Nanotech by Querthe
Naomi was called that morning in the boss office, just after she entered in her laboratory.
“I hope he will not again asking me if we can reduce the founds for my projects, giving them to the military field…” thought the blonde walking along the corridor, her jeans and high necked black sweater quite hidden by the long and buttoned white lab coat. Just before knocking at the door she combed in a ponytail her long curly hairs and sighed.
“Come on…” answered her boss after she punched a couple of time the wooden door.
“You wanted to see me?”
“Yes Naomi. How are you?”
“Fine thank you…” she answered nervously.
She noted on the desk a file about her experiments.
“I will arrive directly at the point. We need results for your experiments about nanomachines, and up to now, after two years of researches, we have nothing…”
“Yes, but…” she started, but he stopped her raising a hand.
“I know, I know the story. But our investors have been more than clear. You have a week to show us something new and useful, or your laboratory will be… closed.”
“Closed?” shouted her.
“Yes. You will be assigned to a new field, under Carl responsibility.”
“You can’t, you know we…”
“Stop now. You can return to your duties. See you in a week.” He closed the meeting cold as an iceberg.
While returning to her laboratory, the girl was not sure if start to cry or think about killing Carl and Robert, her and his boss.
“No. I can’t leave two years of researches to that group of… of…” she trembled for the anger, opening and closing with a bang the room door. She worked hard all the day, trying to find a way to create a functional set of nanomachines, but she had scheduled still six months before starting the first try, and at the moment she had seven days. “I can’t do nothing…” she sighed, seeing the silver liquid moving slowly inside a glass sphere. “Here there are billion of little machines ready to be programmed, and I can create also the program and download on them, but who will be the one that will try? It’s still too dangerous, I can’t know what will be free these things on a body…”
The days run fast, until the evening before the deadline, Robert called again her in his office.
“As you know, tomorrow will be a demonstration of your nanomachines. You are ready?” She stood silent. “Naomi. Have you some news for me or I have to delete the meeting and your laboratory as well?”
She made a decision. “They work…”
“Really?” She sighed and nodded.
“Good. Tomorrow morning, nine o’ clock in the meeting room…”
Naomi leaved the boss office quite in tears. “I can do nothing… The only way I can try to have more founds is try on myself the nanomachines. It will be a big risk, but it’s the only way…”
Arrived in her laboratory, she started to finish the program she had started to create. She worked hard all the night, and only a couple of hours before the meeting she finished. She sighed, starting to download the program inside the liquid, that changed from silver to red indicating the receiving status of the machines.
“Considering the amount of time necessary to the download, I can refresh myself, before dressing me in the special suit…” she thought, moving outside the laboratory, directed to the level bathroom.
Not seen, a male figure entered in her laboratory using a special badge and typed a couple of commands, changing some string of the naomachines program, then he exited smiling maliciously. Inside the meeting room there were Robert, Carl and a couple of investors. The room, apart form a big table, chairs and a portable computer linked to a projector, was empty. Naomi entered slowly, frightened that something could be wrong with her experiment. She was still dressed with her long lab coat, but her feet seemed encased in shiny black rubber boots with two inches heels, as her arms were encased in glossy black gloves. Her neck was back too, and something was dangling on her back, under the neck.
“Good morning, Miss Zerinsky.”
“Good morning Sirs.”
“We all know why we are here, so I think that the best way to proceed is to show us what your little friends could do, no?” said one of the investors. “Have you nothing with you? A sample, something?”
“Y… yes. I will be the guinea pig for this demonstration, and I’m carrying all the necessary…”
“You? It will not be dangerous?”
“No, not at all. The machines are harmless, and they can’t survive if not inside the special liquid they are now or inside a body. The air destroy them in a second. They are metal, after al, and air just burn metal pieces so small…” The girl, her hairs still combed in a ponytail, started to undress from the laboratory coat, showing she was wearing a full bodysuit made in a shiny gloss black material, encasing her from neck to toe. “This suit is designed appositely to transport and protect the nanomachines before the activation. When I will start the program, the nanotech will be injected inside my bloodstream using little and harmless needles, then they will initialise their functions and start to operate at full capacity…” she explained checking two times all the devices on the suit, showing the status of the nanomachines, her vital signs and so on. “Now, let me explain what they will do to me, because I will not be able to talk after this hood will be put on me. They will cover my body with a little layer of metal compound, creating it using the resources available inside me and my suit, forming in this way a perfectly sealed and fitting armour. Due to the fact it will be done with a single, perfect layer of metal, it will be completely bulletproof, yet still flexible…”
“If it will do half of it, I will be really impressed…” said the other investor.
Carl grinned.
“I hope…” smiled Naomi. “This process will be reversed after an hour, as per program.”
She lifted the hood, revealing it as a complete hood with only little pierced holes for the eyes and the nostrils and no one for the mouth. She stretched it, only her blonde ponytail visible, accommodated in a specially designed hole on her back. She tugged the neck edge of the hood under the catsuit neck and sighed.
“Mmmmgrttt?”
“If it was a ready, yes we are.”
She pushed a little button on her left wrist, and the nanomachines entered in her body, activating the program they had in memory. After a minute something started to be seen on her feet, and a hint of silver, shiny metal started to appear on her left leg, spreading over her limb quicker and quicker, while also in her right leg something similar was happening.
“Mmmghttt?”
“Go on, go on, this thing seems interesting…” said Robert.
“Mmgmhtt…” smiled her, her features visible under the skin tight membrane. In a couple of minutes all her body was covered, rendering her a living stainless steel statue. She started to move, showing she was still free, and she sighed thinking that with this show she gained at least some year of founds. The she started to feel that something was wrong with her suit.
“Wait a second…” she thought, sensing her limbs more and more restrained. “The suit is increasing her thickness… But how? There is no enough material to do it, unless… No, they are converting my skin…”
She started to trash, but the thickness of her joint was enough to stop her, transforming her in a sort of slow motion woman, trying to run away, to arrive at her laboratory to reverse the process, but all was useless. She was trapped, and no one seemed to have evidence of her distress.
“Robert, we are completely satisfied, and we think we can leave… Mrs Zerinsky, thank you for your demonstration. You will have your founds increased…” they smiled, leaving the room.
“Mmmmmmmm…” she managed to mumble.
“A little in distress, my dear?” smiled Carl, tapping her head, rigid as solid metal. “Don’t be so rigid, Naomi. Think you did it for your founds, for your work. But it seems you are in difficulty, and you will be I think for the next… century? Ah, no problem, my dear, we will use your money for you…” giggled Robert. “Carl, you changed only the thickness?”
“Ohhh, no… Sit and enjoy…” he smiled.
After a couple of minutes, heels of pure metal started to lift her feet, until she was wearing nine inches long ballet boots, her legs straightened and completely rigid, as were her arms, with fingers bended to create mittens able to grab only big object. The suit moved, compressing her neck, forcing her head in a disdainful position. A corset like affair squeezed her waist, erasing inches until she had a wasp like torso, the arriving to her compressed lungs in small, puffing breaths.
“Mmmmghttgt…” “No fear. The suit will not kill you. At the opposite, it will sustain you for so long you will forget to be a living being. You will be installed in the new laboratory we will build with your money. Well, a part of it. The rest will be used for a couple of sportive cars and well, something else…” Grinned Carl. “Ah, say goodbye to sight and sound, the nanomachines will erase it in…” he looked at his watch. “Three, two one, bye…”
A metal layer flowed over her eyes, and other metal filled and hardened on her hear, leaving her completely immobilised, a being no more, only a living statue thinking about revenge, her blonde ponytail looking quite strange over a perfect sculpted metal face, complete of lips, eyes and ears, also if completely useless.
