It was the end of a workday, and Morgan was more than ready to go home.

"Fuck my life. Why did they put the employee parking so far away." She moaned in despair as she stumbled in the general direction of her car. The only thing keeping her going was the promise of being able to get out of her uniform and get a good night's sleep. She then froze. She thought she heard something. Listening carefully, she could hear soft crying echoing in the parking structure. Following the sound, it went silent when she found a paper shopping bag on its side, shaking a bit like something was in it, or someone. Morgan thought about picking up the bag but decided against it, not wanting to scare who or whatever was inside of it.

"Hello? Is someone in there? Do you need help?" There was silence from the bag, but some justling. Morgan then got onto all fours to look inside the bag, shocked at what she found. The boy looked about five or six inches tall and couldn't have been older than sixteen. His makeshift clothes were torn in places, and it looked like he might have been bleeding. "Good heavens! Are you ok-" Only when it fired did Morgan notice the rubber band pulled along the kid's arm like a roman slingshot, the cherry seed he attacked her with bearly missed her eye, making a deep cut on her eyebrow. "OW! What was that for!?"

"Stay away from me, or you'll get worse!" The scared kid sounded even younger than he looked. But while Morgan refrained from getting back into firing range, she was not about to leave a child bleeding out in a barking garage.

"Is that your blood?"

"None of your business, cow!" Morgan sighed and rubbed her eyes, noticing that her brow was bleeding from his attack, only irritating her more.

"Look, is there someone like you nearby to help you?" There was only silence from the bag. "If your hurt, I can take you to a hospital." Again, he didn't respond. "Fine, I suppose I should just call the tiny shelter and-"

"No!" He screamed louder than Morgan thought he could. "No shelters!"

"Ok, no shelters, got it. But unless someone is already on their way to help you, I'll need to either call someone or take you somewhere." The little boy didn't respond for what felt like an eternity. But he seemed to work up the courage to speak again.

"Turn on your phone, then slide it in. If you try to grab me, you'll get to know my knife real good, got it?"

"Understood." Morgan did as she was instructed, slowly giving him her phone. She could hear him muttering something as he dialed, but the current situation was almost forgotten when she heard who was on speaker phone.

"Sup?"

"DAVID!?"

"Morgan, why do you sound a bit muffled?"

"Dave, why is your number on this woman's phone?" The kid asked, his voice sounding a little shakier.

"Joey? Why are you calling me on my sister's phone? What happened?"

"Dave, please come get me." The kid said, sounding like he was finally allowing himself to break down and cry. "I'm hurt, and I need help."

"Ok, Joey, you need to do precisely what I say. Let my sister bring you to the library, and I'll make sure that you have help, ok?"

"Dave, please, I want you. I don't trust her. What if she's bad?" The poor child wasn't holding back anymore, sobbing as he pleaded.

"She won't hurt you. I promise," David said in a voice he often used when Morgan was emotionally distraught. "I need to hang up and call your mom. Can you be brave for her and me and let Morgan bring you to the library?"

"Y-Yes, I think s-so."

"Ok, mind giving the phone to my sister."

"Y-Ya" Morgan then picked up the phone slowly, turning it off speaker phone and moving it up to her ear.

"I'm here."

"How badly is he hurt?" Morgan bent down to look at Joey, getting a clear look at the poor kid.

"He isn't actively bleeding, but the stains are coming from inside his clothes, so it's definitely his."

"Fuck! Ok, bring him to behind the library I work at, park next to the dumpster. I should be there before you."

"Ok, I'll be there."

"I know I don't have to tell you, but be careful with him. I'm not going to be the only one waiting for you, and these are not the kind of people you want to be on the bad side of."

"Omanuse, but understood." David then hung up on her, and she crouched down to look into the bag again. "Hey, Joey, right, do you want me to carry you in my hand or just pick up the bag?"

"Just pick up the bag. Dave might say your cool, but I still don't trust you enough to let you hold me."

"Fair enough."

...............................................................................................................................

Morgan parked next to the dumpster behind the library. She remembered when she and David tried to hang out with the bad boys there when they were in high school. Morgan failed their initiation test by vomiting after trying to smoke a cigarette. But now, it wasn't future fast food cashiers waiting for her. She could see David, a one-foot-tall woman standing next to him, as well as a three-inch tall tiny mounting what looked like a little cannon with a metal-tipped bottle rocket in it.

"Shit, they're not fucking around." Morgan then covered her mouth, remembering the child sitting next to her. "Sorry for the potty mouth. It just slipped out."

"Bite me, bitch."

"I'm just going to say that's the stress talking and ignore that." Morgan then grabbed the bag, got out of the car, and put her hands above her head as she started walking over.

"That's far enough." Said a voice that sounded like it was coming from speakers all around her, but she couldn't see any. "Set the bag down, get back in your car, and wait for further instructions."

"Whatever you say." Morgan then slowly sat the bag on its side, and walked slowly walked back to her car. She didn't start the engine, not wanting to spook the cannonier. She saw the kid walk out of the bag, and rush into the arms of the woman next to David, must be his mom, she thought.

"You may leave now, ma'am. Thank you for your help." The voice from the unseen speakers. Morgan then started her car, and drove off, slowly, not wanting to

"David is going to have some things to explain when he gets home."

...............................................................................................................................

Lara hated her new job. Sure, she could control the direction of her Enclave, but she missed working in asset acquisition. But ever since the scare at the theater, the pressure on her to accept a promotion to management was more severe.

"Ok, so, what do you have for me, Bridgit."

"Well, according to testimony from those involved. The kid was waiting for his mother outside of the bakery when he was abducted by the big. He was apparently going to give the boy to his daughter as a present." Lara rubbed her eyes with her only hand. It was not the first, or undoubtedly last, time she had heard about people from her Enclave being targeted for such reasons. But hearing about it happening to a child was bone-chilling.

