Free Origins (A Demonkin Novel) by Sean Hayden

describe the fiery liquid in my hand.
    The exam continued while I sipped merrily from my lycanthrope juice pouch. The doc asked me if I would mind consenting to a MRI. I had a feeling it would be more for his benefit than mine, but I grew up watching television shows about emergency rooms and hospital dramas, so I kind of wanted to see the end result. Maybe I would learn a little more about myself. I told him, "No problem," and followed him to the imaging room.
    We entered a cold linoleum room with only one feature, a hollow metal tube with what looked like a cold table protruding from the end. The doctor asked me to get up on the table and he left through another door on the opposite wall. I walked over, climbed up, lied back, and the whole table slid back into the tube. I heard him come over the intercom and he told me to relax. The machine began to hum and I could feel the magnetic fields dance over my skin. I found it tickled a little bit. I knew humans didn't feel a thing, so I made another tick mark in my mental "freak" journal. The list kept getting longer and longer.
    Before I knew it the MRI ended. The machine ended its incessant humming and I heard the door to the room open. Before I knew it, the table I had been lying on slid from the machine and I found myself staring at ceiling tiles again. Doctor Gibbs smiled down at me and lent me a hand to sit up. I didn't need it, but felt touched by his thoughtfulness, so I accepted.
    "It will take a few days to complete the examination of all the data I have gathered. I'll schedule a follow up and go over the results with you. I'm sure you're probably even more curious than I am. Come on Ashlyn; let's get you set up in processing. They have all your information already, so you should be in your bunk shortly."
    We exited the MRI room and made our way back to the exam room so I could change back into my clothes and collect my things. Once I dressed, I met the Doctor back in his office and he led me down the sterile hallways to a door labeled "New Agent Processing". He opened the door and let me pass through first. "Here we go," I thought.
    The front office looked just like I expected. Light tan walls, plenty of filing cabinets, and a counter running the length of the wall. A bored looking, middle aged woman sat behind the counter with a mountain of paperwork laid out in front of her. She had to have heard the door open as we walked in, but she paid us no mind, merely kept on doing whatever occupied her.
    We stood there for several minutes and I looked over to see an amused look on the good doctor's face. He made eye contact and then rolled them up into his head. Apparently he had been in this situation before. I stifled a laugh and continued my wait. I formulated a plan to cough to politely announce our arrival when she finally spoke.
    "Ashlyn with no last name?" Her voice came out as a raspy croak. It sounded like someone poured glass and gravel in a concrete mixer.
    "Yes, ma'am."
    "I have everything ready for you."
    She began pulling papers from the pile in a specific order and stacking them face down neatly atop each other. When she finished, she flipped the whole pile over and smoothed the bottom edge against the countertop. She handed me the entire pile and I noticed a large number of cellophane tabs sticking out of the left hand side of the pile.
    "Go through the papers and sign by the tabs. While you're signing your life away I'm going to wrestle up someone to take you over to provisioning and get you to the dorms."
    "Thank you, ma'am," I replied and began reading through the stack. I grabbed the pen with the little beaded chain attaching it to the counter and began the long process of signing on the proverbial dotted line. Most of the paperwork contained the standard "do you agree" and “I hereby promise" type documents. Unfortunately several copies of each filled the stack. I guess the old "fill these out in triplicate" rule still applied to the US government. I