GENETITECH/BIOENG. confidential file
SUBJECT: --GOLDMAN, David
A.U. No.: --NC 654 55 D
S.C.I.D. No: --7474HHD
SUPERVISING DOCTOR: --Dr. Terrence LYNCH
ITEM: --Transcript of recorded testimony regarding subject's current condition. File for ASSESSMENT/INFO
[cont.]
Yeah, Carolyn woke up. She blinked and glanced around, wide-eyed, trying to shake off whatever dream she had been having.
I was still on top of the phone, my heart on the verge of bursting from my chest. Raymond stood on the table next to the phone, looking just as horrified as I felt. We stared helplessly at Carolyn, knowing any movement would draw her eye to us.
Just then, Denny stepped out from under the couch and waved his arms. "Hey, Giganta!" he called. "Over here!"
Just seconds before, Julie and Chad had stood down there with him. But now, they were nowhere to be seen. Denny stood alone, grinning defiantly as he shouted at Carolyn.
"Son of a bitch!" Carolyn screamed as she leaped up from the recliner. The pistol, which had been resting in her lap, fell to the carpet and went off, putting a bullet through the television screen. The glass shattered and popped, barely audible after the deafening gunshot.
Oblivious to the damage she had caused, Carolyn fell to her knees and scrambled across the floor to the couch. Denny had already retreated out of sight. Carolyn lowered her head to peer into the dark shadows beneath the sofa.
And let out a startled cry as my tiny convertible came barreling out. It bounced roughly over the carpet, its engine buzzing like an angry hornet as it shot underneath the coffee table. The top was up, so I couldn't tell who was driving. I prayed it wasn't Julie.
Carolyn lunged for the little car, but her hand fell short. The Fiat steered past the broken glass in front of the entertainment center and made a hard left. It was headed for the hallway.
"You little [EXPLETIVE DELETED]!" Carolyn shouted furiously. Her outstretched hand snatched up the pistol. She threw off a quick shot that missed, leaving a bullet hole in the wall. Her second shot caught the car in its side, spinning it to a stop as it sent shards of glass and metal flying from the wreck.
"Come on," Raymond said, grabbing my arm. "We've got to go, son."
I knew he was right, but I couldn't look away from my demolished convertible. Carolyn had gotten to her feet and was slowly approaching the wreck.
A single figure began to climb out of the broken window. I recognized Chad immediately, despite the blood on his face and in his hair. He moved slowly, pulling himself with one arm. His other trailed behind, limp and useless. He stopped when he noticed Carolyn's sandaled foot just inches away. The look on his face became one of resignation. He simply sighed and collapsed in defeat as she raised her foot over him.
Raymond yanked my arm, pulling me off the phone. "Get your ass behind that lamp," he ordered me, pushing me in that direction. "There's a cord back there goes down to the floor."
I heard Carolyn's sandal stomp down, demolishing the car and any unlucky to be caught inside it. She raised her foot and brought it down again and again.
"No time to argue!" Raymond barked. "Just go! I'm right behind you!"
We had been so close. We had spent weeks planning for this moment. Hell, Chad and Mr. Nichols had died for this moment. And now there was no hope of calling GenetiTech.
But Raymond was right. There was no time to argue. I turned and ran for the brown ceramic base of the lamp. It wasn't until I got there that I realized Raymond hadn't followed me. Hell, he had no intention of following me.
He was on the phone, mashing the glowing blue buttons.
Carolyn noticed for the first time that we were no longer bound to her wrist. She spotted Raymond immediately and stepped over to the table to snatch him up. A muted ringtone sounded from the earpiece.
"Oh, who the [EXPLETIVE DELETED] are you calling, Dad?" Carolyn snapped. She set the gun down and grabbed the phone. Just as she lifted it to her ear, I heard a muffled voice answer. "Nine-one-one. What is your emergency?"
In spite of everything that was going on, Carolyn managed to sound calm and rational. Ever the consummate liar...
"I'm sorry," she said pleasantly. Her father, writhing in her fist, tried to cry out. Carolyn cut him off with a vicious squeeze. Not that it would have mattered. I doubt anyone would have heard him.
