Dr. Haley Jackyl's no stranger to odd cases among her experiments, but this one takes the cake...

Go find Bandage131 on DeviantArt (that's me, by the way) and you'll find some captions about a scientist named Dr. Jackyl. This story is set with those characters.

~o~O~o~

Dr. Haley Jackyl was in a fantastic mood as she pressed her hand against the scanner. Her morning jog had been pleasant and intensely rewarding, her coffee was just right (three sugars, just a pinch of cream and a marshmallow) and for the first time since… Well, perhaps 2001, actually… Her 1997 Nissan Maxima purred to life without any hint of needing a jump.

Now it was time for science.

She walked into the laboratory and set her styrofoam coffee cup down on her desk. Though the undisputed head of the facility - in every way, as her name was on the side of the building - Haley preferred to keep her desk in the main office space with everyone else. No cubicles, no suggestion of any sort of hierarchy. If there was anything she hated, it was the stuffy… Laboratory-like feel of most laboratories. She preferred a more democratic style, where everyone got a say that wasn't refused because someone else happened to be higher up in status.

“Haley!” someone called. She’d just removed her suit jacket and exposed her bright orange tank top beneath. She looked in the direction of the voice and saw Greg, her assistant and boyfriend, walking toward her with a stack of papers in his hand. “I've got good news from the government liaisons, they've approved the chemicals we’re asking for in the next shipment.”

Good, she thought. They'd been waiting for that approval for weeks, ever since the warden at Pendleson had started turning his inmates over to them. Now all they needed was approval for a separate server to keep all the falsified records away from the official ones. So long as the two accounts sat on the same servers - though separated by numerous firewalls - any skilled hacker at the prison would be able to see what they were really doing with the inmates.

She took the papers from Greg and looked over the observation reports. Angelica and Steven were in the midst of their honeymoon, enjoying every moment. She was happy for them, and possibly even a little envious. Greg hadn't proposed to her yet, though she supposed a relationship only seventeen months in didn't need to move forward to marriage just yet. Still, he could move his ass a little faster.

“I like what I'm seeing, Greg,” Haley said as she handed him back the papers. “Anything else?”

He wrapped his arm around her waist. “Nothing work related.”

She sighed, then kissed him. “Y'know, you could have stayed last night. We could have carpooled.”

“Next time.”

She rolled her eyes. “Fine. Next time is tonight.” She kissed him again, the stepped away from him. “Now, what about Subject TG-Oh-Three-Oh-Nine?”

Greg hadn't let go of her, though he was now holding her from behind while she was bent over her desk. She did love his touch, there was no doubt about that. He answered, “Still the same. This reaction is so odd and unexpected… Do you think we should be worried?”

She turned back to face him. “Of course I'm worried! But all we can do is keep an eye on him… Her… I really don't know what to call him.”

Greg corrected, “Her.”

Haley tapped him on the nose. “Don't, or I swear I'll skip rodents and start the next serum on human trials, and you'll be the first one.”

He smirked. “You wouldn't do that.”

“You try me, you'll see.”

He backed away and held his arms up in a surrendering gesture, but that adorable smirk was still on his face. Haley could do little other than giggle, which always made him grin wider. He told her many times that he loved the way she was both a genius scientist with almost thirty years of research experience and a giggly teenager at the same time. Of course, that was the result of her being one of her own experiments, the first test subject for serum TG-02. Had she never taken that serum, the two of them wouldn’t be together, mainly because Haley would still be a man in his mid-fifties and Greg would still be that man’s young assistant.

But she never regretted taking that serum. Her life had improved in so many ways, and not just because she’d gained back over thirty years of her life. Henry Jackyl wasn’t a very pleasant man, and more and more Haley found herself regretting decisions she’d made as him. Of course, the serum had settled her mind in its current state, and she no longer really saw herself as the same person Henry had been.

She sat down at her desk and looked up the files on Subject TG-03-09 on her laptop. Greg stood behind her, gently stroking her raven colored hair, which she’d tied into a long ponytail. She only slightly ignored his actions and kept her attention directed at the files.

“I need to talk to her,” she said.

“Him,” Greg said.

She glanced over her shoulder at him with a look of mild annoyance. “Keep that up and date night gets moved back a week.”

He chuckled. “I figured you’d want to talk, so I had the subject moved into examination room six.”

She kissed him on the cheek. “Good. Now, be a good assistant and go wait in the observation room.”