“Look at her…” the man said to his companion, walking along the corridor.
“I saw, I saw… I think it’s the new secretary of the boss…”
“Ehhh, always the best for them…” he sighed, going to far from her to hear how they would continue the discussion.
Linda smiled, not sure if she had to be happy for the compliment or to be angry because she was considered a secretary and not the new nanotech laboratory chief.
She was employed after five years the first project of nanomachines was performed. It was a success, but the inventor, a woman called Naomi, disappeared with a lot of money. Her bosses, Carl Foxen and Robert Catting arrived to recover part of her researches, but they were still far from the point Naomi arrived. And there she arrived.
“I studied all her notes, and I think we will do a lot of progress in a small amount of time, but I need to have full powers. Mr. Foxen seemed to agree with my requests. We will see. This is my first day of work…”
The redheaded girl, quite thirty years old, a curly mass of shoulder length hairs circling a cute face full of freckles and a pair of blue eyes arrived in front of the door of her laboratory, opening it with her badge. Inside all was as she asked, form the instruments to the chairs colour. She smiled and started to work, creating and programming new types of nanomachines, unaware she was taped and recorded by hidden cameras that her two bosses had installed to have the full control about her researches.
“So you think she will lead us more money?”
“Yes Carl. I’m sure of it. She is really a genius, and I think she will be able to arrive at the same point Naomi was maybe in a couple of months, maybe less…”
“I can’t believe it… Anyway, she is really cute, no?” smiled Catting, looking on the screen transmitting what was happening on the laboratory.
He grinned, looking at the tight jeans and at the quite too small white T-shirt she was wearing, her white cotton coat on the chair.
“What do you think of her, Naomi? Oh, sorry, you are a little tied up at the moment to answer… But don’t be so rigid with yourself, relax…” Foxen joked, talking with a gleaming metal statue that was standing in a corner of his office. No one on the company knew that that so well crafted statue was not real, but was a girl transformed in an eternal object by programmed nanomachines. Inside, Naomi was still conscious, also if deprived of her senses. She continued to think, to find a way to release herself form her prison, from the thick layer of metal alloy created by the nanotech using her suit and her skin. Only her ponytail was free form the polished prison, and regularly they cut it to stay at her knee.
Linda was so happy she could only smile and cry of joy as a child. She jumped inside the laboratory as a baby, kissing the small amount of printed paper where there was her salary increase, her new car and her new career.
“And the prizes, the researches, the economical and commercial impacts…” she said, giggling and seating on her chair, sighing and looking at the ceiling. “Ahhh, I’m so happy I can reach the sly with a finger… I have to say it to Carl.”
She moved out her laboratory, walking along the empty tunnels. The day shift was finished, and no one normally was inside the building at that hour if not her, a couple of night watchmen and his boyfriend with his friend, Carl. She fell in love with him after a couple of months she arrived, and it was only his week long business trip that impeded them to organise a romantic dinner for two to celebrate their first six months together. It was only when she entered in his office she remembered that both the friends were out for work, also if for different reasons.
“How silly I am… Carl is not here… Well, I think that I can use his office for a drink. I think I deserve it with the discovery I did…” she smiled, switching on the lights on the big room and moving to the minibar he had in a corner of the room, disguised as a part of a desk.
When she opened it and searched for a whisky, she touched an hidden button.
“What?” she said, hearing something move on his desk.
She forgot the drink and moved to the wooden furniture, seeing that a part of the desk disappeared to show some small black and white screen showing her laboratory from different angles.
“So you were spying me? Why?” she exclaimed.
She leaved the room, after arriving to move again the desk in its previous position, her joy disappeared. Her head was full of questions, of anger and sadness.
The day after she had her ideas a little clearer, and the second day she acted her plan. She entered again Carl and also Robert office, and positioned small cameras connected to her portable notebook using the internal wi-fi LAN.
“If you want to see me, why I can’t see and hear you?” she thought, testing the devices, seeing they were working perfectly.
All went ahead smooth, her method to create and control big amount of nanotech was improved and quite ready to exit the laboratory tests, when she heard a strange and terrifying conversation between her two bosses. She was recording all in her hard disk, then she looked the video at home, to be sure that no one was spying her that was spying them that were spying her.
“So you think she could give us some problem?”
“Carl, frankly, I don’t know. She is fallen in love with me, and I used her love to have more information about her work. I sense she is not completely sincere with us, as she is knowing something…”
“Robert, do you think she could became dangerous as Naomi?”
“I don’t know… No, I think no. for now it is not necessary to kill her.”
“But we didn’t kill her, we just… stopped her, in all the senses…” the man smiled, tapping the strange metal statue on his office. “What do you think Naomi, do you need a sister? Maybe Robert will be happy to have her girlfriend trapped in an iron skin as you are…”
Linda gasped.
“It’s impossible. How could be?” she thought, continuing to hear the conversation.
When she closed the video, she was crying, her face wetted by salty tears.
“He doesn’t love me, he want only power and money, and I, as a stupid child, believed his sweet words, his caresses…” she sniffed, her body shacked by her sobs. “And Carl, he was not the best as a man, but I couldn’t believe he could be so cruel. He changed the program on the nanotech discovered by her, and he… oh my god…” she sobbed again. “But I must do something, or I will be the next…” she said, starting to think a way to trick them.
It was only in the morning, after she fell asleep on the couch, she found a solution.
“It will be long, but I think it’s the best solution…” she smiled. “Also if it means I have to act as the perfect lover Robert is accustomed to know. That bastard!”
Starting from that day, she developed a special program for her nanomachines, using the day to act as the perfect researcher and lover, using the night to test the program, until it run smoothly as she wanted.
“Now the second phase of my program starts.” she smiled, toasting with a coke glass to the screen, where a positive message about the program was flashing.
She had to wait until Carl had to leave for a trip, an important customer that needed him on site. She went on Robert office, smiling and yawning.
“Honey, I’m sleeping. I don’t know what is happening to me, but…” she said.
“No problem, Linda. Just go home and rest. And call me if you want to jump tomorrow work day, ok?”
“But…”
“Dear, I’m your boss. If for me it’s ok, where is the problem? Go home, little genius…”
She smiled and kissed him on his cheek, sure of his answer.
When she leaved the office, she directed on Carl one, a little portable torch in her hand, so she could move without switching on the powerful neons. She extracted a transparent bag more or less of her hand dimension, and she put on the back of the statue, moving the long blonde hairs, that after she leaved, covered the adhesive patch that was slowly freeing the special nanotech inside the metal layer of the armour.
“I can’t know how to release her. I need the original program to find a sort of virus to counteract the effect, but I think that also this way will work. Slowly, in a week or so on, the new machines will destroy the old ones reprogramming them, so more and more quickly they will change the thick metal armour in a soft but strong rubber layer, except the outer layer. Other groups of nanomachines will create new channel for her to see, hear and talk, but most important, they will build a sort of receiver so I will talk to her before the changes will finish. I need to say to her what it will happen, so she will be prepared… Then, well, then we will have some fun… If my calculation are correct, in an hour she will be able to hear me.”
The redhead arrived at home, took a shower and ate a couple of toasts, then she connected to the special receiver that was inside Naomi ears.
