[AlexG]

Just as it once appeared on my website, The High Castle – and as promised I now re-present this story, written by AuGoose.

==========

Code: AVATAR – Book One
A Plague of Angels
By AuGoose © 2000

Chapter One

Late next week…

"I want to be twelve feet tall!"

He almost chuckled aloud. He had been eyeing the older sister, about 18 he guessed. They were both blondes. She was wearing rumpled stretchy bicycle shorts and a dark gray sweatshirt topped with a short but attractive haircut. Sort of thick and curly. The kid had long hair and wore a print dress. She was probably 14, though she tried to look older. Not his type. It was the elder sister's legs, bare down to her tennis shoes that caught his eye. More than that, it was her peculiar stance: one leg crossed behind the other, deliberately showing off those legs like a champion racehorse. The funny thing was the younger girl already had more bust. His practiced eye could tell that 'Sarah' was flat as a damn washboard under her baggy sweatshirt. But things could change. More and more he was realizing that selecting candidates was all about seeing the possibilities.

They were all standing in line for a tour of the state building, the sky turning steadily darker as clouds blew in over the Pennsylvania capital. The other tourist types in line had dressed more warmly. She was still talking to her little sister, explaining that twelve feet would be eye level with some of the antique drains on the small building next to the courtyard. The girl looked crestfallen. "That would be too big I guess…"

He couldn't agree more.

Well, he'd come to do some sightseeing and to test the newest module in the Complex. He'd caught the Liberty Bell and Ben Franklin's house earlier in the afternoon. Along the way there had been a few possible candidates, but he'd been waiting for the perfect opportunity to present itself. With a conversation like that going on between the girls, he couldn't resist. Here waiting in line, he'd have an excuse to watch the results. Taken together with the name 'Sarah', it almost had the weight of omen. He concentrated, inwardly sending a last string of commands to the core arming the brigade function and loading some cosmetic nuances he thought would be appropriate. Something told him Sarah didn't particularly like being flat chested. Clenching his fingers slightly fired the tiny dart into the older girl's leg.

Sarah felt a bug bite her on the leg. Slapping it idly she continued teasing her sister. "Yeah, if you were twelve feet tall you'd crush your boyfriend- Thomas wasn't it?" She kept this chatter up while stretching her arms behind her head and twisted, waving her long torso at her sis. Tina retaliated by poking her in her depressingly chubby gut. She had just turned eighteen a week ago, and this trip to Philadelphia was part of her birthday present. She was just a late bloomer (she hoped), and she tormented the much more buxom Tina to make up for it. But they were still sisters. She loved being able to call a little attention to herself without her dad going quite so berserk now. She was deliberately flirting with the guy four places back in line. He was clearly giving her the eye, even if he thought he was being subtle.

"Stop it Sarah! He's not my boyfriend anymore!" It didn't take much to rile Tina. Even at thirteen she'd left a string of broken hearts across the schoolyard back home. Sarah suspected her sister was an aspiring (more like thwarted really) nympho, but would never tell their parents about some of the near-miss stories her girlfriends had passed along. Sarah would flirt, but in truth she was terribly inexperienced with guys. She had only had two boyfriends and one had never gotten past second base. She'd called it off, clearing the slate for college next year. She was really hoping she'd have more to offer by then.

In the first eight seconds the tiny dart had dissolved into its component nano-machines. Stripping impurities from the candidate's bloodstream for building materials, they had already multiplied into over eleven million units and were setting up shop. Elements of the Seed were being convoyed to the base of her brain while the newly added 'bucket brigade' nanites established nearly seven thousand 'port and spinner' clusters, each the smaller than a single pore along the surface of her skin.

Suddenly Sarah felt dizzy, like low blood sugar. Well, she hadn't eaten in a while. She put an arm out for balance and felt at her forehead. It was dotted with perspiration despite the breeze.

"Sis?" her little sister inquired.

Smaller changes utilizing existing bio-mass were already under way. Refinements to her facial structure. Breaking down excess fat. Skin polishing. Then in under twenty seconds the spinners fired. Thousands of mono-filament strands shot outward, searching for raw materials. Thinner than a strand of spider's silk, they were invisible to the naked eye. At the tip of each strand a tiny sensor sought out the necessary organic molecules and even stray atoms, passing them back up the thread to the builder-net spreading through Sarah's body. Those sensors were packed with complex coding (stored molecularly) that let them distinguish animal matter and forego ripping atoms from it. Another recent refinement. Over two thousand of the tiny threads hit other people in line only to be reeled back in and fired again in new directions as the candidate moved. Some chewed into the grass while others hit paving stones and began harvesting a handful of heavier atoms for special uses. Hundreds struck the big oak tree that the museum waiting line circled around, and started mining the enormous trove of organic material. The strands acted as lighting fast conduits, carrying the mass along surging streams one molecule wide into candidate's body. This 'bucket brigade' module had been the latest bit of nano he had gotten from the patron. With it, the newest version of the Archangel Complex, "Seraph" was almost magical.

"Somethin's happening to me…" Sarah whispered to herself, gripped by a sudden premonition. Her skin felt curiously prickly. Tina was looking up at her in concern. "Sis? What's wrong with your face?" Sarah reached up to run her fingers over her face. Her cheeks felt unusually smooth and… rounder? Her arms and hands were feeling strange too. "Are you ok?" Tina's voice was clearer and more immediate somehow.

Sarah tried to brush it off. "Sure. Why wouldn't I be?" She bent down to peck her cheek reassuringly. Straightening, she shivered. "I'm just- Ohhh!" Her voice chopped off in an abrupt sigh, her wide brown eyes taking on a faintly glazed look. Hidden under the folds of her baggy sweats no one, not even Sarah, noticed her pea sized nipples suddenly harden.

'What?!' Tina insisted.

'It's nothing. Really.' She was not going to ruin this trip with a bout of the flu or something. And anyway, she really did feel pretty good, even if she was getting kind of hot.

The Seraph Seed was fully established; a knot of super-dense molecular codes the size of sesame seed rooted in the most primitive part of the brain. It was enormous for a piece of nanotech. A portion of the host's nervous system had been subverted to carry real-time commands to the builders that were now spreading into every organ, muscle and bone. It imposed a sense of mild euphoria and increasing arousal to mask the extent of the activity, which actually would have been quite painful if the candidate could feel it. With several ounces of new bio-mass streaming in at the ports each second, work could begin in earnest. What had taken the old Archangel hours or days depending on the candidates' eating Seraph would finish in minutes.

Sarah's skin felt flushed. It was like she was just getting drunk (another of her one-time high school experiences). On impulse she bent over her crossed legs and stretched like a jogger, trying to clear her head with some exercise. Bouncing at the bottom of the stretch, the sense of tension down the backs of her legs was delicious. Then it faded away; her bounces were swinging lower and lower. Ignoring Tina's concerned looks she bent further to try and touch the brick walkway- first with fingertips then with her wrists. Strangely, even that wasn't a stretch for her.

When Sarah stood back up, Tina let out a little peep of shock- her sister was… different somehow… Was she standing straighter maybe?

Sarah's bra straps started digging into her flanks, distracting her from pangs of discomfort her pinched feet were sending. 'Damn thing must have slipped when I bent over.' Not an uncommon problem for her. The straps were becoming more irritating by the moment. She shrugged her shoulders a few times to try and get them settled properly. 'Honestly,' she thought, wincing. 'I don't know why I even bother with it.' A little more squirming and she achieved a sort of truce with bra, though is still felt tight across her back.

Tina on the other hand was examining Sarah closely, trying to figure out what had changed about her sister. Her jaw dropped open when she spotted the last ridges of excess spandex on Sarah's bike pants vanishing. Those shorts had been a size too big ever since Sarah's kamikaze diet last semester. A diet which, Tina teased, hadn't even touched the potbelly that had gotten her started with dieting. Now the black-and-white spandex seemed to fit her better than ever, smoothly encasing trim thighs. Even her butt looked… pert. Tina knew something was up. Nothing about Sarah was pert. For those creases to have been pulled flat… Her sister would have to be… Her mind was drawn back to their earlier conversation. Then something clicked. Sarah would have to be GROWING!!

"S-i-s!!"

"What?!" She was starting to get a little annoyed with the squirt. Another drop of sweat rolled down her brow. Starting to feel faintly horny, she turned to eye the guy in line again. He was ogling her openly now, a strange half-smile on his face. Willing to give her one fan a little thrill, she casually turned her profile to him and began arching her back while lacing her fingers on her butt. Next she went up on her toes slightly, flexing her calves and thighs. Then lifting her arms straight out behind her, she thrust out her humble breasts like a ballerina. She knew she could at least-

*P-POP!*

It's a sure bet that Sarah was more surprised than her audience when the front clasp of her bra split. The nearly flat cups slid around under her shirt as she quickly dropped her arms. With stitched lace rasping across her pointed nipples Sarah was the one that ended up getting the thrill. The sensation was so unexpectedly titillating (literally) she wanted to laugh, but choked it off with her startled mom standing there frowning. 'Oops!' she thought. 'That's a first.' Wishing she actually had something that could threaten a bra's survival, she went back to subtler posing for the young man in line, unconcerned by Tina's increasingly frantic whispering.

If she had been paying more attention she might have noticed why Tina was so excited. The faint pains from Sarah's feet had gone away because going up on her toes had busted all the laces of her running shoes out of their holes. Even her ankle socks were starting to tear. Once satisfactory legs (Sarah's best feature, hence her choice of clothes for the outing) had silently fleshed out. They were now marvelously proportioned, shapely as any model the fashion conscious Tina had ever seen. They were finely muscled too; striking another one of her dancing postures, Sarah flexed a long curvaceous calf with an impressive twitch.

Sarah was suddenly worried. Even that little bit of prancing had her feeling heated up and slick with sweat. She couldn't really be that out of shape could she? It had been a month since class, but still! Feeling a draft on her damp skin, Sarah finally looked down. The bottom of her sweatshirt had crept up. The unexplained patch of bare midriff revealed what had to be somebody else's stomach. 'Where the heck's the dreaded diet-proof potbelly?' she wondered, totally missing the changes to her comely legs. The part of her anatomy she was looking at was smooth, compact, with of all things a crisply defined crease dividing the two firm sides. God! She was sculpted like an Olympic swimmer!

With general growth proceeding smoothly, the Seed shifted priorities, taking the opportunity to reapportion some liberated mass, concentrating it into areas that were scheduled for additional development…

A new pressure joined Sarah's gradually increasing height, drawing up the bottom of her sweats another half of an inch. The rising waistband revealed more of that inexplicably flat abdomen. Following the motion, Sarah's eyes were drawn upward from her taut middle. What she found there gave her a sudden crazy insight into what had burst her unfortunate little A-cup bra. Something in those loose folds of her shirt looked different… There were soft outlines in the valleys between the folds that looked like she had stuffed two halves of a tennis ball into her bra (a trick she had stopped trying when she was about Tina's age). Staring, she imagined she could see the twin mounds pushing out fractionally farther as she took another breath…

Sarah had always struggled with her boyish figure. She had resorted to finding the best ways to strut and pose to show off her minimal assets. Over the last three summers ballet classes had done wonders for her sense of form. Even so, like many girls who dared watch the women on television she imagined what it would be like to have a full bust. Now the shifting folds made it easy for the sweating novice dancer to pretend for a moment her flat bosom was literally inflating beneath the thick shirt. It was the stuff of old dreams: watching peaks of gray cloth suddenly rising up, hinting at rounded treasures within. Who hadn't during high school? 'You wish, kiddo,' she thought. She dismissed memories of an amusing daydream staring little faeries with pumps and suddenly attentive boys. It was a trick of the light or something. The mystery of her waist momentarily forgotten, Sarah puffed out her flat chest with a deep breath and held it while she modestly pulled down on her sweats. Soft outlines were suddenly forced to conform to solidly defined slopes. Tugging down on the damp sweatshirt made it balloon out in a way that did anything but dispel her fantasies. There WERE tennis ball sized breasts lurking under there!

Sarah's eyes went wide as she tied to absorb certain proof that she actually had… tits! Evidently the faeries weren't done yet either. Still holding her breath (mostly in shock), Sarah watched the "tennis balls" inflate into bulges the size of small oranges. Fleecy gray fabric creaked as it stretched even more tightly over her bared expanses in a luxurious caress. Next to her, Tina's eyes were tracking the development of Sarah's new endowments. Shocked, Sarah quickly crossed her arms over her chest, trying to cover her swelling bust. But doing so only served to press her hands directly against the increasingly lush curves. With a sound between a gasp and a purr her concerns for modesty were converted to child-like delight. 'Finally! That's what a girl's supposed to have there!' she though. Hunching over she turned away from Tina still giggling. Hidden behind her arms her fingers discretely traced the bottom edges of her expanding real estate, confirming there wasn't the slightest hint of sag to them anywhere. Unbelievable! A steady pressure from under her shirt was prying her clasped fingers apart. A rigid nipple rode the bulging areola into the resulting gap, forming a sensitive lump between her splayed fingers. Trying to compress them against her torso was futile; she could actually feel her bulging breasts growing heavier in her cupped hands. Her slim legs shook with more than simple excitement as she slyly pinched a marble sized tip. Her eyelids fluttered in bliss and her knee's nearly buckled in response. She eased off in fear of blacking out.

