"What's a Skin?"

"Once you reach a certain point, the mass you accumulate will weigh you down to the point where you need to make more muscle to move properly, which will then require thicker denser bones for more support. This means more muscle to move, which means more bone, and it just loops like that, not to mention the added heat a larger body would generate. If you want to be able to make a larger more powerful form, you would need to modify your physical body to make the necessary adjustments so you can function with that kind of body. Or you create a workaround in the form of a second skeletal system that you wear. That's the skin, the second skin to be precise. You wear it like a suit of armor with its own muscles that makes you stronger and faster."

"Like some kind of organic power armor?"

"Yeah. That's why we're here. Tomorrow, we have a special operation, which means we have until 6 PM tomorrow to get there with skins ready to go. I'm teaching you the basics and how to make a Skin instead of modifying your body. We can alter the skin as much as we want, but when you’re messing with your physical body, you'll hit a point where your body rejects the changes, leaving you stuck in whatever form you were in."

"Damn." Greens looked down at his arm.

"Don't worry. It doesn't just happen. There are clear warning signs, and with just that you can cut it off before it becomes permanent. It only becomes permanent if you’re constantly shifting stuff around, in which case your body stops allowing it because it’s causing your DNA to breakdown. Anything you add gets incorporated into your DNA somehow. Usually, its nothing major and just gets tacked on to the end of the sequence. But if you make a modification and leave it for too long, or repeatedly make and remove the same modifications, it becomes more engrained into the code until it’s a fixed part that your body won’t allow you to tamper with. Doubt you’ll have to deal with anything like that since we’re getting you started down the right path from the get-go. Now I suggest you eat your chocolate bar, we need to get going soon."

"One last question. What the hell is this cellular energy stuff?"

"Long story short, we don't know. There are particulates of this stuff everywhere, and I do mean everywhere. The food you eat, the water you drink, the air you breathe, it's everywhere. We don't have an official name for this energy, but in carriers, it's used in the body's natural generation of energy from a cellular level. You know what mitochondria are right?"

"Powerhouse of a cell, uses oxygen to make energy. Learned it in school."

"Well, your biology teacher sucks at her job. Mitochondria use oxygen and glucose to make ATP, which is your standard cellular energy needed to do just about everything. This energy stuff we use will mix with the glucose to make, what we call, ATP+. While ATP normally makes enough energy to do everything you do on a normal day, it plays a role in the signals that pass through a body. ATP+ produces exponentially more energy and directly links your brain, or more specifically your conscious mind, into the signal pathways that ATP normally plays a part in. That's how you control it."

"But if this stuff is everywhere, does that mean everyone is infected?"

"No. People who haven't become carriers will filter the energy out in the proper way for how it came in. If they breathe it, they exhale it back out. If they eat or drink it, well I bet you can guess what happens. The weird thing is, this stuff was present before the outbreak."

"How's that possible?"

"No idea. But before the crew abandoned the International Space Station, the scientists up there detected the energy particles in their food supply. It was in much lower quantities than on earth, but it was there. That leaves 1 of 2 options, the energy particles travel like radioactive waves and can penetrate materials, hence they made it into space and even managed to get through the hull of an airtight spacecraft. Or the particles were there the entire time and we just never knew about them before because they were so few and far between. It doesn't strike me as too impossible that readings of the particles went undetected until recently when they became more abundant. I get the feeling a fair number in the science community would ignore some minor background disruptions to focus on the relevant data."

"So much of this doesn't make any sense."

"From my perspective, it's more like very little of this does make sense. According to one of the science guys I worked with in the past, the best and brightest, or what's left of them, don't know what's going on either. Everything that I told you can be backed up and proven with data, even physically observed in most instances, but there are pieces missing from our understanding. We can explain what happens, but not how if that makes it any clearer."

"Not even a little, and it's starting to give me a headache."

"That's low blood sugar. I told you that the energy bonds with glucose to make the ATP+. The glucose that happens to be the same glucose referred to as blood glucose level aka blood sugar. Why do you think I gave you that chocolate bar?" Greens looked at the bar for a second, then took a large bite.

"This tastes awful."

"That's cause it's glucose syrup mixed with chocolate and protein powder."

"I didn't know it was actually possible to make chocolate taste this bad. Hell, I've had chocolate brownies with curry and wasabi in it, and it didn't taste this bad."

"Wasabi brownies?"

"Yeah. Not bad, just had a bit of spicy aftertaste. Tried it with a ghost pepper once, but that was a huge mistake." Greens sighed, stuffed the rest of the chocolate in his mouth, and chugged some water to wash it down. "Though I might give it another try after this." Greens stood started towards the door, before freezing in place.

In the hall, just beyond the door were a dozen zombies. Green could sense the energy in them just like he had sensed it in the corpses, and he could feel the predatory instinct coming from them. They weren’t attacking like rabid dogs, they were hunting like a pack of wolves. He turned to Roland, who had a finger to his lips waving Green away from the door with his other hand. He did as he was instructed, staring at the door in confusion.

The zombies weren't even trying to get in, which was more unsettling than having them clawing at the door. They knew Roland and Green were in the room, but instead of attacking they were spread down the hall, even taking cover in the doorways to other rooms and around the corner that led to the stairs. Green had thought he was getting to a point close to being okay with fighting these things, but seeing intelligence from a creature that was hunting him brought back all the fear and doubt that had plagued him.

"What are we doing?" Roland asked quietly. The mic and earpiece were the only reasons that Green heard him at all.

