The Subject Pt. 02

So far below...

Then she turned back to Cassie, with a knowing look on her face, "Then it must be YOU who's leaving then, huh?" She cocked her eyebrows.

Cassie was taken aback at the accusation at first, "What are you talking about?" She asked.

Tanya shrugged. "I dunno know," she said, turning back toward the edge. "It just seems funny that you'd come here, to the roof of the library..." She paused, looked back over her shoulder at Cassie. "The tallest building at Westview?" The look on her face asked if Cass was getting the hint.

"I... I just like the view from up here." Cassie said, and knew immediately that it was a lie.

Tanya sighed as she faced about, frustrated with the game. "You're thinking about killing yourself, aren't you, Cassie?"

Cassie wanted to protest, to debunk the theory... but found that she couldn't. Her own subconscious was now accusing her of the thoughts that she had been denying. "...Yes..." She said, quietly. She looked away... too ashamed to look her friend in the face.

The dream Tanya acted as the real one would have. She walked over and put her arms around her, pressing herself into Cassie, allowing the woman to fall apart into her, "OH... TANYA...!" Cassie sobbed into the arms of her dream lover uncontrollably, letting all the pent up emotion and pain come out in one long overdue flood.

"I-I-I just CAN'T do it! I can't go on... without you, Tanya..." Cassie sobbed. "I'm... I'm not WORTH anything without you...!" She suddenly felt her head snap up, her face framed by the hands of her lover.

Tanya had a stern look on her face.

"Don't you EVER say that!" The apparition snapped, and Cassie lost track of where the dream began and reality ended. "You're worth more than just what I say you are..."

"But..."

Tanya shook her head at Cassie's feeble protests, "Cassie... while it may be true that I made your body in a lab, it's always been up to YOU what's carried inside it." She smiled lovingly, "And all I've ever seen inside you was pure love and wonder."

"But... you don't understand, Tanya..." Cassie wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. "I'm not that STRONG without you..."

Tanya released her and slowly stepped back, fading. The sky behind her showing through her already. "Well, kiddo..." Her voice floating away on the wind, "I guess you'll just have to figure out how to make yourself stronger, then... won't you?" She beamed that reassuring smile, and with a wink, she faded away.

Cassie stood there atop the roof in her dream, hugging herself for a long time, pondering what she'd heard from her dream within a dream. She felt the emptiness that Tanya left inside her, felt the loneliness and guilt and pain and misery. She wanted it out of her SO badly that she knew she would do anything to make it stop.

"There's not much you can do, is there?" Said a gentle voice behind her. Cassie turned to face the speaker, and saw Dr. Harry Wolper smiling at her from the doorway to the roof.

"Hello, Harry." She sniffled as she wiped her eyes. She'd often dreamt of Harry, especially when she felt the need for guidance. His was the face that her dreams gave to reason.

"There's really nothing you can do to stop the hurting, you know." He said, simply, his blue eyes twinkling. "And it's just as well that you shouldn't try to stop it either."

Now Cass looked puzzled, "I don't understand." She answered the man. "Why would I NOT want to stop hurting?"

Harry smiled and waved for her to follow him down the stairs and into the library. They reached the top floor and Harry explained as they walked along the aisles of ancient books.

"Your loss... your pain... the emptiness. It's all homage to Tanya's impact on your life. Embrace the fact that she was someone worth missing..." He stopped then, looked over his half-moon glasses at her, "But don't let it be ALL that you remember of her..."

Cassie smiled at him. It would have been exactly what he would have said to her, too. They continued walking, Cassie remembering a conversation that she'd had with Harry once before they parted ways. Cass off to follow Tanya, Harry off to seek new experiences beyond Westview. This remembrance blended perfectly into the dream as Harry stopped to peruse the volumes of books at his fingertips. "The sum total of all Westview's knowledge lies here, did you know that?"

Cassie admitted that she did. As each professor neared retirement, he or she was asked to write one final paper, a last thesis, if you will, to be added to the library. Some wrote tomes of their experience at the college, some stayed within the confines of their field, passing on their expanse of knowledge for future generations, some merely added books that had already been published by them.

"What will you be adding, Harry?"

