The sound of the rotors broke the eerie silence of the devastated landscape as the team exited the helicopter in their NBC suits. Flashlights illuminated their path as they moved away from the aircraft and in the direction of ground zero.

“Eight-hundred yards to target,” a mechanical voice said on the radio.

“Radiation at seventy-two counts per minute,” another voice added.

Command had been making their minds up regarding sending a team in for hours. It was closed night by the time they did. And still, the full moon provided more than enough illumination for them to see the post-apocalyptic scene the former city of Kingston had become.

The city was gone. Not only Downtown, but the entire city, its suburbs and some of the neighboring towns. Casualties were still unknown, but no one expected them to be under ten million, by far the largest tragedy in the history of the nation. Lieutenant Milner tried to keep focused on the mission as the evidence of the catastrophe surrounded him. So close to the epicenter of the explosion as they were, not even the building foundations remained. What had one been one of the most vibrant city centers in the country had become a pile of dust, dunes forcing them to change their path or to climb when no obvious alternative was found.

Milner’s unit had been specifically trained for post-nuclear scenarios. None of what he was seeing surprised him. And still, he felt appalled. He had never thought he would live this in his life. Not in a world that had steadily moved away from the risk of nuclear war. The complete lack of radiation made the entire situation even weirder, even if it made his job easier. His team was still geared up for the worst-case scenario, but the readings of their radiation counter meant that they did not need to rush.

They continued their path in silence, breaking it only to provide indications on the way to go or to update the radiation measurements.

“I have something!” one of his men finally said in the radio, his voice a mix of excitement and concern.

Milner and his team rushed, hurriedly climbing a dune to meet Corporal Harris. He had his powerful flashlight pointed in the valley right underneath. Milner felt the tension build in his team as the beam illuminated a body. It was a woman’s body, and it was lying face down.

He gave the instruction and they all rushed downwards. He took the ownership of crouching over the petite frame and pull it towards him, turning the woman so that she was lying on her back.

His men could not contain the surprise and his radio filled with comments:

“Oh my God!”

“Fucking bitch!”

Of course, they had all recognized Lucia Torres. She was unmistakable. It was somewhat shocking to see that, at normal size, the woman was not precisely tall. Milner guessed she would be five foot five, or something like that. It embarrassed him to think that she was good looking.

Then, someone said the obvious:

“She is alive!”

The rhythmical bouncing of her abundant chest was unmistakable.

They had not been expecting any trouble, but Milner still carried his side arm. He had to fight with all his inner strength to not unholster it and empty the clip on the woman’s body, now looking so fragile.

Instead, he said sharply in the radio:

“Doc!”

A man at the back of the group, wearing a slightly different type of suit, moved to the front. He had not known Doctor Steeler before this drop, but he did not need to. The sharp-looking man had been assigned to them and that was all he needed to know.

Steeler knelt besides Lucia Torres, quickly examining her. He then removed a canister from his backpack and attached it to a mouthpiece. Soon after he placed the mouthpiece on the unconscious woman, her chest’s bouncing slowed down considerably.

“Place her on the stretcher,” Steeler said, his voice made of ice.

Milner looked in his direction, even if the masks of their suits prevented direct eye contact.

“We are bringing her back.”

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

It had been three days. Three days Riley had spent in isolation, with nothing else to think about other than what had happened in Kingston. They had not let her talk to anyone. They had not kept her in the dark, though. She had been fed more information than she could have ever hoped. She now understood why. They wanted to debrief her.

Riley was sitting on a windowless waiting room, a single soldier standing guard at the exit, silent, motionless. She did not know who she would face, once the door on the opposite wall opened, but she could guess the types of questions she would get.

For twenty seconds, Riley had been a national hero, the person that had rid the country of the threat of Lucia Torres, officially labeled as the worst monster in the United States history. Now she was the responsible for the death of eleven million people.

She told herself, once again, that she could not have known. Riley had worked on the regeneration area of the GC project. She had never got enough credit for the breakthroughs she had managed to achieve. She had not been senior enough to be acknowledged by Stahl or Lang before everything had gone to hell. Her gut feeling about what would happen if they bombed Lucia Torres with thermite, about which sort of triggers it would activate in the drug, had finally put her on the spotlight. And where she had guessed a problem, she had also found a solution.

