Chapter 3: Measurements of Monsters
The moose’s blood was a shocking, steaming scarlet against the pure white snow. Cole knelt, his hands and forearms slick with it, tearing into the raw, warm flesh with a focused intensity that was both terrifying and mesmerizing. He didn’t use a knife. He didn’t need one. His fingers, stronger than any tool, ripped away a thick, glistening strip of meat from the haunch.
He offered the first piece to Liam.
The smell should have been repulsive. Metallic, gamey, primal. But to Liam’s new senses, it was an aroma more compelling than any sizzling burger. His stomach clenched with a need that overrode a lifetime of civilized instinct. He took the meat, his own fingers brushing against Cole’s bloody ones. The contact sent a jolt through him.
He bit into it.
The texture was tough, chewy, but the flavor was a lightning strike of pure vitality. It wasn't about taste; it was about saturation. He could feel the raw energy flooding his system, soothing the frantic, hollow ache that had been consuming him from the inside. He groaned, unable to help himself, and devoured the strip in a few ravenous bites.
Cole watched him, his dark eyes gleaming with a deep, possessive satisfaction. Then he turned back to the carcass and fed himself, his consumption a louder, more brutal process. They ate until the sharpest edge of the hunger was blunted, until their hands and faces were stained and their bodies hummed with a restless, animal heat.
The light was starting to fade again, the brief day surrendering to another long, cold night. They needed shelter.
“There’s an old ranger station,” Liam said, his voice rough. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, leaving a dark smear. “Marked on the map. Should be just over this ridge.”
Cole just nodded, his gaze already scanning the tree line, looking for the path. The decision was made. He stood, his massive frame seeming to draw the remaining light from the clearing. “Let’s go.”
They found it twenty minutes later, a two-story structure hunched against the mountainside like a weary old man. Its white paint was blistered and grey, peeled away in long strips to reveal silvered wood. A heavy, rusted metal door, set under a small, sagging porch, was the only visible entrance.
Cole didn’t hesitate. He didn’t try the handle. He simply put his shoulder to it, a testing push at first. The old lock groaned in protest. Then he drove forward, a single, explosive surge of power.
The sound was a sharp crack, followed by the screech of tearing metal. The doorframe splintered, and the door swung inward, slamming against the inner wall with a crash that echoed through the silent building.
Dust motes danced in the slanted light from the doorway. The air inside was cold and still, smelling of dry rot, old paper, and neglect.
Liam lit the single kerosene lantern they’d salvaged from the cabin. Its flickering flame cast long, dancing shadows that made the empty space feel alive. The main room was a combined office and living quarters. A dusty desk was piled with water-stained logbooks. A moth-eaten blanket was draped over a simple cot. In one corner, tucked away as an afterthought, was a small medical station.
Cole’s eyes locked onto it immediately.
It was a tall, metal cabinet with a glass front. Behind the grimy glass, Liam could make out the shapes of a blood pressure cuff, a stethoscope, and, most intriguingly, a standing scale with a height rod attached.
“No way,” Liam whispered.
Cole was already crossing the room. He wiped the grime from the glass with his sleeve, his movements eager, almost frantic. He pulled the cabinet door open, the hinges screaming in the quiet. He ignored the stethoscope and the cuff. His hands went straight for the scale. It was an old, heavy-duty mechanical type, the kind meant to last forever.
He dragged it out onto the worn wooden floorboards.
“We need real numbers,” Cole said, his voice low and intent. The casual, easy-going bodybuilder was gone, replaced by this obsessed, primal creature of measurement and mass.
Liam’s heart hammered against his ribs. He was afraid. Afraid of the truth those cold, mechanical numbers would tell.
Cole stepped onto the platform first. The needle on the dial swung violently, shuddering past two-fifty, two-eighty, three hundred. It finally settled, quivering.
Three hundred and forty-two pounds.
The number hung in the dusty air, impossible. Cole had been a shredded two-forty before the mountains.
He then stood under the height rod. Liam moved the horizontal arm down, his hand trembling slightly. Cole had to duck. “Seven feet even,” Liam read aloud, the words tasting like ash.
Cole stepped off the scale, his expression unreadable. He gestured for Liam to take his place.
Liam’s boots felt like lead weights as he stepped onto the cold metal platform. The needle jumped, spinning. It slowed, hesitated, and stopped.
Two hundred and ninety-eight pounds.
He was nearly a hundred pounds heavier than his former guide-fit self. Cole moved the height rod. “Six-five,” he said, a note of something like pride in his voice. “You grew three inches.”
