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"Not exactly." It was a silly thought to him; most of the islanders were rather dissimilar. No one seemed to come close in appearance to his draconic features, at least. The island certainly wasn't without its other oddities, but of them he was one of only a handful he'd ever heard of that weren't disturbed by the irreversible changes they'd withstood. His tail swished back and forth in unconscious agitation. Thoughts of the past always meant thinking about his past opinions, and worthless and wrong as they were, he'd had them. Just thinking about them gave him the horrible feeling that someone knew, had figured out his thoughts simply from looking at him. He didn't believe those things any more though! Sabin couldn't punish him for any of that - he was long since over the foolish thoughts of vengeance or escape. "Well, what I didn't know was that this wasn't a legitimate job offer. I'm not sure what you were told. Doesn't matter though, you're not going anywhere. I could tell you everything I know about this island, that lab, and the people around here, but you wouldn't believe most of it."

"I'll put it this way. I was human once," he started with an almost bitter quality as he referenced the past. His tone changed to something more like admiration as he continued, the hint of a crocodile's blank grin on his face. His appearance was far from beautiful, and even he couldn't deny that. But he more than made up for it in being imposing and fierce. He was nearly twice his original height, and of course, had several limbs more than he arrived with, including an arm he'd lost to his own mistake. As far as he was concerned, it was infinitely better than the frightened thing he'd been when he'd arrived. "But I'm better now."

"I have my ways." Everyone thought of escape. There was nothing worth saying on the subject to the Hispanic that he wouldn't figure out on his own. Besides, he'd have to mention the low morale around the island. Zach had no interest in encouraging the escape attempts. "You're not going to Cuba. There's no way to leave here. If you try, you'll get yourself into very serious trouble."

At being called crazy, he actually threw his head back a little and laughed, once again making strangled, catlike noises. If there was one thing he was sure about, it was that he wasn't crazy. The rowdy, discontent islanders were the crazy ones. Sabin had agreed with him about this, and like hell did this new man's words have more value than Sabin's judgment. He caught the eyes roving over his monstrous form and the twitching in Manuel's face. Zach knew that all-consuming fear that he was seeing in those eyes. "I know it's hard to believe right now. I've been there. You'll just have to wait till it really sinks in. It could be a couple minutes, it could be a few days, maybe it won't actually get though to you until you start changing yourself. I told you, you wouldn't believe me. I'm not happy about wasting my breath."

Zach was put off a bit by the nervous movements of the Hispanic. How in the hell was he supposed to prove that he was slated as an animal person? "I don't need to prove anything to you! I'm your proof. Here, very alive, and definitely not human. What are you, nearsighted? Blind? Do you think you'd really be allowed to just leave when you've seen things that modern science couldn't recreate in a hundred years?"

"My name is Zachary," he grumbled in annoyance, taking a step back from Manuel as the man had his little meltdown of realization. He was not interested in being a target of violence, and the man was large enough to be a danger. And 'lizard-thing'? He was a dragon, thank you very much. "Nothing magical. They use injections. Needles. I'm guessing you got a shot whenever you arrived here. That's one of them. It's not instantaneous. You've probably got a while before your first one to get used to this place. If you wait too long after a change, more than a couple of months, you'll get really sick. So don't think of missing them, either."

"It's in your best interests to cooperate here and not cross any of the doctors. But you'll be good, won't you, Manuel?" he smirked knowingly. He used the first name specifically to sound more informal than their little talk was. Hopefully this would be convincing enough. If not, he did have a small jar nestled in his medicine pouch if the Hispanic didn't take the verbal hint. His tail was moving once again just at the thought of that classic revenge.

"Yes. The doctors. Because that building is a laboratory, this is an experiment, and you," he paused as though he were dredging up some sort of prepared speech to an ESL learner, "are dead to anyone who may go looking for you. Muerto - that's the word, right? Let's see if I can put this into words you can understand... Usted es muerto."

Zach waited out the foreign babbling with a roll of his eye and a hand to his forehead, sighing from sheer aggravation. When he didn't tell them what was really going on, they got pissed off. And when he did, they got pissed off. On top of it all, it seemed he had another rowdy rebel on his hands. Another Gaius? He was willing to do anything in his power to prevent that. His curiosity was slightly piqued by the mention of red hair - Zach had only ever seen Moreau once. Of course, having been thrown on the floor, tied up in rope and chain, and nearly blinded by the ceiling lights, he hadn't seen the doctor as much as he'd heard him force Zach to beg for his life. It was one of those little things he was more than content to keep to himself. Needless to say, he too wasn't fond of Moreau in the least.

"And what are you going to do? Yell at them till they apologize sincerely and give you a one-way plane ticket out of here? You're in for a bad case of laryngitis." Right as he finished his venomous argument, Zach suddenly remembered the man's mention of a wife and kids, and realized why the Hispanic was in such a huff. Picking off a parent seemed to be an unusually bad choice on the part of whoever had chosen to detain him on the island permanently. Likely it had been Moreau, which wouldn't have surprised Zach. He was just glad he knew who had picked him, and why. "People have tried to escape their destiny here, and they suffer for it. I've seen several attempts. One person nearly drowned, another two were stuck surviving in the jungle for months. Doesn't sound so bad, except that there's a killer wolf lurking out there who'll attack anything that gets in its path. Would you like to take your chances with it?"

