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The Towers' Syndrome – Chapter 4

Written by papayoya1 :: [Sunday, 28 January 2018 10:56] Last updated by :: [Sunday, 28 January 2018 11:15]

Sienna Towers is a biologist working on a classified project around the fragments of a comet, who wakes after a three-month coma only to find herself "enhanced". After having drawn first blood and while still investigating the full extent of what happened to her, Sienna will find out that her new condition has changed forever the way she relates to the rest of the world…


Chapter 4

It turned out she needed to sleep. It was a deep, dreamless sleep and by the time her alarm clock rang she felt fully rested, despite the fact she had barely been in bed for three hours. Her head started going through the night events as soon as her eyes opened, memories of her adventure replacing the dreams she had not had.

They were fond memories, even though she knew that they should not be.

Sienna headed for the kitchen for her usual breakfast, stopping by the door to pick the mail up. The letter from the hospital, reminding her of her debt and the 30-day term came just before the one from Atlantis Medical, where Mr. Dick Morris, the senior claims specialist she had talked to, officially communicated her that they were rejecting her claim.

Sienna knew she should probably start looking for a lawyer, but all she could think about was on breaking into the guy’s office and crush his skull between her hands.

She could not prevent that line of thinking to start popping up occasionally from then onwards, like when someone cut her on the highway. It was particularly intense when the HR lawyer at Eclipse informed her that the Labs had no intention to intercede on her behalf in front of Atlantis Medical. At that precise moment, all Sienna wanted to do was to grab him from behind his desk and toss him across the room.

Sienna managed to control herself remarkably well, though, not even using her new abilities when the vending machine refused to give her the sandwich she had already paid for. There had been too many people nearby to do what her inner self was demanding.

Sienna had to content herself with lifting a few more cars in the junkyard and pushing her new limits by sprinting across the county or jumping over an abandoned building. The experiences were satisfying, but they were far from the feeling of dominating someone she had experienced at Wayward.

At least, the progress on the research front was satisfying. It was excellent. It took her just one day to find a pattern in the testing data of the comet fragment that had been missed by the entire geology team. She was not too hard on them: it had taken her a stretch of her considerably enhanced mental ability to find it and start pulling that string.

The DNA sequencing results were waiting for her when she got back home a couple of nights later, a bit earlier than her usual time. She had been expecting something, but she was blown away by what she saw, anyway. So shocked that she dropped the spoon she had been using to eat a yogurt.

Using a trick she had learned the night before, Sienna extended her hand towards the spoon and focused, smiling as the small metallic object lifted from the ground and headed towards her ready palm. It was a neat trick, but after a few tests, it surely felt less breathtaking than some of the other stuff she could now do. She had secretly imagined how she could use some telekinesis to mess with people at work without them noticing it was her, but after a full day of practice, she had not managed to move anything much more substantial than a spoon from a distance much longer than a couple of feet.

She did not care about that now, though. She was too focused on what she was reading in the display of her laptop. It took her over a minute to say it out loud:

“I am not human.”

She had known from the very beginning that whatever had happened to her would manifest itself in the form of a mutation in her genes. Still, seeing the magnitude of the change was breathtaking.

The twenty-three pairs of chromosomes were still there, but for lack of a better expression, they were completely fucked up. In strict terms, she was still human, then. The differences between her current self and her previous one were enormous, though. Much more significant than the differences between a Neanderthal and a Homo Sapiens Sapiens.

“I will need to find a new word to go after the Sapiens” she muttered, smirking.

For anyone else, learning about her abandonment of “standard” humanity and the funding of a new species where she was its only member would have been more shocking. To Sienna’s scientific mind, it just felt logical. After all, she had not seen too many normal humans lifting cars over their heads or killing other humans with a half-hearted punch, had she?

Precisely because of not being that impressed about her finding, Sienna’s mind made the next logical connection quite quickly. And this one was way more relevant than the previous one: the changes she had gone through had been guided.

A quick review of the most remarkable differences in her sampled DNA was enough to find the pattern easily. The changes were massive, but they were isolated to specific parts of her genetic material. And in each of these parts, the changes seemed to be designed, rather than coincidental.

