Rather than try to explain what had happened and where he had disappeared to, Carlos decided to use the video facilities and send out another Mission Impossible tape that would self-destruct after viewing. He needed to let Jerry know what was going on with their experiment, but he didn't want certain other interested partners in on the secret -- the other partners being the government agency that had been funding their on-going studies, although not in a very interested capacity. No one really believed their theories concerning genetic improvements on the human male animal would bear fruit, but the military arm of the government always had more money than it knew what to do with. And building a super race of genetically enhanced men for use in paramilitary maneuvers seemed like a good idea at the time.

Thinking about it now, Carlos was struck by something very odd. Even though the men at IGE had all their male genetic structures pumped up beyond maximum capacity, none of them were displaying what he had expected, namely a similarly pumped up prevalence of violent and aggressive behavior. Part of what made a man a man was his tendency toward fight rather than flight. The nearly constant sexual drive could also be explained by the raised levels of male potency streaming through the blood, but why wasn't there more aggressive behavior going on?

He laughed slightly as he considered this. There was, of course, plenty of aggressive behavior, but it was all being channeled into that sexual drive. Even so, with all the swapping of partners and macho dick-swinging going on, why did none of the men ever come to blows?

He laughed again. "Blows. Heh heh. I said blows."

Carlos realized that his mind was less and less focused these days. Or it was otherwise focused, since everything seemed to be turning its attention towards sex. Here he was trying to reason out the logics behind a scientific question - something that used to come as naturally as breathing to him -- and his brain kept steering him back to images of fucking. Of being fucked. Of the men that surrounded him, and their long arms and muscled torsos, their perfect asses and beautiful faces. And almost as soon as he realized that it was happening again, he also realized that maybe that was the answer to his question, anyway.

Somehow, his brain wasn't even allowed to travel along the lines of thinking about aggressive behavior. For some reason, his brain kept taking a left turn at violence to start thinking about sex. He wasn't sure why that was happening, plus the core emotional questions and intellect-related issues had been Jerry's specialty.

Carlos was the body man. Even now, he could remember breaking down the genetic code and splicing out what altered strength and stamina, where skin color and eye color were decided, whether hair was straight or curly, how tall or short a man would be. He remembered when he started thinking that tying those pre- determined decisions into the normal human processes of decision and reaction could possibly help create men who not only possessed advanced and augmented genetic capabilities, but who could control them as easily as they controlled moving their toes when they wanted, or blinking. The brain tells the body to do something, the body reacts. What if you untied the body's predetermined factors like skin color and hair type, and allowed the mind to tell them what to do as well?

He simply never imagined the scope of the capabilities he'd unleashed.

Not just skin color, but skin elasticity, wrinkles, body hair, fingernails. Not just muscularity, but size and density and flexibility and compactness. Now, it seemed, even bone structure could be altered! It was starting to look like there was no limit to the capabilities their altered bodies were discovering.

Jerry's face had lit up when he first blue-skied the theory at him. Jerry was making all sorts of fascinating discoveries about how the brain works, what it's actually doing up there, and the prospect of releasing its full potential control made Carlos's partner absolutely giddy.

But tests on chimps never seemed to amount to anything. So they both simply considered that they had failed in that particular attempt.

What it took was a human male's thinking brain. And like the capabilities it possessed without "thinking" about them, like eating and breathing and sleeping and dreaming, these new ones began to manifest in amazing and unforeseen ways.

Maybe it made sense that they were so oversexed. Both Carlos and Jerry knew that would be a problem. Men are just naturally horny, anyway. The desire for physical pleasure outstrips the desire for emotional satisfaction, the dick winning out over the heart almost every time. And they knew they had to compensate for the naturally aggressive behavior, and since they'd gotten the blessing from their military advisors regarding that one, uh, awkward decision, the answer seemed natural.

And now, apparently, he was feeling the ramifications of their fiddling with human nature.

He set up the video equipment and started his recording.