Sarah would always remember the remnants of her absurdly inadequate bra scratching the outside flanks of her swelling mounds. In less than a minute the wondrous masses of soft flesh filled out, overflowing her cupped hands and ending any real chance of hiding what was happening to her (or of concealing what she'd really like to be doing with herself just then). It was then that she finally noticed the rest of her had been growing too. Reluctantly she straightened, lowering her arms to pull down the bottom of her shirt again. Tina's mouth shut with an audible click and gulp. Sarah was astounded- doing so revealed erect D-cups poised high on her chest. She was reminded of that woman on her brother's "Ghost in the Shell" posters. A skin-tight white jump-suit revealing every curve of the character's heavenly bust. The pointed flesh just seemed to float there like hers were doing now. Her sister's sort of did that- when she was naked in a swimming pool- on a much smaller scale. If Sarah was still faking it, she had stopped playing with an old tennis ball and had packed a pair of whole grapefruit under her shirt. She couldn't get over it. Even without her bra, each cone held a shape not unlike the pointed half of an egg… If the chicken was the size of an ostrich! Tina almost drooled at the exposed prospect. Maybe even more so than the watching man.

The Seraph Seed was still processing its Rules. Incorporating the candidate's DNA as part of its instructions saved a tremendous amount of effort during programming. The resulting template produced changes that were tailored to each person. He had certain things he wanted, some of them quite peculiar, but clones weren't one of them. The fixed patterns of cosmetic change had started by smoothing wrinkles, adding a satiny finish to her skin, giving her silken hair, brilliant eyes, and, as her sister had already determined, a more heart-shaped face. After the cleansing of her systems and improvements to her heart and lungs, she was going to have the metabolism and energy of a highly active teenager. Her bust had grown to a classic profile in accordance with special instruction he had added to the scheme specifically for Sarah- curvaceous and particularly fine in shape. Other proportions were based on rules he had slowly compiled by examining the measurements of thousands of models, hundreds of dancers, and a lifetime spent collecting Masamune Shirow art. Even a few exceptional athletes went into the mix. Then he took them all just one step further. Equations for total muscle mass, body-fat percentages, hip-waist-bust ratios and other numerical approximations for his ideal beauty began to take over, each targeted to produce a form that equaled half what she had started with and half overly-perfect. Even with all the changes, those who knew her before would still recognize her easily… If they looked at her face. The candidate had been 5'3" a few minutes ago. Split the difference with a fixed value of 7'5", and her new final height would be just about 6'4". Another Rule factored off of that result, demanding an inseam within an inch of 50% of total height. The Seed was going to make her leggy as well as tall. The other changes were a little more personal…

Sarah had been gaining a pound every six seconds for several minutes now. After watching her boobs transform into something she'd only seen matched on some of the most gorgeous models in her second boyfriend's 'private' magazines the whole situation had become quite surreal. Aware of the transformation at last, Sarah's senses reported her entire body was slowly filling up, like a balloon in the sun. Or maybe she was a flower blooming in one of those time-lapse films in science class. 'The late bloomer' she thought, smiling. She felt like she ought to be scarred silly, but instead looking down at those perfect, sexy thighs flowing into smoothly muscled calves could only make her happy. They moved when she thought of moving them, but somehow it was just impossible to believe that those exquisite limbs actually belonged to her. Nobody really looked like that. Especially not her… She was half expecting to wake up when her legs started- 'Stretching' was the best way she could describe the sensation. Those already statuesque legs put on a burst of speed. The hem of her struggling shorts expanded to the breaking point as even more firm, creamy thigh was thrust out of their bottom ends. There really wasn't much Sarah could do except stand there and pant from the heat as strained clothes hugged her flesh and her sister's head abruptly receded towards her waist; a waist that had grown comparatively narrow by having not grown at all. Gaining four more inches entirely below the belt took her figure from willowy to outright sensuous. That brought on another round of giggles: her brother was going to have a fit. She'd always tried to ignore the woman on his walls as being impossibly beautiful. Anime characters didn't have to put up with the limits of real bodies. The perfect thing for his 15-year-old fantasies… And now she must look an awful lot like his dream-girl posters! Her thwarted libido offered a thought: it had been a long, long time since they'd played doctor. It's pretty innocent when you're ten and he's eight. She smiled wickedly. Aaron's birthday was next week. She might need a check-up. 'Doctor… I've got these bumps… They're so swollen, could you rub some ointment on them? Harder?…Ahhh!'

Visions of her brother's impending heart attack set her skin tingling again, utterly alive with new sensations. Brushing fingers across that strange flat belly she realized how flawless the skin was. 'This has got to be a dream. Something out of Alice in Wonderland…' she insisted weakly. Noting how tender parts of her skin felt she added to herself, 'But I don't dare pinch myself!'

She would never know the difference, but the builder-net didn't make cells multiply, it assembled whole new ones and insinuated them into existing tissue. Nothing else would be sufficient to maintain such an accelerated pace. Only the availability of organic molecules and need to not cook the candidate with waste heat kept the process from going even faster. Other segments of the net were altering her skeletal structure. Lengthening bones gained subtle hardness without increasing in weight at all. Extra sensitive nerve cells would be popping in all over her body, giving her a sense of touch that was going to be inhuman. In the end all of her senses would be marginally sharper and some of the specific changes between her legs were going to make for a number of surprises. Overseeing it all, the Seed controlled every step, guiding her growth towards the final proportions. It would remain coiled there in the brain like a serpent to perform other less obvious functions later…

Despite the absurdity of what she was seeing, the hard-edged clarity of it all made her suspect this wasn't quite a dream. Marshalling her wits, Sarah tried to imagine how something like this could really be happening. She had pretty much ruled out alien abduction when the shivering started. Abruptly, what had been a series of tingles turned into her first boyfriend's tongue the night she lost her virginity- only this was happening in little flashes all over her body. A tiny part of her insisted she really ought to be scared shitless but it felt so good that acknowledging any kind of fear was beyond her. She had had a 'wet' dream exactly once in her whole life: the entire track squad busting in and pulling her slippery and naked from a bubble bath. Twelve guys licking and tweaking and thrusting- she'd woken up with her dripping sheets tied in knots and her wildest imagination had been nowhere near as erotic as this. As much as she wished she could take the credit for dreaming up something like this, Sarah was certain she was in fact awake and it really was happening. Somehow. Anyway, there was only one guy, though he was definitely turned on. A little voice in the back of her head asked, 'maybe she was having his dream?' His lopsided grin snapped her out of her reverie. Just looking at him gave her a need to fuck something that was almost overwhelming. No need to wait for Aaron's birthday. She was drowning herself in his deep blue eyes when Tina's squeak distracted her again.

"Sis!! I wanna be big too! Don't get so beautiful without meee!" Their mother looked like she was about to get hysterical, pulling Tina away from Sarah. Fortunately dad and her brother were looking for lunch and hadn't come back yet.

"I don't even know what's happening Tina," she cried. 'But it feels so fucking good…' she added to herself. The hand tugging her shirt down unconsciously drifted up to grope her conical breast again. Everything felt so intensely sensitive! Not just bigger, but really alert to any touch. And she wanted to be touched. Oblivious to the hand massaging her breast, her whole body began to crouch and sway enticingly, eyes lingering on her man again. She realized what she was doing and flushed with embarrassment. Still leaning towards him, she jerked her hand stiffly to her side, letting her sweatshirt slip up again Then she realized where her other hand had wandered off to. 'God. With Tina right here too. No wonder mom's freaked.' She cringed. "I've gotta get out of here" she said in a low voice. Her blush achieved furious red as she came rigidly upright, pulling her long fingers out from between her thighs.

Her sudden jerk to attention was the last straw. The rest of the tourists took notice that something was going on near the front of the line when her elastic waistband snapped like a breaking tree branch. All eyes followed the loud crackle to a 5'11" blonde bombshell. The sound had come from a piece of black-and-white spandex that looked like it had been painted on to her steely buttocks. The satiny dimples and sultry lines of that glove-like garment gave hard evidence of fanatical duty on the stair-master… by someone already divinely blessed. The hourglass waist naturally lead fascinated eyes upward across a wide-open space that very few were so qualified to share publicly. Visions of aerobics competed with thoughts of belly dancing in several more inventive minds. Completing the ensemble, the nubile young goddess was tightly wrapped in a cute little sweatshirt that only came half way down to her navel and whose sleeves went just past her elbows. Only the most disciplined observers noted the heartbreakingly attractive features of her face beneath a shock of rich golden hair. Most were sidetracked before they got that high because no one could fail to notice the girl was unmistakably, pleasantly stacked. Full, almost buoyant curves thrust out of her front, bullet shaped mounds quivering in time with her quick, panting breaths.

And no bra.

Suddenly twenty-plus men were running their eyes over Sarah like hands; her keen eyes spotted the bloom of every hard-on. If they leered any harder she would have been picked up off the ground and spread-eagled mid-air by their combined grip. The part of her that believed this still had to be a dream would have welcomed it. They were just another fantasy track squad for her gratification. Bring on the knotted sheets! Even a handful of children stared in wonder at the amazingly pretty girl up front. Then every one of the twenty-some women in line just looked away, some irritated others embarrassed. The entire courtyard paid tribute and Sarah reveled in it, soaking in her own intense sexiness. Still, there was only one guy on her mind just now and he was standing not so far away. She wanted to tease him, strut for him. Hell, she was sexy and she wanted to fuck him hard. That last though was like a dam breaking inside her. A wave of delicious heat rolled over her like a deep backrub from a really hot guy. "I've gotta get laid is what I have to do!" she murmured as her eyes met the man's again. He was the only person out of the fifty plus in the square who didn't look astonished (well, other than her sister). Actually, a few of the onlookers' eyes had made it back down past her legs to the shredded shoes still dangling from her feet. Those pondering looks weren't quite so lecherous anymore…

She was just about to go over and take him right then and there when her shirt started tearing. Her widening frame ripped through the diagonal seams that held on the sleeves, revealing swaths of pale chestnut flesh and sleekly muscular shoulders. The remaining triangle of fabric extended from the collar at her neck across the tops of her breasts and down to the flanks almost like a shoulder-less prom dress. The loose cloth sliding down her lengthening arms to bunch up just above her elbows only heightened the effect. A wisp of steam rose from her heaving shoulders. Many of the hungry gazes turned markedly fearful at that point. 'How big am I?' she paused to wonder, startled more by the pleasing sense of coolness on her bare flesh than the prospect of her having outgrown a shirt that was a tent this morning. She foolishly imagined that nothing about her transformations could surprise her anymore. The little tongues had stopped licking her but new feelings from her body were making themselves known…

Seraph was nearly finished with stage two. Basic humanoid form modifications were approaching completion. Sarah now topped a svelte six-foot-two. Her proportions and features precisely calculated to showcase the uniqueness of her form while sculpting it into something completely alluring. And she most definitely was! A few tweaks to brain chemistry insured the candidate was in an almost animal heat in response to triggers from him. Now incoming mass was being transferred to the upper back, where Seraph would earn its name, separating Sarah from the human race forever…

"What- now-?" Sarah let out a breathy croon as the new nerves multiplied the powerful backrub sensation. It was so strong that she was forced down, hunching over in place with her arms crossed over her chest. For the first time, she felt strangely top heavy, almost like vertigo. Another wave of heat and dizziness drove her to her knees. Several people stepped forward, prepared to offer help as the lovely young woman was clearly ill. A horrible sound reminiscent of tearing cartilage came from her back as two long vertical ridges appeared under her shirt. Eyes clenched shut with disorientation, she felt a tickling along her back like… Feathers? The good Samaritans (and the one or two dreaming of a cheap feel) fell back in alarm. The sharp-edged ridges grew with such rapidity that they slashed through the already tight fabric in two neat tears. With dangerous speed new limbs like shaped like spears lanced out to either side of her back, revealing themselves to be feathered… Wings? Each grew to enormous length in moments, looking thin, more like a sketch of wing bones. The countless tiny feathers were mixed patterns of iridescent white and yellow, painted in colors that matched her hair.

As the candidate grew, the Seed was effectively gaining resources. Surface area was the key. More ports drawing in molecules went hand in hand with greater amounts of skin surface and vaporizing water to bleed off heat. Rather than growth slowing as she got larger, it actually accelerated slightly. Now with the final stage under way the surface area was about outstrip thermal mass phenomenally. The Seed would cheat, doubling the number of ports while running the builder-net at near boiling temperatures in the new limbs until the last moments when final nerve structures and circulation was laid down. Until then they could serve as radiators for the whole body. Already the candidate's back muscles were being augmented to support the coming load. She wouldn't even feel the weight with proper posture. The Seed would manage the new limbs on the candidate's behalf until true coordination and muscle-memory formed.

The maybe-wings began to fill in from the bony framework, gaining heft and solidity with even greater speed than her breasts and legs had. Heat shimmered around the massive surfaces. The longest feathers near the bottom grew from two-inch tufts to over three feet long. Amazed, one woman reached out to touch it, and pulled back her throbbing hand with a yelp of pain. People scrambled backwards to avoid being touched by the frightening, unnatural growths. Eyes still closed, Sarah's sense of vertigo faded away… Everything seemed to come back into balance. The new wings spread out like twin parachutes to cover most of the walkway. The last lusty stares vanished, to be replaced by screams of surprise and mute shock as another man got scorched. Most of the bystanders openly fled the unnatural sight. One or two fell to their elbows and knees and prayed.

