Chapter 5

Security tossed me inside a room that must’ve been located inside the Sterling Labs security building by the main gate. As I sat inside the windowless room over the last two hours, I’d heard a number of sirens from vehicles that whirred past the building.

All I could think about was Mandy.

Was she alright? Did they hurt her? Or worse?

Then, assuming that she was alive, the unimaginable crossed my mind. Knowing what electricity had done before to her and my brother, what could getting tasered have possibly done to her? 

Finally, a guard walked inside the room and sat down at the table across from me.

“Your dad’s here,” he said. “Guess you weren’t lying after all. We have some questions we want to ask you, but we thought it’d be best if we let him do the talking.”

My dad entered the room with a look on his face like he wanted to kill me.

“Hello, Nick,” he muttered sternly. “So, you used my ID to get into the lab without my permission, huh? We’re going to have a little talk about that, but that’s really the least of our concern right now.”

“What happened to Mandy? Where is she?” I answered.

“She’s fine,” dad said. “But first, we need to discuss what the hell you were up to today so we can figure out what happened.”

“I’m not talking until I see Mandy. Period. End of discussion.”

“Nick…”

“Let me see her!”

My dad sighed, looked up at the ceiling and then at the guard nearby.

“And then you’ll promise to explain everything?”

“Just as soon as you do, dad!”

“Normally, I wouldn’t appreciate this kind of behavior from my own son. But considering what you’ve gone through… fine. Let’s take you to see Mandy.”

“Thank you.”

Two guards led my dad and I into a Jeep outside the security building. The guard in the passenger seat wielded what appeared to be a large tranquilizer gun.

We pulled out of the parking lot and made our way across the Sterling campus. As we approached my dad’s building, I noticed a large hole on the back side where the roof had partially caved in. But we didn’t stop there. We kept on driving as we approached the massive hangar at the far side of the grounds. A number of vehicles – Sterling security and military – were stationed outside.

We drove past the hangar’s towering 200-foot double doors and parked at a side entrance. The guards led us through a side door and into the facility. The place had been repurposed since the end of the Cold War and had a nice new sheen to it. When we reached a set of doors at the end of the hallway, my dad stopped and pulled me aside.

“Now, before you go in, I need to warn you,” he said.

“She’s just through those doors, right?” I said pointing. “Whatever, I’m going in.”

I threw open both doors and rushed inside. I immediately stopped dead in my tracks.

About 10 yards in front of me were a pair of feet the size of cars. The feet were tanned and had toes emblazoned with bright pink nail polish. And they belonged to Mandy.

My eyes followed Mandy’s contours from left to right as I gazed at her, lounging on the floor of the gargantuan hangar like it was her couch. My gaze next took me to her calves that plumped past the knees with her thighs that could barely be contained by her recognizable jean shorts. Her legs were half as long as a basketball court.

My eyes then wandered upward past her curvy torso and froze at what lay above. Breasts, each one larger than even the biggest man. Her T-shirt seemed even more low cut than before, though it might have just been my imagination.

“What’d I tell you about keeping your eyes up here?” Mandy said with a grin that could swallow me whole. I’d never seen dimples like that before. I’d always said her eyes could light up a room. Now they can light up a whole hangar.

I stood speechless.

“Aren’t you gonna say, ‘I’m glad you’re OK?’”

“Uhhh… Yes! Of course, I’m glad you’re OK!”

“You’re going to have to speak up. I can barely hear you from up here,” she says.

“Oh, right. Of course. I’m glad you’re OK!” I yell to her.

She brings her giant, yet still dainty, fingers to her lips and blows me a kiss. My heart skips a beat.

“She’s been like that since we administered the tranquilizer drugs,” said my dad, who was suddenly standing beside me. “We weren’t able to completely knock her out, but she has been a bit… tipsy.”

“I see. Just how tall is she?”

“112 feet. That’s our estimate at least.”

“I know you two are talking about me,” Mandy said from above.

“Oh, I was just bringing Nick up to speed with what happened to you since he was away,” my dad said before turning back to me. “I’ve been able to piece together that she was exposed to the new growth ray we tested out this morning.”

“Right. She started growing back at home and so we thought we’d just come back to the lab to return her to normal,” I said.

“Only the guards found you two and tasered Mandy. How tall was she before?”

“About 14 feet.”

“Well, getting tasered was just about the worst thing that could’ve happened to her. It’s not your fault, of course. How else were the guards supposed to react when they see a 14-foot woman taking aim at them? Anyway, the electricity from the TASER surged throughout her body and initiated a massive growth spurt that activated the energy she’d absorbed from the growth ray this morning. Before they knew it, those guards were faced with a towering teenager that nearly killed them as she burst through the building. She was in shock, as you might imagine, with her top half and limbs sticking every which way out of the building. They’d had her tranquilized in no time and that’s how she was when I got here.”

“How’d she get to the hangar?” I asked. 

“Once we evaluated her mental state and realized she wasn’t going to run off anywhere, we escorted her to the hangar where she could take shelter somewhere big enough for someone her size. Some security vehicles -- and military Jeeps, just in case she tried to pull anything -- ushered her over here to the hangar. It’s about a 1/4 mile, but it couldn’t have seemed like more than a few steps to her.”

“What’s gonna happen to her now?” I ask my dad.

“The military brass have assured me they’ll let me bring my shrink ray over to the hangar shortly. They want to check some things out first, though.”

“Did I hear you say shrink ray?” Mandy boomed.

“We’ll have you back to normal in no time,” dad answered.

“But,” she said as she seductively stuck her index finger in her mouth, “I want some alone time with Nick first.”