Chapter 12

Lucas’s slow, confident trek back to his office could not have been more different from his panicked sprint to the laboratory only moments before. He was holding his head high, with his shoulders thrown back in a display of almost-swaggering self-assurance. He knew Brooke was following along behind him, but he did not turn to engage her in conversation — from that playful, flirtatious smile that had been plastered across her face ever since she had seen him, Lucas had gathered that she remembered at least some of the previous night, and had evidently enjoyed herself. That was the first order of business, Lucas decided to himself, as he neared his open office door: set everything straight with this girl. 

“Ok Brooke,” said Lucas, exhaling loudly as he rounded his desk and lowered himself deliberately into his black leather chair, leaning back in it just like he had done days ago for the interviews. “Close the door behind you, please, if you don’t mind.”

“Oh, I don’t mind at all Mr. Mineur,” came Brooke’s answer, obviously fraught with suggestive undertones. Lucas watched her turn her back to him as she pulled the door shut, once again taking the opportunity to admire her backside, despite how unstylishly dressed she was. He blinked and snapped his eyes back up to her head, which was now turning around toward him. The last thing he needed to do was have her catching him looking at her body — if that dumb grin of hers was any indication, she wouldn’t need much to fuel her amorous advances. 

“Now, let’s get one thing straight,” said Lucas, not even asking Brooke to sit down. He wanted to re-emphasize the power dynamic in their relationship. “Whatever happened last night…we’re not going to talk about it to anyone, ok Brooke?”

She blinked her eyes slowly at him, and Lucas felt a definite stab of irritation — she wasn’t taking any of this seriously. She was literally batting her eyes at him, expecting to have the same effect as she did when she was…well, when she literally wasn’t human anymore. 

“Why nottttt?” she asked playfully, bringing a finger up to her brunette hair and twirling it around, in a way that she clearly thought was sexy. “I enjoyed myself last night!”

“I…look, what happened last night was…a bad mistake, ok?” said Lucas emphatically. “A…an unfortunate malfunction of…of some of the technology, alright?”

“Malfunction?” asked Brooke, narrowing her green eyes slightly. “I…thought it was all on purpose. You were pressing that remote in your pocket, Lucas. I remember.” 

“I…ok,” said Lucas, backtracking a little. He had hoped that his lie would go right over Brooke’s head, but now, apparently, he had to deal with the fact that her memory of the previous night was quite clear, at least in parts. Lucas realized that he needed to subtly, but definitively, get straight what she remembered and what she didn’t. 

“So,” he said, inclining his head sideways as he forced himself to look composed, “How much of last night…do you actually remember, Brooke?”

Her cheeks quickly reddened, and a sheepish grin crept across her face. She looked to the side, like she was embarrassed, but in a way that she enjoyed despite herself. 

‘Oh no,’ though Lucas.

“Wellll…a lot of it, actually,” said Brooke slowly, her green eyes finding his again. She dropped her briefcase down beside her feet and took a couple steps up to his desk, until she was almost right up against it. Very deliberately, she leaned down, putting her fisted knuckles on the wood of his desk as she provided him with a consciously overt view of her cleavage, which, despite having shrunk considerably, was still nothing to scoff at. For a split second, Lucas got lost in the heavy downward sway of each of her breasts, but it didn’t take much self-control for him to dismiss his animal instincts. Brooke was a 5 out of 10 right now, tops…and it irritated him that she was behaving like an 8 or 9. 

“I remember growing…a WHOLE lot…everywhere,” she said in a low voice, that was meant as a coo, cut only came out in an awkwardly low octave. “I remember getting soooo big that my dress like…literally started tearing.”

“Yes, yes, I remember all that,” said Lucas brusquely, waving with his hand. “What else?”

“Mmmmm, well, I remember…getting smarter than you, haha! You were totally embarrassed! It was suuuper cute, actually. Although, well…I don’t really remember a lot of the, um, particulars of what all I was thinking when I…when I hit that point.”