“I like a good story well told. That is the reason I am sometimes forced to tell them myself.”
~ Mark Twain / Samuel Clemens (1907)

[AlexG]

Long seconds later a bewildered Sarah finally managed to stand up- way, way up, having gained her full height of 6'4" during the momentary ordeal. The wings folded into compact masses along her back fanning a warm breeze through her hair. Catching the motion from the corner of her eye, she whipped her head around trying to find the source of the screaming she had heard. Instead she saw a mass of pearly white and gold. Sarah just stared back over her shoulders trying to grasp what she was seeing, her body still going through smaller internal changes beneath her notice. A cool wind tousled the long white feathers… Her feathers she finally realized.

"Holy sh-…" She started, then began to laugh at the irony of what she had been about to say. She must look like an angel! Those were great big downy wings back there! Her now sleeveless sweatshirt was pulled tight enough to reveal the outline of her magnificent breasts; hanging on by the collar and waist bands after the back split open. Folds of fabric encased her upper arms, leaving a gap that showed off her pleasingly firm shoulders. Her spandex shorts were a second skin and every shift in balance as the wind tugged her wings made the straining seams rub against her pelvis in ways that her new sensitivity made very hard to ignore. More than just the wings were angelic. Her mother had fainted, while most of the square emptied of people. Her sister just stood there staring in rapturous adoration, while the strange man, still closer than anyone else had dared, leaned against the oak and was silently watching her.

The whole square had become very quiet.

There was something about him. A look, or scent, or something subliminal, but her raging libido locked on him like radar. No more distractions. She was going to have. him. Right. NOW! She began walking towards him with purpose. Even in bare feet she unconsciously kept her heels off the ground, tensing her perfect calves as if she were wearing 3" heels- and accentuating her curves. At first her wings threw off her balance and she nearly tumbled as she stepped out of the forgotten ruins of her sneakers. She stumbled and her hopes went crashing. 'Stupid klutz!' she berated herself. The confidence taken from the crowd's stares vanished, her internal mood shattered beyond even the Seed's ability to control. Some dancer, she couldn't even walk right! Sarah's experience with guys was that of a plain girl who most teenage boys had been unable to distinguish from a tree stump- pretty normal really. Deprived of any other audience, she was desperate to make the one man who hadn't fled want her like she wanted him. Within a few steps the new weight seemed more natural, and she acquired a grace that others would describe as haunting. Reflex and guile brought out every trick she knew to show off her body, turning out heels and flaring her hips. Wings streaming behind her, she floated towards him- an ethereal vision dancing in a lewd ballet of temptation. If she could have seen herself clearly, she would have laughed at the overkill. Nobody laughed though. Instead he favored her with a spreading smile and the fires in her mind re-ignited.

Still holding the candidate in an exaggerated state of need, the Seed continued to work smaller changes. Having absorbed sufficient mass, it dissolved the remaining spinners and ports. Now hundreds of concentrated clusters of nerve endings began to develop around her erogenous zones…

"I need you in me…" someone crooned using Sarah's voice. Again she was in the grips of the fiercest arousal. She might look like an angel, but her head was filled with the thoughts of a wanton animal (though to be honest a very inexperienced wanton animal…). Her crotch became fire and ice and her nipples ached to be touched. That 'this is a dream' part of her fully intended to rape him on the spot. The rest of her head agreed for once, all thoughts of modesty or her younger sister washed away by the stream of consuming lust filling her loins. He was the center lane of her absolute tunnel vision. When she reached his side she stood all the way up on her toes, leaning into him. Twisting her torso she brushed her tits back and forth against his cheeks, the remaining flap of her sweatshirt gathering in her deep cleavage. The now exposed nipples were stiff with want. The feeling was electric. She started to come right there- and instead let out a rich, sexy laugh when it registered how much taller than him she was now.

The man was stunned. Looking upwards at her cherubic face his breath caught. "This seems a little public miss…" he stammered. She didn't even think. At that point she might not have been able to if she wanted to. She scooped him up in both arms, pivoted-

-and jumped.

Sarah didn't know it, but she could have pressed over 600 pounds at that point. Seed-built musculature was considerably stronger that than ordinary muscle cells and the builder-net was still busily restructuring the last of her flesh into the higher performance configuration moment by moment. Still, it was more than enough strength for launching herself and her prey several feet into the air… Then the Seed's first commands from Sarah poured in with crystal clarity, and her wings went into motion. 

With five beats of her new wings she carried them both onto the roof of a neighboring building, scattering pigeons. "Better?" she giggled, realizing only after the fact what she had done. Not waiting for a reply, she tore his shirt off like cheesecloth. Her fingers were still tipped with the middle-length white enameled nails she had started the day with. But even they seemed longer and more graceful. …Which meant the enamel had 'grown' too… She just stared at them for a moment, puzzling over this newest discovery.

He only looked amused as he rolled back, pulling her down on top of him. He managed to remove his own pants while she peeled off her clothes in ragged strips. Only the crumpled, fleecy tubes of her sleeves escaped. Then she lay atop him, content for the moment to press her considerable length against his body, snuggling in a lascivious ball. His hands maneuvered to stroke her heaving flanks and fondle sweat-slicked breasts. Her breathing got faster as he palmed her hard belly, fingers tracing the valley down the middle of her tightly muscled abdomen. She let out a hiss between her clenched white teeth when of his hand slipped down to begin petting the triangle of silky blonde fur between her legs. Her whole body stiffened with a jerk, toes alternately spreading and curling as he stroked her. His fingers felt unusually big and strong, like she had some enormous field of naturally golden hair and he was ploughing it. When he finally brushed against her clit- Zzap!!

Foreplay was over. Requiring immediate satisfaction, she rolled on top, straddling him. She rose up and swung her hips like a crane, slowly lowering her womanhood towards his eager member. The increased sensitivity of her skin was trivial compared to that of her flushed labia and clitoris. When at last he slid into her well-moistened cleft sighs of pleasure turned to a gasp of alarm that froze her in place. Rigid with fright, she paused with only a fraction of his length within. Her muscular legs held her above him effortlessly. If she dared to move the sudden pressure of his gigantic shaft would burst her like a water balloon! He arched his back and grunted with effort, driving the rest of the way into a pussy that, even grown with her, was still eye-poppingly tight. For Sarah, twenty times the normal number of nerve endings got together and insisted that he had just driven seven feet of corrugated pipe into her! The bowling-ball-sized head of his penis ground across a turkey-platter-sized patch of roughened G-spot. Her heightened senses kept screaming that the shaft inside of her pussy was as big as her whole body! It was either that or they had both become 50 feet tall while she wasn't looking (which was not beyond imagining at that point). When his hands snaked out to start pumping her hips, her brain melted, leaving her jerking and squealing in exultation with his every thrust.

Sarah had become everything he dreamed of.

She was big, supple and fabulously responsive. A perfect hatch for the Complex. Her eyes gleamed like a wolf in heat and even folded her long legs bracketed his torso in a powerful grip. Damp hair and moist skin tickled him as he pulled her forward to lick her pointed breasts. Even Masamune-san could have found no fault with his craft. Sarah peaked almost immediately under his attentions, arching back with a throaty moan. Slow shudders went rolling in waves though her giant frame as her hands clutched her plush tits. Eyes closed, she grinned at the cloudy sky like a child. He just lay there under and inside her enjoying the powerful spasms. After about a minute of that, with there being no sign of her stopping, he struggled to roll her still thrashing body on to her back. It had been a while since he had wrestled with someone as strong as himself. Her great wings were spread under them like a blanket over the tile roof. He grabbed her ankles and bent her powerful legs back over her head without resistance. She was as flexible as any prima ballerina now with the physique to match. He gathered himself to plunge into her again, determined to bring her to another orgasm before he "accidentally" revealed more of what he had really given her.

Sarah came down oh-Oh-O!-so-slowly from what had to have been the most powerful climax in human history, ultimate satisfaction burning new pathways through her mind. Only she wasn't human. It had filled her huge powerful body like a flood of wine and sunlight. She felt truly transformed now. That hadn't happened to some dream-person. That was her! The wave would have drowned the old Sarah… She was sure it would have probably killed any ordinary woman. She had become something better, more vivid. Of course her range of experience was somewhat limited. The 'old Sarah' never had over six feet of perfect legs to wrap around a guy before… Or breasts really. And she had certainly never risen to a multiple orgasm before. 'Other women didn't orgasm that hard did they? They'd never get out of bed!' More importantly, she wasn't always going to cum like that was she? The difference was so extraordinary that she knew today was her real 'First Time'. That night with her first boyfriend was nothing but a little childish groping by comparison. She has hooked. To her delight she found her man still hard at work. Responding to his attentions, the newborn angel tensed unfamiliar muscles, letting them wrap her tightly around his column. She could feel his every bump with those muscles. Sarah had read about them in a woman's magazine, knew she should exercise them for better orgasms. 'Kegels' or something. She had never dreamed they could be so strong- using her inner muscles with the deftness of a third hand she could grab him and hold him inside herself! On the edge of heaven her spreading wings cupped upward to enfold them both. Once, teasingly, she grabbed him hard from within. She laughed at his sudden gasps. Even with him on top and her enormous outspread legs relaxed she could easily prevent him from escaping just by clenching her wet angelic pussy. And she needed him in her so badly! Still clutching him, they rocked back and forth, gradually coming upright. She was sitting in his lap while he kissed her neck and traced the curves of her amazing chest. It seemed to bravely defy gravity. His wide fingers stroked the edges, circling in on their perky tips. They were breasts the old Sarah (and Aaron) could only dream of (surpassing her sister's or anybody else she knew by far). Anticipating his imminent explosion her own breathing grew faster, wings beating an uneven rhythm around them and almost lifting her off him. The scraps of their clothing swirled into the air. He held her tight, crushing her ample bosom to his chest and they both huffed as her marble-sized nipples ground into his chest hair. They came together as thrashing wings made the air roar almost as loudly as her cries of ecstasy…

Slowly pearl and gold feathers settled over the two of them like the most intimate tent. The tiny space trapped her rich scent. Her feathers shivered in time with his pulsing member while he lingered inside her. "I think I'm going to like being an angel" she whispered, in the near darkness.

The Seraph Seed settled in to wait. It would be the arbiter of a far more complex covenant than the candidate was ever likely to realize. Both the man and his patron had secrets still to keep. For now it released it's hold on her passions, the man no longer emitting any overriding cue. Sarah's will was fully her own again…

The only thing he was wearing was socks and an idiot grin, but his wits were returning. Slowly.

It was past time to get moving. This was the first occasion where he had been able to stick around to watch and it could prove to be really a bad idea now. Still, the fulfillment of the fantasy after so many trial runs was something to celebrate, and Sarah would always be his first… He had to struggle to keep his mind on anything but the nymphomanical angel still squirming in his lap. Her soft pubic hair had been a surprise. And God, her pussy did things he hadn't even considered when he threw the code together. Sarah was a natural. Still, it was past time to go, and she'd figure out about the wings on her own eventually. He lifted her off of him, delighting in how smooth and light she felt. He rolled over and grabbed his pants, while the girl leaned back on her elbows, her incredible legs spreading in his direction, her lustrous wings making the frame. Formulas and theory were one thing; over seventy-five inches of silk-skinned angel/super-model with the most come-hither eyes begging you to mount her again was something else. And he wasn't even sending 'the signs'. She took his breath away.

It was an act of supreme discipline getting his pants on.

He was eyeing a rooftop door when she suddenly announced, "you have got to do this to my sister."

He froze, his blood seeming to pool in his veins. "What?"

"You did this right? Everybody else ran away but you didn't even look startled."

'Oh shit' He thought, trying to keep the expression off his face. "That's crazy miss…"

"Come on. I'll never tell. But I can hear her calling me down there, and she'll hate me forever if I don't share."

He knew perfectly well that she'd never tell: the Seed would make sure of that. Still, the proposal was sort of interesting. If nothing else it would make a good distraction while he grabbed a shirt and ran for his car. And it would make sure the kid was harmless to him. More and more he was realizing that it was a mistake to get noticed like this and the girl was offering him a way to cover his tracks without her even knowing it. Time to cut and run. He took her hand, mental instructions going down to the core. Surreptitiously he wiped a load of Seraph in gel form on her hand as he clasped it between his own.

"Fine. Fly me down on that side of the building, then stroke her cheeks with your hands. But you are the one asking for this, and wherever I am, you'll both keep that promise. Understood?"

She nodded, a little taken aback by his solemn manner. It strangely reminded her of stories about dealing with the Devil. It was a bizarre thought when she remembered that she looked like an angel now.

His lack of a shirt went all but unnoticed as she carried him down to the far street. Her own naked glory was clearly the center of attention, and while she was going to have to find some clothes, for one brief moment she secretly enjoyed it.

He vanished into one of the dozen shops on the street, so she launched herself straight upwards and ran back over the building to escape the awestruck crowd. The wings seemed to know what she wanted. Her sister was still watching for her in the almost deserted courtyard. She glided down with little effort.

"Sarah!! There you are! Where's your clothes? I thought I heard you screaming up there."

Evidently Tina was less experienced than she thought. Somehow not quite being caught was worse. Sarah felt like her blush would have been almost enough covering. Instead she grabbed one of her own wings and pulled it across herself modestly. Strangers were one thing…

"Still want to be twelve feet tall squirt?"

"Nah. Just like you would be enough."

