Benny sat with his elbows on the folding table that had become a nexus of research next to Jasmine's tank. Running his shaking hands through his speckled gray hair while his hollow eyes followed Jasmine's wobbly attempts to get herself back on the examination ledge. Trying to gather himself together to be strong for the family he'd strived to assemble at his rehabilitation center. Nearly undone, by the stuff of nightmares that had befallen two of them earlier that day. He struggled with the memories of what had occurred that morning.

                While George cried brokenly for his family in the fate and pain they must have felt just as he did in the last stages of incredible growth that he was undergoing. It had been Rebecca and Benjamin himself who'd been the most furious with the alien's blatant disregard for the cruelty it admitted it was behind. Charging at the alien to demand answers by thrusting themselves into its face and yelling at it. Being stopped by the more reasonable Samantha who had used her formidable size to halt the two in their tracks. When she was sure they were calm, she released the bear hug they were enfolded within to ask the questions in a more sensible manner.

                The dragon, not having moved a muscle through the entirety of Samantha's lesson in mature discussion, explained the enormity of what had happened to the wan, shocked crowd gathered before it. With Jasmine drawn close to listen, bobbing with her head above water except for periodic wetting dunks, even the four wild dolphins with her seemed to be paying attention. Which was absurd, of course, Benny reminded himself uneasily.

                It had been eight hours since Jasmine had returned in her current form from the farm that she claimed to have been sent to. Since then, in an effort to figure out just what had happened, an agonizingly slow method of communication had been worked out by Dr. Yoo between the dolphin-woman and the rest of her friends at the center.

                It was a simple but effective setup. Using a section of a pool noodle water toy with a waterproof laser pointer wedged inside its hollow core gave the handless Jasmine something to bite down on and manipulate. Movements of her tongue and head allowing her to train the red dot on the large dry erase board from the conference room where the alphabet and an array of common words and phrases had been drawn.

                It was currently Benny's turn to dictate what her responses were while Hidalgo oversaw another vital function that had swiftly become necessary. As shown by the word 'DRY' and its prominent location on the message board, the frequency that Jasmine became uncomfortable while exposed to even the moist air of the aquatic center was in and of itself a discovery in the sensitivity of the skin of bottlenose dolphins and their tolerance levels for being out of their element.

                Everything that she told them was, in fact, a groundbreaking discovery. Either what she herself felt or experienced or what she thought was being told to her by the other dolphins. Confirming a primitive form of expressive communication that Dr. Schofield had a difficult time digesting in his head. It was hard for the eager specialists to remember that this wasn't just some particularly odd dolphin. It wasn't like subjects A040621, B040621, C040621, and D040621. The official titles of the four dolphins in the care of Benny's facility and the names that he wished the others would use to refrain from getting attached. No, this was Jasmine. She was their friend, not the greatest source of wonder involving dolphins since their discovery thousands of years ago.

                Everyone had been expecting typical stress exhibition from Jasmine at the fact that she had become a dolphin. Things such as lethargic idleness or manic racing around the enclosure. Only to be disappointed, horrified, and puzzled as it emerged that she had volunteered to become an animal. The simple question of 'why' just not being adequately conveyed through the halting manner of her translated descriptions and leaving the dolphin and the humans frustrated.

Breaks from her conversation were frequent and gave her watchers plenty of other valuable discernments to document. With a human mind in a dolphin body, they were able to reinforce their understanding of what behaviors were innate and what were learned. From what Benny could tell, Jasmine seemed enthralled with discovering her new body and was trying to learn how to control it by following one of her tankmates around in their wake. Like a calf, he had realized earlier. She didn't know how to be a dolphin. So, she was learning as a calf would following alongside in the easier roiling disturbance left by her mother's passage. Did she know that she was doing that? Had it been a conscientious choice on her part to follow the oldest female, C040621 around?

                “K.I.N.D.A" was her reply. Which had led to another round of questions and answers about what was 'her' behavior, and what were her 'body's' innate peculiarities.  

                But, as the day grew longer, and the chaos in Seattle failed to die down, the behavior of Jasmine began to display classic stress indicators. Jacob, the psychologist newcomer, had his hands full trying to calm her and the other humans after the trauma inducing alteration of George and the bizarre sequence of events surrounding Jasmine. A constant reminder of both, which served well in keeping every member of the rescue center family on edge, was the alien dragon who dispassionately watched them all. Being perfectly content to observe the fruits of its freely acknowledged actions while it waited for…something…something…evil master plan…

                 “C.A.L.L.?"

                It was the seventh time that Jasmine had asked that question in the last hour. Following it up by pointing at the name of that young man that Benny had met on a few occasions. Martin. He and the others could only surmise, given her requests, that she was growing concerned that he hadn't been responding to their phone calls to him. Questions about how she perceived the passage of time swirled in Benny's head. Demanding to be released to feed his curiosity and advance knowledge on how dolphins sensed time's flow. 

                As much as it pained Dr. Schofield, he begged the others to stay at the center where he knew it was safe. Having locked the gate at the end of their drive and having nothing of great value to steal to begin with, he was reasonably certain the mayhem in the city would not extend to their location.

                It had been a hard sell for him after George had set out to find his family, with an adamant Rebecca upon his back to make sure no one troubled the mild-mannered seven-meter-tall two tonne family no-longer-man. Not a word had been heard from them since, leaving Samantha, Benjamin himself, Hidalgo, and Ho-Sook fearing for their own families. He hated himself for working to convince them to remain until they knew it was safe. He had met the families of the four who one in the region, and their faces contorted in terror haunted him every time he caught his family here looking at their silent phones or towards the exits.

                The tracker Rebecca had taken, normally for use on the resident Orca pods of the Puget Sound, continued to indicate steady movement of their present location. Just east of I-5 and paralleling it north judging by the GPS coordinates being overlayed on the USGS map. Giving some sense of relief for those awaiting their return about the two's wellbeing. But none about their own loved ones. It had become clear by this point that the cellular network had either failed or been disabled.

                The landlines in the offices of the aquatic center continued to function, as did the Wi-Fi. Making the lack of communication from everyone dear to those at the center incredibly alarming.

                None of this was made any better by the alien dragon. The creature that'd readily admitted it was behind many of the phenomena playing out over the world. The events being shown through news feeds being received on the computers. Providing a constant stream of background noise from the impromptu lab and communication center. 

                While they had been talking with the alien creature just after its arrival and George's metamorphosis earlier, it had provided a single comfort for the institute's family.

                “George Ramirez and his family are the only ones from within your group to be chosen for the transition to Children of the Egg. I understand that this will be…a jarring experience for you and your loved ones, George. I also understand that any words of consolation or justification I offer now will be viewed as cruel and shallow. Instead, I will promise that you and yours will survive the turmoil to come and have lives full of a wonder and enjoyment that you would not believe. For the rest of you, I will offer my advice, and leave the decision on whether to heed it upon yourselves. Events outside of your awareness are headed towards calamity. It is best if you remain out of sight, and mind, at this location. You would be best served by asking those you care for to remain within their own abodes until the initial wave of violence from our advent has passed."

                If George had taken any comfort in this, Benny thought wryly, he had had an odd way of showing it by kicking backwards with one of his legs where he stood panting with his tongue unfurled from his mouth and tears streaming from his eyes. Fracturing a concrete wall behind him and sending part of an amphitheater tier crumbling to the ground. Director Schofield had buried his face in his hands with dismay. Phantom dollar signs and onerous bills weighing on his mind. Also, being a little bit intimidated by the raw strength that he'd just witnessed. 

George had reared his head up on the end of his long neck to unleash an anguished scream, and it had only been Rebecca, flinging her arms around the muzzle of the head that was larger than her when he had brought down again as he got to his feet, that had kept the former man from rushing off to find his family. Using his surprised pause to reason with him quickly.

Less than five minutes later, George climbed over the security fence with Rebecca on his back. Wedging her hands between the scales patterning the massive man's body to keep herself secured and with the tracking collar shoved into a pocket of the loose clothes she had thrown on over her wetsuit. The two setting off to check his and his father-in-law's house where Rosa, his wife, may have fled with their children.

Back in the present, Benny struggled with the uncharitable realization that George's wife and children might not be thinking like humans anymore. If they had turned into what George had, there was no guarantee that they would not suffer a mental break. If their minds weren't whole, what would they become then? He shuddered to imagine what the man he'd known for seven years would do when his wife or his children did not recognize their own names. How would they know it was him in the first place? The more he thought of it, the more he recognized the brilliance in Rebecca accompanying George. That young woman really was something else. Much more than the brainless floating set of tits and ass that she derisively referred to herself as when she was drunk. He just wished she would recognize how attractive and fulfilling intelligence could be on its own.

“MARTIN"

“We know Jasmine. We know. We're all worried about own families too, okay? Can't you hear what's going on? It's not safe on the streets of Seattle right now."

Samantha's attempt to be soothing backfired. It turned out, that no, Jasmine could not in fact hear what was going on in the city. Rolling off the examination ledge with a writhing twist of her tail and a raspy clicking cry.

“You did this! Can't you at least help us? Why are you here anyway? Why are you doing this?"

                The dragon was not provoked by the heat and volume within Benjamin's voice. Remaining as unmoved as its size suggested it would be.

“As I briefly described to you earlier, we are here to make this world suitable for more than humanity. Of greatest interest to you, would be that one group of species that we have the keenest of interest in is the family of Delphinidae. I will explain further when all those of interest to me are in attendance. It will save a great deal of confusion and misunderstanding if everyone is present when I give my explanation. That would include all your families.

“You just advised them earlier to keep in their homes! Now you are holding back information from us as to why two of our friends are no longer human! What is wrong with you?"

Benjamin wished that the dragon would give him the fight that he felt that an invasion of Earth warranted. If the damn thing would just act like a creature with some emotion other than its quiet and implacable reserve. Even if it was just unrestrained hostility, it would be better. At least then he'd known the aliens hated humanity for some reason. Giving motive to what they'd done. Not…this.

“If a conflict is what you desire, I can remove myself and allow one of my siblings to be your caretaker instead. Some of them would be more than happy to inflict additional emotional scars upon you for what your kind has done to a nursery as rich in life and promise as yours. I had been assigned this position to encourage those like yourselves with the proclivity towards mending the damage inflicted by your fellows. I do understand that many of your comments derive from your lack of comprehension on the events that have and will occur. Knowing that, I will continue to refrain from responding to the outrage that you may feel. When all is explained to you, I expect that you, and the others associated with you, will have many more thoughts to contend with instead of pursuing fruitless acts of violence."

