Altered Ch. 03

"You don't happen to be shapeshifting secret experiment escapees by any chance?" I probed, when she turned white it confirmed my suspicions.

"Yes, and we are never going back there... EVER," she shouted.

"Woah, chill out, I would never dream of it," I defended. "No one knows where I am. How did you find me?"

"We followed you here - well, sort of. We figured this is where you would go anyway."

"I have other people to protect so I need to know what you know. Tell me all about who you are, why you are here and start from the beginning."

"OK fine. What do you know about us?"

"I don't KNOW anything. I was told through someone I don't trust that you were designed and raised in a lab. You are mentally unstable and you hate humans... you were the alpha prototype from which I was based."

"Wow, who told you all of that garbage?" she asked, looking insulted.

"Some asshole who calls himself my father."

"What does your father look like?" she asked suddenly, looking nervous.

"He is tall, about 6'5 270 lbs., thinning brown hair..."

"Oh my god, that is Father," she gasped. "He was a horrible brutish man!"

She looked to be introspective and wanted to cry.

"Yeah, I believe it, he used to beat my mother and he fed me a bunch of garbage in an email about this and that. I have no idea if what he told me was true, can I hear your side of the story?"

*******

Story of 11645

My first memory was in a cage like a large dog crate. There were 10 of us at that time, I was the youngest of the 10 and our cages were literally stacked on top of each other, no better than monkeys in a lab. Every day we were poked and prodded, injected with various substances, evaluated and analyzed.

We were like beasts, we knew no language, no love, we weren't allowed to play or even touch each other. We had no shape, we were like Roswell aliens, we had a human skeletal outline but with no real discernable features. Our skin was a light grey, eyes were slits and all black pupils, bodies were smooth and hairless - no eyebrows, nose was flat like an Eskimo, our hands were slender and we were emaciated like dogs on the street. All of us had female genitalia reminiscent of human vaginas, it may have been a path of least resistance since we had no template to derive ourselves.

There were no mirrors and all we ever saw were masked humans. We faced a translucent and opaque wall, kind of like quartz. They never talked to us nor looked at us, other than to observe various effects their latest compounds might have had, using gloved hands.

Some days they would take us into special rooms where they would perform tests on us. They cut into us and patched us back together. We healed fast and learned to take more and more pain. We were just more throwaway experiments to them.

One day things changed drastically, the eldest of us was raped by a technician and found that she could change her form to match her rapist. She formed overnight, I guess the security must have been lax because they didn't discover her until the next morning, fully changed. They thought she was the technician so they let her out of her cage and went on a 'man' hunt for the missing experiment. She made it as far as sickbay before she was discovered, rather than go back to her cage she went wild and killed four and injured many more before she was 'put down'.

All of the sudden interest in us peeked, they must have found some worth in us and so they actually started taking care of us. A Jane Goodall-type name Shayla came to visit us and teach us how to speak, read, and write. We were given rooms and taught how to take care of ourselves. The experiments didn't stop but all of the sudden we could speak and inform them of what we were experiencing and we were right up there with animals in our importance.

We learned quickly and given names; well numbers really but to us they were names. I was number 11645 and I guess that is the number of previous beings they created and threw away before me. We were tested over and over, they wanted us to change our forms but we did not know how and for a long time none of us could. Finally, one of us was able to change into the form of Shayla and we were all put under quarantine until they could decipher how this happened.

It turned out that obtaining a genetic sample was the key; swapping spit, sex, licking and - we learned later - consumption all did the trick. They started bringing us genetic samples from saliva concoctions of various people and we were forced to form into these various samples. They learned that we could change between male and female and once we learned one form we could always form into it again.

We had no concept of time at first. They tried to teach us but we were never allowed to see outside. We had no clocks and there was no night or day in the lab, only florescent lighting. I couldn't say how much time it was until Nigel Thompson took over but I was probably in my 20s by then and on that day, things went from bad to worse.