Sarah hands caressed her sister's face. Then she hugged Tina tight. In moments it had begun.

"Deal."

* * *

He sped away on Route 25, wishing he could have seen the birth of the second Seraph. He had realized after the fact he hadn't changed the instructions on his hastily secreted nano. Sarah was going to have the smaller bust again he realized with a chuckle. Little did he know that news of the most recent outbreak would reach OPT within the hour…

“I like a good story well told. That is the reason I am sometimes forced to tell them myself.”
~ Mark Twain / Samuel Clemens (1907)

[AlexG]

Chapter Two

Four days from now…

She found Agent Grail watching the boob-tube again. Anybody who had seen the gruff mirror-shades monster at work would have had a hard time suppressing the smile. Dr. Fanir didn't even try. Jonathon was watching 'Men in Black' again.

"Looking for pointers?"

Without shame he quipped, "Nah. I have 'The Matrix' for that." He started in with his professionally cool threatening voice, "Mr. Anderson…"

Her smile turned into a full-blown laugh. "Right. How silly of me. I would have thought the 57th time would have etched it on your frontal lobe permanently. Anyway, the marshal has arrived, and you're supposed to greet him, and bring him up to speed."

"Crap. Fine. I'll be down in about four minutes. Can you grab some of the case file? If he's half as good as the rep, I think the initial dancing is going to be short."

"No doubt. I'll meet you at the 'hotel'. I don't want to miss the honeymoon."

"You are a wicked woman Teresa."

* * *

U.S. Marshal Calvin Turner had the sort of rugged good looks that made outdoorsey women swoon and office jocks grit their teeth. He was in jeans and jacket, having just arrived at the NSA compound from Baltimore International. Only the professionally watchful were likely to notice the puffiness under the eyes. This was a man who went without sleep for long stretches. Regularly. The kind of hours that wears a body to the bone.

Agent Grail gritted his teeth and made the introductions. "Marshal Turner? Agent Grail. Welcome to the OPT. Your agency was kind enough to loan you to us for the duration of the current crisis-"

"OPT. You aren't NSA then?"

The first round of questions was so predictable Grail couldn't even work up irritation. "No. We share some resources with them and they have loaned us some office space here. We are autonomous for the most part."

"Answering to?"

"Some senators. The president. A few people higher up than that. Your file says you've worked with the intelligence community before. You know how it goes."

"Can't blame a man for trying." Turner's grin was tight but very sincere. Unexpectedly, Grail found himself warming to the man. "Well, I've spent some time tag-teaming with the Secret Service looking for counter-fitters if that's what you mean. Somehow I don't think that's what I'm here for…"

"No. Our current predicament potentially involves a manhunt."

"Oh. Typical. The department didn't tell me jack and put me up in the usual piddly hotel. Shit. I'll have some more things sent out." Turner counted on his fingers for a few moments. "What kinda spook-crap restrictions and clearances are we looking for this ride? Despite what my file says, my team is essential for the kind of work you aren't describing."

"I'm prepared to allow a great deal of latitude on this matter if you vouch for your agents' discretion. But there will be a few items that are not to go beyond these offices. When you are fully briefed, I'm sure you will agree with the reasons."

'You'll allow?' Turner thought. This Agent Grail was more than just a black suit trooper then. He looked young to have any kind of command authority. Maybe he had been the first agent on the scene or something. Turner put on an expression of mock frustration. "Fine. You're absolutely right of course. I've done a few spook jobs before and the terms always get more complicated as the case goes on. You didn't answer my question though. OPT is?"

Grail hesitated. "The Office of Proscribed Technologies." Turner just filled it away without comment. He had never heard of it. But he would know a lot more after a few phone calls.

"You said manhunt. Nature?"

"We have a criminal or criminals engaged in very dangerous activities. This has resulted in several deaths. The events have occurred in multiple states providing clear grounds for a federal investigator like yourself to become involved. Due to the nature of the activities, we have several victims in protective custody. We would like you to assist in the investigation, and help us apprehend the perpetrators. Specifically, I would like you to interview the victims."

"Hmm. Certainly sounds simply enough- Today. The nature of the crime?"

"I think it would be better for you to determine that for yourself. I don't wish to spoil the scene as it were. And if I were to tell you, I doubt you would believe me anyway." Agent Grail's most disarming smile wasn't nearly as effective as Turner's was. But that was why Turner was here. The man's jacket glowed with commendations. He and his team were outstanding investigators. Superiors used terms like 'predator' and 'uncanny' to describe the man in action. And his interview skills were a highlight. Jonathan Grail hoped this Marshal Turner was as good as the paper on him. The incidents had him deeply concerned. OPT was positively microscopic considering the burden it carried. Requisitioning staff was the only way to keep ahead of the diverse problems the OPT existed to combat. Grail was one of only about a dozen 'native' OPT staff. "If you'll follow me…"

"I just got off a plane from Denver. You want me moving on this now I'm going to need coffee. One cream, three sugars." The man's business mode came on like a suit of armor. His aura of command was so complete John didn't think twice about the man having given him instructions in his own offices.

"We don't have much of an administrative staff, but we've got an excellent break room. I'll go grab a few cups as soon as you've seen the victims. Now this way if you please…"

Calvin examined the route as they spiraled in through a warren of hallways and past several armed checkpoints. On the way Grail accosted what looked like an intern and got the coffee rolling. He grunted in surprise as they passed through a medical airlock clearly emblazoned with biohazard warnings. The dark suited agent in front of him offered no explanations. Agent Grail was playing cold with him. Something very serious was going down here. He ratcheted the surveillance up another notch. An attentive looking Indian woman was waiting inside the controlled area. Early forties, lab coat, and carrying a stack of papers that could only be a case file. An easy smile but no spark of interest met his polite nod. Wedding ring, doctor's bearing. Her nametag said 'Fanir'. "Good evening doctor Fanir. Those are the files for the victims?"

Fanir shot Grail a look. He shook his head almost imperceptibly. Turner pretended not to notice. Interesting. She hadn't been put off in the slightest by his guessing her role or the nature of her package, meaning she had undoubtedly read his file. He expected he would be seeing a lot of this woman. "Yes. Though I'd like to go over them with you after the initial interviews."

"Certainly. Where are the witnesses?"

"You can observe them by video in this room," she gestured towards the door on the right. Their rooms are in a row on the left, each with observation glass in the hall. Just ask, and we can buzz you in to speak to them."

"Well since Agent Grail," slight emphasis "insists on me doing the carnival man's cold read, I guess I should look in the little windows, yes?" She stepped aside with grace as he marched towards the hotel's single row of rooms.

He paced up and down the hallway for about 10 minutes. Going back and forth from window to window. He looked like a big cat stalking some very doomed deer. He pulled out a pocket dictation recorder and started speaking in short chops. "Six subjects. All female. Late teens, early twenties. Four Caucasians, one Black, one Oriental. Generally fit, bordering on athletic. IV's and medical equipment present. Nice furnishings, this is an expensive holding area. Very discrete cameras. New clothing- all of them. All subjects are fairly attractive. Somewhat gaunt. No food, just the intravenous. Appear frightened. More so than governmental custody accounts for. Fear? No signs of outright distress. Inconsistent with rape. Why all women? Medical isolation. Infection? Need more information. Out." He clicked of the digital recorder and returned the entryway. "Well you found me out. I am not in fact a magician. Now will one of you tell me what's going on?"

"Don't under estimate yourself, marshal." Doctor Fanir looked mightily impressed. "As you suspected, the patients are indeed subject to infection. Deliberate infection. Take a look at these." She fanned a series of driver's licenses and handed to him. Grail handed him a Styrofoam cup filled with the much-needed coffee. He sat at the small round table in the center of the room, spreading the cards on the surface before him. He took a long sip. "Seven. Where's the Japanese woman?"

"We'll get to her." Grail announced.

He studied the IDs. Three were from here in the DC area, the others from all over the country. They matched the women he had studied for the most part, though none of them seemed to be very flattering photos. He started committing the vitals to memory.

"Oh. Shit."

These couldn't be the DLs for the some of the women in the rooms. One of them wasn't even a driver's license, just a state ID, the holder listed as 14. One of the women was 27, another 34, and none of them were nearly tall enough to be the girls in custody. But faces did not lie- not to him.

"What the hell did these people catch?"

The woman's cultured voice took up the challenge. "Just the beginnings of our problem Mr. Turner. The 'what' is my job. We want you to help us find out who they caught it from."

Turner was still reeling. The only thing left was instinct: ask questions. "And your part in this?"

"Sorry. We weren't introduced. Doctor Teresa Fanir, Ph.D., CDC and a consultant like yourself. I've been on this for about three weeks now."

"The Chinese kid has got to have put on a foot. She's just a child. Christ. When were they infected?" Turner was making comparisons between stats and reality. The differences were ridiculous.

"We don't know. They all started growing four days ago though. None of them have any idea how it happened. Thankfully these seven sought medical attention and were brought here when the flags went up. We don't know if there might be others out there. That's what we need you for. They were all in the Washington D.C. area when it started. That's our only link for this group."

"This group?"

"Yes. I was brought in because of another similar incident in Los Angeles about three weeks ago. All of them died."

"Then these women are likely to die too?"

"No. The others all died of causes not immediately related to their… infection. Four of them. We suspect foul play in three of the cases. But the record mismatch brought it to the Police's attention and I was called in. After filing my initial findings, the OPT swooped down and drafted me."

Regaining his composure, Turner started the part of his brain working that makes guesses. "So you put them in protective custody. Somebody might be killing them to hide the evidence. I assume you've ruled out something natural causing this?"

"I did the blood work myself. It's a little peculiar in there, but there's nothing resembling a viral, fungal, or bacterial infection. The immune system shows no indicators of a fight. It's artificial whatever it is. And the distribution suggests it's not entirely random either."

"So what IS it doctor?"

Grail chimed in at that point "Almost certainly nanotechnology. Microscopic mach-"

"I've watched Start Trek. Which is what I had assumed such things were: fictional."

"Not quite. Just insanely dangerous and not nearly rare enough. But this incident goes way beyond anything we've ever seen." Grail rubbed his left arm with a shudder. It was the most open display Turner had seen from the man yet. Something had happened to the agent that related to this stuff. Something bad enough to shake his control at the thought of it. Turner had nothing but more questions.

"OPT. So this nano stuff is a 'proscribed' technology? That's a new section of the penal code for me."

"Very funny Mr. Turner. No, we keep this stuff heavily under wraps. The problem with nanotechnology is, after a certain threshold of complexity, it's easier to no-bullshit destroy the Earth, than it is to make nanotech work. You've dealt with some of the bomb-thrower cookbooks out there on the internet, Marshall Turner. Nanotech is never going to see the light of day under those conditions. And that's where we come in."

"Riiight. The new Men in Black then." The sarcasm was poisonous.

"Absolutely." Turner had to hand it to him. Grail could put on a stone-face that hammers would bounce off of.

"And you're looking to catch whoever spread this stuff around."

"Exactly."

"And what do you know about this nanotech stuff?" he asked, clearly speaking to the doctor.

"A lot more than I thought there was to know three weeks ago. I could make a new Ph.D. out of what they've got locked away here. Not that I could ever publish. This is on the level Marshal Turner. And you come recommended as 'the Best'."

Turner just looked at the two of them for a moment, the possibilities unfolding in his mind.

"I'm going to need a phone… and a bigger room."

* * *

After calling his team members and starting a preliminary "free search", he got to work speaking with the women. They were evidently not considered highly contagious at this point. He could go into their room and speak directly with them though he had strict instructions not to touch them. He was confessor, father, kid brother, and police officer all in one. Agent Grail just watched the cameras in fascination as the man worked. He was their best friend the moment he came in the door, and they opened up to him immediately. He started reconstructing their last week in broad strokes, helping them remember details they had thought forgotten. The man was as good as the hype. After the third one Turner decided to call it a night.

"So?" Grail asked, when Turner entered the lounge. Dr. Fanir had gone down to the lab.

"Too early to say anything and too late to keep going. But I'm starting to see a pattern. The ones I talked to know something important, but they're blocking it. I'll have to finish up the others tomorrow. It's a puzzle. Maybe I can skirt around it enough to tell what's missing then. Figure out the color of the piece by the shape of the hole."

"That sounds promising. DC Metro and our guys didn't find out anything beyond the little bit in the dossiers. Blocked?"

"Yeah, similar to a trauma-event, only different somehow. Like I said, I'll have a better idea after tomorrow. I also want to see number 7."

"All right. But first there will be one more thing to show you. It will make the rest clearer."

"Yeah whatever. Oh, and you were right: there is no way I would have believed you if you had told me. I've got to get some sleep. I'll be back bright and early."

"Good work. And Mr. Turner, thank you."

"G'night."

* * *

"Now watch closely."

Miss Shelly Jones was one of the women he had interviewed last night. Her ID said the black woman was a DC native. She had cream and coffee skin the same color as in Turner's mug. He'd found a proper coffee cup in the lounge. He held the mug out at arm's length comparing the two shades. Her license claimed she was 27-years old and 5'7".

Her driver's license photo was badly out of date.

Calvin would have bet they'd card her at any club in the US. She looked like she was maybe 22. She also looked very lean in the new clothes they had provided her. At just shy of 6', she had needed them. He realized now why all of them were wearing new clothes, courtesy of their host, the OPT. The gauntness, as he had surmised, came from their non-diet. All of them had been on intravenous drip for four days, getting the bare minimum of nutrients. Sort of a medically assisted fast on the doctor's orders. Each of them had complained of feeling famished when they first sought help.

