Industrial Espionage III (The Power of the Press)

Stock Used:

Woman With Permission of 365 Erotic
Snake: Falln Stock

Cristin had heard the rumours.  Somehow, Calanden Biogenics was using people as the source for their new lines of non-allergenic antivenins and other products.  She'd heard some really odd ones -- people made into spiders or snakes to provide large volumes of human protein based venom.  They couldn't possibly be true, of course.  Such things were impossible.  All the research she'd done for the past months told her so.  They were unbelievably secretive though.  No one from the press had managed an interview with anyone other than the press handlers.  Hardly interesting.  There was a story here and Cristin knew it but how to get the story ...

First she researched everything she could on the layout of the buildings of their production facility.  The normal ones, offices and such, she ignored.  Only the low flat ones at the back of the facility were of interest.  Clearly, these were used in the production process.  They would hold the answer to her questions. She carefully planned a route in.  She arranged to have a small transmitting camera and a friend in receiving van.  The friend, knowing the dangers of this kind of industrial espionage, would leave if there were any trouble.  She hoped that the micro-camera would be able to send something of interest even if she were captured.

At the next new moon, the pair stopped about two kilometres from the building Cristin intended to investigate.  She made her way, alone, to the fence that surround the place.  She'd found what she hoped was a gap in their camera scans and was going to make use of it. Looking around to make sure there were no other security measures, she tossed the tarp over the barbed wire fence and climbed over.  She felt like one of the commandos from the movies in some ways but, being unarmed, she knew she couldn't fight her way out if she were discovered.  This had to be all on the quiet.  Only the tarp would have to be left to reveal she'd even been in their facility and she was careful to have it tell no tales.
It took nearly ten minutes for her to make her way to the first of the buildings she intended to investigate.  Strangely, she encountered no one not even a patrolling guard.  This struck her odd but she wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth.  Maybe she'd caught them on some kind of shift change.  It made it easier for her.  

Finally, she reached the first building.  She fully expected the usual biometric locks complete with passcodes.  Instead, the door was locked by a simple key lock.  Cristin was no lockpick but she had learned a few talents from her latest boyfriend. Just as she started to get out her tools, she looked again at the lock.  The door was unlocked!  These people were really lax in their security tonight.

She made her way into the darkened building.  Only the dimmed lights of the emergency lighting system was working and Cristin knew enough about the micro-camera she carried to know it wasn't going to pick up anything.  Too bad really.  Images would have given the story far more immediacy and gotten it much better coverage. Still, if she found anything out, it could provide an edge to get in to see things in the daylight.  She made her way down a darkened hall.  There was a distinct smell in the air -- the smell of snakes.  Cristin, who'd grown up on a farm, remembered that smell well having been terrorized by cousins with garter snakes and their kin until she was old enough to realize that they weren't dangerous.

She made her way past the first internal security door, also unlocked and found herself on a raised ramp.  The smell of snake was very strong in this part of the building.  This was obviously where they produced the snake venom.  She carefully scanned with the light on the micro-camera into the darkness to find out more. At first there was nothing.  Just dunes and cacti -- perfect rattlesnake habitat.  Her light ran across a collection of snakes but not the tiny snakes she was familiar with.  These monsters must be a half tonne or more and twenty meters long or more.  One of them raised a head and Cristin shrieked.  It had a human face! She didn't even feel the dart that entered her neck.

"Wh ... what are you doing here?" she demanded as she fought the sedative.
"You shall find out soon enough."
"But that snake ..."
"Just one of our production volunteers.  She'll be back to her normal human form in a few months with a hefty bonus.  Likely, she'll return to this or another of our production facilities six months later after she's had a chance to recover from the whole process.  They are very well paid."
"But ..." Cristin's vision blurred.  "How?"
"You will find out for yourself, soon enough"

Cristin regained consciousness some time later.  The room was brilliantly lit and she blinked away tears from the brightness of the room.  As her vision cleared, she caught sight of the back of a lab coat.

"Wha ...?" her mouth felt dry.
"You've joined my production staff now."
"What?"
"Best get used to it.  Oh, we caught your accomplice, too.  He'll likely join you unless they need him in some other facility."
"I was ..."
"Alone?  Hardly.  We found the van and erased the recordings."

Cristin felt as if she'd been hit.  She'd not left any message as to where she was going just in case something went wrong. She had enough loyalty to the web-news organization she worked for to not get them involved in her illegal investigation.  She tried to struggle but found she'd been tied to some kind of table.  The strange man was working off to one side and had returned with a syringe with an oddly coloured fluid in to.

