"I am She who dwells in all terror

the strength and the trembling."

—The Thunder, Perfect Mind

Chapter One

Dramatis Personae

Major General Mitch Michaelson sat back in his chair and scanned the news idly, yawning and attempting to feign interest. He looked up at the clock—only two, damn it. He couldn't leave before four. Not without arising the ire of General Shortgrass—and he hated when she laid into him. It was almost enough to cause him to resign his commission.

Almost.

He sighed, thinking for the eightieth time that day how things had turned on him, how he'd been so damned unlucky in Glenview. But it didn't matter now; all he had were the two stars on his shoulder and the paycheck that he received for hanging on long after his superiors—as well as the Secretary of Defense, for that matter—had let it be known that he was no longer welcome. He'd been demoted and shunted off into the bowels of the Pentagon, where he'd been handed a desk and a babysitter, and been ordered to keep out of trouble, and above all else, to keep out of the way of Sweeney, the Joint Task Force, and of course, the Society.

A different man would've quit by now, but Michaelson was the same as he'd always been. And when—he always told himself it was "when"—the Society screwed up and the JTF blew it and there was nobody between the White House and those giant bitches, then they'd come down and find him, and they'd have to apologize and eat their condemnations, and he'd have the recognition that he'd been denied.

There was a knock at the door.

Michaelson sat up with a start. Nobody came to visit him except Shortgrass—and then only when she wanted to reprimand him for sneaking out to the Ground Zero Café while he was supposed to be sulking at his desk.

"Come," he said, and the door opened.

A comely Naval Lieutenant Commander entered, in spotless Summer Whites. She wore her red hair in a tight bun, a not-uncommon look for female officers. She closed the door, paused, and saluted. "Good afternoon, General Michaelson, sir. Lt. Commander Elizabeth Stonewall, reporting."

Michaelson returned the salute, and said, nonplussed, "'Reporting,' Commander?"

"Yes, sir. I'm here regarding the Joint Task Force."

Michaelson leaned back. "Sit down, Commander."

The officer strode to the chair across the desk from Michaelson and eased into it. "Sir, I wanted to discuss the situation regarding the JTF with you."

"Really? What about?"

"General, it's important that you not discuss what I'm about to tell you with anyone. My C.O. let me know in no uncertain terms that you were the only one in the Pentagon I could trust on this."

Michaelson smiled. "Of course, Commander. I take it you're working with Captain Arakawa, then? He's the only one left who had any respect for me."

"Yes, sir. He told me to see you directly."

"Interesting, seeing as he's been dead for six months."

He had his hand on the phone. "Shortgrass must be slipping if she thought I'd fall for this. Get out, before I call the MPs."

"General Shortgrass didn't send me, Michaelson," said the Commander, who was now standing, right palm outstretched.

Michaelson looked up and saw the officer anew. She was familiar—remarkably familiar. It was as if he had studied her, had known….

He dove left just before she struck, and raised his service revolver in the general direction of his assailant. "Don't make me kill you," he said, hoping she wouldn't realize the gun wasn't loaded.

"I wouldn't dream of making you kill me, General. After all, I came here because we both have overlapping interests."

"Right. I'm supposed to trust you? Hell, even the Society has you labeled as Public Enemy number one."

"That's right," said the woman. "They do. And that doesn't make you wonder, General?"

Michaelson paused.

"I came to talk, General. I think you and I could benefit by combining our resources to destroy the Society. And then you'll have your sinecure, and I'll have my organization back, unfettered by my erstwhile friends."

Michaelson lowered the gun. "What are you proposing?" he asked.

Leah Jackson smiled. "Just a brief alliance, a bit of a morality play. In which you come out the victor. And the destruction of the Society and the JTF once and for all—and a return of the U.S. military to the primacy it deserves. The enemy of my enemy, right General?"

Michaelson furrowed his brow. "And afterward? When the alliance is done?"

"Why, then, General, we reach a détente—a few staged battles here and there, an agreement on spheres of influence and no-go zones—we reach a happy medium, with the League controlling GTS, putting it in its proper place, and with you, the hero who consigned us to our limited control. You'll get the Congressional Medal of Honor when we're through with 'em."

Michaelson sighed. "And if I refuse?"

"Why, then I kill you, and destroy the Society and the military. But it won't be as easy for me, and I don't relish the thought. Trust me, General, my way is better—for everyone."

Michaelson looked at her, sizing her up. He knew that he should go down swinging—that he should fight her at all costs.

He knew that. But that wasn't what he did. Instead, he stared her down for a long minute.

"All right," he said, finally. "What's the plan?

€ € €

"Excuse me, ma'am, but you're not allowed up there."

A young man jogged across the interior plaza that marked the entryway to the headquarters of the society. He wore the blue shirt-and-slacks combo that had become the uniform of the organization in the past year or so; his right arm bore two stripes, his left a Canadian flag.

The woman in question turned, and smiled. "I'm sorry, Trooper. I wasn't thinking. I'm—"

"No—I'm sorry," the trooper stammered as he saw her face. "Commander Thiessen—I didn't realize…"

"No apology necessary, Trooper—James, is it?" she said, reading his ID badge. She gestured absently. "I just hadn't seen it since the dedication ceremony. It's a good likeness."

The trooper followed her gesture to the statue behind her. The sculptor had chosen the moment right before The Coed had struck; it was a wise choice. He was simply standing, serious, arms outstretched before him, waiting to receive her blow.

The only thing missing, Teri thought, were the eyes—the sculptor had left them out. No doubt there's meaning in that, she thought. But she wouldn't have minded gazing into them again, even if they were only stone.

"I wish I'd had the chance," the trooper said. "Master Adept Chelgren speaks highly of him."

"He and Scott were best friends," Teri said simply. Then, "At any rate, I'm here to meet with the Chair; can you direct me?"

The young man took her to the elevators; as she walked to them, she looked over to the other side of the entryway, where they were working to ready another setting for another statue.

A few minutes later, Commander Teri Thiessen (Isis, inactive) was sitting in the office of the Chair of the Society, who was pacing by a window looking down thirty stories on the city of Chicago.

"Thanks for coming, Teri. It's good to see you—I haven't since Ronnie's funeral, you know."

"I know. It's been nuts—what with planning, and packing, and house-hunting…."

"How are the plans coming, by the way?"

"Good, thanks. It's not going to be a big affair—second time around for me, and Mike…well, he's not big on ceremony."

"You'll find a spot for me, won't you? I promise, I'll get you a decent gift."

Teri laughed. "No gifts, Sarah—and of course you'll be invited. I was planning on asking you to be Matron of Honor. Which reminds me—what do you think of silver?"

"Love it," said Sarah, smiling at the ability to talk about something other than force-status quantities, training for the Southeast Asia sector, the fallout from Laughlin, or any of the other ten thousand things on her plate.

"You don't think I'm rushing this? I mean, we've been dating for a couple years, and—well, I mean…."

"Five years this Friday, Teri," Sarah said with an emphatic nod. "Jake wouldn't want you to be alone. You know that better than I do."

"Right," Teri said, wincing just a bit. "It's just—well, it's hard to plan a wedding when…you know."

"I don't," Sarah sighed. "God willing, I never will."

"I hope not," Teri said. "We'd miss Scott."

"Yeah, me not least. Anyhow, I don't envy you that. But the times I've met Mike he's seemed like a great guy."

"He is. You know he's already told me he doesn't want Trina calling him 'Dad?' 'I'm not her dad,' he said. 'I'll be Mike. Doesn't mean I don't love her—I do, she's great. And I'm looking forward to parenting. But her dad was Jake, and I want her to know that.'"

Sarah mirrored Teri's bittersweet smile at that; but the pleasantries needed to end at this point. There was much on her plate.

"I didn't call you down to Chicago just to reminisce, you know," Sarah said, quietly.

"I know. What's on your mind?"

"I want you to rejoin the Society as an active officer."

Teri leaned back in her chair, just a bit. She'd been expecting this. "I don't think so, Sar. I've got a kid, and I don't want to go into field work. She's already lost her dad; she needs me to stay alive."

"I don't want you in the field," Sarah said. "You're too valuable to me here. I want you to come back as my Adjutant General. Bump you straight up in rank to Master, full pay plus a command bonus in the six-figure range, and a house in the Chicago suburbs."

Teri picked her jaw up off the floor. "Sarah—Master Adept Kensington-Chelgren—I've been out of the game since Madison. I mean, I have lunch with you now and then when you're in town, baby-sit Brit for Anon and Jessie off and on, but—I mean, isn't there someone else?"

"Oh, there are others—of course there are. But I don't want to pull Wollstonecraft off of field duty—she's too valuable there. Scott could—but it wouldn't be right. And with me somewhat out of circulation, we need him there anyhow. Chikara could someday, but she's been busy getting the Tokyo office up-and-running. And there are others, but…Teri, I need someone I can trust. Someone I can count on. Someone who I know will always have the Society's best interest in mind."

Teri rocked back a bit. "I'll need to talk to Mike. He'd have to leave 3M…he likes his job."

"I'll find him a job in the Society if he wants it," said Sarah. "Teri—remember what I told you about the Laughlin raid?"

"You said it was the worst debacle you'd ever been a part of."

"That's an understatement. I can't tell you everything—not unless you're back. But I can tell you that it's not the ferocity of the battle that concerns me."

"You have a mole."

Sarah wheeled, startled. "How—"

"—did I know? I don't know. I've always been perceptive."

"Hmpf. You've always been psychic, Teri. I shouldn't be surprised. But this is why I need you back. And as soon as possible. I trust you, and more than that, you have skills. This isn't charity."

"You wouldn't ask me back for charity, Sarah. All right, let me talk to Mike. Just promise me if I say yes—and I said if, so don't get your hopes up—that you folks will try to welcome Mike in. I mean, if I move him down here…."

"You don't want him constantly living in the shadow of Jake. Don't worry. I meant it when I said he seems like a good guy. And if you think he's husband material, he obviously is. You're one-for-one so far."

"Yeah," said Teri. "Thanks."

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He lay on the floor underneath the chair, heart racing, lungs heaving.

He couldn't believe he'd taken this chance. Stupid, he knew.

But he had to know.

"So," the voice filtered in, "what do you think of Charles?"

His ears perked up. That would be Kate's voice—which meant Lilavati would be under cross-examination.

"Ugh! He's such a prat. Do you see the way he always looks past you when he's chatting you up? Always looking for the next girl? One date was enough with him."

He sighed. Thank God. He'd just about panicked when he'd heard about Lil's date—Charles was handsome, and….

"I knew you'd say that. You only have eyes for one man anyway, don't you?"

He stopped dead.

"Whatever do you mean, Catherine?"

"Don't play dumb, Lil. I've seen how you look at Lloyd."

At that statement, Lloyd went numb.

"Lloyd and I are friends. That's all."

"Right. Like if he would ask you out, you wouldn't go in a second."

"Yes, but he isn't going to ask me out, is he? It's not like I haven't dropped hints. He doesn't like me that way, that's all."

Lloyd smacked himself on the forehead, hard.

"He's obtuse. And a bit shy, if you hadn't noticed. Maybe you could try asking him out."

"Well, I don't want to wreck our friendship…."

"Aha! And maybe he doesn't want to wreck your friendship either. Ever think of that?"

Lloyd was jotting down mental notes as fast as he could.

"Look, if he likes me, he'll ask me, won't he?"

Kate sighed. "Whatever, Lil. Oh, bollocks—it's almost nine. We need to get going if we're going to meet up with Liz and Lula."

Lloyd watched as the two mountains of women rose and got going. He couldn't help but notice Kate's short skirt afforded him a good view, but his eyes were on Lil's bare feet, on which balanced her smooth cinnamon legs, which arched into the heavens where they came together inside a pair of red shorts.

As the girls left, he slid out from under the chair, and grew to five inches tall. It was easy for him—he'd been able to do so without thinking about it since his eighteenth birthday—almost five years now, he mused. He sat on the floor and sighed, and resolved to ask Lil out when he saw her at work tomorrow.

Having this power was helpful, to be sure. He waited twenty minutes before he left their flat, making sure to sneak out under the doorway.

Hopefully, if it worked out, she might actually let him explore her at this size. He thought he'd enjoy that. He thought maybe she might, too.

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The sun had already set, and the Medina of Fes es Bali was dark. It was an unusual place for a Westerner to be at any time, and most especially at that particular time of day.

But that was exactly who was walking purposefully through the narrow winding streets of the old marketplace, as a nervous local walked on beside him.

"You don't know what you're doing!" the local said, quietly but urgently. "These women—they're like nobody you've ever seen. They have powers…dark magic. The leader is a succubus, I have seen her do things that are not possible in the ordinary world!"

"I understand what you're saying. Trust me, I know what I'm doing as well."

"Rahimullah. You are going to get us both killed, Mr. Chelgren."

"Perhaps, but it will be an interesting way to go, won't it?"

They came to a blind corner in the medina, and there Scott espied the group of women, sitting on the ground, listening to a standing woman explain to them, quietly, her view of the world.

This was, of course, unusual in the extreme for this part of the world. Sliding into the shadow, Scott whispered, "My Arabic is non-existent, Dr. Bouzoubaä. Can you translate?"

"These things—it is blasphemy to say."

"I understand. But would not God want us to fight it, then? I must know what she is saying if I am to defeat her."

"Ustugh fer Allah. She is telling the story of how she came to be here. She says…she was being stoned to death…and Allah (peace be upon him) rescued her and gave her power beyond power. A lie, of course."

"I don't need the editorial comments, Doctor. Please."

"She says she will show them how to use this power, how to rise up against the men who have abused them."

Scott nodded. This was what he expected her to be doing. This would be her role for Leah, above and beyond that of adept. She was an evangelist.

He didn't tell his guide that in some ways, he sympathized with her message.

"She says they will take over the world."

"That is their goal," said Scott, calmly. "All right, we've hung around long enough. Let's get back."

He waited a good ten minutes before calling in and confirming visual identification of Wafia. He wondered as he did if she was alone.

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Zoraida frowned as she made her way through the maze of tourists and clubbers beginning to pack Plaza Santa Ana. She had come here after finishing at the University of Castilla la Mancha; where better for an aspiring playwright to live than the Barrio de las letras? Her parents had given her a loan, she took a job as a waitress in a snooty tourist-trap restaurant, and in the mornings she wrote. In between, she'd managed to work in a few tragic-yet-deep relationships with horribly flawed (but irresistible) men. None had worked out, but she wasn't particularly concerned about that. Instead, she used the disappointment to fuel her writing. She trusted her skill with the Spanish language. And she was right too—she had skill.

But like other talented playwrights and novelists the world over, she had discovered that talent alone was not enough to sell a story. She'd had short stories published a few places, had one one-act play produced by an experimental theater to mostly blasé reviews, but nothing concrete. She was still working as a waitress four years after graduating from University, and she didn't feel any closer to achieving her dreams.

So as she turned onto the sidestreet and away from the crowds, she hoped that when she got back to her apartment she might find some inspiration to write something, because it had been three weeks and she hadn't written a sentence. And she was beginning to think it was because she had nothing left to write, and it was time to go back to school and learn to teach, or go into the corporate world and become a drone, or find a less-scarred man and become a mother. And none of those options excited her very much.

A few buildings before her flat, she passed an alley, and saw something out of the corner of her eye. A man, a knife—it was a mugging. Not unusual—Madrid, like every big city, had its crime. But still, the woman who was being held up looked scared.

She wanted to pass by, but she didn't. Instead, she turned and walked into the alley.

"Hey!" she shouted at the man. "What are you doing? Leave that girl alone, give her back her handbag!"

The mugger turned. "This isn't any of your business, but if you want, I can ask you for your purse too, lady."

Zoraida sighed. She really didn't want to do this.

"Leave her alone," she said. "Don't make me hurt you."

At that, the mugger laughed, a wheezing cough of a chuckle. "Hurt me? With what, your consolador?"

Zoraida shook her head. "No. My foot."

"Right, lady. I'd like to see you try."

"As you wish," Zoraida replied, and furrowed her brow.

The man suddenly dwindled to about 20 centimeters tall.

Zoraida took four quick steps and kicked him across the alleyway. He landed, sprawled, unconscious.

"Are you all right?" Zoraida asked the woman. She replied in English, prompting Zoraida to say, "Slow down, my English is not that good."

"It's better than my Español. Thank you so much. You saved my life."

"He was going to rob you."

"No. He said he was going to rape me."

Zoraida's eyes narrowed at that. She looked at the unconscious man, and stared him down until he was but three inches tall. She walked over and rearing up, stomped down on him hard, feeling him crush beneath her weight.

Pulling back, she spat on the ground. "He will trouble no more women."

The woman nodded. "How can I thank you?"

"Just—please, tell no one about me. Nobody knows I can do this. And I do not want anyone to."

"Why not?"

Zoraida shrugged. How to explain that she'd always been embarrassed by this? That she'd hated how she could change things just by thinking about it, that it made her different in a way she hated? Even Raul, who had claimed to be interested in such things, had looked on her differently when she dared reveal this side of her.

So she simply sighed, and said, "Just—please, promise me."

The woman nodded, and gave her a quick hug. "I will tell nobody—but I will never forget, and I will always thank you."

The tourist left the alleyway and headed out into the night, and Zoraida did as well, turning toward her apartment, knowing full well that she would write no more this evening.

Chapter Two

Signposts

Teri exited the Humphrey Terminal and looked for the silver Murano that she knew would be waiting. She saw it just a short distance from the doorway, and smiled and waved. She walked quickly through the warm night air to the waiting car, and paused before getting in the passenger door to open up the back.

"Mommy!" called out a cute, black-haired four-year-old that Teri quickly kissed on the forehead. "Hey, Kitty-Kat. How are you?"

"Good. Mike and me went to the Science Museum, and then we had lunch at Burger King!"

"Really?" said Teri, closing the back door and getting in the front, and kissing her fiancé on the lips, softly and quickly. "I thought Mike wasn't going to take you out to dinner as much?"

"Mike wasn't," said the stocky, sandy-haired man in the driver's seat, as he looked and merged into the flow of traffic. "But it was convenient tonight. So, how was Sarah?"

Teri looked out the window, lost slightly in thought. "Not great. She needed someone to talk to, I think. Scott's off on some mission, and Kelly's busy all the time with the primary, and Ronnie…well, I think she's short on confidantes."

"So did she try to recruit you?"

"Yeah," said Teri. "Yeah, she did."

Mike frowned, slightly. "And?"

"Well, she didn't want me to be a field op. She talked about me working in the Chicago office as her Adjutant General."

Mike raised an eyebrow. "You didn't tell her 'no,' did you," he said. It was not a question.

"No," said Teri. "I didn't tell her 'yes,' either, though."

Mike sighed. "Honey, you know I love you, and I want you to be happy—but we've been through this. I mean, it would mean moving us all out of Minnesota, and I'd have to quit 3M, and…."

"She offered us a house, and offered me three times what you make in a year," said Teri, defensively.

Mike scoffed. "Honey, I make about eighty thousand a year."

Teri said, calmly, "I know."

Mike looked at the road ahead for a good minute. "Teri, I just don't know about you getting mixed up in that again. I mean, the last time you were a part of it…well, you know."

Teri looked back at Katrina, who was now dozing lightly in her car seat. "Mike—what would you do if Pete or Chris came to you and told you that they needed your help, that their very lives might depend on it. And that they'd take care of you and your family, but they needed you to help them. What would you do?"

Mike sighed. "I'd talk to you about it."

"I know. But what would you want to do?"

"I'd want to help them. I know. Teri—I'm not sure I like this idea."

"I'm not sure I do, either. But Mike—Sarah would bring you on in a supervisory role in the civilian wing of the Society, if you wanted her to. She's said she'd match your salary with 3M. She wants me back, badly. And I know all the reasons I shouldn't go. But I want to go back. I think," she said, and then stopped.

"You think what?" Mike said after a minute.

"Nothing, nothing," Teri said.

Mike sighed. "You think it's what Jake would want you to do, don't you?"

"What? No, that wasn't—"

"Teri. Please. Look, I know I'm lucky that Jake's dead, because you'd never pick me over him. Don't lie to me. You think this is what Jake would want you to do. Right?"

Teri looked back at Mike, and smiled. "Mike, I'm glad I don't have to choose between you two. Because I don't know who I'd pick, and I don't want to ever have to find out. Yes, I think Jake would want me to. But Jake's dead, and you're going to be my husband. This is something for you and I to decide, together."

Mike smiled back, keeping one eye on the road. "Well, love, I think that we need to sleep on this. Think hard about it. And in the end, if this is something you believe you have to do—I won't stop you. But please, hear me out on why I don't think it's the best idea, okay."

Teri nodded, and looked back out the window. "Okay," she said.

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Zoraida leaned back from her computer and sighed. Almost four-thirty in the morning. Well, at least she didn't have to be into work until four tomorrow afternoon; she could sleep in.

She had written something; it just wasn't something she could sell. For one, she'd written in English, which always left her feeling somewhat incompetent and fumbling (though she actually enjoyed it in a way; her facility with Spanish was strong enough that she rarely fumbled for words. Having to recheck and think about her words carefully helped her writing, she thought. The same held when she wrote in French.)

The more important factor, though, is that what she had written could only be classed as macrophile erotica, and while there was a growing market for that, she didn't really want to become the Cervantes of Giantess Porn.

The story had been cathartic, though. She was able to get the stain of the night's events out, able to get herself cleared. She smiled a bit as she reread it; it was hopeful, she thought, in a way her actions had not been.

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Untitled

By Zoraida Abarca Vivas

Isabella sat down at her table in her kitchen. She was tired. She had worked hard at her job as a waitress, and she was already ready for sleep. She just wanted to finish a light supper, and then she would slumber.

As she ate, she suddenly was aware of a strange feeling. It was the feeling of being watched. She looked around her empty flat, but seeing nobody, she went back to eating.

There it was again, but this time, there was a small sound, like a mouse. She pushed her chair back and stood up, and looked around the room.

There. By the chair. There was just the tiniest bit of movement.

"Not again," she said, walking over to get the rodent. She expected she would have to talk to the building caretaker again. And just five months after the last mouse, too.

She picked up her broom and kneeled down to look for the tiny creature. She saw the scared figure, and she almost felt bad for it. But she could not let her house be overrun by mice. So she started to reach back with the broom handle.

"Please, no!"

She backed up with a start. Had the mouse just talked to her?

She put the broom down and looked in carefully. She saw that it was no mouse hiding behind the chair. It was a tiny person.

Isabella's mouth fell open. She was amazed. She had never seen a tiny person before, except on television. "Please," she said, "come out. I did not mean to scare you. I thought you were a mouse."

The tiny creature walked out carefully. He was eight centimeters tall, wearing only a pair of gray shorts. She saw he was strong and handsome, with dark hair and an unkempt beard.

"Hello," she said to him. "My name is Isabella."

"I am Germán," he said. "I am sorry to intrude, but it was raining outside, and I needed someplace to go."

"Do you need help getting home?" she asked, wondering if perhaps he had been shrunk accidentally. He shook his head.

"I have no home. My parents are dead, and my fiancée—well, she is not my fiancée anymore."

"How did you get so small?"

Germán sighed. "I was tired of the world. Tired of the struggle, of life. After Graciela left me, I just wanted to leave the world of the living. But I did not want to kill myself. I just wanted to go away for a time.

"That was six months ago," he said. "It has been interesting."

Isabella leaned back. "I can hardly imagine," she said. "Well, if you want, you can stay here tonight. Are you hungry? I have some soup if you would like it."

"I would love some," he said, looking up at her. "If it's no trouble."

"You're small. There is plenty for you," the woman said, smiling down at him.

* * *

Through dinner, they talked. Isabella found that Germán was a writer, like herself. He told her of his plans, that six months from now, he would grow back to the size he had been, and then he would write of his experiences. He told her of many of them: of running from two hungry cats, of befriending an old woman at the park, of foraging for food outside a grocery store, of watching giants and giantesses dance the night away at a club, while he hid under a table, watching the girls and wondering when he might be over his love.

For three hours, they talked. And Isabella found something amazing happening.

She was falling in love with him.

He was funny. He was smart. He was sexy, in spite of being smaller than her foot.

No, that was not right. He was sexy because he was smaller than her foot.

And so, as he yawned and stretched, and she did too, she leaned in close. So close that her face must have taken up his entire world. And she said, softly, "Have you been with a woman since you shrunk yourself, Germán?"

She watched as he looked at her, and swallowed. "I, I, I have not," he stuttered, his eyes wide. "I never thought a woman could want me at this size."

"And what if a woman told you she did?"

"I do not know. I do not know what I would do."

"What if I told you I did?"

Germán looked up at Isabella, mouth wide open. After a moment, he asked, simply, "Why?"

"Why would I tell you that? Well, you are brave, funny, handsome, smart, sexy, and you have good taste in literature. That, for me, is quite enough to want to be with someone. Of course, I won't pressure you. But if you are interested…."

Germán looked up at her. She could see him breathing hard. "I have wondered," he said, cautiously, "what it would be like to see a beautiful woman at this size. To try to make her happy. But I fear that I would not be able to satisfy you."

Isabella laughed, and put a kiss on his forehead. "If all else fails, I can satisfy myself. But you are creative. I think you might just be able to do the job."

Germán smiled. "If you are willing to have me," he said.

"Come," Isabella replied. "Let's go to my room."

* * *

He dropped his shorts on her nightstand; she disrobed entirely, and they faced each other.

She smiled as she saw he was already attracted to her. It was tiny, yes, but it was fully erect, and she wondered if she could feel it at all were he to try to insert it.

At any rate, she didn't wait. She grabbed him, and set him astride her right nipple. She heard the yelp from him, but ignored him, and instead leaned back enough that he would not fall.

He reached down, and she stared down, watching his tiny bottom shift as he touched her nipple carefully. She moaned softly. It felt good.

He suddenly pushed himself up, so he stood on her nipple, and he spun around to face her. He slid back down, and she did feel his tiny member as it slid down her breast. It tickled, but in a lovely way.

He smiled up at her. "I want to see you," he said. "I like to see my lovers."

She reached down, and touched his bottom, urging him on. He began to rub himself on her breast, and she lay back on the bed, feeling him push against her, feeling him gratify himself, and feeling her vagina growing moist, knowing how much she presented to him.

He stopped short of orgasm, and instead rolled into the valley between her hills. Standing up, he said, "Those are nice, but I think there's somewhere I should go first—if you will have me there."

"I am yours to survey," she said, with a wink. And so he walked down her stomach to her bush, and slid down her front, causing her to gasp in surprise, even though she knew it was coming.

She felt him turn himself around, and slide his legs in under her. Then she felt his tiny member enter her bottom, while his hands began to caress and stroke her pussy.

She had never enjoyed anal sex, but she found he was endowed in such a way that yes, it did feel nice. And his hands slid over her pussy, which was wetter and wetter, and soon enough he touched her clitoris, and then it was all she could do not to shout with joy, as she felt him pump his tiny load into her behind while he stroked her. And soon enough, she was bathing him in her juice, and soon enough, they were both done, and she lay back, tired and smiling, feeling the tiny man curled up against the hair by her pussy.

She wondered as she fell asleep if he would still be there in the morning, or if he would be gone. She hoped he would stay, but if he had to go, she hoped they would meet again someday. She had enjoyed herself, and she thought he had too.

€ € €

Zoraida smiled. It wasn't bad. Oh, she'd written better, and it could probably stand some editing, but she was just giving it away. So she saved the file—changing the title to "One Night Stand" and her name to "Bella Gigante," the name she had chosen to be her pen name in the giantess community—and she uploaded the file.

Happy that at least something had come of the evening, Zoraida turned off the computer, and went to sleep.

€ € €

It was but four hours later that Scott sipped the cloying mint tea, trying to decide what the next step should be.

It was easy to say that the next step was simply to Stop Wafia, but he knew better than that. For one thing, he didn't relish the idea of going one-on-one with another adept. And while he could call Sarah for back-up, he didn't want to risk either of them.

