Charles watched as Rampage moved behind some buildings. She wasn’t visible now, but at the rate she was growing, he’d be able to see her over the rooftops again soon if she didn’t stop.

Several
thoughts struck Charles in rapid succession. Rampage had never been this big
before in part because, in theory, she shouldn’t be able to get this big. The
energies should have been too much for her body. Without her regulator collar,
they would have been; while the collar was still feeding her far too much
energy, it was performing its most basic function properly. It was keeping
Kitty Faulkner alive.

He heard
noises from behind him and realized the other STAR Labs staff had evacuated the
building. He was relieved to see everyone else appeared to be all right, but
not surprised. He had, after all, been the only one at the site of Rampage’s
release.

Charles’
eyes widened as he realized one other key piece of information. Before Rampage
was fully released, Kitty said all the collars had the same software problem.

Charles
spotted Kagome Mifune, a pretty lab assistant and intern. Of all the people he
saw at a glance, Kagome was the one most likely to both listen to him and be of
help.

As he ran
toward her, Kagome smiled at Charles. “Oh, Dr. Cleveland! Thank goodness you’re
all right!”

Charles
grabbed Kagome’s arm and tugged her toward the hole in the building from which
he had emerged.

“What are
you doing?” Kagome asked.

“We may be
able to help Dr. Faulkner,” Charles said, “but I need your help.

*****

Thinking in
the conventional sense was beyond Rampage at this point. Between the massive
influx of energies throwing her normal thought processes out of whack and the
rapid growth her brain was experiencing, she wasn’t able to think as much as
observe and respond. Still, she wasn’t rampaging either. She was simply trying
to understand what was happening.

As she
looked around her, the buildings grew lower and lower. Her head moved above
most, but not all of them. Then her shoulders did the same. Those shoulders
were still broadening as the influx of power fed into her musculature.

Rampage
tried to turn, but she was still growing. She lost her footing and fell
sideways. She reached out to lean on a building for support. It held her up,
but only barely; the structure groaned under her weight. She pushed off it to
stand back up, awkwardly regaining her balance. But the building couldn’t take
that final strain. It gave way, collapsing to the ground with a cloud of dust
and a thunder of falling rubble.

Rampage was
still simply experiencing, trying to grasp who she was and what her situation
was, although she lacked the words to articulate that concept. Dimly, she
realized she had stopped growing, but only a few of Metropolis’ tallest
buildings were bigger than her now.

She surveyed
the territory around her. She could see the river that ran along the city’s
edge, leading to the harbor. Thirsty, and dimly aware that the river would be
more viable drinking water than the ocean, Rampage walked there.

Metropolis police,
used to all sorts of menaces, had evacuated buildings near where Rampage had
been growing, including the one she accidentally collapsed, and were clearing
people off the streets along her path. They were vacant, but Rampage stepped on
parked cars and parking meters without even noticing them on this scale.

*****

“I don’t
understand,” Kagome said as she and Charles climbed over rubble to get into the
computer lab. “How can we help Dr. Faulkner from here?”

“All her
regulator collars’ software failed at the same time,” Charles said. “What does
that sound like to you?”

Kagome thought
only for a second. “They’re all linked?”

Charles got
back to the computer  he had been working
at when the software failed completely. “Exactly. The collars must run on some
sort of server or cloud. The machine you’re on is linked to the collar’s monitors,
but not the main operating system – yet. If we can feed a software reboot into
that system from here, we may be able to help Dr. Faulkner. We might be able to
get her back to normal; we certainly should be able to at least get her to
where Kitty Faulkner’s in control, and not Rampage.”

“Why do they
call her Rampage, anyway?” Kagome asked. “She’s really done very little
rampaging over the years.”

Charles
shrugged. “The name was applied to her by the Daily Planet when she first
appeared, and it stuck – kind of like Superman.” His fingers darted along a
keyboard. He pointed to a monitor several feet away. “Check to see if we’ve got
some data coming in on that monitor, please.”

Kagome
looked. “Got it.”

“What’s it
registering for height?” Charles asked. “Is she still growing?”

Kagome shook
her head. “No, she’s stable at … Oh, wow …”

Charles
looked back at Kagome. “What’s it say?”

Kagome
stared at the screen. “Twenty-thousand centimeters exactly.”

Charles
darted over and looked at the screen himself. “Oh, God,” he said quietly.
“She’s 200 meters tall.”

“A bit over
650 feet,” Kagome said.

Charles
darted back to the keyboard where he had been working. “At least she’s stable,”
he said.

“What do we
do?” Kagome asked.

“You work
from that terminal to get access to the collar’s software,” Charles said. “Hack
your way in if you have to. I’m working to get this ancient software working
properly from the source file on a floppy disk.”

Kagome
raised an eyebrow as she worked. “A floppy disk? Really?”

“Yeah,” said
Charles. “I just hope the source software isn’t corrupt, or we’re screwed and
somebody – maybe somebodies – could wind up dead.”

*****

Rampage had
walked to the river with relatively little carnage. She knelt beside it to
drink. She froze when she saw her reflection.