Liam stepped off, feeling unmoored. The numbers were a confirmation, a sentence. They were no longer just men feeling different. They were different, quantifiably, undeniably.
His eyes drifted to the desk, to the clutter of old papers. And there it was, half-buried under a collapsed stack of logs. A radio. A heavy, old-fashioned HF unit, with a coiled cord and a chunky microphone. A thick layer of dust coated its surface.
“Cole,” Liam said, his voice barely a whisper.
Cole followed his gaze. He went still. For a long moment, they both just stared at the device, the only tangible link to the world they had left behind.
Cole walked over, his footsteps heavy on the creaking floor. He didn’t pick up the microphone. Instead, he placed a hand on top of the radio, his fingers spanning the casing. He looked at Liam, his eyes reflecting the flickering lantern light.
“Do you want to?” Cole asked. The question was simple, but the weight behind it was immense.
Liam thought about it. He thought about calling for a rescue, about helicopters and men in hazmat suits, about being poked and prodded and turned into lab rats. He thought about going back to a life of pretending, of hiding what he was, what he felt. He looked at Cole, at the raw, terrifying power of him, at the fierce protectiveness in his eyes. He remembered the feeling of his body against his in the cabin, a feeling more real than anything he’d ever known.
“No,” Liam said, the word final. “I don’t.”
A slow, dark smile spread across Cole’s face. It wasn’t a friendly smile. It was a predator’s smile. He wrapped his hand around the microphone cord and pulled. The wire tore from the socket with a pop and a spray of tiny sparks. He dropped the useless microphone onto the desk with a dull thud.
The connection was severed. The choice was made.
Cole moved toward him then, crossing the space in two strides. He didn’t say a word. He simply framed Liam’s face with his huge, still-slightly-bloody hands and kissed him. It was nothing like the frantic, desperate clash in the cabin. This was a claiming. A sealing of a pact. It was deep and slow and devastatingly possessive.
When he broke away, they were both breathing heavily.
“This is who we are now,” Cole rumbled, his forehead resting against Liam’s.
Liam could only nod, his hands gripping Cole’s thick wrists, anchoring himself.
A sharp, cracking sound from above broke the moment.
They both looked up at the low ceiling. Dust sifted down between the floorboards of the second story.
Something was moving up there.
Cole’s body went rigid, his head tilting, listening. His nostrils flared, sampling the air. The possessive lover was gone, replaced once again by the hunter.
“We’re not alone,” he whispered.
The growl that answered from the darkness above was low, guttural, and unmistakably hostile. It was followed by the heavy, deliberate scrape of claws on old floorboards. More than one set.
“Well, shit,” Liam muttered, his voice tight. He flexed his hands, the knuckles cracking like gunshots in the tense silence.
Cole didn’t flinch. A slow, terrifying smile spread across his face, all sharp teeth and primal anticipation. He took a step toward the narrow staircase, his massive body blocking the lantern light. “Stay behind me.”
“Like I could get in front of you,” Liam shot back, the old, easy sarcasm a thin shield for the new fear coiling in his gut. This wasn’t a moose. This sounded like a pack.
A shadow detached itself from the top of the stairs, resolving into the gaunt, powerful shape of a large timber wolf. Its lips were peeled back from yellowed fangs, its eyes reflecting the lantern light with a flat, green glow. Another appeared beside it, and then a third. They were thin, desperate with winter hunger, and they had claimed this place as their den.
The lead wolf took a step down, a low rumble vibrating in its chest. The threat was absolute.
The adrenaline of the threat kicked their bodies into overdrive. They grew significantly. Each grew over a foot taller and 150lbs heavier of pure muscle.
It was not a gradual change. It was a violent, immediate expansion. Liam gasped as a searing heat consumed his frame, his spine crackling as it lengthened. The world dropped away beneath him, the ceiling suddenly feeling crushingly close. His thermal layer and jacket shredded like tissue, falling from his body in tatters as new slabs of dense, rugged muscle erupted across his shoulders, back, and chest. He watched, stunned, as Cole’s form swelled to even more monstrous proportions, his head now brushing the eight-foot ceiling, his shoulders so wide he had to turn sideways on the staircase.
The wolves, moments before confident, faltered. Their aggressive postures wilted into confusion and then outright fear. The lead wolf whined, backing up a step, its tail dropping between its legs.
Cole looked down at his own hands, now the size of small shovels, and then at the cowering animals. He let out a short, sharp laugh that was more a blast of air than sound. “Guess we’re the big bad wolves now.”
He took one more step up, the old wood groaning in agony under his impossible weight. The wolf pack broke, scrambling over each other in a frantic rush to escape through a broken window upstairs. The sound of their panicked flight faded into the night.