More than that, though, he knew that just stopping Wafia wasn't enough. She was a pawn in Leah Jackson's game. Okay, maybe a rook, but the analogy was still the same. Wafia wasn't the one they were after, not ultimately. And while taking her out would be nice, it wouldn't ultimately take out the queen.

No, he needed to do something daring.

"So, Dr. Bouzoubaä, do you think you can get me back to that group tonight?"

"I would prefer not to, Mr. Chelgren. But I will if you ask me to."

"I am," Scott said. "I think I have an idea."

€ € €

Lilavati sat down at her desk, and sighed. Stupid to go out clubbing when you had to be in at nine the next day. She wasn't eighteen anymore, she thought, trying to ignore the fact that she was declaring herself an old woman at twenty-five.

Still, she was glad as her computer booted up that she'd done something with herself last night. She was certainly not looking forward to a day of loan processing. But it was what it was.

"Hey, Lil," came a voice from behind her. She turned in her chair, and smiled at Lloyd.

"Hey, yourself. You seem cheery today."

"Yeah, well…I've come to a decision. It might end up making this a really good day, or a really bad one."

"Really?" Lil said, bemused. Lloyd was given to grandiose pronouncements, and she was curious where he was going with this.

"Really. It's going to depend largely on what you're doing tonight."

"Oh, Lloyd, I'd love to go see a movie, but Kate wanted to go out to dinner."

"Well, cancel it. I'd like to go out with you tonight."

"Lloyd, I can't cancel it. I mean, Kate's my friend too, and she's got first call on it."

"I don't mean go out as friends, Lil."

Lil started to speak, and then stopped. Instead, she simply stared at Lloyd for a moment.

"I, uh," he said, "I've felt this way for some time, but haven't known how to say it. Lil, I'd like to go on a date with you. Perhaps many dates with you. If you'd like to do so. If not, well—I mean, I still like you as a friend, it's not like I've just been biding my time, looking to seduce you with kindness, so I still want to be friends if you don't feel that way, but—"

"Lloyd," Lil said, "shut up."

Lloyd shut up.

"It's about bloody time," she said, smiling. "Meet me at my flat at seven. Don't be late. And bring a change of clothes."

"A change of—" Lloyd said, then he stopped. And smiled. "Ah. Yes."

€ € €

Teri was accustomed to being semi-lucid in her dreams. She knew when she was dreaming, and when things got difficult or scary, she was quite capable of steering her dreams in any way she wanted them to go. Indeed, she had found through the years that she could do so with almost any dream.

But she didn't.

She knew that dreams were the mind's way of telling you things you already knew, but didn't know you knew. She knew that where her subconscious stretched out and met the wider world, where she became aware of the afterlife and the future, that these things could manifest in dreams. And so she was usually content to simply observe her dreams, observe her actions, and try to figure out what they meant later.

Tonight's dream was very vivid, as she might have expected it would be. She was at a baby shower. Ronnie was there, and Sarah, and Karen and Susi and her mom and grandma. And Trina was there, though it was a baby shower for her.

Still, she looked down and saw she was pregnant. Dream logic. In its own way, she loved it.

"And the next present will require Katrina to leave the room, and the rest of us, too," said Sarah, smiling, as she handed Teri a package wrapped in silver.

As she grabbed the package, the room melted away, as did her pregnancy. She lifted the lid, and inside was the living room of a dollhouse, with two tiny men seated inside.

Mike and Jake.

"Hey, honey!" they said in unison.

"Hi, guys! What are you here for?"

"To make you happy," they said together, and then the package dissolved, and she felt both of them exploring her, probing her, touching her tenderly. She thought she could tell who was who. Maybe.

The dream was like that for a long time, pleasant and comforting. And then, suddenly, she was walking down a street, looking for someone.

There. By the lamp post. A woman with red hair leaned against it, waiting for her. She turned, and smiled.

"About time you got here," said the woman. "Do you think this will work?"

"It has to, Liz," Teri replied. "I just hope I know what I'm doing."

"You do," Liz Anderson said, calmly. "I just hope I can keep things under control."

Teri awoke, gasping.

She reached for her dream journal, and began to scribble furiously, while her fiancé snored softly beside her.

She didn't know what it meant.

All she knew was that she needed to figure it out.

Chapter Three

Entropy

Sarah got off the elevator, groaning quietly as she noted for the eighth time that morning that she was getting to the office while it was still dark out.  In Chicago in May, that took some doing; the clocks showed a local time of 4:58, and she thought it felt closer to one in the morning.  She yawned, and shook her head, knowing her day would last late into the evening—she would probably leave about the time the sun was setting.

She passed by Operations, and stuck her head in the room.  "Report?" she asked, idly, to the watch officer.

"Master Adept Chelgren has a priority two communication for you as soon as you get in, Madam Chair," replied the young Commander, sweeping her hair out of her eyes.  "Otherwise, things are pretty quiet.  We did see a small spike of activity in Madrid last night."

"Really?  Anything we should worry about, Alice?"

"I don't think so, Ma'am.  It was enough to stick out against the background noise, but just barely.  You know Europe, it's almost as bad as North America right now."

"Understood.  Any reports out of Tokyo?"

"Teacher Wakahisa reports nothing out of the ordinary in the Asian sector.  Shall I get Master Adept Chelgren on the line for you?"

"Scott can hang out for a few minutes.  If it was really important, he would've called me at home.  Get him on the line for me at oh-five-twenty.  You can stand down from overall command for the moment, Commander; however, you still have Ops."

"Yes, Ma'am."

Sarah continued into her office, hit the lights, grabbed a Tab Energy out of her mini-fridge and a breakfast bar out of her drawer, and fired up the computer and began to hack through the morning mail.

At five-twenty precisely, Commander Alice Richardson beeped in.

"Master Adept Chelgren on line one, Madam Chair."

"Thanks, Alice. Send him through."

€  €  €

Zoraida started the walk to the restaurant in a bit of a fog, the events of last night and her resolution to them swirling in her head.  She thought perhaps she would get breakfast, read the newspaper.  Settle her mind.

She had barely left the entryway of her flat when she knew that would not happen.

They were a few buildings down, in the alleyway.  Yellow tape sealed the scene off.  The crime scene.

It was her crime scene.

Keep walking.  Don't linger.  Don't look, but don't not look, either.  She was already playing that tape through her head as she approached the serious policeman, who simply waived her around the entry to the alley. 

"Nothing to see here, move along," he said robotically, in the international language of the bored cop.  So she moved along, pausing just long enough to see the police taking photos around a battered, pulpy bit of flesh that had twelve hours before been a mugger and potential rapist.

She thought back to last night.  She was stupid.  She hadn't even thought to dispose of him.  She'd done better the one other time she'd used her power like this—she'd disposed of the man who'd raped her friend Adora easily.  They had nothing to tie it to her.

Here—oh, God, she hadn't even taken off her shoes!  The police were slowly growing more adept at discerning the evidence of this type of killing; she knew, she'd researched it for a play that had died somewhere around the fourth scene of the second act.  There probably wasn't a trail of gore leading to her door.

But there might be.

Suddenly, she felt someone brush her shoulder.  "Keep going," the unfamiliar voice said in English.  "Up two blocks, you'll see a blue Renault wagon with an American flag sticker in the window.  Get in the back."

"Who are you?" Zoraida muttered.

"A friend.  Please, trust me."

Zoraida felt her turn away abruptly.  She kept walking, her eyes peeled for a blue Renault wagon and an American flag.

€  €  €

Scott pretty much expected his wife's answer.

"That, my love, is possibly the stupidest idea you've ever had.  Even stupider than the time you ran away from me my freshman year.  And I never thought you could get stupider than that."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence, Sar.  You always make me feel all mushy too."

He could see her rolling her eyes on the other side of the world.  "Scott, for crying out loud, the level of risk in this is…well, it's off the charts.  I don't want to risk losing our best field agent—not to mention my husband, honey—on a huge gamble.  At least take back up."

"You said it yourself, Sarah.  It's a huge gamble.  I don't want us risking Wollstonecraft or Chikara or Anon or anyone else.  I can handle myself.  You beat her pretty soundly last time, and I'm almost as strong as you are."

"Right.  Scott—"

"Sarah, please, listen to me.  I know what I'm doing here, okay?  This might be our best chance to figure out, not just where Wafia is, but where Jackson is to boot.  We won't get a better chance than this."

He knew Sarah agreed with him, because she didn't say anything for some time.  Finally, she said, "Well, wait—I'll come with you."

"Sweet Zombie Jesus, Sarah, no!  We're not risking you on this.  You've got enough on your plate.  I can handle myself."

"I don't know."

"Sarah, if I was Ana, or Sadako, or even Jana, would you be telling them no?"

"No, Scott.  But I'm not married to any of them."

"I know, Sarah," he said, "but you have to treat me like you're not married to me.  At least on stuff like this."

"I know," Sarah said, quietly and firmly.  "All right.  Oberon, you've talked me into your stupid plan.  Approved.  Now don't you dare not come back to me at the end of this, okay?"

"It's a deal," said Scott.  "I love you."

"I love you too, honey."

"Thanks.  I'll see you in a week.  Oberon out."

He hung up the satellite phone, and sighed.

There was part of him that wished Sarah had talked him out of this.  She was right—this wasn't his brightest idea.

€  €  €

Zoraida slid into the back, her heart palpitating.  Two blocks was enough for her to run through the worst-case scenarios of what could happen.  At best, if they caught her, the trial would be difficult; she would have to prove she was acting to defend a woman who she didn't know.  And how to explain why she didn't call the police?  And how to explain the evidence that would be on her computer?

A woman sat behind the steering wheel, almost motionless, but familiar.  She wore her brown hair short, the same as the woman the night before, because, of course, that was who she was.

"Hello, Zoraida," she said, in English.  "I'm sorry, but we've had to move up the timetable.  Don't worry—you're among friends."

"How—how did you know my name?  I didn't—"

"We've been following you for a while," said the woman, still watching forward.  "Oh, and before you start to wonder—no, last night wasn't a set-up.  Just a happy confluence of events.  Not only did you demonstrate your power beyond a doubt, but we disposed of a rapist as well.  You're going to be one of our star operatives, I know it."

Zoraida leaned back.  "Who are you?" she barely whispered.

"I'm Alyssa," she said.  "We're just waiting for—" the door opened, and a middle-aged woman with brilliant red hair slipped into the passenger seat.  "—Leah.  All right, let's go."

After a long bit of silence, Leah said, "So, I imagine you're wondering what's going on, aren't you?"

"You could say that," said Zoraida.

"You're a woman with great power.  Great power, Zoraida.  Far more than either Alyssa or I possess.  We need you."

"Who are you?" Zoraida repeated.

"We're a group of women dedicated to seizing the birthright that was stolen from us thousands of years ago—we seek simply our rightful spot as the leaders of the world."

Zoraida looked down.  "You're the League."

"Very good!  You pay attention.  Yes, we're the League.  We want you to join us."

Zoraida looked up.  "Didn't you kill a bunch of people in America a few months ago?"

Leah chuckled.  "Yes, we did, but to be fair, they were trying to kill us.  Besides, didn't you kill someone last night?"

Zoraida was silent.

"I'll make this easy, because you're a woman and therefore have a brain capable of rational thought.  Come with us.  We will leave for our headquarters tonight, and by tomorrow you'll be far away from here, among friends who will work to make womens' lives easier around the world."

"And if I don't come?" Zoraida asked.

"Well, then we let you out at your job.  And you take your chances that the police are incompetent.  I would give two-to-one odds of that.  So, what will it be?"

Zoraida sighed. 

"Where are we going?" she said.

Leah Jackson smiled, and leaned back in her seat.  "Alyssa will be heading toward Barcelona shortly.  And from there—well, you'll see."

Zoraida looked out the window, not saying a word. 

€  €  €

Several hours later, a fair distance north of there, a man and a woman collapsed happily into each others arms, damp skin touching damp skin, both happy and spent from a good two hours of finally expressing physically the (now formerly) platonic friendship they'd shared for a couple of years.

"That was fun," purred Lilavati, snuggling up against Lloyd.  "We should have done that ages ago."

"I can't disagree with that," said Lloyd.  "Sorry it took me so long to tell you how I felt."

"Oh, it's my fault, too," said Lil.  "If I actually listened to my friends, I'd have asked you out first.  But I didn't want you to think I was pushy."

"'Pushy?'  I think events of about an hour ago would suggest you might be pushy after all."

"Well, I know what I like.  And you react to that very well, I might add."

"Tosh.  I'm out of practice," Lloyd sighed, leaning back.

"Well, we'll just have to practice some more, then.  Won't we?"

They lay together for some time, talking idly about this or that, before Lloyd asked, quite out of the blue, "So, dear, do you have any fantasies you'll want me to fulfill?  I'll need to know if I need to stock up on cream or handcuffs, or cream handcuffs, or whatnot.  But I'd like to be able to surprise you sometime."

Lil chuckled.  "Isn't that a fourth-date topic?"

"Well, we've done a bit more than an average one-night stand tonight, I hope.  And besides, we've known each other long enough that I think we're onto like the sixth month of dating, don't you think?"

"So you're saying soon the fire will go out, and we'll spend the evenings eating vindaloo and reading?"

Lloyd elbowed his girlfriend at that comment, playfully.  "No, of course not.  You and I just have significantly endowed libidos, near as I can figure.  But you're dodging the question."

"Well, it's just…embarrassing.  You tell me yours."

"I asked first," said Lloyd.  "But I promise, I'll tell you mine—after you share yours."

Lil took a deep breath.  "Well…you'll laugh."

"I won't laugh."

"You will too!"

"I promise," said Lloyd.  "Even if it involves golden showers, Hugh Grant movies, and pizza."

Lil arched an eyebrow.  "You have an odd imagination.  No, no golden showers.  You're not into those, are you?"

"No, and you're stalling."

"Thank God.  I had a boyfriend back in college who was into that.  Let me tell you—"

"You're stalling!  Come, Lil, I promise, I won't laugh, and even if I do, I'll still try it out."

Lil closed her eyes, and chuckled nervously.  "Well, we'll see.  I've always had this fantasy—oh, I can't!"

"Go on."

She leaned back.  Somehow, not looking at Lloyd helped ease her nerves.  "All right.  I remember coming across a bad American film on satellite back when I was in school.  It was something about a nebbishy boy who was lusting after a pretty blonde girl.  You know, the usual type.

"Anyhow, he'd come across a leprechaun in a beer bottle—don't ask how he got there, I came in halfway, and besides, I think they did it to save on special effects money.  Anyhow, I was about to change it, when suddenly, I saw a scene where he shrunk to tiny size, and the girl he was after sat down on him, not knowing he was there.

"Now the scene—it was rubbish, really, just terrible effects, really lousy.  But the storyline—he ended up in her knickers, and in trying to get out, he managed to give her a knee-buckling orgasm, right in the middle of her class."

Lil smiled, feeling herself get aroused at the memory.  "I'd imagined things like that before—being a giant, having a tiny man to play with.  But for some reason, I never put it together.  I just thought it would be fun to keep a man in my doll house.  But after that—well, it would be nice.  And then shrinking became possible a few years ago, and I tried to convince Graeme—the one who was into golden showers—tried to convince him to try it.  But he was more for the getting, not for the giving, and…well, now I'm getting aroused, and anyhow, I'm sure you'll say no, and I can't blame you, but…wow, I'm getting—woah…."

Lil felt something there that was not exactly like anything she'd ever felt before.  She opened her eyes and looked over for Lloyd, but he wasn't there.

She struggled to her elbows, and looked down between her thighs, where Lloyd was busy stroking her pussy, no more than three inches tall.

He looked up at her, and smiled.  "Getting Lucky," he said.

"What?"

"Getting Lucky," he said, stepping back a bit.  "That's the name of the—movie—"

"No stoppings!" said Lil playfully, pushing him back into herself.  "How did—no, wait.  No talking.  Time to talk soon.  I'll…just lay back…."

She did just lay back, as Lloyd rubbed himself up against her beautiful womanhood, feeling it with his entire body as he slid his hands under the fold that hid a very useful network of nerves.  He felt her spasm—a mild earthquake—and grinned.

A few minutes later, he lounged in the valley between her breasts, leaning up against the left one, listening to her heart beat slowly.

"How did you pull that off?" said Lil, who was staring at him with a mix of awe, shock, and bliss.  "Did you have some shrinking elixir on you?  Did Kate tell you?  If Kate told you, I'll kill her—right after I thank her, of course."

Lloyd shrugged.  "I don't know.  I've been able to do it since I was nineteen.  I just think about a size change, and it happens.  Watch," he said, dropping himself so small she could barely pick out the speck of his body in the candlelight.  Then he suddenly reappeared, and then some, back to nearly a foot.  And then, with a shrug, back down to the few inches he'd been at before.  "I like this size," he said, leaning against her tits again.  "It's comfortable."

"So what would you have said," said Lil, "if you'd have gone first?"

"It would've been much the same," Lloyd grinned.  "I would've waited to suggest reenacting Getting Lucky until we'd tried it a few times, though.  Not that I'm not willing to.  Just that I don't know as you want me in your knickers on just any day at work."

"Oh, I'd dispute that.  Tomorrow would be especially good—I've got a light load and no meetings.  Pity you work at the same time."

"I don't know," said Lloyd.  "I do feel a trifle ill."

Lil's face lit up.  "You mean it?"

Lloyd laughed.  "You're offering me a day to play with your pussy, just me and your knickers and your pussy, me trying to get you off as much as I can, and you're asking me if I mean it when I say I'd call in sick to do that?  My love, I'd call in dead to do that."

Lil's head dropped back against the pillow.  "Lloyd, will you marry me?" she asked.

"Yes.  But let me buy the ring first.  Besides, I know how I want to propose when the time comes."

Lil suddenly looked up.  "Lloyd—I don't know what I was saying.  I won't—I mean, I won't hold you to that.  I—I…"

"Lil, do you want to marry me?  I'm beginning to think you may not want to."

Lil groaned.  "No.  I don't mean that.  I—Yes.  I do want to marry you, Lloyd.  Is that stupid?  On the first date?"

"Only if we didn't know each other's favorite ice cream flavors, bands, darkest secrets, and ultimate sexual fantasies.  Right.  Well, tell you what—I'm sold, but you don't have to buy in until you see how I do tomorrow.  Fair enough?"

Lil picked him up off her breasts and kissed him, hard.  "Fair enough," she said, and she lay her fiancé on the pillow beside her, and they drifted off to sleep, happier than they'd ever been.

€  €  €

Scott crept by the gathering as stealthily as he could.  Truly, that was pretty stealthy, as the group of women dwarfed his half-inch form.

He saw Wafia ahead, and he pushed himself forward as quickly as he could.  He knew this was risky.  She could find him.  But he also doubted she would—he thought to himself that her focus was elsewhere.  His mind was sealed, his thoughts on the task and nothing else. 

Okay, his heart—and other parts—stirred as he made the pass between two enormous sisters, both in their late teens or early twenties, with their feet bare and their breasts swelling far above him.  He was married.  He wasn't dead.

He bridged the gap between teacher and students, and saw what he was after—Wafia's pack.  He slid himself inside, walking past a copy of the Quran, sitting beneath a copy of what appeared to be an Arabic translation of The Feminist Mystique, at least if the partial photo of Betty Freidan was any indication.

He hid there until the pack was lifted and moved.  He was doing what he had to, he knew; he had become a human geolocation device. 

He just hoped Wafia was too focused on her teaching to look for tiny men.  He knew it was stupid.  But the reward outweighed the risk.

Chapter Four: Acceleration

"So you're sure about this?"

The question could've hung in the air ominously, had Teri let it. Instead, she dnodded her head. "Yeah, Mike. I have to do this. It's just...I don't know, I can't say no. But I'm going to give you a veto over it. If you disagree...."

Mike laughed at his fiancée. "Teri, if I veto this, you'll never forgive me. I know that. Just...please, do what you've said, okay? Two months. If by then you feel the same, we'll put the house on the market and move on down permanently. And if not..."

"...If not, I quit, and come back here, and I'm done with the Society forever," said Teri, nodding. "Agreed. I love you, you know. Not many men would be as understanding."

Mike smiled. "Well, you're just lucky, I guess."

He kissed his fiancée, all the while terrified of what this meant for them.

* * *

The Gulfstream G450 climbed quickly out of Barcelona International Airport, banked, and turned westward. Zoraida looked out the window forlornly, and tapped her fingers on the armrest. She wished she had her laptop, or at least a pen and paper. She needed to write. To get some of this emotion out of her bloodstream.

"You should get some sleep," said Alyssa, walking over and handing Zoraida a glass of water. "This is a long haul. We're stopping over in about nine hours, but you and I are staying on the plane while Leah takes care of some business. Then it's another nine hours or so before we get to where we're going."

"Where are we going?" asked Zoraida. "I mean, if I can ask that."

"You can ask that," Leah said, reclining in her seat across the aisle. "But I can't tell you--yet. A long way from Madrid, that's for sure. Alyssa's right--you should sleep."

"Why do you want me?" Zoraida asked, for what had to be the fifteenth time.

"You can help us," Alyssa said, taking the seat across from her. "Look, we're working together to build a new world--one where women are finally in charge. Aren't you tired of taking a back seat to men?"

"I've never thought about it," said Zoraida. "It has not affected me."

"Ever been taken less seriously because you have a vagina?" asked Alyssa, brusquely.

Zoraida frowned at that. She remembered presenting a novel to a publisher. Her agent praised it, as had the buyer's female assistant. But he was dismissive. "Just another girl novel," he'd said, waiving his hands idly. "Nothing special."

"Yes," said Zoraida.

"Of course you have," Alyssa said. "Not a woman alive who hasn't been. I was gang-raped; went to trial, and they said it was my fault. Bastards got off, too...for a while."

She grinned at that. "Look, Zoraida, men have set the terms of discussion for the past ten thousand years. They've called the tune, and we've danced to it. Yeah, there are guys out there who are okay--and in the new world order they'll have their place. We don't hate men. We just want to turn the tables. It's our turn to set the playlist, and it's their turn to dance."

Zoraida nodded, quietly. "I understand," she said, though she wasn't quite sure she did. "I'll help you," she said, though she wasn't quite sure she would.

* * *

Scott peered out of the sack, trying to get a bead on what his oblivious hostess was doing.

He had been a bit surprised to hear her awake at five in the morning or so, especially when he noted that she did so in order to pray. He would have thought that given how many tenets of Islam Wafia was bending, daily prayer might well go by the wayside as well--especially in a more secular state like Morocco. But she had left the room to wash herself; when she returned, she stood, locked to the east. "llahu Akbar," she said, then bowed three times, and continued on through the ritual. Though Scott did not speak Arabic, he knew enough of what she was doing to recognize that her actions were not empty or questioning. She was affirming, as all good Muslims should, that there was no God but God, and that Mohammed was His prophet.

She completed by standing, closing her eyes, and barely whispering, "Assalamu alaikum wa rahmatullah." Then she sighed, and headed for the pack.

Scott swore under his breath, and darted backward into the gloom as a titanic hand reached in and grabbed the copy of The Feminist Mystique that had been his overhang. Fortunately, Wafia was not awake enough or aware enough to search her sack diligently. Instead, she walked back over to her bed and, turning on the bedside lamp, began to read.

Scott sighed, and reached into his own pack for a canteen and a granola bar. He'd have to forage soon, but not quite yet. He leaned his back up against the spine of the Qur'an and had a drink, and wondered what exactly he'd gotten himself into.

* * *

Lloyd waited until Lil had gone into the shower to make his move.

He'd had to reassure her three times that he knew what he was doing, and that he'd make sure he was safe above everything else. It was sweet, really--she really didn't want to hurt him, and he had to admit, it wasn't going to be totally smooth sailing.

This would be the smallest he'd ever been around a woman; he'd gotten down to two inches tall with Andrea, but only once--she'd complained afterward about being with him that way, and they'd broken up not long afterward. And there was the time he was bold and shrunk down to an inch and hid in the women's locker room--but he wasn't necessarily proud of that decision, and besides, he hadn't really done anything but look.

At any rate, she had left his target sitting on the bed, the better for him to infiltrate it; they were, he thought, role-playing. Weird to think of it that way, but she was play-acting that she didn't know he would be there, and he was play-acting that she didn't know, too. But that made it fun, and sex is 85% mental anyhow.

Okay, the fifteen percent physical part of this was going to be fun, too.

So he went over to her panties--a simple cotton pair, light blue, he noted--and climbed inside.

He thought she'd chosen well. There wasn't a need for her to wear anything daring--indeed, wearing something slightly more modest actually had its plusses. He moved to the middle of them, feeling the cotton crotch--and here he smiled as he slipped between the fabric above and below, because her scent was everywhere, and it was dizzying.

He grabbed on tight, and held on; he didn't trust himself to hear her come in, and he knew that she would be in a hurry to put these on.

A few minutes later, it happened. The panties lifted, then dropped--though not all the way to the floor. He smiled a bit, realizing that she was trying to be gentle, even though the motion had been roughly equivalent to a meteor strike. Then one enormous foot penetrated the hole to his right, and quickly another penetrated the hole to his left, and he was being pulled up toward Lil's vulva.

It was but a moment before the world grew dim, as Lil pulled the panties firmly into place. He was laying just north of her taint, and he reached up and touched her lips softly but insistently, hoping she'd realize that it was his way of saying he was in position.

The subtle wiggle he felt out of her might have been her way of acknowledging him, or it might have been just a wiggle; nevertheless, he pulled himself up just a bit and kissed her skin softly. He could sense even before he felt it that she was moist with anticipation. He smiled. This was going to be one of the best days of his life.

* * *

The headquarters of the Society is thirty-three stories tall, though a casual visitor might be forgiven for thinking it had only thirty-two. The Society purchased it in 2005 for a cool $433 million (partly financed by a sweetheart loan from FletchCorp), and retrofitted it to suit their needs, which were pretty standard for a multinational, paramilitary, pseudoscientific group with the power to alter matter at will.

Most of the building was office space, with a few floors given over to training, exercise space, a relatively decent cafeteria in the lobby, as well as a Starbucks and a library on the thirty-first floor.

The thirteenth floor's windows stood just a foot from solid concrete walls, and what natural light came in was reflected down from the floor directly above. Lights went on and off for show outside the walls; nobody outside the building would notice that nobody was there. None of the main elevators stopped on the floor; indeed the elevators simply omitted thirteen from the menu of choices. The only way on or off the floor was a dedicated service elevator that emptied out two stories underground. The elevator was guarded at all times by two imposing defenders grown by a 5:4 ratio, armed with not just strong mastery of the forces of GTS, but uzis as well.

Behind them was a lone gate, the only way into the bunker. Just inside that gate were another two guards, as well as a localized morphogenetic dampening field. Then another gate, this one secured magnetically, designed to shut and hold if power was cut. And through that gate, inside another foot-thick concrete wall, lay the detention center of the Growth Triumphant Society.

Walk into Society headquarters and ask about the thirteenth floor, and you'll be told it doesn't exist. It won't be a lie, most likely--anyone with a security clearance below Beta wouldn't know it existed, at least not as such. Officially, it doesn't exist--officially, the detention center is in upstate New York.

Interestingly, the thirteenth floor was also not on the thirteenth floor; I mention that only in passing.

One might not think that the thirteenth floor of an office building would be sufficient to hold the two hundred fifteen men and women currently detained by the Society. But one would be forgetting that the Society deals with size changes on a daily basis. And that would be a stupid thing to forget.

In cell 3-20A, a prisoner went through her usual morning routine. She sat, cross-legged, on her bunk, eyes closed, face implacable, and she meditated.

In her meditation, she visualized the things she'd done, the mistakes she'd made, the people she'd failed. And she cherished them and apologized to each in turn, a prayer for absolution for her failure of character. She focused on one person in particular; she always did.

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa, she recited internally, an old part of the Latin Mass, which was odd, because she was not Catholic. But she had heard the phrase once as a child, and it fit perfectly. My fault, my fault, my great fault.

She opened her eyes, and sighed, and swept a lock of red hair away from her face, and rose.

