The Subject

Tanya quickly scooped up the control from the table, used it to return Cassie to her full size. Cassie embraced her for an eternity of gratitude, and then looked down at the small lump moving under the puddle of clothing. "How?" She said, simply. Tanya bit her lip, carefully began to peel back the layers of the Doctor's clothing.

"As much as you don't deserve the respect of an explanation..." She said, opening the prison of fabric, "I guess you may as well hear this, as well." Dr. Willover looked up in wild-eyed fear at Tanya. The younger girl sat on her haunches, spoke with as much condescension as she could muster to the naked woman on the floor. Willover was effectively only six inches tall. "The explosion." She said, sighing, "You didn't exactly... survive it, you know?" Tanya rolled her eyes. "I kept telling you to make sure to lock down the lid of the EM Generator Unit, but hey, what do I know, right?" She laughed. The tiny woman backed away from her, shaking her head. "Well, I knew that you'd finally get yourself vaporized because you don't listen to people who know more than you." Tanya scooped up the tiny screaming woman in her hand, put her on the table next to the mortar. She had, for a minute, been tempted to throw her into it, but fought the urge. "Luckily, once I convinced the administration that there hadn't been any casualties, except your little cloned students, sadly, I was able to find enough of your DNA left on your clothes and made ONE more clone..."

"But, she wasn't..." Cassie said behind her.

Sensing the question, Tanya answered. "Little?" Tanya reached into her pocket, pulled out an empty bottle. "Nope, thanks to Harry and Boris." She smiled down at the tiny doctor sardonically, waggling the spare controller that Boris had made for Cassie. "I introduced the nano-techs that they had intended for a replacement for yours. I did it while she was still out from the effects of the cloning process, kept her at her original size of 11 inches until I got her home, and grew her to a normal size once I got her in the house."

"Why did you do this?" Willover finally asked, her tiny voice trembling with fear and confusion. "When you wanted me dead so badly?"

"I don't know..." Tanya said simply. "I guess I felt sorry for you, maybe. You're a bitch, to be sure, but I still believe that even the coldest heart can learn to change." She looked at Cassie and smiled. "But mostly," She turned back to the tiny woman. "Because I'm BIGGER than that. Now, Cassie and I are going to leave here." Tanya retrieved a lab coat from the hook near the door, handed it to Cassie. "And you are going to call the police and confess to that poor man's murder." She pointed at the corpse on the table. "And then you are going to go to jail, hopefully for long enough for you to realize that life, and freedom are precious enough to promote, rather than sell, no matter who you think they belong to."

Tanya picked up the mortar, looked into its deadly contents for a moment. "Because if you don't..." She held the mortar high, suddenly flinging it the length of the lab where it smashed against the wall. "I will hunt you down and shrink you so small that you will never EVER be a threat to anyone again, YOU GOT THAT?"

The thunder of her voice seemed to cause the already tiny woman to shrink even more, trying to escape into herself. She nodded, however, terrified.

"Good." Tanya held up the device, pressed the button. In moments, Dr. Willover was her normal size.

"Don't forget it." Tanya growled. "But I am going to do my damnedest to forget I ever knew you." With that, Tanya turned, vowing to never look back as she made her way one last time to the door.

"OH MY GOD!" Cassie screamed, "TANYA LOOK OUT!!!"

Tanya spun halfway around. Willover was running toward, her mad, feral, her eyes glowing hot with madness and rage. She was screaming, incoherent. In slow motion, Tanya saw the scalpel Willover had intended to use on the poor corpse on the table raising now in Willover's fist, plunging toward her face. Instinctively, Tanya threw up her hands, and the scalpel plunged into her palm without pain. Stunned by the moment, Tanya didn't move. Willover, herself froze, as if held in place suddenly by a giant hand. The gaze of both women was drawn to the point where they met, the place where the scalpel had entered Tanya's hand.

The scalpel had pinned the control box to Tanya's palm, it's steel blade sticking through its center. Willover's eyes went wide, and she fell back, her lips forming the word "no" but no sound was coming out. She backed away slowly, and Tanya watched in fascinated horror, as it seemed to her that Willover was running backwards, when in fact, she was shrinking, swiftly.

Tanya was able to gain enough presence of mind to remove the knife from her hand, now beginning to throb with the promise of sharper pain later. She looked at the destroyed control, her mind trying desperately to grasp it's contents, how it could be fixed...but her eyes met the shrinking woman's and she knew that it was too late. Willover was already less than a foot tall, and then only half that. She had backed into the base of the table, fell, tried pathetically to scramble up it, small as a mouse now, and quickly vanishing.

