Chapter 17

Lucia was in a state of bliss as she roamed Downtown without too much purpose for a while after having taken care of her womanly needs. She was in heaven, the feeling of power, of being in total control, made her the happiest she could remember.

Lucia chose the streets she moved on at random, almost like a tourist taking an exploratory stroll in a city she had just arrived in. She was still moving in the general direction of the airport, but she did not seem to be in a hurry to get there. Instead, she used a calm pace to walk among the tall buildings, her feet finishing the occasional straggler with the giant barely noticing.

She admired her reflection in the façades of some mirrored buildings as she traced the contour of others with an extended finger, giggling when her fingernail caused more damage than she had expected. It took her a while to look back down at her feet, which kept sowing chaos at street level. When she did, Lucia made it a game to choose a tiny person at random, typically someone dressed in bright colors, and chase him or her as she advanced, finishing her target under the ball of her foot, usually along with several collateral victims.

It felt so good to be in charge, to have such overwhelming power over everyone else! She had barely tasted popularity, back in college, but this was so much better. Half a day of it had more than made up for the last five years of misery. It also made up for the certainty of her impending demise.

Unless, of course, what had happened to her exceeded her wildest dreams. What if she was not going to die soon? What if she could not be killed? Lucia’s mind wandered in the thought before she could keep it at bay. She imagined herself, triumphant, uncontested. She was having the time of her life now, but what if her life became a never-ending paradise?

She forced herself to stop that train of thought. She had nothing to gain out of fantasizing. Not at this point, at least. The reflection also made her reinforce her determination to get to the airport as soon as possible. Whatever option she might have at prolonging her amazing new life involved what she could find there.

It was in this state that she reached another major intersection. She was taken by elation when she saw what laid ahead. The chorus of screams that reached her ears despite the relative distance informed her that her happiness was not shared by anyone else in the area.

*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*

Colonel Sherman observed Dr. Riley Keane from the distance. She was an interesting character, one he should have paid attention to earlier. A dozen of the youngest researchers they had extracted from BioChem seemed to be orbiting around her as she directed the work in a corner of the main hangar that she had claimed hers.

He had let the scientists organize themselves, assigning some of his men as liaisons, and kept Stahl as his main contact. In the meantime, most of his men worked with Miles Reddington on the preparations for the thermite attack. Keane’ words had made him quite uneasy when it came to using the incendiary powder, but in absence of an alternative, it was still their best shot. A shot they might need soon, considering how fast the giant woman was approaching.

Reddington seemed to have attracted some of the grayest men in the group, while a few other clusters were working without too much apparent purpose. Sherman was seriously considering taking some more control on the way they were splitting tasks, but he needed to have a talk to Stahl first. He was surprised when he saw him walking towards Keane.

“Doctor Stahl,” Riley acknowledged the Senior VP of R&D as he stepped into her field of vision. There was respect in the way she said it, but not submission.

“Doctor Keane,” the older man replied.

Riley broke the silence when the piercing gaze of Stahl’s blue eyes became too uncomfortable.

“We are taking a different approach from the one you initially suggested,” she finally said.

“So I saw. I have been looking at your logs. It’s amazing how they managed to network everything here, considering how little time they had. Military efficiency, I guess.”

“Trying to counter the effects of GC-226 was taking us to a dead end. We are trying something else,” Riley said, sounding more defensive than she had intended. After all, Stahl still imposed a lot of respect.

“You are trying to use the effects of GC-226 to our advantage. I saw. It’s original. And smart,” he said, approving.

Riley was confused, since she had been convinced that the only reason the old man had come had been to chastise her for having, once more, fallen out of line.

“Thanks,” she said, suppressing a smile. “We are stalled, though.”

“Yes. I saw that too. You intuited where the flaw of GC-226 was, but you did not find it yet,” Stahl said. He sounded a bit patronizing, which upset Riley, but she managed to remain silent and wait for the explanation that she knew was coming. Stahl went on, as expected. His answer was shorter than she had expected: “Why don’t you try this?”

The man simply reached for the keyboard in Riley’s terminal and entered a code, bringing a file up. Riley only had to look at it for thirty seconds to understand it.

“It’s… brilliant,” she said.

