2022 AMBY AWARD WINNER - Cassandra prepares to face her true nature as something other than human while avoiding relentless hunters bent on her capture...
Cassie came awake after they pulled her from the MRI scanner. They reinserted her IV and restarted the bag of whatever the medicine was that kept her in a loopy state and feeling indifferent. She was covered with blankets and didn't know what happened to her clothes. Glancing around, she saw no familiar faces except for the black lady from the beach with the dreadlocks.
Cassie smiled at her. The lady smiled back, but then she shook her head as if smiling back had been the wrong thing to do.
"Please," she tried saying but her throat was dry. "Water."
Some guy in a lab coat approached and tilted a bottle of water to her lips. She drank almost all of it.
Cassie tried getting her bearings. What was she doing here? Where was Rafe?
"Get me a pint of the specimen's blood and prep it for surgery," said some guy with a bossy voice.
"What are you going to do?" The dreadlocks lady asked.
The bossy guy answered. "Human trials. I'll transfuse its blood and extract some of its bone marrow. The recipient should then be able to synthesize new, enhanced blood from the bone marrow."
"Who's going to be the recipient?"
"Why me, of course."
Cassie wondered if she heard correctly. Were they talking about her? One of the attendants called the bossy man, Doctor Armando.
The dreadlocks lady said something to Doctor Armando that angered him for some reason Cassie couldn't make out.
He spoke in a bossier than usual tone. "I don't feel the need to justify my actions for you, but I can see from your face that you think of me as some sort of psychopath or at the very least a sadist."
"That's exactly what you are," the lady told him.
"Did you receive a flu inoculation?"
Straining to follow the conversation, Cassie felt confused by the seemingly non-sequitur question.
"Yes, I did," the lady answered.
"Do you feel bad how over a hundred Rhesus monkeys were intentionally infected with the flu virus in order to test the efficacy of the vaccine? Do you lie awake at night pondering how those beasts suffered? Do feel the least twinge of guilt over their sacrifice so that you could stay safe?"
"Your analogy doesn't fly. You're violating a girl, not a monkey."
"It's not human," he shouted. "It's Homo sirenas."
"You disgust me, Doctor Armando."
The man who had been with the lady spoke up. "Claudia, maybe you should leave."
"No, I want to be a witness to this atrocity."
Cassie felt confused and frightened. What were they talking about?
"I'm no monster." Armando seemed to be pleading now. "This Homo sirenas is prime, young, and healthy. Its blood and its DNA can be synthesized to cure human diseases. I'm trying to save human lives."
She was so tired, she could only mumble, "My name is Cassie."
The doctor continued to lecture the people with him. Cassie got bored listening to him drone on and on. She fell asleep. When she woke, they had repositioned her on her tummy. She also realized they had strapped her down.
"Ready to proceed," someone said.
Doctor Armando scolded someone. "No. Don't sedate the specimen. This will be a good test of the effectiveness of Descansar. The pain it experiences will be excruciating. Under normal circumstances it would trigger the specimen's flight and fight response and cause it to transform. Monitor its eyes. If they go black, immediately increase the dosage."
"Cassie, my name is Cassie. I'm not an it," she mumbled.
A little while later, the pain he mentioned came. It felt as if someone was using a power drill boring a hole into her hip. Her entire body seized against the straps holding her down. She screamed in agony.
The dreadlock lady shouted, "That's enough."
The drilling ceased. Several voices erupted into a cacophony of shouts and arguments. Dreadlock lady came to her side and spoke softly. "Miss, I won't let him hurt you anymore until you're sedated. I'm adding it to your IV line now. You can sleep."
She was tired of sleeping and wanted to go home. Fighting the drug trickling into her vein was no use. A thick fog settled over her and she drifted away.
The next time Cassie woke, she was still strapped down and on her stomach. Her hip bloomed with pain. It felt shredded.
"Number three, you're awake," Doctor Armando said. "I'm going to unstrap you now. The Descansar is wearing off. When it does, I want you to transform. You won't be able to hurt anyone because you'll be locked in a padded, secured room. We'll be able to observe you through cameras. Transforming is necessary to study your healing process. I removed several samples of bone marrow from your hip. You'll regenerate and heal quickly while in a transformed state."
He unstrapped her and hurried out of the room as if frightened. Before closing the door, he said, "You may begin."
It struck Cassie as funny. "You may begin," she parroted back at him, except he had already left. The man was a dick. She could barely move because of the pain much less transform. Besides, becoming her altered self was not something she learned yet how to voluntarily control.
A few minutes later she heard Armando's voice. "Please cooperate."
She looked all around for the disembodied voice and noticed speakers in the corners of the room. "It hurts when I try to move. I'm still in pain from what you did to me."
"Never mind what I did to you. Once you transform, I'm sure the pain will abate."
Doctor Armando seemed to know a lot about her kind. Why didn't he know she couldn't just snap her fingers and grow a tail? Slowly, carefully, she was able to sit up on the gurney, careful to keep the blanket from slipping off and exposing her. The effort was exhausting.
The disembodied voice returned. "This is your last chance. Transform, or I will have to introduce an incentive to force you to do so."
As Cassie regained her senses and her mind began to clear, she finally realized her situation. The hunters had captured her. The captivity and torture she feared all her life had finally become a reality.
She would die here.
Tears ran down her cheeks. Where was Rafe? Where was Mister Webb? Why hadn't their safeguards been able to protect her? Had they tried to save her and gotten hurt or killed in the process?
She sobbed and began to hiccup. She couldn't find any tissues so she wiped her nose against the blanket.
"So be it," Doctor Armando said over the speaker. "I tried being reasonable with you, but you won't cooperate."
She heard the whirr of a motor. The padding against the far wall lifted as if a theater curtain was being raised.
When Cassie saw what lie behind the padding, her heart shattered into a million pieces.
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Question - What did Cassie see that might cause her to transform?