“All green from the nanotech. Good…” she said, then she sent a couple of small and soft sounds to the trapped girl. The computer reacted showing an increasing of signals related to movements inside the armour. “She is alive…” she thought, then she sighed and relaxed. “Naomi, you don’t know me, but we have all the time you need. It’s a long story. You are trapped inside your metal prison since five years. Now I will told you more or less what happened, who I am and why I’m talking to you, and more important, what will happen to you…”
After that night, Linda had no time to think or talk again with the blonde encased in the steel prison, but she knew from the computer data all was going on perfectly. It was only six day after she could see again her, but in an official occasion. She was called inside the Carl office. Also Robert was there, and the face they had was the one when they were upset.
“Carl, Robert. How are you? Why this meeting after the normal work time?”
“Sit, please…”
“Thank you Carl, but I’m quite in a hurry to come home. It was a really tiring day, so…”
“Sit!” replied hard Robert.
She did as they said.
“Good. You know, we are friends, no?”
“Yes, Carl, but…”
“But we are also workers, and we are now talking to you not as friend, but as your bosses…” continued the man as she didn’t say nothing. “Well, you know what industrial espionage is?”
“Yes…”
“Good. You know that it can be punished with the immediate firing and the jail?”
she nodded.
“Good. Now, can you explain these?” Robert said, showing the small cameras she had hidden in the room.
“I… I don’t know what they are?”
“No? Strange, we have your fingerprint on, and they are transmitting using our LAN… to your computer. We checked the IP…”
She sighed.
“So… now, what you will do to me? You want another statue?” she said sadly, understanding they wanted to kill her in a way or in another.
“No. We thought something more… let’s say spectacular. You did so much progress in your files we can live on a private income for years. All your researches are in hour hands, and ours only, so…” Carl said. Smiling.
“So if you will disappear, we will be the only one knowing the technology, selling it to the best customer…” continued Robert, walking near her and grabbing her chin. She moved away, as his hand was venom for her. “Bad girl. You will suffer for it.”
“And so, I will be killed and disappear, maybe in the sea, with a pair of concrete shoes?”
“No, We are not so cruel. You will be victim of your creation, and you will destroy your laboratory trying to save you… All your data, your disk, your studies will be destroyed with you, along with your computer…”
“My creation? I’m not working to nothing at the moment!”
“Yes you are. We will find in our computers a mail you sent to us to say you was working on a new program to heal wounds. It’s a pity that the nanomachines couldn’t understand the difference between a wound and lips, eyelid and the other mobile parts of the human body…”
“You are crazy!”
“We will see if you will say it again after it. Robert. Block her!” The man grabbed her wrists, blocking her arms against the chair, while the other extracted a small syringe and injected the blue liquid on Linda. “There is also a small amount of narcotic. See you in a couple of minutes… Well, we will see you…”
The girl lost her senses, drifting in a sort of nightmare, half awoke, half sleeping. She was transported on her laboratory, while the modifications on her body started. Her whole body was shining slightly, her skin covered by billion of little robots replacing all the little scars, wrinkles and wounds with a flexible but unbreakable layer of a special transparent plastic. When they put her body on her chair, she was waking up, her whole skin covered by this strange, and reflecting plastic.
“What are you doing, Carl?”
“Here we are. I put this big piece of magnesium here, on the wash-basin near the chemical point. The little amount of water will wash it from the oil where it was conserved, then the same water will start a burning reaction with it, creating the fire necessary to burn all this place.”
“Ah, this is the reason why you are smearing the entire surround with alcohol, also the paper sheets… You are a genius, Carl!”
“Youuuu are crrrazyyy.” She mumbled, trying to wake up.
“Ohhh, you can still talk. Well, I think this will be the last words you said. I’m sorry, Linda, but you are not my kind of woman. Our relationship is finished.” Joked Robert, closing the door on his back, giggling along the corridor with Carl.
The girl tried to open her eyes, but the nanotech was already in action there, and her eyelids were glued to her skin, blinding her. Also if the eyelashes remained, the skin was fused on itself, so only with difficult surgical operations she could have again the sight, if someone could also cut the plastic that had at the moment covered all her body, except the hairs.
“I need to find a way to exit from here…” she thought, leaving the mouth open to avoid the process on it, knowing that she would close her lips, they would be fused together. Her hearing was restricted, but not blocked, but the worst effect was to have lost her equilibrium.
She touched with her fingers the wall, followed it until she arrived at the door, when she sensed warm on her left side, and a strong odour of burning plastic hit her nostrils. She caressed the metal surface of the door, founding it hot.
“No. the magnesium is burning, stealing me also the necessary oxygen…”
She kicked the door, trying to break it, but all was vain. The air inside the room was hot, and full of smoke, that made the redhead choke, her lips touching just for a moment, but enough to start the reaction of sealing by the nanomachines.
“Nnnnnnuuu!” she cried, while her lips, also if perfectly visible, were linked together and covered with the same plastic. “Mmmgmhtt, nnnghttt!” she howled, her hands trying to grab her lips to open her mouth,finding only a smooth, slick surface as she was touching a mannequin mask.
She collapsed on the ground, sobbing trough the nose, waiting for her death, but a strange sensation, as fresh air arrived on her, and a strong arm grabbed her and pushed outside the room, then along the corridors.
“Mmmghtt?”
“Wwwwaaaiit.” A female voice said slowly, as talking for her was a torture. She could sense her arm, cold and quite rigid over her plastic covered skin. “Yooou nnneeed toooo rrrrrest.”
“Nnnmmmmeee?”
“Yessss.”
Linda sensed they were on the open air, and she were moving still inside the complex, directed on a quite abandoned zone, the one were the blonde was working before she disappeared.
“Weee willll reeeest, ttthennn weee wiiiil ttthinnnk a rrrrrevenge, oook?”
She nodded, smiling with her closed lips.
Linda woke up, but she didn’t open her eyes. She couldn’t. Hers were fused closed to her skin, then covered with a thin but unbreakable layer of transparent, shiny plastic as her whole body. She couldn’t talk, and when she tried to stand up, she found she had no equilibrium, so she can’t move freely without help.
“Mmmgmhttt…”
“Are you awake?” asked a slightly metallic female voice.
She nodded.
“Good. I’m Naomi, as you discovered before, and I’m happy to meet you, also if the occasion is not the best…”
“Mmmght…”
“I can’t understand you, but it will be only for a short time. I think that we could modify your nanomachines program to permit you to regain your senses, as you did for me. Ah, by the way, thank you for the miracle you did on me. I’m still trapped completely inside this metal alloy skin, but I can talk, see and hear. I’m just sorry I can’t feel and smell, but well, you can’t have all from the life, no?” she joked, helping the redhead to stand up, moving her to a near chair. “It’s better if you don’t move too much, every crease you produce on your skin moving it’s immediately replaced by plastic, thickening the layer over your body.”
“Mghhtt? Mmmmmm…”
“If it was a question about stopping the program, well, I can’t at the moment. All my instruments and programs are not here, so…”
“Mmmghtt? Mmmmmmmm…” Linda smiled, patting her chest with her shiny arms. She stopped, discovering she was completely naked. Immediately she moved her hands to cover her breasts and crotch.
“I’m sorry, dear, but you are not my kind of person. And I’m sorry to say you, your nipples and sex are disappeared…”
“Mghhttt!” she was shocked.
“Yes. The machines erased your nipples and closed completely your holes on the crotch, both of them…”
“Mmmghtt… Nghhhttt…”
“Linda, I can’t understand you. Let’s try this way. I will bring you a pen and paper, so you can write me down what you want to say…”
The girl heard some noise, then a pen was put on her right hand.
“You are in front of a desk, and paper is near you, ready to be written…”
She nodded and with some difficult she started to write, continuing for some minute, until she sighed trough her nose and leaved the pen.