“I would have never thought about it… if you had not opened up that path. Congratulations, Dr. Keane. You may have saved us all.”

“We have work to do,” Riley said.

“You do. It’s good news that most of the team that worked on the accelerated healing component of the GC series have stayed here with you. You command respect despite your age, Dr. Keane,” the old man said.

Riley did not know how to react to the kind words of the old man. She had always trusted her talent, but she had not been too sure BioChem was recognizing it as it deserved. She tried to find some words to reply, but Stahl turned and left before she could. Trying to catch his attention back would have felt simply stupid, so instead she just turned to her team and said:

“Gather around, will you?”

Riley waited while the men, some of them her senior, turned and circled around her. When she was sure that she had everyone’s attention, she just said:

“Miss Torres is going to have a heart attack.”

*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*

Lucia did not stop to reflect how her observation skills had improved along the day. She was too excited by the scene she was witnessing to think about that. But the truth was that the scared woman that had woken up at the ruins of Kingston’s East Hospital had become so used to her new frame of reference that it felt as if she had been giant her entire life. Lucia had become an expert at observing crowds, predicting their moves and reactions and dealing with them. She could distinguish screams of fear from screams of pain, identify pile ups caused by her presence and, especially, recognize the different types of escape attempts they put together.

And hence, it was almost instinctive for her to identify the rushed attempt a few blocks down the road for what it was: an effort to shelter as many Kingston citizens as possible into the Monarchs Arena. The masses grouped at its several entrances, the trickle of people getting inside, the abundant presence of police officers and the fact that the crowd had been relatively organized before her arrival told her as much.

There were thousands of people on the street. And for all she knew, there had to be thousands more already inside. It was too good to ignore. So, she was not going to.

The only issue was that the police force seemed to have taken the protection of the crowd very seriously, judging by the number of effectives they had moved. It would be merely an inconvenience, though. Despite their numbers, the cops looked quite less ready than the blockade she had meet earlier in the morning, in what looked like forever. And she was far from the same woman. If anything, Lucia would welcome some action. Tormenting Kingston’s population had become her favorite pastime over the last few hours, but eventually the game lost some interest when her prey did not shoot back.

Without further word, the giantess removed her hands from her hips, where she had unconsciously rested them in a commanding pose and started moving slowly and sensuously down the avenue. A dozen blocks away, the crowd erupted in panic.

*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*

She should have never been there. Captain Baiel looked at the impossible form of Lucia Torres, the giant woman that had shocked the city and the world, still not believing that she was heading in his direction. She had left the river quite to the north in Downtown and had walked across it well away from them. This had encouraged the Commissioner to authorize the evacuation of the people in the area to the safest structure around: The Monarchs’ Arena, where the prided Kingston basketball team played their games. The stalls, court and underground facilities would be able to host up to fifty thousand, in the structure that was the safest to hide people from the giant monster.

It had not been until fifteen minutes ago that Baiel had heard that the woman had changed direction and was moving randomly through the city. He would have never imagined that anyone would be able to get from where she was supposed to be to where she was now in only fifteen minutes. But then again, no one had ever seen a woman the size of a high-rise before.

Baiel remained speechless for a few seconds, both terrified at the implications of the giant’s presence but also mesmerized at her magnificence, at how a creature of her size could move with the grace she did. Her looks only added to the feeling, her ravishing beauty and her stark nudity making her feel less threatening than she was. It was hard to believe that such a gorgeous creature could really be a monster.

But, of course, she was. They had all seen her obliterating his comrades, stepping on countless innocent people, eating others and even using them to pleasure herself. Lucia Torres was the vilest villain in human history, and she was now heading his way.

It took Captain Isaac Baiel a few more seconds to realize that he was in charge. He was responsible for the response of his men. And he was also responsible for the protection of the thousands of people they were trying to save. He had to do something. Only he did not know what. His direct orders were to avoid any confrontation or engagement with the giant woman. No cop had got in her way since the tragic events of the morning. But, in this case, following those orders would mean leaving a lot of people to her mercy. And they all knew she had none.

A cracking in the radio ended up resolving his dilemma. He quickly recognized Commissioner Coates, his boss’ boss.

“Captain Baiel,” his steady voice said.

“Ye… yes?”

“Do you have visual of Miss Torres?” the Commissioner asked.

