The Subject

Cassie fell forward, trembling, her small breasts pressed against the bridge of Tanya's nose. Tanya herself was lost in the glow of pleasure. She felt every fiber of her being, every nerve. She could feel the beating of Cassie's tiny heart against her nose, the throbbing of her sex against her lips. When Cassie spoke, her tiny voice softened by her size and her obvious exhaustion, Tanya wasn't sure at first that she had heard or dreamed the words. "I love you, Tanya." Cassie said. And Tanya's heart opened and caught the words to hold forever. Cassie slid gently down to perch on Tanya's breastbone. Her tiny green eyes sparkled up at her lover.

"I love you, too, Cassie." Tanya whispered, and the words became a vow in her soul that she would, somehow, find a way to save the tiny woman.

Part Seven

Tanya's chest heaved with passion and delight, her little lover standing in the vertex of her spread thighs, using the whole of her tiny body to stimulate the wet female flesh there. They had left the tub, made it to the bed, and collapsed there. Cassie seemingly insatiable tonight dove into Tanya's crotch. Tanya began to think that their vows of love for one another was acting as an aphrodisiac. She never wanted Cassie more, never wanted to please her as much as she did now. However, she would wait her turn, until Cassie was done working her magic on Tanya. The tiny woman knelt, pressed her small breasts into the wet fold of skin just below Tanya's clitoris, and furiously kissed the swelling button of flesh as she rubbed her small tits against Tanya's most sensitive area.

"Ohhh... Cassie..." Tanya fought the urge to grasp at her lover. She instead reached her hands over her head and grasped the brass rails of the headboard. Her pussy screamed with her, the conflagration in her loins building with every little kiss. "Oh, honey...I—ouch!"

Cassie had bitten her before, nipping at her flesh. This however was a painful bite, and when Tanya looked down to ask her tiny lover to back off, she gasped at the sight below. Cassie looked up at her with deadened eyes. All recognition had gone out of them, and her little lips were curled back in a sneering grimace, smeared with blood.

Tanya opened her mouth to say something, anything, but no words came out. Cassie's mouth opened in a broad smile like a death masque, and she screamed. Her high voice cut through Tanya like a knife of ice. Tanya squeezed her eyes shut trying desperately not to hear the senseless screech of her miniature lover.

When the screaming stopped, a new pain erupted in her. She gasped, the pain she felt came on with such a force that it paralyzed her. She looked down to find the source of the agony...and saw her little lover in a mad frenzy, tearing and clawing at the tender flesh that only moments before she had been so tenderly making love to. Blood and gore was spraying out over her, covering her naked flesh like a shroud as she dug into Tanya's body like a feral animal.

Tanya was unable to move, no matter how hard she tried. It was as if her body was suddenly surrounded by syrup. She wanted desperately to swat the tiny rabid animal that Cassie had become away from her, but her arms wouldn't respond. All she could do was watch as she was torn apart bit by bit by this small, once lovely creature.

Cassie's head snapped up suddenly, like some animated doll. Eyes on fire with a sick glow of madness, she smiled an obscene replication of the smile that Tanya had fallen in love with only hours before. "Cassie love U, Tanya," the tiny voice cackled. There was a dull light, expanding in slow motion that enveloped Cassie and a pressure like a giant fist in Tanya's loins. "I...LOVE...YOU!!!" Tanya's ears rang with the sound of Cassie's tiny voice crying from within the explosion, and Tanya herself found enough air to scream.

Tanya woke with a start, her head snapping up.

Her heart raced, beads of sweat stinging her eyes. She wiped them away, looked down at the books and notes splayed out across the surface of her table where her head had been resting. Curled up under a blanket of silk, safe in the glow of the desk lamp illuminating her was Cassie, safe and asleep, dreaming whatever tiny people dreamed of. Tanya's heart slowed at the sight of her. She rubbed her eyes, and stretched, trying to make the life flow back into the muscles of her exhausted body. She and Cassie had moved to the bed after their escapade in the tub, and had spent hours exploring each other's bodies with a newfound passion.

Afterward, Tanya confessed tearfully why Cassie had been brought into the world in the first place, as a means for revenge, a toy by which she could exact retribution on Dr. Willover...on everyone who had hurt her, actually. Tanya had been the focal point of scorn at the hands of the 'beautiful people,' and Cassie's creation had been so that Tanya would have a target for the pain that had been flowing through her all those years.