 Which told Benjamin nothing really, as far as he was concerned. Beyond what the alien had hinted at earlier by informing them that Jasmine and George becoming a dolphin and a dragon would somehow make the world a better place. Which was a leap of logic that he just couldn't possibly understand. While he was no fan of some actions that humankind took, and the gruesome things he had seen in his time spent advancing conservatory causes, Benny did not think that they deserved the threat of annihilation. Or that dolphins and dragons would be the salvation of all. The message from yesterday with all its ominous underpinnings certainly didn't help his confusion or peace of mind either.

“Jasmine, as you have derived from her answers, is in full possession of the facts surrounding her transformation. What she has been told was sufficient for her to agree to become one of the forms of life she cared for more than her attachment to her human body. A fact that you might consider until I deem it time for you to receive a similar level of knowledge. In the interim, I would not prevent you from receiving that information from Jasmine if you were to discover a manner of conveying such complex topics for one who no longer has human hands or speech."

The woman-dolphin under discussion surged briefly upwards with a loud creaking noise, as if she had something to share. Darting from view, she reappeared barrel rolling clumsily onto the ledge with her mouth open for her laser pointer. Indicating readiness to try to express what led her to the decision she had made. Or so Dr. Schofield projected what he thought she was doing anyway. It was what he thought she would have done if she was human. He had to continue thinking of her as such or else he would start treating her like another rescued sea animal. As smart as he knew dolphins could be they were no humans and, despite her appearance, Jasmine was still far more human in thought and behavior than animal.

“…as time consuming as that method of communication remains. Or may I suggest that you check the video feed from your front gate."

This perked up the Center's family quite a bit. Despite their enthusiasm to be learning all that Jasmine could reveal to them, their uncharacteristically taciturn behavior spoke volumes of their worry. The woman-dolphin spit out her squishy pointer by flicking her tongue to pay attention after hearing what the alien said. Scooting around with a wriggle of her tail that nearly swept Hidalgo into the pool until she could see the laptop screen where Benny pulled up the closed-circuit feed from the perimeter.

There was a bit of commotion and difficulty at first to get the main gate feed displayed as another twelve hundred kilograms or so of aggressively curious mammals swarmed up alongside Jasmine to see what everyone was looking at.

                The creatures were adventuresome by nature, but the way they'd been acting since this morning was notably different. The psychologist that had been lured here with a research grant, Jacob, was filling pages of his notepad with observations. Taking an interest in an electronic device in this way was just the latest example of their deviant mannerisms. Slipping and sliding on top of each other, they struggled to get closer to see what had so interested Jasmine. Not being content Benny brought the screen closer to them once the humans saw what they had needed to see, silencing the dolphin's streams of chatter and the thrashing of their wide-finned tails. Eerily staring into the screen that should have been meaningless to them.

                Jasmine created a deafening screech that resonated with the bones of Benny's body and momentarily made his vision double. Samantha wasn't much subtler when she took one look at the image, gasped, and knocked everyone between her and the main entrance that wasn't already on their ass into that position as she bulled her way out. Followed immediately after by Ho-Sook and Hidalgo, using the void created by her passage, to meet those at the front gate. Their families had found their ways here despite the alarming news emerging from the rest of the state. 

Since Benny's family was far too far away to come to his Center, his twice divorced ex-wife making good on her promise to move her and their children as far from the oceans as they could go in South Dakota, he remained behind. Trying to calm Jasmine's agitation to be reunited with the young man on the black and white screen swinging the gates open wide for some reason. The landline for the center rang and after glancing at the number, which was blocked, he ignored it to account for all who had made it safely there.

From the way that Ho-Sook's husband bowed to Martin and Hidalgo's wife hugged him, the director could only surmise that he'd been instrumental in getting them all there. Benny whirled to demand answers of the alien dragon. Getting nothing but a bland non-answer. “That is a very interesting conjecture Dr. Schofield. Why do you suppose that I would be involved in the initiative and resourcefulness that the loved ones of your acquaintances have shown?"

Benjamin watched, flummoxed, as giant shadows spread across the walkway in view and the reunited families moved along to make room for those who came behind them. Wary glances wordlessly conveying their discomfort with whoever that was. Ten dragons, ranging in size from not much smaller than a horse to one the size of the alien beside Benjamin padded into the marine facility. The largest one towing a utility cart, the kind commonly seen behind tractors or underpinning a parade float, loaded with bags of food and bottled water. The rest of the dragons forming a protective phalanx behind it from an unseen danger. Once they had passed through the gate, two of the former humans turned and tried to shut it. At some unseen impetus, the humans and dragons milling around suddenly fled the area of the gate.

Benjamin heard a quick burst of cracking noises, making Jasmine shrill in horror and the other dolphins flounder into the water, as one of the three dragons that remained behind jerked backwards with a flinch. The one standing next to it darted forward in reaction with its wings spread wide and then flexing forward to screen itself. Benny heard a roar from just outside the walls of his facility that might have been a garbled word and then screams followed by more cracks of gunfire.

Typing commands hurriedly into the security monitor software, he switched views to a camera that covered the whole length of the jetty leading to his facility but with much less magnification. He saw a crowd of people pointing at the cart and aiming guns at the dragons. The dragon that had darted forward turned itself sideways to the crowd and swept them backwards with its tail. As they fell into a disorganized pile, no longer able to open fire, the gates were slammed shut. Another of the former-humans reentered the scene pushing one of Dr. Schofield's disconnected emergency water pumps with its head to barricade the gate.

By the time he heard the clamor of the approaching refugees and the slapping of flip-flops on bare concrete, the gate had been reinforced with another pump and a few other mobile pieces of machinery that the director wished weren't being used. Like his slate grey WRX STi, the only extravagance on land that he really cared about, being pushed sideways into the dumpsters to wedge them against the entry. Two of the larger dragons remained to stand guard against any intrusion. Hiding behind an equipment shed to watch the gate with their heads peeking around a corner on the end of their long necks. Flinching back as more shots chipped away at the cement wall. The phone rang again as Martin emerged from the darkness of the tunnel, looking around wildly for Jasmine.

                Standing, Benjamin went to prepare the young man for the bad news. Freezing as the heavy thud of approaching footsteps that accompanied a steady click was the only warning he got before the first pair of heads appeared overhead. The dilated ovoid pupils of the dragon's eyes constricting rapidly in the sunshine into menacing snake-like slits as they glanced around. Spotting the other dragon with the golden eyes, they crouched down as if expecting an attack and twisted their heads to talk to each other in what must have been a language of grunts, whistles, chirps, and churls. When the alien spoke to them in that sing-song language in return, their heads jerked to point the tips of their snouts at the creature while their wings flared upwards. In surprise, he could only guess. It would be fascinating to learn how the ex-humans communicated in words and body. 

                “Martin…it was Martin right? Martin, we have been trying to reach you to tell you…" Benjamin started, hoping that he wasn't already fucking up being a consoler for the wide-eyed child. He couldn't be any older than his own oldest daughter. Not even that, if he remembered correctly. 

                “I… I already know…She's a dolphin isn't she? I think came here to become one too. Which one is she? We are going to be the first. The others will need our help."

                Benny was floored by the comment, as the boy rushed past him to the dolphin next to Jacob. Jasmine was on her side, giving away her identity by flailing her pectoral fin that still had her crucifix wrapped around its base, in a cheerful human-like greeting accompanied by a most in-human sound that was probably just as cheerful.

                He wanted an explanation. He needed an explanation. Why were people all over the place turning into other species? Was this some new kind of flu going around? A temporary psychosis predisposing them to desire it? Benny narrowed his eyes suspiciously at the alien lying supine on the far side of the tank on the wide ledge between the water and the bleacher seats. Was it chemical or physical mind control?

                Dr. Schofield wanted to examine the kid before the onset that he said was coming. To see if there was an implant on his spine or blinking lights in his ear canal. Something to explain wanting to go through a transformation into a different species. Or, if he couldn't find any of that, document just how the transformation progressed and if he was exhibiting early indicators of the change.

                The phone rang again as just half of the dragons piled into the central bowl of the arena. The rest having gotten lost, or hiding, somewhere in the facility, or perching on the rooftops of every structure in the area. All the dragons in the arena were injured. The youngest, or smallest, yowling in pain and the larger among them streaming ribbons of viscous, nearly black blood down their lateral surfaces to paint the ground. Panicking the naturally born dolphins. Samantha and Ho saw, pointing, conflicted.

Benny smacked the phone off the table to in a burst of irritation at its jangling ring, not noticing that the headset jumped off its cradle and the line remained open. Leaping to intervene and free up his veterinarians, he went to settle the families of the family that he'd gotten to know over the years. Assuring the kiddos and the fretting spouses by telling them that they would be safe here out on the artificial promontory. Then asking them to move to the side and try to get settled for what might end up being an extended forced vacation for them. 

                Pulling on a pair of latex gloves, he joined his veterinarians in learning the ins and outs of the anatomy of dragons. Real life dragons, not creatures of fantasy, who in some instances didn't even understand why they were bleeding. They might have been the first in the world to do surgery on them as far as Dr. Schofield knew.

                “It's not like I can't feel it…" the largest one told them in a voice so thick and savage that it was nearly impenetrable. Watching them intently with a foreboding eye as they prepared themselves to operate on the smallest child with a gunshot wound. The dragon looming over them, whose head was as long as the Director was tall, identified herself as April.

                “It's just that I would have thought that being shot would hurt a great deal more. It had felt as if I had been struck by a belt or a whip. A very sharp pain followed by burning. When I was a child, and acting up, my father would often discipline me with his belt. This felt not much different."

                The entry wounds of the bullets were marked by where they had cracked and chipped the scales forming the outer layers of the dragon's epidermis. Touching the area of the first wound, on one of the smallest of the ex-humans startled the humans attending its…his…wounds when his scales rose in a wave to bristle. Exposing the pitch-black skin beneath where the roots of each scale originated from what appeared to be elongated pores with a spattering of smaller dimples surrounding each. Samantha pinched one scale, split clean in half, between two fingers and pointed out to Benjamin that each scale had a tiny loop of branching nerves.

                Fighting to dig into the extraordinarily tough skin with surgical tools, the resilient hide defied their razor-sharp instruments. Afraid that they would snap the metal and imbed more shrapnel within the whimpering and bucking child, who whipped its head back and forth on its neck in shrieking horror.

