Sierra was swiftly situated into the pod and taken into Duval’s hands. Through the first few halls, the same stature and balance was used by Duval as usual, maintaining a safe two-handed grip around the orb. Once reaching an intersection in the quiet halls, however, a different type of caution had to be practiced. A peek around the corner confirmed a distant gathering of colleagues that stood between her and the scale model studio.

Duval sighed as she slumped back against the wall, bringing Sierra closer to her face in order to speak in whisper. “I’m going to have to hide you for a minute or two. D-Don’t worry too much, okay?”

“Y-Y-Yeah…” Sierra replied, her voice shaking -- the whole pod shook, grasped by an unsteady hand that quaked in anticipation. “Y-You should-dn’t… w-worry either...”

“Eek. Sorry…” Duval dismissed the matter by pocketing Sierra’s pod. The shrunken woman was hidden inside an inner-pocket of Duval’s coat, stowing her away from any onlookers. There was more than one page in the handler’s manual for the pod detailing why not to do this, but it was too convenient to ignore. Sierra would get jostled around, Duval knew, but she would be safe the entire time.

Moving forward with a professional presentation, Duval strolled right past her colleagues, acknowledged by no more than a few nods and smiles. Despite the calm and casual environment, her heart was racing. It felt as though she was carrying an anchor chained to her back and that everyone miraculously avoided comment. There was a living human on her person, being smuggled across the building in just a pocket, which had earned several nervous glances from Duval herself. It all felt obvious to her that she was doing something wrong, that she was putting a shrunken person in danger just for the thrill of breaking rules.

Just as sweat dotted her brow, Duval reached the studio doors. A swipe of her security card granted her access inside, and she hastily slipped in, closing the door as quietly as possible behind her. She was relieved, but now warmer than ever. The studio ahead was built like a wide open garage, and so the air was stiff and heavy. As she continued through an aisle of tools and blueprints, she tugged up on the collar of her coat, exhausting some of the heat built up under the layer.

Once the landscape was in view, Duval decided then to retrieve Sierra. She dug into her pocket and plucked the pod out, but upon seeing Sierra, her eager smile faded to concern. Sierra was drenched in sweat and panting for air; she had been overheated being inside Duval’s coat. Duval stuttered up an apology while hurrying to open the hatch.

After getting unbuckled, Sierra stumbled out of the pod and into Duval’s hand. The tender ground tripped her to her knees, but it was a soft landing. “Oh, god,” Sierra groaned, swiping a layer of sweat off her brow, “that was… toasty…”

“I bet it was,” Duval winced, quietly stashing the pod back into the pocket. She loomed over the woman held in both hands, “I-I didn’t imagine it would get so warm, I was thinking too fast…”

Sierra sighed into a smile, shrugging the issue aside. “I’m… I’m fine. Really. A-Are we, uh, there?” Her head raised, trying to peer past Duval’s body and to the rest of the large chamber. “I want to see what you’re so excited to show off.”

Duval’s smile returned, inspired by Sierra’s interest, but that brought new worries. “I hope I didn’t overhype this for you,” she giggled. “Perhaps I’m just the easily excited type, but… just look at this. Isn’t it grand?”

Sierra’s eyes widened with awe as Duval turned her towards the studio’s contents. Encompassing several meters of floor space was a model city, or at least all the parts to make one. Several rows of buildings with various designs and intents were in the midst of construction, only a fraction of which were in a finished state. A few buildings were colored, but many remained a blank white, like towers of canvases waiting to be used. Instead of streets, there were uneven and disjointed spaces dividing structures into blocks, and instead of vehicles,, there were leftover tools and pieces scattered throughout.

Yet despite the evidence that this was fake, the initial image struck Sierra like a genuine vista. “There’s… so much detail,” she said, seated towards the end of Duval’s hand. “It’s like… like, well, a city. This is kind of unreal.”

