Chapter 1: The Serum's First Surge
The single bulb in Lewis’s basement bedroom flickered, throwing long, jumpy shadows over the half-unpacked moving boxes and the permanent laundry pile spilling from the top of the washing machine. It smelled of stale root beer and gym socks, a smell Lewis had come to think of as home.
Keira perched on the edge of his rumpled bed, looking tiny in her pink tank top and short denim skirt. Her short brown hair was messy from where he’d been running his hands through it just minutes before. In her hands, she held a small, unlabeled vial and a sterile syringe she’d pulled from her backpack.
“You are absolutely out of your mind,” Lewis said, not for the first time. He leaned against his cluttered desk, arms crossed over his chest. His blue eyes tracked her every move. “Where did you even get that?”
“The abandoned BioGenix lab out on Route 9,” she said, as if she’d said she’d picked it up at the gas station. Her black eyes sparkled with a familiar, terrifying excitement. “Security is a joke. This was in a locked fridge, Lewis. Labeled ‘Arousal Amplification Serum, Prototype 9.’ Think about it.”
“I am thinking about it! I’m thinking it’s a great way to get super-rabies or grow a third ear.” He pushed off the desk, running a hand through his short blonde hair. “Kiera, just… toss it. Let’s order pizza.”
“Where’s your scientific curiosity?” She drew the clear, slightly viscous fluid into the syringe, tapping the barrel. “Theoretical peak is a sixty-fold increase in sensory nerve response. Can you imagine?”
“Yeah, I can. I can also imagine your heart exploding.” He moved closer, his voice dropping. “Babe, please. This isn’t like stealing the answer key for Chem. This is serious.”
She grinned up at him, that reckless, brilliant grin that made his stomach do a flip. “Exactly. Now, hold my hand or something. For safety.”
Before he could stop her, she pulled down the strap of her tank top, exposing her shoulder. She didn’t hesitate. The needle slid into her skin, her thumb depressing the plunger steadily.
“Keira!”
A sharp hiss escaped her lips. She dropped the syringe onto the bedspread. For a second, nothing. She looked at him, opened her mouth to say ‘see?’.
Then her back arched. A full-body tremor racked her, so violent her teeth chattered.
“Whoa. Okay. That’s… intense,” she gasped, her voice already strained.
Lewis was beside her in an instant, hands on her shoulders. Her skin was burning up. “What’s happening? Look at me.”
Her gaze met his, but her pupils were dilated, swallowing the black of her irises. A flush spread from her chest up her neck. She panted, a shallow, rapid sound. “It’s hot. Everything is… buzzing. Like my blood is fizzing.”
Then the first real change hit.
A low groan tore from her throat, deeper than any sound he’d ever heard her make. Beneath his hands, the bones and muscles of her shoulders writhed, expanding. He snatched his hands back as if scalded. A series of sickening, wet pops echoed in the small room—her spine lengthening.
“Lewis…” Her voice was a ragged rumble.
She was growing. Right in front of him.
Her height was the first undeniable shift. Sitting on the bed, she was suddenly eye-level with him where he knelt. Then taller. The delicate lines of her face seemed to push outward, her jaw squaring, her cheekbones rising into sharper prominence. Her short brown hair seemed to darken, taking on a deeper, almost emerald tinge.
“Make it stop,” she moaned, but the moan itself was power, a vibration in the air.
Her skin. The warm peach tone was leaching away, replaced by a pale, ashen grey that rapidly deepened, saturated into a vivid, inhuman olive green. It spread like a stain, down her arms, across her collarbones, up her neck.
“Your skin… Keira, your skin is green.”
She looked at her hands, which were widening, the fingers thickening. The nails darkened. A terrified, guttural noise escaped her.
The bedsprings shrieked in protest. Her frame swelled, not with fat, but with dense, corded muscle. The slender girl in the pink tank top was vanishing, replaced by something powerful and unknown. The shirt strained across her back, the seams whining. The cap sleeves dug into her burgeoning biceps.
