Thomas woke up in a cold, dark place. 

Although his entire body was sore and bruised, nothing hurt more than a spot on his neck. It was an intense, white-hot pain that felt like a cattle brand had been pressed against his tender flesh. He blinked slowly and tried to sit up but found it impossible to move, his body felt weak and unresponsive. Only after several seconds had passed did Thomas realize he was completely naked as well.

Briefly Thomas forgot what had happened last night. Or had it been days ago? It all seemed like a dream. Everything after he pulled the trigger on that devil of a woman was blurry. All he could remember was Alice… and how she slowly disappeared beneath a gargantuan heeled boot and screamed for help. 

Where am I? Where’s Alice? 

From somewhere very far away Thomas heard a loud thud, followed by an earthquake that rumbled through the ground. Then another boom followed by an even worse earthquake. This repeated several times until they became rhythmic shudders in the earth like artillery fire. 

The animalistic, primitive part of Thomas’s brain screamed at him that terrible danger was nearby. He could sense a sentient presence; he was being watched by something. 

No… please don’t tell me…

Those were footsteps. Subconsciously he had known, but perhaps he had not put it together sooner to cope with the realization of his current predicament. He didn’t want to accept it. He couldn’t. Suddenly the vibrations in the ground came to a halt. 

A thunderous feminine voice spoke to him from the bleary darkness. “You survived.” He recognized the voice of Tae Park, but could not see anything more than a faint silhouette of her endless legs.

With a rush of wind, the godlike figure descended like a meteorite upon the earth’s surface. She crouched above his prone, feeble body with an unreadable expression. Thomas tried to remain calm, but found it very difficult given the circumstances. He was at the woman’s mercy in every conceivable way now, and her cousin had already made her intentions clear.

Nonetheless he refused to quiver in fear under her steely gaze. “Where’s my sister?”  He demanded. 

“Alice is fine. But you should probably focus on yourself right now.” Tae advised and took a seat on the floor next to him. Her impossible weight sent earthshaking ripples through the tile, as if a building had collapsed around him. A subtle reminder of how fragile and insignificant he now was. 

Is this what it’s like for specks? Thomas thought with a shiver. Every little movement Tae made was magnified ten thousand fold. Even the most banal, innocuous gesture was an unparalleled spectacle of power. 

“Why not just kill me?” He inquired, his voice calmer than before now that he knew Alice was safe.

Unless of course that had been a lie. He would not put it past these people, but could sense the sincerity in Tae’s words. Her tone was surprisingly apathetic. It lacked the same smugness he had come to expect from her cousin.

Tae cocked her head. “If it were up to me, both you and your sister would be dead. However it was not my decision to make.” She replied. “After all, you’re her pet. Not mine.”

“I am not a pet.”

“Hmph. Would you prefer the term slave? Both are equally applicable to what you are now.” Tae said pointedly. 

Before Thomas could retort, she brought her enormous left boot over him and let it come to rest directly on top of his legs. He screamed helplessly as she effortlessly pressed down and crushed them into jelly without a second’s hesitation. 

The giantess brushed a stray lock of raven black hair from her face and got lower to the ground to scrutinize him more carefully. “And as a slave, you must be punished for disobedience.” She stated.

It was difficult to believe that such a breathtakingly beautiful woman was capable of such casual cruelty. Tae ignored his shrieks of pain and boomed on from above. 

“You will learn your place in this world, little one. Both you and your sister will be broken and used until nothing is left. Then you shall be discarded like the worthless garbage you are.” She pressed down harder on his destroyed appendages before mercifully the weight was removed. 

Thomas felt his vision begin to fade from the unbelievable pain. The last thing he saw before the bliss of unconsciousness overwhelmed him, was the behemoth of a woman lording over him with a satisfied smile on her face. 

He belonged to them now.

Although she initially had her reservations, the plan had worked perfectly. As Jisoo had expected her cousin wanted to keep Thomas and his bitch sister alive. Perhaps that was a far worse fate than simply death. Few people in their clan could destroy a person’s spirit the way Grace could. It was a craft that took both time, and an incredible amount of patience to truly master. 

Jisoo watched Thomas slip into a deep sleep. Everything below his waistline was now crushed beyond recognition. From a nearby table, she grabbed a small vial filled with amber liquid and applied a small drop to Thomas’s ruined legs. With a sizzle the broken bones and pulverized nerves began to heal. 

Peach droplets worked wonders even when not imbibed. Shortly after she had swallowed Alice and Sylvia, Jisoo had taken one. The ordeal had still been too much for a woman as weak as Sylvia to undergo, but Alice had managed to come out in one piece later that night when Jisoo had gone to the bathroom to relieve herself. Of course, with the mental trauma involved from a first hand experience through the human digestive system.