"You don't think I know that?" Cassie had said, propping herself up on her elbow. She was lying prone across the pillow by Tanya's head, idly playing with a rope of her lover's hair.

"I just wanted to tell you before..." Tanya sobbed, the words drowned in her sudden remembered sorrow.

"Heeeeey... I know...I know. It's okay." Cassie had said, gently. "I don't care. Really." She rose to her knees, then, looking down into Tanya's teary eyes. "Tanya," Cassie said, quietly. "I may just die. No, correction: I am going to die, there's no escaping it." Cassie put out a tiny hand against Tanya's cheek. "The fact is, I can't escape it. I spent my life..." She smiled, laughed. "I remember spending a life striving to prove to the world how strong I was, how big and important I was." She let her hand fall. Her tiny head bowed in shame. "I remember being that BITCH," she said, referring to the host of her DNA. "I...SHE wasted her life, being so large and loud and important...it wasn't until you made me see how it is to be small and helpless...how I made other's feel, that I realized that the reason that I, or she or...oh, the hell with it!" She laughed. "Cloning is going to cause big problems in semantics, I can see that."

Tanya smiled. Cassie continued, "Dr. Willover is a very lonely woman, Tanya. But she holds everyone at arms length because she's afraid that they will see how weak she really is. That's why she strives so, has to be the best, no matter who gets hurt. Because she's afraid that if she shows a chink in her armor, that someone will exploit it." Cassie smiled at Tanya, "Which is exactly what you did, when you made me. And in doing so, you freed me from that miserable existence. Tanya, I don't know how long I have to live...but," she sighed, "I wanted you to know that despite the years of memories I have in this brain, these last days have been my happiest in my heart."

"Aren't you scared?" Tanya asked, sniffling, her voice dry from crying.

"Hell yes!" Cassie laughed, "Why do you think that I jumped you in the tub?" She laughed, a pixie's giggle, "I needed to feel something else, anything else. I've accepted my fate. I've had a good life, despite how it began, or for whatever reason. I'm just glad you made me, and I'm glad that you showed me what it is to be strong enough to be weak." She leaned into Tanya, kissed her on the nose. "Uhm... And the sex was pretty fantastic, too."

Both women laughed then, and felt the release of emotion that they both so desperately needed. When it was over, Cassie mused, comfortably. "I wonder where I'll go?"

"What do you mean?" Tanya carefully sat up, turned to face the tiny woman.

"Weeeell, I wonder if I have a soul?" She smiled. "Funny, Willover is an atheist, did you know that?" She shook her tiny crimson mane, "I guess if she were faced with what I'm looking forward to, she'd start to wonder, too, huh?"

"You have a soul." Tanya reached out her hand. Cassie climbed into Tanya's palm, allowing herself to be lifted eye level with her lover. "You said you love me, Cassie." She smiled at the little redhead, "You couldn't feel that if you didn't have a spirit in there." She touched Cassie between her small breasts.

"But, I'm not even a human, Tanya." Cassie shook her head in doubt. "I'm just a conglomeration of amino acids and proteins built around a computer matrix based on a human's DNA pattern. I'm not even a person! Look at me!" Cassie stood up to her full 10 inches and held out her arms, using her size to drive her point home, "I'm Scientist Barbie for crissakes!" Her head dropped as she crossed her arms. Tanya smiled, broadly. Cassie peered at her for a moment, and then a smile crept across her face as she read the mind of her mistress. "I swear," the miniscule woman growled in mock-intimidation, "if you say 'A person's a person, no matter how small' I'm going to give you a kick, right in the nose."

Tanya laughed aloud. "It's one of my favorite books!" She smiled at her tiny lover. There was a moment of silence as the two regarded each other, "I love you, Cassie." She whispered, and her heart thrilled at hearing the miniature beauty return the words. Tanya continued, still cradling the small female in her hand. "Well...you aren't going anywhere. I WILL figure this out...Promise."

Cassie leaned into Tanya's face, hugged her cheek. "I know you will, Tanya."

That was several hours earlier. Tanya had spent the rest of the evening pouring over every note and scrap of information that she could relate to the experiment, and to Cassie's problem. Across the table were all of her notes that she had kept, and every book she could find that might relate, from Steven Hawkings' Collected Theories of Physics to Emmet Brown's Dynamic Laws of Temporal Displacement. Scattered about were tomes of Asimov and Heinlein as well. Tanya looked at all of it. She had poured over every line, every thought and theory. There was nothing here. There was nothing anywhere. The problem was, is that she didn't know the cause, only the affects. It was as if she were trying to come up with a question to an answer that she already had. It was frustrating, tiring and hopeless.