Nigel Thompson was the worst kind of sadist. He didn't just like to cause pain but liked to invent ways to bring it to that next level. We have no idea how he got his job but I'm pretty sure what he did wasn't in his job description. He made Mengele seem like a pussy.

The first day on the job he introduced himself to us and told us we had some exciting things to do the next day. Each one of us was to morph themselves into a woman or they would be punished.

The next day four of the nine morphed into males and the other five obeyed. Nigel was delighted that four of us showed such spunk. He immediately had them strapped to a medieval torturing device; it would slowly stretch your arms and your legs out until they got ripped from your body. He had the device set to go really slow so that it would last until well after noon. With our healing factors some unusual things happened; their bodies tried to heal while still being ripped apart, this cause their arms to become elongated and warped, eventually though they ripped from their bodies. He didn't just leave them to the slow pull, he would do random things to each one of them, like pour vials of acid on their genitals or slice open their eyes and pour salt in them. In every torture he recorded every result.

I don't know that the girls that cooperated were any better off, he strapped each one of them up to a special table. We were placed face down and our hands were tied behind our back, our waists and necks were shackled to the table and our ass and legs hung over the edge. Our knees were shackled to special stirrups next to where our legs hung, a chain came down from a pulley in the ceiling that hooked to our tied hands and they were slowly pulled up until they were pointing 90 degrees away from our backs, often this pulled our arms out of our sockets. Nigel then proceeded to rape each one of us. He left us there overnight and raped us again in the morning.

His sperm, it turned out, did nothing for us. When that failed he had a hundred volunteers rape us over a period of months to no avail. We were not allowed to leave the table to go back to our rooms, he just had attendants clean up after us if we pissed ourselves; we were hooked to an IV drip and fed intravenously. Every morning we were given enemas and raped. I cannot say why he kept at it, because unlike Mengele he wasn't really doing much science, just torture. He didn't have to rape us every day, he could have just artificially inseminated us, but he was consistent with the pain.

At first, the rape was the most horrible thing that ever happened but after a while we became numb to it and felt nothing and we would choose it over torture anytime. The ones whom rebelled at first quickly complied and they too were raped along with the rest.

He tried to turn us into slaves by a carrot and stick philosophy. He hooked us up to shock collars and tried to get us to obey. It kind of worked at first, the problem is that he got carried away. He put us through too much pain and eventually we learned to turn the pain off.

After trying to get us pregnant by human males he had us turn to males where he farmed our sperm. He tried to use that sperm to get human female volunteers pregnant (I assume they were anyway). This failed miserably after months of trying.

During the human trials they decided to use us for target practice. The wanted to test how well we healed from multiple gunshot wounds. They did all kinds of test with every kind of bullet from small 9mm to large .45s to shotgun pellets. They tested out hollow points and tumbling ammo and wanted to see how well we healed from bullet fragments left in after our wounds closed over. The bullet fragments it turned out made us slightly sick but our body would push them out of our system eventually; normally through the digestive system in a matter of weeks.

After the human females failed to get pregnant they decided to see if we could get each other pregnant. Nigel told us to pick one of us to volunteer to go first as if this were a reality game show. 'First? For what?' we thought, but he wouldn't say and so I ended up volunteering to go first. He pulled me aside and told me I needed to morph into a male, and he had some orderlies take me to a special cell.

The next day he took me into the 'breeding' room and all of the others were still strapped to their tables. I was given a choice, I would rape everyone there or whoever I chose not to rape would be tortured instead. I reluctantly agreed to rape them since we had all been accustomed to getting fucked on a daily basis anyway. After a month of me trying with no success, they switched us up and had someone else be the male. Month after month all of us were raped by someone within our group, and not one of us got pregnant.

This was both horrible and disappointing. On the one hand we were being forced to rape each other but on the other hand we found out that we could not procreate either, we found out we were sterile. Later the scientist noted that it wasn't that we were infertile as much as we were sterile as males. If there existed a potent male they were sure that our eggs would still be viable.

