Chapter 8 : Revelations

The Northern Docks. They were not derelict, no part of Gigantopia was. Still, there was something in the air, in the look of the buildings, that made clear it was a poorer section of the country-sized city. For starter, nothing seemed to be made to accommodate Smalls or taller class of citizens. It was… surprising, to say the least. Rick felt strangely less safe than he expected to be.

“Fuck, no one can see us here” mumbled Alicia, voicing his thoughts.

“Yeah, if some fucker shanks us, it’ll be us alone. Let’s be real quick to see our witness, and then we bail, okay?”

His partner nodded. She moved swiftly and elegantly in front of him, easily dwarfing him. Her size and bulk easily meant the top of his head barely reach her shoulders. And she was way broader than he was, with her muscular physique. He wasn’t a slouch at the gym, but he had never achieved a size like hers, not even when he used it more regularly than now. It was a little intimidating and really arousing.

“Officers Sapovitch, De Paul?” asked a voice, a young woman in her twenties, probably stuck at desk jobs here in the local police station. “You’re witness is waiting for you in the interrogation room 2 with officer Kirkman.”

The two officers exchanged a quick glance. It was a rare occasion that they’d be ushered in so quickly. Cops usually had little work to do in the central neighborhoods of Gigantopia – or the most affluent ones, where the larger kind of humans lived, since crimes was simply unheard off there. But here, in the Northern Docks? It had a certain reputation, and it wasn’t a good one, and Alicia and Rick knew it.

“That bad uh?” said Rick as he left the entrance of the precinct.

“Seems so” grumbled Alicia, who preceded him and opened the door of the interrogation room 2.

Rick looked around. As the receptionist had said, Kirkman was here – Rick had never met the man but he gave him a good first impression. Average-sized for a Normal, around 1m65, with a short beard and a dark skin glowing healthily under the light of the room, he seemed gentle and kind. But he was also agitated and clearly worried, and it made the whole situation worst. Something was absolutely wrong here.

“Sapovitch, De Paul, thank you for coming this quickly.”

Kirkman’s voice was strong and deep, but not as steady as Rick would have assumed. He sounded shaken by something, and it displeased the other police officer a lot. What could turn an experienced man like him in such an obvious disarray? Surely nothing good at all! Still, Rick kept his mouth shut, as he let Alicia take the helm, greeting Kirkman and starting to exchange mundane pleasantries with him.

A part of him just wanted to look at his towering partner, but Rick decided – at great cost – to focus instead on the man sitting on the other side of a see-through glass wall. The witness they were supposed to meet was an old man, easily in his sixties, even if life in the streets may have aged him. It was a rough thing to be homeless, even in Gigantopia which prided itself as the most advanced nation of the world. Some peoples who lost their homes ended dying alone and forgotten, each year.

“So, what’s the deal with him?” asked Rick. “Commish wanted us here ASAP and didn’t told us anything…”

“Yeah, about that…” winced Kirkman. “I think you should hear out old Franz here instead of me. Just… be prepared, it’s pretty gruesome…”

Rick and Alicia exchanged a perplexed glance. Their fellow officer seemed genuinely worried, something which made the two of them wary. What could have happened that could elicit such a reaction in a guy serving in the Northern Docks? There was only one way to find out and the two went in, to meet old Franz. Still, Rick had a somewhat bad feeling about it. As he bitten more than he could chew with all this mess?

Rick went first and he noticed a brutal reaction when Alicia entered. With her towering size, well over two meters as far as he could tell, she was impressive. And sexy. Focus, Rick, focus! Franz however was mousy, even for a Normal, he couldn’t have been taller than 1m55 and he was sitting. Overall, it would have made Alicia look towering to him, even without taking into account her rippling and sexy muscles. Damn it!

“She won’t eat you buddy” he snorted, to try and have their witness relax – he was too damn tense.

But it backfired spectacularly. Franz whimpered, went pale and Rick feared for a moment he’d even try to bolt out of the room which would have forced him or, more probably, Alicia to catch him. It would have been bad, since it’d have only made him more afraid of them, limiting his willingness to talk. Rick had never been a proponent of the bad cop, good cop dynamic and wanted to avoid it today.

“Forgive my partner mister Franz. He has a dubious humor that also makes me wince” said Alicia with a charming smile. “Does it bother you if I sit?” she added, gesturing to the chair opposite to Franz’s.

“No” croaked the old man, his voice hoarse. “Go for it…”

Rick moved slightly toward the door, to be less in the field of vision of the old man, leaned against the wall and let Alicia takes the handles of the interrogation. Considering how his joke had been botched on the poor guy squirming in his chair, it was better that way. Still, it gave him a shiver. Nobody should have reacted like that to his little jest. Except if, for whatever reason, it sounded more like a realistic threat to old Franz.

“So, Franz….” started Alicia, but the old man cut her off.

“She ate them” he blurted, his face pale and feverish, his eyes wide open, his whole body shaking, as if he was  trying to spit the words and get rid of the sickness they gave him.

“What?”

“She ate them. The gang members!”

