To Alexandra Warren, the capital city through the bullet train window looked larger than ever.

            She thought after a lifetime spent in a mega metropolis surrounded by citizens of all shapes and sizes, and particularly spending her adolescence in a home owned by one-hundred-fifty-foot adoptive family members, it might all seem pedestrian now, but it didn't. Lexi felt just as small, and she wasn't even one of the thumb-sized people.

            The Alpha ran her fingers through the dark strands of long hair hanging over her eyes. She'd fallen asleep for the last leg of the journey, and still felt the haze of sleep-drunkenness stinging her cranium, though that could've just been her nerves for the upcoming destination. Seeing the white city instead of grassy countryside through the window already had Lexi's heart palpitating. Her hand dug through the pocket of her jacket, confirming both keys she needed were still tucked inside.

            Across the aisle, chattering caught Lexi's attention. She yawned, and turned her head to the side, surprised to find the enclosed Beta café car opposite her box bustling with life. When she'd boarded, the glassed-in dollhouse-scaled restaurant was empty, but now it was packed to the gills with Betas sharing drinks and laughter.

            "BETA TESTERS" read the neon sign over the bar: a distinct sense of humor in the smallest class which was foreign to Lexi. Three-inch-tall patrons crowded around little tables, ordering drinks at the bar, while wait staff scurried about with trays full of food, hardly paying attention to the much-larger thoroughfare of the train car beyond their designated quarters.

            All of them existing happily in the same arena as a race which a mere century ago hounded, enslaved, and exterminated them. It was a sight Lexi wasn't used to, even in a city which prided itself on full class integration, but the visage of the tiny Beta café made her feel an unexpected swell of comfort, though she couldn't explain why. It wasn't like she recognized any of the miniature faces behind the glass.

            Out of the corner of her eye, Lexi caught sight of the only Beta not engaged completely in the merrymaking of their travels and meals: a willowy golden-haired girl who couldn't have been more than three years younger than Lexi herself. The three-inch stranger stood up against the window separating the café from the Alpha seats, her hand on the glass, and appeared to be staring directly at Lexi. Light streaming in from outside distorted Lexi's view of the girl, and for an instant, the Alpha thought she recognized that face. She flinched, her heart blanching like she'd just awoken from a dream by simulating a sky dive. After squinting and leaning into the aisle, though, Lexi confirmed for herself that she didn't know the Beta girl after all.

            Several minutes of awkward staring contest followed between Lexi and the unknown passenger. The Alpha supposed she ought to break her gaze before the Beta read the gesture as hostile; after all, elongated eye contact could mean something far different when you were looking into the dinner-plate pupils of a being twenty-two times the size of you. Lexi knew that fact personally, from all the time she'd spent around Omegas, though at least they had the built-in social benefit of a universal reputation for guardianship and altruism. With an Alpha, and all the selfish humanity that implied, you could never know for certain where you stood, and Lexi occasionally included herself in that judgment too.

            At last the Beta turned around, presumably to rejoin the café festivities, and Lexi was relieved. Rather than watching the girl disappear back into the tiny crowd, though, the Alpha instead spotted the door on the side of the restaurant which led onto the fenced walkway running the length of the train. The way opened, and the stranger stepped out. Now no longer separated by more than a mesh fence and three feet of open space, Lexi leaned on the train armrest. However, she averted her gaze from the Beta. At this point, though, it was clear that the girl was indeed looking right at her.

            "Hello." The little voice was nearly lost to the white noise rumble of the bullet train's rails down below, but Lexi could make it out all the same. Even with multiple Alpha conversations going on down the aisle, she didn't mistake the Beta's word.

            "Uh, hey," Lexi said, clearing her throat. After not having spoken for at least twenty-four hours, her voice came out as a half-croak. Lexi gave her brunette locks another streak over her shoulder, clearing her eye line.

            "I'm sorry to bother you." The soft-spoken Beta's tone was strangely apologetic for someone who hadn't committed a crime more severe than speaking to someone they didn't know.

            "What? No, um, it's no problem. What's up?"

            "I just thought I recognized you. Do I know you?"

            "I don't think so," Lexi said. "My bad, if you felt like I was staring."

            "Oh, okay. I wondered if you recognized me, too."

            "I thought I did. You remind me of... um, never mind," Lexi said. She batted her eyes, still having to convince herself that she wasn't looking at the three-inch manifestation of Bridget Cade, circa five years ago. That resemblance was, frankly, filling Lexi with a curious urge to reach out and touch the tiny blonde stranger, a notion she quickly had to tuck into the back of her mind before she even creeped herself out.

            "Well, my name is Opal," the Beta said, just as pleasant as ever, despite Lexi's half-asleep droning. She stuck her arm through the mesh of the fence, her hand amiably extended into the aisle. "Nice to meet you."

            Where did Betas like Opal get that near-aggressive friendliness, Lexi pondered? If she was born into a world made for beings hundreds or thousands of times her own size, she couldn't imagine finding the energy to greet strangers. Shrugging, Lexi leaned over to the walkway, uncurled her index finger, and placed the pad of her digit on Opal's waiting palm. Despite the disparity in size and strength, the two young women managed an approximation of hand/finger-shaking.

            It occurred to Lexi in this moment that, given her isolated style of quasi-monastic living these past twenty-one months, she could've counted the number of Betas she'd spoken to on one hand. Hell, she could've held them in one hand. The usual bodily awareness she felt whenever addressing a Beta returned instantly, in the same way one might react to having one's image projected onto a Jumbo-Tron. As someone who'd spent much of the last decade riding in the hand of a giantess, Lexi understood just how much those in the smaller positions could see.

            "Alexandra," the Alpha said as she lifted her finger away from the Beta's hand. By now, she'd turned herself into the armrest so she could pick up the girl's words better.

            Recognition lit in Opal's tiny eyes. Even in a body so small and a train car buzzing with background distractions, Lexi didn't have to be on the same plain to see the connection made. Instantly the little blonde's body language adjusted. She went rigid, and took a step back away from the mesh fencing. That was the specter of fear.

            Lexi's stomach tightened. She knew that look, though she'd been spared the sight of it for a long time. That same discomfort, albeit amplified to horrifying extremes, was worn by a pair of Betas the last time Lexi saw her birth mother twelve years before, when Alma Warren took it upon herself to educate her daughter in the art of genocide. Internally, Lexi reminded herself that there was a perfectly good reason why she kept mostly to herself for the past year and three-quarters.

            For another couple of minutes, Lexi and Opal faced off in silence, though each now exclusively stared at their shoes. The Alpha supposed she ought to consider it a plus that this girl had recognized her and still refrained from sprinting back into the sanctity of the restaurant.

            "I guess you know me after all, huh?" Lexi said at last. She dared cast another glance at the Beta through the fence. To Opal's credit, she wasn't trembling or visibly on the verge of tears, and met Lexi's gaze again.

            "M-Maybe."

            "Would it help if I told you that whatever bad stuff you heard isn't true?"

            "I'm s-sorry, I... guess I thought it might be you. I've never seen you before, for real, but I... I mean, I've..."

            "You know someone else in my family better than me."

            "Y-Yes."

            Lexi nodded. She took care not to make any sudden movements now, anxious of spooking the already-spooked Beta further. One year ago, almost to the day, her famous parent made the news for her contribution to a terrorist attack in the heart of this very city which attempted to slaughter thousands of Beta children en masse during a peaceful celebration of inter-class unity. Though Lexi still lived with the memory of her psychotic mother every day, seeing Alma's face plastered on a television screen had been a startling intrusion into her retreat. Of course, she could only imagine that her own fear of her mother's face was nothing compared to the three-inch-tall schoolchildren who were nearly gassed like lab rats inside Alma's death contraption.

            And then Lexi put two and two together.

            "Oh, God..." Lexi uttered aloud, not meaning to let the words out. Her instinct was to jump into the aisle to be near to the girl, and for a second she jolted, but restrained herself again. "You..."

            "You don't have to say it," Opal said. She sunk to the ground, sitting on the walkway path, and wrapped her arms around her knees. Against all odds, a small smile crossed her lips; Lexi had to double-take to be sure, but it was there. "I've talked to enough people about that day already."

            "I wasn't going to ask," Lexi reassured.

            The awkwardness the Alpha felt burgeoning in her lungs increased tenfold. If it wasn't tricky enough talking to a Beta given her family history, she realized now she was speaking to someone who very narrowly avoided becoming one of her mother's victims. Not exactly the calming return trip she'd hoped for as she prepared to meet with Bridget and Evelyn.

            "Please, just so you know... I didn't recognize you because of your... mom," Opal continued, regaining stability in her voice. Her tone was so sharp and hesitant that it almost reminded the Alpha of twinkling high-octave piano keys. "You don't look like her."

            Lexi now shared the unlikely smirk on the face of her new Beta acquaintance. She took that observation as a major compliment, given the catlike severity that a decade in prison, and general cruelty, had inflicted on her mother's appearance.

            "Thanks."

            "I didn't mean to be rude. I... know you're not like her."

            Again, Lexi let herself relax a little more. "Don't feel bad. I think I'd probably think the same things if I saw me, too. Probably worse."

            "I remembered seeing your face... a while ago, in the newspaper," Opal said. "After what happened with... um, the guy. The one that said those things about you."

            There it was. While Lexi had been cleared of the charges involving Nathaniel Tyler's framing of her in wrongful vengeance, and publicly exonerated with continual apologies from all authority parties involved, who was to say every Beta bought into the hype? Personally, Lexi doubted she could be certain of the truth, if she were in the half-inch shoes of her Beta contemporaries.

            "Oh, yeah," Lexi said.

            "I just... wanted to say something. If it's... all right. Please."

            Lexi was desperate to shut the conversation down, but the pleading earnesty in Opal's voice caught her off-guard again, and she shrugged. They were already in this deep; what was the harm in salting the wound a little?

            "Sure."

            "We're not all like him."

            A surreal ripple rolled over Lexi's brain. She was sure she'd misheard. Blinking, she arose slowly from her train seat, gripped the backrest for support, and knelt down in the aisle. Now less than a foot away from the walkway, the Alpha bowed down to the level of the tiny passenger. Their stares deadlocked, and Lexi saw Opal's face with perfect clarity now. She really was a ringer for Bridget.

            "What did you say?"

            "I s-said... we're not all the same," Opal said. "Betas, I mean. We don't all hate the Alphas, or... you, especially." The girl's small voice was just as lilting and melodic, but it had grown in conviction. "I just thought you should know, in case no one's told you. That I'm sorry for what happened to you. P-Please, just remember. We're not so bad."

            Lexi cradled her cheek in her palm, her jaw hanging slightly open. There were so many things she wanted to correct. So many unjust misconceptions present in the girl's humble offering. The very idea that this little Beta, who twelve months ago saw her life flash before her eyes when she was nearly exterminated by Lexi's mother, actually saw the need to defend her own worth to Lexi made the Alpha sick to her stomach. The world was a bizarre, and frequently unfair place, as far as Lexi saw it. Somehow, social order had dictated in Opal's mind that she had to apologize to an Alpha on behalf of her species. Lexi couldn't imagine what she ought to say to this girl to make things all right.

            Against her better judgment, Lexi lifted a hand to the mesh fence, and pressed her fingertips on the netting. She bit her lip. As expected, Opal flinched, but didn't move, remaining sitting in front of the walled spires of Lexi's digits. After a moment, the Beta touched her own hand to the nearest bulge of Alpha finger flesh pressing between the strands. The touch of that miniature hand was soft and near-imperceptible, like brushing a drop of cream, but she felt it. Lexi was subconsciously aware that multiple patrons of the Beta Testing restaurant were now gawking at her and this girl, but she didn't care.

            Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, the bullet train itself saved Lexi from the burden of knowing what to say. The cheerful digital bell tolled, signifying they were arriving at the station. The floor shuddered softly during the slow-down approach, and as the train lurched to a full stop, the doors on all ends of the cars slid open. Lexi blushed, and removed her hand from the fence. The sensory memory of Opal's hand on her skin lingered; was that what Bridget felt whenever she held her finger? When she stood back to her full height, Lexi felt even sicker having to look down on the Beta.

            "This is my stop," Lexi said, nodding at the nearest exit. She heaved her bag out from under the seat. "I, um... I'm..."

            "Good luck to you, Alexandra," Opal said sweetly.

            "Same to you." Lexi waved goodbye on her way down the ramp, long after she could still see the three-inch girl, and ached with the desire to actually deserve that wish from a stranger.

A stream of light widened from a hair’s width across the pitch-black room as the doorway opened. The glow was briefly blocked out as a towering silhouette appeared, somehow growing larger as it entered the darkness. Her footsteps were short and punctuated, yet landed with the strength of a thunderbolt, and made the whole of the blackness quake in unison each time her heel landed.

In the center of the space stood a stone pedestal, upon which rested a metal bird cage. The bars rattled softly like old bells as the titanic shadow approached, until all the light from the opening in the room was blotted out, entirely eclipsed by the slender landscape of the leviathan form. Wisps of hair twinkled golden as they hung into place, then turned to shadow again. A pair of enormous hands settled on the edge of the pedestal, within flicking range of the bird cage. Fingers, large and strong yet graceful as the rest of the female silhouette, drummed on the surface. Occasionally, the giant’s fingernails grazed the bars of the cage, pinging the sound from end to end, before they balled back into fists. The knuckles popped.

“Please…” a tiny voice rang from within the cage. The speaker couldn’t even make it through the first word without cracking in the back of her throat. “Why are you doing this?”

“Me?” boomed the silhouette in reply, her voice silky and kind, but for the ominous dance of her fingers. Still, the ends of her digits tapped the bars of the prisoner’s hold, even hooking them briefly in her fingers to pluck like harp strings. “Why am I doing this? I haven’t done anything, except serve justice. Everything that’s happened was all dependent upon your own choices, not mine.”

“I didn’t do anything. I’m innocent. Please, you… have to believe me.”

“Your requests for unearned pity don’t impress me. Your guilt is a foregone conclusion. All that matters now is when you choose to let the message sink in.” The giant’s fingers latched between the bars of the bird cage, and remained there this time, giving them a tug to the side. The metal groaned, and the space between the prison bars widened as those fingers literally ripped open a way. “Tell me, is it sinking in yet?”

“Oh, God. No, please. Don’t do that. Stop this,” begged the little voice. By now, the words were nearly drowned in tears. When next the gigantic body overlooking the cage shifted to the side, the light shown through strands of her golden hair again, and then flashed across the bird cage. For an instant, the miniature woman, not much larger than the gatekeeper’s index finger, cowered on her knees. She clawed at her dark hair, draping it protectively over her eyes. Her whole body shook with seismic urgency.

“Tell me,” the larger being boomed as she finally wrenched the bars wide enough for her hand to fit. A gently closed fist entered the cage, hovering over the pitiful creature inside. “What are you?”

“I’m… nothing. I’m a rat. A germ. A smear on the planet.”

“Very cute. But that’s not what I want to hear, and you know it.” The giant hand opened up, fingers curled like a hawk’s talons to snatch. The palm waited an inch overhead of the prisoner. “What… are you?”

“I’m…” the woman sniffled, bowing face-flat to the floor of the cage. She broke into harder sobs, but managed to choke through them and spill the answer. “An Alpha.”

“That’s more like it. Alpha.” The Omega spoke the word like cancer. Her fingers stabbed into the ground around the little woman with a dramatic thunk, but didn’t wrap them inward to capture her prize just yet. Instead, the colossal hand formed a miniature prison cell unto itself within the confines of the bird cage, formed of warm vengeful flesh instead of rusted metal. “And what have you learned is your place in the world?”

“Expendable,” the sniveling voice recited, obviously practiced word-perfect. “My kind is part of a broken equation. There are the Betas: the vessels of innocence and the salt of the earth. And there are the Omegas: the protectors of innocence and stewards of the earth.”

“And the Alphas?”

“An unstable… element, unbalancing an otherwise… perfect union of the large and small.” Again, the words rambled like classroom memorization. “We are the negative which prevents everlasting goodness.”

“Very good, little one. It sounds like someone’s been doing the reading I made just for you.” The spires of the Omega’s monumental fingers at last curled inward, collecting the Alpha upon the pillowy tips, and bundling her into a firm fist. The darkness became muggy and flesh-scented, only for a moment, until it gave way to the darkness of the cage room again. Yet this time, even though she couldn’t make out the intricacies of the billboard-sized face, she felt the spectral presence of the woman’s judging countenance staring her down and mentally dissecting her in the dark.

“B-But…” the Alpha murmured. Still in the Omega’s palm, she remained on her knees. “Please… you h-have to listen… what you’re saying, it’s…”

“Oh, good.” A sarcastic drawl echoed through the room. “Exactly what I wanted. You have something to add now?”

“That’s not what the Omegas teach. It’s not what they believe,” wept the Alpha. Even as she spoke, she winced in rapid succession, expecting inevitable reprisal. Yet she spat it out anyway. “I know the Alphas of the last generations were flawed. A lot of them were monsters. But we’re not all like them, and the Omegas know it. They believe the three classes can live in peace and harmony. Y-You know it. Please, God, I know you do. I know you believed it once that I wasn’t just like my mother!”

The Omega remained tight-lipped, but a storm cloud of sheer fury seethed from her skin; the Alpha could sense it. Instead of responding, the Omega turned and marched back toward the waning light of the doorway. Only once she emerged, were both the golden-haired giantess and the mewling brunette prisoner turning to a puddle in her hand plunged back into light.

“I did believe it, Lexi. You know I did,” Bridget Cade snarled. “Which is why it hurts me more than it could ever hurt you to have to do this.”

“W-What are you going to do?”

“Serve justice. Like I said. Don’t you ever listen?” Bridget’s other hand arose over the plain of her outstretched palm, her thumb and index finger preemptively separated by just enough space to insert an average-sized human woman between. Her two digits formed a vice of spiral-printed flesh beside Lexi’s shoulders, and before the Alpha could react again, the Omega had pinched her adoptive sister and former best friend into a finger-lock.

Then Bridget’s hand rose. She tilted her head back, the shimmering honeyed tresses draped back in a cataract, while her soft pink lips steadily parted. The darks of her eyes glowered; Bridget’s nostrils flared. And then her pinched fingers began to descend again, but this time directly over her increasingly opened maw. By the time Lexi was dangling close enough to feel the hotness of her Enforcer’s breath, the Omega’s teeth had fully separated, and her slimy tongue was dancing up toward the outside.

“N-No…” Lexi peeped. “No, no. I don’t want to do that again.”

“Again? When have we ever done this before?”

“W-When you stuck me on the… p-popsicle, for my second t-time…” Lexi cried. She buried her face in her hands as tears poured between her tiny fingers. “You d-did it just to remind me of when we were… kids. I know you did.”

“Oh, silly little Lexi. You really think all I’m going to do is lick you a little bit again? That’s hardly a punishment, if you ask me. I was just following the manual, not trying to take you down memory lane. Besides, I’ve had you in my custody for five years now, and I don’t intend to stop anytime soon, no matter what Aegis says. I couldn’t possibly do something so boring as that now.”

“Then w-what?”

“I’m going to swallow you, of course.”

“WHAT?” Instantly Lexi started thrashing, though it was useless against the abject strength of Lexi’s tanned fingertips. The thick pads of her dexterous digits quickly pinned the Alpha back against the heel of her giant hand, and lowered her yet again, until all Lexi could make out was the sweltering blackness, two rows of gleaming pearly whites, and a writhing serpent of a tastebud-speckled muscle.

“Don’t sound so surprised,” the Omega said. “I think you’ve always known Omegas are capable of more, even when you look past the fact that we’re big enough to move cities with our bare hands.” Casually, Bridget’s tongue flicked out, lapping at Lexi’s hanging legs. “Is it really so shocking that I can swallow you alive, and bring you back up at a time that it suits me?”

“B-Bridge… no, no, no… you ca-”

“Actually, you’ll find I can.”

“But what if you can’t? It could kill me,” Lexi sniffled. “You can’t just swallow another person to teach them a lesson.”

“Oh, I can think of several Omegas who would disagree.”

“This is what Alphas do to Betas!” she squealed as the tears gushed anew. Lexi had stopped fighting, and gone limp in her sister’s claw. “This is what’s WRONG with the world. I know that. I see it. And you know me, Bridget. You know I could never hurt anyone!”

“I did,” Bridget coldly replied, just as she had once before. Her tongue circled the rim of her lips, glossing them with saliva. “Are you ready to know what it feels like? To be completely, utterly powerless in the mouth of a thing which cares so little for your extinction?”

“PLEASE, Bridget! You’re my sister. I… I love you! No matter what you do,” Lexi defiantly screamed through the sobs. She’d become still and strong, like a little martyr, and Bridget could feel it through the sensitive tips of her fingers, but she was unmoved. “Do you hear me? I LOVE you, and I always WILL.”

“That’s nice,” Bridget said. Her steely resolve remained frozen in her face like a beautiful sphinx. “You’re going inside me now, where you belong. Oh, and one more thing, Lexi: do not call me your sister ever again, or the next time I swallow you, it will be a one-way trip. You belong to your real mother and the rest of your vile kind. Not me and mine.”

The Omega listened to her former best friend and family member’s sniveling wails as she was inserted down into the waiting pit of her upturned mouth. Once Lexi’s back met Bridget’s tongue and slid into her cheek, her teeth clacked loudly together, and those lips slurped to meet once more.

The light which once crept inside the bird cage room was fading now back into darkness, but the Omega didn’t notice as she stood in the center of it all, contemplating the sensation of her charge’s body flailing pitifully from cheek to tonsil to roof. Her tongue was merciless, lashing Lexi with the fury of a bullwhip, and making up what it lacked in smarting precision with gooey bludgeoning.

The little woman was heavy with soggy spit, balled into a fetal roll, and inevitably humiliated beyond reasonable belief after her final unrequited words to her one-time BFF were met with Lexi being turned into a snack. Just as she’d promised, Lexi used her tongue to roll and push the Alpha toward her throat, and without pause, gulped the lump of her battered body down into the gullet. Rivulets of saliva followed, raining down on the innocent woman, while the Omega savored the fiery glow of self-righteousness. Soon, Lexi would splash down into her stomach, and in the meanwhile, there would be a chorus of battling gurgles and screams from within to entertain.

She’d earned this. Yes, she had.

It was just kismet that Bridget had befriended Lexi when they were children: so that when the real monster inside the Alpha emerged, revealing her to be the same product of her mangy species as her mother, then who better to drive the final nail in the coffin than Bridget? What could be a bitterer last blow than to be swallowed alive by your older sister, while the rest of the world carried on firmly believing in your guilt and ugliness, with the full knowledge that you could well-be dissolved into mush in her stomach if you refused to denounce that you ever had a family to begin with?

Enforcer Cade tapped her fingers, counting out the long seconds until she would decide to bring Lexi back up. Odds were, it would be a while, but she had all the time in the world.

###

“LEXI!” Bridget Cade’s scream could’ve leveled a small town, were it not confined to hardy reinforced Omega quarters. Still it rattled the walls.

The Omega awoke in an ice-cold sweat, a choking feeling in her throat diverting airflow. Two a.m. moonlight still streamed through the window across her tangled sheets. She gasped for several desperate seconds, pressing her fingers hard to her windpipe, until she was assured that there was nothing lodged inside to impede her life force. Only a ghostly sensation of her tiny sister passing into Bridget’s digestive system.

The Omega pulled herself up in the bed. Even once she’d convinced herself she wasn’t choking, her body-wracking sobs quaked her to a nauseous level. Her cheeks were as raw and damp with tears as her hundred-plus-foot-tall body was with nightmarish perspiration. She clutched a fist over her stampeding heartbeat. The voice which sprang from her lips within the dream wasn’t her own, and recalling some of her unnatural phrasings again, she wanted to gag. It was as though she’d been possessed by the spirit of totalitarian regime and made to spew it like a giant despotic robot: the very thing Lexi, surely, now saw her as.

God, how had it all gone so wrong. How. Nearly two years since it happened, since she’d seen or even spoken to Lexi, but Bridget’s nocturnal visions were just as potent and unrelenting as ever.

The Omega tried to remind herself of the facts, if only to find some small comfort after the trauma. The things she’d seen in the dream were all wild perversions of reality: indeed, Lexi’s real imprisonment had lasted just over two weeks, and consisted of only two low-class enforcement sessions in between a great deal of sitting in her glass cell. The true scar of that short period had come not from its length or consequential severity, but in Bridget’s own unyielding conviction that she was serving goodness. Her heart had been so broken over the revelation of evidence, combined with loyalty to the mission of the Omegas, she’d been blind to reality, as intentionally obscured as it had been.

How. How. How.

Bridget rolled over in bed, certain that she’d never get back to sleep now. Strands of her hair hung over her face in a golden mess, and as she gently spread her fingers through to sweep them away, she flinched at the sight of what she thought for just an instant to be a person. A small one, not any larger than her index finger, pushing through the tangle of blonde locks. Frantic, Bridget reached out, trying to close her palm as compassionately as possible around the body of who her instincts told her to be Lexi.

However, her fist just closed around empty air, and Bridget couldn’t help but slip back into heaving sobs. Her pillow was soaked straight through to the other side in tears, but she still laid her cheek against it, and brushed her hair back over her eyes. What she would give for the chance to make things right again, impossible as it seemed. Yet that was selfish to think, and Bridget knew it. There was no turning back. One thing was for certain: she’d done so much damage to her best friend and dear sister whom she loved with all her heart, that there was only a single recourse for her penance.

She could never allow herself to appear in Lexi’s presence ever again.

Standing outside on the station platform, Lexi took one last look at the train which had transported her from across the land: if she hopped back on board now, she might delay this return that much longer, until the conductor noticed her ticket was wrong and sent her home. Then again, she’d still be faced with the prospect of knowing how to tell Opal she didn’t want her apology, and that was a whole other matter.

Lexi shook her head, tightened her fist around her roller suitcase handle, and marched off the platform in the wake of the other departing Alphas. An open-air tunnel led the filing crowd out into urban sprawl. There lay the polished white streets of the world’s premiere city: Aegis’s shining example of hand-holding co-existence between Betas, Alphas, and Omegas. It had been twenty-one months since Lexi had last set foot here. Twenty-one months since the sins of her birth mother had come back to haunt her in the form of a three-inch-tall orphan with a grudge. Twenty-one months since her adoptive sister Bridget accepted the responsibility of punishing Lexi for a crime she didn’t commit. Twenty-one months since everything was taken.

If she procrastinated any longer, Lexi might just convince herself it was better to stay away permanently.

No more running, she affirmed. It was time now.

Her first thought was to catch a subway over to her old apartment, but Lexi stopped herself. Even if the landlord hadn’t dragged all her belongings out to the curb himself, which was entirely possible, it didn’t feel right. Instead, Lexi turned herself in the opposite direction, toward a very particular district of the city, and set off, one foot in front of the other. It wasn’t her plan to go this way first, but very little of her life had gone according to plan the last two years, so this was no exception. Besides, stewing in her apartment would only drag this homecoming out. Better to rip the bandage off in one clean pull.

Walking would give her time to ease into what was coming. The reunion. A year ago, she might have called it a confrontation, but no longer. Now, an encounter with Bridget was simply an inevitability in the girl’s mind, neither a curse nor a blessing. She’d spent the last year and a half getting her head on straight enough to come home, and only recently stopped having dreams reliving those two nightmarish weeks, so Lexi sincerely hoped that peaceful mindset would hold true whenever it was that she finally laid eyes on her mountainous best friend again.

There’d been no pestering messages from Aegis for months, though Lexi knew someone was keeping an eye on her, because she always seemed to receive “special offers” for private planes right before she was thinking of going somewhere new. Kayla Everett really didn’t want Lexi spending a dime of her own money on this scatter-brained, and nearly two-year-long, healing excursion. Still, the Alpha had avoided their help as long as possible, until it became impossible to support herself without aid. When she finally accepted the offer Kayla made to her with that glossy white card, and bought herself a bag of groceries, Lexi expected to feel guilt and self-loathing, like she’d surrendered to an enemy. Instead she felt exactly the same as before: hollow, though ironically less hungry.

Her hand fished for the keys again in her pocket, as she’d done dozens of times on the journey over. The metal one, with its jagged hand-carved teeth, she pushed aside, and instead gripped the electronic reader plug which served as the key to her “other” home. Every step of the long way toward the Omega housing district, Lexi held onto the object, until it felt hot in her closed fist. Eventually, the quantity of Alpha street traffic thinned. She only spotted a few individuals her size here and there, replaced instead by signs of life belonging to the other two classes. The complicated network of Beta paths and commercial blocks stacked like futuristic beehives greeted the eye around most corners. Eventually, on the outskirts of the capital, Lexi saw the beginnings of what she’d come to find.

There were the silver-white fortresses which served as Omega homes, rising three hundred feet into the air, most of them uniform and Spartan in their construction, at least by the standards of skyscraping semi-immortal creatures. Out front and back, several Omegas tended to the jungle-sized gardens adorning their property. The street became joined with an automated conveyor belt path made for Alphas, aligned with the above-ground subway which made stops at every Omega address, since the stroll through this gargantuan neighborhood took great effort on its own.

The moving path was nearly vacant except for Lexi, as was the even-smaller Beta road mounted on the sideline. Since it was still mid-afternoon, most Omegas would be at work, probably a great many over at Aegis headquarters. This was an intentional choice by Lexi to return to town now. She wasn’t eager to be overwhelmed by giant bodies in shocked jubilation at her return, no matter how fragile they’d be around her. Luckily, the few Omegas working their yards either didn’t look up to see her, or weren’t individuals she was hugely familiar with. Lexi was grateful for this.

Trains whizzed by, dropping a couple of Alphas off in front of the family homes they shared with kin hundreds of times their size, but Lexi resisted the temptation to board. As it was, the moving sidewalk kept her at a faster pace than she wanted; all this Omega-engineered convenience was no good when you were already reticent about the final stop. Nevertheless, she was fast approaching. Lexi avoided the attentions of the disembarking Alphas, though they luckily paid her no heed.

Just then, beyond the crest of an Alpha train station depot, Lexi spied the top of a fiery ginger mane. She couldn’t be certain of the distant Omega’s identity until the young woman appeared from around the corner, but even before the porcelain freckled countenance of the “petite” giantess was confirmed to Lexi, her heart raced again. Not due to the identity of the Aegis Enforcer herself, but rather the Omega’s lineage, and specifically, the connection Lexi knew her mother had to this towering girl’s family. The Alpha was glad when the strawberry-blonde Omega failed to notice her, or at least acknowledge her, as she instead stalked across the grass plain below toward the door of her apartment with that militant gait. Jenna Reynolds disappeared inside, while Lexi hustled on. Another few minutes, and she’d reach her destination at the end of the block.

Approaching the Cade house was easier than Lexi had calculated. For the past few months, once she even convinced herself it was nearly time to return, she’d imagined her knees turning to jelly. Perhaps a melodramatic faint as she marched toward the imposing fortress door and shot up in the elevator lift. Lexi gave her future self a lot of shit.

Instead, she made it to the front stoop before she’d even realized. Her hand hovered over the door handle. For a long beat, Lexi studied the two-hundred-foot-tall entryway off to the side used by her Omega adoptive mother and older sister. Most of her passages in and out of this house, in fact, were through that door instead, since Bridget always carried Lexi in her hand while operating the knob with the other. Meanwhile, the Alpha entranceway, positioned just by the doorbell, was strangely more intimidating to Lexi. She’d have to step through it on her own, after all.

The Alpha sighed. If Opal could look the daughter of her would-be-murderer in the eye and ask her for surrogate forgiveness, then Lexi could do this. She pressed her key to the reader and stepped through the unlocked door.

Once inside, an instant feeling of homey warmth pervaded the Alpha’s personal atmosphere. This was unexpected, particularly because the slender girl was prone to drafts in this comparatively vast space. Yet it felt more like home than it had in years, even before the horrific misunderstanding. Lexi crossed her hands over her shoulders and took in the expansive arena: like the outside, the architecture was predominantly whitewashed, but dotted with color and handmade texture wherever Evelyn and Bridget had selected furniture and trinkets to characterize their abode.

The elder Cade, in particular, was known to overpopulate the modest living area with bits and bobs. Conversely, Bridget, while still a fan of color, was in a constant losing battle with her mother to keep new accessories from crowding the house. As brilliant a city planner as she was, Evelyn was a bit of a kitschy packrat when it came to the smaller scale of home décor.

Lexi studied the living room landscape. Several new features had been added in the twenty-one months since her last stay. Specifically, a synthetic ceramic elephant the size of the actual creature, painted in gaudy red and pink, rested on the living room side table. Slowly, the Alpha made her way along the wall-mounted walkway into the area, until she could get a better look at the thing from above. It was flashy and eye-catching, exactly Evelyn’s taste. Though she couldn’t fully say why, Lexi grinned ear-to-ear, and even had to stifle a giggle.

Bridget surely hated that thing.

In the silent interim, Lexi couldn’t help but wonder how long the elephant had lived in the Cade house, and at what point her best friend had simply given up on its permanent residence in the living room. Other unique items now dotted the table surfaces and bookshelves, too, but that elephant was the tacky crown jewel.

Lexi was so inexplicably entranced by this funny detail of her true home, she didn’t notice Evelyn Cade’s approach until the Omega had turned the corner and entered the living room. As was the habit of most leviathan citizens, the woman’s footfalls were soft, scarcely quaking even the carpeted floor. When the Alpha turned at the sound of the approaching giant body, her spine went rigid and her throat tightened to a closed coil.

Sure enough, there she stood: the statuesque silver-blonde, emanating her usual magnetic kindness despite her patrician exterior. Between a pair of garden-gloved hands, she clutched a patch of maple trees inside a polka-dotted flowerpot. Evelyn had always been a nigh-uncanny doppelganger for Bridget herself, give or take the illusion of a fifteen-year age difference, which Lexi thought was impressive considering the year gap was more like a century; however, after so long gone, the Alpha was utterly stunned at the lack of separation between their appearances. She had to blink a few times just to distinguish the towering figure as Evelyn and not Bridget. For this reason, Lexi was rooted to the floor, her hands in her pockets and her heart in her stomach.

Evelyn made it all the way into the center of the living room before her eyes locked to the young woman the size of her finger standing on the Alpha walkway. The instant she did, she stopped in her tracks. Her trembling hands fell away; the polka-dot bowl plummeted to the floor and shattered, spilling soil and maple trees at Evelyn’s feet, though she didn’t even flinch, let alone notice what had happened. Instead, her arms hung at her sides, and the Omega’s jaw quavered just open enough to speak.

“Alexandra…” That was all she could muster. The word came out as a forbidden whisper, and Evelyn blanched as soon as she uttered her foster daughter’s name. She had yet to either take another step or blink her eyes since spotting the Alpha.

Lexi, too, was still paralyzed in place. It was a startlingly naked feeling, standing here unannounced after so long, in the presence of her colossal hostess. Her clammy hands grew cold in her pockets. Ironically, the Alpha had sent so much time psyching herself out to reunite with Bridget, she realized only now, too late, that she hadn’t emotionally prepared to face the only real “parent” she’d ever had. Consequently, it was taking a heavy toll.

“H-Hi, Evelyn,” Lexi peeped. She had to say something else; that was the only way to break the spell. Her eyes darted from Evelyn’s gob-smacked countenance above to the strewn mess of plantlife around the woman’s mammoth boots. “You d-dropped your… trees.”

This was about the point the Alpha’s knees gave out and she wobbled to the ground, which she decided to forgive herself, as she’d been expecting it much sooner. Evelyn, snapped from her own suspended reverie, came rushing in. Her boots trampled through the dirt, tracking it across the carpet, and the Omega very nearly tripped over the coffee table on her affectionate warpath toward the wall. But nothing stopped her.

The following minutes unfolded into such a concentrated emotional barrage, Lexi had to consciously focus her attention on each isolated moment to even begin to process them.

Her foster mother ripped the garden gloves off with such force the rubber tore, but these were discarded without a glance. Freed, the Omega’s benevolent hands came to rest on their sides upon the miniature walkway, slowly cupping inward until they formed a canyon of palm flesh on either side which rose marginally taller than Lexi. However, Evelyn didn’t even come close to backing the Alpha into a corner, let alone making actual contact. Her log-like fingers twitched with an aching desire to touch the comparatively doll-sized girl, and cuddle her between them, but she held at bay.

Lexi breathed shallowly, looking from one massive hand to the other. From the flutter of her tender skin, Evelyn’s nerves were just as frayed as Lexi’s. There was no fear inside the Alpha now; no instinct to recoil at the sight of gigantic inviting hands, like she once felt for those two long weeks. If anything, Lexi’s only impulse was to go toward them.

Evelyn bowed slightly, until her gaze was perfectly level with Lexi’s. Even before the golden-haired Omega could open her lips to try talking again, those eyes did most of the speaking, at least until welled tears glazed over the green pools of her irises. At last she let herself blink, and when she did, the tears gushed in hard trails down her cheeks, reaching her neck in record time.

“Oh, Lexi. Oh, God… I…” Evelyn moaned. She gnawed her lip as more tears poured.

Lexi said nothing. Instead, she stumbled to her feet and stepped closer to the edge of the walkway, until she was near enough to reach out and touch the bridge of the Omega’s nose. Then, following that earlier impulse, she did. Lexi placed her tiny hand on Evelyn’s face, and felt the rolling shockwave course through her tremendous face: a shudder, not out of revulsion, but rather like the Omega was receiving a blessing.

“I missed you,” Lexi said. Her hand remained on the Omega’s now unmoving face. She was proud of herself for choking out the words without stuttering, only to cancel the effect when she realized she too was crying.

“I missed you too, dear.” Evelyn’s hands cupped closer, but she still didn’t pick the girl up. Her cheeks burned pink. When she tilted her head forward, a tear instead rolled down her nose and splashed over Lexi’s arm. As balanced and in-control as the Omega usually was in moments of crisis, even two years ago after the truth had been revealed and Lexi was accidentally injured, Evelyn only now officially lost her composure. Lexi had the distinct impression that if she were to push back against her foster mother now, the graceful titan would simply fall to the floor below.

“For all my life,” Evelyn uttered, “even if I started when I woke up and stopped only to go to sleep, I don’t believe I’d ever say it enough to you, but… I’m so, so sorry, Alexandra.”

Lexi had heard these words more times than she could count while Evelyn was visiting her in the hospital all those many months ago following the accident in the garden. However, then there had been a distance, as though the Omega had built up a wall around herself, unable to face reality. This time, the phrase was so ragged and soaked by literal tears that it felt like the one her foster mother had been waiting to say for twenty-one months straight.

“I know,” Lexi whispered, and as she said it, it occurred to her she meant it fully. Any resentment and anger toward Evelyn had been permanently unloaded from her weary back. It went away with less fanfare than she could’ve ever dreamed back when she was sitting in that detention cell on Bridget’s desk, wondering how to get through to her surrogate sister and mother. Relieved, Lexi suddenly felt so light, she thought she just might float right off the walkway.

“What can I do for you?” Evelyn asked. Her tearflow had slowed from burst-dam to a steady trickle. “Just say it, dear.”

“I… was hoping I could stay here again?”

The Omega shook her head and bit her lip. “Alexandra, you’d never need to ask something like that. This is your home. Please, stay.”

“Thank you.” Lexi let go of Evelyn’s face, her arm sopping with salty moisture, and backpedaled, until she could feel the heat of the Omega’s wide palm behind her.

“What else can I do? Are you hungry? Do you need your bed made up?”

“M-Maybe soon, but…”

“Yes?”

Lexi gulped. “Would you… hold me?”

“Oh, darling,” Evelyn cooed. “Of course. Come here.”

Feeling safer than she had in months, Lexi let herself fall back against Evelyn’s palm. The giant woman’s hand eased onto its side, until the Alpha was reclining sweetly in the concave cushioning of her soft appendage. Fingers curled inward, shielding Lexi from the side. The crook of her thumb hovered over the little woman’s fetally curled body.

“Is that all right?” the Omega asked.

“Yes. T-Thank you.”

Gentle and expertly balanced, as though no time had passed at all, the Omega walked to the couch with her foster daughter in-hand and took a seat. Even though the rest of her body continued to tremble, and the tears flushed down her cheeks, Evelyn’s arms held steady as stone.

Lexi practically turned inside out with goose bumps. The warmth and plush give of the creased skin beneath her back allowed her to completely surrender. Not to mention the familiar aroma of rubber gloves and fresh pollen inherent to the hands of the master gardener which invited her to relax.

As good as she felt walking through the front door, this was the moment Lexi started to feel she was actually home. For braced support, the Omega’s opposite hand cupped beneath the one which cradled the tiny brunette. Both hands then rose slowly toward Evelyn’s face, until her beautiful countenance hung wistfully above where Lexi lay.

Twenty-one months ago, the Alpha might have told herself it was a blight on her dignity to not only allow herself to be held, but to enjoy the sanctity and comfort of it. Yet in her new state of semi-enlightened serenity with the world and the past, Lexi knew now that would be a silly judgment, and also a way of depriving herself the protective relief of her gigantic family she’d so craved in her isolation.

Humid, green-tea exhalations wafted down from Evelyn’s still-open lips. These, too, melted Lexi into a state of calm repose. She felt like a twenty-two-year-old infant, letting herself yield to such coddling, but it felt so nice, Lexi decided she didn’t care. Shifting against the squishy terrain behind her, the Alpha studied her foster mother’s giant thumb for a moment, particularly the spiraling pattern of her peachy fingerpad, then shrugged and said a mental screw it. Lexi reached up, wrapped her hands over Evelyn’s nailbed, and forcibly hugged the enormous thumb down against her body.

The Omega shuddered again, but couldn’t hide her grateful smile. She embraced her thumb over her foster daughter’s little body, until Lexi was thoroughly snuggled between a thick, pillowy finger and the mattress of her palm.

“It’s so wonderful to have you back,” Evelyn whispered.

“Wait, what about the…” Lexi said, abruptly remembering. Looking over the edge of the woman’s hand, she could see the soil staining the carpet and the muddy water sopping through the fibers. The Alpha felt ridiculous saying the last word, but said it anyway: “…trees?”

“Oh, they’re just trees, dear. They’ll grow back.”

Lexi stopped herself short of outright nuzzling her cheek into Evelyn’s cushy thumbprint. There would be time to let herself fully out of the shell again. For now, this was more than plenty. The pair remained on the couch for an hour, with no more than a few dozen words exchanged throughout the whole time, and exclusively when Lexi initiated the conversation. Evelyn’s thumb never budged.

Only when Evelyn broke the silence to suggest they get find something to eat, Lexi recalled. In all the emotional unwinding, and perhaps due to a subconscious defense mechanism, she had forgotten the most important question of all.

“Where’s Bridget?” she asked.

Evelyn nodded sorrowfully, but there was no sign that she intended to hide anything.

“She’s not here, Alexandra.”

“Where is she?”

“Sanctuary.”

“Sanctuary?” Lexi frowned, still not following. At last, she loosed her hold on the Omega’s soft thumb. “How long has she been there?”

“A while,” Evelyn said gently. “She left just after you.”

Her old place was right where she’d left it. In fact, it hadn’t budged more than a couple times for twelve straight years, even after it was left empty following Lexi’s move to her own more stationary place in the city. No matter how far she traveled, it was clear now that this was her true bedroom. Not the place downtown where she’d encountered Kayla Everett, and certainly not any of the short-lease locations she’d bopped around during her healing excursions these past months. This place.

Lexi stood on the table in front of her portable Alpha apartment after Evelyn dropped her off in the Cade guest room. Her private quarters looked like little more than an upturned breadbox by comparison to its Omega surroundings. Even before she could lay a hand on the doorknob, though, Lexi was startled by something, or rather the lack of something. It took her a moment to place, but once she took notice, she had to let go of the door and step back.
The brick-patterned housing unit was missing its roof.


###

“Are you sure this is a good idea, Lexi?” Bridget murmured, nibbling her lip and anxiously shifting her weight from one foot to the other.

“Why not? It’ll be so pretty!”

“Well, yeah, but don’t you think this is too much?” The young Omega hoisted the flower pot off the guest room carpet. Her fingers trembled beneath the heavy faux-porcelain, containing several tons of soil and Omega-strain flowers already sprouting higher than average-sized trees in all manner of firework hues. She held the pot aloft at the level of her adoptive sister’s dollhouse-sized home. “This is heavier than your house. I know, cuz I can carry your house super easy. Why don’t we just put it next to it?”

“Aww, it’ll be okay! I just want to see what it looks like with the flowers on top of the house,” Lexi wheedled. She walked to the edge of the table and tugged at the hem of her gigantic cohort’s shirt. “Pleeeeease, Bridge? Please, please, please?”

“They DO look really nice…”

“See, you see it too! Maybe if you just put it down really gentle, it’ll be okay.”

“I don’t think it’ll balance on top of the roof.”

“Well, you can take the roof off, right? Then we could just sit it on the top, and the flowers could BE the roof!”

“Yeah, I guess so.” Though Lexi couldn’t see the Omega’s face above, with the blossoming flowers blocking her way, she could hear the smirk in the voice. Despite her obvious worries, Bridget had caught the gleeful bug of this miniature redecorating venture. She set the pot down on the table with aching slowness while continually eying her tiny friend to be certain she was well-clear of its glassy diameter.

“This is such a good idea.”

“It is gonna look really pretty,” Bridget affirmed. The towering blonde hooked her thumbs under the slanted roof of the box-house to find the latches, freed them, then gingerly pried the entire top of Lexi’s house off the reinforced walls. She set it on the floor, careful to nudge it away from the table with her toes to avoid the risk of accidentally snapping it in half with a misplaced footfall.

“Well?”

“Here goes nothing,” the Omega said, no longer stifling her wide smile. She took a deep breath and picked the enormous flowerpot back up between both hands. “I’m gonna be so jealous of your house, Lexi. My room doesn’t have anything on top of it. The tops of all the Omega houses are flat.”

“It’s okay, you can come visit mine anytime you want, once I have the prettiest house in the house,” Lexi teased.

The girls broke into mischievous giggles as Bridget lowered the vast porcelain vessel into the opening of the box, allowing it to rest on the thinner walls of the individual rooms rather than the much-sturdier roof. Careful as ever, the Omega let go, then slowly withdrew her fingers, in case the slightest gust would cause the whole complex to topple.

“Huh,” Bridget remarked. She took a step back and crossed her arms. “You were right, Lexi. It looks sooooo nice. It’s like your house is half-garden.”

“Hey, I wanna see! I can only see the bottom flowers from down here, but not the really good top ones with all the big red petals!” Lexi whined, jumping up and down from the edge of the table. “Come back! Pick me up!”

“Oops, sorry. Hold on.” Bridget swooped back to the table and lowered her palm beside her tiny friend just long enough for Lexi to clamber aboard the plush plank of her fingers. With the Alpha on board, the taller girl took several steps back for the full effect. She lifted her flattened hand aloft at the level of her own eyes, so both sisters could have the same view of Lexi’s florally revamped home.

“Wow…” Lexi breathed. She lowered to her knees and crept over the fleshy platform of Bridget’s hand, until she’d reached the very tips of the girl’s outstretched fingers. Instinctively, the Omega’s index and middle digits curved up into a slight lip as fencing, which Lexi hardly acknowledged, wanting the best view of her abode. “You picked good flowers, Bridge.”

“I did?”

“Yeah! I’m just kinda sad it’ll be hard to see from inside the house,” Lexi continued. She appreciatively patted the rounded curve of Bridget’s thumbpad. “Why don’t the people at the Alpha houses factory make them all like this, instead of just boring with a regular roof?”
“Yeah, you’re right. I don’t know why,” Bridget pondered.

At that moment, the inner walls of the house buckled like crackers beneath the intense weight of Evelyn Cade’s heaviest flowerpot. Tipping forward, a broad hairline crack split down the vessel as it crushed the whole top layer of the house and crashed into the first floor. Soil poured through the miniature rooms and leathery petals of the sideways flowers thrust through the empty window frames.

Bridget gasped, cupping her free hand over her mouth to quell her surprised panic, though her opposite arm remained just as steady. She blinked several times, shocked and unsure what to do as half of Lexi’s portable house was outright smashed by broken flowerpot while the other half was bathed in mud and chlorophyll.

“Hmm…” Lexi observed, bobbing her head. “Um, I guess it won’t be that hard to see the flowers from inside the house now?”

The Alpha was just about to crack another joke when she heard curious sniffling from above. Craning her neck around, she looked up to find her best friend’s eyes gleaming with pre-emptive moisture. Her nostrils flared and she sniffled again.

“Bridge, what’s wrong?”

“I just broke your whole house!” the Omega blurted. Her upper body trembled as she tried to gulp the tears back down. “Lexi, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay. It’s my fault. You were saying we shouldn’t do it at first, but I got you to do it.”

“But I’m still the one who did it!” The young Omega knelt on the carpet and wiped her eyes with the back of her free hand, only for the tears to well up again. “All your stuff is in there. A lot of it’s probably all dirty now or just broken!”

“So? It’s just stuff,” Lexi shrugged. She frowned, not quite following the source of her friend’s sorrow. Unsure how to proceed, she patted her friend’s thumb again, more soothingly this time. “I just don’t want your mom to be mad about it.”

“We’ll tell her it was all my fault.”

“No, I’ll tell her it was my fault.”

“You can’t do that, Lexi.”

“Yes I can. I’ll go do it right now!” Lexi threatened, still half-joking. She stood up in Bridget’s hand and pretended to walk toward the edge of her palm, even extending her narrow leg up and over the cushy barrier of her friend’s log-like finger. “Here I go.”

“NO!” Bridget squealed, apparently taking the girl too seriously in her state of guilty agitation. Swiftly, the Omega’s opposite hand came down atop the other. Though careful not to strike Lexi, the giantess nonetheless pinned her friend between both palms and cupped her fingers together, ensuring the girl couldn’t take an injurious leap off her hand to the carpet below.

“I wasn’t really gonna do it,” Lexi coughed from between the sandwich of her giant friend’s warm hands. She slapped her thumb as though tapping out of a wrestling match. “Did I get you?”

“No,” Bridget grunted, then cleared her throat. She separated her hands again so Lexi could sit up again. “Maybe a little.”

###

Lexi turned the knob and entered the place where she’d grown up. Going inside was easier than she expected. It didn’t inflict the same kind of heart-lurching difficulty as when she let herself inside the cavernous Omega apartment earlier, which she was grateful for. She’d been through enough stomach churning for one day after her homecoming with Evelyn.

Crossing the threshold, Lexi walked by the empty kitchen and living room, up the stairs, and returned to her bedroom. Every step was a little surreal, but thankfully devoid of ache. In fact, it was a tremendous comfort to return. For now, the Alpha desperately just wanted to settle back in. There was so much to think about, namely the fact that Bridget had banished herself from home just as Lexi had these twenty-one months. However, there was no way she could begin to think about such things until she’d found her footing here again.

Not to mention, the fearful part of Lexi was grateful to defer that reunion with Bridget a bit longer.

The mattress was barren, though Evelyn had reassured Lexi she had sheets for it stored away in a linen box somewhere. Until her gigantic surrogate mother returned with them, the Alpha had a little time to reacquaint herself. She sat on the edge of the bed and dropped her suitcase on the ground. At first she thought to start unpacking, but the very fact of being back was so daunting already, Lexi shrugged and kicked her luggage beneath the headboard.

Not much remained of this room aside from the bed and dresser. Most of the portable apartment furniture had been hauled off to her own place when she moved in just a matter of months before she was framed and sent down a catastrophic spiral. Bridget had skillfully transported the entirety of Lexi’s belongings in one hand.

###

“This is why every house should have a removable roof,” Bridget said on moving day. The twenty-two-year-old loomed over the buildings while standing in the street, watching Alpha movers double-team the furniture, which the golden-haired Omega could’ve finished off with just two fingers, if only given access to the interior. “This whole thing would take, like, forty seconds if I could get my hands in there.”

“You think so?” Lexi joked from inside her open-topped portable apartment, where she was directing movers on which pieces to take. “I guess you just want in so you can ruin this one, too, by dropping a garden inside it?”

“Do NOT bring back my childhood trauma again!” Bridget retorted, though just as suddenly she broke into uncontrollable guffaws with Lexi. She pretended to aim an accusing giant finger at her sister, coming several inches away from jabbing her in the chest, but stopped just short. “I cried about that time for a whole week when I was twelve, and you know it, you jerk.”

“Hey, I got over it faster than it happened, and it was MY house that got smashed!” Lexi laughed. She took a step forward until her body was pressed against Bridget’s finger, as though daring her to act. “Your mom didn’t even care. Don’t you remember? Even SHE laughed about it.”

“Oh, whatever. I’m just mad I can’t move things around for you here like I could at the old place. Seriously, that was super-convenient for redecorating your house every other week, and you know it,” Bridget scowled, smiling broadly. Gingerly as a peacock feather, she dabbed her fingertip at Lexi’s cheeks instead of poking her in the chest, then retracted her enormous hand.

“Uh-huh. And you’re one hundred percent sure it’s not just because you liked having access to a toy dollhouse that someone also lived in?”

“Oh, it’s completely about that. Did I give you the impression it was another reason?” Bridget fired back. The two young women were so slap-happy they could barely hold still. Softening her sarcasm then to match her actual mood, the Omega knelt down in the street and cupped her hand just outside the window of the apartment, which was nearly emptied by now. “Are you coming out?”

Lexi pointed out the last box in her bedroom to the movers, then went to the window. Looking around the empty space one last time, she could plainly make out the peachy platform of her best friend’s waiting palm. It was always this kind of moment which reminded the Alpha that she wasn’t living in a “real” house, but instead the equivalent of a cat carrier to people hundreds of times her size. There were indeed occasions in her adolescence when she did feel a bit like living in a dollhouse, no matter how much privacy and respect she was paid by Lexi and Evelyn, who never removed the roof, let alone plucked the door open between their fingers, without express permission first. Yet Lexi had never minded knowing her home was but a boxed accessory in the fortress of far greater beings. It made her feel safe. Always had, and always would.

“You’d better send me at least two hundred pictures of the inside once you’ve got it all set up,” Bridget said as the little brunette climbed through the window and plopped into her humongous sister’s palm. The Omega arose to full stature again once her charge was safely in, with her arms wrapped around her thumb. “Just so you understand, two hundred is the minimum. I’m still secretly pissed you couldn’t get a place with a better view of the street so I could see inside.”

“It’s gonna look like a dump for a few days until I get everything unpacked. And it might still look like a dump after that.”

Lexi reclined across the smooth, heated pad of her friend’s hand. She peered over the side down at her house far below. It was missing the roof and nearly bare otherwise. Suddenly, the prospect of moving out felt realer than ever, and the usually cavalier Alpha felt the twinge of nostalgia at the back of her throat. It was funny because Lexi had always been under the impression you wouldn’t know you were shifting life phases until you were already well into the next one. But right now, the twenty-year-old was very conscious that she was pressing forward. She felt smaller than ever, and not just because a titaness was holding her whole life in her hand.

“Okay,” Bridget sighed. She cupped her free hand under her elbow, propping Lexi higher up, until she was level with the Omega’s chin. Her wide lips curved at the corners. “So after it’s unpacked, then, and not a second later.”

“Deal.”

###

Pacing circles around the room, Lexi could feel the dollhouse sensation returning. There wasn’t even a monstrous hand waiting outside the window to collect her, nor a pair of leering dinner plate-eyes to suggest nature had a pecking order. She still felt it, though.

Never for a single moment of her youth, following the escape from her birth mother and adoption into the Cade clan, had Lexi been made to feel like the toyish occupant of this place. Bridget would have become furious at the mere notion of doing anything to “belittle” Lexi further than their natural size difference already implied. The blonde never wanted to dress her tiny friend up, and never wanted to play dolls with Lexi standing in for one of the plastic figures. If they played dolls, Lexi would always puppeteer her own avatar, no matter how absurd it may have looked to an outsider.