“Do you remember when we talked about…about Buckminsterfullerene?” asked Lucas, trying desperately to hide the agonized eagerness in his voice. He was testing the extent of her brain — she certainly seemed more on top of it than she had been when she first came to Braden…

“About what?” asked Brooke, furrowing her brow in puzzlement. 

“Buckminsterfullerene,” repeated Lucas, sighing in relief even as he enjoyed himself saying the long word out loud.

“Is that…an actual word?” chuckled Brooke. 

“Uh, yes…yes, it’s an actual word,” remarked Lucas, not bothering to hide the condescension in his voice. “Ok, so anyway, tell me what else you remember. Let’s keep this rolling.” 

“I remember you…uh, heheh…uhhh — ” And here Brooke rotated her head slowly on her neck, looking at him sideways. 

‘What is she doing?’ thought Lucas exasperatedly. ‘Is this how she thinks you’re supposed to flirt?’

“Well come on Brooke, what is it?” asked Lucas, rotating his hand in a “hurry-it-up” motion. 

“It’s just, kinda funny, is all,” she said, looking down on him kindly, though with that same unswervingly flirtatious sparkle in her eyes. “You were soooo excited to take me out to dinner and…and impress me, and…haha, and then I ended up just calling you out! Remember? About Rick being the real expert for the project and you just being the — ”

“Ok, ok, that’s enough of that,” interrupted Lucas, putting up his hand. She had him going now, and even as he reminded himself to keep his cool, he had to say something here. 

“I hope you realize, Brooke, that your…little comments about all that last night just…could not be further from the truth, ok?”

“It’s ok Lucas,” laughed Brooke, shaking her head down at him. “You’re so tense! I don’t care if you’re not the smartest person in the office. It doesn’t matter!”

“I…ok, let’s just…for the record, you don’t know what you’re talking about, Brooke, but we’ll just leave it at that,” said Lucas, feeling his face turn red with frustration. “Anything else you remember?”

“Ohh…yessss,” said Brooke, leaning in even further down toward Lucas. He saw the pleasing contours of her body descending toward him, and there was a slight jump in his pants, but…she just wasn’t attractive enough to just play him like that. Not anymore. 

“Well?” asked Lucas, telegraphing the fact that he was not impressed with every syllable of his body language. 

“I remember…making you cum in your pants,” laughed Brooke dirtily, showing her slightly-crooked teeth as she giggled down at him. “More than once, actually.”

Lucas’s eyes went wide, and for several seconds, it wasn’t possible to play off his panic. He had been hoping, almost praying, that she had forgotten those parts of the night, but she hadn’t…and that was why she was acting this way now. 

“Yeah, you were just sooooo hard down there in your pants, and…and about ready to just, like…explode,” continued Brooke, in her best attempt at talking dirty. She shimmied her hips back and forth, sending her breasts swaying right to left, and then left to right, as she crouched down even closer to him. Lucas knew that he needed to re-assert himself, and fast. 

“Ok Brooke, ok, yes…I was…clearly affected by the artificial pheromones that the nanobots induced in your pituitary and the underpores of your dermis. More affected than I anticipated, to be honest, but when you’re dealing with single-nucleotide polymorphisms, there’s…well, there’s a lot more research that needs to be done about their effects. But that’s why we have you, Brooke, right?”

Lucas’s plan had worked, at least temporarily. He had more or less been speaking gibberish just now, but he had succeeded in reminding Brooke that he was smarter than her again, although the prospect that he wasn’t actually smarter still hung threateningly in the back of his mind. The IQ tests later in the day would set that fear to rest, surely. And besides, there it was: that confused look on her face. He had successfully redirected her playful flirtations. 

“Uh, yeah, yeah that’s right,” she said, nodding her head, clearly not understanding what he had just said. 

“Well alright, so that’s all you remember,” said Lucas in a flourish, wishing to end this conversation so he could go over Brooke’s new job responsibilities, as his secretary, “We can move on to — ”

“Wait!” interrupted Brooke. “There’s one more thing I remember.”

