are you feeling?” said the voice through the intercom.
“I hurt,” she said, her throat hoarse from the respirator tube. “I hurt everywhere.”
“That is entirely normal, I assure you. We’re going to release the restraints now. You need to start moving your arms and legs.”
Technicians slipped into gauntlets on both sides of the chamber. Their gloved hands unfastened the straps, which slithered off her. When she sat up, she nearly bumped her head on the chamber’s low ceiling.
“Please be careful,” the voice warned. “You have grown four inches. You are now five feet eleven inches tall. You have gained sixty-three pounds.”
Dredda looked down at herself. Even though she had known more or less what to expect from computer-morphed projections, she recoiled. Her breasts were still there, and the same size and shape, but they looked smaller, flatter because of the expansion of her chest in bone and muscle. The new muscle mass was smooth, quick, not corded or bulked up. Like her breasts, her hips had remained the same size, but they now looked narrow relative to the increased span of her shoulders.
She ran her fingertips over her lips and chin and was relieved to find no sprouting of coarse facial hair. Although her jaw seemed a little heavier, as did her cheekbones and brow, there was no other apparent external masculinization. She had changed into a very tall, very athletic looking female, the tallest, most athletic female the limitations of her existing genetics could produce. Of course, that was just the tip of the iceberg as far as the changes went.
Dredda flexed her right bicep and, despite a twinge of pain in her elbow, was momentarily transfixed by its unfamiliar bulge.
“Based on the previous experiments,” the voice told her, “your lean-muscle mass should continue to increase slightly for a more few days. The new neural connections are already complete, as is bone growth. You aren’t going to get any taller.
“As you know, some experimental subjects, post-transformation, have displayed outbursts of extreme violence. We have only had combat simulations to work from, but it appears that spending long periods of time in a battlesuit under stress aggravates the problem. If you notice any loss of emotional control, you must start injecting yourself with antipsychotic drugs from the battlesuit medikits at once.”
“What are their side effects?”
“Reduced reaction time and increased fatigue.”
“But that would completely defeat the purpose of the procedure!” Dredda exploded.
The voice didn’t respond.
“If I start dosing myself with these drugs, will I have to take them permanently?”
“I’m sorry, but that is impossible to predict,” the whitecoat told her. “No one knows the long-term consequences of the genetic treatment you have been subjected to.”
The slowly simmering anger that had always been part of Dredda’s consciousness was now paired with an entirely different level of agitation, tangible like a hairy-legged insect buzzing, bouncing off the insides of her internal organs. Everything was taking way too long.
“Unseal the door,” she said.
The airlock remained shut, and the faceless whitecoat talked faster. As he spoke, his gauntleted hands made emphatic gestures above her head. “The viral agent we’ve used is extremely infectious and prone to rapid mutation and genetic recombination with other, potentially lethal life-forms. Understandably, we are very concerned about its containment. We strongly recommend that you spend another three days in Level Four quarantine to make sure it has all passed out of your system.”
The other conglomerates that made up FIVE knew nothing of this lab’s existence, nor were they aware of the genetic-engineering project that Dredda had made herself part of. All research connected to trans-reality and bioweapon technology was subject to the terms of FIVE’s founding treaty—only to be pursued as a joint venture. If the alliance got wind of what she was up to, they would turn on Omnico and subject it to a combined military attack that would make her escape to Shadow World impossible.
Moving in a blur, Dredda grabbed one of the whitecoat’s gloved wrists. He tried to pull back, but she held him fast, and as she did, she applied pressure to the slender bones on the back of his hand with her thumb. “Delay of any kind is unacceptable,” she told him.
“I understand your impatience—just do not rip the glove. You must not break the Level Four containment. If you relax for a moment, everything will be fine.”
The other gauntlets rapidly emptied as biotech workers moved out of her reach.
“Let me out of here now.”
“Please, listen to reason….”
There was no reason but hers, no need but hers. Under the ball of her thumb, the small bones snapped like dry twigs. A piercing scream burst through the intercom.
“Open the door!” she shouted. Her booming voice made the walls of the steel chamber vibrate.
Seconds later, the airlock door popped open and she was free.
Chapter Two
Ryan Cawdor stepped over an exposed tree root, slick, dark and as big as a human corpse sprawled across his path. A profusion of bare roots laced the winding trail and made the footing treacherous. The dim light didn’t help matters, either. Though it was high noon, everything was cloaked in shadow, thanks to the dense canopy overhead and the seemingly endless groves of black-barked trees.
In all his travels, he had never seen this type of rad-mutated oak before. Its wood was like iron; hand axes bounced off of it, hardly making a dent. The bark and leaves were chem-rain resistant, as were the parasitic strangler vines that spiraled up trunks and limbs to reach the sunlight.
The forest’s canopy had protected Ryan and his companions from the searing downpours they had endured since their last mat-trans jump, several days earlier. The intense storm activity of the past forty-eight hours had forced them to take shelter in a cave. From the safety of its entrance, they had winced at sizzling nearby lightning strikes and watched methane ice hail, as blue as robin’s eggs and just as big, pound the earth. In scattered heaps, the chem ice had steamed for hours before it finally melted away.
If the local trees and vines had somehow adapted to survive the caustic rains, other types of foliage had not. There was no ground cover to speak of around the trunks, just slippery piles of fallen, blade-shaped leaves that rustled underfoot.
The passing storm front had left the air extremely hot and punishingly humid—it felt equatorial to Ryan. The weather was the only clue where he and the companions had materialized. The cloud cover and forest canopy had made it impossible for them to orient using the stars.
As he rounded a tight bend, he saw the group’s pointman frozen like a bird dog fifty feet ahead. Ryan swung to hip height the scoped Steyr SSG-70 sniper rifle he carried. Jak Lauren, his pale skin and lank white hair almost luminous in the forest’s half-light, held up a hand, indicating caution. Jak was a man of few words. Fiercely loyal, without an ounce of guile or deceit, he was a true wild child of Deathlands. Jak’s weapon, a battle-scarred .357 Magnum Colt Python, remained in its holster. Whatever he’d found, there was no immediate danger.
“Cook