This was the same place she’d lived for more than half her life, and certainly the half she cherished and remembered much better. Yet today, there was something askew. Isolation was creeping in fast, and Evelyn had scarcely left the guest room ten minutes ago. Lexi slumped on her bed, running her fingers through dark strands of hair, and grappled with her confused feelings. When she turned to face the wall, she pressed her forehead to a conspicuous crack in the surface spackled with so much glue it now looked like amber frozen in time.

Oh, Bridge.

###

“It’ll be exactly the way it was. Exactly!” Bridget frantically reassured her little sister.

“You don’t have to do this.”

“Yes I do! I broke your house, so now I have to fix it.”

The young Omega’s self-seriousness was off the charts, and there was nothing but determined conviction in her soft words. She laid on her stomach upon the bedroom carpet for maximum stability and held one of the many ravaged walls of Lexi’s portable house before her crystal-blue eyes, squinting and fidgeting as she painted on glue a gallon at a time. Her tiny partner-in-crime sat cross-legged several feet away from where Bridget’s fingers inexpertly crafted.
“You missed a spot,” Lexi snickered.

“Where? Where!”

“I’m just kidding, Bridge. It looks perfect. There’s enough glue on there now, I bet.”

“No, it doesn’t look perfect. It’s still a mess.” Bridget sighed, hanging her head. Her fingers paused their work, and the glue brush was deposited back in the well.

“I like it, though,” the Alpha said. “It’ll look different from all the other houses like it. That was what we were trying to do before, right?”

“Yeah, but that was when we were trying to put flowers on your roof. Not crack all the insides,” Bridget defended. The Omega brushed several yellow locks out of her view, batted her eyelashes, and continued with the kind of surgical precision needed to split an atom.

Lexi beamed, highly entertained by the sight of her sister’s colossal fingers holding up entire heavy walls of the house like they were made of construction paper.

“C’mon. Can you put it inside now, so we can see it?”

“Okay, here goes.” Bridget wiped down the last of the glue, ensuring the pieces of the bedroom wall would hold together, then guided the square back into its interlocking notches. After Lexi had climbed back up the reconstructed stairs, the girls studied the refurbished house in staid silence.

“It looks like crap,” the Omega said. Lexi wanted to laugh, but her friend sounded so forlorn, it seemed rude.

“No, I even like it better now! Plus, it’s special, cuz now you helped make my house, instead of just the people in the Alpha houses factory. Honest. Seriously, it’s the best house ever.”

“You promise?” Bridget asked.

“I promise.”

Lexi stirred her pasta in circles with her fork, watching the cheese smear from one edge of the plate to the other.

It wasn’t that she had no appetite. She’d gotten over that phase during the first few days of self-imposed isolation, once the hunger pangs finally trumped the hollowing misery of her family breakup. Still, there was a learning curve to these mealtimes back in her “real” home with Evelyn: the place where Lexi had eaten half the meals of her life thus far, usually flanked on either side by a pair of golden-haired spitting image titanesses. That was the old norm, and Lexi decided she probably could’ve slipped right back into that routine without skipping a beat.

Something was amiss, though. The past five days after her quiet homecoming, there was only one hundred-fifty-foot-tall guardian sitting at this wooden isle of a dinner table, pretending to quietly eat but, Lexi knew, in fact cautiously monitoring her every move.

After all, Evelyn was mature and wise enough to hide her concern and regular furtive glances, but when spying on an average-sized girl who comparatively stood around three inches tall on the tabletop, it was impossible to conceal everything. Each twitch of those luminous green eyes far above, like searchlights blinking on and off, signified the Omega’s burdensome cares. By Lexi’s count, her foster mother’s anxious peeks were down to a couple dozen per meal, which was an improvement. She didn’t blame Evelyn, either, even if the Alpha was still feeling slightly on edge, due not only to the increasing feeling that she was made of fine china, but the unbalanced atmosphere of the cavernous room missing one of its massive occupants. This was a table meant for three, not two.

“Alexandra?”

“Yes?” It was only yesterday that Lexi had re-trained herself not to be startled when addressed by an Omega’s booming whisper. Life while away had been decidedly quieter, and yet louder at the same time.

“How does everything taste? I could make you something else, if that’s not done well enough, or if you’re just in the mood for-”

“No, no, don’t be silly. It’s good. I mean, it’s great…” Lexi sighed.

This wasn’t a lie. If anything, she felt bad for underselling it. Evelyn made a mean macaroni dish, and the Alpha had craved the stuff since she first tried it at age ten. Still, after five days back here, it was obvious to Lexi that her foster mother was exclusively making meals she knew the girl loved best as a child. It successfully made Lexi feel at home, but also stranded her between aching nostalgia for the past and bizarre guilt over Evelyn’s obvious 24/7 efforts at apology.

“You’re sure?” the Omega asked.

“Totally. Sorry, I was just thinking. But it’s your mac and cheese. I’m definitely eating everything on this plate and maybe seconds.”

“Good,” Evelyn murmured, her worries sated for the moment. She cleared her throat as softly as possible. “There was something else I wanted to ask you, dear.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. And before I ask it, I just want to emphasize, there’s absolutely no pressure to accept, either in the future or at all. Everything is in your time. Your decision.”

“Sure. What… is it?”

“Well, now that you’re back, and getting settled in again, there are some people who’d love to see you. The question is, would you allow them to come by and visit you? Not willy-nilly without warning, of course. We would plan a time when you’d feel most comfortable,” Evelyn continued. She set her utensil down on the edge of the plate and steepled her long fingers together, resting her chin atop the created bridge. “I know, I know, it hasn’t even been a week. They’ve just been… waiting, I think, for the chance to see you again at the earliest time allowed but, like I said, only when you permit it.”

Lexi nodded. She wasn’t surprised in the least to know there were people itching to come see her and, whether they intended to or not, likely shower her with silent pity until she was submerged. Specifically the residents of this particular jumbo-sized neighborhood who also happened to run the government. It was probably no coincidence Evelyn had been filling Lexi in on what she’d missed in this neighborhood during her time away: who’d gone abroad, who’d built a new city district, who’d married a Beta…

Frankly, Lexi half-expected to awaken after her first night home to find a crowd of well-wishers milling around the living room, feigning like they weren’t there exclusively for her. Omegas had many gifts but, the girl knew, subtlety in their empathy wasn’t generally one of them. Bridget was her lifelong proof of that.

The Alpha assumed her caregiver had already fiercely defended her against any visit requests during the first few days, no matter how benevolently-intentioned, which Lexi sincerely appreciated.

“You mean people from Aegis?” Lexi said at length.

“Mostly, yes,” Evelyn replied after a studious pause. “But it’s by no means mandated by Aegis, if that’s what you were thinking. I wouldn’t allow such a cheap gesture into this house, I promise you, Alexandra. Nor would any of them want it that way. In fact, this was initiated by junior officers. Every person who would step through that door is someone who just desperately wishes to see you again.”

“I know,” Lexi said. Junior officers meant Aegis workers roughly her same age. That idea was at least less intimidating than facing the ancient senior enforcers. Right away, the Alpha had a good guess which young Omegas in particular had spoken to Evelyn.

Certainly, too, she understood that her foster mother would never set her up for some obligatory amends-giving party. The volume of discomfort on both sides at such an event would probably squelch what remained of Lexi’s psyche. Even so, she felt a knot stringing in her gut.

“How… um, how many would come?”

“There’s… a dozen or so,” Evelyn said, bracing herself with a soothing smile. “We could limit that down, if you wanted.”

Lexi mulled. That sure seemed like the right way to reintegrate with society: by playing favorites with her mile-high peers right off the bat. She’d never been, strictly speaking, “close” with any Omegas, other than the Cades, one of whom at this moment was furthest away from home. Bridget had always served as the buffer between Lexi and Aegis’s newest generation when social situations were required. Without her here, the thought of facing them alone was daunting.

“A dozen’s not so many,” Lexi said, only half-fibbing.

Now resolved that she wasn’t eating anything else until the matter was decided, she rose from her miniature table and commenced shuffling the distance to Evelyn’s place setting. She averted her gaze until her foster mother’s gargantuan hand resting by the plate entered her peripheral. The Omega’s long pale fingers retracted on approach.

“Maybe you’d just like to take some time to think about it,” Evelyn said.

The towering woman’s palm sedately overturned until its creased platform faced up, her digits unfurling one at a time so they were laid at Lexi’s feet. Her invitations for the Alpha to board her hand had been less insistent these past five days, but the choice was available near-constantly. It reminded Lexi of the months immediately following her escape from her birth mother twelve years ago. Yet another time in her life that epitomized bitter-sweetness. The girl contemplated the ringed patterns in the flesh of her foster parent’s soft fingertips like the inside of a tree.

Lexi drew breath through gritted teeth. She clambered up and over the malleable plank of Evelyn’s fingers, only feeling the woman’s steady hand ascending when she was fully secured in the warm basin of her palm. The knotting in Lexi’s stomach persisted, but she bit her tongue.

“No, that’s okay,” the Alpha said. “I don’t need time.”

“Are you sure?” Diplomatic as Evelyn had been in her questions, she couldn’t stop a tremor of hope from shading her tone.

“Yes,” Lexi affirmed. The longer she talked, she could feel genuine confidence rising to match her blind gumption. “I think it might be nice. You know, to see people again. I was by myself for so long… without seeing anyone I recognized. It’s probably time.”

It was, Lexi realized now at the exact instant it was too late, probably not the right “time” after all.

Her skyscraping callers trickled in one or two at a time, in intervals of precisely two minutes, as if they’d planned to stagger their arrivals beforehand. Watching the second generation of Omegas slowly crowding the Cade household, smiling and waving up a politely reserved storm at her, the Alpha felt anxiety creeping up her vertebrae a link at a time. What made it worse was that every single visitor was only working to create a quiet, friendly, almost reverent environment. Any ill feeling came entirely from within, and Lexi knew it. No matter her rationalization, though, her insides were in butterfly mode.

She camped over a snowy white tablecloth draped across the kitchen counter, perched up on the roof of her traveling Alpha dollhouse-apartment. An array of appetizers on trays surrounded her. Evelyn had at first suggested parking Lexi’s house on the coffee table, where she wouldn’t have to share the space with the food, but for precisely that reason, the girl insisted on being placed at the counter. Lexi, having spent half the night lying awake in her bed, decided her odds of melting into a puddle of frayed nerves would be lessened if there were social props in Omega-grabbing distance, in this case, the snacks Evelyn had spent all last evening prepping.

Prior to twenty-one months ago, Lexi would have laughed at the idea of communication issues like this, thanks to her bubbly personality and adventurous spirit. But then again, quite a lot had changed since then. A crutch or two would give her a necessary boost. Hopefully.

Once the guests arrived, though, Lexi realized she’d chosen a vantage point that put her much closer to the faces of her gigantic visitors. While the coffee table would’ve had the slightly overwhelming effect of being nearer to the ground and a much fuller view of these tremendous beings, the tradeoff now was that Lexi had set herself up to be painfully visible. She may have been small enough to fit into the palm of anyone’s hand, but the Alpha also knew for a fact that an Omega’s natural sensitivity, combined with their attitude towards any victim of injustice, meant they’d spot a twitch on her little face from a league away.

Lexi at least recognized every Omega that came through the door, even if she didn’t remember all their names. And those whose names she did know were, at most, friends-in-law. The one remaining Omega that Lexi would’ve recognized instantly, apart from Bridget, however, and thus the one she had been subconsciously awaiting, had not appeared yet. Then again, the Alpha wasn’t sure she was up for an encounter with Jenna Reynolds, knowing exactly what the young Enforcer had sitting in a glass cage in her bedroom just a few houses down.

For better or for worse, though, Lexi had yet to speak to more than a couple of visitors, twenty minutes into the little event. After the first passed by for whispered sorries, a soft-spoken young man with doe eyes and kiddish features, the next Omega in line pulled up a bar stool, claiming the spot for the time being. She folded her arms and leaned in close to the roof of the little house for maximum intimacy with the Alpha.

Instinctively, Lexi inched backward, but kept on a brave face. These were good people who only wanted to help, she reminded herself.

“Oh, wow, Alexandra. My God. This whole thing that happened was just so terrible. I mean, it was so awful!” the female Omega uttered, her tone warbling every other line. Seemingly remembering herself, then, she extended a fingertip toward the tiny brunette to shake. “My name is Alexis, by the way. Alexis Banner. I don’t think we’ve really talked before, but maybe you know me?”

“Y-Yes, I think I do,” Lexi said. Her knowledge of Alexis hadn’t come from a face-to-face, though, but somewhere else that the Alpha couldn’t place. After another minute of the girl’s rambling, though, she realized the Omega’s last name was emblazoned on the limitless white banking card Kayla gifted her before her flight.

“I really love your name, by the way. You go by Lexi, right? Lexi. I used to think about going by Lexi when I was little, but you know…” the auburn-haired titaness continued, bopping from one subject to the next without air. Her jaws occasionally shifted, likely pushing a piece of gum between her molars with her tongue. “That’s what I thought of first-thing when I heard about what happened. I thought, what if she’d been me? I thought to myself: if she was me, I’d want to have some time to myself, and I’m so glad you did that.”

“Oh?” Lexi said in a singular moment of quiet.

“Yes! Anyway, really, I’m so sorry about all the horrible things that happened to you back then. You must have felt so sad, Alexandra! I’m sure I would! Sorry, I didn’t mean to say it like that, I just… felt so bad for you, and I’ve been thinking about it a lot, especially after some of the stuff that happened a year ago, I…”

Alexis paused when a hand tapped softly at her shoulder. The effervescent Omega turned around, then stopped her steamrolling apology in its tracks.

“Anyway… what I meant to say is… I’m really sorry about everything that happened, Lexi, and I’m really happy you’re home safe.” Alexis shook her head, clearly stifling further remorseful digressions, but after the glance with the Omega behind her, withdrew. Once Alexis had said goodbye and risen from the chair, the way was cleared and Lexi found herself staring up at the statuesque, bronze-tanned figure of Claire Lindon: her melancholy carefully masked behind a warm smile.

This one Lexi knew.

It wasn’t lost on her that Claire’s older brother Corey, a Beta, had endured an injustice of his own. Albeit one which, Lexi just had to assume, left him with physical scars as well as mental to show for it. It also wasn’t lost on her that Nathaniel, the troubled orchestrator of her downfall in the name of misplaced vengeance, was pushed over the edge upon hearing of Corey’s nightmare. It left her uniquely at a loss for words as Claire converged, when she was already very short on them to begin with.

“Welcome back, Lexi,” Claire said. At first the Omega made a move to occupy the chair just vacated by Alexis, but seemed to make a conscious effort to instead simply lean across the back, giving Lexi a stone’s throw of extra breathing room. Regardless, there was tension evident in Claire’s athletic frame as she loomed at a distance.

“Thank… you.” Lexi renewed her cordial smile. At least she didn’t feel like she was being crowded right off the roof of the dollhouse. Alexis was so close before, the spiced stink of her cinnamon gum still clung to the air.

“How are you feeling?” Claire’s tone was just as focused as her immovable expression. Her hands braced against the countertop lip, her elbows locked, as if physically holding herself back.

“I’m okay. Or, good…” Lexi corrected. “I’m good.”

“There’s nothing wrong with just okay,” Claire said. “Or letting anyone know it, for that matter.”

“Right. I really am… well, I’m better.”

“I’m so glad.” The Omega appeared to be making efforts to relax her stance, semi-successfully. She exhaled, gathering her thoughts, then spoke again: “Lexi, I... know I don’t know you very well. And honestly, I… only know Bridget a little better than I know you. So, I can only understand what happened to you through… others I’ve known. Others who’ve suffered. But, what happened to you was wrong. In fact, it’s vile. It’s not what Aegis represents. Believe me when I say it’s something that we’re never, ever going to let happen again. And I’m truly, truly sorry. About everything.”

Lexi felt her lungs shudder. Hearing Bridget’s name in the same breath as hers, even hinting at what happened in less-oblique terms, had reactivated a few of the tremors the Alpha had lived with for almost two years. However, letting Claire’s words settle, the girl muscled through the involuntary flinch. She clasped her hands in front of her stomach, wringing her knuckles to soothe herself.

“Thank you, Claire,” Lexi said.

“You’re welcome. And, Lexi, please let anyone here know if you ever need something.”

The Omega bowed her head. She reapplied a solemn smile, then arched back to full stature and moved away from the counter. Though there previously were several building-sized individuals lingering behind Claire for their turn, they’d all since retreated back to the adjoined living room. When the stage was reopened, however, Lexi noticed every pair of eyes in the space except Evelyn’s flash to her, before innocently diverting. She even spotted several of them bashfully lurch forward at the same time, struggling to determine who would go next. Anyone holding an appetizer quickly shoveled it down as a distraction from the cumbersome atmosphere.

A boy ultimately made the first move and power-walked across the kitchen to Lexi’s snack-flanked throne before things got any clumsier. The Alpha mentally fumbled, trying to recall his name, before Kyle Rodgers thankfully saved her with a reminder in his greeting. She was glad he availed himself of the refreshments during this most unusual of icebreaker situations, with chewing filling in any bumbling pauses; Kyle was even kind enough to offer a nib of cracker to Lexi on her roof so she could do the same. Notably, he didn’t say the words “I’m sorry,” which the Alpha was grateful for, though he still expressed great regret for what transpired. As he walked away, despite the relative ease of their interaction, Lexi couldn’t help but keep a head count of how many Omegas remained to address her.

Next came Angela, among the youngest officers present, though she still had a height advantage over half the Omegas present, including the boys. The lanky long-haired ginger was sweet and reserved, but she also sounded rehearsed in her delivery of comforting words. Lexi couldn’t blame her in the slightest. She herself had done a bit of that herself in front of the mirror last night, before feeling too silly to continue.

After Angela followed another partial stranger: a mountainous boy who was outmatched in stature by only one other Omega present. Lexi learned his name was Bennett, after being startled at his low-volume growl contrasting his burly appearance. He stood the furthest away of any of her humongous visitors while he spoke, taking pretzels but not eating them.

Then came another face Lexi did recognize. Among her most enduring memories of anyone in this group came from seven years ago, when a panicked Bridget’s computer went dark and seemingly wiped her final semester essay. Practically in tears, her work was rescued when a petite, stammering, hazel-haired Omega named Dawn had brought it back from the dead in under five minutes of single-hand typing. The Aegis tech whiz had since bloomed, though her placid demeanor remained unchanged. She apologized too, even tearing up, but blinking the moisture away before it could fall. This reunion in particular, to Lexi’s shock, allowed her to feel a semblance of real relief.

Following Dawn, the Alpha willed herself to find a mental happy place, and now that she’d had some practice, she was surprised to find it more or less worked. Another ten Omegas filed through, bringing enough palpable good intention to overcome the last of Lexi’s current anxieties. They definitely outnumbered Evelyn’s modest estimate of one dozen well-wishers. Still, Lexi smiled and made empty small talk and shook their fingertips when offered. When things went dead-silent, she crammed some cheese cube slivers in her mouth. It worked.

Once the unorthodox homecoming visit had carried on close to an hour, the Omegas gradually exited the Cade house. Everyone had taken at least one turn to speak to Lexi, some like Dawn approaching multiple times if there was just a smidge of personal history to latch onto as conversation fodder. Eventually even Dawn had disappeared, too, and the Alpha watched the final few stragglers speaking to Evelyn across the room. Just as she assumed her time on this makeshift stage was through, though, Lexi spotted the last Omega rising from her chair in the living room.

Lexi had noticed Melody King, now Melody Lindon as of her recent marriage, the moment she’d entered the house, of course, given she was the single largest Omega that the Alpha had ever laid eyes on: dizzyingly tall, but certainly not willowy, with her figure filled in generously by a lifetime’s worth of sport-sculpted musculature. Aside from Dawn, she was the only other visiting Omega that Lexi had properly spoken to before, if only due to Bridget’s Aegis desk sitting right next to Melody’s.

The honey-blonde moved with surprising grace across the kitchen, her footfalls landing relatively softly, until she reached the counter. Despite this being the highest available forum for Lexi to stand on in the house, short of being marooned atop the fridge, her eyeline just reached Melody’s stomach, tautly wrapped in her Aegis uniform.

“Hey there,” the colossal woman uttered in a hush.

Before Lexi could let the imposing bulwark of the Omega’s washboard-divoted midriff intimidate her, though, Melody swiftly ducked down all the way to her haunches, until her face actually hovered lower than the top of the dollhouse. The smaller girl took a second to adjust to the sight. She peeped over the edge of her portable home, knowing full-well she was staring at a being who probably had the capacity to rip the countertop off its foundation with her bare hands, yet here she was anyway, planting herself lower than Lexi’s feet.

“Hi.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t come over sooner. I just didn’t, well…” Melody continued. “…you know, want to add to your crowd.”

“That’s all right,” Lexi said. She sat on the precipice of the house, letting her legs swing over the side. The instinctive heartrate bump at seeing the hundred-sixty-foot Omega stride across the room calmed almost immediately.

“I’m… also sorry about all the rest of it,” Melody said. “Maybe you’re getting sick of hearing that.”

Lexi shrugged. “It’s been a long time. And a lot of people have had… worse.”

Though Melody had done an admirable job of figuratively shrinking herself, the Alpha still had trouble finding the words. No matter how far she’d run from home, after all, Lexi had seen the avalanche of news coverage over the near-cataclysm her birth mother had helped unleash. Guerilla footage of Melody catching insurgents over that convention center rooftop had played on a loop for a month straight after. She couldn’t help but wonder how difficult it might be for this demigoddess-sized young woman to look at Lexi, the undistorted mirror image of Alma Warren, and not see the face of a culture that tried to wipe out a generation of people. People like Melody’s new husband. In the awkward silence, Lexi suddenly had the impulse to apologize too.

“Congratulations,” she gulped instead. “About your wedding.”

Quietly surprised, Melody cracked a smile. Her cheeks flushed rose.

“Thank you.”

Another pregnant pause ensued. Lexi studied Melody’s countenance, unable to shake the feeling that she was keeping purposefully silent. Having now spent five days with no attempts at extending herself into potentially aching territory, Lexi resolved to go out on a limb. If anyone in the house had a good answer to the question that had been eating her up all day, it was probably Melody.

“Have you seen Bridget?” Lexi said it in one quick breath, afraid she’d croak if she hesitated.

Melody blinked. She had a good poker face; the Alpha could see that much.

“Not for a long while, Lexi.”

“But… did you… before she…”

“Yes.”

“And did you know she was going to…” Lexi carried on. She could feel her breathing getting labored already, which deeply scorned her, as the last thing she wanted was to appear even more fragile, but there wasn’t much she could do about it. “Did you know she was going to leave?”

“I didn’t. Not for sure. I guess I had a feeling.” The Omega’s tone had leveled out at a furtive murmur, her words only audible to Lexi. “Her desk was next to mine. But you know that.”

“Yes. Did she… say anything?”

Melody briefly glanced away from the toy-sized girl on her portable habitat. Her shoulders visibly tensed.

“Please?” Lexi added. “I need to know how she was.”

When the Omega looked up again, brow furrowed and lips pursed, she gently took hold of the counter’s edge with both hands.

“I wasn’t even supposed to work that late, but I went in anyway. I don’t remember why. It was just her there. I think it must’ve been right after you left, because... she’d just spoken to Dr. Everett,” Melody drawled. “I only knew that because I could see something was wrong, so I asked her if I could do anything, and she… sort of fell apart.”

“What did she say?”

“I could only get parts of it, through the… well, you can probably imagine. Bridget wanted to know where you were going, but she couldn’t tell her. But I think the real reason was from what she heard you’d said to Dr. Everett before you left.”

Lexi’s heart crawled up her throat. She wanted to ask for more, but she was already on her way to being a mess.

Melody reared higher toward the miniature house, still never allowing her eyes to ascend higher than Lexi’s. She halted her speech, clearly considering ending it altogether based on the tears welled in the Alpha’s tiny eyes, but proceeded anyway at a lullabied volume: “She knew you said you loved her, and that you called her your sister. I think by the next hour, she was gone.”

Alma Warren awoke with her fists balled hard to her cheekbones. Her ears rang, stinging at the same resonance frequency which had brought her back to consciousness most days for the past year. The high-pitched sound, so precise and cutting, made it difficult to move at first, but the mangy prisoner mustered the energy to drag herself out of bed. Despite so much practice with this particularly punishing sound effect as an alarm clock, it was still tough to keep her knees from wobbling, and the Alpha was already tense enough from fitful dreams that her knees nearly buckled when she stood. Still the ear-slicing waves concentrated on her, and they wouldn’t cease until she was in position, so Alma staggered to a full stand, too proud and filled with rage to let herself show weakness for more than a few precious moments.

Then, doing everything she could to hide the tweaks of brain-wracking pain currently infecting her ears, the woman padded across the spare floor of her cell. Alma wrapped her knuckles in the fringes of her white uniform, rolling them along her ribcage through the fabric. She passed the table and the toilet, arriving at the glass wall which faced the vast space beyond the reaches of her translucent prison. Only when she stood in soldierly posture, eyes up and spine erect, did the sound mercifully shut off.

Through the glass loomed the enormous feminine face which greeted Alma every day. There was no hiding from that gaze. It was a countenance Alma had come to see in her nightly nightmares, which made her even madder, as the young Omega was difficult enough to avoid during daylight hours, let alone her nocturnal subconscious. The same porcelain complexion, the same freckles, the same green eyes that cut almost as deep as the sonic alarm clock, and the same rigid lips keeping robotically neutral. Blinking at the sight of her ward obeying her usual mandate to stand at attention, the twenty-two-year-old Junior Enforcer still held the device aloft, just in case she was given a reason to turn it back on.

Jenna Reynolds lingered in front of her bedroom shelf where she kept her Alpha prisoner, the glass cell resting there like a pet terrarium. While with one fist she none-too-subtly waved the high-pitched emitter around, her opposite hand rested on the shelf’s precipice, occasionally drumming on the glass with her fingertips hard enough that Alma nearly lost balance. The petite Omega rarely budged the portable cell from its position, except when it became necessary to wrangle her guilty captive. When she was first given responsibility for Alma’s sessions and aggressive rehabilitation, following the diabolical woman’s part in a terrorist plot to exterminate Beta schoolkids, Jenna had made sure to choose a place on a shelf without a view to the bedroom window, and even made a secret point of never setting houseplants or much of anything suggesting nature or life where Alma could see it from her cell. These were luxuries that only humans deserved to enjoy, Jenna had concluded on that first day when she received the Alpha for a year of enforcing.

Now, they’d arrived at the end. In three days, Alma would transfer out of Jenna’s hands and into jail for good. Frankly, the Omega had to believe that Alma would be much happier back in the slammer, which was the only real downside of having such total authority over her this past year. It was just a shame, Jenna felt, that a more appropriate volume of consequences commensurate to the woman’s crimes couldn’t be carried out daily from now until her death.

“Wakey wakey. Eggs and bakey,” Jenna droned in a dead monotone. Her thumb clicked threateningly on the trigger to the sound device, which caused Alma’s beady black eyes to dart about, but the Alpha didn’t move otherwise, either out of fear or hateful defiance. “Good morning, little thing. What do you say now?”

“Good morning, Enforcer Reynolds,” Alma said, practically retching over the syllables, but still she watched the device.

“You don’t have to worry about me turning this thing back on, unless you give me a really good reason to. I want you nice and loose today since we’ve got a lot planned, so it doesn’t help anyone if you’re only at 50%.” Jenna said. Her tone brightened slightly, as it was impossible to totally conceal the enjoyment she got from speaking to Alma like this. The Omega set the device down on the shelf beside the cell. “I don’t know if you’ve ever wondered… actually, you probably have wondered, since I’ve used the thing on you over three hundred times now… but I have tested it out on myself too, on an Omega wavelength, since I can’t hear the Alpha setting. That was part of the training. So, you can rest easy knowing that, yes, I am completely aware of how much it sucks when it’s switched on. I hope that brings you some comfort.”

Alma only twitched. The interior of her skull however was alive with borderline-erotic desire for untold acts of vengeance on every god-damned hundred-fifty-foot-tall Omega upon the planet, but none more than this petite ginger demoness who’d haunted Alma’s every hour for this infinite twelve-month period. Years ago, Alma was imprisoned in this same house for the same reasons by Jenna’s mother, who for a long time was the Alpha’s most-hated being on the planet, but the older Enforcer’s daughter had now usurped her. Alma despised everything about Jenna: her oddly-angelic appearance, her demeaning actions, her creative mind, and even her voice, dry and smug. Having spent so much time in the girl’s custody, Alma had come to suspect that Jenna wasn’t a big talker outside of her enforcing duties, yet the humongous bitch overcome her introversion purely to ensure she never had a moment’s peace.

“Cheer up, now. They’re coming to rescue you from me this week, after all, to throw you in a jail where you can’t even see through the walls, so there will be even less for you to look at,” Jenna continued. With both hands free, she walked her fingertips along the cell wall, coming to rest at the upper glass lip. Slowly her palms gripped the box. “But on the bright side, you’ll have plenty of alone time to think everything over. And I do mean plenty, because you’re never going to leave once you’re there. Maybe you’ll even start to miss me, once you get bored enough. How long do you think you’ll last before you wish you were back with me again, little thing?”

The Alpha bowed her head. She was indeed looking forward to being released from the clutches of the do-gooder creep, even if it did mean a lifetime looking at metal walls in solitary. Sometimes she was just surprised the giant girl’s obvious loathing of her had never resulted in an “accident” during a session that either permanently crippled Alma or ensured her sentence in regular prison had a severe internal-bleeding-related time limit.

Then again, they still had today. This was to be her final scheduled session. Anything could still happen. Not that Jenna couldn’t squeeze in some extracurricular torture between now and the day Alma “moved out,” but while the fire-eyed Enforcer’s enthusiasm for Alpha-chastening was insatiable at all hours, she was also a stickler for the rules and regulations. This last occasion spent together, trying to physically force-feed some empathy into Alma’s head over a bunch of three-inch-tall humanoid insects, was going to be something special. She knew it already.

“I asked you a question. Have you finally gone deaf, or are you just trying to add some extra fun to what’s coming later?” Jenna repeated, her timbre back to its usual stone. She leaned in against the glass, making her emerald glare impossible to avoid. “Admit it. You’ll miss me.”
“I’ll die before I want to see your face again,” Alma answered.

Jenna studied her charge, nodded, then withdrew from the wall-sized window. She didn’t bother hiding the smirk forming at the corner of her lips.

“That’s what I thought. Thanks for your honesty. It’s hearing things like that which makes me love what I do,” Jenna remarked. “Especially when I’m doing it to something like you.”

At last the Omega’s hands tugged the glass enough to tip it forward. Clumsily, Alma face-planted on the wall. Wanting to avoid a repeat of the alarm clock, she went obediently limp, allowing Jenna’s outspread fingers to fish down inside and ensnare Alma around the ankles. A thin index finger and thumbpad latched firmly in place. The Alpha was dragged very slowly up the glass incline, far longer than was necessary to do so safely, but the little prisoner knew the Enforcer tended to smile just a little wider if she could make all the blood rush to Alma’s head first. Once out, the dangling inmate’s legs were released from Jenna’s fingers, allowing her to plop into the waiting cup of the Omega’s other hand.

Alma sighed as she looked wishfully to the cushy edge of Jenna’s palm just a stride away. Early in her year sentence, she’d been deceived by the apparent ease with which she could simply leap out of the Omega’s hand to possible freedom while kept here in the open, and had made several attempts to swan-dive off the plank of these giant slender fingers. Each and every time though, no matter how tricky Alma got with her technique, she was re-captured in midair by a swift grab. These little rebellions were always answered with memorable punishment, so by this point, the Alpha had reached the bitterly logical conclusion it wasn’t worth it.

But then again, she was about to go through her last session anyway, so…

“You can try if you want,” Jenna said disinterestedly. She stepped away from the shelf, not even looking directly at the Alpha in her hand. “Long way down. I may be a little on the short side… but I don’t think even you could make it. Either way I’d catch you. And if I have to catch you, I may have to have a word with Aegis about you not being ready for a vacation in jail yet. So, are you feeling lucky today?”

Too defeated to even get satisfaction from resisting her, Alma remained slumped and pouty in the center of Jenna’s hand.

The Omega traveled to her desk across the room and took a seat, setting her palm on its side and unceremoniously dumping Alma onto the table surface. Once the little woman had righted herself, Jenna’s hands rested prayerfully, fingers laced together, within flicking distance of the Alpha. Sitting up straight in her chair, and granting herself a few feet of extra height, the Omega’s lips pursed to an unreadable point, per usual. She looked ready to conduct an office interview.

Most of Alma’s disciplinary sessions began this way, arriving at the desk, all business-like and above-board, whereupon Jenna proceeded to explain what series of humiliating, brutal, and/or disgusting games would be played out as recompense for the Alpha’s crimes against tiny humanity. Then she’d play them out, beat by beat. The towering girl was modestly made-up and dressed well in a springtime teal blouse and dark skirt today, something she could’ve easily worn in a professional setting. Like this was all so legitimate. In fact, Jenna had apparently cleaned up a little more than usual, semi-formal and lightly glammed, seeming to treat this like a graduation day for Alma’s harrowing time in this room.

It made the Alpha even more resentful to see how officially Jenna viewed her job: a job which just happened to involve using her extreme size and strength advantage to illustrate, in practical terms, what it felt like to be a helpless Beta at the hands of an uncaring Alpha. The sight of the bleeding-heart titan made her sick. Her stomach turned; her teeth ground to flats. But through her fury, Alma reasoned she ought to save some vitriol for the actual session, or she’d only drive herself more insane.

“Don’t look so glum,” Jenna said. “Yes, today is technically the final exam of your re-education, but if you do a very good job, there will be a surprise for you at the end. A real one, too, not one of my hilarious gotcha-surprises. So… impress me.”

Alma managed to swallow the snarl she felt brewing, and instead jerked her neck. No promise of later rewards from Jenna was ever good news, even if she claimed the contrary. But the Alpha wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of it working on her, whatever the hell it was. She would have the last laugh.

“Having said that, there is another surprise, and this one you don’t have to wait for at all,” the Omega said. She clutched each fist in its opposite and wrenched her wrists back and forth, cracking her knuckles like she was preparing for a bare-fisted brawl. “Stand up straight, now. I’ve been looking forward to this.”

Amused at this show of intimidation, Alma risked a slap on the wrist by snorting aloud. Was this supposed to scare her?

Ignoring her, Jenna flexed her fingers, then lifted her right hand, and brought it down like a hammer of judgment straight toward Alma. The Alpha flinched to a defensive ball, despite herself, deciding in that split-second that perhaps she’d been right all along about her captor using this final session to turn her into a quadriplegic. However, though the rushing wind from Jenna’s falling palm suggested the impact would be life-threatening at least and liquefying at worst, that hand came to a midair halt a few inches above the cowering little woman, close enough that Alma could feel the heat of her skin. Clawing her fingers, the Omega’s hand started trembling. An animalistic roar tolled in the Alpha’s ears, nigh-deafening, possibly a latent side effect of the alarm clock, but she knew better. Alma had been down this road before, more than a dozen times over the past year. The now-familiar unearthly pressure squeezed down on her in invisible force from Jenna’s outspread hand, though the tiny criminal was kept from splatting face-first on the desk, instead held in place by intangible waves. Puppet strings. It felt a lot like being trapped in the middle of same-poled magnets, repelling one another at the point of contact yet still strangely attracted by the opposite ends.

Alma chomped her upper lip but maintained her composure. She was being compressed again: that little party trick of the Omegas, one of several in their freak-repertoire, which allowed them to temporarily shrink living things. Already she was below the five-foot-tall marker, courtesy of Jenna’s concentration, and still descending slowly. For educational purposes, Jenna had stolen away one or two feet of Alma’s height before, which was certainly a boot to her ego at first, but the blow was softened once the Alpha observed the fact that her Omega handler didn’t come out unscathed, receiving bruises and evident internal pangs. That alone made it worth a minor shrink-spurt, which ended a few hours later anyway when Alma regrew.

Around two-foot-three-inches, however, Alma was surprised to find she was still suspended in the yawning vacuum of dwindling space between the table and Jenna’s comparatively-enlarged hand. This was the lowest she’d ever gone before, and the process only became slower the smaller she got. Then, hearing an involuntary grunt from Jenna, the first ever, Alma chuckled to herself; it seemed this became more painful for the Omega the longer it lasted. Nevertheless, she was slightly unnerved when the procedure continued, until she was the size of a toddler. A while later, an infant. Yet still Alma kept shrinking.

“All right, what the hell is happening?” the Alpha sneered, her voice drowned out by the roar. Either that, or Jenna didn’t care to answer her and risk snapping her focus. The urge to run struck her, but Alma was immobilized in place. She was just under a foot tall now. “Hey, listen to me, crazy. What the fuck is this?”

Above, the Omega gripped her shivering arm with the other hand to hold it steady, though she could only do so much. Red strands of loose hair clung to her perspiring forehead. Her breathing hastened, and she had to consciously slow it down, controlling the influx of sensations, especially the dire pain in her forearm. Below the skin, muscle was being shredded faster than her specialized physiology could repair it, and bruises that began as small shadowy dots over Jenna’s sacrificial limb had grown, turning purple. This was more difficult than the Omega had even anticipated, but she was committed now to see this through.

“Stop,” Alma screeched. She peered frantically around, nearly dislocating her shoulders and hips from the effort of trying to swim out of the shrinking field, to no avail. By her best estimate, she was only seven or eight inches now, and though her body’s diminishment had slowed to a crawl, it was undeniably still taking place. “STOP IT NOW!”

Jenna’s hand overhead, already the scale of a massive king-size mattress to Alma on any given day, had become utterly astronomic. Her every finger was an ancient temple pillar; her palm formed a floating island of flesh. Like a topographical roadmap, formed from peachy dunes, oily ravines, and spiraled print variations. For the first time, when the Alpha looked up at that hand, she realized she felt something new, other than the usual seething hatred for that enormous race of narcissistic hypocrites. Her insides coiled to an existential nexus. Only then did Alma understand where this was all headed.

This soulless tyrant bitch was turning her into the lowest thing on Earth.

At last the roar died to only an ear-tickling echo, the suspending force gave way to normal gravity, and Jenna lurched forward against the desk’s side to cradle and massage her damaged arm. Judging by the bruises spotting her skin, the Omega was in some moderate agony, though her face betrayed only its usual martial stoicism. Her lip quivered, but aside from this, Jenna looked down with only quiet triumph on her handiwork.

And she truly did have to look down, as there wasn’t much left of Alma now.

The shrunken woman squirmed on her side in the fetal position, paralyzed by the dread of what she knew had happened, even though she was still in denial. It simply wasn’t real. There was no conceivable earthly way that Jenna had just made Alma the same measly unholy dirt-dwelling three-inch stature of a fucking Beta. The little beast wanted to implode. She opened her mouth, either to curse Jenna to somewhere worse than hell, or just to scream until her throat drew blood. Neither sound could escape, however, as Alma waged an internal war to preserve the last of her Alpha-born dignity and keep the Omega from claiming victory over her spirit. But right now, she was losing. Alma’s face turned blue from the strain, squeezed like an insect to the point of bursting out through her skull.

Looming high above in her seated position, Jenna only briefly contemplated the charming reality that, at this instant from Alma’s narrowed perspective, the monolithic strawberry-blonde had to appear somewhere in the neighborhood of half a mile tall. She put that fun fact aside, and cast her gaze to her battered arm, still pulsating with the kind of overwhelming and molecular pain that Omegas generally had no need or even method to experience. Jenna’s tongue pressed firmly to the roof of her mouth. A moan molded in her vocal cords, but she bottled it successfully, at last on top of the gnawing feeling coursing through her body.

This was nothing. This was just a single moment, passing, and one that Jenna had concluded she deserved months ago, when she first decided that this dramatic act would serve as the commencement of Alma’s final session. This was hardly atonement: just a pebble in the ocean of her guilthood, for the Beta lives cost over her brash actions during the hostage crisis, and for Vince. Weighing her current suffering against those casualties, and the gaping hole of their loss which still resided squarely in Jenna’s center, she would’ve gladly continued self-destructively compressing Alma until she vanished to nothing at all.

“I think this size suits you much better, thing. I guess it turns out you’re an even lesser creature than I gave you credit for,” Jenna said. Still nursing her compression-arm against her stomach, the Omega brought her other hand to bear over her puny target. This time she didn’t stop at reaching for her. “Let’s see how much you’ve learned.”

Clenching her eyes and mouth shut, Alma tensed every battered muscle in her shrunken body to a brittle knot. She fidgeted weight from one needly leg to the other. Stars still twirled even in the dark behind her eyelids from so much spinning, and her stomach was performing triple barrel-rolls, having come to a forced standstill so quickly after revolving at such a rapid pace. Alma’s body cried out for her to hunch over, to gasp air and let her gut settle, but she dared not fall for the allure of that prospect, since the consequence would be too revolting to survive.

Instead Alma remained as still as she could, with her standing limbs splayed like a scarecrow’s, and awaited while another gooey, phlegm-dotted blob of crystal saliva, cannonballed straight from Jenna’s lips, sailed through the air toward its intended target. The spitball struck with bullseye accuracy, impacting like a rock and bowling Alma’s legs out from under her, but also splattering apart in its plasma-esque form rather than carry enough force to shatter the miniature Alpha’s bones; that would’ve been far too easy. Dense liquid flecked all around the small blast zone, some of it settling over where prior shots had already begun to stickily dry, but the majority of the payload had met its mark.

Knocked on her back, pill-bug style, Alma became awash once again in the fragrant, bacteria-flavored gunk and its many bubbles seeping over her every limited micro-inch. Jenna, bobbing her chin just once in self-satisfaction, mopped the back of her hand across her lips. Then she granted Alma a moment of rest, though the real purpose of this pause was for the Alpha to figuratively-and-literally stew in the fruits of her transgressions, and also semi-secretly, for Jenna to burn this imagery into her mind, since it was to be her last opportunity to bestow this kind of justice on a being so heinous as this one. The Omega yearned to prolong this moment for as long as possible; she would’ve been perfectly happy living trapped in this same instant in time for quite a while, if it meant the inhuman Alpha would be stuck there too.

Alma quivered, hating every drop of spit soaking into her skin, and in turn every bit of her own skin that had been infected with the Omega’s arrogant fluid, though pride didn’t let her respond, either by angrily weeping or screaming in fury. Hands shaking, she pulled apart the saliva clotted over her face like hot taffy, until she had a clearer view upward. From the little thing’s Beta-sympathizing vantage point on the desk, having regrown a little from the compression but still hovering very close indeed to the scale of the three-inch animal she hated most, her righteous enforcer looked to stand somewhere in the dizzying neighborhood of three-thousand seven-hundred feet tall. And the Alpha already thought that the previous fraction of that size was plenty for the abominable dictators. Then again, Alma bitterly admitted to herself that this size surely was a better fit for the egos belongings to those Omegas and their hyper-inflated lovey-dovey theology.

“You know what to do,” Jenna said. Resting her cheek against her softly upturned fist, the freckled monolith of an Omega might have appeared lackadaisical to anyone else, but there was no mistaking this as anything but an order, with the promise of swift retribution for taking it as a suggestion instead. She loudly slurped and collected spit in her cheeks, but didn’t fire. “Up.”

Head pounding, insides spinning so fast she was certain to throw up soon, Alma still did her best to obey and stand to her feet. It wasn’t easy. Despite her bodily ailments, the toughest opposition was physical, in the form of the Omega’s gummy spittle, now draped over the tiny woman in a continuous opaque wad. It had begun to dry almost immediately after landing, making it feel heavier to Alma and thus trickier to overcome. She had experienced a variation on this exercise before, of course, on many prior sessions during this year. It was unpleasant at first, but since it was like playing catch with a medicine ball made of frothy liquid, Alma had learned to steel herself and handle the fired spitballs without being knocked down, even sometimes smiling right in Jenna’s smug face after catching the glob.

However, those occasions were all experienced while the Alpha still possessed her God-given human stature; now, having been reduced to a paltry fragment of that size, even the smaller lumps of Jenna’s saliva were enough to knock the puny thing right over, and not only be laid prostrate by the force of a single hock, but be entrapped there just by the pathetic physics of dribbling throat-juices. Of course, the Omega had become quite good at this spitting thing, even practicing in her spare time, and there were no such thing as “smaller” lumps now.

The backwash-flavored liquid itself didn’t really smell any worse, didn’t hurt any worse when it knocked Alma over, and came no closer to suffocating her with its encroaching filth than it had when she was her usual height. Throughout her criminal career, she had learned to cope with physical tortures designed to haunt every conceivable sense and extremity, and in many ways, this was just another of those.

Rather, Alma was instead finding herself beaten down by something far worse. The knowledge that she, a real person whose natural right to subjugate the lesser class, was being put into the very same position as those pitiful things, and being made the bitch of a young woman’s cavalier spit globule. It was a heavier weight to bear than any amount of saliva that Jenna could produce which, even the crass little Alpha had to accept, was a substantial quantity, not only relatively due to their extreme size difference, but because Jenna was keeping herself consistently hydrated with a water bottle the comparative size of a rocket ship, and maintaining full eye contact with Alma while taking every new gulp to reload her ammo.

“Up,” Jenna repeated.

Alma grunted, wrenching her limbs every which way, and at last breached through the gluey bonds of spit. Wobbling as she clambered to a full stand again, the shrunken woman defiantly stuck out her lower lip and shot Jenna a classic stink-eye, though it wasn’t delivered with the usual unbreakable fortitude. The Alpha, much as she loathed to discover it, felt herself rotting on the inside from this injustice. She would rather have had tar dropped repeatedly on her at her regular five-foot-plus height than to withstand another round of this.

Yet withstand it she would have to, because now that Alma was standing, Jenna was picking up a silver rope off the desktop again. The towering Enforcer let the end dangle near her captive, gently sidling it closer, until the magnet in the end of the line connected with Alma’s customized prison uniform. The cloth and rope united with a soft click, a deceptively stable connection that would be unbreakable for the little woman, especially in her reduced state.

Alma had been surprised the first time Jenna demonstrated the outfit’s magnetic properties, wondering how a beast so colossal and probably-clumsy had managed to insert thin yet powerful magnets into a seemingly ordinary prison uniform smaller than her own bulky fingers. The Omega had then taken immense, crescent-grinning pleasure in informing Alma that this fabric had been specially tailored by a local Alpha-and-Beta couple at their embroidery business. That news had made Alma wail far louder than any of the bruise-inducing punishments Jenna had inflicted that day.

With Alma attached to the magnetic string, her tiny feet left the sticky ground again. Once Jenna had lifted the delicate yet volatile critter a solid ten feet off the tabletop, a grossly sobering height for the cut-down Alpha dangling limply off the end, the Omega pinched the opposite end of the silver line between her thumb and index finger. Then she began to spin it, expertly rotating her wrist swiftly and at an even keel, turning the string into a lasso that spun in wide arcs around the middle, but winnowed on the ends, causing Alma to spin incredibly fast at the exact same point in space.

This act, too, Jenna had become quite adept at with practice, carrying strings around with her in her pocket and twirling them in place of twiddling thumbs, though for what purpose, very few probably accurately guessed, aside from her mothers and closest friends. Now that the passenger on the end of the string was a feathery fraction of her old weight, Jenna could get a truly formidable spin going. In total silence, the Alpha was spun for sixty carefully watched seconds, and at last upchucked the previous meal she’d half-eaten and felt rising back toward her gullet each time they repeated the cycle today. When time was up, Alma was lowered back to the desktop, the line disconnected, and she was left standing amidst the disgusting refuse of her own vomit and Jenna’s cooling saliva.

Feeling dizzier and sicker than ever, but also knowing there’d only be a five second window before the inevitable follow-up, Jenna resumed her scarecrow pose. For the eighth time now was knocked clean off her feet, buried under perhaps the largest and thickest portion of drool yet, suggesting the Omega was in no way starting to run dry. This one was delivered loud and proud, spewed through puckered lips and capped with a sarcastically blown kiss.

At the end of ten rounds, Jenna didn’t order Alma to stand again, and since the Alpha had just finished puking for the third time in what was only the very first “activity” of the day, she laid still, even though it made her nauseous all over again to think about. The gunk from the Omega’s mouth was soaking into her, through the uniform, turning her sallow skin pruny like bathwater. To think of the last time she’d had any fun, back at the Convention Center a year ago, compared to now, Alma practically couldn’t sit still. Luckily, she didn’t have to choose to hold herself steady, because the settling layer of bubble-and-yellow-flecked spittle was keeping her cemented in place just fine.

In her rage-fueled daze, Alma heard the quiet thumping of calm footsteps beyond. Blinking past the saliva forming molasses layers over her eyes, she could no longer see the larger-than-life frame of the visually enlarged Omega, and felt a momentary rush of euphoria at not being directly observed for just a few precious seconds. That break was to be short-lived, though, as Alma knew well, and after less than two minutes the magnet string caught hold of her through the balmy fluid to literally fish her out of the sour mire. Jenna held the string aloft before her eyes, studying the groggy, messy little criminal hanging from the end. With the flat of her pinky fingernail, the Omega batted the Alpha into her opposite palm, where again she took a moment to enjoy the sight of the tiny thing coughing and retching.

Alma felt the tremoring motion of Jenna’s pale palm beneath her gummied back. The shrunken woman’s clothes were sopping now, sticking to her like a second skin, and reeking of the inside of the Omega’s mouth. Every move made her seize with disgust, but the Alpha fought through her fury and kept it bottled, even if that bottle was beginning to crack. She could still scarcely comprehend the moral outrage of being made into a surrogate Beta. As the seconds ticked by, and the cooled saliva thinned to a film around Alma’s body, she became aware then of a pervasive chill settling on her every exposed body part, even while the Omega moved at a snail’s pace. This, she realized bitterly, was what the little runts probably felt all the time.

Having paced several times around her room now, Jenna wordlessly and without expression knelt to the ground in the center of the space, tipping her hand and nudging her prone ward onto the floor. Alma let herself be shuffled around like dice, too focused on regathering her strength for whatever came next. Upon sitting up again, though, the Alpha was struck by the violently-humbling view that lay above her. Jenna was standing half a football field away now, facing the prisoner and gazing down at the speck with mighty arms crossed, somehow glowering without even needing to frown; those piercing irises of hers alone got a lot of caustic mileage.

The tiny woman had stood at the feet of plenty of these gigantic buggers in her time, and come to be bored by it after half a lifetime, but the experience was made freshly harrowing, now lying in the presence of an Omega from this supernaturally-constricted lowly vantage. Try as she might to avoid it, Alma shuddered from toe to scalp while looking on up at the gravely awe-inspiring visage of this deluded, sadistic, dignity-robbing giant who stood very close to three-quarters of a mile tall from the Alpha’s size-distorted viewpoint. There was so much distance and surface area to Jenna’s body, deceitfully petite in proportion to her class, a fish-eyed telescopic effect was actually taking place. This caused Alma to squint and feel as though the top half of the Omega was tapering off to a slender malform, though the parts of her body that were within range of the Alpha acted as a firm visual reminder that this was not the case.

The hateful giantess’s colossal feet, encased in satiny white socks blank as new-fallen snow, pressed together at the heels but slowly fanned out into first position like a gargantuan ballerina. Her toes flared through the meshy material. When Jenna began tapping them on the floor, even with a layer of cloth between to dampen the impact, Alma could still feel the subtle vibration in the ground beneath her, as though something was moving far below the crust of the Earth.

Alma would not be intimidated by this. Would not. Soon enough, once the compression wore off fully, the Alpha would be returned to her rightful size, and the humongous lug would be back to normal too: tall but not too tall, certainly shrimpy compared to others of her ilk, and unable to put lasting fear in Alma’s heart, no matter how hard she tried. That thought alone kept the Alpha strong, though it still couldn’t keep her stupid arms and legs from quivering, and no longer just due to the chill.

Jenna’s toes gingerly drummed the floor for a silent minute. Ceasing, then, she slid both feet in closer, barely picking them up at all, yet exponentially increasing the magnitude of the negligible floor-tremors rocking Alma’s backside. The effect was so resonant to one of Beta-scale, the miniaturized woman had to wonder how Omegas didn’t bring whole city blocks crashing down with just a few stomps. When Jenna came to a stop within touching distance of the pipsqueak, she pressed both insteps together, pointing all ten toes at her charge to form a bumpy wall of white-wrapped extremities.

And assuredly, wall was the first term to Alma’s mind, because from so close up, she could see the hair-fine detail of the fluffy fabric making up the socks, but could no longer see most of Jenna’s towering body past the tall horizon of those digits, like a range of cliffs nearly blotting out the sky. Only the Omega’s deadly-calm face was visible just over the peaks of her big toes, the expression of a living storm just before the next tidal wave.

“You know the drill,” Jenna said. Somehow or other her words still carried tremendous weight, even from so high above, quaking Alma nearly as much as those footsteps had. She was correct in this surmise; Alma had been in this position innumerable times before, albeit while much larger, warmer-bodied, and cooler-tempered. “But don’t get too bored. Sometimes a little variety, like what’s happened to you, is all it takes to make the old feel new again.”

With that, both of Jenna’s big toes lurched forward. They rose lethargically off the floor, silenced in their fuzzy threaded coatings, and reached for Alma. Fixing a toe on either side of the diminutive woman in a tight canyon of socked geometry, both digits crept inward, collecting Alma with an abrasive pinch squarely between where those toes were meatiest in rounded swollen form. They held so firmly to the target that the sock fabric stretched to the point of peach skin-hue straining through the material. Then they lifted up, toes and Alpha in tow.

Normally when the time for this particular session-activity arrived, Alma felt like she was being roughhoused by a couple of overstuffed punching bags: restrictive, uncomfortable, but manageable. On those occasions, it was gratifying to be able to resist, albeit pointlessly, and still feel the fabric and flesh beneath indenting softly to her angry fists, even if fighting couldn’t free her; it was a sign of some vulnerability in the Omega, a microscopic victory for Alma.

At her compressed stature, though, this was more like being clasped between immense boulders in a snowy avalanche careening. White fluffy walls, muggy and fragrant of sour jogging insoles, clamped their way in and closed off the view of anything else. Bulging mass seemed to inflate from both sides as Jenna’s toes ventured ever-closer together, with the tiny Alpha sandwiched between. No part of this smothering posture made Alma feel the least bit in control like she usually did, or like she’d be able to withstand it if Jenna crammed her toes too close together. It had to be incredibly difficult for the Omega to even feel the mosquito-ish form trapped between her feet, let alone know how hard to press. How would she know when it was too much? The sudden possibility that she might now be squeezed and killed by an Omega’s big toes, of all things, just because the over-confident idiot was such a glutton for punishing in cruel and unusual ways, revived Alma’s nausea. That, and the fact that after Jenna’s toes had lifted off the ground again, they began to bob, jumping like synchronized gymnasts, bouncing from the floor to a few feet up in the air, which was more than enough to shake up Alma’s insides.

All the while, the rest of Jenna’s body did not move. Arms at her sides, breathing as slowly as though she was asleep, the Omega kept her neck mildly craned toward the floor to witness her handiwork, even though Alma had vanished between the folds of sock and muscular big toes. Jenna’s heels stayed rooted to the floor, the act entirely piloted by the regimented up-down wallop of those toes, and the steady arching of her soles to gain extra height. Hitting her rhythm, she began to rock all the way from the heel to the tips of her toes, maximizing the range of Alma’s rise and fall, but also speeding up accordingly.

A quicker pace meant more-per-second of the thudding, discombobulating impacts when Jenna’s toes smacked the floor and shot back up again in the same fluid motion. Normally, while gripping the woman between her socked feet, the Omega got to savor her sickened reactions, and feel her thrashing limbs. She had neither of those entertaining side-effects to enjoy now, since Alma was both out of sight and far too weak to so much as budge a thread in those socks, let alone the beefy globes of dexterous might just inside them. But what Jenna lost in those delights, she gained in the surefire knowledge of Alma’s anguished new perspective.

