Chapter Sixteen
“Ready?”
She looks at me. Total trust, even as we stand on the brink of a last-ditch attempt at escape. If this goes wrong, I’m certain we will be shown no mercy. One or both of us may be killed or imprisoned. Forever. We are about to cash in every chip, burn every bridge. This is the proverbial point of no return.
“Ready.”
“I need you to understand, this isn’t like the previous formulation. It’s much stronger. It could have intense, even poisonous side effects. My research indicates that it is safe for consumption, but the processes it will unleash in the body are much quicker and much more intense than what Regenermax does. That acts on the cellular level to increase healing and in some cases, growth. This goes one step further. If it works, it will step into the genome itself. It will unlock genetic potential we all carry, but isn’t activated in modern humans. We will not be ourselves after this. But it should make us almost impossible to capture.”
I can tell she’s not really listening. Her eyes are locked on the vial. She wants the treatment. She wants the freedom. With that first dose in the woods, I began a process with her that I’m not sure could ever have ended any other way. She’s not the same Briarlee I used to know.
She used to be sweet, but harmless. She used to drift through the world, taking what came easy and rejecting the rest. That’s not who is standing in front of me now. This woman doesn’t want what is easy. She wants her freedom. She wants me. She has fought for both, and I’m not sure there’s a warning I could give her that would stop her from taking this preparation. It’s taken me months to produce this. Every day she’s spent in here, she’s become that much more desperate. The old Briarlee would have been quite content in captivity. This one isn’t.
I hand her the vial. “You don’t have to drink this. We can stay here. It’s not good, but it’s safe. If we do this, we accept that whatever happens afterward is beyond our control. It could make us sick. It could…”
She uncaps the vial and tosses it down her throat.
Decision made.
I watch Briarlee carefully, worried that it could be too much for her to take. Her dose needed to be almost as strong as mine, and I can’t be sure of the effect it will have. She coughs and splutters, but she takes it down. I slide my hand under her wrist to detect her pulse, making sure it stays within the range of human potential.
After sixty seconds or so, she seems stable. Good. Time to take my dose. Like her, I don’t hesitate. There’s no point now. Now we’ve begun, we can only go in one direction.
The drug hits me like a freight train. The moment it finds my stomach, it begins to be absorbed. I have thirty seconds of full coherency to do what needs to be done, before full conscious control becomes a thing of the past, and I defer to pure animal instinct.
* * *
The fire starts in a room adjacent to my laboratory. Sulphur powder is ignited to create a dangerously potent blue flame that laps at the sets of cardboard storage boxes.
This place is wired with plenty of sensors, so evacuation is almost immediate.
“Let’s go, Doctor Knight! We have a situation!” Soldiers come immediately to usher us to safety, totally unaware that we are the danger.
Right now, Briarlee and I are doing one thing: working to contain animal impulse. Trying not to give away the fact that we are undergoing massive internal changes to physiology and psychology. My cock is already rock hard, my desire to take her is burning as hot as the fire that ensures we are rushed from the lab and whisked outdoors, past every single security checkpoint that would otherwise have kept us closely contained.
The small compound is in chaos as things start to explode, bright puffs of brilliant orange smoke leaping from the lower windows. Later on, they’ll discover that there’s relatively little damage, that charges were planted to simulate a near total meltdown, but not incur the costs or consequences—except in one particular laboratory.
I’m sure that the fire is consuming the remnants of my research. They won’t have Regenermax. They won’t get anything from me. Besides, the suits were right in the beginning. This is far too dangerous to unleash on unsuspecting citizens.
There’s a lot of shouting and a lot of chaos. Some of the scientists are very attached to their work. They’re fully prepared to rush into the burning building to save it. This is working even more perfectly than I had imagined.
We were prepared to fight our way through line after line of soldiers. We were ready to sell our lives dearly. In the end, we back our way through the panicked, speculating crowd, and into the tree line. All eyes are on the building. Nobody so much as looks at us.
I look at Briarlee. “Run.”
She doesn’t need any more encouragement. She takes to her heels, and her body becomes a bullet shooting through the mountain flora. I match her pace and together we flit between trees and over rocky outcroppings, heading ever deeper into the wild.
The enhanced dose has caused us both to gain more mass. It stresses clothing, and within a minute we have both ripped the cloth from our bodies and tossed it aside.
