurry..."

The wolf was getting out of the bed.

"Please..."

*

Everything itched terribly. Andy's nose was filled with a terrible, strange, curious, nuanced scent. Everything kept on itching and Andy needed to pee and Andy felt like - well, that was the point. There was a lot of feeling, and a lot of movement.

Curling toes. Arms that seemed to be answering to every command, now that the brain that had laid lax after losing much of its ability to command that body was now finally able to assert its dominance again.

Toes. Fingers clutching over a throat that was covered in warm fur and felt dry and raw.

The wolf let out a rough sound.

Water.

Sitting up hurt Andy's back a little. The light seemed awfully bright, and the glass box of a room...alien? Strange territory.

Territory?

Andy wondered why that thought had popped into the wolf's brain. Andy didn't think about places or things in territorial terms. Places were places. Andy had a few places. Others were in other places. This place was wrong because Andy couldn't really smell proper scents there, besides some bitch -

Why that word?

A bitch, a strange, bizarre scent that Andy's wolf-human brain would soon identify as the true stench of homo sapiens, tickling over sensory organs inside the enlarged nasal cavity.

But there was someone there...beyond a glass window, talking into a phone.

"Hhhhhhhhhhhhhh.......eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee...." the wolf's paw landed upon a throat forming those sounds for the first time.

"Hhheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeyyyy..." the chest expanded, more and more air flowing, the words coming with further ease.

And toes...legs...legs that itched and needed to move. It wasn't just the skin that itched. They felt like they itched to the bone. They needed to move.

The wolf got out of the bed. A tube detached from the port on the wolf's paw but it closed up automatically, so no blood was spilled, only a few drops of the IV solution over the sheets. That didn't have much of a smell, the wolf-brain told. Just salt and water.

The wolf looked at the bed, at the window with the big-eyed woman behind it, looked at paws moving slowly through the air, one with a small bald patch and a bandage on it, from which the plastic cannula protruded out.

"Aaah...aaah..." Andy tried. The single vowel sounded deep and husky, much unlike Andy's original voice. It was a brand new throat and tongue now, and they weren't fully under the wolf's control.

Andy tried sticking out the tongue. It lopped out of the wolf's muzzle and touched the underside of the chin, leaving a wet trail. The tongue was quickly slurped back into the wolf's maw.

"AAaahhheeh...."

The floor felt cold under bare footpaws, big, soft pads that had not yet had the chance to become calloused from the act of ambulation. It almost hurt to put weight on them.

The wolf's tail swung rapidly through the air and shed some loose fur over the floor. Doctor Ambergris, Doctor Cho, or Doctor Flames would note that the keratin was not yet fully set in the countless follicles from which each and every individual hair had grown at super speed over the night in the pod.

The wolf fell onto all fours. The vestibular system was newly re-grown and it was hard to keep bearings. Head hung low, the wolf huffed. The wolf's head was spinning. The floor smelled like rubber and plastic and something else. Big, deep sniffs.

"Hhhnneeeeehhhh..."

The wolf's back curled. The hospital gown rustled. It hurt the supersensitive skin. It itched terribly.

"Aahhhhrrh..."

The wolf bark-coughed. The wolf's throat was dry.

"Ahhheegg...."

The heaving wolf glanced through the window. The nurse was still there, alone and looking terrified.

I can't look that bad, Andy thought.

There was no mirror in the room. The walls were bare and offered no solace. There were blinking red lights in a monitor on the wall.

There was a band around the wolf's wrist. The wolf didn't like that feeling. The wolf wanted to gnaw on it.

The wolf brought the wrist up and bit, tearing onto the plastic strip with these fresh teeth.

The wolf growled.

"FFfffffffffff..."

Thump thump thump.

Noises from the side.

People were entering the aquarium-like room in throngs, gawking through the glass. Unfamiliar faces. The wolf's brain was hazy, anyway. Synapses were firing at a rapid pace through fresh pathways that had not been used before. Memories associated freely. Senses previously unconnected communicated over new super highways of information flooding into that very same mind that'd been woken up from slumber.