It was bad for her to say, but her idea to use the drug’s healing abilities, developed mostly by her, in their favor was brilliant. She had found a bug they could exploit, and she had developed a working prototype in hours. Up until then, Lucia Torres’ body had fixed every problem it had met by growing. So, she had designed a variation of the drug that would appeal exclusively to some parts of her heart and trigger the reaction for a heart attack. When Torres’ body tried to fix itself, it would grow parts of the heart at a higher rate than others, making the problem worse.

It had worked. She had killed the giant. She had freed the world of the monster. It turned out that GC-226 had found yet another way to fix the problem. No one could have expected it to trigger a massive shrinking process. But, of course, it made sense. In the span of seconds, Lucia Torres had reduced back to her normal height of 5’5”. And, in the process, it had freed the megatons of energy it had been accumulating while growing. Fifty-three megatons, to be precise. A higher explosive yield than the largest hydrogen bomb ever built.

And so, Lucia Torres had survived. And the city of Kingston along with the entire county was gone. Riley knew they would blame her. It was the easy thing to do. And maybe it was also the right thing to do. But, could she have known?

She eyed the soldier, still motionless, and sighed, trying to guess how much longer she would need to wait. There were not clocks in the room, but she had probably been there for over an hour.

It was not her fault. She reached that conclusion even before the door opened. She did as best as she could with the time she had had. And she had neutralized the threat of Lucia Torres. After the consequences of the explosion, no one really knew how many victims she had caused before it, but Riley did not think that the number would be under a hundred thousand. And that had been in merely one day. How bad would it have been if she had remained at large? Of course, it was only a guess, but Riley did not think that the figure would have been below the consequences of the massive energy release of her reduction.

The door finally opened. A soldier led the way, followed by a man in suit: Doctor Stahl. Of course they would also like to talk to him. She looked for eye contact. When she finally meet his gaze she did not find the usual arrogance. There was guilt, instead. And fear. He then avoided her and kept going, crossing the room to the opposite door.

“Doctor Keane, come in, please,” a voice called from within the room.

Riley was surprised when the large boardroom turned out to be as windowless as the waiting room she had been in. Where had they brought her? The table was long, sitting men both in different types of military uniforms and dark suits.

“Sit here, please,” a man in a gray suit said, pointing at an empty chair at the front. “I’m Director Reese.”

Riley sat, wondering who the rest of the audience was, but it was clear from the tone of the man that there were not going to be introductions. She decided to remain in silence.

“Do you know why you are here?” Reese asked

“The explosion, I guess,” Riley ventured. She had nothing to gain from being evasive. She was just wondering which sort of punishment she would get. The fact that the trial was not public made her hair stand on end, but then again, it would have not necessarily been better if she had been subjected to the public’s judgment.

“We read your report. It was conclusive enough. Every expert we checked with concurred with your conclusions,” Reese said.

This was surprising. Was the man really saying that the explosion was water under the bridge?

“I was not even in Stahl’s staff before the events, so I don’t see how the explosion is not the point,” she answered plainly.

“You keep looking backward. Kingston was a disaster. A catastrophe. The worst thing that has ever happened to our country. But we would rather look forward,” Reese came back.

She had to stop for an instant to make sure that she had understood correctly what he had said. She was not here to be judged for what had happened. She was here because they wanted to talk about the future? Of course, considering her area of expertise, it was not that hard to guess which type of future he wanted to talk about. She decided to play it safe, though.

“I beg your pardon. I do not understand,” she said.

“Our country has suffered a massive blow, Miss Keane. But this is hardly the most important thing that happened this last week. The world has changed, Riley. The entire world now knows that it is possible to genetically engineer a human being and turn her into a weapon of mass destruction. From now on, we live in this world,” the main said with a solemnity that indicated that he was a politician.

Riley understood where this was heading even before Reese finished. She could not believe it. And yet, rather than being disgusted, she felt interest sparking inside her. She was going to get offered something, and she wanted to know what. She knew she would not get it right away, though. She had to let the man go on.

“We just went through a tragedy that cost eleven million of American lives. The messages of condolences and support only lasted twenty-four hours, though. The last forty-eight our government has had to invest most of its diplomatic efforts in ensuring both our allies and our foes that this was an accident, nothing related to any military research program. Of course, they know as well as we do that we are lying,” he admitted with a sincerity that made Riley realize that she was in as secret a forum as one could get.

“Things are not going to get better. No one will trust us on this. Some will try to replicate whatever it is that we did by themselves. Others will try to steal it from us. Most will try to do both.”

