3. Doctor’s Appointment

They arrived at Daniel's clinic so early in the morning, his assistant nurse wasn't even there yet. Bruno knocked gently on the office door, and Daniel let them into the room with a smile.

"Come on in!" he said with enthusiasm. "Make yourselves comfortable."

Bruno took her coat and handbag and placed them in a closet behind Daniel's desk, followed by his own coat.

"Please sit." Daniel pointed to two comfy-looking chairs in front of his desk. Alice sat on one, but her husband chose to stand behind her instead of sitting. He placed his hands on her shoulders and toyed with her hair.

She sighed. He looked more nervous than she felt, and it was making her uncomfortable. Daniel was probably used to this new habit, since he didn't insist that Bruno sit.

"How are you feeling? Are you ready for this?" Daniel asked.

"I'm all right." Alice tried to sound confident. "How will this work? Do you just throw me in the Tube and pull a lever?" She tried not to sound too nervous, but Daniel gave her a knowing grin that showed she'd failed.

"No levers here. This is a delicate process with several steps." Daniel started typing rapidly on his computer. "First, we do an evaluation of possible conditions or diseases, like cancer, HIV, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, the usual stuff, and we remove them."

She couldn't help but smile at him while he kept his tone all business. Five months ago, he wouldn't talk of cancer in such a dismissive manner. It was something that impacted his work life every day. Now? It was something on a checklist, quickly looked up and corrected.

"After that is when the fun begins. Step two is removing and regrowing any damaged cells the body has. This means removing scars and damaged tissue, and replacing it with healthy tissue."

He stopped looking at his screen to offer her a kind smile.

"This means that piercings, tattoos, and other body alterations will also be reverted."

She looked up at her husband.

"You didn't tell me that I would have to pierce my ears again." She touched her earlobes as if she could protect them. "It was hard enough to have them pierced the first time around."

Bruno leaned down and kissed the top of her head.

"Don't worry. I'll hold your hand while you get them pierced again."

She focused back on Daniel, and took a deep breath.

"I know you hate needles. I'm going to keep them to a minimum, and I promise you won't see any. I don't want you having a panic attack." Daniel smiled reassuringly.

"So, there are needles involved." She turned back to her husband. "What other lies did you tell me?" she asked him with a mock hurt voice. He laughed and squeezed her shoulders.

"Step three is the best one. Small-scale genetic manipulation. We unlock the potential of each individual and improve the person's anatomy as much as genetically possible, as we did with Bruno here." He pointed at her husband. "This is the stage where most people get successfully transformed into a beta. In rare cases they are transformed into an alpha, like your husband."

Bruno gave her shoulders a squeeze. Something was troubling him about this.

"Have any women been transformed into alphas?" she couldn't help but ask. Maybe that was what was worrying Bruno so much, and why he'd delayed this appointment so long. She was strong-willed and just as stubborn as he was. What if she was turned into an alpha as well?

"There are cases of women turning into alphas, but these are rare. Probability wise, turning beta has the highest chance," Daniel reassured her. "Shall we get started?"

She had more questions, but he seemed to be in a hurry to get things moving.

He got up and pushed a tall device all the way around his desk until it was next to her. It was all white, with elegant curves, a ton of buttons and dials, and a circular space that was probably meant for someone to put their hand through. Daniel pushed some buttons, and the machine came to life. He disconnected the cable linking the machine to his computer. Her husband squeezed her shoulders again, this time a little harder.

"Could you please put your right hand through the opening? Go all the way until you reach a wall, then settle your hand on the bottom, palm down."

She looked at the machine with apprehension. They had promised very few needles, but she could bet there was one in that opening that she couldn't see. She took another deep breath, and put her right hand through the opening, setting it down on a hard cushioned surface. She jumped when the opening closed around her forearm and kept it secure. Bruno rubbed her shoulders and kissed her again.

"It's okay, no need to get scared. It's gonna take a little blood, but you won't feel it," he whispered in her ear.

She saw a clear tube on the right side of the machine fill with blood. She didn't feel any prick. Where was this machine a year ago, when she had to take all those blood tests?

"This is awesome!" she told Daniel.

He grinned back at her, and made the machine release her arm. There was now a little plastic circle on her right wrist attached to her skin, with a few wires coming off it. Daniel took her arm and placed a bandage over the circle and wires.

"This is going to be needed for the procedure."

He took a small bundle from a cabinet and gave it to her.

"Hospital gown and disposable slippers. You already know how these work. The opening goes in the back."

He opened the door that led to the next room and turned on the lights.

Bruno helped her stand.

"Come on. Time to show how good that booty looks in a hospital gown." He grabbed her butt and pushed her toward the door.

"Not in front of Daniel," she whispered, embarrassed. Bruno gave a soft chuckle.

