Altered Ch. 08 Pt. 02

They wheeled me into the room and five men surrounded me with guns drawn as a sixth and seventh unstrapped me from the dolly and hoisted me onto the X apparatus, strapping me in. I looked like Theon Greyjoy about to be castrated.

Most of the guards exited the room, leaving two as two lab-coats started attaching the EKG and other sensors all over my body. They replaced my IV with a fresh bag of drug cocktail. During this time no one said a word.

The two guards remained and stood at the ready. They were very serious and disciplined for hours, but slowly the boredom and tedium of standing still for such a long time got to them. They pointed their guns to the floor and started talking to each other. Their jokes were raunchy and their observations about the weather were meaningless. I got nothing from them.

Then they started talking about me. While astral projecting, I cannot read minds. That being the case, I still had one trick left up my sleeve. I just needed to be patient and wait for the right person.

"This is the same guy that slaughtered Charley company... Sixty of my brothers - dead! I'd be dead too, if I hadn't been on leave that day!" he snarled.

He stalked over to my body, flipping his rifle around and slamming its butt in my gut. My body let out a whooshing sound as it expelled the air in my lungs. The sensors all started going off and this set off a small alarm. He went into a frenzy slamming the butt into my ribs and face over and over, and his partner just stood by and watched.

I couldn't have felt anything even if I was in my body, since the drug cocktail they had me on was stronger than Propofol. I was also healing the wounds he was inflicting within seconds of their infliction. What he was doing was kind of pointless, unless it was cathartic.

I don't know how long he fought the futility, but eventually he got tired and sank to his knees crying. In a way I felt sorry for the guy, he lost his brothers-in-arms - his family, and that I could understand. Yet I felt no guilt for killing any of them. They came to kill my family - my mother, my girlfriends and my unborn children. Sure, they might have been lied to, but it wasn't my responsibility to convince a group of assassins to do the right thing nor was I stupid enough to think they'd believe anything I had to say anyway.

I don't know why it took so long for someone to respond to the alarm. They were probably monitoring me the whole time and didn't see him as a threat. When they finally did respond, they simply walked into the room, shot both guards, dragged their bodies out of the room and a woman in another lab coat walked in.

This woman had some clout. Unlike the other lab-coats, she actually talked and had assistants at her beck and call, awaiting orders. She was in charge. This was who I was waiting for.

"I knew it," she said, "His pheromones are affecting the males' aggressions. It's too bad, Sergeant Barnes was a good and loyal soldier."

A good a loyal soldier! It wasn't like the pheromones permanently affected them; all they needed was to be taken out of the room.

I changed my viewing angle and saw her name badge, "Dr. Kimberly Rambeau."

"What are we going to do doctor?"

"I want a rotation of female soldiers in here on the double."

"Ma'am... what about how his pheromones affect the women?"

"I'm not worried about it, Dr. Tanner, he'll make them horny... he's unconscious, they aren't going to fuck him. But just to be sure, let's put a padlock on his genitals. No one gets any without a key... K?"

"Yes doctor... Doctor? Not to question your orders, I just want to know why not use a hazmat suit or something?"

"We have a whole team of scientists on the other side of that glass. A platoon of military personnel watching him on camera at all times. I don't need anyone else looking at him through a window. He's able to create illusions for Christ's sake! I want every kind of asset looking at him at every angle possible. We can't let our guard down."

"Yes doctor."

Ataruian psionic abilities were not naturally evolved. They were genetically engineered. One thing the Ataru found out right away was that it was dangerous to combine high-leveled abilities. So, they limited the capabilities of their species to be jacks of all trades and master of one (if at all). Ataruians genetically carried all psionics but they were limited to only having one master trait.

I was not Ataruian but my psionic abilities came from them. So, the question was, how did I get a master level ability in all branches of psionics? I knew there was more to me than they had led me to believe.

Why would it be more dangerous for one person to have mastery of two psionic abilities than having two masters working together? Simple, mastery of two psionic abilities creates an even more powerful ability.

