Tasha’s eyes fluttered opened slowly. A bright white light was blinding her from above. “Where… where am I?” she rasped quietly.

“I apologize for the dry throat,” a metallic voice called out, coming through an intercom. “I gave you a mild sedative to help keep you… relaxed, and that’s just a temporary side effect.”

It took Tasha a second to realize she leaning back in a chair similar to one in a dentist’s office, except her wrists and legs were strapped down, restraining her. “Where am I? What’s going on?” She felt like she should be panicking, however she was too tired and confused to put up much of a resistance. Her head was hazy, and she wasn’t entirely convinced if she was awake or in a dream.

Raymond stood behind a large one way mirror, typing some last minute notes before proceeding with the test. Tasha sat strapped into the observation chair, her vitals all strong, and blood pressure just slightly elevated. “You’re safe, my dear,” Raymond said, just to himself, “and about to be a part of human history. It will all be over soon. Alright. Hormone-Emotion Control Therapy trial number one-eight-three, human testing trial number one, is a go.”

Raymond typed his last commands, and hit the enter key. A robotic arm swung down next to Tasha’s arm brandishing a long needle, its glass chamber filled with a bright purple liquid. The needle poked into Tasha’s arm, and the robotic plunger depressed, depositing less than a tenth of the liquid into her blood stream.

Raymond watched the screens with the excitement of a child that saw Santa Claus for the very first time. He watched, and waited… and waited… as nothing happened.

“Hmmm…” Raymond did some more typing, and mumbled to himself, “Maybe it takes longer to penetrate the bloodstream than I calculated… white blood cell resistance might need to be looked into…”

Raymond tapped his foot impatiently. Muscle capacity, heart rate, breathing – absolutely nothing had changed. “Time to introduce some variables…”

Raymond flipped the intercom back on, “Young lady… I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but your parents are dead. They were involved in a tragic car accident, both were horrifically decapitated.”

Tasha rolled her head from side to side, “Wh…what? Who are you? What do you mean?”

“They’re dead, miss. Your parents,” Raymond repeated, hoping to stir some sort of emotional response from the girl. He knew he shouldn’t have sedated her to the point it’d impact her cognitive functions. He was hoping that her waking up in a strange room and strapped to a chair would have scared her enough to activate the HECT, but he was getting impatient, and desperate – he had waited too long for this opportunity.   

Tears started welling up in Tasha’s eyes as she began sobbing. “Wh…wha…why….”

Raymond smiled, though it quickly faded as he observed absolutely nothing was changing. He had no idea why it wasn’t working – she was crying for God’s sake!

“Fuck it,” Raymond said, cracking his neck. He was still feeling the effects of the whisky, whether he wanted to admit it or not. “Upping the dosage.” Raymond starting slapping the keyboard vigorously, punching in further commands so quickly he wasn’t even double-checking his work as he always did.

With a loud SLAP! of the enter key, the robotic arm descended again, and plunged the entire needle’s contents into Tasha’s veins.

Raymond’s mouth opened slightly. “Oops…” He must have entered in the wrong amount into the console. That entire batch was nearly all of the HECT that he had been able to manufacture on his already sizeable budget. It was supposed to last for dozens of more trials.

Before he could think twice about it though, a monitor on a screen beeped, and Raymond’s eyes opened wide.

“Muscle mass… increasing!” He could see the number on the screen slowly increasing… 101%...102%...103%...104%. Her heart rate and blood pressure were also on the rise, as was her weight. Raymond looked into the room, and noticed her poorly concealed black eye had completely healed.

“IT WORKS! I’M A GENIUS!” Raymond literally jumped in the air as the HECT continued changing Tasha’s body. Her tight black bartending top appeared to be slowly creeping up her torso, however it was just an illusion as her body began slowly expanding. Her skirt looked shorter and shorter by the second as her legs elongated. In less than a minute, Tasha’s wrists had grown to the point where her restraints were now too tight. They only dug into her skin for a couple of seconds before the steel broke in a loud SNAP!

Raymond was pulling out a bottle of celebratory scotch, before the beeping alarm on his computer grabbed his attention. He took three large gulps from the bottle and exhaled emphatically before reading the flashing text in bold, red letters: CRITICAL DOSAGE ADMINISTERED – FAILSAFE ACTIVATION RECOMMENDED IMMEDIATELY. With a puzzled look on his face, Raymond read the words over a couple of times before they permeated his booze-riddled mind. When he finally looked up over the screen and into the observation room, his glossy eyes shot open as wide as they could go. Flabbergasted at what he saw, he dropped the forgotten bottle of scotch, which seemed to fall in slow motion before smashing to the floor into a million tiny shards.