                “We'll make one more try…" Dr. Yoo decided, after Benjamin objected to the stress that they were causing the child. “It is entirely unknown how their bodies will respond to the foreign metal. If we can't…"

                “No. Stop." April said, gutturally. A growl a lingering echo in the back of her throat.

                “You have no idea what you are doing. How could you? We were humans a few days ago, and now we are aliens. Dragons that never really existed on this world beyond the realms of overexcited imaginations. Experiment on me, before you cause Owen more pain. I think I am big enough not to notice you rooting around in my body like you're digging through clay for treasure with a spade."

                Yoo and Samantha directed her in laying out on her side while Benjamin acted as their assistant. April was so large, that to reach the wound that was the source of the heaviest bleeding they had to crawl up one of her legs to the shoulder where the weeping gunshot was at the base of her neck. The volume of blood had them concerned that it was an artery, but there didn't seem to be a rhythmic pulse to the bleeding.

                “Please, say something while you figure out how to treat us." April asked the three of them while they tried to get comfortable astride her massive body. “Just…talk to me like I am still something intelligent, please." Inhuman or not, there was no mistaking the pleading tone in her words. Benny could not imagine what must be going through the head that he saw extending away on the end of its neck from where he sat further down the body.

Taking in the posterior view of the large skull and the powerful knots of the tensed jaw muscles. The precise contours hidden beneath the fans growing from the sides of April's head. Pinned back against her skin the flaps might have been her ears and had the same appearance as the fin running down the center of her spine. A thin translucent webbing with a regular set of spiny rays supporting the membrane upwards along the peak of their backbones. As she breathed with great rasping swells, the fin rose and dropped in cadence. Noticing that it moved with more urgency in reaction to her words and emotions. A physical indicator, along with the ears, of her state of mind. If only Benny knew what each motion was indicative of.

                Not being able to help himself, he put his hand on her shoulder next to where he sat, patting her stiffly. She shuffled her head around until he could see her eye looking back at him, but she answered his question instead of commenting on the fact that three adults had ample room to sit on just one part of her upper arm and shoulder while one of them pet her placatingly. Or was it her leg that they were sitting on.

                “Tell us about yourself." Jacob said, crouching down so that his eyes were level with hers. With her head resting on the ground the top of it came nearly to the man's chest. “I want you to hear yourself speak. I want you to remember that it is you communicating your thoughts. That you, are still a thinking person. No matter what you may look like now."

                Her tail was beating against her side with agitation as she listened to the psychologist give his advice. With a five-digit foot, she grabbed her own tail and raised it with an ostentatious shake in the direction of Jacob. Catching his attention and then kicking it away to flop into the water tank with a jerk of her hind leg. The rescues came over to nudge at it curiously, while Jasmine looked on with her pectoral fins resting on the rim of the tank like a pair of hands.

April made this physical demonstration by way of response to the man without moving her head from where she was staring straight ahead. A reminder for him of just how far she had strayed from her biological origins. Benjamin noted how comprehensive her awareness of her surroundings and her own body were. Marveling at her perceptiveness and the way that she coordinated the movement of widespread parts of her body that were meters in distance from each other.

                “I was April Mayer. Until the morning before yesterday's when I suppose the process that made me this began and left me bed-ridden within my high-rise apartment. I was the CEO for the server integration and development firm OGIG. I am sixty-one years old; I was going to get married in a month to my second husband, and I was worth one hundred and seventeen million dollars before I became this. Now, I'm worthless as I'm legally dead and my love, Brian Stillwater, is gone. When I woke up this morning like this, I found him crushed against the steel beams framing our apartment's panoramic view of the Sound by my own body."

                Her voice cracked. Becoming even harder for the humans to understand. The tone of her speech gone reedy and broken by sharp grunts as tears leaked from her eyes to form spreading puddles beneath her jaw. An unexpected blast of loneliness and guilt staggered Benjamin and Jacob. They looked at each other with startled, wide eyes.

                “Did you love the view honey? I bought it just for you to enjoy. Brian…I hope your last view was beautiful…as I…as I killed you…Oh…Oh god…Oh god…Brian… Brian I'm sorry!"

                The seismic shivering of her body made continuing the operation impossible, and her mournful keening tore at the hearts of her would be surgeons. Worse yet, the sound of her lamentations was upsetting the other dragons. An image of a man came into Benjamin's mind. Smiling warmly at him, or so it felt, as he put his arm around his waist and pointed to something out in the waters of the Puget. But Benjamin couldn't move his eyes away from the man and felt a love that wasn't his own for him. The experience faded into oblivion just as mysteriously as it arrived.

The dragons seemed to feel what Benny had even more strongly. Or they were reacting to something else entirely. There were subtle currents drifting just below the surface of the memory, and in the air around Benny, that made him think that there was something occurring that he wasn't equipped to recognize. Coming over one by one, sobbing openly in gurgled huffs, the dragons nosed at the woman's head with their snouts. Their tears conjoining as ripples of scales rose and fell. Releasing a pungent aroma that made the Doctor think of anguish, despair, and lastly but most intensely, comfort.

                Benjamin fell from the woman's shoulder when she rolled onto her belly. The other two ersatz surgeons coming right after by sliding down April's army with their tools carefully bundled in their hold before her wings rose and circled forward around her head. Closing herself off from the humans as her high, clear, dolorous plaint continued.

                “We need to be careful." 

Jacob told Benjamin, Samantha, and Ho with their heads together not too far away in a corner. Dr. Schofield watched a smaller dragon, about as long as an Orca's dorsal fin was tall, carrying on in an entirely indecipherable sing-song manner with the headset of the phone that he dimly remembered knocking over a short while ago. He wondered if she was caroling to someone that he should be worried about. The pony-sized dragon pulling the phone away from the side of her head to give it an incredulous look, just as a human would. Bursting into a new spate of yammering while the fins on the side of her head bristled and her tail endangered every human nearby.

                “You heard the narrative given by April. They could harm us without even realizing they are doing it. We don't know what alterations have occurred to their thought processes. Witness the grief ritual. That is not human behavior. They are intelligent, we can all agree that there is no doubt as to that. But what could upset them? How would they react?"

                “I hardly think April even had control of her body at the time that she killed her fiancée. My word, the changes that it would take to shift a human body into that. What it must feel like as you swapped this for that right on down to the cellular level. It would be just like…" Samantha said, in objection.

                “We know." Benjamin muttered, his eyes shifting sidelong to Jasmine floating upside down as her friends prodded at her until she was right side up. There was a loud clapping sound from one of the rescues swirling around the woman-dolphin, and a geyser of vapor rocketed into the air as the newly formed cross-species Filipina exchanged breath.

                “There is some analogous overlap between a human and a dolphin at least." Ho observed. “Between humans and these creatures, I refuse to call them dragons as the truth is undoubtedly far stranger than myth would have it, there is no way at this time to measure the degree of separation. As aliens, they may have biological features that would not make sense within the context of evolution on Earth."

                “Exactly. Could that biology be tainting their physical minds? Remember Phineas Gage. Changes in the structure of the brain can and does lead to profound alterations in behavior."

                “If they have a sensory capacity greater than ours, their minds will have to adapt to handle the additional input. They would go mad otherwise."

                “Again, that reinforces my advice to be cautious. This is Pandora's Box being opened right in front of us. We do not know how these things…"

                “They are not things." Dr. Yoo asserted with offense. “These are unique individuals with complex representations of their identities that are able to at least match our criteria for…"

                “Did you feel that memory just a few minutes ago? These creatures are dangerous, even if they do not mean to be. She pushed her feelings into our minds, and there was nothing we could do to stop her. Don't you three understand how injurious a capability that is if she can do it willfully? We would never be able to trust our own thoughts or emotions again around any of these dragons."

                Dr. Schofield knew that this might be trouble, but he also knew that there was suffering here that they could prevent. April's wracking sobs had subsided into a listless fugue that had her staring dully at her hand. Watching with watery eyes as her clawed fingers opened and closed, revealing that despite the size of her fingers and the distended length of her palm, was still fully dexterous. Even if her hand, wrist, and forearm appeared lacking the ability to supinate with their much larger proportionate sizes.

                The veterinarians diffidently drew near her head to ask her if they could try to extricate the shrapnel from her body. Reminding her that they needed to figure out what worked on her before they caused unneeded pain for the smaller dragons.

                Benny watched as one of those smaller dragons worked its way around on two legs repeating the same series of musical warbles. The little girl that had been vocalizing rambunctiously in the phone repeated her message to one of the larger dragons who swung its head towards Samantha's husband to translate what she wanted. The director perked up when he saw the large man, Tim, point towards him. The relatively tiny dragon spun on her digitigrade rear feet and toddled towards him with the phone clutched in her hands and the headset in her well defined, wedge-shaped, snout.

                He noted that the young girl must have realized the importance of the cord dangling from the phone and had wrapped a loop of the cable around her tail to keep it from becoming unplugged from the phone. Leaving the remainder in danger, but for her shrill alarm calls to warn others from stepping on it. Benjamin only then realizing that she had been talking to all the others with the phone's handset in her mouth the whole time. He stole a glance at the other dragons and noticed that all that were speaking English did so without any movement of their jaws or tongues. Instead cracking open their mouths until the interlocking teeth hidden behind their rigid lips were evident to allow the sounds a passage. Their lengthy necks visibly undulating to modulate the noises originating from the base of their throats.

                 The child teetered right up to Benny with her tail and wings extended backwards to counterbalance her body's natural inclination to be on all four legs. Craning his head to look down uncomfortably at hers before he stumbled back a step as she rose on her crouched hind legs until the tip of her raised snout was nearly level with the top of his head.

                With her head cocked to peer at him closely with one eye, she extended her arms to place the carefully cradled phone base into his hands. Bowing her neck, she nudged him with her snout tip until he held out a hand to receive the handset, nearly knocking him over with her unbelievable strength. Taking it carefully from between her teeth and looking regretfully at the thin streamers of saliva coating the dull black plastic. The young girl, only guessing that she was young by her size and knowing he could be completely wrong about everything about her, spoke in an adult woman's voice.

                “FBI Special Agent Starling would like to speak to Doctor Schofield."

                She shrank in Benny's field of view as her legs folded until she was settled on her hands and feet once more. Bobbing her head like a terrestrial lizard with a meaning that entirely escaped the man and turning to go with a swish of her tail and the canvas-like rustle of her wings. A sudden thought struck the doctor, and he blurted out his question before he could give it any thought.