“Yes… yes, I do,” Baiel replied, finally regaining his composure.

“Ok. Get your men ready. Your previous orders are belayed. Your new job is to resist her. We are sending every possible reinforcement in the city to you now. This is where we make our stand. Bring that bitch down, Baiel!”

“Yes, sir!” he replied, suddenly excited.

It only took him another second to realize that he had no clue about how to do that. The Commissioner was not on the line anymore.

*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*

Lucia felt good at finally having some challenge. She was looking forward to the possibility of stretching a little. The giant knew that her adventure would eventually end, that the tiny fuckers would find the way to kill her. But the scattered cops standing between her and the crowd were not going to be the ones to do so. She had already faced their likes, and a quick rub of her abdomen with the fingertips of her right hand confirmed to her that there were no lasting consequences of that confrontation.

There were a dozen blocks between her and her new destination, the Monarchs’ Arena. Her enhanced sight granted her a very good view of the scene despite the distance, though. Of course, the people could see her too, even without improved visual abilities, only because of the fact that she was gigantic.

The first six blocks were practically empty, save for the typical abandoned vehicles that were nothing more than an amusing inconvenience to her. The next six were teeming with cops and their things. It was quite obvious that they had been unprepared for her arrival. Lucia could see them hurrying to form a blockade, moving squad cars and navy vans with the KPD logo into a line, while the shooters made a line. Behind them, a larger group was moving in a frenzy. From Lucia’s vantage point of view, it soon became evident that a portion of them had been assigned to the protection of the citizens still being herded into the Arena while the rest were taking positions, getting ready for her arrival.

Lucia made sure to be slow and enticing as she sauntered towards them. She got there in no time, anyway. Soon enough that they were still not completely ready. She had not given a damn if they were, knowing as she did that it would have had zero effect on the outcome of the confrontation.

She was about a block away when it all started. Lucia had casually strutted her way towards her destination, her mind already made up. She remembered with some amusement her doubts and hopes the first time she had met a similar group of policemen. She had been another woman, back then. A woman that had not yet understood her full potential. A woman that had gone through a cathartic experience as she had been attacked first and had then wiped her attackers out.

The woman now heading towards the cops was, in a way, a consequence of that first encounter. And, different than in the morning, she would be the one calling the tune this time.

All the doubts she had had seemed to have been transferred to the cops. Lucia wore a permanent smirk on her face as she observed their awe as she approached them. They had not been expecting her. And it was obvious that they did not know what to do.

So, eventually, they ended up doing the predictable thing: shooting at her.

From up high, Lucia could perfectly notice the sequence: the barrels of the guns and rifles flashed, a fraction of a second later she felt the tapping all along her nude skin and finally her ears caught the loud bangs. The concatenation repeated itself hundreds of times as Lucia stopped, hands on her hips, ready to weather the barrage.

By now, she already knew that the impacts were annoying but harmless. Or so she thought. The giant had been willing to endure the familiar stings without hiding or protecting herself, to prove her superiority to the tiny cops. She did not need to.

Lucia could not help but let a loud laugh out as she realized that the impacts of the microscopic bullets were way less irritating than they had been. Each hit had felt like being stung or bitten by a small insect before. Now she barely registered the impacts as painless taps, almost like being sprinkled with water. When or how that transformation had happened, she did not know. But she was certainly not going to complain about it!

Her roaring laughter sowed even more doubts among the cops’ ranks, up to the point where many of them stopped shooting, realizing about the futility of it all. Lucia easily noticed the change in intensity of the gunfire hitting her. It was her cue.

She was moving before anyone could notice, taking three steps to close the remaining distance between her and the front of the blockade, ignoring the innocuous impacts on her calves and thighs. Her right foot was soon looming over a group of attackers, the shadow her sole cast over them letting them know about their fate a second before it was sealed.

Lucia did not even force her stomp. Instead, she just set her foot normally, finishing a dozen or so cops and two of their cruisers anyway. They broke then and there, dozens of policemen suddenly abandoning their positions and stampeding back as they realized that they had nothing to gain from fighting the monstrous woman. Unfortunately, they had nothing to gain from fleeing either.

Encouraged by the lack of pain from the shots, Lucia decided to take a closer look at the fight, gracefully crouching and then getting on her hands and knees.

