Chapter 5: The Accident
The lab hummed with the low, constant whine of cooling fans, a sound Cay had long since stopped hearing. Fluorescent lights flickered overhead, casting a sterile pallor across the rows of glass vials and the heavy steel machinery that lined the counters. She sat perched on a stool before her workstation, a pipette balanced between her fingers, her eyes narrowed at the translucent solution suspended in a test tube.
Four years of graduate work, and this was the night it all came together. Her thesis committee had all but written her off, calling her approach to gene splicing ambitious to the point of folly. But she could see it now, the sequence coded in the faintly glowing liquid, the solution that would bind and rewrite the very instructions of cellular growth. If it worked, the applications would be boundless. Tissue regeneration, metabolic enhancement, even physical augmentation, all of it folded into a single elegant compound.
A soft smile touched her lips. Let them underestimate her.
She reached for the vial of concentrated serum, the one she had synthesized over three sleepless weeks. Her breath fogged the glass as she examined it, tilting it one way then another, watching the way the emerald liquid caught the light. She had tested it on cell cultures, on lab mice, on everything short of a living human subject. The results had been extraordinary. The cells had multiplied, strengthened, taken on a resilience that defied natural biology.
Her hand was steady as she fitted the vial into the injection apparatus, calibrating the flow rate with practiced precision. A distant rumble of thunder rattled the windows, and she glanced up at the dark glass, at the rain-streaked blur of the Seattle night beyond. She should have gone home hours ago. But the data was almost complete, and the opportunity was too perfect to abandon.
The lights flickered, more violently this time. The hum of the equipment stuttered, pitched, and came back. Cay frowned, glanced at the voltage regulator, and was about to adjust it when the whole room plunged into darkness.
For a heartbeat, absolute silence. Then the backup generators kicked in with a grinding roar, and the lights flared to life with a blinding, bluish intensity. Cay shielded her eyes, disoriented, and in that instant she heard it, a sharp crack like a whip, followed by the shatter of glass.
The vial had burst.
The concentrated serum, four years of painstaking work concentrated into a single volatile solution, exploded outward in a fine mist. Cay had no time to react, no time to turn away. The spray caught her across the face and neck, soaked through the thin cotton of her lab coat, and soaked into the skin of her hands and forearms.
At first, nothing. She stood frozen, staring at the broken glass scattered across the counter, at the green-tinged droplets beading on the stainless steel. A cold certainty settled into her stomach. Then the heat began.
It started in her palms, a prickling, itching warmth that raced up her arms and across her chest with alarming speed. The sensation spread through her veins like liquid fire, and she gasped, pressing a hand to her sternum. Her heartbeat slammed against her ribs, a wild, frantic drum. The lab tilted around her, and she gripped the edge of the counter for support.
The floor rushed up to meet her. Or was she being pulled down? A wave of dizziness crashed over her, and her joints began to pop and crack, an awful grinding sound like stones being ground together. She opened her mouth to scream, but only a low, strangled growl escaped.
Lightning erupted behind her eyes. Her bones were lengthening, she could feel them strain and stretch beneath her skin, her spine arching painfully as her height began to climb. The seams of her lab coat split with a sound like tearing cloth, and her blouse strained across her chest as the muscle beneath it swelled, thickening and bulging with an impossible rapidity. Fabric tore at her shoulders, down her sides, the thin cotton giving way like paper.
Her skirt followed a moment later, the fabric ripping up the thigh as her legs grew thick and heavy, powerful muscles bunching beneath skin that was beginning to darken, to shift, to take on a deep, rich emerald hue.
Cay stared at her hands, at the green spreading across the backs of them, at the way her fingers had lengthened and broadened, at the knuckles that had become solid, thick plates of bone. She tried to breathe, tried to force air into lungs that suddenly felt too small, and heard the rasp of her own voice, deeper now, rougher.
"What... what is happening to me?"
The words came out as a guttural growl, barely recognizable as her own. She staggered forward, knocking over a rack of test tubes, and caught a glimpse of herself in the glass door of the supply cabinet.
The reflection that stared back at her was monstrous.
She towered over the cabinet, easily seven feet tall and still growing. Her hair had come loose from its bun, spilling in a wild cascade of bronze down her shoulders. Her face, her own familiar face, was tinged with green, her jaw broader, her cheekbones higher, her emerald eyes burning with a feral intensity. The tattered remains of her blouse hung open across a chest of swollen, powerful muscle, and her thighs, thick as tree trunks, strained the shredded fabric of her skirt.
She reached out, hesitant, and pressed her palm against the glass. The reflection mirrored her. Her fingers, broad and green, left a faint smear on the surface.
"That's not me," she breathed. The voice that answered was low and resonant. It rumbled in her chest like the approach of thunder. "That can't be me."
But it was. The heat that had run through her veins had settled into her bones, become a part of her, and she could feel the change in every fiber of her being. The power that coiled in her new muscles was intoxicating, terrifying. She flexed a hand, watched the tendons shift beneath the green skin, and felt a surge of something that was almost pleasure.
The lights flickered again, and she turned from the glass. The lab, once so familiar, now seemed small and fragile around her. She could reach out and touch both walls at once if she chose. She could lift the steel table with one hand.
A slow, possessive smile spread across her green lips. The scientist in her should have been horrified, should have scrambled for a notebook, for a sample of the serum that had done this to her. But something else had awakened, something primal and patient and hungry. It looked out through her eyes and saw the world as prey.
Her voice, when she spoke again, was a low, rumbling purr.
"Well now. This is going to be interesting."