Chapter 13. Chaos and hope

“Where are we going?” Ron asked through the microphone that connected him to the crew of the helicopter he was flying in

“Rockwell” Barkley replied

“Where’s that?” Ron asked, not having heard about that name before

“Buried deep into the Appalachia” Barkley clarified

Ron held the briefcase in his lap with renewed strength. Even through the gloves he was wearing, it felt cold. He knew how important its contents were.

It was hard for him to focus, still. His mind was very troubled.

The hours alone, trapped in the communications tower, had been very hard. The few remaining units of the army in Hollner had taken a while to regroup. The new commander, a major, had needed a while more to assess the situation. He had even acknowledged that he would not have been looking for him unless someone in the CIA had told him to do so.

He had had a front row seat of Kelly’s antics. And the more he saw, the more despaired he got. Each and every one of Kelly’s actions had been a strong blow to his initial determination.

He saw her taking out a large army force with ease. And he saw her bringing an entire section of the city down while doing it. In a matter of minutes, Kelly had killed thousands of people, and it was easy to see that she had felt good while doing it.

Her short stroll back to downtown was the hardest part to watch. She had already finished her attackers by then, so each of the buildings she brought down as she carelessly walked through them was totally unjustified mass murder.

When she announced her intentions to the world and headed north, he knew that there would be plenty more deaths. And that Kelly did not care anymore.

Ron felt a ball of ice forming on his stomach. For he knew he was as responsible as Kelly for all those deaths.

“How could I be so fooled by her? I should have seen that she was using me?” he thought, incredibly angry with himself, unable to block images of her naked body next to his on a bed, just a few days ago. “How could I let my lust cloud my reason? This only happens to lesser men!”

He then realized that this was but an anecdote. The fact that he had slept with Kelly was not what had caused the current situation. He felt betrayed at having been used… but beyond the harm to his pride, there had been no further consequences.

Once he been able to clear his mind from that, he realized that what was really bothering him was something else. And he could not fool himself and try to block the thought.

He had been the one that had created the original formula that had made the women as big as they were, including Kelly and her new titanic size. And after six years, he had no clue on how it worked and on how to revert the process.

He was the ultimate responsible of Kelly’s size and Kelly’s actions, and he was unable to stop her. He was not as smart as everyone expected him to be and he had been too arrogant to realize about it until now. In a way, he was as guilty as Kelly for each of the deaths she was causing.

With Kelly long gone and while still trapped in the tower, thoughts of suicide started running through Ron’s mind. He knew that every minute that passed was probably increasing the death toll and was making any potential contribution he could make less relevant.

The temptations to just jumping and sending everything to hell were starting to become pretty strong when a Humvee showed up in the park. A few minutes later he was being rescued by one of the very few helicopters the army had left in the surroundings of Hollner.

Apart from the crew and the soldier that had jumped from it and secured a harness around his body, there was a fourth occupant in the chopper. He was dressed in a gray suit, not a military uniform. He had not got his first name. He had not thought about asking when Agent Barkley opened the refrigerated briefcase he was holding and showed him the vials containing a viscous transparent liquid. It was Kelly’s saliva.

“Will it be enough?” Agent Barkley had asked

“I hope it will” had been Ron’s only answer. He did not share it with anyone else, but he felt moderately optimistic. A sample of saliva was typically enough to get abundant genetic information about the donor.

He did not know who Barkley worked for, but he was the type of guy he had expected to tell him that everything was classified. He surprised him. Ron did not feel that he was holding anything back when he described the situation in detail.

Kelly, who was now estimated to be between 1,500 and 2,000 feet tall, had taken out two entire army brigades and three squadrons of attack helicopters. The rescue teams were still having a hard time to get in the affected areas of Hollner, but the initial estimation was that there were at least as many civilian collateral victims as military ones.

Casey and Lisa had fought again shortly after Kelly had left. This had caused even more destruction. Casey had taken advantage of the confusion after the fight to get out of Hollner. They had not been able to find her so far. And Barkley acknowledged that most of the resources were now focused on Kelly and that the ones calling the shots seemed to have forgotten about Casey almost completely.

After a while not knowing what to do, Lisa had headed north, apparently following Kelly’s trail.

This trail would bring her to the FSD. Kelly had shown up there, shortly after leaving Hollner, and had leveled the entire facility, including the thousands of people working on it. Everyone agreed that her objective had been to stop any investigation going on there that could potentially result in the development of a counter.

