Hard Case by Mich I knew something like this would happen: stuck, in a tiny tube that barely let me breathe, waiting. And waiting. And waiting. It was the hardest part. You would think the hardest part was tracking down the exact piece of hardware that the client, "Miss February" she called herself, wanted. Or maybe retrieving credentials, hacked from their ServeNet, so I could disable the inflow tank's lasergrid. Hell, the bit where I actually snuck past their lame outer security, soundlessly opened their triple-Tite locks, and wormed my way a quarter-of-a-mile through an inundated pipe, breathing through my SecSuit's modular air apparatus—that was the kind of stuff that was impossible for anyone else. The kind of stuff that I got hired for. So you'd think that would be the hardest part. Instead I was there, finally at the end of the pipe, ready to be let out so I could continue my job, and I was waiting on Frex to open it for me. "Sorry, Case," his voice droned in my ear for the millionth time. "They're actually paying some cracker to sit there overtime, monitoring the reds." I understood all of that. Hell, I was the one who told him to get up early so that he could be on standby should something like this pop up. But it didn't make the waiting any easier. There was an itch halfway down my back that I was trying desperately to ignore. "Finally," Frex breathed, and there was a low whine around me. With some vibration the ultramesh wall in front of me, porous enough to let water through and not much else, irised open. "Thanks, Rex," I thought, unable to do much more than subvocalize. I knew his readout of my stats would pick it up, minus the sarcasm. I pushed my hands outside of the intake tube, gripped the edges with my bare fingers, and pulled myself into the wider area of the first processing tank. Over the past two days I had memorized everything I could get my hands on about the layout of the Chop City water processing plant, including public records, mostly sealed due to terrorism concerns, private records, mostly stolen from one unprotected wristtop, and security diagrams and layouts, mostly hacked out of a home computer of a high-up city secretary member. It's what helped me find the intake pipe, predict a couple of the security measures, and find this one particular emergency opening on the tank that my own wristtop could open. They normally didn't open from the inside, but that's just one special thing about being me. I was finally out in the air again for the first time in an hour, and I celebrated by releasing the SecSuit mask, letting it slip seamlessly into my collar, and breathing the salty, chemically flavor of the plant. Almost tasted like home. It was pitch black in the tank room, according to a readout on my eyes, but it was like day to me: there was a reason I could only afford one of the downtown coffins for my place of residence, and it was mostly from the second-skin-like SecSuit, a must-have for any hyper-thief trying to make her way in the world. The night vision, though, was all from my cybereyes, the first of a series of major investments that left my bank account empty. "You have about five minutes, Case," Frex warned. It was more than enough time. I turned my eyes to cybertrace mode and followed a line of data as it connected all of the pumps to a bundle of floor circuitry and through a connecting door to another pump room, where they all joined up with a master computer that took up an entire wall. With Frex breathing time into my ear in the helpful-but-aggravating way of his, I pulled out my tools, found the component I needed, and had it swapped out with a second, much cheaper, model in a flash. Nobody should know the difference. The only minor miscalculation was that five minutes was not more than enough time, and I heard footsteps and a whistle of the guard while I was screwing the replacement datadrive back in place. Holding my breath, I left the job half-finished in and pressed myself between two nearby pipes, praying he would walk past without a second thought. The footsteps came into the room and the whistling stopped. I chanced a peek around the pipe, my night vision mode outlining everything that I didn't immediately take in. Over six foot, meaning he had about twelve inches on me. Plus his potbelly meant he was maybe three times my weight. The pistol at his waist had a dataline connected to his wrist, meaning a smart gun; that combined with the standard NVG in his helmet's visor meant that if he took a shot at me, bad risk of being hit. However, he was undoubtedly low on the totem pole, probably not brushed up on his hand-to-hand combat: paid to be a presence. If I could get in close, a couple of punches to the kidneys followed by a low center-of-gravity shoulder could— —the guard's whistling resumed and he turned around. Must have just been having a deep thought as he meditated on the gentle hum of the water processors. The screw in, I crept on silent feet to an exit tank, where the even more disgusting water flowed back to the river, out into the harbor for the Grimestown kids to bathe in. But, I hummed to myself, the job was well done, and the datadrive was safely in my suit's back pocket. Soon the sweet credits from Miss February's account would be flowing into mine. Just another night for Casey Donner's special services. *** The image of Miss February was hard for you to get out of your head. When the door to Doll's Bar had opened and one of her high heels had clicked onto the dirty linoleum, every head turned and instantly took her in. "Statuesque" didn't begin to define her, in the sleeveless dress that hugged every curve. And they WERE curves, the kind that I knew my boyfriend had his paws all over whenever we were broken up: hips that sang as they pressed against the tight, expensive material of the tight skirt; full breasts that pushed and bounced against the low neckline. Her dark eyes focused on me as she strutted her way across the bar and I realized that this was my client. I would have been easy to spot, even as I was sunk low in the booth, an old-fashioned laptop mostly blocking my face: it was my hair, a stark contrast to the elegant lengths of Miss February's which hung in waves and folds down to her elbows. I keep mine short, spiked, and died a perpetual blue. Frex calls the color "blue balls", but it's as close to 0000FF that I can possibly get it. Slipping out of her matching jacket, Miss February seated herself across from me with a whisper from the expensive material of her dress, her legs neatly crossing. I shot a glare at the other patrons of Doll's and they all grumbled, turning their respective gazes away from my client. "Case Donner?" she asked. There was a slight accent on the tip of her tongue, but I didn't bother trying to place it: plenty of my clients would take speech lessons to gain some sort of mystique. French had been in for a while, but lately it was swinging, as ever, back to EuroJapan. Her accent was probably as fake as the curves attracting so much attention, and probably rich enough to be just as impossible to spot. I nodded, tapping a keystroke on my laptop as if it were recording her. It was a bit of a play, but some people didn't hear the whirrs and clicks in my second-generation cybereyes, and it was uncouth to announce that virtually everything I saw was uploaded to my private server. Miss February recognized the motion, just as I planned, and her eyes darted down and then back up to mine, a small smile on her elegant lips. "I see we share certain... retro sensibilities, Miss Donner," she said, referring to the laptop. "Case is fine," I said. "Case it is." "Let's talk about the job." "Right to business," she said with a small laugh in her voice. "Exceptional." And it was exceptional. With only a few words spoken, we had exchanged everything necessary: my infoDrop account for her down payment, exactly what she needed me to obtain, what she knew already. I did not ask why she wanted a datadrive stolen from the Chop City water processing plant, although I had my own theories. She did not ask how I expected to steal it, although I'm certain she had her own ideas. When our business was concluded, she stood from the booth, her long legs unfolding themselves, and replaced her evening jacket. "I expect you'll be returning to me shortly for your payment," she said, and turned around, letting the entire bar watch as her perfect rear end faded into the night. It was only then that I realized she had never told me how I was expected to turn in the product. With a sigh, I ordered another beer from Doll and turned my facial recognition program on. Miss February knew what I was doing, indeed. In just twenty minutes I had her personal history, real name, and office hours. And now, one week later, I had her product. Ready to turn in for my reward. *** "Don't forget my fee," Frex whined in my ear as I zipped through the streets of Chop City on my motorcycle. I rolled my eyes, dodging through the neon traffic that never seemed to end. "Do I ever forget your fee?" "You've pretended to a few times, as I recall," he said. A number began to trace itself at the bottom of my vision in bright green. "Here's a little reminder." Growling, I scrubbed the number off and okayed the money transfer. Frex was reliable and probably the closest thing I had to a friend, but his habit of always demanding payment as soon as possible sometimes left me with a bit of a deficit on my credits card. Still, his paranoia had saved both of our asses more than once, so it was hard to do much more than complain. "Thanks, Case. I'll talk to you later. Maybe if this mysterious February has another job, huh?" I grunted in acknowledgement and he disappeared, but I had to admit that I wanted another, too. The money for this was good. Really good. So good, in fact, that, once I had paid for a public shower at my apartment and carefully locked my SecSuit up in my TripleClear locker, I changed into something I thought was appropriately sexy and hopped back onto my bike. The night was nearly day by then, but I was amped, and I knew that Derek would be just getting off work. My boyfriend lived in a much better part of town than me, befitting his job, and it was great to have a place to escape to that wasn't two feet tall and seven feet deep with a mattress and a locker taking up all of the floorspace. Still, the front door security didn't often take well to my Grimestown sensibilities, so I checked to make sure that the light was on in Derek's apartment from the outside before waltzing past the front desk, my boots only leaving a little bit of tarmac muck on the marble. Beeping my wristtop against the elevator to read my digikey, I zipped up to the thirty-third floor and let myself into Derek's apartment. He jumped from the couch, where he had apparently been doing some reading, in surprise. "Goddamnit, Case," he said, unable to stop a smile despite his annoyed tone. "You need to ask me to let you up, first." "Sorry, babe," I said, pulling my motorcycle jacket off and leaving it on the floor so I could wrap my bare arms around his firm body. "I was too excited to see you." "Oh yeah?" he asked, and I could hear the eyebrow raising in his voice, heading, undoubtedly, for his perfectly braided hair. "Good day today?" "Really good day," I grinned. "Can we fuck?" He sighed, bending down to lift me up to his waist, pulling me into a kiss. "God, you make it sound so horrible," he said when we parted. My hand was already under his shirt, feeling the strength in his back, running along the seam that connected his mechanical arms to his bio body. "And what if one of my patrolmen catch me, with some cyberthief from Grimestown?" "Just tell them you were using an unorthodox method to catch me," I said, pulling his shirt off. "Hmm, good idea," he agreed, letting his metal fingers, warmed to body temperature by the latest in biological mimic systems, pick at the hem of my miniskirt. "I guess we CAN fuck." We fucked. I sometimes wondered how we looked. Him, a large, muscular patchwork of metal and dark flesh, with me, a small, light-skinned, lithe, completely unmodified woman. The accident that took out the rest of his patrol one night, some stupid techgang war that went on too longer, had also resulted in him with no arms or legs left. Now he had the latest and greatest mechanical upgrades that the Chop City Police Bureau could afford, meaning they were just ahead of the curve. The rest of him was "all real boy", including down where it counted, which was always something everyone wanted to ask. He liked to joke that without his augs he'd still be able to pogo around. I sometimes wondered, generally as we both lay in bed soaked in sweat, basking in orgasmic afterglow, if I could benefit from getting augs like that. Getting my eyes replaced had been the first big purchase of my adult life, and it had been extremely scary, but then I never had to worry about glasses again. Plus they were almost vital to my success as a thief. They were an older model, though, not the nutech that Derek was decked out with, and the installation and related immunosuppressors were things of the past for fresher models. Maybe I could take Miss February's money and turn it back around into bigger, harder jobs, and slightly fewer nightmares. Sometimes I still saw that needle, as large as a skyscraper, descending into my vision. "So it was a good score?" Derek asked, interrupting my thoughts. He was a good boy, my Derek, and even though we had broken up and gotten back together more times than I cared to track, he had never given me away to one of his cop friends. I think he found my stories too intoxicating. More than once I was halfway through recounting one particular heist or another when he interrupted me with a kiss that would turn into much more. I nodded from his pillow. His soft, expensive pillow. The kind I could afford, if I could bear to save up. "A good score." *** Miss February did not use her real name, of course. Her real name was Anica Beaumont, and she was very high up in a megacorp with a huge office across the Chop City bay, in a section people called the Mesa. It was on a bit of a hill, but I had never been clear on if the rise in elevation was from geography, or from building on top of slums over and over again. The companies there were literally built on the backs of those who came before. Strangely enough, although it looked like her corporation dealt in the usual complete mish-mash of pharmeceuticals, weapons, and microchips, there was almost no way for them to deal with anything related to the water purification necessary to keep a pollution-farm like Chop City running. Maybe she was in charge of creating some sort of drug that could purify dirty water easily, that the government didn't want to test? Hell, maybe it was already in the water and I had just removed the evidence. Either way, I got paid. And the system was still running fine, after all. When it was daylight hours, I stopped by my place to change into something a little less "fuck me" than what I had greeted Derek with, picked up the datadrive, and headed to the Mesa. The company Beaumont worked for was near the top of one of the big conglomo buildings downtown, the kind that I had broken into once or twice. The footprint they left on the ServeNet was huge, generating their own pseudo-gravity in the meta, so it was almost strange seeing her particular one from the outside. Normally it was just a huge pile of reds, waiting to be broken into. I had changed into something more presentable, but I still probably looked like little more than a deliverator girl to the army of guards in the polished lobby. I wore my knee-length techweave skirt, armored fishnets, metal-toed boots, plus my classic motorjacket. As I stepped over the threshold of the security scanner, the door whispering shut behind me, I wondered exactly how much influence Beaumont had over the company: the rounded silver curves and blinking lights gave the entire thing a retro veneer that was way older than my own love of late 20th-century tech. I flashed the creds Frex had printed me a few nights prior and zipped up the elevator to another