He mock saluted. “Yes, ma’am.” He then turned on his heel and made his way to the examination wing.

Haley opened a text file, then slipped on her headset. “Subject TG-Zero-Three-Zero-Nine, supplemental report, Dr. Haley Jackyl.” The words appeared on the screen, just as she hoped. She shut her laptop and pulled her headset off. She looked over at Melissa, one of the more recent additions to her staff. “Mel, meet Greg in the observation room, I’m going to talk to Zero-Three-Zero-Nine.”

The girl nodded. “Yes, Dr. Jackyl.”

Haley sighed. She’d told Melissa more than once that it was just fine to call her “Haley”, but the young girl was still a bit too formal. Melissa was eighteen years old, an intern from the local university well on her way to her Masters in Biochemistry. She was a mousy-looking girl, with messy hair and a freckled face, but she worked hard and had an IQ well above average. Haley picked her because she saw a bit of her new self in the girl, much as Henry had done with Greg once upon a time.

(The irony was not lost on Haley that she had fallen in love with a man who reminded her former self of himself.)

Haley walked over to the wall opposite the entrance and grabbed her lab coat, then retrieved her headset and her laptop. The examination wing contained seven rooms and a corresponding number of observation rooms. There really wasn’t any reason for so many rooms, as they rarely had more than two subjects at one time, but when the TG serum experiments had hit high enough that the government had given them special funding, along with it came the newer, larger building.

She opened the door to exam room 6 and saw Subject TG-03-09 sitting on the bed in the center of the room. The examination rooms were all set up exactly like in a doctor’s office, which was what they were, in a very general way. Haley sat down on the stool next to the counter and took stock of Subject TG-03-09.

The person in front of her appeared female, and for that particular moment she was. A very attractive female, in any sense, though Haley wasn’t “into” women. The serum had done its job, and Seth Halprin, a sixty-seven year old man, had been transformed into a very beautiful twenty-one year old woman. Her figure was far more leaning toward the voluptuous side than most of the other subjects, Haley herself included. Seth’s head had been completely bald, and now held such pretty hair that Haley found herself jealous of the reddish-blonde tresses. Not that she’d ever dye her hair, but still, sometimes she was jealous.

“Hello, Seth,” she said after setting everything up. Her headset hung around her neck, as she wasn’t ready to type anything yet.

The girl shyly answered, “Hello, doctor.”

Haley leaned forward. “It’s okay to call me ‘Haley’, sweetheart.”

“I…” She could see the girl’s tears welling up.

“It’s alright.”

“It’s not easy... “

“I know. Not to your extent, but I understand better than most.”

Seth was looking at her hands. “Will I ever… Will I ever be me?” she asked.

Haley didn’t know how to answer that. The reaction Seth had to the serum was so odd, so different, that she honestly couldn’t answer the question without the answer being little other than a weak assumption. During her (well, Henry’s) residency days, she had a habit of brutal honesty that made her a quite unpopular physician, something that she’d grown out of after taking the serum. Telling Seth, in the state of mind the girl was clearly in now, that the only answer she had was that the girl wouldn’t combust would be too devastating.

But, at the same time, she had no answers to give. The only thing she was certain of was that the girl was in no real danger of dying. Even that was only a 99% chance, however, as the girl’s biological markers were constantly proving difficult to map out, meaning that at any point in time, Seth could merely evaporate into a pile of fluids, or her brain could melt and render her a vegetable. Nothing was certain here, and that terrified Haley as much as it likely terrified Seth.

“Please…” Seth said, her voice tiny and weak, “I need to know.”

Haley reached out and took Seth’s hand in hers. “I’m sorry, but I don’t know. The only conclusive thing I can tell you is that danger of the serum causing death are astronomically low, but even then… I can’t say for certain that you’ll live.”

The girl began to cry, now, and Haley felt nothing but shame at having been unable to reassure her. I wish I had something, she thought. The tests had told them almost nothing, to the point that it seemed like they were examining a different person each time they looked at the same samples.

She sighed. “Please, Seth, understand that we have determined your chances of a fatal reaction are low enough that we can only treat them as abstract.”

“I know,” Seth said through her tears, “but… All I wanted…”

Haley reached out and cupped the girl’s face in her hands. “You’ll have it. I mean that. I’ll make certain of it.”

