UNTITLED

It seemed easy enough; nibblies and cocktail dresses New Year’s Eve party, walk in, mingle, wait for someone to get drunk and say too much, walk out. Something so straight forward hardly seemed to need a woman of my special capabilities. Still, I had been a spy long enough to know that no mission should be taken too lightly. If this party was at Zoonotics Headquarters- the leading communist genetic research facility in the country- then you could guarantee that the information I was going to gather would play a part in some higher plan too important to screw up. With the amount of risk this case has already had I’m damn glad the amount they paid me. We have already lost eleven of the best spies to the facility in as many weeks. My job was to find out where they are or gone and what the facility has come up with.
I walked into the party without arousing any suspicion. Maybe they thought their remote location would be enough to ward off unwanted visitors. There were no guards, and no one asked me for an invitation. I checked my make-up and hair, fortunate that I had entered the soirée seemingly undetected. I still didn't let my guard down; a company this rich could afford unimaginably high-tech security, and for any mission to run smoothly, I had to be ready for anything.
As the party continued, I made myself invisible by heading toward the most crowded place, which also happened to be the best for gathering information. Even though the room was huge and largely unnavigable due to the crowds of people, I found my destination with little difficulty. The trick to finding a bar in any party is to pick the loudest, most undesirable person in the room and follow them to the place where they’ll bother the most people. They’ll either beeline to a microphone or else to the place where most other people run to make sure that person is less loud and less undesirable.
The large man I chose to trail already reeked of booze by the time I found him coming out of the bathroom. His booming laugh scraped on my every last nerve and his stained tux fit him tightly in several uncomfortable places that he enjoyed scratching. I followed two or three steps behind this sweaty creature (whom several people reluctantly greeted as “James” before remembering something important they had to do and literally running away) led me to the right place. I waited to put a few more unlucky souls between myself and James’s odor before sauntering up to the counter and ordering a Coke; I had to keep a clear head if I wanted to complete this mission successfully.
I sipped on my soda and kept my ears open. It wasn’t long before the conversations got interesting.
“They say that this party isn’t going to be dull like last year’s; rumour has it, quite a few surprises are planned, and the best one will be revealed at midnight. You know anything?”
“Well…”
“You DO know something then, eh?”
“Not exactly.”
“Then you’re not held to secrecy. C’mon- what does the company have planned?”
Suddenly, James’s thunderous voice resonated over the crowd, and several people, including those I was listening to, turned to see what the problem was. Irritated, I looked to see what the disturbance was, only to find that he, in all his crass, disgusting glory, had grown a pair of what seemed to be… I shook my head in disbelief. They stood a full foot above his head, and seemed about as dirty as he was. Donkey ears? Maybe my Coke was spiked. I tossed it into a potted plant to be on the safe side. The more I listened, the more I realized he wasn't yelling- he was laughing.
“Oh! They got me, they got me. Ha ha- they got me good!” he yelled. “I s’pose after how boring this piece of shit party was last year, they had to do something to give it a kick, eh? Ha Ha Ha! Must be the booze! Ha ha! You know, I was the one to develop the water-soluble form of the virus. To think- my very own project used against me! What do you think? Are they my colour? Do these ears make me look fat? HA HA HA!”
He carried on and on, making an ass of himself appropriately enough. Several people, after he coaxed them until they didn't have a choice, even braved his body odor and touched them. They were definitely real; real donkey ears on something that appeared to be a human, even if it smelled like an animal. I was shocked, but not as shocked as you would think; after all, being shocked isn’t what they pay you for, and seeing something strange in my line of work wasn’t infrequent. I leaned back and ordered an extra dry martini to help me sort things out. A man with donkey ears was still not the kind of thing I wanted to process sober.
After a while, a voice came over the microphone and called for everyone’s attention.
“Hello and Happy New Year! Is everybody enjoying the party?” People applauded. “And has anyone found any of our… surprises?” A few more people cheered, and strangely, there were a few barks, meows, bleats, grunts- “Well don’t worry- our little presents SHOULD wear off by morning. What you're experiencing is just an early version of the virus." Some people actually seemed disappointed, and I heard a few boos. "Just a TEENSY joke we decided to play on our employees, I hope you don’t mind. In fact, the biggest surprise will be at midnight, so hang around, and please… have some more to drink! Ha Ha! Enjoy the night.”
