Quaranteam: Unbroken Mold (Ch. 10)

Chapter Ten

July 28 th, 2020

"So, you're telling me, these people agree to get married to people they've never even set eyes upon?" Tom asked Mel as they and the rest of their team ate breakfast post-morning workout. "How, in any world, does anyone consider that a good idea?"

"It's not like they don't know them at all, Tom," Mel said as she cut into her belgian waffle. "They've been talking to each other for days, weeks, through these screen doors, where they can hear what the other person sounds like, and learn all about who they are. They just don't know what they look like at all. But we, the audience, do, and that's where all the surprise and shock comes in, because sometimes there's all sorts of things they don't think about asking or talking about."

"Like what?"

"Like how tall they are. Or how heavy they are. Or what race they are. Or that they have a disability. Or, well, lots of stuff."

"And people watch this show?" Tom asked skeptically

"It's, like, super successful! They're several series in. And they've got dozens of spinoffs in loads of other languages, and sometimes those versions in other languages are some of the best ones! Like, take the Sweden one, for example..."

A good five minutes later, Tom, Nic and Ainsley (the rest of the Team were also fans of the show) knew far more about the intimate lives of two random Swedish people than he'd ever wanted to, but it gave him comfort that the individual personalities of each girl were still holding to a lesser degree.

"You're doing it again." Tom grinned as each member of the Team was in the process of cutting another piece of waffle in unison, their right elbows moving back and forth at the same pace and tempo as the rest of their teammates.

"Sorry," they said in stereo, embarrassed, as their cheeks began to match the color of their hair.

It was readily obvious that the eleven young women who had volunteered for the project had been irrevocably changed physically as part of the regeneration process. However, after the incident, the Meyers had unimaginatively called it synchronization it appeared that said changes were psychological as well.

The girls would move in unison, act in unison and respond in unison. They would all operate at the exact same speed, adjusted for distance or perception, and that was to be expected. Their coordination reminded him of the Rockettes, who he had the opportunity to see in person during a family vacation to New York city when he was in the 8th grade.

However, there was a major difference between his Team and the members of the historic dance troupe, who had to spend countless hours training in order to learn how to dance as one and countless more to maintain their cohesion. His Teammates did it instinctively and without any deliberate effort on their part. As they were acting and responding so much alike, there was a definite fear that they were having trouble holding on to their own unique identities.

Sure enough, Ainsley still hated cilantro, and Meg still loved the Dave Matthews Band for some incomprehensible reason. It was details like that which gave Tom and Joe hope that they weren't going to suddenly wake up one day with humanoid robots who'd forgotten the things that made them who they were. It could sometimes just be a little harder to get them to focus on those things, as if the conformity was their default and just easier for them to access.

From his place at the circular table, Tom surveyed his Team. Nic and Nat were closest to him, on his left and right hand respectively. Next to Nic sat Mel and followed by Mandy. At Nat's right was Ainsley who had Meg on her right-hand side who was next to Mandy.

Each was wearing their standard issue work out gear. A set of matching yoga pants, sports bras under an athletic tank top, and running shoes. Hanging off the back of their chairs was a softshell jacket which had been worn earlier for extra warmth while stretching and warming up. All six had their hair up the same way, simple high ponytails pulled back to get the hair out of their faces.

At first glance his team looked like any other athletic team in their warm-ups. However, having been on an athletic team of varying sports for most of his life, it didn't look or feel right, everything looked far too uniform, no pun intended.

"Let's try something."

Six pairs of eyebrows perked up and while their eyes narrowed focused on Tom. While their irises had shifted to a mixture of green and blue after their initial imprinting, post synchronization they had shifted once more with a green circle surrounded by a larger blue circle. Thankfully, with careful study, they were able to prove they weren't completely identical, but that they were awfully close was a bit chilling in and of itself. Still, they were fine with that, as long as it wasn't complete clonedom. "What do you have in mind?"

"A test of your coordination. As soon as you get uncomfortable we'll stop immediately."

"Okay," six pairs of shoulders shrugged in unison. After synchronization, all eleven women had become quite agreeable to whatever suggestions or ideas that their anchor had proposed having little or no hesitation whatsoever. Joe, had found this out the hard way when he jokingly suggested that they go on their morning run barefoot only to find his team removing their shoes. However, this deference to orders was only their specific anchor. For example, a suggestion given to Liv by Tom or Doctors Meyer would be met with a polite but firm refusal.

"Sound off clockwise from me."

"One," began Nic.

"Two," Mel continued the count.

"Three," Mandy picked up right as Mel finished.

"Four," followed Meg.

