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Aspen

Chapter 2.1

~~~

I gradually surfaced from sleep, my idle mind trying to figure out what had awoken me. I was still puzzling it over when someone knocked on the door again. Yes, that was it. Someone wasn't willing to let me have my rest. Sure, I thought. It's not like I just went through a major mental and physical transformation yesterday and might, y'know, need some sleep...

Another knock on the door. Whoever was there was really being persistent. I stuck my nose out from the pile of blankets and tasted the air gently. I could detect faint odors from all kinds of sources - the practically-raw meat from last night's dinner; the bleach from the recently-cleaned room; a faint burning smell from the room heater... and coming from the door, a scent that I quickly recognized as Jenna's. My guess was quickly confirmed as she called out to me, knocking heavily on the door again.

"Alan? Are you awake?"

"Aspen," I yelled, still not rising from the pile of blankets I had arranged in front of the heater. "Not Alan."

"Crap. Sorry." I didn't blame her; she had known me as Alan for years. "Fuller wants to do some more testing," she continued. "You should probably be waking up."

I hissed angrily. "Fine. I'm getting up."

"We'll be in Lab 2. Come and find us when you're ready." I heard Jenna's footsteps echoing as she walked off.

I groaned as I stretched and uncoiled myself, tossing off the blankets I had taken from the bed. One of the first things I had figured out after emerging from the procedure was that I really liked warmth; like most reptiles, I was cold-blooded, and couldn't produce enough body heat by myself to really be comfortable. The heater in my room - which I hadn't even bothered to use prior to the transformation - was now turned to its maximum setting and pressed directly against the pile of blankets I had arranged as a sort of nest. My scales provided pretty good thermal insulation, as Fuller had informed me, but having a powerful source of heat near which to sleep still felt incredibly good.

I finally cracked open my eyes and stood up slowly, using my tail to help push me upright. It was remarkable, really, how quickly I had adapted to using it; it simply felt right. It was already instinctive to use it to help balance myself, and I had been surprised by how useful it was. It's not like I was particularly unstable on my feet to begin with, but having the extra leverage made me feel oddly confident.

As I walked over to the door, I glanced at the bare mattress. I had been using it ever since I had moved into the Spec-Res labs, but now I simply couldn't sleep in it. I don't know if it was too soft, but something felt wrong about it; even sleeping on the floor felt better, especially with the nest of blankets I had built.

At the door, I reached out to turn off the lights, and paused when I realized I had never even turned them on. Until that moment, I hadn't quite internalized just how good my vision was in the dark; I could see the details of the room so well that it might as well have been brightly lit. Now that I stopped to pay attention, though, I realized that the room's colors were significantly faded, and nothing in the room was casting a shadow.

I started to wonder. How quickly can my eyesight adjust to bright light? If I can see this well in the dark, then my eyes can probably adjust quite a lot. Impulsively, I flipped on the lights, and immediately regretted the decision. The sudden brightness was almost physically painful; for several moments, I worried I had blinded myself. Even through closed eyelids, the light was harsh. Slowly, though, my vision adjusted, and as the spots faded from my vision, I made a mental note: Do not do that again.

Enough screwing around, I thought. I should go find Fuller and learn what he wants to test. Hopefully it involves breakfast.

~~~

"Okay. So, combined with the testing we did last night, it looks like your digestive system can handle pretty much anything a human can, plus a reasonable amount more." Fuller paged through the notes on his tablet. "It looks like you also successfully dealt with the salmonella and E. coli, so that's good news."

I froze mid-bite, and slowly set the partially-eaten sausage back on my plate. "Did you actually... is this food...?" Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Jenna carefully setting a (thankfully uneaten) strawberry back on my serving tray.

Fuller didn't seem to notice. "The poison tests were also a success... We're not going to try any nerve agents, though, since those could have a chance of seriously damaging you." He looked up and saw Jenna's and my horrified stares. "What?"

"You tried to _poison_me?!" I could barely contain my outrage.

"It's all safe, Aspen," he replied. "If your digestive and immune systems had missed anything, the nanobots we had monitoring your system would have dealt with it before it could hurt you."

"You couldn't have told me ahead of time?"

"Well, no, not really," he said, in a tone that suggested he was confused by the question. "If you got all worked up about it, then it might interfere with the testing."

Despite having worked closely with Fuller for nearly two months, I still hadn't quite gotten used to his complete disregard for people's feelings. He was basically always like this, especially with anything that he saw as vital to his work. Well, at least he seems to have accepted my new name, I thought.

"Right then," he said. "On to the next item in the checklist... ah, active camouflage."

"Is that what I think it is?" I asked.

"If you're thinking about chameleons, then yes. You should be able to change the color of your scales. It's a very experimental design, though, so don't get discouraged if it's hard to control. I'm pretty sure that..." Fuller looked through his notes. "Right, you should be able to change color just by focusing and visualizing the end result that you want."

