19 Hell On Earth

I woke up with a splitting headache and I had no idea where I was. The last thing I remembered was not being able to breathe and then an intense burning. I opened my eyes and blinked my eyelids a few times before I managed to figure out I was in a bed. It was dusty and worn, with a bit of something on the sheets. Was that slime? Wait, why am I naked?

I sat up and a wave of dizziness hit me. A soft groan escaped my mouth as I flopped back onto the bed and closed my eyes. I wasn't sure if I had a concussion and I wasn't going to take the chance. Amy Dallon had crammed as much medical knowledge into my head as she could during our occasional weekend trips to various hospitals, so I listened to her advice and didn't ignore what my body was telling me.

I stayed in bed and didn't move as I switched primary powers to Velocity's and spent a good eight hours at my maximum speed awake and resting. Three real minutes later, I opened my eyes and felt fine. It was such a relief that another soft groan escaped my mouth and the door opened to the room I was in.

The most gorgeous woman I had ever seen walked into the room. She had bright blonde hair and a fantastic body that looked like it was modelled after Alexandria, and that was where the similarities ended. Instead of a single pair of eyes, she had another eye on the left side of her head. She also had an extra wide mouth with a bit of it on the left side.

It was almost as if she had a picture taken and had moved her head at the last second and had blurred her face. She also had a smaller extra arm on that side below the first, another smaller breast below the left one, and if I wasn't mistaken, she looked surprised at the sight of me.

"You not be changing? Why you not be changing?" She asked in a sultry voice. "I gives you mother's milky. Two doses! You should be changing."

I stared at her and wondered how she could find or make clothes that could fit her distorted body. It wasn't until she approached the bed that I stopped wondering what she meant by mother's milky, because she pulled off her top and exposed her breasts. Surprisingly, the top breasts reminded me of Taylor's and the bottom extra one reminded me of Vista's.

"You be good now and changing so we can give you to King." She said and dove on top of me as her main arms grabbed my wrists and her smaller extra arm reached up and cupped her extra breast. It had been so fast that I almost didn't see her move. She still caught me, though.

I opened my mouth to ask her to move, because I didn't want to hurt her, and she squeezed her breast. A stream of rancid yellow fluid flew out of the nipple and went right into my mouth. It clogged the back of my throat and I started choking on it.

The smile on her face looked distorted with her extended mouth and her teeth were pointed instead of normal. There was also a hint of madness in her eyes, now that I could see them up close.

I gave up trying to not hurt her and lifted my hands, to her surprise, and I shoved her away. She flew across the room and banged into the wall as I rolled over off the bed and I stuck a finger down my throat to throw up whatever mother's milky was. My so-called concussion now had an explanation as what I threw up bubbled and hissed as it ate at the floor.

I was tempted to save some of it, just so I could give it to Amy later to analyze, which told me that I was not in the right mindset for the current situation. Whatever that stuff was, must have dosed my brain with something. I shouldn't be ignoring blatant threats or accepting that whatever that creature was, as beautiful.

"You will be changing!" The not actually sultry voice growled and a hard fist slammed into the back of my head.

I had enough presence of mind to not let my face smoosh into that acid vomit and moved to the side and cracked my forehead on the hardwood next to the puddle. A hard foot slammed into my side and I was flung into the side of the bed and flipped over it to crunch against the wall. The plaster was crushed and my shoulder left a long dent in it before I flopped onto the bed.

I wasn't sure why I felt weak, until I turned my head to look at the gorgeous woman. Her blonde hair was matted and stuck to her head and showed pointed ears, her mouth didn't have luscious lips, and her enchanting eyes looked like black pits of despair. Her still exposed breasts no longer looked like Taylor's and Vista's, either. They were brownish misshaped mounds and looked like they were covered in small pustules.

There are definitely hallucinogenic properties if two doses can distort my perception to that degree. I thought, disconnectedly. Is a dose a single squirt or did the creature give me two feedings like a baby?

A six finger hand grabbed me by my hair and lifted me up from the bed. "You being bad. You being punished." The creature said and shook me before it started punching my face relentlessly and then threw me against the opposite wall.

I barely stayed conscious as I was given a harsher beating than Battery's usual training session. By the time the punishment was over, the room was pretty much destroyed. I had also been held down and forced to swallow another dose before the creature left me alone to writhe and groan in pain on the torn up mattress.

I hammed it up, of course. I knew from previous experience how to do that, so I wouldn't give away how strong I was. This time had a twisted mental component that gave me phantom pain, which told me that another dose was working on my brain, because I hadn't felt pain since my trigger event. I was completely invulnerable, inside and out, and I had inadvertently discovered another downside from copying powers.