Her chest heaved. The small, flat chest he knew intimately erupted into two massive, heavy curves that strained the thin cotton of her top to its absolute limit, the fabric growing taut and perilously thin.
“Get it off!” she snarled, clawing at the neckline. With a rough tug, the tank top ripped straight down the middle and she flung the tattered pieces aside. She sat there, half-naked and gasping, a giantess carved from jade and muscle.
Lewis stumbled back, his hip hitting the desk. Textbooks cascaded to the floor. He couldn’t process it. The fear was a cold lump in his gut, but beneath it, a shocking, unwanted current of pure attraction electrified him. She was terrifying. She was magnificent. Every curve of her new body was strength incarnate, powerful and lush. The green skin seemed to glow in the bad light.
Her eyes flew open. They were no longer black. They burned with a fierce, radiant green light, like banked coals. They fixed on him, full of panic and a new, predatory wildness.
“What’s happening to me?” Her voice was a rich, resonant alto, shaking the dust from the ceiling tiles. She tried to stand and cracked her head hard on a low-hanging duct with a metallic dong. She swore, a string of curses in her new, thunderous voice.
“Don’t move! You’re… you’re bigger. The ceiling,” Lewis babbled, holding his hands up. “Just stay still. We’ll figure this out.”
But stillness was impossible. The serum was still moving through her. A fresh wave of sensation clearly hit her. She shuddered, a full-body ripple that made her new muscles dance. A low, rhythmic growl started in her chest. Her bright green eyes glossed over, not with fear now, but with a deep, overwhelming hunger. She looked at him, and the gaze was different. Primal.
“Lewis.” His name in her mouth was a command, a need.
“Keira, fight it. You’re in there. Just breathe.”
“It’s too much,” she growled. Her hands—huge, powerful hands—clutched at the bed sheets, and they ripped like tissue paper. The confusion on her face was mutating, sharpening into frustration, then into raw, untamed anger. “Everything’s too loud. My head is… I can’t…”
She swung her legs off the bed. The floorboards groaned under her weight. She towered over him now, a full head and shoulders taller than his athletic six-foot frame. Her new body blocked the light. The scent of her had changed, too—ozone, heat, and something wild.
He reached for her, his hand touching her bicep. The skin was hot, smoother than it looked, and solid as stone. The feel of it sent a jolt through him. “Keira, listen to my voice.”
She looked down at his hand on her arm. For a second, he saw her—his Keira—fighting to surface in those green eyes. Then the anger surged back, hotter. She was losing herself, drowning in the chemical and physical tide.
“Don’t tell me what to do!” she roared, and the sound was physical, knocking a stack of DVDs off a shelf. She shoved him, not with her full strength, but it was like being hit by a bag of cement.
Lewis flew backwards, crashing into the laundry pile, the wind knocked out of him.
He stared up, wheezing, as she loomed over him. Her chest rose and fell, her fists clenched at her sides. Her glowing eyes were wide with a chaotic storm of lust, rage, and terror. She was a stranger. She was the girl he loved.
“Keira,” he whispered, desperate.
A siren wailed somewhere in the distance. The sound pierced the basement walls. Her head snapped toward the small, grimy window near the ceiling, her ears seemingly twitching. The external stimulus focused her raging energy elsewhere.
With a final, conflicted snarl that shook the room, she turned from him. She took a single, stomping step toward the basement stairs. The wooden step splintered under her foot.
She didn’t seem to notice. The siren was calling. The world outside was loud. She needed to move, to break, to run.
Lewis scrambled to his knees, cold dread pouring through him. She was going outside. Like this.
“Keira, wait!”
But she was already climbing, the entire staircase shaking and protesting with each step. He heard the cheap plywood door at the top tear clean off its hinges with a crunch of snapping wood.
Then, silence. Just the distant siren, and the settling dust from the ceiling.
Lewis knelt alone in the wreckage of his room, the ripped pink fabric of her tank top beside his knee. The reality of it crashed down. His brilliant, impulsive girlfriend was gone. And something immensely powerful, and dangerously unstable, was now running loose into the night.