Harry scratched his chin, thoughtfully, and then chose a thick book from the shelf. "This..." he said, "is my contribution." He handed it to her, and she opened its pages to peer inside.

"What is it?" She asked, leafing through the pages of exotic symbols.

"It's the Book of Genesis, my dear." Harry said, smiling. "I believe that there's more to science than mathematics, more to life than mere biology." He winked at her. "One day, a scientist will be looking down a microscope and find God staring back at him."

Cassie frowned at the alien symbols on the page, "Why is it written in... Hebrew?!?"

"ANCIENT Hebrew," Harry corrected. "No knowledge should be simply GIVEN away." He stated. "It should be worked for in order that wisdom is achieved, as well." He paused, peering over those glasses, "Knowledge without wisdom is a dangerous thing, you know."

Cassie set the book on the shelf, knowing that it was indeed the very same as the one that Harry had left when he retired from Westview. "I didn't know that you were such a spiritual person." She commented warmly.

"Well... I believe in God, certainly..." He said, and to explain his beliefs in a style that only he could master, he continued, "But I would hate to believe that rainbows and... pretty young girls in summer dresses could be explained with such mundane tools as refraction of light and genetic biology." He shuddered at the thought. "No... there has to be something more than just science, doesn't there?" He asked as he disappeared inside a field of brilliant light.

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Cassie was jostled awake by sudden movement and lots of light...

A lurch, and she knew she was airborne again. She blinked a few times to let her eyes adjust and when they did, Boris' face filled her vision, reminding her of just how small she really was. It would have been a frightening experience, but Cassie was calmed by his warm smile.

"Guess what, sleepy head?" He said, "We're home."

Cassie was able to see beyond Boris' shoulder to the small cottage that Harry had called home. It was here that Tanya had brought her to save her life the first time. It seemed fitting that she gravitated here when there was trouble.

Whether it was the fading remnants of the dream, or the sight of Harry's old place, or the idea that she was back at Westview, she didn't know, but something inside her told her that everything was going to be okay.

Soon she would be back to normal size. Rita would be cured as well, and she and Boris would probably end up together (Cassie saw the way they looked at one another, there was no mistaking what was happening to them). Once Boris had found the cure for what was happening to them, Cass could finally move on and get to the business at hand...

Hunting down...

And KILLING Cassandra Willover...

Chapter Thirteen

"Dr. Wolper left you his house?" Rita asked, incredulous as they entered the small home.

She followed Boris through the foyer into the den, where she set the box containing Cassie on the large mahogany desk.

Boris was shuffling through the pile of mail that he had picked up inside the front door. "More or less." He answered. "When Harry went off on his 'excursion,' he tried to deed the house over to me, but I wouldn't let him. So, he told me that I had to house sit until he comes back."

"Oh?" Rita's fingers were busily working at the catches and wires that were keeping Cassie inside the box. "When's he coming back?"

"Never." Boris said absently, then smiled broadly and produced a piece of mail with a flourish, discarding the rest to the desktop. "AHA...!" He said, "Speak of the devil... Gotta postcard from him."

Rita had finished releasing the opening to Cassie's container, and she stepped out onto the desktop. It looked exactly the same as it did the day that Cass had met Harry Wolper for the first time. The same polished top, the same books stacked neatly between two small bookends. She looked at these, for the first time recognizing them as horses, sculpted out of rose quartz.

She figured that back then, they probably would have appeared to be like large hobbyhorses to her, she being tall enough to look over the tops of the books they held with their hooves. Now, however, they were almost larger than life, and her head just barely reached the middle of the smallest book.

She breathed deeply. The odor of Harry's cigars still hung in the air, but rather than being an acrid smell, to Cassie it was the most heavenly smell on Earth. This was the place that Tanya had come to save her life. This was where it was proven to her that she could be and was loved by someone. This place, this small vine-covered house, would always be home to her.

"He mentions you, Cass." Boris read from the card.

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Boris—I am coming to the conclusion that the ratio of beautiful people to unattractive ones increases the nearer the equator you become. Will put my theory to the test, next stop—Quito, South America.

Give my love to the ladies, and each of them a kiss from me.