"I was trying to get a listing for Anson Antique Mall," Carolyn said.
There was nothing else to do, so I took hold of the cord behind the lamp and I used my arms and legs to work my way down. The cord ran from the lamp to an outlet behind the recliner, with just enough slack to loop down near the floor.
Carolyn chuckled convincingly. "I'm such a ditz," she said. "I must have hit 9 instead of 4. I apologize."
I reached the nadir of the hanging cord and dropped down onto the carpet, landing in a crouch. I darted behind the recliner and fell to my knees, trembling.
"No," Carolyn said. "No emergency here. Sorry to bother you."
Through the gap between the chair and the table, I saw her turn off the phone. She just kept staring at it in her hand, shaking her head. Her father squirmed weakly in her other hand, but she paid no attention to him. She just stood there, breathing through gritted teeth, growing angrier and angrier.
She let out a furious shriek and hurled the phone against the wall. It shattered into half a dozen pieces and fell to the floor. Then, she turned her attention to Raymond.
The look on her face was terrifying. It was a look of pure rage. She glared at her father through narrow eyes, her jaw clenched.
Raymond stroked his daughter's thumb and said softly, "Pookie?"
Carolyn's fist tightened, and Raymond's struggles grew frantic. He pounded on her fingers as he cried out in pain. Carolyn's hand began to shake. Her fingers squeezed tighter and tighter. Raymond thrashed helplessly in her grip, gasping like a fish for breath that wouldn't come. Blood welled from his nose and mouth, and at last he fell still.
Carolyn continued to squeeze her father, crushing him in her trembling fist as tears streamed down her face. At last, she opened her hand and dropped his broken body on the floor. Then she sat down in the recliner and began to cry bitterly.
***
I inched my way along the wall until I made it to the couch. Julie and Denny were nowhere to be found. I ran under the sofa, stumbling across the carpet, desperate to put as much distance between me and Carolyn as I could. She was still slumped in the chair, alternating back and forth between braying and weeping quietly. From beneath the couch, I could see the crumpled form of Raymond lying, broken and bloody, next to her foot.
I reached the end of the couch and bolted across an open space to reach the corner, where I hid myself behind a flower pot. From there, it was just a short jaunt along the wall to the entertainment center.
There was broken glass scattered in front of the massive oaken cabinet, just below the shattered screen of the television set. I made my way to the back and peered into the darkness.
"Julie," I whispered. "Denny. You guys there?"
At first, there was no response. But then I saw movement in the shadows. Denny just seemed to materialize in the darkness, followed by Julie. I slipped between the cabinet and the wall to meet them.
"Dude," Denny said, his voice wavering. I could barely make out his face in the shadows, but it was obvious he'd been crying. He threw his arms around me and hugged me tightly. Julie slipped by him and did the same, pressing her lips to mine. As she hugged me, I could feel the dampness of her tears against my throat.
They turned and headed back the direction they had come, and I followed. There was a gap in the plywood back, just large enough for us to squeeze through. Julie went first, and Denny motioned for me to follow. I slipped through the hole, into the interior of the cabinet. Denny was right behind me.
There was some dim light spilling through the seams, but it was hardly enough to stave off the darkness. I blinked several times, waiting for my eyes to adjust.
"Thank God you're okay," Julie whispered, kissing me again. "I thought she was going to... you know."
"Yeah, I know," I said. I reached out and patted Denny on the shoulder. "She would have, if Chad hadn't distracted her."
"It should have been me, dude," Denny said miserably. "Chad never could drive, like, worth a [EXPLETIVE DELETED]. But he, like, always beats me at rock-paper-scissors, dude." He sniffed and turned away, wiping angrily at his cheeks. Julie and I both comforted him as best we could.
Outside, Carolyn continued to sob and showed no sign of abating.
***
As my eyes got used to the dim light inside the entertainment center, I realized we were sharing our space with a few scattered cassette tapes and a few dozen LPs, stacked upright against the side of the cabinet. Juice Newton sat in a rickety wooden chair, glaring down at us from the billboard-sized album cover.
There were a couple of doors in the front of the cabinet that were held closed by a magnetic latch, and a narrow crack in between them that gave us a limited view of the living room. Every once in a while, I would make my way forward, watching the doors nervously, terrified that they might fly open at any moment and leave me face to face with Carolyn.
