The Selfless Gene

Chapter 42

As the sun comes up, Lohikaarme wakes in the treatment facility. He sits up. He's still coughing up blood from time to time, true integration yet to happen. Ryder is still fighting for her life. He has all his memories, but hers too. It's unsettling to feel the washes of love come through him when thinking about her family. He also remembers what she was studying, including how to strap an ankle. It's weird for him.

For the first time, he unstraps his wires and swings his legs over the bed. In a hospital gown, his fair arms and stubbly legs were exposed. Red painted toes and black fingernails. Weird, Paimona. He gets up and moves around the room. He's lighter, still strong, but everything seems bigger around him. His lower sense of gravity and different muscles make his walk look like an affected Harlem saunter. He keeps going around the room, sometimes stopping to tap the floor with his toes as if playing piano scales. He runs his human tongue across his teeth, mostly straight and in good working order except for a filling back left. A filling. Humans are rubbish.

He begins to jump and try out some fighting moves. He's slower with miniscule force. Still strong and fast for a human, but not what he was. He concedes that it'll be his mind and guile that'll add to his still above-average strength. Her muscles and bones feel solid and, with his DNA coating her body, they were growing stronger by the minute. He takes deep new breaths and opens a fruit juice that had been left in the room. The blackcurrant is a lot sweeter than he'd ever tasted before, his new taste buds meaning everything he once enjoyed would have to be revised. Lohikaarme jumps one more time and moves around again, noticing things move that he'd never had to worry about before and vice versa. He slowly looks down to his hospital gown as Paimona interrupts.

"My girl. Look at you!"

Lohikaarme growls at her.

"Sorry, my Lord."

"Better."

"You look great." Lohikaarme on command coughs up a bit of blood and spits it into the sink.

"It'll take time. Embrace it."

"It's strange. I have no choice but, since I woke up, my connection with Sarah Ryder, her identity. I feel both. What's my name again?"

"Well, Ryder Whittington, now."

"OK. Call me Ryder or Ma'am. It's odd, I spent my whole life male and now I have this dual identity in my head, still playing out. Ultimately, it's made me feel that I always had my own identity. " Ryder raises her hands and looks at them and shakes his head.

"I liked the black..." Paimona grabs a case of clothes and unzips it onto Ryder's bed.

"It wasn't gendered. This world did that. My identity is omnipotent. As a God I'm above all that. As a God, I'm whatever I ask to be." Lohikaarme smiles at how easy it is to settle back into himself.

"A mirror. Show me what I'm working with."

"Yes, Ma'am." Paimona bends and pulls out a long mirror that was stowed away under the bed. She places it up against the wall and Lohikaarme looks at herself for the first time. She smiles, opens her mouth, looks into her eyes as they quickly change from Ryder to Lohikaarme and back again. Her smile broadens at the change. She puts her hands through her hair and turns around in a slow spin. Then she takes off her gown and stares at her body.

"New rules, Paimona."

"Yes, ma'am. May I offer a choice on what to wear?"

"Bring me gym gear. And some make-up and hair stuff, I'm going have to learn quickly."

"Yes my Lord. Sorry, ma'am. I'll get on this immediately. When may we talk about your brother and business as well?"

Ryder growls again, low, as if to throw a warning.

"Ma'am, I know my place within our world but since you've gone, I've become quite the leader. I think my bringing you back to life deserves a little bit of thanks." Paimona, despite her old role, was a leader and she hated how her boys put her down.

"Different rules, huh, Paimona," Ryder chuckles. "You're right. I have to pay my debt. First do as I ordered, then I'll be trying this out, then let's talk." She was a necessary annoyance for now.

"Thank you. I'll get right on it."

*

Men. Women. Humans. Urgh. Ryder is running alongside the water and noticing how differently she's being perceived. As Sir Henry, there was fear and respect. As the unknown Ryder, women looked her up and down, men sneaked looks of her assets. At least the dogs still growled, their heads bowed. Ryder stays out running for two hours and begins to try out the limitations of his new body. Instead of tiring, she's getting stronger. She sprints up hills and pushes her aerobic capabilities. Coming back into the city, she veers off to a brewing yard and sees barrels of beer ready to be loaded onto a truck.

"Can I help?" She asks a very surprised loading team.

"Not sure we can, I'm afraid. Insurance and all that." The loading bay foreman concludes.

"Come on, just one." Ryder says. It comes out a little higher pitched than her normal tone as she's still getting used to that too.

She goes straight for the tun and winks at the foreman. As he winds up another protest, Ryder lifts it with ease and then, for show, lifts it over her head and rolls it onto the lorry.

"Cheers boys." She's delighted. Ryder and Lohikaarme's strength were already intertwined. Ormr isn't going to stand a chance.

Leaving the befuddled beermen behind, she runs into the city. As she turns down an alleyway, she feels some bloody phlegm come up again. She coughs and spits out some more. Something still wasn't connecting between them. Wiping her mouth with her sleeve, she keeps going down the alley and turns out into a rougher part of town.

Lohikaarme sees some youths on the corner, one of them with a small pouch bag that was the hallmark for marijuana dealing in the area of town. One of them notices her and wolf whistles. Another shouts, asking her to do something rather unsavoury. Instead of changing direction, she veers right towards the group and, as she passes, swings a left hook at the closest of them. The punch cracks the cat-callers jaw and sends him three yards back and onto the ground. Lights out. The group start cursing and make to go after her. She laughs and speeds up. She gets to full sprint with a wild smile and leaves them in her dust.

Looping back, she returns to the facility, going straight into the room to look for a knife. She grabs a surgical blade and makes a cut down her right arm. Blood begins to ooze out. Lohikaarme looks at it curiously, noticing the initial pain. Quite quickly however, the blood stops. She wets some paper towel and wipes her arms. The cut had clotted and was already healing. She turns and walks out of her room into a larger windowed office, which reminded himself of her old one.

Paimona looks up from her desk.

"OK, let's talk about my brother. What's your plan?"