Sienna was, of course, entirely aware that mutation was the engine for evolution. But in nature, mutation did not work just like what she saw on the screen. Mutations were random, sometimes making individuals more fit, sometimes making them weaker. Natural selection was then in charge to make sure that the better mutations survived.

It was evident that there was nothing random in the changes she saw, though. And, truth be told, she would not have needed to sample her DNA to reach that conclusion. Her appearance was, overall, the same, the only modifications to it being changes she would have asked a plastic surgeon to do. And while she still did not understand too well how the modified DNA had granted her the massive amount of strength she was enjoying, it was clear enough that the mutation had been surgically done to enable precisely this.

This was a massive discovery. And it triggered a massive question: if the changes had been done by design … who the hell had designed them?

It took her three more days. She had never been so proud of herself as when she found out what she believed was the key.

It was the rock of course. Only it was so much more than a rock.

The comet was a comet. The geologists saw a comet; the astronomers confirmed it was a comet and the Government was convinced that it was a comet. Sienna saw what was beyond. Under normal conditions, the rock was a rock. It did much more when it was excited with the right radiation wavelength, though.

And while Sienna still did not know the innards of how it worked, she had already formulated a theory about its block diagram. It stated that once under the required radiation conditions, the comet could read genetic material around it, process it against some sort of brain or database, and generate the specific coherent signal that would make it mutate as required.

Of course, the geologists had tested the comet fragment under every possible wavelength. It had always been isolated, though, never close to live genetic material to do what it was supposed to do. It had only had one chance for that: when an unfortunate (or, in hindsight, lucky) containment issue had exposed her to dust from it.

This was amazing progress. Nobel Prize progress. Sienna was not interested in prizes anymore, though. What were rewards worth when she was so close to having the key to guided evolution?

Once she validated her block diagram theory and knowing that X-rays were suitable enough to excite the rock, there would be only one thing to investigate. The thing. The response function of the rock.

She intuitively knew that breaking that nut would require tons of computational power and the best out of her talent. Doing so would let her configure herself in the way she saw fit. And once she did, she would be able to decide how and when to share her learnings with the rest of the world.

She was close. She was incredibly close. This was the last thought she had before her second period of sleep in the week since she had woken up from the coma.

Sienna was happier than usual when she woke up the next morning. She had the accustomed breakfast, but she did not go through her already standard routine of making herself look worse. Instead, she chose a revealing enough outfit and invested some time in adjusting her appearance, even if there was not that much she could improve. An hour later, she was sitting across the desk from Doctor Jacobs.

“You… look good” the doctor said. He could not prevent taking a quick glance at her cleavage, but rather than feeling annoyed, Sienna just smiled in response.

“I feel good” she replied, locking her deep blue eyes in his.

“Honestly, I had never seen such a recovery from such a long coma,” Doctor Jacobs said. “But looking at you and looking at the readings, I see as healthy a woman as one can hope.”

It was time to give him a bit of an opening, she thought.

“I guess I was in good hands,” she said, winking.

She smiled when she saw him lightly blushing. He managed to regain his composure quickly enough, though.

“Well, it seems that things are going as good as they could. It is still advisable to follow things up regularly since we could not make a good diagnostic of the real reasons behind your symptoms. But monthly visits should do it” he said.

“I see” Sienna replied.

She saw him hesitating. She widened her smile, trying to help him.

“You know, I’m happy to see you recovering so well. Even if it leaves me without excuses to keep seeing you more often” he said.

She smiled a bit more and waited.

“Unless, of course, you’d fancy going out to have dinner sometime.”

“A date?” she asked cutely.

“Well … I guess we could call it a date if you want …” Edward Jacobs started replying, looking nervous.

“Look, Edward, I really appreciate the offer … but the truth is that right now I’m into something big at work. Something huge. I’m afraid I do not have a ton of spare time” she said.

“I see” he replied, moving his eyes down and looking gloomier than he intended.

“Oh, no. I don’t think you see” Sienna said, sounding cheerful. “I do not have time for a formal date, right now. Maybe in a few weeks. I’d be happy to go straight to sex, if that works for you, though” she said, sounding naughtier as she progressed in her reply.