“Let see… Ah, you have the necessary to program nanites on your home, and this is the address. This is… I understand, you car model and tag?”
She nodded smiling.
“Yes, but the keys?”
“Mmgmhtt….”
“You have a car alarm?”
She shook her head.
“Well, I’m sorry but I will have to break a window to enter."
She shrugged her shoulders.
“Good. Let go ahead…. Smart girl, you have spare keys of the house… what? How the two beasts will take my disappearing?” she laughed, a strange, artificial sound that quite scared Linda. “They will be too much occupied to explain why a whole building was burned by fire, and why the alarm had no started…”
“Mmmghttt?”
“I listened all what they said to you, and after a second they leaved the room I moved, for the first time in five years, and I obtained to create a small fire with the little lighter Carl had on the desk for his beloved cigars, then I moved, finding you…”
Linda searched blindly for some second the pen, then she wrote again, showing the paper sheet to Naomi.
“Why all the building is burning? Where are they?” she giggled. “When the building was created, the big bosses, our dear friends, decided to go ahead without a fire alarm. The employees had some problem with this fact, but the only one that decided to talk was fired, also if I couldn’t believe they really did it, but looking to what they did to me, well, they were also gentle with her… To distribute the fire, well, I found a good amount of inflammable detergent inside a closet, so…” she stopped a second. “About where they are now, well, I don’t know, but they are alive, I’m sure of it. I think at the moment they are crying and shouting while the firemen are going on to stop the arson. We have all the time and the opportunities to leave the building unnoticed…”
“Mmmmghtt…”
“Are your ready? I think we will have to run for some meter until we will arrive at the car, if the parking was not moved…”
Linda smiled and sat up, immediately grabbed by Naomi.
”Whoaaa! Take it easy, you can’t walk or run alone. I will be at your side to sustain you as much as I can… Here, we are now in front of the door. Stop here and don’t’ move.” she said, leaving her alone for a second, just the time to open the door. “Ok. We are moving out the room and along the tunnel to the secondary exit… It will take us some time, we have to walk three corridors and two stairs… You know, your idea to create a sort of link between my vocal chords and a speaker on my throat is working wonderfully, also if I have to say it’s strange to talk with my lips closed. I had some difficult at the beginning, but in these three hours you were sleeping I did some practise. The same for hearing and sight. Do you think I can change the setting of the microphones and the cameras to see and hear also over human limits?”
Linda seemed to think a little, then she nodded.
“Good, I will think about it…”
“Mmgmhtt? Mmmmmm…”
“Sorry?”
“Mmmmghhhh!” she screamed, pointing her lips and eyes…”
“I think we will do something similar to you, also if I’m quite scared about the fact plastic is replacing little part of your skin every movement you do. We have to stop it or you will be in trouble…”
The two strange figures arrived to the exit, and after a quick check done by the metal covered woman, they started to run as fast as they could, considering that one was blind and the other walking on ballet boots nine inches high. They managed to arrive to the car, a quite old fashioned station wagon.
“I’m sorry for your window…” whispered Naomi punching with all her forces the glass, breaking it. She posed Linda on the posterior seats, then she searched, founded and connected some electrical wire. The car gurgled and coughed. “Come on, come on…” she mumbled.
With a final grunting sound the engine started.
“Good girl, you have a car with automatic gear. It will be easier with my boots…”
Slowly the car moved, searching for the exit with the lights switched off not to attract attention. After some minute the car exited, no one looking at it, all the eyes focussed on the burning building. Naomi switched on the lights and moved on Linda house direction. The road was free, but she had to stay in any case really attentive, using the less used roads, due to her appearance.
“I will have a little thing to explain if I‘m blocked by police or if someone will report he saw a metal woman driving in the night…” she thought, trying to avoid the fear she had.
The girl was enjoying every second of the trip, sensing the cold touch of the night air, finally able to see and hear, to move her muscles, and her joy was not diminished by the fact she had to help a girl in a situation not dissimilar to hers. She started to think some way to revenge on Carl and Robert, but every solution was for her too soft, also to kill them.
“We are arrived, Linda.” Said the girl, opening the rear door.
“Mmmghtt?”
“I already opened the house, so we have just to enter and we are safe for some time. I don’t think it’s a good idea stay here. Maybe Carl or the other will want to see if you have still something useful in your house…”
The redhead nodded and slowly, helped by the other, was leaded inside the house. She seated on a chair in her living room.
“You have your things in the bedroom?”
She nodded.
“Wardrobe?”
Another nod and signs showing a big and rectangular thing.
“A box, they are inside a box on your wardrobe?”
“Mmmmghtt!”
“Ok. Give me a minute. Stairs and ballet boots are not really close friends, but I think I can manage them for you…” she said, starting to climb the stairs using the handrail to support and help her.
Linda heard the companion disappear on her room, then she heard other noise, as she was rummaging inside her wardrobe.
“Mghhtttt!”
“Quite finished. I found your laptop and some other interesting thing… Here we are… Give me some minute, I have to transport it near you…”
“Mmmghtt… mmmmmm…”
“I’m descending the stairs. Just a couple of steps… one to the end… here we are. Wow, they really changed the dimensions of the laptops in these years. They are really light-weighted. And I think this is a small amount of nanomachines, no?”
The girl nodded. She had all the necessary programs inside the computer, and also some dose of nanotech for some sample.
“Now they will be really useful…” she thought while the other plugged the computer on the wall socket and started it.
“Mmmmm, this kind of programs are not familiar to me… You don’t use the same programming language I used…”
“Mmmhhttt…”
“It seems something similar to Netrand…”
She nodded, trying to grab the laptop.
“Wait, wait. Here, it’s in front of you, open on a programming page…”
Linda sighed and searched slowly the two buttons on the keyboard with small protuberances, the F and the J button.
“Here we are. Now, if I only can remember how to type…” she said to herself, starting to touch the keyboard.
“Good, this is better than use paper… So you will write the program. I have just to say you what are you typing. Ok… But as I said, it’s better if we can do it somewhere else… Apart these things, you need something?”
She nodded, moving her arms as she was dressing herself.
“Ah, clothes. Yes, it’s better also for me to have something on. I will attract less attention. We have more or less the same size. It’s a problem if I try something yours?” she giggled.
“Mmmghtt, nnnghtt…”
The car stopped on a motel, the neon light showing there were still empty rooms.
“I think it’s perfect… I saw near here a car-renting. We need to abandon this car.”
“Mmmghtt?”
“No problem. With these clothes on I can manage to take a room and also hire a car. Believe me. Just wait in the car as you are now.“ she said to the girl, dressed with jeans and a long sleeved T-shirt in black cotton. She was perfectly normal, if not for the strange shining surface of her skin, and her closed lips and eyes.
Naomi exited the car. She covered her legs with a long dark blue skirt, while her torso was sheathed with a black sweater. Soft leather gloves were covering her metal fingers, transforming her in a tall but not attention attracting person. She had some problem with her face, the rigid and shiny mask blocking it was too strange to be shown, but luckily she found on a drawer of Linda house an Halloween mask quite life-like, transforming her in a smiling gothic girl. She just hoped that the hat and the scarf covering quite all her head were enough to trick the motel owner.
“Yes?” he said, continuing to see the movie on the small TV near him. It was drinking beer from a dirty glass, stains of it on his white T-shirt, stretched over the ample stomach.
“I would like to rent a room…”
“Thirty each night, only money, no credit cards and so on…”
“I have them. Here the money…” she said, putting the coin on the desk.
