My heart seized in my throat. Forcing panic back down into my chest, I tried the door again with greater effort. It had always stuck a little bit, but in times of old I had been able to overcome that with ease. Now, sweat had slicked my grip and my lungs were burning from the sprint that had taken me to the gym. I reminded myself that I was not the man I used to be.

Before pulling the gym door open entirely, I paused to glance over my shoulder. Adrenaline shot through my veins unexpectedly, sending my pulse racing faster. I wasn't worried that I had lost Phil by running away, only that his superior physique and preternatural endurance would allow him to catch me before I set my plan into motion. Or before I came up with one. I had been able to sense Phil not long before he arrived at Liam's office. I wondered if he could sense me, too. Moreover, I was amazed by how easily I accepted what had once seemed to be the stuff of fantasy.

I filed my worries about telepathy under other things to ask Liam when this was over. Then, resolute, my mind clearer, I pushed through the door leading into the gym. My eyes scanned the main hallway and the second-floor walk that overlooked it. Gratefully, I noted that no one was in the gym. The lights were off, but sunlight made up for their absence. Cool air flowed around me, providing an almost uncomfortable chill after my exertions. I forced myself to walk rather than run to the weight room: I would need whatever strength I had left to delay Phil until the injection took effect. Every second would increase my chances, but I couldn't outrun him for long enough to guarantee success.

The weight room was a hexagonal enclosure bordered on four sides by glass windows, larger than most college gyms that I had seen. It was well lit by a glass dome criss-crossed with metal support beams. One wall of the gym was solid, featuring two doors: one led back into the main hall; the other, to a stairwell that opened out onto the second floor. The center of the room was dominated by various machines. Exercise bikes and treadmills were spaced around the windowed room at even intervals, except for one mirrored wall. It was this wall that interested me more than any others--no, I hadn't become unexpectedly vain. Rather, it was along the mirrored wall that the free weights were racked. I hastened over to them.

Realistically, I knew that a weight would not be the most effective of weapons to use against my roommate. After all, he had virtually shaken off a fire extinguisher wielded by a much stronger man less than an hour ago. This might have been a bad idea, I told myself, even as I instinctively reached for a 30, then quickly changed my mind. I needed a blunt object I could wield effectively. 15 pounds would do.

The front doors of the gym slammed open. The crash echoed down the long main hallway and reached me in the weight room. Phil's footsteps followed. They were slow, as if he were still dazed. Perhaps he thought he was so close to taking me in hand once more, he saw no reason to hurry. I grabbed another 15 pound weight and sprinted upstairs with all possible stealth.

I crept along the second-floor walkway, which featured several kinesiologists' offices and those of the gym administrators. Just as I was about to chance a glimpse over the railing, Phil's voice boomed out from below.

"Dane, I know you're here. Come out now and we can put this behind us," he reasoned.

His voice sang to me, as tempting as a feast to a starving man. I had to clench my fists around the grips of the weights to keep my hold on reality. It took several moments, but the power of the command began to diminish, then failed.

"Please, just talk to me," Phil pleaded.

It was easier to resist him the second time. He sounded too pathetic to be taken seriously, and I realized that he was just fishing for a response. I set the weights down and offered a quick prayer. Taking great care for stealth, I peeked over the railing. He was standing right beneath me. There was no better chance than now.

I stretched to my full--if not so considerable--height and hefted one of the weights overhead. Doing my best to aim its decent, I dropped it. A split-second later, exhilaration made me shout, "Hey, asshole!" True, it wasn't my most shining moment.

It wasn't Phil's, either. He turned his gaze up just in time to see a fifteen pound weight just inches from his face. The blunt object struck with a resounding crack. I reveled for a moment, noting that no matter how many times I saw Phil got hurt, it never got less satisfying. I pushed that thought away, even though I allowed myself a triumphant whoop when I saw that Phil was down and not moving.

True, my apparent victory had made me more confident, but not entirely stupid. I crouched and reclaimed the second weight. My heartbeat tried its best to slow on the walk back down the stairs leading into the weight room. It was almost pumping at a normal rate as I crept back into the main hall. Phil was still down and unmoving. I swallowed. Had I killed him? My eyes took in a fair bit of blood, but not much. And some of the crimson fluid on him might have been from earlier.

