The gown Taylor had worn was torn by the cat. He managed to salvage enough to tie around his waist. It was little things like that which made someone feel slightly human.

He looked at his fingers, his toes. He stood and looked at his feet, ran his fingers through his hair. He’d shifted, but the cat was still there. It was like trying to type with a house cat who wanted attention. But in this case it wasn’t attention the cat wanted, it was revenge. Angelica was hurt. She was in shock. Taylor couldn’t see her well enough from this angle, and she was huddled on the floor not far from where she’d fallen. She’d propped herself up a little. It wasn’t great, but it was a sign of life. Evidence of fighting back.

Damn, if he wasn’t proud of her.

Not that he discounted her fears. It was likely that the ‘subjects’ who had proven to not be useful to the doctor’s experiments were shipped off in the trafficking ring. How much a doctor was worth to slavers was a very valid question, especially when that doctor had earned money for medical school by winning beauty pageants as a youth. The question was, would they take her for her medical expertise or for something else.

I will kill for her.

“You and me both, buddy.” Taylor swore, acknowledging the cat. “We need to get out of here first.”

Mostly, they needed to stall. Taylor couldn’t tell Angelica some of the things he was hoping would come to pass. There was no way to talk to her without being overheard. And as much as it might give Angelica hope, he needed to keep some things to himself.

He needed to see her. Had that robot idiot broken wrist or broken arm? He couldn’t be sure, but it looked bad. When he moved to see if he could get closer, he staggered and fell against the glass, suddenly dizzy. He got a mental image of the cat looking sheepish, head hanging down. “You have to let me drive the body,” he cautioned as he pushed himself upright again.

How do you balance all the time like this on two legs?

He squatted down on his haunches, trying to see Angelica. She hadn’t said anything when he’d fallen. She hadn’t been saying anything for a while. Unconscious? In that much pain? He’d told her they would get out of this mess and they would, if they could last long enough. He needed her to hold on. He needed her to hear his voice. To say something, to make a noise, anything. Anything at all that would let him know she was still there with him.

“Don’t leave me now,” he murmured as he shifted to get a better view. “I need you.” Was that her foot—yes. Part of her leg. The skin was pale. She twitched. Shifted. Let out a soft moan.

“Angelica,” he shouted, wondering where the sound system was that enabled them to talk to each other. It hadn’t been on earlier; she’d been muffled. But when Melinda had been in the room he’d been able to hear her just fine. That moan told him it had been left on. Lucky for them. “So, what do you think...” His tone was conversational. Casual. If someone was listening, let them. Of course, they were being monitored. But speculation would be normal, and he needed her to concentrate on something else. Anything else if it helped her get her mind off the pain. “She said this was all from a private investor.”

“Bullshit,” Angelica spat out after a minute. Good girl. She was rallying. That was the Angelica he knew and loved. “This has to be...” She paused and Taylor understood why. She was fighting a wave of pain. He felt the breaks every time he shifted, but at least it was over quickly. The way she responded to his inane babblings, she was using that conversation to distract herself from the pain like he’d wanted her to. “...has to be a government job... can’t get... soldiers and... equipment...”

“No. But she could have both. What if that investor was someone who had some influence with the local government?” He hesitated and decided that he might as well continue, overheard or not. “When I left, I was about to be reassigned. Somewhere out of the way. Someone didn’t want me coming here. This isn’t just local. This is widespread.”

“Taylor...” Angelica whispered. He strained to hear her. “Does it hurt like this when you... change?”

“No. The bones change and reshape, but there’s no damage from the outside. There’s no beating to cause bruises and it’s over quickly.”

“Still,” she said, and a sound suspiciously like a sob followed a protracted silence. “I can’t imagine you feeling this and still be willing to change.”

“You learn not to fight it,” he said quietly. “At first, everyone fights it. It’s scary. And painful. But when you learn not to fight it... it’s easier.

Still learning.

Taylor smiled. “It’s an ongoing process, learning to share with the other.”

“The other?”

“Normally...” He thought about how to proceed. It didn’t matter, really, this was all to get her talking, to take her mind off the pain. “Normally when you’re a cat, your human mind is distant, vague. The cat called me the ‘other memory’. Nothing is shared, and when you revert back what happened to you as the cat is gone, like a hole in your mind.”

“Sounds scary.”

Taylor shrugged. “It’s normal. I’ve never known any different.” He shifted a little, sitting cross-legged, where he could see her better. “No one shares their psyche. Until now.”

She moved, coming around to face him, and screamed as she put her hand down without thinking. He winced in sympathy. He waited until the pain wave passed, until she could speak again. He could see her face now, deathly pale, sweat trailing down the side of her face. “What do you mean until now?” she asked, swiping at it carefully with her good hand.

“This... this pheromone gas... somehow it’s... it’s shared us. Instead of fighting for control, the cat and I apparently share the helm and... well, we’re joined now. We’re both conscious as either man or beast.

And it’s very confusing.

“And it’s very confusing.”

“How?” Angelica asked, her face a study in pain.

“Excellent question,” Melinda said from the doorway, holding another cup of coffee. “I would love to know that, too. Welcome back Mr. Mann.” She set her cup down and walked to a cupboard behind the nurses’ station. She pulled something out and went to a slot in the wall beside his cell. She opened a panel, pushed the package through. It fell at his feet. “A replacement gown, Mr. Mann. Since you’ve already changed once today, I don’t think I need to cut the strings in the back like I did last time. Just keep them in mind, as we wouldn’t want you to strangle.” Her smile was particularly sincere.

Taylor gave her a dubious look and shook the thin garment out. He slipped it on, keeping the makeshift cloth in place. He wasn’t sure what was worse: the realization that he wasn’t going to see any real clothes anytime soon or that the good doctor was truly crazy. It was the sincerity that terrified him. She thinks she’s doing something that will benefit mankind. How do you fight someone who’s completely convinced she’s one of the good guys?

