Chapter 11. In Charge

“When did you arrive?” Ron asked to the old man in front of him. He had to be in his seventies and was holding himself on a cane

“I took the first plane I could, once I got the call” the old man said in a cold tone

“I wasn’t aware that they had called you” Ron said in a somewhat defensive tone

“Well, as it goes, it seems you weren’t aware of many things” Dr. Mendel said in a reproachful tone

“It was not my fault…” Ron started to say

“You can tell that to the citizens of Hollner” Dr. Mendel replied. Ron blushed. He had seen the latest videos of Kelly and had been informed on the path that Casey had supposedly taken.

“Sykes…” Ron started

“Sykes is stupid. He always was. I believe he is being relieved. A General will take his place. But you are as stupid as him, if not more”

“Everything was under control until Sykes…” Ron started

“Shut up!” the old man said in a much stronger voice anyone could have guessed, given the fragility of his frame. “I read the assessment of your team in the plane. It’s bullshit!” Dr. Mendel said

“What?” Ron said

“Your conclusion is that Miss Morgan and Miss Hanson grew because of the traumatic effects their near death had on their bodies and that somehow that caused some sleeping effect of the original formula that had now shown in any analysis to wake up. And that the only reason why Miss Cooper did not grow was because she wasn’t killed by any stupid Colonel with a loose trigger and because somehow her pregnancy and the breastfeeding had shadowed this supposed sleeping effect of yours” Dr. Mendel said

“Well, it’s more complex than that… but in a nutshell, yes…” Ron said

“And your suggested course of action is to use Miss Cooper as a test subject, counter the hormones produced by the lactation, stimulate her body until the sleeping ‘agent’ gets visible and then get enough data to work on a counter for the two giant women” Dr. Mendel added

“Yes…” Ron said. “Lisa has been very cooperative”

“Can you tell me what have you got, so far?” Dr. Mendel asked

Ron blushed again.

“Nothing, right?” Dr. Mendel asked

Ron did not need to answer. He did, though.

“We were going to work on a new round of tests, increasing the stress on her body” he said apologetically

“You could kill her and you still would get nothing” Dr. Mendel said

Ron looked at him, surprised.

“You are too arrogant to succeed, Howard. I know what I’m talking about. It happened to me too, when I was younger. You have full access to all the research on this project since day 1, even before you joined. And when I retired I took my time to prepare a list of recommendations. I guess you read them, but it’s obvious that you did not put any interest on them”

Ron’s jaw dropped.

“You got sloppy. You forgot about Miss Hanson’s tests, as if they were not important for you anymore. And, of course, you forgot about everything the team had done before you came in. This is a bad enough sin, but it just got worse when, faced with a very serious issue, you have failed to review the data to find plausible causes for what is happening” Dr. Mendel lectured him

“I looked for the data…” Ron tried to justify himself

“Don’t lie. I still have access to the data base” Dr. Mendel barked. Ron blushed again. “Tell me, Dr. Howard, what is the most unique thing in this whole situation we are facing?” he asked

“The girl’s growth” Ron ventured

“Wrong! The girls had already grown, 6 years ago! What is different, this time?” Dr. Mendel asked again

Ron understood.

“Only two of them grew” he said

“You got this one quickly enough. Only you jumped too quickly to the conclusions. Why did you conclude that the reason behind the difference in behavior was related to Miss Cooper’s recent pregnancy?” Dr. Mendel asked

Ron felt a stab in his stomach.

“I assumed”

Dr. Mendel did not have to say anything else. Ron realized by himself.

“There were other differences” Ron said as he took his tablet and started typing. Dr. Mendel did not say anything as he did so. A minute and a half later, Ron said: “You applied different treatments to Lisa than to Casey and Kelly”

“It’s more like the other way around. Lisa was the government’s puppet, the bride of America. They would have never let me test on her” Dr. Mendel said

“You tested on Casey and Kelly” Ron said in a flat tone

“My research hit a dead-end. And the anxiety of the government back then was much higher than today. They had seen the videos ad heard the reports. They knew that it had been a chemical causing that, so they guessed it could be replicated. They wanted it badly. So, they were ready to approve anything” Dr. Mendel said

“You were not trying to understand it” Ron said

“Yes, I was. But the idea, the whole time, has been to weaponize it” Dr. Mendel added