The following room was actually two rooms divided by glass. On this side there was a console, with more buttons, dials, and knobs than a sound booth, and several screens. On the other side of the glass was a mostly empty space, with white walls and floor. In the center of the room, supported on its sides by sturdy metal legs, was a metal cylinder. It reminded her of a tanning bed—with the upper panel lifted, waiting for someone to step in—but it was unlike the Tubes that had been shown on the news. This one had a see-through top, and she could see a white cushioned interior. Several wires and tubes came out of it and wormed all the way back to the console.

"This is more sci-fi than I expected," she joked. "Why is this one different from the ones on television?"

Daniel closed the door behind them.

"They are always being improved, and we get upgrades every couple of weeks." He opened a door behind the console. "Here, you can change in this room and put your clothes away."

She went in, quickly changed into the hospital gown and disposable slippers, and stored her clothes and shoes on the shelves that lined one of the walls. There was a big mirror next to them, with a strong light pointing directly in front of it. She took one last look at herself. No one knew just how much they were going to change before the procedure. She lifted her gown and traced a finger on the scar on her lower abdomen. Then she lifted her hair to take a look at the scar on her scalp. Lastly, she traced the scars on her left arm. She said a soft goodbye to each of them. The idea that she would lose them was bittersweet.

She went back to the main room to find Daniel and Bruno talking softly, but they both stopped when they saw her.

"Ready?" Bruno asked her with a big smile.

"As ready as I'll ever get, I guess." She smiled back. She was shaking a little, but it could be from the cold room, and not just nerves.

The glass door to the other room opened, and Daniel gestured for her to go in. She clutched the back of the hospital gown so her butt wouldn't show, and passed the men into the other room. Daniel followed her in and helped her get up on the cylinder, instructing her to lie down. He took off the bandage that protected the plastic bit on her wrist, and placed her hand on a cushioned support, wrist down. She felt a pull on her skin and the inside of the machine came alive with lights.

"I'm going to close the lid now. I want you to relax and trust me, okay? I will keep talking to you while you're in here, and you can talk back to me. I can hear everything you say in the booth."

"Okay." She nodded her head quickly. She was forcing a smile, but she would bet that Daniel could see right through it.

Her heart was beating fast. Daniel closed the lid slowly, keeping an eye on her. When the lid snapped shut, she started breathing faster.

She saw him go back to the other side of the glass and sit behind the console. The glass door closed slowly.

Her husband leaned into the glass wall, his eyes fixed on her. He gave her a reassuring smile, but she could see the concern in his eyes. She knew him too well for him to hide it.

"Alice, could you please count down from ten?" Daniel's voice came from somewhere behind her. Probably a speaker behind her head.

"Ten. Nine. Eight… seven… six… five…"

Her voice trailed off and she faded into sleep.

"That was quick. Did I pass out that fast?" Bruno asked without taking his eyes off his wife.

"You were out by eight," Daniel replied without lifting his eyes from the several screens on the console.

Bruno wasn't sure why, but he felt insulted by that reply.

"Are you sure you want to do this?" Daniel looked up from the console and turned his chair to face him. He was one of the few people who still looked Bruno in the eyes. He couldn't help but smile at that.

"I am very sure." His mind was set. He was going to take all necessary steps to protect her.

Daniel looked back at the console, paused for a second, and turned a dial all the way down. Then he got up and both of them went back to the main office room.

Gabriel was waiting for them there, sitting in one of the chairs, his feet up on the desk. He had his eyes closed and was holding a cold water bottle to the side of his head.

"Feet off my desk, Gabriel," Daniel ordered.

Gabriel opened his eyes, glared at Daniel, and slowly took his feet down. It wasn't smart for Daniel to give orders to an alpha.

"Why on earth do we have to do this at this ungodly hour?" Gabriel asked in a sleepy tone.

"Rough night?" Bruno asked.

"Met a cute blonde who was recently changed. Not claimed. Wanted to have some fun." Gabriel's words were slurred with fatigue.

"Did you sleep at all?" Daniel asked.

Gabriel just smirked at them as a reply.

Daniel settled behind his desk and put all the items that Gabriel had tossed with his feet back in their rightful places.

"Are we ready to do this, gentlemen?" Now Daniel sounded nervous as well.

"I'm ready," Bruno replied.

Gabriel put the water bottle on the desk, and looked at him.

"There will be no turning back after this is done, Bruno. Are you sure you want me on that list? If something happens to you, your wife will be stuck with me."

"I'm not changing my mind. I'm pretty sure she'll be different. I can't explain it. I just… feel it." It was hard to convey that feeling, that pull he'd felt ever since his own transformation. How did you explain something you had never felt before? It was like trying to explain a new color to them. "And I'm very sure someone will try to get on that list right after me. That's why I want you in there. If something happens to me, he won't get his hands on her."