He stopped talking, clearly giving her the opening for a question. She did not have any, so she simply said:

“You are picturing a dark world.”

“It will be. In 1945, we created and launched the first atomic bomb in history. We beat Hitler to the bomb. And we beat the soviets. Our advantage lasted four years. And we then lived forty years under the constant threat of an all-out nuclear war. As tragic as the events that led to the current situation are, we have a head start. We intend not to lose it.”

Riley sighed. Of course, it was to be expected. And still, the fact that the man could present his plans with such a calm demeanor so soon after the tragedy the technology he was discussing had caused was somewhat startling.

“How?” Riley simply asked.

Reese smiled and stood up.

“Would you please follow me, Dr. Keane?”

She had no option, so she moved after the man, escorted by two dangerous-looking soldiers. Not everyone on the table went with them.

For a man who was so obviously in love with his own words as Reese, the walk along the dark aisles was strangely quiet. Riley was starting to figure out that they were somewhere underground. Was this one of those secret research facilities that conspiracy chasers always talked about?

They finally arrived to an armored door, flanked by two additional guards. Reese got an ID card out and moved it towards the sensor. It was only the first part of a two-step identification process. The next one was a very stereotypical retina scan.

The door unlocked, and Reese went on. They were in a lab. A well-equipped lab. He pointed to the far side of it, where thick glass separated a closed area. Riley’s jaw dropped when she saw the nude and very much alive body of Lucia Torres lying on the bed. She had a mask over her mouth and nose and an IV connected to her left arm.

“I… I thought she was gone. The reports mentioned lethal injection and incineration…” Riley said. That Lucia Torres had survived the explosion she herself had caused was unbelievable to start with. That the government would keep such a dangerous creature alive was even harder to swallow.

“The world thinks that she was disintegrated in the explosion. Those that know better know she survived. And they also know that we killed her right after and got rid of the body. It would be logical enough for a country in grief to do so. There are no more than two-dozen people that know the truth. Now, you are one of them.”

“How… how is she?” Riley asked.

“She is fine. Asleep. And we will make sure that she continues like that. Changed. Very much changed.”

“How?” Riley asked.

“Well, Dr. Keane, we were precisely counting on you to help us understand it,” Reese said.

So, this was it. They were offering her a job.

“What do you want me to do?” she asked.

“A bit of everything, really. We need to understand what really happened better. We also need to make sure that it cannot happen again. At least, not against our will. So, in the remote possibility anyone manages to replicate the process, we need to have a way to neutralize the subject. Without the destructive side effects, if possible.”

Riley listened to what he was saying. It was logical. It was not everything.

“You will not stop here, will you?” she asked.

“We are all grown ups here, Dr. Keane. Of course, we won’t. We are in a unique position to develop a counter to the threat. But we are also the only ones that know how to develop this into a threat we can control,” Reese said.

When Riley did not respond, he added:

“There are two possible outcomes of the events of the week, Dr. Keane. We can let others catch up and start a new cold war, or we can guarantee America’s supremacy.”

The man had sounded like a hawk. Now she knew he was one. And still, what he was saying made some sort of strange sense. She suddenly thought about something.

“What about Stahl?” she asked.

“Dr. Stahl decided that retirement was a better option at this point,” Reese simply said.

Riley felt some discomfort. The man’s words had sounded disquieting. And she had not given them an answer yet. Her train of thought was interrupted by a warm laugh.

“Please, Dr. Keane. Don’t believe everything you see in the movies. Dr. Stahl will retire. He just signed the paperwork committing not to use his scientific skills again. He agreed to have his communications monitored. So, he will enjoy a happy retirement. We will see to it.”

The words had been meant to comfort her, but also as a warning. So, she had two choices: either enroll on the project or abandoned her career as a researcher. At thirty-two, it sounded like a bleak option.

The alternative was certainly much more appealing. She did not need to ask to know that she would enjoy unlimited resources, should she join the effort. The type of resources that were needed to do breakthrough work.

She wondered how Einstein, Fermi and Oppenheimer had felt when working in the Manhattan project. She would not need to wonder long, though. She had every intention to join. She had too much talent to let it waste. Fifty years from now, her name would be in History books, next to those who had turned atomic energy into a weapon. And, considering just how much more powerful the human genome was when compared to the atom, she may as well appear higher.

“I have some conditions,” Riley said.

“Name them,” Reese replied, smiling.