"How did he escape?"

"Well, it seemed that he wasn't disarmed, and he used his rubber band to get a shot off at the bastard, who instinctively tossed him aside in the airport parking structure. It was then that-"

"She found and returned Joey to us. Morgan, that was her name, right? And we are sure that she is the same person who saved us when we were caught?"

"Yes, we double-checked. It seems her brother was already on our list of allies. He helped us found the safe house under the very library the recovery took place at." Lara looked over all the information they could gather on the gentle giantess.

"An air traffic controller..." A smile formed on her scared face, which made Bridgit sigh in exasperation.

"Ok, I'll bite. What the fuck are you plotting?"

"You say that like I have bad intentions." The three-inch woman said with a friendly smile on her face, one that was not returned by her five-inch friend/subordinate. "Right now, the Enclaves are limited by our lack of reliable transportation. Sure, we can keep our people in the suburbs and about half the city relatively safe from tiny-hunters. And our online presence and allies to help move supplies and personnel, but if we could flight schedules and flight manifests, we could start getting into face-to-face meetings with other tiny communities. Start organizing in earnest. Sure, we have online communications, but-"

"Lara, look at me," Bridget said as she moved her hand onto her friend's shoulder. "It's never going to happen. Your dream of getting full rights for people like us will never be more than that. The best we can do is just survive in a world that wasn't meant for us."

"And your really content with that?" Lara said as she moved her larger friend's hand off her shoulder. "Making our clothes from garbage or whatever thrift stores throw out, having to send people out to pick half-eaten scraps from the garbage because if we started growing our own food, we would be noticed and captured. I'm not saying it will happen in our lifetime, but maybe it will be in his." Lara held up a picture of Joey from his file.

"Look, I'm not saying this to be cruel, but you must let go of your past. The moment you shrank, you stopped being one of them. To the bigs, your an exotic animal at best and vermin at-"

"I know exactly how the world sees me!" Lara screamed, ripping off her eye patch, and exposing the round patch of scar tissue where her other eye should be. "I think it was made clear what my status is when my best friend, someone I called a sister, took my eye with a cigarette for not being grateful to eat leftovers off her plate!" She then unbuttoned her shirt, exposing a long scar that started from right above her crotch and ended between her breasts. "Or when the drug dealer she sold me to cut me open and ripped out my ovaries so I wouldn't get pregnant from him and anyone who could pay raping me!" She then pointed at the stump where an arm should be with her only remaining hand. "Or maybe I finally learned my lesson when my arm was twisted off by the last owner I had for daring to try and escape?!"

"Lara, please, I was only-"

"What, Bridget? What were you only trying to do?" Lara scowled as she got decent. "Telling me what everyone had from the moment I shrank? That I'm not a person anymore, just a tiny, that I should be happy subsisting off the waist of the real people who would kill me as casually as any other bug?" When Lara finished putting her eye patch back on, she locked her good eye with Bridget's. "Well, the only reason I'm alive is because I refused to accept that. I am a human woman. I have a masters in architectural engineering and a major in computer sciences, with experience in the field of robotics. And I will not let anyone, ANYONE, make me forget that."

"Lara, I-"

"I am submitting my recommendation to the council. With any luck, we will be one step closer to making a place for ourselves in this world. Or at the very least get standardized import and export of supplies and workforces." Lara said as she stormed out of the room. She understood where Bridget was coming from. She was born small, and just serving was all she understood. But Lara knew that they could do more than just survive, and she was going to prove it!

...............................................................................................................................

Morgan took a deep sip from her cup of tea, accepting the slice of the coffee cake her brother got out for her.

"You have interesting friends."

"I only really know a few of them. I try to keep my nose out of their business."

"Seeing the kind of heat they're packing, I get that." Morgan chuckled, remembering the metal-tipped bottle rocket, her mind cursing her with thoughts of how much damage it could do to some like her, or Lo. "David, are you in danger?"

"No, no, nothing like that!" He said, waving his hand. "I wouldn't have let them set up an outpost under my library if I thought they were violent."

"Then what is going on?" David then took a deep breath, trying to find the best words to describe the situation.

"Look, people have been spontaneously shrinking for no reason science can explain for about thirty years-ish, more than enough time for people to start organizing. They call their organization, the Enclaves, scattered communities of tinies who don't want to submit to larger folk for safety and security."

"But what do you do then?"

"Me? I'm not a part of it. No one bigger than two-feet is. But they can't do everything themselves, so whenever the budget for the children's section is more than I need, I spend the leftover to get them whatever they need. And I make sure no one finds them. Unfortunately, some sick people out there see those poor people as playthings, at best." 

"I see..." Morgan processed that a bit, remembering Lomasi's story about almost being abducted. "So, now that I know? I can't imagine they would be thrilled about you telling me any of this."

"What can I say? They trust me, and I trust you." David took a break from talking to eat some coffeecake but quickly resumed. "They aren't criminals or assassins. They are just people trying to live as close to a normal life as possible in a world that tries to erase their humanity."

"So, we're safe, ok... But how do you know that kid?"

"Just because I stay out of their business doesn't mean I never talk to any of them. Besides, I'm the director of the children's section. So helping kids discover the joys of reading is instinct." Morgan smiled at that, picturing her brother helping a class of tiny children learn the alphabet or something. He would have made a great teacher, patient, kind, and willing to help anyone walk through a problem, no matter their age. "Plus, his mom is one of my casual friends, Kinda like Jan and Tom, I think she might have a crush on me, but she knows I'm aromantic, so it's just sex and casual conversation."

"Ew!" Morgan recoiled, the sweet moment ruined by his crudeness. "TMI, bro!"