Genomorph

Chapter 38

CHAPTER 38

The next morning Melissa awoke and saw that Brandi was not there. They had been able to awaken her enough the night before to get her upstairs, but as soon as they had lain her in bed she was out again. Though they knew she was in Zen sleep, the way she had collapsed had frightened them both.

Melissa followed her nose downstairs and found Brandi at the bar in the kitchen. Before her was a plate piled high with diced potatoes, sausage, bacon and fried eggs, all topped off with sausage gravy, which she was devouring with gusto. Brandon was raised in the south, and while for the most part Brandi’s culinary sense was very diverse, she still preferred very southern style breakfasts.

“Are you ok love?” Melissa asked.

Brandi looked up and grinned, “Just very, very hungry. And feeling very stupid too.”

“Why sweetie?” Melissa asked. “You did great.”

“It’s not that,” Brandi said. “I should’a spent time these last weeks working with my shape shifting abilities. But of all the things I can do…well, like, that part creeps me out the most. Well that and the claws.”

“Brandi we can cancel the performances on Friday and Saturday,” Melissa said. “Karen and I talked about it last night and it’s just not worth it. You’re too vulnerable like that.”

“I don’t want you to cancel them,” Brandi said. “I have a better idea. I want to tell the band everything. If they are in on it, then I won’t have to change until just before we go on. I can take clothes with me to the club. That will add a good hour and a half to two hours to my time.

“Are you sure?” Melissa asked. “I know you can trust the girls, but there’s always a risk they’ll freak out or something.”

“I don’t think so,” Brandi smiled. “Amber will think, like, ‘That’s so cool!’, and Cyndi and Renee will be all, like, ‘Fascinating Captain.’”

“Have I told you recently that I love you?” Melissa grinned.

“Not this morning,” Brandi beamed. “I love you too.”

For a moment Brandi was too busy kissing Melissa to eat. Then she heard the door to Karen’s room open and turned and smiled at her.

“Good God look at all the food!” Karen exclaimed as she came into the kitchen. She walked over to Brandi and kissed her on the cheek and then wrapped her arms around her and squeezed.

“I love you too sweetie,” Karen said. “You were fantastic last night. If I hadn’t known it was you I would have sworn I was going nuts. I never knew I looked so hot up there!”

“Oh believe me you do,” Brandi grinned. “I need to work on shape shifting, and I am gonna do that between now and the weekend.”

Karen took a seat on the stool next to Brandi and asked, “Are you sure you’ll be able to take my form if I’m not here for you to touch?”

In answer, Brandi altered her appearance until she was Karen’s twin, and then quickly shifted back.

“Once I have the pattern, it’s stored permanently,” she said. “I can still look like Susan if I want to.”

“It was so amazing last night, and I admit at times a little creepy,” Karen said. “When you were on stage and even when you weren’t; it was like looking at my life from outside. Sometimes you would do something or say something and I would think, ‘I don’t act like that!’, but then I would realize that I do. It was very surreal.”

“If I hadn’t known what was going on I would have never suspected anything,” Melissa said. “Did you get all that from touching Karen?”

“No,” Brandi said, shaking her head for emphasis. “When I touch someone I am getting their genetic information to help me physically duplicate them, but that is really only a small part of the process. The rest comes from observation, and the longer I have had to observe a person the better I can mimic them. I remember everything, even if I’m not trying to.”

“Then you can actually imitate someone without touching them?” Karen asked.

“It’s harder but I can do it,” Brandi said. “The genetic information gives me a blueprint to work from.”

“Well our DNA determines what we can look like,” Melissa said. “But what we actually look like is really up to us and how we treat our bodies.”

“Exactly,” Brandi said. “The DNA gives me a shortcut, but it’s my observations of the person that fine tune it. The GMU does something similar, though in reverse and at a much more complex level. In its most basic use, it uses a scan of the DNA of a subject to shape them into a perfect representation of their DNA. If there are any problems with their DNA; say they are genetically disposed to obesity or heart disease, it corrects those flaws.”

