Note: This story was dynamically reformatted for online reading convenience. Author: Hoop Title: Cryptozoology Part: 4 Summary: The consequences of Rachel's tentacle rape become apparent. Amy's life gets a lot worse. Keywords: WS, Egg laying -- Rachel ate with Stephanie in the communal kitchen. The food she had prepared was mediocre, but edible all the same. They made amicable small-talk throughout, although Rachel was understandably distracted. Stephanie was doing most of the talking, asking her all sorts of trivial questions about her course, her family back home, whether she had a boyfriend, and so on. Rachel decided that she needed to keep the alcohol coming, and had mixed some into her orange juice while Stephanie was refilling her own drink from the fridge. Half a glass later, the day's events were beginning to seem more distant. After the meal, she stood at the sink to help with the cleaning, drying the dishes as Stephanie handed them to her. The girl spoke without looking at her, concentrating on cleaning the burnt-on residue out of one of her saucepans. "Is something on your mind, Rachel?" "Huh?" "You seemed a bit preoccupied this evening, is all. I was just wondering if everything really is okay." "I told you before, I'm fine." "You were being so quiet, though. Is it something I've done?" "Stephanie. Really, it's fine. Can you please just stop asking?" "O-okay," she said. She seemed a little upset. Rachel regretted snapping at her. They finished cleaning up, and Stephanie put the leftovers in the fridge. Rachel finished the last of her adulterated juice, accidentally bashing the glass against the sink before giving it a perfunctory rinse. "Do you want to do something else?" Stephanie asked. "I've got some DVDs in my room, if you wanted to... to watch one, or something, together." "I'm kind of tired," said Rachel. "Think I'll call it a night." "It's only half eight." "No thanks," she said. "It's fine. Maybe some other time." Stephanie came over and hugged her suddenly, out of nowhere. "What ever it is, I hope you get over it soon," she said. "I told you..." The girl squeezed her tighter. For somebody who she'd only spoken with occasionally until today, this was a bit unusual. Rachel put one arm around her, not quite touching, and patted her on the back. She laughed nervously. "Uh, you can stop now, Stephanie." The girl eventually released her. Stephanie looked at Rachel for a few seconds with an almost guilty expression, and left to go back to her room. Strange girl, Rachel thought. She grabbed a few chocolate bars to take back to her own room, along with the rest of the orange juice to dilute the vodka that was waiting for her. A few hours later, a severely inebriated Rachel managed to climb half way into bed before falling asleep, vaguely aware that her pillow seemed to be becoming damp for some reason. -- Amy spent the night fretting about Boris's whereabouts, and what might have become of him. The data she had access to suggested the creature might have some sort of aquatic origin, but it seemed equally comfortable on dry land. Could it survive the flushing, or had it consigned itself to a watery grave? What if there were macerators in the sewer system? There was little she could do now besides waiting. She spent a while trying to concoct various elaborate tales about how Boris might have escaped through a ventilation shaft, or climbed into a bin and got taken out by one of the cleaners by accident, but there was always the danger that some unconsidered detail might trip her up when she was explaining herself. She decided it was probably best to deny everything if anyone noticed something was amiss. She deleted all the entries she could find in the department's database that referenced the creature, which took her until three in the morning. Even then, she couldn't rule out some kind of backup or paper trail. The creatures were valuable. A lot of care was probably taken to keep track of them all. At a quarter past four she got into bed, closed her eyes, and remembered that Dr. Bryant was expecting her to present her research to the visitors from the funding body the following morning. It looked like sleep would have to wait. Four hours of work later, Amy debated the worth of going to bed for the hour she had left between now and standing in front of that audience, and decided that energy drinks would be a more effective measure. The time to give the talk came. Half way through it, Amy was sorely regretting her earlier decision to have a third can of heavily-caffeinated drink. Taking a bathroom break now, between slides with and twenty people watching, would be severely unprofessional. Dr. Bryant was seated at the back of the room with his arms crossed, nodding along in an unimpressed manner as she presented the first of several slides about