Things still
dimly registered only on Rampage, but the reflection looked wrong to her. The
shoulders were too broad, too mannish. The hair, with its odd Mohawk look,
wasn’t right at all. At a primitive level, Kitty Faulkner’s memories came
through. This wasn’t how she wanted to look. She wanted to look … pretty.

Still operating on instinct, Rampage willed her hair to grow longer, and to grow from the places where there was no hair in the Mohawk cut. She transferred energy being used for muscle size to her hair, making it longer and fuller, the way pretty hair was supposed to be in the dim recesses of her mind. When it stopped, Rampage had the body of a model (if a model were scaled up to 200 meters tall), and a full head of red hair that extended all the way to her ankles.

Satisfied
now with what she saw, she scooped knelt down to the river and slurped hundreds
of gallons of water from it.

*****

“Dr.
Cleveland,” said Kagome, “We’ve got a change in the data coming in.”

“Is it
because you’re able to input to the system?” he asked.

“Negative,”
said Kagome. “It’s weird. If I’m reading this right, Rampage has translated a
bunch of muscle mass into … long hair.”

“What?”

“Long hair,”
Kagome repeated. “Ankle-length, it looks like, so it’s more than 650 feet of
hair.”

Charles
thought for a moment. “That’s good.”

Kagome was
still working the keyboard of her terminal. “Why is that good?” she asked.

“It means
Kitty’s asserting herself in there,” Charles 
said.

“How can you
tell that by this?” Kagome said.

“Rampage
used to be slimmer, less of a female bodybuilder, until her mind was taken over
by a villain at one point. Then she beefed up,” Charles said. “If enough energy
is in her system, her mind – or whatever consciousness is controlling her body
– can manipulate it. If she’s manipulating the energy to look more like someone
Kitty Faulkner would want to look like –“

“It means
Dr. Faulkner is trying to work her way out,” Kagome said.

“Right,”
Charles said.

*****

Rampage was
curious about the running water. She followed the stream down to the harbor.
The water looked good to her. She walked toward it, intending to wade in.

The corner
of Kitty that was dimly getting through screamed at Rampage to stop. Normally,
getting wet probably wouldn’t hurt the collar, but it was scaled so far up now
that seams that normally would be watertight might fail. That could lead to
untold turmoil. But Rampage, operating like a small child, ignored Kitty’s
mental cries.

Police had
held off, knowing it was best not to provoke Rampage if they wanted to avoid
her living up to her name. But the Coast Guard never had dealt with her before,
especially not on this scale. They had mobilized into Metropolis Bay, and now
were shouting into a megaphone for her to stand down.

The problem was, Rampage couldn’t understand them.  It wasn’t a function of her thinking; she
simply was too big. Human voices were inaudible to her now; even with the
megaphone, all she could hear was a slight, high-pitched buzzing sound.

Hoping to get Rampage to stop, the Coast Guard fired off a warning
flare into the air above her. As it exploded, she looked up in wonder. She
reached up, hoping to grab it, but it dissipated. She smiled. Hoping to get the
boat – to her, the size of a large bug – to fire another flare, she started
moving toward the boat. Kitty’s mental screams no longer penetrated into the
childlike thought processes of the 200-meter woman at all.

*****

“I’m in,” Kagome said.

“The software looks good,” Charles said. “Let’s do this.” He hit a
key to transmit the codes to Kagome, who sent them into the network for the
collars.

The computer beeped. “We’re in,” Kagome said.

“Yes!”

Kagome looked at Charles. “Should I reverse the growth all at
once?”        

Charles shook his head. “No. We don’t know what her situation
is right now. Shrinking her all at once – especially this much – could put
Kitty in more danger. We need to take her down slowly. Let’s reduce her height
by … 10 percent per minute until she’s down to normal.”

*****

While the shrinking was gradual, one aspect of the change in
Rampage was instantaneous. As soon as she started to shrink, Kitty Faulkner
regained control.

Kitty looked around as her situation registered. “What the
hell am I doing?” she whispered in a voice that sounded like a tornado to the
Coast Guard crew. She started to back out of the water, raising her hands
defensively to indicate she intended no threat or harm to anyone.

The Coast Guard stood down.

Kitty caught a glimpse of her reflection in the water and
paused to look. She smiled. Looks like my appearance changed again during this
transformation, she thought. She liked it. There was a little more bounce to
her movements as she continued to move toward the shore – but not so much
bounce as to put anyone or anything at risk.

As she shrank, Kitty saw a STAR Labs ambulance coming to the
scene. By this time, she knew the drill for these situations. Protocol said she
would be taken to a lab facility to be monitored, but that would only be for a
short time.

Kitty smiled as she realized what must have happened. Well
done, Charles, she thought. She’d have to thank him the next time she saw him.

*****

“It’s working,” Kagome said. “Well done, Dr. Cleveland.”

Charles smiled. “I couldn’t have done it without you, Kagome
– and please, call me Charles.”

Kagome blushed. She flipped her hair back over her left ear.
“All right, Charles.”

Charles tilted his head slightly. Kagome really was a lovely
woman, he thought. “I’d like to thank you in a better way, if I could,” he
said. “Could I take you to dinner sometime?”

Kagome smiled. “I’d like that,” she said.