Doctors Grant and Michaels were sitting with Rebecca Fine when the two men she had sent to retrieve Lydia Warren and her dog Buster returned. Rebecca had seen Lydia only a few hours ago, but she had already changed further. Her nose had started to turn black, and her ears were poking(ut of her hair. She seemed smaller, but maybe that was because she was down on all fours, with her dog holding her leash.
"Good God," Michaels muttered.
Rebecca smiled at the two visitors. "We just thought you needed further examination. Ruby...why don't you take Buster into the other room and get started, and your colleague can take Lydia? Sound like a plan?" They both nodded. Buster handed Lydia's leash to Dr. Michaels and they headed off to another room.
"Sit down, Buster..." Rebecca said, gesturing to a chair. The dog sat, putting the purse down next to him. The young woman reached into a box and pulled out some items. "I am going to start out with a few tests of my own." She placed a series of blocks in front of him.
"Isn't that a cognitive test?" Ruby whispered. The other woman nodded.
"Buster...say hello to Dr. Grant," Rebecca said.
"Hello," Buster said. It sounded almost normal...but the dog did not seem to speak much.
Rebecca took Buster through a series of tests. She gave him a list of words and asked him to repeat them. She showed him pictures and asked him to identify items in them. He passed. With the block tests, he was able to demonstrate control over his developing hands. But when she tried to get him to speak more than one or two words at a time, he struggled.
Ruby had watched this mostly in awe before Rebecca let her take over to do a full physical examination.
Rebecca headed into the other room, where Michaels had just finished a physical examination. "Hello, Lydia...you remember me, right?"
"Yesss..." Lydia said, her tongue flopping out of her mouth.
"Absolutely unbelievable," the Doctor commented.
"We're going to keep you here overnight for observation...to see if we can understand what is happening to you. Buster agreed to it," Rebecca lied. "It is to try to help you."
She broke out the same cognitive tests she had used before.
Afterward, the three met outside the two rooms. "The dog got a better score in some areas than she did...she is showing definite signs of decline. We need to study this."
"Agreed...but we could have done this at her house."
"I have the cameras running here...and we definitely need to see if we can observe any changes...it would be less subtle with them than the fully human subjects, I think. I am going to let them sleep here, and we will retest them in the morning and decide how to proceed then. I assumed you two got enough samples and test results to go through in the interim."
The two doctors looked at each other. Rebecca Fine had become increasingly assertive, and the ones who assembled their team seemed to support that. And they had not made any progress with their plans so far. This wasn't exactly unethical. It was probably not safe to leave either Buster nor Lydia alone.