But Carolyn remained in the recliner, still clutching the gun in her hand. Her wailing had given way to quiet weeping. She scanned the living room with red, teary eyes, looking for any sign of movement.
Apart from my occasional reconnaissance, we kept ourselves hidden in the space between the albums and the back of the cabinet. We had discussed the possibility of sleeping in shifts, but none of us could even conceive of falling asleep at the moment.
We were, not to put too fine a point on it, hosed. Our Plan A had been scuttled when Carolyn destroyed the phone. Plan B had gone down the tubes when Carolyn rolled up the border circuit and put it out of our reach.
Denny was suggesting we start looking for a way out of the house. We had considered that idea weeks ago, but dismissed it as too hazardous. Even if we could somehow get past Carolyn and make our way outside, we were stuck in the middle of the woods, miles from the nearest town. At our size, it would be a 50 mile journey just to get to the highway. And then, assuming we managed to make it without getting eaten by birds, bugs, or any bobcats that happened along, we still faced a 400 mile trek just to reach the outskirts of Midland.
I didn't even want to refer to it as Plan C. Hell, even calling it Plan Z would have been a stretch.
"Raymond did manage to place the 9-1-1 call," Julie said. "If GenetiTech is still monitoring her, that might raise a flag. And when they try to call back and she doesn't answer, they might send somebody to investigate."
I looked at her hopefully. "You really think so?"
"If Rachel were still running security? Without a doubt." She sighed. "Hell, Rachel would've found us weeks ago, and Carolyn would be sitting in an interrogation room with battery clamps on her nipples."
"We can't wait around hoping your friends, like, show up," Denny said. "Giganta's like seriously gunning for us. I think I'd rather take my chances outdoors."
"You can take the boy out of the scouts, but..." I said, trailing off. Denny actually chuckled.
"Besides, we'll have food and water out there," Denny said. "We stick around here long enough, Giganta will, like, starve us to death."
"Is there any way we can get the border circuit down ourselves?" Julie asked. "I mean, if we could get up to it, do you think the three of us could roll it off the shelf?"
I shook my head. "No. She's got it tucked behind some other junk up there. We'd never be able to..."
An idea popped into my head, one so obvious I couldn't believe it taken so long for it to occur to me.
"Jesus, I'm an idiot!" I said, leaping to my feet.
"What?" Julie asked anxiously. "What is it?"
"I'm the one who wrote the code for the border circuit. Before I modified Eddie's code, there were no safety protocols in place. He had to manually adjust the machine's settings to make it work. In fact, there's a hunk of carpet missing from the floor of his lab from one of his miscalculations."
Julie was nodding excitedly. "So all we have to do is back out the changes you made to the code! And then..."
I grinned. "And then, we can [EXPLETIVE DELETED] zap Carolyn!"
***
An hour or so later, the sun was just starting to come up. Carolyn wiped at her bleary eyes and stood. She looked around the living room and shook her head sadly. Then she tucked the gun into her waistband and headed into the kitchen.
Julie, Denny, and I slipped through the gap in the back of the entertainment center and inched along the wall. The hallway that led to Eddie's lab was just around the corner, but it would be a long trek in the open, with no cover. In fact, Carolyn had left the lights on so we couldn't even count on any shadows to help us stay concealed.
We heard the approach of Carolyn's footsteps. I peered timidly around the edge of the cabinet. Carolyn walked over to my wrecked car and knelt, using a paper towel to pick up Chad's crushed remains. Then she walked over and did the same for Mr. Nichols. She carried them into the kitchen. I heard the sink running, followed by the garbage disposal. Julie let out an audible gasp of horror, and I felt my stomach lurch.
Once Chad and Mr. Nichols were disposed of, Carolyn came back into the living room holding a silk handkerchief. She approached her father, knelt, and gently picked him up. As she stood, she lovingly wrapped him up in the hanky. She sniffled a couple of times, and fresh tears ran down her flushed cheeks.
"I'm so sorry, Daddy," she whispered as she cradled his body in her palm. "This wasn't supposed to happen. None of this was supposed to happen."