"Five," Ainsley carried on.

"Six," Nat said, finishing the count.

"Odds."

Nic, Mandy and Ainsley's eyes narrowed, anticipating an order.

"Undo your ponytail and let your hair down."

The three women in question reached behind their heads and undid their hair letting it fall down their shoulders, backs and necks.

"Four through Six."

Meg, Ainsley and Nat looked at Tom. He swore that there was a hint of eager anticipation behind their eyes.

"Remove your tank tops."

The trio in question crossed their arms, grabbed the end of their tank tops and removed the garment from their bodies. This left them with only their matching sports bras as the only piece of clothing on their upper bodies.

"Two and Six."

Mel and Nat tilted their heads.

"Put on your jackets."

The two complied, taking their jackets off the backs of their chairs and putting them on.

"Three."

Mandy perked up, happy to be given another order.

"Put your hair in a bun."

Mandy complied, picking up the hair tie resting by her silverware and forming a simple bun.

At the end of Tom's orders the strict uniformity between all six of them had disappeared, leaving each Teammate a somewhat unique look. While, they were wearing the same uniform per say but with a degree of variance.

"How do you feel?" Tom asked his team. Before they could begin to answer, Tom raised his hand. "One at a time."

"It's tolerable," Meg admitted.

"Ok? Can you specify?"

"I feel like I'm wearing a shirt that's either too small or too large," she said, fidgeting slightly in his seat. "It's not enough to completely annoy me but it's definitely enough to notice."

"Does anyone else feel this way?"

The rest of his Team nodded in unison.

"Ok, I want you to eat a few bites of your breakfast. But this time independently of each other."

Tom watched as the six members of his Team struggled to complete the task assigned to them, the mental strain on their faces evident as they attempted solo motion out of lockstep with the others. Tom tried (and failed) to suppress a chuckle. One would think that it would be more mentally taxing to work in unison yet for these women it was the exact opposite. Six sets of eyes began to glare at him for the gall to laugh at their misfortune.

"Ok, that's enough." Tom relented, refusing to wilt under the glare of his team. "You can go back to doing what you feel is most natural."

Immediately, the six began to move, intent on returning to full uniformity, albeit with a twist. Mel, Meg, Mandy and Nat undid their hair, letting it fall down like their Teammates. Mel and Nat then took off their jackets, placing them back on the backs of their chairs. Finally Nic, Mel and Mandy discarded their tank tops, leaving all six with their hair down and wearing only their sports bras and yoga shorts.

"Much better," the six said as one, happy to match once more.

Tom brought his cup of coffee to his mouth, raising the cup to fill his mouth full of the warm liquid and temporarily obscuring his vision. He'd regret it in the blink of an eye.

As he brought down the cup, he spat out his coffee, spraying it all over the table.

While his vision was occupied, his teammates had discarded their sports bras leaving them topless, their breasts clearly on display for anyone to see. He could feel his cock stiffen beneath his trousers.

"What are you doing?" Tom was quite grateful that they were the only ones in the mess hall.

"Following orders," the six gave him a smile full of teeth. "You told us to do what felt natural. We're quite sweaty and overheated," their voice dripping with the faux sincerity used when executing malicious compliance, or, as Nat had called it earlier, 'being bratty.'

"Put your tops back on," Tom hissed, hoping and praying that no one would walk into the mess hall.

"As you wish." His Team began to redon their sports bras and tank tops. Within a minute they were fully clothed and no one was the wiser.

While some part of Tom was annoyed at the stunt that they just pulled, he was secretly relieved and pleased at their antics. It showed that despite being amenable to his suggestions, they weren't just mindless automatons who would obey any order he gave them. The fear of them becoming that scared the hell out of both Joe and Tom.

August 4 th, 2020

Things had gone from bad to worse and Joe was most certainly not happy with any of it, but so far, he didn't have a whole lot of room to argue, as Tom had privately told him that in no uncertain terms to 'Not rock the boat unless it's already capsizing.' They needed to play the long game and give the Meyers enough rope to hang themselves.

It had come close a few days ago, but Tom had managed to talk Joe down from flying the coop.

Three days ago, the decision had been made that the smartwatches just weren't cutting it, in terms of leads and information. So, the suggestion had come for a different set of sensors to be attached to the women involved in testing - collars.

They weren't just collars - it was a highly advanced piece of technology that collected biomedical data across the wearer's body and stuffed with sensors, but it still looked uncomfortably like a goddamn slave collar.