Ron felt his blood freezing once more when he heard that. It was not as if he had any close friend there, but he had worked at the FSD for a long time and he knew a lot of people. And now, it was very likely that each and every one of them was dead. He could not prevent thinking once more that this was his fault.

His mind then went to the more rational consequences of what had happened: the FSD was the only research facility in the world that had the equipment, the samples and the data necessary to work on a way of making Kelly small again. From the point of view of her self-interest, Kelly had proven to be very smart.

Then, Ron’s mind screamed the logical question:

“Why didn’t she kill me, then? I am more dangerous to her than any of the people she killed there”

He did not have a good answer. The only one that could come to mind was that Kelly had been telling the truth when she had told him that she liked him. But that, of course, did not match with anything else she had done since then. At the rate she was killing, she would soon become one of the worst mass-murderers in history…

“He has completely lost it” Director Brown whispered to Catherine McAllister, the former secretary of Defense. She had not been formally fired and she had not resigned, but after the heated argument the President and her had had following their conversation with the joint chiefs, she had been told that she was not expected in cabinet meetings anymore. Brown had not been surprised, even if that had meant that the crisis team had lost the only member capable of thinking rationally under stress.

Taking advantage of a break in the meetings while the President had some one on one calls, Director Brown had managed to sneak into the small conference room at the back of the plane where Secretary McAllister was following the events in the ground but where she had no possibility to communicate with the armed forces.

“Of course, I agree… but after my last conversation with the man I guess people could say that my opinion is biased” McAllister replied, with just the hint of an eyebrow movement in her otherwise expressionless face

“He is not listening to anyone, anymore” Brown said

“It was not as if he was listening before…” McAllister replied

“He was being authoritarian before. But now he has stopped listening. And he has stopped managing some of the crises he is supposed to manage as a President” Brown added

“This is why you came?” McAllister asked. She was a smart woman. It was not as if Brown had been very subtle about his intentions, in any case

“The Strategic Air Command contacted us a while ago. China and Russia have put their troops in their highest state of alert. And there is strong evidence that suggests that they may be programming some of their ICBMs to target areas where Kelly Hanson is or where she is expected to go. Their ambassadors’ attitudes have gradually evolved from offering condolences and any support we need to face the current situation to strongly requesting any information we have available on the reasons why Miss Hanson got so big and demanding that we share our plans to deal with her. The tone from our allies in Europe is not so strong, yet, but it’s evident that they are starting to become impatient”

“So, what did he do?” McAllister asked

“Nothing” Brown replied

“Nothing?”

“He said that he would not be bothered while dealing with the emergency and that any way we chose to deal with it was our own business. And he reminded everyone that any unrequested intervention in US soil would be considered an act of war that would be dealt with accordingly, including the use of our nuclear arsenal” Brown said

“Did they find the Secretary of State, yet?” McAllister asked

“No. And he does not think that appointing a replacement is a priority, right now” Brown said

“And the vice president?”

“He just showed up, in San Francisco. The President never trusted him too much. At least he picked the phone up to him, but he did not task him with anything” Brown said

“Not even trying to calm the Chinese or the Russians down?” McAllister asked

“I think that he felt that his threat about retaliation would be enough to calm them down” Brown said, shrugging

“I need to talk to him” McAllister said

“As far as I’ve seen, there is no one monitoring calls out. No one seems to think that spies or traitors are an issue, given the nature of the crisis. It should be easy enough for you. And the Vice President should be receptive enough. I have some doubts on what you two will be able to accomplish, though. Anyway, I need to get back to the cabinet room. It’s not as if the man is paying any attention to who is there, but I don’t want anyone else to start asking questions” Brown said

“Any idea on what he will do next?” McAllister asked

“He is trying to coordinate an attack. With the Joint Chiefs and the Pentagon gone, he has taken over the job of talking to generals in nearby bases directly. He has been so mad since the woman Hanson destroyed the White House and declared herself ruler of the country that no one is even remotely thinking on trying to talk him out of it. The idea of nuking her came back to the table a couple of times, but thankfully he seems to have discarded it, at least while she is moving through populated areas. I believe that he ordered the commander at Langley Air Force Base to send everything he had at her, though”

“That is nonsense. At most, all they will manage to do is to make her angrier” Catherine McAllister said

“Well, at least this time we won’t be wasting lives in the process. If they wanted to shoot missiles at her, they should have sent fighter jets from the start” Brown said

“Any word from the FSD?” McAllister asked

“They are operational again. And they found Howard. He will be there in a short while. We don’t know how soon we can expect results” Brown said

“Can I talk to them too?” McAllister asked

Brown took a card from his suit’s pocket. There was a number handwritten on it.

