Growing into the Job, Post 508: A Day at Far Horizons: EPIRI, 2:31 PM

Evolution Pharmaceuticals Innovation and Research institute (EPIRI)

Monday, 2:31 PM – Research Wing, Secure Area, Treatment Room H.7.3

Re: Program Subject m.000049 aka Nathan Wren

The hallways back here weren’t like the rest of the facility.

Gone were the warm colors, the welcoming lounges, the curated softness designed to lull patients into comfort and complacency. The restricted research wing of EPIRI was all function - brushed steel doors, seamless white walls, floors that gleamed antiseptically beneath cold LED lights. Clean. Modern. Clinical.

No windows. No cameras (at least, not that were obvious). Just silence, save for the distant hum of ventilation and the occasional low whirr of machinery from the labs deeper inside.

Silvia Braccio leaned against the wall outside Treatment Room H.7.3, scrolling through the tablet in her hands, reviewing the subject’s chart one last time before they went inside. Sammi, beside her, was practically vibrating.

Excitement.

Silvia could see it in the way Sammi bounced on her booted heels, could feel it in the way her presence buzzed at the edges of her awareness like static electricity. Unlike Silvia - who kept herself composed, professional, one-hundred percent the competent medical operative she had trained to be - Sammi Hanes looked every inch the intern, one who had snuck into a top-secret horror movie lab and could not fucking wait to see what happened next.

Silvia: dark eyes, sharp as scalpels, framed by thick lashes that softened nothing. Scrubs with no wrinkles, gloves already on, latex snapping tight around steady fingers. She looked like she belonged in the most prestigious hospital in the country - or a high-level interrogation chamber in a place where people never came back.

Either worked.

Sammi, by contrast, looked like a walking HR violation. Thin and wiry, curvy enough to be more than just distractingly cute but currently not as statuesque as many of her coworkers - and certainly not the Coronado brood, some of whom now roamed these back hallways. But still…it was hard for Sammi to not draw eyes. At the moment her hair was a long, messy, bubblegum pink, freshly changed from the natural brown she’d worn for Layla, or the silver or red she’d been rocking earlier. Her eyes were now a huge, expressive blue, lined in too much eyeliner, giving her a look of chronic mischief. She’d put on a lab coat - they kept it chilly back here! - but it was unbuttoned, revealing an insanely tight, cropped “FAR HORIZONS!” tank top, with a neckline so low it was almost criminal. Certainly not official company swag, but rather something she’d just come up with on the spot. Nice thing about being a shapeshifter: you never had to get bored with just one outfit for the day. Or even the moment. Thus the hair, the eyes, the top, the multiple piercings through her ears, all diamond studs. Also, tiny black gym shorts, paired with combat boots, were definitely not adhering  to any sort of dress code. Because fuck decorum, amiright? The lollipop in her mouth, despite the very clear sign that said “No Food or Drink in Experimentation Areas”, was the final middle finger. The white jacket, I guess, helped soften the blow.

Sammi, basically, had shape-shifted herself into a chaos gremlin wrapped in just enough medical professionalism to be technically allowed in the Research Wing.

Silvia, shaking her head at the young intern, had gotten used to Sammi’s antics over the past month or so, but all this blatant witchery still sort of annoyed her. It seemed bolder than it should be. Anyway, she scanned the chart for their next “patient” one last time. One of the technicians had been kind enough to fetch him from the sub-basement, take some early measurements and get him into a room. The AI imbedded in the new EHR, Aegis, has written up some notes.

MALE STUDY 

Program Subject m.000049

Name: Nathaniel Wren (Preferred: Nate)

Age: 27 Baseline Height: 5’7” Baseline Weight: 146 lbs

Background: Former HVAC technician, [REDACTED]

Mental Status: Obedient. Remains Idealistic. Starting to show hesitation anxiety.

Silvia sighed, rolling her neck.

“Let me guess,” Sammi piped up, still rocking on her heels. “He was mighty eager at first, but now that he’s actually strapped to the table, he’s having second thoughts?”

Silvia shot her a look. “You read the file? And, he’s not strapped to the table yet.”

Sammi shrugged.

Silvia shook her head, flipping the tablet closed. “You’re not wrong.”

