It wasn't long before Baxter came around. He was lying on the exam table, staring up at the ceiling. He sat up slowly, but something about his arms felt different as they pushed against the table. Baxter looked down at himself, wondering why things felt so wrong...
He nearly fainted again. It hadn't been some bizarre hallucination, after all; his arms had been replaced by bird-like wings, covered in brightly-colored feathers. Not only that, his lower body was similarily covered. And though most of his lower body seemed to be unchanged, beneath the feathers, his lower legs were spindly, rough-skinned talons, and a fan of tailfeathers stuck out from between them, angled rather uncomfortably forward by his posture. But at least things in his "private area" (not that it was private any more, since he had undressed at the start of this thing) felt basically unchanged. Baxter let out a yelp of surprise as the doctor moved over to check on him. "Ah, you're up," he said, cheerily. "That was quick. Now, let's move on to stage two."
"Stage two?" Baxter snapped. "What the hell else are you going to do to me!?"
"Oh, calm down," the doctor smiled. "You signed up for this, after all. Stage two is adjustments to your general physiology after the species change has finished, and other minor changes pertaining to the experiment. Now, are we ready to begin?"
Baxter felt like protesting further, but he had signed up for this, and the dollar amount on the contract was enough to reassure him about any doubts. For the kind of money being offered, he could do a little survival expedition like this. He shrugged and nodded. The doctor pulled out a pair of syringes and injected the two subjects; first Baxter, and then the other guy, whose plumage had turned out a glossy raven-black that matched his hair.
Baxter felt nothing but the sting of the needle for a few seconds, and then, suddenly, the world began to wobble and swirl around him. He was sure it was some side-effect of whatever drugs were in the injection, but it felt like the world was growing around him. No, wait, it actually was; he could see his viewpoint dropping downward. He was...shrinking?
Baxter wasn't quite professional-athlete built, but he had kept himself in good shape for most of his life, and he was proud of his sizeable and muscular physique. So the thought of being shrunk was a bit of a blow to his ego as well as the general panic-inducing weirdness anybody would experience. Even more so when he looked down at his body and could see the muscle definition he'd worked to build wasting away. Baxter began to panic in earnest, not that it did much good. Whatever was happening was well underway, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.
Baxter spotted a mirror on one wall, and simply stared at it. As he watched, he could see his entire frame becoming lighter and slenderer, his broad, square shoulders narrowing and sloping, and his hips...widening? Nah, it must just have looked that way by comparison. Things began to get a little stranger when his dirty blonde hair suddenly spilled down from his head, lengthening until it reached just below his shoulders, and changing hue to a bright, vivid yellow that went nicely with his new blue and green plumage. By this point, Baxter had begun to calm down a bit; sure, this was weird, but he could cope, right?
Then all hell broke loose. Baxter suddenly felt a scrambling, straining sensation in his groin, and yelped in surprise, only to find that his voice had become much higher and softer. As he watched in the mirror, his slenderer frame became downright shapely, the lines of his body softening into undeniably feminine curves as his face changed from a man's face to that of a woman, and he realized, with a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, what that sensation in his privates had been. She watched, dumbstruck, as flesh began to pile up underneath her bare nipples, shaping into two moderately-sized and perfectly-formed breasts.
For a moment, nobody said anything. Then Baxter let out a screech. "WHAT DID YOU DO TO ME!?" she screamed at the top of her lungs, gesticulating wildly with her wings. "WHY AM I SMALL? WHY AM I A DAMN GIRL!?"
The scientist looked at her calmly. "I think it's perfectly obvious what was done to you," he said. "You were altered for your role in the experiment you signed up to be a part of. As to why your stature has been reduced, the simple answer is that someone as large as yourself simply wouldn't be feasible in this form. Aerodynamics is a delicate science, particularily when dealing with living creatures, and someone too heavily built, when transformed into this species, would be unsuited for flight. Flight requires a lighter skeleton, which cannot support as much body mass as you originally had. Please don't think this was arbitrary on our part; much careful calculation has gone into this, and if you'll take a moment to look, you'll see that mister Davison has undergone similar changes to make sure that he, too, is capable of flight."
Baxter was almost too mad to pay attention, but she did take a cursory glance, and the other guy - the other subject, now the only guy - did indeed appear to be built somewhat lighter than before, although he had been a fairly small fellow to start with. But, ego aside, that wasn't Baxter's main problem. "But...but...but," she sputtered, "why am I-"
"Why are you female," the doctor interrupted. "A simple matter of making do with what we had. The project requires a male and female subject of each test species, but we were left one woman short. If you'll remember back to the forms you filled out when signing up, there was a psychological profile section. Mostly, we use that to ensure we won't be sending someone out into the woods with a psycopath for a partner, but in this case, we compared your profiles, and it was determined that of the two, you would cope better with being changed into a woman. After the initial shock, of course."
Baxter's mind reeled. "One of each," she murmured. "You can't mean..."
The scientist was indignant. "Force you to mate?" he scoffed. "Sweet Eris, no! Even if that was our intention, how could we explain something so flagrantly unethical to the shareholders? While observing our constructed reproductive biology in action would provide valuable data, our only intent in having one subject of each sex is to make sure that our designs for and understanding of the physiology of men and women are accurate. Nothing more."
Baxter continued to sputter, overwhelmed. Davison, the other subject, spoke. "So tell me," he said, trying to ignore the incoherent, pissed-off man-turned-woman swinging her new wings around as she attempted to form complete sentences, "what exactly is involved in this experiment, again?"
The scientist smiled. "As I said earlier," he said, "the experiment is a test of your survival ability. While we will have medical teams standing by if you should find yourselves in any real danger, the aim is to find out exactly how well modern humans are able to adapt themselves to survival in a new environment. You will both be released into a large, isolated game preserve, where you are to spend one year fending for yourselves as best as you can in your new forms. Arrangements will be made to take care of your properties and obligations while you are engaged in the experiment. The only requirement is that you remain on the preserve."
Suddenly, Baxter straightened herself up and spoke. "Not doing it. Change me back."
The doctor merely sighed. "Well, I don't mean to sound threatening, but if we were to comply, we would have to charge you for the injections used, all of which are, at this point, quite expensive. It's quite likely that corporate HQ would also sue you for breach of contract, so I would recommend that you simply go along with the experiment, unless getting out of it is worth a lot of money to you."
Baxter hung her head. As hard-up as she was for cash, there was no way she'd be able to pay whatever they wanted for their injections. She didn't like the idea of spending a year as this bird-woman thing, but it looked like she had no choice.
"Fine," she said. "Let's just get this over with."