“What did you do?” Ron asked

“I knew that the chemical that had caused it all was still inside of the girls. Back then, my theory was that once the door was open, someone’s genetic code was ready for ‘keys’. The whole challenge was opening the door for the first time. Somehow, you managed to do it with the three girls. And no one has managed to do it again. Once you were inside, there were plenty of other doors to open, each with their consequences and their symptoms. The problem was that you managed to lock the doors that had been open on them, when you came up with the damned reducer. And, no matter how much we looked into them, we could not find anything. Still, I was convinced that the master door was still open. As a matter of fact, I’m still not sure you opened it for the first time” Dr. Mendel said

“What did open it, then?” Ron asked

“I have no fucking clue. And, of course, this is what I had to understand. I had seen the samples you had analyzed back in Henford. Urine, mostly. The indicators were all there, in massive proportions. But once they were reduced, everything was gone. No matter how much I looked, I could not find anything” Dr. Mendel said

“Oh my God” Ron said, suddenly understanding

“It was the only option” Dr. Mendel shrugged

“You tried to make them grow again!” Ron protested

“I tried to unlock some doors. I was convinced that if I did so, I would find the clue to the master door” Dr. Mendel said

Ron looked at his tablet again. He browsed through some file. Then, he closed it and browsed through another.

“Fucking bastard! The list of what you injected them is longer than the fucking yellow pages!”

“I tried variations of the original chemicals” Dr. Mendel said in a plain tone

Ron suppressed the need to yell at him. Trying to keep calm, he said:

“Did you get any results?” he asked

Dr. Mendel shrugged again and said: “None. Until last week” he said, showing a copy of Kelly’s analyses.

Ron pulled the papers from Mendel’s hand and looked at the results again. He knew them well.

“This is inconclusive” Ron said

“Of course it is. She had not grown yet. At that moment, her body was just waking up. And, for the record, I believe your theory about the traumatic effects of the girls’ death has some merit”

“We cannot get anything out of this” Ron said

“Unfortunately not” Dr. Mendel added. “But you can be damned sure that right now, that big boobed lover of yours is a walking chemical plant”

Ron felt very angry. He managed to suppress the need to hit the old man.

“So, are you suggesting we go say ‘Hi’ and we ask her for a blood sample?” he asked

“That may not be wise, judging by what I’ve heard about her attitude. But we don’t need to do that” Dr. Mendel said

Ron felt a chill inside as he realized what that statement implied. With a crooked smile, Dr. Mendel added:

“I was careful to keep samples of everything I used”

Kelly smiled as she got her first win against the cops. They had been advancing against each other, in some weird version of the chicken game, and the cops had stopped first, barely a couple of blocks away from her. To make her point stronger, she took three more steps before she stopped herself, cutting the distance with the miniature task force to around a block.

As she stopped, she widened her stance, her legs spreading most of the eight lanes of the road, and placed her hands on her hips in a commanding pose. The cops were already getting outside of their vehicles by the time she did that. There were eight squad cars and what looked like four armored vans. It would have been an impressive display if it had not looked so ridiculously small to her. She waited as two cops got out of each car and took positions behind their doors. The back doors of the vans were open, too, and about half a dozen cops in some sort of assault suit got out of each of them.

When she thought they were more or less ready, Kelly fixed a serious stare at them and said in a threatening tone:

“What the hell do you want?”

The answer came promptly enough. She quickly identified the cop with the megaphone in the center of the group. He was wearing a somewhat different uniform and he was clearly the one in charge.

“You are commanded to stop right here and refrain from further actions. You are commanded to sit down and wait for further instructions. Failure to follow our commands will result in the use of deadly force” the man with the megaphone said.

Well, they clearly did not believe in diplomacy. To be fair, she had to acknowledge that she had not set the grounds for that, anyway. Kelly did not feel threatened at all by their concept of deadly force, but still her mind was working hard, trying to resolve the situation. Of course, there was not the slightest possibility that she would yield to a force of little green army men, even if in this case they were blue. But she had to find the right balance between making her point and causing a massacre.

She decided that if they could threaten her, she was also very capable of producing a few threats of her own. In the last minute, she decided to set some grounds for the type of agreement she was looking for, though.

“Look, guys, I don’t know if you have realized, but I’m VERY big, and you are VERY small. Do you really think that your toy weapons will do anything to me?” she said as she chuckled. Then, she added: “I like my size and I like using it. And right now, I’m having the greatest time in my life. So, there’s no fucking way I will stop doing whatever the hell I please. I have been reasonably gentle so far, and if you guys stop bugging me, things can keep like this. But if you don’t… well, I would hate having to crush all of you to make my point” she concluded.

Kelly could feel the fear spreading among the ranks of cops in front of her. Her lip twisted upwards as she enjoyed it. The effect was lost when the guy with the loudspeaker addressed her again.