I nodded and closed my eyes, imagining my body. For the most part, my scales were a dark green color, though a paler green stripe ran down my neck, across my chest and belly, and all the way down the underside of my tail. I should probably start simple, I decided, and imagined the colors gradually shifting to a shade of blue. Blue was always my color. I focused hard, putting as much effort as I could into making the image as detailed and real as possible. Finally, after a few moments, I opened my eyes.

Nothing had changed. I examined myself, but I didn't see any sign that my scales had changed in the slightest.

Fuller frowned at his tablet. "Well, the monitoring 'bots registered the command to change color, but apparently it isn't quite working. I'll get the lab that was working on the active camouflage to check out these readings, and hopefully get it all fixed up."

He shrugged. "As I said, it's very experimental. Oh well. Next item... low-light vision."

"Oh, yeah, that's working," I laughed, remembering my experience earlier in the morning. "It makes me painfully sensitive to bright lights, though."

"Well, we can probably make some tweaks to that. Next..."

~~~

The testing went on for several hours. It was useful, but tiring - partially due to Fuller's desire to test my strength, agility, and endurance. At last, Fuller exhausted all the items on his checklist, and I collapsed into a chair as he went off to inform the other labs of our results.

"So, what do you think?" Jenna settled into a chair next to me. Due to our personal connection, when I was originally brought to Spec-Res, she had been put in charge of making sure I was comfortable. It was mildly awkward, given our two years of dating and subsequent breakup, but I had gradually gotten used to it.

"About what?" I replied.

"Well... this. You. Your body," she said, gesturing at me. "How are you feeling?"

"It's... impressive, I guess. I'm way stronger and more agile than I've ever been. I won't lie to you, it feels good. It's just..." I paused. How could I really put this into words? I didn't want to offend anyone. "I'm still not comfortable with being basically a prototype super-soldier. I don't really want to kill people, and it's so obvious that I was designed to be a killing machine."

Jenna stared at me with an odd look on her face. "I thought you were pretty open to working with the military."

I returned the puzzled stare. Jenna knew I didn't much like the military... right? Then, it clicked. Of course.

"You knew, didn't you? About the personality modification stuff." I didn't even need her to confirm it; she had to have been consulted in the first place just so that they knew what to change. It was obvious.

Her eyes widened. "What? No! We didn't do -"

I cut her off. "I know what you and Fuller tried to do. It didn't work. Not all of it, at least."

She paled. "Listen, Alan."

"Aspen."

"Aspen. Right. We didn't mean any harm. We just wanted to help, to make sure you'd be comfortable in your new body. We didn't want your mind to reject it."

"There were modifications that would have made me completely loyal to Fuller. You might as well have been trying to take away my free will. That's pretty far from 'just trying to help.'"

"How do you even _know_all that?"

"I fought back against the mental changes. I got to see everything they were trying to do, and then picked out which parts to allow and which parts to block. I allowed the stuff that would help me adjust to the new body, but most of the personality modifications got blocked."

"...Shit." Jenna leaned back with a sigh. "I should have known that was a bad idea. You were always stubborn." She reached into a pocket and pulled out her phone. "I should let Fuller know about this-"

I felt a flare of anger, and before I knew what was happening, I had leaped at Jenna and wrapped my claws around her throat, lifting her out of her chair one-handedly.

"Tell. Nobody," I hissed softly.

"Gkhh - can't - breathe -" Jenna choked, grasping desperately at her neck, eyes bulging. She kicked at me ineffectively, dangling from my outstretched arm.

Suddenly, my mind caught up to my actions. What the hell am I doing?! I let go of Jenna, dropping her unceremoniously onto her chair. Why did I do that? That was... scary._I backed away, staring at my hands as if they had grabbed Jenna of their own accord. _That's really not like me. Did I maybe let through more of the personality changes than I had meant to?

Jenna caught my eye, and I could see her sheer terror. She was afraid of me, and I honestly couldn't blame her; I was almost afraid of myself. I had completely lost control, and I had no idea what had caused it or where it had come from. I can't even trust myself, I thought in shock. What scared me most was just how easy it had been.

"I... I'm sorry. I don't know what came over me." I knew, even as I said it, that it was woefully inadequate.

Jenna picked up her phone from where she had dropped it, and slowly slipped it back into her pocket. "I... I won't tell anyone," she said hoarsely. "Nobody. Not even Fuller."

We stood there for a moment, watching each other warily. I didn't know what to say. I had nearly strangled her; "sorry" didn't quite cut it. The silence was almost deafening.

That was when the alarms went off.

Blaring sirens, accompanied by flashing red lights across the entire lab, started going crazy. A voice sounded on the building's speaker system. "Warning. The Spec-Res laboratories are now in lockdown. Follow emergency procedure L-2. Repeat: The Spec-Res laboratories are now in lockdown; we are under attack. This is not a drill. We are under attack -"

And just like that, the power cut out, plunging us into complete darkness.