As she held the girl’s face, Haley began to feel the beginnings of facial hair growing on the smooth face before her. The changes were beginning again, right on time. Soon, that gorgeous feminine figure that Seth had would be replaced by that of a man in his prime. There would be no physical traces of the girl Seth had become, just as her current body held no traces of the man she’d once been. The men she’d once been. This would be the twelfth change, counting the first.

Before her eyes, she saw Seth convulse wildly, though painlessly. If the record held, this transformation would take no more than three minutes, and Haley started the stopwatch app on her phone. She felt a bit of shame doing this, as it felt almost as though she were simply taking advantage of Seth’s changes. Hopefully, this situation would be rectified soon.

The changes began, as they always did, with the feet and legs. Seth’s skin rippled, like a rock skipping across a lake. The dainty feet the girl once had were now larger, slightly longer. As the ripples crawled up her legs, a light amount of hair grew, and the legs themselves bulked quite a bit. The rippling reached the girl’s pelvis, and what should have been a significantly painful process as the bones reshaped themselves was nothing but a mere second.

The strongest change, at least on the lower half, was Seth’s most delicate spot sealing itself up with flesh. At first, it appeared as though Seth were simply a sexless woman with a masculine lower half, but that didn’t last long at all as a small nub of flesh began to extend outward, lengthening to a phallus that nearly every woman would consider impressive (yes, including Haley herself).

The rippling continued upward, creating what men referred to as a “treasure trail” or “happy trail” of hair on a pair of washboard abs that any man would be envious of. The changes then moved to Seth’s full breasts, shrinking them down to pectoral muscles that most men only dreamed of having. The only true features that still looked in any way feminine were Seth’s smoother facial features, though the five o’clock shadow that now dominated those angular lines diminished that look.

At least, it had. But now, Seth was completely male yet again, all the way down to the most miniscule of cells in his body. It was as if the young woman he'd been had never existed.

As was usual with the changes, Seth experienced what was obviously a very intense orgasm. Haley knew that the next stage of the change would be a strong urge for true sexual release through actual intercourse. It was something most of the subjects required, particularly if they were of age.

And the only woman for Seth to have sex with immediately was Haley herself.

She’d never been put in this situation. The TG serums were designed for male-to-female subjects, with female-to-male serums being designed but proving difficult. And if a now-female subject needed release, Greg usually filled in that role (it was how their relationship began). He wouldn’t be of any use here, however. She hoped that he’d gone to get Melissa coffee or something like that and wouldn’t be in the room.

This is just for a biological need, not… Oh, Jesus, he should understand. I let him have sex with every man I changed into a woman, after all. She mentally shamed herself for her concerns. Greg was understanding enough to know she wasn’t doing this just because there was a well-built guy in the room.

The lust in Seth's eyes as he looked at her told Haley that his conscious brain had shut down, completely overtaken by a need for release. She steeled herself, readied herself for what she knew would likely be something raw and animal in nature.

She pulled off her lab coat and set it on the counter, almost draped over her laptop. Next, she let her mini skirt fall to the floor, and pulled her tank top up over her head. She stood there in nothing but a set of lacy black lingerie that she cursed herself now for choosing. She'd bought the articles for Greg, and now he was only seeing them through a one way mirror.

Seth grabbed her, roughly. He pinned her against the wall and seemed, for a moment, to sniff her. He then pressed his lips to hers and forced his way into her mouth. He was obviously on autopilot as he unhooked her bra and threw it at the mirror. Haley wondered if Greg jumped when the undergarment hit the window. It would have brought a smirk to her lips if not for the fact that Seth was violently attacking her mouth with his tongue.

She then realized that while she was having a mental laugh over her bra hitting the mirror, Seth had pulled her panties down and slid them down her legs. She never even noticed! In less than a second, as he groped her naked breasts, his organ slid inside her vagina. One of his hands moved down to her hip, and he continued to hold her in place as he began his necessary motions.

And he definitely seemed to enjoy motion. He thrusted and bucked, pinched and squeezed. She’d never had sex standing up before, even her initial sexual encounter with Greg had been on the exam table, so this was an experience that was one hundred percent new to her. She wondered if Greg would be open to trying it later. It wasn’t uncomfortable at all, which surprised her.

She felt a moan escape her lips, but it didn’t go anywhere, as Seth’s mouth was still covering hers. He was quite forceful, something she’d never dealt with when she slept with Greg. It wasn’t something she wanted every time she had sex, but it was quite the unique way to be pleasured.

