The Electrical Black Widow serum entered my bloodstream warm enough that, for perhaps two heartbeats, I thought something had gone wrong with the synthesis.
Then my body tried to become something else all at once.
I collapsed beside the laboratory bench before I could put the injector down properly. Heat raced from my arm into my chest, spine and abdomen, followed by a pressure so deep that it felt less like pain and more like my entire skeleton had become too large for the body wrapped around it. My muscles seized. My jaw locked. My fingers clawed uselessly against the steel floor while my hips shifted beneath me with a grinding series of internal cracks.
I had designed the serum to replace the rabbit architecture aggressively rather than slowly suppress it. On a screen, that had looked elegant. Competing gene expression would be overwhelmed by several mutually supporting systems, while regeneration kept the host alive long enough for the new structure to establish itself.
On the floor, it meant my body was being dismantled while I was still inside it.
My femurs lengthened first. I could feel the pressure inside the bones as old tissue broke down and new growth pushed outward, forcing tendons and muscle attachments to follow. My pelvis widened, rotated and rebuilt toward adult human proportions. Vertebrae shifted one after another, each movement sending another white burst through my vision while the muscles along my back tore, healed and tore again because the skeleton underneath them refused to stop changing.
I screamed until my throat hurt. Somewhere beneath Arcadia, something noticed.
The Matriarch's presence slid against the edges of my mind like a hand feeling along the outside of a locked door. It was weaker than before, perhaps because pain had reduced my thoughts to fragments, but I still recognized the emotions that weren't mine. Curiosity. Hunger. Excitement.
She could feel me changing. That realization was almost enough to distract me.
Almost.
Leona: "Stay... out..."
The pressure withdrew slightly, but it didn't disappear. It remained there, distant and attentive, while the laboratory monitor i plug myself to got filled with warnings.
BLACK WIDOW SERUM
ACTIVE EXPRESSION PHASE
REGENERATIVE CASCADE: ACTIVE
SKELETAL RECONSTRUCTION: CRITICAL
NEURAL REMAPPING: CRITICAL
CARDIAC LOAD: CRITICAL
HOST CONSCIOUSNESS: UNSTABLE
Accurate. I lost consciousness less than a minute later.
There wasn't a dramatic fade. One moment I was curled around myself, trying not to bite through my tongue while my legs lengthened beneath me, and the next moment simply didn't exist. When awareness returned, I was already screaming again and had no idea whether I'd been gone for five seconds or five minutes.
My clothes had begun losing the argument with my body.
The shirt split across my shoulders as my torso widened. The trousers tore along the thighs and hips. The armor I'd built for a one-meter rabbit body became actively dangerous as straps tightened around a frame that was rapidly outgrowing them. One plate pressed painfully beneath my ribs until I found enough coordination to hook my fingers under the fastening and pull.
The buckle bent instead of opening. I stared at it through tears.
That was new.
I tore the armor away and let the remains of my clothes follow it. There wasn't much choice. By the time my body finished growing, nothing made for the rabbit version of me was going to fit, and keeping fabric wrapped around a body that was changing shape by the second seemed like an excellent way to injure myself for no useful reason.
I was naked within another minute.
There was nothing erotic about it. I was lying in blood, sweat and clumps of white rabbit fur while my anatomy rebuilt itself around adult human proportions. My chest broadened as my ribs changed, and the endocrine replacement restored the body I'd had before the accident rather than preserving the childlike compactness of the dwarf hybrid. My breasts developed back into normal adult proportions as skin, connective tissue and underlying muscle reorganized together. My waist lengthened, my abdomen flattened into the proportions I'd chosen, and my hips widened into a human female pelvis capable of supporting the height I wanted back.
It wasn't an idealized statue. It was me, or as close to me as I could reconstruct while also quietly inserting enough biological weaponry to make a government classification officer choke on their clipboard.
My rabbit ears began disappearing next.
That was the part I'd imagined enjoying.
I didn't.
Cartilage softened beneath my hands and began collapsing inward. The long ears shortened while tissue was reabsorbed and human-shaped ears rebuilt lower against my skull. Every nerve remained active through the process, so I could feel parts of my ears that no longer physically existed while new sensation established itself somewhere else.
I blacked out again.
When I woke, my cheek was against the cold floor and blood had dried along one side of my face. I reached upward with a shaking hand.
Human ear. I touched the other. Human.
For several seconds I forgot the rest of the pain.
Leona: "Gone."
I laughed weakly. Then my jaw cracked and the laughter became another scream.
My canine teeth lengthened while reinforced roots and venom channels formed beneath them. Glands swelled under my jaw, uncomfortable pressure building until a bitter metallic taste flooded my mouth. One side of my tongue went numb almost immediately.
Leona: "Greatsh... dosagesh problem."
I spat blood and venom onto the floor. The venom not making effect too long in my organist. Two useful notes for later, assuming there was a later.
A shout echoed somewhere above me, muffled by concrete, steel and distance, but unmistakable.
Kira: "LEONA!"