The Alpha was flummoxed by sensory contradictions. The pure-white fabric allowed light through the dense tufts, even though it blocked the view beyond; whenever Jenna’s toes came down, increasing the surface area of big-toe flank squeezing the shrunken creature between them, all light was shaded instantly to blind darkness. Worse, the transitions happened so fast now, while the Omega showed off such speedy athletic prowess in so small a region of her massive form, Alma felt she was on a verge of an epileptic reaction.

And that was only if the olfactory clash didn’t get to her first instead. Omegas didn’t exactly sweat much, superhuman as they were, but even they weren’t immune to certain mortal intricacies when sampled from such intimate proximity, as Alma was now while body-locked between giant toes. It took a lot of energy to power an organism this enormous, and it was evident in this funky void that a coat of filth and skin-oil had comingled, hardening in the very fibers of the sock; in answer, however, there was also a pungent aroma of perfumed cleaning product as well, practically stronger than the opposite odor, and frankly, Alma would’ve been happier with the acrid smell of sweat than this chemical mixture. She wanted to cough on every supplex, but had to resist, for she had such limited air already, and so instead endured the peppery aura in her gullet with each burdened inhale.

As well, the rapid arc of Jenna’s toes offered both a numbing clench when she struck the floor again that spun Alma’s brain in a blender and emptied her lungs, followed up by a gentler hold during the split-second rise that ironically allowed sensation to flood back through the tiny prisoner’s body, and oxygen to flow, but also for her synapses to register the blunt-force trauma. The suffocating texture around Alma was soft as a downy pillow at some instants, then stretched raw and thin, even rug-burning, in others.

The experience was a whole new animal from the usual arrangement spent at her former size; this was the mental and physical equivalent of drowning without dying, falling without landing, of feeling a fluttery itch on one’s skin but being unable to scratch it for a year. At some point, Alma became aware that she was involuntarily moaning in protest from somewhere deep and primal in her gut; she quickly silenced herself, her pride laced too tightly in her bones to allow Jenna to hear these mewling reactions, but it happened again minutes later. A noise like a dying animal’s, somewhere between a gag and a squeal, kept pumping out of her tiny vocal cords. The Omega’s toes had taken such a hold on Alma, they could evidently squeeze out the subliminal cries the Alpha was, previously, strong enough to keep tucked inside herself.

God knew how long Jenna let this phase go on. The enforcer had to be tuckering out her feet and toes now, the Alpha bitterly thought, but the young woman sure didn’t show it, in fact only hastening the longer they went together. Sometime in the dizzy interim, Alma lost the rest of her lunch, which did nothing to improve the quality of the claustrophobic, balmy, throat-burning ride. She was drenched in her own sweat and bits of upchuck, glossed in with a sealant of dried Omega saliva, dotted with tiny bruises, and so turbulently woozy that the little woman might’ve keeled over unconscious if she was made to stand on her own two feet and bend over now.

When at last, and all at once, she was granted this exact opportunity, and Jenna’s toes abruptly parted to liberate the comparatively crumb-sized monster, Alma landed cat-like on all four limbs. Through the exhausted haze, she couldn’t help but chuckle to herself at her steeliness, right before she rolled forward and conked her head hard on the floor due to the sensory equivalent of jumping off a moving roller coaster caught up to her. The Omega’s bulbed toes retracted just far enough to give Alma her recuperation space, but remained penned on either side of her, forming an impassible gulch of white. Massaging her aching temple, Alma was surprised to find her body was, all things considered, still in working order after that repugnant ordeal. Maybe the sky-high bitch wasn’t the mistress of torture she thought herself to be. The tiny Alpha laughed as loudly and theatrically as she could muster.

“Don’t be too proud of yourself,” Jenna said, crouching down again. “My little trick doesn’t give you the constitution, the vulnerability of a Beta. Just the size. You’re no tougher than you ever were.”

Alma grimaced hard at this information, but kept her head down, not letting it show. She tried closing her eyes, but this only made the drunken dizziness worse.

“And frankly,” the Omega continued. Her countenance had yet to crack, but her words burned hotter the longer they streamed. “I don’t think you’d have what it takes to last more than a day existing under the conditions that Betas have to, just to get through the weeks and months and years of their lives. Can you imagine having to rely on the kindness of family, friends, and strangers who just happened to arbitrarily have such a strength and size advantage over you, regardless of whether they deserve that advantage or not? Can you imagine waking up for the first time to a world that, only a generation or two before you, was structured in every way to keep you down, to exterminate you? Can you imagine what that’s like, to know there’s still walking-talking fly-shit relics like you crawling around the Earth, with the sole purpose of making life hell for them, when they’re already up against a wall from the day they’re born?”

The Alpha panted, clutching her ribs, and turned herself over to face the gob-smacking view of her towering custodian again. Jenna dipped lower, bringing her eyes a paltry ten feet from the ground, just close enough that her face could block the rest of Alma’s view.

“Can you imagine…” Jenna murmured. Her bulky thumbpad came to bear above the Alpha, but didn’t touch. “…how many of them would be better off, would be alive today, if someone had just played the numbers game and done with you what needed to be done? And after all that, can you imagine the amount of willpower I’ve needed this whole damn year to keep from giving you the kind of mercy you deserve?”

The Omega’s thumb came down now. Aiming squarely for the dinky prisoner with the center of the spiraled oval of her fleshy fingertip, Jenna applied adequate pressure for the outer rings of her fingerprint to touch the floor, while at the center, tender skin molded in a cookie-cutter shape around the snow-angeled form of Alma. Having reached and acknowledged the exact quantity of her strength needed to completely bury the tiny woman in the meat of her giant thumb without hurting her, Jenna kept right on adding pressure.

Below, Alma was plunged into soundless, airless, darkness. There was none of the chaotic variety of before, where at least between Jenna’s toes, the woman’s unique troubles were jumbled every half a heartbeat. Now there was nothing except the heady lotioned aroma of the flesh pad and the slick concentric rivets of that fingerprint like wide ripples in a lake. With such an extreme size disparity between the two women, the texture of Jenna’s skin was tougher, yet still managed to be soft and almost doughy, though that effect was severely dampened the harder she pressed. Muscle burgeoned beneath the delicate peachy exterior. In time, the Alpha could no longer distinguish the terrain of flesh above and round her from the hard floor at her back; everything was unforgiving, all-encompassing, cutting off her five senses one at a time.

For the first thirty seconds, counting to distract herself from the mounting discomfort and soreness, Alma blew all this off as an empty threat. Jenna talked a big game, especially during the early days of this internment together, firing off all manner of poisonous words, then pretending to follow through on those promises of definitive violence, stopping just short of delivering on them. Lately, though, she’d mainly let her actions do the talking, and only today, the giant had been chattier than she had for any of their sessions in a couple months. So naturally the Alpha was inclined to see this as one last cruel gag. One final chance to fake-out that yes, this time, Jenna really was going to do the deed. If Alma wasn’t so immobile and helpless now, she’d have scoffed aloud.

Then, when the first sixty seconds passed, and there was no sign of relenting, the microbial possibility that this might not be a joke occurred to Alma, if only half-heartedly.

There was no way to know how long exactly the Alpha had been smushed under Jenna’s thumb now. If this session was measured in hourglass sand, someone had tipped the thing on its side just as the last grains were about to trickle through. The lack of oxygen couldn’t be relied couldn’t on as a yardstick, either; Alma had a talent for holding her breath even before her arrest at the convention center last year, having endured chokeholds and dunk tanks alike, though she’d had to become better at it in Jenna’s care just to avoid passing out every other day from their sessions. She felt now that she was just recycling the same stale last gasp in her throat, while the rest of her was bent like putty under the weight of the Omega’s single finger.

What if this was it? Maybe it was the fact that her brain was being pressed into the second dimension right now, along with the rest of her, but Alma’s fever-dreaming mind drifted to the last words she’d heard before being made into a singularity under the Omega’s oppressive thumb. The Alpha would’ve preferred different thoughts other than Beta-related chit-chat to occupy her final moments, but this was what she had. The question of feeling powerless, fearing what might become of her just for living life her own way, was an enraging irony to Alma, because it was how she felt living in the shadow of Omegas, unable to follow the natural law ingrained in her psyche and ancestry. Oh, how she wished to throw those ideas back in Jenna’s big fat face. Was it a crime to squish bedbugs crawling through one’s own property, to tread on blades of grass when stepping out the door? Suppose there was an even larger class than Omegas: an Omega to Omegas, who reshaped the world to fit their own ethical vision, would Jenna still be so quick to judge the affairs of lowlier creatures?

At the base of her hatred, the Alpha couldn’t shake one last thought from her mind, now that she’d been reduced to something approximating a Beta’s size. Was it not a charity to put the things out of their misery, when so many out there wanted them dead, and their every move chilled them to the bone? Look how easy it was to strip her free will; who wanted that eventuality hanging over their heads? In this moment, with her last gulp of dead air about to run out, the little woman actually found the one and only point of empathy she possibly could have shared with the cursed runts. It wouldn’t be so bad to fall “asleep” now, especially if it meant she didn’t ever have to look up at another damned Omega.

Then Alma left the void.

“That, right there, is about how much willpower it took me,” Jenna said, answering her own question at length. Her thumb withdrew, curling and wrapping over her balled fist until her knuckles creaked. “Yes, it may shock you to know that I have learned a thing or two during my time with you, scum-stain. Willpower is the big one, obviously. But also a saint’s patience. Not to mention, second only to willpower, you’ve taught me creativity, the improvisational kind that even sixteen years of violin lessons couldn’t fully prepare me for. Because there was no way the type of enforcement I’ve used on any of the others before you would’ve been enough. I had to write my own rulebook in your case. So… congratulations, I guess.”

Pure atomic rage resuscitated Alma all on its own, even before her shriveled lungs refilled. First it hit her that she had to stare up at that victorious half-smirk on those giant pink lips yet again, then the double-whammy revelation that her own brain had just come to peace with the idea of dying in exchange for never witnessing this vision again. Foam dripped over the Alpha’s bared teeth.

“I can see you’ve got a lot to say to me, and you’ll still have your chance, but hold that thought for now, if you’d be so kind,” Jenna instructed. “I need to take care of something real quick.” The giant’s fist reopened to another claw, coming down over Alma much in the manner it had to commence this day of torments. There was no period of confusion this time for the Alpha; she felt the compelling magnetism of this wretched process taking hold, suspending her and once again shrinking her down. She understood.

As before, Jenna clutched her trembling arm, her skin still healing from the last compression, and allowed herself to be wounded a second time for the sake of shaving off Alma’s already-miniscule stature back to the absolute minimum. Again the Alpha tried to savor the reality of her torturer’s self-inflicted pain, but somehow the little triumph wasn’t as sweet, after the series of events she’d just gone through. What had Jenna done to her, Alma furiously pondered, that she couldn’t even feel much joy now in seeing an Omega in agony?

“Oh, little thing, you don’t know how lucky you are that this hurts so bad, or this would’ve been how we started every single morning, afternoon, and night for the last year,” Jenna said, wincing. She sat cross-legged on the floor now in front of her newly shrunken charge.

Alma hadn’t lost more than a couple inches this time, as the process slowed the smaller she got, but even such a meager amount lost, weighed against her pathetically small total, redoubled her perspective scale of Jenna. It only added a dash of mercury to her broiling insides.

Cradling her blotchy forearm again, and twitching every few seconds, Jenna marathoned through the pain with a smile on her face. Then, collecting her bearings, she wiped away a visible gleam of trauma-induced sweat from her forehead. Her tongue clucked against her palate, perhaps a coping mechanism.

“Full disclosure,” Jenna said, still catching her breath. She began methodically rolling up the sleeve of her semiformal teal blouse over the arm she’d just used, bunching the ruffly fabric, until it perched atop her shoulder. “There’s not much point in me doing that to you over and over again just for the sake of seeing you tiny and powerless. I’m not enough of an idiot like you to fail to recognize how the world works. For example, I know you’re going to grow back to your regular size in a few hours, and I’ve had to learn to live with that, stupid as it is. That’s just a downside of life. Another one is that I usually have to push myself hard to work up a really good sweat. However, there are other benefits to compression, aside from putting you in another person’s shoes, so to speak. We did enough of that this year even without compression that I think you get the point of what it’s like being in a shoe while someone else wears it. No, I didn’t do this again just to shrink you. I did it because…”

Letting the view do the last of the talking for her, Jenna shakily lifted her hurting arm. This revealed, to her tiny audience below, a full picture of her armpit, soft and clean-shaven and blanched paler even then the rest of her porcelain-freckled flesh that usually had at least some sun exposure. This patch of unblemished skin shone, practically glimmering, and Alma realized it was because of greasy sweat smeared across her flesh. It thickly coated the whole area of her pit; already the stuff was traveling in running beads down the giantess’s bicep as residual from the body-straining effort to physically shrink another human being.

The Alpha picked up the briny odor like descending morning mist. Even from this far below, it was tenfold the potency of what she’d experienced between Jenna’s socked toes, and that was with her face being ground into the stagnant threads. Before this moment, Alma wouldn’t have guessed Omegas, so perfect and idealistic, would’ve been capable of producing a stench like that. She’d noticed Jenna sweating before, sure, even experienced some of its whiffy charms when their sessions intentionally took place during the ginger giant’s workout routine. This was still in a new league. It was gratifying to see, or rather smell, such a humanizing flaw, yet at the same time, the Alpha knew she couldn’t celebrate.

Jenna didn’t speak again. Instead, she stuck her tongue out as far as she could like a happy dog, and raked her thumbpad along its sticky tastebud-pocked curve. After two more strokes for good measure, the astronomic strawberry-blonde lowered her hand in the shape of a thumbs-up toward her captive, who was already so repulsed she was starting to subconsciously wish she was being smothered under a finger again, where at least she wouldn’t have to smell such a vigorous sweat.

The Omega only had to brush her spit-slicked digit along the dot-sized woman and Alma adhered swiftly to the gooey surface, in the way of a stray fleck of food discovered loose on clothes and too pesky to be collected any other way. The method worked even better than the magnet rope. Jenna’s hand rose slowly again, her thumb pointed intentionally down, so the Alpha was forced to watch the ground spinning out from under her while stuck on the girl’s fresh saliva like flypaper. At the height of her rage, nausea, and existential dread, Alma allowed herself the luxury of a scream.

With her damaged arm lifted over her head as high as it could reach, still trembling but nonetheless holding firm, Jenna’s opposite hand swooped the Alpha in toward her destination. The closer she came, Alma’s nose and throat started tingling, then stinging, at the salty pestilential smog wafting down from the source. It occurred to the little woman that this bodily excretion would be sustainable if she still stood over five feet tall, even in the presence of an Omega’s voluminous sweat. But she wasn’t five-foot-something, she was three measly inches, and that meant the musky odor was inflating her lungs and shooting up her nostrils like pepper spray.

Once in position, there was no more hesitation. Jenna thrust her thumbpad into her own sweating pit. Vile, miasmic flavors sent Alma on something equivalent to a trip from back-alley narcotics. Rancid balm scorched her throat, rich and almost primordial. It was an odor aged like fine wine and just waiting for the chance to come out now, as the impeccable hundred-foot-plus specimen only occasionally had cause to truly sweat, not just fashionably perspire, even under duress that would’ve caused buildings to split.

That sweat, slippery yet in places almost jellied as melted lard, caked itself over Alma’s body with each minute smudge of Jenna’s finger in all directions. The Omega spared her hostage no square millimeter on the tour, shoving and massaging her into every spiced crook and every skin cell. This experience of being caressed through the titaness’s hellish fluid was a repulsive symbol, an almost-living embodiment of every foul notion in Alma’s skull projected now on her; the putrid stench and the zesty globules unavoidably water-boarding the little woman’s throat matched the vitality of her own immortal wrath. But for what may well have been the very first time, beaten down from every possible angle of her mind and body, Alma was losing the fight in a way that even she had to acknowledge, if only for a second, but that was all it took.

“Your surprise is coming soon,” Jenna announced, stopping the onslaught for just long enough to be heard. “All you’ve got to do is keep breathing, and she’ll be here before you know it. Trust me. You won’t want to miss it. So keep that little chin up.”

The Omega was gentle now, in bracing contrast to the force she’d previously used to nonlethally squash Alma into the floor, and there was no question in the Alpha’s mind of why. None of this was meant to demonstrate Jenna’s physical might. She’d done plenty of that, more than enough for Alma to never forget. There was no need anymore. Rather, this was the capstone, or so the tiny woman desperately wished to believe, because having reached a zenith of catastrophic emotions, it didn’t seem feasible that the Omega had any worse tricks in her rolled-up sleeve. Whatever this taunted surprise was, if it was in fact for Jenna to finish what she’d started shortly before with her thumb, then Alma would have been content.

Lexi’s finger was paralyzed in midair between the doorbell and her pre-hyperventilating self. This was a much tougher gesture to make than the one she’d embarked on a couple weeks earlier, arriving back in the city and crossing the threshold of her home for the first time in so long. That reunion with Evelyn, while clumsy and painful at first, had swiftly turned joyous, in stark contrast to the meeting she had planned for this afternoon. Less than two years had passed since Lexi saw her surrogate Omega mother upon her return, and already that pent-up time made the transition hard. Today, she was breaking a nearly twelve-year drought of visits.

And her blood-mother Alma was, famously, a bit less warm than the loving titaness she’d now spent the majority of her life calling her parent instead.

Exhaling, Lexi’s clenched lungs giving way to a shiver that split her spine. She squinted at the Reynolds’ household bell, just a simple coin-sized button made for Alpha use, so easily pressed, but one that she couldn’t unpress after she stuck her fingertip against it. Keenly aware that she still had the choice of backing off now and nonchalantly power-walking back to the Cade house down the block, avoiding the need to see her incarcerated mother at all as she was transferred from Enforcer custody back to a traditional super-max, Lexi heard the thunderous latch-turn of the Omega entryway before she could make up her mind to flee or not.

Jenna’s gigantic freckled countenance peeked around the side of the frame over the Alpha walkway. The petite colossus opened the enormous swinging barricade and fully emerged onto the stoop before saying a word or even making a readable expression, though her green irises fixated on the visitor the whole time. She crossed one arm over her chest, the other propped up to support her cheek against an upturned fist, and studied Lexi below with a Mona Lisa smile while contemplatively thumbing the corner of her lip.
“Hello, Alexandra,” Jenna said. “Welcome. I’m glad you decided to come after all.”

Lexi didn’t recall mentioning the fact that she almost didn’t come when she, with Evelyn’s support, rang up the Junior Enforcer to request visitation with her terrorist mom. But then again, the fragility of her attitude was likely implied, and by the way Jenna’s eyes were picking Lexi apart, friendly though her face was otherwise, the Alpha knew the sharp young Omega could probably smell her fear, even standing so much higher.

“Jenna. Hi,” Lexi said, feeling the words already stunted in her throat. Nerves made her repeatedly comb the same tuft of hair over her ear. “I, um… I appreciate you, you know, making an exception for me like this, letting me come see her. I know it’s… kind of unusual to do this for people serving time with an Aegis… person, especially considering, well, who she is, but-”

“Nonsense. Alma falls under my jurisdiction until the next stage of her sentencing, which means all her activities, recreation, and rehabilitation are at my discretion. And I think it’s fair to say you’ve earned the right to dictate when, where, and how you see her from now on,” Jenna answered with a professional curtness that Lexi had learned from her brief interactions with the Enforcer was just her own personal form of kindness.

Lexi noticed something else too about Jenna that unnerved her at first, but in the intervening moments since the door had opened, soothed her anew. In the last couple weeks, most of the looming Omega eyes gazing down on her did so with pity, not always necessarily remorse, but still a cloud of murky sadness that made the Alpha want to vanish out of their sight. There was none of that in Jenna’s imperious stare now. She was genuine in her belief that Lexi deserved to see her mother, yes, but there was no lamenting, no heart-bleeding. In fact, Lexi was pretty sure she saw anticipation in the Omega’s pale sphinx of a face. Like she’d been waiting for this moment, and was doing her very best to maintain a cool, righteous façade.

“Thanks,” Lexi said, not quite certain she was grateful or not, but either way was strangely calmed by an Omega not treating her like a teacup with a hairline fracture.

“Well. We don’t have to stand out here making small talk all day, unless you want to,” Jenna said, ever to-the-point. “You’re here for a reason. Are you ready to see her?”

“Oh. Y-Yes. I mean. Yes.” Indeed Lexi was prepared for some dawdling before the main event, but knew full-well that delaying would only make it harder to rip off the bandage.

“All right, then. Can I give you a lift?” Jenna’s hand flattened on the Alpha path, her fingers unfurling into a gangplank toward her creamy palm. “Not that I doubt you can walk there yourself, but I plan to make this as smooth as possible for you.”

Lexi lifted her leg over Jenna’s padded fingertip, but again felt the strings of hesitation pulling her back. She’d also subconsciously expected to have the long stroll along the Reynolds’ home’s well-trodden Alpha footpath to reach her mother’s enclosure, probably in the Enforcer’s bedroom, like where Lexi had been kept under Bridget’s watch. That walk would’ve been lovely for procrastinating seeing the twisted, fury-entrenched portrait of her mother. Again, though, she concluded that the home stretch from here to Alma’s cage could and would make Lexi slow until she eventually considered turning back. Determined now, she set foot on Jenna’s hand, using the Enforcer’s raised thumb as a bannister while the platform lifted gracefully up.

The ride through Jenna’s home was smoother than any automated tram, the Enforcer’s steadiness practiced and talented as the most experienced Omegas that Lexi had ever allowed to hold her. Still, she found herself unconsciously wrapping her arm around the giant’s sturdy finger for support the further inward they traveled, her wobbliness exclusively owing to the sensations bubbling in the Alpha’s stomach rather than the humongous lawwoman’s gait, which was perfect. They passed through the hall, past the kitchen and into the living room, a mirror-image of the layout from the Cades’. The place was clean, almost militantly so, colorful but with little extraneous decoration, though Lexi’s main point of comparison was Evelyn’s plant-and-tchotchke-strewn habitat that made it look more like a multi-tiered jungle than a house. Then again, Lexi knew Jenna had a soldier and a Senior Enforcer for parents, so a certain modicum of order was to be expected. She only hoped the serene, minimalist vibe of Alma’s surroundings for the past year since her lock-up had allowed her to mellow. But she sort of doubted it.

“Here we are,” Jenna announced, probably needlessly as she pressed a hand to her bedroom door, though ironically the sound of her voice did cut through Lexi’s stagnant trance. She didn’t open it right away. “Just so you know. I intend for her to stay in this house until the moment her time with me ends, but aside from that, I’m not going to discourage however you choose to… communicate with her.”

Lexi picked up on the sly curl in Jenna’s voice, but wasn’t sure how to reconcile it with the eagerness she’d seem brimming in those haunting emerald eyes upon arrival. What was the Omega saying, exactly? The Alpha was too preoccupied with her own volcanic anxiety to even think to clarify.

“Okay,” Lexi said. “Will there be, um, a window or something between us?”

“If you want there to be. Or you can be on the same side of the glass.”

“Y-Yeah?” She gulped, feeling stupid to even wonder about her security when she was currently sitting in the palm of the Omega whom she understood to be the iciest, most scrupulous of all the Junior Enforcers in this city, but she still had to ask. “Is it… safe? She won’t, I mean…”

“No, she won’t attack, or do anything to hurt you, Alexandra. I give you my word on that,” the Omega reassured, and though Lexi hardly knew Jenna, the emphasis in her words was all but engraved. She wouldn’t get a better guarantee than that.

Crazy as it seemed, a part of Lexi did desire to close the distance between herself and her estranged maniac parent, for reasons she couldn’t identify now other than a macabre kind of fulfillment. A need to know she wasn’t still the same scared little girl watching Alma carve up victims. Still, Lexi had to remember that this was a woman who broke out of prison and engineered a machine that almost led to the largest Beta casualties since before Aegis took power. It was like asking to be put in a pit with a starved lioness, especially after so long away from her cub. Knowing the things Lexi knew about her mother, it didn’t seem insane to think that the woman might want to put her daughter out of her “misery,” after the system had corrupted Lexi into feeling compassion for three-inch-tall people.

“Are you… going to be in the room, too?” she asked.

“If you want me to be. But I leave that up to you.”

“…oh.”

The Omega was certainly putting a lot of faith in Lexi, willing to place her in the same room with Alma and turn a blind eye to their interaction. Maybe Jenna believed the Alpha was more capable of defending herself than she looked. All things considered, her veins did course with the same life force that drove such a hateful, violence-mongering animal: an animal who just happened to be waiting on the other side of this door, a few Omega-scale paces away, and boxed inside a state-of-the-art cell.

“I think I’m ready now,” Lexi said, and it seemed Jenna was waiting for this, as the towering warden silently pushed the barrier and brought them into her room. Sure enough, perched on a shelf of the opposing wall, was a glass tank exactly like what Lexi lived inside for an excruciating couple of weeks two years ago, though this one appeared to have even fewer furnishings than hers. Still, despite the stripped-down accouterments and asylum-white color that coated every tiny surface of the micro-prison, Lexi couldn’t see her mother inside it anywhere.

She stepped near the edge of Jenna’s hand and narrowed her gaze. Nothing. Not even as the Omega strode closer to the cage did Lexi spy anything remotely Alma-shaped, at least as she knew her. Then, just as the giantess came to a stop at the shelf, her hand leveled in front of the glass, a certain notion occurred to the Alpha that both made her skin crawl and, against the odds, allowed some of her tension to melt away. She hadn’t seen her mother yet, nor received an explanation from Jenna, but she already understood why she couldn’t see her right away.

“What would you like to do?” Jenna asked her passenger. “Inside, or out?”

“I think… inside is fine,” Lexi said, turning up to look the Enforcer in the eye.

“All right. And do you want privacy? I can stand right here, I can sit at my desk, or I can leave the room.”

“Maybe it’s all right if you, um… leave the room. If that’s okay,” Lexi stammered, then added as she felt Jenna’s hand lifting to carry her over the wall of the cage: “But could you leave the door open?”

“Oh, I was already going to,” Jenna replied, just as self-assured. Her palm lowered into the glass arena, her fingernails tapping flush with the floor so Lexi could disembark. The staid reserve of her voice was abruptly tinged with eerie gladness, then, when the Omega addressed her prisoner for the first time since entering the room: “Alma, oh, Alma! That surprise I promised you earlier is here, and it would be a real huge shame if you were rude enough not to come show yourself, when she came all the way over to see you.”

Lexi stood now in the translucent room her mother had called home for a year, her eyes darting around between the few living amenities in search of Alma, but to no avail. If what she thought had happened was true, and it seemed it was, the snarling rail-thin brute she expected to find greeting her with prejudice and animosity had understandably been blunted into a humbler, ashamed, lower version of herself. Literally. Because if there was one thing Lexi knew her mother had to hate more than Betas on Earth, it was the very idea of becoming like one herself.

“Ah, there you are. I see you under the bed. You may be small, but you’re not that small. People can still see you, whether they want to or not. I’d think that would make you happy,” Jenna boomed, hardly bothering to hide her enjoyment now. “You’re going to make a liar of me, Alma, if it looks like I haven’t taught you the importance of respect and obedience to authority in all this time we’ve spent together. Alexandra is here. Come out and see her.”

“It’s okay,” Lexi reassured the Omega, raising a feeble hand. “I… can take it from here. I mean, if that’s-”

“No, you’re right. This is your time now, Alexandra. I’ll be back soon to check on you. Otherwise, just give me a buzz, and I’ll be over before you can let go of your phone,” Jenna said. She shook her head, and true to her word, pivoted almost immediately.

Her fingers brushed the bedroom doorknob, but left the way wide-open, disappearing from sight around the corner and, Lexi was sure, lingering practically right outside the door. Which was fine. In fact, even knowing her mother had been reduced to a relatively harmless fraction of her former self, in body and in soul by an Omega’s mysterious space-compressing powers, Lexi still had to convince herself she wasn’t currently locked in a cage with a dangerous creature. A fire ant could be crushed underfoot, but a few bites from its pincers could still render her helpless.

“M-” Lexi started to speak, but swallowed the word Mom before the single syllable could choke unnaturally out of her lips. Calling Alma by her first name seemed alien, too. There was no name for her birth-parent now, though Lexi had already come to terms with that fact long ago; she’d simply never had to actually address that nameless evil until now. Deciding she didn’t have to worry about such formalities, though, the Alpha crept down to her haunches to peer under the bed. “Hello? Where are you?”

Sure enough, with her cheek pressed to the floor, Lexi could see the woman clearly. There, shrouded in the thin shadow of the white bed and curled into a frightful huddle like so many Betas she’d personally tormented and extinguished through the years, was Alma Warren, shrunken to the size of a doll, maybe ten inches tall at best. Lexi had expected to find her mother miniaturized, of course, maybe down to a foot or two tall, and so was shocked at the pitifully miniscule creature she found hiding under the bed like the monster she was. While the Alpha was used to seeing Betas in her everyday life, the fact that Alma was technically triple the size of one did nothing to lessen the fact that she looked incredibly small at this moment. Smaller than anything Lexi could’ve imagined, at least in the ways that counted toward personhood. She crawled across the floor, and ducked her head under the bed, no longer afraid of her mother, at least physically.

“I’m here,” Lexi awkwardly stated, not sure where else to start. Her fingers drummed on the hard floor as she watched the woman twitch, but remain in a defensive ball. “Are you going to come out?”

Alma didn’t turn around at the sound of that voice, nor even tilt her head back to take a peek at her much-larger daughter. However, upon going dead-silent and slowing her own breath to listen, Lexi picked up on a sound, beginning like the whine of air hissing out of a tire. For a moment she tensed again, prepared to quickly withdraw from under the bed if her mother came out spitting and lashing, rabid wildcat-style. But the noise didn’t crescendo into the hollow scream the Alpha still had etched in her memory after that fateful night so long ago when she fled the life her mother had planned for them. Instead, the sound stayed low and quiet, transforming to a yowling cry, not of anger, but honest-to-God sorrow, the kind that Lexi didn’t believe could exist in a creature like her parent who had also done the things she’d done. Nevertheless, Alma was weeping.

“Oh, my baby. My baby,” the tiny Alpha chanted between cries. At last Alma craned her neck around nearly all the way like an owl’s, her narrow face just as sallow as Lexi remembered, only now stained wet with pent-up melancholy. “Look what they’ve done to you.”

“They haven’t done anything to me,” Lexi said. This wasn’t entirely true, but it felt correct in the moment.

“They have. You’re just not old enough yet to see it for yourself. You hadn’t seen the things I have,” Alma said. Though the waterworks hadn’t let up, she spoke rather plainly through her tears, as though two voices spoke out of the same throat. The compressed Alpha turned herself over onto her hands and knees, arched her back, and commenced a slow crawl out from under the bed to where her child’s prodigious face awaited.

Lexi, not ready to see her hauntingly puny mother slithering toward her in the shade of the white cell, immediately backed out from under the mattress, but remained sprawled on the floor. She kept her legs pointed at the bed, each sneaker raised in case she had to bat the diminutive criminal off with the rubber treads. Unperturbed by the credible threat of her daughter’s feet, each of which was just barely smaller than Alma’s whole body, though, the inmate stood with some effort and placidly shuffled a quarter-inch at a time toward Lexi. The little woman’s catlike eyes, still gushing saltwater, never faltered from meeting her daughter’s gaze above.

“I guess that’s true,” Lexi heard herself say. “I haven’t seen… as much as you.”

“Of course it’s true,” Alma said. “You’re still a child in many ways. My child. I can see it from here.” She lumbered forth like a wind-up toy, arms outstretched, and for a moment Lexi’s pulse flummoxed, imagining the kind of harm a creature so heinous could still accomplish despite a lowly stature. To her surprise, her mother threw her wiry frame around as much of Lexi’s lower leg as she could reach in a desperate, ankle-numbing hug.

Hesitant at first to touch her parent, Lexi finally reached out after an uncomfortable minute, pinching Alma’s uniform scruff between her thumb and forefinger, and gently tugged to encourage some space between them. It felt like peeling off an oversized tick. “That’s, um, probably enough of that.”

“Yes, yes. You need time to get to know me again. I was ready for that,” Alma said, seemingly taking this rejection in stride. She kneaded her tear-glazed cheeks with bony knuckles. “We may not have the time now, before they ship me off to whatever bottomless hole they can find next, but… we’ll have other chances one day. I believe that.”

“Oh,” Lexi mumbled.

She knew she should’ve done more to deny these impossible dreams from her mother, who very-clearly had faith that she could still pass on her treachery to her offspring, just like she’d tried to do nearly twelve years before. However, now that she was standing in Alma’s presence once again, even if Lexi humorously dwarfed her parent, courage didn’t come easily.

“It’s so terrible what happened to you. My heart broke when I heard,” Alma continued. She placed a hand on her chest, right over where Lexi imagined her mother’s heart would be if she had one. “And it’s broken every day since for you.”

“Um. Thanks.”

“I guess you think I deserve to be here, while your time was undeserved,” Alma said, “but at least you can believe I know EXACTLY what you went through.”

“I…” Lexi couldn’t finish the thought. Of course her mother could never comprehend what she had endured, but lying on the floor of the cell now, with Alma’s flinty rasp of a voice poking needles at her emotional status, she couldn’t find the strength to say it aloud. Like she’d feared, the ant had its teeth in her.

“It must have ripped you up inside, to know that the people who pretended to adopt you, pretended to support you, pretended to make you one of them, would fall back on their old protocols, the natural totalitarianism in each of them, to see you as less than them, as soon as they had a good enough excuse,” Alma continued in her daughter’s quietude. “You don’t have to say you agree. I know it must be hard. And, while I can’t relate in that way, seeing how I’ve lived my life knowing that you can’t trust an Omega any more than you can allow a Beta to think they’re special, I do have some experience in family members turning away from me. Don’t I, dear?”

Lexi nodded, her skull feeling leaden as the rest of her. Her neck went stiff. She hadn’t known how this meeting would go, but in the back of her mind had expected it might take this swerve. Still, that awareness didn’t save Lexi from cowering on the floor and drinking in her mother’s words, knowing that hidden between all the violent bigotry were, in fact, grains of truth. For many months of her time away, she’d mired in the idea that she’d been betrayed. Now she was having it echoed right back at her from a distorted reflection of herself, plus a few decades and some unsettling scars.

“I know you still see me as the bad seed. For now. I’ve… accepted that. And there will be time later to prove that I only want the best for you,” Alma murmured. “But please, sweetie. I need you to know, here and now, that I feel the SAME way you do. I want justice for you, and all the wrongs that were committed against you.”

Justice? Lexi wasn’t even sure what justice was now, especially when it came to herself. Somehow, though, she doubted her version of justice was the same as Alma’s. Nevertheless, her limbs stuck frozen to the cage floor, her body in thrall of her tiny mother’s twisted language. With every word, Lexi remained aware that she could swat Alma out of the way, silence her with a finger, kick her back under the bed. Only now did she grasp precisely what Jenna meant when the Omega said that Lexi was free to “communicate” any way she liked with her parent. But she didn’t, either on purpose or not, have it in her yet to shut up the little prophet of calamity. She wondered if she ever would.

“More than all that, though, Alexandra, I understand what happened to you, and what it meant. To us,” Alma blubbered. “Better than anyone else ever could.”

“What do you mean?” Her mother’s word choice was puzzling to Lexi, even though she already knew where this had to be headed, if only because she couldn’t allow her heart to be grouped in with the demon before her.

“The way they threw you in a cage, just like me, even when you hadn’t yet begun to help our crusade. I didn’t have time to teach you. They used you as a scapegoat for that filthy lying insect, who took it upon himself to prove right everything I’ve ever said about… them. About Betas,” Alma ranted, though still in the same state of mewling gloom. The front of her uniform was soaked dark with tears. “It wasn’t just you hurting from that, Alexandra. It was everyone who’s ever been ripped off or put down or cast aside by the likes of vermin the size of my finger, but wasn’t allowed to do what was right and even the score, just because of this dictatorship’s obsession with “equality.” We all felt that with you, darling. We were with you. Not those freaks who threw you in a box like their precious pets, and certainly not the ones who stole you from me and called you their kin. No, it’s us. All of us. All of us like you. And it’s not too late to come back.”

As her mother spoke aloud her longest thought yet, Lexi’s stomach began twisting over itself in quadruple-knots. By the time Alma was finished, her daughter was so woozy with the existential sickness of the little woman’s declaration, she could barely keep herself upright. But, biting her tongue and clenching her fists, she managed, looking down on her mother now for the first time in spirit as well as physically.

“You’re wrong,” Lexi said. From somewhere at the base of her fractured identity, she felt meaning swelling back toward the surface, pushing past the loss, the resentment, and the unknown. When she spoke, it was with a fiery wit, but it spilled forth like poetry: “You’re wrong about EVERYTHING. I… probably wasn’t ready, or strong enough to tell you that the last time I saw you. Maybe I’m not even strong enough now. But you have to know, either way. I wasn’t taken from you. You… didn’t deserve me, so you never had me to begin with, and you never will. Not now or ever. And it doesn’t matter. I found something… so much better than you that I don’t think the word “better” is even enough. No, it’s not. The people I love, that… that I belong to now and who belong to me, aren’t anything like what you’ve deluded yourself into believing they are all this time. The Omegas or the Betas.”

“Alexandra, baby, please. No,” Alma croaked. The tears turned back on, somehow realer than before, and this time gargled her words. “You… you have to listen to me-”

“No, YOU listen to ME now!” Lexi shouted. “Even after everything, I believe that they’re all better than us, you and me. They don’t have all the baggage like we do, that we have to make up for. But you know what? They accepted me anyway. My real sister, and my real mom. They took me in like some stray animal that got dumped on their porch, and they’ve loved me all I’ve ever needed. Even when they thought… that I might be a little bit like you, they still… loved me harder than you ever could. I know that now, too. And you know what? I think I finally know what I have to do. What this all means. You think it means I’m ready to become something like you? No. Never. I’ll tell you what it ACTUALLY means. Instead of sitting here, wishing I could scrub out the stuff that got in the way of my life for a while. I have to do it. I… have to fix this. I have to go to her.”

Alma looked on her daughter with abject horror, withering in on herself and jerking at every benevolent word of rhetoric Lexi piled upon her shrunken mother. Gradually the elder Alpha slunk back to the floor on her knees, clutching her stomach like a worm was eating her gut from the inside-out, the thing brought to life from Lexi’s power: the one thing Alma had ever created in her lifetime instead of destroying, now set to erase the inhuman potential she’d dreamed up for her child. The ten-inch-tall prisoner’s tears and sobs redoubled, but so quiet and tortured she sounded like she was asphyxiating.

Drawing ragged breath, Lexi realized only now that she too had started crying somewhere in the middle of her impromptu deposition, but that the welled tears had waited to fall until she was finished. She was grateful for that. After wiping her eyes, she nudged her mother with the toe of her sneaker and stood up, using the bedpost for support. Now that she could look down on her parent from her full height, she was struck by how truly miniscule she was, almost as though Alma was continuing to dwindle right before Lexi’s eyes, even though the opposite was happening.

“You’re small, “Mom.” And you’ll always be small,” Lexi said, hunching over the gnarled puddle of her old mother and her old fate. “And… you know… I just feel so sorry for you, that I almost can’t stand it. But that’s the best I can do, except to say… well. Goodbye.”

Lexi turned on Alma now, something she might’ve felt afraid to do even minutes before under threat of the ten-inch snake coming after her for an ankle-bite. When instead the Alpha looked past the window-wall of the cage and out to the Omega bedroom beyond, she realized Jenna had returned, either with uncharacteristic stealth for a one-hundred-and-forty-something-foot-tall being, or while nothing else in the world mattered except for Lexi’s message to Alma, which was just much intended for herself. The giantess approached, her freckle-dotted face filling up the glass visage, tranquil and none-motive enough that Lexi had no idea how much of the conversation Jenna had actually heard. But perhaps it didn’t matter now.

“Just checking in,” the Omega stated. Her pupils only flashed in the direction of her shrunken charge once, but otherwise she kept Lexi squarely in her sights. “Is everything going okay?”

“Yes,” Lexi said. She cleared her throat, and tried unsuccessfully to bow her head enough that her reddened eyes and watery cheeks were concealed, still knowing that Jenna could spot every solitary teardrop on her little face. “I’m… ready to come out now.”

“One second.” Jenna reached inside the cell as before, but this time angling the shelf of her hand so that it blocked the sight of Alma behind it while Lexi climbed aboard. The Alpha didn’t look back once at her mother while she was air-lifted via Omega palm out of the box and next the bedroom, finally shutting the door behind them and re-sealing Alma inside.

Lexi exhaled so hard she became dizzy, though the adrenaline likely got her most of the way there. Her hands shook, but not uncontrollably. Knowing how seriously someone like Jenna surely took her job, Lexi wondered if the Enforcer would fish for any debriefing comments about what Alma had said or done, and in fact the Alpha reasoned that it probably would be appropriate for her to relate how stuck the prisoner remained in her chaotic doctrines. For now, though, the rawness made it hard to think straight.

“Alexandra…” Jenna said, stopping in the middle of the living room. She lifted Lexi up to eye-height. “…I’m sorry I wasn’t able to make it, when everyone came over to see you and welcome you back. I don’t really have anything to say about everything that happened before. But I did want to ask you-”

Looking up, Lexi readied herself. Here came the questions about her mother. But she was prepared.

“-would you let me play something for you?”

Taken aback, the Alpha frowned, turning her head in all directions, until she spotted it. Under the mantel was a beautifully carved violin shining like polished brown marble, resting on a stand beside the accompanying bow and open case, which Jenna evidently had pre-set up. There was nothing pushy in the Omega’s question, but Lexi could sense the hope. In her vulnerable state now, the unexpectedness of the offer almost made the girl break down again, but she steeled herself this time and muscled through the throat-bubble.

“I’d like that.”

For half an hour, Lexi sat atop the mantel in a cushy Alpha-sized armchair just a few feet above Jenna’s eyeline, while the Omega serenaded her with continuous flowing melodies, the beautiful likes of which the little audience hadn’t experienced in a long time. The songs ranged from sleepy lullabies to upbeat jaunts, each of which caught her ear in new ways and gradually replaced her brain’s current focus after the face-off with Alma, which was a welcome trade. Lexi didn’t know much about Bridget’s peers to begin with, but before today she would have bet folding money against the idea of Jenna Reynolds, with her stiff upper lip and martial exterior, being such an accomplished musician. Yet here she was, having that first impression proved delightfully wrong.


###


Alma locked her chin back to her chest, creating a shell around her head with both arms until she had no tears left to bleed out. Distantly, she heard the humming song of the violin strings, something she had become used to now over the course of the year, and usually cupped her ears to avoid the grating racket. Today, however, she listened, feeling nothing, but following the lyric threads anyway until eventually it went quiet. When in time she finally looked up again to the percussion of fingers clunking on the glass, she found Jenna resting her fist on her cheek and disaffectedly spectating the shrunken creature inside the cage.

“I guess you got what you wanted,” Alma spat up at her keeper. “She’s turned against me. All of you turned her against me.”

“Well, yes, you’re right. That is what I wanted, and I got it,” Jenna answered with a simpering smile. “But I don’t think we did anything. Certainly more than you, but still. Give your daughter some credit. You owe her that. That, and everything else.”

“Whatever,” Alma slurred, turning away. “You’ve had your fun torturing me and convincing yourself it’s not just because you’re a sadist on the inside. Might as well have your laughs, too.”

“Right again,” Jenna brightly replied. “I have had my fun with you. More than I’ll probably ever have with any other Alpha I take into my custody. But, you did get one part wrong there. I don’t have to convince myself of anything. I know that I like what I’ve done to you. I like it a lot, just the way you think I do, and what’s more, I know what I am on the inside. Unlike you.”

This got Alma’s attention back. She stared, transfixed, up at the tractor-beam gaze of the Enforcer’s crackling green eyes, the Alpha’s chapped lips spooling open in recognition. A round marble shape puffed out from Jenna’s cheek like a gumball, clacking against her teeth as she pushed it with her tongue, making some effort to let her prisoner hear the object bouncing off her cheeks. The Omega shut her eyes and swallowed loudly, only reopening when the round lump had passed fully along her neck. Now under scrutiny again, Alma was alarmed to realize Jenna’s irises glowed incandescent.

“And so, as my parting gift to you, I’ll give you the chance to find out for yourself. Not what you are on the inside, obviously, but what I am,” Jenna said. With that, her hand swooped into the tank and snatched up the little woman between her fingertips, who at a foot tall and climbing now, was a cinch to capture. The Omega held her toy before her vast mouth, licking saliva-gloss over her lips and steaming warm huffed air into Alma’s face.

“Right,” Alma scoffed, feigning a yawn as she stared into the dark wet void of Jenna’s spread jowls. She’d been through this fake-out cannibalistic song-and-dance before, deciding to take solace in the fact that at least her Enforcer would have to eventually vomit in order to carry out this session plan, since leaving her permanently inside wasn’t an option. “So, how long before you bring me back up this time?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t expect to come back up this time if I were you. This is more of a one-way trip,” Jenna explained, pausing to savor the ecstasy she received from watching Alma’s gaunt face contort in total realization. “But before you go getting ugly thoughts in your head, relax. I will see you again later. In fact, I look forward to it.”

The Omega allowed no time for rebuttal, though she did relish the screeched protests she heard as she stuck out her tongue and deposited Alma onto the sticky, bud-dappled flat of her pink muscle, before slurping it and her miniature captive within. Rolling the Alpha from cheek to slimy cheek, Jenna gave Alma a final tour of the hot airless cave she’d entered so many times before, though usually at a larger size that therefore allowed her the slightest resistance and scrap of dignity.

But not today.

The tiny flailing creature was dunked head-first through a moat of syrupy drool, her limbs bumped and flossed along the groove-divots between Jenna’s teeth. She was pinned from the ribbed palate above to the molars to the edge of the uvula, then back again, all while the Omega’s cheeks compressed in and out like a beating heart, sucking on the prisoner one last time, to taste the fear that seasoned her meal just before dropping her down the water-slide for the umpteenth time. Only now, as Jenna had made perfectly clear to her hellion of a subject, there would be no reversals. No quick stint in her stomach before upchucking back along the tract to be spat into the sink. Instead, Alma would be exploring regions previously untraveled by anyone in the being she hated most of all in the entire universe. With a farewell squeeze of the ten-inch morsel in her tubed tongue, Jenna gathered the hungry sea generated by her salivary glands, pressed Alma into the sticky sludge, and gulped hard enough to have swallowed a horse. The wretched critter’s wails marked the timeline of her journey all the way down Jenna’s throat, past her chest and into her stomach, a sonic beacon which the Omega listened to and adored at each and every note like the marvelous sonata it was to her.


###


Lexi remained outside the Reynolds’ front door for several minutes after she was let out, feeling much different now than she had before setting foot in Jenna’s hand: much more the ideal her, and the person she’d known herself to be two years before.

“Okay, Bridge,” Lexi sighed like a vow, looking to the sunny skyscape with reborn devotion as she set off down the street to return home, but only for long enough to pack and collect guidance from Evelyn. “I ran off and found you once. I can do it again. And this time, I’ll bring you home.”

Setting foot for the first time in this city, not only one so remote and unfamiliar, but one that she’d had to acquire permission to enter at all, Lexi still found it easier to keep herself walking in Sanctuary than in the capital city after almost two years away from home. Only two days ago, she’d stepped out of Jenna Reynolds’ home with a hopeful song in her heart and renewed focus. Now she was across an ocean in a continent she’d seen only in pictures, overshadowed by decidedly snowier conditions past the translucent glass shield that arced over the whole of Sanctuary. She was also currently one of only a half-dozen Alphas in sight, while hundreds of Betas quietly went about their day around her.

It was both pleasant and a little unnerving to be surrounded by so many Betas as Lexi strolled the narrow streets: she was happy to see these three-inch-tall denizens living in peaceful solidarity far from the reaches of most Alphas, but also paranoid of how many of them may or may not have known her face. If Opal had recognized her from across the aisle on a train home, how many of these unknown persons, a great number of whom only migrated here after suffering traumas, would see only the daughter of an Alpha terrorist, and a girl who it was once believed had committed brutal atrocities herself? Even though she’d been cleared of those latter charges, judging by some of the unreadable expressions from the sober expressions of tiny men, women, and children she bypassed on the raised Sanctuary sidewalks, Lexi had a hard time deciphering just how “welcome” she was here.

Granted, to hear Evelyn tell it, her allowance to enter the grand domed city had been as simple as sending a casual single-line text to Dr. Kayla Everett herself. Lexi wasn’t even aware of the city’s high security before explaining her intention to her Omega-mother, and quickly fretted that the plan to seek out Bridget and bring her home would be curtailed before it even began. It turned out almost every Alpha or Omega resident of Sanctuary was someone in the employ of Aegis or a connected service, with job descriptions exclusively devoted to improving the lives of the Beta citizens, whether that meant building sustainable housing or developing technologies useful to the shortest class. Suddenly the whole endeavor sounded more complicated than the earnest and newly enthusiastic Lexi had anticipated.

Just to prove to her surrogate daughter that she wasn’t overstepping her privilege, however, Evelyn lowered her big-screen-TV-sized phone screen into the Alpha’s view, where she could see for herself the thumbs-up emoji the benevolent and probably-omnipotent Omega leader had used to respond within two minutes of the request. And like that, Lexi had her clearance. Evelyn couldn’t have been more supportive of the journey, offering to accompany Lexi to help collect the wandering Enforcer, but had ultimately agreed with the young Alpha that Bridget would be more successfully lured back when faced with a, literally, smaller welcoming party. After a long encouraging talk from Evelyn the night before, and a maternal kiss that covered most of Lexi’s head, she’d been ferried off on her way.

A mere twenty minutes ago, she’d arrived at the guarded checkpoint to enter Sanctuary, where it took only an ID scan to be given entrance, no questions asked. Lexi was able to relax a bit now, once she was actually inside the place, knowing that somewhere in the spacious Beta-focused metropolis, Bridget would be found. And even though she didn’t have a place to start looking, Lexi wasn’t concerned about the finding part; Bridget was kind of hard to miss.

She was far more apprehensive of what would happen afterward. Lexi had been so fired up about the chance to start mending the gulf between them, starting with the geographical gulf and then moving onto the emotional one, it had only occurred to her now, as she stood in the same city as Bridget for the first time in nearly two years, that maybe the Omega didn’t want to see her?

This rather crestfalling possibility was enough to make Lexi stop in her tracks. She wasn’t totally convinced of that pessimistic chance, of course, and there was no way she giving up her mission over a single unforeseen risk, but she had to catch her breath nonetheless. After stepping out of Jenna’s house two days ago following the revelatory visitation with her batshit blood-mother, right up until this exact moment, Lexi had kept her momentum going forward, so positive that she herself was ready for the reunion. The thought of whether her kind-hearted, ultra-powerful, and likely semi-broken sibling was also ready hadn’t even occurred to her.

Sanctuary’s Alpha passageways were narrower than those of Lexi’s native city, the majority of the real estate here appropriately devoted to squat buildings and crisscrossing networks of Beta roads. For Lexi, this tighter proximity to the architecture and bustling urban activity meant she was more exposed than usual as she stood in place, clutching her duffel bag and nibbling her thumbnail. With so few other relative-giants to catch their eyes, she knew at least some of them had to have taken notice of the newcomer loitering on the thin thoroughfare like the awkward living landmark she was. If any Betas happened to recognize her and raise their eyebrows before, then Lexi knew this behavior couldn’t have been helping her case.

“Pardon.”

Startled, Lexi looked over her shoulder and down at the nearby Beta walkway, where she spotted a three-inch-tall gray-haired old woman peering up at her. Hiding behind the elder’s skirts was a boy probably no older than six, his eyes bugged as he drank in the tower of the nearby Alpha. Like most of Sanctuary’s infrastructure, the little road seemed designed to put its users in more closely integrated proximity with the larger class, and Lexi was cognizant of the fact that she was within easy touching distance of the old lady and young lad, particularly here where the path winnowed. All she’d have to do was reach.

Not that these unknown Betas had the slightest reason to be concerned by that distant possibility, of course, but in her fish-out-of-water state, Lexi couldn’t help but feel some secondhand stranger-danger on their behalf. Especially based on the way that little boy was looking up at her, not exactly outright terrified, but with a healthy survivalist’s jitters that told him to put the old woman between himself and the humongous new girl in town.

“Y-Yes?” Lexi coughed, taking a step back from their elevated path. While her elbow wasn’t quite hovering over the path’s railing, as a lifetime of public walking experience had taught her to avoid, it was resting pretty close. She nervously combed her fingers through the brunette fringes of her hair. “Sorry, was I in your way?”

“Not anymore, you’re not. I need to get at the edge here,” the old woman replied. Her voice was gruff, but devoid of prejudice, even with an unknown member of the most historically violent race appearing out of the blue. She just had a job to do, and once she’d said her piece, seemed to have all but forgotten Lexi, in stark contrast to the little boy. Behind the pair of Betas was a rolling cart the size of a matchbox car for Lexi, containing a folded-up tube of white canvas thin as a tissue.

“My mistake,” Lexi assured softly.

“We could have managed, but better safe than sorry,” the old lady said just as neutrally, not even looking up this time as she fussed with the tiny cart. “All right, Hector. Like I said. Hold this end. I’ll take the other.”

Hector did as he was told, while the old woman lugged the canvas off the cart and handed the small boy his end. She trudged in the opposite direction, then, unraveling the white sheet, and leaving the youngster to stand in place. He grasped the material to his chest like a safety blanket, all the while looking up at Lexi in a half-frightened half-awed stupor, since the miniature elder lady could no longer stand there to act as his barrier. It was good the old woman had asked him to stay there, because Lexi doubted the two-inch-tall pipsqueak’s legs could’ve moved now.

The Alpha took another step back, knowing she should’ve kept walking so the kid could relax and she’d be in no one else’s way, but found herself strangely magnetized to witness what the old lady and Hector were doing. Internally, Lexi wished to make amends for getting in their way by offering to handle whatever-they-were-doing with that canvas, as she could’ve picked it up herself, one end pinched between fingers of each hand like a party streamer. Ultimately she concluded to say nothing, as she didn’t want to look patronizing after she’d already gotten in their way and intimidated the boy.

The old woman, still blissfully unconcerned that there was an Alpha standing above them and watching, finished unrolling the canvas, then set about hooking it into the railing that lined the Beta pathway. She moved along purposefully, threading it in, until she reached Hector again, who had yet to budge from his unreadable petrification-gawk at the gargantuan twenty-two-year-old whose thumb alone would’ve outsized him.

When the old woman finished her duties, taking Hector’s end and fastening it in place, the canvas was rolled over the side to hang from the railing, facing out toward the other side of the street, and Lexi realized it was a banner, featuring big bold hand-painted red letters.

POTLUCK DINNER, YOGA, AND SELF-DEFENSE CLASS TOONIGHT.

Tonight was misspelled, written sloppier than the rest, and once Lexi squinted at the pair again, noticing red paint splatters on the boy’s pants, she guessed that word was Hector’s handiwork. The old woman dusted herself off, then patted the boy on the shoulder to run along back to the building they’d emerged from. Instead, though, he tugged on her skirt to get her to stoop, then whispered something in her ear. After listening and solemnly nodding, the elder Beta turned and looked up at Lexi again, while Hector resumed hiding behind her.

“My grandson would like me to ask you if you’re a nice Alpha?”

The woman’s voice remained free of benevolence or judgment. Lexi found it refreshing. She also had to fight to urge to look overhead of the old lady at little Hector, knowing that leaning suddenly in toward a clearly timid lad, with her anonymous face already looming above, would probably make him answer the innocent question on his own with panic.