Dr. Jerry Lassiter was sitting alone in an empty lab, watching the government remove the last of his equipment. He had to report back to the compound on this last day to sign off on the failure of his experiments. No one said they'd work anyway. No one seemed to care one way or the other whether there were any results, positive or negative, so convincing the military that their "crazy scheme" was a complete and utter failure was the least of his problems.

What was worrying him was the tape and the data.

The tape taken from the monitoring cameras in this very room a few weeks ago showing his missing partner, Dr. Carlos Martinez, and two naked male figures entering the labs. The two men with Dr. Martinez looked, even on the less-than- perfect quality of the monitor video, uncomfortably close in size, weight and apparent muscularity to the models he and his partner had constructed in their virtual tests on the serum. Dr. Lassiter had watched and re-watched that tape dozens of times, rewinding and pausing, digitally zooming and panning, watching what his brain told him was the actual and for-real sum of his work with Dr. Martinez over the past months here in this room near the campus.

But if this was Todd Masters, their first human guinea pig, who was the other man? And why did Carlos stop the tape shortly after entering the labs instead of recording everything to prove their theories and work were not all for nothing?

The data proved even more strongly that whatever had happened that day in the lab, it was certainly not failure that Dr. Martinez was trying to disguise. Carlos continued to record measuring data of two, then three, and finally up to five test subjects all exhibiting wildly unbelievable results. Male test subjects with size and strength measurements that seemed to be revised upwards almost hourly, and the height, weight, muscular and strength developments were so unbelievable that Lassiter started to wonder if Carlos hadn't gone insane, making up wild numbers to justify that all their work really was just a huge waste of money after all.

Maybe he'd hired those men, found them at a gym or something. The two he saw on the tape, although clearly in excellent health and possessed of extraordinary bodies, were not so unusual for bodybuilders of exceptional genetic make-up in the first place.

And the numbers he was recording were insane. There was no other word for it.

Lassiter had erased the tape, finally, and altered the time code in the access logs to indicate that the labs had been empty for that entire period when Carlos was in here making up numbers. He'd deleted the data and cleared the key logs so no one would ever know any of it had ever existed.

Where Carlos had gone, he didn't really care anymore. It was all over now, and good riddance.

"That's it Dr. Lassiter," reported the colonel assigned to recover all the equipment. Jerry looked around the lab and scratched his head of unkempt hair, pushing his glasses back up his nose.

"Thanks, Colonel."

"I'm sorry this didn't work out. Sounded a little wild, but in my unit, we've seen the impossible come true more than once." The man smiled and winked. Lassiter didn't know what to make of that comment, so he stayed quiet. "Will there be anything else, sir?"

"No, Colonel. I'm all done with this."

"What's next for you?" He asked this while gesturing toward the doors, showing him out. The government even owned the building they were standing in.

Lassiter shrugged. His lab coat hung on his sunken shoulders sadly, not even bothering to try to hide the middle-aged paunch spilling over his belt. He was a 48-year-old man with no family, no life to speak of, and now no funding. What was next for him, indeed?

Arriving home at his small house on the other end of the college, Dr. Lassiter found an unexpected delivery sitting just inside the screen, perched next to his front door. That was how the U.S. Postal Service treated special delivery these days, he guessed. It was just a small box, about the size of a hardbound book, addressed to him with no return address.

"Odd," he murmured as he moved into his living room. He stared at the box for a long time, trying to figure out where it might have come from or what he forgot he ordered when it finally dawned on his analytical mind to just tear open the brown paper and find out.

"Hello, Jerry. It's Dr. Martinez." Lassiter almost choked. The face on the screen looked nothing like a normal human being, it looked super human. Flawless. Perfect. Dr. Lassiter could see something in the eyes and the expressions that hinted at the man he remembered as Carlos Martinez, but he still couldn't quite believe...

"This is no trick. Its no joke, and it's no pornographic movie either. As you can see, the serum works. If anything, it works too well." Even the voice coming out of Dr. Lassiter's tiny TV speaker seemed more than human. There was power in it and something else. Lassiter felt drawn toward the man on the screen, almost sexually attracted to him.

