It was a gasp of relief.
'DANGER!' The screen read. 'Subject is age -1. Failsafe triggered to prevent subject loss.'
His hand trembling, Todd looked down at the egg held carefully between his crossed legs and scanned it for the stats.
'Subject F Nile Crocodile' The screen read. In particular, Todd scrolled down and let out a final exasperated sigh of relief. 'Subject Age -1, Fertilized, Memory Retained, Process Aware'
The remote had stopped her before she had become an unfertilized egg. That would have been a complete inability to save her. As it was, Gretta was still very much alive. Somewhere deep in the just fertilized egg yolk currently making up her embryonic self, she was there, all of her genetic and cell memory intact.
Todd let out a sigh and leaned back in realaxation, crying out as the egg rolled from his knees and thudded onto the floor. He desperately scrambled to grab it before it rolled into the wall and found himself panting as he stared at the helpless egg encased crocodile.
"Okay." Todd said, trying to calm his anxiety. "This is... less than ideal."
* * *
Oddly enough, Gretta's reduction to an embryonic state had solved a major problem: what to do with her to keep the secret of his remote. Now dressed in employee coveralls that had been hanging on a hook, the human grabbed an abandoned lunch bag from the corner. One of those soft ones with a bubble liner in it. In this he stored Gretta for safe keeping and exited the janitor's room with nobody the wiser of the utter weirdness he had unleashed. As a man of science, though, the results had been invaluable. Even if it *was* mad science.
This left Todd roaming the back halls of the reptile house. He paused at the crocodile enclosure again and peeked through the steel peephole in the door. Fred was still there. Nobody was around.
Hmmm.
With a smirk, Todd realized he might like another subject to play with. He stared down at the lunch bag. He grinned.
Todd pulled the remote from his pocket and casually stopped time. The entire world froze into a perfect unmoving snapshot of itself. Todd felt a strange tingling vibration as only he was unaffected. Excitedly, he unlocked the crocodile enclosure and stepped in, staring at old fat Fred and chuckling.
"Well, might as well add another egg." He shrugged. He scanned in Fred, and adjusted him to age -1 with the safety engaged. Like Gretta, the nonmorphic crocodile began to reverse. Though frozen in time, the process was utterly fascinating to watch as the reptile began to lose weight, wear, and finally size as he began to decrease in age. Watching him carefully, Todd observed his regression with total interest, his snout shortening, his scales softening. As he shrank and shrank the loss of size was almost keenly arousing to Todd. Imagine such a tiny thing growing into such a big crocodile.
Finally, hitting the zero point, the crocodile began to curl into himself like Gretta had, still frozen and unmoving, assuming the fetal position as his egg began to form around him. His egg wound up just half the size of Gretta's, which, of course, Todd realized was because she was anthro.
Carefully, he collected Fred's egg in the bag and grinned. Reduced to the same embryonic state as Gretta, he now had two lovely reptillians to experiment with. The idea of growing Gretta back into a huge and sexy crocodile woman made him pause for a moment and savor the idea. Oh yes, they were going to experiment, indeed.
Todd left the now empty crocodile cage, pausing the close and lock the door again, and started time up when he was well outside the building, watching the few patrons and staff spring back to life again and go about their day like nothing had happened.
Todd went ignored and blended in perfectly. He began toying with the idea of taking some more animal friends home with him.