“This is Mendel’s number. I need to go, now”

George Balotelli saw the landscape moving at an unbelievable speed through the glass of the gondola. He was thankful to be inside. He could feel the wind hitting the glass with amazing force and the sound of the shockwave every time she advanced in what he knew but still had trouble to accept was one of her steps.

In yet another surrealistic situation, Kelly Hanson had gently carried him down the Potomac and had then set him next to the Ferris Wheel. Then, with just one hand, she had ripped the wheel from its foundations.

When she set it into the ground next to him and commanded him to get inside one of the gondolas he rushed. She did not tell him anything else while she carried the Ferris Wheel, with him inside, in her hand. He could see D.C. from a bird’s eye view and moving at an amazing speed as she got into Chesapeake Bay.

She set the Ferris Wheel on top of a large merchant ship. From there, all he could see were her ankles. He realized soon enough what she was doing, though. With insulting ease, Kelly lifted the prow of the ship from the water and then ripped its thick anchor chain.

Without realizing too well how she had done it, George soon found himself level with her chest, just above her amazing rack. She had somehow used the chain to fashion some sort of necklace and make the Ferris Wheel hang from it.

Of course, one of the issues with her new size was that people were now so ridiculously tiny that even transporting them was a challenge. She was not going to go all the way to New York with her new President sitting on the palm of her hand. Just thinking about it tired her. And she was not so sure he would be able to properly sustain the rigors of travelling with her without any protection. In the end, the shockwaves she felt when she walked at a good pace were not much more than an anecdote to her, but she didn’t think they would be so easy on the ant-sized man. This same reason discarded her shoulder as a valid transportation method, even if she felt that the space between her shoulder blades should now be generous enough to carry a few guests.

So, when she saw the Ferris Wheel in the distance and worked out how she would be carrying her President around she felt proud of herself. She felt even prouder once she was done with the necklace and had the Ferris Wheel comfortably hanging just over her tits.

Actions like that one, which combined her amazing size and strength with smart ideas and fine skills made her feel especially well. They proved her that she was much more than just a very big woman.

She was now standing in the middle of the bay and ready to go to New York. She was about to turn north and get going when she had another idea.

From her height it was easy to see that the path north would be anything but quiet. She thought that the large city at the end of the bay was Baltimore, but she was not too sure. In any case, it was larger than Washington and Kelly knew that it would be hard to move through it without causing too much damage.

If anything, her trek north had proven her that damage was unavoidable. And a quick look to her left and to Washington and the state it was at made her realize that even when her original intentions were to be careful, shit ended up happening. It had been Lisa’s fault, this time, but the destruction was there, anyway. Half the capital of her new country lay in ruins.

She knew that after Baltimore, she would find other large cities on her way north. Her path would bring her through Philadelphia and then through all of New Jersey. Shit would happen again.

For an instant, her ego told her to ignore the consequences and to just get going to her destination. She did not really want to wreak havoc, but she did not think that she needed to feel constrained by the consequences of her size. Then, she had another idea.

It seemed good enough, so she would give it a chance. Turning east, she walked through Delaware, trying to be as careful as possible, and got into the cool water of the Atlantic Ocean.

She felt proud of her idea, a few minutes later, as she felt relaxed wading north along the Eastern Seaboard of her country, water getting just over her knees and relaxing her as the afternoon breeze cooled her down.

She did not rush. The water was barely slowing her down and she knew that even if she was moving at a leisurely pace she would get to her destination soon enough. On the way, she enjoyed the beautiful coastline of her country, both its cliffs and its seaside towns and cities. She was close enough to the coast to be perfectly visible to everyone on it. She enjoyed the thought that the eyes of millions of people were glued to her.

“Let them see me. Let them realize about my size, about my power. When I’m done, I will come back and visit. I will visit the entire country. And then, the entire world”

A whistling sound took her out of her trance. She needed a second to notice the trails of smoke. She felt her blood being to boil. She knew what they meant: she was being attacked again. Of course, she was not the least concerned about the effects the missiles would have on her. She had already been hit with dozens of it, back at Hollner, and they had barely bothered her.

Her anger gave way to surprise when the trails of smoke passed to either side of her and exploded in the ocean, well behind her.

“What the fuck?” she asked, aloud

“We don’t have an impact” Captain Till said

“We shot a dozen missiles at her!” Major Anders complained

Captain Till’s voice came back:

“The missiles cannot get a lock on her. She does not have a radar signature… and her body heat is barely above her surroundings”

“Fuck. Don’t we have anything else?” the voice of another pilot came in

A fourth pilot gave his opinion:

“Not in the standard payload. They did not give us any time to get ready for this”

His voice clearly showed what he thought about the mission they had been given.