“What a sorry excuse for a police force. I mean, I knew you were puny, but I would have never imagined that you would be so pathetic,” Lucia taunted them.

Her fist landed without warning into a packed group of officers to her right, turning seven of them into pulp.

“So, there are thousands of people in the Arena, hundreds of you and one of me. Any bets about who is going to end up on top?”

She swept a section of the street with her left hand, crushing three squad cars and sending over a dozen cops flying, a glass façade violently stopping the dark blue figures mid-flight.

It was easy enough to see that they were desperate. Now, the officers divided themselves between the ones that were only trying to run and the ones that were shooting back, conscious that there was no point in just trying to escape. Lucia started feeling the inconsequential tapping of their bullets back on her neck and cheeks. She simply ignored it as she slammed her open palm twice on the fleeing mass, finishing countless lives. A quick look at her gory palm confirmed to her that she would need to go for a swim soon enough. Being a giant woman seemed to be a filthy business.

She stopped when she felt something hit her eye. Lucia instinctively closed it, feeling something brush against her cornea. She opened her eyelid again, only to have a tear carry the particle that had been bothering her away. Another one hit again, followed by another. Lucia became concerned, knowing that it was highly unlikely to be randomly hit in the same eye three times in a row.

She closed her eye once more, feeling the specks of dust she now knew were bullets bothering. Still, another tear took care of them as she opened her eye once more. Her sight seemed to be unaffected. Rather than being amazed at having also a bullet-proof eye, Lucia was furious at what she knew was a premeditated attack. She instinctively raised her hand to protect her eyes, feeling four hits on her palm as she looked for the source of the attack. She quickly found it in the sixth story window of a nearby building. She could not see the sniper, but she could see the flash of his gun when it shot a fifth time.

Lucia had to admit that the guy was smart. This did not made her any less upset. Before anyone could know what was going on, she was back on her feet. She was standing in front of the offending building in half a dozen steps. Like every skyscraper in the area, it towered over her, even if this one did not do it by much.

Lucia knew that she had two options. She was not interested in the subtle one. So, before anyone could understand what she was thinking about, the giant drew her leg back and kicked the building with violence, feeling her shapely foot and calf dig into the building as if it had been made of crackers. She removed her foot and stooped to see the massive damage it had caused. The building was still holding on, but it was noticeably battered. If she had had to bet, she would have done so for the shooter being dead already. Luckily, she did not need to leave things like this to luck anymore.

Lucia’s foot kicked the building once more, choosing a different entry point. And then, she kicked yet another time. She was about to repeat the operation when the structure could not hold it anymore and collapsed, sending debris flying and burying nearby policemen as a massive cloud of smoke started rising. It had been an unintended side effect, but a welcome one.

It had taken her less than ten minutes to reduce the former police force to a group half of its former numbers and with no fighting spirit whatsoever. This was not going to save them from her wrath, in any case.

Happy with what she had just done, Lucia buried her hand into a nearby standing skyscraper. When she removed it, she was holding a pile of rubble, furniture and dead bodies on her palm. They did not last there long. Lucia did not even take aim as she tossed her improvised ammunition into the fleeing cops.

“Bulls eye!” she said in scorn as plenty of them fell to the attack.

The next group perished under her foot as the giant started to casually chase the survivors, stepping gingerly on them, as if this would make them less dead. By now, she was already five blocks into the blockade, barely a square away from the last refugees getting into the Arena.

The first cops were starting to blend with the mass of people they should have protected, as if this was going to help them avoid their fate. Lucia knew better. After all, she was not above wiping out thousands if that meant getting who or what she wanted. She moved with determination towards the mob but had to stop at the weirdest thing that had happened to her since waking up.

Ever since she had taken full ownership of her new condition, Lucia had had four basic types of reactions from the tiny people: either they tried to flee, they tried to hide, they paralyzed with fear or they tried to fight back. What she had not yet had was someone moving towards her, standing her ground in front of her, challenging her. There was always a first time for everything, she guessed.

Genuinely curious, Lucia stopped, looking down at the tiny woman that had broken out of the group and was heading in her direction. When the tiny blonde finally stopped and looked up, Lucia felt truly astonished for the first time in the day.

