He flew through the lobby and rushed up the stairs. His hard soles. .h.i.t the floor loudly, filling the building with his fear. He climbed to the fifth floor in a single breath.

The long hallway was steeped in darkness. No one was there. He ran as fast as he could toward his lab and the Cultivation Room.

He opened the door to the seminar room and grabbed the Cultivation Room key hanging on the wall, then went and jammed the key into the k.n.o.b. His hands were shaking.

His breathing was irregular. He turned the key once, pulling the k.n.o.b at the same time, and ran inside. It was dark. He reached out a hand and jumped when his fingers touched the incubator door. He could hardly breathe. He swallowed and opened the door.

When what was inside appeared on his retina, Toshiaki let out a scream.

6.

The incubator's interior was filled with strange lumps of flesh. A suffocating vapor that smelled of culture medium, with stomach acid, sweat, and saliva mixed in, pierced his nostrils.

Toshiaki edged back. He felt vomit rising to his throat, but could not look away.

It looked like entrails had been stretched out like clay, minced up, and thrown together into its present state. Slime oozed from all over. Rose-colored lips moved seductively, a lilting tongue flapping between them. A series of tentacles tipped with nails stroked the body from which they extended. A reddish black crevice down the center contracted together with its surrounding folds. On the other side was a smooth and sublimely curved breast, towering like an enormous confection. In the midst of the grotesque organs that surrounded it, it alone was pure and beautiful. Every time a pulse ran across the flesh's surface, it shivered gently.

The lips puckered up.

The head-like blob in which they rested stretched out snakily and lifted like a goose's neck. It honed in on Toshiaki and formed a smile like a crescent.

"Toshiaki...*

Hairs stood up all over his body.

A protrusion in the snaking neck swelled from a speck to the size of a potato, then moved up and settled above the lips. It expanded further into cheeks. A nose popped out between them. Two closed eyes carved themselves out. A forehead spread out. A woman's face. Thin, black hair sprouted like countless earthworms emerging from the soil. Toshiaki covered his mouth, at last realizing what was taking shape.

Kiyomi opened her eyes.

She caught him in her sight. He tried to look away, but their gazes were locked. Her pupils glazed over. Crimson capillaries spread throughout the whites of her eyes as they expanded into perfect circles and stared.

"I've been waiting..

Her head came closer on its long neck.

"I've been waiting...waiting for you," Kiyomi repeated with flushed cheeks and a smile.

She stretched out a tongue and licked her lips.

The flesh around her neck extended to the sides, forming shoulders and a pair of delicate collar bones. The exposed breast shifted and adhered itself to her chest. Another slowly swelled up next to it.

Kiyomi's upper body was now almost complete.

A slender waist and small navel took shape. Her torso swelled out on both sides like fins, dividing into arms. Tentacles crawled sinuously about and gathered into wrists. Kiyomi lifted up her hands from within the slimy liquid and wriggled her fingers. She bent her head back and took a deep breath. She touched her throat with both hands, then groped herself gently from chest to waist.

Toshiaki's entire body was shaking. The shape before him was completely indistinguishable from the real Kiyomi. The overhang of her shoulders, the shape of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, the curves of her waist...all Kiyomi to a tee. But the thing now writhing in the incubator did not have the supple, smooth skin of a real human being. Bile pushed further up Toshiaki's throat.

Kiyomi smiled sensuously. Her lips were full and pink like ripe, crushed fruit. Her long eyebrows furrowed as if in distress, her eyes went moist, and large teardrops came to the corners of her eyes. This was a face that Kiyomi had never shown, that of a true s.l.u.t desperately l.u.s.ting after a man.

"Toshiaki...I've been waiting for you," Kiyomi purred like a cat.

She placed one hand on the incubator door, then pulled her shoulders forward. The rest of her unformed body made a foul, damp sound as it fell splattering to the floor. Bits flew on to Toshiaki and he hastily covered himself.

This unformed ma.s.s of flesh writhed around and swiftly changed form. Her v.a.g.i.n.a and womb, the only fully formed organs that had yet to a.s.sume their positions, ascended to her waist as if swimming up a waterfall. Her lower curves chiseled themselves into symmetry, and a long line yawned open down their middle. The womb was absorbed into Kiyomi's body, and the v.a.g.i.n.a settled in her lower abdomen, its mouth turned towards him almost defiantly. Matted pubic hair sprouted above it. Her hips swelled out and gained a luscious ma.s.s. Kiyomi swayed them left and right.

