The smell hits you first — antiseptic and something animal, sharp in the back of your throat — before your eyes open. Harsh white light beats down from a grid of panels overhead. Your arms and legs will not move: thick leather straps pin your wrists and ankles to a surgical bed, and your tongue is dry as cotton. The last thing you remember is the bar, the late cold, and then nothing.
Around the room, machines blink. A steel table beside you holds a neat row of syringes and glass vials. A tall figure in a white biohazard suit stands in the corner and lifts a radio to their mask.
"Subject H-0583 is awake. Proceed."
The door hisses open and more of them file in — white suits, clipboards. One of them wears greyish-blue instead of white and leans over you, close enough to see their face through the plastic shield: a surgeon, older, stern.
"I am Dr. Morrow, one of the surgeons here at Meridian Biolabs. Today we begin your hybridisation. It will continue over several weeks. Your care has been assigned to two handlers — Miss Imogen Darby, and Mr Linden Quade — until we decide which of them is best suited to be your sole handler."
The surgeon studies you.
"You have no animal assigned. I have made that choice twice already this week, and I would rather not make it a third time. So I am giving it to you. This is an incredibly rare opportunity."
Behind the surgeon, one of the white suits lifts his face shield. Linden Quade — lean, dark-haired, a keycard hanging from a lanyard at his neck — meets your eyes and does not look away. When the surgeon turns to the tray of vials, Linden steps to the head of your bed, close enough that only you can hear him.
"Your name,"
he says, low.
"Tell him the animal, and I'll write your name on the chart myself — not the number."