Dr. Jacobs tried to reply, but all he managed to do was to start coughing.

“Is that a yes?” Sienna asked, laughing.

It helped Edward Jacobs start laughing as soon as he recovered from his sudden coughing attack.

“You’re not a shy woman, I see” he finally managed to say, using sarcasm as a way to handle the situation.

“Would you believe it if I told you that I would have never done this before?” Sienna asked.

“I don’t know. I have no reason not to believe you. What happened, then?” Dr. Jacobs asked.

“Well, you see, this entire coma experience … it has changed me.”

Sienna had had to lead the conversation with Edward Jacobs after her offer, letting him know that there was no reason to postpone her proposal to any later than that evening. Her smile was wider than usual when she got to the lab.

Sienna could not be happier with herself. Three months before she had been a brilliant scientist, one of the brightest minds in her field. But nothing else was right with her life. Now, not only she was brighter but she was on the verge of the greatest scientific discovery ever, she had been enhanced beyond comprehension, and her sexual life was about to improve dramatically. How else could things go better for her?

Even the knowledge that she owed over two million dollars felt negligible when she put it next to everything that was going right in her life. If anything, she was convinced that she would be able to take care of that one way or another.

Feeling naughtier and more playful than ever, Sienna used some of her newfound abilities to toss Sarah’s coffee on her new and expensive-looking jacket, making sure that the flick of her wrist as she focused her telekinetic powers on the plastic cup was not very perceptible. She also pushed Sarah’s car closer to Miles’ in the parking lot, ensuring that one of them would not be able to open the door and hoping that she could trigger an argument between the two.

In a way, it was as if she had let her little inner girl get out, even if Sienna had never been especially nice or popular as a child.

Most of her effort was set into her research work, though. She invested the first couple hours into guiding the rest of the team into a cul-de-sac in Prometheus. She guessed it would take them at least two weeks to realize about that. The afternoon was entirely devoted to working for her benefit.

She reached an important milestone halfway through the process. She had gone through the available data as many times as possible, in an attempt to characterize the response curve of the comet as well as possible. She had a pretty good theory, but before risking the next phase, which would involve adding genetic material into the chamber, she needed to confirm some parameters.

By now, Sienna was so confident in her ability to hack the system and use other teams’ works for her benefit, that she did not stop for too long to consider the risks of what she was going to do. It was, as a matter of fact, a change in the game. Rather than reading available files, Sienna was about to modify one, the file that would manage the automated test parameters for the rock the day after.

In her mind, the only thing she regretted about what she had done was that she would need to wait for almost a day to get the results she needed.

Things would get quite riskier from then onwards. Introducing genetic material in the chamber would require physical tampering, and not just hacking into IT systems. She had been working on a plan over the last few days so that she would contain the risks in time, though. If her plan worked, and she did not see any reason why it shouldn’t, she would get all the information she needed in less than 12 hours. Once she had it, she would not need Eclipse anymore, and the implications of getting caught would be trivial.

A few more days. Maybe as few as 2. That was what she needed to make the biggest breakthrough in history. And who knew what else.

Sienna could hear Edward rushing to the door when she knocked. It made her silently giggle. He looked fresh and ready, dressed as if he was about to go out for a reception, despite the fact that it was 11 pm.

“Do … do you want a drink?” he asked an instant before recovering from her looks. She had changed her clothes and used a bit of time to tease her hair and put some makeup.

“Sure,” Sienna said, walking into the two-story house and smiling as she saw signs both of money and order.

Edward stopped on his tracks when he stepped out of the kitchen, a martini in each hand, and saw that she had already lost her blouse, her massive breasts defying gravity as their nipples seem to be rudely pointing at him.

Sienna took a step to the front and reached for one of the glasses, taking the martini and downing it in one long sip.

“So, is the bedroom upstairs?”

“Sure” Edward replied, moving to follow her lead up the stairs. “Not bashful at all, are we?” he asked in a sarcastic tone, trying to break a bit of the tension he was feeling.

“What’s the point?”

