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Aspen

Part 3

As I lost myself in my mind, the shards of memory floating around me slowly crystallized into a coherent form...

~~~

[THREE MONTHS EARLIER]

I knocked loudly on the door. "Hey! Anyone out there?"

"What do you want?" A bored voice responded. Probably a security guard.

"I want to talk to Kris."

Silence.

I had no idea if this was going to work. I had to try, though; I was going out of my mind. I had been cooped up in that room for over a month, and the monotony was getting to me. Sure, I had almost anything I could request; movies, video games, high-speed internet... but at a certain point, you just need some actual human interaction, you know?

I knocked on the door again. "Hello?" No response.

I sighed, collapsed on my bed, and spent the next several minutes pondering my situation. It wasn't all that bad, all things considered. I had a bunch of friends online that I talked with regularly, so it wasn't like I was totally starved of social contact. But I was tired of living my entire life within a single apartment-sized room.

A notification popped up on my computer, just a couple meters away from my bed. Incoming video call from Kris Fox. I quickly moved over to my desk chair and answered the call.

"Alan." She smiled at me. "I heard you wanted to talk. Good timing; the latest shipment just went out."

Kris might have been smiling, but she still looked menacing. It wasn't hard for her; she was - as her name might suggest - a fox hybrid. (She changed her name to "Fox" after the hybridization - a rather unimaginative name, I thought, but I didn't dare to say it to her face.) Even smiling made Kris look dangerous, given that she had some very pointy teeth. If I had to pick one adjective to describe Kris, it would be "sharp" - not just because she was smart, but also because she would gladly stab you in the back if she decided it was worth it. She owned and ran the largest Blue Fire synthesis operation in the country, and while the drug-running industry wasn't as cutthroat as it had been just a few decades ago, she was still dangerous. Which made this call incredibly risky.

"Yeah, I... kinda wanted to talk about that," I said cautiously. "I was just wondering if, uh... well, I've been here for a long time. And I'm... um."

"Get to the point."

I swallowed nervously. "I kinda wanted to go outside."

She sighed. "You know that we can't risk any outside contaminants getting into the samples we get from you. People pay a lot of money for this shit, and the last thing we need is to accidentally kill someone just because you needed some fresh air."

"Listen, Kris. It's driving me insane, being stuck in here constantly."

"You agreed to the arrangement, Alan."

"Yes, I know I did, but..." I sighed. Might as well just go for it. "I want to take a vacation."

Kris's eyes narrowed, and she bared her teeth angrily. "No."

"Please. I feel like a prisoner in here."

"You don't need a vacation."

"You need me to be in good shape, right? I can't give you the samples for the Blue Fire unless I'm healthy and happy."

"Let's get one thing straight." She glared at me. "Your happiness is not a priority. If we need to keep you sedated and feed you through an I.V., we will."

I shivered. We both knew it, but I hadn't been expecting her to just straight-up say it; it was honestly a bit terrifying to hear her put it so bluntly.

Her expression softened. "Listen, Alan. You're a big investment for us. We can't go risking your life. Anything could happen to you on a... vacation. You are, quite literally, irreplaceable."

Yet again, the key issue here was my HNR. Fuller wasn't the only person who had figured out how to take advantage of the condition; the whole process of synthesizing Blue Fire required a lot of blood samples from me.

"Yeah, but... please, Kris. I've done so much for you. Also, you said you just finished the latest shipment." Blue Fire wasn't your typical street drug; it's the sort of thing that rich, spoiled kids tended to use. Thus, Kris deliberately kept the supply low and the price high; we only made one or two large batches per month.

She looked down for a moment; I could see her thinking carefully. Doing some sort of cost/benefit calculations, no doubt. I waited patiently. Finally, she came to a conclusion.

"How long do you want?"

I could hardly believe it. "Uh... one month?"

"Sure. One month, and that's it."

"...Really?" I was a bit suspicious; I hadn't expected it to be so easy. "You're just... letting me?"

"I've got my reasons. Don't worry. Just make sure you're ready to come back in a month."

"Oh. Thanks. Thank you so much."

"We'll be keeping a close eye on you, of course. We can't have anything happening to you."

"Yeah, of course."

And just like that, I was out.