She choked back a sob and wiped the tears from her eyes. "I'm gonna bury you in the garden, right next to Mom. Okay?"
Carolyn slipped on her sandals and carried her father to the sliding glass door. We watched her open the door, step outside, and close it behind her. When she was no longer in sight, the three of us made a break for it.
It took us about five minutes to make it down the hall. The carpet didn't exactly lend itself to running, and the hallway was roughly the length of two football fields. The ceiling lights were burning brightly, casting our odd shadows in multiple directions. Every time I caught a glimpse of movement, I had to stifle a cry of terror. We knew Carolyn was indisposed, but still, I couldn't shake the fear that she might, at any moment, suddenly materialize behind us.
It was just terrifying to feel so exposed. And when we finally reached the door to Eddie's lab, I heaved a colossal sigh of relief.
The door to Eddie's lab was made of steel, with a wooden veneer on one side so it would match the rest of the house. It was mounted on a reinforced frame, and held secure by a complicated lock that could only be opened by typing the proper code into the numeric keypad.
There was also about a quarter inch of space at the bottom of the door, so it would clear the carpet without tearing it up. The three of us dropped to the floor and easily wriggled under the door.
Carolyn had left the lights on earlier, so fortunately we wouldn't have to grope our way around in the dark. From down on the floor, the lab was vast and empty. A huge field of beige short pile stretched ahead of us, with a rather sizable chunk missing from out in the middle.
Across the lab stood a couple of workbenches, one of which held Eddie's matter-proportioning matrix. That particular table was flanked by some portable steel shelves that extended nearly to the ceiling. The shelves had once been covered with spare PC parts and electronic components in stacks, boxes, and lying loose. However, during their sweep of the lab, the guys from GenetiTech had knocked most of these useless pieces onto the floor in their zeal to uncover Eddie's "secret project."
Of course, it had never occurred to them that Carolyn would hide the machine at her sister's house, along with all of Eddie's logs, notes, and schematics.
Denny took his position at the door, crouching down to peer into the hall. If he spotted Carolyn coming our way, he would warn us.
Julie and I hiked across the lab as quickly as we could, as being out in the open like that made us quite uneasy. When we reached the work bench, we ran beneath it to the power strip. Three cords, two thick and one thin, ran up to Eddie's machine. I hoisted myself on top of the power strip, placed my foot on the power switch, and stomped down. It took a couple of tries, but the switch finally snapped on and the machine roared to life.
The metal shelves were open, with each shelf bolted into a metal frame that towered above us. The shelf posts were steel as well, with bolt holes drilled an inch apart all the way up. It wasn't as easy as climbing a ladder, but it was certainly preferable to shimmying up the power cords. Julie and I made our way up the shelves until we reached the top of the workbench.
Eddie's pride and joy loomed like a building before us, a massive monitor and keyboard connected to a modified network server that could barely contain its custom parts within its plastic case. A thick cable ran across the workbench to a misshapen digital camera held together by black electrical tape and sitting in its docking station.
In the time it had taken us to climb up, the machine had gone through its bootup sequence. The monitor displayed an empty interface, and the light on the camera had gone green, indicating it was ready to go. The modified server had two industrial fans that sounded like a jet in a hangar, forcing me and Julie to shout just to be heard.
"Isn't Carolyn going to hear it?" Julie yelled.
"Hang on," I shouted back. I climbed onto the giant keyboard scrambled across the letters to the F5 key. I shoved it down with both hands, and a message popped up on the monitor reading "TERMINATE MSMI? (Y/N)"
(MSMI stood for "matter-proportioning matrix interface." I had wanted to give the application a snazzy name, like "ShrinkPad," but Eddie had vetoed it in favor of his lame acronym.)
As soon as the program ended, the extra machinery within the server went quiet and the industrial fans shut down. Julie climbed onto the keyboard with me, and the two of us managed to type out the command to bring up the source code in an editor.
The code had originally been written by a GenetiTech programmer named Greg Garret, who had died before seeing the project to fruition. Another GenetiTech manager named Reynold had gone through and added hundreds of meaningless comments that added nothing to the projects and served only to make sure his name was included. Finally, Eddie had made a few modifications of his own. In a nutshell, the code was indecipherable. I was able to figure out what went into most of the routines, and what came out of them, but had no [EXPLETIVE DELETED] idea what was going on in the middle. The bulk of the program was just a black box to me.