Haley braced herself as Seth came, expending quite a bit of sperm, something that surprised her. This wasn’t his first time going from female to male, though it was Haley’s first time being his sexual partner. The last time, it had been her friend, Ellie, who had allowed herself to him. She wondered if his output had been so strong every time.

As he finished blowing his load, he fell to his knees, his physical energy drained in such a way that he fell asleep. Not Haley’s first time experiencing that. Greg usually fell asleep after sex, as well, though he quite frequently lasted long enough that she felt release. Seth was just wasted.

She looked at the mirror. “So, does someone want to send in a clean up crew?”

Greg’s voice came over the speaker just above the mirror. “They’re outside waiting.”

She put her hands on her hips. “Waiting for what?”

Melissa’s voice answered, “For you to get dressed, ma’am.”

Haley rolled her eyes. “It’s not the first time they’ve seen me naked, Mel.”

“Still, ma’am, it’s--”

Greg cut her off. “We’ll send them in, Haley.”

---

Haley typed her report up. Twelve days after the initial administration and they still knew nothing about why Seth wasn’t capable of maintaining a form. It was such a strange reaction, as if his DNA and the serum were just compatible enough, but still not to the extent that Seth could remain female. The worst thing being that none of their tests came up with anything close to a viable solution.

Greg set a cup of coffee down in front of her. “You look like you need that,” he said, with a smile on his face.

She picked up the cup and took a large gulp. “You’re right about that.” She leaned back in her chair and sighed. “How’s he doing?”

“Finally awake. Just barely comfortable and not at all happy that he took advantage of you.”

Haley sighed. “Hardly his choice. Serum Zero-Three is much more potent when it comes to the sex drive than Zero-Two was, and you saw how uncontrollable I was.”

He smiled. “I remember it fondly.”

She rolled her eyes. Of course he did. Then again, without that, they wouldn't be together, so she really couldn't complain about it.

“So,” he started, “what's our next plan of attack? Can't keep trying the same things and expecting it to be different, after all.”

She took another gulp of coffee. “You, and everybody else, go home and get some sleep,” she answered, looking at her watch. It was already past eight o'clock, and they usually locked up at seven thirty. The government liaisons generally didn't like them to keep too many lights on after then. “I'll stay overnight, maybe sleep in the break room.”

He gently brushed her cheek. “I could always stay with you. Maybe… Conduct a little exploratory research?”

She smiled. He was good at science-based innuendos. “Baby, you know I'd want nothing more, but actual work needs to be done, too.”

He kissed her lips. “Shame,” he said when he broke it off, “but I understand.” He patted her on the shoulder. “Don’t stay too late. Remember what happened last time.”

Her gaze shifted to his magnificent hind section as he walked out the door with most of the rest of the staff. I don’t even remember last time, she thought.

Immediately, she remembered exactly what happened as she accidentally knocked her coffee off her desk and onto her lap. The scalding hot liquid didn't penetrate her clothes, but that didn't stop it from burning like a bitch.

She sighed. Maybe I left something else to wear in my locker…

---

Seth couldn’t sleep.

He’d tried. God, had he tried. For whatever reason, he felt more awake after putting his head to his pillow than he had when he’d been sitting up. He’d never suffered from insomnia, though he supposed it wasn’t impossible that he was now. He hoped it wouldn’t become a regular occurance if it was insomnia.

Instead of sleep, he was in a seated position, his back against the wall, one leg propped up on the bed, the other hanging over the side, throwing a bouncy ball at the wall and catching it when it returned. The sound of the ball hitting the wall was rhythmic, soothing.

There was little else he wanted to do. He had access to a computer and at TV, but there was nothing he wanted to do on the web and nothing to watch at this time of night. Maybe Colbert or one of those others, but not much. Seth was never one for late night talk shows, anyway. Even when he was younger, and people like Johnny Carson and David Letterman were on, he'd never had a taste for those kinds of shows.

He chuckled. Younger. To the world at large, Seth was a twenty-something, and according to Dr. Jackyl, his biology accepted that, as well. How her wonder drug managed that was beyond him, but he thought it quite interesting. It was a new lease on life that he hadn't thought possible until it was used on him.

