Chapter 2: The Unavoidable Reflection
Kylie’s hands were still pressed against the mirror, the glass cool and slick under her palms. The reflection wasn’t warping anymore. It was fixed. A permanent, breathtaking stranger stared back, her dark eyes wide with a fear that looked oddly sultry.
She swallowed, watching the elegant column of her new throat move. The borrowed band shirt was a lost cause, stretched taut over curves that felt both absurd and, now, intrinsically hers. The leggings hugged every new inch, a second skin of pure disbelief.
She turned her head slightly, watching the cascade of dark, rich brown hair shift over her shoulder. It was like piloting a luxury vehicle she had no license for.
“Okay,” she said to her reflection. Her voice was a smoother, warmer instrument than before. It carried a faint, musical rasp. “Okay, no bullshit.” She took a deep breath, the motion expansive and unfamiliar. “Tell me I’m not the hottest damn thing you’ve ever seen.”
She wasn’t asking the mirror. She was asking the silence behind her.
Chad hadn’t moved from the doorway. He was just staring, his protein shake forgotten, a dark brown droplet drying on the carpet next to the spilled, iridescent blue powder. His face was a mask of pure cognitive dissonance. His best friend, his linebacker, was asking for a rating on her appearance. From him.
He blinked. “Kyle…”
“Kylie,” she corrected, the name feeling more solid now, a life raft in a sea of weirdness.
“Right. Kylie.” He ran a hand over his mouth. “Look, dude… I mean… you know that’s not…”
“Just say it,” she said, pushing off from the sink and facing him. The movement was fluid, a hip cocking instinctively. She caught the gesture and forced herself to stop, standing awkwardly straight. “I need to know what we’re working with here. From a tactical standpoint.”
A choked laugh escaped him. “A tactical standpoint. Jesus.” He finally looked at her, really looked, his gaze traveling from her face down to her feet and back up. It wasn’t a leer. It was an assessment, like he was sizing up an opponent on the field. His loyalty to his friend was a physical weight, straining against the undeniable visual data.
“Yeah,” he admitted, the word coming out in a defeated exhale. “You’re… objectively. You know. Stunning. It’s like you were built in a lab.”
A shaky smirk touched her new, full lips. “Feels like I was dismantled in one.” She looked down at herself, at the impossible geography of her body. “This is insane. This is so far beyond insane.”
“The powder,” Chad said, his focus snapping back to the immediate problem. He pointed at the glowing spill. “We need to bag that. Now. Before it does anything else.” He said ‘anything else’ with a tone of deep, abiding horror.
He vanished into the kitchen and returned with a plastic grocery bag and a dustpan. He carefully swept every granule of the blue substance into the bag, knotted it tightly twice, and then placed that bag inside two more. He held the triple-bagged evidence up. It shimmered faintly, a contained nebula of catastrophe.
“We find Marcus,” Chad stated, his voice firming with purpose. “He gave you this. He has to have an answer. An antidote. Something.”
“And say what?” Kylie’s new voice rose in pitch.
Kylie’s new voice rose in pitch. “Hey, my buddy Marcus sold me something that turned me into a completely different person, mind fixing it?” She gestured at her body, the movement frantic. “He’ll laugh in our faces or call the cops. Or worse.”
Chad stared at the bagged powder in his hand, its faint glow illuminating the lines of his palm. “We don’t have a choice,” he said, his voice low. “This is evidence. It’s all we’ve got.”
“It’s a death sentence,” she shot back. She started to pace, the unfamiliar swing of her hips making her stumble slightly. “What if there is no antidote? What if this is just… me now?” The question hung there, vast and terrifying.
“Then we deal,” Chad said, meeting her eyes. “But we start by finding the source.” He set the bag on the cluttered coffee table. It glowed softly beside a half-empty can of cheap beer.
Kylie stopped pacing. Her gaze locked onto the bag, then flicked to Chad’s face, then back to the powder. A dangerous, desperate idea crystallized in her panic. Her reasoning was a fractured, frantic thing. “You said it was a process. A reaction.”
“Yeah, a bad one,” Chad said, turning towards her. “Why?”
“We don’t know what it’ll do,” she whispered, more to herself. “We only have my reaction. One data point. That’s junk science.” Her heart hammered against her ribs, a frantic drumbeat pushing her toward the edge.
“What are you talking about?” Chad took a step toward her, his expression wary.
She moved faster. In one fluid, desperate motion, she snatched the triple-bagged powder from the table. Her fingers tore through the plastic layers with surprising strength. The iridescent blue substance spilled into her cupped palm.
“Kylie, no!”
Before Chad could object, she was on him. She shoved the handful of powder straight into his open, shocked mouth. Her other hand clamped over his nose, forcing him to inhale or swallow. He gagged, his eyes bulging, thrashing against her.
He was stronger, but her new body had a wild, adrenalized leverage. She held on, her face inches from his. “Okay,” she breathed, her voice shaking with fear and a twisted kind of hope. “Let’s see how it affects you.”
She released him, stumbling back. Chad collapsed to his knees, coughing, blue dust coating his lips. He spat, retching onto the carpet. “What did you do?” he croaked, his voice already tight with pain.
Then the convulsions started. He doubled over, a guttural groan tearing from his throat. His muscles, already defined from years of football, began to writhe beneath his skin like live snakes. The fabric of his t-shirt strained audibly, seams protesting as his shoulders broadened, his chest thickened.