My own contributions to the code were structured nicely and properly commented, mainly because I had known they would be counted as part of my final grade. I had designed the graphical interface, including a wireframe model built from Eddie's raw data. I had actually appropriated an open-source CAD program and tweaked it to handle the input from the camera. There were also other routines for error trapping and logging, functions for scaling, and so on. But my biggest contribution to Eddie's machine had been the security routines.
I stood back, watching the code scroll across the monitor as Julie operated the arrow keys. The glowing characters scrolled past, their nested indentions weaving back and forth like a digital snake. I watched intently, waiting for my security routines to come into view.
I finally spotted the familiar header and shouted, "Stop!" Julie let go of the key. I read through the code, motioning for her to scroll down one line at a time so I could remember what I had done.
Eddie had hardcoded the scanner to record a value of -999.999 when it encountered the wiring of the border circuit. I had written a function to check the scanned data and look for that value. If it was there, the function would return TRUE. If not, the function would return FALSE, which would cause the program to automatically terminate.
As I was mulling it over, Julie called my name and pointed down at Denny, who was waving at us frantically. "She's coming!" he shouted. He scrambled for the blackboard and took shelter behind one of its metal wheels. Julie and I leapt from the keyboard and ran to hide behind the network server. The code was on the monitor, and there was nothing we could do to hide it. We just had to pray that Carolyn wouldn't notice or wouldn't know enough to figure out what we were doing.
A few seconds later, we heard Carolyn's sandaled footsteps coming down the hall. Julie's fingernails dug into my arm at the approaching sound. I took her hand and squeezed it tight.
The footsteps stopped, and a door closed. After about fifteen seconds, Denny grew brave enough to sneak a look. He ran back over to the door and peered underneath it.
"False alarm," he called up to us. A few minutes later, we heard a toilet flush. The bathroom door opened and Carolyn's footfalls receded back down the hall.
"[EXPLETIVE DELETED]," Julie whispered with a nervous giggle.
Once Denny gave us the all-clear, we returned to work on the code. Even though I had written the damn routine, Julie lost no time figuring out the best way to sidestep security would be to modify the function I had written. Working together, we inserted a single line at the beginning of the function, telling it to simply RETURN TRUE. By our reasoning, this would bypass the shutdown and force the machine to function, no matter what it scanned.
The program compiled with no problem. Unfortunately, we didn't dare test the application, because running it would cause the server to roar to life once again. Now that Carolyn was back in the house, we couldn't risk her discovering our plan.
Julie and I bumped the camera's docking station with our shoulders as hard as we could, shifting it slightly on the slick surface of the workbench until it was pointing towards the door of the laboratory.
Next, I ran through the procedure with Julie. Wait for the camera light to turn green, then press the button on the camera. Next, slip down to the workbench, run to the keyboard, and hit F10. Julie practiced and, after a couple of dry runs, assured me that she was ready to go.
She gave me a kiss for luck. And as she pulled herself back up on top of the camera, I made my way down to the floor. I shut off the power strip and ran through the process mentally, just to be sure I hadn't left out anything.
On trembling legs, I rushed across the lab floor to join Denny. He was as nervous as me, but he did his best to conceal it behind a manic grin.
This was it. By the time we were finished, either Carolyn would be zapped or the three of us would likely be dead...
"Ready?" Denny whispered, his eyes wide with nervous excitement. He placed his hands on my shoulders, and I nodded. Together we took a deep breath, and Denny said, "Let's go."
Denny dropped to his hands and knees and slipped under the door, and I followed him out to the hallway. As we made our way down the hallway, tight along the wall, we could hear Carolyn bumping around in the living room. She crawled into sight on her hands and knees, holding a flashlight in one hand as she peered under the couch.
I stopped, and reached out to pull Denny back. "Not too far," I whispered. "Or she'll be on us before we can get back to the lab."
