Chapter 2: 'Morning Wood'
Jane woke to a pressure against her thigh that was foreign and absolute. The gray light of dawn outlined the unfamiliar clutter of the living room. Amy was a warm weight against her side, one arm flung across Jane’s waist. And nestled in the space between them, a dense, heavy heat.
She lay perfectly still, barely breathing. The memory of the previous night crashed over her—the shot, the hum, standing naked before Amy. Now, in the semi-darkness, the reality of it was pressed against her best friend’s leg. It felt… integrated. Not like an attached prop, but a fundamental part of her anatomical structure, still semi-turgid and pulsing with a low, metabolic warmth.
Carefully, she tried to shift away. The movement caused a shift in the weight and Amy stirred, mumbling in her sleep. Her hips pressed back, a reflexive, sleepy nuzzle into the warmth. Jane froze. A jolt, sharp and visceral, shot through the new nerve endings. It wasn’t entirely unpleasant, which was the most horrifying part. It was just intense. A direct line of sensation.
Amy’s eyes fluttered open. Her gaze was unfocused at first, then it dropped to where their bodies connected. Her brow furrowed in sleep-fogged confusion. Then, clarity. Her eyes widened, but not with the shock Jane expected. It was a dawning, electric comprehension.
“Oh,” Amy whispered, the sound loud in the silent room. She didn’t pull away. Her body went still, but alert, like a hunter who’d stumbled upon something extraordinary.
“Amy, I—” Jane’s voice was a ragged scrape.
“Shhh.” Amy’s hand, which had been resting on Jane’s hip, slowly moved. Her fingertips traced the line of Jane’s pelvic bone, down through the coarse blondehair until they brushed against the base of the shaft. Jane flinched, a full-body shudder. “Just… let me see.”
It wasn’t a request. It was a statement of pure, unwavering curiosity. Amy pushed herself up on one elbow, the blanket pooling around her waist. Her eyes roamed over Jane’s body in the cool morning light—the sculpted muscles of the torso, the dramatic V-taper leading down to this central, undeniable fact.
Her touch was clinical, at first. Measuring. She wrapped her fingers around the base, her thumb testing the firmness. “It’s warm,” she murmured, more to herself than to Jane. “Really warm. Like a heating pad.”
Jane squeezed her eyes shut, trembling. Every point of contact was a laser focus of sensation. She was a specimen under examination.
“Look at me,” Amy said, her voice soft but firm.
Jane opened her eyes. Amy’s expression was utterly captivated. There was no revulsion, only a deep, sparkling fascination. She began to move her hand, a slow, tentative pump. The friction was… astronomical. Jane gasped, her head falling back against the couch cushion. Her own hands clenched into fists at her sides.
“Does that feel good?” Amy asked, her tone analytical, like a scientist recording data.
“I don’t… I don’t know what it feels like,” Jane groaned. It was a storm of input—pressure, texture, heat, a building tension that was entirely new. “It’s just… a lot.”
Amy nodded, absorbing this. Her pace increased slightly. She watched Jane’s face, studying the reactions. The flush spreading across her chest, the parting of her lips, the way her abdomen clenched. “It’s responding,” she observed, a note of triumph in her voice. “The architecture works.”
The tension coiled tighter, a spring winding deep within her core. The sensations began to localize, focusing into a tight, urgent knot. “Amy, stop,” Jane pleaded, though her body arched upward, betraying her. “I think… I think something’s going to happen.”
Amy’s eyes gleamed. “Let it.”
It was too late to stop. The coil snapped. It wasn’t the gentle wave from before; this was a seismic event. Jane cried out, her back bowing off the couch as a powerful, rhythmic convulsion took over. It was raw, almost violent in its intensity, a systems-level purge that left her panting and slick with sweat. For a moment, there was only the sound of her ragged breathing and the faint, wet sound of Amy’s hand stilling.
Amy slowly withdrew her hand, holding it up as if inspecting a rare mineral. Her fingers were glistening. She looked from her hand back to Jane’s spent body, a slow smile spreading across her face. “Well,” she said, her voice dripping with awe. “That’s a hell of an onboarding process.”