“It pisses me off,” Karen said. “That machine could end so much suffering and they are keeping it a secret.”

“I understand what you mean, Karen,” Brandi said. “But remember there is only the one machine. It needs to be studied so that we can learn how it works and make more like it. Until then, it has to stay secret.”

“Getting back to the band, how do you want to break it to the girls?” Melissa asked.

“Well I was thinkin’ about that,” Brandi grinned mischievously. “I think we’ll let Karen tell them.”

Before she could explain further she turned towards the back door, her grin disappearing.

“Someone’s here,” she said, and seconds later the doorbell rang.

“Stay out of sight,” Brandi said, and once more took on Karen’s form. She walked down the hall and through the utility room to the back door, looking out through the peep hole. A man stood on the porch, dressed in the uniform of an overnight delivery service, but Brandi could sense tension and alertness in him. There was also something very familiar about him, but she could not see his face clearly.

“Can I help you?” Brandi called out in Karen’s voice.

“I have a delivery for Brenda Williams,” the man said. “He will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight.”

Brandi opened the door and accepted a large, heavy package from the man, setting it down in the hallway and then signing the form on his clipboard. She looked up at the man’s face as she handed the clipboard back to him and stifled a gasp.

Matt Branch smiled pleasantly as he said, “Have a nice day, miss.”

Brandi closed the door and leaned against the wall for a moment, her entire body tingling. There was no doubt that Matt was a handsome guy, but seeing him as a woman she now realized just how absolutely gorgeous he was. She was also upset that she had appeared to him as Karen and not herself.

~ Get a grip, girl, ~ she told herself as she shifted back to her normal appearance. ~ Even if he knows what happened he wouldn’t have recognized you. ~ She picked the package up and took it into the living room.

“Is that the package you’ve been expecting?” Melissa asked, and then noticed that Brandi was very flushed. “Are you ok, sweetie?”

Brandi started giggling and when she finally got herself under control she told Melissa and Karen about her encounter at the door.

“I swear I wanted to grab him and kiss him,” Brandi said.

“Ok if you’re going to act that way you can’t be me anymore,” Karen laughed.

“Yeah, like it would really hurt your reputation,” Melissa told her friend. “So do you have any idea what this is?”

“Not a clue,” Brandi said as she began opening the package.

*****

“This is very risky,” the driver of the black sedan said.

“It’s necessary, Blake,” Agent Reynolds replied. “Trying to maintain round the clock surveillance is too risky; she would spot us eventually. If the Genomorph is staying with the Barlowe girl, this will smoke her out, literally.”

Across the street from the parked car was a four story apartment building. Hidden within wall outlets in the first and third floor laundry rooms were tiny incendiary devices. Once triggered, they would be totally consumed in a blinding flash of heat and flame, leaving no trace behind. Before that happened, they would send a surge of power through the building’s wiring that would cause it to overload in dozens of places. The authorities might suspect arson, but there would be no hard evidence to prove it was anything other than old wiring.

“That kid on the fourth floor won’t have a chance,” Blake said in a nervous tone. “That building will go up like a torch.”

“That’s the idea,” Reynolds told him, glancing at his watch.

“Five more minutes.”

*****

“That is really wild,” Melissa said as they stared at the silver cube.

“There are no seams at all,” Karen said. “How does it open?”

“Usually there is a square you press that opens it,” Brandi informed them. “This one seems to need a hand print, and since it has my name on it, I assume it needs my hand print.”

“And how exactly did it get your name on it?” Melissa asked.

“When I was transformed, Susan saved the data file under the name Brandi. She believes at that time the computer sent a signal to the box, encoding whatever is in here for me. It says Genomorph Biomorphic Adaptive Armor right above my name.”

“You can read that?” Karen asked.

Brandi blinked, realizing what she had just done. The Forerunner script was as plain to her as English.

“I guess I can,” she said. It was not the first time she had discovered knowledge she had previously been unaware of. She strongly suspected that if she had been given access to the stockpiles of Forerunner technology collecting cobwebs in Nevada she could have learned much more.