lobby, this time with a little waterfall and a single woman behind a desk. "Name?" she asked me as I stepped out. I resisted the urge to snap my gum and instead handed her my card. The corners of her lips pressed into her hollow cheeks as she examined it. "I don't know if Miss Beaumont is expecting any company," she snapped, and I imagined breaking her toothpick of a body over my knee. "Then again, it's not like she tells me who's coming in." After handing me the card back, pinched between two fingers like it might be carrying a nanovirus, she waved me to the big wooden doors next to her desk, and I focused my eyes on her nameplate so that an image was snapped. I would have to remember to see what was up Janet Tismuth's ass, if it would lead somewhere with Beaumont. Such leads had given me amazing advantages before. The doors opened up to an office that could house a small family. Hell, with the foliage spread about, it could also hold an army of monkeys. Water from the fixture in the lobby flowed under glass in the floor to the atrium that lined the walls, with only a small walkway leading straight to the impressive and stark desk at the end. Anica Beaumont, my own Miss February, stood behind it looking out of a window. It was her hair, at least, and her same taste in dresses: this time an off-white one with ruffles at the shoulders. But no one who had been in Doll's Bar that night would forget the sight of her perfect ass as her heels clicked out of the door back into Grimestown, and this was not that ass. It was larger, rounder, with fuller hips and thighs that were almost squeezing out of her skirt. Only when Beaumont turned around and I caught a glimpse of her equally plumped-up rack did it click. It was her, alrighty; there was no forgetting that classic beauty of a face, those plump red lips. She was just addicted to some sort of amazing, evidence-less surgery, or maybe was a bio-modder. My confusion turned to an internal smirk as I surveyed the damage she had done to her tits. Had she really needed to make them bigger? They had been large just a week ago, but... Hell, even now, just from turning around, the mass of her boobs were still wobbling back into place. While before they had only been bursting out from the top of her dress, today they formed a platform beyond what any super-advanced bra could do. Any bigger and I would have spotted them from behind, the two spheres of perfect-white skin showing smooth, soft flesh pushing outwards from her shoulder straps. She sure did have an odd taste in retro fashion, my client did. Interior design from 1950s sci-fi, fashion from 1920s movies, and a figure from Mesopotamian mythology. Choking back my judgement, I turned to business and approached her desk, trying to ignore how tight my client's hips were pulling her dress, or how obvious her nipples were through the shiny fabric. "Hello, 'Miss February,'" I said, making sure the unsaid quotation marks were heard. She smiled, and it was gracious and elegant as always. "Welcome to my office, Case. I see you had no trouble finding it." "Not very much, no," I admitted. "It's kind of my job." Her lips parted in a genuine grin. "That is what I thought. Your payment is already queued up and ready for transfer at my go-ahead." With as little ceremony as possible I pulled the datadrive out of my jacket pocket and laid it on her desk. "Then here is what you requested." Those blue eyes sparkled. "Excellent, thank you. Then..." She seemed to lose her train of thought as she picked up the drive and toyed with it, her smile fading. "...that will be all?" I finished for her. "Actually," she said, her tongue tripping lightly over the syllables in that precise accent, "I will have a second job for you soon, if the money for this one was to your liking. Should be a little, how should I say, more pleasantly scented than the last one." Score, I thought to myself. This is what you wanted: a reputation to gain among the heavy-hitters. Now that she had trusted me with her weird, non-business thing, she'd put me on a competitor, tracking new weapons tech. Or some sort of bio thing maybe, a drug to steal, a formula to track down. "I'm sure we could work something out," I said. The curve on her lips returned and Beaumont put the drive back onto her desk. "Excellent! I'll transfer the details into your drop. Payment will be equal this time, with the same amount of forwarding fee." Even more good news. I nodded once to my agreement, ignoring the odd way that Beaumont smoothed her skirt over the thick curve of her hindquarters. "I will see you again soon, then." "Should not take more than a week," she warned, her tongue darting out for a moment to lick her lips. "Time is sensitive." "Of course it is." *** "Cryogenics tech?" Frex stated in disbelief. "Short-term stuff, too," I said. "Just something to stay frozen for a few hours." I leaned back against the beanbag in Frex's den, trying not to think about the pile of smelly clothes in the corner. Frex and I had known each other for a while, and I pulled him in for help on almost every job that was deeper than "find out if my husband is cheating on me with that pumped up corporate whore." Even then, he could save me hours of work for half of the cost. My normal problem of working with dudes was completely negated, too: can count on not having someone flirt with you if he's 100% uninterested in your gender. Not that I was sure he even cared about the other ones, either; if he hadn't told me straight-up that he was gay I would have assumed he was a-sexual, robo-sexual, or something like that. He was currently plugged into the net, a string of jacks rammed into the ports on his shoulder. I was amazed that he could manage to keep a running conversation at the same time, but Frex was a man of many talents. It was what made him such a good netrunner: he didn't live solely on ServeNet. "Cryotech is oldtech, Case," he said, repeating things I already knew. "Failed tech." Like me, Frex was a bit obsessed with old, obsolete tech, thus the ports in his shoulder, which ran through the early-model mech arm to his neuro cortex. The old-fashioned aesthetic went well with the typewriters in the corner and his metal-and-leather wheelchair—he still refused to upgrade to working legs. "Probably why I was hired to find some and they didn't just chop some cash out on a cartsite." I rolled my eyes and distracted myself with a pile of ancient Blu-Ray discs sprawled across a desk. "And it's kind of why I came to you, remember." He grinned under the goggles weighing down the bridge of his nose. "Obv." The minutes ticked by, and I tried my best to be patient. Even in Frex's den of retro junk, the kind of things that I loved to salivate over in the few remaining brick-and-mortar stores of Chop City, I couldn't keep my attention off of the next step for long. And with Frex being the bottleneck, that meant my fuse was burning short. "Found some," he said at last, and I bit my lip back from a "finally, asshole." Well, I bit my lip back from the "asshole" part. He was used to the sass, and pointed me to a collector who lived on a private estate, just outside of the city's borders. Within minutes we had a blueprint, approximate layout of security, and the codes to open the case of the cryostasis device. "You're the best, Rex," I said, snapping my eye camera over all of the images he pulled up. We tried not to transfer those kind of things across devices, avoiding a trail in case some goody two-shoes cop like Derek somehow tracks a Grimestown thief. I wired the credits to Frex's account and noted the amount still in my own. I still had five days to Beaumont's week deadline. It would be stupid to spend the entire payout of the last job before the next one... but I felt that I needed to make myself feel good. The restaurant was far nicer than the kind of noodle shop that I frequented, on the edge of the Mesa and downtown. Real wooden furniture, real dishes, hell, even a real chef in the back. A waiter actually took Derek and my jackets, tagging them with glittering clip-on devices with hovering holonumbers on top, before showing us across the floor. "You didn't take money out of my account to pay for this, right?" Derek joked, but I could hear the hint of truth in his question. "I told you, it was a real job. A good one." Neither were lies: my definition of real was just different than his. I don't think the subtlety eluded him, and he grunted before changing the subject. "Your dress is new, too, right?" Of course it was new. I had never owned a dress like it: red, sleeveless, mostly form-fitting with a skirt that ended above my knees. Only I knew where the inspiration for such an old-fashioned outfit had come from, and, while I didn't have a single curve to try to stack up to Anica Beaumont's, I looked goddamn fine in it. "I look fucking good, right?" I grinned. Derek winked and pulled me close, kissing me on the lips before we sat down at the candlelit table. The main course was a generated meat, something of the chef's own design, and far-and-away better than the chow that even Derek normally reheated in his kitchen. Even better than the cloned chicken I had once treated myself to after my first real job with the SecSuit, something I somehow felt justified in splurging for. There was something hot about being able to afford this stuff. It was like I was a legitimate member of society, almost. Maybe I could start to save up, move out of my coffin and into a real apartment. Derek and I could fuck on my bed for once instead of his. I could really get my cycle souped up, so it wasn't running on hopes and dreams. Or maybe I could pay for some of the augs that I was missing; lockpick fingers, grapnel claws, hyper-flexible spinal column. A thrill went up my back as I considered asking Beaumont who she saw to get whatever augmentations she had paid for. The latest I had seen her with, that ridiculous ballooned butt and jiggling bust, that would be too much for me. But maybe something to fill out this dress, to really pull it tight and make Derek's eyes pop... Then again, I thought as I ran a high-heeled foot up his mechanical leg and saw his eyes actually bulge, I wasn't doing too bad like this. Why waste money and effort on something purely aesthetic? Later, on Derek's spotless (although not for lack of trying) couch, the dress was on the floor, my bare breasts pressing against Derek's dark chest, my legs starting to pull up and around his waist, when, in between long, desperate kisses, Derek asked. "I need" (kiss, peck) "to know." "Know what?" I gasped as he probed my lower lips with his heated fingers. "This last job you did." Now he was fully on pause mode, looking down on me. I brushed a shock of blue out of my eyes and looked back up, perturbed. Only a cop like Derek could mix up his career concerns with sex. "What about it?" "It didn't pay so well because it was... really bad, right? Nothing terrible for the city? No awful bio disease stolen, anything like that?" What the fuck was he getting at? "No, not at all. Harmless data from a processing plant. Probably some dumb corporate politics." "That's all right then," he sighed, getting back into the motions. I anxiously agreed: we had broken up at least twice before because of his higher moral calling, and I did not want it to happen again. He was too good of a lay. Too good of a guy, honestly. But that was the problem, wasn't it? *** Three nights later I was back on the job. The security fence wasn't an issue. Frex knocked a temporary hole in it with no problem, the reds in the feedback loops falsified so even if a hawkeyed security roomer was watching he wouldn't see anything. The cyberdogs were trickier, requiring a particular ballsy maneuver on my part to get up to the roof of the main house with them only catching a whiff of my sweat. The windows used old-fashioned physical key locks, actually a strength in today's world where everything could be hacked from a continent away, but I got through them, eventually. I did think about getting that lockpick finger mod again. No, what went wrong was just bad luck. The cryogenics device looked almost like a lunch pail, a design that hasn't been improved in probably four hundred years: square, with a handle and a clasp, only the slightest hint of tech in a series of circuits and wires around the edge. I had it out of the case, an old Green Arrow lunchbox sitting in its place, when a familiar whistling came from down the hall. With less than a whisper I was hiding behind a display of what was probably a prototype laser weapon. This dude loved old shit that nobody had a use for. In a mirror, through NVG mode, I watched the doorway turn from a square of orange light to a silhouette of a big guard, who strutted into the room with his lips pursed, the melody of one of those dumb moshpounce songs squeezing out of his mouth. He didn't have a wristtop, instead reduced to a simple security badge on a keyring that he swung around his finger as he walked. All I had to do was keep quiet and still and he would be gone before I knew it. The badge slipped from his meaty, sweaty finger and was flung across the room, skidding across the carpet not half of a meter from my crouched ass. There was no chance he wouldn't see me as he lumbered across the floor to retrieve his badge, and I had three seconds to come up with a plan. As the guard passed my position I swung out in front of him, elbow already locked at my shoulder height, perfect for jabbing into his stomach. As the air rushed out of the guard's gaping mouth I grabbed a flailing hand and, my feet braced, pulled him forward and around, where he twisted to the carpet with a soft crash. The ground shook with his overweight mass, but my knee was already in his back, my hands holding his wrist at a painful angle. I risked letting go with my right, pulled my fist tight, and punched as hard as I could into the back of his skull. It was over in about three seconds. I knew that he would be missed, that the bang of his body would be suspicious. My time to escape was counting down by the second. I made it off of the property a full ninety seconds before anyone even went to investigate, according to my radio chatter. "Sometimes, Case," Frex chuckled in my ear as he closed up the fence loophole, "I have a hard time believing that you're real." *** My instincts warned me as soon as I stepped foot off of the elevator into Beamont's lobby that something was off, but it took me a minute before I could realize what it was. The secretary, Janet, was still behind the desk, but she was somehow much more alert than the week before. Her blonde hair was still pulled back into a ponytail, but instead of looking at me, a bored eyebrow cocked, she gave me an odd smile and clicked away on her deskboard. "Miss Beaumont told me she hoped you'd be in today," she said in a cheerful voice. "Oh yeah?" I asked, cocking an eyebrow. I had opted to wear the same outfit as the previous time: I don't like clients to figure too much out about me from the different clothes that I can wear. Plus, I had a reputation to uphold. "She seemed quite excited," Janet trilled. She almost seemed to be glowing, and it was then that I put my finger on what was wrong. It wasn't just that the secretary was no longer surly, it was almost like she was a different person. The hollows in her cheeks had filled out, her outfit was neater, better fitted. It showed off her modest curves better, forcing me to rewrite my mental catalogue of her as a stick-like scarecrow of a desk jockey. "There," she said, hitting one last keystroke and turning her sunny expression back to me. I almost wished that I had sunglasses. "She's waiting!" Nodding, unnerved by the difference in character, I opened the wooden doors and stepped through the threshold. Beaumont was seated, this time, also typing away on her desk board, her eyes focused on the one-way holoscreen in front of her so that it felt like she was almost looking through me. "Hello, Miss Donner. Such a pleasure, as always." "Likewise," I said, in what was probably a much more deadpan tone. I lifted the cryo container. "One delivery ready for you." "Oh, wonderful," she