He burped, looking at the money, then he grabbed it and posing rudely a key where the coins were.
“Three zero eight. No howls or other that can disturb the other…” he mumbled, his eyes already on the screen, where a nude blonde was having some fun with a couple of young men.
She grabbed the key and moved on the car, where she helped Linda and quickly they were on their room. It was small but strangely tidy. Immediately Naomi searched for the socket wall and opened the laptop.
“I’m sorry to ask you an effort, but can you start already to type the program for you? I’m really scared for your limbs. They are becoming quite stiff…”
“Mmmghtt…” she shook her head, starting to type seated on the bed, while Naomi, on her side, was explaining her what she was writing.
After a lot of hours, when the sun was already high in the sky, they finished, sighing in relief.
“So this will stop your nanomachines to replace skin with plastic, and to restore you with sight and speech, but it seems that we can do nothing for your balance. You will need a wheelchair or crutches…”
“Mmmghtt…” she nodded, smiling sadly.
“Ready to charge the program?”
She nodded.
“Go.”
The small container, with inside white liquid, connected to the laptop buzzed a little, then the liquid changed to green for some minute, to return white after.
“It’s white. It’s ready?”
“Mmmgmghtt…”
“I think you will have to rest for a while, so the new nanotech will have the energies and the time to set you up. I will rent the car in the meanwhile, ok?”
She nodded and relaxed while the metal sealed woman poured the nanorobots on her.
It was only near the sunset that Linda woke up, moving slowly her quite stiff limbs.
“Mmmmm, it seems the program worked…” she said, her lips still closed.
“Wonderful! Can you see me?”
“I have still my eyes closed, but I can see you quite well. The cameras are still finishing to be built just over my eyelashes. If I correctly programmed them you can see green eyes now, also if not blinking.”
“Yes. It’s a strange vision, but you look quite normal. But you are still shiny.”
“I can do nothing for it…” she tried to sit up, but her knees and elbows were extremely rigid. “What?”
“What is the problem?”
“I can’t bend my limbs… I’m trying hard, but I can’t…”
“Let see… Yes, it seems that the material on our articulations is so thick to block your movements. Try again…”
She grunted, and only with an effort she arrived to move the right arms to a ninety degree position.
“Oh my God…” she mumbled. “Something goes wrong with the program…”
“You can change it?”
“No, it’s too long. As always, until we can’t have the source of the first program, there is always an amount of incertitude…” she smiled. “Anyway, I can see and I can talk, also as you I’m blocked and sealed completely in an impermeable shell. The only positive side is that I will never have again the problem of breathe, eat, drink or go to the bathroom. The nanites are providing me of all…”
“Yes, but I miss the spaghetti taste…” smiled Naomi. “You know what it not to eat for five years?”
“No, but I can imagine it…” she sighed. “Now, what is the plan?”
“Find a new house where we can start our revenge plot and spy our enemies. And I need more of your nanites. In five years I developed a couple of ideas about my aspect. If I have to be a metal girl, I want to be well sealed in my part…” she smiled.
“You are strange, but as long as it can be done and no harm will be done to you or other, well, free to use them… Effectively, you are really similar to an old character of a comic book…”
“Well, we can be Metal Girl and Plastic Woman, no?”
“Why you have to be the girl?” she mumbled. “You are older than me… Now help me on my feet, I’m quite tired to lying on this bed…”
“Only if I will be the girl…” she crossed her arms, lifting her head as she was looking elsewhere…”
“Come on…” she giggled.
“I will be the Metal Girl?” she said in a false mocking tone.
Linda sighed heavily.
“You will be Metal Girl… Happy now?”
She grabbed her arm and lifted up the redhead body.
“Yes.”
“How you can find the way to laugh and be happy in a situation as this one?”
“Why not? You want to cry and howl in despair. I remember you it’s not so easy for you…”
Linda giggled, then laughed.
“Come on, give me a hand to arrive at the car…”
The curly blonde, dressed in baggy jeans and an oversized black sweater looked attentive at the couple that was leaving the big house, similar to the others near to it and smiled, comfy seated on her flame red convertible.
“Do you see them?” she asked whispering.
“Yes. The transmission is perfect.” Answered a slightly metallic voice in her ears. “Could you please watch again the house? I need more images of it to built-up a 3D model…”
“I would prefer to look that gardener… Look at his muscles…”
“Maria, I can remember you why you are there?” exclaimed half-joking another female voice inside her ears.
“Yeah, yeah… Work, work and only work…” smiled the woman in her forties but still beautiful and young. “He changed a lot since he fired me. Time has been nasty with him…”
“Not al could have nanites to help them, no?” commented Linda. “Ok, I think we have enough information. You can return.”
“Yes mistress.” Joked the woman, starting to drive and continuing along more and more unused roads until she arrived at the main gate of a big mansion. She had switched off her senses transmission, so she ringed and waited until the heavy metal doors opened slowly, as slowly they closed behind her while the car moved along the alley to arrive at the old building. The main wooden door was opened, and she entered directed to a precise room, located where one time there was a library.
“God evening girls. How are you?”
“Fine. As always…” answered in unison the two strange figures inside the computers, screens and other electronic devices filled local.
One, Naomi, seemed an old warrior mixed with some science fiction android. All her body was sealed permanently on a thin but unbreakable layer of metal, blocking and immobilizing all her true senses and her features. With the help of nanites her friend Linda restored a sort of sensory apparatus, also if virtual. The same technology mounded her body to her wishes, so she was showing a fourteen inches waist, ample bosom and heelless ballet boots reaching her thighs. The same metal was molded to appear as she was wearing bolted and heavy opera gloves and a sleeveless high necked leotard blocking her head in a upright position. She moved gracefully on her tiny toes and touched the wheelchair where Linda was seated on, or better, she was sealed in. due to her movements difficulty created by the thick plastic layer over her whole body, she decided to built a special chair she could control using the special devices the nanotech created inside her. It was a couple of years before she moved to the extreme step to vacuum pack herself on the chair, so she was seated and sealed under a thick, crystal clear layer of vinyl. The vacuum was so strong to distort and flatten her features as she was more a packed and naked doll than a woman.
“So my transmission system works…”
“I was sure of it. Just it drains a lot of my energies. Now, talking about serious things. I decided to join you n this crazy idea because I was searching for revenge, but I have some problem now to go on…”
“What kind of problem?” asked Linda.
Maria stood silently for quite a minute.
“We want to take revenge of Carl and Robert not on them but on their families, right? But they, I mean Robert wife and Carl daughter, they didn’t anything…”
“I know.” Sighed Naomi, seating on a special reinforced stair to accommodate her four hundred pound weight. “But they will be completely safe. We will inject them but we have already the antidote in case they want no to follow our instruction. In any case or they will be condemned by the law or they will be hated by their families…”
“Are you sure of your plan?”
“Yes. They are what they are now using our ideas and our technology. I want them on the dust. And if they will sign the documents we prepared… well, they will have difficulties also to find a job as waiters.” Answered Linda.
“But you want to steal their signs with a trap, with the force. It’s not really a good action…”
Naomi jumped on her feet and clanged her fists against her rigid chest.
“And do you think this is a good action? What they did to us is right?”
“No.” She stood silent for a second. “No, I think they deserve what you want to do to them…”
“Maria, I would like to leave in peace those two women, but it’s the only way we found. They are the only things on the Earth that could move their hearts. You are still with us?”
“Yes Linda. I believe in you. If you say they will be safe, they will be…” she smiled, touching the shiny and rigid arm of her friend, that tried to smile, but the plastic over her whole face impeded any movement.
