New ongoing story - New Life

[El_Roy_1999]

Milla shook her head.
“Powers? Those aren’t powers! This is a fucking problem! I mean, did you listen to anything I said?”
Jaden nodded slowly:
“I listened to every word. Absolutely. And then, I watched you. I looked at what you were doing with that. And soon, I understood that you might be complaining a lot about how you were all unhappy by your transformation and how this was terrible and bad and everything.”
Ava watched her friends in growing horror. This was bad. This was very, very bad.
Jaden went on:
“But your actions, they didn’t fit! If you really, really didn’t like what was happening, why didn’t you lie low? Why didn’t you try to hide it? Because you didn’t. At all. If you could do as you want, you would be walking in public, all mutated. Because this is great.”
Milla shook her head furiously. Jaden was very close to her now.
“You know what? I understand you. I might have been dreaming of this all my life … This superhero stuff … Maybe it was a bad idea. Maybe it’s a delusion … But I can understand the rush of power. And I want in. I want to do this. With or without you!”
Milla took a step back. Ava could see her body bubbling under her suit. She was furious, but Ava wasn’t too sure about what. Right now, she could imagine quite a few reasons. Was she angry because Jaden had found her out? Was she frustrated by him putting their lives at risk? Did she think he wasn’t taking her seriously?

[El_Roy_1999]

“Look, Jaden, I don’t know what you’ve been thinking, but this is crazy. We went through all this to help me get rid of that blob and to get me back to normal. You can dream of superpowers and whatnot, but for me, this is just about having my body back. Got it?”
“I don’t believe you. But it’s okay. You can do what you want. And so can I. I will have this power. It just takes a little more time, and soon, I’ll get to master it.”
Milla shook her head in disbelief.
“You’ve gone crazy. And the worst part is, I’ve been thinking about you. You know … Romantically.”
Ava felt a sting. Sure, getting into a relationship with Jaden was a pipe dream, but still …
He shrugged:
“Yeah. I kinda felt that too. It was a reason, you know. I mean … If we had been close and you’d have lost control … I’ve seen what you can do. Getting into bed with a muscle beast like you … This way, we could be together.”
Milla looked at him in silence for a while. She winced a little as the flows of pain and sickness came up to her again. At last, she said:
“Well, it’s over before it even began. You screwed up. Let’s just hope it doesn’t kill you before we find a cure.”
She turned around and continued walking down the stairs. Jaden waited for a moment, then followed her. At last, Ava came too, still shocked by what she had just heard.

[El_Roy_1999]

As they descended, the air grew thicker. It was different than last time. There was a kind of heaviness to everything. The stairs were as dusty and crumbling as before. Their flashlights were dancing along the walls and floor. The trio made sure that the descent was safe. Still, they were silent. The revelation had killed all further questions.
When they reached the big hall, the air hit them like a brick wall. There was a terrible stench. Ava gagged. She heard Milla retch, then ask:
“What’s that smell? Don’t tell me it was like that before!”
Ava shook her head as she held her nose. Her voice distorted, she replied:
“No, this is new. And it’s bad.”
Jaden pointed his lamp further inside and sneaked closer.
“I think we may have found the source of our problem.” He looked at Milla, who was still groaning occasionally from the bursts of pain.
The light shone on a greyish mass that covered the floor and some of the machinery. It took the explorers a moment to parse what they were seeing. The lumpy shapes turned out to be vaguely face-like, with thick white ropy tentacles spreading behind them. The “mouth” was set full of strange, slivery teeth and orange growths speckled the things’ skin.
Each individual was easily as large as a cow, but clearly dead or dying. The smell came from their rotting flesh. Some of them pooled into white puddles as the fell apart.
Ava, Milla and Jaden exchanged glances.
This wasn’t what they expected.

