This time, Rick couldn’t stop the overwhelming guilt of turning his step son into a living science experiment against his will. He reached forward and slammed down the main lever. The mist began to cool in the tank, deactivating it, as the lower fan purged it from the air.
Brendon let out a chuff of relief and his head fell in shock. His powerful chest rose and fell in sporadic bursts as the feathered deinonychus tried to process his new form.
Rick kneeled down and stared at the dinosaur in amazement, catching the weak and horrified gaze of his step son’s piercing reptilian green eyes. He tucked his arms in nervously.
“My god, look at you.” Rick whispered, in awe.
Brendon didn’t share the same enthusiasm. The constant weeping of tears from his eyes had made the outer ring of scales swollen and sore. He blinked an inner eyelid several times and stared back unmoving in dejected despair.
Carefully, Rick rose to stand and unlatched the safety lock on the tank door. This made Brendon rise in alarm, awkwardly climbing to his powerful clawed feet and skittering back into the tank. He was trying to stand upright like a human but his new body wouldn’t completely allow it. He trembled in terror, feathers shuddering, as Rick opened the door.
The alien scent of a distressed dinosaur struck in an enclosed space hit Rick first. He was startled by the heavy reptilian scent.
“Hey… hey…” Rick consoled, watching Brendon shrink back into the wall of the tank as much as he could. “It’s okay. We’re all done. It’s all over now.”
The teen turned dinosaur didn’t relax. If anything, he began shaking with more anxiety. Rick reached forward and took his first touch of a real living dinosaur, gripping the powerful flesh of the raptor’s thick muscular wrist joint, tugging it.
“Come on out, buddy. Let’s get a look at you.”
Brendon snapped back with a forceful growl, unconsciously pulling his lips into a fearsome sneer. Rick slapped him across the snout sharply in response, causing a pained whimper.
“Don’t you fucking talk back to me! I can put you back in and finish it!”
This propelled the raptor forward in stark terror. Head down, tail lowered on submissiveness, the deinonychus screeched his dismay and rushed out of the tank. Rick had to turn just in time to see the horrified dinosaur scrunch himself down in the corner, shaking his head no over and over again with fresh tears.
“That’s better.” Rick sneered. “From now on, you’re going to know your place in my house. Are we clear?”
The deinonychus nodded desperately, hugging his ironically dangerous clawed fingers into his chest.
“Good. Now, I said let’s take a look at you. Get up!”
Brendon nervously raised to his feet and stood trembling in the corner.
“Come here.” Rick waved. The raptor complied, too scared to disobey, not knowing what his step dad was even capable of anymore.
Rick faced down the meek raptor and smiled. He circled the nervous creature, took stock of his perfect transformation, admired his strikingly primal wash of blue and green feathers, arranged in an impressive display of camouflage from a lost world.
“Incredible. The compound worked perfectly. It extrapolated the trace elements of dinosaurian bone from the fossilized minerals and grafted them to your body. The ultimate test… successful.”
Brendon tried to fight his urge to break into a run and escape up the basement stairs. He barely heard Rick’s self-congratulatory assessment. In fact, he was being flooded by alien thoughts and instincts. Part human. Part dinosaur. His own teenage hormones from both hammered through him. He needed to… mate? Fuck? Jesus!
Rick failed to observe the dinosaur deftly close his eyes and blink several times as he fought increasingly bizarre thoughts in his confused transformed mind.
Having finished his inspection, Rick giggled as he grabbed a nearby mirror from his desk and held it up for the raptor to see.
Brendon froze utterly still. His jaw fell slack, exposing rows of deadly teeth. His eyes widened in shock. His entire posture fell in shock, from his tail tip to his razor edged toe claws. He stared at the dinosaur in the mirror. The dinosaur stared back in horrified shock.
“Yes, take a good look.” Rick whispered. “That’s you now. Quite an impressive beast. A result of my genius.”
Eventually, reality sunk in. Brendon turned his head away, showing the thick cords of muscle running down his saurian neck, and closed his eyes in realizing agony.
“Now.” Rick continued, placing the mirror back down. “What happens next is up to you. It should be fairly clear that if you decide to disobey me… there will be consequences.”