Fettered

Autopsies

Persephone was stuck on the Molded. Thoughts of its human physiology became a permanent fixture in her mind, and being in the laboratory intensified her conviction to learn. So it was a no-brainer to autopsy Molded cadavers and study their inner workings. Plenty of people had become Molded already, giving her half a dozen fresh corpses to work with.

She wasn't sure how many differences they really had from their human counterparts. Aside from being covered in that mold, and their bones becoming spongy and flexible, everything else seemed to be the same. She procured blood samples and observed them over the week, only to find that the DNA remained the same. The only difference was the amount of fungal spores floating around in the petri dishes.

Obviously, the further along, the more mold, but oddly this meant the Molded had far fewer white blood cells. She supposed this made some sense. The mold was quite adept at keeping itself healthy when it remained in range of Eveline. Persephone kept petri dishes up in the main house areas as well as the lab, and found the reduced proximity to Eveline meant the white blood cells were fighting back—often winning against the mold. What this meant for the future of the Molded, she wasn't sure yet.

Despite its regenerative properties, it simply wasn't strong without Eveline. So she experimented with proximity to Eveline and various fungicides, seeing which ones worked best near and far. As she stood in the lab with the microscope against her eye, she was enraptured by her experiment. Some of the fungicide didn't do a thing, but this most recent one actually killed the mold effectively. A pair of hands grabbed her waist and she let out a tiny yelp of surprise. Lucas put his head against the crook of her neck.

"Didn' mean t' scare ya."
"You snuck up on me like a fuckin' creep, Lucas."
"My bad. Just wanted to see how you were holdin' up. Don' think I seen you all day."
"Really?" She read the forgotten clock. "Fuck, it's so late. How did that happen?"
"Time's a bitch, ain't it? What you been workin' on anyway?"
"I've been thinkin'," she said, "about us being Molded, too, and how unstable the mold is away from Eveline. That's kinda scary, ain't it? I mean, if something goes horribly wrong, we'd be pretty fucked, wouldn't we?"
"Yeah, I guess we would be."
"So if we can figure out how to stabilize the mold, harvest it, and kill it off, we'd be able to control it even better than Eveline could. We wouldn't need her anymore, and we wouldn't be totally screwed if we went full Molded."
"Mm," he hummed against her skin. "Sounds like you been thinkin' this through."
"You know me: I take everythin' very serious."
"But it's a good idea. I don' like bein' under Evie's control all th' damn time."
"Exactly. I'm gonna find the key to givin' her the big Fuck You."
He kissed her neck. "Try not t' work yerself t' death. You haven' eaten all damn day. We should at least get some dinner 'fore you continue. Take a—" He grabbed her breasts. "—break."
"You horny bastard."
"S'all yer fault."

It was easier to give into Lucas than it was to argue against him. And while at first she thought he'd simply bend her over and taint their lab with the smell of sex, he wasn't satisfied with feeding her a load. He wanted her to actually eat dinner. Lucky for her, their lab dinners were much more filling and healthy than whatever the fuck went on in Marguerite's kitchen nowadays, so she shoveled it down as though her life depended on it. She was back to cutting up corpses all through the night, enthralled and eager to experiment.

She sliced her own fingers open and got samples from herself to see the various reactions, both near to and far from Eveline. The mold in her body fought back against the white blood cells much more effectively. Lucas gave her a sample of his own blood as well, to much the same results. Eveline kept her and the rest of the family far more stable than regular run-of-the-mill Molded.

That's not to say she didn't have times of rest. When her vision blurred or her hands cramped or the horrible odor of the mold got to her, she would go topside for fresh(er) air. Lucas was the only person available most of the time. Sometimes she had no idea where Zoe was, and god forbid she had to spend any time with the increasingly unstable Jack and Marguerite.