Susan exited the house laughing slightly.
“See you this evening daddy…” said he twenty-two years old brunette, the straight hairs combed in a braid over a whit and pink T-shirt and jeans.
“Love, remember that this evening I could arrive home earlier, so don’t be in delay as always. I know that the are your friends, but I’m all your family now!”
“Yes, I know, and after mom death, you really did good. I will be not in delay. I swear… See you.”
The blonde moved slowly with the car, waiting the right moment to shot her with the special gun her friends gave her. On a long and straight road she drove the red car near the young and shot, the compressed air pushing the bullet without a sound, then she speeded-up to park some meter ahead. Susan didn’t feel the microscopic object that hit her, nor she felt the quick stream of nanotech in her blood. She just felt strangely happy and dizzy, and always smiling she was stopped by a curly blonde that helped her in a red car, fastened her seatbelt and started to drive. Her vision blurred, as she was drugged, and she feel asleep.
“Perfect.” She thought, directed to the mansion. “Linda, are you satisfied?” she said to the air.
“Yes, thank you. Now we have the first hostage. When she will be ready, remember, you must run to Robert house, then…”
“Yes, yes, I know the plan.”
“Whoa, calm down…”
“Sorry, but now that all is started I feel a little uneasy with the whole thing.”
“Maria…”
“I know, I know…” she sighed, then smiled slightly. “Can I ask you what you have invented for her and for Babette?”
“Surprise. I know you will like more to see with your eyes than hear our explanations…” answered Naomi giggling in her ears.
“Thank you, you are so kind. I will be at the mansion in half an hour. It’s enough for the nanites to prepare her?”
“Perfectly. They have only to enhance her arms flexibility and remove the same flexibility form her legs so she will be completely dependent from us. Ah, Maria, do you prefer red or blue?”
“Why?” asked the blonde caressing with her right hand the sleeping girl head. “She is so beautiful. How she could have such a father?”
“Nature freaks, I think…” mumbled Naomi, checking the last options and details for the program that would be installed in Susan. “But you didn’t answered at the question…”
“I think blue… Yes, blue it’s better.”
“And blue will be. Susan doom ha been chosen and fixed for the eternity…”
“Sometime I think you are too much in the character. Are you sure not to start to think about conquering the world and things similar?” she changed the tone, trying to mime a psychologist during a session. “Do you think of you still as a mere human?”
“Well, I can’t be out of the character. I’m stuck in it. And about the human, I’m more metal and nanotech than flesh and blood. What do you think?” answered the shiny woman.
“That you need some oil. I heard your neck to squeak…”
“Little snake…” she smiled, while Linda was laughing, her body trembling slightly, the lights dancing over her plastic surface.
The girl moved the head, her eyes still closed, a strange, disturbing but in some way pleasurable sensation all over her body.
“It seems she is awakening, girls…”
“Just in time…”
The metallic voice Susan heard frightened her, and she opened her eyes, finding she was laying on a soft table, padded with a blue and shiny plastic layer. She sensed she was naked and, also if not restrained, she couldn’t move a muscle also if she wanted.
“Where… Where am I?” she mumbled looking around. Only a blonde in casual attire and a lot of strange electronic devices on the walls were on her vision field.
“You are in a special laboratory hidden under a isolate mansion, Susan. We have kidnapped you to obtain something from your dear daddy…” smiled Maria, trying to be the most reassuring she could.
“You will not be in danger, if your father will do what we want.” Continued Naomi, moving near the brunette and grabbing her chin with her cold and rigid fingers. The metal let Susan tremble, together with the incredible appearance of the woman.
“Who… What are you? It’s a sort of weird candid camera?” she babbled.
“No, I’m sorry this is the reality. And about your first question, she, as I, we are your father creations…” answered the vacuum packed Linda, the wheelchair buzzing near the brunette feet. From the table a mechanical arm appeared and injected something on her left ankle. “He, with his friend Robert Catting, decided to are us from the world, but they preferred to leave us alive in these forms instead to kill us!”
“I… I can’t…”
“You can’t believe? It’s better for you if you start right now. We will treat you as they treated us. Only a little gentler, and wit no intention to let you disappear. Your body has been already injected wit microscopic robots that will reshape completely you and your senses. We will film you for your father, then you, as Babette, Robert’s wife, you will be returned both to your houses, free, if they will do the right thing. Your destinies are only in their hands. Your dad will decided if to release you or to live forever with a plastic creature…”
“No, it’s impossible. You are only a nightmare, an horrible dream…” she sighed.
“It’s started?” asked Maria.
“Mmmmhh, let see…” mumbled Naomi, moving near the brunette legs. “Yes, it’s started. See, her legs are starting to loose their flexibility gaining a strange and alluring shiny appearance, and also her muscles are becoming hard as rock. In few minutes she will not be able to bend ankles and knees…”
“What are you saying? What is started? What have you done to me?!” shouted the brunette, her body trembling as hit by a cold wind while it stated to shine as it was wet. With a corner of her eyes she noted that the blue plastic layer under her was disappearing. “What?”
“Oh, it’s only the process that is going ahead. Your body is now absorbing the blue plastic, fusing it with her skin, in some way replacing it with the waterproof material. You will be really, really beautiful when all will be finished.” Said wickedly Linda.
“No!” Susan cried, seeing the shin material appearing, quite flooding over her legs, her body, her arms, as it was a living being. “Stop it! Stop it immediately. Please, stop it immmmmmggghhtt! Mmmmghtt, Nnnnn…”
“The nanites are working faster than I imagined. Maybe some interaction between the first and the second injection…” smiled Naomi. “Look, they have already filled completely her nostrils, throat and mouth. Te second and all the material will become hard as concrete.”
“It’s incredible. All her body is now covered and sealed under the vinyl, but she is alive… She can still sense us?”
“No, Maria. At this moment all her senses are erased. They will be restored, a sort of, when her costume will be finished. Look, the nanites are moving her on her feet.” Linda answered.
“How they can do this?”
“They are in full control of her nervous system, so she is no more owner of her body. Now, as you can see, she is moving her arms on her back, and due to the enhanced mobility provided by the nanites, she could arrive easily to a back prayer position, her forearms vertical, aligned to the spine, her hands at the base of the neck…”
“Wow, it seems painful.”
“It is, but for her a lot less than for a normal person. Anyway, for the feedback on this screen, I could guess she is screaming and crying under the mask that is sealing her face and hairs…”
The figure seemed growing in height, but only because her feet went vertical, forcing her to walk on the tip of her toes. A sort of rigid mold was created up to her crotch, rendering another time her legs two columns without any possibility to be flexed. Tethering unstably she turned and feel again on the table, her back up, showing the flexed arms bended in such a strange but erotic position, her ample bust evidenced. Quickly the plastic of her sleeves, gloves and back fused together, crushing the limbs until they disappeared under a flawless surface. Immediately after it long and big white butterfly wings formed on her shoulder blades, changing slightly color until they appeared as made of crystal under the sunlight and not plastic.
“Wonderful. She was beautiful, but now…” gasped the blonde, playing with her curly hairs.
The plastified girl heaved herself up, returning on her feet, showing at the women and at the camera near them that the blue vinyl covering the face had changed in a sort of transparent mask blocking completely opened Susan mouth, revealing to any viewer the plastic filled cavity. Her eyes were stretched, blocked to see only and always in front of her, also if useless as her ears, erased under the plastic hood that was her head.
