Voices.
That was all there was at first.
Adrian couldn't see anything. He wasn't even sure his eyes were closed.
“Run it again.”
“I already did.”
“Again.”
A pause.
Adrian tried to move.
Nothing happened.
“Same result.”
“Rejection?”
“None.”
Silence.
Then someone laughed.
Not cruelly. A short, disbelieving sound.
“We did it.”
Someone else exhaled.
“Holy shit.”
Adrian managed to open his eyes.
White light. Shapes. Faces.
The older woman stood somewhere beyond his feet. The blond woman was beside her.
She was smiling.
Actually smiling.
“Conversion complete?”
“Complete. Stable so far.”
“Good work.”
A hand turned Adrian's head slightly.
“Pupillary response is good.”
“Neurological?”
“Within projected range.”
“Full scan. Document everything before we move it.”
Adrian tried to focus on the older woman.
The room drifted sideways.
“Still conscious?”
“Barely.”
“Doesn't matter.”
The white light faded.
Noise.
Adrian surfaced into it.
Fast footsteps. Something metallic striking the floor. Voices overlapping.
“—not enough time.”
“How long?”
“Twenty-three minutes.”
“That isn't enough.”
“I know.”
Red light flashed above him.
He was moving.
A corridor.
“Transport?”
“Being prepared.”
“Then put it in stasis.”
“Stabilization isn't complete.”
“It can finish during transport.”
“That's not what the protocol says.”
The table turned sharply.
“The protocol assumes we still have a facility.”
Nobody answered that.
A dull impact sounded somewhere far away.
Then another.
“What about the remaining subjects?”
Silence.
“We don't have time.”
Another turn.
Adrian forced his eyes open.
The older woman was walking beside him. Whatever satisfaction he'd seen before was gone.
“Stasis chamber three is ready.”
“Use it.”
A door opened.
Cold air passed over Adrian's skin.
Something about the sensation was wrong.
Too much of it.
His mind reached for the thought and lost it.
Hands released the restraints.
Something lifted him.
His body felt impossibly light.
Then warmth closed around him.
Liquid.
Adrian panicked.
“Hold it.”
“Sedation is dropping.”
“Not enough to matter.”
The liquid climbed around his body.
Something covered his mouth and nose.
“Respiratory link established.”
For one impossible second Adrian saw the older woman through curved glass.
She was already turning away.
“Seal it.”
Darkness.
Adrian returned slowly.
There was no moment of waking. No line between unconsciousness and awareness.
One moment there was nothing.
The next there was pressure.
Warmth.
Weightlessness.
Something drifted across his face.
Adrian twitched.
It moved away.
Then returned.
Soft strands slid over his cheek and across his eyes.
He tried to shake them away.
More followed.
Hair.
His thoughts stalled.
His hair wasn't long enough to do that.
He moved his head again.
The strands floated around him in a slow cloud, catching the weak red light whenever it blinked.
Pale.
Almost white.
Adrian stared at them.
No.
He opened his eyes wider.
Black.
For several seconds, he wondered if he'd gone blind.
Then the tiny red light appeared again beyond the glass.
It vanished.
Returned.
Red.
Dark.
Red.
Where was he?
The thought formed slowly.
Warmth surrounded him.
Not air.
Liquid.
Memory followed.
The chamber.
They had put him in—
Adrian tried to move.
His arm drifted through the fluid with maddening resistance.
Everything felt distant. Dulled.
As though his body were several centimeters removed from where his brain expected it to be.
He reached for the glass.
Nothing.
Farther.
Still nothing.
His fingertips finally touched something smooth.
Adrian stopped.
That should have happened sooner.
He pulled his hand back.
In the weak red light, he could barely see its outline.
Something was wrong with it.
The proportions, perhaps.
He couldn't tell.
His thoughts were still too slow.
Later.
He became aware of the mask covering his mouth and nose.
Air moved through it.
In.
Out.
He listened to his own breathing.
And heard far more than that.
His heartbeat.
A faint electrical click somewhere outside the chamber.
The hum of machinery beneath him.
Liquid moving through a pipe.
Something dripping.
Every sound seemed too close.
Too distinct.
Adrian turned instinctively toward the dripping.
Something shifted on top of his head.
He froze.
The sensation vanished almost immediately.
Then the electrical click came again from his other side.
The strange pressure shifted with it.
Adrian slowly raised a hand toward his head.
Stopped.
No.
There were already too many things he couldn't explain.
He lowered his arm.
It brushed against his chest.
Something yielded beneath it.
Adrian stopped again.
An unfamiliar weight shifted slightly in the liquid.
His heartbeat accelerated.
He didn't investigate.
Something soft brushed the back of his leg.
Adrian jerked.
A strange pull travelled through the base of his spine.
He froze.
His body was wrong in too many directions at once.
Fine.
Later.
The red light blinked again.
