"What do you mean you've found nothing?" a tall man in a plain but well-made suit shouted, spittle forming at the edges of his lips. He stalked over to the one-way mirror that crowned the small meeting room that held himself, agent O'Lane, and the head of the agency's medical team.

On the other side of the window Lyly, in a borrowed grey sweatsuit, jogged lightly on a treadmill. She had a spring in her step and maintained her pace with a long, easy stride. She was otherwise unencumbered—they had tried to fit her with a face mask to measure her Vo2 max, but she had smacked it to the ground before they got close to putting it on her. The same had happened with the heart-rate monitors they had approached her (much more carefully) with, but with equal lack of success.

Next to Lyly stood a female medical examiner who also wore a set of baggy grey sweats. As with the mask, they had learned very early on that Lyly did not take well to the sight of white medical coats.

The man in the suit waved a hand at the scene through the one-way glass, jabbing an accusatory finger at the bouncing figure on the treadmill.

"She has been running like that for four hours now, and you're trying to tell me you haven't found any useful data on her?"

O'Lane clenched his jaw, both arms crossed firmly in front of his chest as he leaned against the back wall. He did his best to keep the small wooden conference table between them, although that put him directly behind the seated medic. For what it was worth the medic seemed too preoccupied with the folders of charts and data they had managed to compile on Lyly in the last 48 hours to notice the agent hovering behind him outside of his line of sight.

O'Lane had barely managed to meet Emma—current alias Lyly—before a suit from the agency had arrived in a blatant power-grab.

After all, this wasn't the "anonymous agent" type of suit. This was the "big mahogany desk" type of suit. O'Lane was somewhere in between in the hierarchy, which is why he bit back his instinctive lashing retort.

"It is indisputable that her stamina is astounding," the medic spoke up, pushing his glasses higher on his face as he looked over the papers spread out before him. "It appears simply that she does not get tired, at least not it the way we might understand it. And she is significantly heavier than we might project from her stature. But in regard to speed or strength, or any other physical manifestation of alteration there is nothing we can find. She is utterly uninterested in our tests, and our only potential measurement of her strength comes from material analysis of the medical instruments she seems to enjoy breaking. Even then, that only gives us at best a ballpark idea of what she can do."

"And it doesn't help that we can't do any sort of MRI or x-ray on her," O'Lane chimed in. "The instant she sees any of that stuff she becomes completely uncooperative, bordering hostile."

"Hence the materials we can analyze to estimate her strength," the medic confirmed. He turned his head to share a wry look with O'Lane. 

"Then figure out a different way to test her," the man in the suit said through clenched teeth.

"We've tried everything we can think of. Physical exams, endurance trials like this one, hell—we even tried to disguise some EEG sensors as kids stickers and run a quick scan, but some weird...electrical pulse broke the machine as soon as the scan initiated," O'Lane elaborated.

He sighed. The stickers had been his idea.

"This is unacceptable," the suit tried again. He swung around to face them, resting his back against the glass window. "If for no other reason than her massive retrograde amnesia, we need an MRI on her."

"Tried that, she bit the medic," the medical leader said with a hint of a smile on his face. "And I am not so sure it is amnesia. There is a copious amount of evidence to suggest that she is in some kind of extended dissociative or fugue state. We would need input from the family to know for sure, but she is presenting as an almost entirely different personality than what I have managed to glean from her old social media accounts."

O'Lane's grimace deepened at the mention of the family. Yet another group breathing down his neck. In fact, the father and brother were already here, having flown in within 24 hours of O'Lane's own flight. He had managed to keep them away for now, but he was not looking forward to the arrival of the mother and daughter, which was scheduled for later in the week once Mrs. Thompson got medical clearance to fly.

The rest of the family, he could handle. The mother, however, was formidable. O'Lane chewed the inside of his cheek as he momentarily imagined pitting Mrs. Thompson against the man in the suit. Let them antagonize each other.

Hell, he'd pay to see that.

"Goddamn but there has to be something we can find. Just look at those mutant dogs—You can't tell me the mutts aren't in some way related to this. And why aren't they in lock-up or quarantine or something?" The suit asked, fists clenching at his sides.

O'Lane's face quirked into a half-smile.

"We tried that. They broke through everything; cages, tranqs., reinforced doors. And every time, one goes to Mr. Theodore McComb and his family, and one goes to Lyly. They're not harming anyone. They're just...watching," O'Lane said with no small relish at the suit's discomfort.

And it was true. Every time the agents tried to separate them, the dogs would break through the barriers like they were paper, find their attendant people, and firmly plant themselves in a guard position. It wasn't particularly un-collie-like behavior, but it was also pressingly aware in a way that had most of the agents giving them a wide berth.

The suit glared at O'Lane, who gave him a calm, placid smile.

"Maybe what we need," the medical leader spoke up, scratching his chin, "is a better stimulus."

"Now we're thinking," the suit said, wagging a finger in his direction. "What do you mean?"

"Hmm. If she really is," the medic hesitated, "altered like those dogs, she has plenty of reason to hide it. Although, her communication and behavior does demonstrate a notably regressed cognitive state."

"You mean to say...?" the suit cut in.

"Simply put, she is stupid," the medic leader said, finally looking up from his papers. "Or rather, she is child-like in her approach to the world around her. So, perhaps she is not hiding her alterations per se, but rather it is the case that the manifestation of the Facility's research is more of an instinctive reaction than an intentional action."

"So what are you suggesting?" O'Lane asked, a prickling sensation crawling across his spine.

"We scare her," the suit concluded with greater understanding than O'Lane had expected of him.

"Yes," the medical leader agreed, "we find some way to agitate her flight-or-fight response, and see what her instincts lead her to do."

"This... This seems like a really bad idea," O'Lane cautioned, pushing up from the wall and walking around the side of the table to face the medical leader. "Aside from a basic breach of trust, we risk anyone who's involved. We can't predict how she'll react, and if we consider the kind of damage the dogs can do—"

"Which," the suit interrupted, spreading his hands wide "we still have no conclusive evidence are directly related to her specifically. There's no reason to suspect they're anything more than an unrelated freakshow from the Facility."

O'Lane turned to face him, incredulous. 

"You were just saying how they had to be related to her—"

"—And," the medic interjected, as if O'Lane hadn't been speaking at all, "this might be the only way to draw out her potential."

O'Lane pressed his lips firmly together, slowly straightening to his full height. He glared at both men as he crossed his arms again.

"I would like to officially go on record saying that I oppose this plan," O'Lane growled, fists clenched tight to his ribs.

"Well, it's a damn good thing your say doesn't matter, now isn't it?" said the suit in turn.

Their eyes locked in the small space of the meeting room, the silence thickening despite O'Lane's obvious and inevitable loss.

"Good," the suit said after a minute. "It's decided."

A hard thump reverberated through the room, causing all three men to jump and whirl toward the window. The suit backpedalled to the side, and behind him, pressed up against the mirrored glass from the other side, was Lyly. She had both hands splayed out across the glass surface, and her face, smushed up against the glass, showed no signs of sweat or exertion despite the strenuous physical testing. Two arms wrapped around Lyly's left bicep as the examiner tried to peel her off of the glass to no success.

Despite the occluded glass, Lyly's eyes travelled around the room until they stopped to rest directly where they could meet O'Lane's.

"Hungry," she said simply, followed by the loud curses of the man in the suit and the sharp laughter of the medical leader.