I couldn't see the entrance from where I was. I couldn't see Kira, the GHCA officers or whatever was happening around the hatch. All I had were distorted voices carried through Arcadia's corridors and the occasional vibration traveling through the structure.
I tried to answer her. The serum reached my spine before I could.
Four points of pressure formed beneath the muscles of my back, two higher near the shoulder blades and two lower along the reinforced thoracic region. I knew exactly what they were because I'd designed them myself, but knowing did very little to help when my brain suddenly began receiving signals from limbs that did not physically exist yet.
Four phantom appendages appeared in my awareness. They weren't imagined. They were present.
I could feel joints that hadn't finished growing. I could feel their orientation relative to my spine. My nervous system had connected before the structures themselves emerged, which produced the deeply unpleasant sensation of possessing four limbs trapped inside my own body.
Then the first one forced its way out.
My consciousness shattered.
I came back halfway through the second.
Black chitin pushed through an opening in my back while regeneration closed living tissue around its root. The first limb had already unfolded against the floor, slick with blood and clear fluid. A third followed. Then the fourth.
The wounds opened and healed almost simultaneously, which would have been comforting if the new structures hadn't still been forcing themselves through them.
One of the limbs struck the floor hard enough to dent the metal. I hadn't consciously moved it. I had simply wanted support, and the new neural architecture had understood.
For a few seconds I forgot to scream.
Another limb planted itself beside me, followed by a third, and suddenly part of my weight was being supported by appendages I'd possessed for less than a minute.
Electricity snapped from one tip.
Blue-white light flashed across the laboratory floor before the charge vanished into Arcadia's grounding system.
I felt where it went. Not metaphorically. I actually felt the electrical path beneath me, the current racing through conductive material and dispersing into the facility infrastructure. Every powered object nearby became a faint presence at the edge of my awareness.
Then my vision vanished.
Leona: "No... no, no..."
Darkness.
Pressure built behind my eyes while the optic nerves and retinal structures rebuilt themselves. I could still sense electricity, which somehow made being blind worse because the room continued existing around me in a language I didn't yet understand.
Then vision came back.
The laboratory was dark, but darkness no longer meant what it had before. Shapes remained sharp where ordinary human sight would have lost them, and the powered machinery carried faint electrical signatures overlaid against what I saw. My surviving spider drone was visible as more than metal and movement. I could sense the battery, the motors, the little river of current flowing through its circuits.
Leona: "...cool."
That was all I managed before Arcadia shook.
Something hit containment below, and the psychic presence slammed into me immediately afterward.
For an instant I felt burning that wasn't mine, electrical pain passing through flesh that regenerated almost as quickly as it was damaged. Then came rage, followed by an enormous pulse of hunger and something disturbingly close to recognition.
Spider. Regeneration. Electricity. Not the same, but close enough to interest her.
The laboratory monitor updated.
AUXILIARY CONTAINMENT RESERVE: 13%
CONTAINMENT LOAD: CRITICAL
Thirteen percent. It had been fourteen before I injected myself, and I had no idea how long I'd been unconscious.
That frightened me.
Above, Kira shouted again, followed by a man's voice I couldn't understand clearly.
Kira: "She's screaming!"
Another answer echoed down.
Kira: "Then fucking move!"
I closed my eyes for a second.
Leona: "Idiot."
I loved that idiot.
My muscles began rebuilding before I could enjoy the thought.
The feline sequences weren't designed to make me visibly enormous. I wanted human proportions, not a body that announced combat enhancement from across a parking lot. Strength came from density, reinforced connective tissue, altered fiber arrangement and faster neural response.
Unfortunately, all of those things still had to be built. Muscles contracted hard enough to lift parts of me from the floor. Fibers tore and reformed around stronger attachment points. Tendons thickened. My shoulders and back gained enough structure to support the four additional limbs without ruining the external human silhouette. My legs filled out around the longer bones, still recognizably human but carrying far more strength than their appearance suggested.
Then my abdomen seized and I vomited beside the bench. The blackout afterward was longer.
When I woke again, I'd moved. One of my new limbs had apparently dragged me several feet away from the vomit while I was unconscious.
Leona: "Good instincts."
The limb twitched. Probably not because it understood praise.
Probably. Maybe it was Six.
Above me came a sharp pneumatic crack. I froze as another followed.
Not gunfire. Compressed launchers. Tranquilizer darts.
Kira.
I couldn't see anything happening outside, but I knew my sister well enough to construct the missing pieces.
She had tried to get through. The Authority had tried to stop her, and they had made the mistake of assuming one dart would settle the matter.
A heavy impact reverberated through the corridor overhead, followed by overlapping voices and Kira yelling loudly enough that even the concrete couldn't completely swallow it.
Kira: "GET THE FUCK OFF ME!"
Another launcher fired. Something scraped hard against stone, someone shouted an order, and a third hiss followed almost immediately.
I couldn't tell if that made three total or if I'd missed some while unconscious.
GHCA Officer: "She's still moving!"
The answer from another officer was too distorted to understand.