If I ate something contaminated, my body would absorb it and metabolize it. Since I had Velocity's power as a primary, I increased time for myself and thought about whose powers I had copied that would allow that. The only one I could think of was someone named Cask. They could produce and consume certain chemical batches that enhanced them and granted various powers for a short while.

I could imagine that would have physically altered my stomach to allow me to imbibe body-altering chemicals, which would send my regeneration on a pretty haywire roller coaster ride as it fixed whatever was trying to change me from the inside out and alter my perfect human physique.

I rolled over on the bed and looked down at my stomach to see little ripples under the skin and my intestines made horrible gurgling sounds. Yes, I am definitely regretting copying more powers.

I kept my mind accelerated as I waited for the creature to come back. I had to assume they were going to leave me alone for several hours, which meant I had about 3 hours of accelerated time to work out if the mind-altering effects were going to fade. Since I could sleep for about 8 hours in 3 real time minutes, that meant I had about 20 days before anyone would come to check on me.

*

"Taylor, what are we going to do?" Vista asked, her eyes red and puffy from crying all night for the third night in a row.

Taylor sighed and hugged her best friend close as they laid in bed. "You heard the director. There's nothing we can do."

"We can't just leave Alex in there. We have to do something." Vista pleaded in a whisper.

"I wish we could. I really do." Taylor said and kissed her cheek.

Vista wiped at her face and gave Taylor her best puppy dog eyes. "Taylor..."

"We won't be allowed to go anywhere, you know that." Taylor said and looked deep into Vista's eyes before she leaned in to give her a tender kiss on the lips.

Vista made a sad sound and kissed her back. In moments, they were both naked and were touching each other with desperation and desire. They both needed to express themselves and their emotions and soon were licking each other out as if nothing else in the world mattered. They both finished hard and Taylor even squirted a bit, which made Vista giggle a little and she turned around to cuddle into Taylor's side.

"I really needed that." Vista said and her hand lightly caressed Taylor's breasts.

Taylor cupped the side of her face to move her up and looked into her eyes again. "So did I." She said and gave her another tender kiss. "I'm going to be here for you and... and I hope... you can be here for me, too."

Vista slowly nodded. "I can't afford to break down anymore. I... I'm supposed to be the strongest Ward on the team. I can't... I won't let this be the end."

Taylor raised her eyebrows at her. "You were going to quit?"

Vista nodded. "Without Alex here, I..." She shook her head. "He wouldn't want me to give up. Not like this."

Taylor gave her a questioning look.

Vista blushed. "I would have asked you to come with me if I was going to make a break for it."

Taylor smiled. "At least that's proof you're starting to think straight again."

Vista smiled back. "Your idea about sending bugs in was a good one."

"Their point was a good one, too." Taylor said and sighed. "There's no guarantee that anything I send in will remain under my control, considering the reports on Nilbog's creatures and their utter devotion to the Goblin King."

"If he did develop an airborne virus, there's no telling what could happen if the PRT blew up the place." Vista said and rested her head on her shoulder as Taylor hugged her tightly. "Do you think... do you... could he..."

"If anyone was going to survive that place, it's Alex." Taylor said and pressed her lips to Vista's forehead briefly. "We have to trust that he's going to live and he's going to be okay."

Vista let out a long and drawn out sigh. "How will we ever know..."

"I'm sure if we send in daily requests with the proper paperwork for Director Piggot to keep us updated on the status of Ellisburg, we can annoy her enough that she'll chomp at the bit to tell us any information she can get as soon as she gets it." Taylor suggested.

Vista giggled. "Should I tell you that's just evil to annoy her with official paperwork that she has to acknowledge?"

"How often has she come down hard on us about following proper procedure?" Taylor grinned at her. "It's only fair that we follow it to the letter."

Vista had to grin back and hugged her friend. It was something they could concentrate on and put a lot of effort into, even if it wasn't going to amount to much in the grand scheme of things. Just being able to do something was enough to keep them distracted for a while. Anything that could keep away the deep sense of loss that they both felt, was worth doing.

*

I had a lot of time inside my head to figure out what was going on. Referencing the last moments I had before losing consciousness, where I had aimed for the eastern seaboard of the US and started flying, I narrowed down where I could have landed. With the creature no one had ever seen before as the biggest piece of evidence, there was really only one place I could be.

I mentally sighed at my luck putting me right inside the quarantine zone for Ellisburg. I would have had to come practically straight down to avoid the high concrete walls and the extremely high forcefield barriers above them. Any kind of oblique angle would have had me hit the barriers and bounce off.