Carolyn put her hand on the couch and climbed to her feet, snapping off the flashlight. Her eyes were swollen and her cheeks were flush from crying, but I was startled to see her smiling. We tensed up as she turned in our direction, but she didn't seem to see us.
"All right, guys," she said, her voice even and weary. "Look. I know I [EXPLETIVE DELETED] up bad, okay? But I promise you, just come out right now, and we'll act like none of this ever happened. I promise, I won't be angry."
Denny glanced back at me, rolling his eyes. Carolyn certainly sounded sincere, but we knew how effortlessly she could lie.
"Come on, Davey," she cooed sweetly as she paced around the living room. "You know I'm not gonna hurt you, don't you? You're my special little guy."
The pistol was still tucked into the waistband of her shorts. She fidgeted with the flashlight as she looked around the living room for any sign of movement. Denny waved tentatively, but she obviously couldn't see him from where she stood.
"All you have to do to end this is just come out," she said sweetly. "In just a couple of minutes, we can all be upstairs enjoying a bath together. You'd like that, wouldn't you Dave?"
"Dude," Denny whispered. "One of us is, like, gonna have to move closer to get her attention. If we go as far as the bathroom, we should, like, still be able to beat Giganta back to the lab."
I nodded, and Denny extended a fist. "Roshambo, dude."
"Things will be different," Carolyn said. "I promise. Just come out, and I'll be good to you from now on."
We pumped our fists in unison and counted to three. Denny threw scissors and I threw rock, much to his chagrin. "Dammit, I suck at this game," he muttered.
"It's just as well," I told him with far more bravery than I felt. "I mean, she's not going to hurt me, right? I'm her special little guy."
I expected a mocking grin or a roll of the eyes from Denny, but he shook his head.
"Dude, I think we both know that's bull[EXPLETIVE DELETED]. Giganta's nuttier than a sack of buttholes. No way she's gonna let any of us walk after what we pulled."
I sighed. "Yeah, I know. But like you said, if I don't go past the bathroom door, I should still be able to get to the lab before she catches me."
"I'm faster, dude," Denny said. "And besides, if I let Giganta get her hands on you, Julie will kick my ass."
He flashed me that same crazy, nervous grin I'd seen before. And suddenly, he bolted away from me, sprinting awkwardly over the carpet. He waved his arms and screamed, "Hey, Giganta!" as he ran towards Carolyn.
Denny had committed himself, and there was nothing else I could do. I ran back to the lab door, ready to slip under and warn Julie as soon as Carolyn was coming our way.
Denny stopped at the edge of the bathroom door, waving frantically. Carolyn, oblivious to him, was still trying to coax us out.
"Julie, if you and Dave want to be together, that's okay," she said, facing towards the kitchen. "I know you think I'm all jealous and everything, but I promise I'm not."
Denny glanced back toward me, then resumed waving his arms and screaming. Carolyn turns slightly as she paced towards us.
"I just want us to all be happy together, that's all. Just let me take care of you, and I swear, I'll..."
Her voice trailed off and her eyes widened as she stared down the hallway. She raised the flashlight and turned it on. The light fell right on Denny.
"Son of a bitch," Carolyn muttered.
Denny bolted and ran, stumbling across the carpet as fast as he could. I waited for Carolyn to begin her pursuit so I could warn Julie.
But she didn't. She reached across her stomach and drew the gun from her waistband.
"Denny!" I screamed. "Gun!"
He didn't have a chance to react before the gun went off. The bullet struck the floor several inches from him, punching a rough hole in the carpet and the concrete below. But the force of the blast stunned Denny and knocked him off his feet. He hit the floor with a thud.
Carolyn came bounding down the hall, her sandals slapping rapidly. She was smiling triumphantly as she came to a stop and looked down at Denny. He climbed woozily to his hands and knees, but stopped as soon as he saw Carolyn's massive feet to either side of him.
"Carolyn!" I shouted, desperate to distract her from Denny. I waved and jumped about, and her gaze fell on me.
"Well, now it's a party," Carolyn said cheerfully. She slipped her foot out of her sandal and nudged Denny with her toes. "Get your ass over here right now Davey, or say goodbye to another one of your little friends."
