Chapter 2: Divine Gains, Unholy Transformation
The break room was a tomb of forgotten lunches and defeated ambitions. The fluorescent lights buzzed like angry insects, casting a sickly pallor over the chipped Formica table and the vending machine whose motor groaned with every selection. Archer leaned against the doorway, sipping tepid coffee from a chipped ISIS mug, his eyes scanning the room.
Pam Poovey was a continent of flesh spilling over the edges of a plastic chair. Her head was buried in a giant family-sized bag of cheese puffs, the crunching sound rhythmic and wet. She was easily over three hundred pounds now, a fact her stretched HR polo seemed to protest with every shallow breath. The chair creaked ominously beneath her as she shifted, searching for the last crumbs. A low, prolonged fart escaped her, a sound like a balloon slowly deflating. She didn't even flinch.
“God, Pam,” Archer said, wrinkling his nose. “A little warning.”
“Consider that my official review of the vending machine’s ‘healthy choices’ option,” Pam mumbled, orange dust coating her fingers and lips. She belched. “It’s a travesty.”
Archer’s attention shifted. Cheryl Tunt was hunched by the vending machine, jabbing at the buttons for a packet of ‘Sensationally Sugar-Free Cookies!’ with a frantic, birdlike motion. Her scrawny frame was swallowed by a shapeless cardigan.
“Ugh! It stole my dollar!” she whined, slapping the glass.
“Maybe it’s a sign from your dark goddess, Cheryl,” Archer said, pushing off the doorframe and sauntering over. “A sign that you’re… too weak.” He was standing close now, his body blocking the view from the hallway. His free hand slipped into his pocket, his fingers finding the remote’s smooth surface. He selected a new subroutine, one he and Krieger had labeled ‘Atlas Variant.’
“Weak?” Cheryl spun around, her eyes wide with offense. “I have a spiritual fortitude that could—”
Archer pressed the button.
Cheryl’s sentence cut off in a sharp intake of breath. Her eyes went distant for a second, her body tensing as if touched by a live wire. Archer watched, mesmerized. The cardigan’s loose sleeves tightened first, fabric straining over a sudden, sharp expansion of her biceps and triceps. Her shoulders broadened, pushing the wool seams outward with a series of tiny, popping threads. The change wasn’t bloated or soft; it was defined, hard. The scrawny hollows of her collarbones filled with sculpted deltoid muscle. Her wrists thickened. She looked down at her arms, her mouth agape.
The flabby cardigan was now a second skin over a physique that belonged to a comic book hero. She flexed tentatively. The muscle surged, threatening to split the threadbare fabric completely.
“Whoa,” she breathed, her voice hushed with awe. She turned her arms over, watching the cords of muscle move beneath her skin. “Do you… do you see that?”
“See what?” Archer said, taking a sip of his coffee, his face a mask of bored indifference. “That you’re still blocking the machine?”
“No, I mean… I feel different.” She clenched a fist, and the knitted cuff of her cardigan tore open with a soft rrrip. A look of pure, ecstatic revelation dawned on her face. “It’s her. My dark goddess. She’s answered my midnight invocations! She’s bestowed upon me the strength of the forsaken!” She struck a pose, flexing both arms now. The cardigan gave up entirely, seams splitting at the shoulders and down the back.
From the shadowed corner of the room, near the humming, shuddering refrigerator, a soft chuckle echoed. Krieger emerged, holding a beaker of something that glowed a faint, unhealthy green. He adjusted his glasses, his eyes gleaming with scientific avarice.
“Fascinating adipose-to-muscle conversion rate. The myofibrillar hyperplasia is… chef’s kiss.” He took a sip from the beaker, unfazed.
“Krieger! You see it too, right?” Cheryl gushed, moving towards him with a new, powerful gait. Her steps were strangely confident, her previously slouched posture now militarily erect.
“See what?” Krieger said, his tone flat. “I see a departmental secretary in a compromised garment. HR violation, probably.” He winked at Archer over Cheryl’s newly muscular shoulder.
Pam wheezed a laugh from her chair, a cloud of cheese-dust puffing from her lips. “Nice guns, Tunt. You gonna arm-wrestle the copier for stealing your forms again?”
Cheryl ignored her, lost in her own mythology. She placed a hand on the edge of the heavy metal table and, with a grunt of effort that came from her new diaphragm, lifted it a full two inches off the ground before letting it crash down. The coffee mugs jumped. “The power… it’s so real.”
Archer felt a thrill that was better than any mission debriefing. This was creation. Or maybe curation. He was the unacknowledged director of a sprawling, secret play.
“Just don’t go all ‘Hulk smash’ on the supply closet,” he said, finishing his coffee. “We’re still waiting on those new ergonomic pens.”
He left the break room, the sounds of Cheryl’s ecstatic flexing and Pam’s congested laughter fading behind him. In the hallway, he pulled out the remote. The screen glowed softly.
Cumulative Morphological Load: 49%. Adjuvant Buffer: Fluctuating.
A tiny, almost imperceptible vibration pulsed through the device, a feedback tremor he hadn't felt before. He shrugged it off. Fluctuating was fine. Fluctuating meant it was working. He thought of Lana, now struggling to tie her own shoes, and Mallory, napping through board meetings. He thought of Katja’s new, impossible silhouette against his sheets.
He slipped the remote back into his pocket. The vibration lingered against his thigh, a ghost of a heartbeat that wasn't his own. For a second, just a second, he wondered if the clay was somehow aware of the sculptor’s hands.
Then Pam’s voice bellowed from the break room, “Hey, Cheryl! If you’re so strong, come pull me out of this chair. I think I’m fused to it.”
The moment passed. Archer smoothed his tie and walked back to his office, a slight, confident smile on his lips. The game, after all, was still his to play. The only rules were the ones he chose to follow. For now.