"Ah, young Mr. Malcolm," Director Carlyle says when the elevator opens up in the lobby. Stepping out to place a large hand on my shoulder, he says, "Good, you're here a little early. Walk with me, we have a lot to talk about."
"How long were you waiting in the elevator just for that scene?" I ask dryly, almost feeling comfortable if not for the fact that I was promptly turned around with only one hand and arm before heading out of the building.
"That's not important," he replies instantly while draping one long and heavy arm over my shoulder. When I say heavy, I meant HEAVY. "What IS important, though, if your plans for today. The goblin is being babysat, there's no dungeon assignments for someone not on the registry right now, and you haven't eaten for twelve hours or worked out in twenty-four? Great, I'll be driving you to your appointment," he informs me without waiting for a response.
When we walked out of the front doors I suddenly found it hard to breathe and there was a light chill from sweat and wind on my face. I actually found myself looking around as if somebody might actually help me. I knew it was ridiculous, but I could not help it.
Across the street from the towering hexagonal Bureau building where the director was taking me stood a large parking garage that was half as tall as the Bureau headquarters here. Instead of going up, though, the director chatted with me about everything from portal occurrences to current material pricing while heading down. Everything BUT the surgery and WHY we were going to the scary part of a parking garage.
Why did this parking garage even have basement floors?!
When we finally stopped walking through the aisles instead of taking the stairs to the third basement floor it was to find an ambulance without any numbers or plates anywhere in the world. This had cheap horror movie written all over it!
At the back of the ambulance, Director Carlyle stops and says, "Now, I can tell you're on the edge of both your seat and pissing yourself but calm down a little. What we're doing is legitimate business, Malcolm, but it's not on any records. So, we just have to do things out of sight is all."
"Why do you sound like a black and white movie villain?" I speak for the second time in this man's presence and can only ask another pointless question.
"I like that, I really do," the director says while clapping me on my shoulder strongly enough to stagger me and opening the ambulance. Instead of a team of people in Earth body armor and ski masks like I expected, there were two ladies in first-response jumpsuits and surgical masks still prepping a long gurney and IV and some set of tanks at the head of the bed.
"We're going to knock you out here," Director Carlyle informs me plainly. "Then transport you to our hospital ASAP to undergo the operations. We won't know what we will or will not be able to do with your body at your current grade until we start, but the very least we're going to do is a series of full body skin-graft-hybridizing.
"For normal people," he says while 'gently' urging me into the ambulance. "We use an E or D grade slime's outer skin to dry and mix into a gelatin and after peeling and regenerating the patient at the same time we keep the removed skins alive and break it down with a B grade psychic mage's psychokinetic abilities to mix with the slime. Then after magically cooking the new skin, we peel, replace, and regenerate the still living tissues back to the body. A civilian with zero MP can come out to around one hundred with the hybridized skin grafting and the skin itself can stop any Lo-MP hollow-point small arms fire as well as most normal small arms rounds."
Stopping while I was being settled into the bed and a clear plastic breathing mask was put in my face, the director waits until he can shut the door behind us before continuing with, "The main difference between what civilians and our soldiers or Protectors get is that the people fighting get a skin graft made from the core tissue of a D or C grade slime. You'll get a somewhat richer MP raise and the prolonged effects is and increased rate of 'MP Consumption'. Your rating goes up faster from exposure and other methods while the toughness of your skin goes up as well."
"How long do you expect me to work for you?" I ask as soon as I get the chance while I could still think clearly as the air in the mask smells oddly… cold.
"Not much longer and not very frequently," Director Carlyle replies. "If you want to know more, you should get in contact with that old instructor of yours again when you get the chance. He's one of the brains behind these projects. I'm just the guy who had a use for you THIS time."
Even though the lights were on in the ambulance it was steadily getting dimmer and dimmer even though I felt more or less fine. All I could do was try to tell myself to remember to punch my C grade instructor in the face at the first opportunity. Then, everything was suddenly dark.
When I came to what felt like seconds later it was in a brightly lit white room with some basic machinery around a bed that I was lying in. Above the bed in the wall beside me was a small window through which I could see the sky and the tops of some neighboring buildings. From the early evening sky I could tell that at least eight hours had passed since I got in the ambulance and from the buildings I could tell that I was pretty high off the ground.
The neighboring properties were another parking garage and what looked like office buildings but they were all three or four floors. I was at least two floors above the tallest neighboring building and a shadow across the street swallowing the other parking garage said I was not the top floor. "I thought you'd like the view."