Silence returned, thicker and more profound than before. Liam looked at Cole, who now seemed to fill the entire room. He looked down at his own body, a breathtaking, terrifying landscape of new power. The scale in the corner was now comically obsolete.
Cole turned, his movements somehow still fluid despite his staggering size. His eyes, dark and hungry, found Liam’s. The light from the single lantern carved the new, impossible contours of his face.
“Now,” Cole rumbled, his voice so deep it felt like it came from the mountain itself. “Where were we?”
The old scale was a useless relic now, its dial maxed out and trembling well below the truth of their weight. Cole stared at it, then at his own hands, which could now completely envelop Liam’s head. A low, frustrated sound rumbled in his chest. “Can’t even measure this.”
“Does it matter?” Liam’s voice was a stranger’s, deeper, the vibration of it feeling new in his own throat. He looked at the torn strips of his clothing littering the floor. “The numbers wouldn’t mean anything anyway.”
Cole’s gaze snapped to him, sharp and hungry. “I need to know. I need to see it.” He strode to the medical cabinet, its glass front already cracked from his earlier enthusiasm. He ripped the door completely off its hinges and tossed it aside with a metallic clatter. He grabbed the blood pressure cuff.
He tried to wrap the fabric sleeve around his own bicep. It wouldn’t meet. The Velcro couldn’t hope to touch its other side. He grunted, pulling it taut, the fabric straining until the seams split with a dry rip. He let the destroyed cuff fall to the floor.
“See?” Liam said, a weird laugh caught in his chest. It was horrifying and hilarious. They were off the charts in every literal sense.
Cole turned on him, his eyes blazing with that obsessive light. “You.” He grabbed the stethoscope from the cabinet. “Heart.” He moved toward Liam, the instrument looking like a toy in his massive hand.
Liam stood his ground, his pulse hammering, a frantic drumbeat against his ribs. Cole placed the cold disc of the stethoscope against Liam’s chest, right over the pounding rhythm. He leaned in, his ear finding the earpieces.
He listened. His eyes widened.
“What?” Liam asked, his breath catching. “What is it?”
Cole straightened up slowly, his expression one of pure, unadulterated wonder. “It’s… slow. Really slow. And powerful. Like a hammer on an anvil.” He shoved the stethoscope at Liam. “You. Listen to mine.”
Liam fumbled with the device, his own fingers feeling clumsy. He pressed the disc against Cole’s chest, against the dense, hot wall of muscle and skin. He leaned in. The sound that filled his ears wasn’t the familiar lub-dub. It was a deep, resonant thump… thump… thump, like the heartbeat of the mountain itself, steady and immense and terrifyingly strong.
He dropped the stethoscope. It clattered on the floorboards between them. The silence it left behind was absolute.
They stared at each other, two giants in a tiny, broken room, the evidence of their humanity lying in pieces at their feet. There were no more numbers that could contain them. No charts or scales. There was only this new, terrifying physical truth.
And the electric charge that had been building between them since the first change snapped.
Cole closed the distance in one step. He didn’t kiss Liam. He framed his face again, his thumbs stroking the rough stubble on Liam’s jaw. “I don’t need a machine to measure you,” he growled, his voice so low it was almost subsonic. “I can feel it. All of it.”
His hands slid down, mapping the new, brutal architecture of Liam’s shoulders, the insane width of his back, the dense ridges of his abdomen. It was a living survey, a claim staked with touch. Liam shuddered, his own hands coming up to grip Cole’s arms, feeling the hard, coiled power beneath the skin.
“I know,” Liam breathed, his forehead falling against Cole’s collarbone. The submission wasn’t forced. It was a relief. It was an answer. “I feel it too.”
That was all the permission Cole needed.
He backed Liam against the nearest wall, the logs groaning in protest at the transferred weight. This wasn’t like the frantic coupling in the cabin or the intense, slow claiming by the radio. This was something else entirely. It was a consummation of their new forms, a brutal, beautiful collision of impossible strength.
Cole’s hands tore away the last remnants of Liam’s pants, the fabric offering no more resistance than cobwebs. His own followed, shredded and discarded. The cold air hit their heated skin, but it was a fleeting sensation, utterly irrelevant.
When Cole entered him, it was with a single, devastating thrust that stole the air from Liam’s lungs. It was too much. It was everything. A broken cry was torn from Liam’s throat, a sound of overwhelming pleasure-pain that echoed in the small space. He locked his legs around Cole’s waist, his heels digging into the immense muscles of his lower back, anchoring himself as the world fractured.