said, her pouty lips forming the word like it was a delicacy for her enjoyment. She made no motion to get up and take it from me, so instead I set it on her desk. Her eyes followed, but her face never turned from mine, until she was once more holding my attention. "Did you experience any trouble?" I shrugged. "None more than I'm used to," I admitted. "You are quite capable, are you not? Your reputation had told me a lot, but still, I am pleasantly surprised. A government-controlled location holds no more of an obstacle for you than a private manse." "I guess you're right." There was something fulfilling about the way she was praising me that I had to try my hardest to downplay. Maybe something in her voice, some hypnotic element of the musical tones and shifts. She smiled, as if she was in on the. "I think we can have a long business relationship," she said. "Several more jobs, small ones, that you would be perfect for helping me with." She raised her eyebrows and leaned forward. "I have a proposition in mind for a retainer." The word "retainer" almost distracted me from what I should have noticed the moment that I walked in the door: she had been augmented again. Her breasts were not just large any more, but were approaching the historical point of huge. Massive and swaying in her taut black top, they were resting on the marble desk as if they were a natural support, six or seven inches of cleavage exposed between her neck and her neckline, with the round, full spheres contained in several square feet of fabric. What a freak, I thought to myself, unconsciously licking my lips. "Retainer?" I repeated instead, salivating at the word instead of staring at her tits. "Yes, retainer," Beaumont echoed, placing her delicate white hands on the desk and pushing herself to her feet. Her hips rose over the marble like a swollen moon, bulging at the seams of her black skirt and forming a shelf at her waist. I stood, numb at the bizarre augs my client was subjecting herself to, as she stepped around to me, each click of her heels followed by a long, luxurious sway of her overly-voluptuous body. All of her swung with the movement: her breasts wobbling and bouncing in their perfect confines, her hips rolling like stormclouds, jiggling at the apex of each step. I swallowed at the sight of her. I had seen fat women before, I had seen women with huge breasts hard with silicon implants, or saggy with cloned ones. Something about Beaumont was just frighteningly real, the most perfect imitations of cartoonlike proportions in a body. And her expression? One of an odd hunger. "We can be partners," she purred, holding out her hand. I reached for it, my mouth tied, and before I knew it I was pulled into her bosom, my lips parting, her tongue finding mine... "What the fuck?" I asked, pulling myself away. Beaumont's eyebrows arched, her shoulders hunching immediately. She looked like a buxom, hurt deer, and my confusion and anger at the personal invasion was cut half away in an instant. "I... I'm sorry. I have a boyfriend." "No," she said, shaking her head, her perfect hair flinging about as her enormous breasts shook. "No, it was... it was my fault. I don't know what came over me." She retreated behind her desk, and I was almost too distracted by the sudden change of tone in the room to take in the bizarre sight of her ass retreating, each cheek rising and falling to the swing of her boobs. "Do we, erm, do we have an arrangement, though?" "Yes," I said, relieved as I wiped at my mouth. "A retainer. How soon do you expect the next job to come up?" A small smile lit her lips, and her eyes went to the lunchbox-looking item on her desk. "Soon." *** Soon did not mean within the next 24 hours, it turned out, and so I spent them gagging on my spit at the sight of my bank balance. "Retainer" to Anica Beaumont did not mean "a pittance," as it turned out, and some quick calculations meant that I would be making more than Derek on an annual salary. I celebrated with a purchase of a new mattress for my coffin, and some private bathroom time (pay by the hour in my building, unfortunately) to re-dye my hair and actually enjoy my shower, for once. Derek was still suspicious when I told him of my new status that night, but that didn't stop him from eating me out with an unusual enthusiasm. I suspected he felt he owed me for taking him out to such a fancy dinner. I didn't mind at all, and before long the tender, fast strokes of his tongue turned to slightly rougher handling; his warm, impossibly-hard limbs stroking me, squeezing me, pressing against me as he entered and filled me up. That was how I wanted to be, always. Cared for and loved with both myself and my bank account full, and Derek always more than willing to go a little bit of the extra mile when I wanted things to get... more exciting. I winced when I pulled my top on the next afternoon after a long, sweaty sleep. "Something wrong?" Derek asked from the bathroom door, the blue lighting silhouetting him, making it impossible to tell that all four of his limbs were fake as he brushed his teeth. "Nothing wrong at all," I said, truthfully. "Tits a little sore from last night, just how I like them." He grinned, a little abashed, teeth-cleaning nanites foaming around his lips. "Sorry, babe." "I said there was nothing wrong with it." It had felt almost extra-good when he had been tweaking and biting at my nipples, and I thought that I was normally pretty sensitive. Each nibble had sent my stomach jumping in excitement, and just thinking about it was getting me turned on. Still, now that I had a bra and top on, there was almost constant pressure against my poor little nips, which felt like they had been sunburned from all of the excitement. Probably just some chafing; I reminded myself to pick up some of that hardening skin-cure gel while I was out. In the meantime, my motorcycle jacket pulled everything a bit tighter against my almost flat chest. "See you in a few days," Derek called as I left. He had some sort of cop conference in Night City, across the bay, meaning I would just have to make do with my own pleasures in the meantime. I was perfectly fine with that: if Beaumont contacted me before he got back, that would mean plenty of time for bed-tossing with my job out of the way. She didn't leave me the drop that day, though, meaning I had the entire evening and night to myself. Some quick repairs on my bike, browsing new mods for my SecSuit, and a bit of reading up on new security systems took the time and my remaining retainer out of commission. After a guilt-inducing meal at a slightly nicer synth diner than usual, I spent the last few creds on a couple of hours at one of the Grimestown gyms. This one that wasn't fancy enough for fitness bots or AI instructors, but was just as well: I got tired much earlier than usual as I went through my normal exercises, which was easy enough to chalk up to my slightly more sedentary lifestyle since taking Beaumont on as a client. My stomach was already growling again, anyway, making a perfect excuse. When I woke up the next day I rolled over to my laptop to find that I had a message from her: some more thieving from the water treatment plant, this time their official containers. I am not a stupid girl. In fact, that's kind of one of my main selling points: I'm smart and clever enough to be able to both plan out well ahead and to think on my feet, leaving almost no trace and getting the job done. It's why I was able to put one and one and one together, come up with three, and find something that Derek was sure to not be happy with: Beaumont was thinking about putting something into the water supply. First she needed some kind of data, then the old cryo tech could keep whatever she needed in stasis for long enough to sneak it back into the treatment plant. The main question was... did I care? The number of zeroes on the infoDrop begged me not to. Like I said, I'm clever and quick, and I try to come to decisions just as fast. My moral compass told me that I needed to be concerned, but I also knew that, whatever Beaumont was planning, she'd still need someone, presumably me, to do the delivering of whatever it was. The more people involved, the riskier it was. And besides, I could just try to find out when I delivered her last request. Who knows? It may be entirely benign. And if it wasn't, Derek would want me to try to stop it. If I told Beaumont "no" right now, she'd find some other cyberthief, and whatever crazy corporate war she was waging would just go on. The money promised didn't hurt. I sent back the usual affirmative message and got to work setting up. First I dropped some info to Frex, letting him know that we'd be using the same system of infiltration of last time, so that he hopefully wouldn't need me to wait for hours inside a tiny pipe. Then I pulled up my blueprint of the facility, updated with data my eyes had captured from my last visit, to find the storage room most likely to have the containers Beaumont needed. Assuming Frex was available the next night, I would have the entire trip done by the time Derek came back. All perfect. Crab-walking around in the position my coffin required, I found my jeans and a bra, wincing again at the odd tenderness of my boobs. The hardening gel had eased some of the pain, but it looked like the actual healing was temporary, as my nipples were still enflamed and painful to the touch. I was so distracted by their state that I didn't notice anything else amiss until I sat up to pull my bra on and an unfamiliar weight bounced with me, weird pressure on my ribs making my mind spin. Looking down, I saw two curves on my chest outlined in the green of my night vision and realized that my hard, red nipples were sitting on top of two firm breasts. "What." Dropping the pants, I brought a hand up to cup my right tit, feeling the soft curve of flesh, pushing against it to take the softness in. Before I had been almost flat, hardly necessitating a bra. Now their existence was definitely not in question, gently curving out from my neck as I ran a hand down my collarbones, then rounding in above my ribs, two little handfulls. Had this happened overnight? I tried to think back before remembering that I could just watch the recorded video from my eyes. Tapping on my wristtop I pulled footage from the gym onto my laptop screen, where I was working out next to a mirror. When I had first paid to get my cybereyes installed it had been strange to watch old memories. It was one of the few features the older generations had, apart from looking much more lifelike; my peripheral vision was only slightly better than a normal perso. When I watched a memory, though, I could look at almost any angle out of my head, albeit with some warping of the picture. It was weird and unnerving. What was more unnerving was realizing that my breasts had been there the night before. It was hard to tell, in my simple tanktop, but there was definite curvage pushing against the plain black. At one point my past self rebuckled my tennis shoe and my current self almost slapped her forehead in frustration: they were right there, the entire time! Small hills affecting the outline of my vision. But I knew, as an owner of cybereyes who found herself looking at old recordings for security holes and easy marks, that the brain is too quick to cover up unexpected things. Maybe this had been going on for a while. Is that why my nipples were chafed so much? From a bra that was too tight? And it was too tight. When I pulled the garment on it was almost comical how much flesh was pressing over the tops of the tiny cups. I knew where I was spending some of my prep money for the next Beaumont job: a proper membership at the gym. I sighed. How had this even happened? I blamed it on the same reason I had been tired so early at my workout the night before, namely lack of exercise and a little extra weight, but that didn't sit well in the back of my mind. Something felt off from it. After all, I had put on small amounts of weight before, just like any other person, and it had never, frustratingly, resulted in a larger cup size. Mostly, I laughed to myself as I squirmed to pull my denim jeans on, it had only resulted in a tighter... waistline... If anyone had been there I would have blushed at the sudden difficulty I had in getting the pants over my ass. Okay, maybe it was just weight. Maybe it was just more than I had thought. I ended up wearing cargo pants. An insignificant percent of the pre-payment Beaumont had made would go to buying some new clothes. The kiosks in Grimestown filled my needs, since some pants, a new bra and maybe a spare were all I really needed, and the tech for auto-fittings was old enough that even the shops on Neon Lane, most of them barely larger than my residential coffin, had plenty of choices in stock. An active-wear one was all I was planning to get, with breathable, size-adjusting smart nanomesh—why not go a bit all-out? Supposedly it could fit any woman with a couple of tab presses. With a glance at my bank account, I figured I could splurge on something else, and, tapping on the interface, brought out an old-fashioned lace push-up, cup sized to D. It snugly fit against my skin, perfectly sized with laser-reading precision, and I knew that, extra weight or not, Derek would love how I looked: like some ancient pinup from the 2000s. I grinned wolfishly at my reflection and bought the matching bra and panty set, noticing that my rounded out ass almost seemed to compliment my figure, as opposed to the last time I had put on weight where I just felt it drawing every eye. It would all have to go, and a few weeks on the treadlane should skim those extra centimeters off. But, while I had it, I would flaunt it. The money on the resizing mesh was well spent, and I was much more comfortable strutting out of Neon Street than I had been going in, bra-less, in pants that felt too tight. The pants still felt that way, but confidently so. I was pulling this off. I just had to make sure that the money from Beaumont didn't go to too many more of those fancy dinners. As I rode back through the city, deciding what to do with my time while I waited for Frex to get back to me, I wondered what was so wrong with me that I hadn't noticed the obvious: even the gentle purr of my motorcycle was enough to send my newly-enlarged assets tugging at the straps of my new bra. I must have been pretty distracted not to notice. I ended up spending most of the hours of the night researching into Beaumont, curiosity (and a slight feeling of guilt for accepting her job) eating away. I found nothing that I didn't already expect or know: she had been promoted to head of research three months before, had worked for the corp for four years prior, went to a fancy overseas university, came from a long line of rich and stupid idiots. There was a picture of her on the company water polo team, posed for a group shot in their swimsuits. Those arresting eyes were unmistakable, but I probably would not have known it was her if not for the caption: she was rail-thin, twig legs and arms wrapped in the slightest amount of muscle, no curves hiding under her skintight one-piece. The picture was from only two years ago, meaning her surgery addiction must have been a gift to herself for the promotion. I rolled my eyes and checked my infoDrop, glad to see that Frex was in, before realizing that I had been considering the benefits of being a bit curvier myself. Maybe I shouldn't be so hard on her: it was so easy to change yourself in the world we lived in, and money could do things to people. The remaining hours in the night were spent looking at lists of all of the things that I could buy with my retainer, and I finally went to sleep when the sun began to rise, only waking up once from a nightmare of a needle plunging into my eye socket. Even on my new, amazing mattress, I couldn't escape those old memories. *** Sixteen hours later I was underwater again in the freezing, polluted current of the river. The vent that would lead me up to the water treatment plant had come off easily, easier than the last time. Probably still was loose. Tucking my battery-operated