"Wait a minute. Just being hungry wouldn't have flagged you people. How did you know something was wrong?"

Dr. Fanir explained, "They've been on IV for four days now because they are always hungry. It has deprived the infection of raw materials."

"Deprived… You said they started growing five days ago."

"Yes. And they did all of their growing in the first couple of hours. That's why they went to the various doctors. What you're seeing is where we arrested the process when they were brought here."

"Hours? Holy shit. I thought you meant they had been growing continuously for the four days. This stuff is that fast? That's-" Turner just gave up. There were no words for it.

Fanir smiled. "It's overwhelming isn't it. I haven't been able to spot the nanites that Grail says are there. Booby-trapped maybe- they might be designed to breakdown before they can be examined. It would fit with some of the unusual blood chemistry. Frankly I just do not know enough to even speculate intelligently. So I am are going to take Shelly here off of the IV and let her eat. It is possible we beat this stuff. Caught it early and blocked it. It may be flushed from her system by now. Or you may get to see how fast it really is. Either way we learn something important."

"What if it's just done? It might have changed her as much as it's going to and gone away."

"It hasn't. Wait until you see Case Number 0ne. The seventh girl. It is pretty obvious when the stuff has run its course. Hell. We don't even have a name for it yet. Though Grail says they classify this thing as a type of Avatar outbreak."

"Avatar?"

"Yeah. Whatever passes for an OPT playbook has classifications for several different types of nanotech incidents. All the generally beneficial varieties that affect humans are lumped under the heading 'Avatar'. You'll have to have him explain it when he gets in."

"I will." Any further discussion was put on hold. Ms. Jones' breakfast had arrived. The pushcart was covered in food. Fruit plates, eggs, ham. A whole spread for about six people. "What's all that for? She's been on IV for four days. No way she's going to eat all that. She'll be puking after the first plate. We having breakfast with her?"

"Certainly not! Once we get her wired up to the sensors, we are going to push that in there and lock down the room. If the nano is still active, I would not risk being anywhere near that woman. Now that you have had a chance to speak to her, we are going to acquiesce to her demands and let her eat. With a full set of monitors going full blast. It is important you get an idea how serious the threat is we are dealing with here."

"I notice the nurse in there doesn't touch her. She's just showing Ms. Jones how to put the little stickies on. And you told me no touching yesterday. What's going on?"

"There was an accident with the first victim. Believe me, you don't want to touch them before this stuff runs its course. I suspect the intervention we have performed here is actually very dangerous. This process was not intended to drag out this long. I intend to cycle through the others after you speak to them. When we finish this up I will explain."

"Whatever. I thought the show and don't tell crap was over last night."

"Really, I think it is for the best. A couple other people have seriously lost composure when they saw 'number seven'. Nervous breakdown level. Better to bring you up to speed slowly."

There wasn't anything Turner could say to that. If the Asian kid had put on a foot in a matter of hours, and the women out in LA had died from this stuff, he wasn't all that eager to watch it work. The criminal aspects of this whole scenario began to dawn on him. Sqeamishness aside, he needed to see what happened, so he could start guessing why. Then he could get to work finding the who.

Dr. Fanir had a laptop open on a third stool where she could glance at the combined readings. A smaller window revealed a different view of the room from a recessed camera. Turner got himself settled on one of the other stools as the nurse pushed the cart in and then firmly locked the door. There was a hiss of compressed gas: expanding gaskets hermetically sealing the room. She padded back towards the main observation room, leaving the two of them there to look through the glass.

Shelly's eyes went wide with excitement. The sight of all that food after the harrowing experiences of the last few days was a relief. She quickly sat down in one of the room's two comfortable chairs, wolfing down a piece of toast as she transferred the first plate to the table. Screw the diet! She was just barely maintaining a veneer of culture, grabbing up silverware. Her eyes were those of a starving person.

At the base of the candidate's brain, the Archangel Seed detected the arrival of new bio-mass. Its programming had never considered the possibility that stage two might be interrupted by a lack of raw material. Fortunately the seed's other directives had settled down to an uneasy equilibrium. Damaging the candidate with self-cannibalization would not advance the process, so it continuously imposed a powerful feeling of hunger into the candidate's mind and waited with the patience that only machines have. As soon as Shelly swallowed the first bite of toast the seed went active and stage two was back in session…

"Her core temperature just jumped three degrees. It is most definitely still in her system."

Shelly was sweating before she finished off half the eggs. She had been terrified that first time, as her sweating body started to change. Four days in isolation with only the nurses and that CDC doctor woman for company hadn't reduced the fear. Even so, the constant pangs of hunger were more pressing than the memories of that first terrible afternoon. Just like then it had started with the sweating. Nonetheless, she had to eat!

Shelly had started that day normally enough: her morning jog down from the Metro-station down around the Washington Memorial before looping back to the office. If you started early enough you could avoid the worst of the morning rush and the hour of PT counted towards her workday. The wolf whistle had been so unexpected she nearly tripped over a curb. Some guy perched on one of the many benches scattered around the Mall. Jerk. She kept on jogging without looking back. The only problem with the pre-dawn workout was the lingering mosquitoes. Hot, humid DC was built over a swamp and it never let you forget that. Arriving at the office she flashed her badge and scratched at a bite on her shoulder. Pulling her neatly folded work-dress out of her backpack she turned to face the day. Civil service paid pretty good for an up-and-comer from the northeast side. Everything seemed fine to the 5'7" secretary. She was starving by lunchtime. Her diet plan said salad. Hungry as she was she knew she was going to over-eat, so she tried to minimize her cheating by going to an all you can eat salad bar she knew. Her friend Gina from down on the fourth floor decided to tag along. If it weren't for her friend's insisting they should get back, she probably wouldn't have stopped eating. As it was she put away something like four plates of fresh greens without a second thought. Damn rabbit food didn't do a thing for her hunger. The sweating had started right after that, her stomach churning and to be honest she had felt a little aroused. She was still hungry when she got back to the office and started digging through her secret trove of candy bars. Then her clothes started to feel tight. A couple of people commented on her looking a bit feverish. She just felt a little bloated. As caught up as any government employee ever could be, she decided to take a half-day. The fear started on the way home. Her clothes started tearing on the subway. It wasn't just that they were too tight. They looked like they were rotting in patches. And she was so damn hungry. Thankfully the early afternoon crowd on the Metro was light. There were only a few curious stares as her clothes continued to disintegrate. When she got up to make her stop, she looked at the seat she had been sitting in. That was when the real horror started. The seat looked scorched or burnt. It was like her sweat was acid or something. Her clothes were coming apart in handfuls. Weeping, she had managed to sprint half-naked back to her small house. She had gulped down more food (everything in the fridge actually), and called her doctor. Everything in her house looked strange. The weird stretching and pulling sensation she had felt after lunch came back. She felt disoriented and, for no apparent reason, horny again. Pulling on some of her loosest lounging clothes (and hoping that they would survive the trip) she zipped over to the hospital. Her doctor examined her gingerly, then told her that the hospital had received a Center for Disease Control alert earlier that afternoon. Shelly had the precise symptoms of whatever it was the CDC was looking for. He said it sounded quite serious, but no it wasn't life threatening or anything like that. He made arrangements to transfer her to a private clinic in the area. There had been a flurry of activity, ambulances and nurses all treating her with kid gloves and not a little fear. After about another half an hour the sweats had stopped (but not before ruining another outfit) and she had been moved into the room at 'the hotel'. A scratchy hospital gown, new nurses, and test after test by people who wouldn't dare touch her. No one had thought to tell the frightened woman that she also happened to be 6' tall now. The cop last night had almost been a relief. At least he seemed like he cared more about her than her condition. She had told him everything that had happened to her over the last few days and he was the perfect listener; a real gentleman. She had been surprised by how short he was. He had that bearing of a man who was in control. Most guys her height were a little more- tentative.

“I like a good story well told. That is the reason I am sometimes forced to tell them myself.”
~ Mark Twain / Samuel Clemens (1907)

[AlexG]

The food was wonderful. Shelly gobbled it down with gusto. She was sweating again, but after four days on IV it seemed like a fair trade. The hospital provided clothes had fit all right, but they were hardly on par with the outfit she had destroyed the first afternoon. The big two-way mirror had let her examine some of the changes herself. Aside from the haggard, malnourished look of the dark patches under her eyes she looked pretty good. Really good actually. Her diet had never worked so well. Her legs looked great, like all her jogging had finally paid off in one big Bar-Bar-Bar jackpot. And the little hint of fat on her arms had melted away. 'I guess a couple of days without eating solid food will do that to you…' She was going to have to see about getting sick more often. She would get horny just looking at herself in the mirror. There was probably somebody watching on the other side. Clearing away the second empty plate, she went to work on the fruit basket. Yes, she could make out faint outlines through the glass. Maybe it was the cop. He had eyed her once when he came in. Very professional, but also flattering. Like his smile.

Half the little scrolling graphs on Fanir's laptop suddenly went flat. "Oh crud! We just lost the skin contacts. It's happening again. Just like the other one!"

"What?"

"The nano seems to reside primarily in the stomach, but when they eat it comes out in the sweat. It dissolves anything organic. That and the food seems to be why they put on weight so fast. Watch."

Shelly was crouching over the table like an animal, on leg folded under her in the chair, the other trailing out behind her. After the fruit vanished she had abandoned the silverware, pushing food into her mouth with her hands. She kept looking at the window, her eyes hazed with lust. Turner had the uncomfortable sensation that she was looking squarely at him, even through the mirrored glass.

The hard curves of Shelly's body were starting to inflate inside her clothes. Her iron buttocks strained the fabric of the institutional white pants as she crouched over the table. Between her supporting elbows her chest took on even greater definition, pendulous breasts squeezing against her bra. Glancing at the close-up on Fanir's laptop, Turner could see one of Shelly's long, lithe legs swinging from the chair, and it was getting longer! The cuff was gradually receding up her calf. Little graphic overlays tracked the change millimeter by millimeter. Turner realized it hadn't taken her hours to grow five inches… She must have done it in minutes each time she had eaten! The woman in there was growing before his eyes! Stunned, it took a moment for his analytical mind to kick back in. She wasn't growing proportionately either. Her legs were stretching out beneath her a lot faster than her shoulders were rising above the table. She crammed another cinnamon-roll and some sausage in her mouth, still looking right at him. Her tongue flashed over her thin lips, lapping up the sticky glaze. Her face was changing too. The jaw was rounder, but the forehead and nose seemed more prominent, more aristocratic. Her lips suddenly turned pale against the creamy bronze skin of her cheeks. He could see a sheen on them, glossy like lipstick. He didn't think it was the sausage grease either. Her short black bob of hair was amazingly silky looking. Had she looked that good last night? He didn't think so. Then in a ripple straight out of a special effects movie her feathery bangs changed color, turning so platinum-white it was almost blue. What had brought that on? A glance at Dr. Fanir showed that last bit was as much a surprise to her as it was to him. It did match the lips though. Shelly grabbed another plate off the cart, reaching out her long, firm arms. She was muscled like an aerobics instructor- Now. Last night, his memory assured him, she had been rather skinnier.

"It's an almost perfect conversion of mass. She gains weight as fast as she eats. And every bit of it goes on in a tightly controlled fashion. People with glandular disorders or forced hormone imbalances take on strange proportions. Warped bone densities. These women just get more idealized. That more than anything else tells us this is engineered. Somebody planned this." There was faint admiration in Dr. Fanir's tone. Turner filed it away, still staring into the room.

Parts of Shelly's clothing started sloughing away. A scrap of cloth from her sleeve slid down her arm, vanishing like melting snow before it got to her elbow. Further back her milk-chocolate legs became exposed as the pants just faded away. The meaty globes of her buttocks had long since absorbed the confining fabric and now bobbed unrestrained as she threw herself at the fifth plate. Turner's imagination provided the sizzling sound as her breasts burned through the confinement of her bra to hang like ripe fruit from her chest. A last tattered bit of shirtfront escaped to flutter down to the tabletop.

In moments the woman was naked. And probably 6'3" though it was hard to tell with her leaning over the table like that. The blunt tips of her shadowed breasts were dangling just above the tabletop, threatening the one piece of cloth left from her outfit. Turner wished (like many men) that her ID had indicated her cup-size. His interest was still professional however. More than just growing, the woman had filled in. She had been vaguely athletic when he first examined her. Now she was sleek and muscular, maybe 12% body-fat or less. She was also noticeably leggy. Turner was reminded of a ballet dancer, the way her stunningly long thighs were curved. Even scrabbling for food, there was something elegant about the way she swayed over the table, still looking at him. He remembered Fanir's comment. Somebody had planned this. And they had to have taken their inspiration somewhere. The female Dr. Fanir might appreciate the technical virtuosity, but Turner had a man's appreciation for the aesthetics of the process. Even the droplets of sweat seemed deliberately, artistically applied. Like the work of a fashion photographer armed with his spray bottle.

She finished off the last plate and stood up. Turner didn't normally care for black women, but Shelly was undeniably, wildly beautiful. She had been transformed into a towering 6'5" amazon princess. Even her eyebrows and pubic hair had taken on that curious blue-white shade. She must have realized that she was taller, because she was staring at where the table brushed against the smooth cinnamon-colored skin of her mid-thigh.

