With Beam And Fang Ch 01

Chapter One: Patient Zero

Infected: 0

Healthy: 7,186,238,691

Day: 0

Celia Corbin was a thief. She didn't like to mince words, and she definitely hated artifice in all of its forms, and she really hated flowery titles and overdone corporatotalk. Her first boss might have called her a 'retrieval specialist,' which was the exact sort of thing that made her want to throw him out of a tenth story window - the same kind of thing that had pushed her

out

of normal jobs and into what she was now. And so...she cut straight to the chase: She was a thief, a stealer of secrets, a skulking skullduggery specialist, the kind of person that most people only saw on re-runs of action TV shows that had too little budget and too many shots of women in bikinis.

Though, some nights, stealing secrets from corporations for corporations were easier than other nights.

Her mouth slid down, then back up, her eyes closed tightly as she counted the seconds before the security guard shuddered and climaxed, his balls jerking slightly as spurt after spurt of thick, white cum sprayed down her throat. She swallowed with the skill of a true professional, her eyes closed tight, until she slid her mouth back, opened it - to show the gleaming cum that pooled in her mouth - then closed it, then opened it again, sticking her tongue out. Clean and pure.

"D-Damn..." The guard whispered, barely aware of her slipping his key-card from his desk drawer.

"Any time, Barney..." Celia stood, grinning as she ran her finger along his chest, her eyes glittering slightly as the security guard - who really had been pathetically easy to talk into shutting down the security cameras so they could be private. She leaned forward, kissing him as she reached around and slipped a hypodermic from her hand. A faint prick, and he stiffened, then collapsed back, unconscious and snoring loudly. Celia grinned, slipped her hypo back into her sleeve holster, and admired her handiwork: He'd wake up with some happy memories and a really aching

pounding

headache.

"Babe?"

"Yes, Spence?" Celia asked, her finger going to the micro-blue tooth in her ear. Her boyfriend, Spencer Kwan, laughed.

"Just wondering when you were going to be done with pencil dick here..."

"Hey, he's hung well enough for someone who isn't you!" Celia laughed. "And I figured, the more time I gave, the better a chance you'd get into their systems."

"Chance?" Spence laughed as she slipped from the security office, sweeping her gaze around the sterile corridors of Dynacore. The place smelled and looked like any other lab in any other high tech, high security biotech firm: Clean linoleum, hidden security cameras, discrete security doors, and a sparse smattering of biohazard doors that let people go into and out of their labs. But Celia wasn't here for any of the dozen or so biological goopy things that Dynacore Biotechnology had locked away down here.

See, the clean environment of a biotech laboratory matched the kind of environment someone wanted for a super-computer array. The kind of thing that held all the

really

fun stuff, the stuff like fiscal records and off the book bank accounts. The things that she could

actually

steal. Or, in this case, sell to Dynacore's biggest competitor - like, where was she going to hawk some fancy corporate gene sequence? The pawn shop?

"Yes, chance," Celia said, grinning as she headed down the corridor.

"I'm offended. Really. I am!" Spence snickered. "I unlocked the door when you walked

into the building

, babe."

"Oh? And then, why did I have to suck the guard off?"

"I didn't want you to feel too useless!" Spence said, laughing it off.

Celia shook her head as she came to the security door that the stolen blueprints claimed was a computer array room. When she came up to it, the door light flashed from red to green and a buzzer whirred softly. She grabbed the knob, pushed, and laughed as she entered the room...and the laugh died, died as quickly as a man hitting pavement at sixty floors.

The room had a computer, yes...but it wasn't the massive, linked array of a super-computer that would hold all the corporate secrets she needed. The rest of the room was a bunch of lab stuff: Beakers, tubes, containers, biohazard lockers, and other things that were used to study the very dangerous or the very fragile. And as she stepped in, without a white suit or a gas mask, the rooms sensors detected this, made a soft chime, and then started blaring alarms.

"Someone fucked up on the blueprint!" Celia snarled, stepping in and looking around, her eyes sweeping over the lab equipment.

"Uh, better get out of here, babe, the security guard's backup will be there in less than ten minutes."

Celia bit her lip, hard.

It was times like this, she had to make a decision: Cut and run, or take a risk to salvage something more than her reputation and her time - since, well, there wasn't a jail in the states that she couldn't break out of. She looked for something, anything, that she could offer to her boss, something that might make up for the money they had already spent on the job.

