Viridian Nova Page 6

  Sarah snapped her fingers. “Okay! How far along is the omnipathogen?”

  “It’s pretty close, they’re just going to do some testing on a range of...subjects...” Dr. Bowers beamed, his hairlip straining slightly. When he smiled, it was hard to notice. His eyes, which were a rich sea green, sparkled as he nodded slightly. “I just take you as a sample, then stow you in long term storage. That could work!”

  Sarah pumped her fist, then lifted her hand up. “High five!”

  Dr. Bowers looked utterly flummoxed, then remembered what a high five was and lifted his hand to tentatively tap his palm against hers. Sarah, remembering, jerked her hand back and clapped it behind her back. “Wait, my skin has a contact aphrodisiac!” She yelped. Dr. Bowers jerked his hand back and stumbled against the wall.

  “It what !?”

  Sarah grinned, her head spines retracting hard against her head. “Yeaaahhh,” she said.

  Dr. Bowers frowned. “Let me get my sampler,” he said, turning around and rummaging around in his hazard suit. Sarah rubbed her palm along her shoulder, looking aside. Of course, touching herself didn’t make her horny – but licking herself had. Maybe Dr. Bowers could be fine if he just touched her and refrained from licking her? A pang struck her. Like a physical blow. It radiated out from the contact point on her spine, burning outwards. It was a need to be hugged . To just be picked up and squeezed in big strong arms. Or even tiny weak arms. Just. Being hugged please.

  Dr. Bowers, instead of hugging her, held out the sampler he had packed. It was a small multipurpose tool for general sample collection and analysis and it looked almost exactly like the design used by a speculative fiction show that had been popular right around the time it had been first designed – then never changed, no matter how many centuries spanned the time between then and now. Humans were funny like that. The extendable baton that was used to collect potentially dangerous samples prodded against Sarah’s cheek. She instinctively batted at it. “Nyah!” she said.

  “All right,” Dr. Bowers said, looking at the result. “This...” His brow furrowed. “Damn. I’m going to need a lab to fully determine the molecular and chemical composition of this stuff you’re secreting. I’m getting multiple chemical signature that I don’t think can be produced without some really serious metabolic trickery.”

  “Like...” Sarah bit her lower lip. “Okay, like, how tricky are we talking here? Are we talking nanomachines or are we talking...” She trailed off as Dr. Bowers took out the dosimeter attachment on his sampler and held it out towards her face, then began to swing it slowly down her throat. “Jesus Christ.”

  “The fact you’re not highly radioactive is just making this weirder,” Dr. Bowers said.

  “Jesus Christ !” Sarah put her hands over her face.

  Dr. Bowers stood still for a few moments, looking down at his sampler. Then he shook his head and shoved the sampler into his pocket, where it say like a large rock. “No, no, nevermind,” he said.

  “What?” Sarah asked.

  “Did...” He blinked up at her, his mouth opening into an O, then closed. “Nothing.”

  Sarah’s brow furrowed. Her arms crossed over her chest again and she tried to not sound angry as she said: “Thinking of the biocomp bonus, huh?”

  “I...” Dr. Bowers choked, then hung his head forward. “Yes. A little. Sarah, I’m sorry, it’s just, it’d be so so much scrip. I might even get some in Universal Credit.” He shook his head again. “B-But you’re right. Earlier, I mean. They’d take you to pieces in the lab and there’s not a damn thing we could do to stop them.” He smiled at her, weakly. Sarah smiled back.

  “Thanks,” she said, her voice husky.

  “Hey, we card punchers and data shufflers have to stick together, right?” Dr. Bowers asked, then clapped his hand on her shoulder comfortingly. Sarah’s smile became completely strained. She stood perfectly still. Dr. Bowers’ own expression had become transfixed in amber – caught between shock, horror, disgust, camaraderie, and indignation at his own stupidity. He slowly, slowly lifted his hand up and off her shoulder. Thin lines of the glossy secretion she put out at all time connected her skin to his skin. Sarah tensed, ready to have to restrain Dr. Bowers the instant the insane mad lustfulness exploded across him.

  Nothing happened.

  “I think I’m okay,” Dr. Bowers said.

  Then his eyes rolled back into his head and he collapsed onto the ground like a boneless heap. His shirt flared red and a siren started to play from the wrist speakers: “ Medical Alert! Medical Alert! Medical Alert !”