“I hope so. I try my best to be nice,” Lexi replied with as much diplomacy as possible, then reminded herself to smile, hoping it didn’t come off as ominous to the little boy.

“See?” the old woman said to her grandson, patting him on the head. “She is nice. Now, go pick up the paints inside. Try not to spill, please.”

Apparently satisfied with this answer, the boy still didn’t return Lexi’s smile, but nodded, gave her a flustered high-speed hand-wave, then turned and sprinted fast as he could for the door. Once they were alone, Lexi wrung her hands, not sure whether she had cause for guilt or not.

“I’m… sorry if I upset him.”

“No need for your sorry. This is a public street. You didn’t do anything. And I trust the boys at Sanctuary’s gate,” the old woman responded. She worked on smoothing out the creases in the banner, granting Lexi the occasional upward glance, but otherwise devoted to her work. “You should be flattered. Compared to what he normally does when he sees, well, someone like you, that was a love letter.”

“I’m glad,” Lexi said. Content that she wasn’t branded a child-traumatizer, the girl still felt a compulsion to make further amends: “He, um, looks a lot like you!”

“That’s nice of you. But just a coincidence. No blood relation.”

“Oh.” Now the Alpha regretted pushing the envelope, as the old lady’s dry tone made it impossible to tell if any given thing had offended her.

“Every boy and girl deserves a grandma, if you ask me. I guess he could’ve called me Mom too. Seeing how I’m his whole family tree now. But by Christ, I’ve gotten too old to be anything but a grandma,” the woman continued, as if reading Lexi’s thoughts, and again put her at temporary ease. “It takes some time. Especially for one like him, who’s been through the kinds of things that give him reason to ask if you’re good or not.”

“I see. That’s… good. Great! Or, what I mean is… my mom isn’t my, um, blood-relation-mom, either.”

“So you understand, then. He didn’t used to want to come outside the house. But I’m helping him come back around. To see there’s good ones, like you. You know how I know you’re actually good and not just saying it?”

“H-How?”

“Because you sweated a lake when you thought you scared my boy just by existing.”

Lexi wiped her brow and hung her head a little, grateful. It occurred to her that now, with at least a smidge of rapport, she might as well see if that goodwill could get her on the right path again.

“Sorry, I… see you’re working, and I don’t mean to bother you anymore, but do you know many of the Omegas who live around the city?”

“Not just many. I’ve met them all, so far as I can tell. Hard to miss when they stack ‘em that big, see.”

“Really? So, um, do you know a… Bridget Cade?”

“I should know her, seeing how she installed this whole building on the block with two fingers,” the old lady said, brandishing to the Beta complex behind them, which Lexi now realized was a ten-foot-tall community center. The banner was straightened to the woman’s satisfaction, but she remained standing by the railing, hands on her hips and squinting up at the much-taller girl. “Why? You need a hand from her?”

“You could say that,” Lexi sheepishly replied.

“Tell you the truth, I don’t see Omegas every day. They can’t exactly squeeze through every part of town here. But you might try the market nine blocks that way and three over. Big open space, can’t miss it. Should be a quick trip for you.”

“Great. Thank you,” Lexi said and, feeling clumsy the moment she said it, couldn’t help but add: “Good luck.”

“We make our own luck around here. But I’ll take it all the same. Hope you find her. Like I said. Just look up.” With that, the old woman stuck her arm out well over her head, her tiny wrinkled hand opened to accept and shake. Flustered at this end to such an initially uncertain exchange, Lexi delicately extended her pointer finger, laying the pad of it over the elder’s diminutive appendage. Despite her petite size and advanced age, the woman had a surprisingly strong grip. When the hand-finger-shake ended, Lexi nodded farewell, and set off down the indeed-brief Beta-scaled blocks.

As promised, she followed the grandmother’s directions and arrived at the advertised marketplace in less time than it took her to walk past a single Omega house back home. It was a colorful and lively location, the first sight in Sanctuary yet to even remotely resemble the all-sizes capital city architecture that Lexi was familiar with. The marketplace was an aesthetically-pleasing scale-distorting marvel of city planning that she couldn’t help but wonder if Evelyn had personally designed, with many a Beta-tailored terrace and shop looking like the most intricate and inviting of dollhouse paraphernalia, even though it was all in very functional use by the mostly-tiny population.

Despite its size, though, there was an undeniable air of calm over the market sprawl, befitting the rehabilitation-minded city’s serene, soft-spoken disposition. Even with hundreds of Betas in sight from the entrance alone, their combined voices amounted to little more than an amiable mumble-chatter. The Alpha path Lexi stood upon spiraled out into the open-air space away from the market and along the broad canal of an Omega road, another first-time discovery during this unusual trip to the domed town. The Omega thoroughfare took center stage in this part of town, as it had to by the necessity of its dimensions, running straight down the middle of the market. Near the edge of that treadable gap, the Alpha and Beta paths ascended, allowing all three classes to comingle at the juncture point.

To Lexi’s disappointment, there wasn’t an Omega in sight at the moment, least of all Bridget. Though deflated, the Alpha still meandered down the sidewalk toward the edge of the Omega walking canyon. She didn’t need to have seen Sanctuary before today to know that Bridget would enjoy being here, probably often occupying the immense stage that acted as an Omega chair down in the empty canal, where she could sit and interact with those mixer-friendly Alpha and Beta paths.

In the close-by gathering area for the smallest race, Lexi noted the presence of grass patches, benches, and even Bonsai trees that made up a micro-park for anyone looking to engage with passing titans. The Alpha road here was just as blank as the Omega’s, but upon examining the cute miniature forested area lofted at the height of her shoulders, Lexi noticed a crowd of at least two dozen Beta youths gathered in the park, most of them roughly tweenage, reading on benches, playing catch, climbing trees, or simply leaning against the railing overlooking the Omega path. Their squealy laughter warmed her heart, activating the innate part of Lexi’s brain that lit up whenever she was around adorable beings, and doubly so when she realized that even though they’d noticed her standing there, none were the least bit upset. If anything, they cheered and played louder at the arrival of a newcomer.

“HI!” one wild-haired girl shouted at the top of her lungs, practically hanging off the railing and wind-milling her arms at the Alpha. Lexi almost flinched at this over-friendly greeting, not knowing before now that a Beta could be that loud. But apparently they could.

“Hello there,” Lexi said, allowing herself a chuckle. Cautiously she approached the raised park, once confident that none of the at-play Betas were shrinking away from her. “Sorry if I disturbed you guys.”

“That’s okay! We like visitors! Only, there’s nothing else to do up here today, and nobody’s walked by in an hour. Can you believe it? A whole hour?” the girl babbled on, as though she’d known the Alpha for years. She rested her face up upturned fists, gazing out over the railing at Lexi like it was her personal fairy tale tower. “My name’s Tiff. Do you know what that’s short for?”

“…Tiffany?” Lexi smirked.

“Nope! It’s Tiffandra!” she blurted, wheezing out childish cackles and slapping the railing, then receded to a mere outdoor-volume: “What’s your name? I don’t remember seeing you around here before. Are you new here?”

“Yes, it’s my first time here. My name is Alexandra, but my short version is Lexi.”

It previously seemed impossible for Tiff to burst with any more hyperactive energy, as the nearly three-inch-tall girl was having trouble sitting still even in conversation, but at this admission of Lexi’s name, Tiff went stark-still and gasped so loud that her Alpha audience did in fact wince this time, afraid that she’d accidentally activated some deep-buried trauma in the poor youth. If she managed to almost-spook two young Beta victims within her first half-hour of being in Sanctuary, Lexi decided, that was probably the fates trying to tell her something.

“D-Did you say… LEXI? Like… that Lexi?”

The Alpha bit her lip. Though Tiff hadn’t specified which Lexi “that” Lexi even was, it wasn’t hard to guess. She was only tangentially semi-infamous for a couple of reasons, and neither would probably make productive chit-chat in a city erected for tiny mentally-wounded casualties. Increasingly, retreating from the Beta park seemed a good idea.

“Do you… want me to move away?” Lexi asked in as even-keeled and non-threatening a murmur as she could muster.

“NO!” Tiff crowed, now fetching the attention of the other young Betas playing in the park. Some of the youngsters even dropped their baseballs and books, wandering to this side of the railing. Their curious little faces all gazed unblinkingly out at Lexi, making her feel simultaneously that she had to back-pedal, and yet that she also had no right to flee in the face of the girl’s request. Odds were that not a single Beta in this city deserved to be denied a thing they asked again for until the day they died.
“Okay,” Lexi swallowed. “I, um, might be who you think I am. But I’m just here to visit, and to look for someone named Bridget.”

“It IS you!” Tiff screeched in so shrill a voice it raised Lexi’s heartrate. The Beta was also now, despite her gymnastic build and clearly adept hand-eye coordination, leaning so far out over the railing that the Alpha was tempted to cup both hands underneath, just in case the youth took a tumble. “Y-You’re… you’re her sister, right?”

Lexi was now feeling so overwhelmed by this conversation, constantly unsure of whether her presence was a positive or negative force on this excitable girl, that upon this final statement, she almost needed a chair to keep herself steady. Ensuring there were no Betas within reaching distance who could misinterpret her incoming fingers as a threat, she gripped the lower edge of the elevated parkland, rebalancing and letting out a deep breath.

Evidently she could be known for something other than her monstrous mother or heinous framed crimes. And it was the best possible thing to be known for, as far as Lexi was concerned.

“Yes, that is me. Bridget is my sister,” Lexi warmly stated, her confidence renewed. She kindly regarded Tiff and, looking between the other cute Beta expressions flanking the girl along the railing, realized they too all knew exactly who she was. The pieces fell into place now. “You… all know Bridget, don’t you?”

Two dozen heads merrily bobbed, several accompanied by proud yeses. Naturally, Tiff led the pack with a cry of affirmation just as loud as her initial greeting. Several times now Lexi shot a furtive glance back up the path to the marketplace proper. Despite this unusual encounter with the kids going rather swimmingly, she hoped the adult residents wouldn’t take issue with the fact that a crowd of young Betas in the park was making such a racket while an unknown Alpha looked in on them. Lexi wouldn’t have trusted herself, if she was in their shoes. Fortunately, she wasn’t receiving any misinformed death-glares from shop owners or pedestrians. If her first two minutes after meeting this precious group was anything to go by, the market was probably used to their loudmouthed joy.

“Are you all her friends?” Lexi softly questioned the group.

“Uh-huh!” Tiff replied on behalf of her mates, who again vigorously bobble-nodded. “She’s super-cool and nice and awesome and she’s kind of quiet actually she’s really quiet and she used to hold us in her hand and doesn’t so much anymore but that’s okay because she still comes here and talks to us all, like you! You guys really are sisters.”

“Yes, I guess we are,” Lexi laughed, impressed that Tiff got through all that and still sounded like she had enough wind to keep talking. “And I’m glad all of you are her friends. So, she’s… talked to you guys about… me before?”

Another wave of nods.

“What has she… said?” Right away the Alpha wondered if she was digging her own grave by voluntarily seeking out this information before she’d even ascertained whether Bridget wanted to see her or not. But at this point, she was starved for any piece of information, even if it had to sting.

“Oh, just that you’re the BEST sister ever and the coolest person and like also her best friend forever and that you used to have a lot of fun together and do adventures but that also she did something bad to you and she hurt your feelings or something only she wouldn’t tell us what she did but just that it was bad and now she hasn’t seen you in a long time cuz of it and you went away to have some time by yourself to get better like we did here and that’s okay cuz everyone deserves the chance to get better and she didn’t think you’d ever wanna see her again, but you DID!” Tiff monologued.

Her rampant speaking speed was actually a blessing for Lexi, desperate to absorb whatever tidbits she could, however parsed the message was by this girl’s exuberance. She was mainly gratified not to hear anything suggesting that Bridget had chosen to live in isolation from Lexi until the end of time. But then again, that probably wasn’t information the Omega would’ve freely given to a traumatized child even if it was true.

“I see,” Lexi said. She cleared her throat, and tried to keep on a cordially smiling face for this row of tiny tweens looking at her like she was a beloved fictional character come to life, even while the knowledge that she was getting ever-closer to her sister made it difficult to stay brave. “And do you guys know where I could find her?”
The adolescents looked to one another, muttering excitedly, then all took hold of the railing. Again they deferred to Tiff.

“She’s probably in the Peace Garden! It’s really pretty and it’s got lots of plants and people go there when they wanna be around the trees and stuff and she’s usually there at this time every day before she comes here to see us and all you have to do is follow the street and it’s kinda far away for us but for big people like you it’s probably fast!” the Beta declared.

Lexi peered down the length of the Omega channel. An Alpha path flanked it all the way around the slow bend, vanishing behind the modestly proportioned Beta roads. It was a simple enough route in terms of direction, but Lexi sure was envious now of Tiff and the kids’ courageous energy. She’d probably need all the help she could get.

“Thank you so much,” Lexi said, looking each tiny kid straight in the eye. Several of them trembled and laughed when they shared her gaze, making the Alpha feel oddly like a low-level celebrity, which apparently was precisely what she was to this group of tweens, though to them she was probably high-level at least. Bridget must’ve told them a good story. At least the Omega hadn’t lost that skillset in her self-imposed banishment.

The group bubbled with cheerful you’re-welcomes and waves. Lexi, almost reluctant to have to leave this audience of psychological supporters, whispered goodbye and marched on her way. The kids, especially Tiff, seemed a bit scatter-brained, but there was no trace of uncertainty in their suggestion that Bridget would be found in the garden. They spoke with the wisdom of beings who knew this city and its goings-on, especially with regards to the leviathan blonde who so sweetly paid them regular attention.

Now with a clear heading, Lexi didn’t have to let worries slow her pace. There was no turning back now. She didn’t make use of a train or even moving path, wanting to be able to control her pace, but still power-walked for her unknown destination. Sure enough, at the exit to the pitched marketplace hub, she discovered a sign touting the Peace Garden just a quarter-mile away. All she had to do was follow the road.

Lexi’s pulse quickened at the first sign of full-size trees dotting the streets more and more populously. The buildings thinned and gave way to the Peace Garden’s greenery and finally, passing under an archway alongside the Omega canal, she entered a vast rounded arena of a place, richly flush with flora of every stripe, from dizzyingly tall great oaks to neon-rainbow perennials. It truly was a beautiful place, aptly named, and Lexi saw close to a hundred Betas and Alphas as well dotted around the immense area, tending the plants or otherwise enjoying them. Despite the presence even of such towering trees, however, not one visitor or bit of vegetation was more noticeable than the Omega who stood in the center of it all, with her back turned to the entrance.

Bridget.

There she was. Right there, real as anything.

Lexi didn’t even have to see her face, knowing the arch of her back and every roped strand of golden hair like the back of her own hand. The Omega didn’t appear to be speaking to anyone or even gardening, but was simply cradling delicate hanging willow-vines over her trunk-sized fingers without snapping a single leaf. For a nauseous second, the Alpha fought her first impulse to scream and catch her sister’s attention, before looking around again and gaining some better scale perspective. She wasn’t even in arm’s reach for Bridget right now. Fortunately, a series of overpasses allowed Alphas and Betas shortcuts around the spacious garden, as the place was its own forest for the former and a veritable biodome the size of four stadiums for the latter.

Legs moving almost independently now, Lexi traversed the closest branch of the path, climbing stairs and jogging along the platforms until she stood somewhere in the middle of the pleasant green void, roughly at eye-level for the Omega, if only she’d turn around. Wondering at first if there was a gentler way to reach her sister, Lexi found she could wait no longer. Their time was well-overdue.

“BRIDGE!” Lexi shouted, hands cupped around her mouth. She’d expected to stutter her yelp, but the cathartic release from two years of angst kept her tone straight, and she drunkenly grinned in the face of her fears. “OVER HERE!”

Her cry, small as it felt when she made it, echoed around the Peace Garden like a concert hall. Alphas and Betas all around turned inquisitively to face her; the only one present not to swivel around instantaneously was the Omega, who only shuddered at first.

Then the angelic giant turned, slowly, gracefully, her expression placid as a mausoleum monument, yellow locks splaying over her shoulders. As soon as Bridget caught sight of the speaker on the level platform, though, a notable layer of her stone-stoicism melted right off the giantess’s posture, leaving her wide-eyed and pout-lipped like she’d been struck by lightning. Once those oceanic blues locked onto the Alpha with the intensity of spotlights, they wouldn’t have diverted for the world, and indeed it seemed for a gravity-less moment that the Omega could see nothing else of the world now except Lexi.

“Jump, Lexi, Jump!”

“That… sure is a long way down,” Lexi muttered. She gnawed her fingernails and shifted her weight from foot to foot, looking down at the bowl of water from the back-end of a spoon her adoptive sibling had fastened to a giant cereal box. The metal was cold under her toes, but still more inviting than the relatively short but still stomach-turning plunge between here and the Alpha-sized “pool” the two youngsters had constructed. This sounded like so much fun in principle, but now that she was here, standing on the diving board while a pair of expectant Omega eyes watched her from so close that Bridget’s huffed breaths fogged her reflection in the spoon, stage fright had set in.

“Are you scared?” Bridget whispered. “It’s okay if you’re scared, Lexi.”

“I’m NOT scared!”

“You want me to pour in more water so it’s closer to you?”

“No, that’s okay,” Lexi sighed. She took a step back from the edge of the plank. “I just, um… don’t know if I feel like swimming today anymore.”

Alpha and Omega sat quietly for a moment.

“Do you want me to get you down from there?”

“No.”

“Okay. Well… we can just wait ‘til you’re ready.”

Peering off the narrow silver platform into the pool, Lexi watched her own partial reflection distort whenever a gentle breeze unsettled the water. She was vaguely aware of Bridget seated to the side, pretending not to look at the tiny diver but only relatively successfully in her eagerness to see Lexi make the leap of faith. The water wasn’t going anywhere, neither was the spoon, but still the tiny Alpha wondered what would happen if she missed the liquid surface and slipped past the edge of the bowl for an even-longer and more painful plummet to the tabletop. That would’ve been impossible, of course, even if she took a flying jump in either direction, but still the sensation pre-emptively chilled the girl worse than the metal under her heels.

Then, looking back at Bridget’s arm resting contentedly beside the bowl, digits quivering at the ready, it occurred to Lexi that her sister was priming herself to swoop in for the save in the totally-improbable event that such a thing was needed. Just as she always did, no matter how long of a shot it was that her guardianship would be required. It was easy to spot, even when she was trying to hide it, from the way Bridget’s thumb twitched while her other fingers flattened to the shape of a mattress for a pillowy last-second landing.

Though her stomach was still flummoxed with nerves, Lexi smirked. She pressed herself up off the utensil handle, let her toes hang off the edge, and took a deep breath.


###


“Lexi?” The Omega’s cracked whisper rumbled around the Peace Garden.

This melancholic pair of syllables was all Bridget could get out before her gaped lips closed again, though a sound of any kind, wistful or not, was welcome to Lexi, as a final confirmation that she was, in fact, seeing her big sister now, and not just a hopeful mirage amongst the artificial woodland. The Omega herself seemed to be having more difficulty in convincing herself that this reunion was happening, blinking rapidly while clenching and unclenching her fists as though squeezing a stress ball the size of a car. Even turned to face the high-rise platform now, there was still a healthy gulf between them, a solid three steps’ distance for Bridget, which she’d made no effort as yet to close. To Lexi, those colossal shoes appeared paralyzed in place down in the walking canyon.

“It’s me,” Lexi said. Bellowing was no longer required, now that she’d learned just how far an echo could carry in the palatial garden. She patted her chest, then reached over the guard rail at her distant tower-sized target, fingers outstretched. Not sure where else to begin, she added almost too quietly to perceive: “I’m here.”

“What are you doing here?” the Omega murmured. She took the first shuddering step necessary to seal the gap, delicate enough that she could’ve almost walked on eggshells, if she didn’t happen to be the size she was. Her hands united over her waist, wringing incessantly. “How… how did you…”

“You’re not that hard to find,” Lexi said, bending the truth just a little. “If there weren’t all these buildings, I could’ve probably seen you from the front gates.”

The anxiety and guilt-ridden dread currently stormed within Bridget so violently at this surprise encounter that her blue eyes had started seizing with a sheen of welling liquid. Despite this, seeing the Alpha standing there, not broken as she’d last seen her, hearing her voice again, made it impossible for the bigger sister to suppress a half-moon smile in the corner of her lip. She soldiered through a second thudding step, looking unsteady as Lexi had ever seen her before.

“Did they… did… did someone…” Bridget fumbled. “…did someone make you come to see me?”

“Nobody made me do anything.” The very idea was so ludicrous she almost had to hold back a sickly laugh, but knew Bridget wasn’t kidding.

“How… how did you know where to find me?”

“Well, you have a whole Beta fan club in the market.”

“N-No, I mean… Sanctuary.”

“I went home first,” Lexi replied. “It took me a little while to, you know… get brave enough to come this way. To find you. But, um… better late than never, right?”

“I just… I never thought…” Bridget stammered. “I wasn’t even sure I’d ever see…”

“Yeah, I know. I, um, said a lot of stuff the last time I saw you. Yelled a lot of stuff.”

“Only everything I deserved.”

Even as recently as six months ago, while still emerging from the mire of uncertainty and regret over everything that transpired after her framing, Lexi might’ve bitterly agreed with her sister’s admission. Certainly she would have felt this way nearly two years ago during that fateful two-and-a-half-week period, when everything changed. Now, though, she was too tired of living with the brokenness to lay blame anywhere, on herself or others. The last of the burden had been dropped the moment she left a shrunken Alma cowering on the ground.

Yet Lexi could see now, projected in the titanic blonde’s spectral expression, indeed like she was seeing a tiny ghost in the great garden, that Bridget had yet to lessen the weight of her own responsibility, earned or not. It was strange to see a creature so colossal, taller than most of the Omegas that Lexi was even acquainted with, and a being who could carry buildings on her back without breaking a sweat, but who also appeared immobile when faced with the living reminder of why she had come to Sanctuary in the first place.

“Are you all right?” Bridget asked quietly enough that somehow her words only reached their singular target rather than ricocheting around the space. Her boat-sized sneaker arched off the ground again, considering taking the final lurch to place her in range of Lexi’s balcony, but she didn’t quite make the jump.

Lexi bristled, feeling as though she’d been yanked back in time. There was something familiar in the sight of that curly-haired golden giant standing just out of reach. It took her back more than a decade, to the moment a certain unknown Omega had selflessly approached a certain friendless, motherless, sisterless Alpha on a desk in Aegis headquarters, and offered her comfort in her neediest hour. Only now, size difference notwithstanding, the one-time victim was here to do the rescuing.

“Yes. I’m fine,” Lexi insisted. It was refreshing not having to answer that question with a lie. She lifted her leg, the same which had snapped like a twig back when her innocence came to light and she tumbled out of Bridget’s palm. That was also the last time she’d touched her sister since then. Demonstratively, Lexi planted her foot up on the railing and wiggled her ankle.

“Good,” Bridget croaked. She blinked back the watery glow in her eyes. “I… d-didn’t just mean your… leg, though.”

“I know. And… I’m still fine.”

“Oh.” A touch of frost in Bridget’s tone suggested she was unwilling or unable to completely buy this. Her hand rose to her chin, thumbnail digging against the corner of her mouth.

“You, um… come here a lot?”

Before everything had gone sour so long ago, Lexi would’ve jokingly asked this question like it was a pickup line, volleying back and forth with increasingly terrible flirtations and puns, all while sharing chortles with her sister for minutes on end. But that didn’t seem possible now, not yet. Taken aback, Bridget regarded the surrounding plant life again, for the first time in many burdened inhales breaking direct sight with Lexi.

“Yes, I do.”

“It’s really nice.” Lexi’s gaze meandered from the vines lining the shielded ceiling, down to the rainbow explosion of flowers in every stripe stuffed into the soil beds on lower decks. “The name definitely fits.”

“I probably come here too much,” Bridget said, steadily recalibrating herself to carry on a conversation. She reached for the willowy canopy of another tree, sifting the verdant threads over her fingertips. “There’s… a lot of work to do in the city. Lots of people who need help, and…”

“It seems like you do a lot already. Everybody I’ve talked to here so far knows you. They really look up to you here. I mean, besides the… obvious reason.”

Seemingly embarrassed, the Omega bowed her lofty head. Wiping her forefinger and thumbpad in toward her nose just under her eyelids, and mopping up a pair of gallon-volume tears before they could plunk, she spoke so quietly then that Lexi had to strain to hear:

“I just had to do something.”

Bridget’s foot shuffled on the ground far below, likely involuntarily, but was still unable to take another step. Having made this last statement, she stopped watching Lexi, and fixed her attention on the lowlier shrubs. The silence returned, but didn’t grow stagnant, instead returning to the normal white-noise pleasantry of bird chirps and spades digging through loam. The waiting made Lexi’s chest sting.

“C’mon, Bridge,” the Alpha sighed at length, waving again to beckon the giantess closer. “Come with me.”

“Where?”

“Home.”

The Omega’s sapphire irises widened, her face paling just when light through the domed greenery dappled over her features. Her fingers soaked up another drop from the corner of her eye and she pursed her lips until they turned almost as white as her cheeks. Then, exhaling heavily, Bridget shook her head from side to side.

“I can’t.”

“You can’t come home?”

“No.”

“Not yet, or not… at all?”

Bridget’s eyes wandered around the floral arena again. When she looked back, it was in haste, almost like she expected the much-smaller girl to have vanished in the time between. She still spoke faintly as though in a dream, still not quite believing yet that her visitor was truly here, even now.

“I don’t know, Lexi.”

“How much… longer do you need?”

“I don’t know.”

This was what Lexi had feared would happen, though still not the rock-bottom possibility sticking at the back of her mind during the journey here. In fact, the Alpha had walked into the dome-top city today with the full knowledge that Bridget might simply power-walk in the other direction without speaking to her at all. Thus Lexi counted it a victory that the former Enforcer was walking toward her, albeit at the speed of a glacier, rather than exiting Sanctuary immediately to keep outrunning her sorrows. Part of Lexi wanted to take her sister by the shoulders and shake her into sense, metaphorically speaking of course, perhaps with the taller girl’s thumb as a shakable substitute for shoulders, less effective though that would be coming from someone so comparatively puny. At the same time, however, Lexi too had taken flight in the wake of their familial separation and utilized every moment of healing time required before bringing herself back. Surely Bridget deserved that same chance.

That possibility threatened to make Lexi droop, but she didn’t let it show, not when she’d come so close to reaching the Omega, physically if not emotionally. And if she couldn’t magically absolve Bridget of surplus guilt in a single conversation, she could at least work on putting them back in the same proximity. For many years prior, the two girls’ personal bubbles had been one and the same, as they giggled and adventured all over the capital, with Lexi seated safely and comfortably in Bridget’s hand most hours of the time not spent eating, sleeping, or studying, and even then exceptions were often made.

While the idea of returning to that same palm which had cooped her in a glass cage would’ve once been frightful, Lexi had learned to let it go, much like all exhaustive feelings of betrayal. Not even the recollection of spilling from Bridget’s hand into the creek bed was enough to deter her. If anything, she realized only now, upon standing in the same place with Bridget once again, that she desperately wished to be held by her big sister. Somehow Lexi intuited that everything just might be perfectly all right again if only she could achieve that, silly a conclusion though this was.

Gripping the rail, Lexi eyed the narrow ledge on the other side. She could’ve vaulted herself over easily, but there were mere inches of platform left to unstably hang off, and with the long drop between the earth and this high-up balcony among the garden’s treetops, the guardrail certainly wasn’t meant to be climbed past. Still, that earlier semi-crazy instinct made Lexi hope if only she could cross more of the distance between them, even if it only amounted to six more inches before the perch gave way to dead air, it might still help Bridget on her last stride-long voyage. With her healed leg still propped atop the railing, the Alpha slid her foot over and straddled the safety bars.

“What are you doing, Lexi?” Bridget asked suddenly, the first sign of urgency she’d demonstrated since laying eyes on the little brunette. Her eyes engorged again, perhaps reminded of the last time she’d watched the girl precariously poised over a vertical plunge.

“Coming to you, if you won’t come with me.”

“Lexi, that’s not… you’re not supposed to stand on that side.” Instantly the Omega’s body language coiled like a spring. “P-Please, you can’t just…”

“It’s safe,” Lexi insisted. She swung her other leg over, now teetering solely on the precipice inches beyond the rail. Though she kept a firm backward grip on the bars, only the rubber heels of her shoes touched solid ground still. The front halves of her feet hovered over nothingness, a sheer hundred-foot drop uninterrupted by other balconies or pretzeled bridges. Lexi’s palms clammed, but this only made her clenched the railing harder. She felt the eyes of most people in the garden upon her now, but only one pair mattered. “I won’t fall.”

“You don’t know that.”

Bridget looked more upset than ever now, tearing up and breathing harder. Her nervous reaction was far disproportionate to the act itself, risky though it was. This made Lexi take a breath to consider whether she was only making things worse, but she was committed now. Her sister had been gone so long, it obviously wasn’t going to take an out-of-the-blue surprise greeting alone to bring her around. A forceful event had split them apart, and it would likely take something equally significant to patch the wounds, starting with this.

“Then help me off of here. Please? Pick me up, Bridge?”

If the Omega was an anxious wreck before, she looked downright distraught now, but just managed to bottle it up by tensing tight as a drum again. Though mountain-steady like always, if only judging by the girl’s thousand-yard stare, one might’ve assumed a strong gust of wind could’ve knocked her onto her haunches.

“Lexi, I… I c-can’t…”

“Yes, you can,” she encouraged. “What about everyone in this city who trusts you to hold them?”

“I can’t… let something hap-” Bridget whispered, choking herself mid-cry. She shook her head again, fearful and powerful, until centrifugal forces launched a saltwater bead in either direction against the treetops. “Not again. Not to you.”

Lexi’s wrists trembled as she clung to the bars, keenly aware of gravity tugging at her harder than usual thanks to her uneven footing on the ledge. Biting her lip, she felt some wobble in her knees thanks to Bridget’s raw state, which was an unfortunate thing to happen after putting herself in this treacherous position just to make a point, but there was no turning back now. Her sister needed medicine.

“I believe you can. I want you to. You did for so long, and I always knew, always, that I was safe. And… I know why you’re scared, but when I… fell… it wasn’t your fault, Bridge.”

Incredibly, hearing this statement seemed to injure Bridget the most, even after watching the Alpha crawl over the railing and hearing her make such an impossible request. Looking first to ensure the way was clear, she steadied herself by placing a gigantic hand on the concrete embankment of the Omega walkway-gulch, and in the process lowered her body and her eyeline below that top-level Alpha balcony. She looked up at Lexi now, beseeching soundlessly by the quake wracking her vast frame.

“Don’t say that,” Bridget slurred. “Don’t… don’t do this, Lexi.”

“Okay. I won’t say it again. But… it is true,” Lexi practically shouted. She chanced another sobering glimpse of the vision-swirling plunge below, a distance far greater than any swan dive from a spoon she’d taken before, and certainly worse than the short drop that had snapped her leg in the backyard. Air thickened in her lungs, but the Alpha was running on pure uncurbed adrenaline now, and at this point she saw her only path forward, or rather their only path. Down. The thought made her grip on the guardrail even more slippery, but that was to be expected, all things considered.

“I don’t… I can’t…” Bridget sputtered like her brain was in full-blown arrest. The Omega took a step back now, even turned her shoulder like she was considering skulking away from the Peace Garden after all, but following a few hard sniffles, brushed tears, and gnawing her lip until it nearly split, she got out the rest cleanly: “I don’t deserve to touch you.”

That was it. Her cue. Lexi could see Bridget fighting herself already to remain in the presence of someone who served as painful proof of her crimes. Who was to say how much of the duty-bound Omega’s grief and self-flagellation was deserved and how much went far beyond the call of duty, but the Alpha couldn’t have cared less now who had done what. All she knew was that her window to make contact was slipping away fast, as Bridget pivoted slowly on her heel, preparing to make a retreat.

Yet through this whole encounter, probably unconsciously to the Omega herself, her hand hovered at her side whenever out of active use: thumb tweaking, fingers planked flat. Lexi, though, had noticed this from the first words they spoke to each other, and it was enough.

Was she really about to do this?

Yes. Of course she was. Because Bridget would have done it for her, too, if their sizes and series of unfortunate life events were reversed, and probably with even less hesitation than this.

“Bridge,” Lexi sharply intoned, catching the Omega’s attention just as she was revolving to depart. The Alpha’s fingers unfurled from around the railing. “I’m ready now!”

And then Lexi tipped forward, pushed off the surface, and leapt.

From the instant her shoes fell away from the thin balcony cusp, her stomach was naturally thrown into a high-velocity spin, though she hardly detected it, as it was still nothing compared to the strung-out nerves and emotional pangs she’d been feeling all day in anticipation of this reunion. She saw little except the whirling vortex of multicolored flora sprinkled through the leafy horizon, though the ground below eventually took the center of her vision, as though viewed through an eclipse pinhole. Tangentially too Lexi noted an expulsion of panicked air bordering on a screech from beyond, followed by a hurdling jet-stream of wind that was largely drowned by the deafening whir of Lexi’s rapid downward trip. She couldn’t tell how close the earth was now, except to know it was very swiftly approaching, but wasn’t troubled. Long before the ground arrived, and mere thumps of her heightened pulse after she’d jumped, the green blur was supplanted by a flash of halcyon cloud-shaped swirls like the first signs of a gathering maelstrom.

Lexi gasped, and rightfully so, with relief and gratitude as she plopped roughly but safely, and sans broken bones, into the warm, sweet-scented padding of Bridget’s palm flesh. Her enormous hand had thrust with innate precision right where it was needed at the right time, as though less than a day had passed since she was last called upon to cradle her sister aloft. The Omega was still trapped in a place of glassed-over distress, lip quivering and blue eyes in a terrified dam-burst glow that soon gave way to damp salt-streaked cheekbones. Nevertheless, the feeling of resting in this most secure of places made Lexi feel more at home than she had even when arriving back on Evelyn’s stoop two weeks before.

“Told you,” Lexi muttered with a smile.

This was a start.

“Did she say anything else to you, Lexi?”

Stirring the contents of her dinner plate until it looked like a smeared race track, the Alpha looked up at once, startled, at her adoptive mother’s delicate expression. She opened her mouth to speak, but it took a few tries to get it out. Both Alpha and Omega, matching one another’s hushed mumble-volume, glanced in the direction of the hallway at Bridget’s bedroom door, which had stood closed and locked for nearly twenty-four hours now, mere minutes after their fanfareless homecoming the evening before. There hadn’t been a peep from the other side since.

“Not too much. Not after she caught me in the garden,” Lexi answered. Sliding out her tiny chair from her doll-scale tray, she shuffled along the wooden plain of the Omega dining table toward Evelyn’s place setting, where the giantess’s hand rested on its side, slowly kneading the corner of a parachute-sized napkin between two humongous fingertips. “She got her things together, stopped to say goodbye to the kids in the market, and then she just walked us home. Without stopping. I think the only thing she said the whole way back was to ask me if I was hungry. I almost pretended and said I was, just to get her to say a few more words. But I didn’t know what else to do.”

“It was very brave of you to do what you did at all, Alexandra. You brought her home. That’s more than enough for now.”

Lexi couldn’t decide if she agreed with that, but kept silent for another minute, watching the immense white wall of her sister’s door in hopes she could will it to open at this exact moment, with a happy-go-lucky Bridget to step through it, so their personal world to return to normal. But nothing moved.

“Will she talk to you?”

“Not yet,” Evelyn said. “I tried, last night, but she didn’t answer her phone or the door. In all honesty, dear, I think she’d speak to you before she speaks to me. Whenever you felt the time was right, of course.”

“I… don’t know if that’s true. She acts like she’s afraid to touch me, and I don’t know how to fix it.”

“I think she may be afraid, yes,” Evelyn said. Extending her pointer finger, she gently laid the tip against the Alpha’s back. “And she’ll have to make peace with that somehow. But it won’t be… oh, Alexandra… it won’t be your responsibility. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” Lexi said, quietly lying through her teeth. She couldn’t even look up at the Omega when she said this now, and likely Evelyn sensed her lack of faith too, but the woman was either too kind or too nervous of impeding Lexi’s recovery period to risk pushing any harder. Instead, the Alpha placed a hand on her surrogate mother’s comforting fingertip, which curled more protectively around Lexi’s narrow shoulders, as the pair observed Bridget’s unbudged door together for several achingly contemplative minutes.


###


The dishes were long put away, most of the lights switched off, and Evelyn had retired to her own room after insistently offering to give Lexi a lift back to her quarters, which the Alpha refused in lieu of remaining on the empty table, alone. After some maternal needling from the Omega, Lexi agreed to have a snack left on her tray in case she got hungry before making the eventual trek back to her room, even while Evelyn must’ve known the strawberry wouldn’t be used, since the girl had scarcely taken from her dinner. When at last she had some solitude, and the stinging quiet that came with it, Lexi eyed the juicy red synthetically-grown produce the size of a beach ball, studying its intricate green seeds. Every so often, her gaze diverted back to Bridget’s bedroom door in the hall, only to find it was just a trick of the shadows making her believe for an instant the way was opening at last.

Lexi had traveled a very long way to reach her sister in Sanctuary, but somehow the short distance from here to the end of the hall, where the tortured Omega planned to hide for who-knew-how-long, felt much further now to the Alpha than any cross-country voyage. Though she hadn’t certainly hadn’t fooled herself into thinking the tension would dissipate for everyone the very minute Bridget returned home, it was hard not to hope anyway. She’d made up her mind about what she had to do then before Evelyn went to bed, which was precisely why she had to wait to be alone, knowing her mother’s protectiveness of Lexi’s own healing process would ensure she protested. Summoning whatever reserves of chutzpah she still had after jumping off a balcony for Bridget yesterday, the Alpha hoisted her strawberry up, clutched it to her chest, and began her trip to the hall with the fruit in tow.

There were faster ways to get where she was headed, but Lexi purposefully chose the most circuitous route for herself, strolling along the walkway that wound around the whole room before curving along the corridor wall. She was too wary earlier today to actually stand at the Alpha-scaled door alongside the colossal Omega way into Bridget’s bedroom, having only watched Evelyn occasionally pass by the entry to give a gentle knock and a loving invitation for her daughter to join them as each of the day’s meals came and went without her. Balancing the ripe berry against her knee, Lexi reached for the door and tried the handle.

Naturally it too was locked, and in fact would barely tremble when she tried to feebly test the hinges, which made her suspect that not only had Bridget latched it shut from the other side, but barricaded it with something. This wasn’t a surprise, though it still hurt Lexi enough to give her pause for a moment. She pressed her ear to the door but couldn’t hear anything, not a sigh or a sob or even an exhale. The nearest elevator was at the edge of the hall leading into the kitchen, so an undeterred Lexi turned around and made her way back. It felt strange operating the lift, as she’d hardly ever had reason to use it even before her retreat from home; there was always a faster, safer way to get where she was headed than by going for the ground level, and since their childhood, Bridget had always scoffed at the concept of Lexi ever needing an elevator when the Omega had a perfectly good working hand at her sister’s beck and call.

The elevator buttons clicked loudly in the otherwise still dimness of the huge house and chugged along to bring the Alpha to the floor, which made her approach toward Bridget’s towering entrance all the more intimidating. This felt more like preparing to infiltrate a castle drawbridge than outmaneuvering dual-locked bedroom doors. Standing at the base, with strawberry still in hand, Lexi eyed her only means of ingress, shrugged, then flattened herself to the ground and started to crawl under, her offering still in hand. Intent on keeping the fruit from scraping along the floor as she went, the Alpha was glad her mother had provided one of the “smallest” strawberries from the batch, because it otherwise would’ve turned to jam while sliding under the relatively narrow crack beneath the Omega door. Protecting the berry like a swaddled newborn in the hem of her shirt, Lexi crept silently out on the other side.

Bridget wasn’t immediately visible on her bed from down here, which was impressive considering how difficult it was to conceal a one-hundred-and-fifty-foot-tall being, but Lexi chalked this up to her low and unusual vantage point. She couldn’t even remember the last time she stood on the actual floor of this room, let alone anywhere in the house. The Alpha was grateful, though, since the peculiar perspective, combined with almost-nonexistent light except for a purple lava lamp on the bedside table that hadn’t seen use in years, made it easier to distract herself from the fact that this familiar and once-comforting space had previously served as the enforcer’s detention block for two and a half life-altering weeks.

The bobbling lilac goop in a lantern the size of a water tower cast just enough of a glow over the tangle of blankets up above for Lexi to see her sister’s leg hanging over the edge of the mattress, her foot dangled close to the floor. In the darkness, and with so little experience needing the in-house elevator system at all, it took the Alpha a moment to even recall the location of the lift in this room. Once it was found in the corner, however, she thought better of using it, for fear of Bridget making a getaway out of the room the moment she heard the little metal box rising up the wall.

Instead Lexi traveled across the carpet, cautiously eyeing the Omega’s leg the whole time out of anxiety that she, ironically, would spook her exponentially larger sister. Reaching the bedside table still without making a sound, she found the old built-in steps which coiled around the back leg of the immense furniture. Though she momentarily questioned whether there was really a point to lugging this berry around so many roundabout paths through the house, Lexi was strangely determined now to get it all the way to its arbitrarily-important destination. So she took the steps two at a time, circling round and round the table limb, until the Alpha and her strawberry stepped into the quivering purple spotlight which coated the whole table and spilled all the way into the bed, where at last Lexi could see Bridget.

The Omega was definitely not asleep, but gazing in a trance-like state into the lava capsule, watching plasma beads fly up and down the watery shaft. Her head was cradled sideways in her pillow, a hand wrapped over her cheek. It was tough to know what was a trick of the wobbling violet light and what was a tear-stain, but Lexi didn’t have to squint very hard to see the moisture tracks dried and unwiped leading down from Bridget’s face, darkening the pillow all around her head. Lexi steeled herself to see a flinch when her sister’s dazed pupils refocused on the finger-sized creature walking across her bedside table with a strawberry. Bridget wasn’t startled, but seemed to recede another few feet away from the edge of the bed, drawing the covers tighter to her chest like she expected a monster to crawl out from under the mattress. It had always been the younger Lexi who anticipated such scares first, needing nocturnal soothing from her much hardier sister, but this time it was the Alpha’s turn to banish whatever intangible forces haunted Bridget.

“H-Hey,” Lexi whispered. She hoisted the berry aloft, hoping the few dented smudge-marks in its red flesh formed by her defensive grappling would go unnoticed. “I, um… thought you might hungry.”

The Omega breathed heavily out into the padded dune of her pillow. Lexi expected the next sound out of Bridget’s mouth to be a polite but firm request to be left alone right away. Instead, the Alpha was delighted almost beyond belief when the gargantuan blonde nodded slowly.

“Thank you.” Using more effort than was physically required, Bridget rolled herself closer to the side of the cot, until her cheek could almost touch the edge of the lava-lit table. “You were right. I am.”

“Here,” Lexi said, having to stop herself from sprinting at her sister’s face. She screeched to a halt halfway there, looking down at the strawberry and at once remembering all the bitter green leaves wreathed around the tip. “Oh. Wait, I’ll… sorry, I forgot to… you know… pluck it first.”

Bridget opened her mouth as though to speak but withheld her comment, looking a bit lost while the Alpha clumsily wrestled with the oversized berry until all the leaves were shorn off and left in a pile at her feet. Now satisfied, Lexi marched forth again, at which point Bridget extended a hand, but only making enough of a shelf from her curved fingertips to accept the fruit. There was no mistaking this as a suggestion for the cargo and its carrier to step aboard the girl’s palm. Slightly disappointed by that, Lexi still hefted the food into her sister’s hand and watched it airlifted gradually away, again with some apparent arduousness disproportionate to how puny and feather-light the little red blob must’ve felt while pinched between Bridget’s fingers.

“…thanks,” she said. The Omega pressed the strawberry between her lips and sealed it shut inside, but rather than chewing, appeared to use her cheeks to compress the fruit into pulp like a trash compactor, which made a continual squelch the only sound in the room.

“Please tell me how I can help. Anything,” Lexi said, once the Omega swallowed the pulverized gift. She edged her way nearer to the bed, hands folded behind her back to hide her nervous shiver, until she stood at the precipice. Noticing the instant alarm in Bridget’s already-tormented expression, those swimming blue eyes darting from her miniature sister to the floor below, Lexi cleared her throat. “I, uh, won’t jump again. I swear.”

This seemed to sate the Omega, who nodded again and ran her tongue around her inner cheek, perhaps gathering the last scraps of the berry, though after receiving this vow, she never took her gaze off the Alpha again.

“You already did way more than you had to. More than you should have,” Bridget said, sounding to Lexi like a more-anguished repeat of Evelyn. “To tell you the truth, Lexi, I was starting to think I’d just live there at Sanctuary.”

“Oh.”

“Maybe not forever, but mainly I thought I couldn’t… you know. Come back here again.”

“But you did. That’s… something.”

“Because you came for me. And if you really were ready to see me again, when I already thought I’d seen you for the last time, well… I couldn’t have lived with myself to just… sit there another day,” Bridget groaned, stringing out some of the longest sentences that Lexi had yet heard from her in close to two years, which was its own sort of blessing, even if the words were hard to hear. “I’m sorry. This is just so… I can’t even… what I mean is, I should thank you. I know that. Thank you, Lexi, for coming for me. For… giving me permission to come back.”

“You’re welcome.”

“But I don’t know how things can go back to the way they were again. It just doesn’t seem possible to me. I… can’t… forget what happened. I don’t deserve to, and I don’t deserve to put it behind me. Yesterday was the last time I can pick you up again. Ever.”

This was the moment Lexi’s knees almost gave out from the wave of forlorn gloaming that washed over her at this tender admission, but she managed to keep standing, afraid of prematurely ending a hard-won conversation. It was impossible to refute Bridget’s need to remember especially, which wasn’t just idle wishing to erase history; Lexi herself had refused a very-real proposition from Kayla Everett to have that portion of her life wiped from her mind, but chose to retain it as a scar, and so had Bridget.

“You caught me, though,” the Alpha said, trying and failing to keep her voice from suffering a crack. She wasn’t sure what good this information did now, but she couldn’t think of anything else worth a damn. “You held me. You carried me home. And before I got there, too, the things you did for the people in that city? I only met a few and every single one of them knew you. They knew the real you, the one I know from before all this bullshit. Especially those kids. I have to believe they love you so much… that you’re so much of a hero to them… they’d forgive anything that they heard about you, no matter what it was. So… can’t they be enough for you to let yourself be here again? You don’t have to forget what happened, but… you can’t just stop living when everything seems like it’s going wrong.”

Lexi was freight-training her way through her case now, knowing she might well give up if she stopped speaking long enough to breathe, and Bridget, realizing her trauma was being compared to the Alpha’s childhood darkness, kept her mouth shut, unable to reply.

“I hate this,” Lexi said. “I hate having to wake up every day and remember all over again that I can’t have back the most important parts of my life just because of some bad goddamn luck. It was awful what happened. I won’t be able to forget it either, but it was like getting struck by lightning. It just… happened, I can’t change that, and it hurt more than anything that’s ever happened to me before, but listen to me, Bridget: I’m so sick and fucking tired of feeling helpless, like I can’t do anything, and God, maybe I still can’t, but I have to TRY. Do you understand? I have to try to fix this, for us. So I’m here, and I need you to believe me when I say I’d do anything to make things right. Anything it took in the whole entire world. I… don’t know if you’re thinking that things won’t be the same because of “justice” or “fairness” or whatever, like something wrong was done that can’t be taken back, but it can be.”

“It should’ve been me,” Bridget rasped. Tone aside, her voice was surprisingly lucid and mindful, even while the flowing tears dampened her sheets again.

“What?”

“After everything that already happened to you… with your mom… it should have been me in that box. Not you.”

“You can’t spend the rest of your life thinking like that, Bridge. The world just doesn’t work like that, where you can trade wrong things back and forth at each other, stupid eye-for-an-eye stuff. And besides, you’re the big one. You’ve always been the big one. That won’t ever change. And… I need my big sister back. Whatever it takes, do you hear me? Just tell me what I have to do to make you understand that I’m all right, that all of us can be all right again, if only you’d come back home. All the way home, I mean.”

Emotionally spent, Lexi crumpled to a slouch on the edge of the table, letting her legs hang in the dark abyss. Her vision was distorted by a double-whammy of the lava lamp’s flickering trickery and her own salty welling. She was too anxious now to look Bridget right in the eye, but neither could she fully look away, on that one-in-a-billion chance that letting her out of her sight for another minute might allow the Omega to vanish, this time permanently. For a long while the pair sat in broken solidarity without uttering another word. Lexi had already decided she would just sleep here on the hard table surface, so long as Bridget didn’t tell her to leave, and was in fact preparing to lean back and make herself comfortable under the dancing purple beams, when the giantess sat bolt upright in her bed, her curly golden locks whipping around her stained cheeks, where a few loose strands stuck to gummied tear-trails.

“That’s it.”

Bridget spoke so clearly and pointedly, like intoning a magic spell, Lexi didn’t even recognize the sound as coming from her giant sister at first, too thrown off by the violent uprising which accompanied it.

“What’s it?” The Alpha’s heart was racing now. She clambered to her feet and stood at the edge of the table in waiting, while also recognizing a distinctly phantom pain-esque dissonance upon remembering just how unnatural it felt to stand near Bridget, especially when she appeared ready to leap up and march somewhere in a hurry, without being offered a lift in her reassuring hand. Being left behind didn’t use to be a familiar sensation, but had somehow become one. Still, Lexi’s shock was mixed with some hope, as it was so surreal seeing a momentary flash of the same enthusiastic un-zombified Omega again.

Bridget, however, now rendered a waking catatonic, didn’t answer the question, but hopped from her bed and snatched her cell phone off the desk. From there, she paced restless laps back and forth from the wall to her bed, never halting for longer than it took to pivot on her toes, while alternately murmuring indistinguishably and furiously tapping away on her phone screen.

“Bridge, what is it? What did I say? What’s it?”

“Everything will be all right, Lexi,” Bridget promised at length, though she said it with such grim solemnity that the Alpha had trouble feeling at all inspired, even by something so optimistic. “Believe me. It will. I just… have to go and take care of… um, please don’t walk on the ground if you decide to leave. It makes me feel better to know you’re up where we can see you.”

“C-Can I just stay right here?”

“Yes. Of course. Wait…” Bridget said, still frantic for reasons Lexi couldn’t fathom. She darted across the room to her closet and rooted through it, shining her phone’s flashlight while burrowing past piled laundry. Finding something, she returned to the bedside platform with a matchbox-sized object clamped between her thumb and forefinger, which she set down on the table next to her adoptive sibling. It was a spare Alpha bed, leftover from a room-sharing sleepover from a childhood ago. “Here. I hope it’s… not too dusty from sitting in there. Get some rest. I have to go now, though.”

“W-Where are you going?” Lexi cried in a panic, genuinely ready to break into the full-on weeping she promised herself she wouldn’t succumb to. She only knew she had to get her desperate message out fast, because after a few sentences, she’d surely be reduced to the same blubbering little girl that once needed the saving, instead of the other way around, and the whole point of coming in here was to lead the charge in rescuing them both. “Please, you don’t have to leave. I’m sorry if I did this too soon, or made you think about all this stuff too much. But, Bridge, you just got-”

“Don’t worry. I’ll be back soon,” the Omega declared with almost religious authority, and this had to suffice for Lexi, who leaned in a dumbfounded stupor against the portable bed, watching that leviathan shadow sprint barefooted out of the dark bedroom. Moments later, the Alpha heard the front door unlocking, swinging, and shutting again as her sister disappeared into the night. Hysterical bells set off in her brain, telling her to run after Bridget to keep her from escaping again, no matter how comically unrealistic it was to expect that she could catch up, when a single Omega lunge would take her dozens of sprinting steps to cover. Still, in spite of the inherent fear that the closest family she had left could disappear for good now as quickly as she’d come, Lexi took her second leap of faith in two days by trusting Bridget’s parting words, and stayed put.

Too full of questions and concerns to let her mind shut off for actual sleep, Lexi was at least grateful to have something soft and properly scaled to buoy her, and crawled under the sheets. With the lava lamp bubbling serenely overhead, she watched that door like a hawk and listened for returning footsteps, until all she could hear was her own pulse.

When Lexi awoke, with long hair wrapped over her eyes after a fitful night tossing and turning with dreams she couldn’t quite remember now, early morning light shown in the window and passed through the towering violet-hued lava lamp as well, with most of the burbling liquid geometry within having settled back down to the base again. Trying to find some kind of oddball peace in this image, before facing whatever else the day had to offer, the Alpha jolted more awake in the Alpha matchbox-bed as though by cattle prod, instantly recalling not only where she was, but the reason she was in here, and most importantly, the fact that she’d meant to remain awake.

Acting as a tiny watchdog for the Omega’s bedroom door once Bridget had made her swift and awkward departure, Lexi had appreciated the gigantic blonde’s vow to return, as well as her cryptic insistence that everything would be all right again, but ultimately took little comfort, considering how long she’d had to wait to see her sister since the last time she ran off without a hint to her destination. Thus Lexi had attempted to remain awake in the glow of the lamp, pulse pounding double as fast as the ticking seconds, with each passing moment of the Omega’s absence making her initially-unwelcome visitor all the more anxious. Where had Bridget gone?

Yet pure exhaustion, emotional and physical, finally conked Lexi out cold. And though it was possible her body had remained on autopilot, shutting down most other senses including her memory perception until she’d latently witnessed the soft-spoken titan’s return, she certainly didn’t recall seeing Bridget come back through that door in the dark. Thrown into fresh panic, Lexi flung herself up from the expansive bedside table and sprinted for the edge nearest to the isle of the Omega’s mattress, though it was plain even before getting close that there was no hundred-fifty-foot-tall being snuggled under those blankets. The sheets were just as messy as she’d left them.

Heart palpitating up into her throat, the Alpha had her phone out in her hand before she even knew what she’d do next. It had been a while since she’d felt this helpless, and that was saying something, considering the crippling impotence that had come with gradually returning home to the city from her life-sabbatical, then venturing right back out to help her sister make the same journey. Where to begin? It would be faster to call Evelyn first, rather than making the cumbersome trek back across the blockaded landscape of Bridget’s room. Having her adoptive mother to carry her while they began a search of the neighborhood and then the urban sprawl of the city itself would certainly speed up the process, but Lexi had a sinking feeling that if her sister had been willing to lie about returning to keep her bedside bunkmate from following her, then chances were good the Omega had no intention of sticking close enough to be found that quickly. And though it was tough for someone of Bridget’s stature to “hide” without at least someone eventually spotting her standing there high as a fifteen-story building, it also seemed desperately unlikely to Lexi that a second pilgrimage to bring her home would be successful, given the struggle required to get Bridget home just once, only to abandon the effort and flee again inside two days.

Pre-emptively, Lexi’s eyes were watering, and she hadn’t even punched a key on the phone yet to alert Evelyn. Her finger hovered above the screen as she gazed over the clothen expanse of the vacated bed beyond. Was there really a point? The Alpha hated to be so defeatist, after she’d summoned such bravado to collect Bridget from Sanctuary, no matter the emotional strain, but it was tough not to take pause and forlornly reflect after finding an empty mattress, with only a probably-well-meant fib from the young Omega in the dead of night as hint to her next whereabouts. Already Lexi’s mind was racing through depressing outcomes both realistic and paranoid, though all futures felt the same in this rather devastating silent morning discovery. Was there anything she could’ve said to convince Bridget to say? Any combination of magic words that might’ve bridged just enough of the gulf to let them have a real chance to heal together? If not, would there ever be a time when Bridget might return? Or was Lexi destined to live out her life here, and no matter what sorts of other happiness she managed to find through the years in attempt to fill the gaping internal void, always remain haunted by the fact that she’d let a sister the size of a small skyscraper slip through her fingers, permanently? That darkest possible chance was still an unwanted outlier in Lexi’s brain, a remnant of her time away when it seemed nothing could ever correct their wounded relationship, but in this uncertain moment, the chance of never seeing Bridget again felt more like reality than it ever had before.

