Part 24 (1/2)

He flew through the lobby and rushed up the stairs. His hard soles. .h.i.t the floor loudly, filling the building with his fear. He climbed to the fifth floor in a single breath.

The long hallway was steeped in darkness. No one was there. He ran as fast as he could toward his lab and the Cultivation Room.

He opened the door to the seminar room and grabbed the Cultivation Room key hanging on the wall, then went and jammed the key into the k.n.o.b. His hands were shaking.

His breathing was irregular. He turned the key once, pulling the k.n.o.b at the same time, and ran inside. It was dark. He reached out a hand and jumped when his fingers touched the incubator door. He could hardly breathe. He swallowed and opened the door.

When what was inside appeared on his retina, Tos.h.i.+aki let out a scream.

6.

The incubator's interior was filled with strange lumps of flesh. A suffocating vapor that smelled of culture medium, with stomach acid, sweat, and saliva mixed in, pierced his nostrils.

Tos.h.i.+aki edged back. He felt vomit rising to his throat, but could not look away.

It looked like entrails had been stretched out like clay, minced up, and thrown together into its present state. Slime oozed from all over. Rose-colored lips moved seductively, a lilting tongue flapping between them. A series of tentacles tipped with nails stroked the body from which they extended. A reddish black crevice down the center contracted together with its surrounding folds. On the other side was a smooth and sublimely curved breast, towering like an enormous confection. In the midst of the grotesque organs that surrounded it, it alone was pure and beautiful. Every time a pulse ran across the flesh's surface, it s.h.i.+vered gently.

The lips puckered up.

The head-like blob in which they rested stretched out snakily and lifted like a goose's neck. It honed in on Tos.h.i.+aki and formed a smile like a crescent.

”Tos.h.i.+aki...*

Hairs stood up all over his body.

A protrusion in the snaking neck swelled from a speck to the size of a potato, then moved up and settled above the lips. It expanded further into cheeks. A nose popped out between them. Two closed eyes carved themselves out. A forehead spread out. A woman's face. Thin, black hair sprouted like countless earthworms emerging from the soil. Tos.h.i.+aki covered his mouth, at last realizing what was taking shape.

Kiyomi opened her eyes.

She caught him in her sight. He tried to look away, but their gazes were locked. Her pupils glazed over. Crimson capillaries spread throughout the whites of her eyes as they expanded into perfect circles and stared.

”I've been waiting..

Her head came closer on its long neck.

”I've been waiting...waiting for you,” Kiyomi repeated with flushed cheeks and a smile.

She stretched out a tongue and licked her lips.

The flesh around her neck extended to the sides, forming shoulders and a pair of delicate collar bones. The exposed breast s.h.i.+fted and adhered itself to her chest. Another slowly swelled up next to it.

Kiyomi's upper body was now almost complete.

A slender waist and small navel took shape. Her torso swelled out on both sides like fins, dividing into arms. Tentacles crawled sinuously about and gathered into wrists. Kiyomi lifted up her hands from within the slimy liquid and wriggled her fingers. She bent her head back and took a deep breath. She touched her throat with both hands, then groped herself gently from chest to waist.

Tos.h.i.+aki's entire body was shaking. The shape before him was completely indistinguishable from the real Kiyomi. The overhang of her shoulders, the shape of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, the curves of her waist...all Kiyomi to a tee. But the thing now writhing in the incubator did not have the supple, smooth skin of a real human being. Bile pushed further up Tos.h.i.+aki's throat.

Kiyomi smiled sensuously. Her lips were full and pink like ripe, crushed fruit. Her long eyebrows furrowed as if in distress, her eyes went moist, and large teardrops came to the corners of her eyes. This was a face that Kiyomi had never shown, that of a true s.l.u.t desperately l.u.s.ting after a man.

”Tos.h.i.+aki...I've been waiting for you,” Kiyomi purred like a cat.

She placed one hand on the incubator door, then pulled her shoulders forward. The rest of her unformed body made a foul, damp sound as it fell splattering to the floor. Bits flew on to Tos.h.i.+aki and he hastily covered himself.

This unformed ma.s.s of flesh writhed around and swiftly changed form. Her v.a.g.i.n.a and womb, the only fully formed organs that had yet to a.s.sume their positions, ascended to her waist as if swimming up a waterfall. Her lower curves chiseled themselves into symmetry, and a long line yawned open down their middle. The womb was absorbed into Kiyomi's body, and the v.a.g.i.n.a settled in her lower abdomen, its mouth turned towards him almost defiantly. Matted pubic hair sprouted above it. Her hips swelled out and gained a luscious ma.s.s. Kiyomi swayed them left and right.

”Tos.h.i.+aki, look at my body.”

She took a step forward with a squis.h.i.+ng sound.

Then, another step.

Tos.h.i.+aki drew back with a hand over his mouth, but the distance between them was growing smaller.

Kiyomi was now fully rendered down to her ankles. Her heels and toe nails were still ambiguous blobs, but close to being finished. She took yet another step closer.

”Look, this is my body,” Kiyomi continued. ”You remember it, don't you? You held this body in your strong arms so many times. You kissed me all over. I haven't forgotten the way you caressed my neck, the way you cupped these b.r.e.a.s.t.s with your hands, and moved so intensely inside of me. You loved me, Tos.h.i.+aki... You loved only me.”

He wanted to scream that she was not the one he had loved so dearly, but when he opened his mouth, he felt like vomiting. He backed away, and would have fallen over had his back not met the Cultivation Room door.

”Come to me, my dear. Hold me like you used to. Enter me. Ravage me to a pulp.”

He turned his head in desperation, but Kiyomi merely smiled and continued her approach. She stretched her arms towards him. Tos.h.i.+aki burst out the door.

He had no idea which way to run in the hallway's pitch black expanse. Kiyomi emerged slowly out of the room.

Tos.h.i.+aki felt his way to his lab just down the hall. It was locked, but the door was old.

After he rammed into it twice, the clasp sprung off. Tos.h.i.+aki stumbled inside and propped a mop against the door.

”Why do you run, Tos.h.i.+aki?” came a chiding voice.

He leaned up against the door with his entire weight.

”It's useless, no matter what you do,” she warned.

There was a sound like water being dumped from a bucket. A syrupy substance flowed into the room from under the door. It was flesh. Liquid flesh. Kiyomi had altered back into an indefinite form. Once she was fully inside, she began to repeat the horrifying spectacle Tos.h.i.+aki had witnessed just moments before. She grinned broadly and pushed up her body from the floor with both hands.

Tos.h.i.+aki let out a strained cry and jumped back from the door. He could see almost nothing but her. He fumbled around, having only a faint night light to depend on. He hit his s.h.i.+n on the corner of a chair. He yelled out in pain, and bile dribbled out of his mouth.

Kiyomi followed him. She grabbed his sleeve. Tos.h.i.+aki flew into a rage and shook her off, but he was cornered against a desk. Realizing it was Asakura's lab table, he felt around, grabbing whatever he could find to throw at Kiyomi.

”Didn't I say it was useless?”