She pressed a button by her door, and waited. After a few minutes, it slid open, and a guard, a good head taller than her by scale, stood waiting.

"Good morning, Anderson," the guard said, dispassionately. "Stand straight."

Liz sighed, and stood up tall. The trooper looked her over, holding a wand out to feel any tremor of GTS activity. Satisfied, she nodded. "All right, you're clear. Have a good day."

Liz nodded. "Thanks, Vi," she said, equally dispassionately.

She wandered down to the cafeteria. It was a bit late for the main meal, but she could still get an apple ala carte, and then go to the library and read. It was what she did most days; the detention facility was actually reasonably comfortable all things considered--it wasn't a Supermax, certainly--but the Society figured that being confined was enough. As long as you behaved, you were able to wander reasonably freely.

If you didn't behave, things got ugly. But Liz had never lacked for intelligence.

"So, Coed, how are you?"

Liz turned, and sighed. "What do you want, Tori?"

"Nothing. Just wondering how you were doing, that's all."

Liz didn't like Victoria Stevens. And Victoria Stevens didn't like her. Liz--and a not insignificant percentage of her fellow detainees--was convinced that Tori should be locked up in a mental hospital.

Tori loved Liz, though, because Liz had killed more men than any other person in detention. And in interesting ways, too.

Tori loved those interesting ways.

"Look, I'm not going to discuss my kills; I know you're overly excited about it, but--"

"Hold on! Look, I'm going to group, just like you, missy. I'm not getting off on that stuff anymore. Although--" the assassin looked around briefly "--I don't mind hearing it now and again. Nice to remember--well, before, don't you think?" "Hmf," Liz said, unpersuaded. "I'm going to get breakfast, Tori."

"Don't let me keep you. Hey, Yvette and I are meeting in the commons this afternoon, we're working to start a poetry group. You might want to stop by."

Liz rolled her eyes. "Maybe, Tori." She would sooner cut her right arm off; Tori was a sick girl; Liz had killed for good reasons--at least sometimes. Tori killed for fun.

Liz walked into the cafeteria, grabbed her apple, and sat down and looked out on the artificial light shining in from outside the facility, catching a glimpse of a two hundred foot tall guard monitoring the dollhouse-jail she resided in.

Tori was right about one thing; it was sometimes nice to remember "before."

* * *

Lil squirmed in her seat, for the fifth time that day, trying not to burst out in ecstasy.

She had felt Lloyd almost immediately, or at least she thought she had. Just a flutter at the base of her vulva--nothing she'd ordinarily notice, save that she was expecting it, much as she was trying to role-play that she didn't. She'd gotten dressed and headed out for the tube, pausing briefly to pick up a copy of the Guardian. It was her morning routine; the ride to Canary Wharf station was a bit of a haul, and she had more than once debated moving out of Bayswater once and for all. If she was going to continue with InterNode any longer....

As she descended to the depths of the station, she had felt the flutter in her panties increase to a light brushing, this time halfway up her slit. She had thought she could almost picture what Lloyd was up to; he was on the right side of her, sliding between her outer and inner lips, slowly caressing her.

She had sat down on the bench, looked down at the Guardian, and smiled. She had had a feeling she wasn't going to be reading much of it.

By the time she'd exited the train for her transfer at Baker Street, she was feeling bubbly and warm, and Lloyd was getting close to the top of her womanhood. She'd grabbed a seat on a train on the Jubilee line, and looking out the window, she had smiled wickedly.

Soon enough, she felt him reach her clitoris, and then she simply closed her eyes and breathed.

She'd had to double back at Canning Town station, and she was twenty minutes late because of it. She didn't particularly care.

Since then, she'd felt him exploring her pubic hair (she was very glad she'd shaved it up the weekend before), felt him pushing his way inside her to the point she couldn't feel him anymore, felt him come back to her clit again and again. Once, just once, she'd gone to the restroom, and tapped three times on the front of her panties--their pre-determined signal that she needed to do so. She'd peered down from far above and saw him, laying back happily, just the tiniest of spots among a very damp crotch.

She'd smiled, and waved, and he had waved back, and she smiled even wider. She wiped herself more thoroughly than she ever had before, and pulled her panties back up firmly.

She felt him exploring between her cheeks soon after that.

Now he was sliding off her clit again. She was blissed-out and spent, and could barely even imagine what Lloyd was feeling. She thought about trying to make love to a man so big that she'd have to work as hard as he was working.

It might be worth it, she thought, for the right man. But only for the right man. The fact that Lloyd was willing to do it for her--well, she thought that she was a very lucky woman.

Tonight, she resolved she was going to make him dinner and spend a long time catering to his every whim; he'd more than earned it.

* * *

Scott wasn't sure why they were at the airport, but he was glad he'd acted when he had.

Wafia had received a call mid-morning; she'd spoken to the concierge at the hotel she was staying in; soon, she was in a car bound for Casablanca and the airport. A good long ride to the Mohammed V International Airport later, they were at a gate in the terminal, waiting for a Royal Air Maroc flight bound for somewhere.

Scott could only wonder where as they boarded the flight.

* * *

Sarah smiled as she raised her right hand.

"Are you sure about this?"

Teri groaned. "I'd like people to stop asking me that, please."

Sarah laughed, and said directly, "Do you swear to uphold the principles of the Growth Triumphant Society, to carry out lawful orders as directed, to defend those who need defense from the GTS arts, and to at all times strive for balance in their application?"

"I do," said Teri.

"Very well, Teacher Thiessen. Welcome back aboard."

Teri smiled, and shook Sarah's hand. She had a bad feeling about this.

* * *

The plane touched down on the long gravel runway, bumping along in protest that it was not the sort of plane that was supposed to land out here in the sticks. Zoraida stirred and looked out the window at a bright afternoon.

"We're here," said Alyssa, as the plane taxied to a stop.

"Where's 'here?'"

"All in good time," said Leah, as they prepared to deplane.

Soon enough, they exited the plane and headed to a waiting Hummer, and then they were off on a dirt path.

"I've never seen an airport in a town this small," Zoraida said, as they quickly passed by a few houses and a small school with an American flag flying out front.

"I don't doubt it," said Alyssa. "It isn't exactly a bustling metropolis. But it suits our needs, and the people of the town leave us alone. In exchange, we spend a lot of money in town. It works out."

They drove up over a hill, and then around to a simple gate, guarded by a lone sentry. She stepped back and saluted as she saw Leah; the President simply nodded as they were waived through.

"Welcome home, Zoraida," said Leah as they turned a corner.

Zoraida gasped as they turned a corner. There it was, a miniaturized city under camouflage netting--but clearly alive with real people. The car rolled to a halt.

"Would you do the honors, Zoraida? It's at a 6:1 scale."

Zoraida looked up, and almost by instinct, the car and its occupants were reduced to Barbie-size.

They drove into the fort, and Zoraida boggled. It was huge in size--far larger than the town they'd exited from. And it was populated by, near as she could tell, hundreds of women of all nationalities, working hard to move boxes and equipment. Working hard, but not hurriedly--there was an organization to their work that was immediately apparent.

"Welcome to New Myrina," said Leah. "We'll get you to your quarters. We'll have plenty of time for discussion tomorrow."

* * *

Lil embraced Lloyd once he was back to normal size, sniffed him, and laughed. "Oi! Someone needs a shower. You smell like you've been living in someone's panties!"

Lloyd laughed. "Best home I've ever had, love. Did you enjoy it?"

Lil looked at Lloyd coquettishly, and said, "Lloyd, you take a shower, I'll make dinner, and afterward--I'm yours. Do with me what you will."

"But I already did!" Lloyd protested.

"Well, then think of something else. You're creative!"

Lloyd looked at Lil, and said, quite seriously, "My love, what I really want is dinner, and then just to fall asleep with you tonight. I've had an exciting enough day already. I hope you're not disappointed."

Lil kissed her fiancé, and said, "I want to fall asleep next to you every night, forever, love. But if you want to rest, maybe you can curl up in my cleavage? I like that size."

"I like that bed," Lloyd said. "I'll shower fast."

* * *

Scott groaned as he awoke, the satchel bumping to a stop in another hotel room somewhere east of Morocco. He thought it might be Qatar from a few snippets of conversation he'd heard, but he couldn't be sure. At any rate, he wanted very much for Wafia to go to sleep so he could get out of here. She'd dozed on the plane, but the pack had been stowed in the overhead bin, and he hadn't trusted his ability to escape and get back. So he'd stuck it out.

But a full day of hiding was numbing his brain, and he was quite ready for something new.

The pack rustled, startling him back to life. He heard some muttering from his giant captress, and then the flap was opened again.

She looked down into the darkness, and muttering again, she tipped the pack over.

Scott should have been on his guard. He was battle-hardened and he had years of experience hiding from women; had he been more awake, he might have quickly shrunk himself more or merged with one of the books. Instead, he was dumped out onto the desktop, half an inch tall, but separated from the books enough that he was out in the open.

Wafia's eyes scanned for something, and then stopped, and darted straight to his position.

He raised his hand, but she was already smiling, and shaking her head slightly. She said something and reached out, and his parry failed.

He felt himself immobilized, and realized quickly that he'd been transformed into a small gemstone. He could reverse this easily, he knew, he just had to...but she was already picking him up and dropping him into a box, one that she'd found among the debris of the bag.

It looked like a metal coffin, and in a sense, that was its exact function. She dropped him inside, and shut the lid.

He sighed. This was odd. He started to think of what his next step should be, when suddenly he felt his soul run cold.

The power. It was dropping out of him.

The box was a dampening field. Small and portable--a prisoner transport device.

He felt the box drop somewhere. He knew for sure that this was not going to end well.

Chapter Five

Inertia

She saw Scott had been pinned to the pages of an album, like a butterfly. He was stoic, but she could see terror in his eyes. She reached out to pluck the pins out, and suddenly heard an angry mob approaching.

"Kill her!" came a shout from outside, which soon was where she was, facing a charging crowd bearing pitchforks and torches.

"This way, Teri! Quickly!"

She turned and followed the voice to a trap door, which she leapt into. The door slammed shut above her, and she heard the voice say again, "This way!"

"We have to go back for Scott!" Teri shouted.

"You'll never make it. They'll be expecting you," the voice said. "I will take care of it. Come on, this way."

Teri heard the roar overhead, and so she did as the voice recommended.

They were suddenly in a clearing, the way you only can be in the middle of a dream. She looked up in the dim, and saw a new moon against the stars.

"You'll be safe now," the voice said, this time attached to a figure.

"Thank you," said Teri, approaching it. "Now you must save Scott. Everything depends on it."

The figure removed the hood that had partially obscured its face, and Teri could see clearly who it was.

"I will go now," said Liz, calmly. "I promise, I'll return him to you safely."

"I know," said Teri. "I know."

Then, suddenly, she heard a scream, and turned to see a casket, raised, with Scott staring out of it.

* * *

Teri awoke with a start. Something was wrong. Terribly wrong.

She reached for her dream journal, trying to get the images down before they slipped away.

* * *

Lloyd sipped tea from a cup in his cubicle, and scanned through reports, his mind only partially on his work.

"Hey, you feeling better today?" came a voice from behind him, and he turned and smiled.

"Yeah, just a case of food poisoning, most likely. Feel much better, thanks."

"Don't mention it," said Henry, who was Lloyd's boss and, in a happy coincidence, his friend. The American ran a hand through his sandy hair. "Tell me, what are you up to tonight? Interested in going to catch a movie?"

"No, sorry--have plans. Thanks, though. Maybe another time."

"Those plans wouldn't happen to involve Lilavati Jayasurya, would they?"

Lloyd coughed on his tea a bit. "What makes you think that?" he sputtered.

Henry rolled his eyes. "Please, Lloyd, I know I'm a Yank but I'm not an idiot. I've seen how you two get along. I figured if either of you ever made the first move neither one of you would come up for a week or two."

"Well…look, I don't want this getting around, because--well, it's work and it's gossip, and besides, I know how things get distorted…."

"It is Lil! Ha! I knew it! All right, you two have fun. Maybe we can do lunch today?"

"Well…."

Henry chuckled. "Let me guess--booked for lunch, are we? All right, all right. Just don't get so caught up in lunch that you forget to get me the FletchCo financials before you leave today."

"No problem, chief. And I swear, I'll come up for air in time for summer, at least."

Henry laughed. "No rush. Carry on."

Lloyd smiled as he scanned through the reports. He sighed, and wondered briefly if he could hint at the exact plans for lunch he and Lil had. No--no need. Henry probably wouldn't believe him, anyhow.

* * *

€ Teri was already in her office by the time Sarah arrived. Which surprised the heck out of Sarah, as she was rarely beat into the office by anyone.

"Anything going on?" Sarah asked, poking her head in.

"Nothing I can put my finger on," said Teri, frowning and flipping through a file. "Sarah, when is Scott due to check in?"

"Why?"

"No reason. Just curious."

"Five days. It's got me twisted up in knots just thinking about it, so if there's a reason I need to be concerned--"

"No, no, Madame Chair. Just wondering. I had a dream that had him in it, that's all. When he checks in, I'd like to talk to him if I can."

Sarah arched an eyebrow, but simply said, "All right. Tell me if you need anything."

"Well, one thing--the detention center, you know--in New York. What is the start of visiting hours?"

Sarah arched her other eyebrow, and said, "Well, visiting hours usually end at twenty-one hundred, if that's what you're asking. If you want a pass, you can requisition it in a file on the q drive, in the special ops folder. You should have access; let me know if you don't."

"Thank you, Madame Chair. Is there anything you want me to do today?"

"Stop freaking me out, for one. Otherwise, keep reading and bringing yourself up to speed. Senior Staff meeting at eleven."

"Right. See you then," said Teri, turning to her computer. She found what she was looking for soon enough. She sent a quick request through the online system, then turned back to her work.

She hoped she knew what the hell she was doing.

* * *

€ Lil was doing all she could to stifle her groaning. She thought to herself that she really should have gotten this all out of her system yesterday, and yet Lloyd hadn't been eighteen centimeters tall yesterday, and he hadn't fit himself inside her just so, and she hadn't felt him slide himself back and forth across her pelvic floor while she looked over at the absurd sight of his tiny doll-clothes folded neatly atop the toilet paper dispensers in the third stall of the toilets on the fourth floor.

She could skip eating every day forever if this was what she was skipping it for.

* * *

€ Zoraida stood and looked out over the fortress—one that was at perfect scale for her, and for everyone around her. New Myrina was an impressive accomplishment no matter what the circumstances, but the four thousand women who were working there, right under the noses of the world--this was astonishing.

"How many people does the Society have?" asked Zoraida to Alyssa, who was guiding this particular tour.

"We estimate eight thousand, but of those only two thousand or so are really ready for battle. They have another two, three thousand who aren't ready but would give it a try. And three thousand or so are just pencil-pushers. And they're spread out across the whole world. Ninety-five percent of the League is here, at any given time."

Zoraida whistled. "Why don't you attack now? You've got superior numbers."

"Well…between you and me, about two, three thousand of our folks aren't ready but would give it a try. More than that, we've got a dearth of talent at the top. They have Scott and Sarah Chelgren--two adepts, both of them battle-tested. We have Wafia, who's tough--but she fought Sarah head-to-head and the best that can be said is she tied. And Scott was preoccupied.

"But that's where you come in," said Alyssa, smiling.

"Me? Well, I mean--why me?"

"You're an adept. A natural talent. You have more power than I could ever dream of."

Zoraida laughed. "You're kidding."

"Quick," said Alyssa, "shrink me to one-fourth my size."

Zoraida shrugged and did so. And Alyssa smiled from her position at her knee.

"I was even trying to block that. You don't understand--uh--how difficult it is for even reasonably talented people--uh--to--uh--Zoraida, could you help me? I'm trying to grow back, but you've locked this spell down hard."

Zoraida quickly restored Alyssa, who gleefully said, "That's what I'm talking about! You have the skills, girl. You learn how to harness your power, you'll be unstoppable. You and Wafia could neutralize Scott and Sarah—and then, like you said, we'd have the advantage."

Zoraida looked at Alyssa, still waiting for the punch-line. But she slowly realized that this was not a joke.

These powers--she was unusual. A freak.

A freak with unbelievable power, one that these women wanted in the worst way.

She realized suddenly that she was holding a very strong hand indeed.

"All right," she said, calmly. "So how do I learn to harness my power?"

* * *

Liz Peterson had been shocked to hear that she would have a visitor; doubly shocked to hear that the visit would be in person. She was accustomed to hearing from her family via telecom; she was a high-risk prisoner, and she accepted it.

But she'd been brought in by a guard and set on an enormous table, still in the prison complex but outside the dollhouse jail she usually resided in.

She sat on a chair that had been provided for her while the full-sized guard waited by the door.

There was a buzz, and the door opened, and the guard said something hushed to someone. Finally, she said, "All right, I'll be outside the door, Teacher. Let me know if you need anything."

The woman walked into the room, and Liz's heart sank.

She sat down in the full-sized chair by the table, and looked at her, and Liz stared back. She swept a mop of hair out of her eyes, and cradled her chin in her hands, and continued to stare.

Why? Why was she here? What did she want?

No--Liz stopped herself. She knew what she wanted. At least she thought she did. And so she said it.

"If you're here to kill me, I can't blame you, and I won't fight."

The Teacher laughed, a hollow chuckle. "No, Coed, I'm not here to kill you."

"I'm not the Coed, Mrs. Thiessen," said Liz, quietly, almost too quietly for Teri to hear. "She's gone. But it's my failure that she ever existed."

Teri looked at Liz a good long time, wondering if she was doing the right thing. At last, she touched her on the knee.

Liz started as the index finger came to rest, and started again when she heard, buzzing in her head, a simple message.

You can hear me, I know, said Teri. There is much for us to talk about.

Liz's eyes went wide, but she thought back, What do you want from me?

Teri smiled, a smile that almost seemed kindly, and the buzzing said, I want to hurt you, Liz, but I think that would probably be a waste--and there are more pressing things going on. And that's why I'm here.

And as Teri explained, Liz gasped.

This was impossible.

* * *

€ The coffin opened, and Scott put his hand to his eyes against the light, or he would have, had he not been an inanimate object.

She was staring down at him. "So," she said, in broken English, "You chase me, yes?"

She laughed as she felt the pathetic gemstone attempt to answer. "You mean to kill me, no? Most sorry, Scott Chelgren. I am heading home tonight. Early, yes, but you will be a surprise for my friend Leah."

Scott would have closed his eyes and groaned, if he could have.

"I just wanted to tell you what to expect. Go back to sleep, Scott Chelgren. Good night."

Scott was enveloped in darkness once more.

He hoped that this wasn't going to last forever.

He feared it was.

* * *

€ Lil exited the tube and headed up the stairs at Bayswater, eager to get home in time to start dinner. Lloyd had offered to host her at his flat tonight, but she'd told him, truthfully, that she had already been planning a special dinner for the night. She didn't mention that she was planning to make basic spaghetti and marinara sauce and then bed him for a half-dozen hours or so—but she didn't think he'd mind that much.

She turned the corner, and suddenly a hand grew over her mouth where none had been before, and something poked her in the back, hard.

"No games," the raspy voice said. "Don't make a fuss, and you won't get hurt."

Her eyes went wide with terror as she was quickly moved to a waiting van, and tossed inside. Her abductor sat down next to her, and closing the door, said, "Drive."

"Please," she said, "You can take anything I have."

"It's not you we want," the man said, putting a black bag over her head. "You're just the bait."

She screamed as the handcuffs snapped on.

Lloyd bounced up the stairs to Lil's flat, carrying a bottle of wine and a duffel bag with a change of clothes. He was going to have to convince her that she should let him cook--for one thing, he enjoyed it. More than that, he didn't want her to feel that she had to be the housekeeper. She had told him some time ago, back when they were just friends, that she hated how she felt she was supposed to grow up to be a model wife, staying home, cooking, cleaning, raising the kids, while her husband went out and made money. (Her parents weren't bad people, but they were first-wave immigrants, and as much a prisoner to their upbringing as anyone else.)

He knew that as much as Lil hated it, she also sort of believed it. He wanted to disabuse her of the notion that he gave a flying fig who was "supposed" to cook. If she continued to let him explore her with wanton abandon, he'd cook and clean every night for the rest of their lives.

He knocked on the door, humming idly. No answer. A bit odd, he thought. He knocked again.

Maybe she's taking a shower, he thought, but no, he didn't hear any water running. Indeed, pressing his ear to the door, he didn't hear anything.

"Maybe she stopped to pick up dinner," he said aloud, reaching for his mobile. He punched in her number, and the phone rang, and rang, and rang.

The line picked up. "Hullo, this is Lilavati, I'm doing something amazingly fabulous at the moment, so if you'd be so kind as to leave a message, I'll get back to you whenever I feel like it."

He sighed. "Hi, love, it's Lloyd. I'm at your building and you're evidently not in. Give me a call back and let me know what our agenda is for the evening. Love you."

He hung up, and sighed. He turned, and the telephone rang. He checked the call ID, and smiled. "Hullo, Lil, you're late," he said, mock-reproachfully.

There was a pause, and then something he was not expecting

"Good evening, Mr. Polley," the gravelly voice said. "I trust you are well."

Lloyd stood stone-faced for just a moment, his heart sinking damn near to the center of the Earth.

"Who is this?" he stammered, as the terrible thoughts tumbled through his head.

"Who I am is of no concern to you. Who is with me, though, most certainly is. I have your girlfriend, Mr. Polley. I thought you should know."

The voice was low, almost a whisper. Lloyd thought it sounded familiar. He closed his eyes, and said, "If you hurt her, I will find you, and I swear on all that is holy, I will kill you."

The man laughed. "Mr. Polley, the only reason she might be hurt is if you fail to do what I tell you to do."

Lloyd leaned against the wall, bracing himself. "Let me talk to her."

There was a beep, and the voice, now somewhat distorted, said, "All right, you're on speaker."

"Lil!" Lloyd fairly cried. "Are you all right?"

"Lloyd, you can't do whatever it is they want you to do. They want to hurt you, Lloyd, and I won't let them do that. Please, you have to run away!" Lil said, before there was the sound of a smack.

"I said not to hurt her!" Lloyd shouted. "I will find you. And I--I'll crush you to death. I swear."

"Mr. Polley, I imagine you would." the voice said, coming off of speakerphone. "Your girlfriend was merely slapped--she was hysterical and needed to be calmed down. No permanent harm will come to her. If--I say again--you do what I tell you."

"I'll do anything you want."

"Good. Good man. Meet me at the northwest bank of the Serpentine tonight at midnight. Come alone. If I even get a hint of police presence, I leave and I slit your girlfriend's throat."

"I want her freed," Lloyd said. "I'll do anything, but you need to release her."

"Come now, Mr. Polley. Surely you realize that you're not bargaining from a position of strength?"

Lloyd slid down the wall. "All right," he said. "Midnight. But she'd better damn well be unharmed."

The gravelly-voiced American said, "Oh, don't worry, Mr. Polley. She'll be none the worse for wear. Midnight. We'll be switching this phone off now. Do not call again."

And with that, the line went dead.

Lloyd sat for a minute, and then stood up. He had work to do.

* * *

Teri sat down in her apartment, tired and spent. She was in over her head, she feared--she wasn't worthy of this post.

She was trying to be daring and astute, like her late husband. Damn it, this was a job for Jake, not her. She wasn't daring. And she never quite believed that she was as astute as she was.

All she knew was that her gut told her that she was doing the right thing, even as her head told her it was a huge risk. But her gut and her head both told her that they would all be facing huge risks soon enough.

When you've got nineteen and you're sure the dealer has twenty, you have to hit, no matter the odds.

Teri started as there was a knock at the door. "Who could that be?" she muttered, rising and heading for the door. She opened it, and smiled, as her fiancé walked in and hit her with a kiss that seemed to melt away all her worries.

"What are you doing here?" she said, after a good minute.

"Wanted to surprise you," he said. "Your mom and dad have Trina for the night. I'm flying back in the morning, but--well, I wanted to show you that I really do want this to go well for you."

Teri arched an eyebrow. "You're sure you're not just trying to remind me that I could have this every night if we were in Minneapolis?"

"Honest," said Mike, steering his fiancée to the bedroom. "After all, if I'd wanted to remind you of that, I'd have bought you the ticket."

"Fair enough," she said, smiling, ushering Mike toward the bedroom.

"So how," Mike said, "would you like to spend the evening?"

"Well, first of all, I'd like you to do that thing."

"What thing?" said Mike, grinning and feigning ignorance.

"Oh, like you don't know?"

"All right," said Mike. He paused, and nodded, and whispered something.

And dropped out of sight.

"Wait a second." said Teri, taking a step back and dropping down, noting that he'd hit about an inch and a half tall. "You did it all by yourself!"

"Well," said Mike, feeling the heady mix of fear and lust he always felt when facing his titanic lover, "I thought you've been busy, so--"

"You've never done that well before! Oh, you get a treat tonight," she said, kissing her tiny lover.

Mike smiled. "Yes, I do. So, shall we?"

"Oh, yes," said Teri. "Yes indeed."

She lifted Mike up onto the bed, but didn't disrobe. That was part of the thing.

She wondered where he would enter--sometimes it was up her pant-leg, sometimes through a sleeve. When she wore skirts, he almost always chose that route, she thought, laying back, smiling.

Mike took the circuitous route. He walked past Teri's immense arm, up past her shoulder, admiring how her breasts rose above, a mountain range of sex above him. He walked around to her head, and planting a kiss on the base of her neck, he ascended her shirt collar, alighting on her sternum between the twin peaks.

He kissed them, too, but he continued on, pulling himself up and over her bra, moving down her stomach toward his destination. He pulled himself into her pants, then her panties, and found her clit.

Putting his feet firmly on it, he looked up at the canopy above. Perfect.

And with that, he began dancing.

It wasn't easy. It was slippery, for one thing, and quickly became slipperier. But he had found--quite accidentally--that a soft-shoe routine was almost perfect for drawing a response from his love. It made him glad that he'd gone out for high school musicals back in the day--he'd always been secure enough in his heterosexuality that he had no fear of show tunes, and given the somewhat unexpected skills it had given him later in life, he had no regrets about it whatsoever.

He danced, humming idly, varying the pace from fast to slow, trying to keep time with his fiancée's movements, until finally she began to spasm. He leapt up, as he always did, and grabbed the cotton canopy, and bounced hard on her clit a few times, springing back up with each landing.

When she stopped moving, he alighted again, and did a backward somersault onto her slick outer lips, sliding halfway down, then braking as best he could and slipping inside.

There was a lot of work for him to do. And he was enjoying every second of it.

Back in the macroscopic world, Teri squirmed happily. Mike was a good man. And he'd made her forget about today. And she was glad not to have any worry anymore. It would work out. It had to.

* * *

Lloyd walked down the embankment toward the Serpentine, looking back over his shoulder toward Kensington Gardens. Hyde Park was largely deserted at this time of night, and he expected he'd probably be one of the few people around.

He drew near the northwest edge of the lake, felling uneasily like he was trying to watch everywhere at once. He got to the edge, and made a point of trying to relax. Not that he could, but he thought it might be a good idea to try.

He saw the man approaching from some distance, slowly. He looked almost familiar in his gait, but Lloyd couldn't recognize him with a fedora pulled low, and a trench coat with its collar turned up. The man looked, Lloyd thought, like someone playing at being a spy.

It wasn't funny.

The man drew a bit closer, and now Lloyd caught his eye.

And said, "Henry--you?"

"Yes, Lloyd," Henry Bigg replied, pulling a drag off of a cigarette. "Me."

Lloyd had not counted on this. He tried to stick to the script he'd written out, but all that came out was, "Why?"

"Lloyd, I'm a part of an organization that is very old. We kept the secret of GTS for hundreds of years, fighting the women who wanted to use it to upset the natural order of our society. But that changed eleven years ago, when traitors within our organization sold us out, uniting with moderate women to create a new organization that sought…balance."

