FSE

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Click-click ssshhh, click-click ssshhh, click-click ssshhh. A muffled moan and then a loud thud followed that resounded around the room before the clicking noise resumed but at a more frequent rhythm. Click-clack-click-clack, click-clack-click-clack. The buzzing noise of a cell phone call could be heard as a tiny screen flashed to life in the lightless apartment. There was a rustling noise followed by a sound of frustration before the clatter of the phone dropping to the floor silenced the call as the phone ceased working. A low groaning noise came from the shadow in the middle of the room before scraping could be heard as sharp points were dragged across several surfaces. The shape reached out for the wall, and leaning against it, dragged itself upwards until it was able to continue to shuffle in this hunched position. Click-click ssshhh, click-click ssshhh, click-click ssshhh, the wraith, Conrad, resumed his pacing with the familiar sound of tapping and of something being drug once more.

What is wrong with me? Lieutenant Colonel Conrad Huygens thought, trying to clutch himself with arms locked into stiff agony. 16 years in the Air Force and not one missed formation... Until yesterday. When he hadn't awoken for 20 hours. And when he finally had... he could not make sense of what he felt in his body. All he knew was that in his state of confusion and fatigue that nothing was right. That he could not think properly... That he felt sick, and wrong, and didn't know how to....

What was the problem? He thought lethargically... I am so hungry... Maybe... If I just had... There was someone... A voice... Yesterday... I heard the voice.... Who... He trailed off with a rasp as his hands batted at his lowered head before he began to click-click his way to his kitchen. Paying no mind to the shredded remains of leftovers and packages he crushed and scattered in his sluggish movements to seek out the cold box... the refrigerator... Yes... he hissed to himself. There was a sudden flicker of movement in front of his face before his wettened nose could smell...

BAM! BAM! BAM! Someone hammered on the front door. With a burst of energy, at odds to his tepid movements thus far, Conrad spun and leapt across the room with an animalistic yelp of surprise and a heavy boom as he landed. Backed into a corner, he crouched down behind an upset table with a click-clack-click-clack, as something flickered once more to wet his nose. The smell was familiar... he thought.... I know her...

"Conrad! Open up! Have you fucking gone AWOL on me? Do you know how much paperwork that is?"

An image slowly formed in his mind... Yes... he hissed. I know this female...She is... Another image of her giggling coyly as they kissed flashed across his mind...mate...

"CONRAD! I CAN HEAR YOU IN THERE! ANSWER ME! YOU BETTER BE DYING! THE WHOLE WORLD IS GOING TO SHIT AND I NEED YOU TO GET IT TOGETHER! You two." She began to speak to someone else with her on the other side of the door. "Let me in. Health and welfare check, let's go."

Conrad chirped unhappily to himself and crouched until he lay flat against the ground. It felt weird...cool...was I...clothes...should clothes? The female... He could remember that she would chase... chase... chase him? Find him? Conrad moaned... something was wrong... he did not want to be chased or found right now...

The front door slammed open allowing three figures to stride into the darkened apartment and look around at the upturned shapes of the furniture. They stopped to let one of the two police officers with the female start turning on lights before turning their dismayed looks upon the destroyed apartment. Conrad shrank against himself as he recoiled from the bright light stabbing into his eyes. His eyes... they felt funny... he traced one carefully with a finger that was not a finger...they were big... The tall female officer gasped at the sight of the usually pristine apartment she was used to seeing.

Parts and pieces of furniture lay strewn everywhere. A bookcase shattered and thrown to lay against the wall, spilling books and technical manuals across the floor. The couch ripped open, with its cushions pushed into one corner in a blanket covered heap with some of the covers torn as if by dull knives. One of the police officers bent to pick up a lamp that Conrad had chewed on to help with the itchy...teeth...itchy teeth.... No... itchy gums growing itchy teeth...

"Animal attack? Did he have dogs?"

"No... Conrad? Are you here? You're scaring me now..."

Conrad lifted from his crouch to curl a black clawed hand over the edge of the toppled table in front of him. The Air Force officer screamed and recoiled as her hands flew to her mouth. Both of the officers of the peace next to her drew their sidearms and held them at the low ready at the frightful sight of Conrad.

"WHAT IS THAT! WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT? IS THAT A HUMAN?"

He looked back at them with mismatched eyes. One twice the size of the other and with a vertical ovoid pupil surrounded by a red flecked golden iris. Even as they watched, more of the hair on top of his head fell to the ground as it was pushed out by the scattered black scales that shifted and twitched individually. Conrad's tongue flashed outward to lick his growing nose, his distending face creaking briefly as it lengthened and new scales appeared while his nostrils quivered wetly as he spoke to the terrified witnesses.

"Know you...female...voice...your voice...Please...speak voice...Aman...no" He shifted his eyes to look suspiciously at the cops as they radioed for backup and flinched when they pointed their weapons at him again. His left ear flapped open displaying the spines and membrane that it had become. "Manda? Hear voice...confused scared...Me not me? What me?" He trailed off in a whisper as tears began to fall from his begging eyes. "Amanda... what is happening to me?"

Lieutenant Colonel Amanda Schneider was a tall red headed Brazilian born woman who gave up modelling to join the Armed Forces of the country that took her family in.

After a half hour of exclamations of fear everyone had settled down enough to figure out what to do next. There were now an additional two police officers out front of the apartment warding off the curious. While Amanda had finally worked up the nerve to search for Conrad's picture ID in the tattered remains of his pants. She used this to prove to the skeptical police officers, based on his unchanged eye color, hair, and what remained of his facial features that this was Conrad Huygens. Currently she was on her phone explaining what had become of him to her and his commanding officer. It was a struggle for her not to revert to her childhood language of Portuguese. What was happening...

"Yes sir, I had local LE let me in to check on him. We found him just like this. Behavior? Well, he seems to remember me, but he is also fucking terrified, and so am I. What is happening? Has there been word from above?" The lite colonel looked at Conrad as he sat in one corner on his legs with his tail (HIS FUCKING TAIL!) curled defensively around his hands planted on the ground before him. Catching her looking at him he tried to smile at her charmingly, just as he had so often in the past she thought with a twisting sensation, only to whimper with a look of sadness in his eyes when she scooted further back from him and the razor-sharp teeth he had unknowingly displayed. He whimpered again and raised his hand to cover his face. With a straining noise LTC Schneider was repulsed to see that she could actually watch his change occur as his mouth lengthened and pushed the claw laying on it further from the rest of his head. Dropping that hand to the ground showed that not only was his nose and mouth longer but that his eyes looked like they had move further apart while his brow grew to overshadow the growing socket.

A change that Conrad himself noticed as his eyes turned towards each other to look at the nose that was dominating more and more of the center of his vision. He made a short keening noise before realizing what he was doing and cutting himself off as his hands shot to wrap around his extending mouth. Closing his eyes, he hung his head low on the length of his growing neck morosely. Tears fell as his naked body was caught in a wracking shiver. With a straining noise and a groan, Conrad's body grew broader and longer until he had to adjust his posture. Horrified, Amanda and one of the officers watched his writhing tail grow thicker while making wider and wider sweeps as it lengthened.

That could have been me. Shivering again she realized, it still could be me... A cold pit of horror formed and took root in her stomach as the feeling of thousands of ants started to march across her skin. Jumping to her feet, she ran down the hallway to his bathroom in a panic. Fleeing from his troubled cry she crashed into the bathroom and slammed the door shut behind her, cutting off the concerned call of the police officers out front. Setting the phone down and placing it on speakerphone she began hyperventilating as she stripped her uniform off to look over her lithe body centimeter by centimeter. Her CO, Brigadier General Boyd, could hear her, obviously, and quietly asked her if she was okay.

Stripped naked, she checked herself front and back, top to bottom. Only when she was done and convinced she wasn't about to turn into a monster did everything catch up to her. Kneeling on Conrad's bathmat, naked, she vomited into his toilet and began to cry as sweat broke out across her flushed skin.

A hesitant knocking came from the locked door and the sound of the female police officer gently asking her if she was all right. Not wanting to be seen in her panicked state Amanda told the cop that it was just nerves, that she would be all right. It wasn't until she could hear her footsteps retreating that she spoke to her CO as well.

"I am sorry sir, I just had a panic attack." She began to redress into her uniform. "Just the thought that might happen to me too, that we don't know what's causing this... What happened to Huygens. What is happening to Huygens... I can't... I can't imagine what he's... Urk..." She gave a strangled groan and dropped her bra to hold her hair back as she vomited into the toilet again.

"Hmm." He hummed. "It is completely understandable Colonel. I haven't actually seen one of these poor souls up close. But from what I understand it is an unfortunate business and he is not the only one transforming right now. We need to get him on base, somewhere we can help him, somewhere we can watch him."

"Somewhere we can secure him." Schneider said, putting her underwear back on followed by her socks and pants.

"Possibly. He hasn't shown or done anything violent has he? He still seems like he is aware?"

"No, and I think so sir. He said he was confused at first, but he keeps mentioning my voice. I had called him yesterday several times to see where he was. I... I could be wrong sir, but I think hearing my voice. Something that he was familiar with... Helped him."

"Good, that is good. Excellent, if the idea is true. Because you are going to spend at least the next few days with him as we figure this out." She opened her mouth to protest this, violently, but shut it as a thought entered her head.

"Infection."

"I always knew you had a good head on your shoulders Amanda. That is correct, do not worry about your Company, it is being taken care. I am ordering you to relay to those two officers there with you that you will be met shortly by a decon team that will transport you to Hangar C where you will remain with Huygens in isolation. Do you understand Colonel?"

"Yes, sir."

"Now, go help your friend. I know you two are close. Am I correct?" She glanced at her toothbrush in the holder on top of the sink. The only reason why she had the cops open the door for her was to keep up appearances. She shivered violently and pressed the back of her hand to her mouth. Before dropping that hand down to rest on the bare skin of a belly that had already begun to curve noticeably outwards. Not that that secret was going to last much longer... I haven't even told him yet...

"We are sir."

"As I thought, you both could have learned to use a little more discretion."

He ended the call, and Amanda Schneider closed the toilet to sit down on it and cry. The female officer came again, and this time she was admitted. Standing, wearing nothing above the waist but her bra, Amanda opened the door to her slowly. The officer, Lindsey Koontz, took one look at her stomach and then wrapped her in her arms as Amanda sobbed in fear for herself, her baby, and the father in the next room.

"Oh honey, I'm so sorry. It's going to be okay." Amanda didn't respond, only burying her face into Lindsey's shoulder to cry hysterically. Neither of them had the heart to acknowledge the lie as Officer Koontz kicked the bathroom door shut behind her.

What finally drew Amanda from the bathroom was not the fact that she was ready. But the increasingly frantic calls for her from her lover. As much fear as she felt it could not possibly compare to what he was undergoing. She and her police escort were watching the physical body of a human melt away slowly before them only to be replaced by...something else.

"Amanda? I... where are you? I...Conrad?" The uncertainty in his voice, questioning who he was made, Amanda's heart ache.

All Conrad knew was that the voice...the comfort...the female...no...he knew her. It was Amanda. He wasn't sure who he was right now...what he was now...but that didn't matter...He knew Amanda...But Amanda had gone! Amanda was not close! He could not smell Amanda! She was afraid of me! But I am afraid! How can she be afraid of me afraid?

"Amanda...cannot see you! Cannot smell you! Amanda...hear voice...not know me...know you...Please...will not hurt...Please talk to Conrad...I afraid...not know I...it...hurts"

Conrad's mind was filled by white hot agony and then the pang of his head hitting something as he thrashed with a painfully loud yowl. Cracking noises shot across the kitchen as the bones in his legs and his arms came apart as small bone along with their attached muscles and ligaments twisted in shape. With another howl of torment, he flung his head upward, slamming it through an overhead cupboard, and sending glassware flying to the alarm of the witnesses to his hell. Lurching to his feet, Conrad reached up to grab the counter and haul himself upright to ease the tension in his legs and arms. But as soon as he let go, he found himself on four legs as he crashed down into the counter. Yet another uncomfortable thing was made apparent to the reluctant watchers, Conrad was naked, and his sex was still unchanged. Small as they looked on his growing body, his penis and testicles still hung limply between his hind legs and could be seen whenever his tail raised in his torments.

With his head now brushing the ceiling of the kitchen, time was running out to get him out of the apartment. He opened his eyes again, both now changed to equally sized red flecked gold oval pupils, and blindly began swinging his head back and forth calling for his friend, his lover, once more.

"Amanda! Conrad scared!"

Creeping from around the corner where she had been hiding, Amanda appeared to him as he visibly relaxed. He lurched toward her seeking the only comfort that he could remember but, when Amanda retreated behind the corner again, instead gave a long and anguished cry before begging her not to be afraid.

"Conrad need Amanda! No bite no scared Conrad good!"

"I'm...I'm sorry Conrad." She sobbed, her heart breaking. "But I could...you could infect me Conrad...we don't know what is happening to you...I can't touch you yet...I'm...I'm..." She trailed off as she rested her hand on her lower stomach. He moaned, and then flailed wildly as he grew, his tail swiping the heavy kitchen table behind him into the wall like a toy. The chairs beside it smashed into kindling. After a brief consultation with the police to discuss what to do she turned back to the confused man. "Conrad, you can't stay in here... you are still growing...we need to leave your apartment. We need to get you outside, and then we are going to base. We are going to...somewhere safe."

But he didn't understand. Why leave safe? Here safe! Out there danger! His body wrong! Wrong danger! Why did Amanda want Conrad not be safe? He tilted his head in confusion and refused to budge. And even if they had wanted to, there was no way to move the new impossible bulk that Conrad had. Before this had even started, he was a healthy 1.8 meters tall and 93 kilograms, and he certainly had not gotten lighter since then. Amanda wondered briefly where this additional size, not to mention all the material for the changes in body, had come from. Magic? Just like with all the other cases reported starting four days ago near the poles of the world, no one had an answer yet.

Seeing that he had no intention of leaving his own home. LTC Schneider had no choice but to take a chance. Taking a pair of heavy latex gloves from the officers working to clear bystanders away so Conrad would feel secure enough to emerge. She closed the cuffs of her uniform top as much as she could and then rolled the gloves over the sleeves. Reaching forward with both hands she gently supported the sides of Conrad's distending face.

Warmth bloomed in his mind, and without realizing it, he cooed gently and relaxed at the feeling of her touch on the itchy feeling of his scales. He wished that she didn't have to wear the smelly blue things but understood that she was scared for some reason. If this made her feel safe enough to touch softly touch Conrad, he would be happy.

Schneider, rubbed her thumbs back and forth against his lengthening cheeks, felt the tiny scales there moving and twitching with each caress. Conrad's eyes slid shut and he made a small sound of contentment as his scales lifted. Amanda was confused by the smell of vanilla that began to fill the kitchen and looked to see if any baking ingredients had been accidentally opened. Humming softly to him made his eyes open once more to show their tortured plea for help. Tears began to appear in Amanda's eyes at the amount of confusion and pain held within Huygens's enormous ones.

"Come with me dear, you will be safe outside, and then we will go to the base. I promise nothing will happen to you."