While all of this was happening, scientists would comment that they already knew that we did not produce viable sperm so they didn't understand why all of these tests were necessary. We knew why but they couldn't look past his sadism; Nigel basked in our pain.

Over the year they tried numerous experiments on us, and Nigel seemed to get bored torturing us with pain so he decided to fuck with our minds. He tried getting us to 'sample' various animal, especially apes and monkeys and have us morph into them. Once again, the scientists knew that this would not work as our DNA was made specifically to be compatible with humans, but once again we were tortured by breeding experiments with animals (I won't go into the detail, I try every day to forget it).

Later, they tried inducing lactation by messing with our hormones and hooking us up to milking machines. But we never lactated. Once again, the scientists were baffled as to why, they knew that our healing abilities were designed to resist the effects of the drugs, and so the artificial hormone levels that were supposed to trick our bodies into thinking we just had a baby would never achieve their desired effects.

Finally, one of the scientists got through to someone higher up and the torture stopped. We were allowed to sleep in our rooms again and eat food again. All nine of us decided long before that given the opportunity to run or die, we would try to run, no matter the risk. Even if we had to kill to escape. So, the calamity of our great plan to escape came to fruition one fateful day when security became lax. Later I learned it was Christmas and the staff were operating on a skeleton crew. We slaughtered 50 humans that day and seven of us were damaged beyond our healing abilities and died.

Only me and my sister managed to escape; we refused to kill anyone, we did hurt, maim, and disfigure many on our way to freedom but ultimately, we were freed by sympathizers who used the chaos to sneak us out a garbage chute where other sympathizers had an elaborate escape orchestrated for us to follow; it reminded me of the underground railroad the slaves in the south used to escape to Canada.

That was more than 20 years ago, and we have been in hiding ever since. We lived in Argentina and Brazil for most of those years, during that time we struggled to live with humans in peace. After five years in Argentina we made a lot of friends, we even took on a few lovers and adopted some kids. We were happy until one day they found us; Nigel sent a hit squad of goons to where we lived and killed our lovers and our kids. We barely escaped with our lives and fled to Brazil.

We have kept a lower profile in Brazil but last year we were found out once again and we fled to Mexico. We didn't know what to do. We got lucky that we survived the last two attacks but we couldn't keep depending on luck so we decided to find help.

*******

"We were wandering around Mexico looking for a new home for the past year, when we recently got a coded message from one of the group that helped us escape," she said, perking up with hope in her eyes. "She said her son was like us, he would protect us and we needed to find him. She gave us a list of places you might be."

She told me the whole story very monotoned and matter of fact. It was hard to believe that someone could just tell about all of the horrible things they went through without batting an eye. I didn't want to believe her, except two things stuck out: first was the fact that this all happened 20 years ago. Yeah, it was fucked up but it didn't just happen yesterday. Second, you could see the sorrow in her eyes and key indicators that she was lying were not there. That didn't mean she was telling the truth but it did get me thinking.

"Your mother said that Nigel was the one that raised you, is that true."

First my father is a drunken wife beater, then he wasn't that bad, now he's worse than Megele; I didn't know what was true about him anymore, but nothing pointed to him being a good guy so I was ready to accept their story, it was too fantastic not to be true. However, I was still skeptical and on my guard.

"Unfortunately, yes," I muttered. "He used to beat my mom and I had to kick his ass. He tried his best to make my life a living hell but upon retrospect, if what you are saying is true, then he must have had a reason not to take me back to his lab after I 'ruined' his life."

"Listen, do you both have names, because I am not calling you 11645."

"We went by many names, I suppose we have always considered our numbers our names because that is what we were given."

"Fine, I am going to name you... I think I'll give you names that can be male or female," I mused and she brightened up by this.

At that point, the other sister revealed that she had been conscious for a while by sitting up in the bed and butting in on our conversation, "What if we don't like the names you give us."

"Well, what if you do? Will you accept them?"

She appeared taken aback and after a few seconds nodded, "Yes!"

