Prologue
The double, stainless steel doors slid apart in front of me with a hiss, revealing a small, white-washed concrete room without windows, save for the two-way mirror on the opposite wall. A heifer was standing there, lowing softly.
"Test Subject no. 321, please enter the containment unit."
Those familiar words. I was sick of them. That exact same authoritative, foreboding tone used by different men and women over the years due to... circumstances beyond their control. For seven years I had heard it, every day, twice a day.
I walked out of the safety of the airlock chamber, bare feet padding on the freezing tiles.
"Infect it."
Finally. The pain that had been growing in my back all day could be eased.
It relaxed, and my spine erupted, sprouting things like branches that resembled humongous spider legs. They were covered in a dark blue, viscous, sticky material and were about a man's height in length.
My eyes clouded over and disappeared, retracting into my head as a titanic, fanged, grinning mouth spread over my face. I extended all six feet of my tongue out and slavered, falling upon the cowering prey.
The cow bucked and mooed, terrified of the monster that I had become, eyes wild with horror. I curled the pink muscle around the cow's midsection like a snake, squeezing it tightly.
It was taking all of my willpower not to let myself spread farther. Ohh... it was so hard. My whole mind was whining with the want to grow, to spread, to infect...
The cow started to become limp, and I lunged forward, biting the cow's neck and pumping dark blue venom under the skin.
The heifer went limp, and I released it from my grasp. It fell to the floor, then began to spasm. Blue growths suddenly bulged under its skin and the flesh tore, blooming buds like alien flowers popping over its corpse. Teeth, claws, and spider legs began to cover the cow in a fleshy bubble, and in about five minutes all that remained was a heaving mass of flesh and bone.
I let myself retreat back into my human body and I watched the blob of body pulse on the ground. I raised a hand, and one of the arms attached to it bent to my will. Yes, I was always in control.
The voice on the intercom told me to go back to my containment cell and I did, wincing as guards came out into the room and took samples of my detached body.
But I grinned, even as they burned what remained of my separate form because I had a plan brewing. A plan of escape.
