I jumped out of my bed. There was an ear splitting siren going off and echoing through out… my room? Once I got over the shock of the noise and covered my ears, hands didn’t help much, I looked around the room and the bed I jumped out of. It was white and sterile. There was no blue carpet that I have been staining since childhood with paint or nail polish, instead it was a polish cement floor that was somehow white. In addition, the window I stared out to watch the storms was gone, the only window I saw was also the door and had a gaggle of people in white lab coats with dark professional clothing underneath staring at me with blank expressions. I stood there staring back at them. I wanted to yell at them, yell every profanity I knew to express my anger. But instinct told me to be quiet. They jotted something down on their clipboard, hanging it up, they walked away.

With my audience gone I moved closer to the window, on the back of the clipboard “Subject A13S : Genetically Modified” was written. A13S. A13S resonates within me, it is my name here. I am nothing but a science experiment, but for what experiment. Looking up from the clipboard I see a hallway filled with rooms like mine. Across from mine room was a werewolf, he looked so lost and angry as he paced. He stared at me for a second, then growled like a distrusting wolf. It broke my heart to see him, so I looked away and looked at the room that feels like my new room.

The bedding was screwed into the floor on two sides. Maybe to prevent suicides? My bed was a simple metal framed bed that was also screwed into the floor. That was my room expect for a little opening in the wall that brought me to a little bathroom with white tiles all over the wall and the same white cement except it was sloped to the farthest wall from the door where there was a drain for the shower. The toilet was like one of those fancy floating toilets you see in modern houses except there was a tiny sink above it. To top off the bathroom was a tiny mirror built into wall.

Staring back at me was the paler winged wolf version of me. She was the one known as A13S. I am Viola Blackwell and I do not belong here with this collar. I needed to look away, but I couldn’t. The longer I stared the more I wanted to laugh, because even if I am Viola Blackwell I am here now as A13S in a collar like an animal. I cannot stop the tears, I am now trapped in this hell hole that made A13S the girl in sadness and pain that I dreamed of, as A13S. Once I acknowledge I was A13S, I passed out in a puddle of tears in that bathroom.

As the white world turned black, it turned white again except there were friendly faces. They all had the collar like me, but they were older and bigger than me. They taught me their silent language as they never spoke. Next thing I was back in that horrid room, except I was in pain. My nails were turning to claws and my ears were moving to the top of my head. I laid and cried in pain, then after sleeping in my half wolf form, a spasm and a pain worse than the previous occurred. My whole form changed to that of a grey wolf. Next thing that occurred was a tiny needle like pain occurred in my neck and the world faded to black. The collar they have us ware is not just to identify us, but to control us. I woke up strapped to a table with them taking my blood, DNA, looking at everything they could as to learn something from this form. Fading to black again and waking up strapped down again, but this time to a chair and as an older human. They open my legs and insert something inside of me. Then for a second I feel myself rubbing my enlarge stomach. They got me pregnant! Jump to me birthing my child and them taking them from me without letting me see my child. I scream, howl, and try to transform to fight for my child to be with me. In return for my “tantrum” I get to be s subject for how shifters heal after giving birth. They non-fatally stab me, cut me, and eject mild toxins into me, just to see if I heal faster postpartum. Now I am no longer experiencing what A13S experienced in this body, instead I am like a ghost looking at her 3 months after giving birth and she is nothing but a shell. She stopped transforming, because she knows all the pain added up and losing her baby was the final suffering she needed. She is no longer a grey wolf, we are a dire wolf.

The silent ones, the elders who were “wild caught” told us who were born into this white hell hole, that when a shifter experiences great suffering their genes can mutate. Their animal form mutates into an ancestral animal that no longer roams the earth with us.

Now 9 months after she became a dire wolf, she unlocked the ability to switch universes. So I live in A13S universe as her and she died as Viola in my universe.

I see her. She is apologizing for everything and I can forgive her. She went through hell and I will escape it. I know her pain and suffering and I know how they manipulate and control the shifters. I will play their game.

With that thought I wake up chained to an infirmary bed and hooked up to a machine. I hear them talking, so I fake being asleep and control my breathing, because I want to know what they are thinking.

“Do we know why she lost consciousness?” “No nothing came up.” “Maybe she still is in a poor mental state, I knew we should had not tested her healing ability post-pregnancy. We lost our best success.” “Hopefully in the next year or two the microchip will be ready.”

Hearing that made my heart race and the machine I was hooked up to started beeping loudly. They heard it and shut up quickly. But one whispered “Thank God she doesn’t’ know common language.” Oh kind sir, but I do. A13S may have not, but I do. Fuck you all for thinking microchips are a good idea!

They all rush towards my bed and start taking note and shining lights in my eyes which gets a nice growl from me. I may not like being a lab rat, but I enjoy making them jump a little with a simple growl.