Authors: Pamela Foland
She stirred just as the other man lost his fight with the sea and began to sink. Max Did his duty diving after the other man. The man was cold, and touching him made Max’s skin crawl. Suddenly Max realized the other man was what was left of the creature, Kavir.
Yllera had made good in her plan of escape, somehow morphing it into a man. Max was torn, he wanted to offer the creature no comfort, but years, decades of training had been dedicated to the preservation of hominid life. He could not bring himself to let Kavir drown. Max wrapped an arm around Kavir, and brought him to the surface, then wrapped the other around Yllera. With a flick of his mind Max teleported all three of them to the nearest sliver of land.
Kavir and Yllera both coughed up water and slime. Max rose to his knees and pulled Yllera away from Kavir, of the two the former creature seemed sooner to revive fully. Yllera roused, “Did I do it Max? Are we free?”
“Yes, you did it. Rest I’ll protect you now.” Max reassured.
Kavir levered himself to a seated position, trilling, “Kaaah-virr,” hoarsely.
“Yeah sure, your name is Kavir, stay the heck away from us,” Max growled back.
“We are Kavirrr,” Kavir trilled, “We must grow. We must feed. We must become. What has happened to us!”
“You’re human now buddy. I don’t think you’ll
>
become’ anything else ever again,” Max snarled. Yllera was weak and Max worriedly wondered if letting Kavir live had been a safe decision.
“We must become!” A slime, like Kavir had once been leaked from his mouth like saliva. Max was frightened.
“Leave us alone, or so help me. . .” Max threatened clearly ready to follow through.
“No, Max don’t kill him he can’t. . .” Yllera argued.
Kavir’s face took on a clear expression of apprehension. He seemed ready to act in self defense. Instead he disappeared leaving a puddle of slime in the sand.
“Yllera, what happened did he change back?” Max asked worriedly.
Yllera let a limp hand feel the puddle, “No, I think he teleported.”
Max felt his brow furrow, “Should he be able to do that?”
Yllera frowned, “I didn’t think so. Take a sample of the slime for Tina to analyze. Maybe she can come up with answers.”
Max shrugged and did as she suggested.
Then he checked his pop-pad for their location. The surprise was his when his pad revealed he was no more than a few miles from where he had been searching out the old man. Max shuddered, now he had some idea what might have been causing the probability anomaly. It was likely his and Yllera’s predicament, and actions, most notably Kavir’s transformation from a water bound creature to a biped with the ability to freely teleport. No doubt Angela would be less than pleased with the news.
“Take me home Max,” Yllera shivered unaware of the fact she may be responsible for unleashing a new evil on the universe.
Max smiled weakly at her and nodded, she would have plenty of time to blame herself.
- - - - - - - - - -
Chapter 15
Good! Plan?
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“Kaaah-virrr, kaaah-virr,” Kavir crooned to himself.
Cold, though no longer naked he stood over the unconscious forms of the handful of factors he had collected.
The woman who had caused him to become a man, had given him much more than form. She had shared with him everything she was and knew. He almost worshiped her for it. She was the fullest and best of all woman-form and he wanted her.
Her knowledge gave him a route to her.
He had chosen to capture a handful of factor folk, that had been easy he could smell them from worlds away, alternate dimensions even. Then it was nothing to pour himself into them and wait while he-they became.
Kavir counted them on his fingers, eight, and thrilled at the depths and reach of abstract thought. It was boundless, he a blind sea-creature of barely more than instinct had been given the land and infinity.
Awed by his every breath, only the stirrings of his prisoner’s minds as they became him were
anything to be compared to the joy of seeing the sky.
Kavir scratched his newly minted crotch, moments later he drug up the realization that he needed to pass his water. Carefully, from his limited experience he knew that the outlet of his urogenital tract was sensitive and vulnerable, he relieved himself in a bush.
The need to cover himself had come as a shock to Kavir, gender taboos, even the idea of gender or sex itself had come strangely to him. It was a wonder to be male, more so since she who had helped him become had been female. Logic, another new concept, told him he should have taken on a female form with his legs.
His prisoners had nearly fully become. He stirred their minds and awoke their bodies. They rose as one. He didn’t need to tell them their goal. They were to return home, to Sanctuary, to find she who had helped him to become, and to bring her to him. Whatever the cost or the obstacle she must be obtained. Max, the male she had changed Kavir to save must be made unconscious or dead. Kavir plucked bags holding slugs filled with his fluid of becoming from the streambed. He gave each of his factor-puppets one and they departed, to bring Yllera to their master.
He closed his eyes to better become with them, they all fought their way through Sanctuary’s security bio-filters, almost too easily making it through. Then through eight pairs of eyes Kavir searched for Yllera. Any time someone got in his way the slugs helped them to become, and they added to his sight.
Finally one pair of eyes fastened on Yllera, and Max.
They were walking leisurely down the hall away from the medical wing. Kavir’s stolen factor knowledge told him they must have just passed their post mission physicals. Right now some doctor was probably learning more about Kavir than he knew about himself.
