Life was good. Life was, in fact, fucking fantastic.

Jake had settled into Stacey’s penthouse—his penthouse—like it was a second skin. Better than a skin. It was a kingdom. Ava and Gabbie were perfect, devoted attendants, their every thought bent to his pleasure. Stacey… well, Stacey was a more complex delight. He’d kept her personality mostly intact, but he’d dialed her sharp, scheming intelligence down to a dull hum. She was still her—sarcastic, proud, with a haughty tilt to her chin—but now she was his, and she knew it. She followed orders with a sullen, simmering obedience that was almost as fun to break as her outright defiance had been.

In the quiet moments, lounging on the sectional or staring out at the city lights, Jake’s newly enhanced mind—fueled by Stacey’s absorbed cunning—chewed on two persistent realizations.

The first was the constant, low-grade buzz of arousal. It was just… there. A permanent fixture in his slime-core. Being a weird purple sex-parasite apparently came with a factory-installed horniness that never switched off. It was a background hum that could, at the slightest provocation, become a screaming chorus. He didn’t mind. It made everything more intense.

The second realization was more curious. He felt… bigger. Stronger. Not in any one host body, but in his essential slime-self. And his control was finer, more effortless. It was as if each new body he took, each consciousness he subsumed, wasn’t just a vehicle. It was nourishment. A psychic protein shake for the primordial ooze at his center. The thought was thrilling. Growth implied potential. Infinite potential.

But even emperors get nostalgic.

One afternoon, while Ava and Gabbie were giving each other manicures and a pouty Stacey was dusting the bookshelves (a chore he knew she hated), Jake decided to check in on his old life. He needed closure. Or maybe just a laugh.

He took Ava’s body for the trip. It felt right. Using the spare key he’d hidden under the ugly welcome mat, he let himself into his old apartment. The place was a tomb. Dust motes danced in the slats of light through the blinds. It smelled of stale takeout and defeat. With a efficiency that surprised him, he packed every remotely valuable or sentimental thing into boxes—his gaming console, a few books, some clothes that might fit his female hosts—and called a courier to ship it all to the …