                “How old are you, little girl?"

                She stopped and turned back to him with her half-unfurled wings raised high above her back. His eyes left hers to trace over the hand-like structure of the bony phalanges and the sweeping arcs that her fingers charted through the membranes before ending in long curving claws that extended beyond the fringes of her wings. Her pupils shrank until they nearly vanished, leaving nothing but the azure color of the irises in her startling eyes, before expanding until the blue was nothing but a thin ring encircling a shimmering black.

                Opening her mouth, the sound of an adult woman with the Yankee twang of one raised in the Northeastern United States came again.

                “Stop Stop not see..." The rest of what she said dissolved into a guttural chant of wavering growls interspersed with cheeps and yodeling quavers. Rising again she crossed her arms over her upper chest and rocked side to side on her rear feet in a teetering motion. Looking down at her interleaved limbs with one cocked eye to make a cooing noise that had Benny gasping in realization. Her scales fluttered open across her body releasing the relaxing enticement of a scent that triggered buried recollections encouraged by an ethereal nudge. Feelings that Benjamin hadn't known since he was a boy at the limits of his earliest memories reached out for him. The touch of a mother for her baby. Being so small and so vulnerable. The eyes and the smell of the one that meant everything to the child who knew nothing beyond those eyes and that smell. Jasmine and the rescues were just as affected by the push, alike what they had felt from April, and while the wild dolphins clustered closely to Nikki, Jasmine bumped her nose against Martin's chest. The man and his fiancée turning to look at little Stop Stop.

                A shaken Benny broke away from the hypnotic gaze of the tiny girl-dragon as she watched him with a profound sadness haunting those eyes that were far too young to know anything of the sort. A familiar voice, sounding just like the one the child had used, came from the phone. Demanding attention that the doctor could not give. Another, much more immediate, voice sounded, and the young girl refolded her wings to trot over to April. Disappearing beneath the wings that came down like curtains to hide the baby. Obscuring her from the sight of those that she had stirred forgotten feelings within. Lost recollections, suddenly rediscovered, that had been stolen by the inexorable march of time and the frailty of human memory.

                Somehow, the smell and feel of April conveyed her thoughts where the alien landscape of her facial expressions could not to the humans.

                “I found Stop Stop hiding behind a trash dumpster in an alley. I don't know where her mother is, but I think the truth is much like you suspect. From what she's told me, she was still breast feeding when the change took her. At most, she's twelve months old. Finding her was the only reason why I did not ultimately succeed in killing myself earlier. When I met her and the others, something within me would not leave them in peril."

                Stop Stop's snout poked upwards from behind her shelter to nuzzle at the older woman's chin. Her tongue flicking outwards, leaving a tiny streak of moisture over the rock-hard scales, and April bent her neck to caress the baby in turn with the tip of her own beak. The larger woman's serpentine body shivered with the clacking of thousands of scales, and from beneath the expanse of her wing's covering another more familiar voice cried exultantly.

                “Got it!"

                The ringing plink of metal striking metal accompanied the restorative victory. Ho ducked out from the wing with a small metallic dish and showed the deformed bullet to April with a gloved hand. The dragon-woman sniffed at it, looked surprised that she would do such a thing, and then looked away with a snort.

                “Take it away, please. Now that you know how to do that correctly on us, treat the children before you finish with the rest of my wounds. You can stich me later."

                “But…"

                “Please, just leave me be. Do not make me force you away."

                Samantha emerged as if she was the one being shot at with the rumbling echo of thunder in the dragon-woman's words. Her and Ho looking on warily as she shifted that conveyed well her size and the ease with which she moved. Climbing to her feet, Benny found himself eye-level with April's shoulder joint and her head far above his own on its graceful neck. She thumped away into the corner that Benny, Samantha, Ho, and Jacob had just had their conversation in.

                Stop Stop tried to follow her, but a dizzying wave of denial swept out. Making the baby dragon stop, peeping to herself in confusion, before looking back with mistrustful eyes at the humans towering above her.

                “Treat Stop Stop. She hasn't let you see it, but I know it is there. I can feel it in my armpit right here." She raised her right wing and pointed to a spot near the top of her flank just beneath the union between her wing and chest with her tail.

                “You are right not to trust us. I don't…I don't know what I am anymore. But I do know that I am not what I was three days ago. The emotions… I know you felt them. I…I should go… I will go out to the parking lot before I kill anyone else. I am not sure what they are, only that they are a part of who I am now."

                Her head turned away making it difficult for Benny to hear what she murmured next. But the words made no sense to the man of science. He could only guess at their meaning to an intelligence that was human no longer. “Everyone looks like the stars in the sky to me now…"

                Some of the family members looked relieved to see her go. Afraid of either her body or her mind. But Ho's and Hidalgo's children spoke up, as did Martin, against her departure. Jasmine's intended was the one to speak loudest for her. Jasmine giving an agreeing blast of spume as he rested his hand on her dorsal fin while she bobbed next to him.

                “You saved us all. You paid for all this food and water. We are safe here because of you."

                Jasmine exploded into a cacophony of clicking and squeaking. Startling her intended into jerking his hand off her fin and staring at her upturned eye in befuddlement. It was April who translated for her.

                “She wants to know how we all met and why we were all coming here when it was so dangerous."

                Stop Stop squealed in pain with a dragon somewhere between hers and April's size with brilliant yellow eyes pinning her in place with its hands and a tearful countenance. Being battered by the unseen waves emanating from the baby dragon. Samantha was the source of distress as she probed the wound discovered beneath her wing, interrupting the conversations within earshot. It was April who shrugged off the sad blanket of her own misfortune enough to continue. 

                “Well…we didn't meet all at once or in one place."

                 The others were content to allow April to describe what happened to her first until the groups had encountered each other. An unconscious deference that even the humans seemed to feel in the presence of the grand woman-dragon and her intimidating aura.

The accented voice called out from the phone again. Benny, startled, looked down at it in shock already having forgotten that it was there. Shrugging, he hung up on the FBI Agent's outraged howl coming from the speaker.

“Don't you dare! I can se…"

April hadn't just been threatening suicide earlier, she had already attempted it. Only thwarted by the size and durability of the lifeform that she'd become. Just after she had discovered her dead lover and realizing what had occurred, she had sprung with the force of her hind legs through the tempered glass floor to ceiling windows of her luxury accommodations, her plummet broken by exterior structures and facades. Slowing her enough that when she tumbled into the alley that Stop Stop had been hiding in she had been only stunned her for a few minutes instead of dying as she'd hoped. Leaving a trail of destruction leading all the way up to her twelfth floor flat.

Once Stop Stop had broken April out of her daze, the woman had responded to a powerful impulse to protect the child that banished thoughts of attempting suicide again.

“I wouldn't have ever called myself terribly maternal before. I knew then that it had been more than my body that had changed. Stop Stop could feel my emotions, and I could feel hers. We are the only two…Children of the Egg… that we've met so far like that. The others that we've met. They…"

“We feel compelled to protect them. I've never met this woman or girl before in my life, but they…"

“They have a presence. We feel drawn to them. Like moths beating themselves against the covering of a light." Said a gravelly voice, hidden among the listening crowd. With no mouth movements it was impossible, Benny realized, to pinpoint which dragon was speaking.

The other dragons described what they'd felt, taking turns. Allowing Benny to learn their names and who they were. He had so many questions, it was hard for him to remember that his prime focus should be on the more immediate issues. Which were legion. With Jasmine's intended there to calm her anxieties, and with no one else appearing to transform into herons or crocodiles or anything like that, he was able to relax the tiniest bit and indulge his curiosity. He had to figure out what kind of danger his family here, and in South Dakota, might be in. That meant understanding what was happening even when he was called away to assist Ho and Samantha as they methodically worked through the sundry injuries. Having to fend off a horse-sized dragon that kept insisting on licking the wounds before they could be covered with the dwindling supplies of the two veterinarians.

Martin had become alarmed at what was going on in Seattle and said with a nerdy giggle that he'd felt a disturbance in the force at about the same time that Jasmine disappeared from the facility. Earning a squeal from the woman-dolphin and a mighty splash from her fluke.

“That was when I remembered that she had said she was going to be a dolphin. That we…" he said, kissing her between the eyes on her melon. “…would become dolphins to help the others."

Dr. Schofield nearly turned himself inside out trying to hold the questions on that subject. A battle between security and curiosity warring in his head. The phone rang again with the same blocked number. Snatching it off the cradle and barking a terse command into it before slamming the handset down again.

“Damn you, keep this line clear until my family gets back here!"

 Bob, Samantha's stout husband, got it from there. “Samantha and I had discussed where would be best to ride out a disaster, and we knew that the isolated nature of this place on the waterfront would be a good defensible position."

Bobby was miffed that his life's work had been relegated to being a half-flooded Alamo. Especially since no one had bothered to run it by him. Samantha voiced her own objections with her arm buried up to its wrist in a dragon who had its eyes pressed tight with pain and was scratching furrows in the concrete with its claws.

“That was if it wasn't Seattle itself on fire, you idiot!"

“It's funny you should say that…" Bob replied, serenely. “Because Tacoma is a lot worse. There is looting going on, and there are armed gangs trying to kill…" he jerked his thumb sideways furtively at the dragon next to him listening to the account with what Benny could only describe as a downcast mien.

“So, I think it was a heads-up move on my part to know that the dragons are friendly and were willing to come here if we would be friendly with them in return."

“We're still people…" the dragon Bob was pointing at mumbled. Staring at the ground past its long nose while lying with its tail coiled to rest between its front paws. “Don't think of us as animals, because then that is all we'll ever be."

“I met Bob, Amelia, Jen, and Grace at King Street Station before we came here on foot with Amelia, Jen, and Grace protecting us. That was when we ran into April and Stop Stop with four others and the cart of food on our move north along the waterline."

“Why did you get all that food anyway April? And how? Did someone really sell that to you…with the way that you are?" Bob asked her, after listening to a red eyed dragon recount how it had met one group travelling here. April resumed the details of her journey.

“My next-door neighbor was quick to call my secretary when I told him to after coming to investigate the sound of my…fall." Her muzzle twisted into what Benny supposed was a wry grin.