Kavir redirected some of his servants to discover what Sanctuary’s finest medical minds knew. While he was at it, he sent others to learn more elsewhere. His main focus though stuck to Yllera.
“I was so scared Max, you know what it was like for it to try and take you. Your mind, no, your will dissolved in that mucous. I’ve seen enough mucous in my life to never want to sneeze again,” Yllera whimpered, clinging to Max’s arm. The touch caused heat to rise in Kavir, a heat born of anger and unsuppressed lust.
“Make that a double,” Max answered her. Kavir hated the way Yllera seemed to be warming to Max.
“I just can’t believe what I loosed on the universe. The repercussions. . .I don’t think I ever dare leave Sanctuary again. I’m just too dangerous!” Yllera said stiffening away from Max.
“Don’t blame yourself! You were trying to do your best to save us!” Max crooned back.
Kavir had enough, the corridor back and front was clear of all but Yllera, Max and Kavir’s servants. Two servants,
with
stun-capsules, disabled both Max and Yllera. Max was stuffed and sealed into a broom closet, while Yllera was teleported back to Kavir. He had his prize now all that remained was wooing her.
- - - - - - - - - -
Angela was sitting at her desk wading through paperwork when Tina’s smiling face lit up the display panel set into the desk top, “Hey chief, how about some lunch?”
Angela frowned at Tina’s image, “I’ll eat when I eat! Why is it you can just barge onto my screen without my even activating it?”
“I’m medical staff, I can do a lot of stuff ordinary folk can’t. Now, I insist you join me at Antonio’s Café. You know the place we’ve eaten there before. It’s an order, if you don’t I’ll steal all your paperwork and make you come anyway.”
Angela grunted an affirmative at the screen and it went blank once again. Then she obediently teleported to the café. The small café was emptier than usual, when Angela entered, making her way to Tina’s regular table. There were fewer than ten people in the dining room and that counted two waiters and a busboy. Angela brushed aside a tiny itch of concern wiggling around in the back of her mind. She couldn’t place it and frankly was relieved not to have the usual entourage of fans and admirers trying to eavesdrop on her every word. Angela seated herself and picked up the menu. She scanned the sandwich list intently.
“What’s up?” Tina asked in greeting.
Angela shrugged, “Nothing, everything’s quiet on all fronts for the moment.”
“Then why do you have your impending doom expression on?” Tina poked.
“I do not!” Angela searched her own face in the mirrored ceiling. There it was, the shallow scowl, the slightly unfocused gaze. A shiver passed up her spine and she glanced around the dining room again. She never got away with so much as a semi-public lunch without someone coming up to her by now.
Her groupies never missed a public appearance, at least one of the goofs was on her trail from the moment she left her office to the moment she reached her apartment, or vice versa. For that matter the waiter should have come by now. The two in the dining room were still standing in almost the same position talking to the same customers, and the busboy was now returning the same dirty dishes to a different table, and then beginning to pick them up again. Something was wrong here.
“Well?”
“How long have you been here?” Angela asked turning to Tina.
“I got here just before you. I teleported in from my lab. I was doing some tests on Max and
Yllera’s blood samples,” Tina answered, slowing as she too took notice of the strange behavior of the room’s other occupants.
“I’m not feeling so hungry right now. How about you?” Angela said rising hastily from the table.
“Me neither,” Tina refolded her napkin and sat it down on the table.
As if their rising were some cue, the room’s other occupants dropped pretense and started towards them. That was more warning than either woman needed. Both teleported back to Angela’s office.
“I knew I should’ve just eaten in my office,” Angela mumbled sitting down in her chair.
Tina whipped out a pop-pad and began tapping away at it, “That wouldn’t have stopped whatever it is. You just would have had even less warning.”
Angela tapped her desk, turning on the media screen imbedded in its surface. She tapped closed the files she’d been working on before lunch and started bringing up the filter shield records for the past month. “Can’t be the dark,” Angela said scanning the chart, “unless they’ve figured out a way around the shields.”
“I think we can safely say that whatever it is has a way around, but I think you’re right,” Tina tapped her screen hard and a second grid came up on the shield records. She pointed to eight brief blips in quick succession, about two days before, “It's probably medical, a parasite of some sort.” Tina tapped some more at her pad and the segment of the chart filled the desk and was overlaid by a spectrographic analysis. “Oh crud! I recognize that signature!”
“What is it?”
“It looks a whole heck of a lot like a blending between Yllera and that creature that captured her and Max. I spent all morning looking at the sample they brought back,” Tina frowned and took a seat.
“I thought you checked to make sure the shields would bounce that back,” Angela brought up Yllera’s report on a small window and scanned it to refresh her memory.
“I did, and it shouldn’t and wouldn’t go through the shields. The problem is that this,” Tina tapped the desk for emphasis, “isn’t that. It’s a blending of it and Yllera. Even so, the shields almost bounced it back, but these secondary micro spikes here show that it adapted and slipped through.”
“Oh, well that makes all the difference!” Angela growled. She was terrified. She had built this place as a sanctuary from the worst the universe could throw at her, and now something had gotten in.
“What do we do about it?” Tina asked.