the phosphorus nuclear magnetic resonance spectra collected on samples from subject B0-RL5 - work he already knew well, and would probably jump to ask a question about at the end of the talk, just to test her. In addition, there was a contingent of biochemistry students from another department, frantically taking notes. The visitors from the funding body were seated, as always, in the front row. They were dressed in their usual black suits, looking like they had dropped in during their break from working at the funeral parlour. Amy stood very still during the latter part of the talk, thighs clenched together tightly, the laser pointer in her palm slick with sweat. The last section, her "conclusions and recommendations," was delivered in three minutes flat. The men in suits seemed unfazed. One of them whispered something in the ear of a colleague, who nodded solemnly. "Any questions?" she said, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. "No? Well, I suppose-" "Yes, here." The voice belonged to one of the student contingent, for whom English was clearly not his first language. He groped around to find the right words to articulate his question, while Amy nodded and tried to finish his sentences for him. "You say, in slide seven, about the eggs," he began. "Yes," she said, gesturing eagerly that he could continue. "And you say," he said, "the creature, he deposit the eggs, inside of the other creatures?" "Yes, that's right," she said. "We assume that part of its life cycle is a parasitic one, where the egg derives nutrition from a host. We haven't got any data on the later stages, though." "How did you collect the data?" he asked. "On the oviposition." "Um," Amy wondered if putting that particular aspect of the creature's physiology in the presentation had been a mistake. "Animal studies," she said. "With pigs." She had thought that pigs might be a reasonable animal to use. She had genuinely intended to do the experiments, which made it mostly true - the fact that she hadn't carried them out yet was a small detail. "And the eggs," he continued, with excruciating slowness, "they are, how do you say, they are haploids? How are they fertilized?" "We... um," Amy glanced up at Dr. Bryant, feeling the weight of his gaze upon her. "We don't know yet. The chromosomes aren't normal. We can't really see them." "Did you try with the, ehm..." the student sifted through his mental lexicon, grasping for a word that didn't seem to be there. "An instrument?" Amy asked, desperately trying to move him along. "Yes, yes," he said, "the microscope, he sees with, how do you call them," "Fluorescence," she said. He shook his head. "Electron?" "Yes," he said, "did you try looking with the electron-" "No, haha, not yet," she said, "we're still, still waiting for the stains, so we can't prepare samples yet, but yes, very good point, we'll get right on that. Good point." She nodded emphatically. The student leaned back, looking satisfied with himself. The situation was becoming more dire. Amy's bladder was aching severely. She glared at the student next to him, who looked like she, too, was going to raise her hand. Amy shook her head every so subtly, staring her down until the girl looked away and scribbled something irrelevant on her notepad instead. "Well, thank you for your attention," she said, "looks like it's back to the lab, haha, back to work. Bye!" She exited through the door at the bottom of the lecture theatre before anyone else had the chance to express their interest. She ran back to her office, one hand firmly clutched between her thighs, to find that there was a sign affixed to the door of the bathroom opposite. "Closed for refurbishment," it read. There was plaster dust on the floor. She pushed open the door regardless, to find a pair of workmen dismantling the whole place: all the cubicle panels were stacked against a wall, and the process of removing the tiles had already begun. One of the men stopped drilling, and looked up at her. "Can't come in here darlin', 's being refurbished," he explained. "Didn't ya see the sign?" She stormed back out, screaming internally. There was a bathroom near reception. She might just about make it. Amy jogged awkwardly up the stairs, through what seemed at this moment to be miles of corridors before finally emerging into the reception area, normally empty, but currently filled with about a dozen of the people who had attended the talk, on their way out. Dr. Bryant was talking to the suited men, and the students were comparing notes, or looking at their phones. The girl who had almost asked a question before excused herself from the group, making her way into the bathroom before Amy could reach it. It was okay. There were two stalls in there. She was going to be fine. "Ah, Amy, I was just telling-" She pretended not