Growth Beyond Reason Re-post Parts 7-9

[JP71]

[COLOR=dimgray]GROWTH BEYOND REASON[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]BY[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]JP71[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]7.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'Let me guess... you ruling the world would get in the way of Redfern's plans to do the same. Am I right?' Mark leaned back in his chair on the opposite side of the table and folded his bony arms across his scrawny chest. He was fed up being this thin, but from what he now knew, he had the potential ? in muscle terms ? to surpass anything so far possessed by the four super-huge bodybuilders he'd crossed paths with.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'Uh-huh,' Trey replied simply, as he went to the fridge to get a protein drink. He would have to eat soon. He sat down and continued with his story:[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'We didn't know of his agenda straight away. Early into the program it was just me and Raul, confined to the same three rooms. The rooms catered for our every need and it was very comfortable there. But it was like a prison to me... a different kind of prison to being almost trapped inside a morbidly obese body of your own creation. To Raul it was like paradise. Ten years in solitary and anything outside of that dark bubble is a veritable Mecca to a guy like him. He loved every minute, but often I found myself going stir-crazy.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'My food was limited at first. I was put on a low-carb but high-protein diet consisting of mostly egg-whites, tuna-fish, lots of vegetables and lean turkey fillets. I grew pretty sick of this within a week but Redfern, my saviour, urged me to be patient. Raul and I were to co-habit, in order to keep one another company. Well we more than catered for that. As our bodies began to change, rapidly and for the better, we developed more than a liking for one another.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'My physical transformation was the most striking, for I had so much fat to lose. The Enerflex treatments were administered twice a day, morning and evening. Each time we were led individually down a dimly lit corridor to the testing chamber in what we imagined to be the most secluded and secure part of the clinic. The ?orderlies? that led us were huge imposing men, who wore dark gray smocks stretched tightly across their hulking frames. I remember thinking to myself: ?will I look like these brutes one day??, but I quickly dismissed the notion. Why the staff needed to wear dark Raybans indoors escaped me. But I remember thinking at the time that it might have to do with the altitude and inadequate light within the clinic. Bad light might also explain the lack of healthy skin-tones. I wasn't sure how high up in the Alps we actually were, but we were forbidden to go outside, not that there was anywhere outside that we could go, unless we were equipped with climbing apparatus.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'The testing chamber was your typically decked-out laboratory setup. It had tables with test-tubes, liquids bubbling through tubes out of one container and into another. There were computers, x-ray devices, white-boards with all manner of nonsensical numerical data scribbled across them. Monitor screens displayed everything from computer-animated DNA... to bacilli replication, all lovingly rendered in delicious 3D. There were three cooling huts, like large walk-in refrigerators lined up against one wall, their doors polished to a mirrored sheen. Adjacent to the fridges was a set of double doors that showed through to the gym room, which would become our second home after we'd embarked on the second phase of the program.[/COLOR]
[COLOR=dimgray]'In the beginning there was little we had to question about a place like this. It was a laboratory and little else, or so we thought at the time. Raul wasn't morbidly obese like I was, although he stood to lose a few pounds. I was so desperate to lose my own weight that I never questioned Redfern as to why the two of us seemed to be receiving the same treatments. [/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'Enerflex, not that we knew its name at the time, was an innocuous-looking solution fed to us through a syringe. It glowed ever so slightly blue in dim light, and the lights in the lab could have done with a little extra wattage. I remember asking Redfern if the serum was radioactive, hence the glow. That was the one and only time that we paused momentarily from his work to look me in the eye with something of a half-grin quaking where a permanent frown should have been. ?Of course not, my dear boy,? was his reply. He then urged me to be quiet so that he could concentrate and not miss my vein. That was the thing about me at that weight: due to all the fat it was hard to find a vein. But Redfern was persistent and he always got what he wanted.' Trey paused from his story and placed his forearm across the table. He made a fist and the massive 45-inch girth of the forearm thickened considerably. It was impossible not to find a vein on him now, for the largest of them bulged to more than an inch in diameter. He squeezed his fist harder and harder, commanding more size and vascular definition into the limb... simply for his own amusement. He was getting HUGE!!!!![/COLOR]
[COLOR=dimgray]'When the treatments were over we would be led back to our three-room paradise. Why we needed escorts down the same lonely corridor was a mystery. There were other corridors branching off from the main one, so I guess Redfern didn't want us to go snooping.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'My reaction to Enerflex was incredible. In my first month at the clinic, I'd lost 216 pounds. Curiously I had no excess skin flopping about, the kind you see on those super-slimmers on those Oprah and Dr Phil shows. They end up having lost a tonne of weight but need a lot of surgery to get rid of the surplus skin. But with Enerflex, this didn't happen to me. The fat was melting away and the skin that contained it was shrinking along with the rest of me. In contrast, Raul ? and we'd started to become great friends at this point ? was bulking up with muscle, not much, mind, but after the first month of treatments all of his surplus fat was gone and the muscle he'd grown in the meantime was clearly visible. He was easily the equivalent of a male model at this point. [/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'I became easily attracted to his tanned, chiselled, Hispanic features, but I didn't have the confidence to get physical with him, considering I was still quite a fat young man, with a lot of shrinking left to do. But he was kind, despite that he'd already told me about his time in prison. He said that Redfern had cured him of his vice and I believed him. Why not? He was the only friend I had in the world at that time. He would share with me any leftovers on his plate, knowing that I was still hungry after the meagre portions Redfern's catering staff had provided me to eat. Technically I was breaking one rule of the program, but during test after test, if a few extra calories showed up from Redfern's probing, then the bizarre and reclusive scientist commented not.[/COLOR]
[COLOR=dimgray]'I mentioned that Raul was kind. And he was. After the second month of Enerflex treatments, I was phenomenally down to 350 lbs or thereabouts. I asked Redfern why he didn't market his serum worldwide since it seemed to be a breakthrough and would benefit millions of people all over the globe. He declined to comment at that time. It put me off asking him questions beyond that moment. Raul started to find me physically attractive. I noticed that my muscles were starting to assert themselves again, the ones I'd had in high-school for football. It was a great feeling. I still had a lot of fat on my body, but I was starting to look better and feel better. It was then that Redfern started us on the weight-training. This is when the real magic started to happen.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'Maybe it was magic, I don't know. I'm not suggesting Harry Potter stuff here. But I'm referring to the otherworldly aspect to Redfern that was as much sinister as it was intriguing to me. By this time Raul and I were sharing a bed, but we had yet to have sex. He'd told me about his past as a rapist of gay men... no one younger than 18, mind. Hard to think that someone with a fetish like Raul's could still abide by some vestige of a moral code. He said that Redfern had cured him, that this clinic was as much for the treatment of psychological maladies as physical conditions. But that didn't explain why we were being given the same treatments. I suggested that Enerflex could be a placebo. Raul tended to think along the same lines. I mean, you couldn't blame us for speculating, considering how little information Redfern revealed to us. If we were human guinea pigs, shouldn't he be as open to us about the procedures we were undergoing?[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'We started to get scared. We would lie awake for most of the night, snuggling together in bed and speculating to the point of paranoia. We'd seen single-celled organisms thriving on monitor screens in the testing chamber and the fact that Enerflex glowed a faint blue in dim light. We arrived at the hypothesis that Redfern had irradiated some kind of micro-organism into undergoing mutation and that it was these things that we both were being injected with. The thoughts of a colony of flesh-eating critters swarming around inside me made me almost pee in the bed. Raul didn't appear to be as scared as me. He was happy with the changes happening in his body. And he was starting to get happy with my body, and what the treatments were making it become. [/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'We made a decision towards the end of the second month not to let our imaginations get the better of us. After all, we were starting to look amazing and I'd never felt better, despite that I still had quite a lot of fat to get rid of. Ironically, as my weight continued to shrink, so my rations of food was increased. When the weight-training began my caloric intake was increased to 5000 calories per day, mostly high-protein muscle-building concentrates. Thankfully they were filling and kept me satisfied. [/COLOR]
[COLOR=dimgray]By the end of the third month I was down to 199 lbs. My body-fat was 12%, which pleased me no end. Raul was already shredded at this stage and his body resembled that of an amateur lightweight bodybuilder. His body-fat was just 6% and he looked amazing. Being just five ten in height, his weight had dropped to 185. He looked amazing, but on a run-of-the-mill Wednesday afternoon, although it was difficult to monitor the passage of time in a place without clocks or many windows to peer out to track day into night and back again, Redfern called us into his private office-cum-sanctuary. The first thing I noticed was how different he looked. [/COLOR]
[COLOR=dimgray]?Welcome gentlemen, come in and pull up chairs. We three are about to have something of a celebration,? was his greeting. Wow I remember all of this word for word, can you believe it?[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]?Redfern was smiling now, something that was hard to believe a man of such stark emotional neutrality was capable of displaying. There was a rather expensive looking bottle of Dom Perignon, layered with dust, as well as three champagne flutes on his huge and ornate onyx desk... for our pleasure. His office was the height of opulence, adorned with ornaments and artefacts of sumptuous design. There were hangings on every wall: paintings, tapestries and carvings of tribal order, a kaleidoscopic museum in tribute to his worldly pursuits. It was clear he was a well-travelled individual. It was all too clear that he was as individual as they come.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'I managed to catch the date on the bottle of Dom Perignon before Redfern commenced to pour three measures into the glasses: 1955. The bottle was over half a century old. He spared little expense and obviously had a taste for the finer things life had to offer. And yet, as if he had a soul that hissed and cursed in the very face of life itself, nothing of the vitality of life was reflected in his cold, pallid... cadaverous features. ?What's the occasion, Mathias?? Raul asked the question I had hoped to, for he was the more assertive of the two of us. Redfern seemed only too pleased to answer. ?The first course of your treatment has been one hundred percent successful. You both have responded to the Enerflex far better than my projections initially revealed. You both look and feel better than you ever have in your... young little lives.? If glee was an emotion that only issued from the coldest of hearts, then from Redfern it dripped like acid.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'I didn't like how he referred to our lives as ?young? and ?little?. It suggested to me that his age couldn't be fathomed, that the wisdom contained within his curiously domed head belied his years by many decades. He seemed vibrant today, his sunken cheeks appearing less concave, a slight blush of red evident in both. His eyes had something of a scarlet shine to them, unlike the usual murky gray haze that was refracted in them both. He looked like he'd gained a little weight, although his appearance still fell far short of being considered healthy. ?A toast to success,? said Redfern, standing up from his desk in order to salute the toast. We did the same and chinked our glasses against his. The champagne was delicious, fruity and bubbly and archaic all at once. It was a taste that I thought I'd long forgotten. It made me yearn for my old life again, the one before the obesity. I briefly thought about my parents, and my sister Sally. I hadn't seen them in such a long time. My heart pined for freedom and normality. But something else in me, an innate urge or desire, wanted to see this experiment through to its ultimate conclusion.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'He indicated that we both be seated again and that informality was the order of the day. He leaned back in his large chair, causing the leather upholstery to creak noisily. He seemed too slight for the throne-like seat, and yet his image was one that still conveyed authority to us. He had transformed our lives in seemingly impossible ways, and yet I still feared the man. Raul was much easier going with Redfern and I often wondered about this, but never got around to talking this over with him. ?So, Trey... here we are, three months later and you are no longer the shapeless hulk you were when I found you. Where do you see yourself going from here? What are your ultimate goals... physically??[/COLOR]


