Chapter 4: The Professor's Experiment
The ache was a living thing. It pulsed in time with Rygell’s heartbeat, a hollow, yearning throb deep in her core that the dawn’s release had only briefly quieted. By the time she’d driven home, showered—the water beading on strange, resilient skin—and dressed for the day, the human facade was back. Mostly. The emerald tint had faded to a faint, olive undertone, noticeable only in certain lights. Her body had settled into a denser, more powerful version of itself; clothes that had fit loosely last week now strained across her shoulders and thighs. The real change was internal, a constant, low-grade current of need humming just beneath her skin.
She taught her 10 a.m. class on autopilot. Blake’s “Tyger” burned with new, terrifying meaning. She spoke of fearful symmetry, her voice a touch too rough, and her eyes scanned the lecture hall. Lewis wasn’t there. A flicker of annoyance, sharp and possessive, cut through the academic haze. He’d better be sleeping, she thought. He’d better be dreaming of me.
The need for answers, for more of the green fire, outweighed everything. The shady supplement shop was a last resort. First, she needed science.
Cay’s house was a tidy bungalow on the university’s faculty row, all clean lines and potted succulents. Dr. Caylin Rossi, a 28-year-old post-doc in bio-chemical engineering, was the kind of brilliant, quiet woman who lived in the shadow of her own microscope. Rygell had always known Cay looked a little too long in the locker room, had caught the swiftly averted gaze. A latent hunger there, too, carefully buried under lab coats and data sets.
Rygell knocked, the simple action feeling dangerously casual.
The door opened. Cay stood there, blinking in the afternoon light, wearing faded jeans and a worn-out band t-shirt for a group Rygell didn’t recognize. Her dark hair was in a messy bun, pencils stuck through it. She was willowy, almost frail in her leanness.
“Rygell?” Cay’s voice was soft, surprised. “Did we have a meeting? I thought the departmental review was next—”
“No meeting,” Rygell said, smiling. It was her old smile, the one she used before a heavy lift—confident, inviting a shared challenge. “I need a consultant. Off the books. It’s about a… performance enhancer.”
Cay’s cautious curiosity was palpable. She stepped aside. “Okay. Come in. I was just analyzing some chromatograms. It’s a mess in here.”
The living room was indeed a chaos of open journals, stacked binders, and a sleek laptop humming on the coffee table. The air smelled of coffee and ozone from old electronics. Rygell sat on the sofa, feeling it groan softly, and placed her gym bag on the floor.
“What’s the compound?” Cay asked, sitting cross-legged in an armchair, pulling a pencil from her hair. “I’m not an ethicist, but most of that over-the-counter stuff is saline and hope.”
“This one isn’t.” Rygell reached into her bag and pulled out the empty glass bottle. She tossed it to Cay, who caught it with deft hands.
Cay turned it over, her scholar’s eyes missing nothing. “No labeling. Residual crystalline powder… green. That’s unusual. Organic or synthetic dye? Where did you get this?”
“A place downtown. I took the whole bottle.”
Cay’s head snapped up. “The whole—Rygell, that’s insane! You have no idea about dosage, half-life, renal toxicity…”
“I know what it does,” Rygell said, her voice dropping. She held Cay’s gaze. “It changes you. Not just muscles. Everything. It wakes something up.”
A faint blush crept up Cay’s neck. She looked away, fiddling with the bottle. “That’s… pharmacologically implausible. Unless it’s some novel neuro-steroid cocktail. You’d need to run tests. Blood work, MRI…”
“I don’t need tests. I need more.” Rygell stood up. She moved with a new, predatory grace that made the cramped room seem smaller. She walked over to Cay’s chair and knelt before it, putting them eye-to-eye. Cay froze, her breath catching. “And I think you want to know what’s in it as much as I do. Don’t you, Cay? All those secrets in tiny vials… wouldn’t you like to feel one?”
Cay’s lips parted. Her knuckles were white around the bottle. “This is highly inappropriate.”
“It is,” Rygell agreed softly. She leaned in, closing the distance. Her scent, clean sweat and something deeper, like petrichor on hot stone, washed over Cay. “You’ve been looking at me for two years. Look closer.”