The subject, “Nate”, was one of Melissa’s ‘monkeys”, the men who had been drawn to this place out of some unusual attraction to her and had taken up residence in the makeshift barracks set up for them in one of the deepest subterranean levels of the facility. They were here out of devotion but tended to be used for maintenance, janitorial services or sometimes just the humor of one of the Far Horizons hive. This one, today, though, would be serving another purpose. He, Silvia had heard, had begged for this. Nate had volunteered the moment the rumors started spreading in the lower levels about what the research wing was working on: a chance to be truly useful. To help Melissa’s higher purpose.

Silvia had seen it before, she figured. Devotion in a man. Blind, desperate devotion to a strong, powerful woman. She’d never really seen it on this scale, though. There were maybe thirty or so of these guys downstairs. Today, though, Nate was the lucky one.

Men like Nate wanted to serve. Wanted to be part of something bigger than themselves. And when they learned what was possible, what volunteering to be a study subject in the new research outpost of  Evolution Pharmaceuticals, here in the Far Horizons facility, they practically threw themselves at the opportunity.

But now?

Now, in the room they were preparing to enter, with the restraints he probably saw aside him just about ready to click around his wrist? With the cold steel of the exam table beneath him and the syringe of experimental male-version Program serum being prepped and waiting?

Silvia smirked, looking at Aegis’ notes. Now he was scared.

Good.

Sammi let out a dramatic sigh, flipping the lollipop from one side of her mouth to the other.

“Poor little bloke,” she said, with absolutely no sympathy, “Betcha he was hopin’ Melissa’d be here to hold his hand through it.” She giggled, leaning against the doorframe.

Silvia gave her a flat look.

Sammi batted her lashes. “What? I mean, that’s what he signed up for, innit? Getting held by a real woman, maybe tucked all nice and warm into her kn-”

Silvia held up a hand. “Please.”

Sammi just grinned. Her teeth were whiter, and probably bigger than they should be. She knew Silvia, deep inside, loved this shit, and was excited herself. It wasn’t everyday that you got the chance to do what they were about to do to an adult male human. It would be a thrill to any woman, honestly, and certainly to a female supremacist as aggressively gynarchical (is that a word? I dunno. It’s a word now) as Silvia. She was just doing a good job not showing it, yet.

Silvia exhaled, tapping the syringe case against her palm. The serum was inside - a delicate little vial of pure potential. “Right,” she said, glancing toward the door. “Let’s get this over with.”

Sammi, still vibrating with giddy excitement, cracked her knuckles. “Oh, heck yes.” She grabbed the door handle, flashing Silvia a wicked grin. “Let’s go ruin a man’s life.”

And with that, they stepped inside.

The room was colder than the hallway outside, kept at a deliberately brisk temperature - up for debate whether that was for sterility, equipment regulation, or just to make this patient uncomfortable. Bright, surgical lighting flooded every surface, making the stark silver-and-white interior feel even more austere.

In the center, sitting on the metal exam table, was their subject, m.000049. Though he’d probably prefer “Nate”.

At a glance, Nathan Wren was nothing special. He was not a tall man, and he was lean, with a nervous energy coiled beneath his skin. With his standard-issue brown overalls hanging on a hook on the wall, he was now dressed in an emasculating treatment gown, paper-thin, his arms and legs exposed to the cold air. Silvia took immediate note of how mildly good-looking he was;  before his new, self-imposed monastic devotion had drained the vitality from his features and shaved the hair from his head, he may have originally been quite the vulni hunk. Now, he wore dark circles under his eyes - not of exhaustion, necessarily, but of a certain hauntedness. Silvia noticed his hands were twitching, fingers flexing slightly against the edge of the table - not quite clenched, but close. He also had a thin scar running just under his chin - subtle, but noticeable when he swallowed. Something from his past life, before all this.

He looked up when they entered, eyes flicking immediately toward Silvia, then Sammi. His eyes goggled once, then wider again. He was trying to gauge them, figure out who they were. He also couldn’t keep his eyes off their tits.

Neither of them said anything at first, just watched him.

Nathan swallowed, hard. Then, finally, he spoke, in the same halting tones the two girls had started to expect from the downstairs “monkeys”:

“Am I…g-going to see Melissa?”

Silence.