Kylie watched, hand over her mouth, as his abdomen tightened, visible knots of muscle forming, dividing, etching themselves into a stark, sculpted eight-pack. His neck thickened, veins cording along its length. His jawline, already strong, seemed to square itself, his cheekbones carving a sharper, more predatory angle.
His skin flushed, then took on a polished, bronze sheen. His short-cropped hair seemed to grow subtly, becoming thicker, darker, falling into a perfectly tousled style. When the shuddering stopped, Chad was no longer just a football player.
He was a fitness model. A parody of masculine perfection, panting on their dirty carpet. He looked up at her, his eyes wide with betrayal and a new, terrifying intensity.
He looked up at her, his eyes wide with betrayal and a new, terrifying intensity. His breath came in ragged, deep pulls that expanded his now-massive chest. The bronze sheen of his skin glistened under the cheap overhead light.
He pushed himself to his feet, the motion fluid and powerful. He towered over his previous form, his frame now comically broad against the cramped living room. He stared down at his own hands, turning them over to observe the thicker wrists, the pronounced veins.
“What…” His voice was different. Lower. A resonant bass that vibrated in Kylie’s chest. He cleared his throat, the sound like gravel. “What did you do to me?”
Kylie took a step back, her heel crunching on a stray granule of blue powder. Her own dramatic change had been a slow, sickening slide. His was a violent metamorphosis, completed in seconds. The air still smelled of ozone and copper.
“I needed a control group,” she said, the words sounding hollow and insane even to her. “We only had my reaction. That’s bad data.”
“Bad data?” Chad’s new voice boomed, filling the small space. He took a single step toward her, his movement unnervingly graceful for his size. “You poisoned me, Kylie! You shoved that shit down my throat!”
“You said we had to find Marcus!” she shot back, her own fear twisting into defensive anger. “What are we gonna tell him, huh? That his product only works on one of us? He’d think I was crazy! Now he has to believe us!”
Chad looked past her, catching his reflection in the dark television screen. He went very still. His silhouette was unmistakable, a mountain of sculpted muscle. He brought a hand to his jaw, tracing the new, harsh line of it.
A low, disgusted laugh rumbled out of him. “So this fixes it? This makes it better?” He turned his furious gaze back to her. “Now we’re both freaks.”
“We were already freaks!” she yelled, throwing her hands up. The motion made her acutely aware of the new weight on her chest, the shift in her balance. “Look at me, Chad! I’m a walking, talking impossible thing! At least you’re still…”
She trailed off, her eyes scanning him from head to toe. The perfect V-taper of his torso, the heroic breadth of his shoulders. He looked like a statue of a god, poured into sweatpants and a torn t-shirt.
A hysterical sound bubbled up in her throat. It was part sob, part laugh. The sheer, absurd unfairness of it all crashed down on her.
“What the fuck?” she choked out, gesturing wildly between their bodies. “I become a chick… and you become a hunk?”
Chad stared, his anger momentarily punctured by the raw, stupid truth of it. He looked at her—all soft curves and terrified eyes—then down at his own grotesquely perfected form. His shoulders, which could have belonged to a comic book hero, slumped.
“Yeah,” he said, the deep voice now just tired. “That about sums it up.”
The silence that followed was thick and uncomfortable. The blue powder was mostly gone, absorbed or vacuumed into the grimy carpet. Only the results remained, breathing heavily in the middle of the room.
Kylie hugged herself, the reality setting in deeper. There was no going back from this moment, from what she’d done to him. The loyalty she’d counted on was now fissured with her own betrayal.
“We really need to find Marcus,” Chad said finally, his tone flat. He picked up his fallen protein shaker, the plastic now looking tiny in his enormous hand. “Right now.”
“He’s at the Gridiron after nine,” Kylie said softly, defaulting to the old knowledge of their world. The gym rat haunt. “He does his deals in the parking lot.”
Chad nodded, a single sharp dip of his carved chin. “Then we go.” He started for the door, then stopped. He looked at his old jersey hanging on the hook. It would be a crop top on him now. He looked at Kylie, swimming in Zoe’s clothes that were now too tight in all the wrong places.
“We can’t go like this,” he said, stating the obvious.
Kylie followed his gaze. A fresh wave of practical horror washed over her. “We have nothing that fits. Either of us.”
Chad’s eyes, sharp and calculating, landed on her. They still held a fragment of the friend she knew, buried under the shock and the new, intimidating exterior. “We’ll have to buy something. On the way.”
“With what money?” Her voice was a thin whisper. “And what store is open this late that sells…” She gestured at his body. “…that? And this?”
A grim determination settled over Chad’s new features. He walked to the small desk in the corner, yanked open a drawer, and pulled out a beaten-up leather wallet. He tossed it to her.
It was his own. She fumbled it open. Inside were a few twenties, a student ID with his old face smiling back, and a credit card.
“We’ll use my card,” he said. “At that big-box place off the highway. It’s open 24 hours. We get in, get basic stuff, get out.” He paused, looking her over again, not with desire but with tactical assessment. “You need… things. Bras. Or whatever.”
The casual mention of it, in his new booming voice, was somehow more humiliating than everything else. Kylie just nodded, her face burning.