It was the little things that R.J. noticed.  Tray's slump disappeared.  His back straightened and became rigid, just before he began rising to his feet.  Horus frantically moved his joystick around like he was working on the high score on an old Pac-Man machine.  Aikman was no longer looking at his terminal but was peering over it to get a glimpse through the window.  There was no noticeable change in Gracie, but considering he'd only seen her register emotions that varied from cold indifference to cold sarcasm, that wasn't surprising.

R.J. marched over to the glass and placed both hands on the sill.  It was almost a staged pose, the director telling him to look resolute and in command, but he was unaware he was doing it.

In the dimly lit enclosure, LARS was writhing on the pallet.  It looked like she was having a seizure.  She was in clear medical distress. A small tic in his brain started thinking they'd have to put a stop to the test and have her treated.  But that was insane.  There was nothing they could stop.  Even if he could push a button and put everything on hold, there was nothing that could be done to help her.  Her enclosure had been sealed until dawn.  No one in or out.  Even if she was dying in there, no one would be going to her rescue.

She was shaking rapidly.  An uh-uh-uh noise came out of her mouth.  Her skin looked blurry.  With her thrashing, it was hard to make out, but it was almost like there was a heat distortion rippling the air around her.

"This is it," somebody said.  It took a moment for it to sink in that it had been his own voice.

The room tensed. The people in the chairs stood and moved in closer.  There was a warmth of bodies behind him and a breeze of stale breath.

"Give that to me, old man," Aikman said, taking the joystick out of Horus's unsteady hand.  R.J.'s eye flickered to see the erratic reading on the EEG before returning to LARS.

There was a collective gasp, as a spasm flipped the girl over onto the floor. 

She landed on her hands and knees, still violently shaking.  A low moan escaped her and increased in volume until it reached a glass-shattering screech.  R.J. put a hand over his mouth and wiped off the nervous sweat that had formed on his upper lip.

He had thought about this moment a thousand times.  He'd envisioned every scene from every movie, imagined ways based on metamorphosis in nature, but when the transformation hit, it was so sudden and ferocious, everyone stepped back from the glass, including him.  Even Barbara Gracie slid her chair six inches away, grinding against the metal floor.

The creature burst out of the girl. 

Afterward, he would swear that the skin had been ripped apart – not shed but torn off her body like a thin layer of latex – an incredibly thin membrane that proved to be no match for the escaping beast.  But they only found clothes – just the girl's pajamas shredded and strewn around the enclosure.  When they watched the high-speed video footage, they saw the minutia of the transformation.  It was as though her body had turned to jelly and reformed itself with lightning-fast elasticity.

The creature had barely taken form when it was in motion.  It did a circle around the chamber, nothing but a haze of skin and fur.  Then it launched itself directly at the doors.  First, the one to the auxiliary hall and then the one back to the little girl's room.  It jumped about like a Ping-Pong ball. It was more a shadow of movement than a physical being.  Its next leap sent it hurdling at the wall sensor.  Its left shoulder slammed into it, and the black bubble of Plexiglas burst.

A bank of monitors went dark and electrical feedback sent a shower of sparks and the deep smell of ozone into the control room.  Aikman and Horus leaped from the console shielding their eyes from the explosion.

The creature tried to take out the one on the ceiling next.  It jumped at it three times before giving up.  The sensors were too high.  Just as it got enough height, gravity would pull it back down.  It hit the ground with a deep resonant thump and tried again.

After the last attempt, it dropped onto all fours and switched directions aiming straight for the observation window.  Its entire side slapped against the glass with a noise that was felt more than heard.

R.J. struggled to focus on the shape and the dimensions, as it hung there for the briefest of seconds.  All that his mind took in was the pale flesh pricked by a mottled white and yellow fur that stood out like quills.  And all too quickly, it was off, moving restlessly around the cage.

The speakers were full of the scratching of claws on metal.  Then a low growling started a deep rumble in the back of the beast's throat.  Through the mikes, there was a Doppler effect to the snarl, as the thing dashed around the room.  After the fifth circle of the enclosure, it fired itself at the glass again.  The layer of tinted plastic broke with an explosive crack.  Its entire surface became a sunburst of lines centering on the point of impact – a spot of white that looked like hard-pressed dust held in place by mysterious forces. The wire-reinforced glass behind it shattered into a web of fissures but held.

Chairs were knocked over behind R.J.  There was the scuffling of feet, a commotion of voices, and yelling.  It was all just background noise.

R.J. was riveted to the scene in the pen. The lycanthrope had finally stopped moving.  She stood there staring at him.  Her pale blue eyes gleamed.  Her jaws opened, and she threw back her head.

The speakers in the monitoring room rumbled with the sound.  The equipment had never been designed for such frequencies and the woofers crackled, while static broke through the upper registers of the tweeters.  Even with all the distortion it still sounded like hell being ripped open.  It was the noise of a demon screaming inside his skull.  Nothing in the animal kingdom had ever made a sound like that.  R.J. clutched the window sill and fought not to drop to his knees.  The world around him was fading out of existence – a buzzing sepia haze of nothingness.  A cold clammy sweat covered his whole body like he was fighting a fever.

When it finally stopped, he wouldn't have been able to say if it had lasted seconds or hours.  It was a non-time of pure terror.

The beast closed her mouth, and the horrendous sound was replaced by a high pitched alarm.  Heaving clean air into his lungs, R.J. glanced around the room, as much to get his bearings as to avoid looking at the source of the howl.  Perhaps if he didn't look, it wouldn't do it again.

Barbara Gracie appeared to be trying to keep from being sick, but she was still sitting there with her perfect posture.  Aikman was sitting on the floor with his arms splayed out for support behind him.  Wiley was holding onto the back of a chair.  It looked like he was holding it in front of him for protection.  Tray was pressed against the door screaming in blindly in terror.  There was no alarm; it was just him wailing.  Horus lay on the floor, motionless with his eyes were shut tight.  He seemed to be hugging himself.

R.J. braced himself and forced his gaze back to the enclosure.  She stood there perfectly still staring at him, as though she could see into the monitoring room, see through the cracked and splintered sheet of smoky plastic and right into R.J.'s eyes, right into him.

R.J. tried to assess its features.  With its long neck and cat-like face, it didn't resemble a modern wolf.  It was more like its distant ancestor, the epicyon.  A synapse burst with the thought that perhaps lycanthropy dated back to the Miocene Epoch when those large canines roamed the continent.  But it was a wondering theory born from confusion and awe.  It was more probable that it was only a coincidental resemblance.

It was bigger in mass than the girl.  Muscles defined the limbs and the shoulders of the beast with raw power.  It bared its fierce teeth, a maw of fangs capable of rendering any prey to nothing but shreds.  Despite all its furious activity, it didn't pant.  There was no visible sign of breathing.  Its metabolism was highly tuned.  This was an ultimate predator – the pinnacle of the food chain.

She was beautiful.

***

Author's Note:

So what did you think of the Big Show?  Was the creature reveal what you were expecting?  Don't know what an epicyon looks like? I've posted a picture on Facebook —www.facebook.com/DavidJThirteen

If you're enjoying the story, please remember to vote.