Jennifer doubled over on the counter, elbows resting on the top of it as she grasped her head. The pain in her head was like a migraine, forcing her eyes shut and her teeth gritted. She could hear Madeline call out, "Doctor Xiao!" in a very worried tone of voice, but at that moment she and the rest of the lab seemed..."far away" would be the best way to describe it, hazy like a dream. Jennifer didn't know how long this fog of pain lasted, but it wasn't sound that would be the first to return to her senses -- no, rather the first sensation she was able to distinguish out as the pain started to recede was...sweetness? That was the first word that came to mind. Like the aroma that she had smelled back in her apartment's shower, when she discovered this whole thing in the first place. But Jennifer was sure that she hadn't brought any food into the lab, sugary or otherwise, and she was sure Madeleine would also not be so lax about sanitation procedures, especially on projects of a biological nature. So why was she smelling sugar at such a sharp scent? And why did this scent seem to come from behind her? Why was she even able to come up with that kind of description?
"Doctor Xiao?" Madeline's voice came back clearer, the pain having mostly faded away but the heat in her head still being felt. "Are you alright?" Jennifer looked up and opened her eyes to see the plainly worried look on Madeline's face. "Doctor, something..."
The fact that Madeleine trailed off, that her eyes seemed fixed at something above her own eye level, the symptoms closely following what she had felt back in her apartment, the scent of sugar that wasn't there before -- Jennifer could already hazard a guess as to what happened. "I've...grown antennae, haven't I?" Her words remained collected, all things considered.
"Y-yes, Doctor."
For a moment they were silent, though Jennifer could feel them twitch a little bit on her head, her subconsciously using them to gather sensory information about her surroundings pulling on her skin as they flailed about. "Madeline, get the camera. We need to...document this."
"Yes, Doctor." Madeleine hurried to get the camera while Jennifer, having regained enough strength to stand up, walked over to the mirror to look at them herself. Even knowing and bracing herself for what she would find didn't do much to take off the surprise of seeing them for the first time: two thin stalks of what seemed to look like bony flesh protruding out of her forehead, extending out several inches in total, both bent forward at an angle about halfway up and the tips darkened. Jennifer saw them twitch about a bit, her eyes scarcely believing what her subconscious mind was telling her that these things seemed to be a part of her as much as her own hands and feet. The speed in which she could subconsciously control and interpret such an alien part that minutes ago wasn't even there -- it was fascinating, relieving, and terrifying all at once.
Madeline returned with the camera and began snapping away. "Are they..." Madeleine started again, trying to find the words in the presence of such stark evidence that yes, this whole thing was really happening. "Are they active?"
"Yes, I...believe so. I keep...smelling sugar."
"Perhaps it's from the, erm...from the spots on your shirt?"
Madeline's careful choice of words alerted Jennifer to what she was talking about. She looked down at the residue on her shirt, her antennae twitching a bit. "No, it's...not that. I can smell the...spots from there, but...no, it's...it's like I can sense which, uh...direction it's coming from." She brought her head back up, letting her strange yet apparently useful new parts to get up in the air. "It's...the scent is coming from...there." She pointed towards the door to the lab.
"There are vending machines outside in the hallway," Madeleine said. "They have candy bars and soda, among others. Though, being able to smell them through all those doors and from this far away?"
"Perhaps it's..." Jennifer's eyes searched around the door for a moment before settling on above it. "Perhaps that." Her finger moved up towards a ventilation cover positioned above the entrance.
"Oh...perhaps, Doctor Xiao. Though even then, that is a very long way to be able to smell it..."
Yes...but even from such a distance and processed five ways from Sunday from the modern food industry, it was still sugar, the lifeblood of complex organisms.