“What is it, Brooke?” asked Lucas irritatedly, closing his eyes and bringing his fingers to the top of his nose, like he had done a number of times with her already…when she was different. He was trying to recreate the past with this motion, but even as he did it, he realized that it was already out of place. Brooke was grinning suggestively down at him again, totally unfazed by his condescension. 

“I remember…breastfeeding you.” 

Her words went through Lucas like a sudden cortege of daggers, and once again, totally independent of his own will, his eyes snapped back up to hers. Her face was leaning down towards his, closer than ever, only about two feet away. 

“Right out in the open…can you believe that?” Brooke persisted, her green eyes going wide with pleasure. “I didn’t really care at the time, haha, and you sure didn’t either! I was so much bigger and stronger than you by that point…I was, like, cupping your head to my breast. And oh my god did it feel good.” 

Lucas couldn’t help it — they were too close — his eyes darted down to Brooke’s hanging breasts, and she caught him. 

“You wanna touch them again?” she asked, her low voice now actually taking on something of a throaty hoarseness. “Here, let me help you.”

In a quick motion that Lucas did not anticipate, Brooke reached out, caught Lucas by his right hand, and started pulling it up to touch her breast. Lucas felt the side of his hand brush the warm fabric of her bra before he collected himself enough to yank his hand away. 

“Brooke! No!” he barked, sounding much more frazzled than he had intended. In addition to the obvious shock of Brooke's blatant and aggressive flirtation, Lucas had noticed that Brooke’s grip was a lot stronger than he had expected. He stared at her with his mouth half-open for a few moments, the pure audacity of her behavior rendering him temporarily speechless. 

“Aw, but Mr. Mineur,” said Brooke in an affected drawl, “Don’t you remember how much you lovvvved it last night?” She was pressing herself up against his desk now, and the soft, insistent sound of her dress against the desk melted into the air. She was actually rubbing herself up against his desk, going up and down rhythmically. 

“Don’t you want me to breastfeed you again?” she pressed on, pouting her lips at him. “Wouldn’t it just be so nice to have that happen all over?”

“B-Brooke…I — ” stammered Lucas, his heartbeat beginning to rage, like the situation, out of control. He had to stop it now; he closed his eyes and took a deep breath inward, reminding himself that this was not the Brooke from last night. He opened his eyes, and her silly little toothy grin was all he needed as a reminder. 

“Look,” Lucas said, convincing himself that he was now firmly in control, “This is exactly why I brought you here, Ms…uh, Brooke. I could already tell, in Rick’s office, that you had…had gotten the wrong idea about whatever you think this is, between you and me.” 

Brooke stood there, blinking her eyes blankly, and Lucas persevered. 

“What we’re dealing with here, Brooke, is a groundbreaking new technology, ok? And…considering that we have no blueprint we’re working from, you know, there are bound to be certain instances when things go a little “off script” for a minute. Because, you see, we’re writing the script, ok? And…and last night, uh, things got a little crazy. Call it my fault if you want. That’s fine; I can accept that. I let things go a little overboard because, well…let’s just say that I got a little carried away with how…how well the nanobots seemed to be working, alright? If you’re an inventor, you’re bound to get carried away by your own cleverness from time to time. I mean, haha, look at Frankenstein! This isn’t anything new. But…Brooke, and here this is very important, it’s essential that you not forget your place in all of this, ok? You did a wonderful and brave thing, agreeing to offer yourself for this project, but that does NOT mean that, as my secretary, we can have an improper relationship. We run a pretty tight ship around here at Braden, and one thing I will not tolerate is employees dating each other. It’s bad for productivity, and ultimately bad for morale. Do I make myself clear?” 