screwdriver back into my SecSuit's pocket, I grabbed the lip of the tube and took a few breaths, psyching myself for the long slog up the pipe. The SecSuit had been a bit tight to put on that night, something I should have expected. There were too many gizmos and features woven into the fabric for it to even think of being made of the same auto-adjusting mesh as my new bra, which mean I had been forced to take a deep breath and zip myself in, ignoring the discomfort over my bound breasts and around my hips. I had completely forgotten about going to the gym the previous day, something I lamented now. I could have at least worked off some water weight. "Something holding you up, Case?" Frex asked, and I gritted my teeth behind the breathing mask. "Just make sure you have that final cap open when I get there," I subvocalized, and pulled myself towards the opening. Arms in front of me, I looked down the pipe. It was perfectly round, and only a little under a foot-and-a-half in diameter. Easy to fit into. I had done this sort of thing before, tons of times. But this time, as I wormed my way in, slight suction helping me along, I realized that something was different. My breasts were pressing into the pipe under me, the cold of the platluminum obvious even through the thermal layer of the SecSuit. Had I really grown that much? Every inch that I pulled along only reminded me of the extra fat that I was carrying in front. How had they grown this big? I squirmed forward, trying to get a knee hooked into the pipe: once I had leverage I could get off of my chest... The sides of the pipe pushed into my hips, hot friction burning into my ass as I tried to wedge myself into the pipe. "Oh, no," I gasped. "What is it?" Frex crackled in my ear. I paddled with my feet, seeing if I could just push myself through the opening. Maybe once I got my butt into the pipe it would be fine, like squeezing into a pair of pants. "N-nothing," I said. "Just a second." One inch, now two, were inside the pipe, and it wasn't getting easier to move. If my butt was really so big that it was causing me problems, the center of volume had to stay dead in the middle of the pipe; I couldn't get my knees under me. "Shit," I cursed. Frex only sounded annoyed. "Talk to me, Case. What's the problem?" "It's my, uh." I realized I was stalling, far and away from my usual direct self. "It's my butt, okay." There was a pause. "Your butt." "Yes! It's too big, somehow. I can't fit in the pipe." Another pause. "This is why I try to never work with girls." "Rex!" "Sorry, only kidding. But your not, right? This isn't some dumb joke?" "It isn't a joke, Rex." It hurt to admit, but I was at a loss for ideas. "I don't think I can get in this way." "What the shit, Case? Did you pack on twenty pounds since I saw you last?" Hooking my toes behind me, I started to lever myself out of the pipe. If I hadn't been underwater, I think my butt would have made the sound of a cork popping when it slipped free. "I guess I did, Frex. I'm sorry my weight problems are causing you duress." "They cause me duress when they keep us from being paid." I could hear the snapping of his antique mechanical keyboard, then the murmur of a baritone in the background. There was a click in my ear as Frex turned his mic off. I was free, and my tits thanked the lack of pressure on them as I pulled out of the pipe. "A backup plan would be nice, Frex." His mic clicked back on. "I got you one right here. Definitely less stealthy, will have to deal with a security grid. Nothing we haven't done before, just, you know, not as neat." I sighed. "Damnit. Sorry, Frex. We'll get the job done." "Sure we will," he said, typing away. "Just, you know, lay off of the rich food you can afford now." If he hadn't been the best netrunner I know, I'd have left myself a note to punch him. I didn't like it when a plan went this far off of the initial route, but we were never without other options, and Frex talked me through all of it: getting around to the treatment plant's power station, slipping past one guard and around some body heat detectors. "That's the junction box," he said when I looked through what appeared to be an old chain-link fence. We both knew better, though, as my thermal vision mode could see the electricity coursing through them. I pointed my wristtop at the box, some twenty yards away on the side of a power pylon, and my power-cutting redliner got to work. There was some background murmuring as he did so, that same deep voice that I had heard before. "Rex," I whispered, "do you have company over?" "That is affirmative, Case," he said. "You have some boy over while we're working? Jesus Christ, dude." He snorted. "Look, you explain why you can't fit in the pipe that you slipped down just a couple of weeks ago, I'll explain why I thought it wouldn't be an issue." There was a distant beep, and the heat traces faded from the fence. With a sigh I got to work clipping the fence open. I normally only needed to cut four or five links in a fence like that, but after slipping my cutters back into my suit's pocket I realized that I'd have the exact same issue as before with the pipe. Mentally screaming, I resigned to doubling the amount of space to squeeze through. The air vents, at least, were wide enough to permit me. "So," I whispered conversationally as I crept along on my knees, ignoring the added weight on my chest that was much more obvious now that I was crawling, "how did you two meet?" Frex's date laughed in the background and said a few more things that I couldn't hear, but my runner sure found amusing. "The normal channels," he finally said. "A tech meetup, if you want. He's in nanobiology." "Too bad he knows what a slob you are, now," I grimaced. "No extra jobs in that field." The baritone finally piped up on the mic. "You'd be surprised," he said. "Besides, this is pretty impressive, your improvisation. IT in the major corps needs that." "Down here," Frex said, taking over, and I complied, silently unscrewing the vent cover. "You hear that, Rex? You can be in IT! Glorified security." "Well, I do have experience." I dropped out of the vent, silent as usual, but was surprised to realize that I was panting when I crept around a corner, heading to a storage area for one of these containers Beaumont wanted. Was I really out of breath from this little activity? Frex had joked about me gaining twenty pounds, but how much weight had I put on? The night before my new panties had been a size 4, a number way bigger than I was used to, but still reasonable. Not enough to make getting into a pipe impossible. Every step I could feel myself move, now. My ass wobbling, my thighs lifting and pulling more. Each breath was a constricting corset around my swollen tits. What the fuck was wrong with me? There were more guards on the interior than the last time, but none of them seemed to care about a storage room of a ton of hyped-up coolers. "Each one has a specific date on it," Frex reminded me. "Yeah, yeah," I said, "and the client wants one marked for, what, two weeks out?" "Right." Skimming over the dates on the shelves of small lunch-box-sized containers, I had a brief moment of deja vu before remembering that the last thing I had stolen for Beaumont was almost the exact same size and shape. The puzzle pieces were easy to put together: something was going to be cryogenically frozen, put into the box, and probably delivered back here. Well, that was worrisome. So was the prospect of not getting my money. I found an appropriate container, was out in the hall, and was about to lift myself back into the vent, SecSuit claws at the ready, when a guard stepped around the corner. Before he could react I was sprinting at him, my prize tossed up into the vent. His mouth was open, his hand going to an ear, when I had sprung off of the floor, one foot coming up to push off of the wall, a fist drawing back. The plan was to catapult myself off of the corner at an angle, the height advantage and my additional velocity sure to deliver enough force. But I had once again forgotten about my rearranged body weight, the odd momentums that now followed me everywhere. Something was wrong as I tried to bring my feet up in time to kick off of the wall, some minor miscalculation due to the added mass to my backside, the two straining weights on my chest. My foot slipped, and I was grateful that I didn't cry out as I skidded diagonally down the wall, slamming into the floor while the wind pushed out of me. "What—" the dude said, my mind spinning just as fast. I planted my gloved hands on the linoleum, trusting that friction could hold me as I threw my arms and chest muscles into a leg sweep, praying that I could get my legs up to speed. Maybe it was the extra weight in my lower half, but my shins connected with his weak ankles and the guard, still trying to find the right place to stand, hit the floor with a wump. I paused for just a moment to catch my breath, but my adversary was already trying to find his feet. I gritted my teeth and pushed myself up, as well, just in time to see his hand go to his holster. "Shit," I groaned, then threw myself up at him, trusting in my muscle memory to swing around his chest, my leg coming up of its own accord to lock around his throat while I slipped around him, ending the maneuver around his shoulders. My arms around his head, bicep pressing into his mouth, I pushed forward with all of the momentum I had, driving him into the ground. One rabbit punch to the back of the head and he was down. Panting, I shook my head to clear it. That was far harder than it should have been. One guard with no weapon at the ready, the element of surprise totally for me? Something was wrong. A theory only cemented by the difficulty I had in pulling my fat ass back up into the vent. Eventually I got one mesh sole onto the lip and heaved myself in, my hated butt waggling behind me. "That could have gone better," I said later, back in Frex's apartment. He had insisted we meet up for some reason, saying he wanted to check the box out. Instead he had tossed it aside and was sizing me up. If he hadn't been gay, I would have found the unwanted looks to be a little bit disconcerting, but instead I got a genuine feeling of concern. "Slightly," Frex confirmed, typing away. "Honestly, good improvisation on our parts. But..." "But." His eyebrows waggled. "Your butt. Case, something's going on. You were here, what, a week ago?" "I think," I said, trying to pull at the seat of my SecSuit, keep it from riding up. It was skin-tight, to the point that I was worried about it bursting a seam. "Something like that." I was blushing, I realized, something I wasn't sure I had done in over a decade. "What about it?" Frex's date asked, reclined on the couch. He was a big dude, muscular, and reminded me a lot of a guy I had slept with for a while back when I was first on my own. Reminded me a lot of Derek, for that matter. I guess I have a type. Frex pointed at a screen. "Here's security footage, Bo." We were treated to three different angles of me lounging in the same location Mr. Baritone was seated, rolling my head in boredom while Frex hacked up info on the cryo job. Sheesh, comparing it to the live footage of me right next to it, I looked tiny. My legs had been sticks compared to the curvy ones I now had, my tits nonexistent; I was impressed that the SecSuit had enough give to allow the globes hanging from me. Hell, even my face was now fuller, less narrow. "Shit, you're blowing up," Bo said. I liked him a little less. Frex spun around. "This can't be normal." I nodded—duh. "Luckily, we have someone who's an expert in biology right here." We both turned to Bo on the couch, who raised his hands in confusion. "Woah, I'm a nanobiologist, not a doctor. What the hell do you expect me to do? Use your Insuracare account or whatever." I licked my lips. "About that..." I normally didn't bother explaining the intricacies of why my lifestyle and career choice prevented me from registering almost anything with the Chop City government, and luckily Frex saved me. "Look, if there's something in her body fucking with her, Bo, you can just peek at her saliva or blood or something, right?" An eyebrow crept up Bo's big bald head. "What, you think she has a nanodisease or something?" Frex shrugged. "Let's hope she does." The cotton of the old-school DNA sampler tasted dry, but I much preferred it to the needle in my arm to draw blood. Needles reminded me of my cybereye operation. "Alright, well, I'll have to use the equipment at my lab to check it out tomorrow," Bo said. "Unless—you don't happen to have a nanodeck or micronscope in this pile of stuff, do you honey?" Frex shook his head, at which Bo shrugged. "Then I'll get back to you tomorrow." He grabbed his coat, an expensive one from some place on the Mesa I'd never been, and pecked Frex on the lips. I yawned and stretched, then thought better of it when I heard the weave in my SecSuit's top complain. "I'm going to get home, too. Get some sleep." My stomach growled. "And something to eat, I guess. Although," I added, "maybe I shouldn't." "Ah," Frex said, a tone in his voice that I recognized. "Derek back tomorrow?" "Oh, yeah." "Try to do something other than have sex. Unless, you know, he freaks out about your condition." I snorted. "Something tells me he will love it." *** Yeah, I had stalked Derek a bit during our "off" seasons, checking out what girls he liked, who he went for when there wasn't me around to boss him. And yeah, when I first saw "Miss February" back in the bar, I instantly had kind of disliked her due to how she looked. But if my type was men like Derek, his type was women completely unlike me: tall, curvy, and busty. Well, now I had two out of three, even if they weren't the ridiculous curves of my employer. Well, they were pretty close, if you compared to when we first met. Derek on my mind, I slipped into my coffin, carefully removing my stressed SecSuit. My income definitely had enough of a padding to buy another one, a few sizes up, but it would take almost all of the retainer that Beaumont had left me on, at least until the next re-up. I would just have to make do without it for a while. There, laying in a tank top that was far too tight and panties that were digging into my hips, I stared at the black ceiling of my "apartment". Something was bugging me, but I couldn't put my finger on it. My mind just kept straying back to Derek: would he freak out at the new me? Think I had gotten some biomods like Beaumont? Would he believe me when I said that I wasn't sure how I was putting on so much weight, and in the sorts of places that he loved? Maybe I wouldn't need to say anything. I could get a new dress, one that played to my advantage. Meet him at his apartment and quickly leave it on the floor. His warm fingers caressing the curve of my rounded tit, flicking at a nipple, while I wrapped a leg around his. My new, bouncy ass would be a perfect handle for his hands to hold me up, and I'd feel the pulsing bulge of his hard cock through his pants. His travel bag would hit the floor, then we would, going at it like fucking high schoolers, his eyes unable to tear away from my new, sensual body, my padded ass riding back and forth on his cold marble which felt mysteriously like my new mattress. I snapped out of the daydream—holy FUCK was I horny. Where the shit did this come from? I was never one for masturbation, but right then I didn't care: my right hand was already squeezing myself down below, trailing a finger up my crotch through my damp panties. Without thinking I brought my other hand up to press against my tit and almost gasped at the feeling, the hot ache of my nipples against the soft cotton. My breath coming in with cold gasps, the elastic of my panties snapped when I plunged into them, rubbing and teasing at my labia with my fingers, letting my thumb rest on my clit and gently pulse, imagining Derek's tongue below, his fingers rubbing inside of me, never filling me up too much. The taut skin of my breasts were pocked with goosebumps, the flesh nearly on fire as I squeezed and mashed them, pinching and rubbing my engorged nipples while the sensations