Then Sammi - loud, delighted, merciless - barked out a sharp laugh. “Oh, mate,” She grinned, wide, unrestrained amusement dancing behind her newly bright blue eyes, “That’s bloody adorable.”

Nathan flushed, seemed to hunch in upon himself.

Silvia smirked, just slightly, crossing the room in slow, measured strides. “Oh, Nate. Nate Nate Nate Nate Nate…” she murmured, flipping open the tablet again, pretending to review his chart, “...that is precious. You think she’s coming to see you?”

“I mean…” He shifted, shoulders stiffening. “I…I just thought-”

“You thought she’d be here?” Sammi leaned in, resting her hands on the exam table, looming slightly. She snickered when she saw his eyes dart down her top. “What, you think Melissa would want to watch? To hold your hand?”

Nathan clamped his mouth shut. But his eyes flickered - just briefly - toward the restraints. They hung off the table, black straps.

Silvia’s smirk grew. Silvia exhaled through her nose, tapping the tablet against her palm. Silvia thought, and Silvia composed herself. “You actually are special, you know,” she mused, “Possibly the first man who’s ever been allowed back here, in this new research wing.”

Nathan hesitated. “R-really?”

“Oh, yeah,” Sammi nodded, over-big eyes going wide,“Which is why, now that you’ve seen everything…”

She paused for effect. Her eyes went wider still.

“…we’re just gonna have to kill ya.”

Nathan’s breath hitched.

And then Sammi laughed, a strange, lilting giggle, rolling her eyes dramatically and slapping his shoulder with just enough force to make him flinch.

“Kidding! Fuck, mate, lighten up.” She shook her head, grinning. “You think they’d waste a cute, precious little resource like you? You volunteered for this, remember?”

Silvia just watched as Nathan let out a small, uneasy chuckle.

Silvia knew Sammi was only half-joking, Nathan didn’t know it yet - couldn’t possibly know it yet - but if he thought this was going to be some kind of noble sacrifice, some act of service for a greater cause, a greater being…well, he was in for a very, very long road ahead.

Silvia inhaled, steadying herself. This was the part she had to be careful with. The part where she had to maintain professionalism, had to be the reasonable one, the measured one, while everything inside her was screaming. She had been trained for this, she had been prepared for this. But even so…

She wanted to do this so fucking bad.

The serum in her hands, pre-loaded syringe still in its case, burned with potential. And right here, sitting small and vulnerable before them, was a man.

God, it was intoxicating.

And to Sammi? Sammi wasn’t even pretending to hold back. She was giddy. Silvia saw it in the way the intern bounced on her heels, in the way her fingers flexed, in the way her grin was just a little too sharp. Sammi was practically vibrating.

Silvia glanced at the open door. “Sammi?”

The intern turned, still grinning. “Yeah?”

Silvia’s own smirk curled at the edges.

“Can you close the door for us?”

Sammi’s eyes lit up. “Now we’re talking, hm Nate?” she said, as she stepped back from the male. When she reached for the handle, when she pushed the heavy steel door shut behind them-

She made sure to let the lock click. Loudly.

Nathan flinched.

And Silvia? Silvia just smiled. She inhaled through her nose, rolled her shoulders back, and let herself enjoy the moment. The dark haired young woman glanced at Sammi, who was still beaming like a kid about to open a Christmas present. Maybe a puppy in a box. One she could skin.

Speaking of puppies…

“Nate,” Silvia sighed, stepping forward, flipping open her tablet again, not even pretending to be in a rush but noting how nervous the little male looked, “Do we need to put your leashes on?”

Nathan blinked, confused. He shifted slightly on the exam table, his movements awkward, uncertain. “I…what?”

Sammi giggled.

“Do we need to leash you?” Silvia repeated, snapping her thin, latex exam gloves up tighter. She glanced up, meeting his eyes with a cool, unreadable expression. “You know, like for dogs.” 

Nathan stiffened, backed up as much as he could.

“I think we do. Sammi?”

Sammi was already grabbing the restraints.

The nylon straps hung from the steel loops mounted into the wall behind the exam table, and Sammi made a show of pulling them down, uncoiling the thick black material with an exaggerated stretch.

Nathan saw what she was doing, and started breathing faster.

Sammi noticed him watching, and grinned.

“W-wait,” Nathan stammered, eyes wide, “What - why?”

