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The first and only warning she got was a twitching in her back. A pulled muscle, maybe. Ashley wrapped her arms around herself. Partially for comfort, partly in the hope she would stretch enough to relax the muscle, and mostly so she wouldn't have to look at her recently mutated arms. The grippy pads on her palms kept catching on her sweater shirts stray threads, and hiding in the locker, as Leon instructed, had the unfortunate side effect that when any part of her forearms touched the claustrophobic metal walls they audibly clacked.
She was trying really hard not to think about that.
She could feel something shifting beneath her fingers. Confusingly muffled beneath the ones with claws and terribly apparent to the remaining human ones. Ashley tried to swallow her panic. If this was what she really really hoped it wasn't then adrenaline would just make everything worse.
Deep breaths. Deep, controlled breaths. Deep breaths through a mouth with teeth falling out and sharper ones growing back in. Deep breaths with those twitching… things on the side of her face pressing into her cheeks.
Her ribs splintered with a cracking sound. She could feel it happen beneath her hands, through her clothes. Something had broken off from her ribs and started shifting around.
She automatically slapped her hand to her mouth to stifle a sob but flinched when her lips touched smooth chitin. She barely had the time to feel disgusted before the thing in her spine started scraping against her ribs erratically. Like it was looking for a way out.
She launched herself out of the locker, stumbled over her own feet and fell to her knees. Whatever was waiting for her outside couldn't be worse than the claustrophobia of being stuck in that metal box. She tried to breathe the cool night air, let it fill her lungs and soothe her sweaty skin. But her ribs were constricting. Not a panic attack, she’d grown very familiar with what those felt like in the past few days, literally constricting. Something was tightening around them like a vice. She couldn't breathe.
After a moment of sheer, helpless terror, the pressure on her lungs eased. The relief didn't last.
The pressure started to push the opposite direction, struggling against her skin from the inside. Wiggling back and forth and scraping like it was trying to itch a scratch. The claustrophobia returned, but this time there was no easy escape.
She felt too big to fit inside her own body as it kept pushing and pushing, until she could swear she heard the skin of her back creaking with the effort of staying in one piece. She blindly clawed at the mound forming on her back, hoping to use her claws to get it over with and relieve some pressure, but couldn't get a good grip because it wouldn’t fucking stop writhing around.
She had hoped for relief when it finally broke through, an end to the unrelenting pressure. Instead, all she felt was mind-shattering pain. Ashley screamed as something kept pulling itself from her back, inch after inch, and was completely unprepared for the second breach of her skin. Or the third. Fourth, fifth, sixth - how had all of this fit inside her in the first place? She heard fabric rip as they shredded through her shirt. The things, now free from any containment, slapped wetly against the floor.
Ashley glimpsed one in her peripheral vision. A long curved black… tube? Tube. With some kind of veiny wrinkled membrane folded closely against one side.
It twitched a few times in rapid succession. A shuddering motion.
She threw up what little her stomach had to offer.
Ashley rolled onto her side and allowed herself to lay on the floor and cry until the searing pain settled into more of a persistent dull throb. Even when she had steadied her mind enough to think straight, she resolved to lay for just a little longer. This was bad. She had earned some moping time, damnit, and if she hadn't been killed by one of the locals by now she was willing to bet Leon had done his job and gotten to them first.
Oh god. Leon. He was putting on a brave face but she could tell he wasn't dealing with his own changes as well as he was trying to pretend. He was a really bad liar, for a special agent. She had to adjust. She had to be okay. Contrary to popular belief, Ashley was a competent adult and she could handle this without emotionally burdening her somewhat terrifying government-assigned bodyguard. She pushed herself back up into a kneeling position and tried her best to ignore the feeling of new sore muscles flexing in her back. Then further ignored the new dangling dead weight when she finally stood.
‘Woah, dizzy.’ she thought, absently. The puddle of blood dripping through the floorboards beneath her was the obvious culprit.
She flinched as a series of gunshots echoed outside and the things on her back all stood at attention in unison, forceful enough to send her completely off balance and careening into a wall. They relaxed as soon as she leaned against it, slapping against her back, thighs and all the way down to her calves. Jeez, they were long, whatever they were. She thanked whatever god was listening that at least she couldn't feel through them.
She should really inspect them closer. That way she might have some semblance of presenting a put-together facade when Leon came back. Soooo I did a thing while you were away… okay, maybe not like that. She mentally steeled herself and stared at the end of one of the appendages resting by her leg.
It had changed since she last looked at it, which was concerning. What she had identified as some kind of crumpled membrane had started to flatten itself out. It shimmered in iridescent greens and blues where they weren't smothered in blood. Now that she was looking at it directly she could see the long tubes were curved into odd half semi-circles at the end. Honestly they kind of reminded her of—
Ah. Right. Los Plagas did bug things to people. Her new appendages gave another twitch, a motion she now recognized as fluttering.
Wings. Sure. Why not.
She retched again.