to have heard her supervisor from six feet away, staring intensely at the opposite wall while she limped to the bathroom. It was taking both hands now to contain herself; she stepped around a trolley of cleaning supplies, and pushed the door open with her shoulder. The first stall was occupied. She shuffled further in to see that the second stall, too, was closed, the chipped red paint above the sliding lock signifying her doom. She hammered on the door. "Hey, you finished?" she pleaded. "What the fuck?" came the reply. "Ever heard of privacy?" "I've gotta go! Now!" "Occupied, sorry." "Please!" she begged. She took a step back, her thighs trembling. "It's really urgent, I'm- ah!" her foot slipped out from beneath her, and her other heel bumped into the yellow plastic "wet floor" sign behind her. Amy sprawled backwards, landing hard on her butt. The shock of the fall had broken her concentration for one, critical, irreversible moment. A wet patch began to spread across her jeans. "No!" she cried. She tried to scramble to her feet, but it was too late to do anything about it now. The warmth crept over her thighs, and down between her legs. She was powerless to stop it. She had to simply remain there, cheeks burning with the shame of it as the piss soaked through her jeans, forming an acrid puddle on the floor beneath her. She stood, so that she was no longer sitting in the spreading pool, and the hot liquid continued to trickle down her legs relentlessly. There was the sound of flushing from one of the stalls, but its occupant had finished too late. She said nothing upon exiting, merely looking down at Amy, scowling, and then walking out without washing her hands. Amy hobbled into the now-vacant stall, pulling her soaked jeans down around her ankles and sitting down just as she expelled the last few squirts. She buried her face in her hands, wishing that she could disappear forever, or that she could wake up yesterday morning, with Boris still safe in his tank, and none of the events since having ever happened. Her life, she thought, was very miserable right now. The occupant of the other stall left a little while after. Amy remained in a daze, not really paying attention to the growing feeling of cold clamminess around her thighs. The missed sleep only made her state worse; she was a wreck. The caffeine buzz from the drinks had worn off now, leaving her drowsy and disoriented. She groaned, and kicked her jeans off into a damp heap on the floor with a sloshing sound. Once she was sure everyone should have dissipated from the reception, she shambled out from the stall, and reached for some paper towels to begin trying to clean herself. The dispenser was empty. Great, she thought. The cleaner was thorough enough to make sure the floor was spotless, but seemingly hadn't bothered with anything else. No hand dryer, either. She glanced down into the bin to see that whole wads of paper towels had been dumped in there, probably by some inconsiderate bitch who thought it took twenty of them just to dry your hands. Then she noticed that some of them were stained with a familiar, orange mucus. -- Rachel missed three days of lectures, spending them in her room instead. She felt constantly tired, and had slept solidly for fourteen hours on the first night, although the alcohol probably had something to do with that as well. She hadn't seen Stephanie since then. It looked like she would have to go outside today, though - there was nothing left to eat. Recently, Rachel had been consumed with an abnormal hunger, to the extent that she found herself waking up in the night to eat bowls of cereal. She had depleted a week's worth of food, and now her stomach was empty and aching, even though she had eaten half a loaf of bread only three hours previously. She looked at herself side-on in the mirror while she pulled some clothes from her wardrobe. Her profile had changed, she was sure of it. Her belly, which was feeling sore and distended, was sticking out by a noticeable few inches. Could she really have gained that much weight so fast? She thought back to her ordeal with the creature, and wondered whether it could have given her some kind of disease. She didn't exactly feel unwell, though. Maybe it was the food after all. She'd have to try and cut back. She collected some groceries in the late afternoon, having to take a shortcut around a section of street that had been closed off with traffic cones. There were some workers in fluorescent jackets standing around a manhole, and two men off to one side, wearing black suits. The first was typing something into his laptop, held in the crook of his arm. The other was speaking on a handheld radio. Clearly the city was taking the maintenance of its water systems seriously. Later that evening, halfway through her second microwave