Fortunately for Catherine, the wheels of government bureaucracy were now turning about as fast as they ever do. While she may have felt neglected, at that very moment there were frantic emails and phone calls going back and forth between the outpost and Headquarters. And while no one, at any level, had a clear idea of what to do in this situation, the beginnings of a plan soon formed.
Early the next morning, the lights abruptly came on in the room Catherine had been relegated to, harsh and practically blinding after several hours spent in darkness. By the time her eyes adjusted, which took quite a bit longer when her vision was so sensitive in dim light, there was a shadow standing over her. "Just got off the horn with HQ," said the man, whose face was hard for Catherine to make out under the circumstances. "They're sending the med-evac helicopter to take you back to the airstrip. You'll be back on the mainland by dinnertime."
Then he walked away. No time for questions, not that she could really ask any - clearly everything had already been decided. It made sense, Catherine considered to herself - they were following the standard protocol for a medical emergency at the base. And if this didn't rise to the level of a medical emergency, what would? Plus, they were taking her back to where all the best cutting-edge genetic technology was, giving her the best chance of making a full recovery (if that was the right word to use). And it was a place she knew well, since it was where she worked during the winter months, in the city where her friends and family lived. She was going home. But in another sense, she had always felt like the Arctic tundra was really home to her, and that feeling had grown much stronger now that she was in a body built for it. She hated to think of leaving when she had only just begun to appreciate the landscape up here in an entirely new way.
But there was no sense in arguing, even if she could. Catherine understood rationally that this was the best course of action, and she wasn't about to do anything stupid (at least, not yet). And so, while she didn't exactly appreciate being treated like cargo, she waited patiently as her cage was transported from one aircraft to another. And when the flights were finally over, she was once again unceremoniously dumped along the wall of a laboratory chamber. All those long and uneventful hours of travel just for her to end up in a windowless room barely distinguishable from the one where she had started the day.
But it wasn't long after that until Catherine heard a door swing open, followed by a voice - and a scent - that she recognized immediately. "I still don't understand what's supposed to be going on here," said the man that was unmistakably Catherine's husband, Brian. "What do you mean, 'she's become a wolf'?"
The uniformed officer that was leading him into the room sighed. "They didn't explain this to you when you came in? We work with genetic technologies here, things that can rewrite an organism's DNA. I don't have all the details yet, but your wife was exposed to one of these and, well, here she is," he said, gesturing toward the cage as he walked up to it.
Brian's eyes were red and raw with tears, although he was still fairly sure that this had to be some sort of elaborate prank that was being pulled on him. All he knew about his wife's job was that it was top secret, that she couldn't tell him any of the details, and that it required her to travel to the far north for months at a time. Like the rest of the world, he had no idea that this technology even existed, and so what he was being confronted with now seemed utterly impossible. Only the obvious seriousness of the situation, and the fact that Catherine had legitimately been missing for several days beforehand, stopped him from asking where Ashton Kutcher was hiding.
Instead, still grappling with the reality of all this, he settled for indignation. "And you just put her in a cage? How can you do that?"
"Standard protocol," replied the officer.
"Standard? How many times has this happened before!?"
"This is the first time we've had to deal with this particular situation. Which reminds me - Catherine, I'm assuming no one has explained to you the next steps we're working on?"
The wolf shook her head no, eager for any information at all.
"The lab boys have been up all night doing their theoretical calculations, and this is what they've come up with. You've lost a lot of mass - going from wolf to human isn't going to be as easy as the other way around was. Even if everything goes off without a hitch, the retrovirus is going to take at least a few months to get you all the way back to normal. So here's the deal. Either we can keep you here, under strict observation, throughout that whole time. Or we could apply the retrovirus again to put you into a more domesticated form and - I can't believe I'm willing to sign off on this - release you back to your husband to live at home until the changes have taken hold."
"What?!" Brian interjected. "You're going to give her ANOTHER dose of... whatever that stuff is when you're not even sure how to undo it?"
"I assure you, the wolf-to-dog alteration - and vice versa - is a very well-understood test procedure. We've carried it out hundreds of times, there's essentially zero risk to it. The research team thought it would make for a nicer alternative than keeping her here the whole time, and we can't exactly release a wolf for you to keep at home. You can take care of her, right?"
"I mean, y-yes, I certainly can, but it just doesn't seem like a good idea to me-"
The officer cut him off there. "Well, it's up to her to decide. Catherine, what do you think?"