I approached Phil. The magnificent mounds that were his chest were unmoving. His polo shirt was a ruin after all he had been through. I didn't glory in the sight at all. Instead, I just closed my eyes, thinking of the implications of murder--even if it was Phil. I knelt by his side and pressed my fingers to his neck.

There was a pulse, and it was strong.

His body shifted ever so slightly, and one hand closed around my ankle almost tightly enough to break bone and cartilage. I stared down, aghast. His arm was tensed, the veins and striations pulsing with a life all their own. Phil drew breath. He was staring at me, malevolence in his eyes.

My roommate smiled. I recoiled physically, trying to stand and escape him all at once, but only managed to stumble and fall hard on my rear. My free leg moved as if of its own volition and kicked him, hard, in the side of the head.

His eyes widened, and I realized almost too late that his grip had been loosed in his shock. I stumbled away on my hurt leg.

Phil leapt to his feet in a single, fluid motion, but swayed as he gained his footing. All of this head trauma had to be doing something to him. At least, I hoped it was. I didn't bother to wait for him to come after me. Clutching the weight in my right hand, I hurtled through the weight room door and positioned myself for an ambush.

My roommate's footsteps pounded toward me. As he strode into the room, I swung. The weight never made contact. One of his massive arms rose up and collided with mine with the force of a steel girder. The weight went flying. Sharp pain greeted me as I clutched at my arm.

First one, then the other of his hands gripped my arms, tearing them away from each other. Glaring, he dragged me unceremoniously into the very center of the weight room. Phil threw me down, and I fell, landing on my back. I didn't know what my roommate was doing, but I was too dazed by his manhandling to reason it out. He reached down, and, with brutal force, tore my shirt down its center. His bloodied polo received the same treatment, and my eyes were filled with his extraordinary physique. Every muscle was pumped, veins exploding furiously from his pectorals, delts, biceps, and forearms. My body quaked with a wretched shiver. Time was up.

"I'm going to show you who's boss, once and for all," he growled. I stared up into the skylight, numb. Phil had beaten me. His pants fell to the floor, and I felt his ungentle fingers pulling me out of mine. He positioned himself on top of me. Despite his greater height, he bent slightly so that his immense member was right over my mouth.

It slammed into my face with all the gentleness of a battering ram. I tried to twist away, but my movements were limited by his bulk. As Phil took my smaller cock in his mouth, I gasped. His dick saw the opportunity, and thrust hard into my throat. He was no expert at fellatio, mainly focusing on my head until the pleasure was so great I could barely lie still, but I was rock hard. I don't think he cared what I did with his dick. My struggles seemed to be exciting him even more.

I rose to the edge of climax with unprecedented speed. Almost as if he sensed this, he let me out.

"They're everywhere, Dane. You couldn't even stop me and mine. Now they're everywhere, and everything is mine for the taking. But first, you're going to make me into a god."

So hackneyed. So very Phil. Who writes his monologues? I wondered.

And then he took me back into his mouth. I came. We came. Orgasm rocketed through our bodies all at once, fire and ice pouring through each vein, artery, capillary, every filament and molecule of our beings. The sensation was a thousand times more powerful than any I had ever experienced, magnified by the bond and amplified by my skin against his. All I could see was white light for a moment, and I worried that I had experienced a stroke in the wake of this explosion of pleasure.

But my sight returned, and other senses followed. I tasted semen, could feel it within me, permeating my being. Diminishing me. A great weight lifted off of my body, and I could see Phil's bulk in silhouette against the skylight's luminescence. He was growing again. The floor scraped against my back as I shrank, losing inches as Phil grew. Perhaps it was the angle, but he looked immense, and he was still swelling. Muscles were mounding up over his body, making him look almost inhuman.

Then again, that was what he had wanted, right? He wanted to be a god. His voice boomed like an Olympian's as he laughed, a maniacal cackle of ultimate success. He had claimed me. I was entirely in his power. I still had to try to get away, to live and... what, fight? Maybe just to live another day. My chest ached with the hopelessness of it all. I had tried, and failed.