[COLOR=dimgray]I didn't have to think about it. Both Raul and I had already discussed it back in the three-roomed cell that had been our home since what felt like forever. ?From what I understand of the program so far, muscle growth seems to be the dominant effect of the treatment. You call it Enerflex. What exactly is it doing to us, Mathias,? I suddenly found the courage to ask. Redfern seemed to mull over the question for a moment, rocking backwards and forwards a little in his chair as he brought his hands up to his face. He made a church steeple of his long, skeletal fingers... a classic 'thoughtful' pose.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]?I am afraid I cannot release that information as of yet. You remember signing those waivers you were given the day you arrived here? Had you read the documents fully you would have been aware of this proviso already. But I'm not displeased that you asked. You have every right to be curious. Do not fear, Trey... Enerflex is made from purely natural ingredients, I assure you. Call it my little home remedy.? Redfern leered at me, a wicked smile forming, which displayed two rows of yellowed teeth, made to seem vivid in colour next to the backdrop of pallid gray formed of the flesh in which they were set. He poured more champagne, intending that the bottle be enjoyed to the last drop. I must admit that since I had embraced the rigorous exercise regimen conceived for us by Redfern himself, my cardiovascular fitness had increased exponentially, and in such a short time. My Vo2 capacity had increased manifold, indeed my blood had never been so efficiently oxygenated since my football days. I was becoming super-fit. Hell, I was super-fit. As a result, the second glass of bubbly went right to my head. Raul wasn't far behind me.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]?Dear oh dear, I guess I underestimated the potency of this excellent vintage,? Redfern seemed to be enjoying his play. He asked me the same question again. ?Trey, what are your true ultimate physical goals?? He was patient and waited for my intoxicated brain to choose the correct words. I found them without too much trouble and they emerged somewhat slurred, but nevertheless the alcohol had reduced my inhibitions, my self-control. "I want to get the hell outta here.... but I want to be the hugest bodybuilder ever!!!" I suppose alcohol can be an effective truth serum when its needed to be. Redfern asked the same of Raul. He said pretty much the same as me, although the champagne hadn't gone to his head as much as it had gone to mine. I felt heady and needed to lie down. It seemed as though our little impromptu gathering was at an end. Redfern walked us back to our rooms personally, something he had never done before.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]He didn't enter our rooms but bade us a good evening before seeming to melt back into the gloom of the corridor that connected our place with the laboratory in which Redfern worked his magic, the origins of which we simply couldn't fathom at that time. We had become intoxicated and hor....' Trey halted at that point, not wishing to divulge the events of that evening to his boyfriend, especially since they involved sex with the man who'd almost killed Mark just a few weeks ago. There was still more to tell, but Trey was tired speaking for the time being.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]Silence ensued. Trey had his head down, attracted to the size and definition of his arms, tensing the muscles as he opened and closed his fists. He became aware of how much his pecs had enlarged, ballooning outwards so that it was difficult to see anything below them. He felt himself growing hard and flexed his shelf repeatedly, delighted at the rush of blood he felt shooting into his chest. The sweat top was losing to the strain. Threads snapped audibly. But he needed to maintain self-control at this time, in order to keep his mind sharp so that he could continue to educate Mark to the past.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]But Mark had questions. 'Let's skip forward a bit, to the day I met you. Why did you come into the store? To get bodybuilding magazines? Trey to a guy your size a muscle mag is like looking through a brochure on kindergarten. What can you possibly learn from them that you don't already know better than any other builder alive?'[/COLOR]
[COLOR=dimgray]'I needed to get away from Raul. We'd been arguing a lot. And he'd just raped a guy before he started work on the electrics. That's what triggered his growth-spurt. Don't know what he did with the body. It was just some punk hitchhiker he'd picked up en route to town, despite our objections. We each of us drove one of the four trucks carrying a section of the gym. Redfern mass produces them this way, to make them easy to assemble so his operation can spread smoothly. By this time Raul and I were no longer ?together?, so I really didn't care what he did and who he did it with.[/COLOR]
[COLOR=dimgray]'We had escaped from the Collective using Raul's limited teleportation skills and Joel's space-folding duck-blind ability. We'd only just learned about the time-locks created by our simultaneous flexing during growth spurts. Redfern had been completely taken aback by that. He was just coming to terms with the fact Enerflex had caused incredible side-effects to manifest in the form of our exceptional talents... but a ?group effort? ability? Like us, he was conscious of what was going on during a time-lock, but unlike us he couldn't break out of it until the effect had dissipated. That gave us five minutes to get out. But more on that later.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'I was pissed off with everything. Carter and Joel had amazing abilities but I couldn't trust them, despite all four of us had decided to form a Collective of our own using resources stolen from Redfern. So far so good, but we never expected everything to go according to plan. I was horny when I came into your uncle's place, I'll admit that. But I needed sugar too, and I got it. Carter and Joel had just injected themselves with some enhanced, longer-lasting Enerflex Carter had come up with, so their growth spurt was inevitable. Away from the Collective Enerflex quickly spoils. Raul managed to teleport back there a few times to steal more, since when Redfern had augmented his Elite Guard and secured his fortress even further. We all knew that it was only a matter of time before he wouldn't ever return from there. Little did we know that at some point during his re-visits, Redfern must've gotten into his head, and made him a turncoat and spy.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'I remembered you from high school. Hell, I knew that you looked at me in a lustful manner, and I sensed that you were always too nervous to approach me. And why not? I was Mister Popularity and I was open about being gay. I guess I was a jerk back then and too wrapped up in my own self-importance to even know that you were there. Sorry about that.' Trey squeezed Mark's hand affectionately, but careful not to hurt his delicate bones. He had no idea how strong he had become and was anxious to put his new size to the test.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'Maybe it was fate that brought you into the store. I am Metazenic, after all. Maybe we have this innate homing instinct or something, a kind of sixth sense ability to seek each other out. It's more than Redfern can do. He needs to place spies in hospitals and such in order to seek us out.' Mark felt that he was on to something.[/COLOR]
[COLOR=dimgray]'You could be right,' Trey agreed. He continued with his account of the day of the gym's arrival:[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'The sugar in the donuts went right to my head, my fault for not having eaten properly that morning. Hell, we'd just escaped from the Italian Alps. Teleporting and space-folding just to get here, all the time trying to get the gym components sorted out for quick assembly. It wasn't easy and we were all very tired by the time we got here. We hadn't planned on hitting this town. But with only one gym and a lot of outta shape young men, it was the perfect testing zone for synthesizing our own supply of Enerflex.'[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'Let me guess... you need young guys to start bodybuilding, right? Basically your typical couch-potato teen whose body has never known a workout in its life? Like Maury Rose Jr? Am I correct?' Mark knew that he was.[/COLOR]
[COLOR=dimgray]'Uh yeah...very perceptive of you. Maury was the key to our success, but we need some of Redfern's blood in order to stabilize the serum. The fiend built his own genetic code into the Enerflex to prevent exactly what Carter Yan is trying to do. Every time he thinks he's isolated a strand of Redfern's DNA from the supplies of Enerflex we stole, the molecule breaks down and cannot be extracted. Redfern built booby-traps into his own creation. But Maury Jr, and three other teens who've also been making gains, have been successfully screened by Carter and he found them compatible with biometric-synthesis, whatever that means.'[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'Biometric synthesis?' Mark had to blink a couple of times to take in that mouthful and a half.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]Trey nodded. 'You remember the yellow fog that covered the town during the time-lock? That's evidence that compatible subjects are present. We discovered a patch of fog in Anchorage ? that's were we had intended to go ? but a short truck-stop here caused us to change our plans. Redfern didn't know I was from here anyway, so we reckoned the detour was worth taking the risk for. Y'see, whenever we are close to those capable of mimicking certain processes in Redfern's own body, the fog becomes evident. We don't know why this happens, or even if Redfern knows about this, but Carter has been quite thorough in his research and his findings in lab-rats adapted to be biometrically compatible proves it beyond a shadow of a doubt. The fog is like a lodestone, pointing us towards the likes of Maury Jr and his friends.'[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'How can they mimic Redfern? And for that matter... what the fuck is Mathias Redfern anyway, some sort of alien?' Mark was completely engrossed in everything Trey was telling him. It was so incredible, like stepping into an epic science fiction tale and being swept along by the strong current of the narrative.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'I don't know. Yan doesn't even know. We don't have enough information at this point. There is still so much mystery to all of this. But be thankful that there are types out there who can be vessels for more Enerflex production. They aren't Metazenic, but I suppose they could be Metazenic-friendly. They could grow larger than a Mister Olympia contestant, but eventually there would be a cap to their muscle growth. To make this completely successful, we will have to get a sample of Redfern's DNA. There is no other way to make this process a success.' Trey stopped speaking, again to let Mark take in the mind-swirling details.