"Ugh, my head," Sandy groaned as he tried to stumble to his feet. Everything from the night before seemed to be a blur. Where had he gone to bed? Had he even gone to bed? From what he could tell even before opening his eyes, he was still in the lab. He could also tell that he was having some trouble standing properly, like his legs wouldn't unfold for whatever reason... Come to think of it, everything felt... off. Not wrong, but not familiar. For some reason he felt like he had a second pair of arms. As his eyes fluttered open, everything WAS a blur. Sandy instinctively groped about for his glasses before realizing that the frames were right at the edge of his field of view. Tentatively, awkwardly, he reached up a hand to remove them.

For a moment, he was confused when he saw a claw in his field of view. [i]This isn't my finger...[/i] he said to himself. And yet this impossibility could explain why his body didn't feel like his own. [i]What the hell happened last night?[/i] Hesitant as he was, he had to know what happened. Off came the glasses. As they fell to the ground, the first thing he noticed was that his perspective had changed. He had to be no bigger than a large dog. While this in itself was concerning, he could already tell that his eyes were vastly superior to what they were before It was like upgrading from a small CRT to a gigantic 8K display. The difference was incomparable. Whatever had happened, at least it had some benefits. He glanced down at himself, and found his arms covered in feathers, ending in the talons of a bird, the tatters of his coat and clothes hanging around them. "This is impossible," he said aloud. There was no one there to hear him... Or so he thought.

"Professor? Is that you?" It was the voice of someone he knew. One of his brightest students; Marie, her name was. They had previously discussed at length the idea of the ecosystem and the creatures in it were in and of itself being a living thing, regardless of what it was composed of. Oddly enough, she was the only one of his students who insisted on calling him 'Professor,' rather than his nickname, 'Sandy.' And yet, when he brought himself to look in the direction from which the voice had come, there was a sort of... reptilian monstrosity standing in her place. Even from this distance, it clearly dwarfed him; he wasn't entirely sure how it had gotten into the building. It had deep red scales, as well as... were those wings sprouting from its back? That might have explained the second pair of arms he felt attached to his shoulders. For a moment he experimented with opening and closing them, his head turned over his shoulder for the first time; they appeared to be functional. He would have asked, 'what the hell are you?' but he didn't feel he was in much of a position to ask.

He could only assume that the same kind of thing had happened to her... Exactly how far did this spread? This city? This state? The country? The world? However far, he could only imagine the long term repercussions... And he couldn't say he liked the prospect. "Marie, I can't help but feel that a lot of my life's work went down the drain last night."

She grimaced. A toothy thing, but at least it reminded Sandy that that face had once been human. "Perhaps it did, but I have no idea. All I know is that the city is in chaos. I tried getting in touch with everyone who's address I knew, and they either weren't there, or they'd... changed. Just like you, just like... me." She sounded like she was on the verge of tears. "I don't think there's anyone left. Everyone's turned into these... things. And they're all out there, killing each other." Sandy stood there, dumbfounded. He must have heard her wrong. Even if they weren't human anymore, most people wouldn't have degenerated so far as to start murdering whoever they saw on the streets... Would they? He took a moment to process this, but his brain would not - could not - comprehend. 

He restated, this time aloud, "what the hell happened last night?"