He caught the ball as it bounced off the wall again. He held it in his hand for a long moment, his mind drawn to what he'd do once his condition was stabilized. A new life, one he'd jumped at the chance to experience. He had so many things in his previous life that he'd never been able to do. Skiing the alps, or hiking in the Redwood Forest, or… Anything, really. The sky was once again the limit.

At least, it would be.

Seth threw the ball again, caught it, and then there was a knock on the door. "Come in," he said, surprised anyone other than the security staff was still in the building. He'd expected to be alone during his insomnia period.

The door opened to reveal Dr. Jackyl, hugging a laptop to her chest. She was wearing an oversized hoodie with a Pittsburgh Steelers logo on the right side of the chest. "Sorry to bother you, but I just need to have someone to bounce ideas off of, and you were the only one awake."

He shook his head. "No problem. Um, why are you still here?" He scratched as his chin. "And why are you wearing such a large hoodie?"

She giggled nervously. "I'm sort of a klutz, sometimes. I spilled coffee on my tank top and the only thing I had to wear was my boyfriend's old Steelers hoodie. He doesn't even wear it anymore, he dumped them for the Broncos."

Seth raised an eyebrow. "I didn't know you had a boyfriend."

She plopped onto his cot and opened her laptop. "Yep. Greg, my assistant. You, um… Well, he sort of takes care of any needs whenever men become women.”

“Oh, I remember him now.” He could tell his face was red, even though he couldn’t see his reflection. “You’re… Okay… With him doing that?”

It was her turn to go red. “It was sort of how our relationship started.”

That was something. In the last two weeks, Seth thought he’d gotten to know Dr. Jackyl pretty well, but never had he suspected she, too, was one of her own experiments. “You were a man once?”

She nodded. “I was.” She brushed her hair back behind her ear. “It was the classic story, I was out of funding to hire someone to be my test subject, even though pretty much every kink had been ironed out and the threat of any outrageously negative side effects had been all but eliminated. Our government liaisons told me that if we didn’t have one successful trial on a human, we wouldn’t get to continue the project, so I took the leap and tested it on myself.”

“How old were you?”

“Fifty-five. My prime was long behind me, at that point. Even the healthiest members of my family didn’t live past their sixties, and I hadn’t exactly been one of them. I can’t stand the smell now, but I was such a chain smoker before that to find me without a cigarette would be like finding a episode of Days of Our Lives without a dramatic reveal somewhere in the middle." She tapped a few keys on her laptop keyboard. "So I saw the serum as a second chance as much as I was creating it for others to have their own second chances."

Seth started tossing the ball again. He found himself almost… Entranced by how much she was obviously excited about having someone to tell her story to. Not to mention, she looked kinda cute when she talked about this sort of thing. "So, why the gender switch?" He caught the ball. "I'm not complaining, or anything, it was what I was most interested in when you made me the offer, I'm just curious."

She smiled. "That was a personal thing for me, too. I didn't really discover my own transgender feelings until I was about forty-one, and while transitioning the normal way wasn’t off the table, I didn’t think I’d be satisfied with the results.” She suddenly turned red. “Not that there’s anything wrong with people who do want to transition the normal way at that age, or anything, I just… I wanted to feel whole, something I’m certain a lot of other transwomen or transmen want.”

Seth couldn’t argue with that. It was one of his main factors in taking Dr. Jackyl up on her offer. “So, you specifically created the serum to give people more life and change them into the opposite gender?”

She sort of made a face that suggested she was going to answer yes, but. “I really only created this serum to turn men into women. I’ve always intended to create a second serum that could turn women into men, because it would just be wrong to only focus on transwomen, but every test we ran on mice turned up problem after problem. There seems to be some sort of problem translating the transformative properties to work in the opposite direction, like there’s some sort of biological block that stops the female body from becoming the male body that doesn’t exist the other way around.” She moved her laptop off of her lap. “It’s something I’ve been trying to use your unique case to try and fix. Your body doesn’t seem to be on some sort of biological one way road, so to speak, but a biological roundabout. It’s why you keep changing back and forth without suffering any ill effects, but without any real way to stop the changes and lock you in the form you want.”

He stopped the ball after about the seventeenth throw. To hear his own body described as a “biological roundabout” almost unsettled him. How he’d gone from just a man who wanted to be a woman to the biochemical equivalent of a roadway designed for nothing but traffic jams was simply unnerving. He hoped in the future that there would be another way of putting that. “You said you needed someone to bounce ideas off of?”

