TOBIAS


The wing snaps off and the plane is falling from the sky and the plane hits the ground and the tail is gone and the plane stops moving and there's fire and there's an explosion and all of a sudden there's darkness and you can't breathe –


You jump quickly sitting up in your bed. You're sweating like crazy, it's been a while since you've had a nightmare like that. You glance over at the clock. You've overslept by nineteen minutes, you need to get moving now, before you're too late!

Jumping out of bed, you quickly rush through your morning routine, going through everything to make sure you don't accidentally leave anything behind. Double-checking, you breathe a sigh of relief as you find you're packed and ready to go. Everything's back on track, You think as you leave your hotel room. Your cell phone rings and you're grateful that you have a long-distance plan. A very long distance plan, as you think. Not looking forward to the jet lag once you get home, you answer.

"Hello?" You say.

"Tobias," You mother says. You'll be staying with them for a while before you head back to the college dorm, and it'll be nice to see them again. "Just calling before you head off to the airport. How are you doing? Any problems?"

"I'm okay, Mum," You reply. "I'll see you at the airport, okay?"

"Okay," She says, but you can tell she seems uneasy.

"What's wrong?"

"I... I just have a bad feeling," She replies. "Isn't there a later flight you can take?" you shake your head, conscious of the fact she doesn't know that.

"No," You say instead. "I can't take any later flight. Don't worry, Mum, Oceanic hasn't had anything bad happen since... 1974, I think."

"Okay," She says, still hesitant. After re-assuring her that everything will be fine, you hang up. Putting your luggage into the taxi, you think back to your nightmare. Could she have had the same feeling, half a world away? You shake it off as paranoia and pre-flight jitters, and head off to the airport.

Dark.

The feeling of being smothered. A heavy, crushing darkness. Paralyzed. There's a dim light, but nothing you can see. You can't move. There's a terrible smell, a mixture of burning and rotting flesh. Your throat is dry, and your head aches. You don't know where you are, or how you got there. All you know is:

This place is death.

You look around slowly, your muscles protesting as you do. The floor (you call it so) is bent, shattered. Stray wires have sprung out like intestines out of a knife wound, and sparks fly out once in awhile from the gaping holes, giving you some illumination. The chamber is small, the walls and ceiling bent inwards in such a way that there is hardly any room to walk in. That's when you realize:

This is the plane.

Oceanic Flight 199 has crashed, and this... this compartment of the plane... you turn, your suspicions confirmed. This compartment of the plane has become your tomb.

You walk down the aisle, hearing your footsteps echo in the small chamber, and hearing your steps splash into something liquid, like water, or –

Or blood.

You continue towards the front, trying to remain calm. You really don't want to think of the number of dead people in here, people who were trapped as death arrived and took their lives as suddenly as –

You reach the cockpit. The security door has been opened, the frame of the door distorted and bent in such a way that the security door has long since fallen out. The plane landed such that you can actually see the river of blood from the pilots inside; they must've died very violently.

You walk in as best you can, and ignore the blood spattered controls and dashboard. You step towards the window, also shattered, and climb up towards it. Looking around, you twist, kicking away the broken glass from the frame of the window. As you do, you stare as your foot seems to get too big for your shoes, which quickly split. Your feet are changing, gray fur spreading up your feet. You've read enough stories to know what this means, and you twist yourself back, which is getting increasingly hard to do. By the time you reach out with your arms and pull yourself out, the changes have spread up to your waist, which now really hurts. You pull yourself out to your waist, and as you do, you get a glimpse of what's happening.

Another pair or legs are starting to grow out of your body. This is painful, and you lose your grip, falling against the nose of the plane. You slide out slightly, but push against the metal side and stay in a lying position. If you lose your grip –

That thought is stopped as your pants rip and an entire back half of your body extends.

"Help!" You shout, hoping that someone hears you. A moment or two later, someone does.

"Who's up there?" A woman shouts.

"My name's Tobias!" You cry.

"How'd you get up there?"

"I climbed out of the cockpit!"

"...are there any survivors in there?"

"No," You shout. "I... I don't know, it was too dark. I don't think so."

"Can you get down?" You shift uncomfortably as the changes spread up your
chest, two breasts blossoming out and pressing against the metal plates.

"I don't think so," You call back. There's a moment or two of silence, and eventually a different voice called back.

"Okay, just slide carefully towards the edge and we'll..." Your mind goes fuzzy and blank, and you lose consciousness.


You wake up on the ground, and you see what must be the rest of the wreckage. You put two and two together, and figure out that you must've survived the fall.

"Welcome back to the land of the living," You hear a voice say, and you turn. A golden vixen leans over, giving you some water. "How do you feel?"

"Like I've been thrown around like a hot potato," you reply, taking the water.
"I guess I survived the fall?"

"Lucky for you, we were ready to catch you," She said. "Then again, you're really lucky, if you were in the front section," You nod.

"It was hell in there," You tell her. The vixen nods.

"I haven't seen it myself, but from the few people who have scavenged supplies from the plane, the front end is completely crushed in." She said. "They
couldn't even get through."

"It's a tomb," You say. "Nobody but dead people in there." The vixen sits next to you.

"So, do you have a name?" She asks.

"Tobias," You tell her. She raises an eyebrow.

"Really? Then again, it does seem like there's a trend around here..." She smiles. "I'm Callum."

"...wait, what?" You ask as you register this. "Callum? But... you're a girl!"

"So are you," Callum said, poking a spot just below you. You look down and gasp. Two breasts are on your chest, and a quick inspection reveals that you're female everywhere else as well. You look behind you and see that you're not only female, but you're an anthro wolf. Well, not really – kind of a combination between a wolf and a centaur. An anthro wolf-taur, you guess. From the waist up, you're an anthro, but from the waist down is the body of a wolf. You take all of this in.

"Most of us used to be guys," Callum continues. Even those who were originally female changed somewhat."

"How many people survived the crash?" You ask.

"You're the eleventh," Callum says, listing the other survivors and who/what
they were now. As she finishes the list, Callum pauses.

"I think that's everyone we're ever going to find," She says truthfully.

"H-how..." You swallow. "How did this happen to us?" Callum stares at you with haunting eyes.

"The island," is her reply.


And so began the first night...