The nurse replied with a sort of ironic half-grunt, half-laugh.
"You didn't read that statistic about the sixty percent failure rate of plant serums, did you?"
The nurse lowered her voice as Grace's heart sank.
"Listen. You didn't hear it from me, but... there are those among us in the program who think it is necessary to publish... misinformation, you know? To keep people optimistic, so they will enter these centers without too much of a struggle."
Grace didn't hear the rest. Not because her ears had melded into the sides of her head, though that was rapidly occurring. Grace had simply tuned the nurse out.
The nurse took note of Grace's ears and made a hasty exit. "Hey, where are you going?" Grace gestured to the nurse, but screamed when she saw the green tinge her arms had taken. She looked a her feet. They were rapidly turning green as well, starting at her toes and moving up her thighs. She went to scratch at the itchy injection point, but her fingernails had dissipated. Her fingers were elongating slightly, resembling vines. Grace found it difficult to move them with any speed.
A large pot of moist soil was raised up from under the floor, and the table tilted automatically at an angle, allowing Grace's bare feet to sink into it. Grace's immediate instinct to step out of it was suppressed by a sudden thirst, and the thought that she would dry up if she didn't keep her roots right where they were.
"Roots?" Grace thought. Indeed, her toes were elongating, splitting, and branching out to form a root system that would support her. Grace's shapely green legs were now two sinewy vines. Her kneecaps lost definition, and the entire leg structure bent in a gentle arc to allow her to sit on the floor; the bones had softened into plant sinew.
Grace did not scream, though she still had a mouth. She had just become quite passive... not unlike a plant... Grace's vine-legs merged into one and thickened.
Grace turned her head to watch her vine-fingers sprout small leaves. Leaves appeared on her shoulders and 'legs' as well. Grace's heart beat faster, and her mind raced, wanting to stop what was happening, but not being able to muster up enough energy to do so.
The transformation sped up. Grace's skin turned a bit yellow, which deepened into a bright orange. Her mouth, nose and ears closed up quickly. Her breasts became more distributed along her entire chest area, and lines began to appear, radiating out from the top of her head and moving down her entire self.
Grace watched her body lose all allure and balloon out into a nearly spherical shape as her organs melted into pumpkin goo, filled with seeds. Her skin hardened and she began to grow, resembling one of those giant pumpkins at a county fair. She was nearly six feet tall, and six feet around. Her entire mass began to increase, nearly doubling to ten feet, before stopping. This increase in girth gave Grace more energy, and she began to snap out of her stupor, trying to cry out or escape.
She turned her head back and forth a few times, but her neck quickly ballooned out. What was left of her head stuck out from an odd angle, as it, with her still-darting eyes, hardened into the bottom of a brand new giant pumpkin plant.
Grace's arm-vine twitched one last futile time as two workers entered the room with a large pot and shovel.