Bigg took another drag, and tossed the cigarette aside. "That's the Growth Triumphant Society you've seen on the news, Lloyd, a pack of traitors and charlatans, men who hate men and women who hate women."

Lloyd stared at Henry for a good long minute, not really caring a whit for the expository dialogue. "Where's Lil?"

"We'll get to her in good time. Lloyd, there are others like me--some undercover in the Society, others freelancers like myself. Our leadership is involved at the highest level of government. We've worked the past five years to restart our program, to supersede the Society's role as protectors of the flame--and, moreover, to begin to reshape GTS to more noble, manly aims. It isn't right that women should be asserting their equality so vociferously. It's not what God intended.

"The Society and the League, though--they've got adepts. People strong in the use of GTS. You, Lloyd--you're an adept, too, though you don't have any training to speak of. You're going to help us reestablish the patriarchy, Lloyd."

Lloyd said, "I don't think there's anything wrong with women being equal."

"I know," said Henry. "But you do love Lil. And because you love her, you'll help us. Or she'll die."

Lloyd said, simply, "I want to see her."

Henry laughed. "Right, like I brought her here."

"Oh, you brought her," said Lloyd. "I can feel it."

He could feel it, he thought. He knew she'd been placed in Henry's coat pocket. He got a sense of the rough feel, a vague sense of her terror, of her wanting him to flee at all costs.

"Show her to me," he said, sharply.

Henry shrugged. "All right," he said, and reached into his pocket, placing a six-inch tall Lilavati on the ground.

"Completely unharmed, so far," said Henry. "If you want to keep her that way, I suggest you do as I--"

Henry did not complete the sentence, so surprised was he to find himself suddenly shrinking to three inches tall.

"Damn!" he said, as he wheeled in the grass. He started to work on countermeasures--he knew Lloyd didn't know enough to bind a spell--when suddenly, a radiant, twelve-foot-tall Indian woman caught his face with a roundhouse kick.

Henry went down, and out.

"Nice!" boomed Lloyd, who quickly restored her to her proper scale.

He started to kiss her, but she said, "There are others in the car. We have to go, now!"

Lloyd grabbed her and they took off running, as they heard the sound of running from behind them. The hair on the back of Lloyd's neck stood up, and he suddenly turned and raised his hands, and yelled, "No!"

The shrinking spell deflected off his parry, but he knew that this wasn't going to work long-term. Lloyd buoyed Lil up the embankment and onto the busy street.

"Are there any more?" asked Lloyd, but Lil shook her head.

"Just the two."

"All right," said Lloyd, calmly turning. "Let's see how the bastards like being bug-sized."

He fired away, and watched the two men try to hold out. He wanted it more, though; he knew, somehow, that if he wanted it more, he'd win. And so he pushed them down, down, down in his mind, down to insignificant.

When they dropped out of sight, he grabbed Lil's hand.

"Let's go," he said.

They ducked and weaved their way to the nearest tube station, rushing down into the bowels of it, trying to lose themselves in the crowd.

"I have to go, leave the country," Lloyd said, hushed, as they got onto the red line train. "If Henry was telling the truth, this isn't just a few guys after me--it's the government."

"I know," said Lil. "I'm coming with you."

Henry looked at her, and frowned. "You can come with me if you want, but--I don't know how safe it's going to be. And I don't know as you'd really want to give up your life here for a life on the run."

Lil said, simply, "We'll need to go to my flat quick, I need to grab a few things."

"I already did, in case--"

Lil stopped his sentence with a kiss. "Good thinking, love," she whispered, "but what did you get?"

Lloyd reached into his pocket and pulled out what looked like a small coin purse. "Reduced it," he said, as he slowly grew the small pack to actual size.

"I hope you grabbed my passport," Lil said, with a wry smile.

"Yes, it's in there."

"Did you take it out of the holder?"

"No, I--"

"Good. I've got a couple credit cards stowed in there. We'd best get a move on--we have to decide whether to head to Europe or America."

"Europe," said Lloyd. "I'm afraid of Americans at the moment."

"Indeed," said Lil. "Then we'd best get to St. Pancras. We'll want to get on the CTRL in the morning."

Lloyd paused. "Lil--I--are you sure? I mean, I want you to come with me--I'd miss you so much--but it could be dangerous."

"Don't go wobbly on me, Lloyd," she said, pulling him close and kissing him again. "We're engaged, right? If you go on the lam, I go on the lam."

Lloyd felt like crying. He didn't particularly want to go on the lam, and he most especially didn't want to drag Lil along with him.

But sometimes we must do things that we hate to do. Lloyd grabbed Lil's hand, and held it fast.

* * *

The small bush plane taxied to a stop, and Wafia slung her pack over her shoulder. She knew he would be jostled around; she was glad of it. She hoped he was suffering.

If it had been up to her, she would have killed him straight away. He was scum--a man who stood between her sisters and the conquest of humankind, the end of the old ways and the start of a new system of sisterhood and freedom, where the men would serve the women, as it was meant to be.

She waved to Leah as she deplaned, noting that she had with her an unfamiliar woman. Wafia smiled. She could feel her power from across the tarmac.

Another adept. They were close. So very close to victory.

"This had better be good," Jackson said, gesturing to the waiting Hummer. "If you're to be in Mecca come Dhu al-Hijja, you've got a lot of mileposts to hit first. Qatar especially."

"I know, Madame President. Trust me, this is very good indeed. But first, who is this, may I ask?"

Jackson smiled slightly. "Zoraida Abarca Vivas, meet Wafia al-Asadabad. Wafia, Zoraida."

Zoraida reached over and shook Wafia's hand, and started. She could feel the power flowing from her counterpart. She was strong. So very strong.

"I'm honored to meet you," said Zoraida, quietly. "I've heard quite a bit about you in the short time I've been here."

"I'm sure you have," Wafia said. "It is right that you should be here for this," said Wafia.

They drove on in silence for some time, discussing idly plans for recruitment in Muslim nations. Zoraida found it curious that they had not yet discussed why Wafia was there, but she was smart enough that she simply held her tongue, and watched and listened. Soon enough, they were at New Myrina, reduced and driving through the streets.

"We will need a secure facility," said Wafia quietly.

Leah nodded. "Stockade," she said to the driver, who headed for a small fortified building ahead.

They walked into the small jail, and Wafia calmly pulled out a matchbook-sized container. "Now, everyone needs to be on their guard. Dampener off."

There was a thrum as the morphogenetic dampener powered down. "Don't shut it down completely," said Wafia. "We'll need it powered up right away, on my signal. All right, steady…."

She leaned over, pushing the small container open. With a flourish, she flipped it over, and a small jewel fell.

Before it had gone an inch, the jewel was a reconstituted man, growing quickly and gunning with all his might.

Scott had barely had time to compose himself before he found himself dropping, but he knew that he would have to be reanimated to be interrogated; it gave him an advantage. He effortlessly reversed the spell, and hit the first titaness he saw with a reduction spell. As he hit the floor and bounced up, he took some satisfaction in the fact that it was Leah Jackson who now stood a foot tall.

"Get him!" she squeaked, and Wafia approached.

"Power up the dampener!" Wafia said, as she raised her right hand.

Scott knew he had but a moment or two. He tried to cross her up by morphing her into an image of Mohammed; he wasn't usually given to casual blasphemy, even when he didn't believe in that being blasphemed, but he was in a hurry, and wanted to throw her off-guard.

The spell didn't connect, though. A force from his left parried it before it could reach its destination.

And then he felt the woman strike him, trying to shrink him.

He struggled, as Wafia joined her.

He looked at the women. They were both adepts.

Oh, shit.

He staggered backward, feeling his height dwindling away. He watched Wafia and the stranger slowly expand, reaching toward the ceiling. He couldn't be more than four or five inches tall…

Suddenly, there was a whine as the dampener came online. Scott dropped to the floor, as the new adept approached him, striding to within a few feet. He stared up her long, jean-clad leg, and saw her suddenly raise her trainers to a few dozen feet above them, and bring them down hard…

"No!" said Jackson, still tiny. "He's too valuable alive."

"I know," said Zoraida, pausing maybe an inch or two above Scott's head. "But I wanted to scare him a little."

Wafia grinned. "I like you. We're going to get along well."

Scott, for his part, was terrified. He was no match for this group, not alone.

Heck, he and Sarah might not be a match for them.

For the first time since New York, he started to think they might just lose.

* * *

Henry Bigg sat on his couch, a bag of ice on his forehead, replaying the conversation he'd had with the chief.

"You blew it," the chief had said. "We need that Brit if we're gonna survive this."

"I know," said Henry. "Don't worry. I've already put my contingency plan into effect. They're headed for Europe. We'll find them soon enough."

"We'd better," the chief grumbled. "This is our last chance. If we fail, it will mean the end of fifty thousand years of male preeminence."

"I know," said Henry. "Don't worry, chief."

The line had simply gone dead.

Henry nursed his aching head, and hoped like crazy that he was right, that his man in Calais was ready. More ready than he had been, anyhow.

He hadn't counted on Lloyd fighting back. He'd never been much of a fighter. But evidently, Lil brought out the best in him.

Henry smiled grimly. Yes, she was the lever. He'd been right about that. He just had to wield her the right way next time.

* * *

Sarah Kensington walked into work early in the morning, sighing and trying to fight a feeling of paranoia that had overtaken her in the last day. She'd tried to visualize where Scott was, and failed. That bothered her. She had a very bad feeling about this.

She walked into ops. "Anything going on, Alice?"

"Nothing of note, Madam Chair. We--"

Suddenly, alarm klaxons blared. Richardson wheeled.

"I don't--how?"

"What?" said Sarah, walking into the room.

Richardson swallowed. "We have a security breach," she said, dry-mouthed, "on the thirteenth floor."

Superposition

Sarah took ten quick steps into the center of the Society's Operations Center, and nodded to Alice Richardson, who didn't have to be told that Sarah was taking over command. "All right," said Sarah, sitting down, as Alice walked to an adjacent terminal. "What's going on?"

"We just got the breach alarm from the thirteenth floor. The elevator's been activated--had been activated, ten minutes ago. Nothing since."

"What do we have for telemetry at station TX-four-one-two?"

Alice shook her head. "Most of the signals are out. We had a short in the main wire last night. We've still got standard communications, but the dedicated lines are down. They've been for about the last nine hours."

"Wait--comm's out on the exit level and we didn't get it immediately repaired?"

"I questioned Commander Honshu, but he was adamant that we repair it in the morning--he said the cost to replace it overnight was prohibitive."

"You should've brought it to my attention, Alice--Honshu was completely wrong there. I know he's got seniority, but you've got a brain, too."

"I know, Ma'am. I'm sorry."

"Sorry doesn't bring the cows home, Alice," said Sarah as she pounded a fist on the console, and made a mental note to tear Yoshii Honshu limb-from-limb later--or at least to place a negative note in his file. Punching a button almost idly, she said, "TX-four-one-two, what's your status?"

No response came.

"Lock down the building," said Sarah. As klaxons began to blare, she repeated, "TX-four-one-two, please respond."

"TX-four-one-two here, this is Stanton. Sorry for not responding immediately, we just had a situation down here."

Sarah sighed in relief. "Report."

"Three prisoners attempted to get out, we detained them. They've been incapacitated; request permission to send them back up the lift."

"Granted," said Sarah.

"Also," said the guard from the station below, "One of us--uh, Redolent--she got a pretty bad cut in the crossfire. Request relief down here so we can get her some medical attention."

Sarah nodded. "Joplin, take Aria and go relieve the crew at TX-four-one-two. Have med teams standing by on floor two. Alice, I want you to go with them--you need to get up to floor thirteen, I'm sure that they'll be happy to see you," said Sarah, looking at the monitors.

She noted that two guards were down on thirteen--switching to infrared, she could see they were still alive. It looked like the people inside the blockhouse were still okay, but the door was sealed. The escapees must have made it through beforehand. Tricky.

"Do we have an ID on the three escapees?" said Sarah to a young trooper.

"Yes'm. We have three signals not reading in the blockhouse. Looks to be Stevens, Victoria Scarlett, H02-14-29; Martel, Yvette Fabienne, H06-32-04; and…wow, Anderson, Elizabeth Michelle, H93-01-01."

"Liz?" said Sarah, sitting forward. "What's she doing with those two? Never mind. We're still locked down, right trooper?"

"Yes'm," he replied.

Sarah drummed her fingers. Something wasn't adding up.

* * *

Lil and Lloyd lay together, half-asleep, as the train roared out of the tunnel.

The train hit a bump, and Lloyd woke a bit more, and snuggled closer to his fiancée, and looked around the cabin. They'd have to start over when they got to the continent, he thought. Lay low for at least a few months. Maybe they could make contact with the Society, he thought. He didn't know much about them, other than what he caught on the news--but if Henry thought they were bad, they had to at least be all right.

He felt like he was missing something. He looked over at Lil and sighed. What a trip so far, rushing through the city, getting tickets for the train at the last moment….

And then made a sound rather like a choking mongoose.

"What--what's up?" asked Lil, stirring.

"God, but I'm stupid!" he whispered. "We used my card to buy the tickets."

"So?"

"Lil--we used my credit card. Don't you see?"

Lilavati suddenly woke up completely. "Oh, bloody hell--they'll know we're on the train, won't they?"

Lloyd nodded. They'd surely had time to get someone to France. Heck, the French government may well be involved--there was a conservative streak to French society that often went unremarked. But how could they get past the gendarmes without being spotted?

Lloyd looked helplessly over at his lover, who for her part was showing a look of dawning realization. He watched her quickly eye the cabin, and point. "There!"

Lloyd followed her finger to a couple of chattering French students--too old to be in Lycée, but clearly not encumbered yet with any actual responsibilities. He eyed them for a second, before saying, "I don't follow you, love."

"Look by the girl's feet," she said.

Lloyd followed the dancer's legs of un petite femme to where her feet touched the ground, a Harrod's bag laying flat and open. "I still don't know what you mean, love. There aren't any Harrod's in France that I know of."

Lil rolled her eyes. "Not Harrod's Lloyd. The bag. The bag! Don't you see, it's the perfect way to slip past them!"

Lloyd looked at her briefly as if she'd lost her mind, then stopped it, as he suddenly knew exactly what she meant.

"That's--that's the most brilliant thing I've ever heard," said Lloyd. "How long before we reach Calais?"

"About twenty minutes," said Lil.

"All right," said Lloyd. "Then let's get a move on. I hope you enjoy this."

* * *

Alice led the team down to the service level; she was already considering how best to restore order on thirteen. She was grateful that she'd just got a tongue-lashing from the Chair--from the second she'd seen the failure at the exit station, she'd had a bad feeling about it. She should've sent more guards to take care of the station. She should've alerted Sarah. Yeah, Yoshii had told her not to bother the Chair--but Sarah pretty much lived to be bothered.

Alice was preoccupied as the elevator doors opened, which is why she was completely surprised as she suddenly found herself shrinking.

"What the--?" she said, as she stared at the woman waiting by the door. She was aiming five ways simultaneously--something precious-few non-adepts could do. But their parries were almost instantaneously overcome, and they were soon but a few inches tall.

The red-haired woman walked over to her, and bent down, picking her up gently. "Give me your passcard," she said, "and I won't hurt you or your team."

"Can I hurt them?"

"No, Victoria--for the last time, we're making this break cleanly. If we kill a few on the way out, they'll search all the harder for us. Now," she said, turning back to Alice, "your passcard, please."

"Y--you're--the--the Coed," Alice stammered.

"Yes, I am," said Liz. "And while I'd prefer not to kill you, I will if you don't turn over your passcard. You wouldn't be the first person I've terminated."

Alice considered her situation. She pulled her passcard off the chain, depressing a silent alarm button as she did.

"Now, quickly," said Liz, dropping Alice to the floor along with her team. "She certainly hit her alarm button--she's a commander. We have maybe a minute."

With that, she pulled Victoria and Yvette onto the elevator, and pushed the button for the lobby.

* * *

The trek across the train was not as easy as one might think. Lloyd and Lil held hands, ducking under seats and trying to move quickly when out in the open. Two inches tall was just about perfect, Lloyd thought--small enough to go largely unnoticed, but not so small that the journey became impossible. Even so, they were currently biding their time behind the enormous Birkenstock of a giantess who was playing with her sandals constantly--sliding them forward, dragging them back with her toe, and then sliding them forward again.

"Is that how big I look to you?" Lil asked.

"Well, the day I skipped work, you looked about eight times bigger. But yeah."

Lil swallowed. "How do you let me talk you into it? I'd think you'd be terrified. I'm terrified right now. If she gets a bit careless with the sandal…."

"It is," Lloyd said. "It's scary as can be, how much power you have. But--well, that's part of the fun, innit?"

The woman finally slid her foot inside the sandal, and Lloyd said, "All right, one more row to cross. Let's go!"

* * *

Up in operations, a new alarm sounded, this one the high warble of a Command-level officer's personal alarm.

"It's Looking Glass," said the trooper, noting Alice's passcode.

"Alice, what's your situation?" said Sarah. Getting no response, she stood up. "Seal the doors to the building. Alice, respond."

No response came.

"Are any elevators in operation?" said Sarah to the trooper.

"Yes'm. The elevator from the exit level is opening in the lobby."

"Shit," said Sarah. "Transport!"

Sarah rematerialized in the lobby, to the left of the statue of D.X. She pointed at three troopers guarding the door. "Stand fast, trouble approaching!" she said, and steeled herself.

Trouble came around the corner quickly, with Liz in the lead. Sarah quickly moved to cut her off, firing a quick burst of shrink spells, hoping to catch Liz off-guard. Liz pivoted just in time to parry all three.

She looked at Sarah calmly. "I have to do this," she said. "I don't want to hurt anyone in the process."

"I do!" said Victoria, who was quickly shushed by Yvette.

"Liz, I can't let you go. You know that."

Liz sighed. "You don't understand the stakes, Madame Chair. Someday I hope you'll forgive me for this."

"For what?" said Sarah, but Liz simply waived a hand.

Sarah caught it. "No, damn it, block!" she said, a picosecond after Liz finished saying, "Transport."

And the three escapees disappeared.

"Stupid!" shouted Sarah at herself. It was the obvious move. With an average escapee, she'd try to lock down part of Chicago. With Liz--well, Liz could literally be anywhere on Earth by this point.

Sarah looked up at D.X.'s statue. "What the hell is your ex up to, Jake?" she said. Then, straightening her shirt, she picked up her phone, and dialed Ops. "We need an all-points bulletin issued," said Sarah. "And we need to call in senior staff, ASAP."

* * *

It was late, Scott thought. Very late.

He was tired of being hurt. But he knew that they couldn't do much more than they already had. Waterboarding was no fun, but he knew they wouldn't dare kill him. He was too valuable alive. Leah had said it herself.

It was Alyssa Freitag who was at present carefully adjusting his body for maximum discomfort. He grimaced as she pulled him into a stress position. "Alyssa," he said, "why are you doing this?"

Alyssa shrugged. "Where were you when I was raped? Nowhere. You saw what your brethren did to me."

"Yes, and I don't fault you your revenge," said Scott. "My best friend used to say that's what a rapist gets. But…how are you better than them, Alyssa?"

She reared up, and brought a fingernail down across his back. He cried out in pain and anguish. "I'm better than them, 'Master' Chelgren. I don't question for a minute what I do. My sisters rely on me to fight for them. When this war is over, they will need fear your kind no more."

"And we will fear you, right?"

Alyssa smiled. "Well, you're a bright one. Yes, you men will fear women. Just like you fear me right now. Just like we've feared you since the dawn of time. It will finally be fair."

Scott groaned as Alyssa took her index finger and thumb, and raising them to his head, simply flicked him. His head snapped back, and the lights went out.

* * *

They had hunkered down in the bag as it bounced along through the world around them. Lloyd and Lil were rather amazed at how haphazardly the giantess was wielding this bag, although, they both realized, the fact that the bag contained only clothes meant that it was unlikely that their hostess particularly cared what happened to it.

"You'd think," said Lloyd, "that the bag would be set down eventually."

"You'd think," said Lil, who was holding onto him with all her might. "But you'd be wrong."

Then, all of a sudden, the bag was set down, hard. The opening spilled forward, and Lloyd crept up to it.

"Looks like a bus. Should we get out?"

Lil nodded. "Let's go."

They exited onto a large black plain, underneath the seat where the no-longer petite woman rested. "So," said Lloyd, "what's the plan?"

"We need to get out of France," said Lil. "Maybe go to Heidelberg or Prague. Somewhere that they won't be expecting."

Lloyd said, "You know, if we use our credit cards, it'll give us away."

Lil sighed. "I have five hundred quid that I got at the ATM in London. That will have to hold us."

"So how do we get to Germany?"

Lil looked around. "Well," she said, "If you don't mind riding forty-third class, I think we might be able hitch some rides for free."

Lloyd smiled. "I thought that might be your suggestion. All right. It's a plan," he said. "But first, we're unshrinking. We're having at least one good meal before we're tiny again."

Lil kissed him. "This is going to be a story for the kids, isn't it?"

Lloyd smiled. "I sure hope so, love. I sure hope so."

* * *

Liz hoped she knew what she was doing. She'd let Victoria and Yvette tag along for a few reasons, but mostly because Yvette might know how to get in touch with the league. Victoria came as a package deal with Yvette, so she hadn't had much choice.

But as they wandered the streets of New York City, Liz shuddered involuntarily. She couldn't help thinking that it had really been fifteen years since she'd been a free woman--and that thought didn't comfort her. Fifteen years is a long time in the grand scheme of things.

"So you're sure there's a safehouse here?" she asked Yvette.

"I'm sure there was a safehouse," Yvette replied. "Whether there still is, I don't know."

They walked up the stairs of the apartment, and knocked on the door.

"We have no bananas," came a voice from the other side of the door.

"Who needs bananas? Not any woman I know," Yvette replied.

"Not any woman worth mentioning," the voice replied. "All right."

The door opened, and the woman looked up at Liz, as if she'd seen a ghost.

"Oh my--oh, it's you! Oh, my love, it's been--I thought I'd never see you again!"

Angela McMartin fairly tackled Liz, kissing her hard. Liz returned the favor. "I wasn't expecting you here, Angie," she said, pulling back just a bit. "We've engaged in a bit of a prison break."

Angie smile wide. "Then you've come to the right place," she said, ushering them inside. The door closed behind them, shutting the apartment off from the outside world.

* * *

"You wanted to see me, Sarah?"

"Sit down, Teri," said Sarah, not looking up.

There was a fairly long period of silence.

Finally, Teri said, "Madame Chair, I've got a lot going on trying to sort this mess out…."

"That's why I want to talk to you, Teri. I'm going to ask this point-blank: did you say anything to Liz that would cause her to escape?"

"What?" said Teri.

"Look, I know you visited with her yesterday. Then she escapes overnight. Strange coincidence, no?"

"Sarah--I didn't threaten her, if that's what you mean. If I'm going to be working in the same building that housed the woman who killed Jake, I needed to get my head clear. And that's why I went to see her--to try to forgive her, and try to close it for myself. That's all."

Sarah drummed her fingers. "Okay." She said. "That's what I needed to know. I didn't see anything when I watched the tape of your talk with her, but I needed to be sure that you didn't slip anything through sub rosa.

"Teri, this is bad. Liz seemed to know some of our operational procedures. I don't know how she knew them, but she did. If she goes over to the league, she'd be a powerful asset for them."

Teri nodded. "I know."

"I've tasked Wollstonecraft with tracking them down. Liz Anderson is smart, but Tori is stupid enough to balance the smartness out. She'll get into a scrape somewhere. But I need you to redouble your efforts. I need you to find out who's leaking information--and soon."

"I'm working on it," said Teri. She started to add something, but stopped herself.

No, she thought, Sarah doesn't need to know that yet.

Instead, she simply said, "I'll keep the heat on."

Sarah nodded. "I'm glad to have you here, Teri. I need you. And I have faith you'll get to the bottom of this."

"I know, Madame Chair," Teri said, rising. "I just hope that your faith is well-placed."

Part Two

Free Will

"Do not be ignorant of me anywhere or any time. Be on your guard!

Do not be ignorant of me."

--The Thunder, Perfect Mind

Chapter Eight

Objects in Motion

Four days late.

Sarah tried to think of something beyond those three words. She'd been trying since yesterday, when she'd been thinking "three days late" incessantly.

She tried to calm herself, to reach out yet again and try to see through her husband's eyes, to try to connect herself to him, to know where he was, to know that he was all right. She could do it at will almost at any time--about the only times she couldn't were those rare times Scott tried to block her, and that generally revolved around him trying to surprise her, so she forgave him that.

But this wasn't the busy signal that a blocked attempt seemed to be. This was more like a dead line.

She didn't want to dig deeper into that metaphor.

The knock at the door broke her thoughts for a moment. "What?" she snapped, then composed herself. "What is it Teri?"

"Hey, Madame Chair," she quietly replied, walking calmly into the room. "I came to see how you were doing."

"What's the report on our escapees?" Sarah said petulantly, looking down at a sheet of paper. It had not helped that in the week since three of the most high-value prisoners they held whisked themselves away, the trail--never all that warm to begin with--had grown stone-cold.

"Ana says she tracked them to New York--she's gifted as hell at following the aftereffects of a spell--but nothing from there. She thinks they're either holed up in the city, or moving using conventional means."

Sarah nodded. "All right, give a call to Lucky, have him begin a sweep of the area."

"Already done, Ma'am."

Sarah smiled slightly. "You're too efficient, Teri. The new parameters are in place for the thirteenth?"

"Yes'm. The interlock now requires two guards to open at all times, and any camera down is a red alert--lock everything down, get everyone back to their cells, and so forth. I should note that Warden Collins has turned in her resignation; I'd recommend you reject it, but it was the right thing for her to do."

"I'll reject it," said Sarah. "But I'll let her stew for a day or so." She groaned. "All right, I've avoided the question long enough, I guess. Teri--four days."

"I know, Sarah," she replied.

Sarah leaned back. "I'm about to my breaking point."

"No, you aren't," said Teri. "You're nowhere near your breaking point. Not unless ten years has made you a lot softer than you used to be."

"That was different," said Sarah. "I knew why he'd left, and I knew that he was probably safe--he was just being an idiot. This time…."

She trailed off.

"Scott knew what he was getting into, Sarah," Teri said, after a bit. "This is dangerous work. Believe me, I know."

Sarah looked up. "Yeah, you know better than I do. Is Scott dead?"

Teri was struck by the bluntness of the question. "I don't know," she said. "I don't think so. What I've seen makes me think he's in danger--but alive. But I don't know for sure that my interpretation is correct."

"I need to see him, Teri," said Sarah. Teri just sighed.

"I can't just make you see him. It doesn't work like that. Would that I could. But I can't."

Sarah nodded. "I know. But I thought you could help me at least find my way through this." She pulled out a deck of cards from her desk drawer. "Picked these up on the way home last night. I know you're out of practice, but last time…."

Teri smiled, breaking the seal on the Rider-Waite Tarot deck that Sarah proffered. "Okay," she said, pulling out a card and laying it aside, without so much as glancing at the deck. "This is your significator. The Queen of Swords," she said, as she shuffled. "Calm and forthright, and deeply intuitive. Tough call between that and the Queen of Pentacles, but I think your perspicacity makes this the right one. Besides, you were Queen of Swords last time."

"How do you remember--" Sarah said, but Teri just smiled, deftly spun some cards and continued shuffling.

After a moment, she said, "All right, cut the deck."

Sarah cut, and Teri picked up the deck again. "Good," she said. "Let's begin."

* * *

"So what should we do tonight?" asked Lil as she walked across the brown plain. "Eat in?"

"Ha. Yes, love, I think so," said Lloyd, walking behind her. "What day is it, anyhow?"

"Friday," Lil said. "So it's a good night for going out. We could walk along the canals and look at the moon and each other, and then we could come back home and do some fun things."

"Sounds lovely," Lloyd said, "but I think we'd better get a move on if we don't want to give Meintje a real shock."