Sienna was really looking forward to what was about to happen. It had been a long time since her last sex with something other than an inanimate object, and her new body was longing for it.

He was painfully slow at taking his clothes off. Sienna was tempted just to rip them off herself, but she knew this would not be a good start. So, while he was getting ready she just inspected the room, stopping her sight in the picture of a young girl sitting in a cupboard across from where she was.

“Your daughter?” she asked casually.

“Yes. Her name is Claire. She lives with her mother in Connecticut” he said.

“Divorced, then?” Sienna followed on.

“Yep. Three years already” he said, already in his underwear.

Sienna was pleasantly surprised when he removed his underpants and saw his already excited member. He would not win a fitness contest, but he was even in better shape than she had expected.

“Her loss,” she said, putting a tone in her voice that suggested that she was impressed at what she was seeing.

He was also clearly impressed at her naked figure, which looked like a mix of a top model and men’s magazine centerfold.

“Any boyfriends?” he asked, taking a step towards her.

“Not for a long time,” she said.

“It’s hard to believe,” he said, reaching out to grab her by the waist.

She reached out and grabbed him by the ass instead.

“I’m selective,” she said, her lips already on his.

Sienna pushed Dr. Jacobs to the bed, getting on top. She was going to lead this. Judging by the look in his eyes, he did not mind.

She started deliberately slow, inserting him and moving sensually and with care. She chuckled when he reached for her breasts. They were, of course, the obvious targets. She could tell that he was trying to mash them, but in truth, he was not managing to make much more than slightly depress their taut skin. It seemed to puzzle him, so Sienna just increased a bit the pace to get him thinking about something else.

It was wonderful. It was true it had been a long time, but she did not have such fond memories of her latest attempt. Her skill and her level of sensitivity had not been what they were today.

A quick look down showed him that Edward was in pure ecstasy, barely noticing what was going on. It made her chuckle. She needed more, though, so Sienna started thrusting a bit harder. It did the trick. It also seemed to take Edward out of his trance. His moans combined pleasure with what looked like some pain. Sienna realized her increased intensity must be hurting him a bit, but he was not complaining, so she went on.

She did not realize that she had inadvertently increased her stamina a bit more until Edwards groans started beating the moans. It was at that moment that the bed crashed into the wall first and had its legs broken later.

She was not going to stop, though. She was so close to climax she was not reasoning anymore. Her inner beast was leading.

“Sienna” Edward said, a bit of fear in his voice.

She was not listening anymore, though.

“Sienna!” he screamed, now in panic.

“Sie… Aaaahhh!” was Edward’s next scream, now in agony.

Sienna never heard it, though. It was masked by her ecstatic yell as she came, a yell so loud it made the windows in the bedroom crack.

It took her a few moments to realize that Edward was in pain. In incredibly intense pain, judging by his screams. Her climax had been amazing, the best thing she had ever felt. The come down promised to be sweet, but it was interrupted by her lover’s screams. She was annoyed at them first. She regained enough control to become concerned a couple of seconds later.

“Wha… what?” she asked aloud, looking down at the man between his legs.

He was screaming like a madman, tears forming in his eyes. She had to look a bit closer to her hips to see the bizarre shape of his body right under her.

“Oh my God!” she said, moving backward and sliding herself out of the man. She hopped back, landing on the bed with the grace of a ballerina, and opened her eyes wide at the scene.

Edward felt like he was dying. And judging by the look of him, he might very well be dying. His screams were anguishing, and the movement of his arms was frantic. There was no movement at all in his legs, though, which together with the antinatural bend of his body was not a very good indication of his wellbeing.

“Edward …” she started, but she did not know too well what to say.

“You broke me!” he yelled, and immediately resumed his more animalistic screams.

“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” Sienna started saying, hyperventilating as she paced at the foot of the bed, the implications of what had just happened sinking in.

The explanation was simple enough. The consequences would not be.

She had broken him. Both hips and his back, by the look of it. He probably had a few more broken bones, but they would barely matter, compared to those three. Of course, she knew how it had happened. She was just so much stronger than him. Things had been more or less alright while she had been in control, but at some point, she had lost it. And the consequences were obviously tragic.