"First off, please accept my apologies for leaving you in the lurch like that. But if I know you, I'm sure you managed capably. I would try to explain my behavior in an understandable method, but circumstances being what they are, there's not very much understandable or believable in any of it."

Carlos paused, looking directly out of the screen at his partner Jerry. It was in that moment that Dr. Lassiter knew that this was no joke. He was so familiar with how Dr. Martinez thought and processed his words that feeling this pause to gather his thoughts between sentences felt almost comfortable, as if something he never knew was missing was back, and now he knew how much he had been missing all along. They had been together working toward this goal for almost a dozen years. For the moment, any jealousy or thoughts of anger vanished.

They had actually done it. It really worked.

He could hardly believe it.

"I would like to show you what the serum has done for me, Jerry. I think you'll be impressed." Carlos started to back away from the camera, and what Lassiter saw on his small television made him stand up, jaw open in astonishment. "There have been several unforeseen alterations to my anatomy and genetic structure in addition to the ones we planned. As you can see, size and strength have certainly increased. Height has in fact doubled in my current form. I think there may be a maximum attainable height, but I'll explain more when you get here."

"Get here?" Lassiter wasn't aware he had spoken aloud, and his voice startled him slightly. The figure on the screen was displaying muscular development of a startling amount. Far larger and greater growth than Lassiter ever anticipated. And how tall was the maximum attainable height? There was nothing else on screen to compare Carlos to.

"I cannot accurately gauge strength development. I'm sure you saw the measurements I was attempting to record before I left. Last time I attempted any sort of measurable strength tests, I was curling over 800 lbs. With one arm." Carlos grinned, bending his arm on screen and rubbing his other hand over the swollen ball of muscle that grew there. The man's bicep size was almost obscene. It seemed to want to bulge right off his arm. The fibers and striations of his muscle were clearly evident, the peak splitting before it hit maximum flex and growing even fatter. "But that was weeks ago, and I've developed incredibly since then. It's amazing, Jerry. I kept thinking we had hit a wall, but we kept getting stronger and stronger. The muscle fiber is so dense, I doubt a bullet could penetrate." He raised his arm and Lassiter's jaw dropped again as the whole of Dr. Martinez's amazing limb seemed to swell even bigger. Fat, huge brawn swelled along every inch, growing ever beefier as if the man was pumping it fuller without trying.

"We cannot share all the credit, you and I. We undoubtedly unleashed something in the male animal with our serum, something potent and powerful and unbelievable. But I met a young man, his name is Michael Sullivan, and he..." Carlos shook his head and laughed gently. Lassiter watched his friend's mane of dark hair shimmer. "Again, too much to tell you and not enough time. You have to see it to believe it, anyway.

"Even then, you may not believe it. I'm living it, and I have trouble believing it sometimes."

Carlos was now fully exposed in front of the camera's eye, and what Lassiter saw staggered him. The human male perfected is what he saw. Even beyond what Lassiter might have considered perfect. Someone beyond all measure. A being of such power and strength and obvious masculine energy that there was no doubt that he'd got the formula right. Maybe the genetic code wasn't as confusing as they'd thought.

"Don't think we did it all according to plan, Jerry. Looking at me, one might easily think that our plans found fruition just as designed. But in fact," he said, raising an eyebrow, "things turned out remarkably more favorable." It was then that Carlos released his second male appendage from its self-imposed cage, and when Lassiter saw that somehow the formula had developed this unforeseen mutation, he found himself sitting on the floor as his legs gave out.

"Fuckin' a!" he whispered.

"Yeah, well. Having two penises is about as incredible as you might think." Carlos considered something. "Or maybe not, if I remember correctly. I don't seem to recall you talking much about your private life, but if it was anything like mine, there was never much to talk about, anyway." Carlos reached down and stroked one of his mammoth pricks. "And I'd explain the magic trick involved with me making it appear and disappear - or maybe you've guessed that part, too -- but there's a few surprises I'd rather save for later.

