Chapter 4

Suddenly, Lucia came back to her senses. Se repositioned her feet and breathed in hard, like someone waking up from a bad dream. She was standing alone on the limits of her own ground zero. Now, there was absolutely no one around. She did not know how long she had been out, but it had been long enough for the little people to get out of her sight, even if they were very slow from her point of view. She knew that there probably were hundreds of people inside the buildings, but not a single soul could be seen on the streets. The fact that she scared the hell out of the crowd sank in once more.

Something surged from within Lucia, though. Some strength that told her that she did not have to give up, that she had to find some way to get the situation fixed. She held to that thought and tried to isolate herself from the rest. Otherwise she was lost, she knew.

Not giving up meant that she needed to find more about what had happened to her and whether it was possible to find some way out of it. And for that, she needed help.

What to do, then? She had to find someone that could help her, someone that could shed some light to what was happening to her. Yes, this had to be her first priority: finding out what the hell had happened to her. No one was around, though, which meant that she would need to move. The idea of just staying in place and waiting for someone to come and offer some assistance crossed her mind, but she immediately pushed it back. She did not want to be around the hundreds of people she had killed while unconscious.

Where to move, though? She had already proven to herself that destruction just seemed to happen naturally around her. Once more, she looked around. She was surrounded by miles and miles of suburbia, with the city and its downtown just straight ahead. And beyond it, the sea.

The answer was easy enough: anywhere. She just wanted to get away from the hospital and the memories it brought. If she did, she was positive her path would eventually cross someone helpful.

Still, she had to pick a direction. The easy choice was the beach. For starters, she had always loved the sea. She liked lying in the white sand, tanning, and she loved swimming. And it was the only place around that seemed to offer some space. There was an obvious problem though. The path to the beach brought her directly through the heart of downtown.

She thought about it thoroughly. The truth is that any path to anywhere would bring her through some densely built and populated area. The path through downtown did actually look shorter than the rest and while the buildings were a tad taller, she felt that it would offer her a better chance. She would not be able to stay careful forever. She felt as she would be able to be careful for long enough to move through downtown and make it to the beach, though. Also, the city offered a better possibility to get some help. Any other direction would not even offer her a spot big enough to rest.

She thought about it for a while more, no one bothering her. She evaluated once more just staying where she was, but discarded it once again, feeling repulse at the idea.

“I will need to be incredibly careful downtown, though. Some of the buildings may be taller than I am,” she thought, reinforcing herself in her belief that she was making the right choice.

She advanced down the empty street as she thought that, starting the trek that would bring her to her heart of the city and to the beach after it. And hopefully, to the help that she so desperately needed. Her steps were calm and elegant, the strides of her incredibly long legs allowing her to advance great distances, though.

Lucia’s feet sank deep in the asphalt, much as if she had been walking in wet beach sand. Every now and then, the wetness was actually there, as her heels reached the waterpipe level and easily burst them, cooling her soles and fucking the water distribution for an entire section of the city.

After a while, she felt something pulling her thigh as she was completing a step. She realized what it was too late. Trying to avoid stepping on a cluster of cars, Lucia had got too close to the buildings on the right side of the street. She realized about it too late, when her hip had already brought a third of a building down.

“Fuck!” was all Lucia could say as she crouched down to evaluate the damage. Her large dark eyes could find several very terrified people standing on the edge of the top floors of the now open building.

“I’m sorry,” Lucia offered as the group screamed and ran deeper inside the building. She felt the urge to pick at least one of them up once more. She had not talked to anyone yet and she needed information desperately. She hesitated for a second and when she tried to make her mind up they were already out of her reach.

A little ashamed about the damage she had unwillingly caused, Lucia kept on walking down the street, mindful of her new relationship with the world. Abandoned cars started disappearing under her soles only to reappear a few seconds later, turned into two-dimensional sheets of metal in the bottom of her large and very recognizable footprints. Quite instinctively, the now giant Lucia had decided that it was preferable to crush abandoned cars than to fuck likely occupied buildings. That apparently simple thought for someone like her had dire consequences for Kingston’s vehicle population.

