Despite her best efforts, Zoey's drug addictions had dictated her life's direction for the better part of her life. From the time she was freed from the Fourth Reich testing compound in Germany where she was created, she had been exposed to drugs and addictions by every facet of her life.
When the Americans liberated her, they took her to their own testing facility, where she was pumped full of growth hormones and other substances. When America got nuked, she relied almost entirely on painkillers to stay alive. When making the journey to Sigma City, she relied on stimulants to stay awake and alert. When she hustled on the streets making a name for herself, she relied on relaxers to stay calm during shootouts.
And now, she relies on all of them, as Sigma City's most notorious mercenary. Some of them made her piss blood. Some of them gave her a headache. Some of them made her see sounds and hear colors. Some of them made her angry at the moon, and some of them made her viciously hungry.
So when she described these effects to her doctor, it left him stumped. Of course, he had never heard of half of the drugs she was on, but that didn't stop him from asking her for samples and running tests of his own.
He was quite surprised when Zoey showed up at his clinic in tears, sobbing, and making no sense.
After arriving in his office, she pointed at her mouth and at her rump. Immediately, he knew what had happened: She had no tail and no tongue. Both were simply gone. There was no wound where her tongue was, but there was indeed a stump where her tail should be.
Zoey pulled out her datapad and wrote something down, practically shoving the thing in his face.
"Ah, I see. I shouldn't have to remind you, but there are consequences for your actions. You might be biologically immortal, but things can and will still happen to you. I'm sorry that your tail got cut off, but I don't know why you would ever inject such a thing into your tongue no matter the effects," the doctor mused.
Zoey scribbled some more, and once again turned her datapad to face the man.
"There's no need for that much profanity in one sentence, but I do know of a couple treatments that might be able to fix your issues. Come back in a week or so and I'll have the meds ready."
Zoey left in a hurry, covering her face from other patrons as she left the building. She was quite embarrassed that some crucial aspects of herself were missing.
Day after day she anxiously waited for the notification on her pad that her primary care doctor had the meds she needed, constantly checking her bank balance to make sure she had enough to pay for the treatment, and then cried herself to sleep worrying that she won't return to normal.
On the eleventh day, she got the ping she was waiting for and eagerly jumped on her motorcycle, completely disregarding the rules of the road on her way to the medical clinic. She nearly ripped the front doors off their hinges on her way in, startling everyone in the waiting room. After a few moments, Zoey's doctor, a tall, bald, white man appeared and directed her back to his office.
He produced a syringe from a box on his desk. "Give me your arm," he said. Without missing a beat, Zoey took her jacket off and presented her bare forearm. The doctor slowly inserted the needle into her, and slowly depressed the syringe until its contents were empty. "This will take a few months, but you should have tail and tongue back soon. Send me updates when you notice progress. And don't forget to pay me, this experimental treatment was not cheap."
She put her jacket back on and pulled out her pad. After a few taps she grinned and gave him a thumbs up, but it was bittersweet as this treatment had wiped out her entire life savings. She wasn't quite sure how she'd be able to make that much money again.
After shaking her doctor's hands and giving him a hug, which she typically doesn't do, she left with a new bounce in her step.
Over the following weeks, she carefully monitored her own body, as her tail stump began to grow and she could feel a new tongue in her mouth. But excitement grew to dismay as she realized something was wrong with the new tail: it was growing scales. Iridescent red and black lizard scales. There was no fur, there was no skin.
As time progressed, she noted similar discrepancies with her new tongue - it was long and forked, serpentine like a snake's. Her speech was slurred as if she was always drunk, and her high pitched squeaky voice and thick German accent didn't help this fact.
Within two months she noted that the growth had stopped, and she had a rather thick and supple serpentine tail with a spade tip. It was strong and prehensile, she could grab objects or hit things with it. Her tongue was incredibly long, moreso than her old one, and it was difficult to keep inside her mouth, something she had to practice and get used to. The only real benefit she found was that eating ice cream was much easier, and her speech problem was quite annoying to deal with.
At her follow-up appointment, she made this quite clear.
"Zoey, you know I would never betray your trust. If I knew you would have problems with a treatment, I would not give it to you," her doctor said plainly. "Furthermore, I know you'd kill me and suffer no consequences. That's not something I want."
"You ssshould have told me firrrsssht! Orrr at leasssht warrrned me!" she shouted. The doctor was having trouble keeping a straight face; the lisp combined with her high pitched voice and thick accent was quite hilarious to him, especially with the contrast of it coming from such a big creature. "Wherrre did thisssh even come frrrom? What company made thisssh?"
"It's an experimental treatment from Nova Medicine in the business district. Technically still in clinical trials, they still offer it to those who need it. Stem cells from salamanders combined with human DNA for compatibility. You are not entirely human so I'm not surprised something odd happened," he said.
"You arrre lucky I ssshtill need you, otherrrwissshe you'd be dead," Zoey said. Her new tail twitched and flicked in annoyance as she violently pushed the office door open and left the building.
Author's note: there's more to this story but I have writer's block :(
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