  “Auh!” Sarah screamed. “Why couldn’t he just be horny!?”

  She knelt down, then stood hurriedly before she touched him. She started to rummage around in the pop-tent, looking for a medical kit. She yanked open a container in the wall and found it was empty. She tugged down the ceiling container and got smacked in the face by something bulky and heavy. She flailed wildly. “Ack!” The package settled into her hands and she shook her head, her hair stabbing in every direction like a bunch of very angry crabs. The package was a glossy, cheaply printed magazine. The holographic title flared out: NovaLog. Below that, in red letter: The best magazine in the off world colonies! The cover’s speaker began to play the happy chip-tune version of the NovaDyne company theme.

  Sarah tried to throw it away from her, but the cover stuck to her palm like she was covered in glue. The interior of the magazine fluttered open, projecting holograms of all the various products you could buy from the company store – including the Mark 2 Pop-Tent. Voices stuttered into the air from the pages as they were flapped open: “-last longer, harder, and-” “-warranty sold separately-” “-act now to get a 10% discount-” “-the Mk. II Pop-Tent includes a full medop station-”

  The magazine flew off and hit the wall with a splat.

  By now, Dr. Bowers’ face was turning greenish-black. His veins were bulging out and clearly visible against his pale skin. His eyes looked glassy, but he was still breathing weakly, his chest rising and falling. Sarah stood stock still, her brain locking up. She wanted, desperately, to save Dr. Bowers life. That thought seemed to fill her entire brain – and so, when she blinked and found herself kneeling beside Dr. Bowers, her wrist poised above his throat, Sarah yelped in shock. She hadn’t thought of moving. She just had . When she pulled her wrist and arm backwards, she saw that a pair of thin veins had emerged from her wrist and slammed into Dr. Bowers’ throat.

  “Auuuuuuuh!” Sarah started to jerk her wrist back, but her other hand lashed out and she caught herself before she ripped the veins out of his...veins. Instead, she stood perfectly still and watched his face. The black veins were starting to recede. But he was still breathing weakly and he was still glassy eyed. Sarah gulped. “Okay. Okay.” She whispered. “Okay. Everything is fine so far.”

  Dr. Bowers’ hair chose that moment to fall out as one big, fine clump, leaving his scalp bald and stubby with scabs. The scabs, before her eyes, started to grow. “Nononononono!” Sarah put her hands on his face, as if she was going to be able to push the black, scabby material away from Dr. Bowers’ head and face. Instead, they just grew under her fingers and spread outwards, fanning over his eyes, covering his nose. It had gone from a set of scabs to a shiny half helmet of slick, semi-reflective chiten that felt intensely hot to her touch. Sarah snapped her hands back and away, gaping as the growth slipped under Bowers’ shirt, wriggling and causing his clothing to pump outwards, strain, then rip and tear as the covering – the cocoon – expanded outwards. She sat there in stupid shock until his pocket tore and his sampler went skittering away from his hip.

  Sarah grabbed it – and as if picking up the sampler had dislodged almost five years of collegiate education that had been curled up in the corner, whimpering. She took hold of the detachable wand, adjusted it from dosimeter to medical probe, then slammed it into his thigh moments before the cocoon swept past his belly. The probe sunk into his skin with worrying ease. She jerked her hand backwards
as the cocoon, picking up speed, completed its growth and surrounded Dr. Bowers entire body. She checked the sampler and saw that she was getting wireless results from the probe.

  “Okay,” she whispered.

  The results from the probe were...fine. Just fine. It was totally normal for a human’s body temperature to skyrocket. It was totally normal for muscle tissue to begin to denature and begin to collapse into a slurry of undifferentiated proteins. “Everything is fine!” Sarah hissed, the sampler creaking as she gripped it harder and harder. “This is totally fine .”

  The next hour in the pop-tent was pretty close to what Sarah thought hell would be. Not only did she get to sit and simmer in a guilt ridden paranoia, but she also got to bake. Because the pop-tent, being a Mk I, had insulation but no temperature controls. That meant it had no way to bleed off the temperature as Dr. Bowers cocoon sat there and got hot enough to cook a rat on. That meant that soon Sarah was sitting in a puddle of her own sweat. Or maybe it was more of her murder-killer body secretions? Maybe she was going to start farting nerve gas!