"True," said Lil, pausing. "I wonder what she'd think if she knew she had roommates?"

"Well," said Lloyd, "She seems nice enough. But I tend to think that she'd still be a bit shocked."

"I still say we should've gone with that strapping young man instead," said Lil.

Lloyd stuck his tongue out. "You'd just rather have him to look at in the morning than her."

"Well, if you're going to have a small skyscraper naked in the same room as you, I'd just as well it was male--but I suppose you're happier with Meintje anyhow, aren't you? If I didn't trust you, I'd be a bit worried."

"First, love, I don't speak Dutch, and as far as we've been able to find out, she doesn't speak English. So that would be a bit of a sticking point," said Lloyd. "Besides, it's not any girl who'd agree to come live with me in the flat of a girl we don't know. Especially if she had to stay in a room underneath a bookshelf. Don't worry--if you'd stick with me through this, I'd be the biggest prat in the universe if I'd chuck that for a face that's not even half as lovely as yours."

Lil gave Lloyd a long and lingering kiss for that, and said, as they broke, "You lie very well, honey. Meintje is prettier than most anyone I've ever seen."

"Ha," said Lloyd, returning her kiss for a while. "I've never seen anyone more beautiful than you, ever. And I know I never will. Now," he said, "let's go get a bit of down collected. It's three o'clock. If we hurry, we can be down and out before our unknowing hostess gets home from work, and we can spend the evening among the size of actual human beings."

"You're not afraid they'll see us?" Lil asked.

"If they looked at the ticket to Moscow we bought--no, they won't be looking here. We shouldn't use our credit cards, but the cash you took out in Calais will pay for a nice night out, I think."

Lil held her fiancé's hand. "Well, I suppose I'll have to wear clothes again, won't I? No matter. Any night with you is nice, love. Do you think--"

The sentence was left unfinished as they heard a key in the door.

"Shit!" Lil said. "She's home already? I thought she had a job!"

"Must've cut out early," said Lloyd. "Quick, love, let's get up by the pillows. We can shrink a bit more and hide out there."

They raced across the bed, reaching the pillows as the door opened, as Meintje Dierickx opened her door and stepped inside.

Meintje was a beauty, Lloyd's general disinterest notwithstanding. She was short--maybe 5'2"--but her small frame and pixie-cut brunette hair belied the spitfire personality that fairly radiated from within. She turned as she entered, kicking a high-heeled shoe off and saying to someone behind her, "Kom binnen, Tiede. Kan ik u een drank krijgen?"

"Het is geen drank die ik heb gewild. Het is u," came a deeper reply, as a larger man came through the door, and without further ado, kissed her hard.

"Oh, no," said Lloyd and Lil simultaneously, as the two lovers pushed the door shut awkwardly. The two trespassers had no way of knowing that Tiede and Meintje had been lovers back in college, seven years ago now--that they had both been more fond of sex than relationships. They couldn't know that on those somewhat rare times when Tiede got up to Amsterdam or Meintje got down to Dordrecht and neither happened to be in a relationship, that they generally found an excuse to hook up.

All Lloyd and Lil knew at that moment was that the two giants were moving rapidly from the front entryway to the bed, shedding enormous canopies of clothing as they moved as one.

Lloyd looked around. "Watch out--I'm going to shrink us," he said, thinking a quarter-inch would probably be safe.

"Shrink us?!? Why?" Lil said.

"Because three inches is too bloody tall. They'll see us!" he said, as they both saw the room start to expand beyond its already Brobdignagian proportions.

Lloyd put his arms around Lil and said, "Hold on tight--this is going to get bumpy, I think." And then it most certainly did, as Tiede and Meintje reached the bed and fell into it, sending Lloyd and Lil spiraling up into the sky.

* * *

"Okay," said Teri, turning over the first card. "The Three of Wands. Interesting. The atmosphere is one of people moving toward their goals slowly and cautiously, of partnership and trust. And, interestingly, of leader feeling too heavy the burden of command. Yes, this fits. Now," she said, turning over another card and placing it atop the first, "The Queen of Swords, reversed. Ironic, that.

"Your enemy," Teri said. "The dark side of air and water; a thunderstorm, or hurricane. Symbolically, that is--and more than that, someone who is violently capable of attack, and yet feels hollow inside. The hollowness, I think, is the key."

"Leah Jackson?" Sarah asked.

"Maybe. Maybe the adept she recruited. Maybe the League as a whole. All right, next, we have The Moon." Teri grimaced. "I won't lie to you, this isn't the best card to turn over. It implies metamorphosis and transformation, as well as dangerous and frightening tribulations."

"That's the best we can hope for?"

"I'd say that's where we are right now, Sarah. So it doesn't surprise me. All right, now let's find what this situation is based around."

At this card, Teri grinned in spite of herself. "The Lovers. Yes, central in the formulation of our problem, I think." She looked up at Sarah, who blushed slightly. "Moving on, we have things we must let go of, and we have…Nine of Wands, reversed. Hmmm."

Teri thought a long minute. Odd, that card should turn up. "The Nine of Wands symbolizes strength, and when reversed it suggests treachery and sabotage. I think we must root out the mole, and fast. He or she is the key to this.

"Now, the approaching influence, what we should accept, is Temperance. Major arcana again--not surprising. Calm, self-control, patience, balance. We can't go charging off pell-mell," she said, looking pointedly at Sarah.

"Your attitude. Another of the majors--this time, The Chariot. You want to fight, to conquer, to triumph. I know this. But you must be aware of the last card. The Chariot implies that discipline and endurance will out. Temperance and The Chariot together make me think we must patiently wait for our opportunity."

"I'd rather it said I should go charging in pell-mell," Sarah said, bitterly. She wasn't sure how she could patiently wait for Scott to die.

"Now, your environment and the people you are interacting with--King of Swords, reversed. A gray sky.

"One who is a talented deceiver, a smooth liar, one who is inspires fear, respect, and obedience. This is Leah, I misdoubt--you're squaring off against her."

"Wonderful," said Sarah.

"Now, for your deepest fear--Seven of Wands, reversed. The Seven of Wands represents Valor, and it suggests the opposite of valor--you're afraid you're a coward for staying here and not charging off after Scott."

Teri looked directly at her superior, and said, "Knock it off. Stop blaming yourself. You're one of the least cowardly people I know, Sarah. You're brave beyond belief. Trust in that."

Sarah wiped away a tear, but said nothing.

Teri touched the top of the deck. It felt cold. She was afraid of the next card, but turned it over, and stared at it a good long while. She exhaled. "Well, at least it isn't Death," she said, trying to reassure herself as much as Sarah.

The upside-down card showed a man kneeling at a bedside, weeping. "The Nine of Swords," said Teri. "Cruelty. Reversed. This is the ultimate outcome should we continue on our course. It suggests danger, and the potential for great loss. Suffering and anguish. But--and this is important--when reversed, it suggests a near miss. It suggests that Scott is in danger--but that he will live."

"But," said Sarah, staring at the card.

"But this suggests a narrow miss," said Teri. "And a narrow miss can easily change to a hit. The cards are like my mind, cloudy. They don't predict so much as suggest. They suggest Scott is in trouble, but they suggest he can survive. They also suggest he might not."

"Do you think they say he's alive now?" asked Sarah.

"Yes," said Teri. "And hopefully, he'll stay that way for some time."

Sarah looked at the cards, and flashed back eleven years. "You were right last time, Teri. I hope you're right this time."

"You've no idea how much I want to be," Teri replied.

* * *

The two titans began to kiss, Meintje on top, Tiede below, and the two insects between them, laying dazed in the thicket of Tiede's chest hair.

Lloyd looked up at the dazzling monstrosity of Meintje's breasts, which were still enfolded by a brassiere; he wondered idly what she was waiting for, before he came to his senses and looked for Lil.

She was shaking the cobwebs out, and looked up to see Lloyd half running, half crawling to her as the two lovers moved in a perpetual earthquake. He reached her just as Meintje dropped herself onto Tiede fully, and the two rolled over. Lil and Lloyd lurched as suddenly they fell out of the chest hair of Tiede and in between two mountains, whose canopy was suddenly whisked away as Tiede removed his once-and-current lover's bra and casually discarded it.

"We have to get out of here!" Lil said, as the two of them cowered against Meintje's left tit.

"And go where?" Lloyd said. "Even if we got off of her, we'd still be on the bed. And I think they're planning on using the bed for a while. We can't just run willy-nilly."

"Bugger!"

"Possibly," Lloyd said. "But for now, I'm hoping that Meintje is the kind of girl who wants her needs attended to before she returns the favor."

As he said that, the two shivered, as Tiede lowered himself to his lover's breasts, and began sucking her nipples far above them. He ran his tongue down to the canyon in her breasts, and Lil and Lloyd came within inches of being swept up by the pink monstrosity. Instead, they watched as it traced a line down her stomach, and watched as Tiede himself disappeared, save for a mess of blond hair, between the thighs a football pitch or so away.

"Well," said Lloyd, as the earthquake subsided a bit, "that gives us a bit of a chance. Now, how do we get off of this giantess?"

"Let's go away from the giant," Lil said. "She won't know or care if a bug is crawling on her right now. If we get up and over her shoulder, maybe we can get past her head and go off of the top of the bed."

"Good idea," Lloyd replied, as he tried to keep his footing on Meintje's chest, which was now heaving heavily beneath them. "It'll be slow going, but we'll do our best. Come on!" he said.

The two insects crawled through the valley of Meintje's breasts, coming out on her sternum. "All right," said Lloyd. "We'll go right. It's--"

Suddenly, the steadily heaving chest began to heave unsteadily. The two tiny Brits fell down.

"Shit--she's coming already?"

"He should've taken more time. It's always fun when it lasts a bit longer," said Lil.

"I'll remember that if we survive this," Lloyd said.

"I'll complain if I've cause to complain. I haven't yet," Lil said, as Meintje began screaming in ecstasy.

"I guess she hasn't, either," said Lloyd as she finally became quiescent.

The breathing became regular again, and slow. The skin was slick with perspiration; shallow pools of saltwater dotted the landscape. Tiede moved back up the bed, and lay down by Meintje.

"We need to stay put," said Lil.

"What do you mean?" Lloyd said. "Now's our chance!"

"No!" said Lil as Lloyd began to run. "Wait, you idiot, and listen. She's going to be hypersensitive now, she'll feel every inch of her body. At least, that's how I get," she said.

Lloyd hit the brakes. "I hope you're an aberration," he said.

Above them, the two lovers whispered. "Kunt u mijn borst alstublieft krassen?" Meintje asked, softly.

"Ik houd van ontroerend uw borsten." Tiede replied, and without a word, his right hand snaked around her shoulder and began to lay waste to the valley of his lover's tits, and anything that might be causing her distress.

Meintje purred as Tiede scratched, and Lil and Lloyd dodged the fingers of a monster, until they couldn't anymore. They held each other as the finger swept them up, the short fingernail sliding along and bringing them into the air. Had it been a few moments earlier, they may have been killed in another round of scratching, but just as Tiede caught them, Meintje purred out a simple "Goed dat, dank."

Tiede reacted wordlessly by taking the fingers he had been using to scratch her chest, and sliding down, he began to scratch in her bush.

Meintje purred as Lloyd and Lil were dislodged in a new thicket of brown hair, with the scent of pussy heady in the air.

"We're not where I think we are, are we?" asked Lil.

Lloyd was trying to think through a sudden and rather inopportune erection, and all he could do was nod wordlessly.

"You're probably horny as hell, aren't you?" Lil asked, smiling.

"If we survive this, it's definitely going to be one for the memory banks," he said.

"Well, I can't blame you," said Lil, pointing. "I must say, that's a sight to behold."

Lloyd followed his fiancée's gesture to Meintje's enormous left hand, which was currently wrapped around a tower-sized cock, one which was slowly growing with each squeeze and caress of her well-manicured fingers.

"Well," said Lloyd, swallowing hard, "I guess I kind of pale in comparison to that thing, don't I?"

"It's not the size that counts, love," said Lil. "It's all in how you use it. Although I must say, that's a strong counterargument."

Lloyd chuckled, then suddenly blanched. "Oh, no. He's going to be using it very soon."

Lil held her lover's hand. "I know," she said.

"What do we do?" he said.

"Watch the show," Lil said. "I think her bush might actually be one of the safest places on either of their bodies right now. Think about the mechanics of it."

Lloyd looked at his fiancée, and smiled a bit. "You kind of want to stay, don't you?"

Lil blushed, but nodded. "You've got to admit, this has been a spectacle, hasn't it?"

"Bent u klaar?" they heard Tiede whisper.

"Ja," Meintje replied.

"Well," said Lloyd, "I don't speak Dutch, but I know when someone's asking if he can bring it about for docking. Hang on, love. This is going to be a bumpy ride."

They were indeed in for a bumpy ride. Tiede pulled himself above the trio, Lil and Lloyd watched in fascination as Meintje spread herself wide to accept him, her pussy glistening with the proof of her ardor.

The shaft plunged down and forward, and the tiny couple marveled as one hundred fifty feet of penis disappeared in but a second, buried within Meintje.

"Bloody," said Lloyd as the two titans began their slow groove. The world bucked as Meintje gave as well as she got. The two Lilliputians found themselves unable to hold on, and soon found themselves bouncing through Meintje's thicket and toward the point of impact.

"No!" cried Lloyd, but Lil kept her head. Seeing where they were heading, she simply shouted out, "Left!" If she was right, one thrust should put them both there.

They bounced up as if in slow motion, one right after each other, just a quarter-inch or so into the air, but enough to clear the edge of the hood that protected Meintje's clitoris.

Lil wached Lloyd almost bounce by her, but bracing herself against Meintje's clit, she grabbed him by the foot and yanked him down to her grotto, which was pulsing and throbbing with arousal.

"Nice grab," Lloyd said, as he collided with his fiancée and hostess. Here they were safe, braced between Meintje's nub and her skin. Indeed, they were in close quarters, laying by the pussy of a beautiful woman who was being serviced by an equally beautiful man, and despite the absurdity of the place, it was only natural that the two would look at each other for a moment and begin to fuck like rabbits, Lloyd's back against Meintje's clit, Lil riding him for all she was worth.

As for the two macroscopic lovers, Meintje wasn't sure quite what was different than usual, other than that Tiede must have hit a sweet spot. As it was, she told him to take his time, that it felt unusually good. And he was happy to oblige, as any man with pride in craftsmanship is. And so, though only two of them were fully aware of it, all four lovers came within seconds of each other, and collapsed into interwoven heaps--Tiede on top of Meintje until he became so flaccid that he slipped out of her, Lil and Lloyd hidden in the folds by Meintje's pussy until the somewhat less enormous penis slipped away. They slid down the outer lips, landing on the bed in a puddle of sludge.

"We're in no shape to go out tonight, you know," said Lloyd a half hour later, as the two reached their home, with the sound of Meintje and Tiede snoring softly in the background.

"Oh, that's okay," said Lil, gesturing to the titan and titaness. "They think they did some work. I think I could go to sleep now and stay there until sunrise."

And that is exactly what Lloyd and Lil did.

* * *

"So tell me again why we aren't just transporting to League headquarters?"

Liz had to restrain herself from killing Victoria. It wasn't that hard; heck, she'd been getting a lot of practice of late. She was more than a little upset that fate had stuck her with this psychotic bitch; had Tori and Yvette not been making their break at the same time Liz had been….

Actually, it had worked out all right. They both had some advantages, and they both had some help from outside. Liz still wasn't sure what the duo's help was--indeed, Tori didn't seem to know exactly, and Yvette didn't know anything. Indeed, Liz was pretty sure Tori had just brought her along for sex.

But Liz wasn't sure she'd have made it out without the two of them. And that kept her from killing Tori, much as she wanted to.

"We don't want the Society following us," said Angie, answering for the group. "They probably already know you went to New York. Spell like that doesn't go unnoticed--even when cast by an expert," she said, patting Liz on her thigh.

It's funny how life works. Liz was actually excited to see Angie. They'd had some good moments. Some very good moments. But their total experience together was but a couple of days. In some ways, they had picked up where they left off. But in others…well, Liz thought Angie had been acting very much like a widow who just found out her husband had really been a POW for five years. Angie loved her--but more the image of her than she herself.

"Can't we just fly, then? Or is this place in Bangladesh?"

"Tori--look, we're driving because it's less obvious. Hell, we've made it into Saskatchewan already. Can you just suck it up for another day? If you really need to, we'll get on one of those cool airplanes when we hit Juneau."

Liz looked out the window at the prairie. The sun was setting to the west, and it reminded her achingly of home, a few lifetimes ago.

* * *

Scott rested. It was a nice moment. He hadn't been allowed to rest for a couple of days. Leah was toying with him, of course--using conventional extraordinary rendition techniques, rather than the unconventional GTS ones. Of course, she knew that he'd break anything she forced him into, eventually. And so she kept him here, his power drained.

Except….

Scott was possessed of a simple faith. It wasn't a belief in his righteousness or immortality, or that God was on his side, no matter how many times Teri told him that story--or, frankly, how many times Jake paid him a visit. He couldn't really imagine that God was on anyone's side; he figured if She paid attention to Earth at all, it was with benign disdain for the rampant stupidity there.

No, Scott didn't believe that he was saved and others damned. His was simply a belief that whatever there was behind the universe, it had set up rules, and it played fair. Scott knew that he had lucked into massive power, power beyond what any morphogenetic dampener could contain. And he believed that there had to be a way for him to find a way through the haze that surrounded him to wield that power.

And so as he rested, he pushed his mind and his power to its limit. That he could not feel anything changing or moving did not faze him. There would be time. He just had to be patient. He would find the key. And when he found the key, he would free himself, and destroy Leah Jackson once and for all.

Oh, shrinking was fun--like a vacation from reality. But even after the best vacations, it's nice to get back home.

"So what time should we head back to Meintje's?" asked Lloyd idly, as they arrived at a small open-air café.

"What do you mean?" asked Lloyd.

"Ah," said Lloyd, smiling at the waitress as she came over. They ordered, and he then said, "Well, it might make some sense. Thinking we should track down your male model friend?"

"…but one never knows. All right, you've convinced me. So where to next? May as well get our base established while the two lovebirds are having sex; fun as that was, it makes foraging a bit tedious."

"All right," said Lloyd. "Let's find another host to leech off of. Should be fun."

Zoraida walked through the deserted streets of the fortress, vexed.

She shivered involuntarily. Four degrees Celsius. That wasn't right, not for the end of May. Maybe for January, during a cold snap. The night before it had gotten below freezing.

What was she doing here? She knew the answer by rote; the past week-and-a-half had taught her much, and she knew that she was the lynchpin of an operation that would establish female supremacy throughout the globe. And she'd listened to Wafia's story of her stoning, and Alyssa's story of her rape, and she'd remembered a few stories of her own, and she knew that there was much to be said for tipping the table over and starting clean.

Maybe.

€ € €

Meanwhile, just south of Washington, Mitch Michaelson shuffled uncomfortably.

But he'd accepted it; this post was part of the plan. The Pentagon had taken its orders from SecDef, and those weren't changing. But this department, though officially under the rubric of the National Security Advisor, was actually being overseen by the OVP. Actually, to be precise, the department was being headed by the Vice President himself.

He'd met a great many people in the past few days. He'd been very surprised when he'd taken the card Leah Jackson gave him, went to the address it offered, and asked to speak to the man in charge. He was told that the Vice President was not in, but his lieutenant would help him.

"You've no idea," the man had said pouring a bourbon for Michaelson, "how much I hate the damned Society. They've completely lost their way. You know, back when they were still the Cadre, still fighting the good fight, I funneled ten million dollars from my organization to them? Ten million! I thought Koschei was serious about keeping women in their proper place. But of course, he sold us out. He sold us all out."

"Why you were approached by Jackson? The Lord works in mysterious ways, General." Michaelson could feel the charm that had made this man rich. "We were getting our organization back together at the same time as Jackson was getting hers back together, and we crossed paths, so to speak.

"Of course," said Michaelson.

"You want to take out the Society," said Michaelson.

"Presbyterian," Michaelson murmured. "More or less."

"I believe in Jesus, if that's what you mean," Michaelson said, shifting uncomfortably.

Michaelson was quiet for a moment. "What does that mean?"

Michaelson looked at the minister a long minute.

€ € €

"Well, this is interesting, ma'am," said Andrew Scott, looking absently at his grildrometer. "We're near where they came through, I think."

But there was just the residual effects of the tunnel from Chicago to here – lapping up to this random corner in the middle of a block of apartments in the Bronx.

She trailed off. "Commander?" asked Andy.

She jogged the hundred yards to the gate, and picked it up. It wasn't much, just a few inches of orange. Doubtless the woman who'd shed it didn't even notice it. But it was a match for the standard jumpsuits that prisoners wore.

€ € €

"I know," she said, her smile widening, "but I'm enjoying this too much to stop," as she dunked him back under.

She pulled him back up. He coughed and sputtered again, and she said, "What do you know about Operation Orion?"

Leah rolled her eyes. "We know that your organization is looking for ways to disrupt our network. Operation Orion is your long-term plan. Tell me about it."

Leah was almost bored with this. As he bobbed under the surface, she idly considered how to torment him tonight. She thought perhaps she would play some old New Kids on the Block albums at 140 decibels, and open the windows to the stockade. That should give him another sleepless night. Eventually, he'd break.

"So small, so pathetic," she said, looking at him. Indeed, he almost seemed to be shrinking before her eyes, withering into nothing….

"What the--" she said, flipping him back up out of the water. But he had already pulled himself through the restraints, and he leapt off the board, shrinking further.

"No problem, ma'am," came the voice over the speaker. "Everything is running at full power."

She thought for a second that she'd order the dampeners off, but she knew he was counting on it. He couldn't be more than a few nanometers tall at the moment. The table itself was the size of a continent to him. He was contained.

With an angry growl, she rose, and spun, and headed for the door.

Lil was growing tired of looking for a potential host or hostess. Indeed, she only persevered because it had been her idea, and she didn't want to give up easily. Still, as she sat down heavily on a bench in Amsterdam Centraal Station, she had to admit that this wasn't as easy as it had seemed. She looked at the paper idly, and then gasped a little at her own stupidity.

"I shouldn't have," said Lil, taking a sip and grimacing; she didn’t really like coffee, but she liked caffeine, so she put up with it. "The family made sense, they would have had food aplenty."

Lil smiled. "Now you're just repeating things I've told you."

"True," Lil chuckled. She paused for a moment. "You know, I think we should head for Germany."

Lil looked at her copy of the International Herald Tribune, and gestured to a lower article datelined Berlin. "Headquarters of the Society in Europe. Look, we can't keep running forever. Maybe they could help us there."

Lil smiled. "You mean the folks coming after us will be waiting in Berlin? Of course they will. But that doesn't mean they'll catch us before we get there. Besides, we'll take the circuitous route."

Lil looked at him. "You know, love, if you think I'm daft, you can say so."

Lil frowned at that. "Actually, if you'd just let them take me…."

"They want you," said Lil. "And I'd rather they didn't get you."

Lil smiled in spite of herself. "Let's go."

"It's been abandoned for a few days, I think," said Lucky, flipping through scattered papers. "But there's no question this was a League outpost."

"Probably moving to another safehouse -- figured we'd be after them," said Andrew. "Hey, here we go. 'Angela McMartin' -- that name ring a bell?"

She noted the license number. "They're probably moving out in this car. Get this information to Chicago. I think this could be what we were looking for."

Scott moved.

He felt very much like he was fumbling through darkness. The powers he had were weak, and he knew that some of the trickier spells, like transport and morpheus were out of the question. Shrinking and growing were going to be about all he could manage. But they were enough.

He tried to claris his way into Sarah's mind, to send her a signal he was okay. He didn't get anything, but he'd keep trying. He had nothing else at the moment to occupy him, and he wanted her to know he was not beaten yet.

€ € €

Lloyd looked at the pretty young thing, who was dressed in a short skirt with leggings, black boots, camouflage shirt and pink hair. "You really think so?"

Lloyd nodded, and pointed to her purse lying on the ground, festooned with pins advertising a few obscure bands and some fairly liberal causes, at least by American standards. "That's our ticket. Plenty of handholds. Let's move quickly, train will be here in twenty minutes."

An hour later, when the train had rolled out, a thin man came through the station, holding a grildrometer. He nodded, and punched a number into his mobile. "Germany," he said. "Redouble the guard in Berlin. And have a detachment waiting at Stuttgart. We've got them now."

Chapter Ten

Refraction

Liz's eyes fluttered open, and she smiled at Angie.  She really did like Angie, even if she'd gone into lockstep mode with the League.  Well, Liz reminded herself, that was partly her own doing.  She slid over, slightly, and said, "Angie, are we there?"

"No."

"We've been sleeping since six this morning.  I was just thinking...."

"I don't want to go up to the observation deck.  I'm sure Alaska's lovely, but I haven't slept on a bed in three days, damn it."

"No!  No, I mean, that's not what I meant."

"What do you mean?"

"Well...I mean, it's been about five years since we...and it was just the one time, and...."  Angie's voice trailed off.  Then, summoning a bit of courage, she said, "Look, I know that you've changed -- heck, we all have -- and it's been five years, and I can't expect that you still feel the same way, so...."

Liz looked at Angie, hooked her right arm behind Angie's neck, and pulled her in for a rough kiss.

It was a long time before they broke for air.  When they did, Angie said, "I want you to shrink me, like you did before."

"No," said Liz, "we need to be careful."

Angie paused.  "What if I shrank myself?"

Liz shifted a bit.  "No, Angie.  Last time -- well, when I woke up from my sleep, I wasn't quite myself.  I want you to get to know the real me.  I don't want to be worshipped.  Not by a lover.

"Which is why I want you to shrink me."

Angie looked at Liz, her mouth gaping.  "Are you -- I mean, you'd be...you're serious?"

Liz smiled.  "Trust me, I know a little person doing for you can be fun.  I'd like you to know what it feels like, Angie, to have me at your command."

Angie smiled a cautious smile.  "All right," she said, "here goes nothing."

€

* * * 

The train rolled in to Stuttgart Hauptbanhof, right on schedule.  Three men were there to meet it. 

Henry Bigg motioned to his two flunkies to spread out.  They'd find them.  They had to.

They looked at their grildrometers, each clicking away. 

He was an adept.  And he didn't know it.  Henry smiled wanly.  Lloyd blasted away when he used his skills, not that he needed to.  He just did so unconsciously, a man who didn't know his own strength.  It had taken them a bit to trace him to Amsterdam; Lloyd was smart, Henry would give him that.  A few hours more, and they would have had him there.  No matter.

Bigg looked at the grildrometer, which wasn't registering what he would expect.

"Damn it," he said.

There was a trace of...something.  They'd been there.  On this train.  He thought so, anyhow. 

He walked along slowly, patiently.  Looking for a spike, or a vector change.  But...nothing.  Nothing but a bit higher than usual background static, signaling that there had been something powerful on this train but a few hours ago. 

But not anymore.

"All right," he said, quietly, walking over to a map muttering to himself.  "They got off up the line a ways.  Stupid of me not to see it -- they're too smart to gun straight for Berlin.  But where," he murmured, drawing his finger back along the line to Heidelberg.

* * *

The door to the dorm banged open, and a college junior blearily looked up.  "Sue?  That you?" 

"Yeah, it's me," said her roommate, dropping her rucksack and denim purse in a corner of the room.  "Next time I say I'm going to Amsterdam for the weekend, remind me that I don't like pot enough to fill a whole weekend."

"I did tell you that." 

"You're right, Ráichéal, and I should have listened.  Just had a feeling I should go, like something important would happen.  It didn't.  Anyhow, I can get some studying done before Monday's test on Kant.  Which would be easy, if it wasn't in German.  I get halfway through writing kategorischer Imperativ and my brain hurts."

"Well, I told you that you shouldn't take the German-language classes in anything tough.  Why not take the English-language classes if you can?" 

"Because, it's my last semester in Germany before I head back to the states, that's why.  Assuming my head doesn't explode, I'll be able to tell my kids that I actually was able to speak fluent German at one point, at which point they'll roll their eyes and ask me why I didn't take Spanish."

