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"The thing is... these men weren't even changed all that much. I mean, I've met several others here that looked a lot weirder.. a lot more.. animalistic, but they were perfectly civil!" Nita sighed and bit her lip.

She grinned at the would-be offer of tea. "That's okay. I'm not a big drinker of tea anyway." She sat cross-legged, suprisingly cheered by that little slip.

"Yeah," she said in agreement. "Stick together and avoid the scary ones!"

Nita slipped off her sandals and sat cross-legged, clearly a bit more comfortable now in Annie's presence. "She wants it on the beach, with a bonfire, food, and music if she can get it. Seems like she's basically trying to spread the word. She's remarkably good at convincing people to help her." Nita grinned and nodded as Angharad leaned forward.

"I know what you mean, and I've never really been a fan of parties, anyway. I figure, if we have to be stuck here, at least it's on a gorgeous island, with some pretty decent people, so we might as well enjoy ourselves as much as possible."

Nita snickered at Angharad's expression. "I'm not giving up, not at all, but it certainly won't hurt to have some fun." She nodded, a determined look on her face.

"And hey," she continued, softly, "A lot of people don't look so bad. And even Cass, who's a giant snake with wings, well, we had a really good talk the other day. They're still people. We're still people." Nita smiled; a real smile. She squeezed Annie's hand.

"Thanks for listening. It really helped..."

"Yeah..." Most likely, Angharad really wouldn't be going anywhere. Nita pushed the thought away fiercely. "Anyway, I'm gonna go and make up some lists for this party."

Nita unfolded her slender legs and stood up, knees popping. She made an amused face at the sound, obviously well-accustomed to it. "Thanks again," she said, and made her way to the door.

'Emergency Surgery Sheet Tent' _________________________________________________//
Fiona/Angharad


Fiona stared up at the ceiling with a forlorn glare, rolling over on her awful, stiff, unwelcoming bed and pressing her face into the pillow. How long had she been on the island? How long was it since she'd last seen her parents, heard her mother laugh and seen her father's eyes twinkle with joy? Nostalgia hit her like a wave of anguish, and, craving a familiar face, she rolled over and then stood on her bed to give the ceiling a bang with her fist. "AAaaannnnniiiiieeeee!" She wailed pitiously.

Annie murmured, bringing her face up from the pillow, eyes sandy. She hadn't been able to get much sleep since arriving, and somehow this once she'd managed to nap... but she couldn't avoid that folorn wail. Wouldn't want to avoid.
Rolling off the bed where she had been lying on top of the covers, she stamped twice on the floor in a signal to say she was coming out, and pattered over to the door in bare feet, opening the door and still frowning at the evening jungle that stared back at her. She sighed, and continued downwards, stairs cool on her skin. She knocked perfunctorily on the door and then peered her head around. "It's me," she said, despite knowing that it wasn't exactly likely to be anyone else.

Fiona was already almost to the door, a miserable expression plastered on her face. "I hate this. I want to go home. Where people actually cared. I'm so sick of everything." Her mouth screwed up in anger. "Everyone is so god damn accepting of all this s**t. I can't stand it!" The sudden explosion of temper melted just as quickly into a sad, depressed tone of voice. "I want mom and dad. I want to sleep in my bed with my pillow and my ugly green wallpaper." Unexpectedly, she threw her arms around her best friend and hugged her tightly, holding back the tears she didn't dare shed.

Annie's face crumpled, returning the hug strongly as Fee's words hit her like a wave. She closed the door carefully behind them with a foot, and murmured stupid phrases like 'it's alright', when it wasn't, and 'I'm here' , which at least she was. But she held herself up fiercely; normally it was Fee who was the strong one, the one she could cry to... but here, perhaps this was her turn. The memory of her two brothers bickering over a cereal box, her mother being snide, sitting on Fee's bed and discussing animatedly how they would reinvent the room with that ugly green wallpaper... she tightened her fingers, but did not cry either, not yet.

"We need to get away. Away from here. Somewhere safe." Her voice wavered unsurely, brows knitting together in frustration. "It's not fair. Not fair that you got dragged into this... that we'll never-" she choked, forcing back some of the overwhelming emotion, "-never get to go home. That they're always watching. On the ******** creepy cameras we can't even see. We've gotta find somewhere safe." Fiona repeated, fingers tightening slightly on Annie's shoulders.