sent thrills down my spine, made my mouth water in anticipation of the orgasm that I could feel growing. As I felt the peak approach, my thighs constricted on their own, pressing my hand into place between them, the soft flesh jittering with my knees. Toes curly, gasps and moans springing from my mouth, I came harder than I had ever come before, convulsions wracking my body, fingers digging into my new, glorious tits. "Well," I gasped, when it rolled off of me, "whatever is wrong with me, maybe it has some perks." My hair sticking to my sweaty forehead, my tits weighing heavily on my chest, I was out like a light. *** The numbers on the kiosk's wall couldn't be lying. After all, when I had woken up that morning, even my loose cargo pants hadn't fit in any sort of comfortable way, when they had been mostly fine just two days ago. Still, the reality of it was staggering. "Any update from Bo?" I dropped in Frex's dropbox from my wristtop, then sighed at the numbers on the kiosk's readout again. Bra: 84cm F Hip: 110.5cm Weight: 63.9kg In just a few days I had put on nearly forty pounds, jumped twelve pant sizes, and, most impressively of all, had advanced from an A-cup to an F. There was no denial stage anymore: I could see the results in the mirrors and viewscreens of the kiosk: big, soft breasts hanging from my chest, pink nipples proudly perked for whatever security perve was watching me; round, soft ass screaming to escape from the thong that kept slipping between the jiggling cheeks. The couple of times I had porked up in my adult life, normally when between jobs or after a breakup with Derek, the fat had been distributed horribly: I would get a little pot belly, cankles, flabby arms. That sort of thing. Now my arms, while definitely slightly chubbier than a week ago, were nowhere near that, my waist softened a bit but still narrow. I was a fucking godly hourglass. An idea formed in my head, and I typed a description of the dress into the kiosk's terminal, then flipped through the options. Finally, I saw what I wanted, and tapped it gleefully. In moments the dress printed, and I slipped it on over my head, adjusting the cups. A perfect, snug fit. Derek would love it. The thought occurred that I would probably keep putting on weight: after all, it hadn't suddenly stopped last night, so why would I expect it to stop tonight? At the best it would take at least a day or two before I evened out, or Bo figured out what was wrong with me. Looking at the numbers as I queued up some more practical items (underwear, leggings, tops with the bust let out), I realized I wouldn't be able to afford a new SecSuit at this rate. I would just have to lose the weight until I could fit into the old one. Or, I thought, lifting an eyebrow, use some of Beaumont's money to get surgery and remove it. Would probably be cheaper than a new suit sized for my thicker body. With that in mind, I splurged a painful amount on a form-fitting top and pant set made out of the same self-adjusting mesh of my sports bra. It was the only bra that I could fit into that morning, but, after an adjustment moment, it felt like it was fitted perfectly to the new F-cup me. I figured the money was well worth it. Worst came to worse, I could wear the entire smartmesh ensemble until I shrank back down. Humming to myself, I drove back to my coffin, dropped the clothes off, and changed into my new dress, then drove to the railport to meet my boyfriend. More than a few cops that passed me by in the waiting area made eyes at me, some of them with their wives on their arms, but none reacted as strongly as Derek. "Holy fuck," he said when he saw me. He must have recognized me from the blue hair, because the body attached was one out of his wildest dreams. Flowy and black, with a wrap-style top, the dress clung to my new curves and left my neckline extremely exposed. I had borrowed it from Beaumont's wardrobe, only I was a bit less ridiculous in it than she had been last time we met. Derek's lips met mine, his hands dropping his bag to cradle my back, both hands resting just above the curve of my posh ass. Oh yes: kissing. Something I had forgotten to imagine the night before. "What did you do to yourself?" he asked, and there was excitement mixed with the concern. "Nothing," I said, truthfully, then grinned. "But you like it?" "Well, yeah," he said, frowning. "But for real. What did you do? Is it surgery? Biomods" I shook my head, whipping him in the face with my sprayed-up hair. "My coworker thinks I have a disease. But, maybe," I said, winking, "you wished for it?" He laughed. "I never. But if it happened..." He drew me in for another deep kiss. I had been right the night before. There definitely were some perks. In my dress I had been forced to take a robotaxi to the railport, and with its assistance we were able to get as close to fucking in the backseat as possible without actually setting off the hydraulic warnings. Derek couldn't take his mechanical hands off of my new body, whether they were cupping my ass, digging into it with his fingers and feeling the heft, or twiddling my hard nipples through the top with his thumb, drawing out a long, low gasp from me with the electric tingles. Underneath me, pressing into my pussy through the thick material of his security-woven jeans, his hard cock was more alive than I had imagined possible, throbbing with an intensity only matched by Derek's kisses. And he kissed everywhere. My neck, my shoulder, the exposed surfaces of my swollen tits... On his bed, our clothes aside, I sat on his naked stomach, my knees split, his jutting penis pushing into my pussy lips, splitting the curve of my butt. Between us, my fat breasts wobbled and jiggled, together more than enough for even Derek's hands, squishing between our chests when I'd come down for a kiss, sending a thrill through the pit of my stomach, then slapping against my ribs as I rode him. That was the other thing that had been missing from my fantasy: his hard, perfect cock, filling me up, making me cry out until I was out of breath and clawing at my tits for more stimulation, more contact, more everything. And when I was too tired to ride him, we flipped around, my soft breasts slightly pancaking on my chest while Derek's hands squeezed and played with them, making me come again, even harder than the first time, even harder than the night before. In the hottest moment of the night, Derek gave a loud cry, then came inside me, the stimulation of his hot seed, his strong hands, his hard legs, and my own overstimulated and oversexed body making me shriek as I peaked a third and final time. It was only 11pm, the earliest I had gone to sleep in a long time. I slept like a baby. And when I woke up, with the birds singing their annoying refrain, Derek was gone, and my dress no longer fit. It wasn't just around the bust, which had been a little tight when I picked him up and now had no chance of fitting, what with the tops of my breasts smooshing out of the neckline like baking muffins. No, it was also the hips: trying to pull what had fit like a glove yesterday down around my ass only resulted in me huffing and puffing. How much had I gained? Derek had a scale in his bathroom, which I borrowed after concluding that he was, definitely, gone, with no note, or message in my drop, or anything. Had I said something the night before? Had he said anything? I thought he had the day off. Replaying our very brief snippets of conversation from the taxi ride home, I stepped on the scale and boggled at the numbers. 69kg, meaning twelve pounds in a little over a day. Had it all gone to my boobs and butt? It was possible to believe. My bust was enormous, a single tit far bigger than one of my hands could hold. Maybe Derek could palm it, like a small, tear-shaped basketball. The weight of them with every step was breathtaking, and I mean that literally: bouncing on my ribs, they'd push the wind out if I didn't start to grow accustomed to them. Turning in front of the mirror in Derek's bathroom, I looked at the damage done to my behind. Yep, that looked like the ass of a girl who had packed on fifty pounds in less than a week. Ballooning out from my waist, each cheek was nearly spherical, both thighs thick and meeting from my groin to my knees. I felt enormous, though I was around average weight for a woman just a couple of inches taller than me. Shit, you could even see the sides of my moonlike breasts from behind, if I lifted my arms. Shivering in both delight and the fear I had of my delight, I wondered, again, where the fuck my boyfriend had gone. It couldn't have been anything that I said, I concluded. I told him a little about developments with Beaumont, leaving out some of the more illegal bits. I said that "an associate and his boyfriend" were looking into what was wrong with me. I had screamed out that the sex was the best we had ever experienced. He must have had some sort of emergency at work. He was a cop, after all. They do that. I pulled my amazing bra from my purse and shrugged into it, marveling again at how the fabric stretched perfectly over my expanded bust. How big were they? An F-cup the day before, maybe a G now. I was a bit lost when it came to sizes over that, so all I could say was that they were huge. Maybe as big as my head. Soon, I'd look like Anica Beaumont, if I wasn't careful. In fact... I'd look extremely similar to Anica Beaumont. Wide hips, plush rear, enormous, jiggling tits. It couldn't be a coincidence. The only impossible part was how blind I had been to notice. None of Derek's normal pants would fit me, but he did have a pair of old-fashioned sweatpants that I could borrow to get home. Trusting that nobody would care about the girl riding in a robotaxi in a sports bra, I stuffed the useless dress into my purse and called Frex. "I have an idea about what's happening with me," I told him. "Oh, swell," he said. "Bo has a better idea." I stopped, halfway out the door, before realizing it was broad daylight and I was half-naked—in a way different than I normally wanted to be. "Well why didn't you tell me that?!" I nearly shrieked. "He needed to do more testing. He's still not sure. Here, I'm pulling up his report. It's pretty detailed." "Great, I'm glad that your new boyfriend is a genius," I said, rolling my eyes. "Not a boyfriend, just a guy that I'm fucking. Alright, let's see. You hear about this old parasite back from the 20th century, Toxoplasma gondii?" "What, like the peaceful protest dude?" "No, apparently like... this rodent. Anyway, this is apparently really related to it. He uses a bunch of words here, 'protozoa' and shit, you know. I could never pay attention in biology." I sighed. "Is it possible to get this from Bo?" "No can do. Said he's got real work to do. Anyway, the gondii stuff can make rats act in ways that make them easier prey to cats, and cats are the only animals that let them reproduce. So whatever you have is scary stuff." "So it's the stuff making me... hourglassy?" "That's the theory. It's the only thing in both your blood and your saliva. Looks like it doesn't last for long when it's separated from those, either." I watched the city as the robotaxi zoomed back to my apartment, out of Downtown and into Grimestown. It was almost weird seeing it in the morning, a time when I was normally just getting to bed. The neon was harder to see, and there were people out there, going to their jobs, avoiding each other. "So it's passed via saliva," I said out loud. "Beaumont kissed me the last time we met, five days ago." "Hot." "Shut up, Rex." "Oh, that reminds me. Bo let me name the thing, so I went with Toxoplasma rex. Or T. rex, if you want." I could hear the smile in his voice, and it annoyed me. "Very cute." I hung up. That bitch had given me a parasite. Good thing we had an appointment. The new clothes I had purchased the day before fit fine, luckily: a black leather skirt, dark red tank, a very flexible and light jacket on top. I hoped the jacket would last if I got bigger, but figured as long as I never tried to button it I would be fine. My nanoweave nylons stretched up and over the hams that were now my thighs, and my bra was still a perfect fit. Checking my hair in the mirror, I was surprised to see how rounded my face was getting. I wasn't really fat, just kind of softened, with no hint of a double-chin. No, all of the fat was going to a few other places. Two of those places showed themselves in the most unexpected of ways. Typing on my laptop a few encrypted things to Frex, I had to reach far further to keep them from mashing down on the space key. Wriggling around in my coffin to change, they kept trying to flop onto the ground or my arms. Climbing onto my motorcycle they had to rest on the handlebars, miraculous brassiere or no. The shaking of the engine was amazing, though. Even if it felt like it was making the globes of fat in my butt shake off, they shook in a bizarrely pleasant way, one I was embarrassed to admit to myself I didn't want to stop. "You want backup as you go in?" Frex asked, popping my daydream like a bubble. "No thanks. Should be pretty cut-and-dry, I'd imagine." "You can never tell with these corporate types." It was true. She may have an army behind some door, a bunch of hired thugs with cyberlinks to their guns and razors in their fists. But I was hoping to have an honest conversation: me, politely cancelling my retainer. Her, politely paying me for this final delivery. But when I stepped off of the elevator, I saw that she did have an army. It was a very small one. Six guys, all told, in matching uniforms, in matching places around her floor's lobby. They all stood casually, their muscles groaning from within their tight jackets, the Oblique Arms assault rifles in their hands loosely held at their sides. I had seen the OR-15 in action, once: just a burst had torn through a door. I shivered, then waited for my body to catch up. Guns don't agree with me. A voice cried out when I stepped into the lobby. "Oh, hi, Casey!" It was Janet, the secretary. I had almost not recognized her the last time, and now I was prepared: not only was her bubbly personality a day-and-night change from when we had first met, so was her body. Her tits rested on the desk in front of her, almost spilling out between the buttons of her blouse, erect nipples greeting me cheerily. As I approached the door, I caught a glance at her seat and confirmed that her ass was wide enough to stick out under the arms, pulling her pencil skirt as tight as a drum. "Go on in! She's expecting you," she grinned. I was so disconcerted that I almost didn't realize that the guard to the right of the door had four cyber limbs and sported the easy smile of my boyfriend. "Derek?" I asked, stopping. "What are... what are you doing here?" "Oh!" he said, as surprised to see me as I was to see him. "Hi, Case!" His brows furrowed like he was deep in thought. "This is my new job." My brain halted. "New job? When did you quit?" "What do you mean? I quit this morning, of course." He gave a little chuckle. "I'm working for Miss Beaumont, now, same as you." There was something funny in his eyes, and a growing fear in my chest. I remembered what Frex had said about rats and T. gondii. "Uh-huh," I muttered. "Well. I'm here to see her." I lifted the delivery canister, the water treatment plant's logo showing clear as day. He smiled in an annoyingly perky way. "Great! I'll talk to you later." With a suspicious glance at the other door guard, who was politely paying attention to a fish tank on the other side of the room, I pushed open the door to Beaumont's office, accidentally scraping my widened hips on it as I stepped through. There was a figure in red standing in front of the desk. "Miss Donner!" Beaumont's voice greeted me before I had a chance to process what I was seeing, but soon my eyes adjusted to reality. Beaumont had grown a lot in the last five days. If I had managed to increase my weight by 50%, so had she; the issue was that she started with so much more, then packed it into almost a caricature of the dress she had worn when we first met. What had once been slinky and sexy was now almost encasing this distorted