“It’s a big jump up from your neighborhood, isn’t it?” Duval chuckled, ignoring the cityscape in favor of admiring Sierra’s fascination. A couple strides took her to the model city’s territory, and one more saw her congesting a theoretical highway with her heels. None of the buildings made it far above her waist, but the scale of everything was more impressive than the terrarium community she was used to watching over. Only here could she stand at “ground level” with tiny society, truly towering over her surroundings, but she had never felt big around the models before. Rather, her perspective saw them as the miniatures they were, effectively toys being built up in a garage.

But as she continued into the center of the so-called city, that exact feeling began to sink. Duval’s feet raised off the floor more carefully, stepping down only where she could confirm the space for herself. She leaned away from the buildings as she crossed through narrow passes, afraid of what damages she could cause. Every movement felt wider and clumsier, a sensation that never before plagued her when viewing the model city. Of course, this was not an ordinary visit to the studio. Her heart was still racing from the excitement of coming here -- Did Sierra hear that? she wondered, remembering how close Sierra had been to her chest moments ago.

As small as the city felt to Duval, it naturally felt more momentous to Sierra being carried high over the roofs, as if soaring over a skyline from a helicopter. Comparing the heights of the buildings to that of Duval proved just how staggering the proportions between them were; Duval was effectively a giant, genuinely concerned that a misstep could flatten something precious. The illusion only ended when looking too far into the studio, or when glancing past an oversized screwdriver.

The awe had brought a silence in the conversation that Duval would eventually break. “Very realistic, right?” she asked, standing over one of the more completed structures. It was tens of storeys tall, but its sharp roof only went as high as Duval’s hips. She knelt down in front of it and brought her hand up to one of the windowed walls, allowing Sierra to gaze inside. “Probably not much to see,” she admitted accurately. Without lights, or any electricity for that matter, every floor was submerged in shadows. Not a single piece of furniture occupied the empty rooms, resulting in an eerie stillness.

Yet even this impressed Sierra, who peered into a few floors, admiring the attention to design. “I can imagine it being… livelier,” she agreed. “Lots of people bustling in the halls… An office that an employee decorated… I can picture it. But, these are just props, aren’t they?”

Duval chuckled, stirring windy huffs that blew around Sierra. She looked to the side, towards another corner of the city. “Maybe one day they’ll be put to use,” she said, her body shifting to rise away from the building. “For now, all we have ready is, well… heh…”

Sierra turned and looked up at Duval. “Heh?”

“Hah, I’m too excited~ Let me show you, b-but promise not to tell anyone.” Nearly forgetting to be cautious, Duval hustled over to another block of buildings. There was a cylindrical tower in particular that was unlike the others, found in the heart of the model. Of its neighbors, this building was one of the tallest, its flat and circular roof stopping at Duval’s belt. It was not on display, but draped over completely by a dark sheet. Sierra had passively mistaken it as a genuine building still under construction, but Duval’s eager tone hinted that it was more than just another prop.

“So, what makes this building special?” Sierra asked, still studying the structure. “No more teasing,” she giggled, “show me what it is.”

“Alright… but,” Duval began, then squatted down to the floor. She cupped a hand over Sierra as she lowered her to the ground, not without ignoring the nervous fidgeting she felt in her palm. When Sierra was released onto the floor, she stood at the base of the blanketed building, its height given new respect from this humbled perspective. Sierra turned quickly towards Duval, a titan even more worthy of respect, but a reassuring smile from above eased her nerves. “This is the grand debut, after all! I want you to see it like the others will, eventually.”

Sierra was confused, but ultimately entertained by everything, and everyone, that towered over her. She readied herself, facing the building again. “Sure. Take it away.”

Duval leaked with giggles as she stepped around Sierra and onto the other side of the building, her eyes locked onto the tiny dot of a person she had willingly left on the floor. Excitement was overflowing as she grabbed two folds of the curtain and whipped it aside. “Ta-da-- ahhg!” In her carelessness, the tower she had just revealed wobbled in its place, where any real building would have totally collapsed. In any case, Sierra had cowered backwards and fallen from the shaking, though the building was unharmed and stable. “Heh heh… T-Ta-da!”