“He only helped because he was terrified of me and Stop Stop. I had to answer an absurd number of questions to prove who I was over the phone when we reached Maria just before the service failed. She met me and two other Children at the Fred Meyer on 46^th. The quickest answer is that I didn't know what we ate, and Stop Stop was hungry. So, I asked Maria to buy us some of everything." A heavyset Hispanic woman with sharp eyes came over to April when her boss looked at her imploringly and laid her hand on the woman-dragon's arm, receiving the embrace of a tail tip wrapping around her waist.

 “As it turns out, we aren't particular in what we eat. I even tried cat food since I'm only as good as an animal when I go around killing people that love me just for being anywhere nearby my fucking…tail. This thing…this thing…It's a tail…April you have a tail…A tail…April has a tail…" She trailed off, her eyes dazed as they stared at the spinal extension rose from coiling about her assistant and into the air. Her eyes shifted, and the tail moved towards where she was now focused. The wings on her back raised with a flexion of her shoulders. Partially unfurling as the incredibly long arm bones articulated at the elbow and wrist. Hinting at the vast span the fingers supporting the wing membrane were capable of when just one jointed digit lifted the top edge of the wing two meters above the body. The wings were probably wider than she was long if the rest of the pair opened to an equal degree.

Even Benny could see the growing sense of panic and horror in those inhuman eyes. Or was it what he was feeling deep at the primal base of his mind? 

“Hey…" he tried to assure the woman-dragon, uncomfortably. What could he possibly say to her? It's okay, everyone grows a tail at some point in their lives? That it's normal to grow so large that everyone around you is crushed to death? That all people are perfectly capable of getting up and walking away from a multi-story plummet?

“It'll…be okay. Okay?" He settled on, giving her an awkward pat that pushed the tightly woven pattern of her scales against his hand when they raised at his touch. Scents swirled from beneath the fine plates, leaving the odd sensation of minty coolness on his skin.

“You're terrible at this! No! No, it won't be okay. Look at me! Look at us! We're monsters. Monsters that people have been shooting at all day! I don't want to be a Child of the Egg. I want to be human. I want Brian back. My old life returned to me. Not this…this travesty."

There was that phrase again, Child of the Egg. What did that mean? The dragon-people seemed to know it, perhaps even instinctively as they seemed to view the term as an axiom that required no explanation. The alien that had at least some hand-paw in this misery said and did nothing beyond remaining aloof with its far too piercing gaze. Half of the remaining dragons joined April in weeping heavy tears that felt unbearably hot when they splashed against Benny's bare feet. The other half trying to console the others in a language as alien to the world as the creatures were themselves.

Grace, Hidalgo's wife, told how she and their only child had encountered Ho's family of seven, including Ho and her husband's elderly parents, on the light train coming west from where they all lived in Bellevue. Describing how they'd seen hundreds of dragons heading east, on foot and flying, into the vast mountain forests that split the state. A sight that had left them speechless in terror at seeing so many creatures, some larger than elephants, that shouldn't have existed. Running for the wilds with their heads outstretched and the thunder of their calls to each other matching their tremendous footfalls in volume.

A dragon listening fluted for a moment and cast a very wistful look to the east in the rough direction that Mt. Rainier lay. Out of sight beyond Seattle. A few others bobbing their heads like pistons in response to their fellow's comment. Wings unfurled, casting the center into shadow, and sending the wild dolphins into a frenzy, to make abortive flutters of movement. As if their bodies reacted to a desire that their minds couldn't express. The grace of the motions being ruined as soon as the owners of the wings tried to consciously control their fifth and sixth limbs with startled jerks of their heads to look backwards at their long forms. A perfect example of just how little familiarity the ex-humans had with their new body plans. But not explaining how some of them knew how to fly and others did not.

Grace and Si-woo, Ho's husband, had all hid on the floor of the train with the few other passengers, including a woman undergoing a rapid transformation that had her howling in agony as she bucked like a horse on her hands and feet. Destroying the interior of the abandoned car that she was alone in by ripping handrails and seats from their bases with every contortion of her swelling and lengthening body. Si-woo recounted how the sight of the horror in the woman's eyes, as the unbelievable broke and reformed her anatomy, would be one that would haunt him for the rest of his days.

Shrieking police sirens and the roar of car engines followed the stampede of dragons outside. Described in ebullient fashion by the youngest children like Hidalgo's six-year-old girl. In counterpoint to the sensational reenactment put on by the child, Si-woo continued phlegmatically describing a scene that must have been terrifying despite his matter-of-fact description. Bullets had struck the sides and roof of the train as the pursuers of the dragons passed the train. Another wave of vehicles chased after the first interspersed with bellows from what he presumed were the creatures and the sound of vehicular and structural destruction.

At the western terminus of the mass transit system, a resounding voice had beckoned all the riders off the train with promises that the area was safe. Telling the wary riders that the train would not be moving again that day as automated safety protocols implemented themselves.

Grace was the most shocked of all to find that the speaker was a dragon two-thirds the size of April, who they were to shortly meet, with a police officer's cap bearing what she was told was a captain's rank wedged between two crescents of fine bristling scales. Grace admitted that she never in her life would have imagined that a woman could have a voice capable of shaking the air with its force. Leaving her a little intimidated by the commander of the law enforcement detachment controlling the transit hub. Somehow, Captain Penelope had gotten herself inside the station with her law enforcement squad to control access to a city that was descending into anarchy. The families described being given a security briefing on where the city was, and was not, safe while an emergency crew from the transportation department away the wall of the train car the transforming woman had no way out of any longer. By the time they knew how dangerous the city had become, the woman was as long as the train car.

“And that is what you walked into? With our family? Instead of staying at home?" More than one angry voice challenged the late arriving spouses.

“We didn't have a choice for much longer once the exits were blocked and the building was set on fire. The dragon cop rammed herself through one of the burning barricades with her officers. She…I don't know if she and the other police survived. As for our home, what good was that without you there? We needed to be where you were, Hidalgo." Grace replied, sadly and defensively both. The man relented, looking defeated. How could he berate his wife for not sticking to a plan that they had never even made in the first place? She had been following her first instinct, and it had just been a miracle that his family had made it alive and mostly well to the center. 

“My child and I…" a larger dragon with brilliant violet eyes rumbled with the tone of a mountainside crashing to a valley floor. “Encountered the families of Si-woo and Grace as they fled the burning station. My little boy, Charles flying above us, pointed out the men to me wearing black hockey masks and body armor chasing after them." The dragon shifted uncomfortably and raised one of its paws to look at the vicious claws capping the fingers that it flexed open and closed. Looking down at them again with a distant and unfocused expression. The lad, who must have been Charles, lay silent and guarded on his parent's back. Looking at the others with fiery red and yellow eyes.

“They were armed with handguns and rifles that they were shooting into the air as they ran. Like… like they were herding the two families. When they pointed their guns at me, I killed four of them with one swing of this hand. You can still see the blood, can't you? I can still smell it even if you can't. I will never forget this smell. The smell when I became a murderer. Their limp bodies being thrown together against that wall painted by the life pouring out of them. I can still see them. There they are." It pointed at a blank concrete wall where nothing remarkable could be seen. “Four of them, with that look of surprise on their faces when I'd knocked their masks off. As if they couldn't imagine that what they were doing would cause them or anyone else harm." The dragon clammed up and placed its head on the ground. Covering its eyes with its paws. Charles crept forward until he could flop down at the top of his parent's neck, crushing the swell of the fin growing there. Placing his head on his parent's, he hummed a tune that Benny didn't recognize but had some meaning for themselves. Shivers made the older dragon's tail writhe before traveling up its spine in rippling waves.

The rest of the story was equally harrowing. Taking the pair of families hours to move from the transportation hub downtown and just five kilometers north. Where the rehabilitation center sat by itself at the end of a crowded pier full of warehouses to the west of the Space Needle visible above the walls of the facility. Making the journey in fits and starts with many long instances of hiding while the intrepid group grew and shrank as others joined them for the temporary safety granted by the gathered dragons.

“Why can't we find out about any of this on the news?" Benny said in vexation after learning that the attackers that had come right up to his gate were after the food being carted by April. “All we get is this national stuff." He exclaimed, pointing at the computers playing news feeds of fretting politicians in the nation's capital. What was happening in Seattle nothing more than one news item detailing the general panic sweeping the country in the chyron scrolling across the bottom of the screens. “Where are the local emergency alerts? Is this problem not as dire as you think?"

“It's pretty freaking bad, Benny." Bob said. “We wouldn't have risked coming here if we felt safe in our homes. There was a lot of arson and looting all the way here on top of the gunfire. The power went out at my house, along with the internet and cellular. I had no way of knowing anything outside of the radio broadcasts. Which only told me that everything was in chaos."

“But why now? That message from the aliens came yesterday. Why is everyone acting out now?"

“Because of us." April said, barely audible. Realization began to set in. “Many of us are waking up from our transformations today and emerging. The world is realizing just how different everything has become. With the usual rational behavior."   

“I might have an answer for why we have heard nothing from the government types." Another ex-human said, bounding out of the water where it had been paddling around with an enamored B040621. April saved the electronics from being swamped by the wave of water the smaller dragon launched by snapping her wing out. “You have your own satellite feed here, yes?"

“What? Oh…yeah. We need it to talk with…"

“Great." The dragon trilled, cutting off the director. “Then you will be safe from what I suspect is happening. Please go to the message board at this address." She rattled off a website address that was meaningless to Benny. “It's where most hackers post their projects. With all the anarchists we saw, I think they might have shut down the city's stuff! No talking with anyone, no coordinating a thing. Nothing will work right!

“My name is Lacy, by the way. Isn't it the fucking coolest that I'm a dragon? This is way more exciting than being an ugly antisocial teenager with no friends! Even if it did… you know… hurt so much that I thought I was dying and the people on the bus totally saw my tits when my clothes fell apart. I hope I don't end up on Itube."

“Do your parents know what happened to you? Where you are?"

“Yes!" She said immediately, as Jacob typed the website address into a browser.

“Don't you dare lie to us, girl!" April snapped at her, startling everyone in the lull as they waited to learn more of what was happening. Stop Stop appeared next to April's head, hopping up and down with her tail whipping behind to slap the ground after each meter and a half leap upward. Fluffed into a scale bristling ball of rage and stinking of ozone. Evidently the two females had picked up a deceit on Lacy's part. Why they reacted so angrily, Benny couldn't guess. He supposed, based on the reaction of the baby, that there might be innate mores against dishonesty ingrained into their new minds.   