hourglass of a woman, drawn tight around her barrels of breasts, her inhumanly wide hips. Her long brown hair fell around that oval of a face and lightly lay on top of the exposed cleavage of her tits. Cleavage that went on an absurdly long way, before breast tissue bubbled up at the neckline of the top, two feet from her chin. Those boobs alone, held perfectly spherical in, I was sure, material nearly identical to my own sports bra, had to have been fifty or sixty pounds. They were huge, more than you could hold in your arms, and certainly wider than her shoulders. How many... gallons? Do you measure breasts that size in gallons? How many feet were they? Twenty-four inches wide, each, if they weren't squeezing against each other in a constraining garment? She took several steps towards me, surprisingly light on her feet despite her upper mass, and I saw what appeared to be a bustle following her, like a Victorian-era dress. Only I knew it wasn't a bustle: no wire and cloth moved with that weight, wobbled and jiggled with each step quite like that. The tight material of her red dress exposed the dimples at her hips and the slight curve of her belly, just below the bottom arcs of her bust. Beaumont had grown enormous. No wonder she had double-doors: she'd need them, now. "You have the container," she purred. "And my, look at you. Growing into a woman." I dropped the container on the ground. "You have a problem, Anica," I said. "I think I have it all worked out, too." "Oh yes? Isn't it wonderful?" The smile on her lips was one of pure serenity as she approached, her bosom heaving with each step, the momentum only catching up one or two clicks of her heels later. "Wonderful?" I scoffed. "Look at you! You look like a balloon animal!" She stopped and regarded me with a curious expression, like a cat seeing a new toy. "Hmm. Is that what you think?" "It's affected you, hasn't it? The Toxoplasma rex? It's making you think this is all good!" "'Toxoplasma rex'?" she echoed. "I like that. I hadn't settled on what to call it." My heartrate was picking up. My instincts told me to let my stance widen, to leave my arms loose. Was a fight coming? A race? "So you know what it is?" She winked. "Oh, not really. Probably less than you, actually." "Then what are you doing? Why are you going to release it into the water treatment supply?" Another step towards me. Another. She was only two meters away, now, and with her enormous chest it felt like one. "Because it feels so good, Case. Doesn't it?" "No! It's... it's weird!" I blushed with the half-lie. It was getting ridiculous, after all, but I had to admit... But no! I shook my head to clear it. "You have my fucking boyfriend! How did he even know to come here?" She shrugged, and it was a hypnotic movement: her tits bounced opposite directions, the minute motions almost swallowed in their mass. "I hardly know how any of them are here. They just know that they're doing the right thing. Like I do. Like you... should..." She considered me again. As if she was making up her mind, she took another step, then bent her knees and, without looking, picked up the container. "I assume you wish to quit, then." "I—what?" "You don't want to further our cause, even though clearly you're one of us. That's fine. You can keep the retainer salary thus far, plus the bonus for this job. There are other cyberthieves in this city who can do your job." It was what I had come for, after all. "B-but what about Derek?" She had turned to walk away, the enormous globes of her ass undulating with each step, a shelf against her back. One eye looked over her shoulder, that gorgeous hair flipping with nonchalance. "He can quit, no repercussions, whenever he wants." The odd look in Derek's eyes came back to me. Sure, he could. But he didn't want to. He was as addicted to this as she was, his brain just as fucked. Gritting my teeth, clenching my fists, I growled. "Rrrrrrno! I don't want to quit." Deep breath, mind racing. "What's next?" She turned to smile, her tits wobbling on and on from the movement. "Excellent. You'll find the details of the next job in your infoDrop within a few days." That appeared to be that, as Beaumont turned and sauntered away. I wondered if she could walk normally at all. Swallowing, I left, hardly paying any attention to Derek apart from a brief "bye" to his cheerful greeting. I did recognize, however, the large, bald man standing on the other side of the door, who had been intently studying the fish. It was Bo. *** "But how?" Frex said, frantically typing at his keyboard. "He had been studying it fine! We even met last night to exchange notes!" "Oh yeah?" I asked, pulling at the hem of my skirt. Already the fabric was tightening, irritating my skin. Was I really gaining that fast? Soon I'd look like Beaumont, a walking freak. And maybe not even walking after that... "Wait, what do you mean by 'met'?" "Well, we fucked, obviously." I gave him a closer look. "You fucked? Uh, do you happen to feel like going to work for Anica Beaumont?" He stopped typing, then slowly turned. "You don't think...?" In a few minutes we had a sample of his blood under the micronscope Bo had left behind. "He showed me which chemicals he used on it, even. Biology is actually kind of cool. It can be like hacking, only with nanobots instead of cracking programs." "Great," I said, this time rolling my shoulders. My top was definitely tightening, squeezing my tits through my nanomesh bra as the hours ticked by. The treated blood popped up on one of Frex's screens, and there, swimming in it, were a bunch of little cone-shaped things. "Shit," Frex said. "But when did I get it?" I shrugged, my boobs bobbing with the motion. "Last night, from Bo? Maybe earlier, from my samples? You were the one to take the saliva sample." "Fuck. But why am I not a creepy zombie slave?" "Don't know that, either. Or why Derek didn't turn into one before he left on his trip." He ran his hands through his hair, the wheels on his chair squeaking. "It takes some time to become transmittable, I think. Shit! How are we going to fix this without Bo?" "I don't know that, either, okay, Frex!" I shouted, tearing at my maddening top, pulling it over my head to finally release my cans. They were bigger, I could tell, stretching the nanomesh bra further out. "And fuck, this is picking up speed!" "Jesus," he said, his eyes popping out at my enormous chest. Guess even gay guys can't look away from a nice rack. "Why the fuck did you take her offer up?!" Frex shouted suddenly, turning away from me and popping the ServeNet cables into his arm, the little servos whirring with the movement. I brushed hair out of my eyes, relieved to be free of the constricting top. "I don't know, I needed to buy more time. It's scary in there, dude! All of those guards, and this impossibly curvy woman bearing down on you. Shit's creepy." "Well, we don't have much time before you're her size, I think. If her rate of growth is picking up like you said, and yours remains constant, you'll be..." He trailed off, fingers tapping at the keyboard, the clicks of the keys as loud as thunder to my ears. "What? I'll be what, Frex?" I asked when the silence got to me. His mouth twisted. "I... hm. I may have a solution. At least to stop the progress." My ears perked up, and I sat up a bit quicker than I planned, causing my brassiered tits to swing away from my chest, then drop back down with enough jiggling force to bow my back a little. "Oof. What is it?" "Some tech I lifted from you a while back, for that one nano job." "You lifted tech from one of our jobs?" He shrugged. "I keep a little bit of most things that come through me. This stuff I didn't care much about, too nutech for me. I'd have to get the bots printed, then work on coding them using the stuff I gleaned from Bo, but maybe I could make a hunter-killer for the T. rex." I was too excited about a cure to care. "How long do you think it'd take? A few hours? A day?" He snorted, eyes never leaving the screen. "Try a few days. Should hopefully have it finished by the time your Miss February gets back to you with the final step of her evil plot." With a sigh I dropped back onto the couch, tits compressing into me. "Great. Thanks, Rex." "Hey!" he said, offended. "I have a cure! What more do you want?" "Nothing," I said, defeated. "I'm glad you have some plan, dude. I don't know what else I'd do." A few silent minutes ended with me standing up, figuring I wasn't doing anything by sitting there. "Let me know if you need help, I guess." He nodded. "I may. Programming this stuff isn't easy. We may need a short-wave transmitter in a frequency that I don't have. Plus, you're better at some of this software than me." "You don't have a short-wave transmitter?" "Like I said, too nutech for me." "Drop me a message if you need it. I'll be at my place, I guess." My stomach growled, making Frex laugh. "Mass has to come from somewhere, Case." "And it has to go somewhere, too," I said darkly. I turned to go, tugging my skirt down as far as it could go, when a thought occurred. "This wouldn't be just for me, right? It could destroy all of them?" Frex just nodded, his goggles showing static from the outside. "Sounds good." *** There were a lot of parts about being the new, improved me that were difficult to get used to. My tits constantly being in the way was the most obvious one, because I used my hands for so much stuff: riding, typing, crawling around in my coffin. Plus the itching horniness, a background noise that would reveal itself whenever I was bored and alone, meant that my swollen nipples were almost always poking out, ready to brush against the slightest thing. What surprised me the most was my lower half, things that I had never considered thicker girls had to put up with. The way my thighs would rub against each other every single step, for one. After I left Frex in his lair, the three security doors closing behind me, I resolved never to wear a skirt again until I was back down to, at most, a size 8. Then there was the jiggle: jiggling with each step, jiggling from a shift of a hip, jiggling just by stopping moving. Pull up my skirt, my ass jiggles. Pull on my boot, my ass jiggles. It was like a trailer following me everywhere, making me feel like I was pulling a wide load, like I had to take extra-wide turns so that it didn't smack anyone. I couldn't even let my arms hang straight down at my sides, because they would meet inches and inches of fat and wobbly hip flesh, leg and ass meat combining to prevent me from standing comfortably. My ass was still in the realm of "normal, slightly-overweight women" territory, meaning that while I got leers and looks on the streets, I didn't get flat out disbelieving stares. But it would only get worse. The day after meeting with Beaumont I tried to go workout at the gym, taking out my frustrations on a nice hanging back of sand. It was hard to get the proper momentum in my punches, though, with my I-cup boobs getting in the way, my size 18 ass providing more momentum in my pivots than I could properly plan for. When I finally gave up, covered in sweat, I looked at the clock and saw that I had only been working out for thirty minutes, even though every muscle in my body ached. Then again, I was carrying seventy more pounds that my muscles could have possibly adapted for; just basic exercise was a weight-lifting routine. Feeling fat and bloated, I returned to my coffin and ostensibly researched Beaumont's building, although really I lamented my state and ate greasy synth food to calm my raging stomach. I was definitely edging towards fat by now, and my cheap workout clothes, picked up at a kiosk on the way to the gym, belied the tiny belly I was forming, the dimples at my elbows. What was really ridiculous was the hourglass figure I was maintaining, just like Beaumont: enormous, hanging tits, now forming almost a foot of cleavage; fat, prominent butt, forming a shelf against my spine; plump, curving hips, several inches wider than my shoulders and spreading further. The kiosk had stated that I was pushing 81 kg, which meant I was gaining around a pound per hour. If I stopped and concentrated, I imagined that I could feel the straps on my tanktop tightening, could see the hexagonal pattern on my wonderful bra scaling up as the fabric stretched and stretched. It was freakish, and frightening. And you would think that would stop me from being hornier than a roided up slicerboy, but the increase in adrenaline and my heartrate whenever I worried about my state only meant that explicit, sexual images flooded my mind soon after. On the second day of waiting I sent a message to Frex, begging him for news. "may be able to work with current transmitter, hold off on theft." Which was great: I wasn't sure how I'd be able to break into anything with the breasts attached to my chest, waving and pulling me around while they slowly took over my torso. Together they were wider than me, now, even with my added plumpness. I could fit my arms around them, hug them to me, ravage my nipples like tiny knobs with either hand, but that was about it. Without my bra on, the weight made me gasp for air, or pulled me to the floor, my back screaming in pain. Beaumont didn't drop me mail, either, which meant either she had died from drowning in her own tits or I was being left on the hook. Maybe she wanted me to get bigger, maybe she was waiting for the mind-control aspect of the T. rex to kick in. That was the thing that bugged me as I munched on puppychow pizza, the synth stuff that I could have dropped off outside of the coffin. Neither me nor Frex were affected by this thing. Maybe it didn't work on gay guys or straight girls, and both Janet and Beaumont were lesbians. Maybe Bo was bi? It was a dumb theory, but it was all I could think about that day. Obviously I was infected; the proof was weighing me down, plumping me up, making me hungry enough to eat two of the pizzas. But something else was missing. I replayed the footage of every meeting with Beaumont obsessively, the truth of her weird obsession with spreading the rex, of what was making her at first drop-dead sexy and then laughably curvy, now clear as day in hindsight. There had to be some clue hidden in the videos that I hadn't seen the first time. Instead, after hours and hours of sweaty searching and miserable eating, hacking at reds that refused to give up any good data, I stripped off yet another ruined top, pulled off yet another pair of too-small panties, and fell asleep to images of Derek sandwiched between my enormous tits. I woke up to a message from Frex in my infoDrop, asking me to run to a simple mech store in Grimestown and pick him something up. It was lucky he asked me to, because when I finally pulled on the smartmesh leggings and top that I had picked up days before, my "emergency only, in case you run out of anything that fits" clothes, I realized that another day of being subjected to the changes T. rex wrought would leave me stuck in my cheapo coffin apartment, too sexy to be able to escape. Tits dragging on the mattress, enormous ass chafing on the metal ceiling above, I emerged, sweaty blue hair sticking to my forehead. Even in two days, it was so different being out and active with the extra growth. How much had I put on in just 48 hours? Fifty pounds? Sixty? While the last time I had felt merely huge, now I was massive: my butt was an entirely separate entity, making its own motions, attracting its own gravitation pull. The mesh leggings, while a perfect fit, left almost nothing to the imagination, letting anyone with functioning eyes see every motion, every overstuffed curve of my ass. At least the top was somewhat prevented from turning into a voyeur's dream from the curves of my mesh sportsbra, turning my two Jello-mold tits, both hovering comfortably over my stomach, into one lap-filling unit that only swayed and bounced with my every motion and breath. I paid for private bathroom time and washed myself, trying to ignore the amazing feeling of the hot water pouring over my hypersensitive skin. And oh, was there more skin to cover, now. The tender areolae of my nipples, the smooth, gentle curves of my