"There is an element of psychological programming too. She ought to be hysterical. Instead she does not even care her clothes are gone. And look at that flush. She is highly aroused." Turner didn't need to be reminded that erect nipples topped the firm half-globes on the woman's chest. She kept looking at him in between her moments of self-examination. Calvin turned in his seat to hide the growing response in his pants.

"Here it comes. Now watch this last bit closely." Teresa pulled out what looked like a cellphone. "Shelly? This is doctor Fanir. You are looking kind of wobbly there. Why don't you lie down on the bed? I'll send a nurse in a minute with some water." She clicked off the phone. Turning back to him, "There's no way I'm sending someone in there until she's through. She's dehydrated at this point. We swapped the mattress out this morning. Same with the clothes. Restoring the environment the bug's designers must have expected…"

"What do you mean?"

"After seeing what was happening, I put them on the strict IV and all their clothes have been inorganic fibers. Even the beds were synthetic. She's running hot now, covered with that nano laced sweat. When she hits that bed…"

"She's going to grow more?"

"Probably not the way you think. Now watch!"

Shelly was feeling dizzy. The disappearance of her clothes wasn't all that big of a surprise after the shape her work outfit had been in that first day. The prospect of being ogled through the mirror wasn't that important either, especially of it was that nice cop. What she really wanted to know was how tall she was. The table, hell, the whole room seemed smaller. And she was feeling parched. Maybe the doctor was right, just lie down for a bit.

She flopped onto the bed face first. She felt her breasts flatten out under her. She was a marginal B-cup when she had her weight under control. Now? A full C-cup easy. She noticed even with her head curled against the headboard her feet were dangling over the end of the bed… That stretching sensation in her legs a minute ago must have been exactly what it felt like. She had been growing! She had suspected it when she saw her doctor. His examination table had felt lower but she dismissed it as part of the fever. How long was this stupid bed? She hadn't had any proper sense of scale for days… Maybe the cop had been taller than she thought. There was a sudden wash of drowsy warmth from her back. She would think about it latter. Then there was the question of that naked Sport's Illustrated model unexpectedly looking back at her from the big mirror- long legs, perfect ass, a hard-body stomach to die for, and that sexy white hairdo. 'Punk beach goddess or dance-club super-diva? Let's hear the votes from our home audience!' She giggled. If that was really her, MTv was about to have a new 'Queen of the Scene'. Shelly had visions of shaking those sculpted hips at some poor drooling cameraman- her hot jiggling flesh bouncing under a sporty blue bikini as a pounding techno-rave beat shook her bones. She hadn't been out dancing like that since she was twenty. Girls night out! She thought of the rest of her mousy friends in the secretarial pool at work. 'What would Gina look like after something like this? I wonder if I'm contagious?' She sank deeper into the padded bulk. Literally. Pleasantly dazed, Shelly couldn't see that her whole body was dropping into a crumbling hole as the natural fiber stuffing of the mattress dissolved at her touch. When had they brought in a futon? To her it felt like someone was pushing her down into the bed. Hot, masculine hands were kneading the thick muscles of her wide back. She purred.

Turner had an excellent view. The mirror was on the wall right above the bed… Hey! The couch had been there yesterday. Dr. Fanir must have rearranged the room for just for this last bit. He could see the woman snuggling down into the liquefying pad. Drops of dissolving padding hit her skin and vanished, absorbed by the slick, hungry skin. Then he saw the bulges. Two bulbous humps massed themselves on the woman's huge back. They formed vertical ridges over her shoulder blades. Even muffled by the glass there was a hideous rending sound that made him jump out of his seat. The blisters split and thin, bony spears thrust out of the mass. In moments they grew to tremendous length, one reaching to the far side of the room while other scraped upwards along the glass in front of him with a nails-on-chalkboard screach, only to bend in the middle when the point hit the ceiling.

"What the hell?" he choked out. The whole blooming into a Caribbean sex goddess thing had been strange enough. But it was still vaguely logical. It followed from what he had already observed. This was totally new territory. The predator part of his brain had already been ticking off web searches and methods of tracking down people with fetishes for growth. Cross-indexing with biotech knowledge that would make a career CDC professional sit up and take notice. The all-female target population combined with the shear sexuality of the process long since having suggested possible motive. This new twist was just weird. He'd be digging through comic books now. Bones growing out of women's shoulders. Right…

The vicious looking new limbs started to fill in. Membranes spread across the gapping arcs, sprouting feathers as he watched. Oh no. It wasn't possible. Glossy black and creamy off-white feathers as long as his arm rippled in a heat haze beyond the glass. In moments they covered the window, blocking out his view of the room. One glance at the camera feed displayed on Fanir's computer confirmed his startled impression.

There was a dark angel of glorious proportions sleeping in the ruined remnants of the tiny bed. A world of new motives came to mind.

Marshal Turner was looking at the start of what was going to be a long hunt.

“I like a good story well told. That is the reason I am sometimes forced to tell them myself.”
~ Mark Twain / Samuel Clemens (1907)

[AlexG]

Chapter Three

Earlier this morning…

The American capitol was even more extraordinary than she had imagined.

Yamashida Saemi had been wandering The Mall for over three days now. Despite her duties, she was a devout morning person. She rose with the sun and was out examining the monuments and parklands before the museums even opened. With her early schedule it had been possible to tour the White House an even seen the inside of the FBI building despite the enormous lines that other tourists promised her always formed by eight. Now she planed to explore as much of the Smithsonian Institute as she could before her master decided to return to his residence in San Fransisco, his business here accomplished.

The American East Coast was very strange to her. The were seemingly almost no other Asians here. Just a few other tourists, but the moment she left the park they vanished. None. She could hardly believe she was in the same country as the more familiar haunts of California. At least Washington had the same dull gray skies in the morning as home. Her outfit was a series of soft gray layers that seemed to gather the light and complimented the extreme contrast between her porcelain skin and raven black hair. At home she was ethereal, a ghost in the morning fog. Here the effect was largely undiminished.

It was Mr. Nagemura's father who had originally purchased her. He had done the job himself, his discerning eye seeking the womanly grace in the gangly child; hand picking her from among a half a dozen wretched youths in her village. Who knew how many rural villages he visited before hers, looking for the right combination of poverty and promise? Few believed such things still happened in the bright and shiny countries of the twentieth century. Few in the west believed in the continuing practice of female infanticide either. She considered herself lucky. The senior Nagemura knew exactly where to look and who to approach. That sort of business was part of his family's legacy. Her parents had sold her when she was five. She barely remembered them now.

The younger Nagemura had been an exemplary master, considering what she knew of the fate of other women like her. There were plenty of husbands in her country more abusive than her owner. It helped that they had been together since childhood. She was closer to being his sister than his lover, but she had been his first in that also. While he had been initiated in the family business and taught to hold the reins of power, her own instruction was no less rigorous. She might not be a true, classical geisha, but her arts of polite entertainment and social grace would have done any of that ancient profession proud. She appeared with him at every function, the model of civility and demure feminine beauty. She was also a symbol of the tremendous power the Nagemura clan wielded in darker, more savage circles. She was a badge of rank among those sharks who respected the discrete display of owning a slave, and a magnificent one at that. It was not the life she might have chosen for herself, but it was the only life she knew, and not without its rewards. One of those was the complete trust of a very wealthy, and influential man. She enjoyed the freedom of the city while he was engaged in business, and the gruff, muscular man who accompanied her about town was truly there for her protection and convenience, rather than to prevent her escape.

So it was more than a little surprising when she heard a polite greeting in her native tongue.

"Excuse me…?"

The cautious, halting greeting was repeated. "Good morning. Your beauty brightens the day."

Now certain that she had actually heard what she thought she had heard the first time, she turned her shocked gaze towards the speaker. A white man was perched on one of the many benches scattered along the footpaths. Not reclining, but actually hunched over with his feet on the seat. She examined him with a professional socialite's eye. He wore a tasteful overcoat and fairly expensive walking shoes. The rest of his ensemble was hidden within the coat. His face was moderately handsome and wore an expression of frank admiration.

Her hulking guardian Kazuo moved forward to smash this unwelcome intrusion.

The young man quickly switched to English. "Whoa, easy big fellow. No harm done or implied." He started to sidle towards the far end of the bench. Backing away but still surprisingly calm in the face of the thug's aura of menace.

Kazuo only grunted. His English wasn't that good, and he probably didn't care even if he did understand.

"No. It's all right, Kazuo." She had to place her hand on her bodyguard to actually reign him in. Nagemura's bully boys were fiercely protective of the boss's 'sister'. She had seen to that years ago. The man seemed harmless enough, and they were not in Los Angeles or San Fransisco today. Her master would not approve of an incident here.

"Gee, sorry miss. I didn't think you'd even understand me." He smiled. "My Japanese isn't that good…"

She smiled at his effort, even misguided as it was. "Keep practicing. Good day."

The pair moved on, her regal manner restored. Neither giving the strange encounter any further thought.

* * *

What a morning!

He was starting to think he should make tourism a serious vocation after he wrapped up this business with the patron. He had been wandering the galleries and exhibits of Washington DC, and already he knew it would take weeks to really take in all the sights. But after this morning, it would definitely be time to move on.

Even with the strangely responsive interface of his Core, it had taken days to write the code for the newest version of the Archangel Complex. It was like having unlimited wishes from a genie, but a genie you couldn't quite trust. He was tired of coming up with his wishes one sentence at a time, slowly building a fool-proof contract that worked. Instead he had stopped and thought long and hard about how this deal was going to work.

The patron's concepts of morality were just plain strange. No using the Core to kill or even grievously injure en mass. But he could give himself abilities that made doing so easy, and if he felt that killing someone with those abilities was justified in individual instances the patron would not object. The highest mandate was that the candidates had to accept their changes willingly. That seemed benign enough, except that they could do so after the fact, and he could write coding that altered their minds. Sometimes he wondered if the patron was stupid or just squeamish about the power implied by this technology. Fortunately they were in complete agreement about the ultimate goal, but that was still a long way off. 'Small steps' he quoted. 'Small steps'. Well today was going to be a big step. He had greatly refined the safeguards and the switches on the complex. Today he was testing out the ability to choose on-the-fly cosmetic alterations in the package. Watching the endless stream of joggers and tourists flowing around the borders of the strip of green through the heart of the city had given him a certainty that this was a place where candidates would come to him. He was absolutely right. He felt like a wolf among sheep, like a tiny god down amongst the unknowing worshipers. He had chosen eight women to escape the bonds of mortality, choosing for each of them a unique look that would flatter Venus herself. It was indulgent in the extreme. Bits of film, anime, video games, TV and art had bubbled up, informing his choices and the Core's programming. Wouldn't she make a great so and so? Well now she'd really look the part. Only ten times better and with his signature wings of course. The real purpose of the transformation wouldn't be noticed for a long time…

At least if everything worked right. That was the worst part. He could not observe the results. It took days for the process to run its course. Nothing he'd been able to dream up would overcome the simple limitations of mass. He'd have to ask the patron about that. It was worth a long flight to see if the patron already had a solution in his bag of tricks. He had considered stalking a candidate to watch her development, but Los Angeles had discouraged that idea. After the media frenzy over the girl in there, he was certain that someone, or more likely several someones were not taking his labors as the gift they were. The media had hinted at FBI involvement before the whole grizzly business was declared a hoax and pointedly taken off the air. That part actually scared him. He knew damn well it was no hoax, which meant somebody had stepped in with enough clout to cover it up. Everything. There had been four candidates on his first trial, and he had never heard a peep about the other three. Trying to check up on them would only get him caught.

That would never do.

So instead he decided to come to DC, while he sorted things out in his mind about the whole plan. He was going to throw down the gauntlet as it were. He'd choose eight right here in the heart of the nation and then vanish.

Sure enough, one morning on a park bench had brought them to him. Eight tiny darts, and the beginning of a chain reaction that would change the world. For the better.

Honest.

* * *

Saemi was exhausted.

It had been a wonderful morning. The museum of natural history was fabulous. A tremendous swirl of people and things. The energy had been like an electric hum in her blood the entire time. Only her insistent hunger had had driven her back to her rooms. She simply could not abide the western cuisine in the museum stores and her one experience with the local Japanese food was so disappointing that she had largely given up on exploring that option. Naturally Nagemura had brought his cook with him, so there was always something edible back at the hotel. He was cautious that way. One of his brothers had died a few years ago from a suspicious bit of food poisoning while abroad. He had taken it hard, and tried to minimize his own risks whenever possible. It wasn't cowardice. Nagemura had the stone cold confidence of his ancestors, but he knew the way of the world too. 'You cannot face down the killer who will not face you' he had observed at the funeral.

Nagemura had one more meeting tomorrow night. She would have to spend hours preparing. But that was for tomorrow. Tonight he was in private negotiations, and wouldn't be back soon. She munched on the small tray of appetizers waiting in her room. Kazuo was ham-fisted, but he was good about seeing to her needs before she even expressed them. Years together in the service of their master.

She considered tuning her guitar. She needed to practice more if she were truly going to master the instrument. She found it more difficult than the flute. Instead the need for complete self-indulgence overcame her, and she opted to nibble on a box of expensive chocolates and watch television for a while. Bliss.

She sprawled languidly across the expensive leather loveseat, lost in its huge, touchable cushions. The western fascination with stuffed chairs was totally alien to her, but she had to admit, curling her entire 5'1" length between the armrests, that there were some fabulous uses for sofas. She might even have to get one when they got home.