Ráichéal pushed a mop of red hair out of her eyes and chuckled.  "You're too mature for nineteen, you know." 

"It's genetic," Sue sighed.  "Ráichéal, are you going to miss Heidelberg as much as I am?"

"I'll miss you, Sue.  But I miss home, too." 

"Yeah," Sue smiled wanly.  "Well, I'll miss a lot about being here.  You most of all, of course."  She felt a bit weak about it.  Ráichéal was the best friend she'd ever had.

"Get to sleep.  You need your beauty sleep, you know," sighed Ráichéal, knowing her friend well enough to know that a protracted conversation wouldn't lead to a happy place, or much more sleep for the evening. 

"Póg mo thóin," Sue shot back with a grin.

"Hey!  Eight months of teaching, and you're finally start getting your profanity right."

* * * €

Liz looked up at her titanic lover, boggling for a moment at the fact that either Angie or Jake had ever looked up at her this way.  It was daunting to sit between her thighs, smelling her sweet scent, and knowing that it was growing in intensity based on the anticipation of what Liz would do. 

She thought back to things that Jake had done for her, that Angie had done.  She walked along the inside of Angie's left thigh, dragging her right hand along it as much in wonder as anything else.  She stood about six inches tall, a good size, or so she'd been told.

She approached the pussy, and simply touched it.  Just...touched it. 

Angie moved her hips up and down, involuntarily, causing Liz to step back just a bit.

Liz reached back, and caressed Angie's labia, moving her tiny, delicate hand over the enormous, delicate folds of Angie's sex.  She got closer to it, feeling Angie's warmth radiating toward her. 

"It's beautiful," she whispered, as she buried her face in the folds.  And it was.

Angie shimmied just a bit, as she felt her tiny lover exploring her womanhood.  She remembered a pornographic comic book that she'd once owned, one she'd damn near worn out.  She'd always identified with Nibbil...but OH!  Annie had it good too.... 

She reached down unconsciously and felt Liz from behind with her right middle finger, urged her forward into the folds of herself.  And Liz pushed herself between the folds into the wet, sultry channel, and pushed herself up inside as far as she could, reveling in the feeling of Angie surrounding her, consuming her, her scent, her air, her water, her world.

Liz slid back a bit, and forward, and Angie above felt Liz moving inside her, and bit her lip.  It was perfect.  She had her lover back and it was perfect, more than perfect, Liz loved her so much, she had to.  And Liz slid herself back and forth, and wondered if she was leading Angie on, or if she actually cared for her.  But she though she owed the girl a bit of affection, she thought...oh, this was amazing, amazing...and wonderful, and it felt so...she fit so perfectly, and she slid back out, and now she was working on...and it was the size of her head, but she simply pushed and kneaded it, knowing that it would make her...and she felt it, oh Goddess, she was coming, she was coming, and she felt it was through her and over her and they fell apart, just a bit, happy and glowing and giggling like two schoolgirls, as the Malaspina came within sight of Juneau.

* * * 

Scott was somewhat amazed that his plan had worked this well.

Not that it was working particularly well.  Oh, he was free-ish, but he was still inside the detention facility, though he'd chanced increasing his size to a half-inch.  It was a size he knew well, and he figured -- correctly -- that the dampener would play hob with their ability to track him.

So he just had to dodge giantesses who were, at present, combing through the facility, looking for a tiny man.  There were a few dozen at present, and he knew there'd be more along soon enough. 

Which is why he knew he'd have to get close to one, and soon.

He picked out a face he'd seen, one that belonged to a pretty girl with black hair.  The new adept.  He felt drawn to her just a bit.  He couldn't explain why.

All he could do was to wait until she turned, and sprint for her knees, which were crawling along with her on the floor.  He leapt and grasped at the hard wall of denim, but he didn't pause.  Instead, he climbed for all he was worth, aiming for the seam on her jeans. 

It would be a long, difficult journey, but he would reach her pocket by evening.  He hoped she would head out of the detention facility soon.

  €

* * * 

Lloyd and Lil curled up under the bed of their enormous transporter, listening to her snore lightly above them.

"Well, at least we know where we are," said Lil.  "Heidelberg is actually okay.  I was thinking that Stuttgart would be too obvious, if they had tracked us." 

"Nice of you to mention it," Lloyd said, pulling his beloved near.  "So stay here a day or two, then head out?"

"I think so," said Lil.  "Actually, we've got some options.  This one -- Sue -- she's heading back to America soon.  That would scramble them up, but good.  And the other -- Rachel? -- she's Irish."

"Irish is no good," said Lloyd.  "Nothing against 'em, but we're back in the British isles then.  And I still don't trust America as a destination.  Still, they seem like nice girls, and the view is nice," he said, with a wink. 

"Oh, I can make you forget the view," said Lil, laughing.

"I know you can," he said.  "But for tonight, let's get some sleep.  Time for love tomorrow." 

"Ah.  And so it begins, the long slide into becoming just another boring couple." 

Lil and Lloyd dissolved into laughter over that, and a few hours later, Lil fell asleep happy, with Lloyd nestled in the valley between her breasts, damp but otherwise gleaming.

* * *  

Zoraida settled back in her room, unable to shake the feeling that something was wrong.

Not that this was an unusual feeling for her; heck, everything had seemed wrong since she left Madrid.  But this was something more, something nibbling at the back of her head. 

That they'd lost the man that Wafia had brought in -- that stunned her.  That he'd been lost after a waterboarding session...Zoraida shuddered.  She didn't know that anyone deserved that.  She'd dispatched rapists, twice, but she'd done so quickly.  Nothing painful, no torment. 

There it was again, the feeling.  She could pin it down.  It felt localized along her left outer thigh. 

She felt the twinge.

"No!  Block!" she said, reacting by instinct.  She held his signal, kept it from getting out.  "Grow!" she thought, pulling him up to a doll-sized scale.  She had him.  She felt the power coming from him, and she struggled, but she had him. 

Scott looked her in the eye as she retrieved him from her pocket, staring him down.  She could feel him straining, feel him pushing against her. 

She could fight him out, maybe even beat him.  If not alone, fight him to a draw until Wafia arrived... 

Instead, for reasons he couldn't adequately explain, she shut down.  "All right," she said, quietly, "let's just stop for now.."

Scott cocked an eyebrow.  A trick.  It had to be. 

"I'm not trying to lie to you."

Scott looked at the giantess a good long time.  "What's going on?" 

"I want to make an agreement," said Zoraida.

Scott rolled his eyes.  "You must think I'm stupid.  You'll attack the second I turn my back."

"I give you my word as a Spaniard," said Zoraida. 

"No good," Scott said, chuckling in spite of himself.  "I've known too many Spaniards."

"Please," she said. 

Scott's eyes widened, just a bit.  He was surprised by this turn of events.  That he was only slightly less surprised than Zoraida seemed clear to him.  Both looked at each other, as if sensing the other's motivations, unspoken and otherwise.

"All right," he said.  "What's the deal?"

"I don't turn you in.  In exchange, you don't make a move, not a single one.  You keep your defenses down, and you stay with me.  For now."

"Why?" asked Scott. 

"Because I want to know who you are.  I want you to tell me why you fight, why you're trying to destroy the League.  I need to know," she said, "what they aren't telling me."

Scott smiled, and bowed just a bit.  He would have to be patient.  As much as he wanted to run right now, he knew that this could pay off handsomely for all of them.  "All right," he said, "I'll tell you." 
 
And he did.

Chapter Eleven

e^iπ

Sue picked at her roll idly as Ráichéal chatted amiably about something-or-other. She couldn't help but feel like there was something she was missing, some piece to this puzzle that would fit if she just knew how to turn it.

She'd learned to trust her instincts these past few years. So when she got a feeling that she needed to go to Amsterdam, she'd gone...but nothing was there. And soon enough, she felt it was time to go back to Heidelberg, and...still nothing.

It didn't make sense. Unless her sixth sense was failing her, with her time in Europe almost at a close. Maybe it's just a fear of going home, she thought. That could be it. She'd carved out a nice niche for herself here in Germany. She was herself. She wasn't defined by her family here.

That wouldn't be true back in America. But she picked at her roll, and knew that all good things must come to an end. Perhaps, when she graduated, she could look for a job in the E.U. Or maybe not; she turned the puzzle around in her head, trying to make the pieces fit.

* * *

Sarah stretched out her mind for him. It was late, and she expected not to see him. But she thought she would try, one last time before bed.

And suddenly, she was staring up at a beautiful woman, slightly voluptuous, staring down at...at Scott, she knew, who was tiny next to her, talking, quietly.

"You have to understand," he said, "I don't think the League is entirely wrong. Women have gotten the short end of it for millennia. Hell, only a brain-dead moron, or a Men's Rights activist, or one of those idiots thinks that women have it better than men. My wife's best friend was raped in high school, my best friend's sister was raped and murdered. And that's not even getting into the thirty-four thousand ways the deck is stacked against women when it comes to everyday life.

"But that's changing. It was already changing before GTS became real, and it's changing much faster since. A guy can't hit his girlfriend now because for all he knows, she'll shrink him down to three feet tall and kick the living hell out of him. Probably she won't, but how does he know? Rapists? You told me you've killed two -- and I won't mourn 'em -- and they're the tip of the iceberg. It's hard to exert control over women when they can't be physically subdued. And they can't be anymore, not reliably."

"So why do you fight the League then?" the giantess asked.

"Because the League isn't happy just getting women to equality. They want women to turn the tables on men completely. They want women to be able to beat men without fear of reprisal, they want women to be able to rape with impunity. They don't want to balance the scales, they want to tip 'em."

"But isn't that fair?" asked Zoraida.

Scott told the buzzing in his head, mentally, I love you Sarah, but please, pull back -- they'll track it. He responded to the giantess, "My friend Jake would say it was, but it wasn't right."

Zoraida leaned back, looking at the tiny man on her nightstand. Her heart was still beating quickly. She knew that she could gain favor from her commanders. If she called them now, she could hold him until Wafia arrived, and Leah.

But she listened to him, and she thought of all the casual cruelty she'd seen in her life.

Not all of it had come from men.

She leaned back, and said, finally, "I can not let you leave yet. I need to think about some things. But -- I will keep you a secret for now. I have to think."

Scott nodded. "I understand. I'll stay. Just give me one promise."

"What is that?"

"If you decide to dispose of me...give me the chance to parry first."

Zoraida smiled. "I will," she said.

Sarah pulled out of Scott's mind, and sighed, relieved. She knew he was in danger. He seemed to be trying to turn a League operative. She smiled, slightly. She knew damn well that her husband was the best field op in the organization. She knew if anyone could pull it off, it would be him. And while she knew that until he was safe in her hands she would be terrified, she also knew that she owed it to the Society, herself, and to him to let him do his job.

* * *

Henry wandered the campus of Universität Heidelberg, looking at the grildrometer as it slowly crept higher. It was at 3.2 kΓρs and rising rapidly. They were around here. He could tell. Just a few more loops, watching the needle climbing slowly, and he would have them.

* * *

Michaelson ran.

He did so every morning; had done so whenever he could for as long as he could remember. A Marine is supposed to be in shape. And he was still a Marine, he told himself, despite the fact that the civilians identified him as one of them.

He struggled as he ran to reconcile everything he'd learned in the past few days. He wasn't stupid -- far from it -- but he was still trying to see how getting the Society out of the way benefited anyone.

Oh, sure, it would get the Society out of the way -- that would be something. But he wasn't sure that his patrons really knew what they were getting into with the League. He had a sinking feeling that the idea that they'd destroy the Society and then everyone would return to their corners to wait for the next round -- well, he didn't think it likely.

But he also knew that the alternative to being a part of this was sitting at a desk in the bowels of the Pentagon, waiting to retire or die. He just hoped he could steer things the right way when it came time. If his friends didn't see that the League needed to be felled at the same time as the Society, well, he would just have to ensure it happened.

* * *

Lloyd reclined against Lil's right breast, looking down at her enormous visage. Of course, it was all relative; Lil was about four centimeters high right now, and he but a few millimeters.

He frowned, looking at her dozing lightly. He was worried. She had been with him so far unconditionally. But he loved her enough that he didn't want to burden her.

He tried to think how he could push her away so that she'd leave, but so that, if the day ever came, she might take her back. Tried to think how even as he knew that if she left, he'd die -- because without her, he knew that he would not have been able to fight on these past weeks. Without her, he would have surrendered. She was what tied him to the world right now. Without her, life meant nothing.

But because of that, he knew that he couldn't let her destroy her life for him. He had to find a way to free her, even if it meant his destruction.

He prayed for the strength to do what he had to do. But not yet, O Lord, not yet.

* * *

Ráichéal almost ran right into the man, who was waiting outside her dorm room, looking at a device.

"Ja?" she asked, wondering what this was about.

"Ja...er...Sprechen Sie Englich? Meine Deutsch ist nicht so gut," the man said.

"I'm actually Irish, so yes, I speak English. What can I do for you?"

"Yes, I'm Hank Bartholomew, we're doing a check for vermin. You know, mice, rats, that sort of thing. May I check your dorm room?"

Ráichéal raised an eyebrow. "What's an American doing checking for vermin at a German University on a Sunday?"

The man laughed. "Thought you might wonder that," he said, flashing a badge that identified him as a member of the National Security Agency. "I'm working for the American government with the assistance of the German government, and I'm afraid I can't discuss the issue any further. National"

Ráichéal backed up a step. "What? Do you have...can I see..."

"Miss, I really need to check this room," he said, replacing his wallet inside his jacket, and retrieving a taser. "We can do this politely, or we can do this the hard way."

At that, the blood drained from Ráichéal's face. "I...uh...okay, yes, okay."

* * *

A few buildings away, Sue's head snapped up.

Something was wrong. Very wrong.

Closing her book, she started to pack it away, then thinking better of it, she dropped it on the desk, and turned and began to run.

* * *

Lloyd heard the door open, and slid off his fiancée's chest and on to the ground, restoring himself to her size as he observed the door swing open, and a pair of wingtips walk in. "Bloody Hell!" he said as he looked up at the giant.

"Wake up, Lil! Hurry, it's them, they've found us, we have to hide!"

Lil woke quickly, and staggered to her feet, as she stared up at the immense Henry Bigg, who was muttering gleefully to the room in general, "No, no, change sizes again. Please, one more good spike and I should have you."

He spun slowly, looking at the dial. "Fee, fi, foe, fum...I smell the blood of an Englishman and his girlfriend. Come out, come out wherever you are."

Lil grabbed Lloyd's hand and pulled him toward the depths of the bed. "Come on!" she said.

Henry turned, and cocked his head. He thought he heard -- yes, the needle confirmed it. It was swinging wildly at this point, almost 100 kΓρs when he pointed it toward the bed. They were there.

"I've got you now," he said.

"Got who now?" came a voice from behind him.

He wheeled, and saw another woman standing in the door, vaguely familiar. "Official government business," he said. "As an American, I'm sure you understand --"

"He's got a taser, Sue," said Ráichéal. "We'd better let him..."

"What's that?" asked Sue, pointing at the grildrometer.

"This? Oh, it's just a Geiger counter. Nothing..." said Henry, who looked down at the meter, and frowned. 550 kΓρs? Impossible.

"That's not a Geiger counter," said Sue. "Put the grildrometer down, and then empty your pockets, and I won't hurt you."

"Susi, what are you doing?" asked Ráichéal.

"Trust me," said Sue, raising her right hand. "Do it," she said to the man.

Bigg looked at her, nonplussed. Almost by instinct, he raised his right hand in a mirror image of hers.

"Shrink1:24scaleandbind," said Sue, matter-of-factly, as Henry Bigg quickly dropped to three inches tall. "Ráichéal, grab him and put him on the dresser."

Sue hated using her powers. But he'd left her no choice.

"Ráichéal, seriously, please put him on the dresser."

Ráichéal, for her part, was frozen in shock, looking at Sue with a mixture of awe and surprise. "I thought -- you never said you had any powers."

"Yeah, well, it's bad enough being Sarah Kensington's little sister, you think I'd ever get noticed for myself if I followed her into the business? You," she said, pointing at Bigg, who Ráichéal was finally depositing on her dresser. "I know you. You used to work for the Society. You're Henry Bigg. What were you doing here? Were you after me?"

Bigg looked up at Susi Kensington in blind terror. "What? No, no, I wasn't after you. You think I'd cross your sister? Your brother-in-law? They're mad enough at me as it is."

Susi looked down at Bigg. "Then who were you looking for?"

"Nothing!"

"'Nothing?' That's why you threatened my friend with a taser, 'nothing?' Really, I thought you were smarter," she said, raising her right hand up. "Now, I'm going to count to three, and if you don't answer me, I bring my hand down. One...two...."

"All right! I was looking for an adept. I thought...thought he might be hiding here. He's gone over to the League. He had to be stopped!"

Sue shook her head. "Well, I think you might have been looking for someone. Which makes me wonder...Hello?" she called to the room. "I won't hurt you. You haven't threatened anyone. Come on out, I promise I'll be kind."

Lloyd looked at Lil, who squeezed his hand. "It's your decision, love," she said.

Lloyd looked back at the giant woman, who was looking around calmly. "I think," he said, "that at this point, the enemy of my enemy is...well, at least she says she's going to be kind."

Lil nodded. "Just stay on your guard."

The two walked into the room, and Lloyd restored them to their proper sizes. Ráichéal gasped, but Sue just smiled. "Let me guess: you guys were in Amsterdam a couple days ago, right?"

Lloyd was surprised, but Lil returned Sue's smile. "Yes, we were, and thank you for carrying us on to here. I'm sorry for the intrusion by this one," she said, pointing to the tiny figure of Henry, "he and his crew have been after us for weeks."

"Sue Kensington," Sue said, reaching out her hand.

"Lilavati Jurasaya. This is my fiancée, Lloyd Polley."

Lloyd reached out for Sue's hand next. "I'm the one he's been after; Lil has just been an unwitting target."

Sue nodded. "Lil loves you," she said to Lloyd. "Nothing unwitting about that. So, Henry, who's in your 'crew?' I know it isn't the Society. Have you gone over to the League?"

Bigg was quiet.

"He said it was an old organization, that the Society had been formed by traitors to it, but that they wanted men to rule over women. Right, Henry?" said Lloyd.

At that, Sue wheeled. "The Cadre! You're a part of a revitalized Cadre? Are you fucking kidding me?"

She took a few quick strides over to the tiny man, and spat on him.

"You sons of bitches, it's not enough that the League has to start up with some cockamamie plan to elevate the womenfolk, you have to go and give them a counterweight. Well bully for you, you goddamn assholes. So I suppose you wanted this guy to help you, and unfortunately, he actually likes women, thinks they're okay and stuff, right? Right?"

Henry cowered, trying to wipe the saliva from his face, terrified of the very angry woman staring down at him. "You...you don't understand. It's the natural order of things...when you're older, you'll know...."

He shut up as Sue brought a closed fist onto the dresser but an inch from him, knocking him to the ground.

"Look," she said, "I may not want to follow in my sister's footsteps, but I'm damn glad she's able to run the Society without anyone questioning it. I'm glad her vagina doesn't disqualify her from leading, or force her into the kitchen. There is no 'natural order,' you mouth-breather. You think we had computers when we were evolving on the savannah? Spaceships? Cars? Brooms? Humans adapt. Women are men's equals, and humanity will adapt to that, and a hundred years from now, you'll be viewed like the slaveholders. They thought their order was natural too, you know."

"Listen, Sue," said Lloyd, "I don't want to frighten you, but he claimed he had contacts in government."

"Of course he does," Sue said. "Of course he does. Shrink, 1:24 scale, and bind." Henry dwindled into virtual nothingness. "One-eighth inch should keep him out of the way for now. All right," she said, "we'd better get packed and get a move on. Ráichéal, you coming?"

"What?" Ráichéal replied, still trying to get her brain around what was going on.

"If Lloyd here is right, then that NSA badge was real, and there will be more agents showing up -- no doubt there are some Cadre sympathizers in der Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz who will be here within the hour. We've got one chance, and that's to light out for Berlin. Now."

"Look, you don't have to go," said Lloyd. "Maybe Lil could stay here, you could claim that Henry took me..."

Sue shook her head. "They'll take one look at my last name, and they'll know. Ráichéal could stay here, I suppose, with Lil."

"Well I'm not staying here," said Lil. "You won't get rid of me that easily, love. I'm in it for good."

"Lil --"

"Stop," she said, quieting him with a kiss. "My life is entwined with yours, for good or ill. You're not going to rid yourself of me this side of the grave."

Lloyd looked at her, and said, "I'm sorry, and I'm glad."

"Ráichéal? You could tell 'em the truth, that a bunch of folks did some crazy stuff with GTS, and that you stayed behind because it didn't have anything to do with you."

Ráichéal, for her part, looked at Sue, and gave a half-smile. "But it does, Sue. I know you'd go with me. How long will we be in Berlin?"

* * *

Wolfgang von Karajan strode into the room two hours later, and cursed. The grildrometer showed a slowly fading echo of a whole lot of power, but that echo was indeed fading. They'd given them the slip.

As for Henry Bigg, there was no sign. The director of the Cadre in Germany did find the mobile phone Henry had dropped, but there was no sign of Henry himself.

Not that von Karajan cared. Had he known as he left that Bigg was trying to climb down a dresser, and about to start a few years of living off the crumbs of the dorm's residents, it's doubtful that von Karajan would have given a second's thought to helping him. No, he had bigger fish to fry. This room belonged to a girl named Kensington. It couldn't be a coincidence; von Karajan didn't believe in coincidence. No, he'd have to find a lever. He'd call Washington in a few hours. See what bones he could rattle. Because he knew that if target Bravo was lost to the Society, that the Cadre would be lost with him.

* * *

The prop plane landed in St. Mary's as the sun peaked over the horizon. Soon enough, the car carried them up to New Myrina, and there the four women were reunited with the League.

Leah Jackson was so happy that she almost was able to blot out her anger at Scott Chelgren. "Liz! My Goddess, I can't believe you escaped!"

"It wasn't easy, Madame President. I had help," she said, gesturing to Yvette and Tori.

"Ah, yes. Tori, you had assistance from your friends in the Cadre. Sir George is going to be quite happy to have his assassin back, I think. We'll send you on to them soon enough. Someday, we'll be enemies, but you and I will talk -- when that day comes, perhaps we need not hate each other."

Tori looked on quizzically, but Leah didn't stop. Instead, she walked up to Yvette. "So, Yvette, how are you doing?"

"I am well, Beatrice," she said, evenly. "I'm glad to see you survived."

"Ah yes, 'Beatrice.' That was the name I was using for that mission, wasn't it? You know, it's funny, but Mikhaela told me not long after the ring was broken up that you testified about our little organization in order to get a reduction on your sentence. Is that true?"

Yvette went white. "Well...not exactly. I told them some things that I did not think would hurt...things they already knew."

"Right. Vous m'avez trahi, Yvette."

"What? No! Never! I respected you, Beatrice, that is why I came back!"

But Leah was not listening. Instead, she raised her right hand. "Pokalechke," she said.

Yvette turned inside out, literally, as the spell worked its way through her body. She tried to scream from the pain, but it came out only as a weak gurgle, as organs crossed with other organs, and her body collapsed into a puddle of flesh. With one last gurgled scream, she was gone.

"I don't tolerate betrayal," she said to those assembled. "Zoraida, would you be a dear and show The Coed, Angie and Tori to some quarters in 'C' barracks? And Liz, I'll be along in about twenty minutes to chat with you. Meanwhile, someone clean this mess up."

And with that, the President of the League strode away.

Chapter Twelve

Spooky Action at a Distance

Sarah vaguely remembered that people don't generally work weekends, but that changed nothing for her. She sat at her desk, and tried to place where Scott was.

He was off the grid. That much was clear. But there weren't many places off the grid. Idly, she brought up the image of the world listening stations, looking for anomalies. Japan was blood red as always, with Tokyo's flashing white; she slid her eyes north to Siberia, where there were no listening stations yet. Nothing she could see. Sliding east, she looked at Alaska. They still needed to get listening stations up there; they didn't have anything west of Anchorage. No, Alaska was calm, except….

That was odd. Just a flash, a wiggle of yellow and red where the signal died…and then nothing.

She wondered.

Suddenly, a different flash caught her eye, this one in Europe. It momentarily lit up on the Rhine, a burst of white that cascaded throughout the sensors in the neighboring countries, before they faded back to their usual red, except for the trace over the epicenter.

"The hell?" she muttered, looking at the dying ember of activity. She hit a button. "Ops, did you just see a huge flash in Germany?"

"Yes'm," came the reply. "Huge outlay, maybe a megagril. Trying to localize."

A megagrildrig? That was huge. Only an adept could….

"Got it," Ops said. "Localized in and around Heidelberg, Germay. Should we dispatch a team?"

"Definitely. Let Dieter know about this, have him get on it ASAP. Did you say Heidelberg?"

"Yes'm."

"Right, okay, let me know when the situation resolves."

She closed communication, and looked back at the map. Alaska was back to its usual blues and greens; could be just a sensor glitch from before. She made a note to check further. Then, she sat back. She didn't want to worry, but she was a big sister; if something big was going on in Heidelberg, she though she'd best check in on Susi, just in case.

€ € €

The unmistakable whistle part of "Young Folks" cheerily indicated the phone call. The mobile sang out its little song even after it was picked up.

"Sarah," said von Karajan, reading the call ID and smiling tightly. "Interessieren." For a split-second, he considered answering; there was a part of his old competitive spirit, after all, that liked the idea of taunting her, pushing her toward a misstep.

But he knew that would mean giving away too much information for too little reward. Instead, he simply waited for the voicemail prompt to light up, then turned the phone off.

€ € €

"Fuck fuck fuck!" Sue said, digging through her purse. "I can't believe I forgot my cell! God, that sucks! I was going to call Sarah. Tell her we were coming."

"I thought you didn't like your sister," said Lloyd, as they walked toward the platform at the train station.

"Did I say that? Hell no. I'm glad I'm Sarah Kensington's sister. I just wish I wasn't 'Sarah Kensington's Sister.' It was bad enough when she wasn't making People's sexiest people list and becoming one of the most powerful humans alive. I mean, I thought I had a lot to live up to when she was a law student. But now…."

Sue stopped, and turned to Lloyd. "My sister is probably a much better person than I am. Or you are. Don't ever forget it."

Lloyd tried to stammer something, but fortunately, Lil interjected. "I'm sure she's a lovely person, Sue. But you've been more than helpful so far. I imagine your sister is quite as proud of you as you of her."

Sue smiled wryly. "Of course she is. Because she's perfect that way. Doesn't mean she should be. Come on, we need to get going."

"You could use my mobile, " Ráichéal offered.

"No good," said Sue, sighing. "I don't remember the number. It's just one of the numbers in my phonebook. I could call my parents to get it…but I really don't want to do that."

"Why not?" asked Lloyd.

"You've never been fourteen and been present while your sister and brother-in-law explained why they were just seen fighting a massive, deadly battle on CNN, have you?" said Sue. "Of course not. It's a dumb question. Forget I asked. My parents took it well, all things considered. Well, my mom did, anyhow. But…"

She grew silent, and looked around. "Fuck," she said. "This isn't going to work."

"What won't work?" asked Ráichéal.

"They'll be watching the train stations."

"We could shrink, like we've been doing," said Lloyd. "That's how we got to Heidelberg, after all.

"No, no," said Sue. "That's how they tracked you to Heidelberg. Didn't you see that thing he had? It's a grildrometer. Measures the amount of energy being used to generate spells. And if you're an adept, like Henry Bigg said, you're bleeding energy just standing here. Every spell you make, every change, it's like a big neon sign saying 'Here I am!'"

Lloyd looked down. "So every time I changed, I was drawing them to me."

Sue looked at him, and smiled kindly. "You don't have the first clue about any of this, do you?"

"Not really," Lloyd said. "I didn't know I was anything special. At least, that I was that special."