My problems didn't stop there, though. I was also contaminated by the various plagues and viruses that the Goblin King named Nilbog had released. They might not be able to infect me properly, thanks to my own regeneration and invulnerability; but, that didn't stop me from becoming a carrier. Either from clothes that I will eventually have to wear or just from my skin and hair, I could pass them on.

On the plus side, after three days inside my head, my body finally settled down and my guts stopped making those god-awful noises. That also told me exactly how long I had been unconscious. Now I just had to keep track of how long the hallucinogenic effects took to wear off... and there they went. I blinked my eyes several times and thought it was more than a little weird that I literally felt my head clear.

Maybe constant exposure is letting my mental trump power fully adjust? I asked myself and lifted my hands and examined them. They were normal and I patted my stomach. There were no gurgling sounds and no ripples. Do I have to experience each thing before my body can adjust to it?

I ignored my questions for now and took several hours as I checked myself over. As far as I could tell, I was completely fine. My body was 20 years old and... holy hell, I had an eight inch long penis! Vista had been nervous about it before and now it was an inch and a half longer. I did a quick measurement with my hand and discovered I was also two and a half inches wide, or half an inch wider than I was.

With no choice but to ignore future problems for now, I stood up instantly. A quick run around the room and a short investigation gave me the information I needed. I was in the corner room of a basement and that explained why only the plaster walls were damaged and the floor was fine.

There were no clothes at all in the room, so I stood in the middle of the room and closed my eyes once more. I spent a mental day going over everything I had read about Nilbog and his creatures. The biggest thing was that the creatures were created wholly from a biomass consisting of people.

Nilbog's power consumed them and changed them from humans with DNA into a generic slurry of biological matter, then he reconstructed the mass into whatever twisted creature he wanted and they were no longer human, despite looking humanoid. They also had inborn mental conditioning to always be subservient to him and to idolize him, even if he was cruel to them.

The thing was, his power was physical. I knew that if I could get to him and defeat him, I could copy his power. If I could, then I could hopefully negate the contamination on myself. It was a faint hope, especially considering I wasn't being converted into one of his creatures. Since I wasn't changing, there was no way the one that was holding me here would ever take me to him.

Also, I was sure that my injury absorption power wouldn't quite work on them. I had no doubt I could suck in their damages, it was just that whatever they had been turned into, was what they were. They wouldn't be returning to human if I tried to heal them and would only become perfectly healthy as they were. That would not help me at all.

The hard way it is, then. I thought and dropped my mental speed to normal and walked over to the door. It was locked, so I turned the handle very slowly and eventually snapped the lock. I listened to see if anyone would come running, and no one did. I eased the door open and peeked out into a hallway. There were no lights except a ray of sunlight through a small window at the end of the hallway.

I zoomed to the window and looked up the stairs to the right and no one was there. The door at the top of the stairs was open, so I ignored the stars that might creak and slowly flew up to peer out into another hallway. A kitchen was off to the right and a living room was off to the left. I knew I would never get out if I went for the front door, so I floated over to the kitchen.

Luckily, no one was there and the back door was within sight. I lowered close to the floor and gently floated around the kitchen counter and stopped near the opening between the counter and the back door. I was glad I had, because that female creature stood just passed the edge of the counter in a laundry room. It started to hum as it seemed to cuddle something.

I looked up at it and saw an oval-shaped head with a twisted face as it suckled on one of the creature's breasts. The baby creature made several sounds when it saw me and made a grabbing motion. The female creature sighed and grumbled something about greedy children and stepped into the laundry room and set up a little bassinet before she shut the door.

I held in my relieved sigh and unlocked the back door, slipped outside, and closed it as quietly as I could. I let out my sigh and glanced around. It was a messy backyard with trash everywhere and a short fence. I floated around the edge of the house and away from any windows before I went over to the fence and peered over it.

Where would I set myself up if I was going to take over a town? The police station or the Town Hall? I asked myself and flew over the fence and dropped to the ground.

I was on a back street and there were many houses around and lots of trash, so as long as I somehow made myself blend in, no one should stop me or question me. Trash wasn't going to help me, so I carefully crept around until I found an empty house that didn't look lived in. A silent shot with one of Legend's weaker lasers burned out a window lock and I slipped inside.

Using super-speed, I drew closed all the curtains and window blinds in the whole house and skidded to a stop in the bedroom of the one-storey house. I dropped to my knees and took several deep breaths. I couldn't... no, I wouldn't let my current situation get to me. It was not hopeless. I would decontaminate myself somehow and escape. I had to.

I just needed to be smart about surviving for as long as that was going to take.