"[EXPLETIVE DELETED] that, dude!" Denny shouted. "She'll [EXPLETIVE DELETED] kill us all, just like she killed Chad!"
Denny cried out as Carolyn pinned him beneath her bare toes. He struggled to free himself, but she toyed with him mercilessly.
"Many times as we've been through this," Carolyn said to Denny, shaking her head, "and you still haven't learned when to keep that little mouth of yours shut."
There was nothing I could do to save him. There wasn't a promise Carolyn could make at this point that any of us would believe. Denny was a dead man, and we both knew it.
"I'm not playing, Dave," Carolyn said, her eyes still on Denny. "Come over here to me or I'll squash this little guy like a bug."
"Dude," Denny gasped from beneath Carolyn's foot. "[EXPLETIVE DELETED] run!"
And I did. God help me. I turned and wormed my way under the door. Denny's dying scream ended in a gurgle and the sound of bones slowly snapping.
"That's another one you've gotten killed, Dave," Carolyn called to me through the door. "And you know what? I'm gonna do the same thing to little Miss Julie when I catch her. And I'm gonna make you watch."
As soon as I was clear of the door, I ran as fast as I could towards the workbench. I glanced up at the machine as I neared it, but couldn't see if Julie was in place at the camera or not. I called her name, but couldn't hear her reply over Carolyn's litany of threats.
"And by the time I'm done with you, you're gonna wish I'd just [EXPLETIVE DELETED] killed you," Carolyn was saying. I heard the electronic beeps as Carolyn punched the numeric code into the keypad.
I reached the power strip, dove on top of it, and hurled myself against the switch as hard as I could. It clicked on just as the laboratory door came unlocked.
Overhead, the machine had roared to life and was going through its rapid diagnostics.
The door to the lab opened. Carolyn stepped in and looked around furiously. The machine beeped to indicate its readiness. Carolyn glared in that direction.
From under the workbench, I could see a dim web of red light, barely visible in the fluorescent lighting of the lab, splash over Carolyn. It expanded quickly to include the wall, the floor, the door, and the hallway behind her.
"I see you over there, Julie," Carolyn said with wicked glee. "Machine's not going to work without that [EXPLETIVE DELETED] plastic sheet, you little bitch."
She took a step towards the workbench, her hand raised to snatch Julie up. There was a blinding flash of white light, and Carolyn's angry screams were lost amidst the deafening crash of plaster, timber, and concrete tearing itself away from the rest of the house.
***
At first, I couldn't tell whether or not we had succeeded. The light from Eddie's machine had blinded me, and I was blinking furiously to get my sight back.
As the black spots receded and finally went away all together, Julie came down to join me. She threw her arms around me and hugged me tightly, and we both began to sob. There was no joy in our victory. So many people dead because of Carolyn--Linda, Eddie, Cecile, Randy, Mr. Nichols, Chad, Raymond, and Denny. Some had died through her negligence. Some had been slain in the heat of anger. And some had simply been brutally murdered.
The power was out in the lab. Wires, gas lines, and twisted rebar jutted from the portions of the wall still standing, held in place by what remained of the splintered posts and studs. Dust fell from the broken plaster overhead.
Julie and I made our way to the edge of the broken floor. The machine had left a concave hole that sloped down about five inches deep. The hole extended through a jagged gap of missing wall, out to the hallway. And there, in the center of the bowl, lay Carolyn on a shrunken piece of the floor. The door to the lab, along with part of the wall, had been reduced as well and still stood, although attached to nothing.
Carolyn was out cold, lying in a pool of her own piss. Julie and I approached her, walking carefully down the slope of crumbling concrete. She looked so tiny and fragile now. It was hard to believe she was the same monster who had so terrorized us.
I knelt next to her and gently shook her shoulder.
"Carolyn," I whispered. "Can you hear me?"
She moaned. "Dave?"
"That's right," I said, patting her hand. "It's me, Dave. Are you okay?"
Her eyes fluttered open reluctantly, and she looked up at me and Julie.
"Dave?" she said again, blinking as if she couldn't believe her eyes. Then she smiled weakly. "You're so handsome. I'd almost forgotten..."
Before she could finish the sentence, I punched her in the face as hard as I could.