Just as Brandi was about to press her hand to the cube she stopped, her eyes narrowing. She rushed from the living room and onto the deck, her head swinging around to look north up Ocean Front Walk. There was a fire; she could hear a building’s alarm system and the screeching wail of dozens of smoke detectors. There was no smoke visible, and even to her keen senses the smell was barely detectable, but all that was not what had alerted her. It was a scream; the terrified scream of a child crying for help.

Without a word Brandi was moving. She vaulted the deck railing and hit the ground running as fast as she could. She was barefoot and dressed only in her knit pajamas as her legs pumped, propelling her up Ocean Front. Her breasts bounced wildly and painfully until her body compensated for the lack of a bra and tightened up her internal support structure.

Behind her she heard Melissa and Karen calling out but there was no time to respond. As she neared the four story building she could see the thick, black smoke rising. The first floor was already fully involved by the time she reached the scene and there were flames visible at the windows on the third floor. A cold fear gripped her as she saw the flames, a sudden realization coming to her.
Fire could kill her.

*****

“It is done, finally,” Ryan said as he entered Susan’s office. “I’m sorry it took so long, but the control programming they used is very sophisticated. It still has the same cosmetic errors in it that the stuff they tried to use on Brandi did; it was probably written by the same person.”

“What’s important is that it be done properly, not fast,” Susan told him. “You did well. It probably took them months of work with a team of programmers.”

Ryan grinned at the compliment, pushing his glasses back on his face.

“Well I don’t like to brag,” he said.

“Since when!” Susan laughed. “How soon can we use it?”

Ryan held up the programming mask, “It’s your turn now, Doc.”

Ryan set the eyepiece on Susan and activated it. When he seemed to remove it almost immediately, Susan looked at him curiously.

“Is something wrong?” she asked.

“Nope, all done,” Ryan smiled.

“I thought it would take longer,” Susan said.

“It took almost two hours, Susan,” Ryan said.

“Oh,” Susan said. She did feel a bit odd, and Ryan noticed the look on her face.

“The feeling will pass in a few minutes,” he told her. “The original programming included instructions to ignore the missing time. I imagine it’s a bit disorienting when your brain tries to reconcile the gap. If we had just been removing the programming it would have only taken thirty minutes at most. Apparently it’s a much more complex process to put the programming in than it is to take it out.”

“So what happens when they activate me?” Susan asked.

“You will receive the instructions and programming as intended,” Ryan explained. “But you will not be compelled to follow it. It will be more like getting a report. The programming included some major personality alterations, to make you more like their kind of people. Those will require a bit of effort to control, as they will dominate your own personality to a large extent. I had to leave them in like that, otherwise you might have gone schizophrenic on us. The difference here is you will remember who you were. It will still be tough to deal with, and we can’t let you stay like that for more than a few weeks. ”

“What happens if it stays in too long?” Susan asked.

“The personality modifications will eventually supplant your personality entirely,” Ryan said. “You will be a different person.”

“Let’s hope we can put a stop to this before they are able to go that far,” Susan said.

“You know I can’t help but wonder why the Forerunners would even have a device like this,” Ryan said. “It seems contrary to their nature.”

“That’s because you’re seeing it misused,” Susan said. “I was curious myself, until I thought it through and then did some digging to confirm my suspicions. The Forerunners were very much like us; they were technologically and socially more advanced, but they weren’t perfect. They still had crime and mental illness. They could correct a lot of problems before birth with their ability to manipulate genetics, but they couldn’t prevent someone from making a bad choice, or eliminate mental and emotional trauma. This device was used as a rehabilitative measure. They could treat both mental and emotional problems and correct behavioral issues.”

“So like the GMU, they have perverted what was intended to be a healing device,” Ryan said.

“They’re tools, and any tool can be misused,” Susan said. “Don’t forget the Forerunners were not perfect. They fled here from a world that had been devastated by war. I can only imagine the extent of that devastation considering the technology we have seen.”

