The dim figure of a husky staggered through the driving snow, clutching at his torso. The pain had faded to a dull ache, and that probably wasn't a good sign - too much blood loss from the bullet wound. He tried not to think about it, but a few minutes later he collapsed to his knees.
Why not? he wondered, but his home became a sudden and vivid memory.
Not here, not yet...
The husky struggled for a moment and stood up briefly, but he was too weak and the cold was creeping in ever faster.
Unwilling to give up he crawled on his hands and knees, a trail of blood in his wake until finally, he could go no further.
It was worth a try... he thought sadly. It no longer felt cold. Then his arms gave way and his head pitched sideways into the snow, a faint weary smile on his face as his eyes closed and everything went dark.
Waking was sudden. Joshua found himself lying on his back, staring at the ceiling of a brightly-lit white room. At first he thought he was dead, until he noticed that the lighting came from fluorescent tubes in the ceiling.
Hospital, he thought. I must have been in an accident.
All at once his last moments in the snow came back to him with a sudden jolt... and that was when he noticed something rather odd.
An ability that had been with him for his whole life - one so natural that he didn't usually think of it - was now with him no longer.
"I can't breathe!" he whimpered. It should have come out as a shout, but it didn't.
"You don't need to," said a voice. "But calm down. Calm down and don't worry about that right now."
"I don't understand!" he cried, struggling to turn his head so he could see the speaker, but his body was still too limp to respond properly.
"Look, I'm afraid this will come as something of a shock," said the voice sadly, "but please, don't panic. I assure you that you're quite safe here, and there is nothing for you to worry about.
"Now. I need to check your memory. What is the last thing that you remember before waking?"
"The snow... I was shot... I must have collapsed. Who are you?"
"Just call me Kristofer," said the voice. "Yes, you collapsed. I had to put your body into a state of suspension to keep you alive until we could begin the operations that saved your life. But as I say, I'll explain more about all that later. Really, everything will be fine and there is nothing to worry about.
"Now. I believe you are a Mr. Joshua Oswald, are you not?"
"Yes. Where am I?"
"A... scientific outpost in the North. I'll explain about that later as well, but right now you are far more important. We need to make sure you've healed properly."
Kris turned a page in his clipboard and made a brief note.
"Now. I'd like you to raise your right arm, and place your hand in front of your face, if you can..."
Josh promptly moved his left arm. "Oops, sorry..." he said and raised the correct one.
"Good. Now, examine it carefully." said the doctor.
"It's not mine," Josh replied.
"It is, well, sort-of. We had to do some skin grafts. Do you think you can manage to sit up?"
The husky struggled. Whatever they had done to him, it was obviously extremely major because he felt very, very strange. Probably he was still under the influence of some powerful anaesthetic. Thinking about it, that might explain why he couldn't feel himself breathing either.
At length he managed to flop himself into a more-or-less sitting position. Looking up, he caught a good look at the speaker, a white wolf in a lab coat who was eyeing him with a friendly, although rather concerned expression.
In the background there were two other figures in lab coats - a grey vulpine who seemed to be about the same age as the doctor, and someone who appeared to be a caracal studying a display. Every so often he cast nervous glances at the doctor.
Standing to the side was a large, free-standing mirror which Kristofer wheeled into place and tilted so that the husky could see himself. He was naked except for a pair of briefs, but what shocked him most was the fur patterning.
It was rather like his coat but not quite, and it was these subtle differences which he found rather jarring. Indeed it almost looked like an artist's impression of his fur and whatever it had been it was most likely dyed.
His head looked okay though. That was a relief - at least he still had the same face - but had they really needed to graft that much skin for a gunshot wound?
"This is, as they say, 'the new you'." Kris continued. "As I believe I mentioned, you very nearly died. We had to do a lot of work to save your life, but I am confident that we have succeeded. Do you think you can you rub your arm, please?"
"What?"
"I want to check for nerve damage. Rub your arm with your hand, and tell me what it feels like, if you would be so kind."
Josh complied with the request, and soon found out why. It didn't feel the same as it did before.