Sammi grabbed his left forearm first, flipping the strap over his wrist and tightening it down. “Oh, ya know,” she hummed, working at an obnoxiously leisurely pace. “Just to make sure you don’t wiggle.”

“And,” Silvia added, tone casual, clinical, “because this is going to be horribly painful.”

Nathan flinched at the sound of the buckle <clicking> shut. His entire body went rigid.

Sammi was already at the right wrist.

<Click>

He sucked in a breath.

“Wouldn’t want you thrashin’ about, after all,” Sammi teased, giving his newly bound wrist a little tug - just enough for him to feel the restraint’s grip.

He tugged back, instinctively. It didn’t budge much. His throat bobbed.

Silvia stepped closer, brushing Sammi aside just enough to reach for the left wrist strap again. She tested it. Found it also had a little slack. So she tightened it. Hard.

He gasped.

“We also need to make sure you don’t try to run away,” she added, making him wince as she yanked the strap down another notch. Silvia smiled as she noted that he was starting to sweat, that his fingers twitched uselessly against the straps, and his shoulders strained as he tested his mobility.

There was none.

Now, as Sammi crouched to the floor, grabbing the ankle restraints, his breathing was coming shorter.

“W-wait,” he stammered again, voice trembling now. “D-do we really need th-those too?”

Sammi clicked her tongue. “Oh, mate,” she sighed, dragging the first strap around his left ankle. “You should know by now…”

<Click>

She gave him a wink.

“…we like going all the way.”

The male’s eyes went wider; he looked down at her, really looked.

And Sammi, still crouched at his feet, let him. Her open lab jacket currently gave him a nice view down the neckline of her black tank, which proudly displayed her cleavage. The jacket also fell to the side around her hips, exposing the sinfully female slope of her healthy hips flaring from her thin waist, and displaying legs long and bare beneath tiny black denim shorts that looked even smaller now.

She was still holding the last ankle strap. She could have finished buckling it immediately, but she didn’t. She was waiting, allowing Nate to keep staring. And, predictably, he did.

Silvia watched the whole thing, unimpressed but mildly entertained. She knew Sammi loved this game. This slow, deliberate exhibitionism -  playing up her girlish curves, exaggerating her movements, drawing eyes exactly where she wanted them. It was a game many women know how to play now, and one young Sammi had learned quickly. 

And Nate? Poor little thing was falling for it, hook, line, and sinker. The little fool didn’t even realize that he was trapped in a room with something a little different - was it more, or was it less? - than human. Because Silvia knew that underneath that currently bubblegum hair, the glossy lipstick and the too-tiny tank top, Sammi wasn’t just pretty. The two had worked together before, in the male-mod labs in the back building of the home office. Silvia had learned that Sammi was a monster, and one that liked to play with her food.

Of course, in the end, that wasn’t the important part, or what Silvia was interested in. She wasn’t here to watch Sammi flirt and play. She was here for what came after: results. The subject was fully restrained, but now distracted. Perfect.

The male tested the restraints again - tugged, strained, twisted his wrists, pulled against his ankles. Nothing. No slack. No escape. The straps were secure. This was happening. His breath quickened.

Silvia was ignoring him now, at least outwardly. She had shifted gears, falling into her usual clinical detachment, rolling her shoulders back as she flipped open the syringe case.

Nate glanced to it quickly, and there it was. His fate, in a vial.

It sat nestled in cold glass, gleaming under the harsh fluorescent lights, the pale amber fluid shimmering inside the barrel. Silvia took her time inspecting it, tilting it toward the light, running her thumb over the KOLECTV logo etched on its side. The vial needed to be plugged into the syringe, which lay in the case still. 

“This medicine,” she began, tone smooth, measured, almost bored, “has been years in the making.”

Nate barely heard her.

Because Sammi was now putting on a show. Her jacket was off now, as at some point she had shrugged out of it and tossed it aside. It left her in only that tiny, painted-on “Far Horizons” tank top, which barely qualified as a piece of clothing at all, her tiny black shorts and big black boots. The long, straight-but-off-kilter waves of bubblegum-pink hair completed the picture. 

The two women were working in parallel. Silvia, calm and precise, now handling the syringe with cool expertise, had begun explaining, indulgently, a bit about the treatment. Confusing things about recombinant DNA, altered mitochondria, and something called the Blake Virus. Had Nate been listening, he’d have understood none of it - which was the point. Silvia also liked to play with her toys. 