[El_Roy_1999]

Ava only found her voice after a moment and asked:
“What the hell happened here? Jaden? Do you have any idea what is going on?”
Milla was very silent, trying to figure out what all this meant for her. Was this a cure or a death sentence?
Jaden went closer, careful not to step into any of the puddles or to touch a dying creature. He examined one of them while trying not to breathe in the miasma. Then he returned:
“Okay, as far as I can tell, they didn’t get hurt. I mean, I don’t know. They don’t have any open wounds and there are no bits torn off or broken. So I guess they died of a sickness or something.”
Milla grimaced and whispered:
“We have to go. This is bad. We have to run. Please.”
Ava nodded:
“It’s better this way. Jaden, I don’t care about this anymore. I just want to go back and leave all this.”
“But we gotta investigate …”
“No. We have to go. Please.”
She could see that Jaden was struggling. He wanted to find out more, but at the same time, he understood that whatever was killing those things was just as dangerous for them, regardless of whether they were normal people or infected with that blob.
He tried something anyway:
“Can’t we just do a quick search of the room and then, we go? Right away? Would that be okay?”
Milla shivered:
“I have to go. Please, please, please.”
Ava took her hand and started leading her back to the stairs.
“Jaden, we’re leaving now. Come on.”
A flat voiced answered:
“You’re not. Stop.”

[El_Roy_1999]

They turned around, surprised and shocked by the sudden interruption. Lucius was standing there, a rifle in his hand. He pointed it at them with cold confidence. The young people were visibly confused. Ava asked:
“Lucius? What’s going on?”
“I’m sorry, but you screwed up, Ava. You never should have come here in the first place. You shouldn’t have brought anything from here to your home and to the university.”
To Ava, it became clear that he was trying to summon enough courage to shoot them. He was still struggling internally. The man continued:
“But you went and told everybody about it. And you infected your friend here. It’s as if you did it on purpose. And now, I have to clean this up. I’m sorry, but I have to do this. I …”
He took a deep breath and raised the weapon. The three explorers were panicking now. It was too much. The stink, the dead things all around and now, this strange man about to kill them …
While Jaden and Ava were about to start crying, Milla got angry. Very angry.
She walked towards Lucius, her suit getting stretched by her rapidly expanding body. She was hulking out right in front of them.
“How dare you! You fucking asshole! You could have told her, you know? You could have told us! You …”
He shot her.
There was a wet crunching sound as the bullet pierced her chest, white fungoid shreds crumbling out of a deep tear in her back.

[El_Roy_1999]

Milla stared at the wound. There was no blood. And, come to think of it, no pain either. Instead, she could feel her muscles grow and harden even more. As Lucius took aim again, the wound started to close, the white flesh knitting itself back together.
The man was now aiming for her head, but Milla launched herself into a full-on charge, her body completely transforming now, the growth even spreading over her face. To Ava’s and Jaden’s fascination, her hair was turning a bright orange, its strands interlaced with the weird fungal growths.
Lucius fired again, the bullet struck her shoulder and pierced it, lodging itself deep in her body.
It didn’t stop her. Flakes of mushroom flew as she reached him, her smash connecting. The big, muscular man was thrown back, landing on his ass. If he hadn’t used the shoulder strap, his gun would have been gone.
Instead, he shot. And he shot her again. She didn’t care and followed up on him, her strangely mutated body moving lightning quick. As she was upon him, he fired his gun once more, blasting her face. The shot struck the side of her head, ripping off a good chunk and destroying her eye.
To Lucius’ horror, that didn’t stop her. Instead, she struck down on him, pinning him under her. From her midsection, strange tentacles lashed out, clinging to the gun and pulling it from her hands.
White motes of dust flaked from her face wound. It was already healing.
She pushed down now, her weight holding him to the ground and slowly crushing him.

[El_Roy_1999]

He grabbed her huge forearm and tried to make her release him. This was completely futile. Instead, he started gasping for air, his face slowly turning blue. His eyes bulged and his tongue stuck out of his mouth. Milla didn’t hesitate for one moment and just squeezed on as her face reknitted itself.
There was a certain lust inside of her now and it was only getting stronger. She enjoyed her strength, the irresistible power, the possibility to choose life or death. Slowly, she increased the pressure.
His arms dropped and his eyes became unfocused.
That’s when Milla noticed Ava pulling at her arm. The other young woman’s voice was piercing her merciless bloodlust.
“Stop it! Milla! Stop it! Don’t kill him. Please! Let him go! You can’t just murder him!”
Somehow, that last phrase managed to push through and reach her higher thinking. Shaking her head, she released her victim. Lucius dropped to the ground, gasping for air. His neck seemed stretched and squeezed, deep marks covering it all the way.
Milla looked at Ava now. The transformation was complete. She was some seven feet tall now, with elongated, powerful limbs wrapped in this weird white muscle. There were striations all over, broken up by hexagonal prisms growing from those masses of strength. Her midsection was now wrapped in layers of tentacles, and her face was covered in orange baubles, with one huge central one on her forehead.
She was still vaguely recognizable as human, but she was absurdly huge now and the fungoid mass that built her body looked completely alien.