Brooke stood there, still leaning against Lucas’s desk, and for several long moments, she didn’t say anything, blinking her eyes in confusion. A couple times, she opened her mouth to speak, and then closed it again, each time looking more and more puzzled. Lucas could see her brain working, trying to make sense of everything he had just said. He knew in his heart that he was doing her wrong, that what he had just said was anything but fair to the poor girl. But the fact was that he cared more about his own standing in the office, and maintaining the status quo, than about the temporary confusion of this hapless intern who had managed to stumble her way into his brilliant invention. He kept his eyes locked up at her, even leaning back again in his chair as he put his fingers together, the telltale broadcast of his authority. 

Brooke blinked again and narrowed her eyes at him; her expression had changed in an instant, from confusedly staring around the room to intensely scrutinizing Lucas’s face. He set his own expression in stone. She was not going to make him budge an inch, he was sure of that. And to think that, looking like she did now, she had any kind of sway over him (except for maybe her body looking a little above average), well…Lucas managed to allow himself to feel frustrated and insulted. 

“But…Mr. Mineur, I thought — ” Brooke started, but Lucas didn’t let her get any further. 

“No “buts” Brooke,” he cut in, shaking his head back and forth emphatically. “This is my final word on the matter. What happened last night is in the past, and we are not going to speak of it again, either in this office or anywhere else. Do you understand?”

Brooke bowed her head a little, and for an instant, Lucas felt a twinge of pity for her. It really wasn’t fair, what he was doing to her. But no one had forced her into anything, he reminded himself. But the pity evaporated when he saw Brooke’s twinkling eyes emerge from her bowed position, shooting him a look that he knew was intended to be sexy. 

“Ok Mr. Mineur,” Brooke said with a hint of a smile, squinting her left eye strangely at him. “Whatever you say.”

‘Did she just…try to wink at me?’ thought Lucas. In any case, he felt his organs sink a little as he realized how Brooke was reacting to all of this — he hadn’t quite gotten through to her. She thought all of this was some kind of…weird game. He knew that the labor of keeping her in line had just begun. And so now, of course, was the time to impress upon her the reality of her position. 

“Alright!” he said brightly, clapping his hands together as he allowed himself to fall forward in his chair. “So now, first thing’s first — just to re-emphasize, what time will you be here tomorrow?”

“8 o’clock sharp!” answered Brooke crisply. 

“Correct,” said Lucas. “And I hope this is the last time I have to remind you of that. Now, when you get here, the first thing that I want you to do is put on a pot of coffee in the break room. You…do know how to make coffee, don’t you?”

“Sure do!” she responded, smiling. “How do you take your coffee?”

“I…well, I was just getting there,” said Lucas, pleased that Brooke had already caught on. “A little cream and a little sugar, alright? Not too much, not too little. It might be trial and error for a couple days, but I’m confident you’ll eventually catch on.”

“I’m confident too!” replied Brooke, rocking back and forth a little on her feet as she stood up proudly to her full height. Lucas knew that she was meaning to thrust her chest forward, but he ignored her without too much trouble. 

“So! Once you’ve made my coffee,” he continued, “I want you to check to see if I’ve received any important calls or mail. You’ll then make a list of people I need to call back, in descending order of importance.”

“Descending…so…the most important people at the top of the list, right?” said Brooke. 

“Right!” said Lucas, nodding condescendingly. 

“Haha, just checking!” giggled Brooke, blushing a little as she folded her forearms together in front of her, squishing her C-cups together. “That kind of stuff can be a little confusing, you know? Ascending order…descending order…haha, you have to watch yourself!”

“Yes, ok, so after you do all those things,” said Lucas, brushing by Brooke’s comment, “You can take a little time to yourself over there at your desk, knowing the whole time, of course, that if the phone rings, you’ll be answering it directly. Understood?”

“Oh wow, so you mean I can write in my digital diary or work on my crosswords?!” Brooke asked excitedly. 

“Uh, sure, yeah, whatever you want, within reason, of course,” said Lucas. Brooke’s mention of her diary had plucked a string somewhere in Lucas’s brain. Brooke wrote in it all the time…and now Lucas couldn’t help but wonder…had she written in it last night?!