She picked up a sheaf of papers, long hand notes of what she had observed in the experiments so far, but her own words seemed to make no sense. She threw them down, angrily. Cassie stirred, startled by the disturbance. "I'm sorry, Cass," Tanya sobbed. "I... I can't do it."

Cassie stretched, stood, pulling the silk scarf around her like a sarong. She walked through the landscape of writings and research, sitting down on a short stack of books. "Tanya..." she said, calmly. "You can't do this to yourself." She sighed. "Or by yourself."

Tanya's head snapped up, she looked angrily at the tiny woman. "And just WHO's going to help me?" she snapped. "Maybe I should take you to Willover, huh? Oh, there's an idea, huh?"

"There are other Doctors at the University who might..." Cassie began.

"Who might just toss my ass in JAIL for what I've done!" Tanya cried out. "At the very least, I... I'd lose my job, get tossed out of school and be black-balled by the entire research community!" Tanya shook with anger, frustration and fear, "NO... I cannot possibly go to them."

"What if you went to the board?" Cassie suggested. "With the amount of research that's been completed already, I'm sure that they would be more than willing..."

"THE BOARD!?" Tanya laughed humorlessly, "Oh... This from the great Cassandra Willover!? I should just go to the board?" Tanya continued to laugh, her anger, mostly at herself rising to a boil. "The BOARD is the last place on EARTH where I can go! Do you have any idea what they already think of the research we're doing? It's hard enough to get them to accept our grant status, without crawling to them now with YOU!!!"

"I'm not her." Cassie whispered, nearly inaudible.

"What!?" Tanya was standing now, unable to sit still in her rage at the situation.

"I SAID I'M NOT HER!!!" Cassie stood as well, screaming. She shook with sudden rage that surprised and frightened Tanya at the same time. "I AM NOT CASSANDRA WILLOVER!!!" It was a vow more than a statement, and Tanya wondered if it was for her benefit, or for the benefit of some inner doubt of the tiny woman herself. "But," Cassie said, coldly, "YOU... You certainly are beginning to sound like her."

Tanya felt the words like a scimitar in her heart. Her anger poured out of the open wound. "Oh, my God..." she whispered. "Oh... Oh, Cassie..." she sat back down, "I'm sorry. So sorry. You're right. You aren't her. You couldn't be her. And I can't either, not now."

There was a silence then, in which both women pondered their fates. Finally, Cassie spoke. "So... now what?"

"I don't know." Tanya buried her face in her hands. "I honestly don't have an idea where to start."

"We'll, start at the beginning." Cassie stood up and began to walk in a small circle around the table. "How was I created?"

"You were made by attaching a chain of amino acids..." Tanya continued describing, in detail the process by which she had cloned Dr. Willover into the miniature creature called Cassie.

"And how am I going to die?" Cassie said flatly. When Tanya didn't answer right away, she urged her on, "Come on, Vale, tell me!"

"You'll suffer a molecular breakdown, theoretically dissipating at an atomic level in what can best be described as an electro-magnetic explosion."

"So..." Cassie stopped pacing. "It's an electro-magnetic pulse used to begin the process and the subject terminates leaving an electro-magnetic pulse in its wake?"

Tanya's head rose. A light went on in a room deep in her brain. "Yeeeah." She whispered. "So there must be some problem in the cohesive properties of the atoms caused by the bioelectric activity in the body of the subject."

"Its the bioelectric impulses of the nervous system causing the breakdown of the magnetic fields of the atoms." Cassie affirmed.

"That MUST be it!" Tanya cried out in joy. "But how do we stop it? I mean, how can we control a change in the level of electrical activity from within a living being?"

Cassie sat down again on the stack of books and struck a pose that vaguely resembled the Thinker. A gleam of realization struck Tanya as she stared off into space, the thoughts flowing through her head afforded her no energy to spend on speech. She suddenly reached out her hands and scooped up the tiny beauty, who let out a squeak of surprise. "Whoa! Hey, what are you doing?" It was a simple question, now without fear.

"Lady, you and I are going for a ride." Tanya smiled, broadly. "There's someone I want you to meet."