According to Tom, it would have been worse. Apparently something had gone wrong, drastically wrong in one of the other offshoot projects relating to the Quaranteam Serum. Tom didn't have the details and wouldn't share it with him even if he did. As such certain members of the committee were once burned twice shy and pushed for the collars to have a shock functionality installed in them, so that the girls could be stunned and disabled if 'something went wrong.' If they were so worried about things going wrong, Tom had argued, they should just immediately discontinue all testing. That, he was told, was not an option, so the middle ground was reached, and the collars stayed, but the shock portions of the collars came off.

They were still, to his annoyance, collars.

"In order to help us in our research, we would like you to start wearing these collars," the male Meyers said, snapping Joe out of his thoughts as the Doctor brought them out for everyone to see.

Five pairs of eyes turned to Joe and six to Tom for guidance. It was as if they were asking them how to feel about this new development.

"If that's what you feel is necessary Doctors Meyer," Joe acquiesced, using his poker skills to hide the disgust in his voice.

"Likewise," Tom echoed his sentiments.

The girls smiled, happy and unperturbed about the developments.

"As you can see we've added name plates on the collars for easy reference," the female Meyer brought one of the collars for all to see. "We wouldn't want one of you to accidentally wear the wrong collar."

"No names?" Tom asked as he read the name plate.

"We didn't have the space and had to use serial numbers with an simple alphanumeric naming convention. T for the Lieutenant and J for Mr. Barton and a number for order of imprinting," the female Meyer said smoothly. It really drove home the fact that the Meyers thought of them more as test subjects than people.

"I know that we were talking about a ring earlier this year. I still want one but for now I'll settle for a collar." Liv fluttered her eyelashes at Joe as she handed him the collar labeled J01. "Care to do the honors Master?" A year into their relationship, Joe and Liv had attempted to introduce BDSM and roleplay elements into the bedroom. It had proven to be a complete and utter failure as neither could maintain a straight face while doing so.

Flustered, Joe clumsily put the collar on Liv. Only to find that when he was done, Tori, Clara, Anna and Nora all wanted the same treatment.

As Joe was putting on the collars for his team, the only solace was that Tom had to do the same for his own Team and he had one more collar to deal with than Joe.

They didn't have long to dwell on the fact that they were now literally collared, as the Meyers wanted to put their new diagnostic toys to the test. Today, they were heading out to the exercise field to do some outdoor testing, something both Tom and Joe would've rather passed on, but when they'd gotten there, they were told the testing didn't apply to them - just the girls.

Although the girls had a somewhat decent variety with their wardrobe, the girls had continued their habit of wearing the same clothes, the uniform of the day being a matching set of sports bras and thigh length yoga shorts while wearing their hair up in simple braided ponytail. Tom had joked that it had made them harder to tell apart, but Meg had joked that it also made laundry incredibly easier - everyone's clothes were just tossed into the same hamper, and everyone just grabbed one from the stack when they got up. But when they'd arrived at the field, the Meyers gave them large stickers to put on their backs, so they could recognize who was who at some distance.

On the field, there were a bunch of pieces of exercise equipment that Joe recognized from watching 49ers boot camp - they were NFL training gear. He suspected the NFL didn't really have much need for it right now, so whatever nearby sports franchise's training center would normally need all this stuff, they didn't have any need for it for the foreseeable future. Linebacker simulators, box jump height guides, tire precision step spots, the whole nine yards.

It was a chance for the Meyers to run larger scale drills and to compare the two Teams of molds against one another. Tom's Team definitely had more strength, while Joe's Team had more speed and agility, although both Teams were utter powerhouses that made Tom feel both safer and more nervous at the same time. In an act of solidarity, both Joe and Tom decided to try and do their best to participate as well, knowing full well they didn't stand a chance of keeping up with the girls, but wanting to show their support regardless.

Both Teams were given plenty of trials and tests - deadlifts, jump testing, timed sprints, charge force - and the trials had some fairly conclusive results. First and foremost, they were miles and miles away from what their former performances were, but more importantly, they were pretty much near peak performance in most categories for women their age. Joe's team had sprint times for 100 meters that would've qualified them for the Olympics alone.

"I give," Tom said, wiping sweat from his forehead. "You girls win. You can run longer than Joe and I can."

Joe, who was already sitting on the sidelines, waved his hand in defeat. "I gave up ten minutes ago, man."

"I couldn't give it to them that easily," Tom admitted. Although he was primarily a golfer, he had been on the Varsity Cross Country team all four years in High School. His pride required that he at least try to keep up with them.

Joe laughed, "Whatever you two did to them, they're better, faster, stronger."

"Well, we did rebuild them," the male Meyers joked.

"We have the technology," the female Meyers added.