[governor]

So is she supposed to be a mushroom woman? That's not cool.

[El_Roy_1999]

So is she supposed to be a mushroom woman? That's not cool.

It is certainly a problem that she will have to deal with. Because she enjoys the power a lot.

[El_Roy_1999]

Ava felt very small and weak next to the hulking creature her friend had turned into. She repeated herself, lower this time:
“Please. Let him go. He’s not worth it.”
Milla looked at her through milky eyes, her vision somehow beyond what she had ever experienced before. She could see strange patterns well up and fade through Ava’s face and body.
“He tried to shoot me. No. He shot me.”
Her voice was a chittering chorus. It was deeply unsettling. Milla had to stop for a second to realize what she was sounding like now. She continued:
“Oh God. What happened to me? What did he turn me into?”
Lucius croaked:
“I had to do it. I wish I wouldn’t have to, but …”
Ava’s mind suddenly returned to Jaden. She looked at him. He was standing there, mesmerized by Milla’s gigantic form. He was completely caught in this terrifying and supernatural display of power. To him, the young woman was perfect. This was what he wanted. Ava could tell that he longed for this. It confused her. How could he want this?
She snapped her fingers to get his mind back to the matter at hand:
“Jaden, focus! We‘re finally going to get some answers!”
She squatted down next to Lucius who was still trying to clear his throat. Milla loomed over him, all huge and white. As Jaden approached, the big man managed to speak:
“Thank you for not killing me.”
Milla frowned. This was not the end of it. Her bizarre voice was heard:
“Tell us everything. What happened here?”

[El_Roy_1999]

Lucius sat up, still recovering. Then, he started to explain:
“You guessed right. I lied to you. I was charged with keeping an eye on this place. The government found those things in the permafrost somewhere up north. They analyzed it here and decided to keep it as an option for further research. Then the whole thing was forgotten. They did set up a fund to maintain the place and to keep people out. I was hired to check on the creatures occasionally and to make sure no one came here. The easiest strategy was just to let the town die out. I didn’t have to do much for that. The only thing was to make sure the state wouldn’t fund any local initiatives. People left mostly, the place was emptying.”
Ava was shocked:
“So you let my hometown die.”
“Most people left anyway. We were just accelerating the process. But then, things got out. When you found that thing and brought it with you, the old systems went back online and we tried to get them back. We were very slow. No one had expected this. Even explaining what we had to do to the other departments was a chore. Everything was so long ago and they didn’t believe us anyway. Also, we couldn’t tell them much. Someone would spill the information.”
“You talked to Professor Lang?”
“Actually, she reached out to us. She didn’t know about it, but she found us and told us about this. Apparently, some of the data on the permafrost discovery had been declassified and she made the connection.”

[El_Roy_1999]

Jaden asked:
“So the, I don’t know, it sounds stupid … henchmen? Where did they come from?”
Lucius coughed. He rubbed his temples and shrugged:
“I don’t know. I guess she got them from somewhere. They didn’t come from us.” He sighed: “Don’t get me wrong: We’re not a huge secret agency. We’re a bunch of people and we manage this facility part-time.”
The young man looked disappointed. Lucius smiled weakly:
“I know. Everybody expects massive government tricks, probably with crazy uniforms and high-tech headquarters. Truth is, they don’t have the money for schools and hospitals, but they don’t have the money for dormant secret projects either.”
Ava looked at Milla and Jaden. They were both rather twitchy now. Something was still affecting them, although they managed to conceal it mostly.
She asked:
“Okay. Now that we know all this, here’s an important question: What happened here? The last time we were down here, the place was terrifying, but all those … things were alive and well. They might have wanted to eat us, but they were healthy. So …”
“So I released the failsafe. I wasn’t sure how much got out, but the instructions were clear. If I can’t recover the material and people get infected, I have to kill everything down here and … the infected people too.”
Milla’s face was stone.
“You planned to murder us in cold blood.”
The older man looked crestfallen:
“I never expected this to happen. Seriously, I was just doing this for the money and maybe the civic duty. I never thought I’d have to do anything. Honest! And when I was told what to do …”
“You didn’t exactly hesitate.”

