“Look, I was just doing what I thought was best,” Sherman explained. “I mean, you know, at the time it made sense.”

“Maybe so,” Jerry said, “but it’s still pretty cruel.”

The five men were making their way through the semi-destroyed facility, traveling deeper into the underground levels. Electrical power was sporadic, but they were more than powerful enough to move aside the walls and columns that fell in their way. Tipton was leading them down to where he had placed Kevin, using Lassiter’s lover and companion as a tool to control the doctor’s powers while the general attempted to gain all he could from his Transformed body. “You really were a dick, you know that?”

“I said I was sorry, Jeez! I admit I was a dick, okay? Satisfied?”

“Would you two just shut up for a few minutes and keep moving?” Scott thrust an 8-foot section of 3-inch steel wall aside. “Let’s just find this guy and get out of here.”

“Dick.”

Jason snickered and Jay Lee stuck him in the ribs with his elbow. None of the men was particularly worried about the facility collapsing round them, but it was getting to be annoying listening to Jerry and Sherman argue back and forth about the general’s plan and the whereabouts of Kevin.

“You have to admit that it was sort of stupid in the first place, particularly given the current situation.”

“As if I could predict this was going to happen.”

“All you had to do was ask.” Jerry’s tone of voice suggested exactly how stupid he considered the general to be. “I could’ve told you, but nooooooo, you had be all Mr. High and Mighty and dictate who gets to be massive and beautiful and who gets to be shit.”

“You have to understand the bigger picture here. We were scared. I mean, look at you! Look at me? Look at this body! How is the human race supposed to continue to exist if men like you and me start wandering around changing everyone we meet into another gay, impotent Superman?”

“Hey! Who’s impotent? I’ll show you who’s NOT impotent!”

“No, Jay Lee, he means it literally. You and me and him and every other Transformed man are unable create children.”

“Exactly!” Sherman picked up a set of collapsed doors and moved them aside. They weighed a ton each. He did it without straining. “So now no one’s breeding. The world’s populated by invulnerable men who can’t – and don’t want to – be with a woman. All this sperm we’re creating can make all the other men into us, but not one drop of it is ever going to fertilize an egg.”

“Eeyoo, gross.”

“My point exactly.”

“You really think that Transformation logically leads to the end of human civilization as we know it?”

He turned and nodded, placing his hands on his narrow hips. “What other logical conclusion is there?”

Jason raised his hand. “I can think of one.” They all paused in their movement and looked at him. “Why don’t they create Transformed women?”

Silence fell. “What?”

Jason shrugged. “Why don’t they create a Transformed woman? I mean, it would work, wouldn’t it? Sure, they’d be all muscley and shit, I mean I guess they would, but wouldn’t that solve the problem? Maybe our junk doesn’t work on regular women because they haven’t been Transformed. I mean, what’s the big deal?”

“Did this ever occur to you?” Sherman asked Jerry.

“Well, no, actually. That wasn’t the assignment. I never really considered…”

“Plus, like, so what if they end up all being dykes or something? I’d fuck a hot, muscular, dyke. It’d be like, I guess, fucking Wonder Woman or something.” He smiled. “C’mon, what fag wouldn’t want to fuck Wonder Woman?” He started to laugh.

“That depends,” Tipton answered. “Are we talking the Linda Carter Wonder Woman or the Cathy Lee Crosby Wonder Woman?”

“Who the fuck is Cathy Lee Crosby?”

Hours passed. Main Office was a massive facility. They would occasionally come upon a pair or grouping of massive, muscular, naked men who’d been hit with Scott’s wave of Transform 3, and inevitably these men would be fucking each other senseless. Jay Lee and Jason suggested more than once that they could take a break and join in the fun, but Jerry had a one-track mind and neither Scott nor Sherman, with his sense of responsibility, would slow.

Finally they came to Level 8, the lowest level in the compound. “He’s here,” Sherman said. “At least, he was before all this happened.”

Scott looked at Jerry. “Would he have been altered by this?”

“I don’t know. He was immune to Transform, I know, I tried.” He looked at Sherman helplessly.

“It was designed to resist both forms of the formula, the one inside you and the one we were creating. But as I understand it, we’ve been altered by a third version. So I don’t know, either. But I would suspect not. If one can not be affected by drug one or drug two, would combining the drugs create something one could be affected by?”

“Why are we standing here talking about it? Let’s just find this dude and get out of here! I’m horny as hell and if someone doesn’t start fucking this fine ass pretty soon…” Jason sounded honest, but he was smiling as he said it. “C’mon, dudes. Let’s go get this guy. I’ll fuck him into Superman if it kills me. Which, according to you, it can’t. So…”

“So, let’s get Kevin.”

They found him in his room. He was lying half out of his bed. He had not been Transformed.

“You did this to him?” Scott stared at the form in front of him, recognizable as a man only because of the presence of a face and limbs. Kevin was otherwise a bloated, soft, blubbery pile of flesh.

“Oh, man.” Jason looked at Sherman. “You did this? You actually did this to someone?”

Tipton nodded slowly. “Fear is a strict taskmaster. It can make you do horrible things.”

Jerry sighed and approached the mass of ugly flesh that had been his lover. “Evidently, Transform 3 still isn’t strong enough.”

“Is it possible that Scott’s sexblast didn’t make it to here? Maybe if we try to…”

Scott said, “I’m pretty sure my little release was more than enough to get into every crack and crevice in the place. But there’s no harm in trying.”

Jerry lifted the body back into its bed and moved his hand against Kevin’s soft forehead. The man’s eyes looked glazed and unfocused. His breathing was shallow and sounded as if his throat or lungs was filled with fluid. Jerry set his hand against the mountains of fat that encased Kevin’s chest and flooded his body with Transform 3.

Nothing happened.

“We thought of that, of course.” They turned to look at Sherman Tipton. “Of course we did,” he said sadly. “I’m so sorry, Jerry. I’m so very, very sorry.”

“We have to get him to IGE. Maybe Carlos and I can… maybe something can be done. Maybe the process can be reversed. He doesn’t deserve this. Even if he can’t be Transformed, he should be given his life back.”

“What’s IGE?”

Scott didn’t turn toward Jason as he answered. He was looking at the scene of Jerry and Kevin. He couldn’t look away. It wasn’t often that he had experience love like that, even if it was between someone else. “An island somewhere. It’s home to the Transformed. It’s where Jerry’s partner is, the other man who invented Transform. Labs there, I guess. So maybe…” He felt his throat catch. It was an odd feeling.

Sherman Tipton sighed heavily, but said nothing.

Jay Lee spoke up. “Let’s get out of here. This place is giving me the creeps.”

Jerry lifted the soft, heavy form of his lover into his able arms. “Come on, Kevin,” he said. “We’re going home.” •