The Subject Pt. 02

"I love Cassie with all my heart, and she loves me," Tanya stated, simply, forcefully, "There is nothing that we wouldn't do for one another," She paused, "She knows that I would die for her, and I know that she would die for me, and we would both rather die than to hurt one another." Rita seemed to understand, or at least gave the impression in the softening of her gaze that she could connect with the feeling that Tanya was describing, "Cassie would never hurt me, Rita. I know you're thinking that somehow she was controlling you..."

Tanya frowned, and in the pause, Rita interjected. "Hypnotism." She said, bluntly.

"WHAT?" Tanya heard, but her mind refused to conceive the notion.

"Cassie has been taking these hypnotism classes, right?" Rita seemed hell-bent on convicting Cassie of the crime, mostly to acquit herself of any wrongdoing, "Who's to say she didn't hypnotize me?"

Tanya laughed, highly and free, the idea was so absurd...and frightening, "Okay... say she did," Tanya crossed her arms in front of her small bosom, challenging Rita to convince her. "Why?

Why on Earth would she want to shrink me?"

Rita was silent for a moment, Tanya thought she was formulating her answer, but realized quickly that she was searching for the gentlest way to bring it across, "Umm... Didn't you say that Cassie is an exact duplicate of your psycho ex-professor?" She offered, quietly, chewing her lip. Tanya agreed that she was, and hesitantly, Rita replied, "Did you ever think that maybe Cassie is being taken over by the personality that she has in her memories?"

There was a long and chilly silence. Tanya was alternately angry with Rita for accusing her lover, and with herself for allowing the idea to have merit in her head. She could not stop the picture of Cassie holding the thermometer earlier, smiling... "I don't hold a grudge." She had said. But wasn't the smile a little more mischievous? A little colder, now? Tanya shook her head violently. "No, Rita..." She spat. "I refuse to believe that Cassie caused this."

Rita sank. She needed so badly to understand, to be understood, that her friend's rejection made tears well up in her bright blue eyes, "I'm sorry..." She whispered, "I DON'T want to believe it, anymore than you do...but...I don't know what else to think, Tanya..."

Tanya stepped toward Rita, suddenly sorry for her words. She stopped short, though, uncomfortable with the size of her assistant, "Rita, it's... it's okay." Tanya said. "I believe you when you tell me that something happened to you that caused you to do this." Rita looked up, light returning to her eyes. "I know that you would never want to hurt me, and I know that you're confused, but I promise you that we'll get to the bottom of this." She smiled up at her taller than normal friend.

"Thank you, Tanya!" Rita suddenly flung her arms around Tanya, encircling her in a hug. Tanya stifled a scream, allowed the show of affection, despite her terror at the grip of a gigantic woman on her body. "OH!" Rita sat back, suddenly, "I... I'm sorry..." She blushed, embarrassed by her actions.

"It's okay." Tanya lied; readjusting the loose gown she'd fitted herself with. It seemed a bit longer down her legs, and she bit her lip now to keep from panicking, "Right now, I think it would be a good idea for you to just go home and get some rest, 'kay?"

Rita stood up, slowly. Tanya backed up, her heart beating harder as Rita stretched to her full height. Not a petite girl, Rita was easily five feet nine. Tanya's perception, had shrunk with the rest of her body, and now saw Rita standing at over fourteen feet tall. Her towering frame was decidedly frightening, and Tanya backed away, feeling like a child trying to face down a nightmare. She tried to hide her trepidation with thoughts that had escaped her until now. "Rita? Where is the shrink ray?" She said, and ignored the trembling in her own voice, hoping that Rita would do the same.

Rita frowned, looking guilty, "I... I don't remember where I put it," she said, "After I..." she stopped, chewed her lip, "...did THIS to you... I don't remember anything. I kinda 'woke up' halfway home, not knowing how I got there, or what I had done after I..." Tanya saw her struggling with the admission 'I shrunk you' and let her off the hook by asking the other question that came into her head suddenly.

"How did you get back in here?" She remembered that Cassie had changed the security code for the door locks before leaving... or had she, after all? She ignored the last part, or tried to. Rita shrugged, half smiling, "I designed the security program, remember?" She looked again with a little bit of guilt in her eyes, "I put in a backdoor code, Dr. Vale." She hurriedly explained, "I meant to tell you, honestly. I just wanted us to have a way to override the system in case of an emergency."

