­Prologue:

Prologue:

Ever since I was ten my father and I have made a sort of pilgrimage. That’s what I called it anyways. We would fly to San Francisco around the middle of July and drive from there to Palo Alto. There we would visit various places, ending up at a graveyard on the twentieth of July where we would place some flowers at a headstone. Every year when we did this, my father, usually a stoic man, would stand there with tears running down his face. He told me that first year what we where doing. First he would visit the places that he and my mother had met, then where they had visited together, and then finally he would come to where she was buried.

I never knew my mother, and hadn’t felt the loss, as we lived with my aunt, dad’s sister. That day was when I first missed having my mother. Dad had never remarried and now I understood why. She was irreplaceable.

Just like last year, on the sixth of these pilgrimages, I vowed that I would never let anything take Misaki from me. Every day of this trip I renewed that vow and every night I would email Misaki in our private code. Each day my father grew sadder. On the nineteenth I begged off going with him, instead staying at the motel. I was feeling very ill, and every time I moved the room spun and I stumbled to the bathroom, violently throwing up. Dad offered to stay with me, but I convinced him that as long as I stayed in bed I would be ok, and would be able to go with him tomorrow.

True to my word, I lay in bed and eventually fell asleep.

***

18th July, Beta Center

“OK folks, we’ve got a live one. Palo Alto CA. There is a hitch though, the subject is a Canadian, so this has the potential of getting out of control. Everything by the numbers.”

Daniel continued to brief us. This was going to be a low visibility snatch and grab. Our precog had identified the motel the subject was staying in, and that he would be alone around noon the following day.
***

19th July I-680 San Francisco 1:00 pm

Daniel was driving, and swearing slamming the steering wheel. Traffic was finally starting to move. There had been a major accident on the highway between a semi hauling pigs and a Gas truck. All but one lane was closed and everybody was rubber-necking. We were seriously behind schedule.

***

19th July, Motel, 1:30 pm

My dad came back a little later, and looked around the room agitated. “Dad, what’s wrong?”

He immediately looked relieved. “Are there you are, I didn’t see you. How are you feeling James?”

“I still feel like…” There was a sharp knock on the door which my father went to answer.

“Mr Osaka? I am Daniel Davidson with the CDC, may we come in?”

He opened the door and waved them in. “How can I help you? There’s nothing wrong is there?”

“We hope not. Where is your son Sir?” the young man asked.

“Right there on the bed,” my father replied, pointing to where I was lying propped up by pillows.

A look of relief passed over Daniel’s face as he looked over at me. “Sir, we believe that your son has come in contact with a virulent disease, that if untreated has the potential of becoming extremely contagious. We need to take a small blood sample to confirm this. May we?”

Dad looked visibly shaken. “Of course. It’s not fatal is it?”

One of the others came to my side. “This may sting a little,” she said, and then quickly took a small sample of blood from my left arm and placed it in a machine. She looked at her leader and shook her head. “Positive.”

The young man looked saddened. “With proper treatment, your son has about a 25% chance of surviving, without, none, and everyone around him. We need to take him to our secure treatment center and hope we can save him.”

“We will come with you then.” Dad said firmly. “I’ll call my work and tell them I need some personal time.”

“I’m sorry, we can’t allow that. The treatment center is a secure installation. I’m not allowed to even tell you where it. If your son makes it, we will bring him home to you, Vancouver I believe is where you live?”

“What about just taking him home and treating him there?”

“Sir, we have a very small window here. If we don’t get him in containment within the next six hours we will have to quarantine all of San Francisco, and probably lose ninety percent of the people here. We can’t allow that, and I don’t want to have to use force, I’d rather have your cooperation.”

My father deflated with that pronouncement, mustered up some courage and said to me, “James, fight this, whatever it is. Beat those odds and come back to me.” He gave me a hug, and told them to take care of me, and let him know how things were going.

Mr. Davidson nodded, and two of the people with him came in with a stretcher, and transferred me out to the large SUV. He had some final instructions for my father. “Mr. Osaka, you have to understand, that you can’t talk about this, we are trying to keep this quiet, we don’t need a panic. So far as we know this has disease has not left American soil, and we hope to keep it this way. We will contact you as soon as we know anything.”

With that we left, and they gave me a sedative that knocked me out.

Chapter 1:

When I woke up we had obviously reached our destination as we weren’t moving and I was in a bed. I felt different somehow, everything seemed to be off, and my peripheral vision was wild. I could see the bed I was lying on, on both sides of my head. A little freaked out I called out nervously “Hello?”