She was undisturbed for a few blocks, which she covered incredibly quickly thanks to the pace allowed to her by her mind-blowing stature. This gave her some time to pay attention to the buildings lining up on both sides of the street, mostly not able to get beyond her knees. Only the tallest among them dared to reach all the way up to her crotch, making Lucia feel like a moving skyscraper.

The density of abandoned cars started to increase, forcing Lucia to make an even more conscious decision about them. At some point, she turned from being mindful about where she was stepping to counting how many cars she could crush in one step. Finding out that the figure could get close to half a dozen if the vehicles were packed enough tickled in a weird way.

Lucia’s new height meant that she had a new vantage point of view of the city, much higher than anyone on the roof of any of the buildings she was walking by would have had. The first intersection she found      blocked with cars had already hinted to Lucia that people could not be that far away. A couple of blocks later, she could already see a sizeable mob in the distance. Whether they were the same ones that had fled from her in the ruins of the hospital or a new crowd that had formed after seeing her in the distance, she did not know. The fact that everyone seemed to see her as a monster had already started to sink in. She still hoped that not everyone would react in the same way, though. She needed someone to help her.

She was upon them in no time, her toes towering over the laggards in the crowd. Standing at her full height and looking down at the mob, the thought that ran through Lucia’s head was that they looked to be no bigger than insects. The size difference was truly astonishing, and from their reaction it was obvious that the crowd shared the thought.

Still, Lucia knew that those were no insects, but real people. People that were just like she had been a few hours ago, even if it was hard to believe it, considering the current situation.

There was no logical thing to do in a situation like this, so Lucia tried one of the absurd ideas that came to mind and that felt less ridiculous. She might be much bigger than they were, but she was still a woman and they were people. So she decided to try and talk to them, even if quite naturally she started by justifying herself.

“People, please. I know you are scared. I would be, if I were in your shoes. But you don’t need to. I know I’m very big, but I mean no harm. I just need some help, some information. If you’d stop running and answered some questions, I’d be really grateful,” Lucia said, her voice thundering and reverberating along the street.

Something deep inside immediately told her that she was being very naïve, but she decided that wishful thinking was better than depression.

It took Lucia less than a minute to understand that the people would not help her. Not a single soul in the dense mob had even pretended for an instant to think about it. All they seemed to care about was getting as far away from her as possible, but even in that they were not being very successful. It would have taken her just one step to catch up once more.

Lucia was about to fall into a depression again. And then, her inner strength came back. She almost surprised herself as she addressed the crowd again.

“Ok, guys. I really cannot put this off any longer. Just remember, I tried to be nice.”

No one knew what she was talking about when her body suddenly started dropping like a meteor, her shadow engulfing a wider section of the panicked mob. Lucia’s knee landed like a boulder and sank deeper than her feet as she bent forward and reached with her right hand cupped like an excavator, fingers upward.

The screams intensified, and the people accelerated their pace, but it was way too late for them. Lucia’s reach was vast, opening up plenty of possibilities. She chose one of the spots where the crowd was the thickest, but was mindful as she brought her hand down, since she realized that, at her new scale, the people would be very fragile.

Tree trunk-like fingers started scooping people and sending them on a roll to the center of her palm as Lucia moved her hand with care, making sure that her backhand would not crush anyone that had not been shoveled.

By the time she felt satisfied enough to stand back up, there were eleven squirming bodies on Lucia’s grasp. And there was room to spare!

She felt some sort of strange pride as she observed the inch-tall people in full detail. She realized that she had a nice pick of the city’s population on her palm, men and women, rich and poor, young and old. And she felt a shiver running down her spine when she understood that each and every one of them were at her mercy.

Of course, they understood too. Their wriggling, their screams and their panicked faces witnessed to that.

Nothing Lucia had done so far had conveyed the sense of her new scale so well as the puny people she was holding did. Sure, easily towering over buildings had already told her that she was massive, and the cars that had disappeared under her sole had framed her new scale a bit better. But it was not until now, when she could directly compare her new self to what she had been not so long ago that Lucia realized about her new magnitude. She was titanic! In the mythological sense. And no matter how freaked out she still was at the entire situation, she could not prevent the self-regard. And as she observed the unlucky bastards she had randomly chosen to grab, Lucia realized that for the first time since waking up, she felt in control, her self-esteem swelling to even higher proportions than her body.