There was a polite knock at the door. Saemi leapt up, then paused to straighten her robes. Frowning at their stubborn refusal to settle properly she went to the door. "Yes?"

A familiar, heavy voice replied, "room service is here Miss Yamashida. They've brought your lunch."

She padded over to the thick door, dainty steps concealed by her long outer robe. "Thank you Kazuo." Switching to English, "please come in." She stalked behind the waiter, examining his buttocks through the tight uniform slacks. His name tag said Phillip. "Just put it over by the TV please." He delivered the covered dish with a magician's flourish, momentarily opening the covered vessel to release a delicate aroma of sesame oil. Saemi couldn't believe how hungry she felt… for a variety of things. "What a tasty looking morsel" she declared, eyeing the blond youth's trim, solid frame. No facial hair thank god, and his short blond curls glistened with care. Yes, exotic, but not too tall. Not quite effeminate, but not overtly masculine either. Yes, very tasty. He smiled at her, his open face not quite hiding the similar pathway he own thoughts were following. 'My, how bold' she thought. Most men abandon such thoughts after Kazuo's usual scrutiny at the door. How wonderfully American.

"I may want dessert shortly. Be sure to be the one to bring it up for me won't you?"

"But of course my lady. I am at your beck and call." Seeing that he was dismissed, at least for the moment, he withdrew with perfect grace.

Saemi didn't normally have much appetite, for food or for men, but when the mood was upon her, she didn't hesitate. Life was too short for that. And she had quite an appetite since this morning. She returned to the loveseat, nibbling on the tastes of home while gazing on the images of a foreign land.

* * *

Grail hated feeling like an errand boy.

Admittedly this was a pretty important errand, but it was still something that some minor functionary should have been doing, and would have been doing if the OPT had even a fraction of the personnel it deserved. He glanced over at the case in the passenger seat, his left hand unconsciously twitching rhythmically, doing the finger exercises he had learned during a year and a half a physical therapy. There were a certain few senators that needed to be informed of Dr. Fanir's findings out on the west coast. And OPT matters were not consigned to e-mail or phone calls no matter how heavily encrypted. Not when he could be put to work as a first rate courier.

He snorted.

The dapper 5'11" agent changed lanes with a flick of the wheel, disappearing out of the path of a car that had to be doing 90. Truth be told it wasn't even the drudgework that bothered him. No, it was the traffic. The freeways were downright dangerous coming into the city, and after the shit he'd been through with the OPT, he thought that getting maimed in some car crash with an 'aggressive driver' would be pretty damn anti-climactic. Not to mention wasteful. Maybe even a little painful. He wasn't absolutely sure about the last anymore, but he didn't really want to find out.

Dodging another speeding car, he approached the heights, thinking about where to park and maybe snagging a late lunch after he dropped of the files. His cell-phone began its quiet chiming, a snippet of Mozart.

"Hello…"

'Mr. Grail! It's Hosanna. It's here! Right here!"

"What's here Hosanna? Calm down." Hosanna Ritter was one of the new recruits. She had been brought on for her background in communications equipment. It had ended up making her the informal dispatcher for OPT agents in the field. That sort of desperate cross-utilization was crippling the agency's ability to actually deal with situations. Fortunately Hosanna had proven remarkably capable, if a little excitable. Like now.

"There's a situation at the Carelton-Merimont Hotel in Crystal City. The police are buzzing like bees over there. They've gone completely nuts! It sounds like there's another one of the angels there! Right here in DC. Can you believe it?!"

"Barely. How long ago, and why are the police on it so bad?" Jonathan took long, deep breaths, mentally trying to calm her by osmosis. Recent experience gave him an ugly suspicion.

"I don't know for sure, just a few minutes. But homicide's on their way, so I'm guessing she's dead… like the last few."

"Thrilling." And completely consistent with his own expectations.

"The boss says skip the drops. He'll smooth it over with the senators. You're nearly there and there isn't anybody else in town to go anyway."

He had already swung the car around and was cutting over to the freeway. "I'm on it." With a squeal of tires that would do any Washingtonian driver proud he sped across an intersection and back onto the freeway to a chorus of horns. "Tell the boss, ten minutes, tops."

So much for lunch.

* * *

“I like a good story well told. That is the reason I am sometimes forced to tell them myself.”
~ Mark Twain / Samuel Clemens (1907)

[AlexG]

Find the average between 7'5" and 5'1". Adding 14 inches to a 61 inch frame means nearly a 25% gain along every axis. Given roughly similar proportions that's an 80% increase in mass. Add in the wings, increased muscularity, and the extra endowments, and the Archangel seed in Saemi's skull was plotting how to utilize over ninety pounds of biomass she didn't have. Yet. Making the candidate endlessly hungry was the easiest way to insure a steady flow of mass to the builder-net now poised within every organ, muscle and bone in her body. Implanting feelings of arousal was just the easiest way of covering up the otherwise painful changes while the builder net worked. Saemi had already been partially refashioned. Her skin, a natural wonder of pale smoothness was now silken, virtually glowing from within. A few small blemishes along her back and legs, legacy of a hard childhood, had been wiped away leaving an unmarred expanse of pillow-soft flesh. Her face achieved a sort of delicate roundness only seen in art, filled with eyes that were deeper and more soulful than the artist could have imagined in life. Even her hair shined with luxuriant health. While the seed carried plans for her longer legs and more pronounced bust-line, it worked smaller miracles with what it had available. Not the least of which her newly strengthened muscles and intensifying sense of touch…

Saemi fidgeted on the couch again, her foot stretched out to lie atop one of the arms. The food was heavenly, of course, but her clothes felt strange. Not uncomfortable exactly. Layers of the finest silk cocooned her, but the folds of her inner garment seemed overly intimate. Tiny nipples rose to brush across the almost liquid smoothness. It was like being fondled by a ghost. She tossed in the chair again. The motion seemed to relieve the pressure across her thighs. Even her undergarments seemed to be conspiring against her comfort. Her lunch finished and feeling too distracted to really enjoy the mindless drivel on television, she resolved to actually get that dessert she had been half-joking about earlier. Maybe even more lunch to go with it. Her hunger- no, her hungers hadn't abated. If anything she felt them both more keenly. Tugging on her robes she dialed the front desk. Food for two. And desert .They assured her the server would be right up.

What was she doing? She would be far too rumpled to properly seduce the boy. He might not even be interested, though her instincts said otherwise. Well Nagemura and his minions knew to give her her head when she decide she needed a little casual sex. Her relationship with her master had gone far beyond that stage years ago. She spent more time screening his mates than being one herself. She gazed over into a mirrored wall, a seasoned veteran planning to make a list of quick touches she could make to freshen up in the few minutes left to implement the newly conceived plan.

She gasped.

When the essence of your profession is appearance, you come to know your own reflection very well. Instead, she saw something quite unexpected. Three quick strides, more like tiny leaps, carried her to the silvered surface. What she saw wasn't right at all. She looked different. Good really, possibly even great, but definitely different. It was still unmistakably her reflection, but… Her sense of balance was off. Even walking across the room was odd; like she was lighter somehow, flowing, as if even a small breeze could carry her away. The lines of her face had changed slightly. Her eyes widened when she finally placed it; she looked younger. A lot younger, as if ten years or more had been stripped away. It was the face of a girl just come into womanhood, except for the deep brown eyes. Those seemed to fill the paleness of her features with warmth, but still glinted with the worldliness she had earned the hard way. Then she noticed something that would not normally seem that odd. Her eyebrows had crept upwards, forming the thin straight lines she would invent with make-up for formal occasions. Only she had taken off even her light makeup after returning to the hotel. Now it was like all the artifice of her cosmetics had become the permanent reality of her features. The skin was so pale. Truly white even without the powders. She glanced down at her bare arms and feet. They were equally smooth and white as snow too. How… bizarre… What could be happening to her?

A knock at the door interrupted her examination and growing wonder. "Your dessert my lady."

She cinched the broad belt across her middle, trying to restore the ordered elegance of her robes with only limited success. Another two of those half leaping steps and she was at the door. She looked back at the now distant wall with a frown. "Come in, come in. And set that on the table."

A variety of desires vied for her attention as the servant laid out a second meal and an elaborate dessert on the small table. He was definitely scrumptious, and not as tall as she had first thought. Better still. Who likes to be towered over? She watched him lay out the last of the place setting with speed and precision. If his hands were as sure in the bedroom as they were with dishes… Then she saw the food. Surprisingly a more traditional hunger won out. "Would you mind joining me? A little company would be the best spice I think."

If he was shocked he hid it well. "Certainly my lady. The Carelton-Merimont prides itself on complete customer satisfaction."

'Oh ho' she thought. 'What a bright boy. He's done this before. And no wonder with hands like those. I must remember to thank the manager before we leave…'

The young man was ideal company, making idle chatter while she ate her second lunch of the day. This one was rather more substantial, with several bowls filed with fish, soup, pickles, rice, and other of her favorites. Still, she couldn't seem to conquer the gnawing hunger in her middle. She ended up eating half of the second portion also. Even with the occasional pang driving through her gut she was too practiced in her crafts not to respond to his remarks. They laughed and chatted like old friends without really saying a thing. Her self-conscious concerns over the changes she had seen in the mirror were set aside as she got to effectively 'talk shop' with another professional companion.

The seed had been hard pressed to do anything with the candidate's spare frame. Normally there would be some excess weight to push around, but Saemi was light as a bird. Even the two and a half meals she had eaten provided only a fraction of the mass required. There was still more than ninety pounds to go. The second lunch was enough to add another inch and a half to her slender legs and hint at the future of her bosom, but no more. Phase 2, with its changes in size and proportion, was expected to take a few days as the relentless hunger drove the candidate to consume more and more building materials. The seed had infinite patience. Eventually the transformation would be complete.

Finishing the last morsel, they stood up together, Saemi swaying more seductively than she intended. Philip measured her quizzically. Was she wearing heels? A sly peek at her now naked feet assured him she was not. Odd. He though he had more of a height advantage on her when he had first come in. 'Must have been the lines of that kimono she was wearing tricking my eyes the first time. She's got on a shorter one now. Clever minx…' he thought, smiling. Finally, as he wordlessly lifted her lunch dishes away she pointed at the desert plate. "Why don't you set that in the bedroom. I'll be right in."

Philip loved his job.

'Yes, definitely a professional.' She thought, schooling her face into a blank expression. His innocent expression as he moved to do her bidding was an act only another expert could appreciate. She slipped into the front bathroom while he busied himself in the bedroom. A last glance at the mirror confirmed the strange metamorphosis was no hallucination. If anything she looked even better than before lunch. Flushed with health. But her clothes were even more troublesome. Well, if they wouldn't cooperate, she would just have to get rid of them. She wouldn't need them long anyway…

* * *

A vomiting policeman is never a good sign. If it's a rookie, you can expect there's something mildly nasty in the next room. When it was a grizzled vet like the man rolling on the floor in front of agent Grail, you knew you were about to expand your catalogue of recurring nightmares. Grail had enough nightmare material already. He was glad he hadn't gotten lunch yet.

Getting into the building had been a struggle. This was Washington DC, a Byzantine maze of jurisdictions and competing powers. DC metro had gotten the call, but feds had come swooping in when the registration of the room came up. Even a few 'company' men were snooping about, trying hard not to pull out their wallets and make a scene. Still, the police detective in the foyer held his ground like a junkyard dog.

"Who are you here with?" he had demanded, clearly having his fill of federal 'assistance' for the day.

Grail decided to shoot for the moon. "NSA."

The detective's prefabricated bitching died on his lips. Nobody gave the NSA any grief. Not in this town. "Uh, ok. Look, my guys are up there now. Can you give us a minute to get a path cleared?" He glanced down at Grail's open wallet, confirming that dread bit of identification. Grail tried to look sympathetic as he shook his head.

"Afraid not. Some of the details are already making the rounds and this is to be hushed up now. I need on the scene right away."

NSA or no, Detective Banner was not quite done. "Alright agent, but this is still a murder scene, and I'm still in charge here."

"Certainly. I'll want to coordinate with your people on this." He bluffed, hoping it would hold long enough to shore it up with some truth, "the CDC wants to check everyone that's had contact with the deceased. I believe the quarantine will last about five days. If you could keep any of your men who have been up there from leaving?"

That got his attention.

"Qu- quarantine? What are you talking about?"

"This is strictly confidential you realize- a matter of national security, Detective Banner. The deceased was infected with a dangerous bio-weapon. We need to keep exposure to a minimum in case its still infectious…"

Suddenly they were headed for the elevator, Detective Banner speed-dialing the forensics team upstairs.

"-Banner. Get everyone out of the room! It might be catching!"

His concerns only deepened as three policemen and a male nurse wheeled a man out of the elevator. He was a thickset Japanese man with a wild expression. He shrieked at the top of his lungs, thrashing about in a straight-jacket atop the gurney. The black eyes and obviously stiff posture of the three cops escorting him suggested it had taken a lot of work to get him into those restraints. He howled again, a tortured sound. There was not the slightest hint of sanity left in those eyes.

Grail was still staring when the elevator door closed. That wasn't at all what he was expecting. He prayed that Dr. Fanir's flight would get in soon while the elevator continued to rise. He was going to need her expertise and the 500 pound gorilla that was CDC authority. What the hell had happened upstairs?