She smiled again.

---

Haley awoke to find she had fallen asleep. At her desk. Having used her keyboard for a pillow. Her face had managed to press every key from F to K and everything above and below them. The Word document on her screen was a giant splotch of letters and numbers that meant absolutely nothing.

She rubbed sleep out of her eyes and deleted the mass on the document, revealing that all she'd managed to type before falling asleep was "Subje". Great. Maybe next time, I'll just try to go to sleep in the break room. My desk is a horrible bed. She rested back in her chair and sighed. She hoped next time wasn’t anytime soon.

After spending a good three hours talking to Seth, going over different ideas (mostly her throwing out suggestions and him asking if that was even possible before she went on and gave an extremely long explanation of what she was talking about), discussing their lives before the serum and then their interests and that sort of thing. Pleasant conversations, in all. She discovered that while Seth’s mind had changed, he hadn’t gained too many newer interests, like she had. She had no idea if that was an effect of the serum or an effect of his odd reaction to the serum, but it was an interesting development. Maybe it was just because he was still a man at that point, and perhaps his next female change would be different. She really had no idea what would happen, which both terrified and excited her.

An arm reached around both her and the chair and then she felt Greg’s warm lips on her cheek. “Late night?” he asked.

She kissed him back, happy to see him in so early. “Late night, early morning, either one.”

“What did you find out.”

She sighed. “Nothing we didn’t already know, at least in the chemical sense. Seth’s mental changes are almost minimal, so far as his male interests go.” She ran her hand along his. “So many hours last night and I just couldn’t get a fix on anything.” She looked up at him. “How was your night?”

He smiled and pulled an SD card out of the front pocket on his shirt. “Actually, I think I may know what the problem is."

She blinked twice. "You… You're serious?"

He nodded. "But, we'll need to move quickly to synthesize TG-Oh-Four."

---

Haley couldn’t believe she hadn’t seen it. Greg had, and she was so very thankful for it. There were seventeen different chemicals that made up Serum TG-03, another four that were added to 03-09, and one further chemical that was the common element to all the different types of TG serums. That chemical, tetragendiacine, had been developed by a private lab that Haley’s had absorbed after some scandal involving a college student being forcibly changed into the opposite gender without prior knowledge (the lab had tried to claim it was in a liability waiver, but Haley had looked over the waiver and found nothing).

And it was the tetragendiacine that had cause such a strange and unique reaction in Seth's system, likely thanks to the ingredients that made up the chemical.

How did I miss that? she asked herself. I feel like such a pre-med student. She walked around the chemical storage center and looked at hundreds of different chemicals in the same group as tetragendiacine, trying to find just the one that had the right amount of similar components to serve as a replacement. Just one difference would be everything needed to stabilize Seth's condition. She couldn't wait to tell him the good news, to tell him he'd finally become the woman he wanted to be.

"There you are!" she exclaimed to absolutely no one (the room was empty). Hypoestrophaline, a potent chemical, likely to decrease the speed of the change but increase the reactionary response to the change. Greg will probably be quite tired after Seth is through with him today, she thought with a wry smirk.

She hurried into the lab, threw on a lab coat and proceeded to run the tests necessary to see if the other chemicals that made up the TG serum would accept hypoestrophaline and whether it would perform its duty in a simulated environment. Seth would be the first test, even bypassing the rat stage, but Haley was certain the results would be more than worth it. TG serums were so versatile that it wouldn't take much to make certain the new chemical would work.

The simulations took no time at all, predicting a 98.2% success rate with a change time of seventeen minutes and fifty-two seconds. Longer than Haley's own change, surprisingly, but not unexpected. She would only hope that Seth would understand. Likely he just wanted the process to be finished and his body set.

And it would be.

---

Seth caught the ball as it bounced off the wall. He was still wide awake, never having gotten back to sleep after Dr. Jackyl left. He wondered if she'd found anything. He was certain he'd never been helpful the entire time, what with needing every damn six words explained. When he was finally a woman and home free, he was going to med school. Helping Dr. Jackyl so that this never happened to anyone else was going to be his priority.

There was a knock on the door, and then it was suddenly open, the doctor's smiling face replacing it. "Good news, Seth, we've figured it out."

He felt as though everything had just been sucked out of his body, but not in a worried, almost defeated way, qs had happened the day before and every day for almost two weeks,but in such a way that he felt freed. "Figured it out?" he repeated, almost incapable of believing he'd heard those words at all.