And Sammi? Sammi was likewise calm, and she was also having fun. A shift of her hips, a roll of her shoulders, a slow, deliberate tilt of her chin. She took her phone from her back pocket and stretched one leg in front of the other, planted a booted foot forward, shifting her weight onto one hip, exaggerating the curve of her waist. A classic model stance - casual, thoughtless, like she was just getting comfortable, and held the phone up high. 

Sammi grinned. 

The <Click> of her camera shutter.

He blinked.

Sammi was taking selfies. The male was in the background.

Silvia, not looking up, continued. “You know, Nate… you should feel honored. You’ll be the first guy in the States to receive this treatment.”

The male’s attention flickered. He looked at Silvia for the briefest of moments, but then a coo from Sammi drew his attention back where she wanted it: to her

“What the-?” he murmured.

But before he could process it-

“Samantha, are you being indecent back there?”

“I’d say I’m looking more than decent - wouldn’t you say, little guy?”

Her voice had changed. She had changed. No longer did Sammi appear to be ust a college intern fucking around, holding up her phone, tilting her head, shifting between stupid pouty expressions and deliberately exaggerated smirks. Yes, still maybe a bratty social media queen, posing in an outfit that was entirely inappropriate for the situation. 

But a completely different outfit, on a completely different body. 

Another <click>

The posing was getting bolder, flipping her now thick, luxurious blonde hair over her shoulder, adjusting the hem of her grey “Evolution Pharmaceuticals” tank top to better show off the sculpted cut of her stomach and more dramatic curve of her hip. The black denim had been replaced by silver short-shorts. 

Nate swallowed. Her breasts had grown, nearly doubled in size. He noticed how her movements had changed. At first, they had been cute, flirty. Now? Now it was something else. Her wider hips swayed more freely, and her curves were those of a voluptuous pinup model. Her legs were no longer the coltish pins of a teen, but the gams of a woman, pure cheesecake. Black boots had been replaced by silver, sequined pumps, six-inches of heel. Even without those, she’d grown neatly a foot of height, most all of it in the legs. 

She leaned toward Nate, bent at the hip, and winked. Her makeup was heavy, classical retro. Even her facial features had changed: she was gorgeous now, a mash-up of several Hollywood starlets from a bygone era. She puckered, cooed, and blew him a glossy pink kiss.

Silvia, casually ignoring the spectacle behind her, had continued speaking - measured, detached, preparing the syringe. “The research behind this project is groundbreaking,” she explained, holding Nate’s attention for just the briefest of moments before it was lured back by Sammi’s bosomy display. “There have been other methods, of course, that accomplish the same thing we’re trying here. The Shrink Tech Ray, from Nexifem - you’ve seen on that on TV, right? On ‘The Kathleen O’Connor Show’? It’s great - but it’s, like, crazy prohibitively expensive. It’s really only being used in high-clearance cases. It’s not going to be viable for the population at large. Maybe for the new military, when it comes around.”

She tilted the vial, watching the amber serum inside swirl, thick and glistening.

“This, however, is pretty cheap.”

Nate wasn’t listening anymore.

His eyes were absolutely locked on Sammi. And his jaw was now wide open. 

Right in front of his eyes she had transformed again. She was now stretching her limbs with languid ease, rolling her shoulders back in a way that made her spine crack audibly. Her smile stretched wider, her eyes shone brighter.

Nate had begun to whine. His lungs refused to work. His jaw hung slack. His fingers twitched uselessly against the restraints, knuckles white, his whole body suddenly locked in a silent, disbelieving stare.

She’d changed again. This time, it was obscene. This time, she was impossible. Sammi stood now in blinding white, in briefs and a skintight “KOLECTV” tank that clung to every absurd curve - and, what curves they were.

Her hips had flared far wider, the narrow dip of her waist now almost comically extreme in contrast. Thighs thicker than his torso tapered into calves sculpted to perfection, balancing atop a pair of gleaming white stilettos that pushed her up another foot. And her breasts-

Nate’s brain short-circuited.