Apparently, James hadn’t been the only the one to be “surprised”. As I left the bar, it became apparent that quite a few people had various new features. Cats came in numerous shapes and species. From leopard, to tiger, to domestic; ears, tails, noses, paws, whiskers; every combination of feline features on humans could found within the room. More than a couple of women were sporting, quite proudly, cat ears or tails, and quite a few men to.
Every breed of canine also seemed to be present. One woman pressed herself provocatively against a man whose dog ears flipped up eagerly as she wrapped her own fox tail around the both of them. Even a few employee children ran around pretending to be puppies with legitimate paws and ears and teeth to match. It was almost cute, if it wasn't so freakish.
Some unusual and exotic species were also on the floor. I saw one man blush as a beautiful peacock display lifted her dress and revealed her underwear to a drunken man with goat hooves watching her eagerly. She smiled lustily at me as I passed, but I knew it was only male peacocks, who, had beautiful feather displays and I decided it was best to keep walking and leave it to the drunken-man eying "her" greedily.
Everywhere I looked people were in various states of change. Some had hooves, some had paws; elephant trunks and pig snouts, scales and fur and feathers surrounded me wherever I went. It was discontenting, and I knew that the party would only get weirder by midnight. Just as I polished off my third extra, extra dry martini (normalcy in a glass) I felt my stretch with an unfamiliar pressure. I briskly made my way to the ladies bath room and quickly loosened up the back of my dress. Not astonishingly, my own tail began to grow, quickly taking on the distinctive look of a fox. I let it fan out behind me, trying to keep my mind on business and not be distracted by the unique novelty of having a tail. However, it was a difficult task, and once or twice I found myself turning around to touch the twitching thing that was so alien to my body. It was soft, and only awkward because of my dress, but other than that felt very natural. I was actually fond of the thing; so fond, I began to caress it and lose track of time and the objective.
Slowly, the noise of the party began to die down. I reluctantly let go of my tail and quickly resumed my professional demeanour. I had been so preoccupied with the thing, I hadn’t paid attention to the time and midnight wasn't much further away. Never had I been less alert while working; and I tried to overcompensate now, even though I knew those minutes lost could have been the most crucial of all. The woman from earlier tapped the microphone, and the whole room went silent. The only thing that I could see I missed was something covered by a large velvet cloth being wheeled out on stage with the man. He tapped the microphone again, but it wasn’t really necessary; the whole room’s attention was focused on him and the large covered object. I held my breath and waited.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, the New Year is upon us in a little less than fifteen minutes! On the east coast, people are already starting over; waving goodbye to last year, and entering the next. I can speak for the entirety of Zoonotics Corporation when I say that because of our hard work, your hard work, we will be having a very different year from last- very different indeed, and it’s all thanks to your time, effort, and brilliance! Congratulate yourself, because you are the celebrities of tomorrow! Science is about to be changed…forever.”
James hooted loudly, and several other people mumbled politely, but the noise was deafened by the thick curiosity that hung around the room like a fog. “I’ll keep this short. All last year, everyone in this room had a hand developing some part of the final product that is beneath this drape.” She gestured to the velvet covered something with her palm. “Whether you are a scientist, veterinarian, or just a janitor- even if you are simply related to someone who works for the noble company of Zoonotics, you will be written in the great book of history for the crowning achievement I am about to unveil! I give you…” I watched as she pulled off the cloth with a dramatic swoop, “… the horse-boy.”
Sipping my martini, I looked up to watch and choked. For what I saw horrified me to and extreme extent, the “Horse-Boy” was one of the last agents sent to this facility, before he was caught and our communications, terminated. As the woman pressed a button, the “horse-boy” came to life. His well-built body was thin and nude under a thin hospital gown, and his large face was furrowed with confusion, pain and drowsiness of the tranquiliser. He didn’t resemble a horse in the least bit, but I knew that was about to change. He groaned, and I saw His hair yield and part to two small fleshy lumps growing out on the side of his head. To make it even more humiliating, the emcee casually narrated the whole event.