She sounded confident when she addressed them with a reassuring voice:

“I would probably be shitless scared if I were you, but you really don’t need to be. I realize how freakish this is, but it is not my intention to hurt you.”

The giant kept her palm cupped. She did not want to risk any of the people falling off the edge or even throwing themselves in panic. Much like she had expected, her words had not had much effect in the people she had picked, but she had already been ready for that. She did not warn them as she reached out with her other hand and extended two fingers. The woman she had been mentally targeting was gently pinched between her fingertips soon enough. She was no taller than one of her finger segments was long, but Lucia had managed to get a gentle enough grip and felt proud about it.

“Can you understand me?” Lucia asked to the middle-aged blonde woman she was now holding right in front of her window-sized eyes.

She was happy when the Quarter-sized woman nodded. She had been counting on being able to communicate, but the truth was that so far she had no evidence that that was even possible. There was a smile on her lips as she went on:

“My name is Lucia. Believe it or not, yesterday I used to be as tiny as you. So, don’t worry, I can put myself in your shoes. I will not hurt you. But I need to learn a couple of things, and you guys were not making it easy for me.”

The woman hesitated but finally replied. Lucia could perfectly hear her mousy voice, but it still sounded funny, so she had to focus not to laugh.

“Will you let me go?”

“Sure!” Lucia said. “I have no interest in carrying you around. It’s not as if I have any pockets, anyway,” Lucia said, chuckling as she made a reference to her now very obvious nudity.

“I’m Emma,” the woman finally said, making Lucia smile.

“So, what time is it, Emma?” Lucia asked, starting by an easy one.

“A… about 9:30 AM,” the tiny woman replied.

It made sense. Lucia realized that she had not slept much, but she felt very rested anyway.

“Did you see how I grew or do you have any clue about what happened to me before I turned into this?” Lucia asked.

Emma shook her head.

“I was close to the hospital. I went to see you when people started talking about the giant. I got away as soon as you woke up.”

Lucia frowned. There was not much useful information in Emma’s answer. She did not warn her before dropping them back on her palm and bringing it higher to take another look at the sample of humanity she had so easily captured. Lucia realized that her nipples were getting harder but ignored the thought and just focused on her guests.

“Did any of you see me grow?” she asked to her captive audience.

There were some heads shaking and some feeble “No”. She could sense the unease when she frowned and had to make an effort not to burst into a laugh.

“I guess I have no further business with you, then,” Lucia said. Something inside her was not keen with parting with the tinies she had captured, but there was really no point in keeping them. Besides, now that she had finally broken the taboo about picking people up, she was sure that  She looked for a building that reached almost as high as her crotch and toppled her palm with care, emptying her catch on the roof.

The exchange had been fruitless from an information point of view, but Lucia could not prevent feeling reinvigorated. This gave her the confidence to look for the clues she needed in the rest of the crowd. After all, the higher the number of people, the higher the chances.

The crowd had not moved much, so Lucia caught up with them in two steps and dropped to a knee once more.

“Shhhhh… please, people, calm down. There is no reason for you to be afraid,” she whispered, although her whispers could be heard for blocks. Of course, the crowd did not share her point of view, especially after she had picked up several of them just a few minutes ago. “I know this is freakish, but I do not want to hurt you. I only need information.”

All the answer she got was a loud noise, quickly followed by a flash she saw through the corner of her eye. There was a sharp sting in her neck an instant later.

“Aw!” she yelled, surprised by the sting. She needed a couple of seconds to understand what had happened. Someone had shot at her!

She narrowed her eyes in anger and was about to speak as she heard a second shot and immediately felt it on her shoulder. She let out another “Aw” as she looked to the crowd, trying to find out where the shots were coming from. She thought that the two flashes were coming from her right, but she had not identified the source of the shooting.

Being shot at made her really, really mad.

“Whoever is shooting at me, stop it right now!” she yelled. Being so close to the crowd, her yell made the running people bring their hands to their ears. Lucia realized, but did not care. Soon, she felt another shot, this time on her right cheek. She did not complain this time, having already instinctively learned that while the shots certainly stung and were incredibly unnerving, they did not seem to be able to cause any serious harm. Instead, she just looked for the shooter. She could not find him.