Dr. Jackyl walked into the room, a small laptop in her hands, wearing a lab coat open enough to reveal she wasn't wearing a top or a bra underneath. "You've been having a reaction to the base chemical that made up the serum. Greg discovered it last night after he got home, ran some tests and narrowed down exactly the type of chemical we needed to swap the original out with. Have I mentioned he's the best boyfriend ever?"

"You mean, you can really change me? Permanently?"

"We can, and we already have the lab set up, so if you'd please come along, we'll make you the woman you've always wanted to be."

Seth couldn't help himself. He threw his arms around her and hugged her as tightly as possible. "Thank you," he said through tears. "Thank you so much."

He felt her pat his back, obviously in surprise because of the hug. "Always a pleasure to give one of my patients what she needs."

---

Six weeks later…

Haley sat down at her home computer and connected it to the work system. Her cat, Mr. Rattles, jumped up on her lap for a scratch behind the ear. The long-haired beast loved to be on her lap as often as he could, making her jokingly wonder if he was secretly an admirer of hers that Greg had somehow managed to turn from human to cat just to keep her to himself.

A silly idea, of course, but one worth thinking about.

"Subject TG-Zero-Four-Zero-One, formerly Seth Halprin. As documented in several other records, Seth had the most unique reaction to the serum I've ever seen, changing from male to female, and then reversing each subsequent day. For almost two weeks, we had nothing, certainly spiralling Seth into a depression I can't even imagine.

"Fortunately, my assistant, Greg, discovered the problem. Seth's body naturally put out a resistant chemical that we’d never seen in any other subject. We’ve extracted as much of this chemical as we could before Serum TG-Zero-Four did its work, which was necessary because Seth’s body no longer produces this chemical. What we’ve been able to glean from it so far, we think it could be the key to successful female-to-male transformations, but it’s too early to tell.

“As for Subject TG-Zero-Four-Zero-One, formerly known as Seth Halprin, the serum using hypoestrophaline was a complete success. Transformation time was approximately seventeen minutes and fifty-one seconds, exactly one second shorter than the simulations expected. The subject experienced no pain, and the change caused a physical reaction that could only be described as… Well… Okay, she masturbated for about a full half an hour.

"Luckily for Greg, as well as my own mental health, the subject - now known as Sonya - didn’t require outside stimulation. This is lucky mainly because the subject went through a further age regression. From sixty-seven years down to twenty-five, originally, the subject has since become seventeen. We’ve already concluded this is the work of the hypoestrophaline, and Melissa has discovered a way to blend it with facial cream to literally take years off of one's life without the risk of gender transformation. Testing has begun and it’s well on its way to becoming an over-the-counter product within the year.

“As I said, Sonya is now seventeen years old, and the transformation has, naturally, come with the side effect of slight mental changes. She still retains all the knowledge she had as Seth, which has come in handy during her studies at the local high school. She’s fast tracking her way to an early graduation with a referral from myself for the same university Melissa goes to. It shouldn’t take her too long to get up to speed and eventually join the research team, helping others like her and myself who transition with the help of our TG serums.

“Enclosed are follow-up reports about Sonya’s new home life, one she quite clearly enjoys, having made numerous new friends. Subject TG-Zero-Four-Zero-Two has already been selected from among a group of about twenty, and the serum administration should be within the next three to five days. Expect a full report on Sonya by the end of the month, and the report on TG-Zero-Four-Zero-Two in no more than nine weeks. End report, Subject TG-Zero-Four-Zero-One, by Dr. Haley Jackyl.”

Haley shut off the webcam (then placed tape over it for good measure), set Mr. Rattles down on the floor then got up to head upstairs. She knocked on the door across from her bedroom and less than a second later, it opened to reveal the smiling face of Sonya, all made up and ready to go. “Sorry that took so long,” Haley said to her new younger sister.

“No problem, let’s just get out of here, Aaron just texted me that he’s already at the restaurant.”

Haley grabbed her dark brown leather jacket and slipped it on over her purple and white minidress. “I’ll text Greg and tell him we’re ready. He’s eager to meet the boy who swept you off your feet.”

Sonya rolled her eyes. “He didn’t sweep me off my feet, I just like him. Gawd, it’s not rocket science.”

Haley smirked. “Nope, it’s chemistry.”