Slowly, so slowly, he bobbed his head once as he stared back fixated on her gaze as trust and love lit the depths of his bewildering red and gold eyes. Keeping her hands on his growing muzzle she began to back away and draw him outside. Only when they reached the front door was there a problem, he could no longer fit. Patting his nose and pleading for him to stay for a moment, she turned to converse with the police once more off to the side.

Amanda wants me outside? But I big and this small! He thought, as he twisted his head to look at the door frame keeping him inside. Settling his mind, he peeked his head and long neck out the door to make sure everyone was clear, then backing up a few paces rammed through the frame, destroying it. Shaking the rubble off his broad back he looked to Amanda for approval.

"I outside! Conrad not safe? We go! Conrad safe!"

His search for approval ended when the crowd of onlookers outside, who hadn't been cleared entirely before he'd undertaken his head long rush, began to yell. Terror grew in his eyes and, responding to his spike of emotions, his body's growth seemed to accelerate as he cowered against the ground at the onslaught of sound. But Amanda said I'd be safe! He thought desperately looking for something stable to cling to. She saw the look in his eyes and ran to place herself between his head and the crowd with her arms outstretched. Drawing in a huge breath she felt him bury his face against the small of her back with a high-pitched pleading whine as Lieutenant Colonel Schneider, commander of 274 airmen and civilians, began to assert control.

"LISTEN TO ME!" She thundered. After a moment, the noise began to die down as the mob before her quieted.

"This man behind me is sick. He is being afflicted with the same condition that is popping up all over the globe. You all know about this, correct?" She asked, as several heads in the crowd began to nod. "Do not let his appearance fool you! This is still the same man behind me that I have known for 12 years. He is Lieutenant Colonel Conrad Huygens. He is your neighbor! He is your friend! Do not be afraid of him and stop baying at him like hounds! Can any one of you possibly imagine how confused he is by what has happened to him? What is happening to him? Do not aggravate his mental health by overwhelming him, leave him be as we address his illness! Please respect this man in his time of crisis and go home so that we can calmly and quietly evacuate him for treatment! As he deserves!"

As anyone that has ever known the tall striking woman could tell you. There was just something about Amanda Schneider that compelled others to do as she said when she was like this. Whether it be her expression, her eyes, the way she projected her voice, or the words she chose themselves. Whatever it may have been, when she put on the bossy face, as Conrad had once called it while snuggling against her in post-coital bliss, people listened. Just as they did now.

Not that some didn't go without grumbling discontentedly. But her fierce glare was more than a match for a few recalcitrant stragglers. As soon as the crowd was gone, the officers began to bring their cruisers forward to act as blockades and a safe area for the team that was on their way.

She turned, confident in them to control the scene now, to comfort the man that she had been only days away from asking to be with her forever. She halted at the sight of him collapsed on the ground and squirming in pain. On his back, two open sores appeared from shoulder all the way down to his ever-lengthening tail. As she watched, his shoulders themselves contorted like snakes beneath the scales that spread across them, mutating as black skeletal appendages began to grow from increasingly complex shoulder joints. Reams of thick canvas like flesh grew from the long narrow cuts and began to stitch themselves to the bony arms sprouting from his shoulders. But, despite the hellish agony that he must have been in, his eyes gleamed with love as he gave her the same comforting smile he had tried earlier. Falling to her knees, she gave no thought to contamination as she reached out and gathered his head into her lap for comfort.

Conrad rolled his eyes up until he could look into hers. Love filled his mind, numbing the sensation of his body changing, twisting, transforming. He was starting to remember...

"I was..." He bit his lip, his long teeth skewering right through the blackened flap of skin with a flash of pain. "I was...give you something tomorrow...I...give you...love you always...Go to my safe place...on top of soft pillow...love always! For you! Amanda...go find. I wait...wait for love me too?"

He lifted his head from her lap, allowing her to gain her feet and totter unsteadily to the apartment. She untangled his garbled speech in her head. Oh Conrad, she muttered to herself. Did you really pick the worst possible time for this? She went into his apartment and searched the bed in his bedroom. There was nothing there, not on the bed, in a pillowcase, under the mattress, nowhere. Then she remembered the makeshift bed he'd made in his living room. There it was, a small velvet square. Laying atop the disheveled nest like it had been placed there carefully. Opening it, she found a twined banding of platinum with a cluster of gems around a central diamond. Her strength failed her as her legs folded and she fell on to her side. Clutching the box to her chest she cried, cried for the love that had been stolen by what was happening to her husband... Yes, how could she ever say anything other than yes? Her husband...who was outside waiting for her return. She got up and ran to him. She ran to his head and looked into his eyes as they gleamed with emotion, emotion that buried the pain deep.

"Conrad, yes! No matter what happens, yes! I love you."

Holding his head, she leaned down, forgetting completely about the potential hazards of what she was about to do, and planted a series of kisses starting at the tip of his nose and then all the way to the top of his head between his eyes. He tried to kiss her back but, with rigid skin losing its fleshy appearance, the only thing he could manage was to caress her face softly with his extended tongue.

"Love you Amanda...forever...never forget no matter what happens to me. No matter what new me is...Love you..."

His head collapsed as he slipped into unconsciousness when the wracking pain of his body grew to be too much. But just as his mind fell into oblivion, he heard Amanda hurriedly cry to him.

"No! Conrad I never told you! I'm..."

He awoke to the hard jouncing of a cargo truck bumping down the road. But more importantly to him, the humming, feeling, and touch, of a familiar presence enveloping his aggrieved pain wracked nerves.

"Ammm...Amanda." Rumbled from a throat that was even longer than he remembered it being before he had fallen asleep. "Where am I?"

The humming stopped and the warm feeling pressed against his side vanished. "Conrad!" Immediately afterwards a pair of soft familiar hands grasped his head, which felt startingly heavy, and tugged at it until he used his own muscles to lift it and face the source of the voice. A strange feeling smile grew on his stretched face as he saw the tear stained face of his love. Amanda. He leaned forward to kiss her and she smiled as his tongue caressed her cheek gently. Bending his head away from the view out the back of the covered bed at the traffic behind them he took in the other two in the truck with them. And then dismissed them, the only one that mattered to him right now was still holding his head. He could feel tiny drops landing on top of his head and it took him a moment to realize they were the tears of his...wife...He could remember...

"I remember... I am...a child of the egg...

I remember everything! Amanda! I remember who I am! You...you accepted my proposal! Amanda...I love you...I love you! Oh! I thought I had waited too long! Amanda...I thought I was dying. But I told you in time!

His heart was bursting with the love he felt. It wasn't until minutes later that the voice of his love penetrated the impassioned shroud that had fallen over his thoughts. Not even, he snarled as another burst of growth almost made his body longer than the truck could contain, this pain can distract him! He trumpeted in his own mind. The feeling of a hand wrapping around the back of his neck to draw his head down until he looked at his love brought him back to Earth.

"Conrad! Please... Stay with me... Are you okay? What was that? What were those sounds you made? It sounded avian!"

"I...I think we are called children of the egg..."

"Conrad? Are you still...you?" Amanda asked apprehensively. Before he could try to answer, something strange happened. Both of the cops, arranged as far from Conrad's head as they could be, gasped before they slumped limply against each other, unconscious. A new voice startled Conrad and his love as they whipped their heads towards a speaker that hadn't been there moments before.

"Hello Amanda Schneider and Conrad Huygens."

A creature, no larger than a big dog, sat on the bench next to Amanda and near Conrad's head. Both of them made a hasty assessment of the creature and guessed, rightly it turned out, that soon Conrad would resemble nothing more than a larger version of it. Which Conrad was able to relax the tiniest bit over. At least I won't have three heads he thought to himself.

"I, as you both have already guessed, am involved in what is happening to Conrad. Both of you need to hear what I will tell you, what I will ask of you, and will have to come to a decision within the time it takes for this vehicle to reach its destination."

A growl thrummed through the metal of the truck bed and the very air enclosed by the canvas cover of the FMTV. "Yuuuuu did thissss toooo meeeee..." Conrad snarled. The first act of aggression he had shown since his change had begun. He lunged with his jaws opened wide and his teeth flashing only to cry in pain as blood shot from his nose when he hit an invisible barrier just before the creature.

"You cannot cause me harm. But you can cause a great deal of it for yourself if you lunge through this flimsy covering behind me and fall into automotive traffic. I ask you to let go of your anger. Both of you." Its golden eyes turned on Amanda as she froze in her leap for one of the unconscious police officer's handguns. "Whether or not your anger is warranted is irrelevant at this time. I just need you to listen to me and then make a decision. You can vent your anger at me later when time is not a detrimental factor. Will you comply?"

Conrad pushed his burgeoning muzzle against the barrier and then planted his hind legs against the metal floor of the truck. Making no headway, his claws instead began to peel through the sheet metal below. Amanda had equal looks of fear and desperation in her eyes as her arm and hand trembled in their reach for the semi-auto pistol just beyond her fingertips.

"Of course, you won't. You are just as short tempered and immune to reason as the rest of your illogical ill-mannered species." The creature's eyes glowed and Amanda returned to her seat jerkily, where she placed her hands in her lap, and looked at the creature with fury in her eyes. Conrad returned his belly to the floor and his head twitched until it was looking at the alien just as furiously. Behind him, his tail lashed danger close to the comatose police officers in frustrated rage. The glow in the thing's eyes ceased.

"You are both highly intelligent, despite your species' flaws. You have been chosen due to that intelligence and your relationship to each other. As well as for one more...factor." It tilted its head to look down at Schneider's waist as she turned pale with her eyes darting down to Conrad. "I know you will both behave if I release you, so just listen. Plot your revenge later. It will not matter, as you will see in time."

It released them, and they did just manage to restrain themselves. Instead, glowering at him with equal parts confusion and hostility.

"Before I begin. Amanda." It said, and looked down at her waist again, where her left hand flew upwards to shield what was beneath protectively. "Certain facts will come to light in this conversation that I know you would appreciate being able to reveal yourself. You have five minutes." Conrad looked puzzled, like every other male human living or dead, when it came to implied reproductive topics.

Settling herself to the floor of the bed, she opened her arms to Conrad, and he willingly thrust his head into her embrace. Even if he didn't know why. But, with her next words, he jerked it backwards to look her intently in the eyes as a torrent of emotions began to surge and cover his conscious thought.

"You're going to be a father."

His snout tilted down to look at her stomach and then up again as his eyes glowed with amazement. How...how long? How far along are you? Oh my! I am going to be a father. I do not know what to say... This is absolutely amazing! Oh, honey! I am so happy! Can you believe it? Of all the men in this world, I am the one to have a child with you? With you? The smartest woman in the country? The most beautiful women I have ever seen? Amanda! This is beyond...beyond anything! Oh, I am the luckiest, you are the most amazing, I am... I am...

His joyful yodeling, not a word of which was in English or to be understood by Amanda, except where she could vaguely pick out her name in the rapid torrent of tweets, chirps, and whistles that he had just unleashed, ended as he saw the sadness in her eyes. All the joy leaked from his eyes in the form of tears as he cast his head downwards to look at what were, just a few days ago, human hands. "I am a demon... Amanda." He looked up at her with pain more profound than anything he could ever feel by the twisting of his body. "I am so happy for you, and I swear upon my own life that you will always have my love. But, look at me." He broke down, crying, barely able to continue. "I am an abomination...this may be permanent... I cannot raise a child with you..." He looked up at what could have been his wife with courage. Courage that was as weak and ethereal as the clouds that passed by in the sky outside.

Courage that folded, as the wings growing upon his back unfolded, with a wracking painful shiver that forced a hurricane of heated air into his loved one's face. The realization of what he was, what it meant for him, for his new family, erasing all progress that he made. Buried beneath the avalanche of change and despair. His face contorted into pain as he begged his love for a favor... "Please...It hurts so much...I feel...who me was...slipping...mate of me...can me who was hear life? The life that you and was me made?" He looked down at Schneider's stomach with painful hope glimmering in his eyes as they faded and brightened in cycles with his struggling memory.

"I go, not want go. Last feel? Us child? Keep warm as me go?"

Amanda could not rip her uniform top off quickly enough and pulled up the undershirt beneath it to reveal the pregnant bulge that was just barely visible. So slight, that Conrad wasn't even able to berate himself for not noticing before, as he bowed his head to rest the finned ear he possessed, and the small canal before it, to her stomach. Amanda wrapped her arms around his head, slowly stroking the unfamiliar terrain of his scales and the ribbon like fin growing from his head and down his spine. Conrad's mind filled with scent of his wife, the sound of the fluttering heart within the egg that he and his mate had made, the feeling of the tears of the dimly familiar female pattering on his head. The only thing tethering Conrad Huygens to his own mind, was the contact, the experience, of the one that loved him. Of the two that he loved so much that the pain it caused him, as he struggled to keep their memories within his, eclipsed what happened to his thrashing body.

The five minutes ended. Conrad slept, Amanda wept, a ring of promise clasped between their hands, the feelings of a future stolen. If life required nothing more than a heartbeat, then it still existed in that pile of misery. But if life required more than that, then it had fled those that lay on the floor of the cargo truck that day.

"Ahem."

The broken woman looked up through a veil of tear dampened red tresses at the alien perched upon the bench in front of her with blank, vacant eyes.

"How can I raise the life in my womb like this? What are you? What do you want from us? Leave me... The man that was going to be my husband, my friend, my partner, is gone." She buried her head against his and sighed. "Today, I die..."

"Or...instead of doing that. You can listen to me like I asked you to, you melodramatic fawning mawkish creature." It shifted to look at Conrad. "As for him, and the continued existence of the evanescent, shallow, insipid memories of what he calls life. That depends on you, Amanda Schneider.

You have options for yourself Amanda. Optimally, I would take this choice from you and shove the best path forward into your miniscule mind. But my Overmind has given us strict instruction with regards to your feeble intractable species. So as much as it would delight me and shorten my time on this world that you have corrupted with your taint, I have to do things the hard way. By allowing you the free will to fuck your own species into oblivion with a series of decisions of exceedingly dubious value.

Option one: You die, and so does your bastard child. Both of you consumed in the toxic cesspool of chemicals that your body will produce in the twitching throes of catatonic despair.

Option two: You live, the embryonic spawn clutched within your primitive reproductive basket dies due to the neglect of your own frail rotting shell. Conrad behaves as I will describe in option three. Are you paying attention, you flaccid pustule?

Option three: You extricate your skull and its gruesome coverings from your own anus. You, and your child live. Conrad lives onward as a creature much greater than the pitiful human that he was. However, he is never again the blathering fool that you have formed ill defined attachments to and whom helped to create the irregular cellular growth that your body will expel in six months through a passage as ill suited for its purpose as every other aspect of your maligned bodies. At best, Conrad will have a dim sensation that he should protect you out of pity for the fragility of you and the squalling cancer you will birth. He will live hundreds of years past the end of the tenuous hold that you have upon what you think is the spark of life and lead a life richer and fuller than any you can ever conceive.

