Gwen carefully lowered herself onto the sofa, feeling even more like a whale than usual after consuming an inordinate amount of turkey and stuffing. With one hand resting comfortably on her bump, she playfully snatched the remote from Rhys and switched over to the news. President Obama was about to begin his speech, and she was interested to see how it would pan out.

Then it appeared.

A face, wild gleaming eyes, teeth sharp enough to shred minds, a laugh that sent a spike of quivering primal fear straight down her spine. She closed her eyes, but it was in her head, burned deep into her brain. She could hear Rhys crying out and she reached for him, blind, her whole vision consumed by the face of a demon. Trying to disperse the image, she shook her head, faster and faster until she could not stop, her whole body twitching and convulsing and becoming other, something alien, something wrong.

Tearing, wrenching pain, deep in her stomach, powerful enough to draw a haggard, breathless cry from her even as she changed, her genetic matrix rewritten. She fell to the ground, brown hair changing to blonde, heart literally splitting, and a terrible force stirring within her.

A hand stretched flesh, ripped and tore at its encasings, gore spattering all over as the thing grew, and grew, and grew. A parasite, twisting and flexing inside its host body, bones cracking and muscle shredding as it slashed and bit its way free.

With a sickly wet sound, a Master extracted itself from his womb, bathed and birthed in blood. He turned to survey his mother, a half-transformed aberration that was neither man nor Master, empty and eviscerated, a life reduced to meat and bones.

Meat and bones.

And he was so very, very hungry.