They were enormous. Ridiculous. Cartoonish. Each massive, impossibly round orb jutted outward like gravity had no claim over them, swelling so obscenely large that they were practically their own organism. The neckline of her top plunged so deep it was barely there, tight enough that he swore he could see the throb of pulse beneath the perfect skin of her cleavage.

Her hair, now luxuriously dark, cascaded over her shoulders in thick, glossy waves, nearly reaching the back of her thighs. It moved as though it had a will of its own, slithering over her body like living silk.

But it was her face - 

Oh, god. Her face.

Nate gasped, eyes blown wide.

It‘s her.

“M-Ms. Monroe?” he stammered. 

Sammi’s lips curled. She hadn’t just made herself beautiful. she’d made herself Melissa. And to this gibbering little male, she’d made herself divine.

To Nate, to the monkeys that lived in the basement, there was no woman in the world more revered than Melissa Monroe, no creature more worshipped. They lived for the mere chance to bask in her presence, to be near her, to be in the air she had breathed, the air that came off her skin.

And now? Now, she stood before him, redesigned in excess. A hyper-amplification of the woman he idolized. A pornographic hallucination.

A hyper-sexualized nightmare.

And she was moving toward him. Slow. Deliberate. Hips rolling. Breasts bouncing. Every step a taunt, daring him to - what? Look away? Meet her gaze? He could do no such thing.

Silvia, meanwhile, remained where she was, entirely unbothered by the ridiculous display unfolding behind her. She had always felt that Witchery was weird, a bit of an abomination. She had to admit, though, that the girl’s powers were cool, and along with her two ‘sisters’, Bianca and Emily, they had increased several-fold since coming to Far Horizons and taking advantage of ‘The Melissssy Effect’. She had the idea that Sammi could do far worse, and in fact was preparing for it now.

Meanwhile, Silvia focused on the syringe. A single flick to the barrel with a simply manicured nail, a precise adjustment of the plunger, and she lifted it for inspection.

Nathan’s eyes snapped to it immediately, his breath hitching.

The needle was long. Way, way too long. 

Silvia smirked.

“There it is,” she murmured. His first real fear.

The restraints? Sammi’s transformations? The leering, impossible caricature of Melissa Monroe approaching him in heels taller than his hands were long? Those hadn’t broken him. But the needle?

Oh, the needle would.

Nathan let out a high, choked noise.

Silvia turned to him fully, gripping the syringe like a promise. She held it up in front of his face. The needle was ridiculously long. 

Nathan’s breath caught. “W-wait-”

“Oh, don’t worry,” Silvia murmured, tapping the barrel to check for air bubbles. “You’ll hardly feel a thing.” A subtle press to the plunger brought a glittering droplet of the amber liquid to the needle’s tip. “Actually, no. I'm lying. This is going to hurt like a motherfucker.”

“W-w-wait, please,” he begged, yanking again at his restraints, finding himself still absolutely unable to move.

Sammi was now behind her, looming, a leering abomination of the facility’s new Administrative Director. She must be eight feet tall, and Nate could no longer see her face past the blimps of her bosom.

He was, though, shaking.

“Now, now,” Sammi-Missy said, amused. “Don’t be afraid of the needle…”

And Silvia? Silvia was smiling, reveling in his fear, watching as he gaped as Sammi began to lean over, bending at the hip, bringing her face down lower and lower, close so he could see, so he could drown in her hyper-feminized, impossible beauty.

But Sammi was now no longer Melissa. She had changed again - still with the mind-boggling curves and heart-stopping beauty - but now with short, brown curls and the features of a face she had studied from his file earlier today. It gave her an unholy thrill of satisfaction when she saw it in his eyes: if Nathan Wren had been unraveling before, now he was completely frayed.  His lungs seized. His pulse skyrocketed. His eyes refused to look away.

Now, Sammi was someone else. The obscene, impossible caricature of Melissa Monroe had melted away, dissolved, reshaped itself to someone he knew. Someone he had loved. Someone he had never seen like this before.

Finally he spoke, calling Sammi by the name she’d hoped he would:

“M-M-Mom..??”

The whisper had barely made it past his lips, but it was there, and Sammi just smiled.

His mother. It wasn’t just a resemblance. It wasn’t just a face.

It was her, perfected.