Phil was so consumed in his monstrous growth that he didn't notice me crawling away. I don't think he cared any more. I dragged myself, broken and battered, across the floor, his laughs swelling behind me like a diabolical symphony. I tried to look away as he approached six and a half feet in height, his body spasming as his biceps expanded to professional bodybuilder sizes and beyond. I couldn't, at first, but then the need to get away drove even my awe away.

I was almost to the door when he stopped laughing. My heart skipped a beat. He had noticed me.

There was no way to keep my head from turning. The look on his face was not one of triumph, or fury--he wasn't even looking at me at all. There was a dazed cast to his features, like something important had gone missing inside of his head.

Phil twitched, and stared down at his arm. Its skin was covered in beads of greyish fluid. A moment later, he started to stumble. I don't know what possessed me, but I pushed to my feet and rushed toward him. Somehow, I managed to catch the man, almost a foot taller than me and who-knows-how-many pounds heavier. His skin was unyielding as stone to my feeble fingers, and it took every ounce of strength I had to hold him up.

Something then passed into my skin, an awareness, a feeling of lightness and warmth. Phil twitched again, our torsos pressed together--albeit his much higher than mine--and something wet and hot passed between us, burning as it went. He felt abruptly lighter. I felt suffused with energy. My head rocked back with the intensity of the force.

His body was shifting against mine, faster with every spasm of his over-muscled and huge physique. I thought he was writhing in my grip, but no--he was still standing slack and stunned. I stared into his chest, aware that his swollen pectorals were lower in my field of view than they had been a moment before. And he was easier to hold. He was getting smaller, and I was growing.

I tightened my arms about his waist, and the effort hastened the transference. A wave of pure power slammed into me, filling me with strength that I had been missing for so long. I felt my muscles tighten beneath my skin, swelling and bulging against Phil's diminishing body. My joints ached, sending pins and needles of agony into me, but that was washed away in the peculiar pleasure of my restoration. I was beginning to feel dizzy with the rapid transformation.

We were nearing the same height, now, somewhere in the high five foot range, and Phil's face was a mask of terror. He tried to speak, but it just came out as babbling. His struggles were weak, and feeling weaker against my expanding bulk and height. I flexed my pectorals against his chest as he shrank further, and by the time I was done flexing his eyes were level with my nose. I squeezed again, as if I were squeezing the very muscle out of him.

Suddenly the world swayed around me. I held tight to Phil as darkness closed in at the edges of my vision, heard him mewl another babbling protest, and allowed myself to sink into the darkness.

*****

Morning. It was morning, and I was on the gym floor. I shot up with unexpected speed and steadied myself. The rise had been effortless. Almost as if...

I stared down at myself. Still nude, I was an absolutely extraordinary specimen of masculinity. My chest was squared and rounded, pectorals bulging out several inches over my brick-like abdomen. Sure, there were a few splotches of blood from where Phil's skin had rested against mine, but there was not a bruise on me. My forearms were corded with powerful muscle and coiling veins that extended all the way up to my biceps. I was bigger than I had ever been.

As I rose to look into the mirror, this fact was confirmed to me. I was at least a couple of inches taller than I was before, and I was well beyond the size I had been at my best playing shape. No one would call my physique a swimmer's build any more. Perhaps I was more refined than most bodybuilders looked, but I was definitely as large as the most developed fitness models.

And very naked, I noticed. My brow furrowed as I examined the morning greeting of my endowment. It surely hadn't been this thick or long before. If my collegiate career didn't work out, there was always the porn industry.

I walked around, marveling in my new size, the restoration--and more--of all that I had been before. Phil was nowhere to be seen, but there was a modest looking pile of clothing near the door of the gym, crowned by a simple white envelope. It was sealed. Professor McTague's simple handwriting had scrawled my name across it: "Dane."

First, I put on the clothes. They fit well, if a bit tight around the shoulders, chest, and biceps, and the boxers as well as the shorts were constricting about my thighs and too loose around my waist. It was, if possible, thinner than when I had started this whole ordeal, and cobbled like a stone road. Every muscle was visible through the fabric of my shirt, and my pants did nothing to hide my new cock.

