Minho opened his eyes blearily, blinking against the bright light a few times. His eyelids, like the rest of his body, felt heavy. He blinked again, not comprehending where he was, or why he was awake, even. Everything felt so tired, but in a lagging way, as if a stone was being dropped into the water and gravity tugged and pulled against the friction of the water.

Minho closed his eyes again. 

He heard murmuring, also sounding as if it came from somewhere distant with his sensory processing slowed to a sluggish pace.

“Look at this Taemin,” a voice sounded above him.

After a few beats, Minho stirred. Taemin! He had come looking for Taemin. 

Minho blinked rapidly, trying to clear his head. His brain felt like it was full of gauze, and each thought and movement was like trying to cut through the fog that filled the port each morning.

“Watch his left hand now! Quickly!”

Minho finally forced his eyes open. He turned his head weakly, trying to find his brother. His eyes found Taemin’s face easily enough, but something was different. Something around the torso, something…..Minho couldn’t tell, blinking again as if it was the only thing he was capable of. 

Something was different with Taemin. And, as Minho came ever so slowly into awareness, he realized something was different with him. While his whole body felt as though it was weighed down with bricks, his lower half felt particularly heavy. It felt like his legs had doubled in size, somehow.

Minho glanced down.

“His left hand, Taemin, look!” 

to the waist down, Minho’s gaze locked, frozen, on his lower half. His breath caught in his throat, and his mind blanked, looping in circles as it tried and failed to grasp that where his legs had been was now a single tail, covered in blue scales glinting iridescently under the harsh lighting. 

A tail. A tail. A tail. His mind repeated the information uselessly, futilely seeking some sort of understanding.

His left hand twitched, ring finger moving, then index and middle fingers grasping at air.

“Did you see, Taemin? That pattern of movement is highly unusual, the brain colliding with something it cannot possibly understand, something unfathomable….”

The voice droned into a buzzing nothingness, and the last thing Minho heard before his eyes rolled back into his head was the sharp hitching of Taemin’s sobs.

--

He was cold. A chill that seemed to sink into his very bones surrounded him, bringing him out of his dreamless sleep. Had he slipped out from under the blankets? Minho reached around him trying to find his comforter, frowning in consternation when he felt only a smooth surface. His hand seemed to be moving weirdly--it felt like each movement had a drag against it, like he was forcing it through something viscous.

Hu huffed a sigh--or tried to, flashing awake at the familiar sound and feel of bubbles rolling against his face.

He was underwater. The realization struck him with panic. He had to get out, had to get to the surface so he could breathe, were the thoughts flashing like alarms through his head. He started vigorously spearing his arms through the water, pulling himself up even as his legs felt like they were numbed and non-functional. With most of his body hanging as deadweight, Minho panicked even further, thrashing about in his rush to get to the surface.

As he finally broke through, he inhaled a huge gasp of air. Relief flooded through his veins, as the simple, primal instinct to stay alive faded away, leaving only adrenaline and a pumping heartbeat in its wake.

Now that he was above the surface, he could finally look around. What he saw gave him no reprieve from the overwhelming sense of confusion and fear that surrounded him.

It seemed he was in some sort of tank, with glass separating him from the outside, and a huge wall of water, backlit with a greenish glow, lighting up the otherwise dark room. Above, he could see a metal framework, including a latched door into the tank. Pipes ran too and from the ceiling and walls, all against stark metal walls.

There was a ledge of some kind, made of concrete, to his left and he paddled over and hefted himself onto it so he could finally get a look at his surroundings without treading water.

Speaking of treading, why were his legs so dysfunctional? He glanced down again.

Where his legs should have been was a tail--blue, glistening with water running in rivulets down its sides. Minho’s breath came in faster and faster spurts. With a trembling hand, he reached down to lightly press on the tail, shocked to his very core when he felt the pressure as if it was on his own thigh.

A shudder racked through him so violently that his teeth chattered. He imagined his legs were entwined together, and tried lifting and lowering them as one.

The tail flopped against the concrete, and Minho promptly turned his head to the side and threw up. 

Falling limply to the ground, Minho gasped out his breaths. Why did he have a tail? This couldn’t be possible, could it? It had to be a dream of some sort. Caused by the stress of looking for his lost brother for months on end and--wait. Taemin! Some man had mentioned Taemin’s name under the bright glint of the lights in his hazy memories.

