Page 88 of Ruby
“Your body.”
I give a short, humorless laugh. “You’re going to have to narrow that down.”
“The changes aren’t going to stop on their own,” she says. “Not until you anchor them.”
Anchor them. I already hate that word. “How?” I ask.
She doesn’t look away. “We believe the transformation stabilizes after sexual contact.”
The world goes very still.
“I’m sorry,” I say flatly. “After what?”
“Possibly only a contact with a male,” she continues calmly. “We don’t know yet if it’s the act itself or specific genetic material. It may be hormonal exchange. We don’t have enough data.”
My arms fall from where I’ve crossed them.
“You’re telling me,” I say slowly, “that if I don’t have sex, this just keeps happening?”
“Yes.”
Something cold creeps under my skin.
“And by ‘this,’ you mean the extra traits. The random upgrades. The—” I make a frustrated motion at myself. “The constant—”
“Arousal,” she says.
Heat floods my face. “Yes. That.”
“No. It won’t stop until stabilization.”
I stare at her, feeling the low hum under my skin. The edge that never fades. The way everything feels charged and too close and too much.
“You cannot be serious.”
“I am,” she responds, unblinking.
I start pacing because if I don’t move I might explode. “So my options are: keep mutating unpredictably and stay permanently wired like this… or have sex to ‘anchor’ it?”
“Yes.”
“With who?” I demand.
“That is your choice.”
“You said possibly only a male.”
“If the mechanism is biochemical, it may require specific genetic exchange,” she says evenly. “We don’t know yet.”
“So this could literally come down to semen.”
“It could.”
I let out a sharp, disbelieving laugh. “Unbelievable.”
She doesn’t react.
“Some of us chose to accelerate the process,” she adds. “To incorporate additional traits intentionally rather than let the changes occur randomly.”