Option four: In an act of unimaginable condescension we will grant you the boon of a life that will make the one you have eked out thus far look like the puddle of canid ejecta you stepped in this morning and that I can still smell on your boot. You will take a form similar to that of Conrad before you. A gift that you do not deserve, vile organism. With this gift, you will keep "Conrad" as who he is. His memories will stay where they have, locked inside the skull of a superior species that does not deserve to be defiled by the vapid primitive neural misfiring you call thought and memory. You live, Conrad lives. The price you pay." It gestured at Amanda's bare abdomen. A dismissive motion that disgusted her more than all its vile words combined. She quickly dressed as it continued. "Is the forfeiture of that thing within you. One will become six, and in nine months your happiness will extend far beyond the lengths that those such as you deserve when you birth eggs and get to enjoy raising a higher form of life than a muck raking mammal will ever know.

So, these are your options Amanda Sofia Schneider.

You die.

Your baby dies.

Some combination of the two, I care not which.

You let Conrad go, and are left to raise a child alone in a world that will soon be deep in the crucible of change. You will waste away for the remainder of your life, raising your daughter in the presence of the evolved life form that was once the man you knew and that will treat you like a pet, or some other kind of easily broken trinket.

Or lastly, you let go of the idea of being human, of giving birth to a human. Shed your humanity, turn your back on everything you thought you knew about yourself, and keep the one you love at your side for the rest of your existence as you raise your alien children."

It looked away from Amanda and stood up on its two hind legs to look outside before dropping down. "Does it look familiar to you yet? We are at the main gate. You have fifteen minutes left to make your decision."

Voices could be heard outside. One guard, in particular, wanted to look inside to verify the cargo but was convinced after several phone calls that no one was to approach the vehicle without MOPP gear. Which, as would be pointed out later, was colossally stupid after a vehicle containing who knew what kinds of biological hazards was just driven across town completely unsealed and exposed. As one furious general officer would later state during an AAR. 'It's a god damned good fucking thing it wasn't biological! The whole fucking city of Dayton would be dragons! You're fired! You're all fucking fired! Get the fuck out of my sight! Go sit on the fucking railroad tracks until the 0840 comes through!'

Doors shut and the diesel engine fired again as the truck lurched on its way once more. Amanda lay on her side humming softly as she continued to brush Conrad's head. Hugging him tightly against her breasts. Trying to find some solace while she thought in vague and detached ways.

"Why?"

The alien watching her cocked its head. "That's it? Why? Is it why does the sun rise in the east? Is it why are you being obtuse? Is it why am I talking to you? Be more specific!"

"Why do you want me to choose to give up my humanity? Why is that the option that you are pushing for? If you hate us so much why help us find happiness in any way? To find happiness in a situation that you created? What do you get out of this?" All of this spoken with a dead voice as she refused to lift her head away from her attention to the head of her mate.

"Pick your head up and look at me when you are addressing me you uncouth shell of a creature."

"No. You have your answer, now leave me to find what remains of the life you've left me with."

The tiny alien did not reply, and Amanda did not look up, but she heard a dry rustling that must have been its scales moving against each other before a thump came from right next to her head. She didn't have the strength to even lift her head to look at the creature as its shadow fell across her. Shock entered her eyes as she saw the little alien extend a single claw and carefully pull her hair to the side to allow her to see the creature clearly. It spoke again, and for the first time, it dropped its corrosive language.

"Child. I apologize for the way that I have treated you. You have a gift Amanda, you always have. Use that gift with human and children of the egg alike. The world will be a brighter place through the efforts of you and your mate. Mourn the child that you will lose today but rejoice in the number that you will bring forth. I will not lie and tell you that it will not be difficult. However, an easy path is not a rewarding one. In time, the fruits of the troubled path you are now on will be great. As will be your happiness."

The truck stopped and then began reverse into an empty aircraft hangar. The alien smiled at her, leaving her reeling from the change in its behavior. "When your mate opens his eyes, greet him with a smile and the feeling of your presence. We will be watching, child of the egg." It trailed off as it faded from her sight, just as the tailgate dropped and the two police officers were startled awake to look around in bleary confusion.

It took Amanda and six others to carry Conrad from the truck, and even then, they had to let his tail flop from the high bed of the truck to the ground. Fortunately for the tortured Air Force Officer, this did not awaken him. By the time that they had set him down on a series of cots, he was longer than the truck that had brought him here.

Schneider was still trying to come to terms with the interaction she had with the strange, hostile alien on the trip to their new living quarters. She did not even fully believe that it had had happened until hours later. When she could no longer deny the roiling in her stomach that at times left her bent over and gasping as things moved within her, or the fact that her undershirt no longer tucked neatly into her pants as her torso grew longer. Her chest was already thickening as well, the strap of her bra digging into her skin until she reached under her shirt to remove it and shove it into her cargo pocket. She shuddered when doing it when her fingers brushed her breasts and she realized her nipples were gone. The two police officers with her in quarantine began to notice she did not look the same as she had that morning as time passed. The distance they kept from the woman increasing in proportion to the lengthening of her body. She called to the watching security forces for someone to take her testimony about what happened earlier after a particularly grueling full body cramp had left her on the concrete, she did not know how much time she had before she was insensible.

Refusing to leave her husband's growing side. Investigators listened to her story right there next to Conrad's head, which by this point had grown too large for his wife to lift easily into her lap. Instead she slowly caressed his spinal fin, even while the feeling of something being crushed beneath her clothing became more and more bothersome to herself. Her first words to her interviewers caused them to run, shouting for a medical team.

"I am changing. It started on the ride to the hangar."

A team of medical professionals immediately descended on the nonplussed woman to chronicle the progress of the change. Stripped naked inside the tent that had gone up around her and her husband it didn't take the medics very long at all to notice her pregnancy, and what had changed already. It was only her refusal to leave her husband, along with her already increasing strength and mass, that kept the team from bundling her off to the MRI on base for a full body scan.

After the initial examination, and while LTC Schneider tried to get comfortable on a stability ball that had been brought after she complained of the pain sitting in a normal chair caused her spreading hips, her interview resumed. Armed guards were posted at every corner of the tent, as the resulting conversation about everything the alien had said to her was immediately classified TS-SCI. Throughout the interview the examiners could not but help to feel sympathy for the woman. With muffled groans she continued to grow larger and larger. Her hips widening until she was reduced to a shuffle as her upper and lower legs began to reform. At her pleas for help, the two investigators assisted her in removing her boots and socks and revealed a pair of elongated feet that looked perfectly adapted for gripping things between front and rear claws. Bellowing in pain, she fell to the ground and scored the concrete with those claws as a set of toes on each foot began to merge while the hind claw grew in flexibility and size. Whenever she was at rest on the ball she had to lean further and further forward as her spine began to elongate, forcing her body to extend well past the hips. Through the flimsy hospital gown that she wore the interviewers could even see this protrusion, her tail, begin to shift in counterpoint to her steps as she paced back and forth in discomfort.

The interview was called off all together, when she fell to the ground on her side to clutch her stomach and scream until blood flew from her mouth as her chest and abdomen swelled in girth. The morbidly fascinated onlookers could only watch while inky black stains and scaling crept from beneath the boxer shorts she wore where they had already covered her femininity.

As bad as what was happening to her on the outside, what she felt was infinitely more strange. Her mind locked at the feeling of her womb slowly changing form. Screaming helplessly in the cage of her own thoughts she felt the last thing that made her a woman spasm, shaking her entire pelvis, as it warped into an unfamiliar shape. But the thing that very nearly drove her into insanity, was the sensation of her daughter's heart stopping. All was still and lifeless for a moment, and then a tsunami of energy pored into her making her swelling muscles and stretching tendons seize convulsively as all that energy poured into the very center of her being. She could feel what was left of her human child shatter into pieces. Drool flew from her mouth as she flopped limply back and forth across the ground in the hell that wiped out almost everything she was. Only as she writhed into her mate did a black scale covered hand dart outwards to seize one of his massive fore feet and drag herself to him until she could press her distending nostrils against the scales of his neck. With a tether to the world, her mate, and her sanity established. She was just barely able to ride out the waves that battered her psyche at the feeling of her human child dying only for...the...

Thump...Thump...Thump...Thump...Thump...Thump...

The feeling of six new heart beats began to thrum deep within the safe shelter of her uterus and behind a huge wall of abdominal muscle that grew thicker by the minute. What was one... had become six... Six lives now depended on her remaining alive. Six lives depended on her being strong. Six lives yearned to meet the ones that made them warm...

Unknown to Amanda, her eyes began to change as did her brain. The azure blue that her eyes had always been sharpening into a blue as cold and piercing as the depths of untold layers of arctic ice. Her head began to lose its oval shape as her face creakingly extended while the back and bottom of the braincase extended in new directions, pushing the attachment points for spinal cord and vertebrae before them. The volume of her braincase began to increase dramatically as her cerebral cortex grew thicker and denser while the number of folds in this outer layer rose by an order of magnitude. Changes in the size of her cerebellum and basal ganglia unfolded as the shape of her most important organ altered to reflect the new skull shape she was developing.

These changes allowed her without thinking to reach out with her mind and touch the simple but strong lives of her unborn children to soothe them. Within herself, she could feel their heartbeats steady, as her six children calmed from their sudden creation. Tears squeezed from between clamped eyelids as she dragged herself up onto the cots, collapsing two of them unnoticed, to press her stomach against Conrad and share what she felt. A single tear fell from his own closed eye as he relaxed against his mate. The nub of her tail twitched against his, until his much longer one flexed to surround her as a nascent wing covered the rest of her. For now, they had peace. But their changes were not done, and while they slept, the monitoring continued.

Not all was calm outside of the tent in the middle of the hangar, however. Another cargo truck, rocking wildly as something hidden beneath the canvas threw its weight back and forth, backed up to unload. At least that was the plan until a 12-meter creature burst roaring through the spars supporting the canvas panel and threw itself side to side. Six men flung themselves out of the bed of the truck and whirled around to grab the chains and choke poles that were flying like whips through the air as the weighty creature screamed its fury.

"WHAT THE FUCK HAVE YOU DONE TO ME? ITS YOU! YOU DID THIS! THIS IS WHAT I GET FOR TRUSTING YOU! YOU..." Its scream ended in a wordless roar followed by a piercing shriek that made the men trying to hold the wrathful creature at bay clap their hands to their ears. Seizing its opportunity, the large black alien tore its way free of the cargo bed, whipped around, and rammed its shoulder into the side of the truck, flipping it onto its side. Spinning again, a shrill warble of rage came from the beast's mouth as its wings unfurled to take flight. The alien was able to get one beat of its wings before keeling over to its side and plummeting headfirst into the ground with an impotent cry of fury and despair. The rest of its body slumped to the ground next to its still head.

"You...tricked...m...e..." It slurred around its dangling tongue before falling unconscious.

All the watching Airmen gasped in relief. Senior Airman Juan Sanchez had arrived. It was little wonder to those that knew him why he blamed the Air Force for what happened to him. He was one of the guards for a lab buried deep in the bowels of Wright Patterson AFB. A lab surrounded by conspiracy theory fueled by the guards that didn't know what they themselves were guarding. It didn't take much thought to realize that when he found himself turning into something never seen on this world he immediately jumped to certain conclusions.

He had been found attempting to force his way into the complex he had once guarded, destroying a good portion of the building's interior. Only to be stopped at the elevator when he had become stuck after a burst of growth left him jammed in the elevator door. It had been in his own self interest at that point to cooperate before the constant increase in his own size would have left him strangled in the steel frame of the lift. His temporary obedience had worn off enroute to the hangar with the pain of his skull extending into a muzzle. Grabbing the loose end of the chains attached to the base of his growing neck and fore legs, the attending guards bolted him to aircraft tie-downs strewn across the floor. Two remaining on standby near Juan's head as his constant growth needed the chains readjusted to keep him from strangling himself.

Victims continued to come throughout the day as local authorities, not knowing what else to do with them, dumped them onto the only marginally more prepared military base. Who themselves could do little more than shuttle the ones that could be managed into empty airplane hangars. Urgent calls went out for information as many could not even be identified with all human characteristics gone and having been picked up wandering far from any residence or structure that could have been used to name them. Urgent communications from the base command team went to DC for additional resources only to be unfulfilled.

Make do with what you have. Do not expect assistance for at least 48-72 hrs. This is happening in every region of the country. Is what they were told.

Local television broadcasts were interrupted by a joint statement by the commanding general of the base as well as the Dayton mayor asking for any healthcare professionals, especially mental health or crisis counselors, to step forward and volunteer. This press conference also went to great lengths to assure the general population that there was no evidence that what was happening to these people was infectious, but instead seemed to be occurring at random regardless of who or what the victim was. Urgent appeals went out to the victims that if they were suffering symptoms to come to local emergency services for help. The sooner help was provided, the advice went, the less trauma the patients seemed to suffer to their mental health.

After this first statement, every half hour an update was provided about what types of help or assistance were still required. And still the number of people transforming continued to pile into the shelter of the Air Force Base. In cities across the country, across the globe, this scenario repeated. The world was in the process of spinning out of control. Not every region was so lucky to have a consolidation point such as The Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, United States of America.

Six hours later, long after night had fallen, Brigadier General Boyd arrived to check on the six airmen under his command that had become symptomatic. The tall officer was the very stereotype of the fighter pilot he was before he'd been strapped to a desk. Stepping out of his flag car he fidgeted with a pair of black gloves on his hands before striding forward to receive a report from the few service members not scrambling madly along the line of hangars with their aircraft removed and doors wide open. A harried Colonel, Colonel Anita Hillard, fell into step with him as he conducted his inspection on behalf of the base CG.

"How many? What have we got? What do we need?"

"Last count sir is 237. Their ages, sizes, symptom progression, all factors are across the board. One of them is already longer than a C-130 sir and still growing, she couldn't even be transported, we had to lure her here with a cow in the bed of a truck." She looked green for a moment, likely remembering the fate of the cow if Boyd had to guess.

"We had to put her in a separate hangar as the only living beings she will allow near her are the children and their parents as they keep coming in. It is no joke, sir, when something taller than one of our transports opens its mouth wider than a cargo door to roar a warning at you. We think the older the victims are, the larger they become."

Boyd fidgeted with his gloves again uneasily as he wondered briefly if this nameless woman was older or younger than himself. His back twitched oddly, making the fabric rustle against something moving beneath. As if something was stretching open and closed. The drive over had been incredibly uncomfortable with the feeling of something that shouldn't exist, nerves that shouldn't exist, yelling at him to stop crushing them against the seat he sat in. He didn't want to look. He didn't want to know. Keep it together Boyd...not yet...You can still help here... With his eyes closed, as he tried to breathe through the rising levels of pain and anxiety building within him, he didn't notice his subordinate's quick but intense glance at him. Hillard stared intently at his back, as the uniform top pushed outwards at two distinct points for a moment, before dismissing it as a trick of the glaring generator lights overhead.

"How many children? What have we got? What do we need? Answer all of my question this time Colonel. We don't have time right now for tangential lessons in their biology. If you need more room for older individuals, tell me."

"We believe there are 28 children sir. I wish I could give you a better number, but we are really basing which ones we believe are minors based on the size of an 18-year-old that has already given her identity. Many of the smaller infected no longer can speak in any language we recognize although we are picking up patterns of communication in the noises they make. Which, despite their sizes and the lengths of their necks, are mostly higher pitched and sound like birdsong.