Angharad looked unhappy, not being able to help looking up and around the room, wondering if one of those sick lab techs was watching them right this instant, enjoying their pain and misery, and unexpectedly felt a little angry. Angry at their situation, angry at the lab, but most of all angry at the fact that her Fee had been made somehow insecure. That had never happened, not like this... not even when they sat together and spat angrily at failed relationships, or Angharad's lack of one. She nodded, eyes far away and miserable. "Have you.. have you thought of anywhere yet? I mean, I've tried thinking, but even they must be watching that girl who's living out in the jungle..."

She pulled back slowly and thoughtfully, a hand lingering on Angharad's elbow for the unspoken support that physical contact offered. "I... I dunno. I've been thinking so much, so long and hard and I've been squeezing my brain for ideas, and I don't think there's anywhere we can know for sure is safe. I think if we have to... to make somewhere safe. Like I remember I read this short story once I had to read in elementary, and there was a guy in a hospital room and there was one of those mirrors when people can see through, and so he made a tent out of his bedsheets." She paused, closing her eyes and frowning. "This is our hospital room, and the door is locked. We need to find a way to make a tent." The fact that Fiona was using metaphors showed clearly just how internally distressed she was.

Angharad bit her lip, and nodded slightly, catching Fee by the wrist. "Come, sit down," she instructed firmly, sitting down herself on the edge of Fiona's bed. "You're right. There has to be a way," and she kept her face steadfast. She hadn't thought of it yet, but she too was getting depressed about the number of people who didn't even care about it any more, and was placing all her trust in Fee. "We just need to sit down and think about it, now we have a better idea of what the -place- is like...."

She nodded slowly, joining her on the bed with a quiet compliance very much unlike herself. "You've always been the smarter one..." Fiona said softly, her own vivid reaching out to those of her companion with a lurking shadow of desperation."All I can think of is stupid stuff like throwing parties that don't work and giving speeches nobody wants to hear..." she sagged a little. "There's got to be a way. Some kind of privacy, some kind of secrecy. We'll think of something. We've got to."

Angharad stared at her hands for a moment, trying not to think too much about the party, and wishing she hadn't run away so early from it, vaguely fearful of Lauren. She looked up again, rubbing the last of the sand from her eyes with one hand, and sighed, looking around the room. "Even if we disable the cameras in the duplexes, they'll be replaced within a few hours, right? So it's got to be somewhere less easy to watch, to place cameras...."

"The thing is, anywhere we decide to set up camp, they can figure it out and put more cameras there. If we were going to do anything without them finding out, we'd have to constantly be on the move. The second we settle for one spot, it'll be more bugged than... than... the internet connection on the school computers!"

Angharad blinked, and then suddenly laughed, a trace of bitterness in it at still being able to think so easily of things from home. "You're right. They'd just watch us go there, and then set up their own camp." She shook her head slightly, the ghost of a smile reappearing. "You know, I can't get the image of us trapising around this darned island with a sheet over our heads."

A grin crept onto her face, a bit of the light returning to her eyes. "Maybe we could pretend to be a ghost and scare off the labbies. Wooo~ooooo!" She gesticulated goofily, arms falling to her sides with a flop after she'd had her giggle. "I don't know what I would do without you..."

"So I guess... we'll have to think of something else. Maybe dig an underground tunnel or something." She ran her palm back and forth across her rumpled bedspread, flattening wrinkles here and there and creating new ones. "We need to find... more people who want to help. Rex is a nice guy... but I don't think he's the kind who likes radical protesting and change and stuff. Neither is Nita. There has to be somebody... somebody who wants freedom and to stop those stupid scientists..."

Angharad returned with a 'you too' smile in her eyes, but sighed. "I know there's a lot of people I haven't met yet. There's bound to be at least one or two. Perhaps.. perhaps we just haven't met them yet. And a tunnel?" She laughed a little. "You'd get damp, and dirty, and they'd still have little cameras poking through the soil. They'd see us digging." The thought corssed her mind that anything elaborate planned would most likely be heard anyway, since they were sitting in a duplex, and she frowned.