Tanya smiled half-heartedly. Rita was so worried about doing the right thing. She was always afraid to take a chance on her own, for fear of doing something that would upset Tanya, even at the expense of allowing her own burgeoning genius to be stifled. She reminded Tanya of herself, not too many years ago.

"It's okay, Rita," She said. "It was a very good idea. We'll keep it that way." Tanya readjusted the t-shirt dress she was wearing, realized what was covering her, "Oh, and thanks for loaning me the shirt," She said, "I needed something to cover up with since..." all her own clothes were too large for her tiny body. This part went unsaid, and was therefore spoken louder than the rest

.

Rita started to say something, a look of pity in her eyes as she stared down at the miniaturized woman, but Tanya stopped her, "Please... Rita, just go." She said, and hoped that she didn't sound too cold. "I'll call you when this is all straightened out and we'll find out why it happened. I promise."

She turned her back on the woman then, and breathed a sigh of relief when she heard the door of the lab open and close, signaling her exit. Tanya returned to her place at the window. The rain had stopped, and the light outside was gray, dark and dead.

But not as dark or as dead as her heart.

What if it were true? She'd always had a sense of pride, albeit a small sense, that it was her actions and feelings for Cassie that had changed her from the vindictive, cold-hearted bitch that she'd copied into the woman that she now loved. But, there were thirty years of memories and feelings in Cassie's head that said otherwise. All of Willover's thoughts and dreams were Cassie's. Did she really believe that the few years that they had spent as lovers could undo the decades of damage that Willover had done to herself? Could she have been so pompous to think that her love would conquer all?

She was stewing these things in the black cauldron inside her head when the familiar swoosh of the door told her that Cassie had returned, at last.

"Tanya?" Cassie called. Tanya realized that she would be hard to spot at her size, let alone sitting in the unlikely position of her perch upon the windowsill. Still, she waited until Cassie repeated her name before answering.

"I'm here." She muttered, her gazed still fix on the window.

Cassie rushed to her side without looking like she was trying to rush. "Boris said that he'd be here in a few days," she said, "He's going to fly out as soon as he can find someone to cover his classes at the University."

"That's good." Tanya murmured. In a few days, she knew, she would probably be much smaller than she was now. "Thanks for calling him." And secretly, unbidden, she wondered if she had called him at all.

Cassie figured she was bummed out, but there was something else... a coldness of sorts, "Are you okay?" she asked, and Tanya would have laughed at the stupidity of the question, had she had any humor left inside.

She simply shrugged, and tried to ignore the voices in her head arguing with her common sense and emotional attachment for Cassie. "Did he give you any suggestions on how we might reverse this?"

"No..." Cassie whispered sadly, "But he said he'll start looking into it right now. He has all the research notes that you and he took from your studies of me. I'm sure that he'll think..."

Tanya cut her off, "Rita was here while you were gone..." Tanya didn't look at Cassie, she couldn't, it seemed. She didn't want to see the look on her face for fear that it would be one of guilt.

Cassie's voice, however, was full of concern for Tanya, not guilt over some secret that Tanya was imagining. "Are you alright? Did she do anything?"

"No. She just... talked." Tanya shrugged, her t-shirt dress slipping from her small shoulder. This drove her over the edge. Fear makes the human mind a playground for self-deception. Tanya's heart was still in love with Cassie, but her mind was full of doubts. The battle was a losing one for her emotions. She crammed herself tighter into the corner of the window, "You haven't been practicing your hypnotism techniques on her, have you?" Tanya asked, regretting every word, but saying them just the same.

There was a long pause. Tanya finally looked up at her crimson-maned lover. A look of shock shone in her beautiful green eyes, "Why..." She stammered, "Why would you ask that?"

Tanya's fearful mind was fueled by Cassie's non-answer, "HAVE YOU?" She insisted.

Cassie frowned, "No, Tanya, I haven't." She seemed angry, feeling the accusation in Tanya's voice. "Why do you ask?"

Her gaze went back to the window, "It's nothing." Tanya lied. But at the end of the lie, riding on a wave of fear and hatred of her situation, came the words that she felt tearing at her heart like a spill of broken glass. "...She said you made her shrink me."

Cassie said nothing. Tanya wished desperately for Cassie to either deny the claim or admit it. It was the lack of knowing that was driving her crazy. Suddenly Cassie burst into laughter, "Oh, my god! Honey...!" She giggled, "Why on Earth would I do a thing like that?"

