Tigree hated the new room that the woman took her to. Dr. Lavender wasn’t completely terrible, not compared to Dr. Trevor. But the room was plain and boring and lonely. She missed Sunny and even missed having Phantom around. Now all she did was spar and train and the only person she ever saw was Dr. Lavender.

The worst part of it all, was when she figured out why she had been sick. Lavender talked about Phantom, and how he had managed to control his transformations, so damnit, Tigree, you better get the hang of it soon.

Tigree hated transforming more than she hated the room, or Phantom or anything else. It hurt a lot, and she could never do it when she wanted to, and half the time she started to transform one way of the other and got stuck with parts of her human and parts of her not. Lavender got mad when that happened, and then she had to give Tigree shots of something so that she would shift. It hurt more when the shift was forced, and Tigree hated that the most of all.

She asked about Sunny and she asked about Phantom whenever she could. Lavender never said anything about Sunny, but liked to tell Tigree about how much Phantom was doing, and how he was making so much more progress than she was. Which only made her angrier and work harder so that she could be better than Phantom at something and show Dr. Trevor that he had been wrong about her. She was only 7 or 8, but she knew that she was going to be better than Phantom even if it hurt a lot to get to that point and even if it was going to take a lot of work. They would fight one day, and Tigree would win. She was sure of it.

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Phantom hated Dr. Trevor more than he even knew it was possible to hate someone. He wasn’t a little kid, and he wasn’t going to let a dumb doctor tell him what to do.

Not that he really ever had a choice.

Trevor didn’t feed him if he didn’t do what the man wanted him to do, and he used drugs to force Phantom to do the things that the boy wouldn’t. Trevor made him shift daily, if not more, and it didn’t always work and he’d be stuck with a paw instead of a hand until Trevor would help him. He hated to feel hopeless and so controlled by the man. He couldn’t even control his own body without the help of the scientist.

Dr. Trevor never told Phantom about Tigree or Sunny or anything that Phantom ever asked. The only thing that Phantom knew was that suddenly he wasn’t allowed to leave the room that he had been brought to, and that Trevor hated him just as much as Phantom hated the doctor.

Sometimes Phantom wasn’t sure if it was really worth trying to do what Trevor told him to do. Surely not having food wasn’t the worst thing in the world? He could just hide and Trevor would leave him alone, because he didn’t want to have anything to do with the scientist ever again, and him being around didn’t do anything but make the boy angry.

Which was even worse, because being angry was the only way that Phantom could change on his own, and all of his anger was fueled by Trevor, and shifting was the only thing that Trevor wanted from Phantom.

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Sunny had never left the room before Dr. Xenon came to get her. Tigree had left before, and Phantom had left all the time. Then both of them got sick and once Phantom was better, Sunny never saw him. Then Dr. Xenon came to take her out of the room as well.

She had expected to get sick, just like Tigree and Phantom, but Dr. Xenon didn’t make her sick. He just took her to another room and after that, she never left it.

He talked to her a lot, and she sometimes talked back, but she was quiet and scared. She was only 5, and she couldn’t remember ever leaving the room before, so everything was new and different and scared her.

But Dr. Xenon was gentle to her and kind and spoke in a soft voice and made her feel comfortable. He smoothed her hair like the woman used to do. After a while, Sunny decided that she liked Dr. Xenon. He told her all sorts of things, and she would play with some toys that he had brought her while he worked on a machine.

Everything was going well. Dr. Xenon finally finished his machine, which was tiny. Smaller than Sunny’s hand, and he said that it could do so many amazing things that Sunny didn’t quite understand.

And he smiled at her and she smiled back, and he asked her a question and she didn’t know what he meant, but she trusted Dr. Xenon, so she nodded and said yes. Dr. Xenon told her that he was proud of her and then he put a mask on her while she lay on her cot and suddenly her thoughts were fuzzy and she fell into unconsciousness.