meal, Rachel clutched at her abdomen in response to a sudden, sharp pain. It couldn't be hunger this time. The sensation abated, she cautiously relaxed, and then it returned, twice as intense. Rachel hissed through clenched teeth. This felt bad. She didn't know what was going on with her body recently, but the bathroom was probably the safest place to deal with this. She had to support herself against the wall on her way there as the pains became sharper, intensifying with each stab. There was a growing pressure in her abdomen, which she assumed was an urge to eliminate in one way or the other. This was apparently not the case, however - a few minutes of grunting and straining in the bathroom brought forth not much at all, and did nothing to help with the pain. It wasn't a feeling of sickness either, though - what was happening to her? There was a stirring in her belly, and a feeling of warmth and movement in places that should be inert. Rachel felt like she was peeing, but the liquid that came out of her oozed rather than flowed - thick like syrup, and coloured an orange hue that brought the memories that she had been trying to suppress to the forefront of her mind. The creature had done something to her. A mass shifted inside her, and the depths of her nethers began to ache terribly, although, strangely, it was no longer painful. Rachel shivered, trying to understand what was happening. Was something going to come out of her? She didn't know what birth felt like firsthand, but it was certainly not like this. What she was feeling now, a sort of thin, tingling tension, felt like nothing so much as the early stages of arousal. Her nipples perked up as another dribble of mucus emerged from her. A cold bead of sweat ran down her back. There was further movement inside, and she bucked her hips involuntarily. Something seemed to be pushing, or being pushed, out of her. A series of rippling contractions were accompanied by a definite, downwards shift of the bloated feeling that she had been experiencing these past few days, and this time, the mucus was accompanied by something more solid. Whatever was coming out had undoubtedly put there by the creature, and she found herself thinking about a film she had watched years ago, when she was far too young, in which a horrid creature had burst out of the chest of some character or other. She was anxious and scared, but despite all of that, she couldn't deny that it was also beginning to feel good. Rachel parted the lips of her genitals to reveal the smooth, rounded end of whatever was inside her. A little cone of white, about an inch across, was poking out from her vagina. She thought she should feel revulsion at this, but the fact that it was coming out of her own body seemed to render it no more disgusting to her than her other excretions. It clearly wasn't normal, and yet somehow, it was hers. There was another wave of tension and release, and the protrusion emerged further, widening her hole as it was forced out. She covered her mouth to stifle a moan. It was like being fucked from the inside. Soon, the thing ceased to emerge, no matter how many times she urged and pushed. Each effort was accompanied now by a surge of pleasure, and she was having trouble keeping quiet, in case someone heard her. She hunched forward, trembling, and heaved as hard as she could with muscles that she was still quite unfamiliar with. The shape emerged a fraction of an inch more, and Rachel gasped and panted with the exertion. She reached down and gingerly touched the surface of the thing. It was wet, firm, and completely unyielding, as if it were made of stone. No wonder it was proving so difficult to get out. She dismounted the toilet, and squatted on the floor in order to try and ease the object's passage out of her. She balanced on her toes, supporting herself against the wall with one hand, and gave another, hard push. This time she failed to silence the moan accompanying it. The change in position had helped, though. She felt the mass slip down by a good half-inch or so, and the accompanying sensation was correspondingly intense. Her breath caught in her throat. With great care, she managed to ease a single finger into herself, alongside the smooth mass. She tugged gently, dislodging it a little further. The widest part of it seemed to be out of her now; the strain was becoming less intense. Another, final push felt like her whole lower body was cramping up: her legs and abdomen quivered with the effort as a protracted surge forced the thing down and out of her at last. Her body, for a brief moment, was gripped by an ecstatic release. The orgasm, elicited by such an unnatural ordeal, felt very strange indeed. She bit down on her knuckles, and tried not to cry out as the climax seized her. The object fell into her hand, coated