Tanya glared up at her, struggling, trying to swallow the words that her terrorized world was putting in her throat, but she couldn't, "Because you want revenge..." She trailed off, letting silence wash into the space between their hearts, widening now with each new accusation. "Because you..." she tried to fill the void, but couldn't.

Cassie took up the challenge, pouring anger into the rift. "I see... Its' HER, isn't it?" She said, coldly.

"Her? Her who?" Tanya turned to sit facing Cassie, her own anger building without cause, save fear.

Cassie's voice was hard as steel scraping granite, "Willover." She said, and the word sounded like a curse, profane in her mouth. Tanya said nothing, simply looked into Cassie's green eyes. The gauntlet was thrown down, there was nothing left to do save the duel. She hated every second of it, but her mind wouldn't allow her to stop it if she could.

Cassie's eyes filled with a combination of hurt, rage, and sadness, "Do you REALLY think that...?" She stood up from where she was kneeling, Tanya stood as well, trying to make herself bigger, refusing to be dwarfed by Cassie, despite the difference in their sizes. "Jesus, Tanya! I am NOT CASSANDRA WILLOVER!" Cassie screeched, and tears filled her eyes.

Tanya died. Her heart broke into a thousand pieces and began to pour out her eyes. She desperately wanted to take back the words, to heal the hole that she had made in her loved one's soul, but it was futile. She tried to speak, and had no voice. She could only watch as Cassie buried her face in her hands, her shoulders trembling with her sobs.

"Cassie..." she whispered, wanting to stop this. "I... I don't..." Then she stopped. Cassie, still sobbing into her palms, began to fall away from her, her clothes sagging, shifting as gravity pulled them from her shrinking frame, "Oh no... Cassie, don't do that." Tanya begged you don't have to prove anything to me, really." But Cassie continued to shrink, her head slowly disappearing below the edge of the windowsill. "Cassie, please don't..." Tanya pleaded, watching her lover disappear into her clothes. She didn't understand what Cassie was trying to prove by shrinking.

When Cassie looked up from her height to Tanya, the look of surprise in her eyes told Tanya that she wasn't trying to prove anything. She seemed shocked by her sudden loss of size. "What..." She was able to say, and then the room was full of ice-cold giggles. Tanya's head snapped up. Behind Cassie, shrink ray in hand, was Rita, the cold hard smile that she had worn earlier on her face.

"Oh no..." Tanya groaned, and was answered with soulless laughter as she felt the shrink ray twisting her body, her t-shirt gown falling away as she was shrunk for the second time that day.

Chapter Five

Darkness surrounded Cassie as if she were submerged in night.

She wasn't certain where she was, but from the odor of urine, and the smell and feel of chunks of cedar beneath her, she guessed it was a small animal cage of some sort. It was her cage, now, the animal that had once occupied it; probably a hamster or guinea pig was absent. Cassie sincerely hoped it would stay that way.

She experimented with standing and found that she could but was unable to move very far, the collar around her neck was tied to the wall behind her. She reached up as far as she could, but felt only empty air. The ceiling was higher than a foot, she guessed. She had hypothesized that she was about 10 inches tall. Her ability to change her size had also given her a sixth sense that helped her judge her own size rather accurately. She was now as large as she had been at her 'birth' the day that she awoke from the gestation matrix from which she had been cloned.

Rita had shrunk her. It had come as such a surprise that Cassie had hardly been able to react before she felt herself captured, tangled and covered in her own oversized underwear. Rita had tossed her into what was probably her purse, and after a jostling ride that seemed to last an eternity, she was roughly fitted with the collar around her neck and dumped here, in the dark.

She heard Rita's footsteps fade off into the darkness, and knew that they were alone, Tanya and she. Tanya was near, she knew. She could hear the woman breathing some feet away, and could just barely make out the heat signature of her body. At this size, Cassie could catch glimpses of light normally in the invisible ranges of the spectrum. Her tiny eyes and retinas, compacted so, were more sensitive than they would be at her normal size. She had called out to Tanya, but no answer came. She was probably unconscious.