She gleams with sweat, her naked body both soft with curves and powerful with muscle. She has gained a full inch in height since treatment began. And she’s aroused. The slick insides of her thighs gleam as she pumps her legs, sprinting almost faster than I can. She’s smaller than I am. More nimble.
She’s fucking beautiful. I need to be inside her. I have to have her. The lust is rising and the beast unleashed.
* * *
Briarlee
We’re free. Even if they come for us. Even if they try to capture us, it doesn’t matter, because in this moment, we are absolutely, utterly free. My heart sings, my senses so keen it feels as though the world has burst into some new kind of color. Everything is brighter, more detailed than it was before. As I run, I see the way the petals of leaves curl and unfurl in the sun. I spot birds sitting in trees, their feathers iridescent and shining in the light. We are running from the military, but I don’t feel like I’m fleeing. I feel like I’m flying through a world that is finally mine to enjoy with Daniel by my side. Every single second is precious.
The bullets will soon sing out around us. Maybe they will find our flesh. Maybe they will find something more vital. I hope they do. I hope this is the last thing I ever experience, this glorious flight for freedom, where nothing matters but the man by my side, this great powerful beast who has always been by my side, who has never abandoned me.
We are more than lovers. We are soulmates in every sense of the word. The thing at the very core of us, our true essence, is bonded completely. And the future we are fleeing toward, whether it culminates in spending the rest of our days in the wild, or ends minutes from now bleeding into the dirt, is good. It’s good because it’s ours.
There are those who would control us. There are those who have plans to use us. There are those who would crush every bit of life and spirit from us for their own ends. Our entire existence has been spent inside a construct we never truly understood until we stepped outside it.
The Regenermax has made me more animal. I feel the great tragedy of what was my life, so modern and so twisted I didn’t know what I needed from it. I thought I needed nice clothes, a good job. I thought I needed a guy who made a lot of money. I thought I needed to live in a house that was nicer than any of my friends’ houses. I thought all those things would come to me if I kept pushing Daniel away and kept going for what I had been told to want.
In the end, all that matters are these breaths I take, drawing the oxygen deep into my lungs. Daniel’s great body beside mine shelters and guides me. We are both beasts now. We have given way to whatever is at the very base of a human. The Regenermax has given us more power, but it has stripped us of civilization. All that careful conditioning we’ve been under since birth to make us perfect little citizens is gone.
I am naked, and I don’t care. There is no shame left in me. There can be no shame in this state where only the animal roams.
Time has ceased to be of concern. It is only the light that matters. It is waning, the sky turning bright golden orange in the horizon. We head toward that great sunset, running until we find the mouth of a cave. There is no hesitation in dipping into it. These mountains are full of natural cave systems, some of which run for miles, many of which have never been charted.
We feel the safety as the walls close in and the tunnels branch and twist. Finally we are in total silent darkness. We are as man and woman were at the beginning of time, sheltering in deep caves away from predators, finding solace in one another.
They’ll never find us. Because we’re not Daniel Knight or Briarlee Smith anymore. The soft fine hair that has always covered my arms and legs in down is growing thicker. Daniel’s face has changed too. The first round of Regenermax made him unrecognizable to me all those months ago. His brow, his jaw, all growing more prominent.
This second dose has amplified that effect. His head is huge, his jaw is even more thick and powerful, his chin is stronger and squarer. His hair has already started to look thicker, and it seems longer. Mine does too. It is almost at my shoulders. When I reach to look at it, I see that the back of my arm no longer has fine hair on it. That too has thickened. We look more animal than human.
This realization should bring fear, maybe disgust. But it doesn’t. The pale, weak aesthetics of the human form don’t interest me anymore. I don’t need pretty. I need passion.
With a masculine growl, Daniel grabs me, swings me off my feet. In his brutish arms, I am delicate and ever female. He impales me on his cock in one swift stroke. There is no hesitation. There is no foreplay. No words of compliment or the little lies humans speak to each other in moments of lust. There is only him inside me, my cunt wrapped around his cock, our passion taking precedence over all things.
We fuck on the cave floor, our bodies writhing in primal passion. He pins me in place, one hand in my hair, holding my head down as he pushes between my legs and slams inside me, my knees raising high and spreading so he can get deeper and deeper, fill my wet fuck hole with the thick rod of his cock. I am stretched. I am dominated. I am taken. I am free.