For instance, I have a mastery of puppetry, and mind manipulation, combine them together and you get possession and even cloning, which historically is an ability associated with demons, and often the subject of horror movies.

What is exactly is possession? Possession is the ability to not only control a person's body, but their mind as well as their feelings. Cloning is even worse, it's the ability to make a copy of your consciousness and memories and have it replace the host. In essence you clone your mind in other people's bodies. They are overwritten like a replaced operating system.

Someone with this ability could take over whole societies without shooting a single bullet. That's what I was currently considering doing. Sometimes you have to fight fire with fire, ask any fireman.

I hovered over her for a moment second guessing myself. Then my mind made up, my consciousness descended into her, invading her like a virus. It didn't take long to take total control. I destroyed her desire and her will became my will. It reminded me of the movie Serenity, where the population of the planet Miranda was infected by the Pax and all desire to do anything just simply died in them. 90% of the population just simply laid down and died. In much the same way, Dr Rambeau was conscious and alive in her mind but simply didn't care about anything, that is except what I willed her to do.

The shock of taking over her body and sharing her mind was tremendous. It was all I could do to keep myself from losing consciousness. Her body was weak, it felt like a struggle just to walk. Even breathing felt labored. My body was super strong, agile and all of my senses were heightened. In this body everything seems slower, weaker and not to mention I was no longer even male. I had breasts and a vagina and the shock of it was hard to get over.

I had no psychic abilities, no physical defenses, this woman would probably have had a heart attack if she ran a mile. She was in her early fifties and had let herself go over the years. I guess if I were to say I had one advantage it would be that I no longer needed to be constantly sexually repressed.

'Behave as you normally would,' I demanded. 'You were making your rounds... continue and say and do what you would normally do without revealing my presence.'

'If you say so,' was her response.

As I reviewed her memories, I synced some of them with my own. In order to keep her mind and memories separate so that we didn't merge into one, I put up walls in her mind keeping her memories from bleeding into my own. We communicated by an imaginary conversation in her mind where we faced each other stark naked and talked. I got what I wanted out of her through interrogation and she answered me through words and visions.

I saw that Dr. Rambeau was breaking in a new recruit. She was showing off, since the recruit was an old rival of hers. She was the foremost human expert on psychic abilities but there was never a case were a psychic could astral project and possess someone so they were not prepared for it. Normally psychics could not use their abilities while in a coma like state. Dr. Rambeau was arrogant, and believed that she didn't need a PND. She believed me harmless and all of her instruments, monitors and staff psychics would protect her from anything I had to offer.

"Are you OK doctor?" a worried Dr. Tanner stared at me.

'Tell her that your stomach was feeling a little queasy but you're OK now,' I demanded. She did.

"Do you want to postpone this while you take a rest?"

"No, I have too many things on my calendar as it is, this is the only day I have for this... So, if you don't mind," she relayed.

Actually, I fed her a guideline of what to say and she elaborated. That was good because if she didn't speak with her own words and tone I would easily be found out. In a way, she was my puppet, except that I was using her mind not just her body.

We walked down a few corridors to an elevator. There were no other experiments on my floor. They thought me so dangerous that all of the other rooms were filled with military personnel and technicians. We dropped down three floors into sub-basement level 14.

When we arrived, we were met with two guards that held up PNDs for us to put on.

"I won't be needing that today, Roger. We're only observing, besides there are no psychics on this floor."

"Yes, ma'am but procedure..." Rodger tried to protest.

"Listen, Rodger, I have a headache and don't want to wear that device right now. But I'll tell you what. Dr. Tanner will wear one and I'll sign whatever waiver you want to cover your butt, OK?"

"Ma'am, that won't be necessary," he said, rethinking questioning the boss. He then tried to be friendly again and said, "You're right Ma'am, there are no psychics on this floor... I don't know why they have us make everyone wear one of these. You're the boss..." he said smiling.

"I AM the boss, aren't I?" she asked suddenly and sarcastically.

"Ye, Yes Ma'am!" he answered quickly.

I questioned why she said that, and she answered, 'Because, it's what I would have said... You asked me to act normal.'