Her eyes alighted on a locker, closed with glass and plastered with warnings. Inside, there was a box, hardened and bounce resistant, and locked. She grabbed a heavy microscope, swung it, and shattered the glass.

"What the hell are you doing!?" Spence shouted in her ear.

"Golden parachute!" She said, grabbing the box and then turning and running.

###

Celia burst into the parking lot - the door swinging shut behind her as she jinked hard to the left. The door didn't even finish swinging back shut before a security guard slammed into it shoulder first. He and his two friends scrambled out, one of them dropping their revolver on the ground as he skidded on the pavement that ringed around the parking lot. Celia - hearing the pile up - sprinted at her boyfriend's car. Spencer watched her - mouthing the word 'run' repeatedly as she-

A gun barked. A bullet thudded into the hood of the car - drawing a furrow along the metal. Celia scrambled into the side door - holding the biobox to her chest.

"Jesus!" Spencer slammed his foot on the accelerator and the sports car leaped forward, snarling loudly.

Celia felt something heavy slam into her chest and grunted.

The sports car zoomed into the fence that surrounded the building, crashing through with a shower of sparks, and then was on the road. A moment later, they were gone, shooting down the highway - which, at this hour in the morning, was almost empty.

"Babe! Babe!" Spencer glanced at his girlfriend. Celia groaned, then pushed the heavy case off her chest. She sighed.

"I'm okay..." She said, then frowned. "Awww man!"

The bounce resistant case had a hole in it, roughly the size of her finger.

"Shit! Dump it!"

"Spence!" Celia said, opening the glove compartment of the car: Inside, Spencer had collected a dozen or so useful tools, including lots of tape. She ripped a hunk of duct tape free and slapped it over the hole.

"Oh, that's going to help!" Spence sounded almost hysteric. "Do you know what Dynacore

makes

? They make..." He paused. "I don't...actually know, but it can't be good for you to breath it in!"

"A," Celia said, holding up a finger - she did it English style, starting with the pinkie, a method that she had picked up from her three year stay in London. "They make genetically engineered crops, not freaking bioweapons. B! This thing is a bounce box, meaning, it is made to resist...like...train crashes. I bet the bullet went in, hit some crash resistant foam, and stopped. I mean, they were shooting .38s, not freaking armor piercing rifles..."

"Right, right. Dump it!" Spencer said, taking a hard right, the car squealing loudly as they shot out of the high way.

"And let some random person find it? Even if it got smashed, our bosses can strip it and find, like, a bazillion uses for it. And pay us." Celia slid her arms around the box.

"Yeah. Right. And this has

nothing

to do with the fact you can't leave a building without stealing something in it..." Spencer frowned, slightly. "My mother still hasn't forgiven you for the snowglobes..."

###

Click

.

The box opened as Spencer slipped his lock picks back into his large machining desk. Celia leaned over the box, biting her lip as she did so. Spencer and her looked into the box. Then Spencer glared at her.

For, sitting in the box, were three vials...each one, shattered into pieces. The bullet had punched through the metal frame, through the crash resistant foam, then

bounced

inside enough times to shatter each vial.

"And there's no dampness." Spencer slammed the box shut. "That means it's FREAKING AIRBORN!"

"Oh shit..." Celia whispered, her face going white. "W-We have to go to a hospital!"

"No, no way!" Spencer stepped around, to get between her and the door. "I'm not going to jail, and I'm not infecting anyone else with this..." He paused. "We stay in here until..."

"Until what?"

"I...I don't know..." Spencer admitted. Celia closed her eyes, feeling hot tears burn under her eyelids.

Stupid. So fucking stupid, how could I be so stupid?

She thought, leaning forward into Spencer's chest. He was stronger than he looked, and she felt his sleek, well defined muscle that she could rub against through the tight T-shirt that had lines of C+ code scrawled on it that she was sure were really funny if you knew what it meant. His arms slid around her, and she sighed, rubbing her face against his chest.

"We'll be okay..." Celia whispered.

"Oh?"

"I mean, it's not like Dynacore makes bioweapons or anything?" Celia asked, looking up at her lover. Spencer snorted.

