Jubal started typing into the search engine on his phone. First, he tried I turned into a hybrid what do I do. Then he started reading links, skimming his way past the advertisements for therapists and support groups and financial aid and not for profit organizations until he found the government websites. Not the ones that looked vaguely like government websites but were probably scams, but the actual government websites.

He clicked the first one and summarized in his word processor as he read, taking notes to hand to his mother to read, tabbing between apps with the practiced thumb of a teen with a smartphone and no social life.

So, it says here that the first thing we do is make an appointment with a hybrid certified doctor who can verify that I really am a hybrid, and then we qualify for hybrid assistance programs that can help us out with things like finances, education, and healthcare, and the doctor can help us find out what I need to stay healthy and happy.

Most of the programs are for me, but a bit are for you, too, because I’m a minor, and there’s assistance for the guardians of hybridized minors. Then there’s a list of programs that we may or may not be eligible for, depending on what the doctor finds out. Stuff like remote learning, government provided service animals, and so on and so forth.

I’m not going to be able to see Dr. Haley anymore, since hybrid certified doctors really only deal with hybrids, but there’s links to websites we can visit to find me a new doctor, and a hotline we can call to get help with whatever, including finding a doctor and getting assistance with its money and food and whatnot.

We are supposed to get everything started inside of a couple of weeks, though. Something about new hybrids being emotionally unstable due to altered instincts and posing a potential threat to the general public, as well as a potential threat to themselves. If I go on a rampage or something before we get me registered, you could be in real legal trouble, and I might get taken away and put in government care, which neither of us wants.

Jubal sat back and considered the remaining pieces of decaying leftovers in his… what even was it? His crop? Was that what the organ birds store food for their babies in was called? A crop? Why did he have a crop?

He looked it up. Yeah, it was called a crop.

He didn’t want that stuff in his stomach any more now than he did before, but he felt like there was something he needed it for. Something that didn’t have anything to do with food. Something important. He just didn’t know what it was yet, so he held onto it.

“We can’t call your doctor for a few more hours,” his mother said, interrupting his thoughts, “and we’re more or less out of food. Will you be alright on your own if I run out to the grocery store and buy some more?” She put a box of crackers on the table in front of him, and he started eating them without really thinking about it.

The thought of more food was much stronger than the (very faint) worry about being by himself. Jubal didn’t need to think about his answer for very long. It felt obvious that someone should go and get food for him when the supplies ran out.

He nodded his head and gave her a thumbs up.

His mother went down the hall, presumably to get dressed before going out, since there was no way she was going to go shopping in her nightclothes. Not after what happened last time. Jubal turned back to his phone and opened one of the game apps on it, both to pass the time and to give him something to distract himself from the knowledge that he was about to be alone in the apartment, undefended, which was bad. He ate some crackers to take his mind off of the fact that he was about to be alone.

He could do more research, and he probably should, but he really didn’t feel like it if he was going to be by himself. He could learn more later, with company. By himself, he didn’t think he would be able to focus, which was weird because he’d never been really clingy before.

Mom wouldn’t leave if she knew he was anxious about it, though, and that meant that she would order groceries, which they almost never did because of how expensive it was, and that meant that she would get anxious about money, and then they’d both be upset. So he put on a calm front and watched her leave.

Once she was gone, though, he got up and slid the bolt home on the door. Then he locked it, then he chained it, and then he made sure all of the windows in the apartment were locked, with their curtains drawn. Then he sat down, dumped the rest of the crackers into his mouth without pausing to chew, swallowed them whole and dry, and settled in to wait, phone in hand, glancing between it and the door and contemplating the things that he was holding inside himself.

His stomach rumbled and an ache that he couldn’t locate made itself known. It was somewhere in his legs, no, in the air between them, like a phantom pain in a body part that he had never had, dull and throbbing. It felt like he was still transforming, like a second wave of change was upon him. He dumped the crackers into his stomach to give himself more fuel for whatever was about to happen.