“As you can see, this is a man from our rivals, known commonly as United Nations Genetics. He was sent here to retrieve information, and through his own clumsiness and inaptitude as a secret agent got snared in one of our traps.” She chuckled, I gulped. “The time-released serum has been slow-cooking in His system for weeks, preparing him for the beautiful display you are about to see. While your own transformations will wear off by morning, his will not. This is not Alpha, folks. This is the final version of project R.A.T. that you have so diligently contributed to over the past year in one way or another.” His ears inched their way up to the top of her head, taking on a glossy black colour and shaping themselves into fully-functioning, swivelling horse ears. He groaned, his face becoming darker as his nostrils flared- getting larger, and larger until…

“His face is pushing out into a snout. As you can see, his nose is growing wider, losing its human shape, and gradually shifting into the horse form that we have now perfected.” She smiled, he moaned; a not-quite-human noise that scared me coming from that once human face. "Funny enough, we probed him for information before condemning him to his fate. As it turns out, UNG has also done some experimenting recently- most of which has been unsuccessful, especially in the reindeer variety." I watched as his ankles took on a darker skin colour and feathering started to grow round his ankle as his toes began merging into two separate masses. The darkness crept up his legs, not looking unlike a panty-hose. "Strange- our process is absolutely perfect. He he - does that make us the best? I'll let you decide, but if you asked my opinion, I'd say- probably." She smirked.
“He spins his wrists like that as his body test-drives its new functions. This is merely his flesh changing- the internal changes, the real challenging part of making transformation work, should be happening…” The large man fell suddenly to the cage floor. With a howl louder and more terrible than anything James had done all night, his back cracked in a horrible, spine-altering way. His eyes shot open, just in time for the engrossed audience to watch as his pupils grow bigger, his irises became softer, and the actual shape of her eyes became rounder. He tried to mouth something, or maybe plea with the stupefied people watching, but got tongue-tied either from the drugs in his system or the size of his new block-like teeth. The noises he made were so horsey that I could barely distinguish them as once being made by a human. A huge tongue flopped around in his mouth as her palate grew to accommodate its growing size.
I felt like crying. This man was in pain, and there was nothing I could do to help. I watched pathetically as the hospital gown ripped easily like paper as he quickly gained body mass, rolling over onto his back as his thighs expanded and became covered with the same glossy black coat as his ears and face. The dark skin on his legs and arms sprouted fur, and his feet merged into hooves that didn't resemble human feet at all. His underside and groin growing white, “I love this bit” called the woman as his member and testicles growing to equal proportion to his body. He rolled onto his stomach, attempting to stand by pulling himself up using the cage bars, but his hands slipped off as they to become hard dark mounds of bone. His arms stretched, and as his standing posture reverted to all fours, I could see muscles writhing beneath the skin, shifting into strong animal hamstrings that could be used for pulling carts heavy drays or a plough. His neck grew outwards, thick and heavy, and his head bulged and swelled, human hair appearing to grow rapidly back into his skull. Soon, what stood before me was a full-grown Clydesdale Draft horse, and as far as anyone could ever prove, had always been a horse and would always be a horse. A tail flicked between his horse buttocks, and with human anger, he delivered a frustrated horse kick to the bars that signified his horse captivity. I felt sick.
“What you have witnessed before you, ladies and gentlemen, is the future. The practical and impractical applications of Project R.A.T are limitless. Science has no boundaries and I think this young…” She smirked, “...man has clearly illustrated my point. The best part is the fact that the animal will retain all its memory from its previous life.” Still smirking “He should feel proud he’s just helped us with our campaign for the total take-over of the world ruled by Zoonotics. Let’s hear it for the UNG and their agents for all their help” she giggled. The Draft Horse, still standing, stuck it’s head through the bars of the cage and bit the woman’s upper thigh, causing her to jump and scream. As the crowd laughed at the woman’s obvious pain and embarrassment caused by the horse she pulled out a gun of some description and shot the horse in the rump with eight or nine red tipped darts, with a particular venom.
I tried not to look at the, should-be, man, now laying down and obviously feeling confused and sorry for himself. With a slight shiver, I felt my own tail recede into my spine. Was that it? Did he just expect us to go home and forget what we had seen? You just saw a man shape-shift into a horse, thank you, have a nice life?
“Ah- I see you party animals are returning to your normal state.” She smirking at her own joke. “It's must nearly be midnight, then. But before I bid you fare-well, I have one last important thing to say-” Blood pounded through my ears. I must not forget the mission- that man is gone- forget her- he's expendable- they don't pay you to feel, remember? Remember the mission- don't think about that man- don't think about that horse...
“To any spies who may be attending the party tonight-” I froze, completely terrified and unable to move. “To any spies who may be hearing this… it’s too late. There's nothing you can do. No information that you could deliver, no mission that you could undertake, nothing can ever stop us now. Have a Happy New Year."
…