To Fly Free: Resolve

Chapter 17 - Precious

Notes:

Again! This is a heavy chapter, however, it is less graphic than the last and is extremely important to the plot!

There is one graphic paragraph that you might need to skip. It starts with the words 'The picture showed Shoyo crumpled on the ground...' It is only the one short paragraph and describes Shoyo sitting in blood with his tattoo showing.

"The next ones are ours." Evan announced quietly, his cursor hovering hesitantly over the arrow that would take them to the next photo from the Secret Facility site.

Everyone became tense at Evan's words. At this point in the viewing, everyone was long done with the food on the coffee table as they all looked sick save for Shoyo and Evan who only looked solemn. The atmosphere was heavy and they only imagined this next part would make the weight even worse.

Evan clicked.

Staring helplessly into the camera, dilated, droopy green eyes made it obvious who's picture they were looking at.

Shoyo smiled grimly as Evan let out a dry laugh. "There's a seven year old me after being injected with cocaine."

Josephine fought to hold back her tears as she moved to hug her son. Noah and Mark however were frozen, looking at the screen. The rest felt out of place as they watched the two close knit families react to seeing a young Evan drugged up.

"This is the picture I saw." Tanaka whispered, unsure of why he was saying it.

He was startled when Evan gave another snort of laughter, this time though, he was genuinely amused. "What a great first impression." The sarcasm dripped from the sentence as tears of both laughter and devastation dripped from his eyes. His mom hugged him tighter as he continued his laughing that soon turned into weak sobs. He turned to hide his face on his mom's shoulder.

Once he had calmed, he pulled away to move to the next picture.

It was Evan again, this time he stood in front of a blank concrete wall, a small whiteboard in his hands. It read 'A.5 - DNA Type: Ring Tailed Lemur - Day: 3 - Subject: 2528' in black marker. If you looked close enough you could see the bits of white fur on Evan's ears, and that the tip of his nose had turned slightly black.

Evan sniffed before explaining the photo. "That's how they kept track of the progress made with the animal DNA adaptations. As you can see I was given ring tailed lemur DNA. This was only the third day so there isn't much happening. They had to wait for a long time between injections so it took a while to get to the point where they got to by the escape."

Tsukishima had a confused look on his face, Evan noticed and caught his eye, nodding his head as if to say 'go ahead and ask'. So Kei spoke up. "Why don't you still have the lemur traits?"

Evan hummed. "Like wings, the traits are retractable. I'd show you, but since it isn't a natural function, the transformation is pretty painful." He got multiple nods of acknowledgement.

Moving on to the next series of photos, they all watched as the number of days on the whiteboard grew along with the changes to Evan's appearance, both because of the added DNA, and because he was aging. The last photo was only taken only a couple of days before the escape happened. Evan was adorned with fluffy white ears in the place of his human ones. His nose and mouth extended into a black snout. His hands and feet were also black, taking the shape of lemur paws. The most prominent feature though, was the white and black ringed tail that snaked out from his lower back.