Shame washed over Jane, cold and immediate. She scrambled off the couch, snatching the discarded blanket to cover herself. The fabric felt abrasive. “Don’t,” she whispered, backing away towards the hallway. “Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?” Amy asked, leaning back on the couch, completely unabashed. “Like you’re the most interesting thing that’s ever happened? Because you are, Janie. This isn’t a side effect. This is the effect.”
Jane fled to the bathroom, locking the door behind her. She turned on the shower, not to get in, but to drown out the noise in her head. She stared at her reflection in the mirror. Her face was flushed, her hair wild. But her body… her body was a testament to something else. The muscularity was more defined in the harsh fluorescent light. And below, the evidence of what had just happened was still present, soft now but undeniably there. A permanent fixture.
The shame began to curdle into something else—a low, simmering anger. They’d done this. NexGen. This ‘stabilization’ was just another layer of the experiment. She wasn’t a patient; she was a laboratory.
She pulled on a robe and marched back into the living room. Amy was on her laptop, the glow of the screen illuminating her intent face.
“I’m not going back,” Jane announced, her voice trembling with a new resolve.
Amy didn’t look up. “Yeah, you are.”
“What? Why? Look at what they did!”
“Exactly,” Amy said, finally turning the laptop around. On the screen was a sleek, professional dashboard. “Phase Two compensation just hit your account. Look at that number, Jane. Really look at it.”
Jane looked. The number was obscene. It was ‘never-work-another-day-in-your-life’ money. It was ‘buy-a-whole-new-identity’ money.
“They own you,” Amy said bluntly. “But they pay really, really well. And besides,” she added, her grin returning, “you wanna see what Phase Three does? I’m kind of invested now.”
Jane’s anger faltered, undermined by the staggering figure on the screen and the terrifying, intriguing look in her friend’s eyes. The money was a cage, but it was gilded in possibility. And Amy’s fascination was a current she couldn’t fight. She was adrift in a new world, and Amy was the only one who seemed to have a map.
She sank onto the arm of the couch, the fight draining out of her. The phantom sensation of Amy’s hand still lingered on her skin, a brand.
“It’s not going to shrink, is it?” Jane asked softly, staring at the floor.
Amy snapped the laptop shut. “Honey, after that performance? I don’t think so. I think this is just the starting line.” She stood up and stretched, her tattoos rippling. “Now come on. You’ve gotta be starving. My treat. We’ll get pancakes. You need the carbs.”
Jane followed her to the door, the weight between her legs a constant, swinging reminder with every step. It felt less like a deformity and more like a new center of gravity. Amy held the door open, her eyes sweeping over Jane’s robe-clad form with a possessiveness that was both unsettling and, Jane had to admit, the only solid thing she had to hold onto. The world outside the apartment seemed vast and threatening. In here, with Amy, it was just a very strange, very well-funded new reality.
In here, with Amy, it was just a very strange, very well-funded new reality. That reality, over the next week, involved a lot of sweatpants and a relentless, quiet experimentation. Jane’s body was a puzzle they were solving together, a new instrument she was learning to play, often badly and with startling volume.
“The sensitivity is just unfair,” Jane groaned one evening, slumped on her bed after another overwhelming, accidental climax triggered by the seam of her jeans.
Amy, perched on the edge of the desk, just smirked. “It’s calibration. Your hardware’s brand new. The software’s catching up.” She pushed off the desk and knelt on the floor beside the bed, her eyes level with Jane’s waist. “We should map it. Systematically.”
Jane’s heart hammered against her ribs. “Map it.”
“Yeah. Like a sensitivity chart. What works, what’s too much.” Amy’s fingers hooked into the waistband of Jane’s sweats. “For science. And for, you know, not having you scream in the produce aisle.”