"What are you doing?"
"You wanted to find out how we made our new line of product?  I'm about to show you."
"What is that?" Her eyes widened at the sight of the syringe.
She struggled against her bonds as he approached.  He was clearly going to inject her with the syringe.  Poison perhaps?  She definitely didn't want to have anything to do with it, whatever it was.  She was nearly immobilized though and could do little other than twist.  He touched a button on the side of a console and Cristin felt her muscles tighten, locked by the electric shocks travelling through from the table she was on.
He deftly inserted the syringe in her hip and stepped back.  

"There it is started," he hissed as he turned the electric field off.

Cristin lay back, exhausted, and turned her head.  She frowned as she looked at her captor.  He was a man, more or less, but his skin looked odd.  Cristin struggled against the sedative that had knocked her out earlier.  It was still causing her to have trouble focussing her eyes.  She struggled to focus and finally her vision cleared enough for her to get a good look.  He had scales, patterned like those of a snake or reptile, instead of skin.  She shook her head and looked at the man's face. It too was covered by scales and he sported a pair of fangs when he smiled. Even his eyes were strange, the pupils more like slits that the usual round human ones.

"What are you?" she shrieked.
"I tried an early prototype of my biogenetic modification agent."
He stroked her side.  Cristin shrank away from his touch.
"You will soon be as beautiful as the rest of them, my love."
"Don't touch me!" Cristin protested.
"Ah!  But you will be beautiful," he hissed, a forked tongue appearing between his teeth.

Cristin, at his touch, twisted her head upward and became aware that she was naked.  She felt a churning in her stomach and her fingers and toes began to tingle.  A series of creaking and popping sounds came from her tail bone.  Within a few minutes, she felt something slide down the inside of her leg.  Something in her mind told her it was part of her and she tried to lift it.  It was difficult at first but she soon discovered she could control the thing. Carefully, she lifted it until she could see it.  It was as she feared it would be.  She was growing a scaled tail with flat belly scutes.  She had no doubt that soon she'd look exactly like the monster she'd awakened in the habitat with her camera light.

She struggled against her bonds again.  He couldn't do this to her!  She had to get off the table, to escape, somehow. But it was of no use.  The bonds were too tight.  She slumped back on the table.

"That's right, my beauty," he hissed.  "Don't fight it.  It will go much easier that way."

Cristin shrieked.  She didn't want to be a snake.  She hated the things.  Even though she knew they weren't slimy, she still loathed them for all the tormenting she'd had at the hands of her cousins.  She twisted again and her right arm popped loose from its bonds.  She tried to sit up but felt strangely weak.  Her arm slipped out from underneath her and she fell back to the table top.  Raising her free right hand, she tried to reach across to loose the bonds on her left arm.  She screamed again as she caught sight of her right hand ... or of the stump that was all that remained of her right hand.  It looked like a deflated skin coloured balloon and had no strength whatever.  She twisted her left hand loose only to discover that it, too, was a limp rag with no bones.

The strange deflation continued.  Soon her arms were nothing more than limp deflated balloons attached at her shoulders.  She could do nothing with them.  She had no doubt that her legs were in the same state.  Somehow she'd been transformed into a legless, armless worm.  She felt the tail grow as the cells in her arms and legs continued to be transferred.  Then something more.  It was as if something was filling her belly, something warm but under pressure.  The pressure continued for several minutes and she was afraid she'd pop but she never did.  Whatever had been injected into her was making use of the substance that was being injected into her to lengthen and strengthen her tail.

"No!" she protested.  "Pleath!  No!" Two of her teeth flew across the room.

This only made her scream louder.  Twinges of pain in her jaws told her that her own canine teeth had been the ones that were being replaced.  Fangs.  She was being given fangs.  She was becoming a snake and she hated snakes. Unable to take it all in any longer, she fainted.
When she awoke, minutes or hours later, she was coiled on her stomach on a warm rock.

"You are every so much more beautiful now!" a man's voice hissed.

She turned towards him and saw herself in a huge mirror. She saw a huge rattlesnake with her face.  Two huge fangs protruded from her upper jaw.  Unbidden a long forked tongue slipped from her mouth. Her long drawn out scream of protest ended in a long drawn out hiss.

Industrial Espionage I
Industrial Espionage II (A Better Offer)