We have plenty of light, generators, and space. We need food, water, latrines, tents, and sleeping gear. Above all sir, what I think we need the most are psychiatrists. The doctors have no idea what they are dealing with here, and beyond pain management, can do little more than watch and observe. They are learning a great deal, but right now we don't know anything about what the baseline for these people should be after their changes complete."

General Boyd seemed to grunt acknowledgement at that information. But what he was really grunting about was the intense pain that his foot had been in since he'd begun his inspection. Waiting for his entourage to look away for a moment, he yanked the glove off his right hand and used the claws that had replaced his fingertips to hook and rip through the laces of the boot on that side. Boyd could feel his throat shiver as a nearly silent hiss of relief escaped his attempt to lock down on it. This was one coincidence too far for the Colonel who had turned back to watch his increasingly familiar actions and was just barely able to hear a noise that she'd heard several times that day already. Hiding his hand from her as he put the glove back on, and trying to the ignore the shaking that had set in as his fear increased to ever higher levels, he didn't notice at first that she had ordered everyone to go on ahead as she wanted to show him a problem with the A/C units next to Hangar B14.

She pointed out several things conversationally that actually had some importance in the current situation before they rounded the corner and she stopped to turn towards him. Oh no, Boyd realized. She knows.

Laying her hand gently on the General's shoulder, her eyes were the very picture of sympathy.

"How long ago..."

Squaring his shoulders, Boyd steeled himself to put on his bravest face, even if he wanted to cry at the thought that he had days if not hours before losing his humanity. Maybe he had already started to? What human vibrates their throat to hiss? He would be strong for them, if he couldn't be strong for himself.

"Four hours ago. It was my hands first. Now I fear it is my feet, and there is something growing out of my back. Colonel, I don't want to put you in a position that you are uncomfortable with..."

"Nonsense sir. I am a physician. It's nothing I haven't already seen. And after today, I can say that with more confidence than I've ever had before. Can you unzip your top or do you need me to?"

Pinching the zipper between the horn of two claws he did manage to undo his outer jacket. And then hiked up his undershirt to his shoulders to reveal what was beneath. The skin across his back from belt to neck was twice as dark as Hillard's own human skin. Three thin pieces of tough hide grew in strips down his back and underneath his belt to disappear below. The central one ran under the collar of his shirt and unseen up into his hair, which shed when she tugged on a small patch so that it remained unnoticed.

"Let me see that." Boyd asked her and smiled ruefully when she handed him the shed salt and pepper hair. "I kept my own hair for fifty-five years, and now...now...I..." A tear splashed onto his gloved hand and he blew the hair off the glove before using it to scrub his face and eyes dry. "What else do you see besides the center flap of skin?"

On both sides of the fin running along his spine, scales grew and radiated away. Peering closely at the edges of the field of small plates she could see new ones slowly grow from skin pores that didn't look like any she'd ever seen before as the black discoloration spread millimeter by millimeter. The two other fins off to the sides of his spine both ran upwards to attach to a pair of armlets that had widespread fingers, or maybe phalanges.

Is that the proper term? She wondered to herself. We might have to update all our lexicon for these people.

The new limbs seemed to emerge from the back sides of his shoulder sockets in a double-jointed mechanism that looked incredibly strong, exceedingly complex, and completely unknown to this world. Tracing her fingers along each arm, each finger, she could feel a pulse along the main bone. The cool gentle pressure of her fingers made the arms twitch, and she jumped back with a surprised gasp when they both extended backwards behind him and grew noticeably.

Boyd felt all this, of course, and knew what it meant. Digging into the breast pocket of his uniform top he handed her his cell phone and, in a small strained voice, asked her to take a picture and show him. She showed him, and the device fell from his hand as he buried his face into the gloves covering the twisted version of the palms that he'd known his whole life. The wings spread again, Hillard guessing they were responding to his emotion, doubtful that he could control them after what'd she seen earlier. They spread, and then wrapped around the tall General's chest in a display of comfort that looked as alien as it sounded. With his head bowed, she could not see his face, but could guess what it looked like as the shoulders, and the wings growing from them, bobbed silently.

Hearing approaching voices, Hillard ran past the General to head them off and give him a moment to collect himself. By the time she had returned his eyes, if a little blood shot and one being brighter than the other, were dry once more and he was reaching behind himself to tug gently on one of the wings. "Anita, I don't know how to move these things yet, can you stretch them flat or fold them shut? I can still do some good with getting you the resources you need. There's no reason for me to go into the zoo any sooner than I absolutely have to."

She stepped around to look him in the face and nodded. "I will keep an eye on you as much as I can. The moment you feel... John... if you feel that you are no longer yourself...before I notice...John...don't put others in harm's way out of stubbornness. Promise me that...and I will help you... But it won't be much longer before this uniform can no longer hide what is happening to you."

"Tell me about it..." He grumbled, shrugging into his top once again. "If I pull my boots off, I'll likely never wear them again. Or likely any others for that matter. How do I look?"

She stepped back and looked him over with a gimlet eye. It was obvious something was going on with him. He had an hour or two tops, which is what she told him. "Try not to let too many people see you in profile maybe?"

"Then I'll do what I can." Icy determination flashed in his steel gray eyes. "Thank you, Colonel."

"Anytime, sir. You're a good man, and a good officer. If I don't get the chance to tell you again... I will now."

"I hope this isn't the last day I ever serve with you, but if it is, it has been an honor."

They reached out and shook each other's hands. For the last time it turns out. In short order his hands would no longer be considered shakable by any rational observers.

Giving her the numbers and the contacts that had been arranged by the city council and the mayor Hillard went on her on her way to find the psychiatric volunteers she needed. On his way to see to his airmen he called up garrison and ordered them to begin a three-tanker rotation to keep a fresh tank on site at all times. He also ordered 20 GP tents and 400 cots as a start. Ending one phone call only to take another, he quickly tasked facilities to get a contract for the immediate deployment of 40 port-a-potties. And no, he fought off a snarl that worked its way up his neck uncalled for, he didn't care if they had to rip individual lockers open to find more cots. Dealing with these issues took him all the way until he found himself before the ones whose welfare he had come out here to check on in the first place.

"Now one last thing Tech Sergeant. Make sure you check the temperature tags on the MREs that you distribute. And get a team on figuring out right away what the patients eat after their transition." Boyd paused as his stomach rumbled ominously. "Off you get."

Of the four changing men and women he was responsible for, only Amanda was conscious. Stopping by Juan Sanchez he asked the guards why he was chained the to the floor. Nodding at the explanation he made sure they had a good handle on him and continued to the others. Passing by the others he made his way into the medical tent where Conrad and Amanda remained. Arranged along the back wall, nothing remotely human remained of Conrad. Next to him, Amanda. Awake, and looking down between her arms and hands, still retained a tenuously human head and neck. A sinuous tail flowing behind her hips where a pair of haunches folded against the ground. Gentle movements of its tip continued to stroke the longer tail next to hers. She didn't even seem to notice that a part of her, that was still wearing parts of her shredded underwear and burst pants, was moving.

"If you had ever asked me to name one thing that identified me as an individual. It was my hair." A hand came up and she bent her agile neck to bat at the back of her head. More of her long tresses fell to the ground. "Sir? Do you have something? What makes you, you?"

Boyd drew a chair over to near where her neck joined her body. "Hard to say Colonel, before today I would have said my rank would have been what identified me." He shivered while black streaks began to wrap around the back of his neck. "Today, that sounds as asinine as it is. Just like your hair, only with loss do we see truth."

Her hands wove back and forth as she shaped her long red hair into a rough circle. Spinning it round and round as the form became more uniform.

"It is a sad state that this is what it takes of us to appreciate what we had. I sacrificed the child I carried to be happy at his side for the rest of our lives. So that I could reach out to him and hold what makes him, him, to this world. I wonder, what that means for me, for us as a species.

"Which species Colonel?"

"Our new species Sir." Her head turned to look at him, displaying a staggering amount of flexibility. She reached out to poke his shoulder with her nose, oddly enough. "Or did you really think that you could hide these?" Her brow furrowed, and after a moment, the arms folded on her back raised and twitched slightly. As soon as her concentration shifted, they flopped to her sides without control. "Or the fact that you are already speaking like you have lost your rank? That you are already accepting what these changes could mean for you. That you have lost the rank that made you, you?"

The General smirked at her astuteness. The warm moist air of the hangar feeling strange upon his exposed gums. With a groan of protest, his neck lengthened as he turned his head skyward with eyes closed to fight the vertigo of his head lifting further above his shoulders. After a moment of growth, his head flopped past vertical allowing him to see his own oddly shaped back when his eyes flashed open wide in shock. It took several awkward second for him to find his composure. The agility of his neck, and spine beneath, consuming his attention as he twisted and bent it back and forth to find its new considerable limits. By the time I reach Amanda's size, he realized. I will be able to rest my head on my own spine.

"You are as sharp as ever Colonel. We all may have to find something new to help define ourselves after today. What have you found?"

She reached out with an arm, which could not bend the way it had had just yesterday and gave up, utilizing her head instead to brush the fin on Conrad's back. Turning back to answer Boyd, Amanda stopped and mewled in pain as her snout widened and thickened. The nostrils on her nose tip broadening as well, flaring fully open, the rims stuck above the end of her muzzle. Closing, they nearly sealed shut into diagonal slashes before repeating the process that occurred with every breath. Boyd mused to himself, I can't imagine how large the lungs are for a pair of nostrils like that. I will have to write how it feels later.

The General would later notate the following: Upon the recent achievement of my full growth. At 38 meters long I measured myself by exhaling into a vacuum. Almost 900 liters per exhalation! In the course of the experiment, calculated data show the subject (myself) was able to exhale in speeds of up to 180 kph for a duration of approximately 75 seconds. Which is substantial, to say the least, and also goes a long way towards explaining how creatures of our size could be rendered airborne through internal chemical energy. Other theories to explain our physical abilities will be coming shortly after consultation with LTCs Huygens and Schneider.

"After today? I have him." Her eyes sparkled with the love that she described. Warmth embraced her mind and serenity cradled her. "Earlier an alien told me that to leave the child that was growing inside of me as she was meant sacrificing her happiness. That she would be born to a father that would not recognize her. To a mother that would die, torn by grief. To a world, that would not care.

I gave away my humanity, the humanity of my baby, so that I could keep the one I loved. So that we could make a pair of mates that could raise children with the love and support that they deserved. So that we could protect them from whatever dangers that may come. Yesterday, I carried life. Today, I carry family. That is what is what I have found sir!"

She looked down at her sleeping mate as her sharp blue eyes glowed with emotion. Boyd followed her warm gaze and saw something that she could not from her angle. Tears ran down the scaly cheeks of the not so asleep husband as he listened. A hungry abyss opened inside the General that he did not know even existed. To have someone speak so passionately, with so much love, with so much hope, to him. A feeling of loss filled John Boyd...as he realized...he did not know what that felt like. Coughing gruffly, to clear the pollen that had obviously gotten stuck in his throat, he changed the subject to the pretending man in question.

"Has he awoken since he arrived?"

"No. I don't know if he's still with me. I..." She continued in a whisper. "I gave up our child for him. For us. How...if...when he wakes, how can I tell him?"

"You tell me you did it because you loved me. You tell me you did it because you know we will love our children no matter what they look like." His head rose until it reached above even Amanda's well-developed height. "Because the children we can raise together will lead the full lives with our support that the poor human child never would have received."

"Conrad!" Amanda cried joyfully. Her scales lifted as vanilla filled the noses of everyone in the area. She slammed into him and they both rolled through the wall of the tent, breaking the supports and collapsing it upon themselves.

Sobs and alien laughter came from beneath the canvas as the newly engaged couple talked over each other trying to outdo each other's declaration of how much they loved the other. Boyd would have enjoyed this touching scene much more if his battered body wasn't trying to creep out from beneath the frame of the tent. Attempting to stand, he instead fell to his feet as his balance was thrown. At first he couldn't figure out what was wrong, but the crippling pain erupting from his misshapen boots clued him in. Neither could he remove his gloves.

Son of a bitch, he realized. There's no hiding this one anymore. First, he ripped the gloves apart, and then he cut his boots at the seams with those exposed hand claws. Standing on the balls of his feet he flexed his claws against the concrete with the heels of his feet lifted high and extended awkwardly.

These were not feet meant for walking on two legs. Just how long did he have?

The hooked talon opposite his four remaining toes clutched inwards in a grasping motion. Hissing loudly in relief, he didn't even notice his head lifting as his neck stretched. A streak of black rose up his cheek to surround his eye, looking for all the world like tribal war paint.

Two heads rose like serpents from the deep, raising the tent shell with them. "Are you alright? How did all those changes just happen to you in only a few minutes?"

Boyd reached his arms skywards and then flexed his back in a bow. The tearing sound of seams cascaded down the sides of his top. Somehow, the jacket held on, for now.

"They didn't, I've been shoving myself into ill-fitting clothes for hours now. It almost feels like..." He opened his hands and spread them meaningfully before him. He was right, Conrad and Amanda realized. The feeling of their bodies spreading their limbs, was empowering. Possibility in every scale, in every new muscle and tendon.

He turned to the growing number of eyes staring at his strange half-way physical form. He wasn't ready to give up the fight yet. He had a crisis to manage.

"What, airmen? Is there something wrong with my feet or my hands? There is? Well guess what! There is three hundred suffering people in this area that deserve more attention than my being out of uniform! Staff Sergeant Thompson! Where are those damn water tankers? Everyone back to work before I bite you all!"

Amanda wondered if that sounded funnier in his head. She licked her teeth thoughtfully as she watched a couple of the staff in the command center flee from the increasingly alien General and his ill-advised joke about the fang that he must feel poking the outside of his lower lip.

"How do you feel?" She reached out with a leg and rested it across her love's neck. "Do you remember..." She trailed off nervously. "...I chose to let our baby die. In exchange for you...Conrad."

He trapped her head against his chest with his own to calm its nervous swinging back and forth. Thrumming came from the caverns of his lungs in a soothing lullaby that reached deep within her.

"I know, I know. I am sorry that you were left to make such a choice yourself. But, please dearest one, do not think of the baby as being dead anymore than you yourself are dead. Whatever the reason for this, I can only think that it serves some purpose. Some course of actions that are beneficial to either us as individuals or as species. Why else would these changes overcome us? No, it does not make sense for this to be with destruction or subjugation in mind. Whatever happened, whatever will happen, we will figure it out. Together." He reached his hands out to grab her left fore foot and raise it. His gift to her sparkled from the tip of her pinkie claw.

"And what will happen next?" She responded, bowing her head to give dainty pecks of her vanishing fleshy lips against his throat. Halfway through doing that, something inside her told her that she wasn't showing him her love properly. Her tongue flashed out, caressing his jaw as his taste calmed her anxiety. Soon, she no longer even noticed that she was kissing her fiancée by licking him tenderly.

"Right now, I don't care. I have you, and if you don't mind. I just want to let whatever is happening to us play out while I lay against you and feel the heart beats of our children. Your heartbeat. Your warmth. I am scared Amanda."

Their heads ducked beneath the canvas as others began to work around them to repair the tent draped over the serpentine length of their bodies.

