"N-Nothing's wrong...don't worry about me. Just uh...tripped a bit." Brody said, doing a decent enough impression of his regular human voice. That seemed to work like a charm.
The person on the other end audibly took a step away and sighed...and Brody was aware he could hear in greater detail and with more finesse. Now these changes might be useful on the force.
Officer Brody was not sure what the hell had happened to him, but it was obviously the work of the Device, which currently occupied a space on his desk. He felt it calling to him somehow, like it was imploring him to go further, to explore the further reaches of consciousness in an altered state. It was a heady and twisted sensation, and Brody had dealt with enough drug addicts to know that dealing with this thing enough would probably form an addiction. So he ignored it for now and put it in his desk drawer.
He took a seat and pulled up a small mirror from a bookshelf near his desk, looking at his substantially changed form. Yeah, his face was definitely no longer wholly human in form. Not as much like a...a muzzle as he feared, but it was pronounced and gave him an unusual look. He started thinking about that kid the Device belonged to. Had he been that donkey?
Brody's mind raced and he offhandedly dragged his new nails along the side of his desk, "Mmmmotherfucker, we just sent a scared kid to the zoo..."
For now, Brody decided to go forward with his plan of testing what his new body could do. He just needed a way out...and then he had it. The Device! He fished it back out of his desk and started fiddling with the settings and capacities, noting with some precaution that it could indeed make him temporarily invisible, on top of everything else it did.
From there it was a simple task of setting himself to invisible for an hour.
He simply walked out of his office, holding the device in the palm of his hand and grinning audaciously. The sheer perverse potential for this application of his little device made sure he decided to keep it permanently on hand. He didn't want some perverted freak using it to molest the women of his town or something.
The outskirt woodlands were a short drive away, and Brody parked his car out there just as the invisibility ran out. There were thankfully no people around in these days, most came in the weekend to spelunk or go exploring the wilderness. Brody looked around just to be sure and shed his clothes carefully, putting them by his car and keeping a hold on the Chronivac. He couldn't just leave it there to be taken and then abused.
Brody started his way into the wilderness, finding he could smell and experience the world in far greater detail than he ever had as a fully normal man. If nothing else, this convinced him if he reverted he was gonna need to keep at least 10% leonine DNA added to his own. This was simply too enjoyable and usable to discard. He found he could shred most fallen flora that blocked his path with his new claws, and, after managing to catch a fish, he felt a greater affinity just digging in with his teeth and claws, eating the meat raw.
He knew as a human he'd get sick doing that, but the lion in him now was acting to give him the capacity to survive in the wild like this. He grinned and ambled back toward a tree.
He was naked, streaked with dirt, and yet despite the time and place, he was readily warm and able to keep going. Fur had its benefits. The lion-cop found himself looking at the Chronivac, pondering whether he should do anything with it from here...