Tanya couldn't turn her eyes from the terrible sight, not until the last, when Willover finally vanished from sight, too small to be seen, Tanya knew, even with the most powerful microscope. "Oh, god..." She felt like vomiting.

Suddenly, Cassie was by her side. "There was nothing you could have done, Tanya."

"I know..." Tanya said, numbly, "I just..." She stopped. There was a whistling sound coming from somewhere, growing louder. Both women searched for the source, their eyes finally coming to rest on the spot where Willover had vanished. The floor shimmered, seemed to shift, as well as the base of the table. Slightly at first, then more so as the whistling sound grew ever louder. The floor creaked, and buckled. The table began to lean, and Tanya noticed a shadow, darkness beyond darkness at the spot where the Doctor disappeared. The darkness was spreading.

"Oh my god." Cassie said. "Her atoms have collapsed on themselves." Tanya's mind, numb with the events and fascinated by the phenomenon before her, recognized Cassie's words, but not the meaning. "We need to get out of here, Tanya." Still Tanya didn't move. "TANYA!" Cassie screamed, pulling at her, "She's imploded! She's created a black hole!"

Already, Tanya could feel the pull, beckoning her forward. The table suddenly pitched over, the floor cracking with the sound of a rifle shot. It was enough to get her to move. Both women ran out of the lab, feeling as if they were running up hill, the feeling fading as they moved further away from the source of the disturbance. By the time they reached the bottom of the steps leading to the hall, they could no longer feel the pull, but heard its effects on the building behind them. They ran for some distance, stopping at last as their bodies ran dry of adrenaline, collapsing on the bricks of the quad.

A bicycle came to a stop next to them and they looked up briefly to see Dr. Wolper, who was looking beyond them toward the horrible sound coming from the Hall. They turned in time to see the entire building collapse, not downward, but upward and inward, as if a giant hand were crushing it as easily as one would crush a paper cup. Explosions of gasses erupted briefly, were pulled almost instantly toward the center, and then were gone. In moments, the whistling was gone. The spot where the building had once stood was crater punctuated here and there with pipes leading to nothing...

"Hmmm..." Dr. Wolper said thoughtfully. "Looks like you ladies have a tale to tell." Both women looked up at Harry, and began laughing uncontrollably. He smiled down at them. "Perhaps over a cup of tea?" he said.

Epilog

One Year Later

"Dr. Tanya Vale." Cassie said it again, and Tanya beamed. "I like the way that sounds."

"Me too." She smiled, looking down at her diploma again as they walked across the quad. Tanya looked up sadly at the construction cranes that stood in the spot where the Lab had destroyed itself, she shook regret from her head.

"So, now what?" Cassie said, "Still want to go ahead and go public with the cloning procedure?"

"I think it will be a great benefit to medicine, now that we figured out how to overcome the size differential."

Cassie stopped. "We?" She put her hands on her hips. "No, YOU figured that out, Tanya."

"Well, it was you that figured out that the Electromagnetism was affecting the atoms in the first stage. I just figured out how to shield the 'soup' from the pulse." She smiled at her lover.

"I guess we make a pretty good team then, don't we?"

"I'd say we do." Cassie continued walking. "But what do we do for an encore?" She laughed.

"Well..." Tanya opened her purse, pulled out a piece of paper. Equations and simple schematics were scribbled across it. "I'd like to get to work on... this."

Cassie looked at the paper, studying it, her eyes brightening. "Oh my..." she said.

"Well, it's really simple, now that we have a greater understanding of the affects of electromagnetism on atomic structure, isn't it?" Tanya shrugged.

"This is a..." Cassie laughed.

"A shrink ray, yep." Tanya said, the self-assurance in her voice telling Cassie that she had already built and tested it successfully in her head.

"And when did you come up with this?" Cassie refolded the paper, handed back to Tanya.

Tanya put the paper back in her purse. "During your speech at commencement." She said, simply, and was saved from the rebuff by Harry's voice calling to them.

Harry rolled to a stop next to the women. "Dr. Willover, Dr. Vale." He greeted.

"Oh, Harry, please... call me Cassie." Cassie rolled her eyes, "I don't even let the students call me that."

"Well call me Dr. Vale, Harry. I can't get enough of it." Tanya laughed.

Harry became serious, however. "Are you sure that you won't consider staying with us at Westview?" He said, "You could do a lot of good here."

"I know." Tanya smiled. "But I need to go out and do some good out there, too. I can't hide here forever." She felt Cassie's hand entwine with hers, a secret hug.

"Well... if you ever need a rest, you know that you're always welcome here." Harry said to the women. "It can be a big bad world out there, you know."

"Bad, yes," Tanya squeezed Cassie's hand lovingly, "but, somehow, it doesn't seem so big anymore."