Interrupting my thoughts from across the room was Director Carlyle, sitting in a thick and overly soft lounge chair while doing something or other on a laptop. Now looking at me from over the tops of some half-rimmed reading glasses, the director says, "You spent most of your time looking at my desk or at my window, so I got a room with a window and a decent view. How are you feeling? There's water to your other side."
He probably knew that I was dying of a parched mouth and throat right now, so even though the only thing I really retained was water my mind was briefly shocked clear when I turned and reached. My hand was… bigger. My fingers were longer and thicker and my fingernails were oddly long despite being a pristine and new-ish white and pink.
The skin of my hand was more or less the same pale I remembered, but if I looked down the length of my arm there was an odd opaqueness or translucence that revealed the thickness of my skin. However, my thumbnail was now at least half a time bigger than before. Looking at my distal joints and then my knuckles and wrist, I realize it was not just one part of me.
ALL of me was just noticeably bigger and shocking enough that I did not even notice when I swallowed and nothing was there. The bed even looked like the same gurney from before but it somehow felt smaller and even a little firmer. Finally, though, I got over it enough to drink from a tall glass of water and croak the question, "What the fuck, dude?"
"Ah, so you've noticed its more than just skin," the director seems to say more to himself than to me while readjusting his glasses. "Don't worry. I was not always this big, either. I used to be what you are right now, in fact. So, you're wondering what happened besides the grafting?"
"Oh yeah," I say after taking a very short break from sipping and savoring water.
"Firstly, your near-E body was compatible with a few other… modifications," he replies while looking back at his computer. "The first was the one I mentioned last time, ortho-reconstruction or some medical shit like that. We had another psychic with the one from the grafting and they broke down and reconstructed your entire skeleton all while a high grade healer kept stimulating your body's regeneration. This allowed us to not only increase the mass of your skeletal structure by healing it to a new shape but also reduce the requirements for blood vessels and pores as well as the marrow itself.
"That was done with a printed sample, I might add," he points out quickly before pausing to do some quick typing. "While we were at it changing your bones, we decided to change some minor designs and filler and fluids. Your marrow, spinal fluids, and the inside lining of your expanded skull is now D grade inner cell wall from a mucus beast not unlike the inner lining of the giant octo-spider you fought with. Your next question, 'how the hell'?"
I could only nod in response, unable to even bother thinking about all the BS being spewed right now. Nodding in kind, the director says in and almost smug manner without ever looking at me, "It's simple, the reason is that mana is already putting our bodies at some level of adaptation and even evolution at higher grades. The susceptibilities and affinities are completely random as far as we know, but the fact that it makes a sixteen-year-old like you into… previous you, and at such a low grade.
"Because your body is somehow still that of a true growth type, even if it's slow as hell, you were compatible with skeletal reconstruction. Because you were compatible with skeletal reconstruction, you body was forcibly compatible with controlled tissue expansions. Everything became larger to compensate your skeleton while under the influence of constant cell division. With the influences of magic and cell division we are able to control this adaptation into an evolution by adding or removing this or that."
Pausing to see if I had any questions while yawning and setting down the empty glass, the director simply looks at me and smiles. "You're long winded as hell. Next," I say tiredly, sprawling out on the gurney and not even caring that I was naked but for a thin sheet.
"You're going back to sleep," he replies with no small amount of satisfaction. "Adding more mid-grade slime components, such as lining the extra space in your skull or your spinal disks with highly impact absorbent material, allowed your body to evolve using it. Now some of your spinal fluids are thicker and the tubing is mucus. I could snap your neck and pop it back into place and you would only need to sleep for about a day.
"For the rest of your body, its as simple as more dense but elasticated muscle tissues, extra fluids, thicker organ tissues, your joints are no longer cartilage, we elasticated all of your ligaments and general tubing to the point strangulation is almost impossible from the outside, your lungs can even swell by a third of their size to hold more air and add buoyancy, your heart was enlarged to compensate for the increased fluids, and you've been asleep since extra fluids."
Getting up from his lounge chair after setting the laptop to the side, Director Carlyle gets up and walks across the small hospital room to look down at the sleeping Malcolm. "You're a good kid but you're an idiot, slap that retired baboon in the face for me when you see him next. I'll try to take care of you from here on out, but survival depends on you. Bag 'em, boys," he says at last, turning to leave the room as the door opens and allows some men in suits inside the recovery room.
*