“Lexi.”

The sound of Bridget’s voice speaking the Alpha’s name was such a common refrain in Lexi’s mental bank, practically tattooed on her cortex from an adolescence of calling back-and-forth to one another in the midst of exploration and adventurous backyard play, she didn’t even question at first that it was anything but a sensory memory dredged up at an especially painful moment.

“Lexi.”

Then it came again, like a slap in the face despite its softness. In fact, the voice was so quiet and fragile, more like birdsong compared to the natural reverberation that came along with any Omega’s spoken word no matter how gently they whispered, that if it didn’t sound so precisely like Bridget, Lexi would’ve thought it was a stranger somewhere in the room. She still did, until it came a third time, and out of her delirious sorrow, the Alpha pinpointed the source of the voice coming from somewhere down in the tousled blankets of Bridget’s bed.

“Lexi. Please don’t cry. I’m… down here.”

Light-headed and unnerved, Lexi crept yet closer to the precipice of the table, kneeling down to peer over the colorful landscape of cozy bedclothes, forming small hills out of generous sheets that could just barely conceal the Omega’s colossal body. Up near where the fabric gave way to the slope of the pillow, Lexi spotted an oasis-like flash of lengthy light-golden locks on a person that was unmistakably a female Beta. At least the Alpha innately believed this, given every three-inch-tall being she’d ever met in her life was indeed a Beta, since the unknown intruder was certainly no taller than Lexi’s finger, and this was excluding the very-slim possibility it was instead an Alpha who’d been compressed down to such a rare degree, as her mother had been in Jenna’s charge.

But upon squinting, and locking eyes with the girl, she stumbled to the realization that she was actually sharing a gaze with none other than Bridget Cade. There was no mirage at work here, no sadness-addled hallucination. The girl that Lexi had never known as anything other than an astronomic cloud-reaching angel had somehow been reduced to the size of the world’s smallest and most vulnerable, almost doll-like citizens. Afflicted by a confusing overflow of almost-giddy relief that Bridget was still here, as well as gut-wrenching terror at whatever circumstances had caused her sister to dwindle to one-six-hundredth of her regular stature, Lexi took a flying leap from the bedside table without thinking.

In the brief rush of air, she heard Bridget’s anxious breath intake, but the choice was already made, and since the distance wasn’t long, nor was the Alpha jumping with anything less than raw energy brought on by profound need to be near her sibling immediately, she easily cleared the gap between the giant table and mattress. Of course Lexi had been on this bed countless times before, mostly in youth as the girls laid together watching a movie or listening to Evelyn read a bedtime story, and though it seemed pretty much an ordinary bed while it was occupied by an Omega, to now be the biggest thing standing in the geography of tossed blankets, the little Alpha truly appreciated its scale. Especially because she could so directly compare, even from afar, the perturbing sight of a three-inch-tall Bridget standing calmly on the plush terrain beside a monumental pillow far too high for the blonde to climb, let alone use to rest her puny head.

Although Lexi ran for her first few panicked strides, instinct slowed her to a more ponderous pace when she was just three steps from Bridget. She fell to her knees, both out of shock and the need to convince herself from closer-up that there were no tricks at play. But now with hardly any space between her and the undeniable shape of the somehow-shrunken Omega, reasonable doubt no longer worked. It was Bridget, looking strangely well-rested, and while not quite smiling yet, she appeared sunnier and more self-assured than she had in these previously distraught hours together.

Before Lexi realized it, she’d lowered herself and extended both hands out toward Bridget, enclosing her palms around her and only stopping herself when she was within range of brushing her now-tiny sister with a fingertip. Just as immediately, the Alpha withdrew both hands, ashamed for having gone straight in as though she intended to snatch the girl right off the bed. Though to the Omega’s credit, she didn’t flinch in the slightest at her sister’s clearly-bewildered approach, and even reached out with her own miniscule hand to touch Lexi’s thumb, but it was retracted before they could make contact. Several more seconds passed in clumsy, roaring silence with the girls just looking between one another. Slowly Bridget’s lips actually twitched to an uncommon smile, a sight that caused the Alpha even more befuddlement. Much as their encounter in the Sanctuary garden had felt to Lexi at first like an out-of-body experience, surreal and almost intangible, this matched that sensation tenfold.

What the hell was going on?

“Don’t be scared, Lexi. It’s me. Really,” Bridget promised just as softly, which only made the Alpha wince, as well as find soothing confirmation. The Omega took her turn to advance now, stepping up to Lexi’s leg and touching her much-smaller hand to her sister’s knee. “It’s okay.”

Unlikely though it was to relate the feeling of a palm tinier than a bead touching her skin, to the overwhelming sanctity of sitting on a warm wide hand like boat constituted of that same peachy-soft terrain, Lexi finally recognized her sister through this touch more accurately than by sight. She’d spent enough years being carried in that trustworthy hand to know what it felt like, even if it was still just a tad unthinkable to see that familiar silhouette so incredibly diminished, framed against a humongous bedspread rather than a city skyline. Their scales had literally flipped, and for the first time in her life, Lexi realized she was seeing her sister from the Omega’s perspective: not with regard to the rest of the world around them, of course, but to the miniature former-Enforcer herself, which was really all that mattered now. Bridget appeared relatively average-sized for a Beta-facsimile, if not a few fractions of an inch on the taller side, yet because her once-mountainous body had been so drastically reduced, Lexi couldn’t help but feel she was now looking at the smallest human being in the world.

Though perhaps the most faithful method of knowing for certain that this was Bridget, Lexi realized, was the simple fact that the Omega was still offering unwavering calm to her sister in the midst of such unexpected awe, despite having their relative scales reversed. After another touch from the Beta-size blonde, and a near-imperceptible shush that nonetheless worked, Lexi’s senses caught up with her burgeoning hysteria, and she somehow relaxed. Despite still not having the slightest clue what was happening, it was worth catching her breath again upon recognition that Bridget, the one who should’ve been yelling in calamity at her unnaturally miniaturized body, seemed to be unbothered, and even gave the impression she knew what was happening, though how that could be, Lexi couldn’t begin to guess.

“Holy shit,” the Alpha exhaled.

“Yeah, um… that’s probably a fair thing to say,” Bridget replied. “But will you believe me if I promise, cross my heart, that nothing’s wrong?”

Struggling to keep her balance while her head still spun with this quiet madness, Lexi let herself fall back into a seated position, clutching at the bedspread behind her to keep from going completely prone, though it didn’t help.

“Y-Yeah,” Lexi gulped. “But… I mean… w-what… h-how is this possible?”

“When I left last night, I was… arranging this,” Bridget said matter-of-factly, which did little to clear the air, though Lexi was inclined to believe her, given the start of the explanation made just as little sense as the outcome itself. “I didn’t go very far. Actually, it was taken care of before I even left the yard. Then I just went for a little walk down the block, thinking things over. I was gone for a while.”

Then, seemingly sensing the guilt that came secondary to Lexi’s incredulity, Bridget walked along the length of her reclining sister’s body, right up to her face just a few inches off the bed: closer than they’d yet come at this unfamiliar divergence in the size-norm. The Alpha stared unblinking at her nearby sister, marveling at the translation of known features into such a narrow package. She’d seen countless Betas in her life, but the novelty of seeing Bridget as short as one still made her seem like a fantasy creature, like awakening next to a fairy. The Omega reached up and pressed her hand to the lower curve of Lexi’s cheek.

“I know you were waiting up for me to come back last night. But you’ve been so tired, too, Lexi. I know that. And you need rest. So don’t feel bad. I tried to sneak back in once I was finished, and I saw you were sleeping, so I just got back into bed, and waited for it to happen.”

“It. You mean… this. You just… waited for it.”

“Yes.”

“I didn’t even know c-compression was possible on… you. I thought it was just Alphas, and… even then… I thought it was too hard to make us as small as a… well, I mean… y-you did this on purpose, right? Made yourself as small as a Beta?”

“Yes, I meant to be exactly this size, but it wasn’t me, exactly, who did it. Not me at all, actually. I think the strain of trying to do it myself would’ve made me pass out way before I even got to be your size. So, you’re right. It’s not normally possible. But you know there’s… stuff about us that’s harder to explain. People that are harder to explain. You know what I mean, don’t you?”

Bridget didn’t even have to name-drop for Lexi to comprehend, but she still had to say it aloud herself to make it seem real and at last fully tranquilize her worries, because with just the mention of one word, suddenly all the anarchy of natural law taking place in this bed was explained: “Kayla.”

“Yes. I called her. She’s… busy a lot, so I wasn’t sure if I’d have to wait, or even if she’d answer me at all, considering how late it was, but… she did. Like right away. And I just asked her.”

“You… asked her… to do this to you.”

“Not to me. For me. And it wasn’t as easy as that, I guess. We talked for a few minutes. But not long, either. I know you’ve met her. Conversations work different. She just… has a way.”

“Where you don’t have to say everything out loud for her to know it.”

“Exactly. Once I explained, she promised it would be done as soon as I got back into bed. And it was. I only fell asleep when I was sure it was done. That it worked. Not that I doubted it would. It is Kayla, after all. But I… wanted to be one hundred percent certain. Needed to.”

“Is… is this-”

“No, it’s not permanent. Just like any kind of compression, it has a time limit, and I’ll grow back to my old size after a while. But not in just a couple of hours, like usual. She told me it would last twenty-four hours, though it could be… refreshed, I guess. If I need longer. All I have to do is ask.”

“Okay. Um…” Lexi stammered, still having a lot of trouble finding words while focused on the simultaneous déjà vu and askew nature of feeling Bridget’s supportive yet meek and flower-petal-tender micro hand still holding against her face. She nudged her cheek lower by a hair, if only to convince herself fully that the Omega’s palm was no longer capable of picking her up, no matter its size. Sure enough, Bridget’s hand lowered, following the motion of her much-larger younger sibling’s countenance. In the same instant, it occurred to Lexi that now she was probably more than able to lift up her sister between her hands, though of course she was far from ready to consider that, while still needing to pose the direst question of all.

“So that answers the how part… mostly,” Lexi said. “But, you know… it doesn’t really explain…”

“I know.”

“…why?”

Bridget bowed her head, not speaking, though her tiny hand didn’t budge from its delicate contact with Lexi’s cheek. The Alpha was grateful her welled tears had reduced upon finding the Omega hadn’t abandoned her again after all, since she desperately wished to study her sister with clear eyes now, hoping the answer would simply present itself from the ether, as hesitant as Bridget seemed to respond herself. Wondering for a moment if she’d gone too far too fast, demanding explanations from her sister when the girl was still evidently in the early stages of self-redemption, Lexi waited breathlessly for the Omega to look back up again. When the smaller party did speak, however, it was from a place of unexpected strength and resolve.

“Because it’s the only way I can set things back the way they were again,” Bridget stated. “I told you last night that I knew how to make everything all right, and I do. To tell you the truth, I thought about something like this happening a lot while I was gone. Sometimes I could only fall asleep at night thinking about it, about… seeing things from this side of the world. Just never seriously, because… well, it seems obvious now, but… it wasn’t possible for me alone. And I didn’t want to talk to anyone back home, not yet. So back then it was just a way to… I don’t know… find balance, I guess. I couldn’t totally explain why then, but last night, after you helped me see-”

“Wait, me? W-What did I-” Lexi stammered, then cut herself off upon the jarring memory of her rambling appeal to a still-Omega-height Bridget: how her sister was and always would be the “big” one, and how she was prepared to do whatever it took to fix things. Apparently this was the remedy somehow, though the Alpha still couldn’t grasp how or why.

“Yes, you,” Bridget reassured, smiling again in a way that made Lexi feel a rush of hopeful goose bumps, despite still feeling just as adrift on the rationale here. “It took you to make me understand it, Lexi. All those months of wondering if it was ever possible to get back to you and Mom, having all the pieces and not knowing how they fit together, and you just made it click. Now it all makes sense. Perfect sense. I have to be… down here, to start fixing things.”

Though Lexi was still lost, her sister sounded so inspired, so primed for the first time to begin the difficult journey of mending themselves, the Alpha couldn’t even care that she didn’t yet comprehend the psychological connection for Bridget. So apparently the Omega thought that seeing the world from a Beta-eye view would let her learn the kind of inward forgiveness that would allow them to be close again; the “why” hardly mattered at this point. This was more than Lexi could’ve hoped to wake up to in her most optimistic dreams, shocking shrinkages aside. She almost wanted to stand up and jump for joy, but was conscious of the Omega’s palm still at her cheek with the width and softness of a splattered teardrop, so she remained on her back and relegated the rising excitement to a tremble. There was light at the end of the tunnel after all, and it was pouring forth.

“That’s… that’s GREAT, Bridge!” Lexi breathed, allowing herself a lilting laugh of near-deranged relief. The Alpha decided that in time she’d try to understand whatever logic had driven this seemingly nonsensical choice, but left the line of further questioning alone for now. It was the Omega’s emotional pilgrimage to make anyway, and if this was the required medicine, then Lexi would’ve supported her sister having herself reduced to the size of a sand grain. Well, maybe not that small…

“There is still something we have to talk about. In a little while, anyway,” Bridget admitted at length, clearly reluctant to say this and veiling it behind a forced smile. “Something else you helped me see that was… important. Something I’ll need your help with.”

“Of course! I said I’d do anything to help, and I mean it,” the giddy Alpha instantly concurred, just relieved to hear she’d be included. “T-Take all the time you need! You know I’m always here to listen, however much you need to say or… you know, don’t want to say.”

“You’ll hear everything, don’t worry,” Bridget insisted. “You’ll have to. But… first…”

“Yes?”

“I was hoping you could pick me up,” the Omega said, then with a sly smirk and even a curl of teasing sarcasm that the Alpha hadn’t quite expected to ever hear again amidst all this gloom, added: “I mean, let’s face it. You’ve got a lot of catching up to do, after I spent all those years lugging you around. Seems only right I get some free rides now before I grow back up, hmm?”

“What?” Lexi was almost as taken aback by the request as from gladness at seeing a hint of the old more-jovial and joking Bridget.

“You almost did it on your own a few minutes ago, didn’t you? It made me happy, actually. I thought maybe you wouldn’t even think twice about this. But that was unfair of me. I’d have needed a second to get used to it, too. This, um… is a pretty big adjustment, I know.”

“Are you… sure?”

“Lexi, you’ve known how to pick up Betas for years. This is exactly the same.”

“Not exactly… what happens if I, you know… accidentally-”

“You’re not going to break me if you drop me. We’re on my bed, and even though I’m this size, I can still… handle a lot. You could probably throw me and I’d be fine. But neither of those things matter anyway, because you won’t drop me, because it’s you, and I totally trust you.”

After such a helpful preamble, Lexi found it startlingly easy to swoop her palms back down to the bedspread and cup them around Bridget’s sides, as she’d done so intuitively to begin with. She still had to muscle past a spine-creep at the sheer oddity of picking up an honest-to-God Omega in her own two hands, but her sister made it easy, grasping Lexi’s thumbpads like railings and stepping nimbly onto the Alpha’s cushioned hands before she’d even finished flattening them out to an elevator. Not wanting to waste time in the healing process on another drawn-out appeal, especially since she so recently knew the strife of having to beg Bridget just to hold her again, Lexi lifted her pebble-weight sister right off the sheets, perhaps a little too quickly. But as the Omega had reminded her, she was made of stern stuff, even while shrunken, and didn’t wobble at all in her confident posture during the quick ascension on the Alpha’s hand.

For just a moment, Lexi’s hands trembled, more from disbelief than fear, but Bridget calmly waited out the minor storm, hugging herself to her big-little sibling’s thumb and smirking. When the Alpha’s posed palms steadied a few seconds later, the Omega looked unsurprised. She swelled with pride upon being carried up close to Lexi’s cheek. Again Bridget reached out to touch her sister, but dispensed with the gentler approach in favor of hurling herself straight at the Alpha’s face for a bear hug, or at least the closest approximation a three-inch-tall girl could manage. This time Lexi didn’t flinch, only tenderly curling free fingers up around her sister to hug her back, much in the way they had done so often as children, only of course roles-reversed now. They remained like this for upwards of twenty minutes without so much as speaking or moving except to sway, a length of time that might’ve seemed awkward to anyone else, if this gesture hadn’t been pent-up for so direly long.

“Welcome home,” Lexi said, her voice cracking just a smidge, but she was too happy to cry now.

“Thank you. For everything,” Bridget whispered, having yet to even slightly loosen her embrace of the Alpha’s rosy cheek. “But… we still do have some things to talk about.”

“Oh, yeah. That’s right,” Lexi replied. She’d almost forgotten that ambiguous mention her sister had made, as this therapeutic reduction to Beta-stature still didn’t make a whole lot of sense to her. “So. Uh. What’s going to happen? What do you need from me?”

At last the hug ended, much to Lexi’s disappointment, though Bridget compromised by keeping both hands pressed to the wall of her sister’s cheek, and withdrew just far enough that the Omega’s little face could be clearly seen when the Alpha looked down. The same resolution and half-smile remained on Bridget’s expression, but now tinged with a shade of necessary melancholy, almost foreboding.

“Why don’t we take a walk, Lexi?”

“So, um… how’s it all look from there?”

“Different. Different, for sure.”

Lexi nodded, unsure what else she expected to hear. The Omega had been reduced to such a miniscule fraction of her former size that she would’ve needed to squint and lean in by fourteen stories just to be able to read her own tiny countenance from normal height, so the view had to be a tad disorienting. Bridget spoke quietly, but neither did she seem intimidated by the abruptly much-larger world around her as the pair made their way toward the city proper through the Omega neighborhood, leaning so far over the cusp of her hand-chauffeur’s thumb that Lexi had to steel her heartrate from increasing by reminding herself of just how sturdy Bridget was, no matter her scale. A tumble to the ground, even from this relatively long distance for the three-incher, would deal less harm to her than tripping and falling into a pile of pillows.

But Bridget was careful, just as Lexi was, and knew she didn’t have to fear disaster either way. Plus, the Alpha had to recall that she herself had always been just as adventurous a passenger when their roles were reversed, sometimes dangling herself monkey-style off an alarmed Bridget’s pinky from high in the air during their youth. With this guilty fun in mind, Lexi allowed herself to become relaxed with the puny Omega’s eagerness to view the world from her Beta’s-eye perspective. By the time they’d exited Bridget’s room, Lexi had a handle on carrying the sister who’d spent years acting as their collective transport, with the Omega always keeping an open palm so the Alpha could watch the oncoming landscape rolling along a hundred feet below, using Bridget’s soft fingertips as protective fencing. Thus Lexi extended her sibling the same courtesy.

Secretly, too, Lexi found herself strangely relishing the chance to have Bridget in her hand, even if it was a temporary arrangement. After the struggle for them both to return home following such a long time away, it was an added reassurance that, at least for now, her sister literally couldn’t get anywhere on her own, because she was perched in the palm of a girl who normally didn’t rise higher than Bridget’s ankle, even standing on tiptoes. Not that the Alpha would’ve tried to stop her charge from leaving, three inches tall or not, but there was comfort to be had nonetheless at being the one in the driver’s seat for a little while. It would surely only be of help once the Omega got around to saying her piece, and Lexi could be the one holding her up for once.

“I guess I could’ve asked Evelyn to give us a lift, if you want to reach town faster,” Lexi said.

“I’m not in any rush. Are you?”

“No way.” The Alpha couldn’t help but smile then.

“Wow. Did… those trees get bigger?” Bridget said after a quick beat, pointing out the array of leafy maples lining another Omega family’s front stoop. Blushing, she chuckled at herself, before even having to look up at Lexi, who was stifling a similar reaction. “I mean, obviously they’re… bigger now to me, but they look like they actually got taller since last time I saw them in the daylight. Or is it really just me?”

“I think it might just be you,” Lexi said. She paused in front of the expanse of their neighbors’ yard, admiring with her sister the thin forestry which decorated the cobblestone line, a footpath roughly the size of the Alpha roadways in town. If she closed one eye, the trees almost blended in with the scale of the house like shrubs rather than fledgling woodland. “They looked bigger eight or nine years ago, but after I climbed ‘em a few times, they didn’t seem so tall. Especially not with you standing next to them.”

“I remember. You could get up there pretty fast, too. It was impressive.”

“Yeah, I’m sure that’s so true,” Lexi snickered, rolling her eyes. “Even when I got to the top, it was still barely over your knee.”

“Hey, that’s still tall. And… God, it almost gives me a stomachache looking at it now, thinking of you getting all the way up there by yourself.”

“You sound more and more like Evelyn every year,” Lexi said, trying to keep a straight face.

“You take that BACK!” Bridget practically squealed in a way that made Lexi’s heartstrings tug. The Omega turned again to face her sister’s face above, giving the Alpha’s thumb a sporting smack which reminded Lexi just how strong and capable the blonde still was, even at three inches. “That might be the worst thing anyone’s ever said to anyone.”

“Okay, now that’s just mean. What’s so bad about it? Your mom is the coolest mom I know.”

“OUR mom.”

Another pause followed, with both girls again watching the colorful maple branches sway, and Lexi struggling to articulate a rather complicated swell of feeling.

“I know she is. O-Ours, I mean,” Lexi said, unsure what was making her stammer. “I just, um… wasn’t always sure if that’s how she, or… you… thought…”

“Well, she always has. And so have I,” Bridget said matter-of-factly, still with her gaze fixed on the trees. Her tone was serious, making sure the point of Lexi’s family belonging was firmly driven home, then shuddered with what the Alpha was at first startled to believe were tears, but were in fact continuing chortles. “I can’t believe you think I’m turning into her, though. Still!”

“All I’m saying is, telling me that you get sick thinking about me climbing a tree is a very MOM thing to say.”

“Oh, whatever. I wasn’t always like that, though! Just sometimes. Usually just when you ran off to try to do things like that yourself when I wasn’t on standby to catch you.”

“I just wanted to impress you. So sometimes I had to sneak away and get a head start before you freaked out,” Lexi shrugged. “It’s not always easy to show off when you’ve got a safety net hanging an inch under your butt the whole way up the tree.”

“Well, you still impressed me. Also, don’t forget that half the time, it was me trying to convince you to do some of that crazy stuff.”

“That’s true. You remember when you wanted me to do that tightrope walk over the bed?”

“Of course. And that time I convinced you to ride on that model boat we built?”

“It wasn’t a model to me, it was just a giant stack of wood we glued together that sunk after thirty seconds, and we painted it so pretty that I thought it would float anyway. But, sure, that one was all you.”

“Don’t forget when I got you to swing around the house on a string like Spider-Woman. I mean, we made you a seatbelt, but still…”

“All right, I take back part of the comparison to Mom,” Lexi relented. “But only like, twenty percent of it.”

“Thirty percent.”

“Deal.”

They were already fifteen minutes into their journey, and Bridget still hadn’t yet spoken a word of whatever had made her ominously suggest this stroll in the first place, which suited Lexi just fine. Yes, she felt the unspoken pressure of the other giant shoe about to drop, much as she had in nightmares during the early days of her solitude, imagining Enforcement sessions she hadn’t even been punished with, but the amusing and literally small-scale wonderment of having a three-inch-tall elder sister in the palm of her hand as they conversed like the good old days helped soften this tension for now.

Eventually the maples were left behind. It was a lengthy walk without an Omega to carry them, but Lexi was anxious for the trip to last as long as possible anyway. The difference in Bridget’s stature actually became less stark in Lexi’s eyes once they had departed the Cade household and finally the Omega neighborhood itself, places they were surrounded by colossal reminders of the change in every drawbridge-like door and tree-height houseplant. Once out in the architectural melting pot of the city, though, where the geometry of the buildings and streets was designed to simultaneously cater to the needs of diverse beings ranging from two inches to nearly two hundred feet tall, the tiny golden-haired trooper in Lexi’s hand seemed to blend in with the rest of the serene multi-sized urban chaos. Almost like this had always been the way of things.

“Was it this crowded all the time?” Bridget asked. Her voice was nearly lost among the downtown area’s hustle-and-bustle din. At first Lexi thought she’d just misheard, until she saw the curious look on the Omega’s face, like she’d never been here before.

“Actually, this isn’t too bad,” Lexi said. “I think you’re just used to seeing it all from-”

“All right, maybe I should stop asking dumb questions,” Bridget said, clasping a hand over her eyes.

“It’s not a dumb question. I’m guessing it just looks a lot different here, too.”

“I think I’d be afraid of getting lost around here.”

“I used to feel that way, too. A long time ago.”

“But you got used to it from walking the streets enough times?”

“Actually, I think it was just because you ended up just carrying me above them half the time, so I got to learn where everything was like looking down on a model town,” Lexi said, sharing a conspiratorial glance with her older sister.

“Yeah, I guess that would do it,” Bridget said, again wrapping her arm over the Alpha’s thumb for balance and, more importantly, succor. The longer they talked, in fact, Lexi began to feel the kind of catharsis she’d hoped would instantaneously result when she found the Omega trying to forget her sins in Sanctuary’s flora. Perhaps there was something to this reversed perspectives idea as a therapeutic tool after all. Certainly Bridget had spoken more in the last half hour than she had the entire march back from the refuge city two nights before. In realizing this, Lexi hoped that maybe whatever mysterious and uncomfortable notion had crossed Bridget’s mind back in the bedroom would simply vanish into the noise of the crowd, now that they’d both had some fresh air and the chance to slip back into their sisterhood like a well-worn glove. It would still take time to adjust, of course, but the Alpha now had every confidence that things would return to normal, if only they kept on pushing through.

Almost in answer to this pre-emptive relief, then, Lexi couldn’t help but notice what she at first perceived to be a literal changing in the wind, the breeze nudging Bridget the opposite direction in her palm-perch. When she took the time to pay attention, though, it became clear it was just her imagination, probably encouraged by whatever was making the tiny Omega fidget in her hand. Trying not to frown too conspicuously, the Alpha raised the elevator of her cupped fingers up toward her face.

“Comfy enough?” Lexi asked, clearing her throat. “I’m, uh, guessing it takes some getting used to. It didn’t even totally occur to me until we were out of the house that this is your first time riding anywhere this way. Also, it’s been a long time since I’ve held anyone… your height… for more than like a minute.”

“It’s not that. You’re doing great. Seriously, you’re a natural,” Bridget insisted, standing up to close even more of the distance between their faces. “But that… also has to do with what I want… no, what I need to talk to you about.”

Lexi stopped dead in her tracks at this omen, which caused some Alpha teens walking behind her, eyes glued to their phones, to plow into her. Though the crash jolted her off-balance, Lexi instinctively curled her fingers inward around Bridget, protectively shielding her against the cushion of her palm while drawing her hand in toward her stomach just below her chest, to prevent her Beta-sized occupant from receiving any of the brunt in case she couldn’t regain her footing in time to avoid a wipe-out.

Though lithe and on the skinny side of average for her whole life, for perhaps the first time, Lexi became painfully aware of the mass her figure carried for someone of three-inch stature. When she wobbled forward after the collision with the oblivious teens, swinging her free arm and thrusting one foot out in hopes it would be enough to get balance, for an elongated instant the Alpha imagined herself carrying the ponderous momentum of an Omega, with fifteen stories of sky-blocking volume that constituted a thousand pounds of potentially street-cracking weight. Such was the unspoken responsibility of every towering upper-class being, she supposed, an uncertain perspective that made her feel different in a way she couldn’t quite place by the time she’d successfully “slammed” a foot down and stopped the pair of them from toppling face-first to the pavement. Catching her breath, Lexi swiftly reopened her hand, certain she’d turned to a nervous brow-furrowing wreck in the span of three seconds, but didn’t especially care.

“Are you okay?” the Alpha gasped, side-stepping under the awning of a nearby shop to avoid any more foot-traffic fender-benders.

“Of course,” Bridget said with a shrug, despite haphazardly straddling Lexi’s clawed fingers.

“Right. Because you’re made of sugar, spice, and Omega super-steel.”

“Actually, I meant because you have good instincts,” Bridget said with a warm smile, then mimicked the evasive action Lexi had taken, pitching forward and clutching her fist to her abdomen. “Even if I wasn’t made of sugar and spice and whatnot, I’d have been just fine.”

“Sorry about that. Like I said, it’s been a while. I probably need more practice. It just kind of caught me off-guard, when I thought you were about to say… something.”

“Maybe that’s a good reason for us to find somewhere more out of the way. How about that little park near here? It’s probably almost empty this time of day.”

They headed off without debate. The site indeed was bare, except for an old man reading on a bench, and an Alpha mother supervising her Beta kids practicing tee-ball swings on raised grassland. Though the park was certainly “little” compared to some of the other greenspaces around the city, there was still plenty enough ground for Lexi to take her time in winding along the paths between trees, continually bypassing benches she could’ve easily chosen which still had lots of empty void between them and the nearest pairs of ears, save for the chirping birds. But she rejected all of them as options for reasons that probably didn’t have to be spoken aloud to be comprehended by her passenger.

“I guess it’s a little bigger around here than I remembered, too,” Bridget said, breaking the quiet after Lexi passed on the tenth available bench. At this point they were on the verge of walking a complete lap around the inner circle of the park. Though soft, the Omega’s tone firmed in the way it occasionally did when circumstances gently required her to take charge up at her natural height, a role owing more to her older-sibling status more than her hundred-fifty-foot size however. She pointed ahead. “How about that one right there?”

Lexi spotted the bench, shaded under a pair of trees which reminded her of those in the Cades’ backyard. It was as good a place as any for whatever-this-was, and the Alpha’s stomach was starting to twist too severely anyway for it to be worth procrastinating any further, so she nodded and made a striding beeline for the wooden seat. She had no specific reason to be anxious, of course, as Bridget had reassured her by now in a dozen different ways just this morning that things were on their way back to normalcy for them. That should’ve been enough, she told herself.

Still the apprehension of the unknown gnawed. Her sister had spoken so cryptically of “needing” a Beta’s perspective in order to fix herself and their relationship; what if that meant Bridget taking another pilgrimage abroad, this time at three-inches, to rediscover herself? Yes, she was made of tough stuff, but in an emotionally vulnerable state, without a lifetime of instilling the better-safe-than-sorry, look-before-you-leap mindset which most actual Betas learned for daily survival, Lexi couldn’t help but feel another lurch of paranoia. Suppose Bridget crossed paths with the wrong people: the kind of conservative old-guard Alphas with bones to pick with both Betas and Omegas? Bridget would make an ideal target to take out their ire, killing two birds with one stone. Maybe not even just metaphorically. Plus, there was the fact that it would and could shatter Lexi to say goodbye for another unknown stretch of time.

By the time they’d settled onto the chosen bench, despite the Alpha’s best intentions to keep the concern from etching into her every facial feature, she knew it would be impossible to prevent Bridget from noticing her leeriness, now more than ever that the puny Omega had those worries blown up on a billboard-scale head to observe. So, rather than making her face turn red from the effort to conceal it, Lexi raked her fingers through her dark hair with her free hand, while the other palm propped an equally-reticent Bridget up at chest-height.

They’d dragged this out for long enough.

“Lexi, we… don’t have to do this today. I’m starting to think I may have rushed you. I mean, this…” Bridget said, indicating to her shrunken body, as she and her comparatively-enlarged sister shared a park bench. “…is already a big enough adjustment to swallow for one morning, right? And what I have to say isn’t going to work if you’re not ready. If you don’t… believe in what I have to say now.”

“No,” Lexi affirmed more declaratively than she wished, shaking her head. “I’ve waited a long time, almost two years, hoping somebody would just tell me there was some magic way to fix everything, so I could just go and do it. Just like I told you last night. So if you KNOW what that magic way is, I want to hear it. I’m… ready to do whatever you need me to do, however much extra distance or time or anything you need me to give you.”

“Oh, no, Lexi. That’s not it at all. This isn’t about me… going away again. I told you, I’m back, and I’m here to stay.”

This vow alone was enough to melt more than half the tension off Lexi’s shoulders instantaneously. She smiled again, no longer bracing for impact. So long as Bridget didn’t want to wander off into the enigmatic potentially-Beta-and-Omega-hating horizon, literally any request she made would be preferable.

“I’m so glad,” Lexi sighed. Taking a deep breath, she steeled herself to have the homestretch of their sisterhood-mending charted out. “What is it, then?”

“I… need you to be my Enforcer, Lexi,” Bridget said. “I need you to do to me everything that I did to you and more.”

Suddenly the park didn’t feel so deserted, even though the Alpha and Omega were more isolated in the shade together than ever. The silence following the tiny blonde’s totally-earnest statement was enough to fill and darken that sunny abyss for Lexi. Though strained, Bridget’s words had ejected so easily, just as casually as their earlier banter, that it was plain she’d made an effort to get them all out in one breath so as to soften what amounted to an emotional amputation, but either way, it didn’t keep the cogs in Lexi’s brain from scraping and then getting stuck.

“W-Wh… What?”

“Yes, I know,” Bridget said, running her miniscule hand up and down the length of her younger sibling’s thumb. “I know what you’re going to want to say, and I know how insane it must sound, which is why I really need you to just try to listen to everything before you say anything else. Please, Lexi. I-”

“No.”

The syllable was said with such quiet finality, it actually succeeded in closing off the conversation for a sustained minute, during which Bridget busied herself massaging her sister’s now-quivering fingers.

“I told you I spent months thinking about this. I guess you thought I just meant becoming this size and leaving it at that, but… that wasn’t all,” the Omega steadily lullabied. “The real reason is because the things that happened, the things I did… whether or not I just following the things I was taught and the things the Omega side of me said to do, I… I did terrible things to you, Lexi. Unforgivable things.”

“But I forgive you,” Lexi interrupted with a hollow croak.

“And I’ll probably have to spend the rest of my life trying to actually deserve that, but I can’t forgive myself. I can’t… live with myself, thinking about everything that happened, everything I did that drove us apart. We’re sisters, Lexi. That’s not just a bond, it’s… a forever-contract. A promise we made after that night in Aegis when Mom and I brought you home. And I broke it. For the job. For the Omega-part of me that- …look, the why of what I did doesn’t have to matter now. It happened, and I can’t take it back, but I can at least make sure I carry around some tangible piece of it from now on. If I can just try to feel a few of the things you had to feel a year and a half ago, in whatever small amount is even possible, I… I have to try. Like… purging some kind of poison out of my system. A ritual, I guess. So I can come out on the other side and maybe start feeling like I even deserve another chance.”

Every word was hitting Lexi so hard, she was glad Bridget insisted on finding a bench before unloading any of the traumatic insanity that the Omega was currently vomiting up. Next to this, that stampede of phone-obsessed Alpha teens was like the tickle of autumn breeze. Despite some of Bridget’s stumbling, it was obvious that, much like the initial bombshell of her request, the tiny Omega had carefully selected her words, probably even silently rehearsed them to herself while pacing the neighborhood in the dead of night, in order to get them out as succinctly as possible before her sister cut in with a sharp refusal.

As the first wave of disbelieving surprise passed, a shell-shocked Lexi bit the corner of her lower lip until she felt the skin on the verge of a tear. Bridget hadn’t spoken any specifics of her dark wish yet, likely by design, but there were only so many ways to interpret the possibility of “being” an Enforcer for someone. Granted, the two full sessions Bridget had used to punish Lexi were the least of the latter’s concerns during that two weeks of hell, compared to being falsely accused and having their years of closeness count for so little against a Machiavellian conspiracy, but Bridget had also said “and more.” And the thought of using her temporary size advantage to overpower or even hurt her older sibling, for any length of time or to any degree of intensity, was so abhorrent to Lexi it made her almost too ill to keep looking directly at the diminutive Omega.

Suddenly the foreboding mentions Bridget had made last night and this morning of “fixing” things came back, and even worse, Lexi’s apparently inspirational suggestions that they couldn’t trade places, no matter how much the Omega wanted, but that if they could, she would do whatever was necessary to correct this stalemate. Such a thing as literally swapping metaphorical size-shoes with her leviathan sibling simply hadn’t occurred to Lexi, but underestimating the existence of someone like Kayla had blinded her to the uncomfortable potential of those desperate promises. That made Lexi feel even sicker, enough that she began idly scouting out the nearest waste baskets at the corners of the forking pathways around them.

Because, Lexi realized only now, this idea was her fault.

“That’s everything I have to say. To start,” Bridget offered, noticing the Alpha was making no more effort to interject. She still hadn’t ceased trying to soothe the girl’s trembling hand. “I’ll… answer any questions you have, and we can talk about it as long as you want. Whatever I have to do to convince you that I need this.”

“You only did it… twice.”

“What?”

“You only did Enforcer-things to me twice. Once the first day, on the floor, and then again a week later with the… you know… popsicle.”

“That’s already two more times than it ever should’ve been. And really, I don’t know how you can’t call that last time in the yard the third. I… broke your leg, Lexi. I did that.”

“That was an accident.”

“But the rest wasn’t, and you know it. No, it was a disgusting mistake. It was a horrible, cruel trick that got us all, and you were the one who had to suffer the most for it. And either way, the fact that you say you’ve… forgiven me…” Bridget said, struggling to spit out two words she clearly didn’t believe, as though they were made of scalding iron, “…means that I have to be Enforced way more than three times to make up the difference. I’d… I’d say do it a hundred times, two hundred, or God, even double or triple than that, but the exact number won’t end up mattering. The point is that I have to serve some time, something, to make up whatever small piece of this that I can.”

The gravity of this concept was settling like a leaden anchor in the pit of Lexi’s stomach. Holding her sister in her hand, and feeling so glad to have her back safe, especially since the novelty of today’s switch had allowed her to be play the part of the guardian “big” sister with some of the kindness she’d known for years in the Omega’s clutches, the thought of then reversing that intent, and using her height and strength to not just put Bridget down, but to utterly dominate her while she was vulnerable enough to do so, was beyond the pale. Lexi became conscious of the fact that she was robotically waving her head back and forth “no” like a lawn sprinkler.

“Lexi… I understand why you’re reacting this way. If anything, you’re taking it super well. Honestly, I thought you’d scream at me, and maybe just leave me here on the bench… and I’m not saying I wouldn’t deserve it, either, for springing this on you like this. But I do mean it when I say that this is the only way back for me. This is the way to finally fix everything.”

“So you want me…” the Alpha wheezed, as though she’d had the wind knocked out of her and was trying to cough the words through a closed throat. “…to just, come up with things to do to you? To make it better by having even more bad things happen to you, to us?”

“You wouldn’t have to come up with anything. I mean, you… could if you had ideas, but I wouldn’t expect you to do that,” Bridget explained. “But I still have a manual from my training as a Junior Enforcer. There’s a section that goes over different kinds of sessions to give criminal Alphas. Ways to combine an Omega’s… physical assets… with strong reminders of the subject’s wrongdoings, so they’re forced to keep it all stuck in their mind forever, the feelings of being overpowered and most importantly why. That’s exactly what I need.”

The Alpha hadn’t stopped waving her head “no.”

“You heard my answer the first time,” Lexi bitterly exhaled.

“Can… you take some time to think about it? A day, or a week, or even-”

“I can’t do that to us, Bridget. That’s final.”

At this, the Omega went quiet again, evidently able to hear and believe in the Alpha’s dead-seriousness. She sat cross-legged in Lexi’s palm on the pillowy heel of her hand, and snuggled herself into a tight bear-hug with the girl’s thumb. Rocking back and forth with the largest piece of her sister she could fully embrace, the shrunken thing planted a comforting kiss on the lower spiral-printed oval of Lexi’s thumbpad.

“I need you to remember how much I love you, Lexi, and how much I need my sister, before I say what I’m going to say next.”

“All… right.”

“I believe this thing has to be something we do together for it to completely work. A way for us to find some kind of balance again, especially because I know you’ll treat me much better than I deserve, and you’d never let anything permanently bad happen to me as my Enforcer, even though I can’t say it wouldn’t be earned,” Bridget softly continued. “But… if there really is no other choice. If you can’t bring yourself to do it, and I do know why it makes you afraid, I… I’d have to find an alternative way to get the job done.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean…” the Omega whimpered, swallowing hard to keep her voice from cracking. “That I need this… treatment… or whatever you want to call it, no matter what. And if I have to do it without your help, then that’s what’s going to happen. Because I don’t think it would be… very hard to find certain Alphas in this town who’d do it for me, plus a lot more, if I told them why and what I need. To tell you the truth, there were a lot of times over the last year where I thought that was the right thing to do, to just go to one of them and let myself take the place of whatever poor Beta might have felt their anger instead someday. I don’t want to do that now, because I think the best and healthiest way is going to be if we work as a team, but if I have to…”

The Omega trailed off, having run out of nervously scripted rhetoric. An even-longer silence passed this time than the one brought on by the first mention of Bridget’s big favor. Hearing this argument in any other circumstances, Lexi might’ve indeed become furious, as the Omega had understandingly guessed, but now all she could do was helplessly picture her shrunken sibling going out on her own, not only risking trouble with strangers, but throwing herself directly into their line of fire.

Bridget wasn’t exaggerating about the ease of finding willing participants for such a venture, and Lexi knew it. Much as society had advanced since the Omegas came to power, catastrophes like those her own birth mother had made possible with those terrorists, or even those examples which hit closer to home like what happened to the poor Lindon family boy, were a grave reminder of the attitudes that still lurked in the shadows. And just as Lexi had already feared on her own, there were plenty of people out there with hatred for everyone but those belonging to humanity’s middle-size class. To have a uniquely-vulnerable, Beta-shaped Omega as a target, who was not only willingly presenting herself but requesting harsh treatment, would be all the push those kinds of Alphas would need to commit unspeakable atrocities a grin on their monstrous faces.

Lexi fought back an acetone-cold chill ripping down her spine, imagining the wretchedness Bridget felt she deserved: Alphas calling her names, raining down curses, shouting to keep her awake, snipping her hair like a doll’s, pelting her with spit or other worse substances, then testing out her Omega-borne durability by clapping her between hands, pinching her like a garden maggot, sitting on her, stamping her under their heels, or even the kinkier minds who might devise equally-claustrophobic locations with which to show their displeasure. Then once they started getting really creative, they might push her to the edge of any number of deadly extremes by using their bodies upon Bridget as a surrogate for all their rage at the world’s power structures, by suffocating, drowning, beating, squashing, and squeezing her until they discovered precisely the point where even Bridget’s hereditary gifts couldn’t save her from the disadvantages of being three inches tall and sorrowful enough to allow every heinous act to occur. Those kinds of Alphas surely wouldn’t abide by any kind of clinical awareness over a person’s limits like the Enforcers, using the three-incher purely as a conduit for frustration, and if they did indeed make her expire, who was to say they’d even be through playing with her body once she was gone?

At the apex of this spiraling mental hysteria on Lexi’s part, she was at once torn between the knowledge that she was only building up a paranoia fantasy here, but also the first-hand accounts in textbooks written by Betas which confirmed that every wildest horror she could conceive was capable of being committed, and probably already had been, by at least one Alpha in history. Then she again recalled her own promise to Bridget, and worse, the indisputable fact that she, Lexi, had given the terminally-guilty Omega this notion to begin with.

Which meant, ultimately, there was no other choice for Lexi here. She’d made the decision for herself last night already by deigning to open her mouth and declare that she’d do anything, cross any line, to save her sister.

“Where is this Enforcer manual you were talking about?” the Alpha mumbled under her breath, and let herself be kept from tears upon feeling Bridget’s hug tighten around her thumb again.

Once Lexi had the answer to her tortuous question, the trip back home from the park was as solemn as the journey two days before from Sanctuary, only this time the Alpha could sense it was Bridget’s turn to stifle further comment after they’d already crossed such a painful hurdle. The temporarily-taller sibling was careful to withhold her remaining sea of anxieties for now, half-certain she’d talk herself out of this crazy venture if she spoke before setting eyes on this so-called manual.

Walking among strangers in the city and then the sparser suburban streets that gave way to the Omega neighborhood, Lexi became self-conscious of the eyes upon her and her handheld passenger, with the crowds likely thinking them simply to be Alpha-and-Beta passerby, friends or sisters, when in fact they were now Enforcer and subject. What would those people think to learn that she was about to learn how to punish Bridget in such a way that, theoretically, two wrongs would cancel out and make a right? How many of them would scoff and shun her? Far worse, how many would support and cheer her on, purely for the thrill of seeing an Omega finally get a taste of her own medicine?

When they arrived back in the Cades’ front yard, Lexi paused so fast she nearly stumbled forward into the grass, thinking rather suddenly of Evelyn. She and Bridget had departed from the house so quickly earlier, in the Alpha’s desperation to let her sister spill the reconciliatory beans, she hadn’t even seen their mother, nor received any texts or calls from her. Not that this was uncommon practice, given Evelyn’s busy schedule at Aegis, but for the first time since finding Bridget shrunken to finger-height in the landscape of her bedspread, Lexi wondered if the elder Omega knew, and more frightening, what she’d say.

It was hard to imagine Evelyn being supportive of her mentally-scarred daughter’s necessarily brutal chastening at the giant hands of the person Bridget loved most, tied only with Evelyn herself. Granted, the Enforcement was unlikely to be anywhere as damaging as what Lexi went through a year and a half before, considering her emotional reticence and total inexperience weighed against Bridget’s near-superheroic constitution, even while shrunken, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t going to badly sting still for both girls. Still, upon entering the house and finding no sign of Evelyn, not even a note by the door, some strange intuition told Lexi that their mother did know what had happened to her prodigal daughter, and more dramatically, what was going to happen soon, which in the most twisted way was a source of comfort, if not additional nerves as well.

“Do you, um, remember where in your closet the book is?” Lexi asked, speaking for the first time since tacitly agreeing to this role-reversal madness.

“Last I saw, it was on the floor somewhere. It shouldn’t be buried too deep,” Bridget said. “I… was using it a lot just before I… we left home.”

The Alpha nodded, not wanting more detail. It made sense, but nevertheless made her stomach coil worse to imagine Bridget reading the how-to instructions for tormenting her sister in the name of eye-for-an-eye justice. Such an idea made a cold and calculated matter seem even colder.

“I needed it more than I thought I would for my first time,” Bridget sighed, as if sensing Lexi’s contemplation. “I knew the whole thing inside and out already, but after I volunteered to… work with you… I still needed the help. W-What I mean, I couldn’t have done it… without…”

The Omega quieted herself now, too embarrassed to squeeze out another word that might deign to suggest her work as an Enforcer was “hard,” when Lexi was the one penned in a glass box, getting lightly trampled and glued to melting desserts. Still, the Alpha understood why her sister gave this explanation before shame took over, as a gentle piece of solidarity, and like the thought of Evelyn knowing about their unusual arrangement, it gave Lexi bittersweet support, with emphasis on the bitter, to know that it would be just as difficult for her to discipline Bridget in the same way.

Once inside, the walk from the front porch to the Omega’s bedroom along the Alpha walkway felt just as lengthy and arduous as the whole meandering trip across the city. As there was still a barricade holding the standard-size doorway from the other side, the sisters once again took the circuitous route down the elevator to the ground and clambered under the lip of the Omega door in order to make their way toward the two-hundred-foot bulwark of the closet. Lexi appreciated this fleeting chance to recall their adventuring of bygone years, spending afternoons making castles out of cardboard and traversing shrubberies they called enchanted forests. Only this time, Bridget was far more adept at fitting into smaller spaces, not even having to duck to slide beneath the crack of the door, which would’ve proven a major boon for their games in the old days. The Alpha realized, just as they emerged back in the Omega’s room, that she would’ve utterly delighted at the imaginative possibilities for creative playtime if her sister could occasionally have been this size during their tweens.

But they were close now, with the ominous door dead-ahead, and Lexi had to steel herself again. It had been a very long time since she feared finding monsters hiding in closets, especially since as a child, the very-large door in the Omega’s bedroom seemed like it could be concealing accordingly kaiju-scale nocturnal creatures; today, however, she felt some of that same youthful apprehension knotting her innards. This monster in the closet was going to feel all too real.

The door was still cracked ajar from the previous night, when had Bridget rummaged through the storage to find doll-sized lodging for her bedside visitor. It was far too bulky for Lexi to have a chance of nudging it the rest of the way open herself, of course, but at least they didn’t have to scramble beneath, and better yet, what little light could enter the closet would aid their search. To speed up the process, the tiny Omega re-boarded her sister’s palm, and the pair ventured again as a unit into the uncertain semi-darkness.

Making her way around several pairs of boat-like shoes, the Alpha came beneath the overhang of a bookshelf. Like the bedside table, the side of the enormous furniture was etched with stepping blocks for Lexi to scale and reach her own little library of books above back when they were children, but of course none of those fairy tale texts could prepare her for what was coming.

“There,” Bridget said, pointing into the shadows deep under the lowest raised shelf. “I see it.”

“Okay,” Lexi sighed.

Stepping out of the path of light trickling in from the distant bedroom window, she padded across the carpet shrouded in black, until the shape of a white-spined book came into view. “Manual” indeed seemed an apt name for Bridget’s Enforcement handbook, as the lettering and gloss of the cover made the tome look more like the instruction guide for an expensive piece of technology. In a way, though, the concept it had to teach was far more complex than any computerized system. Setting Bridget down on the floor beside the book, which was of course taller than the mini Omega multiple times over now, Lexi pulled out her cell phone and shined its flashlight across the dreaded expanse.

A logo for Aegis was illuminated in the corner. In the center, near-transparent silver block letters read Principles of Junior Enforcement: A Technical Education and Instruction.

“Wow, you weren’t kidding,” Lexi said.

“I know.”

The Alpha almost wanted to laugh, if only to break the tension, and because the book bordered on ridiculous for its clinical presentation of what amounted to force-based behavior modification, but it was just a little too grim to be humorous. She set her phone so the flare of the tiny bulb dimly revealed the entire spotless book. Rather fittingly, the smooth alabaster surface area of the cover was roughly the same as the glass cage she occupied for two weeks as the official charge of the Cades’ resident Junior Enforcer. Despite the lack of walls on this platform, though, Lexi expected the lessons contained in these pages to feel rather imprisoning in their own right.

Sliding both hands under the cover, she proceeded to heave the plasticy wedge upward, finding it at least easier than she expected to open the book, but still a cumbersome chore. That was the case, at least, until Lexi felt the platform suddenly tipping up at an angle with even less effort. Looking down at knee-height where the paper stack peaked, she saw Bridget, who’d not only scrambled up the obstruction without making a sound, but was shoulder-pressing the cover overhead without any of the herculean gumption it would’ve otherwise required, if her strength was proportionate to her Beta-stature.

Clearly the girl wasn’t exaggerating about maintaining much of her Omega-native tough-cookie constitution even at three inches tall. Still, while Lexi was relieved to know they would be able to flip through the book without having to get Evelyn for help (a proposition of such catastrophic awkwardness that she doubted she could go through with it in a hundred years), seeing Bridget’s shrunken gusto in action was another uncomfortable reminder that it wouldn’t be sufficient for Lexi to show gentility toward her in any way through this process. She was really going to have to give the Omega her best shot, an almost-literal beat-down, if any value was to come of their work. Working together, though seemingly with most of the push coming from a far-less reluctant Bridget, the pair succeeded in prying the manual open to the table of contents.

“I guess they’re not all about going digital and paperless at Aegis yet, huh?” Lexi said, trying to force a smile.

“There are computer records for the more experienced… employees,” Bridget replied. “But I think for the new generation, they wanted us to have something solid to start, with pages, that we’d have to touch and look at. I don’t know if it was to make what we were doing seem realer, or…”

The Alpha nodded and, having procrastinated laying eyes on the first page as long as possible, joined her elder sib in studying the clean rows of text. Several early sections in the book apparently detailed the history and philosophies of this unique disciplinary practice, then went into detail on the mentality of imprisoned Alphas, their containment, and an Enforcer’s attitude toward them. Further down the column, though, the terms became more tangible, with greater directness than Lexi was anticipating after pre-judging the clean and almost inviting cover: session preparation, then guidelines and breakdowns for those sessions split into beginner, intermediate, advanced, and expert delineations like cooking or video gaming difficulty advisements.

“I was thinking, it might be best to start near the end,” Bridget said, pointing to the advanced label. Her tone suggested this wasn’t even enough in her estimation, though, and Lexi caught the tiny blonde’s gaze flitting to the expert line instead. “You know, since I’m… tougher than most people these things are used for?”

“No. Beginner,” Lexi insisted, rather forcefully. Surprised at her own aggressive timbre, while also realizing it could be used to her advantage in softening the blow, she shrugged, and stepped onto the page, towering over her sister. “Hey, you’re the one who’s putting me in charge.”

“That’s true.” The disappointment was barely hidden in Bridget’s voice, but the Alpha could tell her self-appointed ward wasn’t going to strong-arm the issue, when Lexi’s agreement was tenuous enough already. Stepping back again, together the pair rifled through the pages clusters at a time, until they arrived at the start of the beginner section. Once they’d arrived, however, the miniscule Omega made a point of hopping off the paper stage again, and receded back to the carpet several paces back.

“Aren’t you going to show me which one to pick?” Lexi asked with muted alarm.

Bridget shook her head. “I don’t think it’ll be as effective if I’m choosing my own rehabilitation… stuff. I mean, I’m already taking away some of the point by deciding on my own that we’d do this, when nobody else gets that choice to begin with. I can help you out if the book isn’t clear about something, but it… has to be you, Lexi. Please.”

While this entire scheme was still a tricky one for the Alpha to swallow, she understood this much rationale at least. And the last thing she wanted to do was go through with this whole extreme measure, only for its potency to be lost by Bridget’s over-involvement, and then they’d be back in the same place they were now, except Lexi would’ve punished her older sister for nothing. If she was going to do this, they were going to do it right the first time, leaving no trace of Bridget’s guilt and brokenness behind. So on her hands and knees, Lexi crawled along the page, reading the technical titles and summaries, all while the pit in her gut worsened.

The layout of how-tos on productive and consequential Alpha-criminal rearing certainly wasn’t what she’d expected, vague an idea though she had before. Then again, Lexi had only suffered through two full-blown sessions under Bridget’s tutelage, which wasn’t much for reference. Still, given what those activities entailed, rough underfoot wrestling and toe-punching for one and then plastering betwixt icy pillar and broiling tongue for the last, plus rumors she’d heard from others of what else the judicial system allowed, Lexi half-expected the Enforcement instruction to be segmented by Omega body part categories. In her head, each new chapter might have explained every possible way a foot the size of a car, then a pair of volcanically-exhaling lips, or even an Omega’s finger could make life a living hell for society’s lowest scum. Instead, the difficulty ratings seemed to correlate to the severity of the punishments, physically and psychologically, while encompassing all the methods they could use, both with outside tools and their own anatomy, to answer the horrible choices made by Alphas against Betas.

One of the first sample entries, though, Lexi recognized almost immediately as the same session she’d undergone on her first day as Bridget’s charge. “Introductory Foot-Centered Correction,” it bluntly read. A diagram of a featureless 3D humanoid sat in a chair, overlooking an appropriately diminutive second person, with its foot raised above the victim. A description and bullet-pointed list explained the basics of using one’s feet to chasten an Alpha, and was noted as being a common first session for new inductees to the program, given the frequency of malevolent Alphas bandying ground-dwelling Betas around with their shoes when authorities weren’t looking, if not outright stomping them into paste. The entry was seemingly dispassionate at first glance, almost like a medical textbook, describing methods of dexterously employing one’s toes, or applying just enough pressure beneath a bare sole to avoid inflicting grievous harm, in cold and clear terms.