“If all is correct, now the nanites will give her the control of her new body, restoring also a sort of hearing and seeing. She will be able to listen only what we decide to let her listen, and she will be able to see, but as an insect, in black and white and pixelate…” said Linda
“And the other senses?” asked Maria.
“Nothing. No touch, no taste, no smell. She will be shocked by the difference between before and after. For a short period the bran can survive, but if she will be in that condition for more than some day, she will start to be crazy, if not supported by some strong idea, as Naomi, that is still with us thanking to her revenge spirit.”
The new creature moved unsteady, her rigid legs clicking on the hard floor, the wings moving slowly as trying to help her to balance.
“Mmmghtt, nnnnghtt…” her lips tried to move, arriving to close and open quite freely, but as soon as she stopped to complain, they returned opened in a perfect surprise expression.
“Yes, you will be a strange butterfly until your dad will decided what to do with you. Your arms are useless, but your wings are now controlled by the same muscles, so it’s better if you start to learn how to use them for balance, or you will be in trouble. Ah if you are scared about your life, it’s normal. You can’t breath, you can’t talk, you can’t feel or sense anything and you can move your lungs. But you are and will be alive. All your oral cavity, throat and stomach are filled with hard plastic, and the nanites will provide you with all what your body needs to survive. Pay attention, to survive, not to live as before. If you will be lucky, the system will go down in a couple of centuries. If you are unlucky, you will be the first four hundred years old girl of the history.” Linda explained to her, then cut off any sound, rendering Susan deaf.
“Nnnnght! Mmmmghttt…” the brunette shook her head, her blind eyes fogged with salty tears.
“Maria, quick, the second victim. Now it’s the turn of Robert’s wife…”
“Ok Linda. Something similar to our Madama Butterfly?”
“Not exactly…” giggled the redhead.
Naomi smiled, a smile so cruel to frighten the blonde when she saw it, exiting from the underground laboratory.
The woman heard a car entering on the alley, stopping slowly near the house main door. Curious, not waiting anyone at that hour of the day, the forty-fiver years old black haired woman moved from the kitchen where she was finishing to wash the dishes and went to the front door, forgetting to remove the red rubber gloves she was using.
“Robert can’t be, it’s too early for him, also if he know that this evening we have to attend to a dinner of my friends.” She thought, snapping the left glove away form her hand. She opened the door and saw a curly blonde in her late thirty, judging from the appearances, closing silently the door of her red car, and starting to walk in her direction, a little and reassuring smile on her lips. “Can I help you?” she asked, peeling away also the other glove, fixing both to the belt of her apron.
“Yes. I mean, maybe…” nodded the woman, stopping some meter from her. “I’m searching for Mrs Catting…” she said, a small syringe hidden in her hand on her back.
“Can I ask you the reason?”
“She won the first price of a competition, a wonderful diamonds parure… But I must consign it only to the winner…”
The older woman stopped a child-like smile, giggling secretly.
“I’m Mrs Catting.” She smiled slightly, combing without thinking the wavy shoulder blades long hair with her fingers.
“Mrs Babette Catting?” asked again he blonde, moving near her, quite in front of her.
“Yes. Nice to meet you. I’m so happy, that parure it’s wonderful, I’m really so happy you don’t know…”
Maria pushed the yellow liquid inside the syringe on Babette right arm, profiting the time when the woman extended her limb to shake her hand. Two or three second after, the woman was staying silent, a smiling face and lost in the nothing eyes.
“I’m really so happy too, but I think that in a couple of hours you will not be so smiling, also if you will have a mouth. Now, you can be so kind to enter n the car and wait for me? I need to close your house…”
“Yes. The keys are on the desk at the entering, near the flowers pot.” She smiled mindlessly, starting to walk to the car. Inside her head, she was trashing and screaming, watching her body doing what she wanted not to do, scared and fascinated at the same time about the effect of that strange liquid.
“Thank you.”
“You are welcome.”
Maria find quite immediately the keys, posed near the pot but also near a photo of Robert and her wife, probably token some year before.
“How a woman so kind could be act raced by this sort of monster I will never understand… Well, effectively he is not a bad man, but when you discover the character, whoa, better a thousand of time to be hit by a cat-o’-nine-tails directly on your face… Anyway…” she thought, grabbing the keys and closing the door. She put the key in her jeans pocket and went to the car, starting to drive, directed to the secluded mansion.
When the car exited the garden of the house, the hidden and movement activated closed circuit camera stopped to record all the scene on the computer and went in stand-by mode.
The big mansion was silent, also if inside it was a lot of movement. All the lights were shut off, but a shadow, a slender ad unsteady female figure was moving on he dark rooms, her big white butterfly wings hitting the air furiously, the rigid and arched toes sinking on the soft carpet of the hall.
“Dear Susan, I don’t think that trying to walk away from this house will help you. Why you don’t’ return here? There is a person I’m sure you will be happy to see…” giggled Naomi in the girl ears, her voice transmitted directly to her brain with the special devices the nanites in her bloodstream built, destroying and reshaping her true ears. Them, as the rest of her body, were sealed under a blue plastic membrane that was covering completely her skin, substituting to it. The same nanotech that created the layer blocked her legs in rigid columns,, crushed her upper limbs on her back in a quite painful position, her forearms along her spine, her hands just under the neck, hidden and held immobile by the catsuit. She was not sure about the other modification her captresses did to her, but she was no more able to breathe, to touch, to see clearly.
“Mnnnghtt…” she cursed her kidnaper, but in some way, o a little corner of her heart she could understand her and the other strange woman, Linda. They were employed, before she was born, on an industry where her father and his best friend, Robert Catting, were the bosses, and after things se refused to hear and understand, Linda finished sealed, naked, under a thick layer of plastic while her friend was a gleaming steel statue walking and talking.
“Come on, I ca see on the monitor where you are. If you walk in front of you and push the button hidden under the red flowers printed lamp, you will arrive at the laboratory in a minute. Ah, the lamp is the on the right of the door, the other one is on the left.”
“Daughter of a…” she thought, walking slowly, her eyes seeing only in black and white shades and with a definition so bad she could hardly distingue a lamp from a statue. She arrived to find the lamp, panting heavily for the effort to walk with her stiff legs, also if she had no need to breathe due to the nanites on her body, and instinctively tried to lift it with her right hand. The right wing moved on the air, commanded by the same nervous signals. She grunted, remembering that at the moment she had no arms, only wings. “How she can think I could…” she tried to sigh, but her nostrils, as her stomach and throat, were completely filled with a quite hard plastic.
“Why you don’t try with the nose, until you have still one?” suggested in her ears Linda.
“Mmmghtt, nnnnghh!” shouted ad cursed the girl, shacking her head from side to side as she wanted to free herself form the earplugs that permitted her to hear only what her captresses wanted to let her hear.
“Oh, it seems she s upset!”
“Linda, please… Try hard, Susan. Remember, you will be condemned to this life for two centuries if your dead daddy will not do as requested…”
The girl nodded slowly, and with a big effort due to the stiffness of her body and her legs she arrived t bend enough to push the button with her nose. A full section of the wall on the opposite side of the room moved silently disappearing under the floor, showing stairs going down. It was only at the end of the stairs that Linda was waiting for the girl, her face distorted under the plastic vacuumed over her whole body and glued to the technologically advanced wheelchair. The fixed eyes, only fakes because her true ones were fused closed under her eyelids more than twenty year before, looked at the strange butterfly woman, ten the whole device turned with an electrical noise.