                The effect on the teenage girl-dragon was instantaneous. Crouching nearly on the ground she curled her neck to press the tip of her muzzle against the wet concrete of the ground with her tail held stiffly straight behind and wings pinned tight against her back. Murmuring a muted sing-song reply to each of the dragon-women baring their teeth at her. Benny wondered if the teenager had ever shown a tenth of the respect she was showing to these strangers to her own parents. Even to the tiny little baby-dragon who was less than a year old!

                “It's true. A DDOS has been launched against Seattle systems that has shut down control of electrical and emergency systems, and Olympia has been hit by a ransomware attack that has locked up everything controlled by the state capital."

                “Dios Mio..." Martin said, crossing himself. Jasmine rammed her snout into his hip and knocked him into the deeper water as she said something beyond Benny's range of hearing that grabbed the attention of the dragons. Two of the largest cities in the pacific northwest with no control over the developing emergency.

                “It might be even worse than these hackers." Dr. Ho said. “These might be cyber-attacks from other countries to make the societal effects of first contact with the aliens worse. The United States might be at electronic war right now, and we would never even know. This is how it would appear to civilians. First, communications would start to fail. Then, infrastructure. If the authorities are cut off, false information and command could be given that would cost lives. The economic damage every day this goes on could be in the billions."

                What Dr. Schofield had been told was enough for him to know a decision had to be made. Pacing back and forth, he looked at each of the groups that he needed to account for at his facility. The ex-human dolphin, the ex-human dragons, the alien, the families, the children, the wives, the husbands.

                “I need…I want you all to be a part of this decision-making process. After hearing what you've told me, I don't think this place is safe. Look at this screen. I've got two dragons guarding my gate against looters and thieves that are trying to rob us for the food you've brought. We need to see if we can get help here from law enforcement of some kind."

                “I don't think there's going to be anyone left to help just us when so many others need assistance, but after what we saw I agree." Bob said.

                “I don't trust the FBI, if those are the people you plan to ask. Why are they calling us? There is…" Dr. Ho's eyes widened with realization. She spun to the golden eyed alien watching the deliberations.

                “Yes, your federal government is aware of my presence here. They won't be long in coming."

                The first indication of just how badly that the situation was becoming for the refugees at the Institute came fifteen minutes later. Three giant ravens that had been among many other coming and going from the Needle flew in their direction. Converging on a point directly overhead to engage in wild aerobatics. One of the three lashed its tail with a resounding call that was returned by the dragons watching from the roof of the observation platform of the Needle. Benny and the other humans were partially deafened when two of the dragons nearby rose on their hind legs to voice an answer in a slightly different tone that ended with two ringing chirps of enormous volume.

                What they were doing became apparent when the striking tail produced a puff of black smoke. Another dragon folded its wings and dove after what the Director could now see was a large remote-controlled plane like the kind the military would use. Snatching the freefalling machine with its hands the dragon wheeled around one wingtip in a graceful U-turn to head their way.

                The dragon and his two companions landed with horizontal sweeps of their wings that brought their bodies up vertically into a hover before dropping them neatly onto their tails, hind legs, and then finally onto all fours. Smoothly folding their wings from their vertical positions as the terrible buffeting that everyone had to brace themselves against while securing everything that wasn't bolted to the ground died. The unmanned aircraft was nosed over to April, and everyone felt her surprise echoing in their minds followed by an uncertain expression of approval. As if she wasn't sure why the device was being presented to her and what she should do in response. Which was likely the case. The new dragons wouldn't explain themselves in English or Spanish or any other human language, and didn't seem to understand anything said to them either. April and Sam, the father of Charles finally identifying himself, translated for them.

                “They said that it has been hovering over us. They know that it has a camera and that humans control it, so they've been trying to tell it to leave. When it got closer to the…I don't know how to translate this…two great mothers…they attacked it. I think they're under the impression that it meant you two harm." He finished, flicking his tail tip to point at Stop Stop and April. “I feel…weird being around you two as well. I do not understand why. I don't know who either of you are, but I know that I would protect you even with my life. It doesn't…that can't be normal."

                “…I feel that way too." Lacy said quietly. Not able to meet anyone's eyes when they turned to her as she scratched at the ground with one claw. She'd been lying in a corner, not speaking since her scolding earlier. With the phones only working intermittently now, she still hadn't been able to reach her parents. “I am starting to think that I might not be like who I was. I might have…what are they called…instincts that I didn't when I was a person. It is a little freaky to think you might not be you anymore. Even beside the…you know." Her tail rose and swept along her body demonstratively, her eyes never leaving the point of her claw as she carved fine parallel lines in the concrete. Curling her fingers against her long palm when Dr. Schofield protested the disfigurement of his facility.

                “FUCK!" Samantha screamed, unexpectedly. Jarring everyone away from their uneasy consideration of the plaque on the surveillance aircraft that said: 'Property of the US Government. If found call 123-1234.'

                “Get a camera, and everyone get over here. Martin is turning into a dolphin!"

                “What? No! Stop him! We need to find out what is going on." Dr. Schofield protested.

                “How Benny? Do you want me to hog tie him? He's turning into a damned sea mammal, not running away!"

It was as she said, Benny saw, as Jacob set up one of the absent Rebecca's high-definition video recorders just in time to catch Martin staring in wonder at his hand. The brown coloration of his skin bleaching until it was a dark gray that matched D040621's and spreading across the skin filling the spaces between his fingers to lock them together.

“Martin, listen to us! We don't know what the aliens have told you, promised you, but tell them no! Fight it! If it cares about what you say, it'll let you go! It must stop it! You can't do this!" Jacob yelled in equal parts fear and anger, abandoning the recorder to function autonomously in documenting the bizarre and impossible sight before its mindless eye. Switching the target of his efforts to the alien. Whirling on the golden-eyed dragon and running around the pond until he could grab its lip. Yanking roughly on the thick and firm piece of flesh in a futile effort to get the dragon to bring its head to his level.

“Do you hear me? You can't do this! You must stop! We'll make you stop!" Bringing his hand up, the psychiatrist started swinging his fist upward into the bottom of its massive jaw. Not heeding the damage he was doing to his hand as chunks of his skin and splatters of blood began to decorate the alien's scales.

Some froze, not knowing how the alien would react to such violence no matter how ineffectual. A fear that was overblown, as the alien did react with alarming speed but not with the aggression they'd supposed it would. Striking like lightning with its tail, Jacob was bound with a single muscular loop and hoisted into the air to be sat down well out of arm's reach. Keeping him from injuring himself further to no end.

Many remained spellbound by the sight of Martin however, and the peaceable grin splitting his face. Falling to his knees on the examination ledge as he embraced Jasmine, chittering rapidly to her beau. The water coming up to his shoulders to obscure what was happening to his body with the shimmer of refractive optics and the opacity of the sea water pumped and treated from the sound.

“It's okay. We were asked and we agreed to be the first. We will lead and we will save many for a future that you would not be possible otherwise. Jasmine has waited long enough for me to join her. You can ask the Children of the Egg and the Void Child to translate for us once I am done." He gave a heavy sigh and leaned forward with a thick grunt coming from deep in his throat. Shifting his body as something beneath the water stirred. Roiling the surface just behind Martin.

“No! We need answers from you! What do you mean you were asked to be the first? The first what? To lead what? Just what the hell is going on?"

When the phone rang again, Benny nearly screamed in frustration. Being denied the answers to make this quantifiable. His stomach flipped inside, making him sick. The horror of watching the boy slip from being human to animal was even worse than George. It was voluntary. Jasmine had been speaking the truth. They had agreed to this.

All he could see in the distending face of Martin was one of his own children. One of his kid's coming to tell him that they didn't want to be human anymore, and then their face exploding outwards into the shape of a dolphin's. The tail he saw lifting its flukes into the air with a spasm was not Martin's, it was his own daughter's. Benny turned away from the sight of Martin as the dark gray washed over the rest of his skin. His neck thickening and body swelling. Apparent to all when his clothes dissolved along with the hair on his head and face. His eyes darkening and changing until they only had a hint of the deepest blue.

Samantha was visibly in shock, one hand covering her mouth as she watched. Bob standing next to her and holding her free hand. Their kids among the other children standing aside to film the human to dolphin transition with their constellation of cell phones and a preternatural fascination. Ho-Sook had turned away all together and was being held by her husband. The parents of the two stood watching the horror fantasy of the boy in the water as his arms shrank until they were nearly absorbed into the body. Dr. Schofield knew exactly what the kid's front limbs would look like beneath the thickening skin. His skin erupting in goosebumps at the thought of the enormous shifts in his bodily systems that Martin must feel.  

                This time, to distract himself from the nauseating reminder that he still could not reach his children and his twice divorced wife, to make sure that they were still human if for no other reason, he answered the phone.

                “That system your pet dragon just destroyed cost six hundred thousand dollars. Congratulations." The Yankee voice drawled in his ear without preamble as soon as he picked up the phone. In the background of her call a tremendous roar and incessant whine nearly overwhelming the sound of her voice. 

                “I don't…" Benny had to fight down his bile as there was a wet tearing sound behind him followed by an explosive blast of air. Shivering as he felt moisture rain down on his head and neck. Fearful to learn what unearthly thing had just happened. “I don't care. What do you want, Agent Starling?"

                “For all of you to remain at the center until we arrive. I am allowed to inform you, that the other two that departed earlier have been identified and are being brought along with their families. As for those idiots prowling around your front gate…" Benny looked upwards to scan the skies with his hand shielding his eyes. A useless exercise to spot whatever they were being surveilled with as he didn't even know the crashed remote-control plane was there earlier.

                “We will be there in approximately…one minute to control the situation at your location. If you can, get those two creatures to vacate the area immediately."

                The line, that Benny had placed on speaker phone for the hovering dragons that seemed able to split their attention between his conversation and the dolphinication of Martin, left behind a frenzy of activity when it went dead. The dragons chattering to each other in their recondite language until one suddenly leapt into the air to shoot towards the entrance. Returning in a fraction of the time they'd been given with their worse-for-wear guardians making pained high-pitched noises and dripping blood from tens of wounds covering their bodies. With the gates unguarded the humans assaulting it became bolder without the presence of the dragons to instill caution. 