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'Why do you four need more Enerflex anyway? Aren't you happy with your sizes?' Mark wasn't thinking about himself at this time. Sure, he wanted to get huge himself, and would require lots of Enerflex to do it... but for the moment he needed to absorb every shred of information like a sponge... to fully understand the ramifications of what lay ahead for him... for them all.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'The urge to grow huge is only part of it,' Trey solemnly explained, 'Enerflex changes you, makes your muscle growth dependent on it forming bonds with glycogen. Without it glycogen won't be released to give the energy bursts necessary for heavy weights at short reps. It would make even maintaining our great sizes extremely difficult. Without Enerflex our bodies simply wouldn't have the energy to work out sufficiently. Having told you about my obesity, there is no way that I'm going back to being that way.' He got up from the chair and moved towards Mark. He picked him up in his huge arms and hugged him tenderly... lovingly. Both felt the passion rising ... along with their manhoods.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]Trey kissed Mark for a long, uninterrupted moment. He wanted him huge. Mark wanted that too. Then Trey remembered the Enerflex he'd stolen from Raul's safe. It was in his bum-bag. 'To hell with Carter's fucking agenda. I want you to take this now. If I'm correct in my assumptions, your growth should be near-instantaneous. You're a grade one. That surpasses everything that we know so far about the condition.' Trey quickly prepped the syringes.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'Wait a sec... what if something goes wrong?' Mark was beginning to think that maybe this was a bad idea. Trey and Raul and the others might not have minded being human test subjects in the past, but Mark still had time to reconsider. He gazed wistfully at his lover's gigantic arms as the muscles tensed and rippled beneath fabric that was about to give up its ghost. My God, he thought, his forearms alone are thicker than my chest. He's almost seven feet tall, wider than that at the shoulders. And he's getting bigger and more beautiful by the day.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]Mark's mind was set there and then. He wanted the treatment. 'Give me that syringe,; he suddenly demanded, with more animation in his movements than Trey was accustomed to seeing. Trey was only too eager to oblige. Having a grade one Metazenic bodybuilder on the team would certainly help to shift the balance of power closer to them, taking some of the venom out of Redfern's sting. Trey couldn't wait to have sex with his much-improved boyfriend. Yan would be pissed, but time was running out along with their much-needed supply of Enerflex. It was now or never. Trey had wanted to be the biggest. True, it had seemed that Raul had surpassed him in size and weight, but Trey was confident that he could catch up and outgrow the Hispanic.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]But what of Mark? How huge would he become, and would Trey be content with taking second place to him?[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]Mark jabbed himself with one full dose of Enerflex and then tossed away the syringe. As he did he felt his lust rising. 'Flex for me, Trey. Burst those clothes at the seams. The lust will help my growth.' The demanding tone from Mark was in itself a great turn-on for Trey. He was only too pleased to oblige.[/COLOR]
[COLOR=dimgray]The sweat suit was on its last legs anyway, his growth this past evening had been that significant. He made a most massive crab pose, larger and more stressed than ever before. His muscles burst free almost explosively, fragments of sweatshirt confetti suddenly made the air within the secret lab difficult to breathe. Trey growled like an animal in heat, and his skin flared red once again as it became a stretch-mark light-show. Skin was stressed to the max, snake-like veins rose from his flesh like fat earthworms burrowing to the surface of some beautiful landscape after a thunderstorm. Thicker and thicker his muscles became as he flexed harder and HARDER...and HARDER....FUCK YEAH!!!!!! The striations between the massive bulges became deeper, darker, swallowing up light like miniature singularities... from which nothing could escape. It was impossible to gauge his size, weight and measurements now... but as he crabbed harder and harder, the peaks of his biceps pressed his pecs together with the force of freight-trains. His pec-shelf blasted further outward, his nipples as big as fists now. His abs bloated outward then snapped taut, small gushes of air whistling out of the gullies formed between each ab-pack. His triceps played for dominance over his biceps as they flared to even greater proportions. Networks of massive veins became gluttonous for blood and erupted out of his traps, bis and tris... the ones on his neck thickening it to beyond gorilla proportions.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]His legs likewise exploded with greater mass, density and muscular definition. Sweat from the effort pasted his skin and soon more confetti was fluttering in the air as Trey's lower-half was liberated. His cock, now eighteen-inches in circumference and twenty-eight inches in length, grew at the same rate as his massive balls, each one as large as a bowling ball, eager to spew forth their luscious elixir. 'Is this BIG enough for you?' Trey growled as he continued to demand more size and power from his muscles. He added: 'I feel like I'm over 1500 now. Probably more. Knowing me it's waaaay more. Still want to grow and get fucking HUUUGE!!!!!' His body gained in height, too, but disproportionate to the mass his body struggled to flesh out. His aesthetics improved as always, the ratio between his waist and shoulders bordering on surreal. He did a lat spread and his head disappeared completely when his pecs rushed upwards to block it from view. His lats cracked the air they suddenly rushed out to displace and as Mark silently, but demandingly took all of this in ? his lust ever increasing ? so his metamorphosis into what destiny had intended of him commenced in all its jaw-dropping glory.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]8.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]Mark was on fire, as if his senses and flesh were engulfed in synchronous flame. Searing pain attacked every fibre in his body... every molecule, as the Enerflex was drawn throughout his metazenic physiology. He flailed his arms wildly, arching his back and gritting his teeth against the surging maelstrom now generating within. Trey watched, wide-eyed for once, remembering back to the first time he'd been injected with the same serum. But he'd never reacted towards it with such... hostility. Neither had Raul. This was completely different and it scared the hell out of him.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'Mark....what are you feeling?' It was the stupidest question Trey had ever found himself asking, but he put it down to sudden panic. He stood not three feet away from Mark, his gigantic muscle-bod naked and laved with sweat, his massive cock becoming recumbent once more as sexual stimulation gave way to all-out fear. There was simply no way to fathom what would happen across the next few minutes. Mark was screaming now and the room was far from sound-proof. The din brought Carter and Joel through from the second room. Yan's beautiful brown Asian eyes waxed large in their sockets and his mouth gaped wide, as though his expression alone formed the question he tried to get out.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'Wha...th'fuck?' Joel's reaction was practical and evasive, as Mark Stone augmented in every way possible, great charges of electricity flared from his body as growth seizures intensified with every passing second. It was the same as when they would break out of their own time-locks, whatever unnatural forces were unleashed from their muscles by Enerflex and the extra effects it had on them, nature itself seemed to object, defiantly hurling back at them its own forces. Joel wrapped himself and Carter inside a space-fold and so the electricity had no one to earth itself to, with the exception of Trey. His body jerked spasmodically as the charge knocked him right through a wall and outside. He found himself on a desert highway, revealing the lab of Carter's choice as an 18-wheel semi parked about thirty yards from a truck-stop. He didn't recognize the location and easily off-loaded the electricity into the earth. Once he was static-free he picked himself up and gathered his senses. 'I must've been thrown fifty feet.' There was a huge gaping hole in the side of the featureless black semi. Fleetingly Trey was reminded of Goliath, that nasty big truck from the Knight Rider re-runs he used to love watching as a kid. It was amazing how the mind can often divert itself away from a crisis in the hope of drawing strength from something familiar. But Trey needed to focus... and the jolt to his system made it difficult to think as articulately as he had been when telling Mark some of his story. Would he get a chance to resume the story later? He hoped to.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'Help me....Trey....pleeeeese!' Mark staggered towards the hole in the truck wall and fell down onto the dirt. Already his tee-shirt and jeans were strained to bursting point as his body swelled up at a frenetic pace. Enerflex metamorphism had been set to turbo-boost as every cell offered its allegiance to the growth process. His heart became superhuman, pumping at a rate consistent with his expansion. He was gaining at a rate of at least ten pounds per second. Trey couldn't believe what he was seeing. He wanted to go to his lover, to somehow soothe him through the process. [/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]Joel collapsed his space-fold and he and Carter ventured outside, both of them ripped and huge from their recent dabbling with Enerflex. They kept a cautious distance, but Carter had an SMG trained on the writhing Mark as he begged for the pain surging through him to stop. 'How do we know bullets will even stop him,' Joel asked, adrenaline keeping his duck-blind ability on standby, should they need to avail of it again. 'It's just a precaution. I don't want him to come to any harm if that can be avoided. He needs to be studied in detail. He's something new, Joel. As unlike us as he is like us. This is unchartered territory,' Carter explained, his hand actually trembling as he tried to keep the SMG steady. He'd never fired a gun in his life. He was a scientist, not a soldier. 'We were all of us in unchartered territory from the moment Mathias Redfern slithered into our lives,' Joel said with a modicum of regret. Sure, he loved having gigantic muscles, but things were getting way too weird.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]Trey was with Mark now, holding him firmly, wishing he could take his pain away as he quickly expanded to equal Joel, the smallest of the group. Mark still tingled with static, but Trey fought the discomfort for his boyfriend's sake. Inwardly he relished the massive growth occurring next to him, for the first time since he'd first been given Enerflex, Trey was aroused by the transformation happening beyond his body and to someone else.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'Is it st-stopping?' Oblivious to his growth at an alarming rate, Mark's perception of reality had become disjointed, surreal. Then, as if he had full command of the growth process, Mark's body ceased its metamorphosis. His trembling gradually subsided and he fell asleep in his gigantic lover's colossal arms. Trey, still the most massive bodybuilder in history (assuming he had surpassed Raul once again, which remained to be seen), lifted up the lesser bodybuilder with ease and stood there on the dessert road, wondering what to do next.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'Get him inside the semi, Trey. We don't want the first vehicle that passes by to be from the Sheriff's office,' Yan instructed, finding it necessary to take charge. The vanity in him wanted him to ignore all of this and spend the rest of the day posing in front of a mirror, relishing his now 800 lbs of muscle, testing his new strength in order to see how far he could push himself. But the scientist in him wouldn't allow that. If Mark was indeed a grade one, how come his muscle growth had ceased, freezing him at about five hundred pounds? He turned to Joel: 'How do you feel about hiding our HQ once more? You up to it or do you need to rest first?'[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'I think I can just about manage it. But I won't be able to move the thing. It's not like Raul's teleportation, Carter. He can physically move through portals between two fixed points. My power works by moving fixed points between us, bending space around us and cancelling out the distance in between those two points, hence distance is covered. It uses up way too much energy. I can keep us hidden for a couple of hours, but we need to get that hole patched up pronto.' Joel was pleased that he could at least think clearly during this crisis time. Yan turned to Trey. 'Carry Mark inside. I'm going to sedate him and take some blood and tissue samples. Then you can patch up the wall. We need to get this rig roadworthy. We have to keep several steps ahead of Redfern at all times.'[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]Trey hated having to take orders from Carter Yan. Hell, Trey, as the biggest and strongest of the lot of them, should be the one dishing out the orders. He still had a score to settle with Yan for his attack on Mark back at the Steakhouse. Funny that Yan seemed concerned with the hole in the semi, and yet, just a few hours before, he had smashed a hole through the Steakhouse restroom wall, large enough to seriously undermine Maury's business. Now he was over 100 pounds heavier and way stronger. But raw muscle and brute force would have to take a back seat to intellect. Science was the only way to beat Redfern at his own game. Trey relented and did what he was told. 'Do your tests, Carter. Just don't hurt him any more.'[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'I'm sorry I attacked him at the restaurant, Trey. I was desperate to get a blood sample. Think about it. I now have blood from before his growth spurt. I should be able to tell a lot by comparing the two.' Yan couldn't wait to get to work. But would he have the time to complete his analysis? There was no way to tell at this point.[/COLOR]