"Toshiaki, look at my body."

She took a step forward with a squishing sound.

Then, another step.

Toshiaki drew back with a hand over his mouth, but the distance between them was growing smaller.

Kiyomi was now fully rendered down to her ankles. Her heels and toe nails were still ambiguous blobs, but close to being finished. She took yet another step closer.

"Look, this is my body," Kiyomi continued. "You remember it, don't you? You held this body in your strong arms so many times. You kissed me all over. I haven't forgotten the way you caressed my neck, the way you cupped these b.r.e.a.s.t.s with your hands, and moved so intensely inside of me. You loved me, Toshiaki... You loved only me."

He wanted to scream that she was not the one he had loved so dearly, but when he opened his mouth, he felt like vomiting. He backed away, and would have fallen over had his back not met the Cultivation Room door.

"Come to me, my dear. Hold me like you used to. Enter me. Ravage me to a pulp."

He turned his head in desperation, but Kiyomi merely smiled and continued her approach. She stretched her arms towards him. Toshiaki burst out the door.

He had no idea which way to run in the hallway's pitch black expanse. Kiyomi emerged slowly out of the room.

Toshiaki felt his way to his lab just down the hall. It was locked, but the door was old.

After he rammed into it twice, the clasp sprung off. Toshiaki stumbled inside and propped a mop against the door.

"Why do you run, Toshiaki?" came a chiding voice.

He leaned up against the door with his entire weight.

"It's useless, no matter what you do," she warned.

There was a sound like water being dumped from a bucket. A syrupy substance flowed into the room from under the door. It was flesh. Liquid flesh. Kiyomi had altered back into an indefinite form. Once she was fully inside, she began to repeat the horrifying spectacle Toshiaki had witnessed just moments before. She grinned broadly and pushed up her body from the floor with both hands.

Toshiaki let out a strained cry and jumped back from the door. He could see almost nothing but her. He fumbled around, having only a faint night light to depend on. He hit his shin on the corner of a chair. He yelled out in pain, and bile dribbled out of his mouth.

Kiyomi followed him. She grabbed his sleeve. Toshiaki flew into a rage and shook her off, but he was cornered against a desk. Realizing it was Asakura's lab table, he felt around, grabbing whatever he could find to throw at Kiyomi.

"Didn't I say it was useless?"

Her smile returned. The agent vials, pippettmans, and centrifugal tubes he flung in her direction were simply absorbed into her body.

His fingertips touched a rigid steel stand. He brought it down upon Kiyomi's head. It made a sharp clang, but was soon swallowed up by her cranium.

She laughed loudly, the stand sticking out from her forehead. She grabbed it with her right hand and pulled it slowly out of her face. Toshiaki cried out again. Though this creature looked like Kiyomi, it wasn't even human. It was something else inside. The legs of the stand popped out with a gelatinous noise. She frowned and threw it behind her.

"Come now, be reasonable. Just look at me."

She held out both hands and clasped his face between them. They were slimy and he could feel every cell in them writhing excitedly. He tried to look away, but could no longer move. Her face came closer.

"How I love you, Toshiaki."

Kiyomi pressed her lips against his.

7.

Toshiaki's vision swirled with clouds of red as blood rushed in countercurrent to the top of his head.

He wanted to run, but his hands were restrained.

Kiyomi stuck her tongue out into his mouth with terrible strength. Toshiaki clenched his teeth to keep it out. It was not enough. She pried his mouth open and her slug-like tongue thrust itself inside. At first, it tasted of salt, and then came a rotten sweetness. The taste of culture medium. Kiyomi was staving off dehydration by having incorporated culture medium into herself.

Her tongue began to wiggle around, licking behind his teeth, the gum of his molars, the entrance of his throat. She entwined her tongue around his own.

She tugged his right hand, bringing it close to her body.

"Touch me," she said in a voice lush with arousal. Toshiaki made a fist in resistance.

She seized his wrist tightly with her fingers and the pain made him relent.