Beyond the curved glass, vague shapes emerged.
Tables.
Equipment.
A doorway.
Maybe.
He could see more than he should have been able to.
The room wasn't merely black anymore. Edges separated themselves from the darkness. Equipment became darker shapes against slightly lighter walls.
Another red light blinked farther away.
Then another.
Emergency lighting.
Adrian waited.
Footsteps.
Voices.
Anything.
Nothing came.
He listened.
The hum.
The clicking.
The drip.
His heartbeat.
Nothing else.
No conversation.
No doors.
No people.
Adrian pressed his palm against the glass.
He hit it once.
The impact cracked through his hearing with startling force.
He recoiled.
Too loud.
Much too loud.
Still nobody came.
He struck the glass again, more carefully this time.
A light beneath his hand flickered.
Thin letters appeared across the glass.
EMERGENCY PROTOCOL ACTIVE.
Adrian stared.
Another line appeared.
STASIS SUPPORT TERMINATED.
A mechanical clunk came from somewhere beneath him.
AUTOMATIC RELEASE INITIATED.
The liquid began to drain.
Adrian's pulse surged.
The level dropped past his eyes.
His face.
The mask released with a hiss.
Adrian sucked in cold air but kept silent.
The liquid fell past his shoulders.
His chest.
His waist.
Gravity returned piece by piece.
And with it came sensations the fluid had blurred before.
An unfamiliar weight settled against his chest. His waist and hips felt wrong. Lower down, something he had expected to feel simply wasn't there.
Adrian went still.
For a moment, his mind reached for an explanation.
Then stopped.
No.
Whatever they'd done to him, he wasn't going to understand it here. Not in the dark. Not like this.
The last of the fluid disappeared beneath his feet.
His feet touched the bottom sooner than expected.
Something heavy and soaked settled behind his legs.
His balance shifted.
Adrian grabbed for the side of the chamber.
His hand missed.
The front of the chamber opened.
Adrian fell.
His mind barely had time to register it.
His body reacted first.
His hands shot toward the floor. His legs pulled beneath him, his spine twisted, and something behind him snapped hard in the opposite direction.
For one impossible instant, his body seemed to know exactly what it was doing.
Adrian didn't.
His left hand found the floor.
His right landed somewhere else entirely.
His legs tried to follow a movement his brain had never learned, his balance shifted again, and the whole thing collapsed.
He hit the floor shoulder-first.
Pain shot through him.
Adrian lay there for a second, stunned.
What the hell had that been?
He hadn't decided to do any of it.
His body had simply moved.
And almost succeeded.
He pushed himself onto his hands and knees.
Something wet landed beside him.
He looked toward it.
A pale shape in the darkness.
Long.
Thick.
Covered in soaked fur.
It moved.
Adrian jerked away.
The movement pulled directly at the base of his spine.
He stopped.
The pale shape stopped.
Adrian stared at it.
Then moved his hips slightly.
It moved with him.
Oh.
His brain had nothing useful to add after that.
He tried to stand.
His first attempt got him onto one knee.
The second almost sent him back down.
On the third, Adrian caught the edge of the chamber and hauled himself upright.
His balance was completely wrong.
Not simply because he was weak.
His center of gravity had moved.
The proportions of his legs were different. The floor was closer than it should have been. The control panel beside the chamber was higher.
Adrian gripped the edge harder.
The wet hair that had floated around him in the tank now clung to his face and neck.
He pushed it back.
There was far too much of it.
It slipped through his fingers and fell past his shoulders.
Adrian caught one strand.
Even under the emergency lights, there was no mistaking the color.
White.
His hair had been dark.
And short.
He let the strand fall.
Later.
That was when he noticed something else.
Nobody had come.
He had hit the glass.
The chamber had opened.
He had fallen onto the floor.
Equipment was still sounding alarms.
Nobody had come.
Adrian listened.
The room answered with far more detail than he wanted.
Electricity humming behind the walls.
Liquid moving somewhere beneath the floor.
A faint alarm beyond the room.
Something dripping.
Farther away, metal scraping against metal.
And beneath all of it—
A smell.
Metallic.
Sharp.
Adrian frowned.
Blood.
He didn't know how he knew that.
He just did.
His gaze drifted toward the doorway.
Whatever had happened to his body was still there.
It wasn't going anywhere.
Neither were the questions.
But whoever had done this to him was gone.
And something had made them leave in a hurry.
Panic began crawling back into his chest.
*Pay attention.*
His father's voice again.
Adrian closed his eyes.
Immediately felt stupid and opened them.
*Pay attention to what's around you. Then decide what you're going to do.*
Fine.
Around him was darkness.
His body no longer matched thirty-eight years of memory.
The people who had kidnapped him were gone.
And somewhere outside this room, something had happened badly enough that they'd abandoned their facility.
Adrian took a shaky breath.
One problem at a time.
First problem.
Light.