A Woman Named Marcus The New World of SwapTech chapter 6 by deleted_user

Footsteps. Light, quick, hesitant. Not the heavy, boot-clad tread of the early morning janitor.

Brent froze, his blood running cold. He was naked. Trapped. In a woman’s body in the men’s locker room. Panic, sharper and more immediate than the existential dread, seized him. He scrambled to his feet, yanking the shorts and underwear back up, his movements frantic and loud in the small stall. He grabbed the sweatshirt from the floor and clutched it to his chest, a pathetic shield.

The footsteps paused a few lockers down. He heard a metallic scrape, a locker door opening. Then a voice, high and tight with strain.

“Hello? Is someone in here?” It was a woman’s voice. But it sounded… wrong. Strained.

Brent held his breath. Maybe if he stayed silent, they’d go away.

The footsteps started again, coming closer. They stopped right outside his stall. He could see a shadow under the door.

“Look, man,” the voice said, and the word ‘man’ was uttered with a desperate, sarcastic edge. “I can hear you breathing in there. And fucking whimpering. Trust me, I get it. Just… just say something.”

The voice, the choice of words—it was all so incongruous with the feminine pitch. A cold, impossible suspicion began to form in Brent’s shattered mind.

He reached out a shaking hand and unlocked the stall door. He pulled it open a few inches.

Standing there was a woman. She was tall, maybe six feet, with a powerful build that was currently doing a poor job of being contained by a cheap, flower-print sundress that was clearly several sizes too small. It strained across broad shoulders and large breasts, and ended well above her knees, revealing thick, muscular legs covered in a light dusting of hair. Her face was strong-featured, with a prominent jaw and sharp cheekbones, currently twisted in an expression of pure, unadulterated agony. Her dark hair was a mess, as if it had been growing at an accelerated rate.

She looked Brent up and down, her eyes—a startlingly deep brown—lingering on the 49ers logo on his sweatshirt. Then her gaze returned to his face, her own expression shifting from defensive anxiety to a grim, knowing solidarity.

“Fuck me,” she breathed, her voice cracking. “You too, huh?”

Brent just stared. He knew that face. Without the beard, without the scowl, and now framed by long, dark hair, it was distorted. But he knew it.

“D… Dawson?” Brent stammered, the name emerging in that unfamiliar alto. “Marcus Dawson?”

Marcus Dawson. Starting left tackle for the Seattle Seahawks. Two hundred and ninety pounds of pure, mean-spirited obstruction. Brent had spent four quarters trying to get past him just three months ago. Marcus was also a regular at this private gym.

A grotesque smile, more a baring of teeth, spread across Dawson’s—her—face. “In the fucking flesh. Or what’s left of it.” She gestured down at herself with a large, strong hand. The knuckles were scarred. “Look at this shit. I was driving in my wife's car today because my wife took my usual car to the fucking airport for some goddamn sponsor meeting. Now I’m stuck in this… this Thanksgiving parade float of a dress I found in my back seat. My wife’s, I think. She’s gonna be pissed.”

She leaned against the lockers, running a hand through her long hair with a look of profound disgust. “I woke up like this. Pulled over on the 101. Saw… this…” she gestured at her body, “in the mirror. Nearly drove the Escalade into the bay.”

Brent just stood there, the reality of it crashing over him. He wasn’t alone. This wasn’t some personal hell. It was a shared catastrophe.

“What… what happened?” Brent asked, his voice small.

Dawson barked a harsh, humorless laugh. “You’re the one who lives in Palo Alto, pretty boy. I was just passing through. You tell me.” Her eyes narrowed. “You feel it? The… the empty feeling?”

Brent nodded, a sharp, jerky motion. The memory of groping for what was no longer there was vividly fresh.

“Fucking nightmare,” Dawson muttered. She looked Brent over again, a crude, assessing glance that was pure locker room, utterly at odds with her new form. “Christ, Halvorson. You got off easy. You’re kinda… hot. In a lanky, California surfer-boy-turned-girl kind of way. I look like my fucking German grandmother.” She shook her head. “My agent is never gonna believe this.”

The sheer absurdity of the situation, filtered through Dawson’s crude, pragmatic horror, was the only thing that kept Brent from completely shattering. He was standing naked from the waist down in a gym stall, having a conversation about his new body with his arch-rival, who was now a woman in a floral dress.

The world had ended. And the first person he met in the apocalypse was a six-foot-tall Seahawk with breasts and a potty mouth.

“We need to…” Brent started, but he had no idea how to finish the sentence. We need to find a doctor? We need to call the police? We need to find our dicks?

“We need to get the fuck out of this locker room before someone who actually belongs here shows up and gets the wrong idea,” Dawson finished for him, her voice grim. “Get dressed. Let’s go figure out how goddamn widespread this shit is.”