Chapter 1: The Green Pill
The silence in Lewis’s apartment had become a third person. It sat between them on the thin futon, swollen and awkward. Taran stared at the chipped blue rim of his tea mug, her fingers worrying the frayed edge of her sleeve.
“More tea?” Lewis asked, his voice warm.He was always so warm.It was terrifying.
She shook her head, her long platinum hair a curtain she wished she could hide behind. “Is okay.” The words felt clumsy in her mouth, thick and wrong. She’d practiced in the mirror: Your apartment is very cozy.I like your books.Now, just dumb silence. Her body felt wrong, too, in her tight black shirt and jeans.A child playing dress-up. No curves, just angles.A board.
Lewis was talking about a student, a funny mistake with the word “refrigerator.” She nodded, forcing a smile, but her mind was screaming.He was so handsome. So easy.He could have any Korean girl with perfect skin and a soft, round figure. Why her?A flat-chested Russian girl who couldn’t even order dinner without her phone.
The bathroom.She had to breathe.“Excuse,” she mumbled, standing up too fast. Her knee bumped the low table, sloshing tea into the saucer.“Bathroom. Please.”
“Sure, it’s just down the hall.” He gave her that kind smile, the one that didn’t seem to notice her klutziness.It made it worse.
The bathroom was a tiny, humid closet.She locked the door and leaned against it, eyes squeezed shut. Her reflection in the medicine cabinet mirror was pale, washed out by the harsh light.Small.Insignificant. The confident, bubbly persona she’d crafted for her dating profile felt like a cruel joke. He would get bored.He would see her—the real her—and he would leave.
A frantic ping from her phone.A message from a number she didn’t know. A photo of the club bathroom from last weekend, her looking miserable in the mirror. Then text: Saw you struggling.You want to be unforgettable?This will help.Don’t be weak.
A hollow opened up in her stomach. Below the message, a digital map glowed, placing a pulsing dot right here, right now, in this building’s lobby.A delivery locker number.
Her heart hammered against her ribs.This was insane.Dangerous.Stupid.
But the silence in the other room was worse.
She found the small, generic parcel in the locker, just her apartment number on it.Inside, no note.Just a single, glossy green pill in a plastic bag. It looked like a piece of hard candy, emerald and perfect.Don’t be weak.
She was weak.That was the whole problem. She dry-swallowed it before she could think.It stuck for a second, then dissolved with a faint, herbal bitterness.
For a moment, nothing.Then a spark, deep in her core. Not a spark—a furnace door slamming open. Heat erupted from the center of her chest, a searing bloom that radiated outwards, down her spine, into her hips.She gasped, gripping the edge of the sink. Her knuckles turned white.It wasn’t painful.It was… immense. A pressure, a fullness, a profound and total occupation of her own skin. She watched, stunned, as the reflection began to change.Her black Vans creaked, a sharp, distressed sound. The canvas bulged, the seams whispering then shrieking as her feet widened, toes pressing against the fabric.Her snug shirt rode up, creeping towards her ribs.Except her ribs were… expanding. Her sternum pushed forward, her narrow chest broadening. And then her breasts—her small, barely-there breasts—tightened, hardened, and swelled. They pushed against the black cotton, the fabric stretching taut, the neckline straining.The feeling was heavy, dense, achingly full.
She whimpered, but the sound was wrong.Deeper.Her jeans were next. She felt the denim bite into her thighs, then groan in protest as the muscles there thickened, solidifying into powerful cords. The hips she’d always wished for flared outwards, a sudden, graceful curve that ripped the side seams with a sound like tearing paper. Buttons popped, pinging off the tiled walls.The zipper strained, the teeth parting.She was growing. Upwards.The top of her head moved past the frame of the mirror. The ceiling light glared directly into her eyes, which she realized, with a jolt, were no longer pale blue, but a deeper, stormy grey-green. Her skin, once porcelain, now had a faint, olive-green undertone, like sunlight through a leaf.The transformation settled. The heat receded, leaving behind a thrumming, wire-tight energy.She felt… solid. The shy hunch of her shoulders was gone. Her posture was open, assertive, the muscles in her back and shoulders layered and defined under the ruined shirt. She took a breath, and it was a deep, lung-filling thing that made her chest expand impressively.She looked at the stranger in the mirror. A towering, powerful woman with wild, disheveled blonde hair and a gaze that was hungry and direct. A faint, predatory smile touched her lips.She ran a tongue over them.They felt fuller.
The doorknob turned easily in her hand, the mechanism feeling flimsy.
Lewis was still on the futon, picking up his mug. The scene was frozen, a diorama of his former life.He looked up as she filled the doorway.The mug stopped halfway to his lips.
His eyes traveled slowly, dazedly, from her split shoes, up the powerful legs revealed by the destroyed jeans, over the incredible swell of her hips and the impossible curve of her waist, up to the heavy fullness of her chest straining the black fabric, finally meeting her new, dark eyes. His jaw was slack. His face cycled through pure shock, confusion, and then a dawning, helpless attraction that he visibly fought to control.
“T-Taran?” The name was a stammer, a whisper.She took a step forward. The floorboard creaked under a weight it had never known. Her voice, when it came, was a low, husky purr, her Russian accent thickened into something rich and dangerous.“Lewis.” She said his name like she was tasting it. “Little Lewis.”
She saw him swallow hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing. He opened his mouth, but no sound came out. His eyes were wide, his body rigid, caught between flight and a terrible, fascinated stillness.She cracked her knuckles. The sound in the small, quiet apartment was like bones breaking.His tea mug slipped from his fingers. It hit the floorboards and shattered, a sharp, ceramic explosion that echoed in the new and terrifying silence between them.