Chapter 6: The Unwilling Convert
The convulsion that racked Yeji’s body wasn’t a ending. It was a birth pang. Her guttural moan deepened, vibrating the dust in the air, becoming a roar that shook the hanging lightbulb. The faint green sheen on her skin ignited into a blaze of brilliant jade.
Her body didn’t just change; it erupted.
Bones lengthened with a series of wet, cracking symphonies. Muscles ballooned, surging with a power that made Lia’s transformation look delicate. Yeji’s ruined blouse and skirt dissolved into rags and then vaporized entirely as her frame expanded, upward and outward, consuming the space. She tore free from their grasp, not in weakness, but with an explosive, unthinking force that sent both Yuna and Lia stumbling back.
When the growth finally shuddered to a halt, she towered over them. Ten feet of dense, sculpted emerald power. Her hair, once a neat bob, was now a wild, dark-green mane. Her eyes glowed like neutron stars, pupils vanished in that acid-green fire. She looked down at her own hands, turning them over, fingers the size of burritos flexing with casual, earth-shattering potential.
Lia recovered first, a wicked smile spreading across her face. She stepped forward, undaunted, her head now level with Yeji’s sternum. “Welcome to the party, boss,” she said, her voice thick with possessive pride. She reached up, placing a hand on Yeji’s colossal bicep. “See? I told you it was better.”
Yeji didn’t speak. She moved. One massive hand shot out, curling around the back of Lia’s neck. It wasn’t a caress. It was a statement of control, effortlessly pulling Lia’s face up toward her own. Lia’s smile didn’t fade; it intensified, a challenge accepted.
But then Yeji spoke. Her voice was a rockslide, deep and grinding, yet layered with the chilling, familiar precision of the woman who ran floor seven. “You always were an impatient tool, Lia.”
She pulled Lia into a kiss. It was brutal, consuming, all teeth and dominance. Lia melted into it for a second, a low groan of pleasure in her throat. Then Yeji’s other hand came up, not to embrace, but to frame Lia’s face. And she pushed.
She broke the kiss, holding Lia at arm’s length with terrifying ease. Lia blinked, dazed, a flicker of confusion in her glowing eyes.
Yeji’s gaze shifted past her, landing on Yuna, who stood frozen, the storm inside her momentarily quieted by shock. Yeji’s luminous eyes swept over Yuna’s seven-foot form, over the torn green leotard, and her expression shifted. The primal fury smoothed into something colder, more calculated. A look Yuna knew well from performance reviews.
“You,” Yeji’s grinding voice echoed. “The quiet one. The careful one. You were the perfect test subject.”
Lia tried to shake off the hand. “What are you talking about?”
Yeji ignored her, her eyes locked on Yuna. “That peppermint tea on your desk last Tuesday. Tasted a little bitter, didn’t it? Not enough to notice. Just enough to… soften the walls. To make you receptive.”
Yuna’s new, powerful heart felt like a stone. The memory flashed: the odd, metallic aftertaste she’d blamed on the tap water. The headache that followed. The first, strange dream of a green mirror.
“And you,” Yeji said, finally looking down at Lia, her tone one of utter dismissal. “So aggressively mediocre. So hungry for a drama that wasn’t about spreadsheets. Sending you that anonymous note about ‘power in the east stairwell mirror’ was child’s play. You practically sprinted there, ready to find a conspiracy. You were just the delivery system. The virus I emailed to her terminal.”
Lia’s face contorted. The smugness vanished, replaced by a dawning, horrifying understanding. She hadn’t been a predator. She’d been a puppet. A useful, violent puppet. “You… you bitch,” Lia spat, the words lacking their usual venom, sounding hollow.
“Language,” Yeji said, almost pleasantly. She finally released Lia, giving her a slight shove that sent the seven-foot woman staggering back several steps. “You both performed to specification. Lia provided the traumatic catalyst. Yuna… you provided the genetic key. That dormant little spark your grandmother probably called a ‘family curse’. I just applied the pressure. And now,” she said, stretching her colossal arms, the air whistling around them, “I have the data. And the product.”
She took a step, the concrete groaning under her weight. She was heading for the large loading bay doors, the ones that led to the alley, to the world.
“Wait,” Yuna heard herself say. The voice was still Ana’s husky growl, but beneath it was Yuna’s own core of wounded betrayal. “You did this… for data?”
Yeji paused, glancing over her shoulder. The corporate smirk was unmistakable on her giant green face. “Why does anyone do anything? For an advantage. Do you have any idea what a military contractor would pay for a stable, controllable bio-enhancement process? Or what a woman like me can do with this?” She flexed a hand, crushing a discarded steel chair leg into a lump of scrap as if it were tin foil. “The board meetings are going to be much shorter now.”
Lia found her fury. With a scream that was pure rage, she launched herself at Yeji’s back, a green missile of claws and teeth.
Yeji didn’t even turn fully. One titanic arm swept back in a careless, backhanded arc.
The impact sounded like a side of beef hitting a wall. Lia’s charge stopped dead. She was airborne for a second, then slammed into a stack of pallets, splintering them. She lay still, a groan seeping from her lips.
Yeji looked at Yuna once more. “You can stay here with the faulty prototype. Or you can learn what this gift is really for. Your choice.”
She turned, placed her palms against the steel loading bay doors, and pushed.
With a scream of tortured metal, the locks snapped and the doors burst outward, peeling open like banana skins. The sodium-glow of the city night flooded in, outlining her monumental form. She didn’t look back. She stepped out into the alley, and the night swallowed her.
Silence rushed back in, broken only by Lia’s pained breathing and the frantic buzz of the lone bulb. Yuna stood in the wreckage, her new body thrumming with stolen, unspeakable power, her mind reeling with the poison of the truth. The ghost in the mirror hadn’t been a random haunting. It had been a corporate takeover.
From the pile of splinters, Lia coughed, pushing herself up on one elbow. Her green skin was already bruising a darker shade where Yeji had struck her. She looked at Yuna, her earlier arrogance shattered, leaving something raw and exposed. Her voice was a hoarse whisper.
“Well,” she said, dust and blood on her lips. “That didn’t go how I thought it would.”