Percy:

"Percy!" Annabeth screamed in my dream, clutching at thin air while poison slowly withered me away.

I sat up with a gasp, my head throbbing where Clarisse had hit me with her spear. That traitorous daughter of Ares... I barely held back a curse when I saw the interior of my cage. It was made of the stuff my sword couldn't cut. Just great... the whitecoats weren't as dumb as we originally thought...

"Percy!" came a hissed voice from outside my cage. Oh...It was Frank...

"Yeah?" I muttered groggily, slightly nauseous.

"We have an escape plan. We're just waiting for the others to be brought back before we put it into action." Frank said excitedly, and I grinned even though he couldn't see it.

"Great...What exactly is this plan? You can't really bust me out of here, you're going to need a key..."

"Nope...Octopuses..." Piper started.

"Octopi," I automatically corrected, and they groaned in harmony.

"Octopi don't need keys!" Piper finished.

"Um...why not?"

"I thought you were the sea-life expert..." Piper said, and I had a feeling she was wearing a large smirk.

I sighed, "Alright, I don't know everything..."

Piper snorted, "Alright, I've seen a video of an octopus picking a lock with just its tentacles. Frank is going to turn into an octopus, and get us out of these ridiculous cages!"

"Ridiculous doesn't cut it..." I grumbled. "Let's hope they don't take any of us out to test us...with luck, they'll starve us for a while beforehand and not jump straight to the testing. We can't afford to search the entire place and round up everyone. After all, this is where the Erasers come from.

"Gods... you spent two weeks in a cage like this right?" Piper asked. I nodded, and then realized she couldn't see me nod. "Yes."

They were silent for a while longer, and I peered through an air hole in the front of the crate, staring at the door and waiting for Annabeth to come back. If they hurt her... I was debating whether or not to tell Frank and Piper the full extent of the torture the whitecoats put me through when a struggling Fang was dragged into the room. It took four fully-morphed Erasers to restrain him, and even then, they were struggling. I switched to a hole on the side of my cage in time to see the beat up kid thrown in the cage on his right. Fang's nose was broken and bleeding and he had two black eyes. He turned around and spat blood onto the shirt of the nearest Eraser and then the Erasers left, and there was silence. A few minutes later, Jason woke up.

Jason:

My mouth hurt.

Let me reword that:

My everything hurt. My skin and mouth were the worst though. I couldn't make up my mind which was causing me more agony. My mouth felt like sandpaper and there was a strange taste I just couldn't place. It wasn't bad tasting necessarily, just very not normal. It tasted sort-of like blueberries...with chocolate pudding and lime soda all at the same time. Had someone fed me while I was out? Was I on the Argo II?

I groaned and attempted to open my swollen eyelids. I was staring through a film at the bars of a cage and directly at a painfully bright fluorescent light. I blinked rapidly to clear the film from my corneas and rolled over onto my stomach. My clothing rubbed against my skin painfully and I yelped.

"Jason!" I heard Piper cry in concern and I mumbled, "I'm fine, my ssskin's jusssst a bit sssensssitive"

For some reason, I was slurring my speech horrifically. I would worry about that later. What had the whitecoats done to me?

I pushed myself into a wobbly upright position on my knees and winced as my clothing hurt my skin again. I looked down at my hands and nearly screamed.

I had scales.

Holy Hera, they had made me a snake.

"Jason, are you okay?" Piper asked as I shuddered in revulsion at my own skin. I felt her cold fingertips on my arm and I turned to look at her. She had tears in her eyes but she looked completely normal other than that. Frank was next to her completely normal as well, and on my other side, Fang was looking worse for wear. Then there was a big crate next to Fang's cage that had a door made from the same material that Riptide couldn't cut through.

"Perccccy?" I guessed, and Percy said, "Yo, dude, you aren't looking too good,"

"I'm guesssssing they gave me sssssnake DNA?" I rasped, annoyed that my voice sounded like a snake in a movie or cartoon. Was I going to slur my Ss for the rest of my miserable snaky life?

Piper nodded sadly and I asked, "What about you guys? Have they not given you DNA yet?"

"Actually, they did," Frank said, and Percy cried, "They did?"

"Yeah, I got sea cucumber DNA and Piper got...I'm guessing mimic octopus?"

"Uh...you look perfectly normal Frank," Percy muttered, and I finally found his eye pressed to one of the many air-holes in the crate.

"He was lucky he could shape-shift back to normal, he looked terrible," Piper said. Right now, I was wishing I could shape-shift too. I would do anything to get out of these itchy scales.

"So, what do I look like?" I asked Piper, who immediately blushed. Oops, I hadn't meant to make her uncomfortable. Was I really that bad? I mean, the scales made me look all shimmery and gave me a coppery tan look, but they were hard to see while relaxed. What was disturbing her so much?

"Why are you all staring at me like that?" I asked, and Piper stuttered embarrassedly, "Its...It's your eyes Jason. They...They look like snake eyes...

"Oh...weird..." I said, "I don't feel anything different with my eyessss. It'sss mainly my ssskin and my mouth that hurtsss right now."

"Oh, about your mouth Jason, uh...the DNA kind of made you grow fangs..." Percy said from the closed crate.

"SSSSAY WHAT?!" I cried, reaching up to feel my mouth. He was telling the truth. There were two needle sharp fang protruding from my upper jaw where my canines should have been. Feeling was finally coming back into my mouth, and I realized that the fangs had slots they fit into in my lower gums, because they were too long to fit with my mouth shut.

A few minutes later, feeling returned to my tongue.

"Uh, guysss, why didn't you tell me I have a forked tongue now?"

"You're kidding right?" Piper said, looking disgusted, and I attempted to stick out my tongue to show her. Instead, this long ropy snake tongue flicked out of my mouth, and my nose finally started working. On overdrive. I gagged from the bleach smell and nearly passed out again.

"Gods of Olympus..." Frank muttered, while Piper just stared in open-mouthed shock. Great. Now I was the entertaining freak of the gang. Did I mention that I was afraid of snakes? Guess I'd have to get over that phobia, considering I practically WAS one.

We sat in silence, me keeping my mouth shut so I wouldn't smell the horrific bleach. My sense of smell had completely gone away the moment I shut my mouth, and I had remembered that snakes smell with their tongues.

Leo was dragged in about a half hour later, screaming his head off. I looked at Piper and Frank. They were both cringing in disgust like they were smelling something bad. Leo looked fine, other than the fact that he was writhing like a snake and clutching his neck. I caught a glimpse of a metal collar beneath his hands and on instinct, I flicked out my tongue. The smell of burning flesh filled my sinuses and I gagged. My guess had been correct. They were burning the boy who couldn't be burned.