A startled voice replied. “Oh good, you’re awake.” She came over and looked down at me. I smiled as a pretty girl leaned over the bed, this peripheral vision had it’s bonuses. “Don’t worry,” she said. “You can open your eyes.”

This confused me as I was looking right at her, ok and down her shirt. A little heat came to my face and I tried to look away, but even though I moved my head, I could still see. “My eyes are open.”

“No they aren’t.” She responded. “Try and open them please.”

I tried to close my eyes, but realized they were indeed closed. I whimpered and tried to open them instead. When I did, my vision was blurred, almost like a multiple exposure, it soon steadied down.

I smiled at her, she was beautiful, I was a little sad when she left the room. I tried to sit up, but I was strapped to the bed. “What the hell?” I yelled out. Hell it was, I couldn’t move, and I didn’t sound like myself. If I didn’t know I had been speaking, I would have said it was Misaki, my girlfriend who spoke. I started to hyperventilate. What was this disease?

A short while later the man who had brought me here with dire warnings of a terrible, fatal disease, came into the room. He said “I have some good news.”

“News?” I squeaked.

“Ok,” he replied. “The good news is there is no disease,” he paused. “Cherry said that when you woke up, you said that your eyes were open when they were closed. Why?”

“I could see.” My voice freaked me out again and I screamed “I can see everything!”

He paused. “Ok, how many fingers am I hold up then?”

I turned my head towards him, automatically, and after moment of dizziness, answered. “Three, and she is holding up two in her right hand, and one in her left.” They were on opposite sides of the bed, there was no way I should have been able to see her, with my head turned towards him, but yet I could. I was starting to calm down, but my voice still freaked me. But as my father always told me, patience has its own reward, and I steadied my breathing. Besides, my head was killing me.

“Interesting,” he said. I am going to loosen the straps so you can sit up. I want to warn you that everything is going to seem wrong, but we will explain, and you are, as far as we can tell, perfectly healthy.”

He helped me sit up after he had released the straps which helped because I was sore all over. Everything still felt a little off, even my hair which I kept short, was brushing against my neck. I looked down, there were mounds on my chest, and my arms and hands were black and hairless. A deep purple black like an African. Sounding like a broken record I again exclaimed “What the hell?”

“That’s the real bad news. When your mother was pregnant with you she drank bottled water. Normally that would be a good thing, but what she didn’t know, and the company that bottled the water didn’t know, was that upstream from them some terrorists caused a spill from a genetic research company. You were born with everything you needed to become a female, and at about your current age, you transitioned to female.”

“Misaki is going to be pissed,” I muttered. I felt the mounds on my chest. They felt just like hers, but the sensations they sent to my brain were like nothing I had ever felt. Hardly daring to, I felt between my legs. There was nothing there. “No no no no!” I screamed and fainted.

When I woke up again, the headache was gone, I prayed that it was all a dream, but when I levered myself upright again, the jiggling on my chest, and the lack of anything down below told me the nightmare was real. Also, I was fit to burst, but fortunately there appeared to be an attached bathroom to this room. I slid off the bed with the intention of going there, but the room span around me like a dervish, and it felt like I was walking on stilts. I fell to the floor, hitting my head on the way down.

I was stunned, but luckily didn’t pass out. “Hey!” I yelled as I clambered to my feet.

Almost at the same time as I yelled a boy burst into the room. “I nearly killed myself in here!” I still needed to go to the bathroom. My legs were freakishly long and my boxers were threatening to fall around my ankles. I tried to stagger to the bathroom The boy took my arm, steadying me and guiding me to the bathroom. I was about to drop my boxers but stopped. “Some privacy please?” I mean, I am supposed to be a girl now and all.

He blushed and exited awkwardly closing the door behind him. I dropped my boxers, and remembered at the last minute that I needed to sit. At last relieved, I stood up, a little steadier and went to the sink to wash my hands. What I saw froze me in place. My face, my neck, everything was as black as my arms. If you discounted those strangeness’s I was a stunner, a wet dream made flesh. Even to the long straight black hair that hung way past my waist. Tall, thin, a well defined waist, and small, but high breasts. This was a girl that might make me look away from Misaki for more than a moment. But this girl was me. I shuddered and exited the bathroom.

The boy from before was gone, replaced by a an older woman who looked at the bump on my head, pronounced it as non-life threatening, and gave me some painkillers and a glass of water.

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To be continued. Comments, as always, are appreciated.