She was younger, maybe two decades younger than he remembered her, but still undeniably her. The same soft, brown, almond-shaped eyes, but larger, brighter. The same high cheekbones, but sharper. The same lips that once kissed his scraped knees, but now plump, full, glossy - parted, dripping with sensuality. Now the only place he could picture them was wrapped around his c-

“Something wrong, Nate?” Silvia asked.

And then, the rest - the rest was a perversion. His mother had been a beautiful woman, in her younger years, maybe - but this? This was exaggeration, distortion. She had been graceful - shapely even - but this was predatory. She had been warm and generous in her beauty - but this amount of it was cruel.

And new she stood before him, leaning over behind Silvia, towering eight feet tall, her hips a rolling landscape of indulgence, her waist cinched to a waspish extreme. Her thighs were thicker than his whole body. Her breasts -

Nathan choked.

They were gargantuan. Even in his wildest, most shameful, most horribly suppressed fantasies, he had never imagined his mother like this. But he couldn’t tear his eyes away. 

And Sammi-Mommi knew it. She could see it in his face. She could smell the shame. She could hear his breath hitch. He didn’t want to stare, but he couldn’t stop. That’s right, mate, she mused, just look at Mommy. 

Silvia’s voice broke the silence of the moment. “Nathan,” she said, cool and even, as if discussing the weather, “I want to thank you.”

Nathan flinched, dragging his gaze away from the impossible woman looming over him. Silvia was still standing in front of him at the exam table, holding the viciously long syringe, turning it lazily between her fingers. He looked at it, and her, with confusion. 

“You volunteered for this, right?” 

Nathan gulped, blinked rapidly, trying to pull himself out of the spiraling nightmare that Silvia and Sammi had forced him into.

“You basically begged for this chance, remember?” Silvia’s smile widened. “The first moment you heard about it, you couldn’t get on your knees fast enough.”

Nathan’s breathing turned shallow.

“You were desperate to prove yourself. Desperate to serve Melissa’s higher purpose. Desperate to be something more.”

“I-…I…””

Silvia cut him off with a raised finger.

“No, no, don’t start doubting yourself now, Nate,” She tapped the side of the syringe, watching the amber droplet shimmer at the tip of the needle. “You wanted this. We’re just giving you what you asked for.” She tilted her head, watching his expression flicker - between fear, between confusion, between something darker.

“Tell me…” Silvia mused, “what did they promise you?”

Nathan’s throat bobbed.

Silvia leaned in, voice silky, indulgent. “Did they tell you Melissa would - after this is all done - what? Hold you? Maybe whisper sweet things to you?”

Nathan flinched.

“Did they tell you she might - when you’re small enough - tuck you away in her bra?”

His chest seized. Silvia grinned.

“Maybe you thought she’d do that, or maybe you thought she could wear you, in a piece of jewelry, like a little ornament,” she posited, “Oh Nate…you poor, poor thing.”

Nathan whimpered.

And behind Silvia, Sammi sighed. Nathan’s head snapped toward her, up…

…and up, and up…

Because

Because she had stood. Slow deliberate. Sammi-Mommi had stood, towering, arched her back, pressing her enormous, impossible breasts forward, and upward, and drawing his gaze exactly where she wanted it. 

Then-

She breathed. A long, deep inhale. Her chest rose further, stretching the already obscenely tight white tank, pressing round, heaving, smothering softness upward like a pair of living blimps rising from the earth. The too-tight, too-tiny tank peeled back from below her breasts to expose twin canyons of underboob.

Silvia tilted her head. She didn’t have to look. She knew where his gaze had gone. He was lost in them, under Sammi’s breasts behind her. She let the moment linger. Then, softly, she spoke again.  

“And if Melissa doesn’t want you, Nate…” she offered, “…Sammi or I could take you.” Silvia leaned closer, voice dropping to a gentle, teasing whisper. “We both have plenty of places to keep you.”

He shuddered, made a strangled noise.

Silvia grinned. He hadn’t taken his eyes from the underside of Sammi’s massive breasts. “But it looks like you have a place in mind already.”

At that, from above Silvia, Sammi laughed. A low cackle. Sinister. Horribly amused. The laugh rippled through the air, became syrupy, a chuckle dragged from deep inside her chest or some other unholy, heartless place. It was still his mother’s voice. But it was horribly, horribly wrong

Nathan's body began to twitch.