"I am too." Amanda whimpered back to him and placed her head across his shoulders "But we have each other, and something to live for. The rest will be solved in its own time." In response he tucked in closer to her stomach, rumbling agreeably with the sagacity of her words. The gentle smell of lavender began to swirl around them, drawing odd looks from the humans swarming around them working and examining, as the world faded to black, as they slept in the comfort of the other's presence. A tiny island of tranquility in a hurricane.

Work continued through the night as more victims were found. Some, complete, huddled in fear or trembling in anger over what had happened to them. Some, behaving in ways both bizarre and as incomprehensible as, what was generally agreed to be a linguist who had volunteered his knowledge, the new language that was they all seemed to know. For every one that was found peaceably, such as the two year old that sunk her claws into the leather apron her mother was forced to wear as her head darted side to side with terror blazing in the tiny girl's rust colored eyes. There was another who, whether by panic, fear, sadness, or rage, was a danger to those around them.

It was only after an airman under Boyd's command had had her arm snatched off her shoulder like a leaf from a tree, that the general forced out a command that tasted bitter in his growing snout. Non-lethal methods of riot control from Dayton, such as sound, water, and kinetic deterrents, were brought in for attempts to control the affected. But, a group of a dozen Security Forces were given orders that presented significant constitutional problems, however necessary they may have been. Four teams, each with a Captain who had final authority to execute, were arranged as a last resort. Each carried an M240L and a thousand rounds of ammunition. Their orders, coming straight from Boyd's fanged black muzzle, were: If all else failed and clear line of fire and background could be established, kill the United States citizen that was a threat to the lives of others.

It was an order that had to be executed in the worst possible way. On one of their own. Two hours later, when the chains holding down SrA Sanchez were adjusted yet again as his growth continued. Feigning sleep, he jumped forward causing the chains running through his captor's hands to turn them into bloody shreds and ended both of their lives with one swipe of his hand before they had a chance to scream. Turning, he spotted the command post and the lifted head of Boyd towering above the others as their attention whipped towards the sound of his escape and roared his fury at them.

YOU! I WILL KILL YOU ALL FOR WHAT YOU HAVE DONE TO ME! LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME! IS THIS WHAT YOU WANTED? LET ME GIVE IT TO YOU!

Boyd's ears flared open for the first time as he found out that he could understand what had just been roared, what had sounded like a snarling cough broken up by squeals running beyond their ability to hear to every human ear, and he turned to fling himself on the group of humans next to him. Tackling eight of them out of the way as Juan lowered his head and charged through the command center.

Pleas for the E-4 to stop came from all sides as tables, computers, and people flew through the air. Blasts of water, fired from fire hoses, slammed into the head of the rampaging airman making him howl in mindless rage. Ramming his head into a full water tanker, he clawed at the tank, ripping it open, and washing the dozens of human running from him off their feet.

KILL YOU! KILL YOU! KILL YOU! KILL YOU!

These screeches of mindless rage continued to grow louder and louder, the tantrum more and more violent. Boyd gave the order as he pointed at one of the weapons teams he had created earlier. The promises of murder made his ears twitch with each repetition.

My own men...

"Captain!" He cracked his jaws open wide before coughing and spitting as they pushed outwards and his tongue began to swell with drool falling from his bottom jaw. "Captain! I order you to kill him! Bring him down! Bring him down!" He reached for his head and tried to cover his mouth as he continued to hack wetly. Blood and saliva mixed together and ran through his clawed fingers to the ground.

The captain turned to the weapons team he was supervising, that had already set up their machine gun on its bipod and aimed at the first sign of trouble. He looked down at the 18-year-old with her finger twitching against the trigger, eyes awash in indecision. Glancing upwards he saw the transformed patient in front of him seize a wheel and tire assembly weighing hundreds of kilograms and turn to throw it at a fleeing group of doctors. If anyone is going to do this today, it's going to be me. Reaching down, he pulled her hand away from the trigger and then flung her out of the way. Putting the stock to his shoulder. He shouted as loud as he could.

"HIT THE DECK!"

Squeezing the trigger, he went cyclic at point blank range.

Dozens, then hundreds of rounds began to strike the enraged SrA. The first rounds did not penetrate, skipping wildly away from their target as shown by the tracers, but followed by hundreds more the unexpectedly resilient scales began to crack. Cracks were followed by shattering, and into those empty gaps, bullets began to strike flesh that was as easily damaged as any humans. Pain and shock broke through the former humans crazed bloodlust as he reared upwards instinctively. Seeing what happened to the armor of his outer skin, the Captain kept up the same blistering rate of fire on that weakness.

The barrel began to glow cherry red as blood flew from the opened mouth of the kid who once liked to relax by making toy models. Who had enlisted to make his father proud. The kid who had come home from basic training and been told by that same father that, now, he was a man. The man, who unable to cope with what had happened to him, retreated into anger that no longer recognized reality from fiction.

Stumbling backwards, Senior Airman Juan Sanchez crumpled over the remains of the truck that he'd been attacking, his head falling to the ground as blood ran in dark ribbons from his open mouth and the gunfire ceased. Juan reached out in front of his failing eyes with a hand, a human hand, not the paw he had, trying to reach the image of his father that was fading before him, as the furthest points of his body spasmed in its death throes

"Papá? I..." He choked out, through his own blood, before his leg dropped lifelessly.

The screams of hundreds of transformed tore through the air.

None of them knew why at the time. As Amanda told her therapist later: "I just woke up feeling like a part of my self had just fallen quiet. Like a part of me had frozen and fallen to shatter upon the ground. It was a feeling that I could not keep inside of me and so, I opened my jaws to let it out." Whatever may have been the cause, the results were the same. Hundreds of transformed victims threw their heads back and screamed in sorrow. A display that went on for five minutes before jaws closed and heads lowered to moan despondently as the large bodies began to sway listlessly.

Oddly, General Boyd did not seem effected by it. Colonel Hillard noticed. Perhaps he has some time left after all. This observation left her with many more questions than answers with regard to how this process was affecting these individuals mentally. The dead Airman had just gone on a rampage in front of their own eyes, killed a number of people, and then was brutally stopped by 1000 rounds of 7.62. Maybe they weren't just mourning him? Were they mourning all the dead? She needed to discuss this with the counselors working with them.

During the outpouring of this inexplicable behavior, calls began to come for medical aid. Screams for medics crisscrossed the airfield. The Captain who had fired the fatal rounds locked and cleared the gun before relinquishing it to the AG only after the wails of the converted ceased and he knew it wasn't a prelude to some kind of mass attack. "Take that weapon somewhere no one will accidentally touch that barrel Airman, let it cool off for at least a half hour." Grabbing the gunner, he led her away from the scene. Once out of sight of the body, he laid his hand on her shoulder and looked her in the eyes with understanding. "Killing a fellow service member, a fellow citizen, who is suffering in ways that we can't imagine, is not something I would ever order another to do so that I would not have to. I want you to know that." She nodded her head, and then dissolved into tears.

Something shuffled and snorted behind Captain Simmons. Twisting his head to look he was startled to see the large form of General Boyd watching the two of them. Bent over slightly with his arms dangling in front of his upper thighs, his barreling chest slowly inhaling immense amounts of air, makings his arms rise slightly, before releasing it with the snort he had heard. Snapping to attention, Simmons started to drag the crying enlisted woman next to him in line before Boyd made a waving motion with his tail that made him pause. What...what did that mean?

"As you were."

Simmons could barely understand him at first but the more he talked the easier it was to pick out what was said amidst all the run on sibilants and vowels.

"Airman Jones, I want you to look up at me." Tearing her sight from her hands she saw him and tried to straighten herself up to look at eyes over a meter above her own head. Eyes that, even as alien as they were, remained soft with compassion. "How are you?"

"Fi...fine sir."

He didn't look convinced and swung his head side to side on the end of his neck in a strange but somewhat familiar way of showing disbelief. "Listen to me Airman, I am ordering you to go collect your assistant gunner and report to Dr. Henry Fleischman. You will follow his instructions, and do not worry about your weapon. It is already being seen to. Do you understand?"

She nodded blearily and he stepped forward with an odd gait that made every step he took look like he was going to fall face first onto the ground, his twitching tail lifting off the ground to help balance himself. He pretended not to notice as she cringed and shot fearful glances at his hand when he extended it toward her and uncurled its long fingers and talons to reveal a packet of tissues clutched by what used to be his thumb on his distended palm. "You did nothing wrong today Airman, don't ever forget that." Gingerly taking the tissues from the General she walked past him and Captain Simmons, honking loudly as she blew her nose, trying to make her appearance reflect better upon the uniform she was wearing

It wasn't until she was out of ear shot that the General lifted the hand that he'd given Jones the tissues with and clapped it onto Simmons' shoulder and gripped it to give it an approving shake that almost threw the Captain to the ground.

"You did right today Captain. I can see in your eyes that you know what is coming for the one who gives an order like that as well as the one who executes that order. A fate that you saved her from. For what it's worth, I want you to remember that in the time to come. More Security Forces will be here shortly to take your statement. Before you go, are you alright?"

Captain Simmons covered his eyes and pinched his nose before raising his head to answer. "No, no I don't think so sir. But I know that there are forty therapists here who can help me. I don't want to hold you up any longer than I have to."

"Actually, I was hoping that I could lean on you as we make our way back. I don't know if you've ever realized this yourself, but when your body is trying to grow a tail with the same circumference as your abdomen, walking on two legs is not very easy." Boyd didn't say that neither did he want his command to see him return on hands and feet. Or four feet. I suppose. Not noticing that he made a huffing noise and lashed his tail again as he dismissed the thought.

He looked down at himself and sighed at the sight of what remained of his clothes. His pants remained, held up only by the nylon web belt at its fullest extension around his waist. Which was a blessing because a last intact scrap of fabric was miraculously covering his thighs. Frankly, he did not want to see what his tackle had turned into, all he knew was that he had felt several tugs of something being forced inside, a sliding and then growing sensation that extended well into a region forward of his pelvis, and lastly the absence of air upon his scrotum.

For all he knew, he could be female now. It couldn't possibly be any less strange than everything else that was happening to him. Although, he didn't feel like a woman, which didn't necessarily mean a damn thing as he didn't feel like a man anymore either. The side seams of his pants had given over after his hips had spread allowing his tail to curl and drag behind him where it grew like wildfire. Which had been very embarrassing indeed when he had cut open a slit for his tail tip to emerge as it had sprung free with his boxers hanging from it like a flag. His top and his undershirt only remaining on his body due to some fabric still connecting the sides along with the strained sleeves. The backs of both had been cut away entirely allowing everyone to see the base of the wings growing from his back except where the membranes were cinched beneath the belt and waist of his pants. Painfully. Pride, being the only thing keeping him from just giving into his new form entirely and stripping to bare all his scales to the world. Respect for what his uniform represents be damned.

"I am afraid I might be guilty of a few dress code violations Captain. Promise me you won't tell my CCM will you? I don't know what she'll do if she finds out. Probably kick my spine back up past my hips where an Air Force manual says it belongs."

Simmons grunted and gave a half-hearted laugh at the General's jokes as some of the weight of his commander fell onto his right shoulder before they toddled back to the CP.

Around the devastation from that tragic occurrence. There were several, several individuals operating in the AO with mind sets not disposed towards the cordial. Ten looked upon the destruction just one of these demons had caused. How many it had killed. (6!) And how hard it was to take down. (Capt. Simmons had put 853 rounds into the creature. At point blank range with a medium caliber machine gun. And the individual had been relatively young and not even completely changed. An important note that will be more relevant later.) Fear began to set in at the realization of the barely contained power of these demons.

Others, had heard the what had happened between Colonel Schneider and the alien on the way over here. If people were bargaining their unborn children, if aliens had done this to us, if they were manipulating us, then they must be stopped. They must have their converts stopped. Nothing that looked like these people did could ever be human again. Their minds are corrupted, and they must be stopped by any means. Anger had taken root.

Lastly, and perhaps most dangerously, were the ones that looked upon what happened. Looked to their changed loved ones. And walked away from them. 15 patients over the course of that night and the next day were lost. Suffering severe mental degradation and identity loss when the touchstones they relied on walked away leaving them with nothing for their minds to anchor to. Helpless therapists watched, pale with horror, as stable patients slipped into mindsets that did not have human analogs. Cries of despair at the loss they could feel coming over them broke the wills of the mental health professionals until the cries were no longer made in any human language and their meaning lost. These were the cruelest tragedies of all. The people unwilling to associate with the victims of this transformation. The ones that turn their backs on their loved ones, leaving them in the dark, without even the knowledge of who they were.

One good thing however had come from the aftermath. The enormous aircraft sized giant had nudged her shelter's doors open, effortlessly snapping the chain holding them shut, to emerge from the hangar and blink at the lights right at her eye level. Turning, she used her head to nudge a few tiny children bounding around on four legs back into the structure before approaching the command post where she stood tall above all of them, blocking out their light. A group that found themselves beneath her hips when she stopped gawked upwards at her only to avert their eyes and blush when they realized what they were looking at. Hearing them, the old woman bent her head upside down to look at them beneath her as they giggled nervously.

"What?" She said peevishly, but without an ounce of embarrassment. "Are you telling me you have never seen an old woman's snapping turtle? If you don't like it, why are you looking at it? Clothes do not fit my frame anymore, so it would behoof you to develop a modicum of respect for my state of affairs."

Laughter broke out as the admin clerks turned cherry red and tripped over each other fleeing the old woman's scorn, and the sight of her nether region.

"How can we help you? Or, for that matter, are you finally willing to tell us who you are?" Boyd tried to stand tall to ask her this, and unknowingly flared his wings to increase his size in this affront to his command. But rather ruined the effect with the fact that he was holding himself up with a prop. He was currently leaning on a pair of stacked desks to make it look like he was standing as everyone else was forced to give his tail sweeping the ground behind him a wide berth and apprehensive looks.

Although to the amusement of some as, for a time, a game was made out of making attempts to jump over the body part with guesses of when the muscular appendage would swing. This had ended when someone had mistimed their jump of the General's sizable tail and been thrown to the ground in a jumble. Which wasn't nearly as terrifying as when Boyd had crouched and shuffled around on his legs to bend and twist his head for a look at the frozen orderly that had done this with one slit pupiled eye. His tongue flicked out to lick his nose before he finally opened his jaws to reveal fangs half a finger long lining the front half of a pair of jaws large enough to hold darkness between them. With his jaws ajar his neck vibrated with sound as he rumbled like a rock fall. "You may go now..." The General watched the young woman crab walk back in a panic until she was lost from sight, and then threw back his head and joined everyone else in the nervous tittering that became more genuine when his huffing laughter joined it.

In crises like this, little bits of humor were needed for the responders managing the chaos, it's what kept them sane, and going. As many there, just like the General, had not slept yet and dawn was fast approaching. More than a few were inspired by General Boyd himself to keep going. Wondering how could he possible deal with what was happening to himself, while running this show, and with no sleep? If he can do it, then so can I. Was a thought that ran through many tired heads that night as supplies were ran back and forth to needy patients.

(General, can you please stay on track with your portion? We all know how well liked you are. -Ed.)