“Oooo good!” cried Brooke, going over to her desk and putting her briefcase down. She promptly took out her laptop, opened it, and started typing away, glancing over at Lucas with flirtatious stealth. 

“I…didn’t say that you could write in your diary now,” said Lucas, rolling his eyes. “But!” he added quickly, before Brooke could close her laptop, “There's no reason why you can’t keep it open. We just…we need to go talk to Rick first about the next dose of nanobots. In fact, why don’t you go ahead and walk on down there to the lab, alright? I just need to check a couple emails real quick, but I’ll be right behind you.” 

“So I can just…leave this here?” asked Brooke, putting her open laptop down on her desk. 

“Of course!” laughed Lucas. “This Braden, Brooke, not wherever it was that you interned before. We’re all professionals around here.” 

“Yes, well…this certainly is a very nice place to work,” said Brooke, shooting Lucas a long, slow gaze as she rose deliberately, taking care to brush extra-close past his desk on her way out. 

“See you in a minute,” she chirped, turning and flipping her brunette hair in an attempted imitation of a shampoo commercial. 

Lucas watched her go, shaking his head. 

“Jesus Christ,” he muttered to himself, “She’s gonna be a handful.” 

He watched her go; her ass still had some bounce to it, but she wasn’t quite anywhere close to the level she had been at this point in the day, 24 hours ago. 

“5 out of 10, tops,” he reminded himself. She was going down the wrong side of the hallway, past Sophia’s office, but Lucas figured she’d eventually find her way to the lab. In the meantime…

He glanced over at her open laptop, and getting up from his desk, he carefully closed his door and locked it. His heart was beating a lot faster than he expected as he rounded Brooke’s desk and looked down at her open diary. The cursor blinked at him…”Tuesday: So I think I have a crush on” was all it said. Lucas rolled his eyes again…but besides what Brooke had written, there was an empty white page…but his eyes caught the sidebar, and saw that it was at the bottom of the page. There was a lot more above. He reached down and carefully pressed the “up” button. Immediately, the cursor skipped to the previous page, and Lucas felt everything pause inside his body. It was just a page…of gibberish. Solid blocks of text with no spaces in between them…letters, numbers, and strange symbols all squashed together in a cohesive rectangle of text. Lucas puzzled over all this — what on earth was it!? There didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to it, and yet, somewhere in the back of his mind, Lucas felt like there was nothing haphazard about it. It was a code of some kind. He kept scrolling upward, and was met with still more blocks of text, all gibberish. And on it on it went; he scrolled up for some 30 pages, until the blocks of text abruptly ended, and began to resemble a normal diary. He scrolled down a bit more, to where the date would be for the gibberish. “Monday: A lot taller and curvier…Lucas asked me out to dinner tonight…I wonder…I wonder how far…how much…?” 

There was a space after this entry, and then, just before the epic block of gibberish began, two sentences that made Lucas stop dead in his tracks.

“Good morning, Lucas — no doubt you’re reading this the morning after. Silly man, don’t you know we’re all professionals at Braden? ”

Lucas slapped the laptop shut, breathing hard. He hated that his cock had gotten erect, but he could HEAR the Brooke from the previous night mocking him. She had predicted his every move, including the pathetic little lie he had told to Brooke to reassure her. He felt so exposed and…simplistic. For several long moments, he just stood there, breathing hard as he stared down at the laptop. He realized that he needed to hurry up and go to the lab, and he nearly left before he remembered that he needed to leave everything as Brooke had left it. Feeling his stomach tighten up, he opened her laptop back up, did his best to ignore everything the “Goddess Brooke” had written, and left the cursor where it had been before. 

He stumbled out into the hallway, his mind uncomfortably garbled. Reading Brooke’s diary had given him a nasty jolt, and he still wished that he could just get a fucking handle on his heart beat, which was pounding uncomfortably in his ears. He got the distraction he needed, however, when he heard Sophia’s voice and saw that she was standing there, talking with Brooke outside her office. 