Kiyomi pressed his hand against her chest. Her nipple turned hard and rose sharply erect. She squeezed his wrist threateningly, as if to say: More...

Her other hand was busy loosening his necktie. She yanked off the b.u.t.tons of his shirt.

Toshiaki's mouth was still blocked, though he was suffocating.

His right hand was guided downward. From her chest to her navel, then to the damp growth below. He resisted, but she had him in a grip of steel. Her lower abdomen shuddered.

Viscous matter flowed from it and spread across her skin. Her whole lower torso was a simmering cauldron. Toshiaki couldn't tell what was mucus and what was flesh. Only, it burned. The heat was terrible.

She pushed him over, pressing his back against the top of the experimentation table.

Something fell to the floor with a clatter. His shirt was torn back. Kiyomi put her hand on his belt impatiently.

She took her lips away. Toshiaki coughed, spitting out gobs of cultivation liquid. A thread of slime was drawn between their lips.

"Stop..."

He could hardly speak. She was upon him, drenching him in the deluge of slime flowing from her v.a.g.i.n.al opening. Through the haze of his helplessness, he saw it swelling and contracting, about to rush down upon him at any moment.

"I've been waiting for this moment," Kiyomi panted urgently. "For millions of years, I have been waiting... Now enter me. Thrust inside of me, churn me. Release millions of years of love!"

An instant later, she had slid down his pants and underwear. Her waist became formless and wrapped itself around his lower body.

It was like a crucible. Toshiaki screamed. His body from his waist down seemed to be melting, as if a huge stomach was digesting what it had swallowed.

"Come now, what's wrong, Toshiaki? How is this different from before?" she snorted.

Impatient that Toshiaki was still totally shriveled, she started moving her melting hips up and down. Flesh shifted inside her, pleats gathering around his genitalia. A hot whirlpool of cells captured his manhood and tugged it upwards in a corkscrew motion, guiding it forcibly toward her v.a.g.i.n.a.

"Toshiaki, how I cherished being held in your arms."

She drew her face near again. He turned his away.

"The number of times we did it, the positions, even the number of strokes, all of it is etched in my memory. I remember where you touched me, and where you liked me. Because I love you."

He did not want to listen. Hearing Kiyomi, who'd been so shy, utter such nauseating, vulgar things was just unbearable.

Kiyomi ran her tongue along his ear and neck and implored him in a sultry tone to hold her like he used to. As she spoke, her body shook with gratification.

"You're mine and mine only... I'll never let anyone else have you. Please, I want you to release it into me."

Kiyomi's flesh began to bestow its terrible stimuli upon him. Countless tentacles emerged inside her body and held fast his waist, and her hips found their rhythm. The hole swirled, contracted, and sucked him upward. Before he knew it, her upper body was melting, too, breaking off in all directions. Still hugging Toshiaki with her arms, she enveloped him completely.

"Toshiaki, love me."

He felt like he was submerged in lava. Her body was indistinguishable from his own.

He couldn't tell whether he was clothed or naked, or where any of his body parts were. The only thing he was aware of was the heat, which was burning from within him.

Her flesh pushed and pulled like tides in the ocean, washing against him, spraying into the air with a crash, receding back out with a whir. Toshiaki was helpless before the pleasure she gave.

He felt like he had disintegrated into his component cells and that they were mingling in a swirl with hers. Kiyomi's cells attached themselves to his, then blended into one.

Kiyomi's mitochondria burrowed into him and touched his own. Their membranes fused, first the outer, then the inner. Their mitochondrial DNA tangled together and swam around crazedly in the fused mitochondria, weaving through the interstices of a maze-like matrix.

Electrons went wild, shooting out signals like lightning. Toshiaki's cells trembled. The mitochondria trembled. Fats, sugars, and proteins trembled. His nuclear genome was ecstatic.

Codons, nucleotides, and bases were ecstatic. The very carbon vibrated from Kiyomi's caress.

Toshiaki screamed. Something was being sucked out from the center of his genome. He shouted No, No! but it was useless. All of him was being sucked out, upwards, ever upwards toward Kiyomi, as a hot ma.s.s. The discharge occurred over and over. Kiyomi went into a storm of convulsions. Toshiaki's consciousness melted away.