[COLOR=dimgray]* * * * *[/COLOR]
[COLOR=dimgray]The next morning....[/COLOR]
[COLOR=dimgray]Maury Rose Jr. peered through the locked door to Shapeshifters Gym and frowned. It was past 7am and the place should have been open by now. He rapped on the glass, hoping to attract some attention. But the place was deserted. It was a foggy morning, cool and clammy on the skin... a most unnatural mist indeed. And in summer? That didn't make sense. But Maury didn't care about the weather. He just wanted to train and grow, under the excellent tutelage of the biggest, most muscular Asian he had ever seen. 'Hello? Guys? C'mon, open up. I'm fucking freezin' out here.' Freezing in the middle of summer? And where were Pete, Simon and Donnie, the other three once-couch-potatoes who had taken to Yan's training programs like ducks to water? They should be here by now, too. [/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]Maury left his gym bag back at the main doors and did a full circuit of the parking lot. There was a vehicle parked at the main gates, that must have rolled up quietly without him noticing. It was a black limo, with windows tinted black... a predator of a vehicle, like something out of a Stephen King story. 'Finally,' Maury droned and went to get his gym bag. The fog began to thicken. Things were getting stranger by the minute. It was eerily calm this morning, and unnaturally quiet, as though the fog acted as a muffler to the sounds of reality beyond the gates to Shapeshifters. [/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]Maury approached the limo, hoping to get some answers. As he did, it changed position, taxiing into the parking-lot, suddenly steering to the right so that its impressive length completely blocked Maury's only escape route.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'What the...?' Maury began to panic. This was completely fucked up. Suddenly the rear-left passenger window wound down with an electric whine and a hand beckoned to Maury to come closer. 'It's OK Maury, it's just me and Simon,' said Pete Carmichael, who was practically Maury's training partner at this stage. Relieved, but still holding his bladder at yellow alert, Maury felt like throwing his gym bag at Pete for scaring him so.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'You fuckin' ass, Pete. You scared the bejasus out of me. What's with the stretch anyway? You win the lottery or something?' The door opened for Maury and he wasted no time getting in out of the unnatural cold. When the central locking mechanism engaged, Maury found himself a prisoner. He was made to sit opposite two of his three 'gym-buddies', although the fact that he knew them failed to settle his unease. They were acting quite strangely. And they looked different, apart from just bulking up by what seemed like a whopping fifty pounds of pure muscle. All three of the teenagers were starting to look pretty damn handsome, having spent all of their childhoods and most of their teen years so far failing to work their bodies into a healthy lifestyle. They had been sedentary out-of-shapers before Shapeshifters came to town. And now, in just over a month, their bodies had responded to Carter Yan's programs with tremendous zeal. Maury's body-fat was 50 percent less than what it had been, no easy task when your Dad cooks the best steaks and burgers in the county. Maury had made the swiftest gains of the three, Yan's star pupil, if you will. Had it something to do with the blood and sperm samples the Chinese genius took regularly from Maury, Pete, Simon and Donnie? And just where was Donnie this morning anyway? He, like his buddies, never missed a workout.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'You guys look bigger... way bigger. What's going on, guys?' Maury was scared and his skin issued a cold sweat that did little to improve his situation. It was stuffy inside the limo. He turned to look through to the driver's partition, but it was completely closed off. There was a speaker and a small video screen built into the partition. Who the hell was driving? 'Do you know that Shapeshifters is a sham, Maury?' Simon, a quiet introspective type if ever there was one, suddenly had information that Maury needed to know. His voice was deep and rasping, as if his vocal cords had been rubbed raw by sandpaper. His was bigger, more muscular, and sported a lot more facial hair than Maury remembered him having. Pete was the same. But despite their augmentations, their skin was deathly pale, lacking the vigour and healthy sheen you would normally expect to see on guys who had taken to treading a path to extreme health and fitness. And in the dim light of the limo's passenger interior, their eyes glowed a sickly, eerie yellow. Clearly they had relinquished their humanity, but in exchange for what?[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'Whuh-what do you mean? We've made great gains in the first few weeks. My Dad is really pleased with my progress.' At a time when reality suddenly made no sense, Maury desperately tried to justify what he was hearing. 'Your Dad is a fag and jacks off to the thoughts of you growing big,' Pete said with a devilish grin on his face.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'Shut up, Pete. I'm speaking here,' said Simon, nudging his buddy forcibly. Pete hissed....yes hissed in annoyance. Simon trained his inhuman gaze on Maury. 'There are no records of our progress available for us to review. The computer in the reception area is an empty box. Half the locker combinations spin freely in their housings. They don't lock anything away. Half the rooms in this building are off-limits. There are no women here, just men. And where are the staff this morning? It seems like we've been abandoned. Does any of this add up for you, Maury?' Simon paused to allow Maury to think about what he'd just heard.[/COLOR]
[COLOR=dimgray]'But we've made incredible gains. Look at me, I'm down in body fat and up in lean muscle mass. It's all I've ever wanted. And by the way, my Dad is not a fag.' Maury was visibly upset now, wishing that this was a bad dream he could simply wake up from.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'We've changed, Maury. And you will, too, we like to think. It's great over where we are now. We are stronger than ever before and we can hear our master calling to us from his mountain refuge. He needs us to go to him so that he can determine how Yan has changed us.' And to illustrate his point, Simon did something that caused Maury to scream. He produced a hypodermic syringe and stabbed it through the fabric of his gym shorts, near his crotch. Maury was transfixed with awe and disgust at the same time. He watched as Simon drew the plunger of the syringe backwards, extracting a clear solution from his gonads that appeared to glow a faint blue. It was not what Maury expected. Simon then held the solution up for Maury to get a good look at.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'Our balls don't make jism anymore, Maury. They make this shit, whatever it is,' Pete added. [/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'Mine too? Oh my God. This could be cancer or something.' Maury started to weep like a baby. [/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'Our new master can undo Yan's damage, Maury. He constantly calls to me in my mind, for he made me first. We have to answer his call. Just open your mind and accept him in. Be like us, Maury.' Simon's tone had become a resonant drone that found its way easily into Maury's head, causing the teenager's panic to intensify. He suddenly shot out of his seat and tried to kick open a door. He was getting stronger, but he was still a far cry off from ever committing such a feat. [/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]A prehensile appendage of great force and resilience suddenly punched a hole the size of a grapefruit through the driver's partition. Boneless and protoplasmic, but constricting like the coils of a great snake, the appendage quickly wound itself around Maury's neck and wrenched him backwards. He began to choke as the limb tightened its hold around him, despite his every effort to get free. The driver of the limo had now made itself known.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'Gaghk...aghk....aghhkkkk!' Maury's skin began to turn blue, his face bloating with the effort to take in oxygen. His feet kicked wildly about and one of his sneakers struck Simon in the throat.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'Enough! Donnie... release him. You may have the same master as I, but I am still in charge. Let him go,' Simon snapped. Donnie immediately obeyed. The limb slid away from Maury's throat and he dropped to the floor, gasping in huge lungfuls of air for all that he was worth.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'Good job too, the Master would string our heads up on poles if we allowed Maury to come to harm,' Pete commented. Simon looked at him without remarking and then clapped his hands together. 'Donnie... contact Raul and have him open a portal. We must return to the Collective, now that we have secured our prize. Master Redfern awaits our swift return.'[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]Sheathed beneath the miasma of an unnatural fog, the limo roared to life as a greatly metamorphosed Donnie gave it gas, seeming to make a beeline directly for the main entrance to Shapeshifters. But before the vehicle could collide with metal and glass, the limo vanished, swallowed into nothingness. Before the portal could close completely, an object, about the size of a cereal bowl, skimmed out of the portal and attached itself to the main doors of the gym, its LED readout counting down from 30 seconds....down to 25... 20... 15... 10... 5....[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]A second disturbance, making more of an impact than the one at the Steakhouse only the previous night, lit up the morning sky, waking many up from their slumber. The explosion not only ripped through the gym, reducing it to a smouldering heap, but passing cars and property for 500 metres in every direction was severely damaged. Innocent passers-by were killed in the blast and when the sound of the devastation eventually died down, it was replaced by an horrific cacophony of car alarms wailing, injured people screaming due to their injuries...oblivious to the fact they had dead loved ones nearby... and police and fire truck sirens hurtling to the scene of the carnage. Hell reigned in the aftermath.[/COLOR]


[COLOR=dimgray]* * * * *[/COLOR]