"Fine, I am going to name you Tracy, because when we first met I could only see a void where you should have been."

Surprisingly she beamed at this name and nodded in excitement to finally be given a name.

"And you, 11645, I will name you Robin, because when we first met you sang to me your life story."

And she too immediately took to the name and I saw a tear well up, she leaned up to me and kissed me on the cheek.

"I accept..." she looked at her sister and they both smiled and said, "WE accept!"

After a few minute of the girls giggling and hugging each other I sobered them up.

"Girls, I'm afraid that if what you told me is true then we need to get out of here quickly."

"Why?" Tracy asked. "We just got here, we only know where you went because of a guess. We lost track of you at El Faro Beach where we meant to meet you."

"I came over here with two companions, one is a college girl I met at the beach and the other worked for my father. If my father was as bad as you say he is then Irene has been lying to me this whole time."

"Irene? Irene Adler?" Robin asked, turning white.

"You know her?"

"She is your father's number two," Tracy said. "She came up with half of the tortures we endured. She is the one that treated us like cows. I'll kill her!"

"Listen, maybe it's not the same lady..." I said, not yet ready to kill her. "Let's confront her and find out what's going on."

"Where is she?" Robin asked.

"She is in a bar with Tanya. Look, I know you are justified in your revenge but we might need her regardless of whether she is friend or foe. You are not going to put Tanya in danger! Let me handle this."

I had all of my stuff still packed up and ready to go so we quickly left the motel. Since Tanya took her car to the bar we walked there, it was just a mile down the street.

We arrived at Diana's Bar, I wished I knew how to morph but I had to barrel into this head on. I hid my things behind a garbage bin in the alley behind the bar. I didn't want to have a shoot out and put anyone in danger so I checked the alleyway for getaways in case we need to leave in a hurry. We walked in from the back entrance through an open metal security gate.

The bar was a small joint in the midst of a bunch of shops. It really wasn't a seedy bar, there were nice benches out front where people felt comfortable enough to sit and relax. It was kind of dimly lit, the floor was a cheap white tile and behind the bar there was a nude painting of Artemis firing a bow off to the side. There was just enough room between the bar and the wall to set up a few tables-for-two against the wall.

We sat down at the bar and ordered some drinks, but we didn't see Tanya or Irene anywhere. I decided to text her, "Hey how's it going over there, you gals aren't partying too hard I hope?"

Two gruff-looking guys came in the bar, they sat down and ordered drinks. Beers. I wouldn't have thought anything of them as they had no visible gang tattoos but the barkeeper looked scared of them.

After few minutes, Irene respond with, "Hey... No, we're good, we're just finishing up! We'll head back to the motel in a few minutes."

My thumbs moved quickly, "Diana's Bar seems to be missing you, are you going to continue with this charade or are you going to tell me what the fuck is going on!"

"Ah well, I didn't think they would get to the motel in time."

"Shit," I thought, "this might get ugly quick." I spun to face Robin and Tracy.

"Girls, we got trouble. It looks like you were right about Irene, but what's worse is that she kidnapped Tanya," I said, looking around for signs of trouble.

I discreetly handed Robin my Glock.

"What are you going to do?" she asked, surprisingly at home with the gun in her hand.

"Time to be bold, they are expecting me to run. Meet me at the border crossing, If I'm not there in an hour then run."

I handed Robin a prepaid debit card I had in my wallet in case of emergencies and let her know the pin.

"That account has about 10 thousand in it, it should be enough to smuggle each of you across the border if I get captured or held up. If we do get split up meet me at Richard Walker's Pancake House in San Diego, if I'm not there within two days then find my mother, maybe she'll be able to help."

"No, we will help you!"

"I wish you could help, but if you do I am afraid this will turn into a bloodbath," I assured. "With only one target, it will be easier for me to escape and minimize the damage they will do coming after me."

I didn't know the 'girls' very well but they were my people and I felt protective of them. I gave each one a kiss on their cheeks.