"You are," said Sue, quietly. "I can feel it. You're strong. Don't worry Lil," she said, taking an unconscious step backward in response to Lil, who was moving to interject herself between Lloyd and the bespectacled punk beauty. "I'm not moving in on him. He wouldn't have me anyhow. I can't compete with you, and I don't want to. No, he's strong like my sister, like my brother-in-law."

"Like you," said Lloyd.

"Maybe," said Sue. "Maybe."

€ € €

Sarah couldn't help but feel a bit disconcerted. Oh, maybe Sue was studying, or sleeping one off, or maybe she'd found herself a nice Bavarian boy to bed. Yeah, it was her little sister, but given what Sarah had been doing by age nineteen, if Sue was just having sex with a hot guy she was pure as the driven snow.

Still, Sarah hoped she'd hear something soon. She had a bad feeling. After a few minutes, she picked up the phone and made one last call.

"Teri? Are you getting back in tonight or tomorrow? Great! I'll meet you at the airport. We need to talk…well, I need to talk. It's been an eventful Sunday."

€ € €

"C" Barracks was a relatively nondescript building, as were all the buildings on base, for that matter. Zoraida first showed Tori to a room, and was now showing Angie and Liz to the room they would share.

"So," said Zoraida to Liz. "You're legendary, you know."

"I know," said Liz, looking back at her. "What's your name?"

"Zoraida Abarca. I'm an adept."

Liz's eyebrow went up at that. She wasn't sure why Zoraida was trying to intimidate her. Maybe it was insecurity, or something deeper. As for Zoraida, she was trying to suss out whether Liz was The Coed that she'd been told about. She seemed calmer. Either way, Zoraida didn't trust her, not a bit.

That wouldn't have bothered Liz; she didn't trust Zoraida. Not at all.

€ € €

"So you think this will work?"

"Not necessarily," said Sue. "But I don't know that we have much choice."

"It makes some sense," said Lil.

"I don't like it," said Lloyd. "We don't know where they're going."

"True," said Sue, "but the Cadre won't either."

They were standing near the train station, observing a tour bus bearing some Americans slowly wandering back. It looked like the kind of if-This-is-Sunday-this-Must-be-Heidelberg tour that busy people take when they don't trust their own sense of direction. But they were close enough to the train station and close enough to leaving that it looked like a good way out of town.

"Once we get some separation, we can use our powers again," said Sue. "But if we shrink and then go quiet, they won't be able to follow us. Not easily."

"You don't think we should…uh…'transport?'"

"I told you the second I thought of it, Lloyd. They’ll be watching Berlin, Chicago, probably Tokyo, too. We may want to transport, but we can't do it blindly. If we do, we may be slitting our own throats."

"Glad you talked me into coming," said Ráichéal. "All right, how do we get aboard?"

Lloyd pointed to a young couple, perhaps on their honeymoon, or perhaps just happy to be away from the kids for a while; they were seemingly perpetually in danger of throwing one another to the ground and leaping atop and/or astride each other.

"They're going to be oblivious," he said. "And she's got her bag on the ground. If we hurry…"

"Yep," said Sue, nodding. "All right, let's do it."

And she quickly shrunk them and transported them into the shopping bag that rested against the woman's ankle.

About forty minutes later, von Karajan arrived. "They shrunk outside the station," he said, sweeping with the grildrometer. "What trains left in the half-hour?"

"Stuttgart, and Frankfurt."

"Spread out to those stations," he said, frowning. "Search the trains at destination. Leave no stone unturned."

He didn't think to look for a bus. He didn't expect those kids to be that creative.

€ € €

The knock at the door came as no surprise to Liz. "Come," she said, quietly.

"Hello, Liz," said the President of the League. "Angie, would you excuse us, please?"

Angie gave Liz a peck on the cheek before leaving the room. Leah, for her part, sat down on a chair, opposite Liz, who was sitting on her bunk.

"I'd forgotten about your history with her," Leah said, offhandedly.

"Me too, for a while," said Liz. "Angie is a good person."

"A good woman," Leah agreed. "No question. There's a reason we had her running the New York safehouse. She's not overly skilled, but she has heart. She believes, like you do."

Liz nodded, and said, "So what do you want to talk about, Leah?"

Jackson started just a bit at the use of her first name; she wasn't accustomed to it. "Well, Liz…I wanted to find out what your intentions were."

"Excuse me?"

"I know that in Madison, it was your operation, that you brought me back for my technical expertise, and my command experience. This organization was dead until you revived it. But with all due respect, much of the building was done after you were captured. I would hesitate to give up command of the organization, much as I can understand if that is what you seek."

Liz shifted back, and crossed her arms inscrutably. "Leah, I'm offended."

"Liz —"

Liz put her hand up. "I'm offended that you would expect I would try to take over, or expect you to turn over the keys. You've done well, Leah. Very well. We're in a great position. And I want you to retain command of day-to-day operations.

"All I want is a sinecure, a position that shows deference to me – perhaps one that is technically equal, sort of the head of state to your head of government."

Leah smiled. "You've read my mind, Liz. I want you to take over the new position as Regent of the League. When we have captured the world, I'll do the dirty work. But we need a face that people know, and fear. That's not mine. It's yours. They all saw you at Madison. They know."

Liz returned her smile. "I assume 'Regent' is roughly the same as 'Queen,' right?"

"And I your Prime Minister," Leah agreed.

"Perfect," said Liz. "So Madame President, let's get down to business. The rumor that was going around prison before our escape was that the League had Chelgren. Is that true?"

"Well…your Highness," said Leah, "we have him…in a manner of speaking."

When Leah finished explaining Chelgren's daring escape, Liz was stone-faced. "So he could be anywhere. He could even have gotten away."

"No," said Leah emphatically. "He's still on the base. We haven't seen any indication that he got away. He was too small to escape on his own, way down in the microscopic realm. And the few flashes of activity afterward were all explicable and tied to our own people. No, Chelgren hasn't cast so much as a transform spell since he escaped. He can't wait forever. A few days, at most, and he'll have to surface."

"Don't be so sure," said Liz. "Jake Thiessen trained him, and I know Jake well enough to know he trained Scott well. I want to review the security tapes from the prison break. See if I can find anything that your people missed."

"Yes, your Highness," said Leah.

"Now, Madame President, what can I do for you? Surely you have ideas."

"I want you to train Zoraida," said Leah. "Wafia is strong, but unpredictable. She's a good evangelist, and a great soldier, but she's not command material. You, on the other hand…you're smart. Calm. Brilliant. And deadly. I want you to take her under your wing, teach her how you killed in Madison, and how to handle herself as a giantess. Ultimately, I think between you and Zoraida, you can defeat the Chelgrens."

"And what of Wafia? Isn't she an adept?"

"Yes, but…she's angry. So angry," said Leah.

"Aren't we all," said Liz.

"I suppose," said Leah. "But her anger makes her move rashly. It's how Sarah Kensington-Chelgren beat her in Mendota Heights, and it's why I can't trust her as the lynchpin of my operation. No, I need people I can trust, people like you, and Zoraida."

Elizabeth the First, Regent of the League, smiled tightly at that. "Well, Leah, I like to think that you've earned my trust. I'll train the adept. For now – it's been a long journey. Do you mind if I take a nap before the day gets much later?"

"Not at all," Leah said. "I'll wake you and Angie before dinner. There I'll introduce you to the ladies."

"Very good, Madame President. If anything requires my attention before then, I am at your call."

"Thank you, your Highness. And likewise," said Leah, bowing slightly. She smiled. This was perfect – the perfect set-up for her triumph.

Liz, for her part, fretted. She didn't know whether she could turn Zoraida into the right kind of adept, and she herself was hearing some voices, long-buried. Voices she thought that she'd excised a long time ago. And they were telling her, softly, that she had found her home.

€ € €

The check-in went as it had in Brussels and Frankfurt, and now Matt and Erica Treehorn were happily moving into their room in Zurich, which was not exactly plush, but which had a big, soft bed, which was all they really required.

As they went downstairs for dinner, a small party was exiting the bag of tchotchkes. "Well, that was an interesting form of travel," said Ráichéal. "It was a little smoother than Ryan Air, I suppose, but still…oof."

"It could've been worse," said Lloyd, "if Lil hadn't gotten the bright idea to stow ourselves in the Toblerone box. That probably saved us."

"Well, I was getting tired of dodging that giant nutcracker," said Lil. "Blasted thing. I don't know why the Germans ever started making them."

"Well, we all came through okay," said Sue, dusting herself off. "But still, I think we should probably figure out where we are."

"We're in Zurich!" shouted Lil, as she walked across the enormous desk, looking at the hotel's information guide. "I don't know how that helps us, but there you are."

"I meant in the room, and the answer, obviously, is a desk. Could be worse. Anywhere good to hide while we wait for the lovebirds to return?"

Lloyd scanned the surface. "Not really," he said. "Frankly, the bag might be the place to go. This is pretty slim pickings."

"Well," said Lil, "Sue, do you think we could survive a leap into that?"

On the ground was the couple's suitcase, which had been opened but not yet unpacked. "Well. That's a bit of a drop at half a centimeter tall. Still, we're proportionately stronger, and that's pretty soft material. Yeah, that's a heck of a good idea. I told you she was a keeper, Lloyd."

"I know she is. All right, do we just jump, or what?"

"We jump?" said Ráichéal, looking sickly over the edge.

"Don't worry," said Lil. "I know being tiny is freaky…"

"Oh, it's not that. It's just getting my brain to accept what it's seeing. Shrinking and growth have been around for millennia; I doubt the leprechauns thought it was 'freaky.' All right, on three then?"

On three, they jumped into the sea of clothing.

They impacted and bounced all over the place, ricocheting off of shirts and skirts and socks and stockings. They bounced to a stop in alternate quarters of the case.

"All okay?" shouted Lloyd.

"Okay!" yelled Lil.

"Roger!" said Sue.

"I'm fine…except for the fact that I think I'm in a pair of briefs," said Ráichéal.

Lloyd looked around, and blushed slightly, realizing that he'd alighted in a pair of black lace panties.

Lil, for her part, was straightening herself. She could see Ráichéal, and waved to her. "I'm coming," she said, climbing down a bit off of the folded black socks. "At least they appear clean."

"Aye," said Ráichéal. "They do at that. Imagine how well hung a guy would have to be to fill these out?"

"Don't have to," said Lil. "It's impressive."

Lloyd, for his part, reached a hand down to pull Sue up from the bowels of a pair of silk stockings. "You okay?"

"Yeah, just fine. You know, I –"

But the group fell silent at that moment, with the sound of an opening door.

They heard the sounds of the titanic couple reverberating, chuckling and laughing. "So you want to try the club, honey?"

"You know how dancing gets me."

"I know how everything gets you. I thought women weren't supposed to want sex more often than men?"

"Please. You know you're glad you married a nymphomaniac."

"Glad? I thank Jesus every day for you, Erica. Let's get changed and go to the club…and see where it gets us."

The four hitchhikers tried to disappear as the enormous form of a busty, blonde, just overweight enough to look phenomenal, appeared over the case.

"Do you want to change your underwear? I'm changing mine," she called out, grasping a pair of black panties and a pair of white cotton briefs.

"Sounds like a good idea," said Matt, as Erica lifted the items from the case, along with a pair of pants, some socks, and a shirt for him, and a skirt, a bra, and a blouse for herself.

She also lifted four people, though she didn't have any idea of that, of course.

Chapter Thirteen
Turbulence

"The Coed is here."

Scott paused and looked up at Zoraida, who had removed him from the dresser drawer where she'd stowed him.

"What?" Scott replied, shocked. "You must be mistaken."

"I am not mistaken. I've met her. Liz Anderson, right?"

Scott paced back and forth. How was that possible? She was on the thirteenth floor, for God's sake! "Why is she here?" he asked, blandly.

"Don't know. I just know that Leah was really glad to see her."

"I'll bet," Scott said glumly. He cursed his own stupidity. He had thought Liz was reformed, but obviously not. Unless Sarah sent her…

No. His wife would never be that reckless.

"You know her story, right?" Scott asked.

"The short version."

"Let me tell you the longer version," said Scott. "It's important you know it."

* * *

Meanwhile, in a hotel room in Zurich, two pairs of underwear were being pulled on by two halves of a couple. And in each pair, two people clung tightly, scrambling quickly out of the way.

"We have to get Lil and Ráichéal out of there!" Lloyd cried as he and Sue were pulled into a forest of pubic hair.

"Wait a minute, we need to think," said Sue, grabbing hold of Erica's bush and holding on for dear life. "We may need to do something, but we need to be smart. The longer we can hold off using any powers, the better the chance we get through this in one piece."

"But they don't even know we're in Switzerland. Surely —"

"We need to keep it that way! Look, do you think I like being in the panties of an oversexed giantess? At least Lil and Ráichéal have something interesting to check out. I already have one of these things," she said, gesturing to the chasm that separated her and Lloyd at the moment.

"You're selling them short," said Lloyd, but he clung nonetheless.

Meanwhile, in a pair of briefs, Ráichéal and Lil had pulled themselves up onto the underside of an enormous scrotum.

"Well!" said Ráichéal, as they held fast, both to each other and to the ball sack, "Everyone I sleep with forever is going to be smaller than this."

"Too true," said Lil. "I think we're best of staying here as long as we can. Even if he sits down, it should be safer than messing with the giant above us."

Ráichéal looked at Lil in the rapidly diminishing twilight, and said, "Have you ever tried this with Lloyd?"

Lil shook her head. "No, largely the opposite."

"Pity. I think a day in a lad's undies might be fun. I can think of a few things I might do."

"Well," said Lil, "assuming we survive this, you'll probably get your chance with someone down the line."

"Do you think your fiancé is going to whisk us out of here?"

"If he does, I'll kill him. He needs to keep a damper on his powers until he actually needs to use them."

Out in the macroscopic world, Mike and Erica moved together before they headed out for the dance.

* * *

"I see," said the Vice President. "Well, update me when you have a locus. Damn it to fucking hell!" he yelled, slamming the phone down in its cradle. "We've lost Invest One."

The rest of the master control room was quiet, until the Vice President thundered, "Well, are you all just going to sit there with your thumbs up your asses? Damn it, damn it, damn it, this is fucking terrific."

"He's just off the grid, like he has been for the past few weeks," offered one staffer from the front, but the Veep shook his head.

"No, Jenkins, he's hooked up with Sue Kensington. That's Sarah Kensington-Chelgren's sister. It's only a matter of time before he gets to the Society now. And then we're hosed. Best chance at an adept and he slips through our fingers, damn it, I never should have sent Bigg to do this, I knew he'd fuck it up, I knew it."

"Mr. Vice President, why do we need an adept?"

"Michaelson, that's maybe the dumbest question you've ever asked. We need an adept to keep up with the Society and the League."

"We have conventional munitions. And unconventional ones."

The Vice President strode quickly over to Michaelson and stared him down. "You know damn well that the Chelgrens managed to shrink a thermonuclear warhead down to nothing. Going after them militarily without having some access to GTS is like going against the Red Army with spears and arrows."

"Well, they haven't made it to the Society yet," said a man in the corner of the room, "or I would have heard something. Besides, I think you're overthinking this. Sue Kensington's a non-factor. She and her sister weren't that close in age, and besides, she's just a college kid. And she's not gifted with the whole GTS thing anyhow. Doesn't have powers, Sarah even said so, once. At best, she calls in her sister, and frankly, I think they know we're watching, so she'll probably steer clear. We haven't lost Invest One yet, and with luck, maybe we won't."

"Too bad I can't send you, Stuart," said the Vice President, "but you're more valuable to us here. Which reminds me," he said, checking his watch, "you'd better get back to your conference. Wouldn't want to arouse suspicion."

Stuart Little bowed slightly, turned tail and headed out. Michaelson, meanwhile, scribbled idly on a piece of paper. "It's stuff like this that makes me wish Beanstalk would have worked out."

"Yeah, well, it didn't," the Vice President said. "One interesting accident was all we saw for eight hundred million."

"If he hadn't escaped, we'd have the key. We would have had the key before the Society, even. Damn Finney anyhow."

"Who's Finney?" asked Jenkins.

"Jake Finney. The unlucky grad student. His sweet-assed girlfriend and I tried to talk him into staying, but he wasn't willing to listen. Of course, he was probably right, from his perspective. But he hurt his nation that day."

Ted Jenkins furrowed his brow. "Beanstalk was at Ames, right? Iowa State?"

"Huh? Yeah. Why do you ask?"

Jenkins turned back to a terminal. "I remember something from our last data dump. A scientist who was working for the League at Laughlin. He just sort of appeared at his wife's side out of nowhere. Iowa State guy, remember that because my Jayhawks were beating the Cyclones' brains in the night I tripped across the guy. Let's see…if I remember right, there was a big gap in his records. Nothing on his social for seven years, then suddenly he reappears. Here we go," he said, printing out a dossier. He grabbed it and carried it to Michaelson. "This your guy?"

Michaelson stared at the grainy photo for some time, before his face broke out in an odd, lopsided grin. With slightly trembling hands, he picked up the paper and leafed through it. "Wife Jane…both of them went to work for FletchCorp directly after the Laughlin raid, so they must have thought he was trustworthy…and he probably was for what they wanted. Yes…yes! God fucking sonofabitch, yes!"

He spun happily. "Mr. Vice President, I want your permission to take him. He could hold the key to why Beanstalk failed, and what can make it succeed!"

The Vice President turned to Michaelson, bemused. "So you found your white whale, eh? All right, Michaelson. Go get him. The NSA will back you up. Just don't fuck it up. Got it?"

Michaelson smiled widely. At last, he had a chance to put this right.

* * *

Mike and Erica embraced, and pulled each other close, and kissed, hard.

This did not go unnoticed by the people currently hiding in their respective undergarments.

"Oh, that's probably not good," said Lloyd, noting the slight condensation on his hostess' pussy lips. "You don't suppose they're thinking about a quickie, do you?"

"No," said Susi. "I think they'll go dancing, first, because that sounds like the more painful option."

There was a sudden force on the front of the panties, pushing them both into skin.

"Well, they're a close couple," Lloyd said. "Bugger…I suppose this is old hat for you, though, right?"

"No," Susi said, "actually, I've never shrunk before. I try not to use my powers if I can avoid it."

"Ever?" said Lloyd, breathing easier as the pressure subsided, and the world began to sway back and forth slightly, as his hostess began to walk somewhere.

"Ever," Susi said, clinging tightly. "I don't trust myself with them. I think…look, I've spent a lot of time studying, reading, learning about it. I know the theory cold. But a couple years ago, I shrunk a guy.

"He was a jerk, and he was being a jerk, and I shrunk him, and I almost killed him. I easily could have, and I wanted to…I really, really wanted to."

Susi sighed. "My sister told me, back when all this was new, that she'd had moments where she worried her powers were too big for her to handle. That she worried she'd overstep her bounds, lose her humanity in the power. I almost did in that split-second, and I didn't want to tempt myself ever again."

Lloyd looked across the dim chasm, and said, "I'm sorry, then, that I got you mixed up in this."

"Not your fault," Sue said. "Probably fate's way of telling me it's time to get in the game. It didn't give my sister a choice, it's not going to give me one. But I don't have to like it. And I really don't have to trust it."

"Bollocks," Lloyd said. "You didn't use them for two years, right? That was a decision, right there."

"Yeah, but if I cut lose –"

"—then you still don't kill people. You want to, but you don't. Look, I don't know much about the whys and wherefores of this power, but I know that if you wanted to hurt someone, you could've just turned yourself into a fifty foot woman and smashed things. You didn't."

"I wish I believed that," Sue said.

"Tell you what," he said. "If we live through the discotheque, and the post-discotheque activities, you teach me all the theory and background I need to control my powers, and I'll try to convince you that you can use these powers without killing humanity. Do we have a deal?"

"I'd shake your hand, but I don't want to crawl across this woman's labia to do it. How do you think our friends are doing?"

"Well," Lloyd said, "I imagine they're hanging out by a giant penis. Not much exciting in that, I suppose."

"Speak for yourself."
Meanwhile, a foot and a half away, Lil and Ráichéal were trying to find a comfortable, safe spot. The scrotum had pulled taught earlier, as their host grew semi-hard while grinding himself against his wife, and they'd dropped unceremoniously into the briefs below. Lil thought that would be safe, but the penis, once flaccid, slid about occasionally. So now they were trying to scale it, to get up into the man's pubic hair, which was problematic, because every so often, he would manually rearrange himself, likely because of the two female insects climbing his junk. This would, occasionally, knock them back down into the briefs, and they'd start their journey again.

"Just wait until the dancing starts," Lil said, as she rested briefly where the head of the penis met the shaft. "Then we're in for a world of pain."

"Well," Ráichéal said, looking back up the shaft, "at least I can say this is the biggest hand job I've ever given."

"You're wicked," Lil said. "I must say, when I decide I'm finally up to doing this for Lloyd, I want another three or four inches in height. If you could embrace it…now that might be fun."

Ráichéal laughed. "Who's wicked now?" she said.

Suddenly, the air, already steamy, grew more so, and sounds from the outside world invaded the underwear prisons. All four passengers groaned as the thumping bass reached them.

They were at the club at last.

* * *

"Your husband's an idiot. A brave idiot, but an idiot nevertheless."

"Thanks, Teri," Sarah said, picking at her sandwich. "Still, if he is at league headquarters, he might be able to operationalize Operation Orion."

"Should I move us to alert condition red?"

"We'll discuss it in the staff meeting tomorrow, but probably not; yellow alert is likely enough for now. No good invading until it's time to invade."

"Right. So that's one loved one accounted for. What about Susi?"

"Still nothing," Sarah said. "And I'm starting to get worried. Taran reported a few hours ago that the seekers appeared to be spiraling in on the university – and given the readings…."

"I thought Susi didn't have any powers?"

Sarah drummed her fingers. "That's what she's said. She's only nineteen; I figured she could be a late bloomer. Maybe she is."

"Or maybe she lied to you," Teri said.

"Yeah," Sarah said, "I think that's more likely, really. That's my fault – I think I scared her off a few years back, right after Madison. I opened up about some of my own concerns...."

"The kid thing?"

"That, and the God thing. Not that either thing has disappeared, mind you."

"Right, Sarah. If you've got a God complex, it's one of the most complex complexes ever known, since it manifests in concern for others and general unselfishness."

"Still, the temptation's always there. Anyhow, I'm not sure I didn't scare her into deciding to refuse the cup she would eventually be given. I've tried since then to loosen her up, but…I don't know. Maybe Karen could have talked to her better than me."

"Maybe," Teri said. "So you're thinking your little sister is into something?"

"Could be," Sarah said. "What do you think?"

Teri pulled out the deck of cards. "Queen of Wands would be her significator, I think. Let's see."

* * *

The pulse of the beat reverberated through the sweat-soaked hammock that was Lloyd and Sue's current location.

"So," Sue said, clinging tightly to the swaying panties, beneath the swaying vulva attached to the swaying woman, "are women's panties always this damp?"

"Don't have much data to go on," Lloyd said, "but no, not usually. This is not a particularly fun ride."

"At least you didn't end up over in the guy's shorts," Sue said. "More to dodge there."

"Yes, and I'm worried about them. Are you sure that they're okay?"

"I'm trying to do occasional claris spells; they seem okay so far. I'm just hoping these two get so worn out clubbing that they go to sleep."

"A nice dream," Lloyd said, "but I'm not counting on it."

* * *

She flipped the cards out, choosing almost idly to go cross-and-triangle. It felt appropriate. She flipped the Devil over above the significator, and let out a squeak.

"Well…she's up to something, Sarah, I think I can say that much."

"I'm guessing," Sarah said. "But what does that mean?"

"The Devil is a powerful card, and it's about fear and temptation. In this position, it acts on her reason. Susi is afraid of her power, and tempted by it. The next card suggest creative energy…Knight of Wands. Suggestive of travel or escape, a new visitor leading her on a quest."

Sarah drew her lips tight. "Go on."

"Knight of Cups, reversed. Immaturity, selfishness, insecurity. This describes Susi's emotional state."

"Has she been turned?" Sarah asked.

"What?" Teri asked, looking up in surprise.

"Has she been turned by the League?"

Teri sighed. "Patience, Sarah. The cards only suggest, and we're not through our reading. The next card, her position in life – Four of Cups. Surrounded by love, but not aware of its depth. Dissatisfied with her current position but unsure of where to go next.

"The cross is complete. We begin the triangle with the first of two opposing forces. Nine of Pentacles, reversed. Elitism, eroding security. I always view this as a very male card, incidentally. The next opposing force, the Queen of Swords." Teri couldn't help but laugh.

"What's so funny?"

"That's what I've always used as your significator, Sarah, and I assume this refers to you, or possibly the Society in general. The reconciler of the conflict is the Page of Cups, a new relationship, a greater understanding of the world. It can signify the birth of a child, or the rebirth of a soul. No, Sarah, Susi hasn't been turned, but she is in trouble. And she's caught between this elitist force and the Society."

"How does it resolve?" Sarah said.

"The Sun, reversed," said Teri, flipping the last card onto the pile. "Uncertainty. Outcome unknown. Reply hazy, try again."

"You always reassure me so," Sarah said. "So you really think –"

But Sarah was interrupted by the sound of her cell phone. She picked it up, and hit speaker.

"Titania, I've got Isis here as well, go ahead Ops."

"Master Kensington-Chelgren, this is Looking Glass. I've got a report from Heidelberg."

"Go ahead."

"It's personal, ma'am."

Sarah went white, but said, "Understood, Alice. You can talk to Teri too."

The two women could hear the pause, as Alice Richardson gathered herself. "Ma'am, the German internal security folks, their version of the NSA, has locked down the likely locus of the incident; it's a dormitory room in Heidelberg. They aren't being cooperative, even after Hans-Peter reminded them of the Treaty of Harrisburg, but…"

"Cut to the chase, Alice," said Teri.

"The incident apparently occurred in a dorm room registered to two exchange students, one from Ireland, the other an American named Susan Kensington. The BFV is telling us they believe that the incident killed both women."

Sarah sat silently for a moment, before she said, quietly, "Bullshit."

"Ma'am?"

"They would know," she said, "if it had killed anyone. Had they recovered bodies?"

"Our operative Taran got as close as he could, he said that there was no evidence of any struggle, or anyone injured at all, much less killed. But –"

"Right," said Sarah, standing up. "I'm coming into ops. I want an all-points bulletin issued for my sister, as well as her roommate – I think her name's Ráichéal Gallagher, but you should confirm that. Get it into the field now that the German authorities are not being cooperative and we cannot assume they are trustworthy."

"Ma'am? Are you sure?"

Sarah looked at Teri. "Am I sure?"

Teri looked back at Sarah, and smiled. "She's not dead. There wouldn't be uncertainty if she was."

"I'm sure, Alice. I'll be there in fifteen minutes. Coming, Teri?"

"Yes. What's going on with the Germans?"

"Don't know," Sarah said, "but if they've hurt Susi in any way, there'll be hell to pay."

Chapter Fourteen
Imaginary Numbers

The bedraggled women in Mike’s briefs were beginning to tire of the location’s novelty.

They had, at least, finally made it to the base of the shaft, and into the protective cover of his pubes. But said pubes were currently soaking wet and growing wetter, as Mike shook his hips to the music. What’s worse, their world would shift often now, as Mike rearranged his semi-erect phallus, either on his own or by grinding on his wife.

“You know,” Ráichéal said, “I’m growing to dislike penises.”

“I’m really only tired of this particular one,” Lil said. “I – whoop! – bloody hair, too slick. Anyhow, I’m really just hoping these two will call it an evening soon.”

“Aren’t they just going to leap into bed?” Ráichéal asked.

“Well…yes. But that’s not the end of the world.”

“I should think it would be quite a bit worse than this,” Ráichéal said.

“Actually,” Lil said, then stopped. “Never mind.”

“You have experience with that?” Ráichéal said, eyes widening in the dim briefs. “Well! So it’s not that bad?”