"Who's your special little guy now? Huh, bitch!" I screamed as I punched her again and again. Her nose was broken and her lips were bleeding as she begged me to stop. But I couldn't. Not after everything she had done to us.
I don't know how many times I hit her. My knuckles were almost as swollen and bloody as her face, but I didn't care. I would have been quite content to go on until her teeth were gone, but Julie finally stepped in and stopped me.
"Easy there, Punchy," she said with a smirk. "You'll kill her if you keep that up."
The white hot anger abated somewhat, and I became aware of the pain in my hand. Glaring down at Carolyn, I stood up and spit in her face.
"Bitch," I snarled. "How do you like me now?"
Weeping bloody tears, Carolyn reached out a trembling hand and touched Julie's shin.
"Thank... thank you... Julie," she said with considerable effort.
Julie looked down at her for a second, then delivered a hard kick to the side of Carolyn's head. Carolyn let out a surprised grunt, then fell unconscious again.
"Don't you [EXPLETIVE DELETED] thank me," Julie said viciously. "I just don't want you to die before my friends at GenetiTech can get you into their lab."
***
So, I guess that's just about it. Tim Ware came out to the house a couple of days later to check on Carolyn personally, and we had no problem getting his attention. Once he realized just what had been going on, he brought a team out to go over the house from top to bottom. They boxed up Eddie's matter proportioning matrix and brought it back here to GenetiTech to see if somebody could figure out just how the [EXPLETIVE DELETED] the thing works.
They also went about collecting the remains of Carolyn's victims. They found Denny where Carolyn had left him, crushed to pulp in the hallway, near the edge of the broken floor. Raymond and Cecille were found in Carolyn's garden, buried next to the okra. Randy's crushed and desiccated corpse was recovered from the septic tank, along with some bones that likely belonged to Eddie and Linda. Guess there wasn't enough left of Chad or Mr. Nichols to bury.
Jesus, all those people. I still get sick when I think about it...
For the past few months, Reynold Kaplan and his team have been trying to find a way to reverse the shrinking process, but they haven't had any luck. Reynold was ranting the other day about how it's all Eddie's fault, that if he hadn't been so secretive about the whole thing and just shared his progress going forward, they'd all be on the same page. Personally, I think he's just afraid they're going to take his project away from him before he gets a chance to grab some of the credit. Reynold is a bit of a tool, if you ask me.
Um, he's not going to be reading this, is he?
***
I have no idea what happened to Carolyn. Julie and I haven't seen her since we arrived here at GenetiTech. I've asked a few times, but everybody around here is so tight-lipped about everything.
Because of Julie's former position here, we've been treated quite well. But let's face it, no matter how nicely they dress this place up, it's still a cage. Tim Ware refuses to let us have any contact with family or friends outside of GenetiTech for what he claims are reasons of national security. What's particularly troubling is that Julie seems totally fine with this. She keeps reassuring me that it's strictly temporary, and that things will go so much more smoothly if I'll just go along with the situation and quit making things so difficult.
What's weird is that I used to tell her the same thing when we were Carolyn's prisoners. It was so much easier to just surrender and lose ourselves, to simply accept our roles as pets or playthings. Julie used to get so angry with me for giving into Carolyn like that. She said it was sick.
And now, she's pretty much done the same thing with GenetiTech. She's drunk the Kool Aid, and she resents me for resisting. Ironic, isn't it?
We've grown closer, Julie and I. But I have no illusions about our relationship. It's one of convenience, and nothing more. We're not in love, but we need each other, if only to cling to some semblance of normality at times.
Sometimes, when the reality of our situation becomes too much to bear, all we can do is close our eyes and hold each other. And, for just a few brief seconds, we might be able to ignore the fact that we're trapped in a lab, possibly doomed to spend the rest of our lives the size of plastic [EXPLETIVE DELETED] army men.
And who knows? Maybe they will find a way to reverse the process. Maybe they will be willing to let us return to our lives outside the lab. Maybe one day, this whole horrible tale will have some kind of happy ending.
Hope springs [EXPLETIVE DELETED] eternal.
*** END Transcript 7474HHD
2003.03.14
18:56:44
Giantess World
Summer Job by Cayce