hips. I closed my eyes for just a second, letting a finger trace around the tip of my mound, and before I knew it was on the ground, tits laying on my knees, fingers thrusting inside of me. Something deep within me wanted sex, needed it, badly. I knew what it was, and how I could help stop it. And I would. Just as soon as I had another mind-wrenching orgasm. My motorcycle jacket still fit, in a way: the arms were tight, and I had no chance of the two halves of the zipper ever meeting, but it at least covered my back and part of the sides of my breasts. It mostly made it look like I wasn't wearing an awkward, smartmesh onesie, which is all I wanted. Shivering, trying not to stroke my breasts and finding that there wasn't any way to hold my arms that didn't, I realized that I couldn't take my motorcycle anywhere. My rack, piled onto the handlebars, would impede my vision and motor abilities. Plus, I imagined the purr of the engine coming up between my thighs, now so fat that I almost couldn't keep my legs together without uncomfortable pressure, and I almost got wet again. A cab was the only way to go, and I sighed, whipping out my credits card. If we ended up somehow retaliating against Beaumont, forcing her to give up our significant others, I knew the well of my retainer would dry up instantly, if my account didn't mysteriously empty first. Every cent was something I would have to live off of while I figured out how to make money in my new body. The robotaxi ride almost hurt. Being out in public was strange, and forced me to really come to terms with what I had managed to become. Not just to myself, which is really where I had been trapped in my head, but to the rest of the citizens of Chop City. Knot-tops eyed me up and catcalled me, using far different language than they had when I was a petite hackergirl. Hookers smirked while they sized up my chest, mentally running the numbers on how much my figure had cost me. Kiosks could see that my jacket wasn't made for someone my size, and displayed ads for big and wide clothing selections. Size 20 and above, they displayed. M-cup bras now in stock. Meanwhile, I wondered if I could fit into a kiosk. Most of the cheaper ones had a 100kg limit, and if I had been 180lbs two days ago, gaining over a pound an hour then, and increasing in speed... there was no way. I'd be at least 100kg. My body felt it, back straining to hold me upright, arms swinging and trying not to smack into my wobbling hips, thighs squeezing against each other, butt bouncing and shaking behind. Yeah. I was too big. My relatively tiny stomach rumbled, and I wondered where I was going to eat once I was done with Frex's little errand. Why couldn't he leave his lair, I pouted. He had said he probably didn't need this part. I found the transmitter in a little cable shop, one with wire mesh shelves and an old dude in ancient glasses behind the counter. He raised an eyebrow at the sight of me, but that was all. Probably used to dealing with people even stranger. My tummy was really on a rampage by then. After all, I had gone at least three hours, which probably meant nine pounds of body fat, without packing calories into my system. Disaster loomed. I reasoned there was little harm in taking a break before making my delivery. Doll's Bar was nearby, I realized with a laugh. Why not? Empathy can be a dangerous thing in Chop City, so I tried to prevent the thoughts from entering my head as I pushed the creaky door open and was greeted with the familiar smells and sounds of my favorite dive bar. Yet, there they were, hovering just beyond my grasp: the image of what it would have been like to first enter a place like that as Miss February, the mysterious and offensively sexy femme fatale that had first hired Case Donner to do a small job. Her hips, narrow compared to mine, sashayed with each step, enticing stares and licked lips. Her cleavage, so much less fulsome and squeezed, exposed to the air for all to sink into. One thin finger touching a single plump lip in thought, one leg, healthy but thin, exposed through the slit in her dress. I basically waddled in. "Three pints of the old stuff," I said to Doll, "and two things of fish and chips." Bless her, she didn't even look twice. Maybe she didn't recognize me at all, and treated everyone as a regular. It was hard to squeeze into my normal booth, my ass so plumped up that the table dug into the tops of my thighs even while my tits rested, fully supported, on the cheap, sticky surface. I had to reach around them for a beer, but then just let the chilly bottle rest on top of the stretched hex pattern of my top. The cold felt good, through the layers, and it was almost fun: at last, a use for my cartoonish body. When the food came I tore into it, two beers already sucked down. As I ate, feeding the beast that was blowing me up, I thought. Both Bo and Derek had been fine, almost uninterested, until Frex and I, respectively, had sex with them. Or maybe just kissed them: Frex wasn't clear on if the T. rex would transmit via all fluids or just saliva. Either way, that meant that Frex and I were both infected. It made sense with my timeline, and it could make sense with Frex's, but it didn't explain why we weren't both suckered in to working for her high and mighty Beaumont. What was different about us? Well, we were both hackers, constantly plugged in to ServeNet. Not a big deal, most of Chop City was, probably including Beaumont's secretary. We both had mechanical replacements, but so did Derek. Hell, Derek had more than both of us put together. I was missing something important, and it bugged me both hours that I sat in Doll's, working my way through a plate of greasy nachos, grown in a heating plate out back, and another two beers. When at last I left, I nearly had to pry myself out of the booth; my ass had already added on another six pounds. Or was it eight by now? It wasn't until I was handing the transmitter, a tiny thing barely two centimeters square, to Frex that it clicked. He reached across the space, not looking away from the simulations of nanobots on his screen, and the tiny rotors and metal tendons in his arm whirred and clicked in the old familiar way. "He needs to oil that up," I thought. "Oldtech like that needs better repair." Oldtech. Like my eyes. Some of the first mechanical eyes on the market. Oldtech like Frex preferred, because he was a paranoid netrunner. Oldtech like even the police department didn't give to their injured cops. Almost out of breath, tongue slurring a little from drunkenness, I explained my theory to Frex. He tried to brush me off at first, and I was halfway through repeating myself when he stopped. "No, wait," he said. "No, no, no. You may be on to something." "That's what I've been trying to say!" I said, putting my hands on my hips and realizing they were further apart than I had expected. "No, not what you realize," he said, flicking through documents and files on his screens, the goggles covering his eyes flickering. "A decade ago, mech replacements used a different procedure for installation. They didn't have the same antibiotics they have now, and it required a local administration." A vision of a gigantic needle plunging into my eye surfaced, just as it did on most nights. "You mean that shit they injected into us?" "Right!" he said, nodding so furiously that the goggles slipped to his nose. "Only supposed to affect you long enough for your body to accept the implants, but maybe..." It took me ten minutes to realize that our conversation was over, and, hopping from foot to foot in anticipation, ignoring the waves of moment it set off, I knew nothing better would come out of Frex until he was done. Time to go. My coffin was out of the question, though. I had been gone for five hours, so who knew how much bigger I was? I did have a digikey to Derek's place, though. The bed was big, and soft, and didn't make me feel huge. True, I had no clothes there, but I had no clothes that fit me anymore back at my place. All I needed was my locker and my wristtop and a place to rinse my smartmesh outfit, and I was fine. Frex was going to figure it all out. I was fine. *** It took two days for my netrunner to formulate a true solution. He had all of the pieces, now: nanobots to destroy the T. rex, antibiotics from a decade ago to immunize everyone from future invasions, a transmitter to activate everything. Only problem was that his main infiltrator, a master of stealth, break-ins, and on-the-fly hacking, was never going to be able to sneak into anywhere ever again. "Bzzt, no clothing items in the wardrobe will fit you, Mz. Hamill." "I know, I know." I had been able to program Derek's closet to do body readings on me, like a clothing kiosk, and now it gave depressing updates on where my body status was and where I was heading whenever I wanted, but I had never been able to get it to register a new user. Instead it now thought that Derek had undergone a gender transition, as well as a height reduction, in order to give me measurements meant for a woman: band size, chest size, women's sizes for pants. The afternoon I finally heard back from both Frex and Beaumont, I had gained over twelve inches around my hips in 24 hours. Fifty pounds. An astounding seven inches on my bust, leaving me in some fantastic cup. "W" the closet maintained, but I had never heard of bras going that high. All I knew was that even my nanomesh sportsbra felt like it was straining as I slotted my tits into it, just one of them too wide around for me to encircle with my arms, the hexagon pattern of the material stretching from smaller than a centimeter wide to eight or nine. I would have felt grotesque if I wasn't so horny, all the time. Being in Derek's place didn't help: everything smelled like sweaty, sexy cop, from his shirts to his chairs to his stupid fridge, stuffed with protein gain formulas and bioengineered milk. Without much to do other than wait and masturbate, I normally opted for the second. And boy, I was good at it. My overstuffed thighs rubbed together to stimulate my clit without much help, my turgid nipples hardening into tiny red thumbs at the slightest provocation, even cold air blowing over them sending thrills through square yards of flesh to my chest, making me shake with furious desire. Once I came grasping both butt cheeks in my hands, arms spread wide in order to be able to grab them, mashing the soft, lovely flesh together. In another twenty-four hour period I'd be well over three feet wide, my enormous ass and Venusian hips the perfect counterbalance to my inhumanly large chest. I was catching up to Beaumont, or at least the last I'd seen her. Of course, she was no doubt far, far bigger than this, now, growing larger by the moment as the T. rex worked its mad way through her brain, forcing her to become... what was it? More desirable? Sexier? Some insane goal that only made sense if you were a mindless, thoughtless paramecium? My wristtop beeped with the update to my infoDrop. I had loosened the straps after my wrists had finally gotten chubby enough to warrant it, but, even just walking around with nothing on but my bra, I still didn't go anywhere without it. It was a message from Beaumont. "Retrieve package tomorrow night. Delivery before 2am at water plant." So. It was finally happening. Whatever she had been waiting on, maybe an upgrade to the cryo system, was ready to go. Did she really think that I, Case Donner, who was now literally over three times the woman I was when she hired me, would be able to deliver it? The second message arrived, this time from Frex. "Time to plan." Fully clothed in tightening, ever tightening, nanomesh, I squeezed out of the door. First one tit, then one hip, then the second cheek, then the second breast. I giggled at the thought of cutting the fence to the water treatment plant wide enough to fit me, then almost broke down laughing at the image of me busting open a vent. It was genuine laughter, laced with fear. That was me doing the unusual things that my career called for; when would the usual, like getting out of a door, become impossible? I took up the entire back seat of the robotaxi on the way to Frex's. "The shit is cooking now," he said, after I freaked out over the words "not quite ready." "It needs time to print and to have the instructions baked in." "Well, great," I said. "She's expecting me to pick up 'the package' tomorrow night." "Oh, that's no problem. It will be ready before dawn." I tapped my foot and tried to cross my arms, but only found fat, swinging breasts in my way. "Then why did you call me over?" He smiled sheepishly. "Honestly, I wanted to make sure you're okay. Uh. You are, right?" I looked down and only saw breasts covering my vision, sloping away in front of me to cover my tiny pot belly and bounce against my thighs as I walked. Reaching behind me I patted the shelf of my ass, knowing that it extended far beyond my comparatively thin back, two globes of plump, dimpled fat. "What would make you think I wasn't all right?" I asked, watching, hypnotically, as the bump of my erect right nipple slid slowly, ever slowly, underneath a hex seam in my top. Even now, I was growing. "Hm," was all he said, slipping his goggles back on. "Well, you need to be well enough to get up to the roof of her building when this stuff is ready." "The roof of her building?" I echoed. "You really think I can do that in this state?" I slapped a hand against my hip, sending ripples through my fat, fleshy hindquarters that soon reached the wobbling globes of my tits. Frex only mimicked my movement, slapping the creaking side of his wheelchair. "You're at least mobile, Case. And who else can we trust?" He tapped a screen and it flickered through pictures, showing robotaxi after robotaxi arriving at Beaumont's building, new muscle and curves entering in pairs and trios. "The T. rex has been spreading, and who knows who has it?" I stared at the images, leaning forward just enough to make my back scream from the load. There were dozens of people in them, maybe as many as sixty. "How?" "Probably the same way our boyfriends did." "Oh, so now Bo is your boyfriend?" He sighed. "He had better be, by the time we're done here." I growled, thinking exactly the opposite about Derek. Making me come to his rescue? Terrible boyfriend material. "All right. Let's talk this through." *** Panting and huffing, I looked across the gap in buildings in night-vision mode, once more pondering the tensile strength of the zipchord that hung in the air. It would be invisible to the naked eye, but the sight of a three-hundred-pound woman flying through the air surely would not be, especially in the neon lit sky of 3am Chop City. "It's good for up to three-hundred kilos," Frex repeated. "What did you say you were?" "Hardly half of that." He snorted. "You sure?" I was sure, although his sardonic question was not lost on me. Even in the four hours since I had gone to his place I had probably put on ten pounds if not more, all of it in my tits and ass. There was little place to hold my arms anymore but resting on top of the shelf of my tits, every step sending fat and flesh sliding over each other. And now he wanted to send that through the sky. It was easier to think of my growth in terms of pounds or kilos instead of inches and pant sizes. It reduced the problem, even if it made me feel... well, grosser. Fatter. "Fat" wasn't the problem. Curves were. "300kg," I thought. "That's nearly 700lbs. I'm fine. Nowhere that fat." I breathed, tugged on my harness again, and clicked the button with "Go" written in marker. The force of the motorized pulley didn't zip me across as I thought it would—maybe my mass was too much. Instead I found myself foolishly walking across the rooftop as the pulley motored above me until, holding my breath, I stepped off. Trying not to look down at the neon glow of the Chop City streets, the zipchord moved me at an aggravatingly slow pace to the top of Beaumont's building. I wondered what it would look like to anyone gazing upward. I could feel gravity working against my various ballooned parts, pulling my drooping ass and hips down, my tits pushing and straining against