Taemin….a tail….the thoughts swirled together, before the blackness encroaching on his vision overtook the green luminescence of the room, and Minho slipped into darkness.

--

He awoke with a gasp. His back was uncomfortably warm, sweating lightly and sticking to the surface he was on. He rolled to get away from the heat, and found his middle encounter something wet and foul-smelling. 

Right, he had thrown up and passed out because he had a tail. A quick glance assured him it was still there, and a limp flop confirmed that it was indeed his. 

How could this be possible? As Minho inspected the area where his lower body transitioned into a smooth, scaly mass protruding from human flesh, he noticed tiny, almost-imperceptible sutures. When he pressed on them, he felt only a strange numbness. Maybe that was it--maybe someone had sewn his legs into some kind of contraption designed to look like a tail, maybe if he picked the stitches out he could free his legs and--

“I wouldn’t do that, Minho.” A voice cut through the sounds of water lapping against the walls.

Minho whipped his head down to see, standing outside the bottom of the tank, a figure of a man. He had long hair tied back in a messy bun, and glasses atop a frankly beautiful face. A lab coat covered his tall and slender body.

“Your stitches are numb now, but I can assure you they will not be forever. And you don’t want to deal with reopening them when the anaesthesia wears off.”

Minho’s mouth opened and closed a few times. Who, he wanted to ask. What, and how.

“Now that you are awake I believe introductions are in order. Clean yourself up and practice using your gills. I’ll be back with the others soon.”

Another punch to the gut. Gills? The hand that had been hovering above his stitches flew up to his face, and then traveled down to his neck. Indeed, there were sensitive slits beneath his ears with shallow indentations. How could any of this be…

Wait, others?

“Is Taemin there?” Minho found his voice and cried out to the retreating figure, who only lifted a hand in response.

Left alone, Minho continued to finger his newfound gills. Shifting his body to hover over the ledge of the concrete, he stuck his head underwater and breathed in.

Immediately, he pulled his head out of the water, sputtering as he tried to expel the water from his nasal cavity. 

After a few minutes of coughing, he tried another approach--holding his nose closed, he stuck his head in the water again, and imagined drawing a deep breath from somewhere around his neck.

His lungs inflated with oxygen, which Minho promptly coughed back out into the water.

Raising his head out of the salt water and into his hands, Minho let out breath after shuddering breath. What was going on?

Just then, he heard a door opening and the clicks of footsteps walking across a metal surface. He turned, and nearly fell into the water at what he saw.

The man was back, and with him...a man with goat legs, another with wings, yet another with wooden stumps protruding from his head, and...Taemin? Taemin! 

It was Taemin, but he was different. He had translucent appendages--fins? Wings?--stuck to his arms and legs, sticking up and out from joint to joint.

“Hyung!” Taemin’s voice rang out. 

“Taemin!” Minho returned in kind, pushing himself off his ledge and using his arms to force his way down to ground level.He barely registered the tall man tutting at him, admonishing him to use his tail next time or he would be punished.

Minho banged his arms against the glass, and Taemin ran forward to lightly hit his palms against it, before curling into himself and sobbing.

“I’m sorry,” Taemin gasped, “Minho, hyung, I’m so sorry” He repeated over and over again, sobs and hiccups breaking his speech into fragments.

He slammed his hand against the glass, and was about to do so again before the man grabbed his wrist. 

“That’s enough, Taemin.” He stated firmly. “You wouldn’t want to break your bones again, would you?”

Taemin glared at him, and with a roar, wrenched his hand away and made to strike the glass again. 

The man sighed and whispered a few words under his breath, and Taemin was thrown back, a golden light circling around his body and tying his arms at his sides. 

Minho watched wide-eyed, before snarling and banging harder at the glass. 

“This glass is made to withstand much more pressure than you could possibly generate, Minho. Human bones are so fragile, I suggest you stop before you break something.” The man wasn’t even looking at Taemin, who was writhing on the ground, screaming and crying.

“Minho….” He continued as Minho made no moves to stop bashing the glass. “You brothers resemble each other so much. In your genetic compatibility with magic and in your...disobedience. I suppose this will be your first lesson, then.”

He uttered a few more words, and suddenly an electric jolt zapped through Minho’s tank, stunning him and leaving him floating to the ground, muscles temporarily frozen. Only his gills worked feverishly, pumping air and out of his lungs as Minho twitched in rage and confusion and fear.

