Grayson watched as the doctor stroked his chin. Billy and he had immediately got themselves checked out by the certified medical team that worked with their company. The doctor was finishing up the examinations on him while Billy was getting checked in the other room.
The look said most of it. "A week off of work?"
The doctor didn't even smile. Bad sign.
"Lethal?" Grayson asked.
"Not exactly," the doctor said with a long, relaxing sigh. "It's not good news for you though. We can keep this back, but somehow you have become infected with something changing your DNA."
Changing his DNA? "How?"
"I don't know how it happened, I just know it's beyond us. Eventually you will succumb to this, but it could be years down the road," the doctor said. "Maybe in that time we'll have some new research too."
"Changing my DNA how?" he asked.
"Your DNA is becoming lycanthrope in nature, Mister Grayson."
"Werewolf?!" Aw, damn! "Someone is changing my DNA into werewolf DNA?" Billy probably had the same thing happening.
"Yes. By law, even under the circumstances, I'll have to report this," the doctor warned him. "It's slight, not even a full percent, but-"
"I hunt werewolves, they are the enemy. I am not my own enemy." Grayson couldn't wrap his head around it.
The doctor removed his glasses and stroked his head. "There is something I can try, to suppress it much longer. However, it's completely in testing, it's not fit for the general public. There are no guarantees, it's only experimental."
"Did it make the werewolf DNA stop?" That is all Grayson needed to know.
"No," the doctor revealed. "It did slow it down so much that after fifteen years it still wasn't at three percent. There is no protocol for it though, and even though you aren't anywhere near the percentage to be sent to Wolf Islands, you will be in a few months."
Kill. He would find those women, and he would kill them. He didn't care male or female, for this insane act? They would suffer long and hard. He glared at the doctor, not speaking a word yet.
Experimental. He would have to give his own permission and waive all rights if the doctor signed off on it for him. However, once it was known that he was any part werewolf, he would lose that right to choose. "I agree if you treated me with it, you could have any and all research credit conducted with it."
"Mister Grayson, that right won't hold once the government knows what is happening to you." Even the doctor knew. "You might have to-"
"Grayson!" Billy showed right up by the door. "You got the, the thing where we become our own enemy too?" He was trying to not say the word werewolf, to see if Grayson had the same problem.
Grayson gave him a nod.
"Doctor, I need to talk to my partner privately?" Billy insisted.
Grayson got up and followed him out. "Limited options."
"If we don't report what's happening," Billy told Grayson, "then we can take an experimental treatment. It'd be a better idea. Hell, if they had enough proof it worked, maybe it could even be a cure to eliminate it for good?"
Eliminate it for good. Use their enemies own tactic of revenge against them. "Agreed. I don't want to become some bloodthirsty werewolf." They were disgusting. No sense of control. They were skilled assassins that used the weakness of innocent humans against them, just for a fresh kill.
Wolf Islands were a chain of islands that were used to separate anyone with lycanthrope DNA from joining with humans anymore. Eventually the weak points of humanity would die out safely away amongst themselves. Those werewolves couldn't even shift, he had no problem with them.
Shifting werewolves though, they were terrifying and their kills were immediately gruesome. Even surviving an attack by one was rare. "We've got months before we have to consider this."
"Old fashioned way of checking out more information then?" Billy asked.
Yeah. Yeah, they owed those women a visit.
---
"Do you ever get that feeling that you're being watched?" Lily asked as she looked around their office corner.
That wasn't funny. Jill went back to typing. She might be what one would call a ferocious werewolf, but she was more than that. She was also a data entry person for a company with Lily. She spend most of her days not out in the forests seeking prey and howling at the moon, but typing on noisy keyboards all day.
She preferred the grocery store to hunting in the wild. She preferred a home in a building than a hole in a cave. Her and Lily had hid their background to stay there ever since each of their parents decided to curtail the law themselves.
After all being found with as much werewolf as they had wouldn't send them to Wolf Islands, it would send them off for execution. No trial and no guilt, just dead for being something they had no choice of being.
"Hey Andy," Lily called out to one of the other office employees nearby. Lily was sweet like that.
"Lily," he said kindly back. "Jill?" He came over toward her. "Hey there."
Jill didn't stop typing. "Hello." Small talk.
"I was wondering, are you doing anything this Saturday night?" Oh, he just had to ask. "I was free and I thought you might want to go get something to eat or maybe go try a movie?"
Last week he asked if she wanted to go out for coffee and she said she hated coffee. It seemed like he didn't pick up the hint that easy. "I'm not into movies, and I don't like to go out to eat often." Especially after that morning.
"Actually, it was just this morning that we missed lunch," Lily told him. "She would probably leave early to eat some food."
Lily! Jill rolled her eyes as she continued typing even faster. "I am too busy."
"Oh, she's busy," Lily said to Andy. "Maybe next time? Hey, I like food and to go out though. I also missed lunch. As long as it's just a friend thing, you could totally treat me?"
Jill hid back a smirk. Lily wasn't setting her up, she was setting up Andy to get free eats.
Andy didn't seem to know how to react at first. "It would be just as friends."
"Yeah, that's what I just said," Lily said as she grabbed her jacket from the back of her seat. "Let's go. I really would like some boiled eggs. I've been craving it all day."
"Oh. There's a little place nearby here that has great eggs," Andy said. "What about you, Jill?"
"Yeah, Jill, it's just a friendly employee friend thing." Lily went toward the back to fetch her purse, leaving Jill to deal with the consequences she put in motion.
Well? She was hungry. "Fine, as long as it's not the noodle house near here." The last thing she wanted to do was run into those werewolf killers again. They probably wouldn't even recognize them if they went back. They probably didn't even notice them real well. There's no way they would have ever thought they were werewolves anyhow.
Just in her head. It was all just in her head.
Just like the strange smell.