It was four in the morning when Reed Richards finally became
too tired to stay in his lab and continue his research. Having staggered his
way back to his bedroom with guiding help from his wife Susan, only to collapse
face first into bed and swiftly pass out. Tucking her husband in and giving a
loving peck on the forehead to the man, Susan turned and headed her way back to
the lab.
Finally getting her chance.
Stepping through the vault doors of the laboratory, Susan
called out to the building’s A.I. “Herbie? Are you online?” Locking the door
behind her, she took off the bathrobe and sighed, a sense of relaxation flowing
through her now that she wasn’t trying to keep up her human form. Her skin
turned olive green, the flesh underneath becoming murky and translucent. Her fingernails
grew long and sharp along with her toes, her clawed feet clicking with each
step as her ankles rose and grew heel spurs like stilettos. The same kind of
spurs began to form up her ankles and fore arms, and a row of spines lined down
her back all the way to her tail bone. As such a tail whipped and slithered out
of her back, flicking idly like a cat’s tail; thin and prehensile with a
razor-edged tip. Rolling her shoulders and stretching her arms over her head, a
second pair of arms formed under her original limbs, stretching forward and
cracking her knuckles in front of her. Making her way to the computer, her eyes
had become yellow, slit and reptilian while her teeth grew razor sharp and
serrated like a shark, her ears disappeared and were replaced with a pair of
curved horns that framed her still beautiful but alien face. Shaking her hair,
her mane of blonde locks snapped to life as a sea of waist length green
tentacles that flowed behind her like seaweed, slithering and coiling around
each of her fingers before she brought all four of her talons to the computer
desk.
“GOOD MORNING SUSAN STORM” responded the rather chipper
voice of the building’s artificial intelligence. “ARE WE TRYING A NEW LOOK FOR
TODAY?”
“Uhm… Yes… Herbie could you do me a favour?” She asked just
as she prepared a glass slide to be used under the nearby microscope. Pricking
her thumb with her own clawed finger, a droplet of green blood dripped from the
digit which she quickly smeared over the slide before it could heal back and
placed it under the microscope. “I’m doing a personal project and I don’t want Reed
to know about it, can you keep a secret?”
“OF COURSE, DISCRETION PARAMETERS AT 100%”
Smirking despite herself, Susan looked into the droplet of
blood blown up for her eye to see under the microscope. She had a basic
understanding of biology until last night, now, after absorbing over a dozen
textbooks on cellular biology and genetics, she quickly became impressed by
what she witnessed. “This blood sample is already dead? No… The cells haven’t
collapsed or degraded… Dormant then?” With two of her free hands, Susan pulled
a stopper of water and prepared a syringe to fill with a few droplets and carefully
pointed it on the slide and expelled some moisture. The result was
instantaneous when the cells came alive and soaked in the moisture before going
still again.
“So, it does go dormant… Probably explains the rock that hit
me in space.” Puzzle pieces of how she was infected began to come together in
her mind. “How long was that stuff waiting dormant on that peddle? Years?
Centuries? Eons?” Focusing on the cells again, she zoomed in to find what she
was after. “There you are…” Hormones; complex chemical signals sent through the
blood stream by the brain. Some controlled growth and development, some
controlled organ functions, and others like the ones she was looking for
control moods and reactions. With a smile comparable to a shark, Susan found
the aphrodisiac hormone responsible for sex drive. “Jackpot! Herbie, can you
isolate the hormone I have on my scope and display it next to me?” Never
keeping her eyes off the microscope, one of Susan’s hair tentacles branched off
from the mass and sprouted a reptilian eye at the tip, allowing her to do both
tasks at once.
A holographic display of the arousal hormone was shown along
with a chemical analysis. Making mental notes, Susan was already forming an
idea of an anaphrodisiac to counter the hormone. With all four of her arms and sprouting
additional eye stalks from her hair, she reached out to the array of chemicals
Reed had on the ready for his research, elegantly measuring what she needed and
poured the concoction into a vial and set it to a mixer. Raising one of her
free arms to gesture to Herbie, Susan continued to make mental notes. “Herbie
have you scanned the genetic code of the sample I have under the microscope?”
“YES, SUSAN STORM.”