"It isn't just my body that's been transformed by all this, either. You'll no doubt recall that we warned the military that raised levels of testosterone would definitely lead to heightened libido, and might lead to certain tendencies regarding sexual preference in the men who used our formula?"

Lassiter remembered it well. And as he recalled, the military was only too happy to receive the news. "Don't ask, don't tell," might be the official line in the regular corps, but when confronted with a military elite force of super- strong, hyper-sexual men who could manage to survive and thrive very well indeed for extended periods without having a so-called shore leave, since the only leave they would likely be interested in was leave with each other, it seemed the perfect solution.

"Well, speaking from experience? It ain't a bad thing at all," smiled Carlos. And if the tone of his voice was any indication, he was enjoying all his changes very much indeed. "But there again, we may have been a little too successful. I was just thinking before I started this recording... but I digress." His hand was still down there, and Lassiter could have sworn that the man wasn't stroking himself with his hand so much as his hand was being stroked. "There are some other side effects as well, some I'll just have to share with you in person because you'd never believe them if I told you." He shrugged, lifting his hand away from the twin marvels and shoving his cascade of blue-black hair back over his shoulder. "Besides, experiencing them is so much more fun." He walked back toward the camera again until his beautiful face filled the screen. Lassiter was having a hard time just now remembering what the old Dr. Martinez looked like.

Holy shit, the stuff worked. And it worked really, really well.

"Now you have a choice to make, Jerry. But either way, I trust I'll be seeing you soon and we can talk for as long as you like." He quirked a brow again, lasciviously. "Or I'm sure we could find something a little more exciting to do than talk." Carlos laughed. "Sorry, Jerry. I find living inside this body is affecting my confidence and sexual drive a lot more, lately. Anyway, you'll find enclosed with this tape a sample of the formula in its current form. It's been altered a few times, and I cooked this sample up special so you won't see the full results like I'm exhibiting just yet. I know you can't tell from this tape, but even if you took away the fact that my body is more heavily muscled than two Schwarzeneggers and my voice would likely make you start creaming your pants without the audio filters I have in place for this recording, I stand right around twelve feet high and weigh nearly a ton if I allow myself to." His brow wrinkled. "I should probably explain that last part, but I won't. So rather than subject you to figuring out how to get out of your house to where I am unnoticed as a 12-foot tall muscle stud with two dicks and a fog of sex scent drifting after you - another one of those odd side effects I mentioned, Jerry, a latent capability manifesting rather potently too - the sample should have a powerful but much less dramatic affect on your form.

"Be prepared, however, that the effects will definitely make you stand out. I can only tone down the dosage so much, that's how potent and powerful it's become. Even a tiny sample diluted in a pitcher of water could turn a meeting of overweight, three-piece suited middle management execs into a naked mass of 6-foot, 8-inch gang-banging muscle ripping out of their clothing with bodies so strong and fully male that they'd fuck anything that moved with their 14-inch pricks and not even break a sweat.

"Excuse the language. Sometimes I get carried away.

"If you'd rather get the full treatment in person, then bring the sample with you when you come. Directions and instructions are on the blank sheet of paper with this tape. Dunk it in hot water and read it quick. It'll dissolve soon after. And you won't be able to watch this tape again, either. It's already being erased as you watch me."

Carlos paused and took a breath. His mouth turned into a beatific smile, his face so beautiful it was a wonder the screen didn't shatter. "Make sure you take care of all your business before you leave. Close down the lab. Don't leave anything behind. Because once you take this trip, Jerry, there's no turning back. And believe me, when you get here, you won't want to go anywhere else.

"Later!"

The screen went black.

Dr. Lassiter held the tiny capped vial in his hand for a long time, wondering whether or not to take the trip he'd seen a taste of on the now useless tape. He wished he could watch it again, to make sure he'd seen what he thought he saw. Watching that face of perfect male beauty talking to him was strange, indeed. The fact that the man speaking had been his friend and colleague for a dozen years and had to be in his 50's was even stranger.