“I must insist. Follow our orders or we will be authorized to use force”

God he was annoying. She almost felt tempted to stomp him flat. She knew that she did not have to let herself fall into that, though. That was not what she wanted to achieve. Still, she had to make them respect her. Smiling as an idea came to her, she said:

“Let’s see what you think about this”

Without warning, Kelly raised her right leg as high as she could. She saw that some cops realized about what would happen just then, but it was too late already. Stomping down as hard as she could, Kelly’s foot broke through the tarmac and sank past its ankle, creating a deep crater and several cracks that quickly spread out of it.

For the cops, barely one block in front of her, it felt like an earthquake. By the time she had removed her foot from the crater, no one that did not share her size was left standing. What was more amusing was that a few of the squad cars were now upside down. A couple of vans had also fallen to their sides.

Kelly let a loud laugh out.

“Is this enough force for you?” she taunted as she saw the cops trying to recover from the shaking world. Kelly realized that she had been a little too rough when a section of the façade of the building to her right peeled off it. “Ooops” she said. She was not too concerned about this, in any case.

Smiling naughtily as she observed the helpless cops, she indulged in the scene. She felt more powerful than ever. In the end, it only had taken her a well-placed stomp to defeat a full police task force.

“Now, I hope that you have realized about…” she started saying when she stopped and suddenly added: “What the hell is this?”

She needed some time to associate the flashes and the banging sounds coming from the blockade with the barely noticeable prickling in her skin. Then she understood.

“You are fucking shooting at me!” she yelled

A few windows broke, glasses raining on the street below as Kelly’s voice boomed and her blood began to boil. The shots were still sporadic, most of the cops not having still recovered from the earthquake she had created, and they were definitely not hurting her. But they were shooting her! The fact that someone was using a fire weapon at her made her madder than she had been in her entire life. She had to use a lot of will power to restrain herself from just heading towards the cops and crushing them.

“Stop it!” she yelled again, this time so strong that the cops that were shooting at her had to stop and bring their hands to their ears. “You are really pissing me off” she said in an incredibly angry tone. She got even angrier when the cops, apparently recovered from the effect of her thundering voice, took aim and she felt a few scattered drops along her skin once more.

She felt an itch and a naughty idea came to mind. She quickly discarded but then, her wilder side prevailed and said “They are fucking shooting at you!”

The number of bullets that harmlessly bounced of her skin started to increase as more cops recovered from the quake and joined their comrades. Kelly’s frown then turned into an evil smile as she squatted and, without warning, let thousands of gallons of warm golden liquid flow strongly from between her legs. The stream met the road just in front of the blockade and splashed the cops in the front of it. An instant later, the current flooded the street and advanced wildly down the road. Kelly laughed as she held her knees and observed the cops helplessly tried to fight against her pee as they were washed away together with their vehicles. Kelly had not even realized how much she had needed to go, but the truth was that by the time her bladder was empty she had been peeing for over a minute.

Ripping an awning from the entrance of a building, she cleaned herself and then stood up. A water tower she ripped from the roof of a building let her wash her hands. Looking down the road, she chuckled as she saw that she had just created a river that was washing down the street, dragging everything and everyone it met.

“Well, that was not very lady-like, but hopefully it will have helped them understand everyone’s place”

The truth was that, considerations about her manners apart, she was very impressed with what she had achieved.

The street in front of her was now empty. Still, she addressed an unseen audience with a powerful voice:

“Anyone else wants to piss me off, today?”

“I’m afraid you have not understood your position, Dr. Howard” Mendel said. “The only reason they did not send you back home is because we all think that your help can be valuable, if you can just stop whining, but I’m in charge of this scientific research once more”

“You cannot use her like that” Ron protested

“I can and I will. In case you haven’t noticed, we have two giant women in a large metropolis”

“But she should at least know” Ron said

“Well, you can go and tell her yourself, if that’s what you want” Dr. Mendel said

Of course, Kelly was not going to advance through the peed street, so she just made a left in the intersection she was at and looked for another artery into town. Not surprisingly, the people had used the time she had spent with the cops to clear the area as much as they had been able to, so for a few blocks Kelly only found the distraction of the few abandoned cars she carefully crushed under her feet. Without too much more to do, she started experimenting about the different feelings she had when she crushed them under her heel, the arch of the ball of her foot. One car she even tried to get a hold of with her toes, but after the third failed attempt she just flattened it and went on.

Buildings were getting taller once more, but she still towered over all of them, the tallest one barely reaching to her mammoth breasts.

“Maybe I should spend some time with the buildings” she thought. The thought quickly went away as something else grabbed her attention.