Chapter 13: The transformer goe off
The neon diner sign at the edge of town blinked its last red pulse as Jez’s sedan turned down the gravel road to Jed’s place. The crow-feather gown was a silent pool of darkness in the passenger seat, Essie a tense statue within it.
“He’s still up,” Essie muttered, seeing the bare bulb burning over the garage’s side door. A shadow moved behind the dusty window. Earl.
Jez killed the engine, the silence rushing in. “Let me do the talking. This is a diplomatic recovery.”
“Diplomatic,” Essie snorted, pushing the door open. “He’s a tow truck driver who enjoys knocking mailboxes over with a baseball bat. Just follow my lead.”
They crossed the hard-packed dirt. Essie didn’t sway. She marched.
The garage was a cave of organized chaos. Engine blocks, transmissions, and hills of forgotten tools rose in the gloom. In the center, on a workbench lit by a trouble light, sat the slab. It looked innocuous. A black, rectangular sheet of nothing. Earl stood beside it, a crescent wrench in his hand like a priest with a censer.
His face, usually crinkled in a permanent grin, was flat. His eyes skipped from Essie to Jez, in her immaculate black trousers and silk blouse, and back. The disappointment was a physical thing, sour in the oil-scented air.
“Brought company,” he said, his voice gravelly. He didn’t say her name.
“Earl, this is Jez. Jez, Earl.” Essie’s purr was strained, an engine trying to turn over on a cold morning.
“Figured.” Earl set the wrench down with a deliberate clank. “Y’all got a falling out? She find another model? Or…” He leaned on the bench, his barrel chest deflating a little. “You just let her in on the plan, Ess? Our plan? Thought we was partners. You and me and the miracle.” He gestured to the slab, a father introducing a prodigy child.
“It’s not a miracle, Earl.” Essie stepped forward, her gown whispering against an old fender. “It’s a… it’s a weapon. From a war. A war we lost before we even knew it started.”
Earl stared. “The hell you talkin’ about?”
So she told him. Not like she’d told Jez, with layers of guilt and longing. She gave it to him straight, like diagnosing a catastrophic engine failure. Aliens. Venusians. Infiltrators. A galactic quarantine. Galgov. Jez’s real job. The fleet waiting in the dark. The tripwire.
“She ain’t my girlfriend, Earl,” Essie finished, her voice raw. “She’s the cleanup crew. And if we don’t give her the slab, her people are gonna come take it. And they might decide you’re a loose thread that needs trimmin’.”
Earl’s face had gone through confusion, disbelief, and had settled into a weary, profound sadness. He looked at the slab. He’d polished it. He’d run diagnostics. He’d dreamed on it. “Bambi,” he whispered.
“What?” Jez asked, her professional cool faltering for a second.
“My lady name,” Earl said, not looking at her. “For when it was my turn.” He sighed, a long exhalation of surrendered dreams. “Alright. Alright, damn it. If it’s gonna bring more trouble than it’s worth… take the cursed thing.” He waved a dismissive hand, turning away as if he couldn’t bear to watch.
Essie’s heart cracked. She moved to the bench. “I’m sorry, Earl. Truly.”
“Just get it gone,” he mumbled, staring at a poster of a 1970s pinup girl taped to the wall.
Essie reached for the slab. Her perfect, flawless fingers hovered an inch above its obsidian surface. She meant to pick it up, to hand it over to Jez, to end it.
It reacted.
A lattice of fine, hair-thin blue light erupted from its surface, not in the usual slow diagnostic pulse, but in a violent, stuttering flash. It wasn’t accepting a handler. It was discharging.
A concussive wave of silent energy slammed outwards.
Essie gasped, flung back against a stack of tires. The world didn’t spin—it stuttered. In her head, in the place where Jez’s alien phrase had etched a command, she felt a clean, sharp snap. The linkage, the control, it just… broke. Vanished. She was untethered.
But the energy wasn’t done.
It arced. Two forks of jagged, shimmering blue light. One struck Earl, standing forlorn by the bench. The other lanced into Jez, who was rushing toward Essie.
There was no sound. Just light.