“Stop arguing” Anders commanded. “We will need to engage her within visual range”

An anonymous voice said: “Fuck”

Everyone complied, though.

She was puzzled for a few seconds. Then, she saw the black points in the distance. They were getting close to her fast.  There must be a dozen of them.

They had covered about half the distance towards her when she saw new trails of smoke forming under each of the grasshopper-sized aircraft. She had very little time to react. She did not realize until the last minute that she might not be too concerned about the effects of their impact, but that the tiny person that was hanging from her neck did not share her invulnerability.

In the last second, Kelly turned. She felt half a dozen impacts at her hack. And she saw what looked like half a dozen additional missiles crashing with the surface a few miles behind her.

She was getting really mad. Would they never learn?

She was about to turn when another whistling sound make her have second thoughts. She felt a few more impacts at her back and realized that if she had reacted just a second later, her new President would have disintegrated. A dozen more insect-sized planes flew whistling above her as Kelly felt all her muscles tense. If they wanted a fight, she would give them one.

First, she needed to protect her passenger, though. Wading closer to the coast, keeping alert, she unfastened her makeshift necklace and set the Ferris Wheel on top of a cliff.

Without even looking at the tiny man inside one of the gondolas, she said:

“I’ll come pick you up once I’m done”

And then she moved farther into the water, putting as much distance with the tiny man as possible in order to prevent any stray shot to hit him.

The whistles made her turn south. Soon enough, the planes became visible in the distance. She did not make an effort to dodge the missiles this time. She just let them explode harmlessly against her naked torso while she kept her hands on her hips. She wanted to make them realize how useless they were.

Then, as the dozen planes finished their pass and moved to the sides and up, she tried to swat them. She did not hit any. They were too fast and nimble. It made her mad.

The second squadron hit her with the same degree of success. She was not luckier in hitting any of the attackers, either.

The battle was quickly becoming an exchange of harmless blows where no one could hurt the enemy. Kelly felt very frustrated at that. In her mind, anyone who attacked her had to be punished.

The first squadron became visible in the distance once more, now flying from the north, when an idea came to Kelly’s mind. She let them fire their missiles at her, without even looking at how many hit her and how many missed. She waited for them to be closer.

“Just a little bit closer” she thought as the squadron started to scramble in order to fly out of her reach.

Then, Kelly brought her hands together, clapping with as much strength as she could muster. The clap was deafening even for her.

Five attackers just exploded in front of her, unable to resist the wave front Kelly’s clap had created. The other seven managed to keep flying, but turning Kelly saw that three of them were actually spiraling out of control. The three aircraft were heading straight towards a collision with the surface when the three chutes unfolded in the sky.

“Oh fuck!” Till yelled in the line. Major Anders was in one of the planes that had disintegrated right in front of Till’s eyes. He still did not know how his F22 had managed to keep flying after the rocking it had been subjected to. In any case, half of his indicators were in red and he knew that he did not have any other option than heading to base.

He realized about something else. With Anders gone, Till was acting commander. He realized that the pilots in the 112th were about to make their pass when he yelled in the common channel again.

“Abort immediately. I repeat: Abort immediately!”

Kelly was ready for a second dose of her own medicine for the fighter jets that were approaching in the distance when they suddenly scrambled and started to head away from her.

She needed a second to realize that they were falling back.

She let a laugh out.

“Getting away already?” she asked aloud. “Do you think that this is going to do you any good? I will find you. And when I do, you will pay!” she yelled for anyone who wanted to listen to her.

Without anyone attacking her anymore, she turned to see the three parachutes slowly moving down. Of course, she was not going to let them go.

Not in a rush anymore, she calmly waded towards the first one. Waiting until the pilot was in front of her smiling face, she plucked the chute out of the sky and headed for the other two. Soon, the three tiny pilots were dangling from their parachutes and in front of Kelly’s satisfied eyes.

“You fucking gnats seem to keep on believing that you are able to hurt me” she said in a cold tone

“It would really be much easier if you just accepted the new state of things and stopped being stupid. I’d really love not being forced to teach you the same lesson over and over again. Buy you just cannot learn” she added

She wondered what to do. Crushing them would be just too easy. She felt like being creative. The tiny assholes had given her an excuse and she was going to use it.