Part Eight

Tanya stopped once on her journey to make a phone call. She dialed the number from the phone booth by the S-Mart, was relieved to get Dr. Willover's voice mail instead of the doctor herself. She left a quick message, apologizing that something important had come up, and she wouldn't be available for the next few days. She tried to sound as vague as possible, giving herself time to think of an excuse that would satisfy Willover. She hung up the phone, took a step out of the phone booth, and suddenly realized that Willover wasn't at the lab, either.

"Where the HELL is she?" she mused. She found it nearly impossible to believe that anything could drag the doctor away from the research, she seemed so obsessed. And now that they'd had such a major setback as the self-destruction of the cloned subjects, she knew that Willover wouldn't rest until she had found the reason, and solved the problem once and for all. Yet, she wasn't there. Had something happened to her? Tanya knew her schedule better than the doctor did herself, she had spent so much time being the secretary to her. She knew that she had nothing planned for today, no conferences, meetings or whatnot. There was no place she could be other than in the lab.

Tanya turned back to the pay phone. She dialed the number again, and, when the automated voice informed her that she had reached Dr. Willover's voice mail, she punched out the code on the keypad that allowed the doctor to check her messages. Tanya had it memorized, since it became her job to organize all of Willover's appointments, as well as fetch her coffee, take her clothes to the dry cleaners, schedule maintenance on her car...all those truly important scientific tasks.

There was a message from Willover's broker, asking that she provide information about some new account she had opened with him. Tanya skipped it. The next message was from Science Digest, asking her to consult on an article dealing with biomechanical engineering. The last message was brief, and took Tanya by surprise, only with its obvious lack of respect for Willover. The voice was male, an Asian accent.

"Dr. Willover." the voice greeted, "Mr. Yashika will meet with you today at 2 PM." The voice gave an address, and ended with "Mr. Yashika is very interested in what you have to tell him about the current status of his... investment." The inflection in his voice was sarcastic, almost threatening?

Who in the world was Mr. Yashika? He obviously didn't know Dr. Willover too well. Tanya didn't know anyone who dared speak to the Crimson Tide in such a manner. More than once, that was. She shrugged, looked at her watch. She almost slapped herself when she realized that it was still dead, it's battery drained by the electromagnetic pulse from the little chimpanzee's death. She hung up the phone, slipped the watch from her wrist, and opened her purse to drop it inside. "Hold this." She said, carefully placing the watch inside.

The tiny woman in her purse smiled up at her and winked. Tanya sighed, unable to accept Cassie's vote of confidence. She made her way up the street to the bus stop, glancing up at the big clock hanging off the corner of the bank along the way. It was 2:30, which would explain the whereabouts of Dr. Willover, who was obviously still in her meeting with the enigmatic Mr. Yashika, whomever he may be... She let the thought drop for now, and when the bus came, she boarded, rode it to a stop that brought her within a stone's throw of her destination. A destination that she couldn't help but feel may be her final one.

Tanya made her way quickly down the winding path to the small, ivy-covered house. She was about to climb the steps to the small porch when she heard a noise coming from the garage a few yards away. She should have known that he would be out there. Moving with caution born from sheer fear of what she was about to do, Tanya peeked in the side window of the garage. She determined that he was in there as she suspected, and went to the side door. It was open, and she stuck her head in quietly.

The inside of the garage was a laboratory like no other. Stacks of equipment obviously purloined from the university lined the walls, adorned the large work area in the middle of the room. Had he been anyone else, the owner of the garage certainly would have found himself in serious trouble over the equipment. However, Tanya knew, and she smiled to herself in the knowledge, that not one member of the University's Executive committee had the nerve to tell it's major contributor that he was not allowed to borrow a few test-tubes, petri dishes, centrifuge, or for that matter, a particle accelerator, if he wanted one. It was his money that bought most of the stuff in the first place. And, Tanya knew, it was his work that kept Westview University on the map.

The man inside the makeshift lab moved quietly about the equipment, his back to the door. Swallowing the last of her fears, Tanya cleared her throat. "Ahem..."

Dr. Harry Wolper turned in her direction, the look of puzzlement on his face clearing away to one of delighted surprise. "Well, good morning, Miss Vale!" He beamed, his British accent crisp, and full of chivalrous charm. "To what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?" Dr. Wolper came around to Tanya's side of the worktable, brushing a lock of his thick silver hair away from his eyes and removing his glasses, which he tucked beneath his lab coat in the pocket of his sweater. He only looked at Tanya for a moment, and the smile on his face became a look of sincere concern. "My dear, you look positively terrified." He said. "A cup of Earl Grey might calm your nerves a bit."