The new changes could wait, but Liam's letter would not. I extracted it gently--my hands were still deft, although longer and stronger--and read:

"Dear Dane,

I've never been one for too many words in letters. Perhaps if we had been able to know one another longer, you would have come to know that for yourself. Unfortunately, we two are both slaves to our responsibilities. You have fulfilled yours, but my work has not yet begun.

You will have realized by now that the injection I gave you worked as was intended. Philip's symbiote is dead. I do not know what happened in those last moments of its life, but it seems that you have had an unlikely stroke of luck: not only are you free from your roommate, but your life can continue as normal. I know I promised that we would be able to restore you, but I must humbly--and sorrowfully--admit that promise to be a lie. I have been forced to abandon San Cristobal State and my identity here. We will not meet again.

As you might imagine by now, your difficulties with Philip were but part of a larger struggle, one that has been severely complicated by my own inability to act. The others warned me that I was becoming too fond of you, and perhaps I allowed our friendship to stay my hand until it was too late. I have been forced to use you to combat your roommate, but I could not bring myself to use you to the fullest of your potential. I hope that you will forgive me, and appreciate what it cost to spare you. There are only a few of us with symbiotes out there, and we now have our hands full with an invasion on a level that we cannot yet fully comprehend.

We have tried to set things back to normal at San Cristobal State, including modifications of memory for many of those involved. Our haste may have left a few loopholes behind, so I suggest that you be very careful in the next few months.

I know I have no right to ask anything more from you, but I hope you will take my advice. The drug in your system will not diminish for several days. It may have enough potency yet to reverse the physical changes in some of the people you were forced to enhance.

We cannot ask you not to seek revenge on those who wronged you at San Cristobal, but please do not attempt to seek us out, or your roommate. He is under our control, now, and we will deal with any interference without prejudice. I am sorry.

I took the liberty of personally removing Christian's memories of these incidents. I believed this to be the best course and--"

I could not read any more. The paper in my hands was shaking so hard. Fury was rushing through my mind. Liam was fortunate that he had fled; there was no way I would be able to control myself after all of that. The symbiotes had stepped into my life and left things a shambles. And now, because of me, they were at war. I tried to calm myself by giving Liam credit for keeping Christian free of this madness, but even that seemed an unforgivable intrusion.

Sighing, I looked around and pushed myself back to my feet. Regardless of what Liam had said, all of this was my responsibility. I had work to do.

*****

I walked down the hall, my hair in a tangled coil, my features set as hard as stone. Some day, I would find Liam again, and show him that I was not a tool, to be set aside after he had used me. These creatures were my responsibility and mine alone. There was messy work ahead, but I would see it done. Still, some of that work was bound to be more pleasing than the rest. Like this first job.

Fluorescent light battered down atop my head; I almost had to stoop in this older corridor of the residential halls. This hall had not been built with a 6'4 man, almost 230 pounds of solid muscle, bone, and sinew, in mind. I was still getting used to my new height, but it was nice; how crowds parted around me, how people I used to know glanced down at my feet to see if I was wearing new boots, how the girls--and some boys--chattered about me just out of a normal human's earshot.

I'd miss it all. I was leaving San Cristobal State on a year's hiatus, or at least that was what I'd told the people in Registration and Records. They would have had me committed if I'd told them the real reason I was going away.

The door awaited me. I could break it down if I wanted to, but that seemed excessive. There'd just be more to clean up afterwards. I looked down at the name plate. "Jason Keane," it read.

I knocked. Once. Twice. My knuckles left scars in the door.

"Who is it?" Jason's voice boomed groggily. Not a trace of regret for the things he had done, the people he had bullied since becoming a behemoth. He was going to be brought down to size.

"An old friend," I said.

The door swung open moments later, and I reached for Jason. Difficult times were ahead, and I had to have a few last worthwhile romps. I'd earned that.

His expression shifted from exhaustion to shock as my hand closed on his shoulder despite his resistance.

Oh, yes. This would be fun. Lots of fun. •