Scientific curiosity was also pulling strongly at him.

Using his own formula, feeling the effects, seeing himself change as the very structure of his genetic make-up was broken down and rebuilt, improved, augmented - it was a very strong enticement. He looked down at his body, which he'd always rather ignore. It had never been his intention to use the serum himself. When he thought about the men it would change, they were always wearing military garb and standing in lines at attention. The thought that he could be one of those super men was both scary and exciting.

"What the hell?" he said at last to no one.

This time there was only one vial. He couldn't know that this was in any way different than how every other subject had been transformed. It was, in fact, what he expected. A serum. The serum. And here it was, at last, the sum of all his dreams and experience in a tiny droplet of white goo.

He tipped the bottle up and dripped the thick liquid on his tongue.

He cringed immediately as his mouth was filled with heat. He couldn't even swallow the stuff, it was now so fully meshed with human physiology and hungry to be inside that it plunged through his tongue and into his bloodstream, spreading through him so fast that he felt dizzy. The heat was spreading, too, branching through his body like liquid fire until he felt like he was burning up. Hotter and hotter it built inside, lava boiling through his every cell to break down the essence of the man he was and rebuild the man he would be.

And as quickly as it had come, the fire was dying. Its uncontrolled access to his genes now beginning to recreate him almost from scratch, keeping all the best parts and discarding the rest, replacing what didn't work with the ultimate masculine power of what did.

A feeling of vast and overwhelming pleasure inundated him. It was as if someone had thrown a bucket of cool water on his skin, but it wasn't wetness he felt afterwards but pleasure and male power and massive sexual release.

He was instantly hard, his erect dick uncomfortably pressing against the confines of his trousers and feeling thick and hot and angry. He regained the feeling of his body and his senses as the heat passed and suddenly, everything was feeling tight as if his skin was seizing up and his muscles had all gone tense.

He tried to feel what was happening to his body as he transformed. He wanted to feel everything, sense everything. How did he feel as he changed? What was his body telling his brain? How would he know whether the new capabilities were...

He felt a sudden, sharp pain in his feet and looked down to realize that in the few moments he was trying to gather his thoughts, his body wasn't waiting for him. His feet were growing just like the rest of him, but they were confined in hard leather that didn't do an awfully good job of stretching.

As he kicked his shoes off, made more difficult by the fact that he was now wearing size 10 1/2's on size 11 1/2 feet, and he was reaching toward his belt buckle to undo his tenting pants and allow a little more room for whatever was happening between his legs, he noticed his hands. He watched them for a moment as they grew thicker, the knuckles bulging and the tendons stretching, his wrists extending from his sleeves. He found himself smiling at the absolute impossibility of what he was watching and feeling, because he noticed all at once that his shoulders were feeling uncomfortably constricted.

But it was his dick that wanted attention, pushing so hard against his pants that the flap had peeled back off the zipper and it looked like the little silver teeth were having trouble holding onto each other. There was already a wet patch on his crotch that was spreading like a spilled wine on a tablecloth.

He was fumbling with his belt, watching his prick pushing its way higher and higher when he heard a ripping sound from somewhere, and he realized that his right thigh had managed what his cock so far could not. It was splitting his pantleg wide open, tearing the seam apart as thick muscle filled in under his skin. He could actually see it happening. It looked like an eel was swimming under there. The fibers of his muscle were growing, splitting, swelling larger and larger.

A shock of sexual pleasure erupted from his chest as his nipple rubbed itself against the tightness of his shirt. The tip looked huge and hard, and he momentarily forgot his pants as he reached his fingers up to feel that hardness. Bending his arm made his bicep bulge its way through his sleeve, ripping his arm free in a sudden violent tear that exposed an amazingly carved collection of male muscle. He was reminded of the video picture of Dr. Martinez's arm bulging so hugely as he watched his own bicep balloon with power.

He was smiling so broad his face hurt watching the muscle grow, visibly developing under his copper skin.