“Now, Minho, I’m sure you must be wondering where you are. This is the Cloudsteam Laboratory, where you and your brother will be making history. You see, I am working toward an incredible advancement in both the magical and scientific realms. The project I am working on will finally unite the fae and human, so long at odds with one another. With the magic of the fae and the scientific advancements of the humans--there is no coincidence that this laboratory is centered in the hub of innovation itself--we can finally see that there can be a common creation of both human and fae blood.”

Saying this, he put his hands on the shoulders of the two men closest to him. The goat-legged man shrugged his hand off, while the man with the crown of tree branches stared with dead eyes off to the distance.

Paying no mind to the goat-legged man’s rebuff, the man continued, “I am Doctor Strand, one of the foremost--in fact, one of the only--fae scientists. I am leading this project single handedly. And you, Minho, are one of the humans who will advance society past any boundaries it could possibly have imagined. The success of Taemin’s operation led me to believe his magical compatibility might be linked to the makeup of his genes, and what better way to test that theory than by giving his brother a sister species?”

“Oh, but I get ahead of myself. These are your companions.”

“Kibum, who you might recognize as one of the formerly great Kim family inheritors. Alas, they fell out of favor and donated their son to our cause. Kibum has been made into a faun, one of the gentle creatures who roam the forests. Of course, his temperament is quite the opposite, but that is a work in progress. Kibum was the only one who did not require a fae donor, as I modified a goat’s legs to support human weight.”

Minho studied the brown-haired man. Curled horns protruded out of his hair, the only indication from the top up that anything other than human might be present. From the bottom, however, he had a pair of furred goat legs, sticking down and then curling back with sharp, seemingly impossible angles, but which seemed effective at holding his weight. He was also, Minho noted, the only one wearing cuffed chains binding his legs to a maximum distance apart. Indeed, his lip hard curled in distaste the entire time Dr. Strand was speaking.

“Next is Jinki. He has been modified to accept dryad infusions. Another irony, as he comes from a family instrumental in keeping the well-oiled machine of Steamcloud up and running. Eventually, I expect that his entire coating of bark will grow in, but for now, I seem to have run out of dryads to collect samples from, so he is also something of a work in progress.”

Jinki continued to stare blankly head of him, not even blinking to acknowledge the doctor’s words. Now that Minho was closer, he could see that Jinki’s skin had patchworks of what appeared to be tree bark growing out of them--a cluster on his right shoulderblade, a cluster on his left calf, and a particularly strong presence on his left hand, with his fingers all appearing to be roughly carved out of wood with moss lining the joints. Like a crown, his head had small branches growing out around it, some tipped with new leaves.

“And then Jonghyun. Jongyun was my first creation, and in many ways the one closest to my own heart. Having no government support at first, I had to draw a little...closer to home for my grafting. He has the highest compatibility with magic than any human I have ever seen. I consider him one of my greatest successes.”

Jonghyun was a slight man, who had bright pink hair and a pair of golden-veined translucent wings fluttering nervously behind him. His angled face held kind, purple eyes, and he looked sadly at Minho, soulfully conveying his sympathy without words. Minho immediately felt as though he could trust Jonghyun, in spite of the high praise coming from the doctor.

“And finally...well, you know Taemin. You have not seen him since he was a regular human, instead of the incredible accomplishment he is now. Taemin is one of the rare humans who might be compatible with the rare cloud mermaid. You might not know of them, as they stay far away from human hubs like Steamcloud. They are beautiful and graceful beings which cluster in dense patches of fog and mist, and swim through the clouds with their fins. Indeed, Taemin’s surgery was the most complicated, as we had to hollow his bones to make him light enough to make functional use of his fins. Some would stop simply at the aesthetic transition--in fact, I admit to have done that with Jonghyun; he cannot fly--but at this point in the project, that would simply not do.”

Taemin, now curled up and sobbing, had what appeared to be large dragonfly wings attached to his arms and legs, only with sharpened edges. They flared out toward the end, with a glossy sheen coating them. Other than that, he looked completely human, but the doctor’s words filled Minho with a fresh bout of rage and horror. Hollowed his bones--how could they? And, recalling the doctor’s words from before, how many times had Taemin broken bones as a result of this fragility?

“And then you, Minho. You are our newest addition, and shaping up to be quite a success. I...liberated a mermaid tail, and have succeeded in attaching all your nerves and tendons. You might experience some pain over the next few days, but that is normal, especially with the modification to your bone structure.”

“Welcome, Minho, to the Cloudsteam Laboratory.”

--