The wolf hissed in the direction of the aquarium. The wolf didn't want to be interrupted.

*

Doctor Ambergris entered the nursing station, and had trouble fitting into the mass of people who had all stormed the small room after the call had been given. Peter Cho was there, as the physician in charge, Flames, Yang, Clarkson, even Myles Clachan were present. The lion elbowed himself over to the nursing station.

"Signs?" he demanded.

"Agitated," the nurse said meekly.

The lion looked at the screens. Some alarms were going off.

"Should I page the on-call therapist?" Doctor Cho asked. "Is...is...it...going psychotic?"

"Someone talk to Mister Laurie!" Clarkson yelled, clutching himself as if a nice big hug would make all his medico-ethical problems disappear.

The wolf was looking at them, head tilted, staring through the glass, crouched on the floor.

"This is all melting down..." Doctor Clarkson mumbled.

Doctor Ambergris growled. It sounded loud enough to make the glass vibrate.

"Nobody is melting here!" the lion snapped into the room. "I'm going in."

The Chief Clinician stepped over to the glass door and opened it.

*

The wolf smelled the lion even before the lion entered. The wall didn't seem to be entirely scent-proof. The wolf was no longer interested by the band around the wrist. It was a bit frayed, and delicate printed circuitry hung out of the tear in the sensor band.

"Andrew..." the lion said, "please try to calm down. This is a very delicate part of the regeneration process, you might be experiencing some confusion..."

The wolf's lips gnawed air.

"Heeehhhreeer..."

"Your cranial nerves are getting used to interfacing between your organs of speech and your cerebellum," the lion said. "It may be difficult to speak at first. I presume you understand what I am saying."

The wolf's nostrils flared. Air flowed sharply.

"We are concerned about you, Andrew, could you please stand up and return to the bed?" the lion said.

The wolf looked at the lion. He was a towering figure viewed from the posture, hunched on the floor. The wolf sneered. The lion smelled bad.

"Heeehhnnnnnn..."

"It is possible you are experiencing a hypomanic episode due to the increased - "

The wolf snapped jaws at the lion. The feline man fell quiet. The tail swished from side to side, making the hems of the hospital gown shuffle. Even that sounded loud for the wolf's brand new ears, like bangs on the drums. The long, black ears dropped flat.

"Aaaaahhhhhhhhmmm...."

"There are many things to discuss, but first, you should calm down and I could take a look at you...perhaps try to rest a little more..."

"Nnnnoooooooo..." the wolf's head shook from side to side as the first comprehensible enough word passed from the wolf's lips.

"Please, Andrew - "

The wolf grabbed onto the hospital gown. The agitation of the situation was causing the itching to become worse. The lion flinched at the sound of the flimsy fabric being torn under the wolf's claws. More and more black fur was revealed. The wolf found the act relieving, the pressure and contact of the fabric gone. The wolf let out a pleased sound. Even the tail was wagging.

"Andrew - "

The wolf had a purpose now. The offensive garment had to go. The wolf clawed on the neckline of the gown and a jerking motion of the arm caused the entire thing to come apart all the way to about the waist. There was nothing there to hold it on the wolf, so it all simply flopped to the side.

The wolf didn't care about the lion anymore. The scratching of the claws on hide and fur felt too good to think about much else. The claws were almost drawing blood, scraping across new physical landscape on the wolf's body. Very little familiar remained.

The wolf's paw stilled, and the wolf looked down curiously, over the body that was now in view.

No flat, smooth chest, but breasts.

Flat belly, covered in the softest of black fuzz.

A groin containing all the physical essentials, and emanating a strong scent the wolf picked up with hungrily sucking nostrils.

"We must discuss a few things, Andrew," Doctor Ambergris spoke in a raspy voice.

The wolf was still staring at the apex of her thighs.

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Thank you for reading my story! I hope you had an enjoyable time, and I look forward to reading your comments! Do remember that all votes, faves and watches will help others to find these stories to enjoy as well!

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