His skin! His skin was no longer pasty and fleshy, but glowing bright and sleek, smooth and beautiful, accentuating his new size and strength. His forearm was a roadmap of brawn, and he flexed his fist watching the muscle pop and bulge. Thick veins branched across the surface, feeding him to even bigger proportions.

He felt the pressure give down below at last as his huge and perfect cock thrust its way through the zipper and the wetness of his shorts was now the only thing keeping him covered. The thin material clung to his engorged beast until it, too, was staring to rip from the power of his growing body.

Then his shoulders were tearing his shirt further, splitting wide and tearing down his back. He bent his other arm to free it of its sleeve and then grabbed the front and pulled it open, revealing the clean white cotton of his undershirt beneath. He dropped the torn shirt to the ground and watched his own chest suddenly expanding as if he were being inflated with brawn.

He felt massive and was struck with a thought, raising his arms into a double- bi to see how big they were now. The feeling of growth and power was everywhere. He felt huge, and as he growled a feeling of satisfaction, his cock burst through his underwear at last and the red, shiny skin of his foot-long monster pulsed and throbbed. A stream of clear precum was pumping from the tip, drizzling down the shaft and inside his pants.

He wanted to be free of these clothes. He wanted to watch himself mature into his ultimate masculine self. He whipped the belt free and tore his pants off. He ripped his underwear off as well, his beautiful skin cooled now that it was uncovered. All but his T- shirt, because he wanted to watch himself reveal what was underneath there.

He entered his bathroom, the only room with a mirror, smiled as he entered, noting that his head was almost brushing the top of the doorframe. He had to be nearly seven feet high, already. How much bigger was he going to get?

And all this from a drop of the stuff?

Flipping on the light, he stood in shock for a minute. The man in the mirror was growing. Growing thicker with muscle. His face was resolving itself, losing wrinkles and imperfections, the skin growing clear and clean and healthy. He was glowing, there, that man. His chest was stretching the material of his T- shirt, A long of honey-colored hair fell across the man's face. His squared jaw was shadowed with a stark blonde fuzz that swept across it and his upper lip. The man's lips looked full, moist, soft. The man in the mirror smiled. Dimples appeared on his chiseled cheeks. His blue eyes sparkled. His slender brows arched upwards as his smile grew. "Oh my god," the man said, and his voice rattled the glass.

Jerry reached to the hem of his T-shirt, dangling above his navel now, and started pulling it up and over his head. He revealed a tight stomach of rippled glory, an abdomen hard enough to break bricks on, bulging with an 8-pack of beautiful brawn. Higher, the hanging muscle of his chest came into view. His nipples looked almost swollen, so large and dark on his skin. Almost wet, somehow. The caps were hard and round and perfect. The split between the hemispheres deepened by the inch as his arms rose over his head to pull the shirt off, and he pulled it loose and shook his new mane of straight, full gold free. It hung to his shoulders like it had in college.

And then Jerry stood there naked, his erection pulsing dully between his legs, his balls swollen with his juice, and watched the last few moments of his transformation until his body displayed its new magnificence in full.

He was 7-foot-2. A treasure of gold spilled across his shoulders. His face was tanned and sculpted like some dream surfer. A long neck stretch suddenly wide onto shoulders that didn't even fully fit in his reflection. He had never seen a chest as big, except on Carlos. It was smooth and round and thick with power. He raised his arm to see if his bicep mimicked Carlos's as well, and his lat suddenly unfolded from his back like a wing. A tuft of more gold erupted from his armpit. It was soft and wet with his sweat. He was releasing a musky, earthy scent that entered his head like cologne. He was turning himself on.

Hell, he was turned fully on if that huge cock between his legs was any indication.

He started to stroke himself, sending thick waves of deep pleasure through his body when, as luck would have it, there was an insistent knock at his door.

"Hell," he said aloud, then smiled and laughed slightly. His voice was absurdly deep. He must have been dredging it up from his feet. His huge feet.

He glanced at his new self in the mirror and shrugged. "Well," he told himself, "no time like the present to try out the new wheels." •