She kissed her. It was not gentle. It was a claim, an interrogation. Cay made a small, shocked sound against her mouth, then melted. The pencil clattered to the floor. Her hands came up, trembling, to touch Rygell’s jaw, her neck, feeling the impossible density there.
When Rygell pulled back, Cay’s eyes were wide, dazed. “What are you?” she whispered.
“The first draft,” Rygell breathed. From her bag, she pulled a small, full bottle she’d saved—a twin to the empty one. The liquid inside swirled, emerald and malevolent. “Help me write the next one.”
Cay’s scientific mind warred with a lifetime of suppressed desire. Desire won. She nodded, a quick, frantic motion.
Rygell uncorked the bottle. “Open.”
It was not a request. Cay obeyed, her mouth opening slightly. Rygell tipped the vial. The liquid, thick and syrupy, poured into Cay’s mouth. Cay gagged, tried to pull back, but Rygell’s hand was behind her head, holding her firm.
“Swallow.”
Cay’s throat convulsed. She swallowed, once, twice, her eyes bulging. She pushed at Rygell’s chest, a feeble effort. “Oh, god, it burns—”
Then it hit.
Cay’s back arched violently, throwing her out of the chair. She landed on the rug, convulsing. A guttural, wrenching moan tore from her throat, too loud for her small frame. It was a sound of agony and ecstasy, unraveling.
Her body began to change, but it wasn't the monumental, brute-force transformation Rygell had undergone. This was sleeker, more targeted. Cay’s scrawny limbs filled out with long, defined muscle, not bulky but powerfully athletic, like a sprinter or a climber. Her shoulders broadened, her back reshaping into a taut V. The transformation surged through her torso, her chest swelling, bursting the confines of her band shirt with a soft tear, becoming full and heavy. Her hips flared, her waist nipping in, a deadly, sensual curve.
Her skin flushed, then stabilized into a shade of warm bronze, not green. Her hair darkened, spilling from its bun in a wild, chestnut cascade. Her moans shifted, deepened, becoming roars of raw sensation. She rolled onto her hands and knees, her new body gleaming with a faint sheen of sweat and radiant energy.
Her eyes snapped open. They glowed, not with Rygell’s fierce emerald, but with a fiery, intelligent amber. She stared at Rygell, panting, a predator recognizing its maker.
“What…” Cay’s voice was a marvel, low and rich and full of vibrating power. “What did you do to me?” She looked at her own hands, turning them over, clenching powerful fists.
“I opened the door,” Rygell said, kneeling before her again, captivated. “You walked through.”
Cay moved. It was a blur. She surged forward, knocking Rygell onto her back. The weight of her new form was surprising, pinning Rygell’s heavier build with electric strength. Cay’s mouth found Rygell’s, a kiss that was all teeth and claiming tongue. It was no longer a shy academic kissing her crush; it was a hungry creature tasting its equal, its origin.
Rygell laughed into the kiss, a raw, joyous sound. Her hands gripped Cay’s powerful new back, feeling the muscles play beneath hot skin. The hollowness inside her shrank, soothed by the presence of another who understood.
Later, tangled in the wreckage of the living room rug, surrounded by scattered journals, Cay traced a finger over the residual green vein on Rygell’s bicep. The fury had passed into a sated, buzzing tranquility.
“The compound is self-replicating,” Cay murmured, her scientist’s mind already whirring behind those lambent eyes. “It’s rewriting cellular machinery. I can feel it. We need a mass spectrometer. My lab, after hours.”
Rygell nuzzled into the crook of Cay’s neck, inhaling the new scent of her—ozone, sage, and warm female. “We will.”
“The man from the gym,” Cay said, and it wasn’t a question. “Lewis. He’s part of this.”
Rygell stilled. “He’s mine.”
Cay propped herself up on an elbow, looking down. Her expression held no jealousy, only analytical interest. “He’s a control variable. A baseline human reaction. We’ll need to observe him.” A slow, wicked smile touched her full lips. “Closely.”
Outside, the sun dipped toward the horizon. Across town, Lewis stirred from a sleep plagued by dreams of emerald skin and crushing weight, his body aching in a way that felt like a promise. He had no idea that the equation had just become more complex, that the secret was no longer hers alone.
It was theirs. And their work, their hungry, insatiable work, was just beginning.