The giant woman primly raised her head while sitting back on her rear legs and brought up a hand to place it against her chest. "I, am Dorothy Campbell, and it is painfully apparent, that none of you know what you are doing!"

"How can we do better, Mrs. Dorothy Campbell?" Boyd asked her, more to get rid of her than in actual consideration of her views. She would only be moved by convincing her to, as she was indeed larger than a C-130 in all ways but mass at this point.

"For starters by not killing us!" She snapped. Pain flashed in the General's eyes and he looked away from her acidic glare in brief shame. "That boy that is even now soaking the ground with his blood needed help! Not gunfire!"

"What do you mean us? That boy...was one of my airmen, Dorothy Campbell. That order to kill him came from me when I made the determination that we had no other way to restrain him and he was an immediate danger to those around him. It was a last resort. Now, unless you have a solution to prevent that situation from happening in the future, get the hell out of my Command Post!" He roared angrily back at the towering women, wounded deeply that she thought that he had any other choice. Groaning, he clutched his chest as he began panting.

"I think you know who I mean by us, and I think you know what I am offering. The solution is me General." She had lowered her head until she could look closer at Boyd as he swayed on his legs woozily.

"Next time an unruly student is here, let me deal with them. I do not see any others near my size, do you?"

Reaching out for the desks next to him with an arm, Boyd steadied himself as his breathing became even more ragged. Blood began to appear in his nostril and ear canal.

"What? Student? You...you were a teacher? Where..." He grunted, and his scales lifted as his worried aides, reaching out for him, began to smell a new odd odor around him. They would later report it smelled astringent, like vaporub. "Where were you when you could have stopped his death?"

For the first time the elderly woman's stern bearing cracked to show regret. "I...I was asleep. I only came back to my senses late last night. I am unsettled, and wanted to escape from this truth in slumber..." Her tail curled around her, knocking over everyone and everything in its way, to wrap around her legs. She obviously didn't do it consciously as her arms left the ground when she jumped in shock at the feeling of its tip coiling around her right wrist. Neither did she seem to notice the destruction it had left in the wake of its swing. She whined loudly and a tear slipped from her eye. "...this truth. Oh, Gregory. If only you could see me now... What you would think... All those fantasy novels that you read..."

A doctor standing beneath her stretched out his hand to put it on the scales of her forearm sympathetically. Dorothy bobbed her head at him with gratitude and the ghost of a smile. (Smile? How the hell did I know that was a smile? The doctor comforting her wondered. All she did was bare her teeth...) She straightened her posture proudly as she pulled herself back together.

"Regardless, I am awake now. My shelter is to stay open from now on. No more of your feeble attempts to restrain me with chains because you are afraid of my size. I will not apologize for what I did to the concrete and steel anchors in that hangar. I want all juveniles to continue to remain under my care while this shattering process plays out. And I will keep them under control by laying neatly before the entrance to the hangar. If any other children of the egg act out of turn, I will be the one to deal with it. Just, just run away from the rebellious troublemakers. I am very large, and do not want to step on you or something equally unfortunate. Nor do I wish to see you harmed by the actions of other children of the egg."

Boyd looked increasingly the worse for wear as he openly panted in agony with his tongue lolling near the edge of his jaws. A hazy film was now coating his eyes. Enveloping his thoughts in a thick haze of its own at the same time. I did all I can for now...This is the big change that always leaves the others screaming... He thought gravely to himself. Fear began to rise in his chest as the burning grew while he battled to keep it from showing. The smell around him thickened as the astringent miasma began to grow overwhelming. It was the scent of pain, only Dorothy knew it for what it was, and even with her only in a vague way that she wouldn't be able to explain to another. A thin whining noise began to come from his throat with each exhalation, but he continued to fight the pain. Dangerously now, as blood ran from his nose and his right eye. His blood pressure was skyrocketing as the veins in his wings bulged with fatal force, he was in rapidly increasing danger of a stroke.

"That phrase again...children of the egg...what issssst?" His question ended in a slur as his legs shuffled beneath him unsteadily. Multiple people were now running to get a platform for the general to lay on as more and more called out to him in concern. Arrays of emotions flickered through Dorothy's eyes before settling to the grim acceptance of an unwanted fate.

"I think that is the name of the species we are becoming dear."

His head rocked backwards at her words before darting downwards and vomiting blood and bile that splashed onto his own talons. "Colonel Hillard issssscommand..." Turning from his lectern he tried to shuffle away but stumbled only to catch his balance with his tail as his head started to curl limply when he lost the strength to keep himself up. Dorothy was already sidling sideways around the concerned crowd towards his side and was there for him when he fell.

"Just need a nap...Be right as rrrr..." He muttered, before his body started twitching in the paroxysm of the change that would really solidify the loss of his humanity. The one he was right to fear. The makeup of his organs, his bone, his nerves. All was changing. Everything up to this point had just been the change of his shape. Mere window dressing in comparison to now. His insensate form fell into the massive hand of Dorothy with his jaws locked open in a scream that wouldn't come through his seized throat. Personnel everywhere scrambled to escape the whipping of his tail until Dorothy lifted him clear of the ground to keep the uncontrolled appendage away from the decidedly fragile untransformed.

"Where?" She thundered.

"Here!" A voice immediately shouted back as a hand raised and began waving to get her attention. Everyone between her and the low-slung pallet loader, that was the only thing large and mobile enough to serve as a gurney for the humanitarian operation, scrambled out of her path as she hopped forward with the convulsing General in one hand. As soon as he was down on the sheet covered cargo pallets, a trio of doctors leapt forward to assist. Two of them asked Dorothy to pin him down and try to extend his wing. Using her strength to hold him, they soon had an IV drip set up in the only vein they knew for certain they could find, along his wing arm. The third doctor was at his head, trying to calm him with his voice. After a few minutes, their efforts bore fruit as his struggles stilled when the powerful muscle relaxant they were pushing into him set in.

Listening to his heartbeat and his breathing, one of the doctors nodded and stood up to address the hushed crowd watching them. "We've got him, he's stable!"

Colonel Hillard's hoarse tired voice barked out from the communications center next to the command. "You heard him, there's nothing more that can be done for him now. Back to it!"

Dorothy lowered her massive head to speak to the doctors as she paced alongside the cargo equipment while it crept away to a quieter part of the hangar where treatment could proceed. "Keep talking to him. Let him hear a voice. I can tell you from my own change that he needs to hear someone. Is anyone here that he is close to? If not, keep talking to him yourselves. Give him something to claw his way back to lucidity with."

This was invaluable information that none of the medics had known beforehand. Soon enough, they realized it was not something that they had to concern themselves with when it came to General John Boyd. As soon as her duties permitted her, Colonel Hillard was the first to approach him and talk to him encouragingly as his wings flapped and grew with shuddering twitches. Steadily through his unconsciousness, Airman after Airman came to his head to tell him how much they appreciated him as their commander. Relived candid stories with him. Gave touching tributes about his caring nature. Helped him remember himself through the pain.

Connective therapy, as the psychiatrists called it, substantially helped with many of the others in the days to come. Recovery rates of mental acuity and identity changed dramatically. Unfortunately, it only helped during the process of the change itself. Those who lost their identities due to the change often times needed unspecified environmental factors to find themselves once more. Which was problematic, because as the days went by and more and more people awoke from their changes, the number of those whose minds had 'blanked' rose steadily. And what was the first instinct of each and every blanked individual when they woke up surrounded by a great mass of noise and confusion? Escape.

Of the 340 patients that ultimately spent time at the AFB, 180 of them awoke without any sense of identity or self. And 150 of them escaped into the skies above. Frantic calls to the FAA advised them of the situation, a mad cackle of laughter was their reply when they suggested the local air space be shut down. The Major making this phone call, pulled the headset away from his ear to look at it incredulously until the laughter stopped with a cough and a guttural snarl.

"Don't you worry Major! Nothing flies today! Nowhere! Mil-Air flight only! Except everyone that grew wings! Like mine! Hahaha. I can't get out of the tower! I don't fit! Everyone ran and locked me in here when I knocked my chair over! But that is okay, I don't mind! Hahaha! I have been getting stronger! I can claw the windows out! Oh! Ouch! I stepped on my own tail! Hahaha! Isn't that funny? A tail! My tail! Instead of a butt! Hahaha. Major? Major? Major! Hahaha! Something feels wrong!" The smoky voice moaned loudly and then dissolved into a pained hysterical scream that ended as the feminine voice on the line coarsened and deepened until all that could be heard was a throaty roar of terror. There was a scuffling noise, then the sound of something heavy hitting something solid, and after that the roar cut off to be replaced by deep ragged breaths near the phone.

Waving over another officer he told her to get the authorities in the area for the traffic control center about the emergency. Then he stayed on the line just talking to the unknown women so that she could hear his voice. He would only be able to guess what happened later, but he thought his transformation began to occur sometime during his phone call to keep her mind grounded. He spent eight hours with her, just talking to a woman that he did not know if he was helping. By the time rescuers arrived, and he had hung up to rub his tired eyes, the changes to his head and neck were well past the point of being noticeable. This was gently pointed out to the oblivious Major Samuel Cochran, who began to grunt and snort through the short muzzle he hadn't noticed his face steadily growing into in rising panic, by a psychiatrist. Dr. Jonas Kraft had been observing his behaviors and mannerisms unnoticed, as he led him Samuel to a quiet corner of another hangar once his task was done. There he was injected with a long-lasting sedative after agreeing it was better that he wasn't awake for what happened next and fell asleep wondering if he did her any good.

Little did he know that he had done her more than a little good. Four days from that date he would wake up to the singing of a child of the egg lying next to him. The first thing he ever laid his new eyes on, was the woman he had helped hold on to her sanity, and the smile that she gave him as her eyes glittered with happiness. Lifting his head, he noticed shyly that while she may have been laying next to him, singing with her eyes on him, he was not the only one to hear her melodic voice as a round of applause came from the listening military and doctors around them.

I do not know what song that was. But that was the most beautiful thing I have ever heard in my life.

He told her truthfully. The song had been 'Dream a Little Dream of me' and she introduced herself as Charity Earley, the woman he had talked to for eight hours straight in an effort to save her mind. After awaking, she had found out his name from the firefighters that had saved her by cutting through an exterior wall. She spent half a day learning to walk again and set out ambling through the city to find him. Not taking no for an answer she had bulled her way resolutely through lines of security until she had reached his side where she waited for his red eyes to open once more so that she could give him her thanks.

A month and a half from that day, two children of the egg would twist their tails together and stare into each other's love-struck eyes as they made a promise to each other before a priest wiling to marry them.

Neither of their families had come. Forsaking them both because of what they had been forced to become.

She sang songs of love for the both of them as they slowly danced about each other with wings touching and eyes alight, alone in the blooming orchard of apple trees. Two years from that day, they would hatch five children as she filled the air with the song that filled her heart, and he nudged their newly hatched with his nose to match the dance that filled his. Whatever one may think about the harsh grating tones of children of the egg's speech, or their colossal size. Their talents were beyond words. All over the country, she would sing accompanied by her beloved as he danced, and together they would fill others with the sound and movement of life.

Even if, that life never reached the hearts of their families. Who both swore vengeance on the creatures that they thought had replaced the loved ones they knew. Families who blamed each other for what happened, because they did not share a skin pigment. A feud was born that imperiled those that knew only love for each other.

The ebb and flow of the apocalyptic change continued around the forms of Conrad, Amanda, and Boyd. By serendipitous happenstance their slumbering selves having come to lie next to each other. The tent around Conrad and Amanda being torn down in their sleep as their shoulders and hips both began to protrude from the flimsy structure that was in danger of becoming nothing more than a decoration upon their backs. In peril of being flung into the air and across the hangar by the slightest of unconscious wing movements, much like a human might fling a blanket in restless sleep.

Shrieks of terror as humans awoke as children of the egg. Roars of denial, of loss. Sobbing gargantuan figures being comforted by humans smaller than what their heads had become. The sounds of angry children of the egg lashing out. Shouts to run from surrounding humans followed by the titanic sky rending bellow from Dorothy Campbell for them to behave. More often than not followed by a short skirmish and then the vinegar smell of submission from those restrained beneath her mighty paws as scales raised to express what words could not. Still to the utter bafflement of the humans in the area as to where the odd smells kept coming from.

The chatter of human medical specialists as they began to understand the progression of what happened to the changed. Psychiatrists that were increasingly more effective in calming hysterical fear. Authorities that could breathe a temporary sigh of relief as the rate of transformation dwindled to a halt by the end of the day. Major General Armstrong, the base commander, who came by to see what had happened to his deputy stood in disbelief at the sight of his XO and his sprawling length where Dorothy had moved him once his movements had stilled. But...but...we were supposed to go golfing today...He thought irrationally to himself as he stood next to the head of John Boyd which was thicker top to bottom than he was tall.

Apprehensively, he reached out his hand to the shoulder of his golfing partner and lay it against cool dry scale that whispered with movement from the vast amounts of air that passed into his lungs and making his whole body swell during respiration. Tiny increments of growth continued to run the length of Boyd's body, which Armstrong could feel as the scales beneath his hand shifted until new ones lay beneath his touch. In the few minutes he had been beside him he felt that the scales had moved at least half a centimeter.

"Incredible." He whispered to himself in awe of what had happened. "What power." He drew himself together as he walked along the John's neck until he reached his head a few meters in front of him. Licking his lips, he sighed, with his shoulders slumping.

"John...The specialists here tell me that you can hear me. They have encouraged me to talk to you. To keep you sane? Grounded? Connected? Something to that effect. But I hardly know what to say to you. I was told that that didn't matter, what mattered was just for you to hear my voice. I have spoken with Captain Simmons and he reported everything to me about the earlier incident and its immediate aftermath. I would promote the man if I could, we need leadership like that now more than ever when people like you are... Well, it is wrong to call you lost to us... like you will wake up as someone I won't have ever known before I...I don't know what will become of you and the others now. The shrinks want to keep tabs on you, especially officers like you, as they have a very good base line from the psychological tests you've taken in the service. They want to observe your behaviors to see if anything has changed.

I don't know about you, but I think they are the ones that have lost their damned minds if people could go through something like this without the smallest change in behaviors. I have a ninety-year-old retired grade schoolteacher outside that is over 40 meters long, still growing, and pinning a...a...I don't know...a dragon! that tried to ram its way through some windows to escape. At the same time she has that one wrapped up in a tail that she did not have four days ago she is reading from a children's book to two dozen little juveniles in a language that no one can understand. They seem to be well adjusted, but I have some that wake up and not even know how their own limbs. Many don't remember who they were at all.

What happened to you all is... I don't know... But it scares me John. It scares me like nothing I have ever seen in war. This could be the end of the human species. Why would this creature that spoke with Lieutenant Colonel Schneider do this? Perhaps this isn't the best of topics to talk to you about..." He walked back to Boyd's shoulders and put his hand on his scales again. The only place he could bring himself to offer comfort to his XO at. Everywhere else just felt too intimate. He wasn't going to pat his face or his stomach that was for damn sure.

"I have orders to contain you all John. I'm not quite certain how to do that, and some of you may accidentally escape. After what you have all been through, this is the last thing I think any of you deserve. But we will work through this. I promise you."