-Harry-

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The front of the postcard was a picture of a waterfall in Antigua. Boris placed the card down atop a pile of others from Harry showing pictures of Moscow, Athens, Alaska, and points in between. He wished that he knew of a way to contact him about Tanya, but Harry never stayed in one place very long. He knew that would have to wait until Harry had to contact him in some sort of two-way contact. He sighed and looked at Cassie.

She raised her eyebrows, set her fists on her hips and cocked her tiny head. "WELL?" She asked, "where's my kiss, then?"

Boris chuckled, and placed his hand down, palm up, on the desk, Cassie took a good start and leapt onto it. Boris lifted her up as she held onto his upturned thumb for balance. Once she had been raised to the proper height, she turned her tiny cheek to him, and he brushed it ever so gently with his lips. Cassie couldn't help but giggle, then noticed Boris' nervous gaze toward Rita.

Knowing he was emotionally twisted at the moment, she decided it best not to chide him for giving her so innocent a kiss, and thanked him graciously instead. She settled down as if his palm were her throne. Boris was amazed and worried at how light she was. He knew that she had shrunk even more, despite his precautions with the magnetic shielding. He also knew that constant readings of her, measurements and the like, should be taken but he couldn't, knowing that any setback in Cassie would be like a bullet in Rita's chest, since the same thing was happening to her.

Again, he missed Tanya's candor and ability to make even the worst situation seem bright. He failed miserably in the bedside manner department and tried his best to evade the problems altogether instead.

"Would you ladies like to see the garden?" he asked. "It's too late to call Dr Brennan now, and he won't be in his office until the morning."

Cassie chimed in from Boris' hand, "Oh, I'd LOVE to go out to the garden, Boris. Lord knows I could use a walk." Her legs were cramped from not moving at all during the long car ride, and she looked forward to exploring the backyard a bit.

Followed by Rita, Boris carried the tiny redhead carefully out the backdoor into the spacious garden at the back of the house. Rita gasped when she saw it. "It's beautiful..." She whispered, almost reverently.

The spacious yard was fenced at the far end, both sides gated by a hedgerow that allowed total privacy. A long path of cobblestones wound down the center of the yard and circled a pond, which seemed to be teeming with life and completely surrounded by wildflowers. Large Grecian urns were placed, randomly, it appeared, and were filled to overflowing with long strands of hanging flowers, that blanketed the ground around the base of the pots.

"Harry's wife started this when they first moved in," Boris explained. "Harry hired the school groundskeeper to come in once a week and keep it up after she died. He always said that it was a nice place to come to get away from the structure of research."

"It's wonderful." Rita said, and found a fine place to perch on one of the Mediterranean style chairs in the shade of the house.

Cassie tapped at Boris' palm, getting his attention. She motioned for him to put her down, which he did, atop the flagstone that began the path to the pond. She jumped off the stone and waved at him as if she were about to trek off to parts unknown, and began making her way through the waist-high grass. She was in awe at the wonders of nature around her. She didn't get a chance to be outdoors much at such a small size, and now that she seemingly had no choice, she decided to take advantage of it.

The grass was soft, not weedy like a normal lawn, but carefully cultured and cut. There were a few flowers that blossomed over her head, and the late afternoon sun shining though their colorful petals had her staring in amazement of them. Cassie found herself almost thankful for her current size. The smells of late summer, the grass, the flowers, were all striking and lovely to her enhanced senses.

She had wanted to take a walk to the pond at first, after spotting it from the vantage point of Boris' palm. But now, she wasn't quite sure where it was, her perspective being that of a mouse, she figured. She wandered in the jungle of grass for what seemed like days, wondering at every movement, listening to the music of the air against the grass, and studying the stray insects that scurried across her path.

Finally, she climbed atop one of the cobblestones and let the warmth of it fill her body with pleasure. She looked back to see how far she had come, and was humored to find that all the time that she had walked had only taken her twenty feet from where Boris had put her down. She could see them there, Boris and Rita, in the shade of the house.

Her eyes growing more sensitive as she grew ever smaller, she was beginning to see the outlines of heat radiating from them, as well as the colors in infrared and ultraviolet. They were beautiful this way. She thought. Then smiled to herself. She could also see something radiating from them that she didn't need hyper-enhanced vision to see.