~~~

It only took me about two days of my vacation to decide that I wasn't going back.

The problem, of course, was figuring out how to make sure Kris couldn't come after me. Her drug-running had made her a lot of money, and more importantly, gained her a lot of influence. She had operations going on across the entire country, and had all kinds of resources at her disposal. I couldn't just run away; I had to disappear completely - and moreover, I had to plan it all without tipping off whoever she had assigned to keep watch on me.

It was frustrating; after a couple of weeks, I had made literally no progress. The only idea I could even come up with was to sell my services to some other drug-running operation and hope that they would give me a bit more freedom. Not for the first time, I cursed myself for getting into Kris's organization in the first place; I should have seen that something like this would happen eventually. Straying outside of the law was a big risk, and making myself irreplaceable was an even bigger mistake. They could - and would- go to any lengths to keep a hold on me.

Then, I got the message from Jenna.

_ "Alan: I'd like to talk to you. I gather you're in a bit of trouble right now. I work for some people who would very much like to help you out. Let's meet up for lunch and talk about it."_Below, she put the address of a local café.

I was immediately suspicious. I hadn't talked to Jenna in years; how did she know about my relatively recent problems? How much did she know about my trouble? How the hell did she even know that I lived in the area? For all I knew, she was working for Kris, and was trying to lure me into some kind of trap. For Jenna to be offering to help me, out of the blue, after several years... It was almost too good to be true.

But it was intriguing, and I was running out of options. I couldn't pass this up; I just had to be careful...

~~~

Again, the memory faded, and my awareness returned to the procedure lab. This time, though, I could still feel a strange tingling across my body - concentrated particularly in my lower back. The nanomachines were still active. Why was I awake? Had they simply stopped work on my brain for a brief moment?

A sharp pain spiked at the base of my spine, and I spasmed violently. A split second later, I was sitting upright, breaking through the restraints like they were tissue paper. I heard alarms going off, but I could only pay attention to one thing: The tail that was slowly but visibly growing from my lower back. I could feel it stretching and expanding, as my nervous system expanded to accommodate the new limb. It glistened brightly and had a visible pattern across it - dark green scales, solidifying as I watched. I quickly noticed that the tail wasn't the only part of me covered in the rapidly-hardening scales; my entire body had developed a similar pattern. My skin - or rather, scales - felt cold, but oddly soothing. It was a nice change after the sensation of burning that had accompanied the nanomachines' activity earlier.

My activity had not gone unnoticed by the occupants of the lab. "Director!" someone cried.

"I see it! How did he get out of the restraints?" Fuller was yelling. "What the hell happened?"

"I don't know! He just snapped through them!"

"Listen, Alan!" Fuller said, running up to the glass of the containment chamber. "You need to stop moving around! It's not safe!"

I ignored him, preoccupied with the changes that were continuing even as I watched. My feet slowly elongated, and I could see my toenails slowly changing into massive claws. A similar process was happening to my hands, although with significantly smaller claws. I flexed them a few times, observing as the claws extended and retracted. Neat.

Meanwhile, Fuller had turned back to the lab techs monitoring the controls. "Sedate him! We need him to stop moving! He could completely ruin everything!"

"The sedative isn't taking hold!" A lab tech yelled back. "Someone needs to get in there and hold him - "

"No! We can't risk anything getting in or out of containment! It needs to stay sealed!"

"What do we do?"

Fuller approached the glass again. "Alan. _Please._Listen to me. You need to lie down. You could permanently damage yourself if you keep moving around."

I looked up. I tried to process what he was saying, but couldn't quite get a hold on it; my mind was... foggy, somehow. What was going on? I couldn't think.

A lab tech spoke up. "I think the sedatives are taking hold!" Sure enough, I started feeling dizzy. The room started to spin. I still didn't... know what was... going on...

As Fuller watched me anxiously, the room turned on its side, and I collapsed into unconsciousness.