She was holding the three chutes with its dangling pilots between the thumb and index finger of her right hand. Almost without thinking about it, she started to play with them, giving the strings a rolling motion. Soon, the three pilots were moving as in a merry-go-round. Happy with it, she started to increase the rotation speed.

She kept on increasing it until the pilots became just a blur. Then, she moved her hand down and let them splash against her right tit.

The blur stopped right away. All that remained of it was a small red stain right next to her right nipple. Dropping the remainders of the chutes to the water below, Kelly felt happy. Then, something kicked in the back of her mind:

“This was unnecessary cruelty. And you enjoyed it. You were just waiting for an excuse”

The thought unsettled her for a moment. Then, a defense mechanism kicked in and said:

“You have the right to do anything you want to those who attack you. Anything”

In the end, why shouldn’t she? It was not her fault if they refused to learn. Heading back towards the coast to pick her new President up, she wondered if they would be stupid enough to attack her again. Part of her almost wanted them to.

Rockwell base. 200 feet underground at an undisclosed location in the Appalachia.

“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

The results on the screen were conclusive enough. There were three columns: one listed the analysis of Kelly’s current DNA as recovered from the saliva sample. The second one was labeled as Kelly’s DNA in her last check, right before she had grown. And the third column was highlighting the differences.

There were red markers almost everywhere. Her DNA was still grouped in 23 pairs of chromosomes.

The first important difference was evident enough. And it would have been shocking if Mendel and Ron had not already seen something similar when they had been trying to determine the cause behind the women’s growth earlier in the day, when they had been “just” 250 feet tall. The two X chromosomes in the pair were not identical.

Their theory had been that the differences between the two X chromosomes actually contained information. The differences had been so subtle the first time the women had grown, 6 years before, that the computers helping in the analysis had discarded them, but the results in Lisa’s samples after she had grown were conclusive enough.

There were thousands of changes spread out through the rest of Kelly’s DNA, but the biggest change was there. Neither Mendel nor he had a clue on how to decode the information stored in there, but the differences in Kelly’s DNA were now an order of magnitude bigger than those on Lisa’s. The biggest difference was actually in the sequence that both Mendel and he had theorized was coding the women’s size, which kind of confirmed the theory.

In regular conditions, these findings would have been more than enough to grant them a Nobel Prize. In the current circumstances, though, confirming their theory about the genetic sequence where the growth was coded was just a reminder that they had focused their efforts on the wrong approach. And this had resulted in their first attempt at a reducer being a failure, which had resulted in the current situation.

This time there was another very visible difference in Kelly’s genetic sequence, though. One that they had not seen before, when analyzing Lisa’s.

Mendel had finished checking a reference document when he said:

“Unless the magnitude of the changes is even bigger than we can imagine, this is controlling her liver”

The conclusions were so evident that Ron and Mendel did not need to discuss the details. They had found the lock. Kelly’s genetics were changed. With time, they would be able to understand the sheer magnitude of the changes. But her changes needed fuel to show. They did not know what it was exactly, but they knew that her liver was feeding tons of that fuel to her bloodstream continuously. Without it, her body would not be able to keep the changes.

He still did not know how he had managed to create the first reducer, back in Henford, but he now knew that what he had done was to counter whatever hormone the girls’ bodies were creating in order to keep them big. And now he also knew that their bodies were gradually starting to synthetize this hormone again when Sykes had decided to kill them and had accelerated the process.

And even if he had not been able to see what Kelly had done to make herself grow once more, Ron was pretty sure that she had tried to kill herself and that this had sent an even bigger amount of the hormone to her veins, making her grow much more and accelerating the changes in her DNA at the same time. The two processes were feeding each other, it seemed.  The change had left a mark, though. Staying bigger required a bigger quantity of the hormone to be pumped into her body in a continuous way, which was the reason why one of the most noticeable changes in her DNA was precisely the one that controlled her liver and the generation of the mysterious hormone. And this had pointed them to the key.

“The cleaner solution would be to try to alter that particular gene and prevent her liver to ever release whatever is keeping her big anymore” Mendel said

“We don’t have time for that” Ron replied

“Of course we don’t” Mendel added. “But if we manage to counter the hormone or whatever that is for long enough, the short term results will be the same. And it will give us time to work in the long term solution” Mendel said

“If the short term solution works” Ron started to say “I doubt anyone will give us time to work on the long term”

“We have a solution, in any case” Mendel said, sounding satisfied

“Well, we have a theory. There is a little something we need to find a solution” Ron said

“We have Miss Cooper’s samples in the freezer” Mendel said

“Let’s get started, then” Ron answered