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Antony already knew what was going to happen, and she frowned, which only deepened when the guard addressed her in a crass manner. "What? Scared of a girl on crutches even when you have a gun?" She sneered openly, gesturing at him with the one in her right hand as she bared her teeth at him, tails lashing behind her.

Inwardly, she knew that they wouldn't actually shoot them. The lockout had made it clear that they weren't going to let any of their 'precious islanders' die. That didn't seem to calm the squirrel down any, however.

Either way, at Chert's motion, she back crutched rather skillfully, but not too much, she -did- manage to climb up a tree in a cast afterall.

"There's no inbetween choice, huh?" Chert said, letting his mouth run while he assessed the situation. "Like maybe we break for dinner and you come back when I've found something large and heavy to chuck at your head?"

But he failed to see anything that hinted at a real possibility of escape. They had guns. They had the chips. They had more people. Chert stopped moving and crossed his arms over his chest.

It might have seemed as if he'd actually chosen to be agreeable for once, against all odds, but Chert was only waiting for the guard to get within arm's reach. If he couldn't escape, he wanted someone else to feel a little bit of his pain. He'd sit and wait, dangle the guise of cooperation like a snapping turtle's lure, and then lash out with a fist if he got the chance. It probably wasn't the smartest thing to do in the world, but it would certainly be satisfying. Right up until the point with the whole fly-in-a-bug-zapper thing, anyway.

The skilled guard dodged the punch by a hair, his military training kicking in with lightlning reflexes. He ducked under the swing, the connected the butt of his rifle into his ribcage while bringing his over hand down heavy on where his neck met his shoulder.

Antony blinked, eyes wide in shock when the guard defended himself so effectively. The fact that she could do nothing but watch pissed her off, and caused her to feel useless.

Inwardly, she wondered what a crutch to the balls would feel like.

The false cheer of the guard was an additional sting. Chert snarled a few acidic phrases after the departing jeep, but it was a few moments before he managed to straighten up enough to regain his feet again. It was not a "nice day." It was going to be a very long while before it was ever a "nice day" again. One hand clutched tightly at the needle mark, turning the skin around the fingers a pale white. "That could've gone better," he muttered. His voice was tinged with the emptiness that accompanies an unexpected shock, and his eyes were distant as he glanced towards Antony. "I think I'm going to..." His voice trailed off as he looked back towards his duplex.

Chert sat down on the edge of Antony's bed and rested his forearms on the tops of his thighs. He tried to keep his face impassive, but the booted heel that kept up a constant beat on the carpet belied his agitation. The tylenol was accepted with an absent grunt of thanks. Even 30 years of practice had failed to make conversation second-nature, and although he was grateful to have someone else to keep him company besides the four silent walls of his room, his scattered thoughts twisted in on themselves and drew together into a tight ball that excluded the majority of the outside world. Chert waited.

It's not like you haven't been expecting this for weeks. Just deal with it. Deal with it, and get back to planning. Doesn't change anything, he thought. Then, s**t. All this because of high school. That was ten ******** years ago.

...I hate rats.

He reached up to scratch the side of his face and frowned when the small inch failed to disappear, instead gaining intensity and spreading across his shoulders. The raspy sensation of stubble gradually softened as hair sprang eagerly out of newly-formed follicles like grass shoots in a time lapse video and covered the sides of his jaw and his shoulders completely. This was beyond truck driver hairy, Chert thought with dismay. Beyond lumber jack hairy. It was rapidly approaching sasquatch territory... Possibly even 1970 disco king's.

The maddening itch was soon accompanied by a strange, vague ache that resided just under the surface of his flesh. He felt his skin sag like silly putty, becoming unexpectedly loose and elastic. Chert didn't even want to speculate about the strange swelling in his shorts. Still... he could deal, right? A little extra time in the morning, and the hair could easily be taken care of. And everyone sagged eventually; the middle age blues had just come a little sooner than he'd expected. Nothing that couldn't be dealt with.

Then the changes began in earnest. His fingernails lengthened into small claws, while the bones in his hands and feet began to rearrange themselves into a new configuration. Although the harsh grind of bone-on-bone contact wasn't quite audible, it sent excruciating, white-hot vibrations throughout his limbs. Someone was attempting to yank his ears off of his head with a pair of pliers. Chert tried to press his lips down over an exclamation of pain, only to find that they were going the way of the ice bergs and receding. "What the fu-" he began, but he didn't manage to get much farther, for that was when the two most universally recognized features of rat physiology chose to make their appearance. His incisors lengthened and thickened painfully, and it seemed as if his tailbone was trying to wrench itself free from the rest of his body as a naked tail sprouted from the area. He almost wished that damn guard would come back and hit him in the ribs again, just for a pleasant change of pace. Anything to relieve the marrow-deep agony that seized his bones and shattered all sense of time. It might have gone on for hours. It might have been mere seconds. Chert gripped his rage and frustration, the only things that remained constant on the island, and used them as an anchor. Hate you! he hissed, but was unsure of exactly who he meant in the moment. Moreau? Himself? The whole miserable universe?

Later, after an indeterminable amount of time, the pain eased and his ragged breathing slowed, but Chert remained silent, his fingers clutching his knees tightly. The p***k of the small claws in his skin was lost in the wide-spread ache of his body, and his gaze rested on the carpet without really seeing it.

Chert flinched involuntarily when Antony sat down beside him, his thoughts slow to unwind from their defensive ball. The temptation to break something- to remove some of the disorder in his head by venting it out into the world- was fierce, but the feeling of her fingers in his hair made it impossible to forget her presence. Although she'd already seen him get thumped in the ribs with a rifle and watched the change, the last remnants of his pride drew together and protested against the notion of a violent breakdown. However, an irrational part of him also wanted to be angry at Antony for preventing him from taking the easier, albiet less constructive route. He could be off somewhere aggravating another guard into bruising his remaining untouched ribs- but there she was, reminding him there were others that had suffered through the transformtion simply by sitting there, and just generally being supportive. Goddamnit. What was he supposed to do with support? He didn't give it. He certainly didn't get it. And admitting that it helped also meant admitting that there was something wrong in the first place. There wasn't. So Antony's kiss couldn't possibly have surprised away some of the worry bearing down on him because there wasn't any there, and her words couldn't have eased some of his roiling anger because it didn't exist, and the only reason he was tilting his head to one side so that it rested against her own was because he was tired.

Chert tried to respond to her suggestion with a wise-crack, but the words that came out around his new teeth were largely incomprehensible. After a moment, he tried speaking again, this time very slowly and distinctly. "If I bite my tongue with these, I'm ********."