[COLOR=dimgray]By 9am that morning, after an evening of little sleep, for Yan was working through the night to map Mark's altered and simply incredible genome, Trey was taking a nap, stretched out on a gym mat that he'd placed on the floor of the rec-room within the semi. He had found corrugated iron paneling, which he'd used to repair the hole in the wall. He was exhausted, his body starved of Enerflex so that no more growth was possible. Yan had the last two syringes that Trey had stolen from Raul's safe and wouldn't relinquish them. He needed them for his experiments. All of this had become completely fucked up. Trey still wouldn't allow himself to trust Carter and Joel, although the three had agreed to put their differences aside, at least until they could confidently say that Redfern was no longer a threat to them.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]Joel was sleeping in the driver's compartment, for there was little room elsewhere and he was just about able to fit into the bunk at the back. He was depleted and so they were visible to the world. He had manoeuvred the semi around to the most secluded part of the truck-stop and paid the owner of the diner to keep an eye out for trouble. The old fucker was gay and would do anything for some green and a little muscle show free of charge. But how would the bodybuilders guard against another visit by Raul? They knew that Raul could only teleport in short-hops, therefore oceans still provided impossible barriers he could not cross. It meant that Redfern was temporarily away from his mountain fortress in the Italian Alps and operating some place nearby. Either this, or Raul's ability had improved exponentially, making oceans no longer impossible for him to transcend. This was something they would have to remain constantly mindful of.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]Trey dreamed as he slept. But it was a dream like no other. It had way too much clarity to it, as though for the first time in his life, he had carried his five mundane physical senses into something that was beyond physical.... metaphysical even. The dreamscape was featureless at first, a swirling haze of inarticulate shapes and sensations. But soon things firmed up into a human-shaped figure, which emerged from an amorphous nebula of black gassing right before him. It was then that Trey realised he was so much like his physical self here, massively muscular and faultlessly beautiful. His mouth fell agape when his now greatly augmented boyfriend stood before him in a dreamscape that suddenly glinted like diamond. 'Is this... real?' Trey was stuck for words. But he did not need to speak here. On this metaphysical plane, thoughts were all that was required to communicate. Thoughts now flowed effortlessly between the two lovers and when Mark smiled at his muscle-god, so he conveyed so much warmth, sincerity and devotion to the one he had been obsessed with since high school. 'Of course it is. I am being examined by Carter back in the physical world. But whilst my body is incapacitated, my mind has realised the extra ability that Enerflex has afforded me.' Mark's word's were sculpted and academic. Just a few weeks ago he had been working a dead-end job with little prospects for a lucrative and fulfilling future. Now... he had become a superhuman muscle-god, whose presence could transcend reality itself.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'You're making this possible? You drew me here? But why?' Trey's emotions were strong here. Despite his great size and strength, recent events had wearied him. He was bigger than he'd ever been, and yet... without further doses of Enerflex, all future muscle growth was uncertain. Mark had taken just one dose and had achieved in minutes what it had taken Trey two years and many, many doses to achieve. It was remarkable. 'I brought you here so that we could be together. Also... I need to know about your later months with Redfern, not so much the muscle growth, but things about Redfern's operation, anything that can be of use to us. And Raul, too. He must be stopped. If his power intensifies, and his teleportation improves, he could be unstoppable.' Mark, still less than a third of Trey's size and weight, moved towards his boyfriend, finding he still had to stand on his toes to reach his luscious lips. Both men were naked in the dreamscape, their beautiful bodies glistening with light reflecting the diamond-fire around them. There was only joy to be felt here, now... something Trey greatly relished. Their kiss seemed interminable, fluids passing between their tongues as their union intensified. Trey ran his hands across the beautiful spread of Mark's back, his fingertips tracing the contours of his newly acquired muscularity. Smaller though he was than Trey, the feeling still aroused him more than Mark ever had back when he'd been scrawny. 'You are.... so ...beautiful,' Trey exclaimed, gasping and trembling with nothing less than delight and increasing lust. Mark was only too willing to allow Trey's touch to explore every inch of his new physique, for he wanted Trey to know the new him, as much as he had the old.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'And this is only for starters, honey,' said Mark, finding it impossible to keep his lips apart from Trey's for more than a minute or so at a time. Trey didn't want this to end; he didn't want anything bad to sully this experience. [/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]Mark kneaded the powerful, super-hard muscles that formed Trey's immense balloon-pecs, finding now that he could dent the muscle, whereas before... he couldn't. Trey threw his head back and moaned, causing his pecs to heave upwards. They rippled to Mark's touch, whose his fingers fornicated with the sudden striations across Trey's pecs that formed like tectonic shifts in the earth's crust. Feeling so much muscle moving to his touch made Mark's erection pump to its fullest. A massive eighteen-inch cock morphed upwards, its pink mushroom head slamming against the brickwork of his abs like the sound of a cracking whip. But it was dwarfed next to Trey's immense member, which now approached thirty-inches in length and nineteen-inches around. His balls swelled larger than bowling balls as they stocked up on massive amounts of ?manbrosia? to shower his lover in.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]Mark briefly broke away in order to flex for Trey. He made a front double biceps pose and his arms peaked massively, although he had yet to form the secondary peak on each bicep that Trey's colossal 65-70 inchers had sported for some time now. Each bicep peak rose to about halfway up Mark's raised forearms, whereas Trey's biceps had already ascended several inches above his fists when flexed. No matter, compared to the way Mark had been, seeing him like this now made Trey want to shower him in cum. But was it even possible to cum in a dimension formed of dreams and aether? Mark knew he was having an effect on his lover and dropped down to a crab pose extending massively striated flesh dressed in bulging veins across most of his upper body. His skin glowed with a golden lustre and his muscularity seemed to deepen and improve, although there was no further growth. Mark then swung up to a full lat spread and his lats flared wide enough to fill any space between his arms. It was breathtaking, the effect making it appear as though his upper body was even more fleshed. In unison to Mark's pose, Trey also did a lat-spread and his upper body swelled to near-explosive proportions. Again his head disappeared from view as his ever-expanding pec-mounds ballooned outwards and upwards, gorging on every bit of free space available to them. Mark immediately flung himself at Trey and buried his face in those gorgeous over-swells, taking time out to suckle each compelling nipple... for all of Trey's phenomenal physique cried out to be worshiped... needed...tasted![/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'You have so much power... now... Sweetie. Hurt me... hurt me with your growing strength.' Trey was subservient to Mark now, despite he still carried the superior size. This dreamscape was of Mark's making and therefore Trey was a guest of this surreal extra ability now manifesting itself. He dropped to his knees, and secured his lips around Mark's cock. He concentrated and lowered it slightly so that Trey could begin to ease his orifice along the shaft, ensuring that his zealous tongue relished every gorging vein on its surface. [/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]Mark's body tensed from the sensation and every muscle stood out clearly from its neighbour, his body becoming super-rigid, flexed supreme. Locked in paroxysmal bliss, Mark began to jerk his groin back and forth against Trey's rhythmically oral pursuit of his cr?me. He would have it and savour it as though this were to be his last moment.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'Unnnghhh!' Mark's precum met with Trey's saliva, creating a delicious aperitif to what was to come. Both men put more power into their union as Trey took Mark's shaft impossibly into his mouth and partly down his throat without gagging. He wanted so much of Mark inside him and now that Mark was way more huge, with a bubble butt so thick, shapely, defined and accommodating, he looked forward to fucking him like never before. It was then that sheer masculine need overwhelmed him and he pushed Mark away from him. He then dove on him before he could hit the dreamscape floor as his desire to take him rose to fever pitch. Manipulating him into position, Trey growled as his great weight kept Mark in place and he separated his legs to drive his massive payload into his lover's passage. Mark didn't object one bit and screamed out his need for full penetration.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]Growling with an insane lust overload, Trey rode his lover with unseen ferocity, knowing that Mark was now strong enough to take his invasion. He drove his cock further into him and Mark writhed beneath him, in the throes of utter ecstasy, demanding he invade further and with greater and greater intensity. And as he fucked Mark, Trey flexed his awesome muscles, filling out into a full lat spread that blew him up to gargantuan proportions. 'So big... huge... huger still. I'm SO FUCKING HUUUUGE!!!!!' Trey released load after load of steaming, salty juice into Mark, pushing more fiercely against Mark's deliberately defiant glutes, now strong enough by themselves to pound against Trey's invading meat, stimulating it further to give up its goods.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'Unnnnnghhh!!!!' It was overwhelming and both men screamed out their bliss in unison, the ensuing orgasms further cementing their bodies into one. Together and between them, over 2000 lbs of solid, massive muscle became one glorious and inexorable union as Mark's demand to be filled by Trey intensified with each passing second.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]This was where things began to go terribly wrong. Trey's bliss gave way to a sudden awareness that discomfort had taken over from ecstasy. His orgasm subsided whilst Mark, still writhing ever-harder beneath his lover, seemed to be enjoying the experience more and more. Furthermore, the sensation of Trey being raised further from the dreamscape floor was disquieting in itself. What was going on? As he gathered his senses, panic seeming to whitewash over all pleasure he had felt previously, he noticed that his elevation was increasing in conjunction with Mark's sudden growth-spurt. Trey couldn't stop ejaculating semen. Litre after litre of jism was pumped out of his balls, through his cock and into the ever-hungry Mark, whose muscles again began to balloon outward at an alarming rate, pushing them both further upwards. In contrast Mark never ejaculated, his orgasm seizing him in an unholy paroxysm of euphoria that seemed without letup. And when Trey's balls were spent of their manbrosia, so there were other fluids within Trey Waters that would have to be tasted.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]It was here, in a diamond-speckled dreamscape of Mark's Enerflex-powered design, that Trey Waters was drained of his strength, size and beauty. He cried out for Mark to stop, but Mark seemed not to hear him, such was the level of bliss surging through him that communication at this point was a futile exercise. Mark's hungry, keen flesh wanted everything and wouldn't stop until Trey had been drained to the last drop.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]The dreamscape was an endless expanse of no-where and no-when, therefore it went on in all directions for indeterminate infinity. And carrying on endless currents of soul-searing aether, Trey Waters's screams would sound onwards and forever, without end. In his place, something new and incredibly massive willed itself back to the waking world. 'I know everything now,' Mark told himself as his id made peace with his flesh once again. He had no idea what fate had made of Trey Waters in the real world, but as he regained consciousness on the examination table of the lab on wheels, he fixed a steely, inhuman gaze on the flabbergasted Carter Yan. He smiled, warmly, showing serenity as he slipped his feet to the floor and caught Yan around his throat with a reach that was monstrous and inescapable.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'Well if it isn't the woman in the red dress,' the monstrous 2000-pounder remarked snidely, as he raised the 800+ pound Yan off the floor, holding him as though he were made of feathers. The scientist was doomed, powerless to break out of the choke-hold he was caught in. 