And then, the woman-that-was-not-his-mother leaned in, slowly, Nathan’s pulse pounded in his ears. He couldn’t move. She looked at him, into him, with her huge, warm eyes.

But then she closed them.

It was still hers. It was still his mother’s gorgeous, unnaturally beautiful face. He studied it, amazed by it, her perfect skin, her full lips, her curly hair that was just like his, before he’d shaved it. When had his mother been this gorgeous or glamorous, when had she been this splendid, striking and stunning? Before she’d brought him into the world? Or was this some fantastical idealization of her he’d held? These thoughts swirled around Nate’s addled mind for a long moment as she let him gaze at her. But then she opened her eyes-

No.

No no no no no-

They were gone, her eyes. Or rather, they were replaced. White, gaping voids. Suffocating. Depthless. Not blank, but infinite. And inside them, inside them, he suddenly was made to see a world where women - mothers, wives, sisters and friends - would no longer indulgently care for the pathetic, lazy, useless males with whom they shared the earth. They would not be the gentle, charitable, long-suffering gender they had been for centuries - at least not without first taking their pound of flesh. In Nate’s case, their 146 pounds of it.

Her eyes - the white voids - watched him see this, and then she screamed.

Her mouth first dropped open wide, causing Nate’s brain to seize. Her glossy lips were now stretched grotesquely around a too-wide grin, exposing rows and rows of jagged teeth, all too long, all too sharp, all not human. Her tongue was black, thick, forked like a snake’s, coiling hungrily, twisted and elongated. Her grin, feral,  had opened wide enough that her cheeks had split - split wide - as though the corners of her mouth had been ripped apart by some horrific force. Her face, too, changed, with skin now warped, pulled tight over a skull-like structure, her features now an exaggerated mask of still-transcendent womanhood, frozen in a chilling mockery of beauty.

That’s when the scream came.

It was not a bellow, a howl, or a roar. In fact, to Silvia and the room around her it was more a hiss, a nearly silent one. But to Nate it was a shriek, a wail born of years of pain that was now having its maleficent vengeance. It was not a sound that belonged on this earth, but at the same time it was the scream of something primordial, something that lived in the dark, something that waited in the corners of the cave while men huddled around their fire.

It was something that had never left.

It screamed into a world where the matronly hands that once rocked the cradle had now tightened into fists. A world where the gentle smiles of women were gone, replaced by teeth, by hunger, by fury.

He too tried to scream, he felt it in fact swelling in his chest but it had no release. He tried to look away, but he couldn’t. He could only look deep into that mouth, his ravishing mother’s mouth - one that once sang him lullabies, one that once called his name, kissed him goodnight.

But now it was none of those things, because now she was speaking. And it wasn’t one voice, it was two: one high, lilting, mocking, the other low, guttural, rotting. Two voices, twisting together, slipping into his brain, curling like a noose.

“Do girls SCARE you, Nathannnnnnnnnn?”

Nathan gasped. His throat closed. His bowels seized.

And then finally, Nathan’s soul shattered. His mouth dropped open. And - he screamed. 

He SCREAMED.

He screamed like a dying animal. He screamed like something being dragged into the abyss.

And in that exact moment -

With a savage, brutal efficiency -

Silvia plunged the needle into his neck.

…

…

The male subject had convulsed. His body had gone stiff. The restraints had cut into his wrists, but he didn’t pull against them. Because he had passed out, probably from the pain. Supposedly the male Program was excruciating. 

And then -

Then she -

She, Sammi -

She moved.

Not quickly. Not jerkily. Not like a human at all.

Her head snapped sideways, like a doll being wrenched at the neck.

Then back again. Then -

She hissed. Long. Slow. A snake’s hiss, echoing like a whisper through the room.

Silvia, after all this, finally spoke again:

“Girl,” she said, shaking her head in bemusement, “you’ve been watching too many horror movies.”

Sammi giggled, sounding once more like a teenage girl as she stood back up.

“Now, you weirdo,” Silvia instructed, as she drew the syringe out of  m.000049’s neck. His head slumped forward on his shoulders. They both knew that it would be several hours before his body started to respond to the treatment, deep in the bowels of the new wing, where he would live out the rest of his days. “Why don’t you escort Nathan here to his cage?”

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