Ryan shuddered at the thought. It was true; the Forerunners could manipulate genetics and even alter the molecular structure of a living being without destroying the person in the process. Considering the power of their healing machines, the thought of a device built for destruction falling into the wrong hands was too frightening to contemplate. There was enough potential for destruction in the ability to reprogram a person’s mind like a computer, an ability they already knew was being used. Just how far it went, they could only guess.

*****

Secret Service Agent Kevin Driscoll removed the ocular device from the President’s Chief of Staff and placed it in its case. He then set the case, along with the crystal pendant, on the desk and returned to his post, unaware that he had ever left it. Had his absence been noticed by one of the other agents on the detail it would not have mattered, they had already been programmed.

The Chief of Staff blinked several times, and then looked at the case on his desk. He picked it up and slipped it into his coat pocket, and then picked up his phone.

“I need to schedule some time with the President,” he told his assistant. “It’s a somewhat urgent matter and we’ll need approximately two hours, uninterrupted.”

While he waited, his fingers kept drifting towards the case in his pocket, though he had already forgotten placing it there.

“Yes, Friday morning will be perfect,” he smiled.

*****

The knowledge that fire presented a real danger to her caused Brandi to hesitate for less than half a second. Then she sprinted past the swimming pool and the gathering crowd of spectators and plunged into the lobby of the converted hotel. The stairwell was blocked by a wall of flames, but instead of stopping she picked up her pace and charged through, lowering her pain response as she did. A burn was no different than any other kind of damage to her, but she knew if the building were to collapse around her or she became trapped under burning rubble she could be burned so badly that her body would be unable to heal.

The girl had stopped screaming, but Brandi had already pinpointed her location on the fourth floor. She took the stairs two at a time as the thick smoke burned her lungs. It was impossible to see a thing, until her vision shifted spectrum and the smoke seemed to disappear. In her eyes the world became shades of grey, darker for hot and lighter for cool, like the view through a thermal imaging system. She also noted that her respiration had slowed, despite her heavy exertion, to about one breath every minute. Her lungs pulled every bit of oxygen from each breath before she expelled the smoke and gas.

As she reached the fourth floor smoke was pouring from the wall outlets and she could see that there was tremendous heat within the walls.

~ Shit, it’s traveling through the wiring! No wonder the place went up so fast. ~

Reaching the end of the hall, she did not even stop to check the door. Her thermal vision showed her that the door was not dangerously hot yet, so she kicked it open and charged into the apartment.

She found the girl in the back bedroom, lying on the floor in front of a wheelchair with a wet towel wrapped around her face. Towels were also stuffed under the door to block the smoke.

~ Smart girl. ~

She looked to be around fourteen and to Brandi’s great relief, she was still breathing. She snatched a blanket from the bed and knelt down, wrapped the blanket around the girl and then lifted her limp body in her arms. She paused just long enough to scan the rest of the building for signs that anyone else was trapped, and thankfully detected no one. If there had been others, there was no way she could have saved them. Carrying the girl she rushed back into the hallway as flames began erupting from the walls of the apartment.

The hallway was now engulfed in flames as well and the fire escape was at the opposite corner of the building; but the pool was just twenty-five feet beyond the window at the end of the hall. Even if she missed, Brandi was certain she could shield the girl from injury in the fall; though she did not dwell on what it would do to her own legs.

Pulling the girl close to her body, she wrapped her arms around her tightly. Then she ran, her legs pumping as hard as she could make them. At the last second she pressed the girl’s face into her breast and leapt for all she was worth.

Melissa and Karen reached the burning building just in time to see Brandi come flying through the fourth floor window, her legs still moving to keep her body upright as she arced through the air, shattered glass trailing in her wake. She cleared the concrete between the pool and the building and landed squarely in the middle of the deep end with a huge splash. She plunged all the way to the bottom and immediately pushed off, breaking the surface and pulling the unconscious girl to the side. A half dozen pairs of hands reached down and pulled them both out, and Brandi dropped to her knees beside the girl.