Grace would want to play with Thomas later, it wouldn’t do if he was too damaged to risk a proper introduction to his new role in life. 

Jisoo sighed contentedly and emerged from the guest room in her cousin’s hotel suite. It felt as if a world’s worth of stress had been alleviated from her shoulders. With Thomas Evans safely taken care of, she could finally return home. 

And she would do so with the man she loved at her side. Now her attention could shift to more important things. How she would formally request to marry him, and begin the lengthy process to have Eren approved as her spouse and have him properly educated. Then she would propose, he would accept, and they would spend eternity together in a beautiful new world free from the tyranny of disorder and hatred.

This is a strange feeling. Is this why Min allowed me to leave in the first place? Did she know I would discover this… clarity? It’s like I can see my own future and understand what must be done to achieve it. Jisoo thought merrily as she returned to the living room. I’m at peace with myself. I left because of what I did to Byung-ho, I thought it was because I’m a monster. Now I realize that ultimately what he and Tae-yeon think is irrelevant. They were never my real family to begin with. 

After a full week in a modified bunker out in the middle of nowhere while they waited for Evans to finally make his move, Grace needed to catch up on sleep. Jisoo bid her cousin farewell and promised to catch up at some point later that week when she was not preoccupied. Kovit took the quickest route back to her apartment, she had left Eren waiting for longer than she would have liked. 

Their show was still paused on the flatscreen when she stepped back inside and shrugged off her coat. She frowned and circled around the couch to see Eren fast asleep on the blanket right where she left him. 

I told you, you could have watched the rest of the episode without me! She thought with a part bemused, part exasperated expression. Well, at least now I won’t have to catch up to you.

Carefully Jisoo sat down, gentle as she possibly could. By now his body had acclimated to her gargantuan body and how much noise she made, so Eren slept through that as well even when she cuddled right next to him. Finally he began to stir when her enormous fingers slipped underneath the blanket, and warm minty breath washed over him like a strong breeze. 

She murmured reassuringly to him that everything was alright, she just needed to move him a little. Once she had Eren firmly snuggled between her breasts, he went back to sleep almost immediately. The warmth from her prodigious chest contrasted against the slightly chilly apartment climate.

Jisoo turned the flatscreen off along with the lights. With Eren tucked firmly away in a safe place, she strolled back into her bedroom and slid beneath the covers. Content with how this had all turned out. 

Thomas had been an annoyance for as long as he meddled with their affairs. Now he was in his proper place and would learn what it meant to offend their family. Both him, and his sister. All witnesses to what happened at Ginny’s were dealt with; Keira had been taken care of by Xiangling at some point before New Years Day and interrogated for any other details. Thankfully, Thomas was the only person she had opened up to. 

Tomorrow she planned to settle her affairs in the United States, then prepare to make a formal proposal to Aunt Min. Of course she would probably need to apologize for her sudden departure and lack of proper communication with her family throughout her senseless self-imposed exile. She had rustled many feathers at the time. Some had worried she would follow in the footsteps of her mother and abandon the dynasty with their secrets and power in tow.

Her ascension felt so long ago. It was bizarre to think that she had spent more of her life as a speck than as a ‘normal’ person. Now it all seemed like someone else’s bad dream. Grace and the rest of her family were lucky, they underwent the ceremony at the proper age and barely remembered what it was like to be so small. They never experienced the cruelty of others the way she or Eren had.

Did my mother ever realize how awful my life would be because of her choice? Did she ever care? Jisoo thought. What kind of mother would abandon her own child to the wolves like that? Why did she even have me in the first place if she was just going to toss me away like a piece of trash?

Maybe one day I’ll find her. And ask her myself before I kill her for everything she’s done.

Maddie could feel countless suspicious eyes follow her every move. Her arrival had caused quite an uproar in the Jefferson Commune which had nearly signaled an evacuation order when she first appeared on the outskirts. Had it not been for one particularly perceptive lookout, she would have never been able to find someone to help Maeve.

That was her name. The name of the girl she had found in tears just outside her home. Maeve.

The Jefferson Commune was very large for a speck domain, considerably bigger than most in New England in terms of territory. However it was not a single city, but rather a series of small shantytowns spread out over a wide area. At first Maddie had thought Lexington, the rough and tumble town she stumbled across was abandoned. 

Most of the buildings were falling apart or ruined by mold, damaged from the elements or held together by duct tape. A far cry from what she had imagined they would be. In the news, Speck Communes all looked the same. Sturdy concrete and well-designed interior spaces and lots of nice amenities. From that impression, it was easy to see why so many were envious of specks and how easy they had it.

But what Maddie saw now was… awful. Half the people she saw looked decades older than they actually were. Many were malnourished, with sunken faces and exposed rib cages. Those that were not looked strong, only in the sense their bodies had been adapted to be overworked. Powerful muscles exposed by a lack of fat or proper nutrition, which left them sinewy. 