Once recovered from the scare, Sierra absorbed the unveiled creation. Amidst a city of clean whites in a studio of dull grays stood a bright contrast. The cylindrical tower was like a beacon of color with its tall, encompassing windows all tinted a different vibrant color. There were eight distinct floors, not including a base and roof that were both thick enough to be floors themselves, and each floor was its own room -- no walls, other than the central spire that several elevators ran through. Combined with the wall-sized windows and tall ceilings, everything within the building was easy to locate and observe, from a normal-sized perspective.

Duval waved a hand down the front of the building, presenting it with another flair. She studied Sierra’s reaction, though it was hard to perceive a tiny body and its gestures from such a distance. “I present to you, the Rook!” she announced, leaning to one side of the structure so she could admire its front with Sierra. “This is the most complete building for shrunken people we’ve developed yet. The engineers are quite proud of it!”

Sierra was baffled by what was revealed. It was far beyond the quality of the other buildings in every regard, and unlike any normal building she had seen before. Nonetheless, it felt very real, as though she were on the sidewalk looking up at a fanciful, modern-edge skyscraper. Yet even more wild than that was Duval standing behind this piece of work, her height far outreaching that of what she was showing off. Had Sierra been able to speak to Duval at such a range, she would have lacked the words to say anything at all.

“It’s more than just a model of a fancy building,” Duval explained, keeping a hand atop its roof as if keeping it on a leash. The toe of her iconic heels tapped against the black base, bringing Sierra’s attention to it. “It has wheels, so it can be moved around! That’s why they named it the rook. They. Not my suggestion.” She then knelt down by the Rook’s flank, pointing at the different segments stacked on top of each other. “At the showcase, our tiny subjects will all be in here while one of us moves it across a show floor. Investors will be able to look inside from just about any angle, and see for themselves what shrunken life is like!

“So… do you wanna go in?” Duval skipped to the point, pushed by adrenaline. As much as she wanted to be quick inside the studio, she could not resist pushing the limits of these risks even further. “Check it out! There’s an entrance in front of you, it will take you to the central elevator.”

There was a delay before Sierra moved, leaving Duval in suspense that all this was not as impressive to her as she had assumed. Her worries, however, were proven wrong when Sierra approached the base, albeit tepidly. Duval’s smile arced wider as she watched the tiny person below enter the Rook, disappearing from sight. She then twisted around the tower until she was at its front and seated on her knees. She waited for movement -- then, an elevator rose from the bottom floor, slowly ascending to its first stop. The doors slid open, and out stepped Sierra, entering a wide room that circled around her. Everything inside was cast in a pleasant blue shade, including Sierra herself, just like the tinted window that enclosed her.

Past the unique coloring was even more to take in. The floor was decorated like a gym, equipped with training weights, treadmills, and aerobic balls, along with a whole stock of devices Sierra could not immediately recognize. Although it was not what she had anticipated, she did appreciate having a new location to explore, fitted for her size. The array of fitness materials was all intriguing, but most interesting to Sierra was what lingered outside. Straight ahead of her and past the blue window were two giant legs bunkered onto their knees. It was obviously Duval that she stared at, made especially clear when her face ducked into view.

“Hello!” Duval waved with her fingers, her face close enough to fog the glass with her breaths. “Look at you, huh! You fit right in!”

Sierra’s arms joined together at her front as she replied with a nod. “I do, but… what is this exactly? A gym?”

“A gym-- yep, a gym!” Duval swallowed -- perhaps, she thought, this was not the best floor for introducing Sierra to the Rook. “This floor is supposed to showcase fitness and health. We’ll have a few subjects in here using the equipment like it was all normal. That’s the idea behind all the floors, offering different glimpses into everyday-tiny life. While you guys are doing that, we’ll be moving the Rook around, just like…” To demonstrate, Duval gently grabbed two sides of the tower and began shifting it across the floor. The wheels allowed it to glide smoothly for a quarter-rotation before coming to an end, “... this!”

Despite the tender attention to move the Rook carefully, Sierra still managed to trip as the world around her moved in an unnatural way. Her eyes were fixated on Duval as a point of reference, who stood outside like an unmoving pillar. The sensation quickly became dizzying, and Sierra swayed too far to the side she was rotated away from, eventually tumbling onto her side. Duval reacted immediately with a concerned gasp, but Sierra was unharmed, soon to be back on her feet.