*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*

Sharon had met Lucia at a party, almost four years ago. They had both clearly been the hottest women around and had ended up laughing together at the consecutive attempts from the same guy to hit them both.

Another coincidental meeting at a bar, a month later, had got them into a conversation. Their friendship had started to forge there. They were too much alike not to get along. Over the last four years, Lucia and she had jogged together, clubbed together, shopped together and shared problems together. Sharon loved Lucia’s genuine and sometimes excessive character. She was a great companion to have fun, but also a loyal friend when she had needed her.

This affection made Sharon ignore Lucia’s flaws, the most obvious of them the fact that she often seemed to have a chip on her shoulder. It was hard for Sharon to judge her too strictly on this, since she had to acknowledge that life had treated her better than her friend. Sharon’s job was not out of this world, but it was both more interesting and better paid than Lucia’s. Most importantly, she did not need to deal with regular harassment in the office. And still, Sharon knew that Lucia’s anger went deeper than that.

She would have never imagined that it could go so deep as she had seen during the day. By now, Sharon was ready to accept that what had happened to her friend was real, that she had really become gigantic. She had already witnessed the first spurt of her growth, when she had gained a couple of feet and tossed a mugger around like a rag doll. She had not learned about her further transformation until she got to work after being released from the police station and had tried to check for the wellbeing of her friend. She had got a continuous busy line from the Hospital where she had been taken. It had not been until an hour later, when the first images started hitting the net and the newscasts, that Sharon had found out the truth.

Her emotions had been like a rollercoaster since then. Thankfully, no one at the office knew about her relationship with Lucia, so she just looked like another curious employee as she kept her attention on the fifteen different browser windows she had open on her PC. Everyone else in the office was doing the same; no one shared the same interest in the events that she did, though.

Sharon found herself gasping in horror as Lucia fell over a building, bringing it down, together with everyone inside. She then had to fight hard to contain a yell when the police started shooting at her. She hated her colleagues when the office erupted in cheers when they brought her down with a missile. Her surprise was analogous to that of her co-workers when Lucia stood back up, even if her reaction to the fact was considerably more relieved.

Things had got out of control then and there. Sharon had seen Lucia annihilate the police force, step on people, kick a building out of existence… and this had only been the beginning. When her friend now turned giant waded a thick crowd with apparent disregard for the hundreds of lives she was sowing, Sharon felt disgusted. She then saw her eat a woman. And when Lucia turned to the dozens of cameras pointing at her from the news helicopters, Sharon understood up to which point the city was fucked.

Lucia and Sharon had double dated once. Things had gone well and the four of them had ended up at the place of one of the boys. Sharon knew she was good in bed, but Lucia was something else. The woman was wild. Sharon saw the same look in her when she looked at the camera that she had seen that night. She then realized how much into what she was doing Lucia was.

“Damned fuckers!” she murmured at her desk. Sharon had seen Lucia hesitating when she had met the cops. She had seen her trying to reach an agreement. She knew she would have honored it. And they had pushed her all the way to becoming a monster. Sharon could see all the anger, all the frustration of countless years suddenly surfacing. And then some. She could not believe that it was her friend that was doing this. But she could not deny it either.

Her company’s management had advised everyone to stay in the building for safety. Authorities had recommended people to stay out of the streets as much as possible. Until they had changed their mind and asked everyone in the neighborhood to move towards the safest building in the area: the Monarch’s Arena.

It was there that Sharon saw her friend live for the first time since she had been taken out of her apartment, unconscious, by a group of battered cops. She was among the very few that did not scream their lungs out when Lucia’s looming presence became visible down the street.

Sharon stood outside the Arena, frozen, observing her friend move in her direction with murderous intentions. She then heard the shots.

“Stupid!” she muttered.

Lucia seemed unaffected. It surprised Sharon, who vividly remembered the pain her friend had suffered when she had been shot the first time. The murder fest started right after.

There was no trace of compassion in Lucia. No hint of her humanity as she crushed the cops by the dozen, teasing them when she did. She recognized her friend’s wits and dark humor there, but it was way crueler than she could have ever believed. Sharon’s horror peaked when Lucia brought down a building with three well-placed kicks, burying countless people into its rubble. She could barely see her legs and feet by then, Lucia so close that it was hard to see her face without craning her neck.