She did seem to be a snarky bitch before and from the guard's reaction this seemed to be expected behavior from her. I internally shrugged and accepted it. Besides, I saw that there was a catch phrase that she was to use if she was ever compromised by a psychic and she hadn't used it to warn him or anyone. She didn't care one way or the other to warn anyone.

We were escorted down the hall until we reached what turned out to be an observation room. There was a technician monitoring a bunch of readouts and watching different camera angles of a creature on the other side of a one-way mirror.

"This is subject 11375," she began.

I was shown visions of Corrileans from her memory. They were computer simulations constructed from sample DNA. The Corrilean were a scaly amphibian humanoid race. Their scales were soft like a snake and very colorful. They had six appendages two of which were equivalent to arms, and the four lower appendages appeared to be legs. Their feet were webbed and their hands evolved to have fingers with opposable thumbs. They, like humans, were the first creatures on their planet to use tools and over the centuries dominated their planet. They were not bipedal like humans, but they did not use their "hands" to move on land, instead their flexible spinal columns allowed them to bend and raise their upper torsos up, making them look much like how you would imagine a centaur would. In the water, they were agile and fast and they moved more like a sea lion than a fish. They quickly dominated their planet because they could live in water and air and didn't need boats to explore. With the use of tools, such as spears and tridents they quickly became the apex predator and with their intelligent minds, they eventually moved on and evolved their technology and eventually took to space travel.

The Pax on the other hand were insectoids, and they, like the Corrileans, had six appendages, the upper two evolved into hands to use tools. But that's where their similarities ended. The Pax looked more like praying mantis and being insectoids, they had exoskeletons. The Pax were not amphibious but they did have wings and thus did not need boats to explore and dominate their planet either.

"... It is a creature, we engineered as a cross between a Corrilean and Pax," she said proudly, both to Dr. Tanner and myself. "We have no living Corrilean or Pax subjects. All that we know of them are from the deceased remains we found in crash sites, and from whatever we could glean from the leftover debris."

The hybrid creature was, in a word, "ugly". It looked like something out of a nightmare. With spines projecting out of its body and a misshapen head that looked like someone had beaten it with a bat. Nature and natural selection tend to make things beautiful, this thing looked like something someone scrambled together in a blender.

"The creature is an example of what NOT to do when gene editing," she went on. "It has no purpose or evolutionary advantage and is effectively braindead. We keep it alive in an incubator and study it. It's scheduled to be destroyed in thirty days so get all you can out of it while it's still around."

"Yes, Doctor."

'Do I share DNA with them too?' I asked.

'Yes,' she said simply, not elaborating.

'For what purpose?' I queried.

'The Corrileans sequences gave you the ability to grow gills. Within your neck are slits in the skin that are camouflaged so well that you'd need and MRI to notice they were there. The Corrileans also gave you the ability to switch between being warm and cold blooded. The intention was to give you the ability to survive in more varied environments. Since it would be next to impossible to find a planet like ours it is cheaper to change our bodies to suit the target planet than it would to terraform it.'

'OK... what about the Pax?' I asked.

'We originally wanted to give you wings like the Pax, but after much experimentation it was deemed impossible without altering most of your physiology. Other than increasing the efficiency of your eyes and ears, the PAX also changed your brain. There is a small part of your brain that looks a lot like a pituitary gland that comes from them... but we don't know its purpose. We do see that your brain operates more efficiently than a human's so we kept it as is.'

"Your first task is to finish off all reports on this subject before it is destroyed," she continued, giving Dr. Tanner more orders.

They continued talking back and forth about job specifics, rules and expectations while I simultaneously queried her mind.

'How many species am I mixed with?' I asked.

'Ten,' she answered, and continued without prompting this time, 'We took the best traits of the strongest aliens that visited this planet. Although, Ataru have the ability to shape shift, they also are Hermaphroditic. Actually, that isn't entirely accurate, they are able to change their sex at will and don't have both sets of sexual organs like a hermaphrodite. The closest thing comparable in nature is called Sequential Hermaphroditism, however this usually occurs once in a lifetime not at will.