Earl jerked, his back arching violently. A scream choked in his throat, transforming into a high, ragged gasp. His body contorted, not in pain, but in a fundamental, cellular rewriting. His barrel chest streamlined, his shoulders softening. The work shirt and jeans seemed to melt and reform, stitching themselves into a tight, cherry-red tank top and denim cut-offs that hugged new, dramatic curves. His thick mustache vanished, his jawline smoothing into a delicate, heart-shaped face framed by a tumble of chemically-perfect blonde curls. His hands, stained with perpetual grease, became slender, manicured things. He–she–staggered, catching herself on the bench with a grip that was surprisingly strong.
Across the garage, Jez wasn’t being rewritten from scratch. She was being… refreshed. The energy washed over her, not changing her clothes, but sinking into her skin. The few fine lines at the corners of her icy eyes vanished. The subtle tension she carried in her jaw dissolved. Her short red hair seemed to thicken, the undercut turning savage and sleek simultaneously. Her already elegant posture became unnaturally fluid, a panther’s grace poured into a human frame. She looked not like a different person, but like the most devastating, hyper-real version of herself at twenty-two. Every feature sharpened, intensified, radiant.
The blue light died.
Silence, thick and heavy, filled the garage.
Earl looked down at his–her–new hands. Turned them over. Brought them up to touch the cascade of soft blonde hair, the full lips, the shocking swell of chest under the red fabric. A strange, shaky breath escaped her.
Jez simply stood still, her eyes wide. She flexed her fingers, rolled her shoulders. A slow, dawning sensation of pure, unadulterated wellness spread through her. The chronic knot between her shoulder blades from years of stress was gone. The faint ache in her knee from a forgotten training injury—gone. She felt limber. Powerful. Vibrant.
Essie pushed herself up from the tires, the black feathers rustling. She stared, first at Jez, then at the stunning blonde now occupying Earl’s space.
A hysterical laugh bubbled up in Essie’s throat. She swallowed it, her voice coming out hoarse. “Earl?”
The blonde figure looked up. The eyes, a startlingly bright blue, were filled with a chaotic storm of terror, wonder, and a sharp, new cunning. The voice that came out was a melodic, southern-tinged chime. “Yeah, honey.”
Essie’s lips twitched. “What’s… what’s your sexy lady name?”
A slow, stunning smile broke across the new face. It was a smile that could sell used cars and break hearts in equal measure. “Bambi,” she purred, testing the name. It fit like a glove. “Bambi Hicks.” She took an experimental step, her hips finding a natural, rolling rhythm that made the cut-offs strain.
Jez finally moved. She walked to an old, pitted side mirror hanging on a post. She looked at her reflection. The woman staring back was her, but more. All her best features dialed to eleven. The exhaustion, the weariness of a galactic civil servant, was erased. She felt a hungry, physical thrill course through her. It was addictive.
She turned from the mirror, her icy blue eyes now gleaming with a new, fierce understanding. She looked at Essie, free of the control phrase. She looked at Bambi, a masterpiece of chaotic creation. She felt the years she’d lost, not to age, but to duty, return in a surge of raw potential.
“Oh,” Jez breathed, the word full of awe and horror and a terrible, thrilling joy. She stretched her arms out, looking at the smooth skin, feeling the tensile strength in her muscles. A laugh, low and real, escaped her. “I only regained a few years.” She met Essie’s gaze, and the professional veneer was utterly gone, burned away by the surge. “And I feel… great.”
The word hung in the greasy air, charged with a weird, shared euphoria. It was Bambi who broke the spell, running those new, slender hands over her denim-clad hips with frank appreciation.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” she chimed, her voice a symphony of honeysuckle and mischief. “Ain’t even a draft. Everything’s… tucked up neat and polite.” She laughed, a sparkling sound that seemed to startle even her.
Jez was still examining her own hands, turning them over as if they were alien artifacts. The simple, profound sense of physical perfection was a drug. She flexed her fingers, feeling no crackle, no residual ache from hours of sketching. A slow smile spread across her flawless face, one that had nothing to do with tactics.
Essie watched them, the euphoria curdling into a cold, sharp dread in her stomach. She looked at the slab, now inert and dark again on the bench. It had just rewritten two people on a residual burst. It had shattered a Galactic Coalition control linkage like it was cheap glass.