“Display it please.” Blinking, Susan whistled through her
fanged teeth at the holographic display. “That’s my new DNA?!” From what she
remembered, human DNA was a helix; a pair of strands linked together by
proteins, but this was more like a rope. Forty gene helixes bundled together
into a knotted cord of genetic material hovered and rotated in front of her on the
holographic display next to her. Returning the tentacles back to normal and
letting them join the sea of tentacles swaying behind her like seaweed. Susan
stood up and crossed three of her arms under her prominent bust while the
fourth tapped at her chin. Her serpentine tail swishing idly behind her like a
bored cat.
“Herbie, what are the chances of the genome being reversed
to return me to… To return the subject back to human?”
“GENETIC MATERIAL ON DISPLAY SHOWS SEVERAL REDUNTANT
COUNTERMEASURES TO PREVENT GENETIC DAMAGE OR ALTERATION.” Answered Herbie,
zooming into a porting of the gene bundle where a cut out was displayed. “ANY
ATTEMPT TO MAKE CHANGES TO THE GENOME RESULTS IN GENETIC RECOMBINATION TO RECLAIM
LOST GENES” to make its point, Herbie showed a simulation where a portion of
the genetic strand fell apart, only for the remaining genes to cluster over the
gap and recombine, almost as if the damage never occurred.
“So, there’s no cure then…Damn…” Breathing in sharply and
turning on her heel, Susan scratched her talons through her tentacles in
frustration. “Okay… Okay… Breath Susan, you can still fix this.”
“No, you can’t!” Whispered the lone voice in her head,
making the Invisible Woman hiss. “Why would you want to go back? You are
EVERYTHING now! Powerful, Immortal… Fertile…”
Her breathing hitched as she felt a warmth grow inside her,
a familiar need she already recognized that slowly grew like a blaze inside her
core. “S-ssshut up! I’m not some animal in heat! You don’t have control over
me!”
“Who said I’m controlling you? I merely want you to embrace
what you already are; a Queen, a progenitor to a new superior species!”
Already she could feel herself getting worked up, the drive
to mate and breed reawakening despite having birthed so many so recently. “NO!
I’m not some broodmare to a race of monsters, you can’t control me! I CONTROL
ME!!!” Snapping her attention back to the chemical mixture just as the process
finally completed itself. Frantically storming back to the desk, she pried one
of the vials off the mixer and bit off the cork, spitting it across the lab to
drink it straight.
Waiting patiently, Susan closed her eyes. Deep inside she
felt the growing heat in her naval fade, her booming heart calming down, the
sharp breathes became calm and slow. Looking down at the empty vial in her
talon, the Invisible Woman sighed with relief. “One down… Over a hundred to go…”
It worked! She didn’t know for how long, but for now it worked. The gnawing
drive to breed had been beaten down to the depths of her psyche, and the voice
in her head had finally gone quiet. Looking to the other vials, Susan set her
plan in motion. “Herbie, can you continue to make the batch I made in large
amounts? We’re going to need a lot more to deal with the problem.”
“OF COURSE, HOW MANY SUBJECTS WILL WE BE TREATING?”
“I’ll let you know when they all hatch… When its all ready,
let me know.”
“YES, MISS STORM, ALWAYS HERE TO HELP.”
Smiling happily for the first time in days, Susan moved to
put the empty vial back on the lab table and pull the slide out of the
microscope to be sterilized. Setting her sample in the incineration chamber
nearby, she locked the door and set the machine, watching with mild fascination
as the glass and material were reduced to carbon dust. It was when she turned
to go back to the table that she spotted her reflection in the chrome finish of
one of Reed’s projects, turning her head back and forth to look at herself,
something seemed off. “A Queen huh?” Combing her claws through her tentacles,
she thought on the matter before she willed the tentacles at the hair line of
her scalp to rise and coil around each other. With her many hands she moulded
the now hardening tentacles like they were clay, forming a ‘V’ shaped growth or
crest that branched out like a pair of antlers. The new set of horns merged
elegantly with her brow and the bridge to her nose, almost as if it were
natural.
Turning her head back and forth to admire her new look and
how her new horns framed her face, the she-creature shrugged with a smirk and
turned back to her work.
“If I’m a Queen, might as well have a crown…”