Nearby were the first two under his responsibility to come to his to attention. LTC Schneider and Huygens. They had both of their heads next to each other, and from where he was, he could hear the deep even snuffles of their breaths as they recovered from their ordeal. From what he had been told their respiration and heart rates were much reduced and they did not seem to be in pain any longer. That did not seem to mean that they were done growing, however.

Coming around one of their sides, not knowing which was which he tried to address them both using generalities. As soon as the first words left his mouth, the slightly bigger one on the right opened its gold flecked red eyes. The General started in surprise as the eyes that had been blurry and unfocused shifted when the pupils shrank and keyed in on his movement. The light of recognition entered those enormous orbs and it raised its head to look down on Armstrong from three meters in the air.

"Wow, that is weird sir. I remember you being taller than me. But just raising my head felt like being launched off the ground and how small you look is giving me vertigo." It stopped and went rigid in alarm. "Sir! I apologize for my actions! I would get up to salute you, but I am afraid I do not know how!"

Armstrong laughed, "At ease Colonel. You're indoors and I don't expect salutes from those recovering from medical conditions. Now, I don't want to offend you but, I only know that you are either Lieutenant Colonel Schneider, or Huygens. I can't..." He looked pained and tugged at his collar. "I can't tell if you are a man or a woman."

"Lieutenant Colonel Huygens, sir! And to be fair, I don't know how to describe to you how to tell one of us from the other. Smell, I think, and the patterns of our scales are different sir!"

Armstrong watched as he wriggled closer to what must be Amanda Schneider. He narrowed his eyes at them in irritation. "I can't say that I am fond of surprises within my command such as learning that two of my senior officers have been dating seriously to the point one of them allowed herself to become pregnant only after she was afflicted by...this." He waved his hand at Huygens' lofted head which he bowed repentantly.

"It was quite the shock sir! But, if it hadn't been for her...and her welcome surprise...Sir, you must understand, if it had not been for her, I would not know myself. I would not know her. I would not know that I am going to be a father. She's... Oh, I would give everything for her! If only she knew! She is...my mate...

General Armstrong only understood half of what his subordinate had just said. But he knew the look in his eyes as he cast them down on his partner next to him.

"Colonel, you have trying times ahead of you. But I hope the best for the both of you. Soon enough, things beyond my control will be set in motion. Draw strength from the love that I can see in your eyes. I cannot fathom what must be racing through your mind right now. What you must think about what has happened to you. What you have become. Soon, those who have no attachment to you, or your situation will be in charge." Armstrong gave a curt dismissal to his aides nearby and waved his hand to bring Huygens' head nearer his own. "If anyone ever tries to separate you from your pregnant wife. Do not let them. I am giving you an order that I will put down on letterhead as soon as I get back to my office. If anyone ever, no matter their authority or rank, tries to separate you from Lieutenant Colonel Schneider..." His eyes brightened with thought before narrowing slyly and glancing at the nearby Boyd "...or Brigadier General Boyd. You are to flee and seek refuge far away. Am I understood Colonel?"

"Sir!" Huygens bellowed with fervor.

"If what I fear comes to pass, bring as many like you as you can."

"What should I be on the lookout for sir?"

"There are some who have already made decisions about what you are now. Or, I should say, what you are now, and what you represent."

Conrad let his head droop, and a sound came from his mouth that the General could not interpret before the changed man shook his head with a flapping sound as his ears beat upon his scales.

"Children of the egg... That is what a voice whispered in my mind. That is what I think we have become."

Armstrong's eyes danced with the implications of this knowledge. Realizations, one after the other, filled his mind. Choosing his next words carefully, he continued.

"Tell me that you still put the United States of America, and the oath you have sworn, before what you have become."

"I think that the situation has changed sir. I don't think we can partition humans into individual nations anymore. We have been contacted by an advanced alien race. There is no more one country vs. another anymore. There is humankind...and...and..." He winced as he looked down on his...paws. There was no more use in denying what they were. "There is humankind and us... the children of the egg. I don't know what it means to be what we are...but I suspect this did not happen to us to make us enemies of who we were." He looked up at General Armstrong, pleading to be believed. "I...do you believe me sir? I think I am still who I was. I mean, in my mind. But, it is like travelling outside of the town you were born in. When you did not realize yet just how small, how limited your concerns were. Until you saw something, experienced something, that could never let you think the same way again... Sir, I don't know if I can promise you what you seek. But what I can promise you is that I do not see any less value in what I was, now that I am something else. That as different as I look now, my feelings have not changed. I wish no harm upon anyone that does not wish any upon me, or more importantly, my loved ones."

He clasped Amanda's paw in his own as the wings and fins adorning his back and head spread in what seemed to be either a gesture of resolve or defiance to the General. Armstrong sighed, and reached out to pat the arm of the giant next to him. "It is like I said to General Boyd, what this means scares me more than anything ever has in my life. I fear for us, I fear for the future of this world. Remember what I had ordered you to do. Is there anything else you need before I go?"

"Actually sir, I have been thinking. I would like to be able to get up and move again. Can you, by chance, bring a nearby child of the egg who has regained their locomotion? Or, failing that, a service dog so that I can watch their movements?"

Armstrong laughed again. "You are a smart one. What were you in charge of?"

"Material R&D, sir. I was in the process of supervising final touches on..." The excited Colonel trailed off when he realized just how many ears listening had not been read in... "final touches on stuff...sir."

Nodding his head, the commander was happy at the moment that, whatever else he was now, Colonel Huygens could still keep his mouth shut about classified projects. However, the four-star general was troubled by the fact that the Colonel would not reiterate his oath to put his country first. Back at his office, he gave long hard thought to what it meant. Before sending forward a classified memorandum stating that he did not believe that these people had the interests of their nation first and foremost in their hearts after their affliction had set in. Knowing what the repercussions of this note would be, he could only hope that Huygens, Schneider, and Boyd would hide themselves from harm as he had verbally ordered them to do. To give them some cover for the actions he had ordered them to take, he wrote out formal orders for the three of them and then lock them in his office safe. Armstrong would never be able to fully convince himself that he had done the right thing. Less than six months later he, and the orders, would disappear.

By the time Amanda awoke, there was, what she later learned, a four-year-old child of the egg proudly marching back and forth not far from her nose. Conrad closely watched his movements as the child caroled on and on about what he was so excited about.

The nice woman brought lots of books! I read them! I read them all! Do you have more books? Books are so nice do you not think? The woman did not know how I could read them all! But I did! As fast as she could turn the pages! I re-mem-ber! I do! One day I want to be a li-bra-ri-an!Then I can have all the books! Look! I made a page flipper! So I do not scratch the books! If you scratch books, you are bad! No one else will get to read the books that are scratched! That makes me sad, does that make you sad? It makes me sad!

Conrad had not noticed that Amanda was awake yet, giving her a chance to watch him as he interacted with the adorable little child. The little male picked up a piece of aluminum that had been stomped flat on one end, and the other looked like it had been chewed on until it had formed a crude round handle. It resembled a large spatula more than anything else. Holding it clutched in his fore paws, he swung his tail forward and jabbed its tip into the hollow center of the thing's handle and lifted his tail vertically to wave it happily above him.

See? My page flipper! I will be the best li-bra-ri-anever!

The look that Conrad gave the little boy made something inside of her melt. A coy smile grew across her snout as she began to notice the smell of vanilla. It took her a moment to realize what was happening as she watched him fondly. The gentle way that he was interacting with the child, the look on his face, the thoughts of how good he would be with their own children...His gentleness was turning her on, the big adorable goof ball. Giving in to her feelings for him a pleased trill came from her throat, snaring Conrad's attention away from the child who was bouncing up and down in excitement. Opening his wing, a book hidden beneath clattered to the ground as the young child bounced around it with his tail wagging behind him.

See! My new favorite book! He crowed excitedly. Dragons! He thought exuberantly, we look like dragons! Can I breathe fire? He wondered. To the bemusement of the watching Colonels, he stopped bouncing long enough to take a huge breath, squeeze his eyes shut, and clench his stomach as a hurricane of hot air left his gaping mouth. Oh! he realized, too bad! Oh well! I can fly! I cannot do fire, but I can fly! We are dragons! Just like the book! Brandishing his page flipper, he opened the book titled 'When a Dragon Moves In' and tapped a picture of the eponymous dragon with the tool for emphasis. See? Wings, tail, big teeth, big nails! Dragons! He showed off each part of his body as he named the features he had in common with the big red imaginary creature in the story before launching himself aloft to orbit their heads in insuppressible glee.

Amanda and Conrad twisted their heads to look each other over. How did we not make that connection? They both wondered. Looks of sadness entered their eyes as that smell came from between their scales. What happened to the child within us that would have seen this in a heartbeat? What happened to our imaginations?

Appalled, Amanda said what they were both thinking. I feel like my inner child just died Conrad. What happened to our imaginations? Did we really not see the similarities?

Awww. Now you are sad. Why are you sad? Do you want me to read my book to you? It helped me when I came here, I was sad!

The cheerful voice of the child broke into their morose conversation. Before he continued in a much quieter tone as a tear rolled off his nose onto the book before him.

Still kind of sad.

Shocked looks erupted on the scaled snouts of the two adults watching the child as he curled in on himself with the book and his page flipper clutched against his chest. He began to wail loudly in distress as sobs overtook him.

Mommy and daddy do not want me anymore! They...they...they put me in Rex's cage! They left me in the woods! They...they kicked me!

The heartbroken lovers crept towards the child and tried to reassure him through the touch of their bodies and their warmth against his. The noise of the despondent male reached beyond the hangar and there was a stampede of humans as furious roars erupted outside while a set of seismic thuds rapidly approached. The first to gallop into the hangar, clipping the door with her shoulder and knocking it askew on its track in her violent hurry, was Dorothy Campbell.

WHO DARES HARM A LITTLE ONE! WHO DARES?" She roared at full volume, temporarily deafening every human in the structure. Her thrashing head homed in on the source of distress, and her eyes immediately widened in realization at what was happening. Throwing her wings open, she halted the writhing ball of hissing children of the egg that had run in close on her tail at the sound of the crying child. Several tried to dart around her anyway, and she had to turn and bat them all back out of the hangar with her massive paws until she was the only one left. Angry snouts appeared in windows all around the hangar as teeth were bared, and promises were hissed.

You! You harm little one? We bite! Bite you all! Scratch you all! Yes! Yes! Bite and scratch until child not scared! You see! Bite you all! We will, we will! Watch you!

Every human in the building had retreated into a protective circle in the middle of the concrete floor in a panic at the sight of the watching transformed and their threatening noises. Dorothy thought it was a very good thing indeed that they did not know what they were being threatened with, as she circled them protectively. She whispered to them not to make any sudden movements and to make themselves look small before turning her attention to the scale rattling wing flaring angry horde.

No danger! Back! Go back! Away!

She called to them commandingly. Submitting to the ancient mother figure, the blanked converted sullenly backed out of sight, but not out of range of hearing. As Dorothy could still perfectly well hear their snuffling breaths just on the other side of the flimsy walls, ready to burst through at the least instigation. At random intervals, she could also see a pair of nostrils or an eye spy hop to sniff or peer suspiciously at open windows before retreating once more. Slowly, the children of the egg that retained their minds began to appear in her sight as they all curled their heads through the door opening to see if the child was truly all right. Tension left Dorothy's body at the sight of them, at least these ones she could reason with.

"The child is fine. He is the one that was found in a dog kennel before being brought here. The male and female around him are comforting him and the situation is under control. Can each of you please escort a lost one back to their respective billets? We are scaring the others." Their heads swiveled to look at the humans and then bobbed in agreement before vanishing as the sounds of their retreat faded.

Dorothy uncoiled herself allowing the humans to go free after remarking to them that it would be best not to approach the sobbing child. A woman approached her and identified herself as a child psychologist that specialized in abuse. The elderly woman's tongue flickered to lick her nose in an unconscious action as she mulled that over. Shrugging her shoulders, making her wings flare and resettle, she escorted her over to the child.

"Do you know his name?"

"John Beckley. Before you go speak to him, it will help him open up to you if you have a book that he hasn't seen yet." Dorothy told her.

She hummed in thought for a moment before excusing herself as she ran from the building. Returning shortly, she huffed as she jogged back with a cardboard box that she dropped in front of the towering retired teacher.

"Any look familiar?"

"Please spread them out."

The psychologist did as she was asked, and Dorothy's nose swept back and forth across the books before stopping at one that didn't have his scent on it. Well that was certainly odd she thought to herself. Now I know what it is to experience the world with the sense of smell of a dog. Why ever did I do that first when it seems so strange? Am...her throat bobbed up and down as the wondered apprehensively. Am I still changing? But I still remember everything that I did before...I think. I don't have any changes of opinions... However, I am sniffing books for clues to... Picking up on her distraction, the psychologist looked up at her with curiosity at why she had just frozen silently. Dorothy gave her a strained nothing wrong here smile and tapped the book she picked out with her nose.

"This one. I do not believe he has read this one yet. Approach him with this, and you will be in like Flynn."

"In like Flynn? How old are you?"

"Old enough to appreciate an Errol Flynn movie, impudent child!" She snapped back at her.

"Okay, okay. Sheesh." The young professional muttered, as she shied away from the teeth longer than her hand gnashing next to her head. Christ, she's just like my own nana, Jenny Scarlet though to herself.

Picking up the book, she approached the curving bulk of the two converted before her and tried clearing her throat to get their attention. When that failed, she reached out and patted one of the scaled flanks. Like a giant snake, scales whispered and rubbed until a long neck rose above her and twisted the head atop it to look at the diminutive Scarlet. After a moment of being peered at under the microscope, whoever that was lowered its head again, and she heard a series of chirps before the massive body unwound. Behind the armored wall was the tiny child clinging to the forearm of the other afflicted and sobbing uncontrollably.

"Go on now. Don't be scared."

Easy for the towering being overhead to say. She couldn't reach its chin if she raised her hand and jumped as high as she could.

Holding the book before her as a peace offering. Also putting the flimsy cardstock between her and the lethal knives she saw on the child's hands and feet, coward that she reminded herself she was. Bending low to put her head on his eye level as a disarming mechanism she sat next to the crying child and held her arms out for him.

A scent filled his nose, close enough to a smell that he longed for, that it gave him hope.

"Mama?"

But as soon as he opened his eyes his hope shattered and his grief resumed.

"I am sorry John. Do you like to be called John? But your parents are not here. We are going to take care of you until they come back."

They are not coming back! They do not like me anymore! I do not know why! What did I do? I hurt! I hurt! Help! Help! I just want to be with mommy! I woke up from a bad dream and I felt funny and went to see mommy, but she kicked me! Daddy kicked me too! And then they put me in Rex's cage! What did I do? I...I...He gasped and clutched one paw to his chest as the other held tight to the book that Jenny had given him. It hurts to re-mem-ber! Why? I just want... I want... mommy! Mommy! Boo-boo! I have boo-boo! Please...please do not kick Johnny. Johnny hurt!

Dropping his book and his cherished page flipper he leapt at Jenny to cling to her as he buried his head under her chin and sobbed incoherently. The only thing keeping poor Jenny from slamming her head into the ground under the child's mass was Amanda's tail tip bracing her. Wrapping her arms around the little one's wings, she pinned him to her chest as rivers of tears ran down her throat to soak her blouse. Johnny wrapped his long tail around her waist and pressed himself further into her while Amanda bent her head inwards to translate everything that he had said for her.