'Your days of tinkering around with my blood are over.' Mark looked at Yan stolidly for a moment and almost pitied him for how powerless he had suddenly become. Then, without a second thought, Mark worried him back and forth until his neck snapped. He tossed Yan into a corner and the massive bodybuilder collapsed into a spineless heap. [/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]McIntyre was next. Mark, all seven and a half feet of him, stampeded across the lab, smashing everything in his path, and punched right through the trailer and into the semi's cab, where Joel had slept through the commotion due to sheer exhaustion. Rampaging without the ability to examine his actions, Mark wrenched the cab apart and thrust Joel out into the cool night of a less than tranquil desert. Before Joel could make sense of what was happening, Mark held him, too, in a choke-hold, only he had no intention of killing him... not yet anyway.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'It was wrong to make me,' the monster growled. Monster he may have become, but he was still very beautiful and so huge that his measurements couldn't be gauged at this time. 'But you didn't make me, Joel. Redfern did. And now you are going to take me all the way to the true monster's lair.'[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'Gagghk... ghk... I cuh-can't fold that much.... gahhkk...space....ghk!' Joel's protests fell on deaf ears. [/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'Very well then... Scotty... how about I fold you in....HALF,' Mark snarled, his desire for vengeance now insatiable. He began to apply pressure to Joel's throat, restricting his air-flow so that the smaller bodybuilder became weak and semi-conscious.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'Take me to Redfern, Joel, or you will die just like Carter.' Mark choked Joel still further, holding the man several feet off the ground and at arms length. Then, with his other hand, he grabbed hold of Joel's waist and began to apply incredible pressure. Joel gritted his teeth against the pain but couldn't scream due to the vice-grip around his neck. Reality began to melt away from Joel as a most disquieting peace rushed up to accept him.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]9.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]Maury Jr couldn't remember losing consciousness. But for the sake of mental stability it was for the best that he was out of it. At least he was spared much of the ghastly imagery he would have otherwise been exposed to as he was taken into the Utopian Collective of Mathias Redfern... now his master. [/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]Raul's teleportation ability had improved manifold, along with his now 1700 lb muscle physique. He had served his master well and Redfern always rewarded his minions for loyal service, in Raul's case: more Enerflex. His portals could indeed span oceans, now, therefore there were little places across the world in which Redfern's enemies could hide. It would bode a man well to serve Redfern than to be served death by him. Ah, but death was nary a release from Redfern's clutches, for he had ways of making you suffer beyond death. Thankfully, and for the moment, Maury Rose Jr was between life and death, in a place where Redfern could not venture, at least for the time being.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]He came to in a room that was not unpleasant in design, although it was little more than a prison cell. He sat up to find himself on a reasonably comfortable cot, with a single fluorescent tube buzzing and flickering overhead. To his right there was a table laden with simple foodstuffs. He was ravenous and made a bolt for the food, caring little if it was the kind of fare not covered by Carter Yan's diet plan. It consisted mainly of ham and cheese sandwiches with curling edges, some stale chocolate biscuits, and room-temperature bottled water, hardly appetising but he was grateful for it anyway. Half-way through the meal he noticed that there were no windows in the cell.... and worse still... no door.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'What?' How did he get into a room without a door? That was impossible. He began to test the walls, thumping on the cold brickwork for signs of a hidden mechanism, the kind of thing you see in old horror movies. But he found nothing. He began to panic and called for his father,[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'The fag can't help you now, bro. He's thousands of miles east of our position,' said Simon from behind Maury. Maury turned sharply and saw his gym-buddy sitting at one of two chairs in the room, fingering what was left of the biscuits on the plate but deciding against them. 'How did you get in? There's no door, Simon. Tell me what's going on.' Maury was terrified. He wanted to pass water but there was only a kid's potty in one corner. Was he supposed to go in that? Simon smiled and got up from the chair. Maury couldn't get over how big he'd grown. At a guess he had to be at least 250 lbs now, his body ripped and muscular, comparable to a super-heavyweight pro bodybuilder. He was very handsome, except for his gray pallour, and sickly yellow tinge to the once-whites of his eyes. There was something faintly reptilian about those eyes, with their slitted irises that seemed to marry well with what Maury was sure was the briefest flicker of a bifurcate tongue darting between Simon's blackened lips as he chuckled near-insensately. 'Heh... I'm sure you'll eventually figure it all out, bro,' said Simon, and flexed his muscles as he moved towards the petrified teenager. He wore a semi-transparent black wife-beater, stretched to near-ripping point across his beautifully muscled torso. It was accompanied beneath by a pair of white spandex gym shorts with a black lace-up front. These were the kinds of garments Maury hoped that he would one day look great in, if he happened to live long enough to see ?one day?.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'Teleportation, right? Jeez, this is like a fucked-up movie. I'm in the Matrix, right?' Why Maury would even ask a stupid question like that was beyond his comprehension. He was scared for sure, and his mind sought a rational explanation to his sudden, inextricable predicament. The Matrix was as good a theory as any. Simon chuckled some more. He flexed right in front of Maury, towering over him by a good four inches. He was broad at the shoulders and his pecs were deep and striated. He pressed them against Maury, sandwiching him between himself and the wall, and as he did so, he guided Maury's hand down to his crotch, ensuring that he got to know his jewels pretty well.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'What are you duh-doing? Simon, stop this,' Maury pleaded. [/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'Your Dad's a fag... and so are you. I found your gay porn under your bed once, but I said nothing. I took home one of the movies without you knowing and jerked off to it all night. Guess we all have our little secrets, Rose.' [/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]Despite his fear, Maury felt himself growing hard. Simon continued to flex his pecs right in front of him, forcing him to press against his muscular power. But his skin was cold, unnaturally so, and Maury hadn't the space to properly recoil. Simon was no longer a regular person. Maury's mind fleetingly settled on the memory of the tentacle that had attacked him in the limo earlier. Simon had referred to it as Donnie. Donnie was nowhere to be found. Was he even human any more?[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]Maury fought against his rising lust, fear of his current situation refusing to give way to the shock revelation that Simon knew his secret. Maury's sexuality was irrelevant right now. Fear of the unknown reigned supreme... its presence stifling. 'That stuff in the syringe... what did Carter Yan do to us?' Maury's breathing was laboured, his anxiety and lust hastening his heart rate. His fate was now in the hands of a higher power, and this power ? this master ? had yet to make himself known.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'You should hear this from Master Redfern himself, but until he calls you to audience, he asked me to bestow upon you a welcoming gift.' Simon opened his mouth, seemingly to impossible proportions, and tasted Maury with his snake-tongue. Between the forked tips there was a gobbet of phlegm which he'd gathered from the back of his throat. And as he kissed Maury long and hard on lips that quaked along with the rest of him, so terrible stuff was introduced into Maury's body, stuff that soon had him screaming and writhing on the floor as if squirming in acid.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]His task of deliverance completed, Simon stepped backwards into one of Raul's portals and vanished. Maury lost consciousness once again, which was for the best. He escaped much of the pain of his physical reworking and soon was silent and still in his sealed-up sarcophagus.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]* * * * *[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]Mathias Redfern was used to working in bad light, even darkness. His workshops existed in the lowest level of his mountain fortress, a place where only his highest lieutenants were permitted entry. He preferred it this way... an almost sacred pecking order, although Redfern held nothing sacred to him. Except, maybe the blood of the innocent and the energising conflicts obtained from souls in turmoil.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]He worked calmly and methodically, relying on his astounding knowledge of modern science to extrapolate a cause of reasoning behind his once-prot?g? Carter Yan's meddlesome research into the gross synthesis of his elixir. He examined a vial of Enerflex-B, as he called it, holding it up in front of him, recalling how it had been offered to him by his senior lieutenant, Simon, who'd extracted it from his own gonads. Redfern sneered in the blackness, black lips drawing back from teeth that were pointed and beast-like, his augmented sight as good in darkness as it was in conditions of light. 'Yan almost had it perfected,' he remarked, his attention fleetingly diverted to the commotion occurring in one stinking corner of the workshop. He turned to address it and twin-hell-lamps blinked on in the darkness, their unnatural light strobing on rivers of airborne sulphur. The creature whose eyes generated this light rattled its binding chains in violation of its master's rule of silence. It was Redfern's own fault that the thing was restless, for he had forgotten to feed it.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'Silence, Donnie, my boy... here... sustenance for your worth,' said Redfern and went to one of several tables in the dark lab, each one supporting a catatonic human subject of experimentation. He chose a somewhat plump comatose ?patient? in his mid-to-late twenties and without giving it a thought, plunged his taloned hand through and into the doomed man's chest cavity. Bone splintered and flesh was rended apart as Redfern pulled out the life-giving pump that was the man's steaming, still-beating heart. Some blood splashed across Redfern's face and neck and he relished it greatly, for it formed half of what he considered complete and utter sustenance for a creature of his exceptional design. As for the heart itself, he tossed it towards Donnie who stretched his chains taut in a desperate attempt to catch the meat in mid-air. Donnie just about achieved it and swallowed his meal whole. His six limbs were each encased in manacles, but the introduction of a meal into his system sent his once human body into further metamorphosis. The creature growled with rising power as two more pseudo-limbs burst forth of a hideously mutated torso and began lashing and whipping about in search of mischief. Similarly... a second, rudimentary set of wolf-like jaws began to push out from what was once the youth's left shoulder. Before it had even established itself as a second head, the ?snout's? nose began to sniff the air, reacting to the smells of blood and faeces.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'Poor, Donnie. You ingested the same biometric spores as the rest of the males in your stinking hovel of a town. Ninety-nine percent rejected them immediately, as I have learned to expect. But four of you accepted my taint into your bodies. Simon, Peter.... even dear Maury. They are shining examples of my genius. But you, Donnie, you made different work of the spores and became this, the subject of further experiments, I think. But all in good time.' Redfern grew silent and sent a mental command to Peter to sever the extra appendages and put them into cryo-storage for analysis later. Donnie was just about containable with six limbs, but should he grow any more, becoming stronger all the time, then a creature like that would be difficult to put down. Redfern resolved to be more mindful of where he sent his ?altering mists? in the future.