There was another jurisdictional catfight at the top of the stairs, this time with an FBI agent. Grail methodically browbeat the man until he had free passage and the added tidbit that the renter was a major Yakuza figure while the resident was some socialite chick he was always dragging around. Amazing what people will tell you when they want to seem important.

"The bodyguard found her first we think. Got antsy after hearing some screams maybe. Management says there was a waiter in there for a long time. A very long time." He winked to add blunt emphasis to his innuendo.

"So what happened to the bodyguard?"

"He snapped or something. Went wild."

Banner filled in the rest. "The house detective called the cops after people down stairs complained about the screaming. He came up, found the girl and the- remains, and called in the homicide squad."

They passed the gagging officer in the hall. Banner looked suitable ashamed, but stopped to check on the officer. Grail couldn't blame either of them. There was a stink in the air. Heavy, coppery. Fresh blood. Worse, there was a subtle scorched smell. One he knew all too well and hoped never to encounter again. Not likely in his line of work. Visions of the Nevada enclave danced in the back of Grail's mind. A growing pool of nanotech gone mad and the stink of flesh as is was disassembled molecule by burning molecule.

He reached the open doorway alone. Turning the corner, he saw the suite. It was elegant, expensive, but hardly the hotel's biggest. That was down the hall. A lab-coated examiner was just shooing the last of his aids out of the bedroom. The stench was overpowering. The man in the white coat looked askance at Grail. He was ignored. Grail followed the scent, the darker, smoky odor to the doorway, rubbing his left arm and fearing what he would see.

It was even worse than he thought.

* * *

She let him enter her with a whimper. He was on top, dominant and full of the bright energy of youth. She played to his maleness, enjoying the game on many levels. He was a charmer, but out of his depth against her decades of wiles. Still, her passion was enflamed like never before, so she threw herself into the pillowing like an animal, bucking and thrashing beneath him. To her faint surprise she launched him clear off the bed. When she first pulled him down, she had realized that he hardly seemed to weigh anything at all. It was like picking up a pillow. She could toss him across the room one handed, and knowing it made the game all the more amusing. Let him feel his power and strength. Maybe later she would show him hers, newfound and prodigious. With a sheepish grin, he levered himself back onto the covers.

"My little tiger" he whispered, clearly startled she had thrown him. If he hadn't been so aroused himself it might have hurt.

The seduction had been short and somewhat hurried. Her loins had been flushed even as she came to the door, her robes in artful disarray. They refused to fit her properly, but they certainly fell away to great effect, the shear silk drifting down her shapely legs. She usually used the act of disrobing to call attention to her delicate face, her smooth torso, her long graceful fingers; not her almost stumpy legs. But it would have been a shame not to share in the wonders of her transformation, and her legs were definitely more… curvaceous. His eyes had widened in honest appreciation. Yes, whatever was happening to her, it was very, very good.

Phillip loved his job. He'd been there about a year and a half now. The pay was only decent but the tips were good and sometimes he got the really good perks. Who plans on being raped by a twenty year old Japanese supermodel? He thought the register said the guest here was like forty or something. Not the he was complaining. He'd have thought she wasn't even old enough to drink, but man she had the moves of business woman. That oldest of businesses. Just touching her made his hands tingle, and when he plunged into her- Yowza! Is was like being fucked by a lightsocket while a hurricane beat down the door. The tingling spread out from his manhood to fill his bowls.

Saemi was pleased to find the boy was reasonably expert in his own way. Those lovely hands were every bit as deft as his table manners promised. Good. So many men seemed to think that mere size would carry the day. Skill, such a rare pleasure. She envisioned a giant flute, played by a loving hand. He mounted her again, thrusting deep in long slow strokes. She responded with a rising series of cries, the world slowly fading in and out as his ministrations drove waves of pleasure through her. She had never risen to the clouds so fast, her short masseuse's nails raking welts across his back. More testament to her burning need than to his considerable skill, she climaxed before he was spent. The last wave rolled through her with such power than she nearly passed out with the pleasure radiating from their throbbing shared center. Dozing, she distantly felt him stiffen against her with a shriek of pleasure, his seed filling her at last. Then he collapsed atop her like a warm blanket, his head coming to rest on her sweat-slicked chest. Content, her hunger finally sated, she slipped under the waves and slept.

The Seed never slept. Instead it sent scavengers to the surface of the candidate's body, lurking within her sweat. There it found an enormous trove of biomass. A simple fractal function provided the blueprint for a million tiny fibers to invade the mass. The rocking, shifting movement made it hard to establish a proper transport, so the seed simply built up the network. Strands reached one, two, even ten inches into the mass, ready to convert and absorb the chemical wealth as soon as a solid pathway could be formed. If the seed had possessed emotions, it probably would have been surprised at the nearly perfect balance of molecules detected by the expanding transport web. If it had a sense of its environment larger than a millimeter across, it might have realized that that perfect balance was the 165 pound of human flesh named Phillip. Even if it had, it wasn't programmed to care. Its programmer had never considered the possibility. Threaded through well over 90 pounds of raw biomass, the seed simply ripped apart the existing cells and took what it wanted…catastrophically.

Nano-machinery performs work. All work generates heat. Millions of chemical manipulations per millisecond is an awful lot of work… And a lot of heat if not deliberately regulated. That kind of heat can flash vaporize cellular fluids, the same way a microwave makes dried corn kernels pop.

On the bright side, Phillip died almost instantly. The shock from having your forearms and torso liquefying will do that. He was already gone when filaments of nanotech in his body suddenly became white hot. With a gruesome splash his torso virtually exploded, bits of bone and a spray of blood striking the walls, spattering the ceiling and, covering the bed… except where bloody rain struck Saemi. There instead it swirled across the surface of her still white skin, shimmering before being absorbed. The main mass of his body slid downwards, being absorbed so fast it almost appeared as if his ravaged carcass fell -into- her already swelling body. Her unconscious form began to writhe, legs abruptly thrusting out across the befouled covers, lengthening until they were sticking out over the edge. A random kick sent the remains of a leg sailing against the farthest wall with a wet slap, coming to rest next to an ichor-spattered guitar case. The red stain where she touched the horrific remnant faded in an instant. A final burst of growth and her knees reached the edge of the covers, long white calves descending from the bed as dainty, unblemished feet dangled down to touch the thick carpet. Simultaneously her alabaster torso lengthened, hips and shoulders expanding around an even more waspish middle while her tiny breasts rose higher with each shuddering breath. There was a sizzle as her overheated body began to sink into the surface of the bed slightly. Sleek muscle flowed outward from her center, spilling downward over bone, filling out her long limbs to gymnastic proportions. Skin pulled tight by the surge of power relaxed as a hint of body fat followed to smooth the crisp lines. A timid A-cup profile swiftly blossomed, flesh pushing upwards like the birth of two small volcanoes from the sheath of muscle forming across her torso. Her firm buttocks hardened and clenched beneath her with such force that her hips were lifted off the crimson surface, a gap appearing under the small of her back and arching her body against the sudden tightness of her rigid abdominals. She would have been an Olympic coach's wet dream: a tight waist and long hard calves, stringy muscle lay in cords across wide shoulders and ropy arms, all topped with a face of rare beauty. She could have passed for part of any national team except for one small detail- 6-foot tall girls rarely go out for gymnastics. A drop of blood fell from the ceiling, momentarily marring the perfection of the her newly plush chest, only to nourish her growth as the greedy skin absorbed its substance moment later. Solid thighs lifted her in an arch as swaths of muscle pulled and flexed. When she fell back to the bed there were a pair of peaked, up thrust C-cups, subtly bobbing high on her chest. A faint pink tinged their pointed tips, tiny areolas gracing the upper surfaces. Still convulsing, her arms described widening arcs across the covers, length and strength having poured into them in equal measure. Clenching hands tore huge furrows in the covers, ripping down into the mattress. Her jet black hair swirled like it had a life of it's own, spreading over the ruined bed, a black halo that grew until it would have reached her ankles had she been standing, even allowing for her 6'3" height.

With a moan born of compressed air, Saemi's torso heaved forward, lifting her to an almost sitting position as the two delicately feathered spears jutted from her back. In moments the extra limbs folded in the middle, dropping her still unconscious form back to the bed. With the same formidable speed as the rest of her transformation, the limbs thickened, first to the solid bulk of a black swan's wings, then even larger, to something never seen on any bird. Spreading with an audible whoosh, wings the color of the night sky, glossy sable with tiny white spots, fell to cover the bed. They tangled in her hair, obscuring much of the horror of the bloody nest.

* * *

There is a surprising amount of blood in a person. More than most people outside of the medical profession and the police would ever imagine. Enough blood to soak the carpet of an entire bedroom. But Grail knew there wasn't enough to make the floor squish under his shoes and to paint the walls and ceiling with gore too. No, that would take some other bodily fluids and a few normally solid bits mixed in with the blood to do.

What really made the scene horrific was the centerpiece. Unmarred by the slightest fleck of red was the woman. Well, maybe not a 'woman' anymore. The pale, black winged angel sprawled in peaceful slumber in the midst of the carnage. An oriental angel of death in repose at a charnel house. Somebody was a fucking artist.

He changed his mind. The two recognizably male legs, one against the wall and one that had flopped off of the bed, were the worst part. Naked legs. The thick ends were somewhere between seared and chewed in appearance. The stump of Grail's own arm had looked like that not long enough ago. It didn't take a lot of imagination to fill in the blanks when you knew what you were looking at. Mass can't come from nowhere. He figured he knew where the rest of the body was.

Jonathan wasn't surprised the forensics team hadn't done anything yet. The surreal quality to the scene would have given anyone pause. He certainly didn't know what to do. The last few had gone through the transformation peacefully enough to the best of anyone's knowledge. Nothing like… this. Actually it sort of suggested why two of them had been murdered just after their metamorphosis… Had someone else be consumed that they didn't know about? The OPT was going to have to come down on this site like an anvil. He was going to have to call in their NSA landlords and stomp this episode right out of the media. There weren't any laws for nano-tech crime. How do you explain to a judge that the murder weapon was a bunch of dust?

He had a sudden realization about the victim that was still breathing. He had to get her out of this abattoir before for she woke up. There is no nice way to explain to someone that the reason they are a foot taller is they have just eaten another person.

This one was certainly different than the others he had seen. It was hard to look away from the delicate white six pack of muscle, framed by the narrow hips and long thighs. The others had gained a little size, a little firmness, like dancers. This girl- woman maybe- had an exaggerated hardness to her frame the first four had lacked. It was like looking at a comic book character come to life. She was certainly a beauty like the others, but there was nothing appealing about the tableau. He had never seen a Japanese woman who would tower over him before either. Was the bug changing? Or had someone changed it. Neither prospect was very comforting. He knew so little about what was going on this time. Avatar strains were usually used by their inventors to improve themselves, or sold at outrageous sums on the black market. This was too random, and far, far too advanced. Every time he learned something about this outbreak there was a body. Or part of one anyway. How many more would there be before they stopped this?

His phone rang again, drawing him out of his worried reverie.

"Hello…"

"Agent Grail, it is Doctor Fanir. I just got off the airplane at National. Ms. Ritter gave me an update. I'll be there in less than ten minutes."

Grail realized his unspoken prayers had been answered. "That's great! I'll clear the way at this end. Come right up. The outbreak has… changed."

Auto noise in the background made her next words sound slurred. "That sounds bad. I am getting in the cab now. See you directly."

"It's very ugly in here Dr. Fanir. The angel is still alive, but someone else died this time. Badly."

"There are no good deaths Agent Grail. You are breaking up.' There was a crackle. "…there soon." Then she was gone.

He listened to the dead air for a moment. Jonathon Grail knew that while Teresa Fanir was maybe the wisest woman he had ever met, this time she was wrong. Whoever had done this, he decided, needed very much to die. He looked at the walls, the floor, and the two limbs that were all that remained of the deceased. Anywhere but the white flower in the center of the blood-soaked room. He had shot those fools out in Nevada, but there had been no pleasure in it. Even after their idiocy had turned his left arm into a mass of nano-grilled steak. Just the job, just saving the world. A resolve hardened in him, crystallizing his growing fury. Whoever was behind this was not some crack-pot philanthropist running amok with the engines of creation. This was calculated, twisted and dangerous. The weight in his shoulder holster felt solid and cold against his body, hanging from his re-grown arm. The gun flicked out to the ready position in his right hand. In his head Grail counted slowly to three. Then the sidearm was back in its holster, his arm returned to his side. No ordinary human could have seen more than a single blur in front of the agent, an afterimage of his straight arm, like a subliminal message. He was going to kill them.

"And that will be a good death."

[End of File]

“I like a good story well told. That is the reason I am sometimes forced to tell them myself.”
~ Mark Twain / Samuel Clemens (1907)

[Cowprobe]

I've seen AuGoose posts occasionally on the ZZZ Everything Grows boards within the last year so signs of life are present.

He's made some very cool original stories as well as some remakes of popular fare.

Here's hoping life's been so rewarding offline that AuGoose simply hasn't had time to continue his varied fiction.

BIG thanks for sharing this archived awesomeness AlexG.  8)

[g-man]

The writing was truly awesome, but it sucks that there's no conclusion 🙁

[fritzcat]

Alas, with Au Goose, there never is.  :-[

[Pug]

Dear god that's a great start though.

Pug

[Author]

Posts