in slime. It had a certain density about it, feeling weighty in her palm. She held it up to have a closer look. It was an egg, three inches from end to end, and almost the same girth at its widest part. Its surface was pale cream, still warm from the heat of her own body. She slumped back against the wall, exhausted, to catch her breath. The process had taken a lot out of her. Perversely, her genitals still felt tender and tingly from the weird pleasure of it all. Rachel stared at the egg silently for a long time, considering her options. She cleaned herself up, wrapped the egg in a nest of toilet paper, and carefully carried it back to her room. -- The distraction and worry was getting to Amy. For three days she had tried to carry on with her work, staying in the lab until midnight to meet the deadlines Dr. Bryant had imposed on her. She was making stupid mistakes due to the fatigue. She could not help but think constantly about the fact that Boris was somewhere outside of the lab's controlled environment, quite possibly alive and well. Now, the thoughts occupying her mind had caused her to ruin a day-long chemical extraction at the last step. She slumped down onto a stool, staring helplessly at her now-useless beaker of contaminated ethyl acetate and trying very hard not to burst into tears. If she tried to do any more work now, she'd probably just screw up again. Best to leave, try to get a good night's sleep (although that seemed to be infeasible for her these days), and make another attempt tomorrow. She knew that when she went to bed her thoughts would return to the escaped creature, and possible ways she might find it and recapture it. How could she track it down? There was no trail, only the evidence from one bathroom that at least one other person had encountered it. Boris could be anywhere. Even worse, if she told anybody the circumstances of his escape, it would be the end of her studies here. She didn't imagine Dr. Bryant would look kindly upon the use of the creatures for personal reasons. She needed to find whoever had used those paper towels. That person must have found Boris before she had come down in the evening, and that explained why the creature had been so unmotivated to copulate with her. He had probably needed time to recharge. This also meant that whoever the victim was had been carrying one of Boris's eggs for three days now. Amy had no idea what that implied for a human host, but it would probably not be healthy. It was vital that she found them somehow. She stepped out of the department into the chilly night air. Only one window was illuminated, up on the third floor, the rest of the building dark and vacant. She crossed the car park, wondering about the van whose sign writing declared it as the vehicle of "E-Z-Cleaning Ltd." Cleaning was usually handled internally. Maybe these people were the same ones who had left the bathroom floor in such a slippery state those few days prior. Amy made a rude gesture at the van. She reached the path that lead through the small park adjacent to the building, the quickest route to the edge of the campus. Amy hugged herself as a cool breeze enveloped her, and leaves stirred at her feet. Strangely, the wind didn't seem to be coming from any particular direction. The night had been still a few moments ago. She looked up, to see that part of the sky was obscured by a looming black shape, with spinning rotor blades making the stars behind them flicker. A helicopter? It was almost totally silent, the downwash from the rotors the only real sign it was there at all. No lights, either. What the hell was going on? "Amy Peterson?" a voice came from somewhere off to one side. This wasn't right. She turned away, and ran straight into the chest of another figure who had stepped out behind her. They collided with a thud. The man did not move so much as an inch. "You're coming with us," he said. "What? Why? Hey! Let go!" Hands grabbed her from behind, pulling her arms back. There was a zipping sound, and something hard and plastic dug into her wrists, binding her hands together. Amy screamed for help. Someone pulled a sack down over her head and clamped a hand firmly over her mouth, silencing her. She could see nothing through the opaque, black fabric. Amy tried to kick behind her, and someone grabbed her legs. Another pair of hands grasped beneath her armpits, and she was carried away, struggling in their iron grip to no effect whatsoever. From the sounds of things, they were once again walking on the tarmac of the car park. She was hoisted up, and dropped onto a metal floor. The barely-audible sound from the rotors increased in pitch, and there was the sound of rushing air. Alongside her, she heard a female voice. "Good job, men. Command, this is echo one, we have her in custody. We're bringing her in."