Epilogue

“Are the uploads finished?” Doctor Mendel asked

“Yes, doctor, we need to leave now!” a man in uniform pushed him

“Are all the samples shipped already?”

“We are missing just the last collection” the uniformed man said

“Where is it?” Doctor Mendel asked, anxious

“They are sealing it now”

“We need to bring it with us” the scientist said

“We need to leave now!” the man in uniform pushed once more

“Then, get the collection and we’ll be ready to go”

The rushed through the aisles, as much as they could taking into account Doctor Mendel’s delicate physical condition. An aide met them in an intersection between two sets of corridors. She was carrying a case.

“Is this it?” Doctor Mendel asked

The woman nodded. Doctor Mendel seemed a little more relaxed.

Then, the building shook and some dust fell from the ceiling.

“She’s getting closer” Doctor Mendel said

One of the uniformed men in the group said, in a quite desperate tone:

“We just saw her on TV… she was on Hollner”

He clearly could not understand how Kelly Hanson had been able to get there so quickly. Doctor Mendel just pointed out what he thought should have been obvious to everyone:

“With her size, she can walk at the speed of sound”

They led him through another corridor. He asked:

“Are we not going to the heliport?”

The man in uniform shook his head and said:

“No, it wasn’t considered safe”

The elevator they took brought them deeper underground than they already were. They got out and saw a train waiting for them in a platform whose existence was unknown to almost everyone in the group.

They rushed in and the train left almost the moment the doors closed. There were two strong shakes before then, which filtered even as far down as they were.

Above the ground, Kelly was now standing in the middle of the campus where the FSD was located. There was a crushed building under each of her feet. All around her, helicopters were desperately trying to get up and away from her.

“Sorry guys, but I cannot let you leave. I need to protect my power”

She easily swatted them down like mosquitos. She finished all of them off in less than a minute. Anyone who had tried to flee using the only road that reached the campus had already met a similar fate in the bottom of one of Kelly’s city-block sized footprints.

Once she was sure that no one would be leaving, she finished the rest of the buildings on campus. It was fast enough, but she also knew that it was not nearly complete enough. Lifting her foot high over the main building, she stomped hard. There was a magnitude 5 earthquake in the area, its epicenter on Kelly’s foot, which was now over three hundred feet deep in the ground. Removing it, Kelly saw that she had cleared the bottom floor of the underground infrastructure, but not by that much.

She was methodic as she brought down the rest of the complex. She was beginning to regret having let Ron go, but no matter how god-like she was, Kelly still had some soft spots in her heart. And she thought she might well have them. Otherwise, the risk of turning into an oversized version of Casey was too big. She had probably killed many more people than Casey, so far, but she knew that she was far less dangerous as a goddess than Casey would have been.

Ron was a loose string, but with the FSD and everyone that had worked there gone, she was pretty sure that she had dealt with any threat coming from them.

“It’s curious” Kelly thought. “Saving Ron forced me to kill thousands. And it still feels like the right choice”

She turned north. She knew which would be her next destination: Washington D.C.

Two hundred feet underground, in an undisclosed location.

“Where have you been, Howard?” Doctor Mendel asked

“Long story” Ron answered, shrugging

“We had been progressing quite a lot, but we have been stuck for a while”

Ron opened a briefcase. It was refrigerated. He got a vial out of it.

“I think this will help”

“What’s this?” Doctor Mendel asked

“A sample from Kelly Hanson. From her saliva. The team that brought me here had previously collected it”

Doctor Mendel quickly ordered one of his assistants to process the sample. The equipment was not as good as the one they had on the FSD, but was decent enough, considering the circumstances. The results started popping up after a while. Ron’s expression was the first to change. Doctor Mendel reacted just a second later.

“So, this is it” Doctor Mendel said

“This is it” Ron confirmed, nodding

End

Author's note:

This was a quite shorter than usual chapter, but I decided to keep the epilogue separate from Chapter 23 in order to provide some sense of closure to the story (hopefully you'll agree with my decision)

Volume 2 finishes in a quite different way than Volume 1... the girls are not back to normal. They are still big (and Kelly is actually quite bigger). Of course, this sets the stage for Volume 3. I'd like to write it, but as I already mentioned to some people in the comments, I won't post the story unless I'm certain that I can complete it and I'm happy enough with it. I'm already working on it and I'm feeling optimistic that I will be able to get something done, even if it may take a while. I make no commitments, though.

If it ever gets done, though, Volume 3 will be the closure of the series. At most, Side Effects will be a trilogy. 

I hope you enjoyed the story. I encourage to let me know what you thought about it in the comments. Thanks to everyone that has read any chapter of this story to invested some time, in any case. Cheers!