A week went by. AJ and Ben were restored to their proper sizes, with Jason's help. Ben sent Jason out to break into his apartment and AJ's. Recover carkeys, wallets, spare clothing, AllTec access badges, toiletries, a beard trimmer.

"Anything else you need?"

"Yeah. Bottle of whisky would be nice. Something Scottish. Oh, and I've got a watch in the repair shop I need picked up. Bring a few hundred dollars. Repairs will probably be expensive."

"You serious?"

Ben glared at Jason. There was violence in his steel blue eyes. No more being pushed around by giants. From here on, Ben did the pushing.

"Okay, okay," Jason assented, arms in the air. He left AJ and Ben alone in his apartment. They wore bedsheets until proper clothing arrived. The two recounted their stories to each other, leaving out embarrassing details along the way. It took several days for Ben to forgive AJ for lying to him about him being the lone viable shrinking candidate in the world. She felt terrible about it, given all that had happened. But she was upholding a deeply classified government secret, and she stood behind that defense.

"Why'd you do it, AJ?" Ben asked about her attempts to sabotage the growth project.

"Do you remember your first day at AllTec?"

"Yeah. You sat me in a room and asked me dumb questions for three hours."

"I performed your pre-employment psychology assessment," she corrected. AJ was frequently annoyed with Ben's condescension toward her profession.

"Okay, what of it?"

"I came to conclude what I already knew about you. You're an arrogant, anti-establishment nutcase who has serious problems with authority," AJ said, blunt as always. Ben smirked.

"Thanks, I think. Anyway, what's your point?"

"Your girlfriend is the polar opposite, Ben. She's off-the-charts authoritarian, 'may God punish the wicked,' 'the death penalty is too lenient...'" AJ mimed God shooting lightning bolts from the heavens, complete with little “pchoo, pchooooo” noises.

"I get it, I get it," Ben said, trying to hide his amusement.

"She's the last person you would want to enlarge."

Ben saw where AJ was going with this. "Let me guess. There is no biological test for compatibility with enlargement."

"Ben, I'm not sure there's any test at all. We had a committee convene to review the psych evals of all the candidates, and they looooved Heather's profile. Most of them voted strongly in favor of her selection. And there were these sickening, gushing speeches being made in her favor. I dissented, of course. The girl was way too Old Testament for my tastes."

"They railroaded her through anyway."

"Exactly."

The two stared at the floor, contemplating what this meant.

"Anyway, when the AllTec board denied me access to you, just to see how you were doing, I got really concerned. I did some digging around..." AJ stopped. Her hand had been quivering, until Ben took it into his own. "Ben, they're going to do a lot more than just make Heather big. There are research divisions at AllTec I didn't even know about. Human pheromones. Longevity research. Muscle stimulation. Perhaps even others..."

"Yeah," Ben sighed, looking grim. "The tall woman is behind all this, I feel."

"The who?"

"Carter... Doctor uhh..." he struggled to place her first name.

"Rachel!" AJ blurted out. "A world-class cunt."

“One thing is clear, AJ. That woman will stop at nothing to complete her research. She tried to kill you. Fair to assume she’ll do the same to anyone else who gets in her way. She needs to be stopped.”

Jason arrived, carrying two suitcases containing AJ and Ben's personal effects. He set them down, along with a brown paper bag containing Ben's requested Scotch. "Oh, nice watch by the way," Jason said, retrieving the item from his jacket pocket. Ben snatched it from him and promptly put it back on. Good as new. 

After dressing in his own clothes, properly trimming his beard, and gelling his overgrown hair into a more respectable shape, Ben felt like his old self again. Only meaner. More determined. He looked himself over in Jason’s bathroom mirror for the first time in weeks. He’d lost a little weight, and was looking slightly tired. He walked from the bathroom to Jason’s kitchen, grabbed a few glasses and filled them with ice and a couple shots of whisky.

He came back into the living room, where AJ and Jason were planning the next steps forward. He handed them each a glass, raising his own. “Cheers.” The three conspirators clinked glasses.

“We don’t know how big Heather is, or how dangerous she is,” AJ said. “Right now we’re blind.”

“AllTec is blind too. They think you and I are out of the picture,” Ben retorted. “Plus we’ve got senior security personnel on our side,” he added, motioning to Jason. “We have the element of surprise.”

“Woah woah, hang on now,” Jason motioned his hands in the air. “What exactly are you guys planning to do?”

“Jason, Heather is dangerous. There’s more to her growth experiment than we’ve been led to believe. We have to stop her,” AJ pleaded.

“Ya’ll are talking like she’s godzilla for fuck’s sake. She’s a chick! Just saying we oughtta just go talk to her before calling in the Air National Guard. Jesus.”

Ben and AJ stared at Jason with utter disbelief.

“Y’know what? Maybe you’re right,” Ben said. “Why don’t you go see her? You could....” he searched for the right words, “assess her state of mind,” he finished, with a kind, insincere smile. “Heck, maybe she’ll even help us out. Whaddya say, wanna do a little recon, soldier?”

“I’m not stupid, Ben.”

Ben leered at Jason. He had always been much smaller than Jason, but suddenly Jason found Ben to be intimidating, even menacing. The ordeal of the past few weeks had either changed him forever, or awoken something that nobody should’ve ever fucked with.

“Okay okay! I’ll go. I’ll just check it out, see how she’s doing, and report back,” Jason said, surrendering completely. 

The next morning, Jason left for work. His two guests wished him luck and a safe return.

“Do you trust him?” AJ asked Ben.

“No.”

“I’m worried. What if he gets hurt?”

“Then that’s one less moron with a god complex we have to deal with.”