Cole set a punishing, deep rhythm, each drive a testament to their transformed bodies. The wall behind Liam shuddered with every impact, dust and splinters raining down around them. There were no words now, only ragged breaths, guttural groans, and the slick, rhythmic sound of their joining.
Liam’s hands scrabbled against Cole’s back, his blunt nails leaving red trails over the impossibly dense muscle. He was being unmade, atom by atom, and rebuilt into something that belonged only to this, only to Cole. The pleasure was a seismic event, building from a deep, internal tremor into a full-body cataclysm.
Cole’s rhythm faltered, his own control shattering. He buried his face in Liam’s neck, his teeth grazing the tendon there in a final, possessive threat. His hips stuttered, driving deep, and he roared, a raw, animal sound of release that seemed to shake the very foundations of the station.
The sensation of Cole pulsing inside him was the trigger. Liam’s vision whited out. His own climax ripped through him, violent and silent, a tidal wave of sensation that left him boneless and shuddering, held upright only by Cole’s immense strength and the protesting wall.
For a long time, the only sound was their harsh, slowing breaths steaming in the cold air. Cole’s weight was a solid, crushing comfort, pinning Liam to the wall. He nuzzled into Liam’s hair, his breathing gradually easing.
Liam’s arms, feeling like they weighed a thousand pounds each, came up to wrap around Cole’s neck. He held on, his face buried in the heat of Cole’s skin, breathing him in. The wild, metallic scent of the moose’s blood was still there, mixed with the pure, potent smell of their sweat and sex.
Cole finally shifted, pulling back just enough to look at Liam’s face. His eyes were dark, sated, the frantic hunger replaced by a deep, unsettling peace. He didn’t speak. He didn’t need to.
The silence between them was heavier than the snow outside, filled with the echo of what they’d just done and the terrifying certainty of what they were becoming.
The silence between them was heavier than the snow outside, filled with the echo of what they’d just done and the terrifying certainty of what they were becoming.
Cole finally eased back, his breathing a steady rumble against Liam’s chest. “We should…” He gestured vaguely with one massive hand toward the dark hallway leading deeper into the station. “Look around.”
“For what?” Liam’s voice was rough, his throat dry. He flexed his hands, still marveling at their new size and strength. “More things to break?”
“Supplies. Answers. I don’t know.” Cole’s gaze was already scanning the shadows beyond their lantern’s pool of light. “Maybe someone else was here before us. Maybe they… knew about this.”
A cold dread, separate from the winter chill, trickled down Liam’s spine. The idea that they weren’t the first was somehow more frightening than being alone in this. He nodded slowly, pushing away from the wall. His legs felt strangely steady, powerful. “Okay. Let’s explore further.”
The hallway was narrow, forcing Cole to turn sideways. His broad shoulders scraped against both walls, leaving trails in the dust and peeling paint. The floorboards protested under their combined weight, each creak a sharp complaint in the oppressive quiet.
Liam held the lantern high, its flickering light pushing back the darkness room by room. The first door revealed a small bunkroom with two rust-framed cots, the thin mattresses stained and chewed by rodents. Nothing useful.
The next was a storage closet, mostly empty save for a few rusted cans of beans and a collapsed shelf. Cole picked up a can, his fingers completely enclosing it. He squeezed. The metal gave way with a wet pop, the contents oozing between his fingers.
“Still hungry?” Liam asked, a weak attempt at their old banter.
Cole looked at the mush in his hand, then at Liam. “Not for that.” He dropped the ruined can. It clattered loudly in the silence. “This is a dead end.”
They moved toward the last door at the end of the hall. It was heavier than the others, made of solid wood reinforced with metal bands. A stout padlock hung from the latch, old but intact.
Cole reached for it.
“Whoa, hold on,” Liam said, catching his wrist. The sheer density of Cole’s forearm was still a shock. “Let me try something first.” He rummaged in the pocket of his torn snow pants, pulling out his multi-tool. The once-substantial tool now looked ridiculously small in his palm.
He fiddled with the lock for a moment, the tiny pick seeming futile. “It’s no use. I can’t even feel the tumblers.”
A slow, predatory smile spread across Cole’s face. He gently moved Liam aside. “My turn.” He didn’t punch the lock. He simply wrapped his hand around the entire mechanism—lock, latch, and a section of the metal band—and clenched.
There was no dramatic roar, just the sharp, splintering crack of wood and the screech of metal being wrenched from its moorings. The entire assembly came away in his hand. He tossed it over his shoulder like a piece of trash. It landed with a heavy thud in the hallway.