The cops that had tried to stop her, that had tried to protect the people that was being evacuated, were now running for their lives. Sharon saw the first two run past her and get into the crowd. Lucia’s foot landed with deadly force not too far away, snuffing several more lives and making the ground under Sharon shake with violence.

And then, without known too well why, Sharon felt a force rising inside her and found herself walking in the opposite direction to everyone else. Walking towards the giant that was terrorizing the city. Walking towards her friend.

*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*

Lucia was perplexed for the first time in hours. Standing merely a step in front of her was Sharon. Her best friend. Her only friend. She was as tiny as everyone else in the world was to her now, but Lucia’s enhanced eyesight let her see her expression with fine detail. She had seen it before. After all, even best friends got upset with each other. It was not the first time she saw someone angry at her. It was the first time she actually gave a shit about it.

“Sharon?” she asked, sounding as surprised as she was.

Her friend’s squeaky but recognizable voice got clearly to her ears, despite her relative size and the distance that separated them both, considerably larger than a football pitch.

“Of course it’s me!” she said, sounding as upset as she looked. Her attitude puzzled Lucia a bit, even if deep inside, she guessed she knew where it was coming from. And still, there was an amusing component to it.

“What are you doing here?” Lucia asked, even if she knew that Sharon worked in the neighborhood and was starting to add two plus two in her head.

“What are you doing here?” Sharon asked back.

Lucia opened her arms and answered:

“Isn’t it obvious?”

Of course, Sharon would have seen her on TV. The entire world had. She had seen what she had done. Everything she had done. Lucia blushed slightly, but then quickly reaffirmed herself in her behavior. Determined to keep the lead, Lucia started to crouch gracefully. Sharon took a step back, obviously impressed with her massive figure coming so close. Lucia suppressed a giggle. She did not give her little friend time to react before she extended a palm and set it on the ground, right in front of Sharon.

“Why don’t we make this conversation easier?”

She saw the look in Sharon’s face. There was hesitation. But also fear. Lucia felt somewhat hurt, but she understood too.

“I would never hurt you,” she said in the gentlest tone she could cast.

“You have killed thousands!” Sharon then yelled back, in obvious anger.

“They were not you,” Lucia said, shrugging.

Sharon was visibly shocked by her answer. Lucia knew why. And there was not much she could do about it. She was eager to go on with the conversation, though. Since Sharon did not seem too eager to take the step, Lucia decided to take matters into her own hands. Her friend was startled when she moved her palm back up, unfolding her fingers into a different pose: a pinch. Of course, there was nothing Sharon could do to prevent her from picking her up by the sides. Lucia was the gentlest she had been in the entire day when raising Sharon from the ground, bringing her now kicking form in front of her eyes as she stood up herself.

“Sorry,” she offered with a smile. “This was going to happen one way or the other, so I thought we’d rather use the time to discuss things that mattered.”

Sharon’s fire was back in her eyes.

“You can’t just force everyone to do as you please!” she yelled back.

“As a matter of fact, I can,” Lucia shrugged back.

“Who do you think you are?” Sharon asked, still angry.

Her attitude was not helping the exchange. It started to fed Lucia up.

“I don’t know, who do you think I am?” she asked, sounding sharper than in her previous attempts.

Sharon remained silent. Her expression was softening a bit, maybe also showing a bit of fear. Lucia did not want to scare her, but it was good to get over Sharon’s initial overreaction.

“Right?” Lucia asked. Then she added: “Let’s make this easier.”

Without further warning, Lucia cupped her left hand and then deposited Sharon’s inch-tall figure on it with the utmost care. She ended up sitting in the center of the cup, as safe as anyone could ever get there.

“It is good to see you, Sharon,” she finally said.

“Is it?” Sharon snapped back, her anger returning.

Lucia decided there was no point in delaying the inevitable. Sharon was very upset, and she knew why.

“I know how some of the stuff I’ve done must have looked from your point of view,” she said.

Sharon was not going to give up only with this, of course.

“I don’t know. How did it look from yours?” her blonde friend asked.

“You know? I wish you could see it for yourself. I almost wish that you could share this with me, live how great this is. But then, I don’t. Because, you know, I’m going to end up dead in hours, and I would hate it if what happened to you.”

