In a moment driven by compassion, you walk over and boldly rummage through Dr. Hurley’s lab coat pockets until you find her access card. The doctor stares at you blankly and then realizes what you are about to do. "No!" she screams, "don’t let her out! She’ll kill us both!" You ignore the tiny helpless woman and turn back towards the poor saurian you’ve made friends with. You swipe the card on a reader near the cell and the metal bars unlock and slide apart. The parasaur scrambles to her feet and seems quite overjoyed. "Oh, God, thank you! Thank you so much!" She leaps at you and wraps her scaly arms around your neck in a loving embrace, pulling you close and rubbing her face against your cheek. You laugh slightly and gently pat her back, glad to have helped out a fellow living thing in such a terrible situation.
When your new dino pal is done showing her thanks, she steps behind you and looks at the tiny Dr. Hurley, blinking curiously. "She’s so much smaller than I remember her. Did you shrink her?" You nod sheepishly and walk towards Victoria, who has backed herself into the corner of the countertop, now naked and shaking violently. You reach down and pick up the terrified little woman in your hand, finally realizing just how small and fragile she is. You’re not sure what she’s done in the past but she hardly seems evil. Likewise, the dinosaur doesn’t seem that horrible either. You mercifully cover Victoria up in her coat again as you walk over and sit her down on the desk in the room.
It’s time for some answers. You walk up beside the red humanoid parasaur and face Dr. Hurley. "So, are you going to tell me what this all really about now?"
Victoria takes a long sigh and nods, still shaking. She’s had a terrible time of all this. "All right, fine. The truth is that the newspaper ad is just a front for us to get willing participants to the laboratory. From there, well, they usually don’t return to the public eye again."
"You mutate them and keep them here for study?" you ask rather matter-of-factly.
"Yes," she responds, "we do."
"Why?" you say with some confusion.
"You have to have some vision," Victoria says, "imagine the ability to change the world. Literally. We’ve perfected it, we’ve deduced a device capable of altering living matter in infinite ways. We’ve broken the barriers that our own bodies have confined us to, and transcended to the limit of science in new and amazing ways. The potential for the health and improvement of mankind is limitless."
You are skeptical at best, but appreciate the doctor’s vision. "Then why do you still need to test it?"
She frowns and seems to grow angry. "The government won’t let us release the finished product. They demand test after test and still won’t approve. We were barely able to receive funding for human trials, let alone meet the results we need to proceed."
"What about her? Who is she?" you ask, putting a comforting arm around the nervous parasaur’s shoulders.
"She was the first experiment into extrapolating prehistoric DNA into a human being. As you can see, we succeeded physically, but her mind began to degrade rapidly. She killed two of my staff and injured several guards. Uh, her name is Sylvia Ross."
You take your arm away from Sylvia and look into her eyes. "Sylvia, huh? This gentle thing, a murderer?" This elicits an actual blush from the scaly ex-human beside you, who sits down on the floor again and puts her head into her hands in shame.
"Yes, she is." Hurley accuses, "We’ve been putting her through therapy and drug treatments for six years to rebuild her mind, with, it must be stated, major success. However, she still suffers through psychotic episodes and unpredictable behavior. She may seem shy and reserved right now, but you haven’t seen her when she becomes violent."
Sylvia looks up at you and whimpers. "She hasn’t told you how they tortured me. Performed surgery on me, tried to brainwash me. She nearly killed me, so I broke her arm in defense. I had to. She was going to inject me with more serum. Change me again. I don’t want to be changed again. I’m too not human now!"
"She’s delusional!" Hurley roars. "She attacked me without provocation! Which is why she’s here. Come to your senses, man. Just leave now and we’ll forget this."
"No," you say. "I promised to put you back to normal. If I do that, you have to promise you’ll let her go."
"Let her GO?" Victoria says in horror. She pauses and looks at Sylvia doubtfully, who is now huddled into a nervous wreck on the floor, weeping again and shaking violently. However, Hurley is painfully aware of how small she is and how she needs help. "All right. It’s a deal, but she’ll be your problem now! Not mine. I do need to be regrown. If I don’t get big again in the next seven hours, I’ll be like this for quite some time before I can be changed back. If you help me get back to my original size, I’ll give you the damned lizard."
"Deal," you say.
Sylvia looks up at you pathetically, and offers a heartwarming smile. "Thank you," she whispers. "You won't be sorry."