"Nn-hnn." He made a bored noise of agreement in response to the wolf question, avoiding the tricky sound of the letter M. The rim of scales lining his mouth were nowhere near as flexible as lips, and fact that they didn't line a simian mouth but a crocodile-like maw did nothing to aid in making English easy to speak. He didn't really have any other choice, though. At least he'd dealt with the change in mouth shape for some months before his final change. To be honest, he knew little about the situation with Annie. There had been some panic, he knew, and it was more than justified when the crazed wolf crashed a drinking party on the beach months before. But since then, there had been no sign of her. Jamal, instead, was the one featured in island gossip as a deranged.

"They weren't allowed to." Zach didn't let himself get taken in so easily by the sudden change in demeanor. Just because the man was finally shutting up long enough to figure out how stupid he'd been to howl about escape didn't mean he wasn't going to consider attacking the dragon. He tapped a couple of finger-like toes on the ground as he considered his response. It all came down to the chips, and like any fresh-off-the-mainland human, he'd probably resent them. Zach considered them a lifesaver, both for himself and for others, even if those others refused to accept the facts. "There's a little computer chip in everyone's neck. They can knock you out remotely if you do anything wrong, like attack someone else. So if they want anyone to stay out of this, ah, village, they just knock them out any time they get too close. Pretty simple. They don't use it unless they have to, if you were wondering."

"But before you start pitying yourself and cursing those chips, you might want to think about something..." Zach knew exactly what happened without the chips. That one night the power went out, his chip was also out of service, and he had nearly taken Aubrey's life. And without the chips he wouldn't have survived all the attempts on his life. For his own safety, he needed his chip. "If some predator around here decides you look like prey to them, you're going to be glad the labs can stop them from ripping your throat out. And if someday you happen to be that predator, you'll be just as glad you were stopped before you did something you'd regret."

Zach shrugged, figuring the man had already been chipped somehow. He had absolutely no idea how they got the chip in, only that he didn't believe it was really there until he'd received the first of many electric shocks. The labs could do anything, as far as Zach was concerned. As far as he'd seen, Sabin rarely appeared to have any limitations on his power. There had been that one time when the doctor was stuck in the village, and later handcuffed, interrogated right next to Zach for the same crime of attempting to kill Aubrey. It wasn't really weakness so much as it was that the doctor had no more power than the islanders, in the long run. But Zach didn't want to think of him that way, as powerless, or he'd also have to contend with the possibility that he would never get his eye back. The island had certainly taught him to keep his mind as blank as possible for his own safety. Manuel luckily seemed to understand what the chips were for. "Well, you're finally catching on."

"I wasn't talking about myself," he growled defensively. Zach bared his teeth in a grimace at the accusation, frill flared. He took a daring step forward, gesturing a little as he spoke with those sharp claws slicing the air. "It's everyone else who can't keep their claws to themselves. I lost my eye to an idiot with a bad temper. It's damn lucky something was done to him. If he's smart he won't try anything like that again."

"Yeah, well, they're not psychic. And some people here are... unpredictable. You just need to know who to look out for if you want to avoid getting ripped to pieces." He shifted a little uneasily. There were so many of them... "They can stop the worst from happening. In my experience, there's not much they can do to stop an attacker here the first time if they're fast, though I'm doing what I can to keep people from getting so crazy. You just need them to be taught not to go after you again. Make examples out of those few so that everyone else doesn't have to go through the same to get the message. And there's ways to do that."

Zach touched his sunken, scarred eye lightly with two fingers, pensive, but drew them back just as quickly. Sabin had reprimanded him for doing that before. He didn't want to go against the doctor, especially since it would only hurt him if he kept poking at the empty eye socket. It didn't come as a surprise any more to Zach that Sabin was always right.

"I... think he must be, but if he has any sense he'll never attack anyone again. Unless he'd prefer to be blind, he shouldn't be a problem for you or anyone." Zach drew a small jar from a handmade leather pouch at his waist, carefully holding it by the lid with his curved claws. The jar itself was totally unremarkable, but the human eye giving the jungle a dead stare from the sea of embalming fluid within was a much less normal sight. It didn't seem to bother Zach at all, but he had to like what he was given. If Sabin graced him with a piece of physical proof that he had avenged Zach, the dragon would not turn it down. And if he didn't get his eye back after all... it would have to serve as enough. He echoed the philosophy behind Sabin's choice of action with approval. "An eye for an eye."

"Exactly!" Zach had a certain level of contempt for the man, seeing as he was, for the moment, quite human. However, he sounded smarter than a lot of the people who'd been here considerably longer. Here was someone with their priorities straight!

The eye loss didn't hit him as hard as it could have, aside from the daily pain he drowned in painkillers and the odd feeling of an empty socket. He could still see, after all. And it wasn't as debilitating as the loss of an arm, that was for sure. Still, he shouldn't have been attacked in the first place. He needed it back. They didn't have a goddamn right to keep tearing him apart.

"Of course you'll be safe. See, uh, most of the serious injuries here are... deliberate. For your own safety, you'll probably want to avoid mentioning me or what I've told you to anyone else you meet. I think you can get a good idea of how they all feel about me from this." He proffered the jar one last time before slipping it back in the pouch, sounding fairly disgusted himself. He completely failed to notice the lack of enthusiasm in his expression. Any sincerity, even fake, was better than being ravaged by teeth and claws. After so many failures at showing people the light, he was willing to invest some extra effort in ensnaring the Hispanic. "You have the right idea, though. If anyone gives you trouble, come talk to me... The labs will be watching out for you, regardless."

As though that answered everything, he gave Manuel a knowing grin. With a quick wave of a razor-tipped hand, he continued walking past the Hispanic, off toward the rows of duplexes. His wings dragged in the air a little, but didn't slow him down given how he could barely get past a brisk walking pace anyhow.