Eren’s face when I first interviewed him looked a bit more like this. Maddie realized. Like he had not eaten properly at the time. He looked a lot better at Ginny’s… did he live like this before? Do all specks?

“You seem surprised by what you see.” Her new friend observed from beside her thigh. Maeve’s surgery had been a moderate success, she had lost her right leg on the operating table.

The only doctor in the entire Commune had been summoned for the emergency procedure. She did her best, but ultimately there was only so much the poor woman could do for Maeve with what little equipment they had. A few buckets of disinfectant, the repurposed lid to a soup can, and a very strong brew of rum and vodka was all they had at their disposal. No anesthesia, painkillers, x-rays, nurses, or any modern medicine developed after the early industrial period. 

Maddie had never heard screams like that as Maeve’s leg was sawed off. Apparently she bit through every gag the doctor provided. 

She curled her knees tighter to her chest. 

“This place is nothing like I thought it would be.” Maddie admitted and glanced around the shantytown.

There were seven more small villages just like Lexington around the Jefferson Commune. Yorktown was the largest, towards the southeast entrance to the domain and where supplies were deposited by the local municipality. Maeve was actually from further north in Saratoga. 

By Maeve’s accounts, none of the towns were any better than Lexington. She even expressed surprise when Maddie commented how rundown everything looked. Jefferson Commune was supposedly a very nice place by speck standards in New England. 

“What did you expect?” Maeve replied and leaned back against her crutches. All things considered she seemed to have taken to her new disability rather well and spoke in a cheerful tone that suited her more aptly. “Beverly Hills?”

“Something like that.” She muttered and hung her head. “Maeve… how are you so calm about all this?”

The tiny woman scratched her chin thoughtfully. “To be honest I accepted that I was going to die when you first picked me up. I thought you were going to kill me right there and then.” Maeve reasoned. “So when you said you wanted to help me, actually surviving was just a pleasant surprise.”

“It was a person like me who did this to you wasn’t it?” Maddie asked.

That was the only explanation she could think of. It had looked like Maeve was the victim of a bomb when she stumbled across her. There was no way that was caused by a fall or an accident of some sort.

As she had suspected, Maeve nodded affirmatively. “Yeah. It was.”

“What happened?”

“I like to adventure outside the Commune from time to time. Usually I just collect odds and ends… bottle caps, coins, that sort of thing.” Maeve explained. “I didn’t make it very far when a couple with a little kid walked by.” 

“The toddler saw me and tried to pick me up. His father screamed at him to ‘put that filthy thing down’ and in the commotion I felt something break just above my knee. Then I fell to the ground while the family walked away.” She recounted with a shiver. 

A kid did this?! And his parents didn’t do anything to help after they hurt her?!

Maddie felt sick to her stomach. “That’s horrible. I’m so sorry.” She murmured. 

“It was bound to happen eventually, and I can’t be upset. The kid probably didn’t mean to hurt me or anything.”

“Will you tell the authorities? Press charges?”

“…what?” Maeve asked, confused. “Maddie, do you really think the police would investigate something like this? Stuff like this happens all the time.” She stated.

All the time?! This is a regular occurrence?!

Maeve suddenly backed away as Maddie clasped her hands over her mouth. It took a tremendous amount of willpower to resist the intense urge to vomit. She had never done very well around gore or violence of any kind. It made her feel sick to the core to simply learn about it, and now she was confronted by it. 

None of this made any sense. 

Everything Maddie had seen today conflicted with everything she thought she knew about specks. Not a single thing added up. Specks did not live in nice rent-free districts free of the ills of the world. They lived in utter poverty. Nor were they coddled and protected by the government who claimed to have their best interests in mind, their emergency line simply did not work. 

So why was it that it was supposedly so damn expensive to maintain their communes? Where did all that tax money go? Where were the leeches and brainless parasites she was told infested these communes and were a drain on society?

Had Eren lived like this in one of these Communes? Maeve told her that this was considered a nice commune by speck standards. What kind of conditions had Eren grown up in? 

Suddenly all of those stories about crazy schoolteachers and charity funds set up for specks made sense. Most derided such movements since it was supposed to be entirely unnecessary. In fact, many wanted specks to have less since they were afforded so many expensive privileges. 

A simple walk to a commune showed me how wrong I was… if it’s this easy then why isn’t everybody talking about this? People should be rioting in the streets over this! Maddie thought angrily. What kind of person would willingly let this happen?! What kind of person lets their kid maim a random girl in the park?! What kind of person-?!

Maddie stopped suddenly and felt her body go slack as the realization hit her. Her grandfather had been right to be vexed with her. If anything she deserved far worse. 

What kind of person fires a stellar employee just because he’s a speck, and then tries to kill him in a fit of rage when he just asks her why?