Zoe, Bodysuit and Adaptive Bandage

Your eyes fluttered open, staring upwards at a white tiled ceiling. You remember chaos, your world falling apart around you, the heat that enveloped you. The silence from your hospital bed was jarring in contrast, save for the soft beeping of a pulse monitor nearby.

You didn't move for the longest time, you felt a dull soreness, but also a tingly numbness over your whole self. It felt like you were covered in some sort of salve or lotion for the burns you definitely sustained after being hurled into an explosion. But something else felt strange, you couldn't quite place your finger on it. But since you didn't move for a long while, you just rested quietly, staring upwards as you tried to work up the courage to sit up and assess your injuries.

Eventually, you lifted a hand up in front of your face. There was a dulled pain as you did so, but you were met with two surprises. The first, most obvious observation was that your hand was entirely undamaged, despite feeling like it should show clear injuries of some sort.

The second was that it wasn't your hand.

This hand was smaller, more feminine. The nails were neatly manicured and polished. There wasn't a single trace of hair on your new slender forearm.

"What...?" You started to say, but almost choked on your words. While you had definitely spoken them, the voice that came out was someone else entirely! Your more melodic voice had startled you enough to cause you to bolt upright, enduring the flash of pain you felt when you did so as you looked down at your body. Your perfectly preserved, undamaged, unburned body. But at the same time, you were looking at the unmistakable body of a woman, as two sizable breasts wriggled along your chest with your various jerky movements. You hadn't noticed them until now, but now that you were aware of the breasts, it was all you could seem to sense at all!

On instinct, your hands came to rest on the chest, as you grimaced with pain from the arm movements. Something was clearly wrong with your body in a multitude of ways, but the mixed signals were confusing as you felt not only the breasts through the hospital gown with your hands, but you could feel your hands through the breast flesh!

"Ooh, do be careful." A voice softly spoke into your ear, as you turned to look to see who was speaking at you, eyes wide like an owl as your head swiveled around, causing your neck-length brunette hair to swish around your head with an unfamiliar sensation. You recognized the voice as Dr. Zoe Hildebrand, but she was nowhere in sight. "I mean, touch all you like, but your body still will need time to recover. It'll still probably be a half hour or so before I can fully numb the pain at least."

"Where..?" You started to talk again, your voice croaking a little as you stopped once again. You couldn't be bothered to finish that sentence, but the voice seemed to get your meaning.

"I am with you in a way that you might not understand right away... first, it's me, Zoe. I am currently fully covering your body with my own." You sat in stunned silence, not sure how to respond to such a bizarre revelation, so Zoe continued. "You recall the Hideki adaptive bandages, yes? That's the material we use to cover minor wounds to mask the injury while it heals. Well, I am actually what inspired them, I'm basically a human-sized adaptive bandage. I put myself on you in order to protect you from further injury, right now the damage to your body is pretty extensive. I'm doing what I can to alleviate pain so you can move more easily, but even with what I can do to accelerate healing, you're looking at four weeks of recovery, minimum."

"You're... my body? I must be dreaming..." You shook your head again, and lifted a hand to your cheek to slap at yourself.

"Just for the record, that hurts both me and you, but probably more you right now." You realized your mistake too late, as it felt like you had slapped a severe sunburn. "I'm sorry, Jason, I was hoping I could have introduced you to my abilities in less dire circumstances, because there are, well, a lot of things I wanted to discuss with you today. Ways you could help me while I helped your research, and... well, that can wait for some other time. The more important thing right now is that I need to stay bound to you that whole time to heal you before anything becomes permanent."