Quarantine

Peter Smith’s eyes fluttered open to a totally different world.

His thoughts, sluggish and barely strung together made speech difficult. Eventually he managed to spit out a weak “Where…?”

He gazed around himself and saw a hospital bed, his hands and legs tightly secured with brass laundry-pins, and the sides of the bed were up. There were walls of thick plastic all around him, like a strange tent. His head ached, and when he tried to think of how he had gotten there…nothing.

The last thing he recalled was the taste of Chinese food, his children making a stupid joke and him chuckling along, pretending to have gotten it. His wife had come home, he had greeted her with a kiss and…

His body felt strange. He wasn’t just tired, there was a strange heat that burned away inside him. Feverishly hot. He felt weaker in his limbs, but also…smoother? His skin felt soft, and so very sensitive. There was also a strange ache from within his body, a strange feeling that was utterly alien to him. He felt empty. And wet.

Two figures, both of them wearing what looked like spacesuits, peered through a clear window in the plastic. Though their faces were hidden by the visors and masks, Pete got the sense that they were judging him.

On the other side of the plastic, the two CDC members were quietly taking note of the changes that had overcome Peter Smith in a short period of time. Whatever the virus was, it was harsher on men than it was on women. A janitor at Dr Smith’s clinic had contracted the disease and died within hours, while Peter Smith had gone into a coma, bounced back from the brink of ****, and began to slowly change into something that startled those observing.

—
Jack couldn’t say how long he had been in the tiny, white room. Things had been a bit of a blur since Dr Smith had revealed her condition to them and alerted her friends at the CDC. Men in hazmat suits had come and shepherded them into a white with blacked out windows and then brought them to what seemed to be a hospital of some kind.

They had separated Jack from his mother, and despite his protests and demands to see her, none of the small army of doctors and nurses had paid him any mind. What they had done was draw blood, swab the inside of his mouth, and even suggested that he cum into a cup for them. He had tried to refuse that, but when they talked about extracting the semen in a more mechanical way, he relented.

So, he paced about his room, going slowly mad. And it was in the midst of pacing that the door buzzed open and a weary looking man in a business suit entered. His jacket had been removed, and his tie looked a little loose and tucked in his arm was a tablet of sorts, but when his thin, lined face looked at Jack he offered a smile that seemed genuine.

“Mr Rayson,” he said, strolling across the room. He stuck out his hand, and Jack, surprised into the defensive, shook it. "I’m Dr Linker. I’m one of the ringleaders here at this circus and I’m here to tell you about a little pickle we find ourselves in."

“Where’s my Mom?”

Linker nodded. “Within the building, safe,” he took out his tablet, opened an app, and the device showed what seemed to be live camera footage of his mother in a room not too different from his own. She sat on a cot, a book in her hands and a tent beneath the hospital gown she now wore. “Satisfied?” He didn’t wait for Jack’s answer, “we’ll get back to her in a minute, because right now we have more pressing concerns. I don’t think you’re an unintelligent young man, so I’ll cut to the chase. There’s a disease going around, new strain. Your mother was patient zero.”

Jack wasn’t surprised, though his pulse quickened just a tad.

“This disease,” Linker continued, “when you break it down it’s actually almost entirely unheard of. The creation of new cells is one thing, but entirely new, functional organs?Mammals don’t work that way, the human body isn’t designed for it. And yet…here we are.”

“Sure, it’s weird,” Jack agreed, “but why are you going through all this? Every doctor and nurse I’ve seen over the last few days has been covered head to toe like we’re sick with some kind of flesh eating virus.”

The older man smiled faintly. “Trust me, that would be far more straightforward,” he sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “This virus doesn’t just cause women to grow male genitalia. It’s quite deceptive, really. Do you recall Dr Barbara Smith when you last spoke?”

“Yeah. She was shook up, worried. But I didn’t see what happened to her after your guys showed up.”

Linker inhaled sharply, released. He took out his tablet again, flicked across the screen and brought up another video. “This is Dr Smith at present.”

The footage showed a room identical to the one Jack was in, the same that his mother was, though what drew his attention was its occupant. The formally buttoned up, monotoned Dr Smith was completely naked, her breasts having grown another size and her body now almost Amazonian in its level of fitness, her biceps, her thighs and stomach hardened with muscle. Around her the bed was overturned, the sheets flung about, and the now hermaphrodite’s face was twisted in a snarl of inhuman madness as she furiously jerked the length of her rigid cock. Cum had splattered about, glistening in the camera feed.

“We think it’s an increase of hormones, pushes the sex drive into critical mass. There was no warning, just seemed to snap one moment while a nurse was taking her bloods. The poor girl was tossed to the ground and had a load of cum down her throat by the time the guards intervened. Took three men to restrain her.”

Jack said nothing. He was stunned.

“Between those infected at the clinic, and their close contacts, we’ve had to bring in forty two very sick people. Twenty of those were women, and each of them to the last woman has undergone a transformation identical to Dr Smith here. Starts with stomach pain, cramping that might be mistaken for really bad indigestion, followed by spontaneous grow of phallus and testes. Shortly thereafter a mental degradation happens, and they’re left as deranged, feral, and sexually aggressive.”

A horrible wave of fear came over Jack and he found that he had to lean against the cell wall to steady himself. “And…the men?”

Linker was silent for several heartbeats. He was looking at Jack calmly, even compassionately. “Seventeen of them grew very ill, very fast. The virus brings about cellular mutation and an **** hormonal shift, the sudden influx of chemical flooding the body…” he paused, made a dismissive motion, “the long and short of it is they underwent cardiac arrest. They’re gone.”

Jack did the math, his mind **** for any tiny shred of hope. “But the five others?”

“They went through their own change,” There was disgust on the man’s face, and deep contempt that spoke to a number of things Jack couldn’t begin to discern. “The virus, as it turns out, goes both ways. Women find themselves growing a cock and balls, and the small few who survive the initial fever get a sudden influx of antiandrogens and testosterone blockers. Muscle mass and body hair diminishes, penis size goes down, they take on a more feminine appearance. But the big thing is what goes on inside. They develop a womb, ovaries, eggs, all of it. We have no idea how insemination would be possible, because there isn’t a visible vagina, but for all intents and purposes they became hermaphrodites in the other direction.”

Like thick and noxious smoke, tension filled the room. Linker put his tablet aside and leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees, hands making a little pyramid of which he stared over at Jack. “We have run every test known to man on you, Jack. And you know what we found? Not only are you not symptomatic…you’re clean. You spent days alone and in close proximity to sick people, and there is no virus in your system. Your body killed it, somehow. You’re perfectly immune, and we really need to know why, and then if possible find a way to replicate that immunity.”

Jack felt as though he were on trial for his life. “I don’t know why. But aren’t you guys the professionals, haven’t you figured something out?!”

“The most likely theory we have is that you have a unique genetic structure inherited from your mother,” he tapped the device he brought with him. “Which would also explain why she has thus far not experienced the same level of mental degradation that every other woman has.”

“Can I see her?” He asked, desperately.

“Maybe,” Linker pushed himself up and stared at Jack with something that might have been pity. “But I suggest you make yourself comfortable and cooperative. You’re going to be here for a while.”