Then, however, Lexi would stumble upon a word choice or a sentence where she could feel the ire of the author seeping through, and a burning sense of justice, where rather particular examples were given of precisely how tightly to pinch one’s digits with an Alpha limb jammed between to properly unsettle them but before breakage occurred, outlining the sensation with needless detail. Completing the listing was a “Did You Know?” panel, explaining that this basic concept of humiliation and correction underfoot was in fact THE first session conceived by Aegis Enforcers, given the volume of early punishable Alpha crimes which involved grinding and smearing Betas into shoe treads or tattooing three-incher remains across their soles.

It wasn’t exactly the same as what Lexi had experienced, since the Alpha had been batted around in accordance with what a vengeful Beta mastermind had made the Omegas think took place at the crime scene, but the principles were the same. It was also plain that the then-Junior Enforcer had not only chosen the first relevant option out of the manual she saw, but in fact selected one less damaging than Lexi’s alleged crime probably warranted.

“Beginner” was probably too soft for putting someone in a coma. Instead, the first entries Lexi laid eyes on in this section of the manual implied these were actions deserved by perpetrators who either negligently hurt or simply terrorized Betas without physically harming them. Indeed, Bridget hadn’t been joking either about volunteering to be her sister’s keeper specifically to keep the far more brutal activities later in the book from being utilized by less sympathetic Enforcers. This reminder of the Omega’s own prior emotional pains offered strange solidarity to her Alpha sister as she read through the lines, but it still didn’t make Lexi’s decision any easier.

The Beginner section quickly became a labyrinth for the Alpha, focusing at first on the “gentler” use of individual body parts, but quickly combined these primitive concepts into more creative permutations, almost like choreographed dances, and this was still the section meant for the world’s least-offensive Beta-harmers. These options often involved eerie size-unbalanced versions of roleplay between Enforcer and Alpha, or even directly re-enacting the crimes of the perp, except with their statures reversed, including whatever exact dialogue or actions they’d taken to hurt tiny citizens, as reported by witnesses and survivors. Putting them as directly as possible into the shoes of their victims, sometimes literally, the guidebook emphasized, was among the most crucial ways of imbuing these Alphas with necessary knowledge.

Stranger still to Lexi was the fact that the more she read about rolling Alphas along one’s instep or plucking on their limbs like paper finger traps, the easier it became to follow the book’s logic, even while the sickness in her stomach didn’t much subside. Whenever a new punishment recipe involving fake-out falls or phlegmy spitballs began to boil Lexi’s blood in memory of her wrongful conviction, she’d spot another “Did You Know?” blurb, many of which provided background on similar real-life crimes that had earned Alphas the consequence in question.

This led to Lexi reading multiple harrowing three-sentence accounts of her own size-class’s deplorable conduct, from hooligan Alpha students tossing Beta teachers in mud puddles, to sorority sisters “hazing” one another by egging Beta houses with enough yolk to drown the occupants, to professional go-getters trapping their smaller coworkers in jars just to win a promotion at work. And these were still just the Beginner section-worthy infractions. What horrors awaited later in the manual, at higher skill levels, were Lexi could only presume that much more draconian but potentially-earned punishments were enacted?

Just maybe, the Alpha was beginning to conclude, this whole operation would be easier to follow through on if, for but a minute or an hour, she considered Bridget’s line of thinking, and the book’s. Surely she could give her determined Omega kin that much of a chance? And, misguided or not, Bridget’s own actions as an Enforcer over a framed Lexi did technically place her in an even higher category than the lesser abuses of the Beginner section. If Bridget believed so strongly in this system’s ability to correct problems, then maybe it was time for Lexi to trust her big sister again, just as she used to, without hesitation.

“Everything okay?” Bridget whispered, though she still kept her distance from the book. “I know it’s a lot to take in. And plus you’re skipping all the formal training that eases you into it. But-”

“Yes.”

Lexi stood up and walked across the page, planting each stride between impactful typeface and illustrations she was, for better or worse, soon to copy as the first and perhaps only unofficial Alpha Enforcer. Reaching the edge of the manual, she looked down on her three-inch sister, cowered humbly in the glow of the phone flashlight. With her tiny shadow stretching toward the Alpha’s feet, Bridget looked smaller and more insignificant than either girl could’ve probably ever imagined, but every bit as needful, patiently waiting to hear that they were a team. She truly hadn’t backed down by even an inch from her faith that this was the only way forward. And seeing that resolve in the little Omega’s face gave Lexi the last bit of confirmation she needed to see them through what had to be seen through.

“Okay,” she said with near-alien purpose. “Let’s just do this thing.”

Lexi sat cross-legged, dead-center in the expanse of bedroom carpet more spacious than a poppy field. Her phone rested beside her thigh, displaying photos from the Enforcement manual and her own typed-out directions, and despite knowing she would almost-assuredly need to refer to the crib notes during this highly-taxing affair, she avoided looking that way until she absolutely had to. It seemed important to the Alpha that she fixate upon the task itself, which meant training her focus on the miniaturized Omega standing placidly in the middle of her palm. Even lacking formal training, that much at least she could glean from the few pages she’d stood upon: an Enforcer had to keep their mind on the live situation and its gravity. Bridget let her arms hang at her side, and kept her own stare reverently bowed to the peachy terrain of Lexi’s hand, likely to make it easier for her sister to begin the process. Even before the Alpha budged her first finger, there was a natural resistance trying to push back against every muscle in her body, to protect her from breaking the natural order of things, though of course that line had already been crossed by opening Bridget’s book at all, and likely long before then.

The little Omega didn’t flinch as Lexi’s digits, one at a time, curled inward toward her palm, and even closed her eyes. There was nothing unusual about this, as Bridget had done the same countless times in their adolescence while ferrying her adoptive sibling about town, using her fingertips as protective fencing. The difference now, of course, was that Lexi didn’t stop at cupping the occupant of her hand. Her fingertips crept in closer, until Bridget likely could feel the warmth of her sister’s fingers lurking around her, though still she kept still and self-blinded.

Lexi parted her lips, instinctively preparing to ask if Bridget was ready, then caught the sound in her throat. That thinking had to go away, starting now, if any of this was going to work. Swallowing, the Alpha looked the sacrificial Omega up and down once more, willing herself to see not a sister but an accidental sinner in need of healing and justice, and then her own comparatively-massive hand as the first of many hammers in dealing that justice. Dragging this out, coddling the little thing, and wasting away these limited hours of size-reversal with half-measures would serve only to hurt them both. Now was not the time for hand-wringing, Lexi silently affirmed to herself, but instead to briefly embody an ideal, and a stature, technically larger than her own, just as Bridget had done the opposite by shrinking.

In a flash, Lexi clapped four firm fingers like full-body shackles around Bridget, then latched her thumb over the curve to maintain a clenched grip. Immediately the Omega’s body was compressed thin in the leftover crook of space between digits and curled palm, with her blonde-crowned face poking out the top, as the Alpha took her sister in perhaps the sturdiest fist she’d ever formed in her life. Not that Lexi ever paid attention to such things, but it took on different meaning to ball one’s fingers when there happened to be a human life existing at the center of them, even if said life was more superhuman than average. Her knuckles popped and blanched ashen-white, but she didn’t let up the squeeze.

Bridget had, of course, held her sister in softly-clasped fists a few times over the years, but even during her brief period punishing Lexi for crimes she didn’t commit, hadn’t handled her with this kind of aggression. In fact, the only time in her life the Alpha had personally seen someone of a larger size class handle a punier citizen with this kind of force was her own mother, grappling the far-more fragile shape of a Beta while the poor stranger writhed. At least until crunching gave way to stillness. And assuredly, if Bridget was a Beta, Lexi’s clenching now would’ve already bruised if not sprained her, and they were barely getting started.

The shrunken Omega winced upon the first impact of those assailing digits, but stifled her groans even as Lexi’s fingers intentionally winnowed tighter around her. Neither girl made another sound except to laboriously exhale, one primarily for physical reasons and the other for psychological; the only other faint noise in the cavernous room came from the fleshy friction of the Alpha’s finger-flanks grinding together in an effort to coil yet closer together, with a narrow three-inch feminine figure pulled flush from every angle to her rapidly-heating hand.

The book made numerous comparisons to help the Omega reader imagine precisely the correct amount of pressure to apply for maximum effectiveness in bestowing sympathy for Betas without inflicting such grievous bodily harm that the criminal couldn’t recuperate in time for the next lesson. If you squeezed like you were holding a dumbbell, that was too far; if you imagined you were squeezing a ripe piece of fruit but not spilling its juices, you were somewhere in the correct neighborhood. This was the first direction from the manual that Lexi had to ignore and chart her own path, as Bridget had insisted, though of course she understood why. Strength that would snap the bones of an Alpha, never the goal of an Enforcer (at least at Beginner level), only made the little Omega contort rather powerlessly against her handler’s fist. So Lexi had to push harder, doing her level best to dig her fingertips into the meaty heel of her hand, and deprive Bridget of as much space as possible. The deeper she curled, the more vibration she felt radiating out of the Omega from her pointless but involuntary wriggling.

It was unsettling for Lexi to know not only just how much control she now held over Bridget for the first and probably only time in their lives, but to be able to perceive all of the tiny blonde’s body at once, even through her clothes, smushed unbreakably against humid palm skin. Given what a living landscape the hundred-fifty-foot Omega was at all other times, such a feat would be impossible, and likely never come off so delicate and fine as in this three-inch form, when even despite frequent lotioning and hand-washings, rides in a giant Bridget’s cupped hand were usually characterized by the spiral gridded texture of her flesh. Yet there she was now, smooth as porcelain, all of her contained in Lexi’s fist at once, except for her head of course, though that could’ve been remedied by simply pressing her thumbpad into the top of Bridget’s scalp and jamming her like a detonator button into the compressed pocket below.

Two minutes passed, and she didn’t let up the squeezing. Lexi’s fingers were actually getting a little tired, unaccustomed to clenching for so long, at least intentionally, though she’d done her fair share of anxious tension-related holding over the last year and a half that had left knots in some of her lithe muscles and probably made her slightly better suited to using her fist on Bridget like an ill-fitting iron lung, though of course the mental discomfort played a role too.

Several times, the Alpha felt her lips trying to open again to say something, even though she had nothing useful to declare, simply because it felt wrong to sit in grave quiet for so long while committing such an unfortunate act, necessary or not. The Omega was either kind enough or too preoccupied to look at Lexi directly, keeping her eyes closed and the grunting to a minimum while she took her lumps, though once the Alpha’s grip strength was engaged enough, it was tough for the little thing to keep every sound from escaping. So they both soldiered on, each working to keep composed and tight-lipped.

At the four-minute mark, feeling her finger joints going numb as well as temporarily anemic, Lexi gently guided the phone up to her leg using her free hand, careful not to let up the squeezing nor disturb the pressure consistency enough that Bridget had cause to open her eyes, as the last thing the Alpha wanted was to be observed while she was studying her notes on proper legalized low-grade torture.

Sure enough, she was definitely following the protocol according to the helpful 3D diagram, which demonstrated exactly where to place one’s fingers on a subject to strike a balance of bracing discomfort, oxygen deprivation, and functional pain while mitigating the risk of smashing vital innards. She had to be able to recognize the shape of bodily segments on Bridget’s torso and legs against each curled finger and remain conscious of the strength applied through each to adjust to the endurance of every miniscule body part, a show of hyper-attentive focus that made Lexi wonder if the manual was calling on senses she simply didn’t possess as an Alpha. Nevertheless, she did her best, and redoubled her efforts. The book recommended a ten-minute squeeze before an interlude, and that was what she intended to do.

Minute six ticked by, and Lexi was counting every second. They’d definitely passed the fruit-juicing threshold, as even something with a thick husk would’ve been purging seeds by now, and the Alpha certainly held on this tight the last time she was lifting weights at the gym. This kind of effort was probably all Alma required the last time she pulped a helpless innocent in her talons, yet Lexi was bypassing that level, and Bridget was handling it with only a frown and a squirming disposition. Still, everyone had a limit, and part of Lexi feared now that at any instant, she might hear the fracturing of an arm or leg or, probably worse, a cringing implosion from organ damage in Bridget, in which case she would’ve done more harm, physical if not emotional, to her sister in one fell swoop than she’d experienced those two hellish weeks of wrongful Enforcement. It didn’t help that the guilt-ridden Omega would probably fail to mention if she was seriously wounded, deciding she deserved each and every bit of permanent damage sustained.

At the same time, the Alpha tried to remind herself how silly it was to think she could crush a veritable amazon using her own determined but admittedly-average strength. Bridget had promised she couldn’t be easily hurt, and that even while standing at three inches tall, she maintained much of her constitution, likely able to be hurled across the room from the highest shelf into a comparative hundred-story plummet without even getting a scratch. Then again, wasn’t that also exactly what someone would say if they had to convince an unwilling party to punish them outside the comfort zone? Was she just being lulled into a false sense of security? Such a thought immediately made Lexi’s palm grease with sweat, a process that was already occurring due to her exertion and the heat of her hand wrapped around Bridget’s body, but the apprehension at the thought of her sister underplaying her own durability made it impossible for the Alpha to keep her cool.

When at last the six-hundredth second of this first punishment struck, what felt like an age to Lexi, she pressed her knuckles to the carpet and unfurled her fingers at once. Immediately the shrunken Omega rolled down the gangplank of digits and onto the floor, spent but not crippled. At first, hearing the popping of joints, the Alpha’s heart raced into attack-mode, thinking she’d snapped Bridget’s skeleton like pretzel sticks, until she realized it was only her own weary finger-bones stretching healthily back into normal resting shape after such prolonged fist maintenance. She massaged her hand, cracking her knuckles and feeling relief rush through her arm for this rest, though of course her heart and mind were feeling anything but relaxed, seeing Bridget stumble back to her feet. The Omega managed to rise far quicker than any Beta would’ve in the same circumstances, and in fact a naturally three-inch-tall citizen probably would’ve remained crumpled in a pile of viscera for permanent sleep on the floor, though Lexi could still see a wobble in her sister’s step as she tried to get the circulation going again, her head dutifully hung.

“Well,” the Alpha said, warring with herself not to sound too wretchedly concerned. “How was that?”

“You did well,” Bridget groggily replied. Coughing to clear her throat, the little golden-haired victim stood up straighter now, recovering at exponential speed now, though she kept up the revered posture, arms folded behind her back and chin down. “Exactly right.”

“Uh-huh.”

It didn’t feel appropriate for Lexi to offer thanks, as this assessment was meant less as a compliment and more an assurance that they were on the right track, no matter how wrong it felt. Wiping her palms together, the Alpha became fully aware of just how clammy her skin had become, almost pruny like from bathwater, and embarrassing in the way where she’d have avoided handshakes until wiping down her pant leg. Bridget’s clothes, thoroughly rumpled, appeared slightly damper now after being squeezed so hard into rigidly-firm sweat-glazed skin from neck to toe for ten straight minutes, but the Omega appeared not to notice her disheveled appearance.

“I… know you’re still afraid. Of hurting me,” Bridget said, now back to prime health. “But you can probably see, and hear it too. I can take it. Especially this.”

Lexi knew the little Omega’s explanation was meant again as a reassurance, not a challenge, yet she was perturbed to discover some part of her took it that way regardless, like accidentally reawakening the small part of her brain that couldn’t turn down a playground footrace in her adolescence, though of course it wasn’t simple competitiveness that made Lexi feel this way. She couldn’t say quite what it was, either, but knew it probably had to do with whatever had made her agree to all this madness in the first place.

The Alpha glanced again to her phone, noting that the session script suggested taking a ten minute break now, to let the subject be somewhat restored, and more importantly, to lecture them with appropriate verbiage. The book was helpful enough to provide several more applicable anecdotes detailing depressing nonfiction accounts of Betas squeezed into pencil-thin corpses, and even some peer-reviewed psychology journal excerpts explaining why Alphas who did such things were especially barbaric in nature. But Bridget, an admitted follower of the manual during that difficult week twenty-one months back, surely knew all those lessons already, just as she probably knew by heart that a ten-minute rest was called for now. Perhaps she was even expecting that long of a wait if not longer for Lexi, not the punishment recipient herself, to get composed again.

That was exactly the kind of expectation that would keep Bridget from healing, Lexi realized. And what the hell was the point of all this if the low-borne Enforcer could predict every step of this supposedly-needed torment like a choreographed dance? Seeing the little Omega’s eyes bat open briefly, Lexi waited until her sister averted her gaze again, and then swooped in, palm splayed. Twice as quickly as before and doubly as strong, she had her fingers lashed around Bridget, and after barely two minutes of pause.

Unlike the first bout, when it took Lexi nearly half the time just to work up the courage to squeeze at more-or-less full capacity, she leapt right to this same concentration, squeezing so hard her knuckles popped uniformly down the line, and an indeed surprised Bridget let out a yelped wheeze. Yet in the split-second after, the Omega seemed embarrassed of her own bodily reaction, settling almost-gratefully back into the horrid rhythm of being clenched so ruthlessly. She fidgeted and even buzzed with a sore moan, but only because her biology dictated it, and otherwise Bridget again took her consequences like a champ. This time, the shrunken thing’s feet tipped out the bottom of Lexi’s fist, which meant Bridget’s head sunk deeper into the top past a crook of a tightly-tucked index finger as though descending through quicksand.

Feeling her sister’s delicate facial features compressed into the inner flank of her digit was something Lexi had to get over, but she did so this time without the anxious mental flip-flopping or excess palm sweat. After all, Bridget’s head was no frailer than the rest of her, and no part of the Omega was remotely breakable, that much was clear now in practice as well as by promise.

Slowly the Alpha’s hand rose up from the floor again, and rather than propping her forearm across her thigh for support, she held Bridget’s naturally protesting body aloft, up at the level of her own eyeline. In doing so, Lexi became more cognizant of the musculature activated all the way down her arm, bulging her slender biceps and triceps, thickening a couple veins. She could even feel the effort uniting the structure of her back and shoulders, her entire silhouette stiffening for this ritual, though no longer purely from fear of the unknown or nerves over hurting Bridget. This was different now, the calling upon of necessary strength, and holding firm not because Lexi’s own body had locked up, but because this much effort was required to “fix” Bridget. With renewed confidence, the Alpha bit her lip, in focus rather than as a coping mechanism, and rolled her fingers yet harder.

Before Lexi knew it, five minutes had passed. She hadn’t caught herself checking the clock every fifteen seconds or so this round, and in fact had expected the timer to be lower. Not wanting to waste the opportunity now that she’d mustered the will to do this right, the Alpha thumbed through her phone notes again, recalling that for the second ten-minute stretch of imprisonment, the book recommended a change-up in squeezing pattern. There was more to teach the subject here, the text insisted, other than just how awful it was to be helplessly bound and squashed to the breaking point in the clutches of someone who cared so little for where that breaking point was, at least externally. While again Lexi had to overlook the manual’s meager suggestions of pressure so as not to crack the mere mortals in half, she found its prescriptions useful.

With the directions memorized, Lexi placed her free hand over her left breast to track her heartrate. Though her pulse was elevated, her ticker was no longer pumping at a sprint, as it assuredly had that first uncertain and sweaty attempt. The pace was instead sitting where it might for a light jog, which she considered an impressive compromise, considering what a novel and potentially-traumatic experience she was sharing with her sibling. Once she had the rate learned, Lexi commenced replicating it by patting her chest, and simultaneously moving the fingers of her opposite hand inward around Bridget at the same speed.

Immediately Lexi’s fist, which was roughly the size of her actual heart inside her chest anyway, became more like the vital organ it was aping, pulsating around the miniaturized Omega as a way to not only keep the subject from getting complacent in the pain and pressure, but also a method to make them live for a short time, almost literally, in the Enforcer’s calmness. Of course, according to the book, the ideal Enforcer would be cool and collected during this moment, so the delinquent Alpha in their fist would understand precisely how unaffected the giant handler was by this bloodless carnage, just as that cruel-hearted thug had likely treated their Beta victims before. Upon the knowledge that she was sharing such an intimate fact as her truth-telling heartrate with her sister at such a hateful moment in their lives, Lexi’s pulse quickened slightly, but still not nearly to the chest-pounding velocity it occupied before. The Alpha chose not to lie to her sister by artificially slowing, but picked up the speed she was squeezing Bridget, feeling the little thing strain due to her inability to predict each pump.

Still, the Omega fought very hard not to squeak. After enough repetition, clenching her hardest at the apex of each pulse from her heart, Lexi could feel Bridget’s own pulse too where her middle finger strapped across her big sister’s chest. In time, their heartbeats seemed to synchronize, especially once the temporary Enforcer’s pulse stopped fluctuating between the even pace of before and a more panicked race, and settled back to the mid-range. It might’ve been cute if it hadn’t come of something so heinous.

For the remaining five minutes, Alpha and Omega shared one pulse, raised above the norm but not in mind-breaking distress either. Lexi found it especially impressive that Bridget could pull this off without descending into a claustrophobic seizure, considering how much force was coiling in on her from every side, and this time with her face trapped in the pithy confinement too, struggling for full breath when her tiny nose and lips were flush with the Alpha’s finger.

Then again, Lexi’s own relatively even-keeled status was a tiny marvel, as she’d been palpitating from the moment Bridget first admitted her desire to be punished, up until the moment she’d clasped the Omega in her fist. Yet she’d found a strange equilibrium now, and while the fact that she could do this with only some stomach flutters and a healthy cardio threshold wasn’t a source of joy for Lexi, it was soothing too in the worst way to know that she just might be able to stick with Bridget through this whole experimental treatment. The ten-minute marker was reached, and though for an instant Lexi prepared to loosen her hardened muscles again and gently dump her sister back to the carpet, she let the clock pass to 10:01, then 10:02, and beyond. In fact the manual suggested a fifteen-minute break at this Beginner level before the third and final squeeze, but without even having to think about it, the Alpha determined that they were skipping it.

Bridget could take it, and now so could Lexi.

Following the next piece of advice from the book, however, she removed her hand from over her heart, as it wasn’t really needed any longer to know the rate of her pulse, and instead used her pinky finger to nudge Bridget’s tiny bare feet back up into the cocoon of the fist. When the girl’s head started to crest over the top again, Lexi did the same, carefully but resolutely wadding the Omega the rest of the way into her closed hand, until she had the girl’s entire three-inch self contained inside, with only slivers of light and air able to penetrate through the crevices between pale-clamped digits. To an outsider, it might’ve looked like Lexi was a magician stuffing her enchanted handkerchief deep inside her fist before making it vanish into ether.

The Alpha had a more difficult time now feeling individual body parts pressed into segments of her fingers, as Bridget was forcibly curled into a cramped fetal position, but Lexi decided this knowledge wasn’t necessary either. Her sister would endure, and more importantly, the little Omega couldn’t have predicted this behavior, thus robbing herself of the benefit of Enforcement in the first place. Keeping up the squeezing gauntlet, and laying down pressure in a chaotic rippling pattern over Bridget’s submissive shape despite still following their heartbeats, Lexi ensured her mind stayed squarely focused on the task literally at hand. While she’d previously expected the experience to feel like being forced to stare into the sun, it was instead more like watching major surgery: surely disgusting in its own way, but required to sustain life, and over time something she was able to steel herself against while bearing witness.

This last stretch of the session went the quickest of all. Lexi’s hand, arm, and back grew latently tired, but in a way that she could easily push to the back of her consciousness to instead keep centered on what mattered. She remained aware of Bridget’s micro-movements, panged and short of breath while balled like living clay into a cask of curled flesh, but the Alpha didn’t fear extinguishing her sister in this act, especially so early in the manual, utilizing only a fraction of her potential destructive capability. By the time the twentieth minute rolled around, Lexi even contemplated extending the lesson by another few minutes, but decided against it after they’d passed only one second extra over the line. Whipping her hand open again, the Alpha let her sister come to rest on the ground before the tall altar of her crossed legs.

Sprawled on all fours, shivering but not heaving, Bridget muted her choking gasps to refill her lungs. Again there were no visible marks on the tiny blonde’s body, even while Lexi had employed strength that could’ve pulverized a few dozen Betas, given how long the girls had spent interlocked this way. Unquestionably, though, the Omega took longer to settle herself, standing with greater difficulty, and only when she appeared to recollect enough of her stamina did Bridget speak up, half in rasp and head still bowed:

“Yes, Lexi. Yes. T-That was it.”

“I… thought so too,” the Alpha stated, with neither malice nor affection in her tone. There was no place for either one if they were to succeed here. She stood, leaving Bridget hunkered down at her feet, and only stooped to collect her sister after looking upon her from the full five-foot-something gulf of space separating them, which nevertheless felt much more distant to Lexi. But maybe that was a good thing for now. With Bridget scooped meekly in her palm, she nodded to the closet again. “Do you thi- …I mean, it’s time to turn another page. Let’s go see what’s next.”

When Lexi’s hand clasped over Bridget’s entire body again, compressing her little face against palm flesh and blocking even a glimpse of the dimly-lit Enforcement manual, the Omega didn’t so much as flinch, nor did she offer a peep of commentary. The tiny blonde didn’t budge either when the Alpha trekked across the surface of the book and, rather than moving on to the next sequential Beginner’s punishment, began flipping through whole sections at a time. Even though Bridget heard the swishing of chaotically turned pages, which meant she couldn’t predict the coming storm. In fact, Lexi made a point of parting her curled fingers just enough so her sister could perceive this unexpected progression, and flung paper at random to begin with, backtracking then skimming ahead in the book without reading any headings yet.

It felt like trying to throw a pursuer off her scent, when in fact Lexi still held all the agency here, literally, in her hand. She knew it was probably pointless, but couldn’t help it, even while understanding this process wasn’t going to work until she could shake off the nebulous ghost-sensation of a full-size Omega’s presence hanging over the room. But there was no one else “in charge” here. And though she remained physically nigh-invincible, Bridget had no power except that which Lexi unintentionally gave her through hesitation and doubt.

So when working one-handed to peruse the manual became too cumbersome, the Alpha plucked open her pants pocket and, without even exchanging eye contact with Bridget, deposited the shrinkee inside. The only movement Lexi felt then came from the Omega adjusting herself to obediently curl against the sloped cloth basin, her knees pulled to her chest, making no effort to peek over the edge of the pouch and cheat. Briefly the temporary Enforcer marveled at the sensation of how truly puny her sibling felt confined there in her pocket, an unmoving fetally-rolled lump like a newborn rodent. The reminder of their swapped sizes both unnerved and empowered Lexi to resume exploring the manual, now with both hands free, and her eyes glued to the prescriptive text. Meaningless a gesture though it technically was to switch her willing Omega prisoner from her fist into a pocket, it was the act of doing so at all, without warning or consultation, that gave Lexi the confidence she needed to press on.

That first session was the warm-up: half-hearted, uncertain, and spent monitoring Bridget’s reactions at all times for “approval.” But no more.

Bypassing the rest of the Beginner section, a move she was vehemently opposed to less than an hour before, Lexi dug into the Intermediate session listings. The layout was much the same as the earlier examples, detailing an Enforcer’s actions like a recipe, including diagrams, and peppered throughout with more informational blurbs on the inhumanity of humans-to-tiny-humans. Predictably, though, everything here was more intense, starting with the approach to the session “activities,” which featured fewer educational explanations while physically overwhelming the subject, and went straight to the point more often, either suggesting silence on the Omega’s part, or a higher quotient of put-downs based around the Alpha’s crime. The demonstrative pictures, just as cartoonish, took things to a new and more degrading low. Some of them, showing the faceless 3D Alphas getting treated like toys or unruly hamsters or worse, made Lexi feel sympathy and then strange condescension on the behalf of the little inanimate shapes meant to represent nonspecific persons. It almost felt like discovering someone’s private nude photo, or something equally exposed, appear without warning in a school textbook.

Even the “Did You Know?” stories were sadder, with several accounts giving Lexi a fresh pit in her stomach before she could again properly focus on the next helpful suggestions for pounding justice into comparatively-miniscule wrongdoers. Similar to the last segment, these consequences were ranked by their severity rather than style of delivery; unlike last time, however, the Alpha found her imagination drifting beyond precise reenactments of the diagrams. She’d been too afraid to stray much from the directions last time, aside from shortening Bridget’s rest in between fist-pulses. But really, there was nothing to stop her from slamming the manual closed now and never even glancing at it again for the rest of this important day.

No, Lexi internally sighed. Baby steps.

Then the Alpha turned the page once more, her eye catching on the third listing. After reading over the instructions twice, she hopped off the manual, decidedly without snapping a reference pic as backup, and stepped back out of the closet shadows.


###


Lexi stood on the smooth expanse of the kitchen counter, the same platform where a parade of well-wishing Omegas had welcomed her back to familiar society, but this time in almost-total solitude, save for the shrunken blindfolded Enforcer squeezed rigid in her fist. Indeed Bridget’s presence may as well have counted for nothing, not due to her size, but the severing of communication which began when the Alpha ceased speaking to her sister after the warm-up session, and continued when she elected to muffle the girl’s sight and hearing as she was now.

Secretly of course, the tiny cloth cover wrapped snug around Bridget’s head was meant more for Lexi than the tiny Omega, who took this choice in stride and without altering her receptive posture. Just because Lexi had made the firm decision to start taking charge here didn’t mean she wasn’t also intimidated by the specter of her audience’s judgment, even if said audience had insisted on this day of relentless punishment in the first place. The thicker the barrier between them, focusing Lexi on her task, and allowing Bridget to concentrate on the “healing” process of increasingly-stiff comeuppance, the better off they’d both be.

The house stood empty and quiet still, as it had since Lexi’s strange awakening to a micro-scale sibling, but now that they’d ventured out of Bridget’s bedroom, the Alpha was keenly aware that, although unlikely, it was possible that Evelyn would make a pit-stop at home around midday. And depending on when exactly she entered the room, to find Lexi and a tiny Bridget engaged in the decidedly-unfriendly ritual they were about to perform, there were sure to be some tough words exchanged or, probably worse, some tough facial expressions. Nevertheless, though Lexi had originally preferred to keep the entire hair-brained exercise confined to the Omega’s bedroom for privacy, this spot in the kitchen also just happened to be the most practical surface for their Intermediate explorations. And thanks to the empowered confidence Lexi found by the end of that last round, though she didn’t look forward to such an encounter with her adoptive mother, neither did the risk preclude her from doing the job right.

Bridget was flattened lengthwise on Lexi’s open palm, not struggling or even turning her head in attempt to guess at her upcoming fate, nor where they were. The irony here was that the Alpha herself probably could’ve taken the trip to this point in the house while blindfolded and still known exactly where she was, owing to a decade of riding in the grasp of giantesses and learning just how many bobs of a palm it took to reach every spot in the house. Conversely, the little Omega had never been held in anyone’s hand before today, and so they may as well have been on the other side of neighborhood by now for all she knew. This ignorance, Lexi thought, was probably for the best too.

Stooping in the center of the counter, but keeping her sister level in-hand, the faux-Enforcer produced a set of fabric bands from her pocket, then proceeded to loop them each over Bridget’s legs. These cords were then twisted and then re-looped to avoid slack, ensuring no appreciable movement was possible from the girl’s shoulders down to her ankles. Feeling herself restrained, the Omega again didn’t speak or flinch, but simply cooperated by keeping her arms and legs straight, even when the tension of the rope approached intolerable levels.

This preparation was on-script for the Aegis-authored guidebook, at least as far as Lexi remembered, but the section still made a point of recommending that its Omega reader use great caution when binding an Alpha criminal, to be held tight but not so tight that they were completely numbed. Such a state would defeat the purpose of sessions, which was largely to feel their wrongs reflected back at them; going too far would also risk such grievous injury that the schedule of consequences would have to be spaced out further, thus stunting the inmate’s improvement as a person. The middle size class, the book had remarked, were just as fragile as Betas in many ways, and in some respects more so, due to their frequent and brazen lack of recognition for their physical limits, which their smaller counterparts meanwhile had evolved to learn for survival. This meant a certain amount of unearned tenderness was required when hogtying an Alpha, no matter how tempting it was for a justice-minded Junior Enforcer to be heavy-handed.

With this instruction in mind, Lexi made the first deviation by promptly ignoring the book’s warnings and roping Bridget so firmly that, if the girl had happened to be of Beta constitution as well as height, she would’ve soon hyperextended and curled in one direction under the buckling strain of the cords. Instead, by reading the subtle body language of her volunteer subject, sore but accepting, the Alpha knew she’d secured her sister just well enough to leave her in perpetual discomfort. It was much like what Bridget felt while being clamped and pulsed in a giant fist for half an hour, only this was merely their starting point, and exactly what the little thing wanted. When she’d finished gussying the puny Omega up in iron-tight double-loops, Lexi gingerly plucked her sister around the hips and deposited the three-incher face-up on the countertop.

Withdrawing across the platform, Lexi watched Bridget with every backpedaled step as though she expected the compression to wear off at any instant and the three-inch subject to rip through her cords back into her natural fifteen-story frame. No such commotion occurred, though, even as the Alpha reached the edge of the counter again, distant enough that her tiny sister looked more like a fly entwined in spun webs: her golden hair hanging out the top of her heavy blindfold and rope knots was the last remaining feature recognizable as Bridget’s own.

Reaffirming the need of these measures to herself, reminding herself that Bridget would advocate for them all if she could speak now, Lexi stooped and began re-tying the laces of her running shoes. When she cinched the strings, she tugged with the exact strength she’d used to bind the shrunken Omega, conscious of how it must’ve felt to experience that around her whole body instead of just her foot. Nothing she’d want to repeat, that was for certain, which told her that Bridget was ready. With her rubber-soled sneakers lashed on tight, Lexi closed the space between herself and her sister again, strutting with new confidence. Suddenly she was standing not just before the miniature blonde but above and around her, with Bridget’s blinded, deafened, and lamed three-inch shape positioned between the raised mesh insteps of the Alpha’s pink-and-white athletic footwear.

At this stage, the book had suggested a choice of either dispassionately restating the criminal record of the prisoner’s wrongdoing, or remaining silent. Lexi picked the latter option, and not just because there was no official document detailing the moderate physical and deep-seated emotional wounds the young Omega had been manipulated into inflicting on her little sister. Though Bridget hadn’t reacted to the sounds of loudly confident footsteps drawing near, Lexi was pretty sure she saw that little head tilt in reaction when the temporarily-big sister drew a sharp inhale above.

Controlling her breath as much as could be expected, Lexi teed one foot back, balancing it on the rubber-boughed toe of her sneaker, and posed it an inch from the Omega’s side. Then before she could rethink it all, the Alpha kicked her foot forward: not hard, but more than enough to push the shrinker halfway across the wide counter at high speed.

Watching Bridget skid over the flat terrain bordered on surreal for Lexi, as it would’ve looked almost comical, if not for the complex soup of circumstances surrounding the gesture. She’d taken care on that first boot to not use more effort in thrusting her toes than would’ve been required to send a pebble down the road, but the Omega went shooting off easier than she’d thought. Maybe she’d underestimated her own strength, or just maybe this was less of an ordeal than Lexi had feared. The book, of course, didn’t recommend more than a tap that rolled the Alpha a few inches away, perhaps getting them to fear that they’d get punted to the other side of the room at any second, but never following through.

That wasn’t enough for an Omega, though, and Bridget understood that most of all. Deciding to at least follow the guide’s advice for following one’s feelings in the heat of a session, rather than getting too academic, Lexi shut off the part of her brain still asking moral questions, and chased after her sister.

Naturally the three-incher couldn’t move still from where she’d landed, and didn’t show signs of distress, despite traveling the equivalent of a city block in-scale with her minute stature. Still, Lexi reached her muffled sister in a matter of seconds, and rather than pausing for another slow wind-up, went right for the shot like an MVP striker, battering the little Omega with double the force this time. Not only did Bridget’s ultra-light shape go speeding off instantaneously from the mighty impact on the nose of Lexi’s athletic shoe, but she went airborne, arcing almost as high as her sibling’s eyeline before landing hard nearly on the opposite side of the counter.

She was getting the hang of this now. Lexi felt fired up now, emboldened and assured that this, at last, was the literal and figurative kick-in-the-backside Bridget desired and possibly needed, not the wishy-washy finger-swaddling the Alpha had given her during their first round. They were definitely off-script now, and that was exactly how it had to be. Not even waiting to watch her sister complete the short voyage this time, Lexi was off running again, this time nudging Bridget with the hardy heel of her shoe, but only to set up the next “shot.” The Omega twirled into a likely-sickening tailspin, coming near to the precipice of the counter.

After following closely after her, slamming her feet down in a cacophonous stampede all around the tiny subject meant to discombobulate her, but not actually contacting yet, Lexi swung her leg as far back as she could reach, balled her toes inside the shoe for a firmer bulwark through the curved mesh, then launched her foot at the small but not-so-fragile target.

The blow was so solid, she actually felt Bridget’s body roll up the front of the shoe, depressing the fabric coating just long enough that Lexi was momentarily chilled at the sensation of her sister’s infinitesimally-squirming body cradled against the architecture of her curled toes. She delivered this strike with such enthusiasm, that as Lexi watched her helpless sister soar, she briefly wondered if she’d gone too far, and itsy-bitsy Bridget might topple right over the edge into a ninety-foot plunge to the ground.

Then the Alpha snapped out of this unhelpful distraction, feeling rather stupid, by recalling no matter how small the Omega became, her superhuman composition would still allow her to tank such a stomach-churning descent like a minor spill akin to tripping and falling off a curbside. Lexi shook her head, scolding herself for thinking too gently, since Bridget wasn’t currently in a position to offer this pep talk aloud. But even as the hog-tied Omega sailed far through the air, crossing the entirety of the long counter and landing safely not six feet from that dizzying edge, the Alpha could hear her sister’s voice ringing in her head.

Don’t worry about me, it demanded with love but also exasperation. If you hesitate, this won’t work. If you worry about my feelings, this won’t work. If you go slow or baby me or believe that you’re going to hurt me, this won’t work. Push yourself. Do this for me. Make me like you were, as close as you can. Show me what it felt like, Lexi.

Well, that wasn’t hard to do. The psychology of being imprisoned by one’s own family might not translate, but Lexi could certainly offer up a tangible substitute of her old pain for the here-and-now. Charging as fast as she could across the counter, the Alpha zeroed her gaze on her insignificantly-sized subject, unable and unwilling to fight back, and rather than kicking Bridget again, she raised her sneaker above her, then brought the textured platform down to roost. Most of her weight was balanced against the opposite leg, but in a matter of seconds, Lexi shifted her momentum over into the opposite foot, until she was supported solely by her shrunken sibling, using only the tipped-back heel of the other sneaker to keep from falling.

There was another jump in Lexi’s pulse now, as there had to be, simply because she felt a tiny body under her shoe, and happened to exist in a world densely populated by same-sized beings who, if they were stood upon exactly as she now stood upon Bridget, their bodies would slowly shatter into a crunchy mess in the treads of her shoes. Once again logic caught up a second sooner, however, reminding Lexi that she’d “stood” on Bridget for ten comfortable years, nestled feather-light in her palm, and that was all this was, at least until she began to push down harder.

It felt alien to Lexi to apply anything more than body weight, let alone put effort into stomping, yet this was a move that countless Alphas throughout their grim history had of course performed with total intention. From drunk idiots casually stepping on street dwellers for a laugh, to lowly maids disposing of desperate “vermin” in the house, to giddy adolescents daring one another to squish a Beta barefoot, to full-grown otherwise-loving adults in their total “right” minds who saw it as a birthright to annihilate anything, humanoid or not, that was small enough to liquefy underfoot.

This was the legacy in Lexi’s size class’s DNA. It was the legacy of her birth mother. And no matter how much it made her heart rail, even for a second, at the bodily instinct to retract when she felt a breakable toy-sized life splayed under her hardy sole, it didn’t change the fact that for two hellish weeks which truly felt longer than the year-and-a-half she’d spent in traveling solitary confinement, her friends and family thought her guilty of carrying on that legacy.

Of course, the body she had under her foot now would not break, no matter what she did, and so her reflexive hesitancy was not only unnecessary, but counterproductive. Bridget would not crush into gory smithereens, and even if she did sustain injury by some miracle of physical violence that an Alpha was probably incapable of exerting, she’d heal shortly thereafter. By her own admission, she needed this, and perhaps Lexi, in her own sorrowful way, buried deep inside, needed a little catharsis of her own. Without further guesswork, then, and feeling her veins light up with some of the adrenaline and even twinges of anger she felt for those two weeks of boxed-in emotional strain, the Alpha let her other shoe leave the ground.

She stood on one foot, completely balanced, and just touching ground by virtue of Bridget, only in a necessary perversion of their usual arrangement. From there, Lexi began to funnel the distribution of her weight to an even smaller space, rolling forward off her heels and flexing her toes up inside the shoe so the mass was centralized to the ball of her foot, with the tiny Omega right below. The next step then was performing a one-legged calf raise with the outward calm and serenity of a practiced yogi, though because a three-inch person served as her own support during the gradual rise and fall of the Alpha’s body, the activity radiating down through her nervous system was anything but zen.

However, unlike the fraught months spent away while she wrestled through swallowing her grief alone, there was something oddly freeing in this act, which had to be severely uncomfortable for Bridget, but had the opposite effect for her sister. Leaning back slightly, the Enforcer-for-a-Day caught her balance with the toe of her other shoe against the floor, then pushed off again, harder this time, so her sibling was made to endure the full weight of a body hundreds of times her current shrunken mass, all focused through the hard-rubber battering ram of Lexi’s footwear toe. Then she repeated this bouncy flex upon her shrunken subject, again and again, for dreadfully slow minutes on end until she felt her calf going sore from the effort to continually compact Bridget between shoe and surface, but even then she didn’t stop. She couldn’t.

At the apex of each rise, when Lexi trusted none of her weight to the floor and wholly to the three-inch Omega’s body under her foot, she recalled the skin-clawing frustration she lived with for those interminable days in a glass cage as an accused Beta-beater: the internal scream she had to keep bottled the whole time, but which made her long to grab Bridget by the shoulders and shake her, slap her if needed, until she saw reason. But her sister was too big then, too unreachable, too far gone in her sorrow for that have ever worked, and so now that raw feeling of coalesced fury-and-mourning, which had gone dormant in Lexi out of necessity, was blossoming back up and being expelled through the sole of her foot with every controlled trample.

When the Alpha felt her leg preparing to give out from soreness, she simply swapped limbs, giving that foot a break and putting its twin sole back down before Bridget could so much as shake her head. Then, bobbing her heel up and down off the countertop, she resumed the exercise of quashing an unbreakable shape down into the unforgiving platform. Eventually the majority of the “session” was spent in this manner, not in the game of Alpha-body “soccer” the Intermediate section suggested, but Lexi had come to see that approach was useless. It didn’t relieve her any more than it probably bored the invulnerable Omega. This, now, was a different story, and the Alpha had turned the simple mechanism of her pistoning foot and clenching leg into a device for ridding herself of those wretched backburnered feelings. The silence around them in the vacant kitchen was near-deafening, with Lexi just as secluded from sound as her shrouded big sibling, except for the rhythmic bend and occasional squeak in the contorted rubber underbelly of her shoe, molded for unnatural but prescribed purpose on a miniscule body.

As she’d intended, Lexi lost track of time. They’d certainly been at this for longer than the half-hour stress-balling treatment. Had it been a full hour yet? Even longer? She didn’t know or care, and decided not to learn until she’d decided of her own accord that they were finished. Still, both the Alpha’s calves were getting tired, which meant it was time for a rest, but still not for both of them. God knew that her own rest didn’t start until long after those original wrongfully-delivered sessions were through. So Lexi kicked her invincible sibling back across the counter the other way, and trudged after her, giving her limbs time to recover, then on the opposite end of the stage, resumed treading on Bridget, taking her time and doing so without remorse, exactly the way the Omega would’ve been chanting at her to perform, if only she could see or speak now.

After another wearisome series of punishing sneaker-pumps, treating her underfoot subject like a coiled spring that might rocket her into the air with a hard enough push, Lexi repeated the cycle and punted Bridget back to the other side. Just to avoid falling into a predictable pattern, she varied the menu now, sweeping the Omega around with the sides of her buoyant footwear, standing on her using the broad hemispheres of her running shoe heels, and creating a rampaging clatter all around her by mightily bashing her foot to the ground a half-inch from Bridget’s body, and daringly drawing closer to violently tromping her on each successive impact, without ever doing so.

When at last it felt they’d reached the end, and only when she herself had decided this to be true, a breathless Lexi wiped the sweat from her brow and nudged her hogtied sister with the side of her foot. Bridget was still obediently wordless and only wriggling in reactionary disturbance. Though for a moment the Alpha prepared to sit down and catch her breath, far enough away from her sibling so the self-made prisoner couldn’t hear her heavy breathing, she paused and stopped herself, squinting intently at the miniature golden-crowned bundle of knots and blindfold on the ground.

Once more couldn’t hurt. Literally. In fact, it could only help them.

Was this what they believed she was capable of back then, Lexi wondered, as she stepped on Bridget for the hundredth or perhaps thousandth time of the session? Was this what Aegis imagined for her? Was this what they thought she’d learned from Alma, what she’d suppressed as long as she could until she just had to take it out on the first strangers that crossed her path with the wrong look on their tiny smashable Beta faces?

They were wrong, of course; she knew that much. But that didn’t mean there wasn’t a hint of painful-if-crucial satisfaction to be had, like pulling a long splinter out from the flesh of her fingertip after keeping it stuck there for years. Lexi finished with a huff, slumping to the ground beside Bridget and drawing deep breath, this time unconcerned with whether her sister heard her exhaustion or not.

Bridget hadn’t been able to see for more than an hour, and she was glad. Her hearing was muffled, too, despite the inherent sharpness of her Omega senses, and she couldn’t move her arms and legs, due to the flimsy fabric bands cinched around the majority of her body. This was exactly how things needed to be for now, though, and Bridget was deeply grateful when Lexi took stern measures to restrict her charge’s diminished liberty, but that didn’t make it any less claustrophobic and tiring to be blindfolded, muted, and tied from neck to toe for this long.

It was a strange juxtaposition for the shrunken giantess to feel the weakness of the binds from the very first moment Lexi dutifully coiled the recipient of her punishment in their uncomfortable tension. It would’ve been so simple for Bridget to spread her limbs apart and snap the cords like blades of dry grass, but of course she wouldn’t do that, couldn’t, because she needed to accept any discomfort the Alpha bestowed on her, plus whatever additional difficulties she’d likely have to convince Lexi to foist. Besides, the knowledge that she could’ve freed herself of these ropes in an instant, but wouldn’t allow herself to do so, contributed severe frustration that the Omega knew could only enhance her sessions and thus the healing process. So Bridget willfully let herself be confined and abraded by this token imprisonment, reflecting on her sins more intently without visual or clear auditory distractions. Now there was only the mild physical duress and a guilt-soaked catalog of hateful memories to settle with.

Naturally, the rough sensation of those bands triple-looped around her deceptively-powerful three-inch body was nothing next to the distress she’d been feeling for eighteen long months, and which finally had the hope of turning around today: resolution wouldn’t come all at once, but Bridget still wholeheartedly believed that their lives could be fixed, if only Lexi committed today. As of this second session, especially, wherein the blinded-and-deafened Omega was surprise-booted, spun, and compacted for seventy-eight cloying minutes on the kitchen counter, it was clear that the Alpha just might pull it off.

Bridget was in fact supremely proud of her Junior-Junior Enforcer little-big sister, and if their circumstances weren’t so desperate and distraught; if she hadn’t wrongfully performed similar acts on Lexi a year-and-a-half before; and if this necessary dance wasn’t punctuated with grief and uncertainty, she would’ve gladly declared that pride aloud for her too.

It took a very strong person to help her in this way, sacrificial even, and midway through the underfoot punting, Bridget was already brainstorming a shower of genuine compliments to give Lexi at day’s end, remarking on her focus and dedication despite the risk of secondhand agony in remembering her own experience as a convict. By the conclusion of that session, however, Bridget had resolved to keep all of these words of praise to herself, no matter how badly she already wanted to thank Lexi for her bravery today. The Alpha would surely not take anything positive from being acknowledged as a successful disciplinarian of tinier creatures.

When they were finished with the session (or at least Bridget was pretty sure they were, given the lack of shoe treads trouncing her body now), Lexi lingered nearby, laying on the countertop and recuperating as forcefully as her shrunken ward. The Omega heard her taller sibling’s more labored breathing, could smell the bittersweet sweat of her effort, and even felt the heat of her proximity. This brought the little blonde special comfort, since all those elements belonged to the comparatively much-larger entity who’d agreed to put herself in an emotionally-shredded state, all for the sake of mending Bridget through the most unconventional possible means, even if that same being had just spent over an hour delivering an impressive volume of dizzying, pinching, concussive consequences.

Then suddenly, Lexi was gone, with the same amount of explanation she’d given when braiding her elder sister up in bands and blindfolds, which was to say none. Bridget felt the wind of the Alpha rising, and heard the familiar squeal of her rubber sneaker soles marching away toward the distant stairs, however, rather than straight at the prone and vulnerable Omega, to either disorient her with thudded impacts, sift slow weight on top of her, or kick her to the countertop precipice. Those were undoubtedly tactics from beyond the Beginner section, and Bridget was overjoyed, all things considered, when she was first launched across the surface by the hefty toe of her temporarily-giant overseer’s footwear, knowing it meant that Lexi had summoned the courage to flip deeper through the manual’s pages. Then of course, happiness was quickly and appropriately overwhelmed by the manic disturbance of several hundred punts and poundings beneath a humongous shoe.

Once alone, though, the Omega instead had time to stew for a silent interim that soon stretched past twenty minutes. The sensory deprivation of the wrappings around her body actually became far more unsettling when nothing was being done to violently repay her misdeeds, leaving her to concentrate only on the itch of those taut yet brittle ropes, and to question whatever was next. Primarily she wondered what had become of her sister and wished she’d return soon, since this much time to rest was as undeserved, Bridget decided, as the blessing of Lexi’s apparent forgiveness. The more prescriptive abuse they could pack into this limited time at her Beta-size, the better. Then again, Bridget remembered that this day was probably as tough on the Alpha as it was on her, and immediately cringed with more loathing at her own selfishness. Obviously Lexi was taking a break, not giving one.

By the half-hour mark of senseless alone time, though, Bridget greatly longed to remove the bands, if only to stand and peer across the cavernous breakfast nook in search of her sister’s towering five-foot-something form finally making her way back to collect the inmate. Still, willpower made the Omega remain stock-still and exposed, just as she’d been left, without the benefit of sight or distinct sound to help her guess what might befall her next. Though the materials Lexi had bound her with certainly intensified the exercise’s discomfort for Bridget, the true purpose of this masking wasn’t lost on her: to prevent the well-read Junior Enforcer from predicting the activities of her own retribution, and perhaps most importantly, to avoid dampening the rigor of the sessions by having to see one another’s faces throughout the requisite torment.

If anything was going to make Lexi falter, Bridget knew, it would be the little Omega showing even a hint of distaste for these extreme measures, no matter whether the whole scheme was hers in the first place. Even if that shade of hardship was expressed on a face just a miniscule fraction of its usual billboard size that Lexi always looked up to, Bridget understood that a slip-up might still be enough to render their shared suffering today moot. Their bond, however fractured, could not be allowed to interfere with the process.

Plus, the sessions in that book were indeed tattooed on Bridget’s brain, and she would see most of it coming from a mile away. From the first hour she got her hands on the manual in preparation for her training at age eighteen, until her certification two years later, she’d spent countless free moments poring over its pages again and again. She’d memorized the principles of session work, taken copious notes of “effective” combinations, tested out educative phrases in the bathroom mirror, gotten teary-eyed over the numerous historical examples of Alpha cruelty, and repeatedly mimicked the physical arrangements depicted in the 3D diagrams. And this was just on her own time. For the Omega, after definitively making her post-graduation selection of Aegis career path, this over-preparation was an unspoken duty she had irrevocably placed upon herself long ago. Her job was not just a public service but a calling, and Principles of Junior Enforcement: A Technical Education and Instruction was her Holy Bible.

Now, to even think of ever consulting those pages herself again for use on another person, whether they deserved it or not, made Bridget knot with unshakeable sickness. Even raising a finger against an unquestionably and unreservedly evil Alpha made her clam up, flooded with the opposite of every positive emotion her Aegis training had ever instilled in her to associate with Enforcement and good-vanquishing-evil.

Still, it was easy enough to touch the manual this morning for page-turning, to stand on those words and images which had inadvertently trained her deliver and experience so much hurt, knowing that it was now going to serve well in her redeeming. Lexi was taking to the material as well as Bridget had years before, timidly at first but quickly finding her footing, though the Omega sincerely hoped neither of them would ever have a reason to open the book again after today.

Shrinking dramatically below the normal Omega threshold like this was all well and good, but Bridget now couldn’t help but yearn for real corrective power over her life, to actually smooth over the blemishes instead of endlessly apologizing for them later.

If only she could go back and redirect her own journey, maybe point herself toward a desk job in Aegis, or something outdoors that allowed her to construct with her hands, instead of using them to squeeze the hope out of a loved one. But what stage of life could she have done it? When did she ever take pause, even for a second, to reconsider whether this way was “right?” It wasn’t when she’d signed the papers declaring her career aspirations, which was marked by pride from her mother and Lexi. It wasn’t when she first cracked open the guidebook, either, that was for sure; considering the all-day binge-read which followed, her fascination and loyalty to justice were only further ignited by the contents of the manual. Neither would her first use of the Alpha-surrogate training doll wouldn’t have been the correct turning point. Having assigned the inanimate mini-humanoid an imagined face, identity, and laundry list of heinous crimes, her brutal practices upon it only made her double down. The same went for her first occasion putting down a Senior Enforcer’s charge, seeing how he came pre-packaged with grievous fault.

Then it occurred to Bridget: the only time in her Enforcement schooling when she might have been pushed a different direction, and thus spared herself and her sister all kinds of misery.


“Safety check.” Kari, the Alpha supervisor for Bridget’s first live session simulation, tapped away on her tablet. After studying her fellow Alpha, a blank-faced man with his arms held aloft like wings, she looked over her shoulder at her significantly-taller husband above. “Are his vitals showing green?”

“Green as grass,” said Max, the Senior Enforcer overseeing the test. The Omega’s gaze briefly shifted to his own monitor as he sat on the opposite side of the table from their recruit, but his attention was mostly on Bridget herself, though not out of suspicion or mistrust, just scrutiny, so far as the younger Omega could tell.

Aside from a mild adrenaline tremor that incited her to drum her fingertips on her thigh below the table, Bridget was calm and focused as could be. She’d been preparing for this first trial for a long time in myriad ways, some more thorough than was even required, so she was prepared, and itching to begin. Still, she’d somehow expected the occasion to have slightly more fanfare; she’d expected more Aegis professionals babysitting her first time, and the room was rather sterile, empty except for the table and aptly-sized chairs for the four people present. Not that Bridget was expecting there to be congratulatory streamers hanging on the walls just minutes before she performed a session on a real person for the first time, but she figured SOME decoration might help put the Alpha at ease, even though he was a volunteer, and being paid handsomely for his willingness to serve as Bridget’s guinea pig.

“His internal mic is picking up?” Kari asked her spouse.

“Loud and clear,” said Max.

“S.O.S. button is receiving? Mr. Bell, if you’d be so kind as to activate it, like we showed you earlier.”

“Louder and clearer.”

“Secondary S.O.S.? Mr. Bell, the same, please.”

“Golden.”

“Great,” she said, turning back to the Alpha volunteer. Even when he was directly addressed, however, the young man, clad in a waterproof tear-resistant white jumpsuit, was much like Max in that he had yet to rip his gaze away from the blonde titaness looming over him with spoken-and-unspoken promise. “All right, Mr. Bell, we’ve gone over all three methods you have to alert us if, at any point, you wish to pause or even stop the test altogether. We will of course be watching your vitals, as well as the test itself, and halt it if we see you’re running into some trouble. Understood?”

“Yes,” the man huffed without emotion.