The consent hung in the air, unspoken but thick. Jane gave a tight, nervous nod. Amy pulled the fabric down, the cool air of the room a shock against Jane’s skin. Amy didn’t touch her immediately. She just looked, her head tilted, an artist assessing a new medium.
“It’s actually kind of beautiful,” Amy murmured, not looking up. “The form is… perfect. Not like porn. Like a sculpture.”
Jane made a sound that was half-laugh, half-sob. “Thanks?”
Then Amy leaned in. Her breath was warm first, a ghost of contact that made every nerve stand on end. When her mouth made contact, it wasn’t where Jane expected. Amy bypassed the shaft completely, her lips finding the small, swollen nub of sensitive tissue just above the base—the familiar anchor point in this unfamiliar geography.
Jane’s back arched off the bed, a sharp gasp ripped from her throat. It was a different key of sensation, higher-pitched and devastatingly precise. Amy sucked gently, experimentally, and Jane’s vision whited out at the edges. Her hands flew to Amy’s head, not to push her away, but to anchor herself, her fingers tangling in the colorful strands of her friend’s hair.
She pulled, maybe too hard. Amy moaned in approval, the vibration traveling straight into Jane’s core. The rhythm was slow, deliberate, and utterly consuming. Jane could only ride the sensation, her hips moving of their own accord, her breaths coming in short, punched-out whimpers. This wasn’t the chaotic eruption from the couch; this was a targeted demolition, wave after wave of pleasure so intense it bordered on pain. When it finally crested, it was a silent, shaking collapse, leaving her liquefied and gasping.
Amy rested her cheek on Jane’s thigh, her own breathing uneven. “Okay,” she puffed, a grin in her voice. “Chart that spot in permanent marker. Ground zero.”
The next morning, Jane woke alone. A note from Amy was stuck to the coffee maker: Gone to Sam’s for design brunch. Back by 3. Don’t break anything. Jane smiled weakly, making coffee. The apartment felt different without Amy’s charged energy—quieter, heavier. Her body felt used, but in a settled way. The phantom weight between her legs was just… part of the landscape now.
She was standing in the kitchen in just an old t-shirt, sipping coffee and staring at the staggering balance on her banking app, when a key turned in the front door.
She assumed it was Amy, back early. “Forget your portfolio?” she called out, not turning around.
The footsteps in the hallway were heavier. “Amy?” a male voice asked.
Jane froze. The coffee mug slipped from her hand, exploding on the tile floor in a spray of brown liquid and ceramic shards. Frank, Amy’s occasionally-on-again boyfriend, stood at the edge of the living room, holding a set of spare keys. His eyes, wide and confused, scanned her: the muscled shoulders, the defined arms, the shirt that ended mid-thigh.
Then his gaze dropped lower, and stuck. The shirt was thin cotton, and the morning light from the window was unforgiving. It left absolutely nothing to the imagination. The shape was unmistakable, a clear, soft outline against the fabric.
Frank’s face underwent a rapid, seismic shift. Confusion crystallized into stark, uncomprehending shock. His jaw went slack. He looked at Jane’s face, then down again, then back up, as if trying to solve an impossible optical illusion. The keys fell from his hand with a dull jangle.
“Jane?” he whispered, the name a question and an accusation. “What the… what the fuck?”
He took an involuntary step backward, his shoulder thudding into the doorframe. The disgust in his eyes was immediate and physical, a reflexive curl of his lip. There was no fascination there, no scientific curiosity. Only a profound, bedrock-level wrongness. He looked at her like she was something that had crawled out of a drain.
In that moment, the money in the bank account meant nothing. The scientific marvel of her transformation meant nothing. All that existed was the brutal, simple truth in Frank’s horrified expression. The world outside the apartment wasn’t just vast and threatening. It was irreconcilable. And it had just walked through the door.
The silence in the wake of the shattering mug stretched into something dense and fragile. Frank’s eyes were locked on the revealed shape beneath the thin cotton, his face a canvas of revulsion trying to process the impossible. Jane stood frozen, the cold coffee seeping into her bare feet, a pathetic counterpoint to the heat of her humiliation.
