Mary closed her eyes and took a couple of slow deep breaths. On opening her eyes... Yep, she was still a human centipede.
People don't just grow extra limbs. This has got to do with that warning on the teleporter console yesterday. Maybe I can find some way to fix this in Dad's lab.
Mary nodded to her reflection and went over to her dresser. She picked out a cute keyhole top that showed off her cleavage and settled on a skirt for her front legs. For underwear she grabbed a thong she didn't like and cut the string in the back. Some quick stitchery with some loose fabric and she had converted the thong from a standard form to one that had 2 strings in the back. She slid it up and into place - Each string in the back nested against and stretched around her 1st additional segment. A few experimental pulls and it seemed the strings would likely hold into place and keep the fabric where it needed to be.
She cannibalized another thong to make similar underwear for her 2nd set of legs, though that one had a clasp in the back too, and decided on a regular pair of panties for her rear-most legs. Mary hesitated when she wondered how she would get them on... Until an unfamiliar instinct came to her and she held the underwear back behind her. Without realizing what she was doing, she grabbed the thong with the arms on her 1st additional segment and after just a little fumbling got her makeshift thong covering her 2nd groin. Then, still following instinct, she passed the panties to her 1st segment's arms which passed them to her 2nd segment's arms. She easily lifted her 3rd pair of legs up as she put on her 3rd set of underwear.
This is surreal. I don't understand how I know how to do things like that. It's weird how natural this feels.
Mary turned her attention back to dressing herself and after failing to find anything reasonable to wear on the upper parts of her 2 new segments, she elected to simply wear 2 bikini tops. Besides, if she was successful in the lab, it wouldn't matter what she wore on the segments.
For her bottoms, she selected a pair of tight jeans for her rear legs and 2 skirts for her legs sans butts. The sensation of shifting and squeezing her rear legs into tight jeans while standing perfectly upright was yet again surreal. She was used to moving her entire body... But now it was just 1 pair of legs.
I hope Dad's still asleep. Wait, doesn't he... Shit that's right, he has that presentation today for the investors. I'll need to hurry up.
Mary quietly opened the door and listened. At first, silence. Then a few seconds later the sound of Dad's snoring resumed as his sleep apnea relaxed. Without realizing she was doing it, she used each pair of arms in sequence to hold the door open. She paused when her final pair of legs passed the threshold and gently closed the bedroom door behind her, careful to hold the knob turned so that it wouldn't make a click.
Suddenly the realization of what she had done struck her. That... I... Okay, so apparently my coordination like this is superb. Maybe this change wasn't all bad. Even still... Appearances are important.
The lab door opened easily enough using the same passcode as the previous night. Mary had no trouble at all getting down the stairs and silently closing the door behind her - Both things she was worried about, but her new instincts helped her effortlessly achieved.
This wasn't the first time Mary had found herself in a problematic situation due to touching stuff in her Dad's lab that she really shouldn't have. Every time so far she had managed to get herself out of the problem without involving her Dad. She was pretty sure that her Dad was aware of her shenanigans and had simply not stepped in - perhaps he was testing her, or using her to test his inventions, or maybe he was preparing her to one day be an inventor and scientist of her own.
Back when Mary was in middle school, Dad had been working on prosthetics and cybernetics. He had developed tech for a prosthetic that would self-attach without needing surgery and even more amazingly, integrate into the subject's nervous system. As a middle schooler Mary had found a couple of his test prosthetics - All crude mostly metal arms but instead of hands they had specialized tools. The morning of Halloween, middle schooler Mary, unsatisfied with her frankenstein costume, decided to make some "improvements" and attached 6 cybernetic limbs to her body including an arm ending in a buzzsaw blade on top of her head. She had gotten the hang of controlling the additions just enough to look semi-natural by the time her ride picked her up to go to the Halloween party. Her costume had been a hit, but the next morning she woke up with a massive headache as the prosthetics' integration continued and they started to conflict over nerve connections. She managed to locate and use the "abort implantation" function before any permanent damage was done.
Sophomore year of high school, 15 year old Mary accidentally uploaded her consciousness into an android. By the time she woke up, the android had assumed Mary's appearance and it wasn't until she saw her original body unconscious in the upload chamber that she understood what happened and why she was sending and receiving text messages and google searches directly in her mind. At first Mary was thrilled - she didn't need to eat or sleep and she had no trouble with her studies. She hid her original body in her closet. After living in the android body for about a month, Mary got an alert that her organic body was improperly stored and was starting to suffer deterioration. She put off returning to her original body for 2 weeks, until finals finished, much to her regret. Mary spent the first month of summer vacation weak, frail, and sick. She never did find out what happened to the android body; the next time she snuck into the lab it was nowhere to be seen, but the upload chamber and its fairly large attached housing are still there to this day.
Senior year of high school, last year, Mary found a gorgeous ornate necklace in the lab. But instead of a gem, it had a small glob of an orange putty-like substance. When Mary wore the necklace on, the glop periodically dripped orange splotches of goop. At first Mary thought it was funny and didn't pay it any attention - Most of the goop landed between her breasts; it dried clear, washed off cleanly and caused her no irritation or other side effects. It was when she leaned forward and goop started to fall onto furniture, the floor, and other objects that she began to notice something weird. She began hearing echoes when she was in her room. Using the scientific method she figured out after a couple of hours that somehow she was capable of hearing in her bathroom even when she wasn't physically there. She continued to hear the echoes even after taking the necklace off, and quickly dismissed it as a likely factor. After a couple of days she started to get periodic glimpses of her bathroom. A couple days later she was always seeing the interior of her bathroom, even when her eyes were closed and she was asleep. Then she started to hear sounds from all the classrooms she visited at school, from the buses she rode, the kitchen and living rooms downstairs, and many other places. She quickly became overwhelmed by the additional sensory information and after digging around in the lab found a pill that severed the link between her mind and the droplets of orange goop. She returned the necklace to where she had found it, in a container with several other necklaces and rings that each featured goop with different colors.
Mary looked around the lab. The terrarium and aquarium of unusual specimens on the side wall briefly caught her attention before she looked at the teleporter control console. She had recovered from some crazy situations before, now was no different. Of course, she was also clever and intelligent. Maybe instead of just trying to change back her DNA, she might revisit something she had done in the past, or maybe try something else entirely. After all, it wasn't important for her to meet the investors. She could claim to be sick and hide in her room the whole time they were there.