“And just as a final reminder, some mild-to-moderate distress is normal for most people in this position. Please do not be alarmed, and if you are able, endure it as long as you can. Again recall that the two of us will be monitoring you every step of the way, and likely recognize any real danger even before you do, unlikely as such a situation would be. That said, no one expects you to let herself be truly harmed, either, which is why you have those signals. Can you verbally confirm for me again that you understand all this?”

“Yes.” His beady eyes still hadn’t left the giantess-in-training beyond.

Bridget studied the little man, careful not to frown or narrow her eyes at him too much. He was just a volunteer, after all, and so far as Aegis knew, was a model citizen. Then again, some steeliness was required just to help get her in the zone. It had always been relatively easy for Bridget to reach the correct headspace for punishing an Alpha criminal, even though she’d never done it before. She’d put her practice doll through the wringer, and doubly so to some of the diabolical evildoers in her dreams after particularly engrossing late-night reading sessions from her manual, but this time egregiously different. Intellectually, of course, the Omega knew she’d eventually have to demonstrate her skills on a totally-undeserving living sample who represented the size and durability of the culprits she’d soon legally subjugate, but it was still strange to be sitting here in front of him now, with stern witnesses, preparing herself to treat Mr. Bell as someone who aggressively viewed Betas as lesser, if not outright wished their extinction.

“Thank you. Then let’s begin,” said Kari. She adjusted her glasses on the bridge of her nose and looked up at the yet-untested Omega. “Ms. Cade? You may start with… oh, let’s go with Enforcement Training Protocol B-7, Section 3. Do you need to consult the manual?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Excellent.” With that, the supervisor walked back across the table, stopping at the place where her Omega partner’s vital-tracking tablet rested. When Kari turned back, she and Max looked at Bridget with the kind of pregnant expectation that briefly sped of the rate of the girl’s finger-leg tapping, but she quickly got ahold of herself, silently swallowed, then reached for Mr. Bell with her fingers outspread and dilated pupils zoomed to his offered body.

Yet during the short journey of her giant open palm toward the Alpha, Bridget felt her shoulder tightening as though a sprain was imminent. Her fingers curled inward, stroking her thumbpad over the ends of her index and middle in a hypnotic fashion that made Mr. Bell take anxious notice, and though the young Omega still stared directly at her volunteer subject, her focus almost seemed to pass through him. For the weeks and days leading up to this test, Bridget had eagerly anticipated the moment when she took that major step toward becoming an Enforcer at last, stoic but not without some guilty-pleasure excitement either. Once she laid a finger on that Alpha stranger with intent to control and discipline him, well-guarded and financially-compensated though he was, there would be no turning back.

Up to now, she’d seen that purely as a wonderful thing: a necessary turning point in her education which meant only beneficial things for herself and the multi-size community going forward. At this instant, however, as her almighty hand hovered within mere feet of where he stood, so small and willfully vulnerable and prepared to be manhandled in whatever ways would advance the Omega’s training, the same unconscious tinge of wonder which had slowed her arm in its reach now arrived in her mind. Bridget bit her lower lip and reminded herself of why she was here. Without the temporary sacrifice of this man’s time, comfort, and general dignity, she couldn’t effectively curb the atrocities of people who actually deserved it. This now was definitely, absolutely, 100% correct and beyond that, necessary, just as it had always been, for all Omegas and for Bridget.

She knew this. Felt it up and down, inside and out. A history of hardship, a revolutionary generation that saved an entire miniscule race, and thousands of elders infinitely smarter than her had all proved it. All she had to do was reach out and take him.

“Ms. Cade? Are you… positive you don’t need to consult the manual?” Kari questioned, scribbling a note on her tablet. Max expressed nothing, but crossed his arms, perhaps sharing his wife’s concern.

“Positive,” said the Junior Enforcer-to-be, shaken from her curious indecision limbo. In compensation, then, and to reassure her two handlers as well as herself, Bridget’s fingertips parted and her hand overshadowed Mr. Bell.

In a controlled flash, she had his legs between her thumb and forefinger, and swept him high off the tabletop to dangle at the level of her fixated baby-blues. Despite her fervor, though, Bridget didn’t forget her training for an instant, nor did the muscle memory fail her. Kari and Max, splitting their practiced attention between the physical display above them as well as the screens, no-doubt saw a jump in the Alpha’s heartbeat for this rapid blood-to-the-head rush. While the volunteer hung limp, taking several seconds to adjust, the soon-to-be-Enforcer’s other hand came cradling up from below him, brandishing her giant thumb and middle fingers just far enough apart to accommodate the tiny thing’s head in between the peach pads of her digits. Then she grabbed it, now holding the inverted Mr. Bell aloft by his ankles and skull, using equal parts self-aware delicacy and consequential firmness while squeezing his countenance against the yielding yet smother-read oval of her fingertip.

Then she began a sequence of pulses on the Alpha’s head, her six unused fingers splayed back as though she was holding a cup of tea, while her forefingers and thumbs applied pressure on the pliable figure of this would-be “criminal.” It was like playing an instrument by heart. Every infinitesimal change in strength from her fingertips was pre-ordained. Bridget had practiced on the realistic doll so many times that the actual sensation of the man’s soft and wholly impotent body clamped rather uncomfortably in her grasp was no surprise.

What DID upset the young Omega’s expectations, ironically, was how indifferent it seemed so far from holding an Alpha friend or family member whom she loved, with no intent to hurt them. Even with thousands of dry runs under her belt using the Alpha-shaped doll, Bridget still expected the implicit brutality of this act on such a significantly weaker creature to feel more taxing on her own body somehow. She had the fortitude to crumble mountainsides with her bare hands if she chose, but still it seemed obvious to Bridget that she would feel resistance in taking dominion over this little guy who was, objectively, her inferior in every physical manner.

But she felt no internal push-back, after that fleeting subconscious reticence in her shoulder before. This was easy. It came as naturally as holding, say, her sister Lexi in the palm of her hand. Hearing the blips from Kari and Max’s tech in the background, Bridget didn’t know exactly what was happening, but understood in her gut that she was doing this right. Flawlessly, even. Mr. Bell was squirming against the immovable pillars of her fingers pinched around his body, just like any volunteer and especially a bona fide wrongdoer might, but not so much to suggest he was permanently at risk. This was what he’d been paid for, what the Aegis supervisors expected, and it was what the young Omega had spent years preparing herself for.

“Satisfactory,” Kari said. Bridget didn’t hesitate this time, lowering Mr. Bell back to the table rightside-up, as per the protocol that she could not only recite, but see its page clearly in her mind’s eye, along with the diagram. “Vital readings are healthy, and we received no signals. Mr. Bell, are you ready to continue, or do you need a rest? There will be a mandatory break after the first three training simulations, but-”

“C-Continue,” he coughed, notably either unwilling or unable to look up at Bridget now. He bowed his head and cleared his throat. “I’m okay.”

“Good. Then, Ms. Cade, this time let’s see Enforcement Training Protocol B-13, Section 2.”

“Right away,” Bridget declared with total faith, her hand already descending and swiftly blocking her view of Mr. Bell, as she bound him inside her warm and inescapable fist. As she squeezed him, she couldn’t help but imagine what it must be like if, when next he saw the light, it was only for the sliver of space separating him from the Omega’s wide-open lips, whereupon he might be powerlessly traded to the muggy darkness of the giantess’s inward-compressing palm flesh for the gurgling darkness of her justice-hungry maw.


Looking back on that day now, Bridget could only wince, recalling the way her first tentative domination of an Alpha cemented her already-resolute career path, even when for but a breath or two, she might’ve become someone wholly separate. What if she’d just listened to her body’s quiet influence when her shoulder locked up, and closed her hand all the way, well-distant from that Alpha?

But of course, doing so wouldn’t have changed much. Her confidence and self-righteousness in her future as a professional punisher began well before any of that formal training. It stemmed directly from the malice of a certain cold-blooded barely-human Alpha, and a certain traumatized young Alpha girl that Bridget first met perched on an Aegis desk one fateful night. Ultimately, Bridget now realized with gut-stabbing reluctance, that was the only moment which could’ve made her swerve toward a destiny where Lexi was never her first caged con. And to alter that occasion such that she avoided the path of an Enforcer would’ve required never meeting her poor adoptive sister at the absolute zenith of her childhood, when she most needed a family. This was a possibility that legitimately made Bridget wonder now if she wasn’t in danger of vomiting a little into her face-covering bandana.

No, she decided with panged acceptance, her road here was inevitable precisely because she would never have chosen to give up her relationship with her sister. And no matter how tortuous it had been to demand Lexi’s custody after the “incident,” both for the Alpha’s protection from more zealous Enforcers and out of sheer heartbroken disappointment, that very same inspiration was still partially responsible for her position of power over the hypothetical scum of the Earth: the job, the knowledge, the philosophy that ultimately made Lexi believe she’d been cast out by two families in a single lifetime.

Could any of this ever truly be made up to her, Bridget wondered? Given an infinite number of days to live out this bizarre role-reversal over and over, including infinite Kayla-gifted compressions and infinite pages in the session book and infinite patience on Lexi’s part to continue playing the oversized avenger, could it possibly be done? The Omega felt only doubt.

They were going on an hour now since Lexi had left her roped and gagged on the kitchen counter in stark silence. Maybe this was the next session, Bridget began to question in her solitude. Admittedly, leaving the Omega alone with her thoughts on a day where it was impossible to even remotely ignore her transgressions was a very effective approach. Certainly it was doing more lasting damage than any of the blows she’d received from Lexi’s fast-cascading shoe treads today, no matter how smarting each crush felt in the heat of the moment. But sooner or later, she was going to grow back, which meant she spent the latter minutes of this stinging reflection period rooting for her sister to recuperate and come back with a vengeance.

Then suddenly there were fingers curling around her body. Bridget hadn’t even heard Lexi’s footsteps, but upon the reinforcement of nobly crushing pressure on her frame, without an ounce of mercy from even the Alpha’s smallest finger, the Omega felt a mix of relief and involuntary physical apprehension for whatever was next. No matter what, though, she was prepared to spend the rest of the day in darkness, enduring surprise blows and degradations as fast as Lexi could possibly tax her own heart to deal them out. But what would it be? Was Lexi psyching herself up to flip all the way to the Advanced section of the manual? Was she busily concocting her own formulas for the punishments to keep her sister off-balance? Might she keep it simple, and end the break by simply flinging her three-inch willing captive all the way to the ground?

Despite Bridget’s rapid-fire theorizing, though, the almost-last thing she expected was in fact what occurred, when the squeezing force of Lexi’s forefinger unfurled from around the Omega’s head just far enough so the shrunken thing could sense light and limited oxygen leaking through her thick blindfold. Then, in blatant contrast to the burly hold of her other huge fist, the Alpha’s thumb and index fingernails delicately plucked at the tiny mask, and began to peel it off. This, more than anything else her sibling might’ve done, made Bridget’s heart race and the air catch in her throat.

It took a moment for her eyes to readjust after so long in the blackness, but once they did, she found a very serious-faced Lexi staring back at her: unflinching and unafraid. Not even so much as a nostril flare or lip quiver. There was determination, something bordering on callous coldness, but just as much a fiery need to exert authority on someone who deserved it, and Bridget certainly knew she above most others deserved it. She was looking at the face of an Enforcer, a countenance she recognized very well not because it was still her “little” sister Lexi, but because the Omega had made that same face so many times in the mirror during her years in training, to pump herself up for the real work. It was unmistakable.

The Alpha, without ever averting her gaze, slowly parted her soft lips. For an instant, Bridget expected a spoken address to come forth, and tensed accordingly for whatever message might accompany this apparent newfound ability for the taller girl to look her dead in the face while playing the domineering skyscraping peacekeeper. But Lexi’s mouth kept on opening, wider and wider to reveal the wet abyss and a shining tongue rising from a salivary moat. Then her hand thrust Bridget near, straight at the opening from which the shrunken Omega expected a preamble instead, and it was then that the mini-sinner realized this was not a conversation.

It took Lexi less gumption this time to heave the Enforcer manual pages over to the “advanced” chapters, having steeled herself sufficiently after the previous jump to intermediate. While she expected to wince when it came to actually scanning through the words and imagery meant for more grievously criminal Alphas, this stage too was bypassed, her psychological armor having evidently been strengthened even better than she realized from that session spent sliding, punting, and heel-pressing her sister around the kitchen counter. The process of choosing the next punishment on the early advanced pages was an easy one, and even simpler to imagine, given the option’s relative lack of frills as far as creative Omega discipline went, and because Lexi had the sensory memories baked into her brain from that single occasion she’d experienced this brutality from the other side. Still, despite settling on the next course of action in the most efficient time yet, having adopted a rookie soldier’s foreign-yet-necessary focus on the grim tasks ahead, the Alpha took her sweet time in returning, but not for herself.

Every single step back across the Omega’s bedroom floor plain was methodically taken. Of course Lexi was conscious of the fact that they were on the clock now, and that any minute spent leaving Bridget alone and at peace was a potential minute wasted which could’ve instead been used to help heal the tiny giantess’s fractured identity. But this felt right. She recalled seeing similar suggestions in the pages of the manual as she flipped past the easier-going methodology, and while she’d anticipated desiring such a pause more for herself than her sister, in truth, she was ready to carry on right now.

However, unlike the prior two experiments in Enforcement, Lexi’s thoughts weren’t mired in the buildup toward what she had to do next. No running start was mentally required. She hadn’t even thought to snap a picture of the page, nor read through the explanation more than once to try to memorize every clinical word. Her own past experience would be guidance enough, because even though that occasion had lasted but one session nearly two years ago, and the vivid nightmares had since subsided, hardly a day passed that Lexi didn’t accidentally recall some scrap of a nearly-forgotten sensation, whether it was the feeling of that ice-cold popsicle pillar sticking to her skin, the magma-like drool oozing down between her and the frigid treat, or those oscillating taste buds riding up the side straight toward her in an inescapable tidal wave of tongue flesh. That was plenty of training for the Junior-Junior Enforcer.

As a result, when the Alpha finally did return to the elevated island and peel the blindfold off her big sister’s face, she didn’t hesitate to commence this necessary work. With every stride she’d taken across the cavernous Omega home, away from that manual and back toward her own responsibility, the glistening cherry-red carnage, the intermingling fluids, and the steam of hot breath bristling off the chilly wall of that dessert stick all fastened themselves more acutely again in her senses. In a way, it felt like willfully marching back into her own memory to repeat that hateful and skin-crawlingly-slimy torment: an ironically scorching reminder of the ruinous distrust she’d suffered from a giantess who was literally willing to harm herself in the act of compressing Lexi down to an even more edible scale before making her endure the cold friendlessness of that session.

Thus, when the Alpha arrived back in place, with Bridget in hand and those traumatic feelings rising back to the surface right beneath her skin like bulging veins, she felt as though the universe was giving her a chance to reach backward and edit her own spotty history. She could either voluntarily glue herself back to that citadel of a popsicle and let herself be slurped and suckled to the point of madness for a crime she didn’t commit, or she could separate her own jaws and threaten to consume the source of those sensations herself.

This time, Lexi chose the latter, and popped her lips closed with a previously one-hundred-fifty-foot titaness stored within.

Putting a person inside her mouth was about as disorienting as she’d expected, and she’d certainly done her fair share of nightmarishly picturing the feeling after the things she’d witnessed her mother doing to Betas that fateful night. Still, her readiness aside, the bizarre novelty of having a hogtied life form cupped lengthwise along the moist flat of her tongue sent a tingle through her extremities nonetheless. Bridget seemed to be doing her best to hold prostrate, yet even the three-inch Omega’s most microbial shudders were enough to set off automatic alarm bells in Lexi. Almost like her body was warning her to become more hyper-aware of her maw than usual, perhaps trying to tell her that a wasp or similar creature had somehow wandered inside, and that she had but one chance to spit it out unscathed.

The Alpha had no intention of vacating her lips for a while, though, no matter the risk of a sting. In spite of the strange newness found in placing a restrained finger-height individual on her tongue, Bridget was so light now, a piece of sushi eaten in one bite would’ve registered more heavily on her taste buds, and since the majority of the Omega’s diminutive body was wrapped in elastic cords, these and her splayed-out blonde doll locks were the flavorlessly bland tinctures which met Lexi’s flavor centers. Additional saliva didn’t gush from her cheeks in hungry response, as she somehow feared it might, and there was even a moment of uncomfortable adjustment for her to make as the Alpha calibrated her slightly-stretched jawline to account for the presence of a three-inch body pressing against her inner cheek like a second tongue.

Still, in line with her reformed attitude toward this whole Enforcement-switcheroo ploy that was almost crazy enough to work, and wanting to definitively banish those memories of laboring between that popsicle and her sister’s tongue once and for all, Lexi took control. Her own tongue sharply capsized now, and Bridget along with it, slapping her occupant hard against the stiffened buoyancy of her cheek. Facing front, the Omega’s body was stuffed in a crescent-like pose from the middle of her chosen Enforcer’s sealed lips to the corner astride her molars.

From there she used her tongue to manipulate Bridget forward in a sliding arc back and forth across the inner gateway of her mouth, almost in the way of a piece of flattened chewing gum she meant to then inflate into a bubble through puckered lips by blowing right through it. The session had only just begun, however, and trusting in her knowledge of Omegas’ vastly improved oxygen capacities over their usually-smaller fellow citizens, the Alpha only breathed through her nose for the time being, turning the dark drool-sloshing prison of her mouth into a stagnant sensory deprivation tank. Ten seconds in, and already this act had become more oppressive and surely-taxing than anything the Omega had actually done to her adoptive sibling those many months ago, at least physically. But it was imperative to Lexi now that Bridget receive the full force of her desired Enforcement therapy, as well as the knowledge of exactly how it felt to be marooned at insect size on that red pillar of chilly foodstuff and watch the acid tongue of the person she loved most on Earth bearing down on her fast. The shrunken blonde was a tougher cookie, by birth, so the challenge would have to be upped.

Though at first Lexi’s mind drifted back to what she vaguely remembered of this activity’s instruction in the manual, as she dragged Bridget to and fro along her slicked-up pearly whites, she quickly found those suggestions too restrictive. Once again, even at the advanced level, the book still had to account for the natural bodily limits of the comparatively breakable Alphas, whom the brunette couldn’t help but realize were described with increasingly fragile, pathetic, almost-pitying terms the deeper into the Enforcement guide she had turned. That hint of distaste she’d sensed through the detached textbook prose earlier on was allowed out the closer to the opposing flap of the book she came, doing little now to disguise the authors’ likely-justified antipathy to this more-developed scum of the Alpha criminal population.

Yet even those types had to be shown some restraint for the punishment to work. She knew all too well that much of Aegis’s corrective program relied on the slow-burn of that belittlement, the wearing away of the inmate’s mental state by tasting the burdens they’d placed on Betas, rather than dealing grievous injury, like the kind they’d probably enacted themselves to earn their stay in a glass box to begin with. Unlike her own class, however, who could be pushed too hard too fast without training and cautious disciplining, Bridget would just brush it off. Would anything in that book truly push the little Omega in the way she needed to be pushed so this madness actually succeeded, Lexi wondered? If that expert section was anything like its predecessors, it would degrade and frighten and near-wound the world’s most deserving Alphas, no-doubt like her own birth mother, but not the largest beings to walk the planet.

It was at this moment that the Alpha realized she not only had to completely stop relying on that book’s mentorship, but let go of it altogether and create something more extreme on her own terms. They were deep into uncharted territory now, and she alone was responsible for her sister’s healing just as much as her penance.

So Lexi wrapped her flex-plumped tongue hard beneath her miniaturized sibling again and curled her back into the center of her mouth. Forcing the tied-up occupant into a deep fold like a saw-the-person-in-half magic trick between the curve of her lower jawline, the Alpha carefully retracted her slippery muscle behind Bridget, thus wedging the soaking little thing between a muggy wall of taste buds and her middle teeth. And then Lexi began to suck whole-heartedly on the diminished body of a sky-reaching giantess. There was no gradual lead-in, no murmured word or warning pulse to indicate what was coming, which the guidebook had strongly advised, not necessarily to be kind to the advanced-level Enforcement recipients, but so they didn’t have an instant panic attack and pass out, which would kill all purpose of the session. By contrast, the Alpha just started undulating her cheeks in an out with a vengeance, and so too willfully forgot the scientific pressure warnings the book had given so the Omega’s mouth-inductee was not smothered or battered out cold, but only put to the brink of what their consciousness could tolerate.

Rather than incorporating an edible prop like Bridget had nearly two years before, popsicle or otherwise, Lexi’s method instead made the Omega herself into the treat, and specifically hard candy, judging by the aggression of her suckling fervor. Unlike a hypothetical probably-cowardly Alpha felon, the girl currently lodged in her mouth showed no signs of threatening to pass out at this rough behavior, only wincing with acceptance each time her temporarily-taller sibling’s mouth seemed to shrink around her for punitive and flavor-dredging purposes. She might’ve been surprised at the lack of fanfare to this session, but took it in self-loathing stride. The rising drool supplies were churned up anew every-split second, enclosed to a yet-tighter space around Bridget before splooshing back out against the Alpha’s re-puffed cheeks, though Lexi was careful to let none of it spill out between her lips, only cautiously swallowing the surplus when it became necessary, and miraculously without coughing her sister back out into the light either.

The act was quieter than the Alpha expected it to be. Not that it should’ve been louder, in retrospect, since she’d eat a hundred lollipops in her life and created only throat gurgles and suction-squeaks against the candy shell. If anything, the sound was actually tamer when sucking on such a soft target, though it nevertheless encouraged Lexi to press around her sister from all angles even more firmly. Even then the Omega displayed no real signs of distress, at least not in the physical sense, though she still tangibly cringed against Lexi’s sensitive tongue each time her tiny curled body was even further smushed to a zenith of space, simply because the laws of physics only lent so much leeway even to usually-gigantic superhumans. And right now, the Alpha’s bulging cheeks and tongue were cancelling out all negative space around Bridget every half-second, wrapping her in yet another void: wetter, scarier, air-deprived, and even more hopeless than the last.

This outcome, however, was precisely what the Omega wanted and felt she deserved, if not much more. In short order, Bridget’s hair was so densely-slopped with her temp-Enforcer’s spit, that those angelic yellow tresses had wrapped around her face and neck like heavy seaweed, becoming a new blindfold and gag to replace those Lexi had torn off just before popping the girl into her mouth, so she’d know precisely what was coming. Not that these measures would’ve been necessary to suppress the Omega’s focus, of course, since not a pinhole of light was allowed between the Alpha’s tightly-clamped lips now. The continual splashes and squeals from dripping slobber and suctioned cheek flesh, nigh-unheard by Lexi, created a hauntingly squelchy din at first, but soon became akin to TV static for Bridget, blocking out all normal perception. Without sight or sound, all she had left was what she could feel, though to the Alpha novice’s credit, the overpowering cornucopia of literally mouth-watering sensations taking hold of her were already more than could be digested at once by one person’s mind.

She’d only been stuck in here for a few minutes, but already Bridget was quite certain that there wasn’t a single skin cell on her body that wasn’t drenched with her sister’s saliva, either directly applied, or melted clean through the cords and clothing. It was utterly sweltering, beyond the tolerance of a sauna-goer, and felt even more so thanks to the lack of refreshed air between Lexi’s lips. The smell was deeply peculiar, not disgusting, but oddly intimate and heavily breath-scented, with a fleck of peppermint among the throaty sludge flavor. That tongue writhing at her curled spine and mussing her wet hair every few seconds became a brilliantly-conceived irritation, an itch that couldn’t be scratched, or at least that Bridget couldn’t allow herself to scratch. Being sandwiched from every side at once in ever-winnowing space made her feel like she was in a tailspin, weightless and directionless, even as she hadn’t budged from the sloppy froth-spilling basin of Lexi’s mouth in entire minutes.

In far greater intensity than when she was punished inside a fist or beneath a shoe sole, this was wholly all-consuming, making the Omega feel subjugated in a way she never could’ve dreamed might’ve been possible before this ultimate compression. There was simply no activity in the life of an average fifteen-story-tall individual that could ever compare with this kind of moist entombed powerlessness, regardless of whether Bridget could technically worm through the ropes and force her way out of Lexi’s mouth. Again her own determination to endure anything her chosen Enforcer dished out only enhanced the impotence she wanted to make herself suffer.

The puny Omega was shocked to find herself eerily “at home” here in Lexi’s ruthlessly suckling maw, but obviously never in a way she’d expected. In between the nightmares that had plagued her during her self-imposed exile in Sanctuary, Bridget’s grief had taken on such a specific form, not quite pain, but something worse and more inexpressible: the crushing guilt and lonesomeness and regret, all experienced as something that made her feel simultaneously empty inside and squeezed from the out. All that time, she’d alternated between leaning into that feeling as self-flagellation, and then trying to distance herself from it with all the endless acts of kindness that she knew could still never correct the grave errors made. Yet here Lexi had placed her inside her mouth and gone straight to sucking on her body with fortitude that would’ve made an Alpha or Beta easily black out as if assaulted by g-forces, a commanding level of effort that the guidebook assuredly had not instructed her to use, but still Bridget’s little sister had done it anyway, and without even knowing it, Lexi had perfectly replicated that all-too-familiar trap of the Omega’s mourning.

The similarity of her past bereavement to this now literal tongue-and-cheek confinement was so exact as to be frightening for the tinier being, in fact, to the point she almost had to wonder if it wasn’t mere coincidence. Maybe her own subconscious had just been operating on premonition and haunting her with the eventual feeling of being enclosed in suffocating pressure, surrounded in a claustrophobic cauldron of gooey spit that stuck as close to her skin as that hurtful remorse, and cheek walls that burgeoned inward with the same inescapable urgency of familial loss. She definitely deserved to go through this torment much sooner, but she just didn’t have the life experience yet to wrap her mind around how it would be, until she was actually here, in the mouth of the person she’d hurt so dearly. Even her own golden hair, sodden with drool, had curled fully around her throat like it meant to choke her, but couldn’t quite bring itself to go through with it; if her hands weren’t bound down, though, Bridget still would’ve left her damp tresses exactly where they were now. All of this was exactly as it should’ve been, fulfilling and horrible in equal measure, and she was grateful.

Meanwhile, Lexi had climbed all the way back down from the countertop and was meandering in listless circles around the kitchen floor by the closest windowed wall, just outside the pane-shaped squares of incoming sunlight. Her attention was only placed upon the world outside her head just enough to keep herself from crashing head-long into an Omega chair leg, while she’d all but transferred her entire consciousness inside her own maw with Bridget. She employed every crackling nerve ending, each flavor and texture of the body she was oppressively spit-coddling, and every muscle in her tongue she’d never learned to independently operate until now. Her mouthbound working-over on the shrunken Omega was precise and exacting, punishing her sibling well beyond any threshold listed in the guidebook, but that text had now been forgotten more easily than Lexi had worried. She was just doing what felt “right,” at least according to what Bridget required of her, but it wasn’t long either before she started trusting her own judgment of its correctness too.

It was amazing how possible it became to get in the spirit of this thing, despite her initial desperate resistance to Bridget’s crazy table-turning plan. No matter how much she’d questioned the wisdom of such an approach when finding catharsis for herself and her Omega sister, it became objectively far easier to do what she had to when she had the girl herself, hogtied and slimy and shivering, who just a year-and-a-half ago had forced her feel all those things and more. With every pulsation of her inward-sinking cheeks that achingly clenched the spit-gelled creature within, Lexi’s brow furrowed, her pupils dilated, and her cranium tensed as a unit. Losing all sense of location, the Alpha marched in bleary circles now around the nearest table leg thick as a lighthouse, with one set of fingers grazed to its surface to keep herself anchored, while sucking on her voluntary victim more harshly than ever.

Why, she found herself saying without words, instead communicating this message in the form of a passionately angry and lovingly broken-hearted suckle, right when her mouth compressed the tightest around the little being. Why. Why. Why. Her eyes were starting to water from the strain on her jaws and heart. Why. It wasn’t even meant as a question, and not just because Bridget was helpless to answer it now, but a statement intended to hang in the air, and then be compacted and soaked down to the very bone in her shrunken Omega sibling. Why.

Why. Did. You. Not. Believe. Me.

At the end of this sentence delivered by both telepathy and cheek-crushing, Lexi swallowed a croaked cry with an intake of breath that must’ve, to Bridget, sounded like a dragon gathering its fire breath. Certainly it was hot enough inside there to suggest flame belching from her throat, if the Omega wasn’t just gulped down there instead along with her younger sister’s anguish. Rawer than she’d felt in weeks, and probably months, Lexi staggered down to all fours, but didn’t relent a single ounce of pressure from her cheeks and tongue for several seconds. When the Alpha’s lips parted for the first time in close to ten minutes, feeding her sister a wisp of cold air to keep cogent and re-engage her senses, she used the same brunt of remembered sorrow to lurch her exhaustion-swollen tongue forward, pushing Bridget back into the tract of space between her resealed lips and teeth, but then stopped short of making her fit there cleanly. Instead, allowing the tiny Omega’s roped-up shape to sling across her teeth, Lexi’s jowls tremored, suppressing another moan, and then she bit down on her sister’s body.

The Alpha’s teeth compacted from above and below around the blonde tongue-prisoner’s abdomen. First her incisors landed lengthwise, then repositioned from the sides, with help from a flank of pink taste buds ramming Bridget face-first in the other direction. After that, Lexi commenced chewing on the inmate more regularly, tilting her head to let her sibling’s flinching but unhurt body make slumped-over contact with different teeth, and biting all over again. It was much more than just a threatening nibble, and she only had the willpower to prevent herself from outright chomping on the girl, who was now more like an invincible jawbreaker than a crunched-off lollipop ball. Indeed, neither Enforcer nor her subject had any illusion of Lexi actually being able to break skin here, let alone the silly unreality of ever chewing an honest-to-goodness Omega up into bloody pulp, like had happened to so many Betas in the jaws of smiling Alphas across history and modernity.

This could and could hurt Bridget, yes, but like the rest of their rogue session, it felt “right” to Lexi. And though that was all she required to make the decision to bite and gnaw at the three-inch prisoner like a dog’s rawhide, she could tell through subtle body language that Bridget approved too. Perhaps she even wanted Lexi to slam the guillotine of those teeth down as hard as she possibly could without risking injury to her own dentistry, as that was sure to be the bigger danger here than actually cleaving through an Omega’s flesh. Robust constitution aside, though, Bridget still fidgeted and reacted to every consequential bite-down, though this only encouraged Lexi to keep going, faster and more ardently. Somehow the rage she’d let bleed back out during the act of sucking on her big sister was now descending again, strange though that should’ve been given the violence of this current act. But it was true. Each time she clamped her teeth down on the Omega’s arms, legs, chest, and even head, unlikely calmness took hold again little by little, seemingly jettisoned out of her in the thrust of her chompers.

Though she couldn’t know for certain at this time, and didn’t need to, Lexi was correct about every one of Bridget’s feelings. Just as the suck-up portion of the session had replicated that in-and-out torture from her months of gut-deep lamentation in solitude, being chewed by her sister had now flung the Omega into another physically novel but appropriate realm of chastening. She knew this jolting, stinging, head-spinning sensation just as well, from the weepy self-hating screaming tantrums that had sometimes followed the quieter introspection. Most important and bitter of all, though, was that Bridget could indeed feel Lexi’s own dormant pain driving down against her in the form of every sharp tooth edge.

This wasn’t done mechanically, or in conflict with herself; the Alpha was in full control, intentional, and showing her sister an impalpable wound she still carried. It hurt Bridget, badly, and rather than painfully jerk in response to the merely soreness-inducing clack of those ivories coming together, the little Omega was now blanching and even breaking into plentiful tears in answer to the emotion she could taste in her sister’s gargantuan body all around her.

Why hadn’t she believed?

At the same time, the Alpha had successfully cooled back to a manageable level by this reversal in the session. Laying down in the shadow of the table high above, Lexi stretched out her legs and laced her fingers together, through her chocolate-brown locks and across her scalp, in the way of a sunbathing cloud-watcher, while still chewing Bridget all the way to hopeful absolution.

It was the same arc of the sun still shining when Lexi marched back outdoors as she’d sat beneath when Bridget first described her insane plan, but it somehow felt like multiple days had passed over the course of a single morning and afternoon, and she was at last coming back out of a dark cavern for the first time. Well-lit and spacious as the Cade household was, large enough even for an Alpha population to construct a small town on their own across the surfaces of the monumental furniture, there was something about Lexi’s earlier more-reluctant duties in becoming a temporary Enforcer which nonetheless made her feel like the walls were starting to close in on her like fingers unto themselves.

This breath of fresh air was deeply necessary, then, and she even caught herself instinctively smiling at the feeling of the heat and breeze on her cheeks, now that it seemed the worst of this wretchedly difficult day was over. She’d crossed the hump, feeling readier than ever to help her sister by giving her exactly what she’d requested, and if she herself received just a modicum of catharsis from it, well… she seemed to have Bridget’s full permission, and even desire, to do so. Thus, as of this moment, Lexi decided she was through guilting herself for the hints of satisfaction and even justification she’d felt tickling through her veins as she marched around the kitchen floor a half-hour before, chewing on the miniscule giantess like cow cud and giving her the most accurate taste yet of the gulf still existing between them.

The irony wasn’t lost on her of course that Bridget was probably experiencing the precise opposite of this freeing natural sensation right now, even though she too was technically coming outside. The Omega had literally descended into a danker darker more-closed in prison, after all, though she had been placed there minutes before without expressing a twitch of complaint, and Lexi had learned finally to trust that martyred contentment. If Bridget wasn’t worried, then she wasn’t worried either, or at least not enough to have hesitated in authoritatively tucking her shrunken sibling deep into a mildly-musty hovel which was soon to get far more crowded, concussive, and (considering the temperature out today) itchily stickily steamy.

Still, much like every other novel power dynamic-flipped encounter Lexi had enacted today, first stress-balling Bridget, then kicking, trampling, pressurizing, suckling, and gnawing her, this latest session also took some bodily reorienting for Lexi, even if her emotions didn’t flare with pre-emptive panic now. When she’d inserted her bare foot into that semi-worn running sneaker, just as she had hundreds of times before, there was no stuttered pause in gliding her arch along the warped insole, nor a shudder of discomfort when her toes shuffled into the bough and then settled down over Bridget’s cord-lashed body. Having the weight of a three-inch-tall person under her foot wasn’t new, as of today.

But since Lexi had consciously chosen to go sockless now for a variety of reasons, chiefly being to give her a better sense of the Omega’s current status for safety purposes and also so her own mind couldn’t be closed off to the work at hand (or rather foot), there was no tricking herself into ignoring the lump of a body under her stride. Especially because she’d made the choice to remove most of her sister’s knotted bonds beforehand, only keeping enough looped on to maintain the little thing’s rigid pencil-like posture, the connection made instantly between the plush moderately-dewy undersides of her five wriggly digits and the Omega’s diminutive features was visceral and impossible to disguise as anything other than what it was. Lexi really was about to walk, perhaps even run, with a one-hundred-fifty-foot entity stuffed and stowed tightly beneath her soon-to-be-damp foot.

And what’s more, the transition was easier than ever now. Lexi didn’t have to protectively limp, or keep the weight distribution as lopsided as possible to avoid really “stepping” on Bridget. This was what she wanted. What they both were beginning to want. This meant it just took single-minded concentration as she walked out the door to adjust herself for the oddity of walking both upon and with her sister on board, feeling her little body involuntarily fidget and smush slightly yet never break against the bottom of her foot. By the time she reached the sidewalk, all potential weirdness had dissipated, and Lexi was just out for another stroll, only holding her unnaturally tiny passenger in a diametrically opposite manner now than when she’d cradled her earlier up in the daylight. Her gait wasn’t affected in the slightest, and if anything, the breath of wind and rejuvenation from the sun gave the Alpha more of a spring in her step, though she stopped herself from outright jogging yet. She still wanted to monitor Bridget’s every move, and be in control of every sensation she was feeling down there.

At the same time, though, there wasn’t much need for the same dexterity as when she had the Omega closed in a fist or clamped between her teeth. Simply traveling forward one stride at a time was the session itself, such that it could’ve almost been performed totally on autopilot, especially when Lexi eventually started running and let herself get deeply in the zone, as she would very soon. Hell, maybe Bridget was expecting and hoping for something so educative as being forgotten beneath a hail of perspiring toepad impacts for the whole duration of the Alpha’s cardio time.

For now, though, Lexi intended to keep at least one hand on the wheel, mentally, without it stuttering her pace either. Once she’d gotten comfortable at a normal march without being disturbed by the organic sensation of a tiny body snuggled claustrophobically between the petite shafts of her digits and the grainy sneaker insole, the last hurdle for Lexi to figuratively cross was the built-in paranoia of walking the streets, with a human being inside her shoe, in a world where the whole Alpha class had made a historical reputation for themselves by committing such crimes, often exactly like this.

Was this something her mother ever did, Lexi couldn’t help but wonder? She’d only ever seen Alma Warren gnash through a Beta like a potato chip, but knew now the depths of the woman’s malicious depravity, especially her part in the awful events which had earned her this lengthy stay on Jenna Reynolds’ bedroom shelf. It wasn’t hard to imagine that Alma might’ve amused herself at some point in time by dropping a three-inch stranger into her shoe. Only Lexi could’ve imagined her birth parent not just stamping on the poor thing, but driving her heels into the earth with enough effort to demolish a watermelon, until there was nothing left to identify the Beta under her as human: just a smeared trophy soaked into the twisted woman’s boot. Sickest of all, as extreme as Alma had been in her glory days of genocidal activity, Lexi knew her mother might not have seemed particularly out of the ordinary compared to the rest of the populace, in a different era not terribly long ago. Maybe three generations? Two? How many Alphas through time, she extrapolated, had done precisely the thing she was doing now, keeping a Beta at the mercy of a foot that could crush them into paste in just one purposeful descent, without consequence or guilt, and with every intention that the tiny helpless being beneath their sole was nauseated, terrified, tortured, and probably snuffed out in the end?

By the time she reached the end of the block, though, Lexi wasn’t bothered by the danger of being caught in the act of wearing Bridget either, and felt foolish for having allowed the comparison with those wretched precursors into her head. Especially her mother. Yes, it would seem a bit peculiar if anyone was able to perceive what she was doing or who she had in her shoe, let alone how tall that “who” normally was, but what she and Bridget were doing now couldn’t have been further removed from every black-hearted Alpha who’d ever shoved an innocent Beta squirming and weeping into their shoe, purely for the power trip and drawn-out homicide. She knew her Omega sibling would want her to remember that difference, to repeat it to herself, and so she did, more reassured with every step she took through the super-sized neighborhood.

Meanwhile far below, lodged in a wholly different environment than the breezy sunshine Lexi was enjoying, even though the pair were just as close now as they’d been all day so far, Bridget was desperately determined to painfully, horribly, masochistically savor every difficult sensation coming her way in this shoe. Not that this experience was made any easier to handle, physically, by her belief that she deserved every load-bearing trample under Lexi’s foot. In fact, it was mild-to-moderate hell. The pain and brute-force discomfort were dampened significantly by her Omega constitution still, but as that chaotic incisor-chomping venture into her sister’s mouth before had proven, there were worse things than bodily agony for her to dread today. Now she was crammed into another ultra-tight pocket of dark compressed near-airless emotional suffering, and Bridget sensed that it was bound to be even more punishing here than when she was slapped atop Lexi’s tongue for mock mastication.

Of course the Omega had thought about this particular sensation of in-shoe underfoot battery more than most other session-worthy activities (it being such a popular selection for justice-rearing) and been made to study the practice more closely in her training to become an Enforcer, even though she’d ironically never had to perform the act for real, for herself, on a criminally deserving Alpha. The simulation exercises were the closest she’d ever come, and naturally then she’d still been the one on top, learning the precise volume of pressure to apply while mashing a miniscule human under her toepads, rolling them along the ball of her foot, into the deeper arc of her sole, and even beneath the heel for a heartier press. Even now she could recall the scientific choreography of it, the ways to inspire fear in especially scummy Alphas by abruptly altering the magnitude of stomping force, switching her walking pace just as suddenly, backpedaling, shuffling, or even squeezing their heads between pithy toe-tips right up to the point that her giant pillowy digits started to tighten like a vice around their skulls.

None of that academic work could have prepared her for being the one down here now, though. The lack of personal space was the same as when she was cooped in Lexi’s mouth a short time ago, only somehow even tighter, despite the shoe theoretically offering more space than the Alpha’s jaws. What this current activity lacked in the sharpness and angularity of being couched awkwardly across a tongue mattress and teeth rows for disciplinary nibbling was replaced instead with a technically softer but more all-encompassing and oppressive coddling of tepid insole and spongy foot flesh from every conceivable side. The snug, suffocating feeling of not just being clamped but trampled into the ground overrode any benefit to being plastered beneath smoother more-rubbery terrain.

And whereas entrapment in Lexi’s maw had given Bridget semi-frequent opportunities to gulp down backdrafts of oxygen through the slit of her sister’s lips, there was almost no such thing to be found here. The thick mesh top of the sneaker cave allowed in filtered air at the height of each stepping flight, and the Omega had but a split-second to swallow it and keep her lungs sated, before the swift descent that would empty her airways yet again when those toes piled atop her body. There wasn’t much aroma to speak of at the start of the walk, other than the stagnant baked-in mustiness of well-loved shoes, but as the sun was beaming down so enthusiastically, it wasn’t long before a wetter, more present musk was awakened in both the walls of the shoe and Lexi’s skin, and this filth too was gradually glued into the museum of humiliating bodily odors Bridget was made to wear today, especially with the reduction of the ropes keeping her rigidly hogtied. Indeed the little Omega was relieved when Lexi removed those binds before dropping her in the shoe, not because she expected better comfort (the opposite, if anything), but because it would ensure she righteously suffered more of the sensations awaiting her in here.

Because now she really was getting everything. There was no longer a shield of abrasive roping to keep her from feeling much of the heat, moisture, or tactile disgust dead-on. Bridget was enclosed and exposed in a coffin of swollen-padded toes that were rapidly turning warm as asphalt on a baking summer’s day. Plus, every groove and print-divot was so intimately pushed in around her that the little one’s Omega sensitivity could’ve allowed her to recreate a faithful 3D sculpture of Lexi’s underfoot identifiers. This detail was felt most keenly at the apex and base of each step, first when the Alpha’s foot leveled off in midair in preparation to fall again, causing Bridget’s body to rise higher by loping centrifugal force and face-plant all the hotter into the squirmy landscape of those toes, and then especially on landing, when everything briefly went flat and Lexi tilted forward on the ball of her foot for another digit-splaying launch. There was nothing either emphasized or held back here; the Omega knew that her sister was just walking like normal, and would’ve taken the time to feel proud and grateful to Lexi, if she wasn’t so busy reflexively grunting and jolting from the onslaught of tramples.

A half-mile into their walk, give or take a few hundred steps, and the climate was taking its toll, probably even more so while the Alpha had to share space in her shoe with a miniature but powerful body naturally brimming with energy like a model reactor. The mildly-oily surfaces of bulbous toe brawn, scrunched gently down against the upper shelf of Lexi’s sole, were dampening with a more prominent sheen of sweat. It didn’t outright stink, at least not yet, but the incrementally increased gunky slip-factor from the temporarily-taller girl’s perspiration was enough of an obstacle on its own for now. The skin-tight ceiling of lightly-greased skin soon caused Bridget to oscillate more frequently width-wise along the top of the Alpha’s foot, as there wasn’t quite enough of her shrunken height to cover the distance from big toe to pinky. The whole interior might’ve turned into a dizzying slip-n-slide for the puny Omega, had the pressure and cloying nearness of her sister’s seemingly titanic foot not still mostly dominated her movement, and kept this slick variation of her undertoe position to a minimum.

More so than with any activity they’d yet engaged in, though, likely because Lexi hadn’t so much as turned the page in the official guidebook for advice this round, the Alpha’s lack of formal Enforcer training was felt. Numerous tactics were taught to Omega disciplinarians, albeit via subtle measures that might go unnoticed by the average wrongdoer direly wiggling inside a shoe, to keep a punished passenger from moving very far. It ensured the Alpha felt a balanced magnitude of underfoot force on every step, never giving them a break from experiencing the precise same permutation of odors and textures, but also acted as a better insurance policy to keep their fragile constitutions from weathering hurt too heinous to endure day in and day out.

This protocol definitely wasn’t followed by Lexi, who truly was doing nothing at all to differentiate this march from any other, which meant Bridget was not only made to jerkily fidget up and down like a pumping mechanism in some grand machine, complete with a thorough oiling; she was also subject to the hateful liquid friction of having her whole three-inch body, but most prominently her face, quashed and dragged so hard against the constant cave-in of sour-redolent toe flesh that her face, for split-seconds at a time, was wholly molded into the succulent edifice of meaty upper-sole. Yet even this development she couldn’t resent, and though she couldn’t help but guess that Lexi wasn’t doing this on purpose, it was still only right.

After all, Bridget herself had tragically turned a far more grievous blind eye to certain truths while she was in charge of wrongfully correcting Lexi’s behavior. And they were attempting to replicate that injustice as closely as possible today. What was this, then, but a well-earned added touch of comeuppance for the diminutive Omega? Especially because the physical compaction itself of being stepped on wasn’t exactly “painful” for her - at least not nearly proportionate to the mathematical aplomb of being stood upon and uncaringly crushed by a being hundreds of times her size - Bridget was deeply gratified to be here, getting repeatedly trounced and slaked through a trap of ever-swampier toes, no matter how much she physically wanted to screech and crawl her way out.

“Okay, Bridge. Here we go,” Lexi sighed, coming at once to an unplanned halt before an elevated jogging path which wreathed a midtown Omega highway footpath far below. This screeching stop meant Bridget’s body was used in impromptu fashion like a brake pedal, pressed down until the ratty insole depressed in the shape of her silhouette like hard clay, but not even this could unsettle Lexi’s heartbeat, though she felt the irregularity of her stride upon her shrunken sibling. “This is… it.”

The Alpha hadn’t known until now exactly when she was going to pause before the run, or even if she would run at all. But the time had abruptly arrived when it was necessary, much like her willingness to take part in this whole ritual. Of course she knew Bridget couldn’t literally hear her speaking, but in this moment it somehow felt more appropriate to address her sister rather than herself. They were, after all, the closest now to Enforcement colleagues as they’d probably ever be, ridiculous as Lexi still felt in many ways to compare herself with the highly-trained building-statured correction officers of Aegis. This wasn’t about some set of Utopian love-and-peace-for-all rules now, or even simple right and wrong. This was between her and Bridget, and no one else. Indeed, meeting her prior expectations, not a single unknown face on the street had turned to frown in recognition of there being a body stuffed in her sneaker, and nor should they have. For all the lively crowding in the multi-size urban space, Lexi had shut herself off to all of them now, and for all intents and purposes, it was just her and Bridget alone in the empty capital, left to conquer themselves.

And at the back of her mind, irrational though it once should’ve seemed, Lexi was determined then that when she eventually removed the Omega from her shoe again later, following wherever this sprint took them, they would reach their goal together, and claim victory over this ugly intangible chimera of guilt and grief still floating between them. No more. Lexi would run all day and night and even longer, if that was what it took to banish the thing for good.

Balling her fists and squaring her jaw, the Alpha drew a deep cathartic breath, and then took off running down the vacant path, with Bridget now tanking collisions twice as often and thrice as mighty under her much-larger foot.

Lexi was no Olympic athlete, and prior to her self-banishment a year and a half ago, didn’t often choose jogging as recreation, since she much preferred to get her heart pumping through sports. Following those tragic events which upended all she knew, however, she’d found herself plagued by chaotic energy, a cutting side effect of grief, that she needed to extract and “put” somewhere, while also experiencing that painful necessity of solitude that prevented her from joining in any team-based contests for a while. It all had to go somewhere. Sometimes this meant a good hard cry, and sometimes it meant a clumsy rage-fueled boxing session against a large red punching bag which bore a curious resemblance to the girth and firmness of Bridget’s fingers. Eventually, though, Lexi had settled on long runs, taking advantage of the quiet and the oncoming endorphin rush balanced against fatigue to distract herself from bad thoughts while also bleeding all those unwanted energies right out of her body.

In a strange way, that inexpert routine of sprinting at full-tilt through near-empty streets in the early mornings, fueled only by a need to purge fitful sensations rather than by calling upon much actual athletic prowess, had trained Lexi for the current activity of charging down the sidewalks of the capital city while she had an honest-to-God hundred-fifty-foot super-being stowed in the stuffy prison of her turbulent footwear. Any endurance she’d built up through those months, plus the duty she felt to complete this task with Bridget slotted below her rapidly-dampening toes, all came to bear now. She’d already run further and faster today than she ever had before without stopping. Tired, rosy-cheeked, and glossed head-to-heel in sweat as she’d become over the past hour of unbroken jogging, though, Lexi had yet to indulge in a rest. Not because she didn’t want one, but because she worried it might be tough to get started again if she stopped, and allowed her mind to catch up with the sensation of the little Omega’s body still faithfully curled beneath her stride, only now practically glued to her skin like a quivery barnacle by the oven-like heat and constantly-refreshed dew of sweat now infesting the sneaker.

Naturally, the Alpha had felt her sister’s shape under her foot for every one of the literal thousands of times she’d stepped on her now, bare and brutal and at high speed. But it was easy enough while moving at-pace to avoid the chance of any sympathy-disgust over the squalid humidity-spiced odor pit the shoe was becoming, not to mention the pounding from every crook and crevice of Lexi’s soft-terrained foot underbelly. Lexi didn’t fear she’d succumb to second thoughts by slowing down and more accurately feeling her adoptive sibling’s twiggy arms wriggle against her sole skin in involuntary protest - the two of them were in this deep, after all, and only going deeper - but it also happened to feel good. Very good, in fact, but specifically in the way Lexi had experienced the release of running alone in that faraway town where she’d retreated, using the limb-swinging exertion to rid herself of those mournful energies that used to make her tremble and verge on tears whenever she sat still too long.

Now, she was literally disposing of those same feelings directly through the puny body of the exact person who had acted as an unwitting instrument of all that injustice. Lexi didn’t exactly think it “right” that she was treating Bridget like a living insole wedge, yet she also couldn’t deny the absolution that surged through her frame each and every time the Alpha’s toes drove back toward earth inside the sneaker: splaying out over the obstruction of the squirming sweat-glommed Omega, and transferring the full force of the temporarily-taller sister’s hurtling form down through that firm region of her sole where Bridget was rolled, until Lexi chose otherwise.

It wasn’t until she’d been running for nearly an hour and a half, out of breath and ignoring the cramps, that Lexi was finally given abrupt pause. Though she registered her surroundings on the path just enough to keep from crashing into pedestrians or walls, she had otherwise let herself lose track of her progress while winding through the colorful well-lit labyrinth of urban walkways meant to safely intertwine the social lives of all size classes. She’d subconsciously clocked the innumerable Alphas and Betas passing her by, plus a few Omegas briefly hogging the whole horizon with their mere presence, but the one thing which finally made Lexi come skidding to a stop was Aegis itself. Which, in fairness, made for a large visual marker, scaled as it was to serve as home base to many of the world’s most titanic beings at once, and hued such a stark obsidian up along its smooth fortress-like yet clinical walls.

Of course Lexi didn’t have to wonder why she was not-so-mysteriously compelled to stop here, as she staggered over to a bench just beside the long walkway leading up to the Alpha entrance of the place. The building had long held a special place in her heart, making her feel warm and safe, seeing as how it was the first place she’d ever truly learned what legitimate familial love could feel like, thanks to the Cades, on that traumatic night she’d escaped Alma. Looking the black cubical structure up and down now, Lexi couldn’t quite find the same attachment in herself for Aegis - like just about everything else, her positive associations with people and places had been hurtfully altered following her imprisonment - but she was still curiously drawn toward it for some reason.

She also felt a second impulse, right then, to speak to Bridget. Make a comment. Crack a joke. Ask another in an endless series of questions about Aegis that her big sister was only ever able to sort-of answer. These were all instincts she’d had to unlearn while alone, when suddenly she couldn’t up from the palm of her sibling’s hand and speak her mind at will. She hadn’t felt that whim to simply chit-chat with Bridget in so long, certainly well before actually reuniting with the Omega in Sanctuary, and not just because conversation would be essentially impossible while the shrunken giantess’s world was currently so limited to the musky summery-sizzling keep inside that old shoe and under her painfully tender foot. It was just a small instinct that tugged at Lexi, but it felt significant to her: a glimmer that somehow or other, things could be the same again.

Just as soon as she finished stomping out all her lingering frustrations and subconscious leftover grudges onto Bridget. And she still had plenty of those to dispose of before they were through here.

Below, with most of the pressure of the run now alleviated from her feet and her passenger, Lexi could feel the girl had quit that natural squirming which came of serving as a much-larger being’s toe cushion in such miserably cramped, wet, ripe, ever-constricting solitary confinement. Not that Bridget had actually resisted a single step of their time together on the town today. Still, during this interim of rest outside Aegis, she could feel the same guilt-riddled tremors that had infected the miniature blonde while taking on the part of Lexi’s chew-toy earlier, only now flinching up against the oily undersides of her toes with self-loathing and tired duty to this insane role-reversal cause. And while Lexi still foresaw nothing constructive coming of Bridget’s inward-facing hatred at this point, she could now at last comprehend why today’s activities were necessary for them both.

Right as the Alpha pushed herself up from the bench again, and by extension onto her sister’s wriggly self, Aegis’s glossy sliding doors parted ways. And out walked a trio of Omegas whose shadows immediately cast across the smaller-class pathways. With every soaring step forward they took, that shade from their bodies combined like clustered downtown buildings traveled faster toward Lexi, who kept her head hung at first - not out of disdain for whichever strange giants she was about to pass by, but to re-center her thinking for the therapeutic yet punishing remainder of this current session to come. Swallowing hard, Lexi knew then (maybe for the first time beyond any iota of doubt) that she’d officially become what Bridget needed her to be, because there hadn’t been an ounce of sarcasm in her head that time, even when thinking of the word “session” with regards to herself as an Enforcer, however brief her informal service in that job title would be.

“Lexi?”

Stopping in her tracks along with all three Omegas, Lexi recognized the owner of that voice before she’d even finished looking all the way up. The juxtaposition of those three highly-distinct giant silhouettes, combined with the sincerity in the young woman’s soft yet piercing tone, told her right away that she wasn’t just passing by strangers.

Closest to the Alpha pathway, and the one who’d spoken up, was Claire Lindon, who bowed her head slowly over Lexi with a reassuring smile, then brushed a hanging brunette strand out of her sightline as she did so. Beside her was the deceptively-waifish Jenna, who studied Lexi with that familiar unhostile placidness shown in her cool emerald eyes from when she’d played her a private violin concerto on the mantel. Behind them both, but still plainly visible for her staggeringly-massive presence, was the honey-haired quintessential gentle giant Melody, who regarded Lexi with some of the same sober pity leftover from their last conversation.

“Oh. Um, h-hey you guys,” Lexi replied in a similarly fragile tone as when they’d all last seen her.

The little Alpha couldn’t help but reflect on the fact that she’d in fact been cured of the shaky-voiced emotional duress that the Omegas might’ve reasonably expected from her, and so her hesitant murmur now wasn’t due to sadness or intimidation, but rather the seething awkwardness she felt at standing before three gargantuan Aegis professionals while a tiny Bridget languished down under her foot at this same moment. It wasn’t lost on her, particularly where Claire and Jenna were concerned, that she was currently attempting to do what they did for a living, only without any of their formal training, and much less of their will.

“It’s really nice to see you out and about,” Claire said. The dark-tan Omega smiled softly, as she held unflinching eye contact with Lexi, and reached for the pendant of a necklace as big as a grandfather clock hand which hung around her neck. She slowly massaged the object between her thumb and forefinger. “Were you… about to pop inside Aegis?”

“Your mom is in there now,” Melody said, thumbing over her shoulder in the direction of the building, and in the process causing her pronounced bicep to swell like a boulder.