Her blood was boiling, out of rage. How could the people be so stupid? True, she was a giant, but she was trying to be careful and nice with them. There was no reason for them to shoot her! She touched her cheek in the place it had been hit just in case. It still stung but, as expected, she found no wound or felt any blood. This barely calmed her down, though.

“Ok, let me be clear. To the guy who is shooting at me: stop right now and I’ll forget about this. Otherwise, I swear to God that I’ll crush you!” she said, her anger speaking for her. Lucia had always been moody and being shot at was making her incredibly mad.

She heard another bang and felt another sting, this time dangerously close to her right eye. She closed it and brushed the area with her fingers, afraid that there could be serious damage. There wasn’t. She opened her eye once more and, incredibly angry, looked for the source of the attack.

On the corner of her eye, she saw someone trying to hide behind a car in the general area where the shots had come from. Furious as she was, her anger acted on her behalf and, without thinking twice, she slammed her fist down hard on the car.

It was only a fraction of a second before her fist hit the ground that she realized that with the crowd as packed as it was and with her scale, there was no way she would only get the shooter. It was too late to stop, though. She was too angry. The car crushed easily under her closed hand and a spongy feeling told Lucia that the vehicle had not been the only victim of her rage. Her knuckles easily broke through the tarmac and sank in a crater of her own making.

Of course, the shock of her action on the crowd was immediate. Screams intensified, and people crashed against each other with even higher frequency as they tried to get away from her as fast as they could. They were not being very successful at it.

Removing her hand from the ground, Lucia could see the two-dimensional remainders of the car and what looked like half a dozen very unrecognizable burst bodies. Their sight made Lucia realize about what she had done immediately.

“Oh my God! I just killed six people. I crushed them. I was so mad that I did not only crush the guy that was shooting me. I crushed five more people instead. Five people that had not done anything to me!”

Lucia was quickly moving from rage to depression. Those that were not too busy trying to run away from her and still managed to sneak some glances at Lucia saw as the giant woman suddenly remained motionless, crouching, her hands rested on her knees, her sight lost in the distance, apparently not looking at anything.

“Oh my God!” she repeated to herself. “No matter what I do, I end up destroying things and killing people”. She had just crushed six people with her hand.

“I killed them. They had not done anything to me and I killed them,” she kept on thinking, feeling some coldness inside.

Then, something woke her up from her trance. She heard another bang and an instant later, felt another sting, this time in her chin. Her mood changed, once more, very quickly. Her blood boiled again. Her eyes came back from the undetermined point they had been looking at and there was fire in them again.

“Fuck!” she yelled aloud, making the people to cup their ears again. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!” she yelled again, without minding the effect of her yells in the crowd.

She then said aloud:

“I just killed six guys and I did not even get the bastard that had been shooting at me!”

This added one more innocent victim to her count, but she did not care about that. Her mind was focused on the shooter, the one that was to blame for all that had happened.

She scanned the crowd again, trying to find the asshole that had dared to attack her. She wanted to catch him and when she did she would make him pay for what he had done. And for what he had forced her to do.

The intersection was just too crowded to be able to identify a man with a gun, though. She was not too worried about being shot one more time. She had already been shot a few times and had understood that the bullets were not doing much more than annoy her. So, she waited for him to shoot. It would be her best chance to catch him.

The man seemed to be clever, though. Lucia had already been observing the crowd for some time and no one had made any suspicious move. Probably he had realized that she was looking for him and was trying to hide or keep a low profile. Lucia thought about turning, luring him into shooting her, to suddenly catch him red handed, but it would be too difficult. She was far too big for a surprise approach.

Then, an idea came to her mind. Focused as she was on finding the man, the regrets and uncertainty that had clouded her thoughts since she had grown had disappeared and her mind was as sharp as ever.

With a wicked smile forming in her lips, she looked back to the crowd and said:

“I want the man that has been shooting at me. Deliver him to me or I will start crushing people randomly, just as bad as the last six.”

She sounded cold and threatening, just as she had intended to. She even surprised herself with her tone. To stress her point, she just slammed her fist in an empty stretch of road in front of her. There were no victims but her closed hand still sunk spectacularly in the asphalt, cracking it and making its surroundings shake.