                Martin was half formed into his new shape when the helicopters arrived. Circling overhead and drawing the interest of every single dragon that had been lounging on the Space Needle. Current and former humans alike scrambling in the thundering wash of the rotors that sent the table full of computers and the watching camera crashing to the ground. Only the quick thinking of some saving the electronics that didn't succumb immediately to shock and water damaged. Amber, startled by the actions of the helicopters, spread her wings in alarm. Catching the full fury of the churning rotors, she was flung by the wind in her sails into the wall next to her. Crumbling soundlessly even as Benny felt her shock and the flash of her pain slam into him like a physical force. Lacy and Charles where roaring at the helicopters with their heads raised and jaws opened wide. A sound they led the others in creating that was so terrible that it could even be heard over the elemental cacophony from the flying war machines. Benny felt his own heart hammer within his chest at the sensations emanating from April. The drum beat in his ears of his blood surging with alarm at what happened to the woman-dragon in ways that made little sense to him and that he couldn't rationalize later.

An impending conflict that came closer to nuclear midnight as the creatures flying their way from the Needle dipped one at a time towards the ground. Reappearing with dumpsters and motorcycles clutched within their claws. An awesome display of strength that intimidated Dr. Schofield more than anything else he's seen the ex-humans do yet as they may have been flying with loads equal to their own masses. No creature of Earth was remotely capable of such a feat. Not now, not in the lost ages of giants.

The pilots of the helicopters spotted the flying creature as they came but could not engage them with the energetic contortions the dragons performed to keep away from the guns bristling from each side of the aircraft. Soon, there was a cloud of dragons swirling above the trio of choppers landing one at a time in the abandoned parking lot to discharge their occupants. Whether by accident or design, the helicopters with their emplacement left them safe from the weapons clutched within the paws of the flying dragons without risking those beneath. Hovering directly above the forms that were struggling to help steady April as she staggered onto her feet. Leaving the most insane kind of stalemate that Benny could possibly imagine existing.

                On his security monitor he watched as a team of five wearing GI-Joe gear ran towards the front gate with their guns raised to their shoulders and pointed at the armed looters outside the barricaded fence line. He saw the fools raise their own weapons and then puffs of smoke came from the kicking weapons of the soldiers. A mute violence in the roar of the helicopters as the gun-toting civilians crumbled. Two more teams equipped just like the first ran into the service tunnel towards where the Doctor watched, unable to keep pace with how swiftly things were unfolding.

                “Hey. No one make any sudden movements." Was the only insipid thing that he could think to shout as loudly as he could before one of the two fast moving teams emerged from the darkness of the tunnel in the shape of a 'T'. Yelling for everyone to get on the ground.

                Which of course upset the dragons that had clustered around Stop Stop and April instinctively and ended with the armed men being thrown, cartwheeling helplessly through the air, into the pool. Jasmine leading the dolphins into ramming the men's weapons away and then working to stop them from drowning under the weight of their bulletproof Army stuff. Keeping them alive, but also away from the still changing Martin wallowing like a gray misshapen log in the water without a dorsal fin to stabilize the flailing of his one finished pectoral fin.

                Benny flattened himself against the damp concrete, feeling it soak through the few remaining dry patches of his clothes as the helicopter above reacted to the assault on the troops. Warm flesh pressed against his hand, and he grabbed at it while twisting his head to see that it was the hand of Samantha's oldest child. Her eyes wild with fear as a dragon he did not know the name of crawled over her with one sprawling leg movement. Benjamin saw the warm brown of the eye looking back at him before the dragon's head and the world beyond vanished behind a canopy of black flesh and jointed digits. Backlit by the weak sun of a fading Seattle day to reveal the intricate road map of veins and arteries radiating through the wing spread over them both.

Cracks pierced the veiling drone of the helicopters accompanied by roars of pain that transcended into the physical. A smell was everywhere. Saturating his awareness until all that he could think was that if fear had an odor, it would be this. Tangled frenzies of emotion battered at him leaving him confused as to what were his and what were not. Rage, pain, fear, despair, an assertation of control. A sense that a growing force had decided that enough was enough.

                A metallic shrieking noise and then the sound of mechanical component beating themselves to pieces silenced the repetitive cracks. One of the thudding beats of the choppers overhead changed in pitch and frequency as it moved away. Suddenly feeling out of rhythm to the steady cadence that it'd had before. Lessening the currents buffeting the membrane covering them.

                With the abatement in the hurricane, he could hear many more voices shouting commands that remained insensible to Benny and the young girl, Emma, her name was Emma, as they cowered under the shivering wing with the smell of fear and damp brine-soaked cement in their noses. The fear was replaced by swirls of something softer. Something that they wished they could draw in and never forget. Then the reason for the change swam across the perception of the two humans. A powerful sense of peace, that everything was okay, came from two distinct directions that amplified each other. Benny shushed Emma, not trusting these new and foreign feelings that swirled within and placed his hand against the side of the dragon just in front of his face. Feeling the smooth and rock-hard scales collapse with the weight of his touch and the percussive drum of a heart far larger than his own beneath thick insulating layers of muscle, skin, and scale.

                Peering out, he saw the comparatively miniscule shape of Stop Stop making good on her repetitive name. Standing perpendicular to the director's line of sight, she stood tall on her hind legs and tail with her wings spread wide. With her head held high, and her front legs extended up and out, she appeared to be pleading. A form that she was either mimicking from April, immediately behind her, or inspiring in the woman-dragon overshadowing her.

All around them the dragons that had been in flight, and those that had been on the ground, had formed in rings. Facing inward with their wings extended to overlap their ex-human companions while their heads bobbed and wove on their serpentine necks. Talking to each other and stepping forward individually to chirp positive expressions to the two in the center that remained frozen with their eyes shut and tails quivering with energy. The rasping, guttural breaths of the dragons and the movements of their scales as they raised and lowered creating an eerie soundtrack to the alien sight.    

                Benny tugged Emma's hand, who'd maintained her vise-like grip on his, to bring her into the light. Their protector had its head and body flat to the ground with its eyes on the girl and woman like all the other ex-humans in a behavior that had the scientifically minded director on fire with curiosity.

                The human voices that he'd heard shouting had come from the new group standing in the mouth of the tunnel. Unable to move through the mass of scaly quadrupeds occupying every inch of dry land beyond. Including a woman with red hair peaking out from beneath the stormtrooper helmet she wore that was yelling into the radio held to her lips with one hand. Making dismissive waves with the other at the helicopters that were already tilting away to return to where they'd come.

                Sensations of emotion hovered on the edge of Benny's awareness. Swirling thought and feeling that he could barely get the impression of. The hair on his arms raised as if he was standing within an energy field awaiting discharge like the moment before a lightning strike. He raised his hands to shout at the dragons, knowing that whatever was happening the ex-humans had to be at the center of it. The brown-eyed transformed human that had protected him moments earlier nudged him in the small of his back with its wing. Catching his attention to tell the director not to interrupt with a wide swinging motion of his head. Stop Stop and April didn't know what they were doing, and Stephanie was afraid that their empathy would become unmanageable and harm everyone.

                The maelstrom of emotion and energy dissipated with the crumbling of April and Stop Stop to their sides and the shrill alarm of many of the dragons. Benny realizing only then something that he should have noticed before when Stephanie had stopped him. She had never spoke a single word. It had all been in his head. It was then, Dr. Schofield knew, that he began to fear the dragons for a far better reason than their appearance. Just who were they now? Did even they know? How did he know the brown-eyed dragon was a woman? How did he know her name?

                The girl and woman dragons roused from their alarm with a keening wail of pain. Adding to the chaos that Benjamin, Agent Starling, and April when she could speak past what was ailing her, were confronted with. Which all could have been avoided if the FBI, like a bunch of cowboys, Benny thought derisively, hadn't come down on them with a heavy hand.

                For the alien, as they'd suspected. They wanted to secure the alien and move it somewhere else. Instead, being told that there was nowhere else for it to be, as its purpose could only be fulfilled at the aquatic center.

                “I will not allow myself or any of those present to be removed from this location unless they themselves desire to leave. You may test me as you like, but you do not have the capability to do so."

                Which was tried once when an agent slapped handcuffs on a resisting Samantha, only to fall unconscious on the spot. Another tried to shoot the alien with a dart gun of some kind, but the projectile failed to fire. Then the agent fell unconscious like her fellow. Just for good measure it seemed.

                “You have come here to speak to me, and that is fine. But I have come here to give intelligent life a new opportunity to flourish. Even if humanity does not satisfactorily change their behavior, the existence of others must be allowed to continue. You will not be permitted to impede my mission. This is not negotiable as it has nothing to do with the wider challenge presented to you and the Children of the Egg."

Agent Starling and Benjamin had listened to the alien make these declarations in the first minutes of post-arrival chaos as the injured were seen to and more threats of incarceration were made. The squall that Stop Stop continued to emit seemed to be from those wounded, both dragon and human, by the FBI's arrival. She, and a moaning April, were…absorbing the pain they felt in the others nearby, or so Lacy felt after she had nuzzled the older woman. An action that confused her enough that she pawed at her nose afterwards in snorting disbelief. Which was all just as well with four suffering bullet wounds along with the casualties of the helicopter crash that Benny had heard. The ex-humans putting out the small fires that had started with the aircraft's uncontrolled encounter with the ground by dumping stupendous amounts of water from the sound on the crash site.

                Samantha's middle child was the one that needed evacuation for the wound to her leg and four more suffering trauma from the crash had to evacuate on the helicopter hastily called to return. The fact that she had been shot for no other reason than because might made right had driven Samantha into a fury that had four agents piled on top of her as she screamed her righteous anger. The daughter, Chloe, was accompanied by her father on the helicopter. Leaving behind a distraught mother that threw herself into helping the others to ignore the tears tracking down her cheeks after she'd been ordered released to treat the other wounded. Three dragons with bullet wounds, too large for transport by helicopter and to be carried by others were held down instead for emergency treatment as April writhed with the feeling of the operation to remove the projectiles lodged in their flesh.

                “I can't block their pain! Make it stop. Make it stop. Make it stop!" the woman-dragon had howled while on her side. A perplexing outburst that raised many questions and answered none. Lashing back and forth like a snake and knocking some into the secondary holding tank to the bafflement of the dolphins who came nosing along and to the cringing distress of all the other victims of governmental thuggery. 

                The dolphins, after another fifteen minutes of nauseating metamorphosis, now numbered six. Jasmine stayed glued to her ex-human partner's side as he struggled to maneuver his larger body while clicking and creaking unbroken streams that Benny wished he could translate. The other four, more reluctant to come near a new male dolphin, instead swarming towards every new occurrence. Exhibiting an uncanny and watchful curiosity. Hidalgo, and his children, worked with the ex-humans to try to learn just why he would want such a thing as a change in his species to happen. With Jasmine's help, they got Martin onto the partially submerged ledge to rest and point out what he wanted to say on the message board.    