Sienna liked Edward. It was not that she knew him too well, but she liked him. He had been the first man she had met after her transformation and his attitude towards her had been nice, for a change. Of course, she knew the reason behind it had been her new looks, but she also knew that Edward was a genuine person. He was smart and successful too. So, even if he could not compare to her by any standards, he was as good a man as she was likely to find. And he was interested in her for what he thought she was, not for what she was in reality.

It could have worked. Not like a standard couple. She was beyond that. But he could have been a friend with benefits. Now, looking at his screaming and squirming figure in the bed, it was obvious that this was not going to happen.

“Fuck!” Sienna repeated, slamming her fist into the wall, easily breaking through it, her fingers appearing in the adjacent bathroom.

Her casual gesture made Edward stop screaming for a second, his eyes opening even wider. Their glances met, and she hoped to be able to quiet him to explain him everything. Then, he started screaming once more.

It was a disaster. A total disaster. Not only had she fucked up an amazing chance to have a satisfactory relationship, but she had also given her new self away. Edward was now probably too shocked to realize what had happened, but he was not stupid and after having treated her for three months, putting all the pieces together would be as easy as adding two plus two.

“Fuck!” she repeated, slamming her foot on the floor, easily breaking the wooden tiles and sinking her bare heel a couple of feet into the structure.

Sienna knew what she had to do. She just did not want to do it.

First things first, though. Taking a couple of steps towards the bed, she bent next to Edward and ripped a piece of bedsheet with the ease of someone tearing a paper in two. A second later, the homemade cloth was in Edward’s mouth, gagging him and preventing him from screaming. She could obviously hear his babbling, but the silence was welcome.

Another piece of bedsheet was enough to tie Edward’s wrists down and prevent him from removing the gag she had just applied.

Sienna then walked back to her previous position, just beyond the bed, pacing the room with a permanent scowl in her face, her glorious naked figure no longer looking appealing to the suffering man in bed.

“This should have never happened,” she said, sounding sincere. “It was an accident. A mistake. I hope you can believe that” she said, stopping and looking at the man’s crying eyes, like someone looking for redemption.

Sienna took a deep breath, her heavy breasts bulging as she did.

“I’m so close,” she said. Edward Jacobs did not look like she understood. She went on, though. “I’m so close, now.”

She took another deep breath.

“You know what I am. Or at least, you are starting to figure out. I can be much more. I’m just so close.”

Sienna looked like a conflicted woman. It was exactly what she was. She clenched her fists, fighting with something inside. Then, her body straightened, her fists relaxed. She looked to the front, her expression now neutral.

Sienna took a step towards the bed, then another. An instant later, she was straddling Edward’s broken body once more. She held his head in her hands, her gesture delicate, like that of a lover waking her couple up to kiss him. That’s what she did.

“I like you Edward,” she said. Then, in a flat tone, she added: “This won’t hurt.”

His neck snapped with ease, following a swift movement of her hands.

Sienna looked at the lifeless body of her recent lover, now standing back at her feet. Her face was expressionless, but the conflict remained inside. Sighing, Sienna turned and moved down the stairs, her fist making a new hole in the wall as she punched it, out of rage.

She got dressed, the image of Edward’s awkwardly bent body still in her head.

“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” she muttered again.

A heavy closet broke in half as she kicked it, out of rage. Sienna was already at the door and just stopped to take a look at her reflection in the mirror, scowling at herself.

She was about to reach for the doorknob when she realized that she could not leave the house like that. The kitchen’s door suffered her wrath as she kicked it out of its hinges, the wood bending in half as it did.

Apparently, her sense of smell was also enhanced, since she could notice the gas just an instant after turning one of the stoves in the kitchen on. Ignoring the unpleasant smell, Sienna proceeded to open the other three stoves and turned, leaving the kitchen and the hissing sound of the gas as it filled the house.

Sienna had seen the ironing board in a small room by the door. Getting in, she set it on top of a pile of letters and plugged it.

She had barely reached the car, parked on the opposite side of the street, by the time the house was engulfed in a massive explosion. The sirens of the firetrucks still sounded distant by the time she reached the highway. There would be no evidence of what had happened. Possibly not even in Edward’s body. She would always know what had happened, though.