Lexi blinked, nodding as she looked toward the monolith-smooth entrance to the humongous black structure. Based on Melody’s upbeat tone, and old-fashioned common sense, of course the Alpha knew in retrospect that she should’ve interpreted this statement to mean that Evelyn was inside the building. Yet because of the emotionally and psychologically foreign territory she’d put herself and Bridget in today, for both of their sakes, Lexi’s mind now went instead to Alma, especially when she looked up at Jenna right as the stern-lipped ginger giantess crossed her arms over her chest.

This was believable, after all, since her birth mother’s sentencing was so close to finished, though Lexi didn’t know the particulars of how long her animalistic creator would remain boxed up under the direct watch of the Omegas in Aegis before she was shipped off for further penalizing in probably-less degrading conditions. Alma could’ve been just resting on Jenna’s desk in that HQ office, like an angry goldfish in her glass tank. Lexi was relieved to find that her pulse no longer leapt to palpitations at the mere thought of Alma being close by, since their previous encounter in the Reynolds’ house had helped clean her out of old fears, both of the monstrous Beta-slaughtering woman herself, and of Lexi’s own family tree inheritances. It was a trick she hoped to pull off twice, only now with Bridget. In spite of that brave progress, though, the young Alpha still felt her chest tighten and cheeks drain at the thought of what Alma might say if she could see the contents of her child’s shoe right now. No matter how badly needed it was for herself and Bridget to go through these trials, it was also painful to realize that she was currently doing something with an Omega which would’ve undoubtedly made her birth mother rejoice.

“Not that one,” Jenna whispered with a frown, recognizing the mistake only a split-second after Lexi’s expression changed and correcting it immediately. “She means your real mom.”

“Oh. Of course,” Lexi said, mustering a nervous chuckle. “I know.”

She could see some rosily embarrassed color tinting Melody’s cheeks now, even though the blame for that little mental side-trip was entirely on Lexi. Anyone who’d known her since the age of ten would’ve known that her “mom” meant Evelyn, and Evelyn only. Nonetheless, the hypothetical of what Alma might say about a shrunken downtrodden Bridget made Lexi’s guts curl even worse, though she couldn’t back down now.

“…but, I… wasn’t going in there,” the Alpha said, knowing it sounded like a lie even as she spoke it. Of course she had no intentions of going inside Aegis, but the thought of her birth-parent’s unwanted approval - and the continued sensation of three-inch Bridget being squelched under exercise-swollen toe flesh - was in danger of throwing her wholly off balance. She took a step closer to the edge of the path.

“Are you sure?” Claire asked with a counselor’s calm. The soccer champ continued rhythmically fiddling with that pendant between her fingers. “If you need to talk to somebody… besides your mom, well… there’s us, obviously, or we can go find you somebody, if you don’t want to go in there by yourself?”

Lexi nodded without answering, indeed touched by the Omega’s continually-flowing kindness, and then looked back and forth to Melody and Jenna again. Suddenly it became obvious why the three were acting so charitably, albeit stiffly. Even though Bridget hadn’t left the Cade house at her natural fifteen-story stature following her secret homecoming from Sanctuary (aside from that midnight arrangement with Kayla), it was probably difficult to keep the news of her return from making the rounds at Aegis anyway. Except Claire, Jenna, and Melody all understandably believed that their coworker and friend Bridget was still holed up in her bedroom, rather than taking action in the most unusual way possible: incredibly small, buried alive in a sweaty shoe, and hidden right below their eyelines.

“I’ll be okay,” Lexi stated, though even she couldn’t be totally certain if this was true, and so knew that the Omegas would probably remain unconvinced by her voice as well. “I just… needed some time out of the house. That’s all.”

The trio seemed to buy this, believing that Lexi was taking a necessary breather away from the mopey presence of her prodigal sister, when in fact Bridget was closer than ever, at least physically. Claire reluctantly appeared ready to say goodbye now after reading Lexi’s mood, even parting her lips in readiness for giving the troubled Alpha her personal bubble back. But then a questioning furrow etched in the titanic leader’s forehead after Lexi took another three self-conscious steps closer to the path’s edge. For the whole run so far, she hadn’t allowed Bridget’s presence down below to alter her posture or foot-slamming pressure. Yet just as she’d feared might happen when she finally came to a stop, standing for sympathetic scrutiny by professional Enforcers right outside a place that held so many partially-soured memories and which now was probably caging her birth mother who’d surely feel greater kinship with her today than ever, Lexi stepped on Bridget with a knee-shivering wobble as though nursing a wound. It wasn’t much, but evidently enough to catch an Omega’s eye.

“Lexi…” Claire drawled, cocking her head slowly and stroking two fingertips repeatedly up the side of her neck while tongue-tapping her inner cheeks in search of the right words. She spoke with a minimal-possible degree of accusation, but still clear purpose: “Do you… have someone in your shoe right now?”

The Alpha’s heart cinched in on itself as if by yanked drawstring. Though a paranoid part of her brain had acknowledged the chance of this exact situation happening while wearing Bridget out, logically she’d still expected it was a very remote probability that anyone would recognize something was off about her gait, suggesting she had a whole person cooped up down there. Now, though, as Jenna and Melody looked at her too with the same patient caution, it occurred to Lexi that she’d either underestimated Omega senses, herself, or both. Immediately a clammier layer of murky sweat poured from the raw underside pads of her foot, re-drenching the shrunken Omega in fresh conflicted moisture worse than the penultimate stretch of the jog. Was there any point in trying to lie, if only to keep this insane scheme with Bridget private?

“I…” she grunted, then bobbed her head. Lexi didn’t break her skyward gaze with Claire, but also knew there was no hiding the multi-faceted phantasm of guilt currently trying to smush her into the ground. “Yes.”

“And, are they there… consensually?” Claire asked in the same vigilant whisper.

Knowing that an innocent person would’ve answered right away with a technically truthful “yes,” Lexi felt her throat catching and her shrunken sibling’s body slicking more egregiously with anxious perspiration as one second extended to three, before seeming to freeze there entirely. What was the “right” thing to do here, let alone her legal recourse? Based on Lexi’s history, even in light of her acquittal, plus her incredibly standoffish behavior right now, she doubted she’d have much of a defense to offer if the Omegas decided to doubt her hesitant answer and then insisted she prove this was all the idea of her underfoot prisoner, who surely had to be a Beta. Running away would only make her look guiltier, and she’d obviously not get far before a giant hand formed a shadow-encasing wall of palm flesh around her, or a set of firm yet gentle fingers like monumental obelisks plucked her clean off the ground. And since Aegis was barely ten steps away for Claire, Jenna, and Melody, they’d likely take her inside the building to debrief. Revealing a bleary toejam-caked Bridget instead of a terrified bashed-up Beta down in the darkness of Lexi’s sneaker would in fact clear everything up, but at what cost? What would these three say? What would any of them in there, including Evelyn, think?

What if Alma saw her, too? Lexi would eventually recover from the embarrassment of every Omega in there learning what had happened today, seeing it with their own eyes when puny Bridget tumbled out of her shoe, but not the woman who’d given her life. Never.

Meanwhile, Bridget had been lying still for the past couple minutes of this encounter, accepting the weight of those soused toes compressing her into the insole like a sinking bog. But despite this lack of fidgeting, Lexi was more aware of her passenger now than she’d been for the whole past hour and a half, which made it seem all the more significant then when the little Omega raised a hand and patted it comfortingly up against the sweat-dewed pink bulb of the Alpha’s second toe. At first it seemed an accident that she was feeling Bridget’s touch right now, a search for meaning or aid in maybe the greatest moment of turmoil that Lexi had felt all day in a day stuffed to the gills with said turmoils, when really it was maybe just the half-conscious twitching of someone who’d just been thoroughly trampled in claustrophobic sun-cooked blackness. But her sister kept supportively clapping the delicate underbelly of her toe, the same body which had been beating Bridget’s invincible mini-self into swarthy submission for so many questionably-helpful hours now, and the Alpha knew for sure it was loving insistence.

“Yes,” Lexi said to Claire after four ridiculously long seconds of quiet, but the surest and most authentic she’d sounded yet. “Yes… she… chose to be in there.”

The Omegas regarded her, then one another for a split-second unspoken conference, and after another moment of kind albeit penetrating study over the Alpha standing in their towering shade, Claire finally unbowed until she loomed above the raised sidewalk again at her full height. Lexi’s heart still had yet to unclench following the Omega’s eagle-eyed awareness, but Bridget’s little hands didn’t stop pat-a-caking her toes in the best possible show of support her elder sibling could muster given the circumstances, which made it possible for her to take another step forward minus that guilty quivering.

“All right, then.” Claire blinked, spun the pendant one once more between her fingers, then tucked it into the neckline of her top, apparently satisfied. “Just remember what we said, Lexi. We’re here, and so are the people waiting in there.”

“I know,” Lexi said. “I’ll remember.”

The minute the Omegas had rounded the block after a final glance over their shoulders, her attention was transfixed back on Aegis’s façade. Lexi could still feel Bridget’s supportive hands on the bottom of her foot, not to brace but to encourage more stampeding, though the sensation turned fainter the longer she stared at that door: wondering at last about the voice of just one living creature in the whole structure. Everything Lexi been through so far, and Bridget’s full support, would protect her from any humiliation or raised eyebrows about their choices today from the caring fifteen-story souls inside. But nothing anyone said or did would ever stop Alma from celebrating, probably crying with laughter near to the point of vomiting, over what Lexi had allowed herself to become even for one sacrificial day. Her birth mother would of course never learn of all the “payback” she’d gotten on an Omega today, because Lexi wouldn’t have gone inside Aegis right now unless Bridget’s life depended on it, but she didn’t have to. Just knowing what might have been was enough of a self-inflicted knife in the gut.

Feeling mortification surge up inside her, Lexi didn’t even stop for another deep breath before reversing course on the path and hurling herself into another full-tilt sprint back in the same direction they’d come. Bridget’s toe-patting became almost imperceptible when the Alpha’s foot resuming alternately flying and then squashing down atop her three-inch form, but nonetheless, Lexi could feel her sister’s grateful little palm taps gently applied even throughout the sweaty maelstrom of blood-pumping adrenaline and rubber-soled impacts below. Despite expending so much energy before on the way here, she moved her fastest yet, letting the city and strangers around her blur together while her body became an efficient machine for Omega-stomping, until Lexi was aware of only two things: Bridget under her foot, and behind her, an encroaching familiar presence that persisted no matter how many steps she put between herself and Aegis. It was the same sickening once-inescapable blight she’d felt chasing her on that night almost twelve years ago, when Alma pursued her outside their home in a rabid betrayed fury. Only now she didn’t fear the woman’s anger, but her approval.

“That’s it, my darling. You’re doing it! Show her what she did to you. What ALL of them did to US!” Alma’s voice spat in her ear, just as Lexi staggered up to the Cade property barely an hour later and spilled onto the front lawn. Panting in desperation, she grasped at the earth and tore up tufts of grass in an effort to keep the tears from coming, while Bridget’s touch never left her toes. “That’s the way!”

The moment Lexi’s sneaker was unlaced inside the Cade family foyer, as her bare sole peeled away from that sticky basin puddled with her fluidic effort, the Alpha had flexed her toes across her unbound desperately-compressed sister to separate her from the malleable raw-pink undersides. Once the sweat-spattered blonde was divorced from the effort-swollen shafts of those digits, then, the Omega was gently fished out and dangled between Lexi’s fingers to be brought back into the light, whereupon she was laid face-down on the floor beside the athletic vessel’s scuffed rim. And then in a dazed patter, Lexi kept right on hobbling exhaustively down the wall-mounted walkway with one probably-blistered foot still in a shoe. Meanwhile, Bridget only listened to her departure, not daring to look up. The little Omega flinched only to catch her breath in air not tainted by vinegary acridity, not to mention the cooler sturdier texture of surroundings less claustrophobic and soggy than she’d experienced during the precisely three hours she’d spent in that tortuous hot box.

Of course, the tearful shrunken being still felt she deserved every instant in that squelchy prison, if not many more: perhaps until the precise moment Kayla’s gift to her wore off, and her body unfortunately expanded to rip through the meshy siding of the shoe. No, she decided, even that wouldn’t have sufficed. But based upon her subtle reading of Lexi’s body language, which vibrated like a secret subconscious code through that brawny perspiration-drenched underfoot sky resting with the equivalent burden of a collapsed rockslide atop Bridget’s three-inch form for most of an afternoon, she sensed that the Alpha’s reluctant catharsis for today’s wholly justified sisterhood-reforging ritual was undergoing a shift. Even independent of the vigorous exercise she’d endured for those long hours, purging ill will and saltwater by the gallon, Lexi’s sole-thumping pulse had plainly changed pace following that midway-point pause outside of Aegis, her heartbeat growing disproportionately intense, and Bridget had spent the whole concussing return journey willing herself to see their way forward and through this. Would today be enough, for either of them? Even if, hypothetically, Kayla had agreed to leave Bridget shrunken for weeks, months, or years of this treatment, day in and day out, would that eye-for-an-eye repetition ever remotely chip away at the mountainous injustice still imposed between them?

Was this still the “right” thing? Because if it wasn’t, Bridget angrily asked of herself, what else could possibly be? Somehow it hurt even worse to wonder at this now than it did last night.

Though she hadn’t been given formal permission, after remaining motionless on the walkway for close to an hour in silence, and hearing no returning footsteps nor feeling Lexi’s fingers at her back again, Bridget took it upon herself to rise slowly onto her haunches. With head bowed and her toeprint-matted golden tresses enveloping her features, she massaged her cord-reddened joints and stretched out some of the stiffness that inevitably came of serving as someone’s pithy living sole-cushion for three hours of relentless high-impact cardio, no matter how durable her Omega constitution made her at any size. Still, as though there was a witch’s chalk circle drawn around this spot on the floor, Bridget didn’t give allow herself to fully rise and take a step outside where she’d been placed. Instead, on her knees, she stared down the hall, uncertain even where Lexi had gone, and waited for her to come back, all while self-furiously clawing at the mental Rubik’s cube of this impossibly cruel favor she’d asked of her sibling.

Where was the end going to be? She thought she’d known the answer when she’d asked the all-powerful Omega scientist and ruler to do this for her, and yet the solution felt cloudier than ever for Bridget, even though she was able to “see” better in now than she had for most of this day spent blindfolded, hogtied, tongue-smothered, and toe-grappled. Lexi had gone through so much in the time before, and now again put herself in an unwanted and uncomfortable position, at Bridget’s request. It was simply unacceptable to the Omega to think that her vision here wouldn’t succeed.

Meanwhile, Lexi had been asking herself much the same sorts of things earlier in the day, during those more-uncertain hours of initiation into the rhythm of punishing a supposedly deserving three-inch target, but the Alpha’s mind had since fogged over, forgetting such specific questions. Instead, Lexi only heard her mother’s theoretical blessing still, which spurred her to take that determined one-shoed stumble down the walkway and around the nearest corner of the Omega home’s comparatively cavernous main hall, going nowhere in particular at first. Her every muscle ached down to the bone worse, via her own choices, than they ever had during those physically tame sessions she’d endured under Bridget a year and a half before, and she could barely stay standing now. But she had to. Alma’s influence had followed her all the way home from Aegis, just as the woman had sprinted after Lexi on that fateful night so many years ago when she’d decided to reject the madwoman’s homicidal inheritance. Only this time, Lexi hadn’t managed to outrun her parent’s voice. Yes, Alma was locked up somewhere, whether in Aegis or some cold super-max cell far away from here that would probably treat her infinitely kindlier than Jenna did. But given the throbbing of that joyful imagined voice in her daughter’s ears now, Alma might as well have been pouncing at Lexi’s heels now like a mangy cat, cleaving on and singing her bloodthirsty approval all the way.

No more instructions. No more sessions. No more feeding wrongs with wrongs, and guilt with more guilt. Done. They were done. Yet even as Lexi silently promised these things to herself, knowing there was no way she could possibly perform anymore pseudo-disciplinary action over her miniaturized sister now or ever again, there was a pestling at her core, a feeling which told her that it was too late. She’d done the deed. She’d made Alma Warren proud.

Instinct had at first pulled Lexi toward Bridget’s bedroom, which had served as her home base during this surreal day of unconventional corrections, but then she walked straight past it. She knew if she got anywhere near that Enforcer guidebook in the closet, or the bed where she’d discovered Bridget shrunken this morning, she’d only feel her mother’s spiritual endorsement again. Still wandering, yet moving with a strange purpose, Lexi desperately wished to stop moving: to ease her fatigued body, while somehow shutting out Alma’s damning voice in her head, and then think of whatever the hell she was supposed to do next. In time, she knew already, she’d have to go back to Bridget by the front door, and tell her she could handle no more of this, but for now, the beleaguered one-shoed Alpha was drawn insistently toward somewhere, as though by gravity down a steep hill.

The place she was going, it turned out, was her dollhouse apartment, resting on the living room side table beside that ceramic life-size elephant. The irony wasn’t lost on Lexi that she was inexplicably lured toward the one place in their whole Omega-scaled habitat which, once she was inside, would remind her more fervently of Alpha-specific homelife instead of the cozy yet palatial space she shared with Evelyn and Bridget, and thus somehow reaffirm the sensation of Alma pursuing her. But Lexi was past questioning why she wanted or needed certain things, and just acted, taking the quickest route along the walkway and then down a ladder which descended onto the furniture. Foraging past some of the jungle-thick houseplants, the Alpha emerged on the other side out of breath, her body still damp with sweat and her face with stinging tears, and burst through the front door of her home-inside-the-home.

Staggering to the kitchen table, Lexi realized she was utterly sapped, too tired to keep moving even by sheer distraught will, and slumped into the nearest chair. Her panged limbs were thankful for the relief after so long on her feet, but that conflicted knot inside her was only going noose-tight now, making her nauseous on the verge of puking, and simultaneously too desolate to believe anything would even come out if she went and wretched over the sink. So, folding her arms on the tabletop, Lexi buried her face between them, skipping the sobs, and fell into a rasping choke as though she was being slowly deflated by a tube stuck into her lungs by her noncorporeal birth mother’s own hand. Was all this just destined to be the great cosmic joke of her life? To finally have pleased her real parent in such a roundabout way as to successfully reject her evil, escape it, and find the place she thought she belonged for a decade of deceptive peace, only to be framed for the very thing Alma had always wanted for her, then horribly punished for it, distanced from everything she cared about, and finally today made again to performatively live out an approximation of the awful practices her mother had named her birthright, in mad hopes that it might heal someone who’d clearly taken on just as much pain as herself throughout their shared travesty? Even with her watering eyes pressed so hard against her forearm that they came close to numbing, at once, Lexi was “seeing” the room take shape around her again. A kitchen, only not the one inside her Omega dollhouse.

“Alexandra,” Alma echoed, while seated across the table from her daughter in their dark cramped living space: no longer that compressed unfrightening permutation of her from the glass box, but back to natural stature again. The woman shook her head and tsked under her breath, not quite smiling, but exhilaration palpably radiated from her. As the shadows crossed Alma’s face, she appeared at the same time as her younger more put-together visage, like Lexi had last seen her birth parent as an unjustly free woman all those years ago, as well as the gnarlier, dourer, prison-hardened version to whom she’d said goodbye forever in that transparent cage on Jenna’s bedroom shelf. “You remember how proud I was of you that day, when you helped me play the game and find my special little friends? Well, that’s nothing next to what I feel for you today.”

“I don’t want to play that game again,” Lexi whispered back, frailly. She was afraid to stand up from the table, or try blinking away her runaway imagination’s vantage.

“That’s all right too,” Alma smarmed. “Because you’re not a little girl anymore. And none of this is really a game, anyhow. It’s war, just like I told you. You’ve been old enough for a while now to understand the way things are. To help me in my work. I can’t tell you how much sweeter it would’ve been, to have you by my side in that place, when we came so fucking close to frying the next generation of little Beta germs. Maybe we’d have even snuffed them out for good, when the rest all just gave up and keeled over. Something tells me if I’d had you there with me, that day just might’ve gone different. We might’ve won.”

“I would never help you. With anything,” Lexi snarled back at her mother, still audibly soft-asphyxiating on her own gasps. “I wouldn’t have run this time, either. I… would have stopped you.”

“And all this time, I thought you were a lost cause,” Alma blithely continued, as though her daughter hadn’t spoken at all. “I thought those overgrown freaks turned you. Still, here we are, because you’re finally starting to understand. No matter how much time you spend with those people, no matter how much you try to prove yourself, no matter how much you let them tell you they “love” you, you’ll still never be anything more to them than a time bomb. A little ol’ ME in training.”

“That’s not true,” Lexi spat, even while unconvincingly wiping her eyes. “I figured that out for myself a while ago. They… know… I’m not like you, and I’d never be like you.”

“Then why did you agree to spend a whole DAY kicking the SHIT out of one of them?” Alma guffawed, slapping the table hard. Her wheezing laughter quickly ascended into repetitive cackles. “You can’t have it both ways, my darling Alexandra.”

“She… asked me,” Lexi strained through more tears, wishing she had the strength or presence of mind to flip this table right on top of her mother, the un-realness notwithstanding. “She told she’d… find someone else to do it… if I didn’t. I didn’t… have a choice.”

“That’s exactly RIGHT!” Alma victoriously cheered, with every tooth seemingly displayed while her uvula visibly danced above her throat. She rested her fist atop the table with a hard thump, holding it in the center of the surface as if to offer something to her offspring, but kept her fingers clenched closed. “You didn’t have a choice. NONE of us do. So we do what has to be done, even if everyone else is slow to understand why we’re doing the right thing. You gave that bitch back just the smallest taste of everything she’s owed, and every monster like her, too. Not even a whole mouthful. Those freaks can’t feel anything, after all, no matter how small you make ‘em, and I’m not just talking about when you got to step on one. They’re a big circle-jerk of false gods, Alexandra. When they punish one of us, no matter who we are, they feel… nothing. Just empty. And maybe sometimes a smug streak that tells them they deserve to keep all of us down here at their feet, in chains.”

Lexi continued reluctantly processing her distant mother’s imagined venom-words, but now couldn’t take her gaze off that fist. The last time they shared a table at the same size, Alma’s hand forcibly contained the soon-to-be-broken father of a boy who would one day set events in motion that temporarily shattered Lexi’s adoptive family bonds. She saw no slight movements shuddering beneath her birth mother’s unforgiving fingers, no shoes or tufts of Beta-scale hair poking through, but that still didn’t mean there was no one in there. Certainly Lexi herself had done a suitable job of containing a miniaturized Omega in her own hand earlier today, holding so firm that, given the right pressure and stuffing technique, Bridget might’ve disappeared altogether.

“But we both know what you’ve done today isn’t enough. Not nearly. Not yet,” Alma hissed, while craning her neck at such an unsettling angle to the side that she almost appeared like an owl emerging from the kitchen shadows. “She’ll grow back up to freak-size, because she believes everything gets fixed after one day of living this. Living like the way they make us feel. Beneath them. Just rolling over and accepting their disgusting perversion of the world’s rightful order. She won’t even have a scratch on her, Alexandra, and she’ll get to go back to the way things were, thinking she made the slightest difference. Thinking she made things RIGHT!”

Immediately then, Alma’s fist splayed open. There was no half-crushed Beta lying on her palm, nor anything else, but Lexi flinched nonetheless, slamming her spine hard against the back of the chair and gripping the table’s edge, still wishing desperately to activate her fight or flight, but could do neither. Meanwhile Alma revolved her hand upon the table, curling her fingers hard like claws while dragging her nails noisily along the tabletop toward her daughter, shaving off sawdust en route.

“She wanted you to hurt her, didn’t she, darling? That giant pretender needed you to make her FEEL how YOU felt. How we all feel. Isn’t that right?”

“Y-Yes…” Lexi hushed.

“Then you know what you have to do. You can’t “hurt” her by chewing on her, running on her, or holding her worthless little life in the palm of your hand. Even if the Omegas are more vile than the goddamned Betas, they sure don’t break as easily,” Alma rambled on at a trance-like speed, practically drooling with blood-lusted focus. She stood from her chair now, still nail-grinding the table, while leaning across it, seeming to loom higher above her offspring with every inch she advanced, until she may as well have been ten feet tall. “No, Alexandra, what you have to do is show her what her actions have wrought. If you want to cut her to the heart, and I KNOW deep down that some PART of you does, then you’ve got to go out there in the streets just like I taught you, grab up a handful of Betas, and turn them into fucking juice. Right in front of her.”

Despite feeling the heat of her birth mother’s enraged breath steaming on her neck, the young Alpha felt only frostbite-inducing chill glazing across her skin and insides at once. Though no part of her had ever felt ill will toward a Beta, not even ultimately the one who’d worked so hard to make her suffer, she’d have been lying to herself to believe now that, during her darkest moments over the past twenty-one months (and just a few glimmers today too), she hadn’t occasionally felt the purgative hunger for Bridget to feel something of that once-endless sorrow brought on by her wrongful incarceration. To let her sister take on even a grain of what she’d been made to feel. That deeply-entrenched feeling, hardly knowable now to Lexi herself, may even have been what allowed her to agree to this madcap role-reversal plan in the first place. Maybe, she’d thought, playing Enforcer would at last chisel out that guilty little inkling from her mind for good: that piece which made Lexi want Bridget, even for a useful moment, to comprehend the Alpha’s hurt the only way she could, by experiencing it herself.

Unable to continue looking at this blame-induced apparition of her birth mother stretching toward her across the table like a funhouse mirror reflection, Lexi buried her gaze in her lap, instead watching her hands convulse and sweat against the side of her thigh. They’d gone through with it. Finished the task. And still neither Alpha nor Omega seemed to have found what they wanted. Lexi felt even less desire now for Bridget to commiserate with her in that hypothetical instant of sympathetic suffering for all they’d been through together, and she could only imagine her shrunken sister was feeling no more whole now than she was from the instant Kayla put her down to Beta level.

Indeed, sick as it made her to realize, what this fictional shade of Alma Warren had stated was correct: if Lexi really did want to hurt Bridget in a way that corkscrewed the emotional knife all the way to her core and back out the other side, it wouldn’t be achieved through play-acting the part of an Alpha-correcting peacekeeper. Stomping on an invincible being would’ve been as empty a gesture as offering thoughts and prayers to a stranger. To truly make the Omega sting would require an act cruel and black-hearted, like her mother wanted, that Lexi would sooner die than see it actually have its effect on Bridget.

So then what was the point of it all? What had they gained, or worse, what had they lost? And if this near-lunatic scheme, with the punished playing punisher and vice versa, wasn’t the solution to this whole spider-webbing mess of justice miscarriage and family dysfunction, then what was? If there even was one at all?

“You know what you have to do, Alexandra,” Alma scowled, now perched fully atop the kitchen table, her fingernails seemingly embedded in the surface, while drool strings hung from her chin like a jungle cat preparing to make the final pounce.

“I’m not going to hurt anyone,” Lexi said again, though meekly, looking up once more. The way forward hadn’t seemed so opaque since that day she’d limped out of town almost two years ago, yet still the words came to her pure. “I never was. I never could have. Especially not her.”

“Just reach in your pocket,” her mother spat, her eyes shining yellow even while the darkness of the mirage wrapped tighter around them both. “Like you did for me, when you were still my good little girl. When you still listened.”

“I already told you,” Lexi said. Pressing her soles into the floor, one shoed and one bare, she pushed herself away from the table with the ease she’d longed for in uglier times. When she stood, then, suddenly the shame-phantom of Alma wasn’t distended into so much of a room-filling giantess, though her gaunt age-tricking presence remained hunkered atop the table like a gargoyle. Mother and daughter came eye to eye, then, for the first time ever, since during their last “real” meetings, one Alpha was either still Omega-compressed or an ungrown child, respectively. For a moment Lexi pondered reaching into her pocket, just to confirm for herself that there was nothing weighted there, be it the poor little Beta woman she’d been fooled into capturing years ago, or whatever other remorseful conjuration her own mind could come up with. But instead Lexi stayed her hand, knowing there was nothing there to reach for, and calmer still for the lack of compulsion to find out, before she breathed: “No.”

Standing firm, utterly fragile and powerfully immovable at once, Lexi fully anticipated this dream-projection of her mother to let loose a furious scream and take a swipe at her now with those claws, and perhaps draw blood, despite “this” Alma’s continued make-believe nature. But the trauma-weathered young Alpha didn’t lean away from the table, nor did she blink in the shadowy enclosure of her remembered old home’s kitchen. Though of course this room hadn’t felt like “home” in so very long, and so was just as foreign and sickeningly otherworldly to her as seeing the creature who’d given birth to her existing there at full height. And just like that, the leftover threat of pride and joy, sadism and schadenfreude, that Alma had apparently imprinted in her daughter like a tumor was permanently cleaved out, proven just as removable and replaceable with something better as the crazed Beta-slaughterer was herself. Still feeling like her stomach had been turned inside out, but certain now that she had both seen and thought her last of this woman, Lexi turned from the table and Alma, trudging with tired lethargy up the nearby stairs of her dollhouse.

In her bedroom, the Alpha collapsed in slow motion onto the end of her bed, crawling up toward the pillows and wrapping her face in one. She’d expected to need it to muffle a scream, but as no noise or even tears came gushing out just yet, Lexi simply waited in the limbo, feeling her heart race and insides plumbed. She’d seen the truth, cut Alma out of herself for good, and knew that she could never again attempt to make “amends” with Bridget in the way she’d been beguiled into today. The only thing still devouring her from the center was the thought of her sister, as it had always been since they were split apart. Surely Bridget was able to sense all along that Lexi wasn’t cut out for Enforcer work, nor for making things “right” via the very means that broke her own heart a year and a half before? Which meant that the Omega probably hadn’t gotten what she wanted. In fact, Lexi was certain she hadn’t. What would happen now, then, in the face of the Alpha’s failing? Would Bridget make good on her horrific promise to abuse herself at the hands of a vengeful stranger, in lieu of her sibling’s help, until all was somehow made right with the world again? Was there anything on Earth Lexi could do to stop her?

Only now, upon realization of this possibility, did the eye-burning tears and hoarse moans come: not for herself, but entirely for Bridget. Lexi rocked atop the mattress, still gently smothering herself with the moisture-stained pillow, while the first square of amber evening sunlight just so happened to align with the window panes of the Omega home outside and her personal habitat’s at once, allowing in a twinkling angular spotlight glow just above where the Alpha was curled in quiet stop-loss turmoil on her mussed sheets. There was nothing more she could do for Bridget. She’d done her best and beyond. And still her miniature sister was arranged beside that abandoned running shoe in the foyer, likely just as lost and close to breaking apart as Lexi was now, not to mention physically spent from all the chewing, rampaging, drowning, high-flying torment she’d forced upon herself today.

Nesting herself in the bed, where at least she could rely upon the walls of her Alpha-home as a vault for now to help hold back all her miseries on Bridget’s behalf, Lexi sincerely wasn’t sure how she’d manage to get herself to leave this little house for a while, if not the rest of the day or week. If she stayed in here, and didn’t go find her sister, she wouldn’t have to tell her she was done. She wouldn’t have to admit defeat. She wouldn’t have to hear the Omega reluctantly declare her intention to leave again, whether Bridget meant to find someone who could persecute her shrunken self in a more corrective and potentially injurious manner, or simply to go wandering again out in the cold wild to wallow in her own seemingly incurable disgrace. That would all eventually have to happen, the Alpha was steadily convinced, but not yet. Not until she moved from this spot and made it real.

“Lexi?”

The velveteen-soft all-too-known whisper of her elder sister’s dulcet voice came from so close by that it should’ve startled Lexi, particularly because she’d been counting on her controlled solitude in this tiny house to help stave off the inevitable decompressing conversation with Bridget. So much for getting to cocoon in her denial and fear for a time. When she at last emerged from smushing the pillow over her tear-streaked face again with the difficulty of rising from an earthy grave, though, the Alpha found at least part of her first expectation was happening already. Which was to say that Bridget was, literally, decompressing. The Omega stood now at around twelve inches tall, which meant she still had to look up at Lexi from the floor. With the pillow no longer there to catch the tears or saliva from the Alpha’s full-body sobs, several drops plunged to the ground at the re-enlarging blonde giantess’s feet when the pair could first see one another again from above and below. But Bridget didn’t tear her gaze from her temporarily taller sibling while staring up at her with searing apology and lily-delicate hope in her angelic little face, in spite of her body still showing the filthy toll of today’s sessions.

After a week spent developing lumps in her throat, Lexi truly couldn’t produce another single one, but nevertheless still felt her damp red cheeks turn pale and the wind go out of her chest as though the Alpha dollhouse was caving in on top of them. She wiped her hair out of her eyes, shaking her head while continually envisioning then quickly rejecting whatever statement she could possibly speak aloud now to make things all right. Meanwhile, Bridget seemed in comparable strife. The foot-tall titan shifted from one leg to the other, violently twiddling the same golden strands of hair over her shoulder as if she meant to rip them free, the bigger sister just as exposed but certain as ever. Seeing the growing Omega open her mouth to talk first, no-doubt to declare this whole preposterous experiment an explosive failure before she departed on another possibly-forever walkabout, Lexi too parted her lips, even not quite knowing while doing so what she was going to say to stop her sister from giving up. Sure, she was still big enough to restrain her for now, but in probably less than an hour, judging by Bridget’s progress, Lexi would be powerless. Words were all she had, whatever they were going to be.

“I’m-SORRY!” both sisters choked out together in one raspy syllable as though discharging a cannon, ridding themselves of the sound and the feeling in one swoop. And no sooner did the Omega and Alpha look at one another wide-eyed with strangely liberated absolution upon recognizing their shared release, first in shock then relief, when Bridget lunged urgently up the side of the bed in a single bound and hurled herself into a necessary embrace upon Lexi’s body. Just as quickly, the Alpha’s hands closed around her sibling’s back to scoop her closer, holding the shrunken giantess against her tear-soaked neck. They curled immediately into the blankets as a unit, breathing raggedly and holding one another in a way that again made the vindicated Lexi wish very much to remain right here with the most important person in her life, in this spot, in this moment, for as long as humanly possible. It took only an instant of contact to know without further explanation or glances that her sister was back home at last.

“W-Wait. Sorry? What are YOU saying sorry for?” Bridget demanded once she’d caught her breath again. The Omega’s twelve-inch-tall body still clung fiercely onto Lexi’s torso as though she might go hurtling into a mile-long plummet if she released of even one lovingly clenched finger from the folds of her sister’s clothes. It took at least a full unspoken three minutes of hyperventilating clemency from both women before either could even articulate coherently again, though, with the Alpha laid flat on her back among the sheets, just as jealously holding Bridget down against her stomach and chest in the nearest thing to a hug they could approximate right now, given their temporary yet unusual juxtaposition in sizes. Gradually, though, Lexi rose back into a seated hunch upon the bed, her thighs splaying to make room for the foot-tall giantess’s own feet to reach the mattress again for standing support, though she still didn’t dare relinquish any affectionate pressure from their embrace yet, nor would Bridget have allowed such a thing.

“I should’ve stopped it all sooner,” Lexi insisted in answer at last, gently resting her chin on top of Bridget’s head while they continued fondly rocking one another side to side in the middle of the bed. Though no longer weighed down by even remotely the same kind of guilt or distress which had plagued her all day, having successfully flushed Alma from her psyche for good, her voice was still heavy with remorse for the questionably-necessary steps which they’d taken together to finally end up here, where they should’ve been all along. “I should’ve said no. I could’ve said no so many times today and I didn’t. I should’ve done… something.”

“NO!” Bridget shamefully declared, loud enough to be heard even while her tear-stained face was buried hard above Lexi’s navel. “I… made you do it. This. I didn’t give you a choice. It w-wasn’t… to hurt you… more… it was all for me. If that… means anything to you. But I did it anyway because I thought I knew what I needed, or what could fix me, but… but… it wasn’t. That… couldn’t… fix me. The only thing that could have… was… just you. Coming back for me. And you did, like you ALWAYS do. L-Like I don’t… deserve.”

Lexi, exhaling heavily again, just listened to her sister stammering. She felt no discernible ounce of a grudge remaining in her for the little Omega, distant and minimal though that bitterness might’ve been already. The physical release of squeezing, punting, chewing, and stomping out some of her unnamable frustrations and grief earlier today had perhaps helped fire up the fleeting illusion of justice in her damaged heart during their improvised sessions, but ultimately, Lexi felt that hostile incentive come to exactly nothing now, leaving her only empty and frustratingly sorrowful as she’d been from the start of this mess. There was no fulfillment in eye-for-an-eye; she didn’t want or need any shade of payback, nor was there some cosmic natural law of right-and-wrong returned to balance by her having spent most of today pretending to be an Enforcer.

“Yes, you do,” Lexi affirmed, wiping her eyes with one hand while still clutching the shrunken titaness’s back against the other palm. “You do deserve it. Being… fixed. Like I am now. And Bridge, you’re an idiot if you think I could ever not come back for you.”

“I am. I am that now. Or I already was. This whole time. Since you came and found me. Fixed. I… I promise I am. Please. You did this, Lexi. You did this for me. Oh, God…” the Omega rambled, spiraling now into more enervated sobs, though primarily due to the long-awaited expulsion of Sisyphean weight worn on her shoulders, rather than lingering sadness. A tearful wet patch the dimension of her face was soaked now into Lexi’s shirt. The gradually-regrowing giantess hiccupped from such ragged breathing and even let out virtually-hysterical chirps of cleansing laughter in between moist sniffles, and the temporarily taller between them soon couldn’t help but join her.

As long as she’d known her, it had always been difficult for the Alpha to imagine Bridget as “vulnerable” by any possible metric, to the point that she’d eventually never even acknowledged the girl to have a single real weakness. Bridget was just the big sister: wiser, kinder, more cautious, more powerful. Maybe it was the Omega’s current surreal downsizing to less than the scale of an Alpha infant which now helped tear that notion down for good, or maybe it was simply a combination of every healing roadblock they’d each suffered both apart and together from the moment they were horrifically ripped apart almost two years before, but Lexi realized most vividly now for the first time ever how incorrect she’d been to have ever ascribed that kind of faultless omnipotence to her one-hundred-fifty-foot-tall sibling. Just as there was so much beautiful empathy and compassion contained in this vessel of Bridget, not to mention strength sufficient to break a house in half, so too was there a completely-human streak of uncertainty, flaws, and occasional need to mend wounds while only trying to do the right thing: traits which Lexi felt gratefully fortunate to realize made them more alike than any strand of DNA would have. For twelve years, she’d been the little sister here in every sense. At least for now, or however long they had left before a decompressing Bridget didn’t have room to stand up straight inside the dollhouse, it was Lexi’s turn to the be the big one.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry…” Bridget chanted, with her face still pressed into the shirt. It took a while for Lexi to recognize these declarations as words at all, though, since the sound of the Omega’s under-breath voice blended right out of her choked sobs and delirious sputters. Once she did parse out these machine-gunned apologies, however, and began to worry that Bridget just might make herself sick from so many wordy retches one after the other, the Alpha smiled to herself, then tenderly took the Omega’s damp face between the pads of her fingers and guided her out of their sisterly stranglehold hug at last. For the first time now since Bridget leapt onto the bed, they actually looked at one another. Something about their current posture, with the watery-eyed blonde crumpled to her knees like a tiny fallen angel trying to earn back her grace, made Lexi feel as though she was seeing Bridget at her smallest stature yet today, even though the blonde had in fact sprouted up by another couple inches in the brief time since they dove into each other’s arms.

“Shhhh. I know you are,” Lexi sighed. She daintily brushed the pad of her forefinger against Bridget’s cheeks, first wiping away the excess saltwater, then patted even more gently, as had been done for her on so many occasions through their youth, albeit in reverse of their current positions. It was time to restitch this thread, two years in the unmaking. “And you don’t have to say it to me anymore. I don’t want you to. Okay?”

The Omega arched her back abruptly with another expelling gasp, evidently releasing yet more burden for what had turned out to be a days-long gauntlet of glacial two-sided forgiveness and final acceptance. She was absolved. Nodding feverishly and seeming to fathom this resolution she’d been gifted once and for all, Bridget leaned back on her haunches and let Lexi’s open palm cradle her again, while the Alpha’s careful finger continued combing back stray golden locks and dabbing away all gleaming trickles still adorning the fifteen-inch-tall titan’s face.

“Thank you,” Bridget said, her voice more whole than before. Apparently unable to handle this distance of crouching less than arm’s length apart from one another for long, though, she fiercely entwined her arm with Lexi’s finger, then thrust herself back against her sibling’s body. Since she was taller now, the Omega’s arms could fit a little further across than before, with the strength of Bridget’s deceptively mighty form becoming more palpable to Lexi again. It brought calm almost akin to the experience of her full-sized sister’s fingers gradually curling around her body for some tumultuous journey ahead. The Alpha was glad for that sensation’s return, reminded that this was still the same personal guardian she’d always had since her “real” life began on that night at Aegis. Bridget’s growth seemed to be accelerating now, which meant they likely didn’t have long before the gulf in their scope widened to more considerable yet familiar extremes.

Neither Omega nor Alpha felt the need to cry any longer, but they remained loyally wrapped against one another as though they did anyway, with Bridget’s head bowed supportively low into Lexi’s shoulder. For a while, the latter could still see high enough over the top of her elder sister’s curly blonde crown to soothingly stroke loose silken strands in a lullaby-inducing fashion between her fingers. At regular intervals, too, she pursed her lips and softly blew cool air against Bridget’s neck, the Omega’s skin still warm and flushed, as she too had done for her in their childhood whenever cry-worthy trouble arose, until Bridget’s complexion seemed to return to normal. Lexi had lost track of time, but could still follow its passage by the fact that, eventually, the lifelong giantess lifted her head from the Alpha’s body, and for the first time in their lives, the two young women met one another’s eyeline from precisely the same height. It was like something ripped from a bizarre dream, definitely not foreign or unwelcome, but difficult for either to comprehend at first glance. Both seemed to recognize this harmonized anomaly which probably would’ve never had reason to occur if not for the redemptive insanity of today, staring curiously into one another’s eyes as if to better cement the memory and lesson.

“Hi,” Bridget greeted, breaking their astonished silence with a smile.

“Hi.” Somehow it felt to Lexi like they had just taken a very long swim together in black briny ocean depths, and emerged only just now with a refreshing crash up through the waves. Perhaps to confirm for herself that this sight seated before her was real, or maybe just because she knew she probably wouldn’t get such a chance again, the Alpha raised both quaking hands and perfectly cupped her sister’s cheeks in her palms. Sure enough, it was real, and so was she. Letting out another laugh, Lexi was stricken with inexplicable gratitude for this singular instant of familial sameness, and caressed her thumbs repeatedly over Bridget’s upward-curling dimples while that smile widened to the sunniest grin she’d witnessed in the Omega since before all that tragic distraction of their last twenty-one months.

“I didn’t… think about this part,” Bridget admitted, not exactly knowing how to articulate the unexpected exquisiteness of, even for a few minutes, sharing the same height as her sister. Visibly comforted by Lexi’s hands pressed against the sides of her face, she followed suit, cradling her little sister’s own features too.

“Me, neither.”

“I’m glad, though. That I got to see you like this. That you… got to see me.”

“Y-Yeah.”

“But, you might have to kick me out of your house soon,” the Omega crooned, though she didn’t let go of Lexi. “Or this bed is going to break right under us.”

“You know I’m not going to kick you out.”

“Well, you might not have to. The walls will just crack apart, if we wait too long.”

“I’m fine with that, too,” Lexi said, mostly joking, but understood just as well as Bridget did that she wasn’t totally unserious, either. Much as she liked this little home-inside-the-home, she’d happily let every manufactured piece be splintered on the Omega’s behalf, if that was what it cost to stick around in one another’s orbit for a bit longer. But she had a good feeling that no such melodrama would be necessary: just a brief separation, once the former Enforcer’s height in feet reached double digits, and then they’d be together again outside the house.

Bridget’s face seemed to remain the same size resting in the Alpha’s hands for quite a while now, as though her expansion had temporarily paused once the girls were matched in stature. It was an oddity, but one that neither of them questioned or regretted, as they studied and stroked one another’s countenances as though back together for the first time in a decade. And Lexi was gratified to realize that, thanks to their prolonged passing-by one another in size, her own mental projection of her Omega sister was no longer the infallible statuesque skyscraper-topping valkyrie she’d known and resolutely imagined her to be for more than half her life. Instead, it was irrevocably the “real” Bridget seated before her now: the same size as her for a little while longer, human in every inch, with the same hopes and sorrow and unceasing love. And no matter how tall the Omega physically became again, Lexi knew they would remain this way together in spirit, just as they should have been from the very start, perfectly side-by-side.

Gradually, then, well-after the Alpha knew for absolute certain that she had preserved the visage of her big sister as she was now, Bridget’s face continued proportionally growing, along with the rest of her. Lexi’s hands began to appear as a small child’s by comparison, still clutching at the Omega’s rosy post-breakdown cheeks, and accordingly, the now-taller sibling’s own gentle mitts could contain all of Lexi’s features between them. Though she no longer had the giantess’s body hugged heartily to hers, the Alpha could feel the incredible strength resonating still from Bridget’s warm pliant palms, even up through those tender fingertips caressing into her hair now. This position, too, felt familiar in its own peculiar perspective-evolving way, since so much of Lexi’s time in years prior was spent safely cupped in her sister’s hand, albeit once her entire body fit snugly into the center beneath the elegant fencing of curled digits offering her shade. The Alpha could still feel her own crossed legs pressed down into the mattress, of course, but since the only ground she could see now was the creasy softness of both Bridget’s hands united under her chin, most of Lexi’s internal systems told her that she was already sprawled happily again in her sister’s palm, ready to be carried off toward whatever welcome discoveries the day would bring them next, just like always. Bridget had easily bypassed eight feet tall by now and was climbing swiftly toward nine, officially having to look down to meet Lexi’s eyeline, but still didn’t budge from the bed, even as the cushioning sunk more noticeably beneath her enlarging form.

“I should probably get off your bed and out of your house,” Bridget said at last with a reluctant exhale, obviously just as wishful that she could stay in this exact spot with Lexi for a bit longer. “You know. While your, uh… door still fits me.”

“Guess you’re right.”

“I’m not going anywhere, though,” the Omega said again, her assurance maybe less necessary now, but still appreciated. “I’ll just be right outside. Until you’re ready to come out, too. Or, if you… wanted more time, I don’t mind going back to-”

“I don’t want time,” Lexi interrupted with a bashful grin. “I’ve had nothing BUT time. I’m… getting really, REALLY sick of time.”

“Me, too.” Bridget smiled, then gracefully released both her now-spacious hands from cradling her sister’s face, or at least tried to. Lexi, however, feeling this oncoming separation, was compelled to follow her sister’s example from before, being the smaller one again, and practically pounced to clap her own tinier palms atop the Omega’s fingers, insistently holding that same mellow touch right in place against her cheeks. Bridget laughed quietly, and relented to the Alpha’s desire, continuing to nestle and pet Lexi’s face between both her hands, even while the Omega was now twice her sibling’s size and counting. “You know you can just follow me out there, too, right? It’s not like we have to be alone again at all.”

“I know,” Lexi said, and meant it. She could actually see Bridget growing using her naked eye now, and could even feel the dwarfed mattress beginning to struggle under the lopsided burden of its two occupants. Still hanging onto the seated twelve-foot-tall Omega’s hands for balance, she wobbled up to stand on her bed, which again – if briefly – let the pair’s sightlines intersect for a final time. “I just. Wanted to make sure I remember this.”

“You will,” Bridget whispered in a voice like a practiced enchantment, so definitive and persuasive that Lexi would’ve unquestionably trusted her forever no matter what was said. Still holding the entirety of her sister’s head between her palms, the growing Omega guided Lexi’s face closer to her own until she could wetly plant a thankful kiss on the Alpha’s forehead. “I love you, Lexi.”

“I love you too, Bridge.”

“…I REALLY do think it’s time for me to go now, though. Or else you’re going to be minus a house.”

The not-quite-twinned pair shared a few giggles now, pressing their foreheads together while they still could, with Lexi on her feet and Bridget’s head bowed to meet the Alpha’s. Feeling the bedframe beginning to buckle, however, the Omega made the decision to step lithely back onto the floor at this last possible instant before collateral damage occurred, releasing her little sister’s trembling face from her hands, and immediately bumped her head against the ceiling when she resumed her full ascending height.

“Okay, okay, maybe you were right!” Lexi said, exultant.

“Yeah, it might be a tight squeeze now,” Bridget agreed. She hunched, swatting the dollhouse bedroom door open with her oversized fingers, and somewhat comedically reminded the spectating Alpha of Alice in Wonderland, about to start wearing the White Rabbit’s cottage like a boxy gown. “But Mom is gonna kill me if I destroy your house after only two days back.”

Snickering, not caring in the least whether her portable home was exploded or not, Lexi clambered out of bed, with her every footfall feeling stronger and more assured now, and followed Bridget just as the latter commenced maneuvering down the stairs. It was indeed a narrow fit, with the Omega’s hips banging into the walls and furniture as she surpassed fifteen and then twenty feet tall, but still she moved with determination through this final ceremonial obstacle course of the day’s many more-significant tribulations. For each step, Lexi was right behind her sister’s trailing heels, ready to help try and push her out through the door if it came down to that, even while knowing she wouldn’t be able to actually contribute much force after the Omega had spurted past a certain already-passed threshold of enormity. With seeming moments to spare before she became too large to escape without first having to batter down a wall, Bridget thrust herself through the front door, knocking one of the hinges askew in the process, and at once appeared to stand almost as tall as the whole two-story Alpha habitat.

“I mean, IF you’d wrecked my house, though…” Lexi said, leaning in the doorway now to watch the Omega soar. “…I totally could’ve invited myself to have a sleepover on the table by your bed again. You know, since you would’ve squished my actual room, and all.”

“Oh, was THAT why you wanted me to stay in there so long?” Bridget teased. The moment she’d stumbled out the door, almost rocketing now back toward her natural Omega hugeness, it was like a switch had been flipped, and whatever abiding communicative barriers preventing them from speaking as normal for the past two days had been categorically shattered. “Hey, I can still break your house, if you’re that desperate to stay in my room tonight. Obviously, that part’s not necessary if you really want to sleep beside me, but I’ve been gone such a long time, so who am I to say no if you-”

“On SECOND thought…” Lexi interjected with another sarcastic drawl, though her cheeks were starting to hurt from smiling so hard. “Rain check on you crushing my pad. All my stuff’s in there, so…”

“If you insist,” Bridget concurred. Standing now at forty feet tall and advancing more rapidly with every second, she nimbly took a seat on the edge of the table, letting her feet dangle off the side, then looked over her shoulder at her Alpha sibling who was still posted in the tiny dollhouse doorframe, bearing an earnest jittery full-body grin. The Omega winked. “See you in a second.”

Then Bridget hopped off the side of the furniture, palpably growing even during that split second when she was supported only by thin air beneath her, and suddenly she was gone. Lexi, stifling another laugh, stepped out of her house and ambled toward the table’s precipice. She heard or saw nothing for close to a minute, but right as she arrived at the edge, it came as no surprise, and fact a proportionally great comfort, to see the Omega abruptly rise high above her during the final twenty-foot sprint back to her ordinary fifteen-story stature. Gratefully decompressed in more ways than one, Bridget closed her eyes, rolling her head from side to side against her shoulders. Everything was put right again. Predictably, the Omega looked a bit worse for wear from this projected scale, at least on the exterior, having spent a part of today being literally worn, along with every other straining dirtying sweat-soaking Enforcement exercise performed with blind ultimately-needless urgency. Though the bliss in Bridget’s expression, and Lexi’s too, more than cancelled out these leftover filth-caked artifacts of the pair’s hard-fought strife today. The giantess extended her cupped hand toward the side of the table near-immediately, though the gratified Alpha still had her handler beat, effectively leaping off into her sister’s open clutches before they were even physically present to catch her. Of course, her confidence in landing upon Bridget’s palm was, as always, well-founded.

“Okay, there is actually one condition for you to have that sleepover in my room tonight,” the Omega sighed as she lifted Lexi up to the level of her face. “You have to give me, like, at least another two days to get used to you doing that crazy jump-off thing you love so much before you start getting that risky again. It’s been a while since I’ve had to be ready so fast. I’m good, I know, but I’m not magic.”

“Two days. Fine. You said two days. I’m holding you to that now.”

“I should’ve said three. Okay, no stunt lady jumps for two more days?”

“Deal.”

“Great. So, uh… besides… you know… throwing yourself in danger over and over just to test my reflexes for fun, what do you want to do now? As in like, right now? Because I want to do whatever you want to do.”

“Now?” Lexi repeated, both taken aback and deliriously enthralled by the possibilities that stretched before them like open ocean after all the choppy rapids were finally survived. Leaning back against Bridget’s fingers, she idly laid a hand over her stomach, which immediately gave an angry gurgle, as the emotional duress up to now had essentially deleted any appetite, despite neither Alpha nor Omega having eaten anything since yesterday. In fact, she hadn’t felt quite so painfully hungry or thirsty in all the past months of static wandering as she did in this instant. “First, I want to eat literally everything that’s in the fridge right now. And then maybe get something to-go after we empty everything out here.”

“Oh, I’m with you there,” Bridget groaned. Apparently in a similar state, her own belly gave a much bassier growl as though on cue. Nodding, she marched immediately toward the kitchen, with Lexi still on board. “Pad Thai and bubble tea and strawberry cupcakes?”

“As if you even had to ask,” Lexi confirmed. “I tried versions of all those things, while I was gone. At pretty much every place I could find. None of it was ever as good as around here. I think I’ve been going through withdrawal since then.”

“Same here,” Bridget said. Reaching the fridge, she yanked the doors wide open, letting the arctic breeze blast refreshingly over them both while she started scooping out leftover food containers with the hand not currently keeping Lexi at the level of her shoulder. “Sanctuary is… a wonderful place. It helped me, and it helps so many people, but… it’s not exactly the cuisine capital of the world.”

“Yeah, sort of guessed that.” In short order, cold plates of assorted dinner options were laid out in a feast arrangement on the table and, without guile, the Alpha started forking bites over her jaws immediately without even chewing in between. She and Bridget had never bothered with table manners around one another, unless Evelyn was there to gently scold them, and today, she felt more like a child than she had in years. “Maybe I should order that bubble tea soon…”

“Already done. Should be ready for us to pick up in ten minutes,” the Omega said with a tap on her phone screen, then spooned her own first bites, left equally as ravenous as her sister after their shared energy-draining odyssey. For a minute there was only the sound of relieved scarfing in the room, though Lexi still stuck close to Bridget’s hand, almost preferring to sit in her giant palm, but then again, the Alpha would’ve had trouble reaching their smorgasbord from there. “Okay, so. First thing on the list is now underway. What comes after we eat everything in the house?”

“Next,” Lexi said. Catching her breath from bingeing, she took a seat upon Bridget’s resting thumb. “I want to hear about your whole time out there. In Sanctuary. Every minute, from when you first got there. Literally, the whole time. Every detail you can still remember. About everything that happened, what you decided, or thought, or… felt. I, uh, was going to wait a little longer to ask that. But, you agreed, too, that… we’ve both waited. A lot.”

“Of course,” Bridget agreed, now tempering their collective smiley atmosphere with appropriate gravity. Without moving her thumb beneath Lexi, she stroked her forefinger down her sister’s back. “And after I finish, I’ll want to hear about yours. Just as much of it, too.”

“Deal,” Lexi said again, while chomping off a hunk of grape. Attentive, relaxed, and euphorically at-home in this moment and space, she nuzzled herself into the gap between two of her colossal sibling’s reposing fingers, surrounded by a wealth of much-needed sustenance, and stared comfortably up into Bridget’s ocean-like baby blues high above. “I’m ready whenever you are.”