“Oh, it’s dangerous,” Lil said, “but it has its moments.”

* * *

Sarah paced in her office, spitting fire.

By the time she and Teri had reached Society headquarters, the story the Germans were feeding had changed. Now Susi and Ráichéal were “missing,” persons of interest in an ongoing investigation into something or other – the German secret police was still playing coy. And so Sarah paced, waiting for the call she’d directed. No sense playing with underlings any more.

The phone on her desk chirped.

“Madame Chair, I have the Chancellor on the line.”

“Send her through,” Sarah said, picking up the receiver. “Madame Bundeskanzlerin, thank you for getting back to me so swiftly, especially at this late time of night.”

“Of course, Madame Chairwoman” came the Chancellor’s logy reply. “I understand your sister is caught up in the event in Heidelberg, I’m just being brought up to speed myself, so please…at any rate, you must be worried. How can I help?”

“Well, Madam Bundeskanzlerin, for one thing, you can let your internal security folks know that they should be working with us on this. We still don’t have access to the site, and it’s been eleven hours since the initial reading. Unless you’re invoking national security, we need that access, and frankly, if you are invoking national security, I’d want to hear from you why that is.”

There was a pause, longer than just the satellite delay. “I’m not sure I understand,” the Chancellor said. “Why hasn’t der Bundesamt allowed you access?”

“That’s what we’ve been trying to find out,” Sarah said. “This has never been a problem before. We put our European headquarters in Berlin precisely because your government has been helpful in all cases before. I’d hate to think that I need to be concerned.”

“This is most troubling,” the Chancellor said. “We are not declaring a national security exemption, let me make that clear. Who has been blocking your access?”

“A Herr von Karajan.”

“Stasi Dreckskerl,” muttered the Chancellor. “I know him too well. I will make this right, Madame Chairwoman, you have my word.”

Sarah sighed in relief. She and the Chancellor didn’t agree on everything, but she was glad to hear that didn’t extend to matters of importance. “Thank you so much, Madame Bundeskanzlerin. Say hello to Jochen for me, will you?”

“Of course, and you give my regards to Scott. We hope to see you both for the dedication ceremony in November, eh?”

“Barring calamity, we’ll be there,” Sarah said, resisting the urge to note that calamity had already befallen them. Instead, she gave a hearty, “Tschüß!”

“Take care, and let me know if the situation does not improve. Bis später.”

Sarah hung up, and dialed Ops.

“Ops, Titania,” she said. “The Chancellor sounds annoyed with this von Karajan character. Direct Taran to go in there ASAP. We need as much information as we can get.”

Sarah finally sat down. She stared at the computer a minute, trying to decide if she could delay by calling Karen first. No, no, this was her responsibility. She picked up the phone, and dialed the number she’d known since childhood.

“Hi, Mom,” she said. “Susi’s in trouble.”

* * *

Blessedly, the music faded, the world cooled, just a bit, and for a brief time, the travelers could relax in their undergarment purgatory.

Just for a bit.

Soon enough, Mike and Erica arrived at their hotel room. They were both tired, both ready for sleep. But Erica, at least, had never been too tired for a little action, and Mike…well, even if he was, he was usually happy to oblige his wife.

They stripped down to their underwear, and Erica came up behind Mike, reached around him and grabbed him by the balls.

“Well,” he said, as she began to massage him. “I guess I know what you want.”

“I know you probably aren’t up for the grand tour, lover,” she breathed into his ear, “but I figured we could do a little bit before bed.”

“I’m always up for at least a little bit,” Mike said.

“Yes, I can tell,” Erica said, kissing him on the neck. She slid her hand up, and into his briefs. “You’re definitely up for it.”

The light came as a bit of a surprise, but the hand really shocked Lil and Ráichéal. “Sweet Jesus,” Ráichéal said. “She’s going to give him an Allied Irish.”

“A what?”

“A wank. Great, another one I’m going to have to school in Irish slang. You don’t have an excuse, you only live an island away.”

“Sorry,” Lil said, “my bonus slang is all Hindi. I’d teach you what jhaant ke pissu means, but frankly, we resemble it a bit too much for comfort.”

“Fair enough. But I’m not sure we’re in good shape here. She could crush us in mid-stroke, you know.”

“Kahe ko kha raha hai chut ki chapati aur lund ka beja?” Lil muttered.

“What?”

“We should be okay, as long as she doesn’t decide to….”

But the hand abruptly moved, and suddenly tugged the briefs away. And quickly, too quickly to be believed, the beautiful round face of Erica was in front of them, staring ravenously at the monstrous cock.

“Okay,” Lil said. “We’re in trouble.”

* * *

The Prius pulled into the driveway of a nondescript house in the suburbs of Chicago. “I thought it was a bit far-fetched, that’s all I’m saying.”

“Well, yeah, but it’s an action movie. It’s not supposed to make sense.”

“But when Iron Man falls from 50,000 feet and makes that last-second turn, I don’t care what the suit does, he’s a puddle of goo.”

“Jane, the guy had a nuclear reactor powering a magnet keeping shrapnel out of his heart. They weren’t going for reality.”

“Good point,” said Jane Matthews, as she switched the car off. “So, you ready for tomorrow?”

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” said Jake Finney, as he exited the car. “I just hope the PowerPoint doesn’t bore ‘em to death.”

“It won’t,” Jane said, and then she paused.

“Did I leave the door to the garage open?”

Jake looked at the door, which was open just a bit. “I didn’t think so,” he said. “Here, let me go first.”

“Should either of us go in?”

“It’s just an open door. I’m just being overprotective,” he said, swinging the door open.

He walked into the kitchen, and flipped on the light. As Jane walked in behind him, he said, “See? Nothing to worry about.”

It was when he walked through to the living room that the guns were drawn.

* * *

The enormous cavern of Erica’s mouth filled the vision of Lil and Ráichéal. They hung on as it slipped over the enormous shaft and clamped down, moving toward them with a mighty slurp.

“We should be okay if we stay in the pubes,” said Lil, hanging on tight.

“I certainly hope so,” said Ráichéal. “She’s certainly taking enough of it in.”

“Hang on,” said Lil, as Erica’s lips reached apogee, before sliding back down. With a smile, the woman opened her mouth and caressed Mike’s member with her football-pitch-sized tongue. “Oh, God,” Lil said, as Erica ran her tongue quickly up the shaft, right toward them.”

* * *

Jake looked around the room, holding his hands up. He looked toward his sofa, and sighed. “So. You found me.”

“Jake, it’s been a long time,” said Michaelson. “A long time. How are you?”

“I’m not excited about the gun at my temple, but otherwise, life is good.”

“Good, good. Look, about Beanstalk…I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have pressured you like I did. I like to think I’ve learned from my mistakes.”

“If you don’t think you should have pressured me,” Jake said, evenly, “why are there four federal agents pointing weapons at my wife and me?”

“Oh, I should have pressured you, just not the way I did. Gun to the temple’s more effective. Jake, you’re coming with me. You too, Mrs. Finney.”

“It’s Dr. Matthews, and she isn’t going anywhere,” said Finney.

“Jake, don’t….”

“She’s not going with you,” Finney said. “I’ll go. But Jane is unharmed, and free to go.”

“Right,” said Michaelson. “What I’m doing right now is in violation of the Treaty of Harrisburg, and your wife goes and tells the League and ten minutes later, we’re getting a knock on our door telling us to let you go.”

“That might be a hint,” said Jake, “that you shouldn’t be doing this.”

“Might be,” said Michaelson, “but I’m not taking it. You’re the key, Finney. The key to solving the problems of Beanstalk. The key to stopping those bitches once and for all.”

“Beanstalk was fatally flawed,” said Jane. “Jake shrinking was a one-in-a-million event given what you were working with. It won’t work.”

“We’ll find out, won’t we? Anyhow, I’m done arguing. Restrain them and prep them for flight.”

“I’ll die before I help you,” said Jake.

“Then you’ll die. Get ‘em prepped.”

* * *

The tongue moved right, and pushed straight into the pubes. Lil dodged, but it struck Ráichéal dead-center, and as it slid back, she slid along with it, bouncing between the rough tongue and the veins of Mike’s shaft.

She tried to extricate herself, but the saliva was coating her, and she was too small to push away. Lil pulled the tongue back along the shaft, and flicked it lightly against the head of the cock, finally dislodging Ráichéal into Mike’s piss slit.

The world went dark again as Erica took the shaft back in. Ráichéal tried to right herself, to go somewhere – anywhere – to get away from the chaos of the mouth, of brief glimpses of gleaming white teeth and the smell of Erica’s dinner. But before she could imagine where to go, she felt the shudder, and suddenly she was forced out violently into the yawning cave.

She came to a rest on the back of the tongue. The last thing she felt was the great suction of Erica swallowing. She blacked out as she felt herself pulled backward in a puddle of spit and come.

* * *

The afternoon’s festivities had been enjoyable for everyone in attendance. Leah Jackson had introduced the new Regent of the League, to a raucous standing ovation from a thousand women. Even knowing it was coming, Liz couldn’t help but be taken aback.

And then, they had begun the testimony.

“I was fourteen when my uncle raped me,” the slender girl had begun, to the complete silence of her sisters.

“It wasn’t the first time he’d done so,” she said. “The bastard had been sniffing around me since I was ten. First fingered me when I was eleven. First raped me later that year. He always gave me money, told me not to tell.

“That rape wasn’t the first one, but it was the first one that made me pregnant. I was terrified – but that wasn’t the worst part. I tried to get an abortion, tried to get rid of it – it was going to be a freak, inbred freak, and I didn’t want to give birth to a freak. But I had to get my parents’ consent to the procedure. I told my mom first, but she said she’d have to take it to the Lord in prayer, and He evidently told her to bring my uncle’s brother into it.

“My father beat me for an hour. Beat me until my eyes swelled shut, called me a whore, accused me of lying about the abuse his brother had visited on me, accused me of trying to cover up my sin. He beat me in the name of Almighty God, telling me, ‘Let the lying lips be put to silence,’ over and over, until I blacked out.

“Needless to say, he didn’t take me to Planned Parenthood,” she said, smiling wanly, to the nervous laughter of the crowd.

“It was four months later that the complications developed. I started bleeding and bleeding – if my parents had taken me to the hospital right away, I’d have been okay. But the doctor had to do emergency surgery to remove the fetus by the time I got there – placental abruption, it had died in my uterus. While trying to remove the baby, the doctor perforated it. Badly. He had no choice but to go full boar and remove the thing. I had a hysterectomy two days before my fifteenth birthday.

“I can never bear children. I can never be a mother. That’s what I’d really wanted to be, you know; I know it doesn’t sound really feminist, but I really thought I’d be a good mom….”

The young woman trailed off, and a woman to her right rose and put her arms around her, and let her cry it out until she could continue.

“My father, his brother, they failed me. They both raped me in their own way. And my mom…she was too part of the system to see what she was doing. And I vowed that day that if I could not be a mother, that I’d be a foster mother to all the girls out there in my situation. I swore I’d help to free them. And then the miracle happened,” she said, and now she was beaming. “The miracle that built this sisterhood. This sisterhood will save women, and save our sisters around the world. It will end the reign of men who view women as their property, theirs to defile as they so desire. I am so proud to be a soldier in this army, and I am so grateful that you found me.”

This drew cheers equal to the ones Liz had received; indeed, Liz found herself cheering the woman quite naturally.

There were three more stories: The woman from Egypt who, at age two, had her clitoris sliced off by her grandmother in the name of femininity. The woman from Japan who, at age 16, had to spurn the advances of not one, not two, but three of her male teachers. The woman from Brazil who had been gang-raped by a mix of tourists and locals and left for dead.

They stopped only because they were the four who would speak this evening; the next night’s meeting would bring four more stories, as was their custom. Four more women who had been wronged by men. Four more women justified in seeking revenge.

When it came Liz’s time to address her subjects, she found she did not have to dig deep to find the words.

“The stories we heard from our sisters tonight,” Liz said, “like the stories we all carry in our hearts, are the reason we fight.

“Not all of our stories are as dramatic as those our sisters told tonight, but all are of a part of it. All of us have been devalued for who we are. All of us have been told that we are not the equals of men, from the time we were born. All of us have been on the receiving end of men who had been told we exist for their pleasure. Men can’t help being psychotic bastards; society breeds it in them. But we can damn well stop society from putting them in charge, from putting them in positions of power. We can build a new world where our daughters need not fear rape, or assault, or even simple prejudice. And in a few generations, when men have been domesticated, perhaps we can allow them back at the table as an equal partner. But we cannot do so now; we know what men are. We cannot trust them to simply change because we ask nicely.

“Sisters, it is good to be home,” she said, and the crowd cheered. “Soon, my sisters, we will succeed in the task we began so many years ago. Soon, my sisters, this world will be ours!”

There had been applause and drinks and good food and good company. Angie had looked at her adoringly, and Leah had looked at her with respect. And Liz…Liz wanted very much to crawl away into a hole and stop thinking for a good year.

She hadn’t expected this. She had banished every trace of the creature she had become. Jake’s sacrifice had not been in vain. And she had no desire to go back to the vengeful, wrathful creature she had been.

And yet…there was a part of her that thought, maybe she could be a positive influence. Maybe she could help make the League something like the Society, only more firmly on the side of women. Create a gender imbalance that resembled more a reversal of 1985 than 1955. A world where men who were almost equal…but not quite.

Because she believed what she’d said to the group. Oh, certainly there were men who were the exception to that rule, men like Scott Chelgren, and Jake, of course, but most men still were, well, most men. They had earned their opprobrium.

But she had promised Jake’s widow that she would help free Chelgren. Could she go back on that promise? Could she betray her again?

She shuddered as she walked through the cold campus toward her quarters. She wanted a hot bath, and to talk to Angie, and an end to these brief, annoying thoughts.

“Your Highness,” said a voice from behind her, “a moment, please.”

She turned, and saw the new adept, Zoraida. “Hello,” Liz replied calmly. “What can I do for you, Senorita Abarca?”

“I have…some questions,” Zoraida said.

“Really,” Liz said. “All right; what’s on your mind?”

“It’s very remarkable,” Zoraida said, “your escaping the Society.”

“That’s not a question.”

“Perhaps not. But it is remarkable, is it not? Especially since you’d been basically written off as having gone soft on the Society. And then, out of nowhere, you go on this daring escape.”

“You know,” Liz said, “I’m not exactly liking your tone, Zoraida. Why don’t you just speak freely, and tell me that you think I’m a traitor?”

Zoraida looked a bit flummoxed, and struggled for words. When she spoke, it was slowly. “That was not my intent, Highness,” she said. “I…I wanted to know how you did it. And why now.”

Liz sighed. “I’m sorry, Seniorita Abarca. It’s been a long trip and a trying time. The answer to how: I had help.”

“From Tori and her folks?”

“Right. As for why now? The opportunity presented itself.”

“Ah,” Zoraida said. “That makes sense. I am sorry for intruding, Highness.”

“Not at all,” Liz said. “Talk to me in the morning. I’ll be in a better mood then.”

Liz and Zoraida parted, both of them unsure of what had just transpired, and whether they had just conversed with their best friend on the base, or their worst enemy.

Part Three

Metaphysics

“I am peace,
and war has come because of me.”

—The Thunder, Perfect Mind

Lil screamed.

She had seen Ráichéal sucked into the maw of the giantess, and she had not come back out. The man had shuddered, and blown his load, and Ráichéal was gone.

And so Lil did the only thing she could do. She leapt for the giantess, hoping she could make it to her destination in time.

The woman’s breasts were slick with perspiration, and Lil skidded down them, coming to a rest at the edge of her brassiere. Throwing caution to the wind, she threw herself over, bouncing off the shirt and back underneath the breast, and sliding down the beyond-vertical slope toward the panties below.

“Lloyd! Sue! Quick!” she cried as she skidded past the woman’s navel as the woman was standing up, with the sickening knowledge that she was passing by Ráichéal as she did so. She didn’t know if the giant couple meant to do anything more, and didn’t care. Now was for running, and sliding, and hurtling toward the only hope Ráichéal had.

She hit the waistband of the panties and bounced beyond it, grasping onto a bow that decorated them. “Can you hear me?” she cried out, for a moment terrified that something had happened to them.

Lloyd’s head jerked up. “Lil? Is that you?” he called.

“Yes, bloody – you have to do something! The giantess swallowed Ráichéal!”

“What, on purpose?”

“No, by accident. She was pleasuring the giant, and then – well, look, it doesn’t matter, you have to do something!”

Lloyd looked at Sue, who had her eyes closed.

“Sue?”

“Damn,” she said, quietly. “Damn it all to hell.”

“Sue, we have to do something. Quickly.”

Susi punched the labia of the giantess, and sighed. “All right,” she said. She considered her options, and realizing she had few, she decided to throw caution to the wind.

“Transport,” she said, and she was gone.

  

“I’m sorry,” Jake said, as he lay hog-tied next to Jane in the back of the SUV. “If only you hadn’t found me, if only…”

“Jake,” Jane said, quietly, “don’t ever think that. I knew this day would come, didn’t you?”

“I hoped,” Jake said, “that you’d be anywhere but with me.”

“That would be awfully lonely for you,” Jane said. “I always hoped they’d take us together.”

That brought weeping from her husband, and anger from Jane. “You bastards really think this is going to get you somewhere? Huh? You took away years of his life, left him tiny and scared and alone, and when things got better for him, he was just tiny and scared. Why would you do that to him again?”

“He could have stayed with us,” came Michaelson’s voice. “He didn’t have to run.”

“Oh, yes he did,” Jane said, furious. “It’s fucking obvious he did, isn’t it? Monsters.”

“You know, you’re coming close to treason with that kind of talk. Where’s your love of country?”

“My country doesn’t kidnap people,” said Jane, defiantly. “Doesn’t force them into lives of degradation. Doesn’t conduct experiments on unwitting human subjects. My country is better than that. Wherever your paycheck comes from, you aren’t part of my country.”

“Believe what lies you want to believe, Dr. Matthews. But your country has done far worse than this simply to keep you in test tubes and Bunsen burners. This is just routine, a pretty standard NSA black ops mission. Nothing out of the ordinary.”

“You know the Society will look for us when we come up missing.”

“Let them,” said Michaelson. “Let them come and find you.”

  

The pit of Erica’s stomach smelled like vomit, cervelat, and beer. Actually, it may just have been cervelat and beer, the smell of the sausage and vomit being too close to be discerned.

“I want to crush you. Or maybe drop you between my lips, and swallow you whole. That…that would be a bad way to go, don’t you think? Oh, Pete, I can think of so many ways to dispose of you. Which should I choose?”

The words danced through her head unbidden as she felt the slight sting of the stomach acid against her skin. “Ráichéal!” she shouted. “Ráichéal, it’s Sue! Where are you?”

She swam in the murky sludge, hoping that Ráichéal was still above the surface. She listened to Erica’s heartbeat, reverberating in the pulse that fed the stomach, that the stomach fed. She could hear, far distant, the distorted sounds of her voice. This was what she’d subjected Pete to, only worse.

She coughed up the contents of her own stomach, and continued to call out for her friend.

Suddenly, the world tossed sideways, as Erica evidently dropped onto her back; whether in preparation for bed or more sex, Sue didn’t know. She dropped below the surface, and popped back up, coughing and sputtering.

“Ráichéal!” she cried out.

“Sue?” came a faint reply, several meters distant.

“Thank God. Are you okay?”

“What happened? Where’m I?”

“You’re in the giantess’s stomach, Ráichéal.”

“What…giantess stomach? I…Sue, that you?”

“You’ve got a concussion,” deduced Susan, swimming with all her might for her friend’s voice. “We’re going to need to get you to a doctor.”

“We were running away from someone,” Ráichéal mumbled. “Running away from…a guy with a taser?”

Sue grabbed her friend around the shoulders. “I’ve got you, Ráich. I’ve got you. It’s okay,” she sobbed.

She hoped it was okay.

With a wave of her hand and a barked, “Transport,” she was back out in the bush, by Lloyd and Lil.

The dim light underneath the blanket didn’t give her much to go on. “You two, grab onto me,” she said, not hesitating. She knew what had to be done. She just hoped she had the right range.

Feeling Lloyd and Lil grab her shoulders, she said, “Transport” once more. And they were gone.

  

“So we’re doing everything we can to find her, and I’m not leaving here until we do,” said Sarah, finally, as she finished telling her mother what little she knew.

“So. Susi has powers like you,” Sharon Kensington said, quietly. “Another daughter I get to lose to this.”

“I don’t think I’ve been ‘lost’ to this, mom. Frankly, I think I’m too easily found. As for Susi…I think she does have powers. But I don’t know to what extent.”

“You said you could see them from Chicago, Sarah. Don’t try to snow me.”

“I’m not trying to; the one time I asked Susi about this, she said she didn’t have any. Now, I think events seem to indicate she was lying to me, but I won’t know until I talk to her.”

“So you think she’s alive,” said Dr. Kensington.

“Yes, she’s alive,” said Sarah, with a certainty she was unsure of. “But something’s put her on the run. I’m just hoping she knows she can come to us.”

“You don’t think she’ll come home?”

“She might,” Sarah allowed. “If she does, let me know right away. We can protect her here, no matter what.”

“Can you?”

Sarah sighed. “Yes, we can. You know, it’s funny; the Chancellor of Germany treats me with deference and respect, like an actual equal. Yet my own mom can’t seem to grasp that I actually am a somewhat powerful individual, that I head an organization that spans the globe, that I can take care of my kid sister, for God’s sake!”

There was a brief silence, before Sarah said, “I’m sorry.”

“I know how powerful you are, ditto,” said Sharon, quietly. “I do. I am proud of you, you know. And I know how scared you are for Susi, because I can hear how badly you want to protect her. But she’s my daughter, Sarah, and some day you’ll understand, you don’t care about anybody more than your kids. And as much as you’re terrified for your sister, I’m more. So understand that when I question you it is not because I would doubt your ability to protect anyone. It’s because I have to doubt your ability to protect my child.”

“I’m able to protect myself.”

“I only doubt that, ditto, because you’re my child too. And as tough as you are, my heart leaps into my throat with every breaking news segment I ever see, or ever will see. But I know you love Susi, and I know you’re probably better equipped to take care of her than me; if she comes home, I’ll let you know.”

Sarah slumped back into her chair. “I’m sorry, mom. I should have pushed her to tell me.”

“It wouldn’t have done any good. She’s stubborn. She got it from me, like all of my daughters. Let me know when you find out anything.”

“I will. Tell dad I love him.”

“I will.”

Sarah hung up the phone, and cried.

  

“Your friend’s going to be okay,” said the doctor, quietly. “She’s got a concussion, and some chemical burns on her shoulder, but otherwise she’s healthy. Lucky, though, you got her out when you did; a few minutes more and she probably would have gone under and aspirated.”

“Thanks, doctor.”

“Look,” the man grumbled, “I know what you two were doing. Stupid thrill-seeking kids. You were swallowing each other, weren’t you? That’s how she came to be in your stomach, right? First you, then her, that’s how it goes, right?”

“I…you’re right,” Sue said.

“Seen it a couple times, kids who don’t know what they’re doing with this stuff. Look, you’re adults, so it’s your own lives you’re dealing with here; I can’t make you be smart. But have you ever read Sarah Kensington’s Guide to the Transforming World?”

Sue had to fight back the smirk. “I haven’t,” she lied.

“Do. It’s laid out well, smart, simple-to-read, and with good advice for proper safety procedures if you’re going to try stunts like this. Doesn’t have a bunch of bullshit theory, just practical stuff. Also, the GTS Society website’s got loads of information. Look, you want to play with size, do a little light vore play, whatever floats your boat – but for God’s sake, don’t do it stupidly! Safe sex is at a whole different level of meaning these days. You got it?”

“Yes, doctor.”

“Good. Because I do not want to see you two back here again. And I doubt you do, either. Anyhow, Miss O’Riordan will be staying overnight, if all goes well we should be able to release her in the morning.”

“Thanks, doc. Really, for everything.”

Sue marched triumphantly down the hall, to where Lloyd and Lil were waiting. “So, all’s well?”

“Yep. Ráichéal should be good to go in the morning, I guess. That’s what the doctor said.”

“So now we just have to find a hotel room,” Lloyd said. Then lowering his voice, “With these nice new IDs you whipped up, that shouldn’t be too hard.”

“Eh, the credit cards won’t work, you know. But the cash should spend okay. And I doubt they’re going to be expecting us to turn up in Winnipeg.”

“Why did you choose Winnipeg, anyhow?” asked Lil.

“Free health care. Plus, there’s a mid-sized GTS pharmaceutical company in town, former actor runs it. It’s one of the brightest lights on the whole North American map, given the size of the city. If I aimed us right, we shouldn’t have been noticeable, at least on this end. Switzerland, of course, probably lit up like a Christmas tree, but we’re half a world away. We should have a little time. Look, you two go, find a decent hotel, take a shower, get some sleep.”

“What about you?”

“Ráichéal’s here ’til morning, I am too,” said Sue. “If I’d been less afraid to use my powers, we would have been here all in one piece.”

“We’ll bring you dinner,” Lil said.

“Thanks,” said Sue. “But I’m not really hungry right now.”

  

Erica screamed as the door to the hotel room was broken down.

“Sie sind nicht hier, Herr von Karajan,” said a young woman, swinging a grildrometer from side to side. “Aber sie waren in diesem Raum, vor nicht allzu langer Zeit.”

“Who are you? What do you want? You can have money, but don’t hurt us.”

“We will not harm you, Herr Treehorn. I am with Interpol, we are on the trail of some fugitives. Katja, was sehen Sie?”

“You can’t come in here without a warrant,” said Matt, trying to cover himself and Erica up.

“Come, come, Herr Treehorn, this is not America, and not even your home. The hotel knows we’re here. Katja?”

“Ein großer Höhepunkt, aber verblassen. Wahrscheinlich ein ‘Transport’ buchstabieren.“

“Naturlich. Herr Treehorn, Frau Treehorn, we will need to do a thorough sweep of the room. We’ll give you a few minutes to get yourselves dressed, and then we have arranged for you to have the Presidential Suite for the remainder of your stay, and €5000 for your troubles. Will that suffice?”

Matt looked at Erica, who was nonplussed; $7500 was far more than they’d spent on this trip. “All right,” he said, slowly, “but we would take that few minutes to get dressed now, if it’s all right with you. Mr…uh, von Karajan?”

“Certainly, certainly. Katja, kommen Sie mit mir.“

The intruders left, and the Treehorns looked at each other quizzically. They weren’t quite sure if they should laugh or cry. And so, in silence, they got up and got dressed.

  

“Oi. Wher’m I?”

“Winnipeg,” said Sue, squeezing Ráichéal’s hand. “How do you feel?”

“My head feels like it’s filled with coddle. But I think I’ll live.”

“Do you remember what happened to you?”

“Last thing I remember I was being swallowed by a giantess. So either I’m insane, or I was swallowed by a giantess.”

“It was the latter,” said Sue, sighing deeply. “It’s my fault.”

“I don’t recall you throwing yourself down the gullet of a giant woman.”

“No, if I’d been less afraid to use my powers…I knew what we had to do. But I was too scared, that if I started, I’d lose control.”

“Sue, I feel plastered right now, so I’m not sure I’m being clear, but if you’re trying to tell me that this is all your fault, you can go feck yourself, ya neddy.”

Sue smiled. “I think that was the next lesson on Irish slang there.”

“And there you go, falling back into your Minnesota heritage. You’re the only person I’ve ever heard end a sentence with a gratuitous ‘there.’”

“That will change, and right quick; you should be discharged in the morning, and when you are, we’re going to see my family.”

“How? Where are we, anyhow?”

“Winnipeg, in Canada. And if anyone asks, you remember you’re an exchange student going to North Dakota; dullest state in the union, even people who are from there don’t want to talk about it.”

“So, I finally get to meet the source o’ your troubles,” said Ráichéal, her brogue deepening a bit as she began to fall asleep. “Should be interesting.”

“Yeah,” said Sue, unsmiling. “It sure should.”