[About four years ago]

Day 14. Journal Note N35:
Swapping the CN1A gene branch in sample 17 has proved to be a success (N = 20, degree of confidence = 95%). It is time to test the method on more complex organisms. The next sample planned for today is a Stegosaurus fossil with remnants of DNA. This one contains 6 almost complete strands of 78 chromosomes broken into groups of about 10 to 20 pairs at a time which indicates 5 to 7 swapping procedures will be required to reconstruct the sequence.

Doctor Vincent Stegron closed the journal, taking another look at the lovely grayish-brown fossilized bone before him with a number 18 painted on it in a circle to indicate the regenerative serum was already applied to it. If all went well, soon it should absorb the remaining tissue from the fossil and then the most difficult part would begin. Failure was not an option. He didn't have enough material for another sample. It was do or die before everything was lost and, likely, forever.

The future of all dinosaurs was on his shoulders. In just a few moments he would be either the most renowned geneticist in the world or the last fool. The Doctor switched on the equipment and focused the microscope on the fossil, examining the surface that made contact with the serum. A strand was successfully being extracted, but something sparked the researcher's attention. A part of it had pieces of some other DNA, by the looks of it from a fragment of an Allosaurus' claw, crammed over, and the solution was trying to merge them together. Alarmed, Stegron reached out for the off switch, trying to stop the reaction before it was too late to save the sample. Sparks flew and he heard a strange cracking noise. Boom! All of sudden everything went black and silent.

Vincent opened his eyes again in the debris of broken tables and equipment. The room was filled with thick black smoke. Perhaps something was burning. Stegron tried to stand up, but his hand slipped on a gooey substance beneath him. He examined the liquid on his fingers. The papers and floor around him were covered in dark red.

"My samples!" was the immediate thought of horror, the Doctor realizing his one chance in 65 million years could have been eternally lost in this very moment. Yet in the next moment his suspicions about the nature of this situation started to grow. The area covered with blood looked a little too large for his samples alone. Surely he didn't have that many?

Stegron traced the red stain on his trousers and up to his lab coat with a gaping hole, through which a sharp piece of the fossil was still visible.

"Oh. That doesn't look good"

Was all of this his blood? Surely that much could not fit in one human! Stegron felt the building panic as he gasped for the air, his arms and legs splayed helplessly on the floor over the broken glass and tables. It was not the time to lose control, he needed to stop the blood loss somehow before things got even worse.

"Ambulance! A phone!"

The professor reached out for his phone only to find it broken under one of the tables, smashed in half by the heavy cryogenic refrigerators. Dizzy, the Doctor stood up with the last of his strength and slowly plodded towards the exit, dragging his numbing feet.

It was a cold night and reaching past midnight already. The streets were mostly deserted, but he spotted a couple not far away. He tried to call out to them, only to be stifled by a groan of pain. The man turned his head to the sound, but stepped back immediately, encouraging the girl to speed up.

Stegron made a few more steps, barely aware of his surroundings anymore.

"Help… me…" He coughed, more blood on his hands.

Even this late at night there were some people passing by occasionally, but none of them stopped. The Doctor felt his knees buckle as he neared a bus stop. Stumbling, he dropped to the ground face down, covering the wound with one hand the best he could and writhing in pain. Everything was getting dark and he felt deadly cold creeping up his spine. Another couple went by, and still nobody stopped to help him.

The agony was indescribable. It engulfed him, consumed him, tearing what was left of his mind apart. He was going to die here. So many people around and he was still going to die here, because none of them gave a damn or wanted to get involved. He hated them and hated himself even more for trusting them with the Future. Weren't they supposed to all work together towards a better world? No. Nobody here thought like him. They wanted him dead. The strong ate the weak. He was weak. Nothing changed for millions of years.

Stegron opened his eyes again. There was nobody around. He was still lying a few meters away from the bus stop, cold and dizzy, now also wet from the recent rain, barely aware of anything at this point. A crippling sense of pain and a familiar sticky sensation under his hand quickly reminded him of the past few minutes. Stegron growled and tried to get up. His body felt heavier and slower with every second. That must have been the blood loss. Honestly, he was surprised he was still alive. One thing he knew for sure, he didn't want to die here, he couldn't! He would fight for his life even if it was the last thing he did.

He needed treatment. But where to go? A hospital? He didn't know of any nearby. Then it clicked. Buckham. Of course! David Buckham lived nearby and his wife was a surgeon. They could help him!

Very slowly Stegron rose, supporting himself against the wall with one hand. His mind was hazy and legs didn't hold him well. He could hardly stand, let alone walk, but Vincent was determined not to give up. He would crawl all the way to his friend's house if he had to.