“What did you do?” Frank finally choked out, his voice low and粗糙. He wasn’t asking about the trial. He was asking about a fundamental violation of nature.
A defensive anger, cold and sharp, cut through Jane’s shame. This was her apartment. Her body. “What does it look like?” she shot back, her voice tighter than she intended. She forced her shoulders back, the movement making the shirt tug across her chest. “Amy’s not here.”
His gaze flickered from the space between her legs to her face, and she saw the calculation begin, the slow reassessment of the woman he thought he knew. The disgust was still there, but now it was tangled with a brute, uncomfortable curiosity. He was a big guy, a gym rat who measured his world in plates and reps, and his eyes inevitably scanned the new definition in her arms, the stubborn set of her jaw.
“She said you were sick,” he muttered, taking a hesitant step forward, his own physique suddenly posed, a silent challenge. “This isn’t sick. This is… something else.”
“It’s none of your business.” Jane held her ground, the tile cold under her soles. The phantom weight Amy had mapped so carefully now felt like an anchor, rooting her to the spot.
Frank let out a short, humorless laugh. “You’re in my girlfriend’s apartment with… that… hanging out. I’d say it’s my business.” He was closer now, close enough for her to smell the cheap beer on his breath from the night before. The invasion of his presence was stifling.
His eyes dropped again, and this time the revulsion was edged with something darker, more speculative. A predator sizing up changed prey. “How does that even work?”
The question hung in the air, vulgar and inevitable. Jane felt a dangerous thrill mix with the fear. The same reckless impulse that made her let Amy conduct her “experiments” now coiled in her gut. He saw her as a freak. Why not show him how much of one she could be?
“Why don’t you find out?” she heard herself say, the words leaving her mouth before her brain could catch up.
Frank stared, stunned into silence. The power shift was instantaneous and electric. His confusion was a tangible thing. He glanced toward the door, then back at her, his curiosity clearly warring with every instinct. The silence stretched, thick with unspoken threat and a perverse invitation.
Then, with a grunt that was more confusion than consent, he reached out. His hand was calloused, rough against the soft skin of her inner thigh as he pushed the hem of the t-shirt up. He stared at what was revealed, his breath catching. It was a purely clinical, comparisonthere, his own bulk making her seem deceptively compact.
“It’s… smaller,” he mumbled, almost to himself. A statement of fact, not a taunt. He was measuring, his own anatomy the obvious yardstick.
His other hand came up to her bicep, his fingers pressing into the firm muscle there. She didn’t flinch. He squeezed, testing, and she felt the drug-born density resist him completely. A frown creased his forehead. He looked from the defined strength in her arm to the smaller, unfamiliar anatomy below, then back to her face, his expression a muddle of confusionand a dawning, competitive unease.
The math wasn’t adding up for him. The pieces didn’t fit the person he thought stood before him. He was still holding her arm, his grip tightening unconsciously.
Without a word, Jane brought her hand up and wrapped it around his wrist. She didn’t shove, just applied steady, increasing pressure. His eyes widened as he felt the unyielding force, his own grip weakening, his fingers being peeled away from her arm without any apparent effort on her part.
A soft, baffled breath escaped him. "Jesus."
He didn’t pull away. Instead, a different kind of tension took over, charged and blunt. The scientific curiosity was gone, replaced by a raw, physical challenge. It was clumsy and aggressive, a transaction of grinding friction and sharp breaths in the quiet kitchen. He was trying to dominate a puzzle he couldn't solve, and she was a passive, defiant witness to his confusion.
It was over quickly, a perfunctory release that left him leaning against the counter, breathing heavily, avoiding her eyes. The victorious expression he might have worn was absent, replaced by a troubled frown. He adjusted his clothes, the motion jerky.
He finally looked at her, his gaze sweeping over her body one last time, lingering on the arms that had so easily removed his hand. He shook his head slowly, a quiet, muttered sentence slipping out as he turned to leave. "Wouldn't want to arm-wrestle you, that's for fucking sure."