###

The next day, Spencer woke first. He looked down at himself, then at Celia, who was curled up - still asleep and still dressed -neither of them had done anything but hold one another and fall asleep.

No symptoms.

###

The second day, Celia woke up first and sniffed at her boyfriend.

"Okay, you need a shower."

###

The third day, Spencer woke up in sweats. His eyes snapped open and he gasped, and whispered: "C-Celia...Celia...I...I..."

"Yeah?" Celia sat up, her eyes blurry. She looked down at Spencer, biting her lip as she realized that she was sweating as well - though she didn't feel the normal headaches and regular aches of a fever. She looked down at Spencer, whose eyes had closed again. She reached out - realizing that it was four in the morning, not the normal wake time for the two of them - and snapped on the lamp next to the bed. It shone on Spencer and Celia gasped.

His shirt was...distended. It had been slick against his chest before, but now it was straining so much that the C+ was completely distorted. She put her hand on his chest, her eyes wide - almost positive that she'd feel nothing but...

What? Rotting flesh? Tumors? Something worse?

Instead, she felt muscle. Not just the thin definition of a nerd lucky enough to be born naturally skinny, but the bulging muscle of a body-builder. Her fingers grabbed the hem of shirt and tugged it up, her eyes wide as she saw that Spencer had bulked up into a completely different body type - a body builder, not an athletic nerd. Other than the occasional rash on his olive skin, she didn't see any other bad things. His chest rose and fell as he whispered: "Celia...a...I feel funny..."

Celia nodded. "You're...different..."

He reached up, and scratched at his chest. His skin...crumpled around his finger, buckling and snapping away, a bit like the dead skin around an infection, though without pus or blood. Celia grabbed his wrist and jerked it away.

Her eyes widened.

Instead of seeing raw, new flesh underneath the rash...she saw

green

. No, not green. Emerald.

"My fingers itch..." Spencer muttered, lifting one hand, looking at it. His fingernails seemed to have grown longer.

Celia reached up to scratch the back of her neck and hissed as she felt blood welling against her fingers. She looked at her fingers - and saw that they gleamed with red and her fingernails had grown

longer

too.

"What is happening to us?" Celia whispered.

Spencer's stomach growled, long and loud enough that it startled a laugh out of both of them...but before Celia could suggest a run to the fridge - which was only slowly running out of food, as their appetites had been pretty dead out of sheer fright and the worries of what the sickness might do - the door to the apartment opened and their landlord stuck his fat nose into the room.

"Celia! Spencer! What the FUCK! I asked you to..." He walked into the room, glaring at them - his anger not seeming to give him room to notice the odd looks on Celia and Spencer's faces. "...to pay on time! Which was LAST night!"

"What the hell are you doing in my apartment at..." Celia looked at the clock.

Spencer, though, shoved her off him and onto the bed - which he did with ease - and stood. He towered over their landlord, who had been of height with him just three days ago. As he stood, Spencer's shoulders straightened, making it all the clearer how much broader and well filled out they had become.

"Get. Out. Now."

His voice was a

growl

. One that Celia had never heard before, not in her life, not from Spencer -the hacker who had won her heart with charm and good humor and good sense.

It was a little hot.

Just a tiny bit.

The landlord whimpered, turned, and fled. The door slammed...

And Spencer put his hand on his face. "He's infected, isn't-"

He started to collapse. Celia leaped out of the bed, landed behind him, and grabbed him, holding her man upright and dragging him back to the bed. Only once they laid down beside one another, sweating and itching, did she realize she had leaped almost eight feet. From her back.

"What the

hell

is happening to us?" She whispered.

Spencer snored.

###

On the fourth day, Celia and Spencer ate the last of their food - having gone from an almost full fridge to a nearly empty one in a seemingly endless orgy of meals.

They fell asleep, barely aware of stripping nude as they did so, unable to bear the press of clothes against their skin.

###

On the fifth day, Celia sat up, stretching her arms over her head, and sighed as her ears twitched and swiveled from side to side. She heard the distant sound of the next door neighbors arguing as if she was right there in the room with them. She heard the sound of the cars trundling past across the street as if she was on the street. She heard the sound of a detective, talking to the landlord.

"Never seen the car before in my life..." He was saying, and the detective sighed, her voice bitter as she responded.