Now he definitely felt noticeably bigger. His baggy clothes wrapped him two or three sizes short and the boots also painfully so. Barely conscious of what he was doing, the Doctor only knew instinctually he had to get them off, now. With a painful wince he forced himself to stand on his toes, hunching slightly in what strangely appeared to be a more comfortable position. And then there was another very painful event happening at his lower back as he was experiencing a very unpleasant sensation he could only describe as getting longer, but Stegron was already in too much pain to dwell too much on it. He couldn't even say the decision to rip his pants back then was entirely conscious, but the relief that followed gave him some time to catch a breath.

Stegron coughed again and slowly made his way to his friend's house, so exhausted that he could barely lift his feet enough to go up the stair. He stood in front of the door, his back against the fencing and breathing loudly in pain as he hammered at the door, when a new spasm punctured his back and face.

"David! David, open up!" He pleaded in tears, barely recognizing his own voice now.
"Pleassse! I need your help!"

The door creaked and there was a scream of horror. Stegron stood dumbstruck as he saw his friend reaching out for a gun and pointing it at him.

"David?" were his last words as a gunshot echoed through the night. The saurian stumbled back in surprise and fell to the ground as more blood splashed on the stairs…

Stegron woke up in a cell with no trace of his wounds. He heard two guards discussing in the other room a monster who attacked a family in their neighborhood in the middle of the night and how a scientist, who courageously protected his family, shot him and already requested the creature's corpse for research.

The nerve of this jerk! And this was a mammal he considered his friend!

Stegron scrambled back to his feet, the body still feeling weird and mismatched, much heavier and noticeably larger than he was used to, his movements sluggish and clumsy at first as he struggled just to remain upright. Then he remembered to use his tail for balance and everything fell in place.

"A tail?" Stegron thought back in a bit of surprise. There it was, right behind him, long and thick, with four sharp spikes facing sideways. His awareness was still a bit slow to follow, not quite up to date with past events. What had happened? Was that his?

The Doctor looked down. From how far the floor appeared, he could estimate himself as easily over seven feet tall! His massive body was completely clad in tough orange scales, the hue going to creamy-yellow on the chest and abdomen, encasing the thick hard muscles underneath. His legs looked nothing like what he remembered and hands had only three digits each, ending with deadly sharp talons. The Doctor gawked in surprise.

"What was that? Did you hear?" came the immediate response from the guards.

So they wanted his corpse to experiment on, like some lab rat? They wanted him shackled and caged away in a cell? No. He would never accept that. He couldn't stay in this filthy place any longer. Stegron was handcuffed in what appeared to be gold-coloured bracers, a symbol of his place in the eyes of humans, but they looked laughably weak. The chains tore effortlessly. He turned to the door. This was not going to hold him either. He grabbed the bars and tore the metal lock out with his claws. Just as he stepped outside, the guards came running. They screamed and fired guns at him, but bullets did no harm to his armoured hide.

Why did they attack him? He did nothing wrong to these people!

"Ssstupid mammalssss!"

In his anger Stegron sent them flying with a swing of his tail on the way to the exit.

The moon was still up, a gentle breeze brushing his scales and bringing a whole pallet of unusual smells he was previously unaware of, his instincts pushing him into a cautious exploration to see what they were. He should have known this area well, but he couldn't quite place it – there was a hint of familiarity, but everything looked strange, smaller and more vividly coloured now. Perhaps he was the strange one instead – the heightened senses only adding to the confusion in the saurian's head as he struggled to orient himself.

Stegron's mind was a mess. He couldn't explain it, but he knew strange things. He remembered being something else entirely, a creature called Vincent Stegron. He remembered a laboratory and a research gone horribly wrong. He remembered humans that betrayed him, that tried to kill him even when he did nothing wrong. Why did they attack? Did they hate him? What for?

The answer was as clear as the new colours to him now: they were an enemy species, the kind that would hurt another for no reason. They did not need a reason after all - it was in their very nature, in their instincts to hate one another. Mammals and reptiles never got along well.

The saurian took a step back. He was tormented by many contradictory feelings, his thoughts seemingly in dissonance with his memories. Some said reptiles did not have feelings, did not have emotions. They couldn't be more wrong.

Disappointment. Betrayal. Loneliness. Perhaps they were different too, not quite like a human's, but Stegron certainly felt things he could not easily put into words or cries. It felt a bit like getting suddenly bitten by a soulmate, kicked out of the pack and left to die in a swamp for no apparent reason. A pretty bad feeling, that was. And all of it was humans' fault.