"Too strong for us to keep up with," Joe said. "Too strong, too fast, too powerful. Any one of them could beat the shit out of us without even breaking a sweat."

"We'd never do that," all five of his partners said in unison before they giggled.

"Sorry," Olivia said with a smirk. "It's easier for us to just respond as one most of the time, but I know you're starting to think it's a bit creepy, so we'll try and not do it as much."

"For the greater good," all of Joe's team said together, although Olivia gave him a wink right afterwards.

"That's not funny, you know," Joe grumbled, although he had to admit, the "Hot Fuzz" reference was spot on, and apropos.

"Can I ask about something I've noticed, Doctors Meyers?" Tom said to the two scientists who were studying a particular instrument.

"Of course, Lieutenant, what can we do for you?" said the female Meyers.

"Is it just me, or do they not sweat as much?"

"Very perceptive of you, Lieutenant," the male Meyers responded. "You are correct - those who have gone through the Restructuring, as we're calling it, have less need to sweat. They still do, but not nearly as easily or as often. It will take true exertion on their part. You can see they're just starting to sweat now."

"Sure, after me and Joe are basically too tired to run another lap or do another pushup, then we start to see them sweat a little. That just isn't fair."

"Their metabolisms are beyond anything we've ever seen," the female Meyers said. "We're still learning what the pros and cons of this sort of experiment are, but overall, we've been delighted with our results, even if there are some... oddities that we need to examine further."

"You mean the flocking/hive mind behavior," Tom said.

"Calling them a hive mind is inaccurate, because as you know, Lieutenant, they still have their own personalities and foibles inside of them, and they do still have individual bits about them. It's just, they tend to work and work more as a Team than most Teams do, responding in unison, performing in unspoken coordination, much like migrating birds in a flock, or ants working as a colony to complete a task. But they still have their own thoughts and opinions - they just tend to be subsumed by the urge to work cohesively to accomplish a goal when one is presented to them."

"They aren't quite this bad when they aren't being tested," Joe said. "They seem a bit more like themselves, a little less... y'know... creepy Stepford."

"I agree. When there's nothing asked of them, or when asked inquiries about something they have specialty knowledge in that the others lack, they do tend to be more individualistic, more prone to doing their own thing, such as it were," the male Meyers added, "but when there's something that requires doing, they unify and focus together. That's a very useful skill to have."

"What worries me is how they seem to lose individual focus when they do it," Tom said. "As if they weren't paying any attention to stress or difficulty. That's a dangerous precedent for them to be setting in terms of 'acceptable behavior,' Doctors."

"So far, it hasn't been to their detriment, only to their benefit," the male Meyers responded.

"Sure," Joe said, "but I think you're only testing them in ways you want to test them."

"And how would you suggest we test them, Mr. Barton?"

"Things designed to break the flocking behavior," he said. "Things that require them to act independently, rather than collectively. Test them to see how well they function when they're all given different tasks to do at the same time, to make sure they're still capable of independent thought."

"Alright, Mr. Barton," the female Meyers said. "Never let it be said we were incapable of taking criticism or applying outside standards to our testing procedures. Girls, we're going to try a handful of new tasks now, so gather round."

Joe brought out a long piece of rope that the Meyers had previously used in a tug of war contest between their two respective teams. "We're going to repeat this exercise that we did earlier but with a twist.

"Liv and Anna. I want you on one side. Clara and Nora I want you on the other," Joe ordered.

With the four girls in position, Joe continued. "I want you to compete against each other and try to pull the other side over the line."

What happened next was unexpected. Instead of pulling on each side of the rope with equal strength, the four girls stood there for thirty seconds puzzled almost as if the four had never played tug of war despite participating in the activity just an hour ago. When the two sides finally began to pull on the rope both sides did so with nowhere near as much strength as they did earlier in the day. It was as if they had lost half their strength. After ten minutes of flailing about, Joe called it off much to the relief of the four involved.

Joe then proceeded to mix his and Tom's Teams, putting Tori and Mel versus himself and Tom. This resulted in him and Tom winning despite their partners' superior strength and physical condition. Tori and Mel struggled to work together, the lack of any sort of coordination proving to be their undoing.

The next couple of hours proved to be almost as illuminating as the tests the Meyers themselves had originally come up with, because it revealed several things the Meyers had as of yet been totally unaware of, all of which was going into Tom's report.

First and foremost, if the women were working towards a unified task with specialized subsections, like each person manning a different station on a ship, then they worked in perfect tandem, requiring minimal communication, as if each simply knew when something was being handed off to them or expected from them.