'Most highly evolved beings have the ability to either shape shift or camouflage themselves. Your ability to shapeshift came from the Irieh, a shapeless formless non humanoid creature. You, unlike some of the other hybrids, are not able to change your sex. We actually thought that was a flaw but it turns out, you do have an evolutionary advantage of being able to reproduce with any other species...'

'Can't the Ataru do the same thing?'

'Yes, but the Ataru do a true blending and sharing of DNA, each pairing gets half the traits of the mother and half the father, where the Ataru are missing chromosomes, they are able to duplicate, where the other species is missing chromosomes the Ataru don't contribute. So the children look like the host species... this is why Human/Ataru hybrids look Human. The exception to this, is that for some reason the Ataru are also able to pass on one chromosome that gives them psionic abilities. We think this chromosome was artificial in that they gene edited themselves with it, it did not evolve naturally.

'YOU on the other hand - your species rather - tend to not only share existing traits but also fill in missing chromosomes, so that your children stay closer to your species rather than the host species, thus you are able to produce more of your kind by mating with any other species...'

'You mean I could mate with a bird and produce more of my kind?' I asked sarcastically.

'Well, yes and no... first of all that species would need to have a similar way of reproducing. Obviously, you couldn't mate with a tree. A bird lays eggs and your offspring would still need to be in a womb until they were large enough... If there were a way for you to physically mate with a bird then yes you might fertilize an egg and produce a viable zygote. If the egg is too dissimilar it might not take. But even if it did the zygote wouldn't be able to survive naturally... Which takes me to my next point.'

'There's more?' I asked, already in disbelief.

'Not only can you make more of your kind via any other species, but your sperm also act as a virus that genetically alters your mates. The altering does not fully change them into one of your species but their genetic code is changed so that their bodies would grow wombs receptive to reproducing your kind. For some species, such an alteration would kill them; this hypothetical bird you are talking about would most likely die since the rest of its body wouldn't be compatible with a mammalian womb... Not to mention the fact that it wouldn't likely survive growing a large humanoid in such a small body. You'd need a bird as large as a mythical Roc or Griffin to be able to bear a child your size. Not only that but if they did survive the process, they would no longer be able to reproduce their own kind. We aren't even sure if they can reproduce with their own kind at all...'

'What do you mean by that?'

'We know that you contribute extra chromosomes, like a fill-in-the-gap...'

'Yeah I get that...'

'What we don't know is whether or not the altered person is able to do the same. You see all of their eggs are changed to have these extra chromosomes after their alteration is complete. So, a human having sex with an altered human... Well we haven't studied or even had a viable candidate to study until recently.'

'That's pretty fucked up... I basically ruin their reproductive systems... How do you know all of this?'

'You weren't the first of your kind, just the most successful. Most of your kind either were killed or went insane and killed themselves.'

'Most?'

'Yes well, one did escape...'

'You mean there is an insane version of me running around?' and she nodded.

I couldn't think of anything to myself without her hearing me...

'When your father found out that you were producing an all new species and not Ataru hybrids, he wanted to get rid of you. Your father isn't a racist he's a speciesist. He didn't care about looks or skin color or national origin; he only cared about whether or not you were his species. But his termination order was overridden by some higher ups in the Organization (Illuminati). They thought you might have potential, after all you were pretty much perfect in every way - at least for what THEY wanted.'

I knew there was more to this so I continued questioning her.

'Nigel must have known that I wasn't going to be Ataru, so what did he want from me?'

'He was fascinated with your species' ability to genetically edit other organisms. But he wanted to find a way for his own species to do the same by altering Human DNA in the same way that you do. There are seven billion humans here, so if he could produce more Ataru without diluting them any further, then they would have a chance of survival. Ataru hybrids are much like a chimpanzee in that they have 24 chromosomes, and through continual mating with humans we have successfully reproduced that extra chromosome 90% of the time, but lately, the Ataru have been losing this extra chromosome. The rate of offspring retaining the extra chromosome has been dropping exponentially. This is why there has been so much incest lately. The hybrid race is predicted to become completely extinct in three or four generations if they continue to be diluted.'