"We can make a run for it,” Green said just as quietly. He’d spoken before he actually thought about what it was he was suggesting, but he kept talking and worked out the thought he’d blurted out to a logical conclusion. “We open the door, take our chances and head for the stairs down the other side of the hall. We could try shooting through the wall, I've got a decent sense of most of their positions. Or we can go out the window."

"We're several stories off the ground."

"True. But we can drop down to the level below us and escape from there." Roland smiled.

"Very good. 3 solid options. But you haven't quite started thinking like a carrier yet. We could easily survive a fall to the street from here. Might need a moment to put ourselves back together and get moving, but we would certainly survive. We could also go up, climb the wall outside and head for the 4th floor. And lastly, we could always jump to the neighboring roof." Green looked out the window at the roof across the alley from their building. "You're a carrier. You can make it. But for right now, I think it might be best to go for the direct approach." Roland pulled his handgun and aimed at the wall, leaving Green only a second to realize that it wasn't the silenced pistol.

Green pulled the SMG as Roland fired the Desert Eagle through the wall, blowing a hole the size of a baseball in the plaster and turning a wall stud into shrapnel. 2 zombies were killed instantly, Roland had fired as a zombie was walking past another and hit them both with the same bullet. The remaining zombies instantly began rushing the door, 4 runners from their floor as well as 3 more that ran up from the lower floor, were at the door in seconds, clustered together just beyond the wood. Green leveled the SMG at the door, set it to full auto, then took a breath and fired in bursts.

The wood door was just thin enough for the SMG to punch through and hit the zombies on the other side. Though the gun was on full auto, he fired in bursts of 5 to 8 rounds, spraying bullets across the entirety of the door, until a chunk was blown away and he could clearly see targets on the other side. The zombies were completely unconcerned with their own survival, tearing at the hole in an attempt to get to their prey. Some even tried to squeeze through, but that just made them easy targets. As the last zombie stuck its head through the hole and tried to drag the rest of its body in, Green’s gun clicked empty. Instead of reloading, he grabbed his knife, stepped up to the door, and rammed the blade through its eye.

He pulled the knife and stepped back just as he sensed another one coming up the stairs. This one was big and actually crushed 2 shamblers that were still walking down the hall as it ran. It stopped, turned, and punched through the door with a heavy fist, shattering what was left of the door into splinters. Green reached for a mag to reload, but it had already forced its way inside before he even brought the fresh mag forward. This wasn't a normal zombie, from its waist up was pure muscle, with arms that were a foot thick and fists that looked more like cinder blocks. It roared and reared back to punch Green, when Roland grabbed Green’s shoulder and pulled him out of the way, throwing him halfway across the room as casually as you please. Six shots rang out as he emptied the Desert Eagle, putting 3 in its head and another 3 in its chest. The monster took a step back before falling over.

"Holy shit." Green gasped.

"Stay back. Specials who mutate have a period where they can keep mutating. I've seen more than a few cheat death by creating extra organs after I rip out their heart." On cue, the monster pushed itself up and swung an arm at Roland. The entire arm deformed as the flesh and muscles stretched out to cover the 15 feet between them. Roland showed no hesitation dipping just a bit to the left as he charged forward, snapping his left arm straight out to the side. In a flash of spraying blood his left arm ripped open, a set of bones ripped out the front and back of his arm, hinged at the wrist and ripping out of his flesh as the pieces swung out to align, forming a straight spear.

Roland ducked back under the overly long outstretched arm and brought the spear up into the center of its chest, running it through and lifting it off the ground. But he wasn’t through. He tackled the body and drove it into the wall with several powerful steps. The spear tore through the plaster and wood to wedge in place, holding the zombie up off the ground. Green thought the thing dead for sure this time, but it reached out with its left arm which hadn’t stretched out. It tried to curl inwards to grab Roland, its jaw unhinged and stretched out wide as teeth started to form in an attempt to consume his entire upper body in a single bite. Roland dropped to the ground just in time as its arms snapped closed and its teeth sunk into its own flesh. He slid back away from the monster and pushed himself up at the same time in an unnatural way that was far too fluid and smooth to be possible for a human.

Roland stood tall, took a deep breath, then screamed. A snap of his fingers as he waved his hand across the front of his body created a small spark, which ignited the plume of flammable gas that spewed from Roland’s mouth as he screamed. The sudden light and awkward angle made Roland look like a dragon for a few seconds as he literally roasted the monster alive with fire breath. It swung at Roland with its stretched arm, but he ducked under the swing then jumped over the backhanded swipe, all the while maintaining a constant stream of fire. The monster looked like it was going to pull the fist back to try another punch, but the arm dropped to the ground, flesh slumping as its shoulder practically liquified and the arm detached completely. Now it was dead.

Roland stopped screaming and the torrent of flame cut out, leaving him coughing and gasping for breath. "I heard carriers could throw fireballs," Green started, getting off his ass and reloading the SMG. "But I had no idea we were capable of that."

"Extra lung that builds up methane," Roland said before coughing. "Highly pressurized and propelled out by the air in my lungs that can operate independently of each other for a constant stream of air."

"No way there's enough space in your body for an extra lung with the capacity for that."

"I rearranged my organs, took out the small intestines, and adapted the large intestine to do the job of both. Lowered down everything else to take the place except the lungs and heart, then created the new lung in the open space I also had to remove my bottom ribs to make it fit, but that just makes me more flexible.."

"You removed your ribs? Does that mean you can suck your own-"

"Get your mind out of the gutter," Roland yelled as he ripped the spear out of the wall. "Start draining the ones in the hall. If they're setting ambushes then we've been made. It's only a matter of time before they try a more direct approach."

"They can coordinate their attacks?"

"Like a pack of wolves. Now get going."