As her thoughts of the various people she'd met tumbled through her head, a scowl darkened the girl's expression. "Did I tell you that I almost got into a fist fight with that stupid, ugly Lauren chick? She was piss drunk and shouting when I was trying to motivate these lazy asses into doing more than sitting around and saying, oh s**t I'm being experimented on. Guess I'll just be emo and angst about it but not really do anything. God, it drives me crazy!!"

Angharad looked surprised, and she scrunched her fingers into the coverlet more. "D'you.. d'you really think she's the doctor's daughter? That Lauren mongoose girl, I mean? She seemed so superior and stuck up when I saw her last..."

"His daughter?" She repeated, startled. "I didn't think about it- I'd never heard that. But I wouldn't put it past the sick ******** to do that to his own kid. Maybe that's why she got so pissed when I was badmouthing him in the caf'. But that still doesn't explain why she's so damn happy about the fact that she's turning into something nature never intended!"

"Well, when I first met her, she said she was.. and that she'd volunteered for it, and that me and Nita should just accept it..." Her voice got lower, and she looked unhappy as she rubbed the long healed shot mark on her arm. "You haven't.... felt anything strange, or anything, yet, have you?"

She shook her head angrilly. "Not yet. I was almost looking forward to getting claws or fangs or something until I remembered those things they put in the backs of our necks. The first time I met that crazy chick, she tried to kill me, I swear to god, then fell unconcious to the floor, boom, just like that. That's another thing we need to do. Is there any way we can like... cut the knock-out devices out of our necks? With like, a cafeteria steak knife and some alcohol and ice?" The subject would have made the stomach of a normal teenage girl do backflips, but Fiona wasn't that sort.

Angharad was, and she swallowed convulsively before trying to seriously consider it. "Um... it's possible.. but if it's in your neck, it's a bit too close to vital stuff to risk, I think... that's probably why that doctor put it there...." She touched the back of her neck, frowning as she let her fingers feel the odd little scar left there.

"What if we got someone else to do it? Do you think there are any ex-surgeons on the island?" She traced a fingernail up her neck. "How big do you think it is? Maybe we can convince someone to get it out, and then we can both escape into the jungle so they can't catch us and put it back in. That's really the biggest thing they have over our heads- if we could just... get it out somehow." Without thinking, Fee scratched the bumps of her spine that protruded from between her shoulders.

"It's possible... but I mean, you'd think Moreau wouldn't let ex-surgeons on.. everyone I've met so far seemed to have been tricked on purpose here..." Angharad hated putting downers on the hope, so she tried to smile. "But it is possible.. I guess one could have got washed up.."

"Yeah... so the odds aren't too good... well, maybe we'll just have to find someone with a solid stomach and wing it. But s**t, I just realised- if they see us doing it, they'll just knock all of us out! Damn damn damn. This is where we really need somewhere without any cameras."

"'Emergency Surgery Sheet Tent'?" Annie laughed a little ironically.

Fiona too laughed loudly. "Sorry. I haven't been sleeping too much. I guess my thoughts are getting kind of random. Maybe I should have a nap or something." The girl sighed softly.

Angharad looped her arm around Fiona's, smiling a little. "What do you think I was just trying to do? These beds really do suck."

Absentmindedly Fiona ruffled Annie's hair. "I'll let you get back to bed too, then. Tomorrow we can plot some more... maybe I'll have a wonderful dream where God or Buddha or Ganesh or Jesus or something tells me how to build a holy tent of privacy. You never know." She stuck out her tongue.

Angharad laughed. "Dear Higher Power, please tell us how to build you a holy tent of unwatchedness." The words were said solemenly as she hugged Fiona again. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to make you feel guilty. But napping is always a good idea." She smiled a little as she stood up.

Fiona remained on her bed, grinning up at her. "Yeah. Now go get some sleep- how am I supposed to tap into the power of your brain if you're half dead?" A gentle laugh, and Fiona had returned again to the position of protector, where she felt most natural. "I'll talk to you when I wake up, if you're around."

Annie laughed a little. "I don't really think I have anywhere else to be." Shr smiled a little sadly, and headed for the door. ".. You sleep well, okay?"

"You too." The girl responded softly, biting her lip and feeling a wave of remorse for having dragged her best friend into this mess. Once Annie was out of sight and beyond hearing, Fiona lay down and sighed, a gentle whisper slipping past her lips. "I'm sorry... for everything..."