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]But altering mist posed an irresistible lure to Yan and Company. According to information constantly fed to him by his spy Raul: Yan, McIntrye and Waters believed that the mists were formed when biometrically compatible subjects were present. Well, they weren't far from the truth (they had no idea that Redfern had created the mist in the first place). There was little of Redfern's stuff in them, but just enough of his taint in Enerflex to make them compelled to follow his mists. Redfern had sent out the spores to contaminate young men in Trey Waters' home town. Most would not take, but three or four might. And so Redfern would have his lieutenants, his loyal servitors. It was convenient that Yan had unwittingly recruited them to Shapeshifters, to conduct experiments of his own into Enerflex synthesis. Redfern gradually tightened his net, all things coming together nicely, he felt.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'Be quiet, Donnie. Settle down and let your master work,' Redfern instructed. Should the beast become unruly in its black prison, he would have it sedated, or maybe destroyed, for it was a failure. Or by the same token... Donnie Drake's mutation could be seen as an evolution, but one most foul. Redfern went back to examining Yan's brand of Enerflex. 'He would have needed a pure strand of mine own DNA to perfect the batches. This is unstable and spoils easily. Knowing Yan he would not have attempted to test unstable solutions on himself. He might have been able to extend the shelf-life of authentic Enerflex stolen from my stores, but beyond that he was stumped. Hmmm.' Redfern's attention returned to a more docile Donnie, now settling down to sleep off his meal. 'Only hours ago you were capable of driving an automobile. Now... you are a chained beast. Your degeneration is hastening. You could be dead in a matter of hours.' Redfern had yet to test Yan's crude Enerflex on something living. True, he had human subjects laid out before him, but where was the fun of making another like Donnie, when Donnie himself could be the recipient of an inferior serum?[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]Redfern prepped a syringe just as Pete arrived with extra chains. 'Wait, Pete,' Redfern admonished sternly. Pete's eyes hadn't fully adjusted to the darkness, although they were slowly getting there. He tried not to stumble around before his strict master. 'Attach an electrode to Donnie here, I wish to try something. If things get out of control, shoot him with 50,000 volts.' [/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'Yes, master,' Pete replied simply. Grinning wickedly, his curiosity suddenly that of a child on Christmas Eve, Redfern pacified Donnie with a mental command. The creature that had recently been a human boy of 17, received the spoiled Enerflex without argument. Master and servitor gave the abomination plenty of distance, Pete's hand poised over the control pad for the electrode.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]The transformation was near-instant. Pete couldn't see much but his master's vision was sharp in the darkness. Redfern's fell aghast at the intense swelling of Donnie's now protoid flesh... malleable, adaptive... filling out to seemingly engulf every free space in the room. With the force of a train Redfern was blasted against shelves stocked with all manner of compounds and chemicals. The force caused a devilish and corrosive rain to shower him as he landed in a heap on the floor. Pete fared worse than his master and was snatched by a nest of lashing tentacles that erupted wildly from Donnie's once-chest. He dropped the electrode control pad in the darkness and screamed maniacally as he felt his entire body become ensnared in the creature' ever-thickening pseudo-limbs. Shaken and suffering from chemical burns, Redfern's mind called out to Raul who was working several floors above carrying out his master's duties. 'Raul, send a portal to rescue me. There is trouble here in the lab. It is too late for Pete, but your Lord and Master must not succumb to detriment!!!' [/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]Raul heard his master and answered his call, focusing a portal in his mind and projecting it down to the workshop. The portal was invisible, but Redfern was sensitive to such energies and was drawn to its event horizon. The fiend wasted little time hurling himself through its centre. He emerged head first, rolling forwards and snapping to his feet in a trice. His lithe frame (although slight of flesh but deceptively robust) was surprisingly supple. He found himself in Raul's private quarters, the very same three rooms that Redfern had, four years into the past, housed Raul and Trey at the beginning of so many experiments. Raul was not alone either, having dosed a youth (from a village far below) with so much wine that it was easy to get him back to the Collective. The youth was purely for Raul's pleasure and was already half-dead, his anus ravaged beyond recognition. [/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'You are supposed to be working, Raul. What is the meaning of this?' Redfern's spoke tonelessly at first, but ended his sentence acerbically. Raul, naked and massively pumped, towered above Redfern and seemed to grow before his very eyes. His titanic muscles gained yet more substance, his thighs pushing his balls and cock out further, whilst his lats forced his arms upward and his pec-shelf became massively disproportionate to his diamond-hard torso. Inches and pounds were added to his already too-huge frame and he loved the sensation more and more the larger he became. But he had to know his place before his Lord, for Redfern had the power to revert him at any moment.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'Master, I was swollen with Enerflex and needed to vent the pressure,' Raul explained with a lame excuse.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'You could have used the gym to train like before,' Redfern hissed, in part due to anger and partly due to the pain of chemical burns which covered most of his head and shoulders. No matter, he had excellent healing abilities and would soon be mended.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'The weights do little for me now, Lord. I have grown so strong. I get little satisfaction from working out now,' Raul added somewhat resignedly. [/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]Redfern snorted gruffly, intending to pick this matter up later. Discipline was paramount if the Utopian Collective were to become a global force to be reckoned with. 'Leave no trace of that when you are done with it,' Redfern commanded, extending a bony, shaking talon towards the bloody and dying mess in Raul's bed. The youth had been raped heinously by Raul and more than likely would not survive the assault of the near 2000 lb muscle monster. Despite Raul's immense proportions, he was still a beautifully handsome man and Redfern lusted greatly for him. But now was not the time to give in to bestial hungers. Something had to be done about the grossly mutating Donnie far below in the labs. Redfern was grateful for Raul's portal but quickly left his rooms for his office nearby. He had to organise a cleansing party for Donnie. But did he regret testing the Enerflex-B on him?[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]Nothing ventured, Redfern mused solemnly to himself.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]* * * * *[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]Mark was furious with Joel and took it out on him physically. He picked up the massively muscular Scotsman as though he were weightless and tossed him with little effort. Joel did his best to protect his face with his hands as he struck the giant sequoia with enough force to leave an impression in the great trunk's girth. He fell to the ground and lay in wet ferns, trembling and depleted. Mark rampaged after him, mildly amused that he was strong enough to throw him that far. Just for fun he tested his strength and began to hug the trunk of the tree nearest to him. He gave it every ounce of strength he had and despite that the sequoia was many centuries old, the great organism was powerless to resist such a mighty uproot. Mark didn't completely detach it from the forest floor, for its root-structure was far too extensive, but he did worry it enough to undermine its foundations. With an ear-splitting grown, the massive tree crashed to its death, narrowly missing Joel by just a few metres. The impact sent the forest into a frenzy, as the diversity of life it supported took to fleeing in panic from the sudden maelstrom.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]Mark laughed heartily and pounded his way after Joel. He found him without too much effort and picked him up one-handedly, his mighty mitt clamped securely around his throat. Joel weighed close to 800 (it was impossible to tell his exact weight without careful measuring) but Mark began to bicep curl, heaving him up and down in a series of reps that could easily go on for hours. His arm filled out with the strain and a vein super-highway erupted across the hugely defined muscles. Joel felt like death was near, and he would give up his ghost willingly if it meant an end to this torment.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'This doesn't look like the Italian Alps, Scotty,' Mark growled, bodybuilder smugness the only emotion he cared to feel right now. How could he have gone from a sweet and morally abiding young man into an apathetic, maniacal murderer? Joel thought he knew the answer, but he was in grave danger and his thought processes had become seriously marred. Mark didn't even give him time to get his breath back before intending to knock more wind out of him.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]Battered, bruised and bleeding from his nose and mouth, as well as from a great many cuts across his rippling physique, Joel was once again snatched into the air and held at arm's length. Mark's strength was phenomenal and he was getting bigger and stronger by the second. He growled at Joel again. 'Take me to Redfern or I will snap you in half, runt!' Panting furiously, his breath bellowed like a miniature hurricane and as his chest heaved to help inflate his lungs, so his pecs swelled up to their most mammoth size yet. Striations that could take a man's hand up to the wrist cracked across the pec-shelf, like fissures formed by an earthquake. 'Nuh-need to...resssst, Mark. Cuh-can't fuh-fold any more.... rest.... puh-please.' The plea broke through a small crack in Mark's psychotic veneer and for a moment he relented, giving logic and sense time to germinate once more. He wanted to kill Joel, but without him it would be difficult to get to Redfern. Italy was a long way away from wherever they were and Mark was simply too big to fit onto any commercial airliner. He granted Joel the rest he desperately needed. Joel passed out with gratitude. [/COLOR]


[COLOR=dimgray]When he awakened once again night had fallen across the land. The forest of giant sequoias was filled with all manner of nocturnal sounds made by animals that belonged to the night. Still though, they could sense that a malicious force had invaded their domain in the form of a giant of great enmity, and so kept their distances. The temperature had fallen considerably and Mark was naked from head to toe. He didn't feel the cold at all, but Joel was weak and hungry and trembled as he regained consciousness, partly from the cold but mostly out of fear. To his surprise Mark had gotten a fire going and was roasting some large mammal he'd killed and skinned. The smell of the meat was irresistible to someone like Joel who needed to eat a vast mount of food in order to energise his massively muscled body. His mouth watered and for a moment he thought that the old Mark had returned to vanquish the fiendish personality that had recently overwhelmed him so completely. But his thinking on this was quickly laid to rest. He fleetingly wondered how Mark had gotten a fire going on a damp forest floor, but thought against asking.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'Eat your fill, Scotty. Then use your power to shift us from here,' he ordered coldly, tearing off a leg of meat which he then tossed towards Joel. It was a little overdone and Joel wasn't even sure what kind of creature he was eating, but he was grateful for the offering. Mark kept the rest for himself and hunkered down with his back to a tree to feast on the carcass.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'This isn't just about getting back at Redfern. It's also about Raul... what he did to you, I mean?' Joel was taking a risk asking something like this. Getting Mark even more worked up could have dire consequences. But as he ate and felt his strength returning, so he began to think that Mark would spare his life, if only to use him to get to Redfern. Mark barely acknowledged him as he chewed his meal noisily. In the reflected glow of the flickering campfire flames, Mark's body was radiant and beautiful, especially in the area where his rippling pecs cast huge shadows over his abdomen. With every chew of the fibrous sustenance, Mark's muscles bunched and heaved, flexed and relaxed. It was a ceaseless motion and Joel actually felt himself growing hard just watching him eat.