Neither Amanda, nor Conrad knew how to comfort the child. They really didn't know how to comfort themselves after their own change. It was a whirlwind of events that left them ill equipped to come to grips with the fact that their human bodies were gone. Jenny looked up at them as the outpouring of emotion in front of them triggered their own suppressed ones and led to a desolate look and smell from them as the plaintive sound they made drew her attention. She gave them a sympathetic look, but quietly asked them to leave her to comfort the child.

Distracted by their own problems, the two Colonels gave them privacy by stretching their heads away at the full length of their bodies so that they could at least give the illusion of not listening in. They left the distant ends of their tails curled around the counselor and child for reassurance but fell into their own affairs.

Amanda tore herself to pieces in wondering if it had been right for her to end the human life she had carried for Conrad's happiness. Conrad, not knowing how to reassure her, did so by just holding her as she expressed her doubts and fears to him.

"It really depends on if that creature told us the truth." He finally told her, after they had fallen into sullen thought for a considerable time. "If the world is about to become as unstable as it told you it will, then the evil thing would have been for you. You, Amanda. To have raised our child by yourself. Without any assurances of social or financial support. I...do not if I am right for thinking this...but I would rather us raise a family together. With both of us aware of what we were doing. Even if it meant the loss of what our bodies once were. I..."

"But our baby!" Amanda cried. "Our baby became a monster with us! Split into six! I felt her split! Conrad, I felt the life we made together split. It was horrible! I have never felt less worthy of being a mother than I did the moment that I felt the effects of my choice! Less worthy of being a woman! Less human! I've been stained Conrad!

But now... but now I feel six heartbeats. I can feel them move. Conrad...if I think a certain way...I can...I can touch their minds while I carry them. I can feel their emotions! I have never felt this satisfied in my pregnancy before. Now, I can connect with my children! I can communicate with them! It is every expectant mother's dream! Conrad am I monster because I enjoy that alien connection? Does it make me a monster because I think this is better than the alternative of letting you go just to keep myself and my baby human? Does it make me a monster because I took the word of another and chose a path I thought would be safer?"

Conrad...who are we? I do not know what I am supposed to feel anymore. Please tell me. Do you know? You did not have a choice, when I did. Do you know who you are?

No...no...no... Conrad moaned repeatedly as his eyes spun with confusion. Looking for stability, for assurance, but finding none. Amanda's sanity frayed.

She reached up with her front paws at the same moment she lowered her head and began to scratch at her own face as a horrified Conrad tried to wrestle her under control. Flinging his head, he bellowed for help as blood began to run from the tears that Amanda opened in her own skin after clawing through the scales covering it. Even as a medical team ran forward to help calm her. Six lives inside of her projected their fear of what their mother was doing to herself into Amanda's awareness, and in realization, her self-harming behavior ceased as she shuddered in revulsion. She had not realized that the link between her and her children was bi-directional.

A psychiatrist ran to her head as he told her to breathe. To listen to his voice and breathe in time with the cadence he called. Each breath you let out, he told her, will carry with it the harm that you feel. A little at a time. Breathe.

"My babies!" she wailed, losing herself to the tempest. "They feel my hatred! They feel what I feel! I was human! I am human! My babies are not! I am not! Do I hate them? Do I hate me? Help me Conrad! What should I feel?

The only comfort he could provide, was to hold her, and to quietly tell her that she had done the right thing. Even if he had his doubts about what he was himself. Doubts about what the right thing was. Their children, no matter what they were now, were more important. His fiancée was more important. Setting his anxieties about his own identity to the side. He applied himself to assuring his wife at her greatest moment of weakness. With the help of the counselor still speaking to her, and the feeling of his warmth against her, she gradually retreated from the edge that she had been racing towards.

Anxious peeping came from past the ends of their twitching tails. Johnny, forgotten, had heard all their desperate attempts to define what had happened to them. Curling tighter around Jenny, he fought to block the sounds of their distress. It grew to be too much for the suffering child, and he squirmed from Jenny's embrace, scooped up his books and his page flipper with his wings, and ran crying helplessly from the hangar. Startling a number of Air Force guards and support staff.

Jenny shouted for him to stop and tried to limp after him. But in his haste to run from the vocal woes of Amanda and Conrad he had unknowingly lashed Jenny's thigh, resulting in a painful bone bruise that would take weeks to heal. Outside he blindly ran headlong into one of the pillars that were Dorothy Campbell's legs and bounced backwards with a squeak of surprise as he lost control of his meager possessions. Tears resumed running down his nose as he flailed to reach out for the few items of comfort that he had. Jenny, catching up, bent down to scoop up his page flipper and offer it to the child breaking down in front of her. He clutched it to his chest as Dorothy settled her immense bulk around the three of them. Trapping Johnny between the tip of her nose and Jenny's arms, the two women worked together to bring peace to Johnny's broken thoughts of abandonment.

Years later Johnny Beckley will become the 1st Guardian Librarian of the Library of Congress. Ensuring the largest modern repository of knowledge ever assembled would be safe.

Jenny Scarlet and a dozen of her psychiatric colleagues will all go onto collaborate on a new seminal work in the mind-body connection. Insights from their experience at the Wright Patterson AFB will lead to a whole new level of understanding of the concept of self.

Dorothy Campbell will coin the title of Great Mother when she assumes the leadership role for The Appalachian Enclave after the dissolution of the United States. In time she will meet Kim Schwarzkopf, and the two will quickly agree that some partnerships are just too dangerous for the world to survive. A lifetime of friendship will be born when they collapse against each other, cackling in unabashed hilarity, at each other's sarcastic humor.

But the future was an abstraction that Amanda Schneider and Conrad Huygens could not concern themselves with at the moment. They spent hours that day holding each other, crying against each other. Trying to come to terms with the decision Amanda had made after the change had been forced upon Conrad. Working with the psychologist that talked Schneider through the earlier episode they made some progress. But this was going to be a marathon, not a sprint. Exhausted from the day, they wished for nothing more than sleep. But the bodies that they now had were not interested in sleep. They needed relief, food, and water.

The work of the day, and Conrad's idea to watch a child of the egg who had already mastered at least their terrestrial motions, paid dividends. As evening drew near, Conrad followed by Amanda took their first shaky steps into a strange new world on four legs.

Amanda at last found something to distract her from the oddity that she had become, the distraction being of course mastering the oddity she had become. After a few awkward exchanges, Conrad finally found someone that could point them in the direction of where the other children of the egg had been relieving themselves. An empty field full of overturned mounds where the others had apparently dug their own sanitary pits. She creased her snout in distaste, it stank to high heaven. But not with the smell of any shit she had ever smelled before. Twisting her head back and forth she looked for somewhere to find privacy. But there wasn't anything. Then she remembered that she was already naked. Digging a new pit, she spun around until she found herself facing North. Once she was done, she kicked her hind legs until the pit was full and trotted away feeling like she had just committed a crime. She was mortified to think that she had just used the restroom in full view of whomever would like to look. Judging by the sheepish look in his eyes, Conrad felt the same way.

A series of large plastic tubs had been filled with potable water for them to drink from. Huygens tried to purse his lips to drink but got nowhere with his new anatomy. Amanda made an attempt at lapping the water up, but her narrow tongue wasn't terribly effective either, so she plunged her entire head into the bucket and scooped it into her jaws by tilting her head back. Raising her head with water dripping from her snout she burst into tears once again as she tried to retreat from what she was.

I know honey. I know. Conrad tried to say soothingly. Taking a drink of his, following her lead, he nudged her with his nose until she allowed herself to be brought away from the trough. Do you want something to eat? Or do you want to sleep? I think I have had enough of today.

Sleep. I...I do not know if I can take anymore of this new life today Conrad. I... What does it matter? Tomorrow we will wake up, and we will still be monsters.

Conrad's muzzle creased in concentration for a moment and his wing unfolded from his back to flop to the ground. He turned his head to stare at it and, after a few seconds, the fingers began to twitch upwards until the hand, followed by the lower and upper flexed off the ground and it fell across Amanda's back to draw her into his side for comfort. He had meant it to be like an arm across her shoulders like he would have done before. But he could tell that she had mixed feelings about the arm and the sail like membrane she could feel across her meters wide back and the two wings she herself had.

A tiny part of Conrad was pleased with himself, but the surge of elation was quenched almost immediately, as this was just one more example of the strangeness of what they were now. There was no going back to what he once was though. It was simple, whatever had done this to him according to Amanda, whom he had no reason to disbelief, had done this for a purpose... But what? Whatever it might be, it certainly didn't involve undoing what they had done. So, with that logic in mind. It was easy for Conrad to see that he might as well get used to being in this new body. However long it takes for that to happen. Can't forget a lifetime of being on two legs in a day or two, the 43-year-old man reminded himself. Maybe, I'd feel better if I could get a chance to gut the creatures that did this to me, he wondered.

Conrad began to realize...that he might be accepting what happened to him. A sliver of icy fear and doubt wormed its way into his heart. Could he even trust himself when he said that he thought he was the same person he was before? His mood plummeted as fast his wing as it sagged to fall between him and his fiancée to drag listlessly on the ground.

Amanda felt the comforting blanket slip from her back and turned to look at the glum look creeping into Conrad's eyes. She stopped and turned towards him to lower her head until her nose was beneath his wing and lifted it to his back where his arm reflexively folded the wing neatly. It was her turn to lead as whatever distraught thoughts careened back and forth in his mind. The look that he gave her, the lost helpless look, made her breath hitch in her chest as she fought off a sob at the frightened uncertainty that she could smell coming from him.

Leaning into him she nudged him on their way. Wending their way past Dorothy, who looked up at them and bobbed her head in acknowledgement, they headed to their original sleeping area. Stopping at the hangar door, the two of them sat on their hind legs and worked together to reset the door on its track. Resettling in their 'beds' they lay their heads on the cots provided for their comfort and sighed listlessly.

Hours later awareness flooded back into his mind, and in a burst of confusion Boyd flailed awake bellowing.

"Colonel Hillard!"

A distant voice responded habitually. "Sir!"

But Boyd did not hear her voice nor the sound of running feet as his staff came to see how he was. Or calm him down as they saw their commander writhing like a crocodile as he kept trying and failing to stand and walk on his four legs to get back into it.

"How many people are here in total Colonel? How many children of the egg are here? How long have I been unconscious?"

"Sir... It's okay... You don't have to..."

Giving up on standing, Boyd tried to do a low crawl, with his splayed legs dragging him along, over the groggy forms of Schneider and Huygens. Several voices called out for them to stop him and his progress was halted as paws reached out to grab his legs.

"No! I've slept enough! Has the situation changed?"

"Please, General! Calm down! You are hurting the Colonels!"

One of his scrabbling fore feet was pushing down on the neck of what smelled to him like Schneider. She was wheezing for breath as she twisted her serpentine body to kick at him with her hind legs. Meanwhile Huygens moaned in pain as the points of Boyd's right hind foot poked precariously against the membrane of his wing.

The fretting medical and command staffs all breathed a sigh of relief as General Boyd backed off his two subordinates and started breathing deeply to get his scattered thoughts under control.

"I apologize Colonels, are you both all right?"

Amanda rasped something unintelligible and then raised a foreleg to wave off his concern. Conrad was looking sleepily at his wing which was dripping nearly black blood on the ground from the pinprick holes that Boyd's sharp talons had opened in it. Without thinking, Boyd lowered his head to seal the wounds by licking them. His mind caught up to his actions immediately afterward and he recoiled so forcefully that he flung himself off his paws onto his back with his legs twitching in the air.

Colonel Hillard waved everyone back, and he saw her upside-down form grow larger in his eye as she approached his head.

"Sir. What is the last thing you remember?"

"Putting you in charge. Everything seems to be well in hand. I suppose I should take some time to get adjusted to my...condition."

Hillard could see her shoulders sag in relief reflecting from the massive pupil of her commander. "Of course, sir, I am glad to hear that you realize you might not be suited to resuming your duties right away. Not that we would stop our commander from doing that if he wished to. Of course." She wasn't able to bring herself to say that they flat out couldn't in any case as his head alone was bigger than her entire body. It looks like I could fit entirely in his mouth, she thought uneasily.

He smirked at her unsaid words as he caught her staring at his opened mouth. "I am sure my size alarms you. I will try not to be more intimidating than I already am." He rolled himself upright before resuming. "I will leave you to it, Colonel. I will ask you however, to have a summary report made of everything that happened since I fell unconscious so I can get up to speed. Has the investigation into the shooting begun yet?"

"Yes, sir. We were to contact special investigations as soon as you awoke."

So she said, and so she did.

He watched with one eye as the medics attended to Conrad's injured wing, later they came by to inspect his hind foot and to clean the blood from it. His grilling over the necessity of creating the gun teams, their deployment, and the issuing of the order to execute a United States Armed Forces service member went on for hours. The promise of a follow up interview was given, while he raised his head to look outside uneasily as the winds shifted to bring a scent to his lifted nose. Surrounded by the still bustling crisis operation, a crime scene had been marked out around where the machine gun remained and encompassed the tarp covered body of SrA Juan Sanchez. A crane with a pair of nylon load slings was currently attempting to move the corpse onto a flatbed truck. Sanchez's tail slipped from its confines and dangled limply as streams of blood glistened on the black appendage. Boyd's stomach heaved and he was forced to look away while his scales rustled with the smell of his regret and shame wafting around him.

Conrad woke for a little while to give General Boyd the rundown on what had been told to him by General Armstrong. Boyd wasn't quite as enthusiastic about this as one would imagine. Knowing that his commander was likely covering his ass even as they spoke, there was no guarantee of any such protection for them if shit really did hit the fan. He kept that to himself for now. No reason to corrupt the chain of command after all. But it did get him started thinking...

He knew Conrad was working on carbon nanotube sheets that could be processed as textiles. It wouldn't be too far fetched for it to be used on them...

He knew Amanda had a distinct ability to talk people into doing such things as buying refrigerators for igloos and other similar nonsense. She could pitch his idea...

He knew that he had the rank and authority to initiate experimental pilot projects. Or had, he thought, looking back over a body that was as black as night, thirty-five meters long, and seemingly capable of flight while being decidedly non-human. We still might be able to talk someone around if we can be proven to be trustworthy...

Knowing all to well how little the military thought of anything new and strange, he surmised it was only a matter of time before he and every other child of the egg would be pushed to the side. If not imprisoned in some manner for either being what they were, or for some other contrived rationale. He himself had to worry about the pending court martial for ordering an airman killed. But afterwards, what if... What if... What if he could put something together so high profile that they could not be secreted away in some no-mans land...

On that day...the ideas and foundations for the experimental United States Air Force 1st Wild Sky Wing took shape. Its founders: Lieutenant Colonel Huygens, Conrad. Lieutenant Colonel Schneider, Amanda. And Brigadier General Boyd, John.

The next day all humanitarian operations ceased as children of the egg and humans alike came together to listen as a warning was broadcast across all electronic devices. Staring into the western sky, they watched together as the old order of the world died.

...