If Rita had not adjusted the shrink ray after she miniaturized her with it, Cassie guessed that Tanya had probably been shrunk the same percentage as herself. Unfortunately, Tanya had a smaller percentage of her original size to begin with. Cassie figured that Tanya, though still seemingly 28 inches to her, had actually been reduced to only four inches. At her size, the rough handling that Rita had submitted them to would be like being strapped to a rocket chair. The increased gravity and speed knocked Tanya unconscious.

She hoped.

She had been sitting there, in the darkness of their prison, watching and listening for any sign of awakening from her lover, and postulating an escape. She considered concentrating herself to grow back to normal. She knew that she possessed the ability, despite her preference to do the opposite. She had only tried it once, and it ended so disastrously, with a broken bed and a hole in the ceiling, that she hadn't done it again.

The only thing that kept her from trying to enlarge herself was the theory that, since the nanites in her blood, reacting to her brain waves like voluntary muscle responses, regulated the magnetic bond of her molecules, she was able to shrink herself to incredibly small sizes (a quarter inch is as far as she had ever gone). She was also able to signal the nanites to DECREASE the bond, in which case, she would grow larger.

She had been grown from 10 to 70 inches by the nanites when they were first introduced into her body, so she should be able to use them to grown back to 70 inches now. However, the nanites affected her on a molecular level. Tanya's shrink ray affected her on an atomic level. It wasn't the molecules of her body that had been compacted together this time; it was the atoms themselves that were being affected. To her molecules, her current size was normal. If she tried to use the nanites to grow herself to seven times her current size, she feared that she would cause the molecules to lose their cohesion, and end up vaporizing herself in the process.

She sighed, knowing that there was only one way of escape, and that was to shrink her out of the collar and be small enough to slip out between the bars. But she wouldn't. Tanya didn't have that option, and Cassie would never leave her behind, alone with Rita...

Why Rita had done this to them was still a mystery. She never seemed the type to be hiding some secret psychosis, and why had she tried to convince Tanya that she was under Cassie's control? Cassie pondered this, and her heartbeat slowed, as it grew heavier. Tanya had believed her story. The years that Cassie had spent trying to be Cassie to her were futile, it seemed. She tried to make Tanya forget that, despite that she was a mirror image of the woman, Cassie was not, and never would be anything like Cassandra Willover.

But it hadn't worked, had it? The ghost of that vindictive and frozen-souled bitch still hung to her like the fetid smell of a crypt. Tanya had loved her, to be sure, had let herself forget all about Dr. Willover, and had found love in Cassie. But it took only one bad day, albeit the most horrible day, and the ranting of a madwoman to convince her otherwise. She was saddened only that she obviously wasn't doing a good enough job separating herself from the woman she had been cloned from. She began to realize that Tanya was probably always going to look at her with eyes that saw only Willover and her hatred of her. She hadn't purged herself of the woman's memories, and past thoughts, no matter how many classes she took in meditation and hypnotism and the like. She tried, though. Lord knew how she had tried...

She knew then, that it would be the hardest thing that she would ever have to do, but she would say goodbye to her lover. She couldn't stand the thought of being seen with eyes that saw what she once was, and not what she was attempting to become. She couldn't bear to know that Tanya relived the feelings of worthlessness that Willover had crammed down her throat everytime Cassie spoke.

She would go, then. She would start a new life somewhere where she would never have to be reminded of Cassandra Willover. And in her going, neither would Tanya need be reminded of how she had been betrayed by what Cassie obviously was. A copy of the woman that had hurt Tanya so much that she was driven to the point of madness. That madness had resulted in Cassie's creation, to be sure, but it was madness, just the same. Tanya wouldn't have attempted such a feat had it not been for her unquenchable desire for vengeance against Willover.

But first, they had to escape the prison that Rita had trapped them in, and then, figure out how to reverse the affects of Tanya's shrink ray. The latter seemed much easier at this point, and far more important, to be sure.

Tanya was already shrinking when Rita had returned to the lab for a second time. The initial affects of the ray had not completely faded after the initial reaction. Tanya, and now Cassie as well, would continue to grow steadily smaller. But whether or not Tanya would shrink faster, having had a second exposure was a question that Cassie needed answered, and soon.

Did the effect of the ray now layer itself upon the original effect? Would Tanya now shrink at an increased rate? Or, as Cassie hoped, did the second exposure cancel out the first, causing Tanya's molecules to return to a baseline of their original condition, to shrink from there? Not that either possibility was appealing, but at least the latter gave them some added time to find a cure for their condition.