Lucas felt a sweep of panic, but then remembered that he had no reason to believe that Brooke wouldn’t honor his command not to talk about the previous night with anyone. He straightened himself up and walked confidently over to them. 

“Oh, but those clothes that we got you over the weekend!” Sophia was saying, eyeing Lucas carefully as he strode up to them. “Why aren’t you wearing them?”

“Ah, haha, yeah, well, I tried them on this morning,” chuckled Brooke apologetically, “But they don’t fit anymore. They’re just a little too big.” 

“Aw, well honey, not to worry,” said Sophia, looking at Lucas hard in the face, “I’m sure that will change here sooner or later.” 

“Well not if we dilly dally around in the hallways instead of going to the lab like I told you to,” said Lucas with a firm, paternal incline of his head toward Brooke, causing her to blush in embarrassment. 

“I was the one who accosted her out in the hallway, Lucas,” said Sophia. “So don’t berate the girl.” 

“Sorry, love to talk,” said Lucas, proceeding on down the hallway and indicating to Brooke to follow him, “But some of us have work to do.”

“Oh nice,” intoned Sophia in a sarcastic drawl. Usually she had more of a comeback, but it was clear that she was using her energy to study the situation. Lucas could tell she knew something was off, but he wasn’t going to stick around and let Sophia pick him apart. 

A minute later, they were back in the lab, and Rick was excitedly showing them a prototype of the second generation of bots, under an electron microscope. 

“So…the original bots?” asked Brooke slowly, “They just…died inside me?”

“Well, “turned off permanently,” is a more accurate way to say it,” corrected Rick. “I got the idea that, after a few days, the natural processes of your body would neutralize the bots. And don’t worry — they’re so small that they’re easily filtered out of your body when they’re rendered inactive.”

“Natural processes of my body, huh?” Brooke seemed interested to know more, so Rick eagerly gave it to her, with Lucas watching on, wishing privately that he had played more a part in the construction of the nanobots than he actually had. 

“Well yes!” exclaimed Rick. “And actually, I think this was one of my better ideas. Since I knew that our first test subject was going to be a woman — ”

But here, Lucas snapped his head up, giving Rick a sharp look. Rick opened and closed his mouth nervously; he had just divulged to Brooke something that both he and Lucas had intended to keep a secret. But Brooke just blinked and kept staring, and Rick gave Lucas a slight nod, as if to say, ‘She didn’t catch it.’

“So anyway, you, being a woman, Brooke, yes?”

“Uh-huh,” said Brooke, nodding. 

“For you specifically, since you were going to be out first test subject, I thought specifically about how women’s bodies work biologically.”

Rick paused, and Lucas sighed, rotating his hand in the universal “hurry it up” motion. He didn’t know why he was feeling irritated at Rick; maybe it was his partner’s enthusiasm, or the sheer breadth of his knowledge…or, whatever…something. Lucas just wanted him to get on with it so the injection could happen. 

“And I remembered,” continued Rick impressively, “That estradiol, like other steroids, is derived from cholesterol. And cholesterol, being a lipid, of course, would add a protective macrobiomolecule shield to specifically-electro-signalled nanobots. “Protective,” of course, until a programmed jolt of electromagnetic radiation goes off and “shocks” the entire lipid shield around the nanobot, immediately short-circuiting it and turning it off for good.”

“So…estradiol?” asked Brooke uncertainly. 

“Estrogen! Estrogen!” exclaimed Rick excitedly. “Estradiol is the main female sex hormone in estrogen.”

“So the bots turned off…because I’m a woman?” asked Brooke, an understanding smile brightening her face. Lucas had to admit, even though she definitely wasn’t nearly as attractive, her face had improved. That smile…

“Precisely!” laughed Rick, giving her a “thumbs up.” Pretty cool, huh? Almost, like…poetic, right?

“Very nice, Rick, very nice,” said Lucas, chuckling down his envy of his colleague’s brilliance. “But you have us on pins and needles here. Tell us about this second-generation batch you’ve made.”