But when they were put on tasks that required them to independently operate, operate with non-Teammates or even worse, at odds with each other, their performance tanked, as if the idea of working contrary to something that the rest of them were working on was detrimental to their ability to think about it in a way that had appreciable results. It wasn't just that they were bad - they were even worse than expected.

Isolating them seemed to have similar problems. They were much easier to agitate, found it much harder to focus, as if being deprived from at least one of their Teammates for company was causing them significant mental distress. Strangely, if they were separated in pairs, they seemed to have no real problems managing. Having at least one other member of the flock/Team seemed to make everything functional and fine. But isolation? That was what made any one of them anxious and uncomfortable.

Their behavior when removed from the group made Tom nervous enough that he wrote a fairly detailed description of it in his report for his superiors, comparing their habit to that of a junkie in the early stages of withdrawal - argumentative, combative, sometimes unfocused or muddled, with difficulty following a line of thought beyond a few seconds.

For all the positives they had gained, this downside seemed rather significant. It would limit their use professionally or in a military sense, in that they could never be deployed in a solo fashion, nor could their sort of "intuition" as to what the others were doing be used over long distances. It was something Tom wanted to test further, whether increased separation in terms of distance had even more detrimental effects than the ones they were already seeing. He suspected they would and that to move them too far apart from each other would prove significantly distracting, if not even damaging, to members of these new units.

That was one of the other changes Tom wanted to propose - the people who had been exposed to this particular strand of the Quaranteam serum felt different enough that calling them a Team no longer seemed appropriate. He wanted to propose this new unit be called a Flock, for their herd-like behavior, but without sounding so condescending as to actually call a 'herd,' which sounded too sloth-like and too primitive. At least the term 'Flock' had some mathematical applications beyond the word itself.

Strangely enough, the adverse effects of separation were remarkably short-lived. The recovery time was almost nil, and it almost seemed as if the girls had forgotten about the separation as soon as it had happened, although that wasn't entirely accurate. They hadn't forgotten so much as the entire experience had immediately become fuzzy in their brains, with the edge taken off, like the short-term trauma had been regenerated over immediately upon reinsertion to the Flock.

Towards the end of the day, Tom made another discovery that the Doctors Meyer might have missed - the girls weren't tanning, much less burning. Their skins showed no signs of any sunlight exposure, despite not having put on sunscreen of any kind. They weren't even slightly pink, whereas Joe, who'd forgotten to put on sunscreen, had a rather red nose and face, even though he'd been mostly sticking to the shade. Tom, the minute they'd been told they would be spending part of the day outside, had slathered it on, not wanting to risk the burn.

At the end of the day, despite having been run through the wringer, the girls didn't even seem particularly tired, asking the Meyers if they wanted to run a handful more tests, making sure there wasn't anything they'd missed in terms of outside work.

"We can do this all day," Ainsley had joked, with a few of the others echoing a few of her words, and it didn't seem like they were kidding.

They were still doing the slightly eerie thing of sometimes talking in tandem with each other, two, three or even four of them saying part of the same sentence at the same time, but in slightly different pitched voices. It was like an intermittent dose of 'The Shining' twins, and if the girls asked him to come play with them, Tom was convinced his dick might shrivel up and crawl in upon itself in abject terror.

The one thing they were certain of after the days' worth of unusual tests was that they really had only just started to understand what the Meyers variation of the Quaranteam serum had done to their partners, both for good and bad. Their new physical capabilities were astonishing in terms of strength, speed and coordination, but the downsides were notable and not to be overlooked lightly.

Still, the Meyers' report was that, despite some complications, they wanted to be full steam ahead, with the ramping up process to increase the numbers in the test to start as soon as possible. Their report spent pages and pages talking about the benefits of the new serum, and how many applications they could think of for these particular Molded Teams, not just in terms of military, but also construction, demolition, law enforcement, education... Their report made it sound as though it was nothing but cookies and rainbows as far as the eye could see, with the downsides being negligible at worst. The way it was written, the Meyers were practically patting themselves on the back and readying their Nobel Prize acceptance speeches.

Tom's report was nowhere near as glowing, but even he had to admit that the positives were still currently outweighing the downsides, although he did reserve the right to suggest course corrections if the distinction between Team and Flock continued to be adversarial to the individual state of mind. Mostly, he said, he was worried that this might be used to form Flocks that would do what they were told, without stopping to question whether or not they should. Good old Ian Malcom.

Another quote, this one often attributed to Lincoln, had been lingering in his head for days now. "Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power." Tom knew that should he lose his moral compass, he and his Team could and would quickly turn into something unrecognizable to their pre-pandemic selves.

He was going to do his damnedest to make sure that didn't happen.