Melinda leaned against the nurses’ station where she could easily see inside each cell. Her expression was benign. A woman at peace with her job, interested and curious about what she didn’t understand. “I’ve observed the transformation many times, Mr. Mann. I’ve seen men and women, children, change into lions before my eyes and back again. But when they are induced to do so...” She indicated the cannister. “The results are always so much... harder. For them, I mean. Some actually do not survive, and I don’t know the reason for the difference. What should it matter if the change is voluntary?”

For a moment Taylor was speechless. Here he’d been starting to... well, not sympathize with her, but at least understand her. She was a doctor for fuck’s sake, and she was trying to help people—even if going about it entirely the wrong way. He’d thought he could maybe reason with her when she’d come back. Find a way to convince her to let them go.

But this was cold. And more callous than he’d expected.

“You bitch,” Taylor spat the word, then had to remind himself that he needed to stop before she could see that she was getting to him.

Calm. Stay calm.

“Not helpful.” She took a sip of her coffee. “What is groundbreaking is that you told me about how fighting the change is ‘normal’ and that you’re taught—taught, mind you—to accept the change. This indicates another supply of test subjects. All we need to do is a little research into your family and your place of birth.”

Taylor felt his blood run cold. He thought of his family, his community, and his hands clenched. He’d brought danger right to their doorstep with this.

“Not that we weren’t already looking into this,” she said, leaning against the counter. She waved that particular train of thought off negligently. “Be that as it may, you’ll be pleased to learn that I’ve isolated the genetic signature of the change. The DNA strands themselves. I’ve been able to recreate the... aberration that is you, Mr. Mann. Well, I shouldn’t say it that way. I didn’t know were-tigers existed before now, even though I’d been informed before your arrival. No, I mean that I’ve duplicated the lion changing gene. I can now create shifters.” Melinda shrugged. “Theoretically.”

Create?

“What do you mean theoretically?”

“I mean, Mr. Mann, that the experiments to recreate the beast have been less than successful. The subjects all complete the change, but they’re usually dead before fully realizing their true potential. You see, that forced change, and the engineered change isn’t successful. Yet. So... we try again. And again.”

She turned a valve embedded in the counter on the nurses’ station. “In order to create tiger pheromones, I will need some female shifters to extract it from. Males, for some reason, have very little. I’m sure that my investor will procure some for me, now that we know where to look. In the meantime, the experiments will have to continue with what we have. Lions.”

Taylor’s head whipped over to Angelica who was sitting with her eyes closed, curled up around herself. Her face shiny with sweat. “No.” It all made sense now. A deeply, sick, distorted sense.

“It’s the best way to heal, Dr. Truman,” Melinda said, making a note on a clipboard in front of her. “You’re getting the pheromones introduced through the ventilation system.”

“How?” Angelica asked, raising her head sharply. “You can’t possibly have a CRISPER! That’s an enormous amount of expenditure. Even the local government couldn’t spend that much and hide it!”

“What the hell is a crisper?” Taylor demanded.

Melinda looked at him as if he were a toddler interrupting the adults. “Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats,” she said. “It’s a naturally occurring mechanism found in bacteria.” She began warming up to her topic. “You see, some viruses feed on bacteria, so the little buggers found a way to defend themselves. They slice the DNA of a virus with surgical precision. All you need is to supply it with a marker to tell it what to look for and it will alter DNA to whatever the hell you program it for.”

“But you have to provide the genetic marker,” Angelica said. “That’s not something you can just cook up in your kitchen. It has to be created...” She gasped as another wave of pain lanced through her. “It’s an enzyme, so it requires sophisticated equipment and trained personnel.”

“Oddly enough,” Melinda chuckled, “you can order it online.” She laughed at Angelica’s expression. “I know, right? You go online, create the marker with their tool, and they ship it to you overnight express. It’s the most remarkable thing, really. Not nearly so expensive as you’d expect, but terribly easy to make a mistake. You have to be very sure before you add the product to your shopping cart.”

“You’re serious?” Taylor asked in a voice he didn’t recognize.

“Who’s behind all this, Melinda?” Angelica asked, sitting up a little straighter, wincing a little with the movement.

“It’s an odd thing.” Melinda chuckled. “Did you know that the UN spent a fortune to clear the jungle around the camp as a humanitarian gesture? They had no desire to get their hands dirty, of course, so they dropped the cash off and let the locals handle the details. You saw the delicate hand they took in cleaning that up.” She laughed and took a big swallow of her coffee. “But can you imagine holding the patent on a cure for pain? A cure for disease? A cure for suffering? What can your cells tell us, Mr. Mann? Can you prolong life with the right adjustments? Can you provide us all with immortality someday? Think about it. No more death, no more enfeeblement, no more paralysis from accidents. Can you understand why my investor is so motivated? What a glorious future you have provided for us, Mr. Mann, if only we can grasp it.”

Angelica suddenly screamed. Taylor shot to his feet and threw himself against the glass that separated them. “What’s happening?” he shouted when he saw she’d curled even smaller around herself, clutching her arm against her stomach. Her head was thrown back, eyes sightless.

“The pheromones are kicking in. You smell them now, don’t you, dear?”

“Wait—” Taylor cried. “What have you done?”

“I injected her while you two slept,” Melinda said, and made another note on the clipboard. “She’s about to change into a lion.” She blew a kiss at Angelica. “Good luck, dear. No one has survived this yet, but I have faith in you. The two of you are both rather unique.”

“ANGELICA!” Taylor and the cat screamed as one.

Unfortunately, Angelica was beyond hearing either one of them.