[El_Roy_1999]

Lucius was coughing profusely now. He laid back down and produced a big glob of spit. There was a gob of blood in it.
“Shit. I think you broke something, girl.”
Milla was still in her huge, monstrous form. Her face didn’t show the least bit of regret or even compassion. Her wounds had almost closed by now. She was watching the scene with a certain detachment. To Ava, it seemed as if her normal face was slowly coming back, but maybe it was just a trick of the light.
Ava came closer to Lucius now and said:
“And what did you do to this place?”
He groaned again and rolled to his side. It was clear that he wasn’t well.
“I did as I was told. If everything was discovered and I could no longer contain it, I was to destroy everything. I think originally there was a plan to notify the army or something, but all those things went to shit long ago. They gave me a special toxin back then. It would kill those things. I just had to open a can of it and spread it out, they would go wild for it, and then they’d die.”
“So the creatures are all dead?”
“They should be.” He looked at his hand. There was a faint cut on it. “Oh. I think I may have cut myself on that can. That … explains it.”
He coughed again.
“I know it’s a shitty thing to do to kill young people like you. Any people really. I regret even trying it. I shouldn’t …”
He fell unconscious.

[El_Roy_1999]

They all took a step back. No one knew how to deal with all this right now. Actually, even touching the man felt like a very bad idea.
Ava asked:
“Shouldn’t we be giving him first aid? Maybe call an ambulance?”
Jaden harrumphed:
“That guy just tried to kill us. Also, I wouldn’t want to get infected by what he got. No. Just let him lie and fuck him.”
Milla nodded:
“Screw him. Ava, he just tried to kill me. What are you thinking?”
“It’s just that … I can’t just let someone die right in front of me, can I?”
The huge inhuman monstrosity that Milla had turned into squatted down next to her, reaching to her level and said:
“Then we go. If you think it’s really necessary, we can call the emergency services when we’re out. But I want this guy to die. He didn’t do me much harm, but he tried, and he would try again. I’m not taking the risk.”
Ava shivered. What Milla said was obvious, but it felt terribly, terribly wrong. She covered her face with her hands and whispered:
“Okay. It’s not like we can actually reach anyone from down here anyway. Let’s leave this place. Please.”
Jaden wanted to say something, but the huge monster woman cut him off:
“We’re leaving. Now. Besides, you don’t want to be down here when your transformation starts.”
That clicked with him. He nodded, took a deep breath and went after them. As they went back up, he could feel the unease subside. At the same time, his excitement was mounting. He was going to be like her.

[El_Roy_1999]

The two others started back upstairs, but Ava stayed behind, hesitating. How could they be so callous? She returned to Lucius, who was still lying there, unmoving. Was it just the light or was his face turning grey? Ava wasn’t sure whether he wasn’t already dead anyway, but hesitatingly, she came very close and said:
“I’m going to get help for you. I’m sorry about all this.”
As she fell quiet, she noticed the enormous silence all around her. The air was cool and dry, and all the noises that had haunted her before had died down and disappeared.
This was a grave now.
Suddenly, Ava felt incredibly alone. The whole place seemed to cave in on her. She didn’t want this anymore. This whole town had broken down in her mind. She just had to leave it all behind her.
The young woman got up and climbed the stairs quickly, the echoes of her footsteps haunting her as she put this behind her.
The three would-be explorers soon reached the surface again and found themselves in front of the main hall. Milla had mostly reverted to her normal shape, with only her eye still foggy. There were some weird bumps under the skin of her arm, but that didn’t worry her.
Instead, she looked at her companions and said:
“So we’re the only bits of that strange organism that’s left.”
Ava hadn’t thought about it that way. She was right. Whatever that creature actually was, it was their ward now.
Jaden nodded:
“It’s a kind of responsibility now, don’t you think?”