Daniel picked up a pen and started to play with it, but his eyes were fixed on Bruno.

"You still haven't told us who this mystery guy is," Daniel said. "The list is censored, but I can pull some strings and check the names."

Did doctors have access to that kind of information?

"I don't want to say anything in case I'm wrong." Bruno crossed his arms over his chest. He talked to them about this before, and wasn't going to budge. "He has the right to his anonymity. But I sure as hell won't let the second on that list be up to chance."

"Planning on having an accident?" Gabriel joked.

"No, but we had a close call before."

"What if something does happen? What am I supposed to do then?" Gabriel asked.

"You take good care of Alice, or else I will come back and haunt you," Bruno replied, and he meant it.

Daniel, however, just settled into his chair and looked at him intently. "What did this guy do to her, and why didn't you tell me about it?" he asked calmly, the pen in his hands stilling. "I'm her doctor. If something happened, I would expect to know."

Gabriel rolled his shoulders, and stared at Bruno also.

Bruno sighed and buckled under his friends' gazes.

"Around a month ago, Alice called me in the afternoon, sounding very distressed. She asked me to pick her up from work, but she wouldn't tell me why. She said she wasn't feeling well and wanted to go home. She was crying, and she was scared. Funny thing is, when I got there, she had forgotten all about it. Like it had never happened. I double-checked my phone and the call was there, but it was gone from her phone. To this day she says I dreamed it. I fucking know I didn't."

"What did you do after that?" Daniel asked.

"I asked her to quit her job."

Gabriel lifted an eyebrow. "And she accepted that?"

"It's Alice—what do you think? She fought me all the way. And on top of that her boss begged her not to leave. Said a lot of people were quitting, and the company was holding by a thread."

"So it's someone at her workplace who is making you nervous…" Gabriel lifted an eyebrow.

Daniel leaned into his desk and rested his chin on his hands.

"And you think she won't be a beta on top of that?" Daniel asked, but he didn't wait for an answer. "There are rumors of a third dynamic, but I haven't seen a single case of it happening in the whole country."

"Maybe she will be an alpha and kick Bruno's ass all day," Gabriel said with a big grin.

"She won't be a beta, Daniel, I just know it." Bruno got up and grabbed the back of the chair. He just couldn't stand still. "But does it make a difference either way?" He looked expectantly at his friends.

"And you're okay with this, Gabriel? You won't be able to sign up for another list while you're on the one for Alice." Daniel asked.

"That is perfect for me. If I'm waiting for someone to be available, then the higher-ups will stop nagging me about getting a mate."

Daniel watched them for a few seconds before making up his mind.

"I have a way to do this that will guarantee that Gabriel will be second on that list. But it will sound alarm bells to anyone who has access to the time stamps." Daniel started typing on his computer keyboard. "Give me your ID card, Bruno. I will need yours too, Gabriel."

Both men passed their IDs to the doctor, who inserted Bruno's card into a slot on his keyboard. He placed Gabriel's card next to the slot, ready to swap both cards. Then he got up and connected the blood machine back to the computer, making it light up again. Bruno really hoped Alice wouldn't ask him why it was disconnected in the first place.

"I'm gonna need your fingerprints. Gabriel, I want you to put yours down as soon as I tell you to." The doctor placed a tablet in front of them. "Also, you can't say a word while I do the register. It will have an audio recording, and no one can know you were here."

Bruno sat back down, picked up the pad, and waited. Gabriel settled comfortably into his chair and remained quiet.

The machine started making some soft mechanical noises. Daniel placed a wireless earbud on his left ear.

"Subject 11843290. SNS and ID card of the same number. Last name: Lopes. Given name: Alice Antunes. Age: 31 years old. Subject will go through conversion at today's date. Female, blood type O negative, not pregnant. Preliminary tests show no forms of cancer, blood issues, or possible organ failure. Inserting full blood analysis now." The machine came to life with noises and colored lights. "Registering first claim. Husband. Last name: Ferro, Given names: Bruno Silva." Daniel tapped a button next to Bruno's ID card, and the slot lit up.

"I don't remember so much bureaucracy when you registered me," Bruno said, feeling uncomfortable while watching Daniel's endless typing.

"Changes were made shortly after we started accepting female patients. They sent a bunch of requirements and demands to be followed for each conversion attempt, but only for women."

"That doesn't make any sense. Why ask it from women and not men?" Now he was really uncomfortable. If Alice found out, she would be furious. She was already mad at the new restrictions as they were.

"Your guess is as good as mine," Daniel said absentmindedly, paying more attention to whatever he was writing. "Everyone has been asking the same thing, but no one has figured out a reasonable explanation yet."

The machine gave three beeps and powered down.

"Please place your right index finger on the registry now."