Tasha was now huddled over in the middle of the room, the remnants of her chair now crushed and broken beneath her. Raymond had to guess she had at least doubled in size, though it was hard to tell with the position she was in. Her shirt, skirt, and shoes were nothing but tattered rags on the floor beneath her, and Raymond just looked up in time to see her spandex thong finally reach its giving point and snap off, no longer creasing into her quickly expanding skin.

 “No…no, no, no, this shouldn’t be happening…” Raymond quickly began typing on the console in front of him, doing his best to ignore the grunts and cries of pain Tasha was making. He looked up again, and saw both of her hands placed flat on the ceiling, like she was holding it up….yet she was still kneeling on the ground.

“Fuck…” Raymond was paralyzed at the sight in front of him. Tasha looked like a Greek Goddess version of Atlas, holding up the world; her flawless body, easily tripling her previous size, continued visibly swelling and growing. Her magnificently round breasts that sat so high and perky on her chest stared right at him, though they were quickly swelling into the size of exercise balls.

Raymond didn’t want to activate the failsafe – releasing a vat of toxic gas that would surely kill the girl in a matter of seconds - however it appeared he had no choice. Her rate of growth was unimaginable, and didn’t appear to be stopping. And if she grew through the ceiling, there’d be no telling how big she would get, or how much damage she would cause. He looked down at the screen, which now read ACTIVATE FAILSAFE? Y/N? and hovered his finger over the ‘Y’ key. Could he really kill this sweet, innocent, young woman? It wasn’t supposed to happen like this… she should have grown a couple of inches at most, and become strong enough to bench press like an Olympic athlete. Was he really ready to end her life, because of his mistake… because of his hubris?

Before he could even decide, the observation window in front of him shattered as Tasha’s giant knee exploded through it. In shock, Raymond’s finger dropped and hit the ‘Y’ key, which caused an alarm to sound and the vents in the experiment room’s ceiling to open, dissipating a misty green gas into the room.

“Oh shit!” Raymond screamed. With the observation window breached, the gas slowly started seeping into his control room as well. Raymond took a deep breath, grabbed as many files as he could, and ran towards the exit. He took one last look back at the expanding girl, now completely filling the room, and ran outside as fast as he could.

Within seconds of the expulsion of the gas, the ceiling started cracking under the pressure Tasha’s expanding body was exerting – the room was now completely filled with her growing body, and there was nowhere left to grow… but up. With an earthshaking primal scream, she stood upright, her head easily bulldozing through the ceiling as plaster and wood rained down to the floor. Now fully upright, her head already bumped into the next ceiling up as she stood 20 feet tall. Within seconds, she grew through that ceiling as well, leaving the poison gas of the first floor a distant, harmless memory.

The same pattern continued for minutes. Tasha just stood unmoving, the top of her head cracking and eventually piercing the ceiling above her, and her shoulders widening the hole as she continued her ascent upwards. The entire building rumbled and hummed as the interior was demolished by her enlarging body. An elderly man on the 7th floor braced himself in a doorway as if for an earthquake, only to see a giant blond head erupt through his living room floor with a terrifying screech of metal and wooden splinters. The last thing he ever saw was her gargantuan blue eye staring at him before ascending to the next floor, which was enough to stop his frail, beating heart.

Raymond burst out onto the street, taking deep breaths of fresh, safe air. He crossed the street, and jogged down half a block, trying to distance himself from his lab. Dawn had come and passed, and the sun was now high in the sky.  He turned and looked at the low rise apartment, and held up a hand to block the sun which was shining directly in his eyes. He could see the windows shaking, and could feel a rumble in the street even.

“Oh no…” he breathed. Windows in the building started shattering, one by one. A car alarm of a taxi parked out in front of the building started going off as well. Then suddenly, a loud CRAAAASH sounded, and Raymond spread his legs to steady himself. He looked up in horror as he saw the impossible image that would never again leave him until the day he died – a colossal blonde head of hair burst through the top of the building. In less than a minute, Tasha’s entire head had grown completely out of the building. Raymond lowered his hand, as her enormous face, more than ten stories up in the sky, was now completely blocking out the sun. She blinked slowly as he studied her – a look of shock, bewilderment, and wonder painted on her impossibly beautiful face.

Raymond collapsed to the ground. “My God. What… what have I done?”