  The results from the sampler’s diagnostic probe just kept getting weirder. Structures were forming inside of that cocoon that bore zero similarity to human parts. She had plunged the probe into the thigh, near the femoral artery. Well, now, the local resolution showed that a muscle of similar size had grown there, but it was shaped wrong and was nowhere near anything she recognized as a bone or vein. The blood that was flowing past looked more complicated than most of the nano that she had observed while in college – it was doing things far more sophisticated than just carrying oxygen here and dropping off waste there. It was stopping to do repair work, to fight what looked like minor infections.

  The biologist in her said that nothing of Dr. Bowers...of Larry...could survive this transformation.

  “But I kinda disprove that, don’t I?” she muttered, brushing her palms along her cheeks. “I mean, I’m still here.”

  After what felt like an eternity – but according to the sampler was less than two hours – the cocoon let out a blast of fragrant air from several seams, all at once. The sound made Sarah’s heart rate skyrocket and jerked her from her slumped position of self recrimination and misery. She put her hand over her breast, feeling her soaked leafy bra turning to mush against her fingers. She had a few seconds to mutter about how gross it was before the scythe blade slammed up and out of the cocoon.

  Sarah sprang to her feet and screamed.

  The scythe blade punched upwards, and it was connected to a muscular, brown-red arm. Exposed muscle stretched and flexed between curved armor plating that looked like it had come from the set of a cheap spec-fic horrorshow, save that it was so terribly, glisteningly real. Then another scythe blade punched out of the other side of the cocoon. Both ripped to the side and then the rest of what had been Dr. Bowers emerged with a flail of muscular limbs, snapping teeth, and whipping tendrils, and a screeching noise that set Sarah’s spiny hair on edge. She molded her back against the airlock, her heart almost literally crawling up her throat as Dr. Bowers wriggled and kicked himself free of the cocoon.

  Dr. Bowers shook himself. Cocoon stuff slapped onto the floor as he breathed heavily. He had the build of a grayhound canine – big bell chest, narrow tiny waist. He had two forelegs, two rear legs, and two shoulder blade mounted limbs that ended in scythe blades nearly as long as his elongated, canine-like muzzle. His eyes were set back into armored plating, and blinked languidly. He had a long, whiplike tail tipped with a curved barb, and his head had a ‘mane’ of slowly writhing tendrils that looked somewhere between dreadlocks and tentacles.

  Sarah inched towards the airlock.

  “What. The. Fuck?” Dr. Bowers asked.

  Sarah closed her eyes. When she opened them again, Dr. Bowers was looking right at her.

  Sarah inched a bit closer to the airlock.

  “Sarah,” Dr. Bowers said, his voice remarkably calm – emanating as it was from his chest, not his muzzle. It had an echoy quality, like he was speaking out of a well.

  “Yes, Larry?” Sarah was impressed with how calm she sounded.

  “I’m a dog, Sarah,” Dr. Bowers said, slowly. “Why am I a dog, Sarah? Why the fuck am I a fucking dog!?”

  Okay, Sarah, she thought. He’s going through a lot. Say something. Anything. Helpful!

  “Well?” Dr. Bowers growled.

  “I mean, you’re more of an alien abomina-” Sarah clapped her hands over her mouth. She immediately hurried over and threw herself to her knees before Dr. Bowers head. She grabbed onto the curved ridges of his forehead and dragged his head up, so that she could look into his eyes. Her voice was soft and it was serious. “Larry, I know that I did this. But that means I can undo this. Right? Right. So, we just need to stay calm, and think about this rationally, and you’ll have your fingers and your hands and your...everything back! Right? Right.” She nodded.

  Dr. Bowers did not try to nod. He was looking at her with wide, slitted eyes.

  “Right?” Sarah whispered.

  “Sarah,” Dr. Bowers said.

  “Y-Yes Larry?” she whispered.

  “Remember how you...said your skin was an aphrodisiac?” He asked, his voice very strained.

  Sarah slowly craned her head to the side.

  Oh.

  Oh .