"What have you done to me?" he exclaimed, with a sinking feeling - and even that didn't feel quite right.
"Just one last check, and then I'll explain," the doctor promised.
"Now, take one of your fingers and put it in front of your nostrils."
Becoming used to the strangeness, the husky did so, and as he had half-expected there was something very funny going on.
Whatever it was, it must be bad, because the doctor is obviously taking great care to break it to me gently, he thought. Placing the finger before his nose, he quickly discovered that one nostril was blowing a continuous stream of air, while the other...
As he put his finger closer to it, he realised it was actually drawing air in. He looked pointedly at Kris, who turned away before taking a deep breath and launching his explanation.
"You don't need to breathe because you don't have any lungs anymore. I had to replace them with an electric blower. Two actually... one for redundancy."
Josh made a strange sound - he no longer had the ability to choke, or laugh for that matter.
"If you pinch one of your arms and flex it, you'll find that you don't have any muscles either. Your whole body is synthetic, except for your head and neck. Inside your chest cavity is an oxygenation system, blood pump and various other life-support systems. The power-plant is in your belly, a small cold-fusion generator."
"What about my fur?" the husky asked. 'What about my brain' might have been a more pertinent question, but when something like that happens to you, an entirely coherent and sane response is something of a bonus.
"Oh, it's synthetic polymer. I couldn't get the fur to sense things I'm afraid, that's all done by your skin, but I'm sure you'll get used to it."
"What does that make me, then? Some kind of robot?" The scepticism in his voice was something which Kris had anticipated. It was only natural, after all.
"Mostly, yes. Your body is one of my experiments... I was fairly sure it would work, since I've been able to test most of the components in isolation. But I didn't have the means to test the entire system until you came along.
"It's a good job you made it as far as you did, you know. If you hadn't set off my intruder alarms, we wouldn't have found you until it was far, far too late for me to save you.
"Now, I guess I'd better explain a few of the basics. You don't need to eat anymore. In fact you can't because you don't have a digestive tract - or any other organs below your neck, come to that - so I advise you not to try.
You will need to take some substances once a day to remain alive however, it's a solution of various nutrients that will be absorbed directly into your bloodstream."
Kris strode over to Josh, and gave him a sharp poke in the chest. His indignation melted into surprise as a panel in his breast swung open.
Woah... he's not shitting me about this robot business.
"All you have to do is attach the canisters to this receptacle, and your systems will do the rest. You get the canisters from a special vending machine. See the data port here? You'll have to plug yourself into the vending machine. It will then create just the right mix your body needs using the data from your internal blood analyser. It will also tell us about any impending or actual fault conditions, either in your bloodstream or your hardware."
Joshua was impressed. "You've really thought this through, haven't you? It sounds like I could live forever."
The doctor's expression became somewhat sombre. "I'm afraid not. The furrae body is a complex, self-stabilising system which I cannot replace so easily. What I have done will keep you alive for a while, but not forever."
The husky could see that there was something he was reluctant to add.
"So how long is 'a while', then?"
"Five years, ten, maybe fifteen if you're lucky. But don't worry - I have another body you can inhabit when that time approaches.
"There are a few other things I should mention. Your body will be considerably more prone to disease I should think, and you won't be able to do a number of things which you took for granted before. Swimming, for instance. But if you remain here as one of my staff, I'll do my best to see you have as full a life as you can, given the circumstances."
"Can't I just upgrade to the new body now?" asked Joshua, although he wasn't entirely sure he would be able to cope with any more strangeness.
"No. You're not ready for it yet. Believe me, if you thought this body was a shock, the next one will be even more different. If we hadn't found you when we did, I might have been forced to try it, but the jump could have driven you insane. It is better that it happens in stages.
"Besides, if you don't mind, I'd like to know how well your current body performs."
Joshua followed as the doctor showed him to his quarters. They had advised him to sleep, and that seemed like a good idea. Perhaps when he woke up he would be safely back at home and none of this 'mission' nonsense would have happened.