Rita was at peace. She didn't have any reason to be, she knew, but she was just the same. She had watched the tiny woman they were racing to save, wandering aimlessly through the yard, wondering at everything around her, and she was amazed. She knew that Cassie should be terrified of the inevitable, should be screaming and kicking against her fate... and yet... she wasn't.

There she was, on a flagstone sunning herself like some miniature goddess. How? Rita asked herself. How could she be so at ease, knowing that at any moment, she could just shrink completely out of existence? Boris' hand touched Rita lightly on the shoulder.

It was as if a light went on in her head when she looked at him. Cassie had total faith in this man who, admittedly, saved her life once but now was completely dumbfounded with the problem at hand. Still, she believed in him, put all her faith in him. The strain on Boris must be unbelievable, she considered. To know that someone is counting on you to save them from not just death, but non-existence, a fate worse than death. The pressure to find a way to save her must be stifling and yet... he continues.

Rita was so enraptured by the sudden revelation that she almost failed to notice Boris pointing across the yard to the pond. A duck swooped down and executed a beautiful water landing in the center of the pond, followed by another, just a few seconds later. They circled and bobbed around one another, and it wasn't long before Rita realized that they were mates.

"They show up about this time every year," Boris said. "They stay a few weeks and then they're gone again." He was entranced by the waterfowl. "Cool aren't they?" He said, "I mean, the way they stay together like that?"

"Very cool." Rita answered, but she wasn't sure if she was talking about the ducks. A thought occurred to her then, and much as she hated to break the reverence of Boris' engagement with the birds, she asked, "What's the deal with Willover?" Boris looked at her curiously. "See I know the history of her and Tanya and Cass and all," Rita continued, "but what I WANT to know... is, why the hell was she like that in the first place?"

Boris stretched out his long legs, then drew them back in again. He leaned forward, elbows on knees and spoke out into the distance. "She's... really had it rough, I guess." He said. Then quickly added, "Not that it's an excuse, mind you." Boris leaned back in his chair. "Harry knew her better than anyone, I think. She and he went through pre-med together. He said that she was way young when her mom died and ended up being raised by her father. I guess he was a big shot in military intelligence or something, and didn't really care for her all that much. Harry said that she always seemed obsessed with success. Probably one of those kids who never could do right for her dad. He ended up being a senator I think. Harry always said that the only thing that power respects is more power, so I imagine that being raised by a megalomaniac would make you into one as well."

He paused, and then chuckled a little, "I don't know, to tell you the truth... I always thought that she was just a royal BITCH, myself." He paused again, longer this time, looking toward the stone Cassie was on, remembering, "But you know..." He began to nod his head slowly; "Tanya liked her, even when she was a bitch... Somehow, she saw something likable inside her... I guess there was SOMETHING there, because..." He shook his head, "Cassie isn't ANYTHING at all like Willover, and they're supposedly exact in every way."

Rita smiled, "Tanya was the kind of person who could bring out the best in people."

Boris reached out his hand and placed it on top of Rita's on the arm of her chair, "I know a few other people like that."

Rita started to blush and swiftly changed the subject, "Uh... Can I ask you something?"

"Sure." Boris answered, putting his hands back in his lap.

"Is there somewhere around here where I can get some clothes?" She asked. "I packed a few things, but..." She stood up and relaxed. It was obvious that her pants were about three inches too long now, "as you can see..." She trailed off there, unable to state the obvious.

Boris swallowed a gasp. He didn't notice the change, but now it was apparent. Rita had lost at least five inches of height. He mentally kicked himself for not noticing that her clothes didn't fit. They must be terribly uncomfortable, as well as a constant reminder that she was shrinking.

"Sure!" He said, brightly, "I can run you into town, since there's nothing we can do until tomorrow when Dr. Brennan gets back."

"Oh, you don't have to go with me, Boris." She smiled, "I won't subject you to shopping with me." She laughed.

"Hey!" Boris said, standing, "I happen to like to shopping, actually. Just let me get Cassie settled in and we'll be off, okay?"