“Y-You’ll get used to that,” Duval promised. “There’s going to be some practice sessions in the days before the showcase…”

Sierra tidied her attire as she regained composure. Though so much of her surroundings were mundane, there was never a moment she felt truly escaped from being small. It did not help that a giant was sitting right outside, peeking into the room, which brought to Sierra an interesting concern. “If this is the bottom floor, basically… how will investors see what’s happening?” She grimaced at the theoretical concept of being this low to the ground, watching boat-sized shoes thunder about outside.

“Oh! Right! There’s a feature for that,” Duval chuckled, rising away from the blue-shaded fitness floor. “The boys in the engineer lab think of everything. Err, g-get ready! It’s gonna move again!”

To continue operating the Rook, Duval stood back up and hunched over the building’s roof. Atop it was a panel of simple buttons, and with the press of one, the tower began to change. Sierra was warned well to prepare for movement, but the motion this time was vertical. The floor under Sierra rose towards her, forcing her knees to buckle. As if she were in an elevator, the entire floor was rising upwards -- all of the Rook was, expanding higher with all its floors stacked. The ascent stopped at its upper-limit, allowing Sierra to look up comfortably from her seat. Dead ahead was the black of Duval’s slacks, her hip arced towards the window as she finished using the panel.

Duval backed up from the elongated Rook, gesturing out to her sides for Sierra to view. The cityscape the small woman was once among the streets of was now leveled to her, even in height with the tallest buildings. Sierra awed at the scene, pressing against the glass and walking along its curve to enjoy this superior angle. Duval knelt slightly, keeping dark hairs out from her face as she peered into the fitness floor, ever curious of Sierra’s reactions.

“The whole tower is now taller,” Duval explained, filling in the silence. “You can’t really tell, but it’s about as tall as I am. We can adjust the height to whatever fits the moment. We can also…” She leaned back in, tapping at the panel a few more times. The fitness floor shook, then began to sink alone, disconnected from the other floors. “... do this. See? We’ll be up on a stage for some of it, so we can choose on the spot which floors we want to have visible, and to who.”

Sierra was tickled by the experience, but all the movement left her uneasy and leaned against the window. “This is so… weird,” she stated. “It feels so much like an actual building, and then it starts moving… It’s kind of scary…” Sierra scoffed amusedly; she was frightened by an elevator, but not by the giant scientist standing outside. She realized, however, that at the day of presentation, it would be much more than just her trusted overseer rumbling around this peculiar structure. “I suppose that’s the… least scary thing about this, though…”

“Ohh, no! Don’t be worried about a thing! You’re going to be very safe in there, i-it will feel like nothing, i-ideally...” Duval assured her, touching the glass where Sierra stood as if to console her. She so despised the idea of someone so small being overwhelmed and fatigued over this exhibition, but especially so when represented with Sierra. Worse still was what little she could promise, only ideals and hypotheticals. “Once we practice a few times, you’ll have the hang of it...”

“Ophelia?” It felt like a siren to hear a woman’s voice be added into the studio, chiming in from behind Duval. She recognized who spoke to her immediately -- everyone in the labs was familiar with Ericka Slate, one of three project supervisors with a level of authority just underneath that of the director. A chill stabbed Duval in the back, but the tone itself was mild and stable. “Ah, you are here. That’s what the others said, but I wondered why you would be.”

Duval sprung up from where she had been squatting next to the Rook, her jump so sudden that she had to lean on the building for support. “Er-Ericka!” she greeted, her fluster hidden only by the distance between them. With her body and drape-like coat, she kept the Rook blocked from sight -- a tactic she knew would not last as her supervisor approached, weaving through the various prop buildings.

Duval’s heart drummed madly in the face of this worst-case scenario; how was she supposed to hide Sierra? How could she possibly retrieve her from inside without drawing suspicion? I’m going to get fired, Duval panicked, her teeth tightly clenched. There’s no way around it. She’s gonna find out. This is it… The last time I’ll ever see Sierra…