He placed his finger on the tablet, a small beeping sound confirming the scan, and quickly passed it to Gabriel. Gabriel's finger hovered above the screen, waiting.

Daniel swapped the cards on the keyboard and typed furiously. Then he removed the earbud with his left hand, holding it as far away from them as he could, and made a halt sign with his right hand to Gabriel, all without taking his eyes off the screen.

"Now," he mouthed silently to Gabriel, pointing to him.

Gabriel pressed his right index finger on the pad, the same beeping sound confirming the scan, and both men looked up at the doctor expectantly.

"Closing registry, time seven forty-nine a.m." Daniel tossed the earbud on the desk, and slumped into the chair, rubbing his eyes.

Both Bruno and Gabriel gave a deep sigh of relief.

"Done." Daniel peered back at the screen. "Gabriel was registered after you with an eight-second delay." He gave them back their cards. "The list will be opened for claim requests until conversion finishes. After conversion, the second list will open."

"Second list? I wasn't told about a second list." Why did they keep coming up with new rules?

"It's for claims after—"

The computer beeped, interrupting Daniel. He looked at the screen with his mouth still open.

"Son of a bitch, he's already in." Daniel stared at the screen while Bruno and Gabriel got up to look at it too. "Third entry onto the claim list, seventeen seconds after I registered her. Just nine seconds after Gabriel. How did he—?"

Gabriel cut Daniel off. "Is that possible? Can someone make a claim that fast?"

"It's only possible from a Medical Conversion office. That's why I could do it for you. But outside the network, it should at least take a few minutes…"

They all stared at the screen in silence.

"Well, I guess you were right all along," Gabriel joked without humor. "Although I do wish you weren't."

"Me too, old friend," Bruno said. "Me too."

"Well, we'd better get started with the procedure," Daniel finally relented, passing his hands through his hair. "I can't delay any further." He got up and went to the next room.

Bruno thanked Gabriel, and went to the conversion room to watch over his wife. Inside, Daniel was already busy reading vitals, pushing buttons, and talking into his recorder to register each step of the process.

"You and Alice placed bets over how long I would be in there. Should we make a bet too?" Bruno joked, trying to lighten the mood.

Daniel grabbed the recorder. "Starting phase one." He set it down again.

"One fast entry into a claim list might pass undetected. Two entries in the first twenty seconds of submission are going to raise a flag somewhere." Daniel turned in his chair to face Bruno.

"I know. Will you get in trouble?" he asked, feeling terrible.

"Depends on whose flag it raises, I guess."

"I'm sorry. For what it's worth, if there is any issue, I will assume full responsibility. This was my idea, after all," Bruno promised.

Daniel ran his hands through his hair and leaned back in his chair.

"Don't worry about it. Gabriel was right. An entry that fast on the list just shows you were right to be concerned." Daniel reached behind him and grabbed two water bottles from a cabinet, passing one to Bruno, who gladly took it.

"Besides, if for some reason you are right once again, and she is neither alpha nor beta—something I find highly unlikely, by the way—one more layer of protection would make even more sense."

"How soon can we know?" Bruno pulled up a chair and sat next to his friend.

"Up to twenty-four hours for betas, up to forty-eight hours for alphas. Longest conversion I saw so far was Gabriel, with forty-seven hours in the Tube. After forty-eight hours? Unheard of, unless you count rumors."

"What rumors are those?" he couldn't help but ask. He had heard a few things himself, but they were contradictory.

"Doctors talk amongst each other, you know? Sometimes someone mentions a conversion that went over the forty-eight-hour mark, but there is no record, nothing to prove it happened." One of the screens lit up with green light, and Daniel tapped it gently. "I heard that somewhere in France, a conversion took fifty-eight hours. No info on if it was a male or female conversion, to be honest, but some voices said the end result was very different from both betas and alphas."

"Different how?"

"I don't know. As I said, it's just rumors. But someone said they called the dynamic an omega."

"Omega?" Bruno scoffed. "Shouldn't it be the next letter on the alphabet? A gamma?"

Daniel laughed. "I'm not in charge of the naming department. Maybe they were named like that because they are the opposite from alphas?"

"The opposite of stubborn?" Now it was his turn to laugh. "If Alice comes out of that Tube obedient, I'll eat my hat."

"Do you even have a hat?" Daniel teased.

"No. I guess I'll have to buy one first. I'll even let her choose it."

They both laughed, the tension in the room lifting. They heard the assistant nurse come into the office, and Daniel stepped outside to talk with her.

Bruno watched his wife sleeping peacefully in the conversion chamber. Obedient? She was just as stubborn as he was. He didn't want her to be obedient; he wanted her to fight him on every bad decision that he made. She was the balance to his temper, the heart to his stubbornness, the one who made him think and see beyond himself.

She was perfect for him, and he wouldn't have her changed into any other way.