Kira's wasn't.
Kira: "I'M A FUCKING LAMIA!"
I laughed. It hurt, but I laughed anyway.
A fourth tranquilizer launched. Then a fifth.
The voices above became more frantic, though I could make out only fragments now. Someone called for additional restraints. Someone else shouted about dosage. Something heavy struck the wall hard enough to send dust drifting from the ceiling above me.
The commander apparently reconsidered several career choices. I couldn't see his face, of course.
I didn't need to.
Another pneumatic crack echoed through Arcadia.
Kira's answer was weaker this time. Still furious. Still Kira.
Kira: "You... don't... get to take her..."
Then the Black Widow serum attacked my heart.
My new electrical perception made the failure impossible to miss.
The rapid rhythm inside my chest simply stopped.
Silence.
My eyes widened.
Leona: "No."
I tried to breathe, but the rest of the body was already starving for circulation. The edges of my vision darkened while regeneration surged toward the failing cardiac tissue.
One heartbeat. Nothing.
Then a violent contraction struck my chest. Another followed several seconds later, and the third came fast enough to establish a rhythm.
My heart restarted with enough force that I collapsed flat onto my back.
I lost consciousness again.
When I returned, I could hear several people shouting above me, followed by the unmistakable grinding scrape of something extremely heavy being dragged across metal.
Kira wasn't shouting anymore. For a moment I thought something had happened to her.
Then I heard a weak, slurred voice.
Kira: "Le... ona..."
Alive. Drugged beyond reason, but alive. My throat tightened.
There had been at least five tranquilizer shots that I'd heard, probably more while I was unconscious, and she'd still kept trying to reach me.
Cruel little sister. Pointy-eared asshole. Still came running when I screamed.
I pushed one shaking hand against the floor.
Leona: "I'm here."
She couldn't hear me, but it still felt important to say.
The voices above shifted. There was more scraping, more commands, several people apparently attempting to move something that did not want to be conveniently shaped.
Then I understood. Kira had gone down near the entrance.
If she had collapsed across the narrow access path, several hundred kilograms of unconscious lamia were now between the Authority and me.
A strange laugh escaped me.
Leona: "Good job, idiot."
The Matriarch touched my mind again, harder. That laughter disappeared instantly.
For perhaps two seconds the laboratory vanished beneath a vision that wasn't mine. Darkness. Webbing. A body too large for the space around it. Thousands of smaller presences pressing close to one central mind. Hunger moving through all of them like circulation through one enormous organism.
Then a human memory flashed beneath it.
White lights. Hands holding someone down. A woman's scream. Needles. Cold. Fear. HUNGER.
The image broke apart before I could understand it.
I came back on the floor with tears running down my face.
Leona: "You're not getting in."
Whether I meant my mind or the laboratory, I wasn't sure.
The containment system beeped again.
AUXILIARY CONTAINMENT RESERVE: 12%
I stared at it.
Twelve.
The serum's violent phase was finally beginning to slow, although slow was relative. My skeleton had reached its final proportions. My human external phenotype had stabilized. The remaining changes were becoming finer rather than larger: nervous-system integration, sensory calibration, toxin resistance, electrocyte regulation, muscle reinforcement and regeneration controls settling into balance.
I pushed myself upright, and four spider limbs moved with me. For the first time they didn't feel attached. They felt mine.
The distinction was subtle and enormous.
I planted two against the floor and used them to support myself while my normal legs tried to remember what human height felt like. I rose too quickly, overbalanced and nearly fell, but another limb caught the floor before conscious thought reached it.
I stood. Actually stood.
The laboratory looked smaller. I looked down at myself.
Adult height again. Human legs. Human feet. Human hands. A human torso and face. My breasts and hips had returned with the rest of my adult female proportions rather than the compact juvenile build imposed by the dwarf conversion. There was no fur anywhere I could see, no rabbit ears, no visible sign of the body the hospital had forced on me.
My skin was pale beneath streaks of blood. White hair hung past my face, wet with sweat. My eyes reflected red from the dark monitor, though there was something brighter behind them now, a faint electrical intensity I hadn't possessed before.
I touched my face. Mine. Not exactly the old one, but mine anyway.
My hand lowered as the claws extended. Four black spider limbs unfolded behind me, and electricity crawled between two of their tips.
I smiled.
Then the entire facility shook hard enough to interrupt the moment. The lights flashed, and containment alarms multiplied.
Below me, the Matriarch pressed herself against whatever Arcadia had used to hold her for almost three decades, and through the psychic connection I felt thousands of smaller things begin to move with her.
Above me, the Authority was still trying to get around my unconscious sister.
I was naked, covered in blood, exhausted enough that standing felt ambitious, and still learning where four additional limbs ended.
But I was alive. That had been the first requirement.
The monitor dropped again.
AUXILIARY CONTAINMENT RESERVE: 11%
Eleven percent.
I looked toward the scattered remains of my clothes, armor, backpack and Dad's bent staff.
Leona: "Right."
The rabbit was gone.
Now I needed to survive.