The voice of old Franz was almost broken, as if he had screamed so long he couldn’t speak properly anymore, but it did little to make his claim less horrific. Rick felt as if a pit had opened in his stomach, and even Alicia had visibly paled. It was hard to write off the homeless man’s reaction, after his reaction to his joke and the urgency in the Commissar’s orders for them to come here.

“Who ate the gang members?” asked Alicia, her voice ringing a little hollow.

“The Giantess, the dark-haired one” explained Franz, shivering a little. “I was on the docks the other night, like I always do during this period of the year, best spot to get some food and money to buy more. It was kind of cold but not too much and I saw the guys of the gang. I knew them, they’ve been operating over there for years now, and no one ever bothered to try and make them move…”

Now that he had started talking, Rick realized that there would be no stopping old Franz. He needed to empty his bag and it was clear he was intent on it. And neither Alicia nor he could stop him, even if they had wanted to. The revelation that something had been done that was a lurking terror for all the Normals in Gigantopia for generations was too terrible, it left them paralyzed and shell shocked.

“But that night… something big came. A huge Giantess, even for her kind. She was young, probably in her late twenties, and she towered above the gang. And her face… her face. She was smirking, her black eyes were cold and dark and her lips… they were red with the blood of the poor guy she had already eaten!”

Rick shivered. He wanted to laugh at the old man’s face, to exorcize his horror, but something in his voice, in his eyes, made quite clear that he was telling the truth. And when he elaborated on the events of that night, the police officer better understood why he had been in hiding for days, risking his health and even life, rather than to expose himself. He would have done the same, and a glance at Alicia confirmed he wasn’t alone in that sentiment.

“They never had a chance” rasped Franz, his face ashen as he remembered vividly his past terror. They screamed and shouted and shooted, but beside me, there was no one in the docks, and their little guns could do nothing to her. I don’t think the bullets even tickled her!”

“And she… she killed them all?” asked Alicia. “She… she stomped on them?”

Stomping on them. It was hard to picture a more gruesome death in Gigantopia, one that still happened from time to time. Young Normals forgot about their bigger peers, got drunk, or drugged, and ended as a red stain on the foot of a Small or the ever bigger Growns. The lucky ones simply aided maimed for life. And in even rare occasion, it was a Small who ended crushed like a gnat by Titans and Gigantics.

It was horrible, but it was a part of life when you shared your world with such enormous beings, and Rick could stomach it. But what Franz described, as lacking in gruesome details as it was, was enough to make his blood curl. What he had seen was the terror keeping Normals awake at night, be they children of adults. The intimate knowledge that they were nothing to the Growns, and could end up as food…

“Not one of them got stomped. She caught them, the two dozens, who had clumped like idiots. Six in each hand, more or less. And she looked at them, and she licked her lips and… The ones in her left hand, she bite first. She… she took a bite of them, and most of them died on the spot, I think. I almost blacked out and I’m sure I screamed. She had cut them in half with her teeth.”

Rick felt nauseous and he had to adjust his position as he battled the wave of seasickness threatening to submerge him. All he wanted now was for the old man to stop, but it was clear that the dams of his lips had been broken. Franz continued to describe the carnage, and he could almost see it in his mind, as if he had been the one witnessing all this horror. He gulped hard – he wouldn’t manage to keep his stomach in control much longer.

“She chewed those half bodies and the other guys, the ones alive… they screamed like fucking Hell was upon them – and it was! She grinned, that monster, as she gulped down the bits she had in her mouth and then she ate all the remaining portions including the entrails on her fingers and the blood on her palm. And when she finished, she just looked at her other victims, and she said… she said…”

“What did she said?” asked Alicia, her voice hollow.

“She said that it was good to finally be true to her nature, that Normals existed to the pleasures of the Growns, and that she wanted to purge this city and this country from its filth. Including them. But now she wanted to savor them, since she had one free hand now!”

“She wanted to savor them?”

Rick was horrified, and truly he needed something to steady himself. He leaned against the wall, sighing. What was happening to this country? For centuries, Growns had made their best to try and avoid giving in to those stereotypes of the cruel giant monsters a lot of Normals had pegged them as, initially. And suddenly, someone had snapped. Was it in aberration or a harbinger of worst to come?

“Yes… She… she picked one, and she put him whole in her mouth, alive. He was screaming, the poor bastard… I still hear him when I close my eyes. She toyed with him, in his mouth, I… I saw his outline on the outside of her cheeks, when she pushed him into them… And finally, she gulped him down.”

“Alive?” rasped Rick, horrified.

“Alive” confirmed Franz, his voice cracking. “And she loved it, she purred and moaned as she traced his descent with her free fingers… And then she did that to all the other gang members. One by one, as they cried, pleaded and shrieked for help. For someone to save them. But nobody came… nobody came…”

Franz stopped talking and started sobbing. Rick couldn’t move, he was already mustering all his willpower to not crumple on the ground. The wall was doing more than his body to maintain him upright, or so he felt. It was up to Alicia to gently pat the old man’s shoulder, but when she looked at Rick, she couldn’t hide her anguish and horror.

“We need to call the Commissar soon” she stated.