                “Everyone here is absolutely under arrest for resisting a lawful national security action. I don't care what fiction you have seen on tv or in the movies, and as soon as the…dragons will cooperate in telling us who they are, they will be charged with all the crimes they have committed as well. If they refuse to do that, then they will be held in pens like wild animals. None of you are allowed to leave this place, because I also don't care what that thing over there says or does. If we can't stop you here, we'll find you at your homes and arrest you there. Now sign this fucking non-disclosure agreement stating that if you ever speak about what this alien said or did in your presence you will never be free again. No, you don't have a choice." Agent Starling said, in the present. Finding things settled to her satisfaction in what had started the day as Dr. Schofield's aquatic rescue center and had now become a prison for a growing number of inmates that included himself. Prisoners of which some could fly and had done so already much to the irritation of the federal agents.

                “Tell them they're not allowed to leave! I know all of them used to be human, so they know how to obey law enforcement. No! Bad dragon! Arrested dragon! Dragon stay here!"

                Annoying Sam into a fit that had his scales twitching up and down in waves across his body. His tail snapping with a mid-air crack as he flicked it with his angry response. “Stop speaking to us like that. We can understand you just fine, even if the others don't remember who they were or how to talk." He snarled, looming over the woman who didn't seem to have what Benjamin felt might have been a little more concern for her safety while angering people that had already been through the unknown of losing their species of birth.

                Who she thought had this illusionary ability to command the dragons that knew how to fly Benny couldn't guess. The ones flying to and from the compound were also the ones that didn't seem to be able to speak English and the least interested in what the humans had to say to them for the most part. Only on occasion looking back at the humans trying to direct them with heads cocked in what seemed to be patient toleration. A larger dragon even responded to being yelled at that it was under arrest by patting the head of the FBI agent condescendingly, which Benny had found hilarious.  

                If anything, the dragons that would not speak any human language might have listened to April and Stop Stop. But as soon as the wounds had been dealt with earlier, Stop Stop had fled into the tunnels with the youngest of the children and three of the other dragons. Not being seen since even after those children had returned full of excitement to tell their fretting parents about the “brain pictures" that the tiny girl-dragon had been sending them. April had little inclination to direct any other living creature to do a single thing at the command of the federal agents. Leaving very little control of the population of the prison beyond vague threats on what would happen if they left. The investigators promising that the questioning would begin tomorrow as soon as more help arrived.              

                Benny was sitting in his office in the concrete warrens as night fell. After seeing that his work family were settled and that Jasmine and Martin's needs were being met as much as they would allow with their human minds and dolphin requirements, he'd gone searching for peace and quiet. Ho-Sook was with her family in the conference room adjacent to his office. Trying to get them comfortable with what they had. Which were the clothes on their backs and a vague promise that they'd be taken care of tomorrow by their jailors. Benjamin should have guessed that he had a visitor in his office by the trio of dragons sleeping in a pile just outside that took up most of the hallway with their sprawling tails, necks, and wings. The squawking, peeping conversation that had preceded being allowed into his office bemusing the director. Only once they had sniffed him thoroughly had they shuffled aside long enough for him to step wearily inside before shutting the door quietly and piling themselves up again outside with much scuffing and rustling of scales.

The tail wrapping around the outside of his desk and his displaced office chair betrayed the presence of Stop Stop hidden curled up within the footwell. The broad shoulders of the infantile dragon twitching beneath the wings growing from them with dark and unpleasant thoughts as soft squeaks came from her throat. Sitting down within sight of the video monitor displaying the feed from around his facility, Benny woke the comparatively tiny baby-dragon by placing his hand on her tail. Startling her awake, and nearly upending his desk with the force of her jump, he beckoned to her with his arms opened wide. Remembering what happened earlier and making some guesses as to what it might mean, he tried to think warm inviting thoughts to the baby-dragon watching him with wary amber eyes and felt a tugging on his thoughts like a fish nibbling on suspicious bait.

Her tail thumped and the fins sprouting from the sides of her head flared before she made a low whistling cry and bound into Benny's arms. Slamming him back against the wall with an oof. Burying her head beneath his chin, she shivered and chirped a stream of incomprehensible messages as he brought his arms to hug her against his chest. Ignoring the not so little pin pricks of her claws caught between them and the squirming of her tail as it encircled them. Obscuring the room as her wings created an intimate cocoon that smelled of vanilla and the warmth of her body radiating from her oversized membranes and from beneath the cool scales encasing her body. The man held the baby, wondering who she was and where her parents were. If they had abandoned her, were looking for her, had changed like her. Who would look after her? Did she even need looked after now?

Benny didn't know when he had fallen asleep, or how long at first, when Stop Stop poked his face with her iron hard nose. Making him groan and feel his own nose to make sure that it wasn't bleeding or broken as his other hand flailed at her to give her a reassure pat. The strength and the structure of her body was simply incredible.

“What…what is it?" He asked, groggy from what had been only a twenty-minute nap. Memories that weren't his dissipating from his mind. Replaced with new images that showed the night sky and a breathtaking display of constellations. Questions on just what the baby was showing him, and how she might have known what stars and the night sky were, pushed aside when seven of the lights moved towards his point of view. Six of the seven stars clumping together and then breaking apart again while the set continued to grow larger and brighter. The image faded, and Benny sat blinking against the glare of light that didn't exist. The baby resting her hands on his folded knees and looking him in the face with her wide set eyes bracketing the long wedge of her nose and her flaring nostrils.

“I don't know what that means, Stop Stop. What are you trying to tell me?"

                She chirped a sing-song melody at him that ended with a trill and raised her hand to grab his. Pulling him up and on to his knees with unsettling ease by extending her body upwards from its crouch. Backing away as he stood, she turned to the office exit with a swish of her tail across the tiled floor. Pushing Benny's chair back into the spot where it was before she had hidden absentmindedly. Issuing a whistling command, the door slammed open with a crack that made the Director wince to reveal three heads stacked on top of each other to peer inside before darting away down the hall with an orchestra of high-pitched cries. Hooking her tail around Benny's waist authoritatively, Stop Stop led him back outside to gaze at the nearly black sky with a focused look on her face.

                With a chirrup, she raised her wing to point with the thumb claw at a moving shadow in the night sky. Again the image of a cluster of stars came to him, this time accompanied by a feeling of belonging when six of the stars clumped together. Realization struck the Director at the same time a haunting roar came from the darkened aether that resolved into words.

                “Get out of the way. I don't know how to land!"

                “The tank! Aim for the tank, George!"

                A load that Benny had been carrying since George and Rebecca left that morning lifted from his shoulders at hearing both their voices. Leaping forward and ignoring the wrath of the agents yelling to obey their commands, he called out to Jasmine to lead her fiancée and the other dolphins into the depths of the water tanks.

                “What? She's…" Rebecca's shout of surprise was cut off by a terrified deep throated wail, and then a terrific splash as a shadowy piece of the night itself fell into the water. Once the wall of water had subsided, Benny saw that a pair of broad wings stretched out from the tank to lay limply draped over nearby equipment soaked with the spray of the uncontrolled crash. A heavy groan filled the air, and the wings lifted from where they had come down to fold one expansive joint at a time against George's back with a rustle. Revealing that the man-dragon was even bigger than Benjamin had remembered him that morning. As the dragon dragged himself from the tank to stand there dripping with a soggy and disheveled Rebecca sliding down his shoulder to the ground, the Director was almost certain that George's shoulder joint wasn't above his head before.

                The biomechanics of watching a neck lower a head below its own base so that the person whose body was made up of all those parts could look you in the eye was fascinating and terrifying in equal proportions. Benjamin was entranced by those large eyes looking back at him, only catching Rebecca by accident when she stumbled into him after her two and a half meter drop to the ground. Pushing back off him her head whipped around in search before glancing back at the flustered Director.

                “Jasmine? Where is she?"

                “In the pool…" Benny said, absently waving her towards the pod of watching dolphin heads to Rebecca's confusion. The Director was focused on the man that had been working for him ever since he had bought the center. “George did you find your family? What happened to them?"

                The pain was evident in the man-dragon's eyes. Sadness and boundless worry both clouding the large orbs until spilling over into tears that dropped to the ground. Stop Stop, at Benny's side, moaned wordlessly and he nearly started crying himself as George's feelings of loss and despondency battered him. Broadcasted through Stop Stop who seemed unable or unwilling to stop the strong emotions being shared.

                Before he heard the rising whistles of new bodies streaking through the air, Benny knew the truth about the fate of George's family. He had found them, changed as they'd been told, none of them remembered who they were. Not his wife landing perched suspiciously on the top of the amphitheater and not his children climbing out of the tank and turning to stare with wonder at the dolphins squeaking at them. His family had been broken by the strange and terrifying experience of becoming aliens on their own world. Now, his children moved to be close to the dragon they felt a natural attraction with and help him with his morose feelings.

                “I failed them, Benny." George sobbed, his shaking legs collapsing under him and dumping his belly to the ground. The swarming FBI agents held back from getting their guests separated from each other by the other dragon-people. They only needed to lie there to form barricades that the law enforcement was not able to overcome when the ex-humans held their wings tented upwards. Behind the sheltering circle, the bottom of George's head came down on his friend's shoulder. Nearly crushing him beneath its weight until a helpful onlooker supported the man-dragon's head.

                “I failed my family! They're gone! They're gone!"

                Nearly being scalded by the startingly hot tears, Benny clutched at the scales of the man's neck, giving him the only comfort that he was capable of. He felt a nudge in his head, a foreign presence trying to lead him to some answer. But he brushed it off. The images and emotions being shown to him non-sensical. Benjamin did not want to decipher the abstract thoughts of a baby that by all accounts should have still been helplessly crying for her mother in her crib.    

                “Everyone is here at last." The golden-eyed alien said intrusively. Peering over the sheltering wings at Benjamin, Stop Stop, George and his children after having moved in close with George's wife Maria trailing behind with crouching watchfulness for the humans getting in each other's way to resettle their recording devices on the alien ignoring them after its movements.

                “Gather your family, Dr. Schofield. It is time for you all to learn your places in the challenge to come and the decision that you must all make. Whether you will join Jasmine and Martin in the sea."