“We’re gonna have a world of trouble covering this up,” Essie said, her voice low and flat, cutting through the self-admiration.
Jez blinked, the smile fading as professional reality crashed back in. “The local anomaly report just got complicated,” she murmured, reaching for the comm unit in her duffel.
Bambi was peering out the grimy window, her stunning face pressed to the glass. “Speakin’ of trouble, y’all expectin’ company? Got two black cars out there, parked all crooked in the gravel. Fancy ones.”
Essie and Jez rushed to the window. Two sedans, their engines off, sat at haphazard angles in the driveway as if they’d coasted to a stop. The doors were opening. Men in severe, cheap black suits began to spill out, moving all wrong. They stumbled, catching themselves on the car roofs and doors, their movements disoriented and clumsy.
At least, they had been men. Now they were… reconfigured. The transformation wasn’t uniform like Bambi’s, or a refinement like Jez’s. It was chaotic, as if the slab’s burst had hit them mid-stride. One agent’s suit had fused and reformed into a tight, sequined cocktail dress, his formerly short hair now a tousled chestnut mane. Another clutched his face, his features softening under his fingers into pouty, model-perfect symmetry. They were all dizzy, beautiful, and utterly confused, murmuring in low, startled voices that were already pitching higher.
“Oh, no,” Jez breathed, her hand tightening on the comm unit. “The extraction team. They were on perimeter standby. The pulse must have… rewritten the entire field.”
“Your guys?” Essie asked, watching a formerly muscular agent try to walk in suddenly acquired four-inch heels, teetering on the gravel.
“They were,” Jez said, a note of horrified fascination in her voice. She lifted the comm, a sleek black disc. Her voice, when she spoke, was all business, but it now had a richer, more resonant timbre. “Shepherd to Galgov Orbital. Priority Override Sigma. Anomaly is not contained. Repeat, not contained. Uncontrolled phenotypic cascade at ground zero. Standby team has been… compromised. Request immediate sterile extraction, full quarantine protocol.”
There was a crackle of static, then a digitally flat voice. “Acknowledged, Shepherd. Hold position. Retrieval in three minutes.”
The next 180 seconds passed in a bizarre, silent pantomime. Inside the garage, the three women watched through the window. Outside, the newly-minted hotties in torn black suits gathered in a dazed cluster, some crying, some laughing hysterically, all running hands over their shocking new anatomy.
Bambi let out a low whistle. “Looks like a model agency bus crashed into a Men’s Wearhouse.”
Then the world pressed down. The air grew thick, heavy, and silent. Every dust mote in the garage froze, hanging suspended in the yellow light of the trouble lamp. The faint night sounds of crickets and distant traffic were utterly erased, replaced by a profound, weighty hum that vibrated in the teeth and bones.
Outside, a silver disc the size of a grain silo settled onto the hayfield beside Jed’s driveway without a sound. It was matte, seamless, and gave back no reflection.
Hatches irised open. Figures emerged, clad in form-fitting grey environmental suits with darkened faceplates. They moved with a terrible, efficient grace, not walking but gliding over the gravel. They ignored the stumbling, transformed agents, who were now cowed into a terrified, beautiful huddle.
Two of the grey suits flowed directly toward the garage door. It dissolved before them, not burning, but simply coming apart into motes of dust that floated away.
One of the figures pointed a slender device. A beam of cool light swept over Essie, Jez, and Bambi. It paused on each of them, ling'ering on their eyes, their flawless skin.
“Three primary assets,” a synthesized voice stated, devoid of all inflection. The beam then fixed on the slab. “One Venusian causality device. Marked for reclamation.”
The other grey suit gestured. The slab levitated from the bench and floated smoothly toward the open hatch.
“You will come,” the first figure said, not as a request, but a simple declaration of fact. The beam from its device widened, enveloping them in a cone of light that felt like chilled honey. Essie’s feet left the ground. She saw Jez and Bambi similarly lifted, floating, powerless.
They were guided out of the garage, across the drive, past the weeping cluster of gorgeous former agents. The hatch of the silver disc awaited, a portal of pure, shadowless white light.
As she was drawn inside, Essie’s last sight of Boone County was Bambi Hicks, floating beside her, giving a timid, dazzling little wave to the empty night.