Julius was quiet for a long moment, staring from one face to the next. His mother reached across, squeezing his hand.
“Julius, if you know something else you have to tell them,” said Tina.
“I don’t know if I know anything important but I remember one of the guys complaining that his, uh, penis was shrinking and another guy in the locker room laughed and said he should check the ladies locker room.”
“Why would he say that?” asked Suzette.
“Because they said two women in the women’s program were growing penises.”
“Julius, listen to me,” said Riley. “Think very carefully. When you saw these women, were they in tights or shorts?”
“Both. I mean, sometimes they wore shorts, sometimes they wore tights,” he said.
“Okay. Don’t be embarrassed by this, if you looked, and all men tend to look when women are in tights, did you notice that perhaps their vaginal area wasn’t flat?”
Julius’ face turned a horrifying shade of red and he looked down. He father gripped his shoulder and nodded at his son.
“This could be something very important, Julius. It’s alright to answer honestly.”
“I looked,” he said nodding to Suzette, Riley, and Brian. “I can’t be sure, but it looked like they had penises. I heard the guys joking about it because the girls’ voices were deep, almost as deep as mine and their breasts were flattening out. They looked like guys.”
“Jesus,” muttered Suzette. “He’s playing around with gender. He’s seeing a space he wants to fill, finding an athlete willing to cooperate, or not, and presenting them to the world as a different gender.”
“Did these women change their names?” asked Brian. “Or do you remember if perhaps any men changed their names?”
“I don’t remember any of that,” said Julius. “Honestly, I stayed focused on me, not on anyone else. I will say he enjoyed using gender specific curse words to humiliate people. The guys he would always call pussies, sorry ma’ams.”
“It’s alright,” nodded Riley.
“With the women, he’d call them dikes or butches, even asking if their dicks were bigger than the big boys. It was horrible.”
“Julius, why didn’t you tell us?” asked Tina.
“You spent so much money getting me into the program, I didn’t want to disappoint you,” he said with a look of shame.
“I thought athletes had to compete in the gender they were born into,” said Graham.
“It’s different in every state,” said Brian. “We’re not here to judge that. What I think Suzette and Riley are concerned about is that he’s doing this to athletes without their full knowledge or approval of what’s actually happening to their bodies.”
“God, those poor kids,” said Graham. “Do their parents, friends, family not even notice the changes?”
“Oh, they’re the live-in athletes,” said Julius. They all turned to stared at him with open-mouths.
“Live-in?” asked Riley.
“Yeah. Didn’t I mention that?”
“No. You didn’t mention that,” said Suzette.
“Sorry. The athletes I spoke of, were all living in a dormitory away from the gym. Most weren’t from Wisconsin.” Riley turned to Brian with a terrifying expression on her face.
“Brian? I need you to get with the tech team and find out who the hell this guy is. This isn’t something that the average Joe could formulate. Someone, either him or someone working with him, has extensive knowledge of genetics and pharmaceuticals.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
While Rory was working with a couple of kids on the chest press, Bull took a quick bio break. Standing at the urinal, he saw two guys walk in behind him and head into separate stalls.
At first, he thought nothing of it. I mean if they needed to take a shit he understood the need for privacy. But like all communal bathrooms, you could hear everything and thing he wasn’t hearing was someone having a bowel movement. They were peeing.