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'I'm going to fucking kill that bastard,' Mark snorted, and pounded the humus floor with one fist, hard enough to cause the forest to quake. Creatures of the night squeaked, squawked and caterwauled a cacophony of defiances. Joel's heart leaped inside him.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'I know why you are like this. It happened when Redfern stuck his finger into your face. He did the same to Trey, infecting him with megalomania. You've got it as well. I think I can help you regain control.' Joel was done with eating now. He felt his strength returning rapidly and he flexed his muscles to work the heat from the fire into them. He was huge but still a dwarf compared to Grade One Mark.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'How did you know about that,' Mark growled, making a huge fist as if about to strike the ground again. He hesitated.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'Who do you think intercepted Raul's teleporting of you to bring you to the semi? My ability folds space around me, but it also acts like a two-way mirror. Sounds and images filter in, but nothing of me leaks out. I was monitoring the situation with you, Trey and Redfern back in the apartment, waiting for the right moment to act. I could only pull you out once Raul activated his portal. Besides, I needed you away from Redfern... his powers are considerable and we just don't know what he his capable of beyond what he's already demonstrated.' Good, he had Mark's interest and the bodybuilder-god had yet to pound the earth again.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]Mark grew silent, seeming to shrink down into himself somewhat, but maybe that was a trick of the flickering light. Joel was out of his depth in a place like this, having grown up in cities, with little connection to nature. In a wilderness like this he was stripped bare, reduced down to his basic elements, in his case... an extra-sensory talent to fold space, massive muscles adorning his ample frame... and the desire to grow, always to grow, although of the four super-bodybuilders Redfern had augmented, Joel's desire to grow was not as governing of him as it was the others.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'I...I think I... killed Trey.... absorbed him somehow.... absorbed him into me and my mind. I have this place in my head... like a dream only a real place... within a dream. I took Trey there and killed him.' The realisation of what he'd done now struck Mark with a cold audacity. Joel concentrated and prepared to fold space around himself, purely a defense mechanism. He could escape now if he wanted to, but something caused him to pause from taking that course of action. Was Mark returning to his old self? He needed to keep talking, to keep his mind interested in anything but killing him or uprooting any more trees.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'Trey loved you very much. You couldn't help yourself and no one blames you for what happened. Redfern is to blame for this. He caused this imbalance in you, but Trey got over it. Heck... he wanted to rule the world at one point. Redfern messed around with Trey and Raul more than Carter and me. But one good thing came of Trey's hostility towards Redfern, it allowed us to escape from the Collective when first we realised we could stop time by flexing during a growth spurt. Trey's not here to tell you the rest of what you need to know. But I can try to fill in the blanks, if you'll allow me to.' But Mark now knew all that he needed to know, thanks to his absorption of all that had been Trey Waters.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]Silence ensued, during which Mark seemed to shrink down further into himself. He began to shake back and forth, erratic movements gripping him like a palsy. He pressed his hands to his temples and grimaced, hissing against a sudden upheaval taking place inside his head. 'Unnnngh....can't stop this... too much to... buh-bear!!'[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]Joel could do nothing but watch, helplessly, as Mark began to change, shrinking down further, his entire body transforming into something else.... nay... someone else. Muscles pulsed, flexed and became more compact, still massive in size despite their shrinkage. Bones shifted audibly as the frame upon which Mark's massive muscles were supported became denser, smaller, but still huge enough to support his now 1000 lbs of weight. In a matter of a minute or so, Mark Stone ceased to exist, and in his place.... a much smaller, but somehow more powerful Trey Waters sat, naked and rippling, more beautiful than ever before. The palsy ended and an eerie kind of calm befell the forest.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]Sweating profusely, misty perspiration rising off him to condense in colder air, it was as if Trey had been re-forged from a womb riven by flames. Joel was speechless. The only one he had seen shape-shift before was Carter, for that had been the extra-ability he'd developed as a side effect of Redfern's enerflex experiments. 'Trey... is that really you?' Joel's mouth fell agape and his eyes waxed huge in their sockets. This was all too remarkable. It was as though having killed Carter, Mark had absorbed his shape-shifting ability. If Trey had been killed by him in some alternate dimension formed of thoughts alone, then perhaps something of Trey lingered there still... in Mark's mind. Somehow Mark's thinking about Trey willed this to happen. All of this was highly speculative, mind. But it was as good a theory as any.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]Trey looked across the campfire and was pleased to see a familiar face. He still shuddered a little but at least the heat of the fire helped. 'Please tell me what's going on, Joel? Where are we? And where's Mark?'[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]Joel didn't know where to begin, but just continued to stare at the regenerated Trey Waters. Around them the night concealed the travesties of a fiend... as much as it cradled a miracle.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]* * * * *[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]In the deepest recesses of an inaptly named ?clinic?, Raul Ortega, a most intimidating man given his size and strength, nevertheless cringed outside of the workshops of his Lord and Master. He was facing an unknown threat and no one had gazed at Donnie since when he'd been relinquished of his humanity due to Redfern's biological (bio-ill-ogical?) tinkering.According to Redfern, Donnie's mutation had accelerated due to the introduction of tainted Enerflex formula into his system. Raul, like the half-dozen bulked-up gray-skinned thralls sent to assist him, was armed with two modified UMP .45 calibre submachine guns, each one capable of firing a chemically-charged bullet at a rate of 580 rpm. The chemical was a reversion formula to Enerflex but was housed in a secondary chamber designed to explode after the bullet's silver/titanium compound tips had punctured Donnie's immensely resilient outer skin.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]The area had been floodlit with ultra-violet lightning, leaving nowhere for the beast to withdraw to. These creatures of the night tended to avoid direct sunlight, but was this having any kind of adverse effect on a creature beyond doors that seemed too flimsy to contain its rampage? It was too quiet. Raul gulped audibly due to nervous tension. He cocked both of his guns and tried not to think about shitting his shorts.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]Behind him, his smaller subordinates, the gray-skins, with their deathly pallours and even less animated gazes, would do whatever he ordered them to. That suited him. He puffed up his enormous chest, flexed a little blood into his muscles and ordered three of the six thralls to enter the workshops. Little more than mindless trogs, their wills completely bent to their master and his senior lieutenants, the first three kicked through the only entrance into the workshop. They drew back from the ultra-violet lamps which immediately seared the outer layer of their pallid skin. Raul was grateful that his master had saw fit to leave his humanity relatively intact. But the thralls were too far gone, re-made in their master's image too extensively. The thralls hissed out an agonising objection to their mission but Raul was uncaring. 'Sweep the area and clear,' he commanded with an authoritative tone he generally kept in storage until his master was out of earshot. 'The light stings us, pleeeeese be merciful,' the creatures hissed in a fawning tone that was to be pitied. 'Lt. Donnie is nowhere to be found,' one of them was only to eager to impart, his skin beginning to smoke as the lamps made short work of the moisture in his altered body. Raul ordered the second three to enter. They went willingly, but like the first three were soon screaming in pain. That in itself should have been enough to provoke, Donnie, had Donnie been capable of reacting at the time.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]Raul killed the UV lamps and restored normal low-watt lighting, much to the relief of the thralls. When he was convinced that it was safe to enter the lab cesspit, he did so... and almost gagged at the site of what he found there.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]Every surface: walls, floors, ceiling ? the remains of whatever benches, shelves and work-stations that still resembled such ? was slick with disgorged organic matter. It was as though Donnie had exploded, but only after ingesting (absorbing?) every last comatose test-subject Redfern had had present in the workshop at the time, as well as Pete. The smell was pungent and nauseating. Raul felt his gorge rising but just about managed to keep it down. Still, he couldn't bare to be in this room for more than a couple of seconds. The thralls gave the room a clean sweep and reported it clear of monstrosities.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'He must have nearly filled the room before he turned into so much sludge,' Raul commented, deciding it was okay to lower his UMPs.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]Just as he did so, the doors slammed shut, as if of their own accord, trapping all six thralls within. Power to the lights was cut and in the darkness of the former workplace of Mathias Redfern, flash-fire from several guns cut through the blackness, the high-velocity pulses from the weapons not loud enough to drown out the screams of six altered men being relinquished of their spines. As the gunfire ceased, the sound of flesh being wrenched apart completely brought Raul's gorge up and he began to panic, unleashing a hail of machine-fire from the twin nozzles of his UMPs. He emptied two complete magazines into the doors to the workshop, and as he did so raced backwards, his movements completely controlled by adrenaline. When the guns were spent he dropped them and held his breath for a moment, stooped over, each shoulder almost scraping the walls on either side of him.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]The doors had been reduced to wood chips so that the being thus emerging could do so with little effort. Raul couldn't believe what he was seeing. Empty footprints formed of the putrid slick remains of an organic monstrosity, appeared to animate themselves along the corridor, as though the invisible thing that made them sought an audience with Raul. Fear riveted him to the spot. In his mind came a mental inquiry from his master: What is happening down there? The video cameras aren't transmitting. Respond to me, Raul.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]But Raul couldn't respond, for fear had transfixed him. The invisible thing closed the distance, its footprints, tap-tapping along and voiced in wet, tacky splashes. An insubstantial wraith solidified before him, firming up out of thin air itself. He was human-shaped... seemingly with his humanity completely restored... but fleshed out in a manly beauty the like of which Raul could have easily rivalled back when he was in the early stages of muscular development. [/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]Donnie Drake was human again. But how was this possible? 'Hello Raul. Did I miss anything fun?' Raul was speechless. Redfern would have to be informed of this right away. He immediately formed a portal behind him and stepped into it, leaving the embodiment of an inexplicable process standing passively in the blood-stained corridor.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]Nothing ventured... indeed.[/COLOR]


[COLOR=yellow]Parts 10-11[/COLOR]