Lucia could tell that her words had finally softened Sharon a bit.

“You… you don’t know that,” she finally said.

Lucia could only laugh. Sharon brought her hands to her ears, making her cut her laughter abruptly.

“Sorry for that,” she apologized. “But I can only love your wishful thinking. You know they will bring me down. They are gathering at the airport as we speak. And I can guarantee you, next time someone attacks me, it will not be a walk in the park as it was with the cops.”

Sharon’s expression changed again at the mention of the cops she had crushed. Lucia cursed. It had been an uncalled mistake. Well, there was no option but to deal with it now.

“I don’t recognize my friend when you talk about killing people just like that,” she said, more disappointed than angry. It was worse.

“Do you forget that the cops were the ones who attacked me first?” Lucia replied.

“What about the people?” Sharon then asked.

There was only one way to go. Lucia took it.

“People? You mean that ones that cheered when the cops shot a missile at me? The ones that looked the other way when Phil harassed me? The ones that knew Carl was cheating at me and laughed at my back? Or maybe you mean the ones that have made my life a living hell over the last years? The world has given me shit, and I’m giving shit back to the world!” she finally let out.

“Does it make you feel better, then?” Sharon asked.

Lucia frowned. And then, she smiled.

“It does, actually. It makes me feel in charge. It makes me feel alive. This is the part you cannot understand without looking at things my way. But, before you judge me, just think about this: I have been a giant for almost a full day now. I’ve tried both ways. I was the same old me, at first, scared and apologetic. And I got the same crap from the world. Believe me, this new approach is working out so much better.”

“As long as you can live with it,” Sharon said, accusing.

“Oh, I won’t have to live long with it, don’t worry,” Lucia replied.

Sharon was stunned. And then, Lucia saw a tear running down her face.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked, confused.

“Has the size made you so selfish that you can’t even see?” Sharon asked back. “You may be alright with dying. You may even be eager to. But there are still people that care about you!”

Lucia was taken by complete surprise. Sharon was, of course, talking about her.

“I… I thought you were horrified at what I did,” she said.

“Of course I am!” Sharon shouted back.

“But you don’t want me to die”

“You are my friend, for God’s sake!”

Lucia remained speechless for a few seconds, the screams coming from the street far away in the distance the only soundtrack to the scene.

“Then, try to put yourself in my shoes when I’m gone. I’m not asking you to understand what I did, but I ask you not to judge me from your perspective.”

“The cop’s weapons did not hurt you,” Sharon said, changing the direction of the conversation.

“No, but they will eventually find something that will,” Lucia said.

“You sound too sure,” Sharon said.

“Is there any other option?” Lucia asked back.

“They have not attacked you yet,” Sharon said.

“They must still be getting ready,” the giant replied.

“Then, don’t let them,” Sharon asked.

Lucia had been surprised before. She was shocked now.

“You realize what you are suggesting?”

Sharon nodded.

“Just don’t kill civilians,” she said.

Lucia let out a soft laugh. So, Sharon was now seeing her situation as a fight between her and the army and was asking her to soften her “rules of engagement”. The lengths she was willing to go in order to rationalize what she was asking her were touching. Because, after all, she was only doing it in order to have some hopes that she would live. Lucia had none. So, it was not hard to come back with a white lie:

“Let’s do something. Let me set you somewhere safe and go take care of the soldiers. If I make it back alive, we can have a chat about my approach to this. Deal?”

Sharon hesitated. Then nodded.

It took Lucia a minute to find a suitable spot. It was the only roof in the vicinity of where she was that was not higher than her. She reached the spot in no time, taking care to avoid any collateral victims in the process. She could still not avoid a spongy feeling under her left sole after a few steps. Lucia decided not to fill Sharon into what had happened and simply kept a cheerful face. She had never been so careful as when she set her friend on the rooftop.

“Wait for me here, will you?”

She had not had too many expectations regarding her fight with the army. She knew they would be nothing like the cops. In a way, Lucia had been avoiding them, stalling in her way through Downtown, trying to have some more fun before the unavoidable happened. She could not postpone it anymore. After all, she would have better chances if she caught them unprepared. And now, she had a promise to keep. A promise to the only person she still cared about.