Chapter Sixteen

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

RILEY MOVED AWAY from the microscope. "It's like you're saying, the mutation has stopped."

"To really have any idea what's going on, of course, we should have samples of the other guards," said Jonathan.

"I was thinking the eggs," she said. "We should get samples of those, look at them under the microscope and maybe compare them to, um, to yours. I assume you can… lay one?"

"I haven't tried," said Jonathan. He scratched the top of his head and more of his hair came off. But instead of reacting he just seized a handful of it and yanked it free. "I wonder if I took a shower or something, if I could get it all off."

"I'm—" Her throat closed up and she couldn't finish.

"Don't," he said. "I don't need your pity at this point. This is my own fault. I brought this on myself. It's practically a cliche, the mad scientist who pursues knowledge at any cost without stopping to wonder if he should. I'm an idiot. This is what I deserve."

"No," she said. "No, that's a very reductive way of looking at things, Jonathan."

"You're the one who brought up Frankenstein."

"Well…" She threw up her hands. "Hello, pot, meet kettle."

He eyed her. "No, you were trying to pull me back. You said—"

"But because of how badly things had already gone!" She lifted both of her palms and gestured upwards. "If it had all been working well? If I hadn't been captured by Bub? If things had been under control? I can see myself being seduced by the idea of it. Creating an entirely new species? It's… who wouldn't want to try it?"

"Lots of people wouldn't want to," he said in a harsh voice.

"Well, it's done now," she said with a sigh. "And let's be honest, Jonathan, people like us, like you and me, we were never going to have normal human lives anyway. We never have, have we? Do we live like proper primates with a mate and a family and a tribe? Do we concern ourselves principally with the business of our personal survival and social position? Have we ever been even remotely normal, either of us?"

"I fail to see why you're making this even harder, Riley?" His voice cracked. "My hair is falling out, and I'm covered in scales, and all I'm thinking about is how badly I'd like to feel that very agile cervix of yours gripping my—whatever it is—ovipositor? I want to put it inside you, and that's my concern first and foremost at the moment, but by all means, let's evaluate whether or not—"

"We should," she said with a nod.

His black eyes widened, and she saw just the vague edges of whites, right out there.

"It would have been better if we hadn't turned ourselves into test subjects, of course, but we have. So let's see what happens. Let's try it. We have to see if we're capable of mating, I suppose."

He gaped at her, wordless.

"Do we have cameras?" she said. "I think, if we could record it, we might be able to study it more objectively afterward. We'll likely both be distracted in the moment and we'll be less than capable of making observations and evaluations."

"So, you're saying… let me get this straight, Dr. Stine? You're saying that we should fuck for the sake of science?"

"You don't want to?" she said.

He bowed his head and let out a long, low chuckle.

"That's what I thought," she said. "I think your scent might be affecting me, too, to be honest. We might both be tempted to a certain degree. We should document that, I imagine. We could split up and separately describe our arousal experiences. I suppose we have cameras—at the very least—on our phones, so if there's no other option, that should be sufficient. It's not as if we're going to publish the videos, after all. They'd be too explicit and private. It's just for our own purposes."

He slowly raised his gaze to meet hers.

"You're willing?"

"Oh, yes," he said darkly. "But why are you, that's the question? After what happened to Nancy Manes?"

"Well, you'll stop," she said. "That was four of them and one of her, and there's only one of you. You should likely just try one egg to begin with, and if that goes all right, we can work up to a few more in me."

"What if I don't stop?" His voice was rich now. She liked the sound of his deep, rich voice, and she was intrigued by the look of his scales and his webbed hands. She liked it precisely because it wasn't human, because it was an adventure, a new frontier. She liked that no one had ever had sex this way before, and she found the idea of being stuffed full of his eggs very appealing.

Hmm. That was disturbing, wasn't it? Should she want to be stuffed full of his eggs?

"Do you think you won't be able to stop?" she said, and her voice had taken on a teasing sort of lilt. They were flirting, she thought, flirting as they discussed whether he was going to fuck her to death.

Okay, very disturbing.

"To be honest, I have no idea," he said in that same rich voice. He came closer to her. "I want to try it, though, very much. Ever since you sucked my finger up into your body, I've been craving it. I think the ovipositor is made to fit right up in that hungry little cervix of yours. Don't you?"

She nodded. "Yes," she murmured. "I do."

"Made by whom, though, Dr. Stine?" he breathed, reaching out to trace her jawbone with one of his webbed fingers. "Made by chance, is that it? Or made by me? Did I engineer it in some way, subconsciously?"

"I don't think so," she said with a shrug.

"But I thought you were pretty," he said. "I wanted you on that video call, all the way back in the beginning."

"Me too," she said. "I thought you were… I had a little daydream about the two of us, working together, being together, maybe having a family together? I thought it would be perfect if it worked out. We want the same things, we could understand each other, and—"

"Really?" He was surprised. "But I'm not…" He looked down at his body. "Well, now I'm abundantly unattractive, but then—"

"No," she said. "You weren't unattractive then, and you aren't now. But I like the way you look. Take off your pants now, Dr. Greyson."

"I thought we were going to record it," he said huskily, lowering his face to hers.

"Mmm, right," she breathed.

And their mouths met, and his tongue was just like a normal tongue and the kiss was just like a human kiss, except that it was more intense in some way, and it tasted like sex in the way that he smelled like sex. She liked it.

He pulled her into his arms.

She sighed into him, locking her arms behind his neck, running her fingers over his scales there. He had gills now, in his neck. She wanted to touch them, maybe kiss them, maybe… was that strange?

He ran his nose over hers. "You smell like bliss, Riley," he breathed.

"So do you," she whispered, leaning up to capture his lips again.

Which was when the lab door opened and Luther and Angela came into the room.

She and Jonathan broke apart immediately, moving so that there was four feet of space between them.