"Well, do you know anyone who-"

The fridge buzzed. The birds tweeted. A phone rang. A toilet flushed. Pipes gurgled. Her lover spoke: "Celia?"

She clapped her hands over her head, her eyes closing tight, feeling the furry curve of her ears, crumpling under her fingers...and she realized her hands reached for the top of her head, not the sides. Her tail lashed from side to side, pushing aside the blanket around her, and she realized she

had

a tail.

Celia opened her eyes, and looked down at Spencer, who had rolled onto his side. A long, sinuous green tail burst from above his buttocks, lashing from side to side as he sat up, his face covered with patchy rashes. But where the rashes were falling apart - in their centers - there were emerald scales, glittering and gleaming. His eyes were slitted and gold.

"A-Are you okay?" He whispered.

Celia slid her hands away from her ears, the press of sound becoming more and more normal as her tail stilled. She looked down at herself, and saw that her fingers had claws - claws that she retracted with a thought.

And...above her breasts, between her neck and her shoulders, was a triangle of golden fur.

"I...I don't...know..." Celia whispered.

They closed the blinds, and pressed against one another, shivering in terror as sleep crept around them like a stalking beast, stealing away their consciousness at capricious and random times. Their energy sapped and flowed, moving up and down like a river in a flooding downpour. Every time Celia woke, her hands ached more, and the only comfort was that Spencer's tail had closed around her waist and drawn her close.

###

On the sixth day, Celia woke to found her nose pressing against another nose. She opened her eyes and looked at the long, sinuous snout that swept back into an elongated, reptilian head, with a ridge of short horns sprouting from above a pair of expressive golden eyes, the glittering green scales that spread along his forehead catching what little light crept through the windows. Celia put her paws - flexible, hand like paws that were still padded on one side and furred on the other - on his chest, feeling hard scales and hard muscle both.

"Sp...Spencer?" She asked, her voice oddly accented.

His muzzle opened and a long, sinuous tongue flicked out, tasting the air.

"Celia?" He asked, his voice holding a faintly sibilant hiss.

"Yeah..." She whispered. Clawed hands reached down, finding her ass - her furred ass - and squeezed as her tail lashed up and then down, slapping on the bed. She heard a slick, slipping noise and looked down - between her golden furred breasts and her pale white belly, to where a large, red cock had emerged from between Spencer's thighs, pressing against her belly. She

purred

. Not the close approximation she had done in the past, back before the robbery.

No. A deep throated thrumming

purr

that buzzed through her entire body and, from the gasp that Spencer let out, through his as well.

"You're...hot..." Spencer said, sitting up, looking at her. She leaned forward, bumping her wet nose against his chest and breathed in - a wild bouquet of scents that made her entire body burn with desire. She felt her sex growing not just moist, but soaked, her tail lifting and arching as she felt her whole body want to...to...

She pushed back, then put her hands and knees on the bed, curving her spine as she purred louder.

Spencer slid his scaled hand along her back - his palm was a pale yellow, against his emerald scales - and then grabbed her ass again, growling.

"Fuck me..." She purred. She was unused to speaking and purring at the same time, and so it came out softer than she had wanted it to.

"Hmmr?" He asked, his hand releasing her ass.

"I said..." She said, louder, clearer. "Fuck. Me."

Spencer grinned, wickedly - his teeth were so sharp - and leaned in. His muzzle opened and his tongue flicked along her muzzle, finding the soft lips of her strange, hybrid mouth. They kissed, hard, and she sucked on his tongue, feeling the slender organ slide around her tongue again and again, coiling around it and squeezing. He drew back, laughing.

"I can't believe how good I feel!" He said, grabbing her hips and sliding behind her. His cock pressed against the curve of her ass, and she shifted, to catch and grind his cock against her. He moaned, softly, and then louder as her tail twitched from side to side, teasing the tip of his dick with its movements. He grabbed her ass cheeks and pushed them together, so that he could grind against her better, slipping down low enough that his tip pressed to her anus - teasing it for a moment - and then pushed up.

Celia was marveling, really, at the way that his cock had changed shape. It wasn't human, but it...it wasn't

bad

. It was sharply tipped, and slicker than she had expected, and so very hot...

"Aren't lizards cold blooded?" She asked, managing to sound coy and not weirded out.