the stressed smartmesh. "It should be easy," Frex repeated to me. "I know, I know." The slow speed was necessary, especially with my volume: motion detectors and infiltration units would notice me for sure if I moved faster through the air than an old woman with a mechanized walker. It was slow, but it was definitely safe. There wasn't a creak or moan from the chord. Still, I was never more thankful than when I put my foot heavily on the old-fashioned gravel. Old-fashioned gravel, old-fashioned secretary. And, according to my hacking, old-fashioned fire suppression system. My eyes were able to spot the pipes right away, the near-motionless water that nonetheless had an intake for replacements and maintenance on the roof. The schematics showed them going through the entire building, a whole building filled with infectees, safety dictating that the sprinkler heads emerge from the ceiling in every room. I reached under my breasts into my pouch, a sad excuse of a replacement for my SecSuit, and pulled out the tiny drill. From the pipe emerged a gross black water, but it was wet and it was thin. "Perfect for our means," Frex said, reading my thoughts. The vial with the nanites fit easily into the palm of my hand, and I twirled it through my fingers. At least one part of me was still dexterous, I mused, before seeing the slight chubbiness of my wrist and arm attached to it. Then again, my upper torso, ignoring my tits, was merely chubby: hardly the body of a 300lb woman. I shook my head. Not important right now. Hooking the vial up to the nanite injector, I pushed it through my tiny drill hole and pulled the trigger. Millions of nanites squeezed into the pipe system and, with a couple of twists of the corroded metal handle, began their slow circulation and spreading through the building. I quick-soldered the hole closed, preventing any of the water leaking out while I ran the water-cycle system, and, breathing deeply again, hooked my harness up to the zipchord. When I touched down back on the safe, anonymous building, I felt the first tear in my supposedly one-size-fits all nanomesh and cursed to myself. It would only get worse. Still, steps one through three, complete. *** I had never visited Beaumont's building at night, but now, nearly twenty hours since my surreptitious visit, it looked darker, scarier, more imposing. Then again, the guards that filled the ground floor, their smartguns cradled in their arms, certainly didn't help. "Miss Donner," one said, the visor of his helmet obscuring his eyes. "Miss Beaumont is expecting you. Go right up." "Sure, I'll do that," I muttered, and waddled towards the elevator, knowing all of their eyes, a dozen pairs if my quick count was right, were on my staggering form. I was a blimp. A bloated, overflowing hourglass of fat. Each step sent my body on another experiment in movement, in tectonic plates shifting and quivering. Just an hour before I had sat down on Frex's twin bed, springs creaking under me, and my ass had drooped off of either side of the mattress, my tits had filled up my lap and begun their assault on my chin. My nanomesh clothes had given up the ghost soon after returning from my rooftop trip. Taking them off had been sweet release: where they hadn't ripped to show embarrassing square-footage of flesh they were tightening enough to strangle me around the waist, and especially around my tits. Fully naked in the shower, I had pondered for a while what to do while following my new cleaning routine. Lift each breast one at a time, heaving them up, to let the water patter against their undersized, against my bare stomach. Unsupported by nutech they fell almost to my knees, perfect teardrop shapes that pulled at my back. If I squashed and pulled at the flesh I could reach one of my thick nipples, could squeeze the pebbly flesh in an open fist and... ...the clothes hadn't come from a kiosk in Grimestown. I was too big to fit into one and test the weight restriction, too embarrassed to try. Instead I had been forced to wrap myself in a sheet from Derek's bed and rush through one of the high-end shops on the Mesa, not far from Beaumont's office. There they had actual aisles that I could walk through, filling them up with my ass and tits while I looked for a single top that was over 10X. I think that the panicked clerks had made someone in the back of the building throw some things together to get me to leave before I filled the store up completely. I know that I saw a figure run out the side-door when I asked if nanomesh bras came in larger sizes than my old one. I needed to leave more stretching room, after all. It nearly broke my bank, but they do. Finally I had a bunch of clothes that were the size of a tent. I was thankful that soon I would have the T. rex removed from my system, hopefully curing me. Believe me, I was. I desperately wanted my SecSuit, would feel naked going into the office without it, but I knew it was an impossibility. I could live with that. There was only one problem, I realized, and I held up the blue leggings to the cashier, the loose, stretchy fabric mostly resting on my bust. "Does this come in black?" In Beaumont's elevator—and there was no doubt in my mind that the entire building was now hers, one way or another—I could tell that the black leggings were stretching far enough to be a much lighter color, the sleeveless tunic, mostly serving as an intermediary between my bra and the air, stretching to its limit. I had a miraculously small amount of cleavage showing, maybe as little as six inches, and I wondered if Beaumont would be impressed with my professionalism. Just before the elevator doors opened, I thrust a hand into those six inches of cleavage, found the transmitter hidden within, and pressed a button. Her lobby was lined with an army, one that took a step back to let the wide load of Case Donner through. Behind them were a bunch of makeshift desks with computer displays on them, the hovering holo interfaces showing biological readouts, charts and graphs. Shit that Frex was no doubt already reversing from my live feed, poring over for more info. He was thankfully silent in my ear, or maybe the transmission was somehow being blocked. I hoped not. What I was amused by were the people behind the desks. Some men, yes, but mostly women: curvy, sexy women, breasts pushing against their lab coats, asses pulling their pencil skirts up their enticing thighs. Beaumont had an army of male security guards, and a platoon of female scientists, but for how long was it sustainable? Eventually the women would be like me, or bigger, and I was already approaching the point where walking was surprising, if not difficult. Trying to act unperturbed by the crowd, I scratched the top of my ass, which was somewhere halfway up my back. I managed to maintain the act until the double-doors to Beaumont's office opened and I was greeted by the sight of her. The desk was gone, the glass floor covered by cushions and mattresses, hastily arranged under her bulk. "Not bothering with a silly dress this time?" I asked after a brief gasp, doing my best to not waddle as I approached the mountain of a woman, pushing past a stonelike Derek. Mostly what I could see were breasts, which hardly moved as my employer chuckled at my joke. They were still porcelain white, still held an amazingly round, slightly tapered shape—and they rested on the floor, stretching out probably ten feet from Beaumont's beautiful, smiling face, spreading maybe four yards wide across the soft mattresses. There were thin veins across the surface, breaking up the perfection. Some attendants knelt in front of the boobs, their plush asses pushing at their slacks as they bent at the waist, and I could see delicate hands gently massaging nipples the size of paint cans. Somehow her ass was smaller than her bust, but it was no less impressive, rising up behind her adipose form, two round mountains for her naked back to rest against. Madly I wondered if her legs were dangling from them, unable to reach the ground for the fat filling up her hips and thighs, before knowing it must be true: she towered over me, perched on her own mass. "No dress could contain me," she said, her lips still tripping over the exotic pronunciations of her words. I felt like she had X-ray vision as her steely gaze undressed me, sized me up. "Soon it will be the same for you, and for all women in Chop City." I licked my lips. "So you have your little delivery ready?" "Soon," she repeated in a moan, closing her eyes. Behind her there were shifts in the wobbling mountains of fat that made up her butt, a rhythmic rocking back and forth. A mixture of disgust and willing horniness filled me when I realized she was thrusting, jacking herself off right there. Honestly, I could hardly blame her: my horniness levels were at an all-time high as the T. rex in my body begged me to spread my infection. Something else was happening, though, and with a small cheer the women at her tits began moving with the rhythm as well, pulling and stroking on her engorged nipples. Beaumont panted while my mouth dropped open, and enormous droplets formed at the tips of the red nipples, white milk that turned into a light spray. One woman opened the container from the water treatment plant, the cryocontainer making a soft hiss, and removed a half-dozen vials. In moments they were filled and, licking her lips, Beaumont seemed to come out of a trance. "You surely have noticed," she said, sweat rolling down her neck to begin the long journey down her bosom, "how the parasite is evolving. Becoming stronger, faster at adapting to its environments." I considered the attendees, and how much I had grown in just a week. "These were infected... earlier today?" I guessed. She grinned in acknowledgement and rested her sticky hands on her bare breast flesh. I couldn't help but notice that her shoulders and arms were still relatively slim compared to the rest of her. Was her waist waspish somewhere in there? Was she still a hyper-exaggeration of an hourglass shape? "As the exalted first keeper of them, it is most advanced in my own body. It's why everyone, even you, feel the call back here." Her smile was creepily serene. "The parasites, no, the symbiotes inside you know that I am the best chance of survival, of multiplying." She nodded to Derek. "You infected one man. Think about what we can do with a heartier strain, one that can survive in not just bodies but in water." The timeline all clicked. "You didn't need to do any research or wait for any tech. The cryogadget fit in the treatment container fine." She smiled. "I like taking my time. And now—" her eyes rolled back in her head and her arms darted down under her breasts again, as the need to orgasm overcame her. I politely waited, playing with the fringe of my neckline. The tunic was growing impossibly tight, now, but the armor of my nanoweave bra was helping mitigate the pain. "—now, we're ready for delivery." "Great," I said. "Then I'll just take that," I said, holding my hand out to the busty chick that held the cooler-like container at attention. Beaumont's laughter tinkled, and soon the entire room joined in, as if afraid to disagree. Of course she wasn't going to give it to me. I sighed. "So you already have people at the plant?" She nodded. "Oh, yes. A healthy young man. Actually, one who knew your associate's former lover. Bo, I think? He's guarding the plant, now, as well." I nodded. "Well, that sucks. You brought me here to gloat?" A shrug sent a cascade of movement down her breast, a ripple of perfect, mutated flesh. "And keep an eye on you." "Good," I nodded, taking the time to look around at the plants in the atrium, still green and flourishing. I waited as the cryocontainer hissed, locking the vials in. And waited. How long, Frex? How long did I need to wait for you? The short-wave radio signal was activating all of the nanites in the building, each tiny robot acting as a receiver and short-wave communicator to the nanite next to it, sending out one command: purge. I licked my lips. Any minute now. "So…" I began. The sprinklers opened up, dirty black water soaking everything in seconds. "Restrain her!" Beaumont shrieked, and, hearing footsteps, I turned to face my opponent. Derek's face was cool, collected, the eyes under his visor taking in everything in his officer training. I dropped low, praying that my obscene center of gravity could stay down with me even as my tits brushed the floor, then, when he approached, did the only thing I could think of that was possible to pull off: I spun in place, breath escaping as my breasts swung out from my body and my overstuffed rear collided with my boyfriend. I was already out of breath, and the various arms of the guards encircled me, the barrels of their OR-15s sticking against my temple. Beaumont was apoplectic with rage as they brought me before her, dragging my chubby legs behind me, my tits squeaking on the mattresses. "What is this?" She asked, pushing water from her face. It was pouring over her, and the report reading in my eyes told me that the nanites were burrowing into her skin, delivering via thousands of tiny pinpricks their own little immune system attack. They would be flooding her enormous system, soon, as well as the entire building's, nanites mixed with the immuno-suppressors that both Frex and I had been dosed with years ago. Any minute, now. The arms loosened on me, letting me drop to my knees. My face ended up buried in my pillowy cleavage, but I shoved myself to my feet. "What is going on?" Beaumont asked, turning from guard to guard. "Why are you letting her go?" I dusted my knees off, the leggings threatening to tear, and then traced a finger on the shaking, goosebumping flesh of her tit as I waddled around my prey. "Sorry, Miss February," I said. "Guess your money wasn't good enough." She screamed in rage and, to my surprise, rocked herself to the side. Slowly, like an avalanche, her flesh slid over itself as her arms outstretched, reaching for me even as I backed up. Her beautiful face was contorted in rage, her perfect hair sticking to her forehead and breasts in the dirty water, and she toppled to the side, a breast the size of a shed sloshing with her, buttock as large as a robotaxi wobbling in the air. "We... we have to spread it..." she begged as she came to a stop, her arm on the ground, her flabby hip towering over her. One breast was sliding to a stop a few feet from me, bumping against the cryo container on the ground. "We need..." But I didn't find out what we needed to do. Beaumont blinked, then blushed. "Oh, my goodness," she said. "What have I done?" I let myself slide to the ground in relief. My tits filled my lap, my ass providing a wonderful cushion. I rested a head against the wall of Beaumont's tit and closed my eyes. "About my bill..." Derek, not bothering to feel shame, collapsed next to me, then kissed me on the cheek. I accepted it and saw he was holding the water treatment container. Within were six vials of Beaumont's breast milk, teeming with an advanced form of T. rex, still frozen for the next few hours, at least. "What should we do with this?" he asked me, a teasing sound in his voice. I liked this, my boyfriend treating me as an authority. I liked this a lot. Scratching a tit, I considered it. "Well," I said after a while, drawing him into another kiss of relief, loving the thrill of his hand pawing at one of my mountainous breasts, "it's probably worth a lot of money." Our bodies still raging with the horniness of the T. rex, his mouth wrapped around mine while his warm fingers fondled one of my engorged nipples. Soon we were both naked on the soaked floor of Beamont's office, our bodies pressed up against her engorged skin, neither of us caring as he drove himself from behind between my plump legs again and again, my tits providing more than enough of a surface. Filled and fulfilled, my overtaxed and overstuffed body crying out for more, I had a brief vision of living the rest of my life like this, my sensitive flesh teased by Derek's touches, my hips and breasts lovingly swaying. I wouldn't be able to squeeze into any more pipes, but maybe I wouldn't need to.