Angharad woke muzzily, with a strange sense of deja vu. She was staring at a pale ceiling, and her whole body felt a little numb, a little abused. Perhaps.. perhaps she had finally woken from the dream?

She sat up suddenly, looking with wild hope from side to side. But her stomach felt sicker and sicker as the stark surroundings resolved not into a neat hospital, but the same dusty, empty room that she had been calling her duplex.
She was still trapped.

Angharad slowly put her head in her hands, face twisted into a bitter grin. No escape from the dream, not yet. Her whole body ached; the back of her neck throbbed, and she slowly remembered. The storm... the power outage... but she'd been woken up when the power came back on, hadn't she? And then that buzzing sense that tingled through her, impending doom..

She scrabbled one hand to the back of her neck,Parting the hair untidyily, she gently ran her fingers over the tender, suffering skin around that small bump, where Fiona had said that chip was. Had she been... zapped by it? But surely only if you did something bad that would happen?
The edges of panic crept into her mind. Perhaps it had only happened because of the power cut. Some weird consequence of the messed up machinery in the lab...

Swinging slowly, achingly to her feet, Angharad walked unsteadily to the window, looking out at the sunshine over the jungle that glittered with the aftermath of the storm rain. Everything looked the same still...
She shuffled over to where her sandals weree left haphazardly on the floor, pushing them onto her feet and opening the door to the outside. She closed it quietly behind her; she hadn't seen Fee for... days, it seemed, after her abortive attempt to run to the cliffs and hide had failed miserably, thwarted by the storm. She would ask her.

But as she stood on the stairs, words suddenly crackled into life, booming and rolling across the settlement. And Angharad's face went white. Dr. Lockheart had been gravely injured? By.. someone in the village? Some small part of her didn't feel sorry for the coldhearted woman, but Annie was not fundamentally a bitter person. What scared her more was that it must have been one of the islanders... She knew Nita had been scared by the animal-like behaviour that an argument had escalated into, and the memories of the bear man, and the wolf man, with their muzzles full of teeth, came to mind. She wrapped her arms around herself, and called out miserably. She could never suspect her friend, whatever that tannoy had said.

"Fee! Fionaaaaa......!"

After seeing Fiona, somewhere, Angharad knew that it was only a matter of time.
The days stretched, each one seeming to hold the looming promise of inevitable loss of your humanity, and each day it has yet to come. However, after a week of this, Angharad begins to feel.. strange. Feverish, out of it, frequently nauseous. Her body aches, and the headache doesn't seem to go away. It is understandable, then, that it seems to be too much effort to even leave her duplex.

Then, one night, when Angharad is already feeling miserable, it gets worse. The room suddenly feels hot, so hot, and you can't get comfortable. Your whole body begins to itch something horrible as before her eyes the hair over her body begins to thicken, grow. On the sides of your face, all down your back, over your legs and arms and hands and feet. Everywhere your hair is naturally and even a bit more the hair grows. By the time the fur stops growing, it is a light dusting over most of your body - nowhere near as the pelts that you've seen over many of the islanders - but thicker than even some of the most "natural" women that you've seen who don't shave.

As you itch, your fingernails thicken and blacken, becoming cyllindrical black claws. Callouses form on the pads of your hands and feet, also thickening, becoming rough and visably darken to a black.

It's then that the real pain begins. What starts with the pulling at the cartilage of your ears is soon joined with a bonegrinding PAIN at the base of your spine and in your feet as your feet push out, changing, your tailbone unfusing and pushing out, the mass of bone replicating, splitting off into vertebrae. Even your clenched teeth hurt - canines on top and bottom growting. You can feel your insides twisting, added more nausea you want food - a particular food that you've refused to touch for years now. The change in the pigment of your eyes - streaked with a lime green bordering on yellow and the thick fur that grows from your tail is so minor compared to the other pains that you would hardly notice.

The pain is almost unimaginable - even compared to many of the other islanders. You already hurt, and this seems to be doing you no good. By the time the changes settle down hours later, you hurt. You hurt so bad - not just the muscle and bone aches, but you feel very ill. You don't feel right, at all. You're hungry, but you can't even think of food. You have a hard time even controlling your muscle movements. And you're nervous - the room doesn't feel right - nothing feels right...