“Follow me. I think you will be happy to see a friend. Also if I don’t think se will be really happy to see you, or better to see what are you now…” she said in a mocking tone, waiting Susan arrived to her side and controlling the speed to remain near her. “Maybe she doesn’t deserve it, but really I finally start to feel a sort of joy on my plastified heart. I don’t remember how many years I saw with my false eyes, my skin sealed under this suffocating and rigid layer of material, how many days and night I stood silent, completely and always awaken, never feeling the desire of food or drink, never feeling the tiredness, always at my best… If this could be considered my best…”she thought. “But now, well now the payback time is arrived, and final I will see someone other suffer quite as I suffered, also if only for a short time… well, a short time if they will not sign our papers… if they will decide to refuse our offer, we will leave this precious daughter and the other precious wife to them in this form for some month, then we will free them. So we will be at least four person to hate them, eh, eh, eh…”
The two women entered the laboratory where some hour before Susan has been sealed in the costume that was at the moment her skin. Giving their backs, Maria and Naomi were checking something on the screens that were covering with electronic devices the walls of the big room.
“Welcome back, honey.” Said the woman covered in the strangest but in a weird way appealing steel costume. “I’m sure Babette will be interested in see what we did to you…”
“Mmmmnghtt, nnnghtt, pphhhhmmm…” mumbled the blue covered girl, walking as quick as she could to the black table where the wife of her father best friend was strapped, shiny ring of rubber around her limbs, torso and head, also if she stopped a meter far from it, to be sure Babette would not see her.
“What do you want from me? If you think these masks could impress me, you are completely wrong.”
“But they are nor mask, Mrs. Catting. As we explained to Susan, we want revenge on Carl and Robert for what they did to us more than twenty years ago, and well, after so much time we had the wonderful idea to punish not only them, but only the most precious persons they have: you!” she laughed, something similar to an electronic sound, but frightening enough to stop the black haired woman breath.
“They will feel the despair to have their family transformed in strange monsters as we are, and if they will not sign what we want, they will find what is to live with a monster for the next two centuries at minimum…” added Linda, moving near the strapped woman.
“You are crazy! Completely crazy!” she shouted.
“She said the same before we stopped her howling filling her whole internal cavities with hard plastic… Susan, come here!”
She didn’t move, too ashamed to show her aspect to someone else.
“Susan, I said to come here!”
She shook her head.
“Susan, or you will move or we will take again control of your body as during the sealing process. What do you prefer?” menaced Maria, lying about the possibility to control her.
The girl walked stiffly near the table, arising a gasp and a cry of terror and horror from Babette.
“You are joking… she can’t be Susan…” se sighed, tears falling over her cheeks.
The blue butterfly run away mumbling incoherently.
“Enough chatting.” Exclaimed the plastic sealed woman. “It’s time for you to change in a black, wonderfully shin creature. I advise you that the nanites we will inject in your body will change you radically and internally ad externally to fulfill the characteristics of your new self. Your hearing, speaking and vision will be erased and substituted with a new, completely different sensorial system. I hope you will like to see as a mix of a bat and a radar…” she giggled.
“What… ouch!” shouted the woman when Maria injected a green fluid on her left arm. “You little…”
“It’s not polite to say this to your kidnapper. But luckily in some minute that little tongue of you will disappear with teeth, gums and lips to leave only a perfect flawless black latex surface…”
The rubber of the table and the one of the straps started to disappear, as absorbed by the woman skin. Feeling she was in some way free, she jumped on the floor and started to run to the door she saw. No one stopped her, laughing to what she was doing, and frightening her, her legs slowed and started to shake when she arrived near the front door of the mansion. Her body was heavy, her vision fogged and distorted as she had her eyes full of tears, until when she touched the door knob she felt on her knees, without sensing any pain.
“Mmmmghaaah, nnnghhhuuu…” she screamed, her lips already disappearing, fusing together as her eyelids, rendering her completely blind. She forced anyway herself on her feet, then she moved with her hands in front of her, trying to open the wooden door. Her ears were absorbed quickly on her skull, as did the nails on her hands and feet, then her whole body froze, leaving the time to the nanotech to finish the external changes on the woman, sealing her under a thick rubber layer, shiny as a jet. The material thickened all over her face, making her long hairs fall on the floor, her features smoothed by the airtight material leaving only an anonymous ovoid.
“What is happening? Why I can’t talk or hear?” she tried to say, uselessly.
A strange sensation hit her brain and a sort of black and white vision, similar to an echography filled her eyes. It was a full round visual, permitting her to see her hands, now encased in thumbless mittens rigid as steel, the door, the furniture, also the ceiling and floor, all without turning her head.
“Mmmmghtt…” Susan mumbled, entering in the room with the other three girls.
“Yes, I think the nanites finished their job. She is now in your exact conditions. She doesn’t need to eat, or drink or breathe and she is completely deaf and dumb. Her eyes are useless, but she can see all around her using a sort of radio waves, scanning the surround as a bat. The rubber over her body, now only a couple of millimeters thick, is slowly substituting her true skin and the superficial muscles until it will arrive to an average thickness of half an inch, letting her resist to any kind of pressure and slow temperature…” Naomi explained.
“Yes. If she is perfect for the ocean abysses, you are wonderful for the skies. In fact I think that now your transformation is completed…” continued the other strange woman, her voice showing a hint of mockery, her face immobile and deformed under in a scary smile. “Your bones are now quite completely disappeared, your weight all over your rigid legs and your sealing suit.”
“Mghttt!”
“No need to be scared.” Maria added, going near Susan and caressing her blue, warm body. “If you will find the way to control enough your wings, you will be able to fly. Obviously if your dad will not free you…” she joked. She was not sure if the changes Linda and Naomi were saying to have done to tem were real, but she remembered that they used as a base for the changes two old projects of body modification for engineered humans, a sort of new species.
Babette felt on her knees again, her mittens on her ovoid, and started to mumbling as she was crying. She went in hysterics, and she could do nothing to stop it. The idea to be completely filled, encased, sealed in a costume that had changed her in a sort of monster was too much for her brain. Susan moved near her, trying to caress her, but her wings just flapped slowly on the air. She bent on her hips and kissed with her sealed lips the woman head a couple of time, until she lifted up and hugged her.
“Mghttt…”
“Nnnght…” mumbed the black creature, nodding.
“Ok, this was a really touching scene, but now it’s time to come back to reality.” Maria said, grabbing them on their small waists and pushing them away, closing them in a empty room, then she returned to her friends.
“Before continuing with our plan, repeat me again that you have the antidote for what we did to them.”
“Yes, we have. We created t before to create the nanites and we already prepared it. Do you saw the two black vials on the laboratory?” asked the metallic figure.
She nodded.
“They are the nanites to erase all the changes we did to them. We have also the original program and several backup copies in our computers… Satisfied?” smiled Naomi.
“Thank you.” She exclaimed, grabbing her car keys and two digital disks. “I consign these to the two bastards and return. See you later.”
“See you…” they said, seeing her trespassing the wooden main door directed to her red vehicle.
The blonde had no problems to consign the first disk at the maid inside Susan house, saying it was for her chief. Humming happily she stopped the car near the other car and walked at the entrance playing with the keys. When she touched the doorknob, the door opened suddenly and a gun, hard and cold, touched Maria forehead.
“Hy dear. You are exactly as I was remembering you…” smiled cruelly the man.
“Robert. Nice to see you…” she smiled back to him, activating her vision and hearing transmission to the mansion.
“I’m sure of it. Now you and I will talk a little about my wife, ok?” he said, closing the door on their back and walking, his gun always pointed to her head.
“Shit!” she thought, a cold sweat drop running slowly along her spine.