“Come on honey, wake up,” she said, gently shaking the girl. She began coughing and then opened her eyes and looked about wildly. As she started screaming Brandi pulled her up and held her tightly.

“You’re gonna be fine, sweetheart,” Brandi told her as she rocked her.

She could hear sirens in the distance and moments later paramedics arrived. Brandi let them take charge of the girl and started to walk away, coughing violently.

“Miss we need to check you out,” one of the paramedics said. “You’ve got some nasty burns there and smoke inhalation from the sound of that cough.”

Brandi turned, her eyes catching sight of a news van pulling up.

“I’ll be fine, you just take care of the girl,” she said, and started towards her friends.

“Wait please!” the paramedic pleaded. “At least give me your name. She should know who she owes her life to.”

“She doesn’t owe me a thing,” Brandi smiled.

The paramedic watched as the beautiful blonde walked away, shaking his head. A short distance away, Agents Reynolds and Blake watched as well.

“Do we take her?” Blake asked.

Reynolds gave him a withering look, “Do you want to die? She’d tear us into little pieces. We report in and wait for orders.”

Brandi did not argue at all when Melissa and Karen had her lean on them for the walk back to the house. Her feet were cut and blistered, as were her arms and legs. Her pajamas were scorched and totally ruined.

“Damn, and these are my favorites,” Brandi said as she looked at her pajamas.

“So do you need to take a nap?” Melissa asked as they had entered living room.

“No but I need to sit down, my feet are killing me,” Brandi said. “Could you get me some towels so I don’t ruin the couch?”

“Fuck the couch, sit down,” Melissa said.

“I’m sorry I took off like that but there was no time,” Brandi said as she dropped onto the couch, legs splayed wide.

“Ahem, young ladies, even those with third degree burns on their feet, do not sit like that,” Karen said with mock severity. Brandi stuck her tongue out and put her knees together in a more lady like fashion.

“Do you want me to get something for those burns?” Melissa asked.

“Well a couple of damp towels would feel nice,” Brandi admitted. “I’ll be fine within the hour, but they hurt like hell right now.”

Melissa disappeared into the bathroom down the hall and returned with several dampened towels. Karen had a pair of scissors and was cutting Brandi’s pants away as she returned. Once her legs were exposed, Melissa wrapped towels about them, and then wrapped her feet and arms as well, trying to be as gentle as possible. The action still caused Brandi to wince.

“I thought you could turn off pain,” Melissa said as she sat down next to her.

Brandi looked a bit guilty as she said, “I haven’t been totally honest about that. What I can control is my response to pain, and then only for a short period of time. I still feel the pain; I just don’t react to it. I was able to turn it off so I could pass through any flames without the pain bringing me down, but it’s back now, with a vengeance.”

“Well that makes sense actually,” Karen said. “Not feeling pain could lead you to aggravate an injury. Can I get you anything sweetie?”

“A beer would be heavenly,” Brandi sighed.

Karen went into the kitchen and came back with three bottles of Killian’s. Brandi took a long drink and closed her eyes for a moment.

“I have to tell you guys something else,” Brandi said, her eyes still closed. “As I went into that building, for the first time since I was transformed I knew that I could die. When I saw the flames it was like something clicked again; some part of the programming opened up and I knew that fire could kill me.”

“And you still went in,” Melissa said.

“I had to,” Brandi said. “I could hear her screaming for help…I just couldn’t stand by and let her die.”

“No you chose to go in,” Karen said. “Just like you chose to dive in and save Melissa fourteen years ago and you chose to stay behind in Iraq so your men could escape. Remember that, Brandi. That’s what makes you who you are, what makes you special; not a bunch of behavior that was programmed into you.”

“Thank you,” Brandi said. Despite her statement that she did not need rest, she was beginning to think that a little nap would not hurt.

“Why don’t you lay your head in my lap and rest,” Melissa suggested. Brandi smiled and did so, and in seconds she was sound asleep.