She waited for a few seconds, observing. Then, she saw a group forming inside the already chaotic mob and observed with curiosity. The group converged on a man in gray pants and a black T-shirt. She saw as they tried to immobilize him and as he tried to resist. Suddenly, another shot was heard, but this time it did not sting her. It looked as if the gun had been shot in the air.

She saw as the group was trying to drag the man into a clearer area, certainly with the intention to deliver him to her. She smiled. Her strategy had worked, and she felt proud about it.

She waited a few more seconds for the group to overpower the gunman, but soon it became clear that it would be hard. Of course, the man was fighting with all his forces for his life and the people that were trying to overpower him were far from coordinated. Growing impatient and still feeling mean about having been shot at and everything that had come afterwards, Lucia just reached out with her right hand and closed it around the mass of humanity. Trying to strike a balance between not crushing them and not letting them fall, she lifted her hand, seeing as a couple of people slipped through her fingers. None was the object of her interest, though, so she let them go.

Bringing her hand under her face, she opened it and saw nine people on it, lying in several positions. One of them was the one she had been looking for. Seeing that he was turned face up and looking at her with a very scared face, she fixed a stare on him and said:

“You!”

Then, she picked him up with two fingers of her left hand and removed him from her palm.

Half of the remaining people in her palm were face down and the other half were looking at her face, as scared as the man she had just picked up. Her expression softened as she looked at them and told them:

“You don’t have to be afraid. I won’t hurt you.”

She did not sound apologetic this time, but more like a queen being magnanimous.

Still in the role, she just brought her hand to the ground and turned it over, letting them go. She saw with surprise as the ones that had been higher in her palm seemed to be pretty bruised by the fall but seeing that they seemed to recover and join their running mates, she forgot about them and focused on the man on her fingers.

Bringing him in front of her eyes, she looked at him in anger and said:

“You! Do you realize what you made me do?”

The man did not reply. He just babbled.

“Why were you shooting at me?” Lucia asked

Again, the man only babbled.

Then, Lucia narrowed her eyes and said:

“You know? There are six dead people just because of you.”

The man looked at her, afraid. Narrowing her eyes a little more, she added:

“It is not fair that they are dead and you are alive and kicking, don’t you think?”

The man was terrified, she could see, and she absolutely loved it. Tired of being crouched, Lucia stood up, keeping the man held between her fingers. Apparently, the rise had been a little too much for the man, since he looked sick. Lucia could not prevent a chuckle at the effect.

She kept on looking at him as he recovered. The man then managed to articulate his first words since Lucia had captured him:

“Let me go,” he said, in a suffering tone

Lucia did not react for a second, then smirked and said:

“As you want!” and she opened her fingers, letting the man fall dozens of stories to the ground below. She followed the fall with her sight and her smirk widened as the man landed on the asphalt with a ‘thud’ that she could distinguish over the screams of the people. She was pretty sure that he was dead, especially when a pool of blood started forming under his body. In any case, in an impulse, Lucia brought her foot forward and pushed its ball over the man. Rather than just stepping, she twisted her foot, as if she was putting out a cigarette butt. Bringing her foot back one more, she saw as the offending man was now but a smear in the asphalt.

It was strangely satisfying. Then, her conscience kicked in.

“You just killed another man, and this one was in absolute cold blood” she thought. “True, he deserved it, but did you have the right to do it? What are you? A judge? An executioner?”

She breathed in hard. Then, she repeated to herself:

“He deserved it. He definitely deserved it!”

Looking at the smear on the pavement she thought:

“Did you need to be so cruel, though?”

As thoughts ran through her head at high speed, she observed that the intersection in front of her was now actually pretty clear. No doubt, the people had used the time she had spent with her last victim to finish emptying the street. There were still some scattered people, but she did not think she would have any problems avoiding them. Some of the people still in the intersection were actually looking up at her. She felt some guilt. As if to justify herself, she said aloud:

“He deserved what he got.”

Of course, no one dared to challenge her opinion. Somehow, the implicit acceptance of the crowd reinforced Lucia in her self-imposed belief that she had had the right to do what she had done.

Trying both to advance and to keep her mind busy, Lucia took the first step into the intersection, making sure that her foot would end up as far away of the scattered little people as possible.