He pushed the door open.
This room was different. Colder. The air was still and carried a faint, chemical smell. The lantern light revealed a space that was part office, part lab. A large metal desk was bolted to the floor, its surface clear except for a thick, leather-bound journal. On a metal shelving unit stood rows of glass jars, their contents obscured by dust.
But it was the walls that made Liam’s breath catch.
They were covered. Not in maps or posters, but in sketches. Dozens of them, pinned haphazardly to the wooden panels. They were drawn in charcoal and pencil, detailed and frenzied. They depicted figures—massive, distorted human forms caught in moments of violent transformation. Muscles bulged in impossible proportions, spines arched, faces contorted in agony or ecstasy.
One drawing, larger and more detailed than the rest, showed two figures. One was a giant of sheer, overwhelming bulk. The other was slightly smaller, but denser, more feral-looking. They were locked in a brutal embrace, their bodies intertwined.
It was them.
“What the hell is this?” Liam whispered, stepping closer. His heart hammered against his ribs, a frantic drumbeat of denial. He reached out, his fingers hovering over the paper. The likeness was uncanny, down to the specific sweep of Cole’s shoulders and the new, rugged density of his own frame.
Cole was silent, his eyes devouring the images. He moved to the shelves, brushing dust from the jars. Inside one, suspended in cloudy liquid, was a large, dark organ. It wasn’t a heart or a liver. It was riddled with strange, fibrous tendrils that pulsed with a faint, internal light.
Another jar held what looked like a section of skin, but it was thick and leathery, covered in a fine, downy hair.
“Someone was studying this,” Cole said, his voice low and awed. He picked up the leather-bound journal from the desk. The cover was embossed with a symbol he didn’t recognize: a stylized helix intertwined with a mountain peak. He opened it.
The pages were filled with dense, frantic handwriting, interspersed with more sketches and complex chemical formulae. His eyes, now capable of absorbing information with frightening speed, scanned the pages.
“It’s a log,” he murmured, turning the pages. “He was a ranger. A biologist. He found something up here. A mineral deposit in a cave system. He thought it was a new energy source.” Cole’s brow furrowed. “He exposed himself to it. Called it the ‘Catalyst.’”
Liam came to stand beside him, reading over his shoulder. The words jumped out at him. Accelerated cellular mitosis. Hyper-dense myofibril generation. Structural bone reformation. Primal instinct override.
“It changed him,” Liam said, the pieces clicking into a horrifying puzzle. “He started to… change. Like us.”
Cole flipped to the last few entries. The writing became more erratic, slanted and desperate. The hunger is constant. The need for biomass is immense. The change seeks symmetry. A counterpart. It pulls from the environment, from those closest…
Cole’s head snapped up, his eyes locking with Liam’s. The truth was a physical blow.
“It’s contagious,” Cole breathed. “Not a disease. A… resonance. I got it from being near the source. And you…” He looked at Liam, a devastating understanding in his gaze. “You got it from me.”
The journal’s final entry was a single sentence, scrawled in what looked like charcoal: I am going back to the source. It is the only thing that can sate me now.
A violent shudder ran through Cole’s body. He dropped the journal as if it had burned him. His knuckles were white, his breath coming in short, sharp gusts. The hunger was back in his eyes, a ravenous fire that had just been fed a new kind of fuel.
“The cave,” he growled, the words distorted. He looked toward the station’s front door, toward the mountain looming in the darkness. “I can feel it. It’s… calling.”
Liam felt it too. A low, magnetic pull in the pit of his stomach, a hum in his blood that aligned with the direction Cole was facing. It wasn’t a sound. It was a direction. A compulsion.
Cole took a step toward the door, then another. His entire body was tensed, a bowstring drawn taut. He was fighting it, and he was losing.
“Cole, wait,” Liam said, his voice tight. “We don’t know what’s up there.”
Cole stopped at the shattered doorway, his immense frame blocking out the night. He turned back, his eyes glowing with that feral light. The storm had passed, leaving a sky of brutal, cold stars.
“We’re going to find out,” he said. It wasn’t a suggestion. It was a destiny.
He stepped out into the snow.
Liam stood for a moment in the ruined lab, surrounded by the ghosts of another man’s transformation. He looked at the drawing of the two figures on the wall, then down at his own powerful, alien hands. There were no more choices left to make. The path was clear.
He grabbed the journal from the floor and followed Cole out into the freezing night. The pull was irresistible now, a siren song etched into his very cells. Their footsteps crunched in the deep snow, two giants walking into the heart of the mountain, leaving the broken world behind.