Chapter 2: Specimen Under Scrutiny
The lock’s click echoed in my skull long after he was gone. I spent the night curled on the cold lab floor, drifting in and out of a feverish doze filled with dreams of falling and flying. Every time I jerked awake, the grinding in my bones was worse. A deep, cellular ache, like my skeleton was being melted down and recast.
Morning came not with sunlight, but with the fluorescent banks flickering on with a aggressive buzz. The door hissed open. Dr. Kruger entered, followed by two large, silent men in simple grey uniforms. Orderlies. Their faces were blank slates.
“Good morning, Subject J.M.,” Kruger said, his voice cheerful, conversational. “Time for your first comprehensive assessment.”
I scrambled back, my limbs feeling loose, uncoordinated. “Get away from me.”
The orderlies moved with practiced efficiency. They weren’t brutal, but they were immovable. My protests, my clawing—my claws catching on one’s sleeve—were meaningless. They lifted me, carried me through a door I’d never seen opened, into a smaller, even whiter room. In the center was a padded examination table, fitted with thick nylon restraints.
The panic was a live wire in my throat. I fought until my new, frantic heart felt like it would explode. They pinned me down. The straps went over my wrists, my ankles, my torso. The coarse material bit into my skin, which was now hypersensitive, every fiber a razor. The harsh, surgical light above bleached the world into a flat, pain-white plane.
Kruger moved into my field of vision, holding a tablet. He was humming.
“Release point one: integumentary system,” he said, not to me, but into a microphone that dangled from the ceiling. He set the tablet down and picked up a pair of polished steel calipers.
His cold fingers probed my forehead, my cheeks. I tried to twist away. “The frontal bone is showing pronounced antero-posterior narrowing. Note the subcutaneous layer thinning significantly.” He sounded like he was commenting on the weather. He pinched the skin on the back of my hand, measuring its thickness with the calipers. “Dermal plasticity increased by approximately sixty percent. Fascinating.”
He moved down. My feet were bare. I hadn’t taken off my socks; they’d been cut away. My toes were longer, the joints prominent and knobby. They curled reflexively, spasming, as if trying to grip an absent branch.
“Observe the pedal phalanges,” he said, his touch clinical as he manipulated my foot. “Elongation and increased curvature is right on schedule. The flexor tendons are rewiring themselves beautifully.” He tapped a toe with a metal probe. A jolt, not quite pain but a shocking burst of neural feedback, shot up my leg. I gasped.
“Hyper-sensitivity in the new neural pathways. Expected.”
“Stop,” I begged, the word dissolving into a wet, clicking sound in my throat. My mouth felt different. My teeth ached. “Please.”
He ignored me, picking up a magnifying lamp on a stand. He wheeled it close, its bright circle focusing on my forearm where I’d scratched myself raw. The skin there was no longer red. It was a patchwork of greyish, quill-like filaments pushing through, each one emerging from a puckered pore.
“Primitive feather follicles. Development is accelerated beyond projections.” He selected one with a pair of fine tweezers and pulled.
It didn’t hurt. It was a weird, deep, unlocking sensation, followed by a trickle of warm fluid. He held the quill up to the light. It was three inches long, grey, with a faint, downy barble beginning to unfurl at its tip. He placed it on a glass slide. “Sample for cellular analysis.”
The humiliation was a fire. I was a thing being cataloged. My body was no longer my own; it was a public document, and he was reading it aloud.
The worst was the mirror. A vast, dark square taking up one whole wall of the room. I knew what it was. A one-way observation window. I stared into my own reflection, distorted by the angle and the light. My hair was lank, stuck to a sheen of sweat on my forehead. My eyes were still too black, my cheekbones sharp enough to cast shadows. And behind me, the cold, bright room, the man with his tools, my trapped, twitching form.
He produced a ruler. “We need to track the caudal progression. This will require a moment.”
One of the orderlies approached, unstrapping the restraint across my hips and turning me onto my side with impersonal force. My spine felt liquid, alien. Kruger’s hand pressed on the base of my back, just above my tailbone. A fresh, shocking pain lanced through me—a deep, internal pressure, as if something were pushing, trying to bifurcate.
“Ah,” he said, a note of genuine triumph in his voice. “There it is. The coccygeal extension is initiating.”
He measured something I couldn’t see. “Seven millimeters of nascent vertebral growth. Ossification is rapid. Note the pronounced inflammation at the site.” He pressed again. A sound escaped me—a sharp, truncated shriek that hit a frequency that made the orderly flinch.
Kruger just made a note. “Vocalization continues to shift into the ultrasonic range. The laryngeal structure is undoubtedly undergoing cartilaginous revision.”
He finished his measurements, his touch leaving a ghost of violation on my skin. He stepped back, regarding me as a sculptor might a block of marble. “The osteal restructuring phase is indeed intense. Your bone mass is decreasing, the marrow cavities expanding. You will feel lighter, but fragile. Do not try to stand unsupported yet. The long bones are… delicate.”
He picked up his tablet. “Subject is coherent, if distressed. Physiological stress metrics are elevated but within acceptable tolerances for this stage. We will proceed with nutrient injection and continued observation.”
He prepared a syringe from a small refrigerator unit—a lurid orange fluid this time. The needle sank into my thigh. A cold rush spread, followed by a sudden, overwhelming hunger, but not for food. A craving for light, for open space, so powerful it felt like nausea.
They left me then, strapped under the light, facing the dark mirror. I was alone with the humming machines and the horror of my own body. I strained against the straps, but they held. My new toes curled and uncurled, scratchy against the padded vinyl. The patch of feathers on my arm itched maddeningly.
Hours passed. Or minutes. Time had no meaning in the white room.
Then, a new sensation. A vibration, deep in my chest. A low, rhythmic thrumming. My heart was beating too fast again, but this was different. It was a pulsing, internal tremor. Without thinking, my head lolled to the side, my neck arching in a stiff, unnatural curve. My beak-like mouth—when had my lips hardened?—parted.
A sound emerged. Not a chirp. A low, soothing warble. A self-comforting trill, emanating from a new place within my reshaped throat. I was comforting myself. Like a bird in a trap.
The realization broke the last of my will. A sob shook me, but it came out as a warble-chirp, a pathetic hybrid noise. I looked into the dark mirror, into the eyes of the creature strapped to the table.
I didn’t see Jenny Maxwell anymore. I saw the subject. I saw Project Avis.
And in the deepest, most hidden part of my changing mind, a treacherous, instinctive thought whispered: The light is too bright. I want a nest. I want to hide.
The human part of me screamed. The other part, the growing part, just kept up that soft, desperate thrumming, waiting for the darkness to come.