Jessica

I often wonder if my sister even realizes just how lucky she really is. Not just because of her natural exquisite beauty composing her exterior, but for the intricate genetic makeup deep within her body as well.

Before the first attack, before all of this, I had been focusing on my education, working hard, studying each night, striving towards my goal of attaining for myself the means to a life I wanted to live.

And what of my sister? Well, as I've said before, I'm the responsible one. Kelsey has never been able to hold down the same job for more than a few weeks at a time. It's been the same story at each job she has abandoned.

In her eyes, regardless of the task at hand, she is simply too good to be spending her time and energy on it, and/or she believes she should be receiving higher payments for the effort she's putting in. I don't think she would be satisfied with any sort of employment unless she could manage to find herself a job that paid her superfluous amount of money for simply acting like a spoiled princess.

So, not too long ago, while I was off at school and my sister was... well, being her usual self, the first incident occurred. It was like something straight out of a work of science fiction. The biology class I was in at the time was interrupted by another professor. He was hysterical and frightened the majority of my class when he suddenly whipped open the classroom door and starting shouting.

He was out of breath and so shaken by whatever it was he was trying to convey to us that it was difficult to understand just what he was saying. Among the few words we managed to understand as they quickly poured from his mouth were “giant creature” and “attacking city.”

How ridiculous, I thought to myself. This couldn't be anything more than some sort of prank or practical joke. But as the professor stood there, continuing to spew what I still believed to be nonsense, a voice came over the intercom and requested that everyone make their way to their choice of a few different parts of the school for an assembly.

Most of my classmates grabbed their belongings to take with them as the voice on the intercom hadn't mentioned the duration of this assembly. I grabbed my backpack and sweatshirt and followed the others as we noisily made our way into the halls and talked amongst each other, wondering what was going on.

I decided to head to the auditorium. It was already packed with other students by the time I arrived, however there were still many unoccupied seats. There were TV's set up at the front of the room and everyone stood crowded in front of those screens. Every few seconds, members of the crowd gasped, some held their hands on their faces, covering their mouths. I couldn't tell what it was they were seeing but I just had to find out so I began making my way towards the front of the crowd.

After pushing my way to a place where I could sufficiently view the TV screens, I was shocked by what I saw. A red banner on the bottom of the screen flashed “BREAKING NEWS,” but I was much more concerned with the footage being shown. On the screen was a city somewhere in Japan, and the streets were stricken with panic.

Crowds of people ran, screaming as they passed in front of the camera which was held by whomever happened to be filming the event. Vehicles smashed into each other, blocking intersections as panicked drivers tried desperately to flee the scene. The cameraman turned his attention and filmed a spot further into the distance where entire rows of buildings had been torn into, many of them reduced to rubble by some as of yet unseen force.

In the auditorium, we wondered, was Japan under attack? Were we witnessing the beginning of World War III on live TV? Suddenly a loud shrieking sound accompanied by booms came over the speakers and our attention was glued once more to the screen.

The cameraman zoomed in on a massive building, still unscathed by the assault on the city but surrounded by thick smoke from the fires burning all around it. He was just in time to capture on film the sight of a giant exoskeletal claw piercing through the building, shattering glass and sending debris flying through the air. Fleeing crowds on the ground tried their best to evade the downpour of destruction and get to safety.

Panic ensued within the auditorium. The gasps continued and some people even screamed. I couldn't take my eyes away from the carnage on the screen as I wondered just what the clawed creature attacking the city could be.

Needless to say, classes didn't resume that day. We were all told we could go home, but most of us wished to stay put and watch as the events continued to unfold. Throughout the day, the TV's displayed live video of the event as well as home video footage. Some of my fellow students dug out their laptops and smartphones and got online to discover the internet was abuzz with photos and discussion speculating as to what was going on.

The next day, the creature was killed. The military swept in and evacuated the city as best they could before unleashing barrage after barrage of missiles upon the beast, continually raining fire down upon it until it was taken down. The world watched on through their television screens and the internet as the creature's campaign of devastation was brought to an explosive end. At the end of a trail of destruction blazed through part of that Japanese city lay the smoldering carcass of what resembled a crustacean of gigantic proportions.

This had been the first attack... but unfortunately, it was not the last. It wasn't long at all before another inexplicably large creature found its way to another heavily populated city and launched its own assault. And after that, there was another, and another, followed by, yep, you guess it, another.

Humanity, we were under attack by an enemy knew virtually nothing about. Each time military forces managed to slay one of these abominations, the corpse was studied, but the research never yielded anything of significant value regarding the animal's origins. These creatures were always like shellfish or insects, but they were somehow mutated and blown up to a massive scale. We were at war, and we needed a new weapon to combat this threat.

In fighting this war, military force actually managed to produce more destruction than the creature itself. It was time to discover a new tactic, something that would result in less devastation and fewer human casualties.

The United States was the first to come up with something promising. I'm definitely not the person to talk to about the specifics about how it all works, but our scientists somehow managed to discover a way to grow a human being to a large enough size to combat the creatures.

Originally, the plan was to grow US soldiers. However, there were many complications. Again, I'm definitely not the one to ask about the specifics, but for whatever reason, the size changing simply would not work on just anyone. In fact, it wouldn't work on males at all. And it just barely worked on females. It seemed as though only people with very specific genetic makeup were suitable to trigger the desired effects.

The government scoured the country searching for viable candidates with the genetics necessary to induce the growth and turn the human body into a weapon. One day, a team of what I guess you could call government scouts ventured to my school and tested the students. Imagine my surprise when it was my turn and the test results were positive. I had been cursing my genetics my entire life, and suddenly, I found out that I possessed something inside me so incredibly rare that it wasn't even fully understood yet by science.

Jealous eyes watched on as I was escorted out of the building and into a government aircraft, trembling with excitement and a goofy smile glued to my face.

Still faced with immense difficulty in trying to find successful candidates whose bodies would respond to the procedures, I mentioned to someone high-up on the science side of things that I had a sister, and that it might be worth screening her through the initial test. They agreed that it was worth a shot, so they flew her out to one of their secret bases and I'm sure you already know how her genetic tests went. See what I mean? I'm telling you, Kelsey definitely won the genetic lottery. And if it weren't for me speaking up on her behalf, she'd still be floundering her way through an endless string of trivial jobs rather than living out this amazing experience. She'd better appreciate it.

So that's how my sister and I got to be where we are now, in this secret base in the middle of a barren dessert. The government holds the routine growth tests on successful candidates out at locations here for many practical reasons, the biggest of them being the fact that it's better for everyone if someone is grown to gigantic size in the middle of a desolate area opposed to a densely populated piece of land.

Each nation wants a growth-enabled candidate of their own stationed within their country to protect them from the giant creatures in the event of an attack. The plan is to eventually make this desire a reality, but presently, there simply aren't enough candidates to go around.

It's early, but I should get to my quarters and sleep. With another routine test completed out here, tomorrow we'll be flown back to US soil.