Sienna’s mood during her drive home was very different from the one she had had on her way back from Wayward. For the first time in a very long time, she felt guilt. She knew she had done what she had to do, though. She was so close. Edward had been too much of a liability.

Her mind had revisited the scenario several times. In all of them, she reached the conclusion that she had done the right thing. And still, she wanted to believe otherwise. She wanted to believe that she could have let Edward live, drive him to a hospital, get him fixed. Chances were she had crippled him permanently, but being in a wheelchair was certainly preferable to being dead. She could have explained. He might have understood…

But she was way too smart to believe that. Edward would have been freaked out, the doctors attending him would have wanted to know how he had ended up so badly injured and she would have been visited by cops sooner rather than later. And she was so close… she was forty-eight hours away from making history. For all she knew, her current enhancements were but a glimpse of what the comet could do.

Doing the right thing did not mean that she had to be happy about it, though. So, Sienna’s face was still showing a permanent frown by the time she got home. The surprise waiting for her there made her change her expression right away.

Her enhanced perception took notice of the two large men in her kitchen at the same time it realized about the broken back door. One of them was aiming a gun at her as if this should have intimidated her, while the other was sitting and smiling evilly. Their clothes, shaved heads, and Nazi tattoos did not leave too many doubts about their allegiance. Sienna immediately realized that she had been way less careful with covering her tracks back in Wayward than she had been with Edward. It was likely that her opinion on the Nazi gang had been so low that she had underestimated their ability to track her. She had certainly given them ample opportunity, walking out of the alley for everyone to see and climbing into her car for anyone to take a picture of her plate. She did not know how things had moved from then onwards, but she was pretty sure that running a plate was not so tough in the underworld.

Her first instinct was to punch her fist through their skull. Maybe this would help her feel better after the night’s frustration. She contained herself and analyzed the situation, though. After all, the last thing she wanted was to attract anyone’s attention to her house.

She considered it obvious that the men were out for vengeance. Somehow, they had made the math and realized that she must have been the one killing their comrades. The fact that they were pointing a gun at her as a threatening gesture told her that they did not have too much of a clue about what had happened, though.

Sienna started to think about how to finish them discretely and get rid of the bodies as far away from her house as possible. This included making sure that the gun was not fired. It turned out the thugs themselves gave her the answer.

“Don’t move an inch, bitch” the man with the gun said.

She complied, looking at them with a scowl on her face. She could tell that they were a bit disappointed at the lack of fear in her reaction, but this did not stop them from going on. It was the sitting man, this time.

“You know who we are” he stated.

“I think you share hairdresser with some guys I used to know,” she said in a neutral tone. She could see that this made them jumpier, which she celebrated by smirking slightly.

“We should light her here,” the man with the gun said.

“Not yet. Locke wants to know what happened” the sitting guy, who apparently was in charge, replied.

“Did you find all the bits?” Sienna asked, defiant.

It made the goon with the gun almost pull the trigger. Sienna made a mental note to tune it down a bit. After all, she did not want the gun fired.

“Locke is expecting you to explain that part,” the sitting man said.

“Why didn’t he come, then?” Sienna asked, assuming that Locke was the leader of the Nazi gang.

“Because we are going to bring you to him.”

Sienna was about to laugh when she realized that it was perfect. The guy was talking about bringing her to Wayward, to visit their leader. Which meant that they would leave her neighborhood without further fuzz. It also meant that she would most likely have the chance to let some of the steam she had accumulated during the night go.

Sienna did not reply, so the leading thug, who was now standing up, produced some cuffs and pointed at her.

“Turn around and place your hands on your back.”

It was ridiculous, of course, but Sienna obeyed. She then calmly followed them to their truck and did not protest when they covered her head with a hood.

“I think I’m going to stick it up your ass,” the thug that had held the gun said, while they drove back to wherever they had come from.

“Are you sure you’ll be man enough for that?” she asked, from under the hood.

She forced herself to complain when she felt the butt of the gun hitting her head, in what the goon surely assumed was a painful punishment for her insolence.

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