  She yanked her hands back. But it was far, far, far too late. Dr. Bowers had a hardon that would have made a horse blush. It was long and it was thick and it hung between his haunches like a great big blue flag. It was blue, by the way. Blue and almost glowing . The tip was triangular and the underside was ridged in a way that looked either extremely uncomfortable or extremely pleasant, depending on if all the advertising copy she had seen for sex toys had been lying to her or not. Not that you ever had the money to spare on a fucking dildo, she thought, even as she saw that his cocktip was dripping with glowing fluid, which pattered thickly onto the floor. It looked glittery and slippery and her brain was already starting to imagine what it’d feel like rubbing into her skin.

  “Uh… “Sarah whispered.

  “Sarah,” Dr. Bowers said. No. He was a bit past saying things now. That was a growl. A nearly subsonic growl that sent a crawling shiver along her spine and made Sarah’s knees slip just a bit further apart on the ground. In the silence that came after that growl, both of them clearly heard Sarah’s gulp. Then Dr. Bowers leaped. His forepaws pressed to her shoulders and her back mashed against the floor of the pop-tent. His breath was warm and hot against her face, and his tongue darted out, slathering along her lips, her cheek, her jaw. His breath smelled sweet and she whimpered as his tongue probed her oh so willing, oh so hungry lips. His tongue thrust down her throat and she grabbed onto the back of his broad neck, while his hind legs planted themselves to either side of her hips. This had the side effect of grinding his dayglow cock against her belly, smearing her with his excitement. His lubrication . Sarah shuddered and her toes curled. Her claws snicked out and caught against the armor chiten of his body as she kissed him back.

  When Larry pulled back – and it had to be Larry now, not Dr. Bowers – Sarah gasped in huge lungfuls of air to try and clear her head. Since those lungfuls were full of Larry’s animal musk , that has less of a head clearing effect than she would have liked. So, instead, she giggled in a way she hadn’t since college and mumbled. “T-This is going to be a weird HR complaint.”

  Larry’s chuckle buzzed through her whole body. Sarah put her hands against his chest. “Giddof,” she mumbled.

  Larry sprang backwards as neatly as a trained show pony. He landed on his hind legs, setting his haunches down as he settled himself into a seated position that looked almost dignified, save for the fact that he was still popping a boner that made Sarah go a bit dizzy in her head. She sat up, her hair spines flicking and twitching as she rubbed her hands along her scalp. “Okay,” she said, laughing. “Okay, wow. Okay.” She gulped. “Okay. Thanks.”

  “Y-Yeah, about that,” Larry said, his voice
tight. “That was an automatic response. I...am...going almost fucking insane with lust right now, but I cannot move.” He panted. “God, Sarah...get on your hands and knees, thrust that green ass of yours into the air and let me fucking plow you until you can’t fucking walk, rrrr!” The growl that escaped his muzzle made the entirety of Sarah feel as if she had been electrified. But. In a good way. She blinked slowly. Her mouth opened. Closed.

  “...you have to follow my orders,” she whispered. “Roll over.”

  The words popped out of her mouth before she could really think them through. Larry rolled onto his back, his legs spread slightly, his cock laying against his narrow, muscular belly. He made a soft whining noise. “Sarahhhh!”

  Sarah felt a knot that she hadn’t known was there uncoil. Loosen. Fall away. “I can say no at any time,” she whispered.

  One of Larry’s eyes swiveled to look at her inside of the armored bony plate on his head. Despite being a doglike alien with three foot long, razor sharp scythe blades on his back, he still somehow managed to look like a kicked puppy. “Sarah, I’d have stopped! If you said no. I mean.” He paused. “Please please please let me fuck you!” That last word came through in a whine that reminded Sarah of the wild dogs that some of the kids in the sline levels took care of.

  Sarah grinned, shyly. “I believe you...” She licked her lips, slowly. Was this what it was like to go to a robot brothel, where the droids were sleeved by a kneecapped AI and had to follow your every whim? No, it wasn’t quite the same. This was Larry, not some dumb program. She gulped, then turned around. Her palms slapped against the floor and, feeling extremely silly and extremely turned on, she thrust her ass into the air, wriggling herself from side to side. “Larry, come here an- Jesus Christ !” Her head snapped backwards as Larry, in a single smooth motion, went from laying on his back to on her back. He had pounced on her in a blur of movement, and his forepaws gripped her shoulders, his hind legs planted themselves to either side of her legs, and his shoulder arms slammed forward into the ground ahead of her.