Chapter 1

There were three girls: Michelle, Tommie and Kellie. All were the same age, and all were friends since 2nd grade. At the time of this story Michelle was the oldest at 14 years, 6 months and 21 days. Kellie was the youngest at 14 years, 2 months and 8 days. Tommie was somewhere in the middle.

On the day of this story's inauguration, the three girls were at the mall, engaged in afternoon shopping. It was a Friday afternoon and the three planned to shop until 6 o'clock, grab a pizza at Gino's, and then catch the 7:15 showing of Flirtation. It had been showing a month now and Michelle had already seen it twice, Tommie once, and Kellie ... well, this would be Kellie's first time. Michelle and Tommie could not believe that Kellie was still a Flirtation virgin.

"Come on," Kellie moaned. "Leave me alone, okay?"

Laughing, Michelle grinned at Tommie and winked. It was old news that Kellie suffered from draconian parental oversight. Tommie returned her grin and held out a dark purple top, eyeing it critically. She shook her head no and hung it back on the rack.

"I heard that Robert cheats on Amy," Michelle teased. Robert and Amy were the stars of Flirtation and an item in real life.

Tommie had another purple top in her hand, this one light in color and fringed at the throat and sleeves with fine lace. Eyeing it critically, she said: "I heard he's cheating on her with Albert." Albert was a character in the movie, played by Mallo Rice, a hunk. "I don't know what he could possibly be thinking. Albert is soooo hot, but no will ever make me believe that Elijah would kiss another guy. No way." Elijah was the character Robert played in the movie.

She slipped the light purple top back onto the rack and fingered a blue one instead. Kellie muttered something unintelligible and looked at tops on an adjacent rack. Michelle and Tommie exchanged another grin.

And here our story takes a sharp left turn. Instead of continuing on as girl's night out, things got very strange for Kellie. A man jostled her, excusing himself gruffly as he wedged between Kellie and a shelving unit. Kellie felt a slight sting on her right thigh, and wincing, eyed the man suspiciously as he skulked away. That was her impression, that he skulked away. He was middle aged, like her father, thick like her Uncle Guy, with unruly longish hair like her biology teacher Mr. Grove. Kellie wondered for a moment if she hadn't been groped, but then decided against it. But what was that sting she'd felt?

"You okay?" Michelle asked.

Kellie nodded and rubbed her thigh. If she didn't know better, she'd swear the guy had jabbed her with something. She felt a little panicked. Maybe she should chase after him and call for help? Who would she call, though? Looking around, Kellie realized there were only shoppers like herself and Michelle and Tommie in sight; no store personnel at all. And being naturally shy and insecure and timid, indecision stopped her in her tracks.

"What happened?" Michelle demanded.

Kellie felt herself redden. "Nothing," she muttered, and then hesitantly told about the bump and stick on her hip.

"You should go look," Tommie advised. Beneath her look of concern, there was a hint of amusement, which embarrassed Kellie even further. She shook her head.

"Bullshit," Michelle told her and grabbed her arm. "If you got stuck, we need to find out." So a thoroughly embarrassed Kellie found herself dragged off to the Ladies Room for inspection.

Kellie was not the cutest of girls. Though blonde and blue-eyed, she had an unfortunate complexion, features seemingly a little too large or a little too small or a little two wide apart, and a body that was best hidden beneath loosely fitting clothes or a one-piece swimsuit. In her 14 years, 2 months and 8 days, she'd been kissed by a exactly two boys, and neither had attempted 2nd base.

"This is ridiculous," she complained. A woman and her 10-year old were at the sink, someone else was inside a stall, and a pair of girls a couple years older than Kellie and her friends were primping at a mirror.

"Which hip?" Michelle demanded. Fretfully, Kellie indicated her right one.

The mother and daughter eyed the trio with mild interest; the teens at the mirror ignored them. The person in the end stall finished peeing and un-spooled toilet paper from the roll. Kellie judged by her shoes and black slacks that it was not a kid her age. She felt mortified when Michelle ordered her to undo her belt and then began to undo it herself. "I can do it," she protested. The best she could manage was to assist Michelle in getting her undone and pushing her jeans down to her knees. Now the teens at the mirror were staring. "This is ridiculous," she repeated.

"Are you O.K.?" The 10-year-old's mother looked rather alarmed that Michelle had forced Kellie out of her jeans. Kellie blushed even harder.

"Some guy stuck her with something," Tommie said.

The 10-year-old's mother's eyes opened wide. "What?" She strode purposefully over and examined Kellie's leg. "Oh my gosh. What is that?"

Kellie blinked at the angry red pinprick on her leg. Despite her fear, she really hadn't expected to see anything. Seeing the tiny red puncture and the reddening bump of skin around it made her feel lightheaded and nauseas. The room swayed slightly. She felt Michelle grab one arm, and Tommie the other.

"Maybe you should sit down." Michelle guided her toward the nearest stall. The 10-year-old's mother said something about calling the police. The 10-year-old's eyes were open very wide, not in alarm, but excitement. Ditto the teens at the mirror, Kellie thought. Though dizzy and battling queasiness, she noticed the woman in the end stall hurrying to get dressed and join the action. "I'm okay," she muttered defensively.

"Sure you are," Michelle answered. The 10-year-old's mom had her cell phone out and was pushing buttons. She put the phone to her ear and stood tapping her right toe impatiently on the tiles. Kellie felt really sick on her stomach now. The toilet down the row flushed again and the door opened and the occupant came out and hurried down to Kellie's stall. Kellie watched her black slacks swish around her sensible black flats. She looked up as the woman appeared behind Michelle and Tommie at the door. She was dark-haired and anxious looking, though wide-eyed with excitement like everyone else. Kellie loathed being the center of attention.

"What happened?" the woman asked breathlessly. The 10-year-old edged up beside her and Kellie instantly saw the resemblance. This was the mother, not the dirty blond. The dirty blond announced an emergency occurring in the woman's restroom at the Raymond's store at the mall, and demanded the police and an ambulance. "Someone stuck her with a hypodermic," she said. By now Kellie was ready to cry.

"Did you see who it was?"

Kellie looked at the shorter, cuter of the two mirror teens. She shook her head.

"It was a man?"

Kellie nodded. The damned thing on her leg itched maddeningly, like a dozen mosquito bites. It looked like a mosquito bite, from a monster mosquito. The bump had expanded to the size of her thumbnail now, and damn, the thing itched.

"Don't scratch it," Michelle warned. She tested Kellie's forehead with the inside of her wrist, found it acceptably cool and stooped to examine her leg.

"That's definitely a puncture wound. He effing stuck you good, Kel."

"Bastard," Tommie growled.

Michelle looked up. "Does it hurt?"

Kellie shook her head.

"We should have gone after him," Michelle complained.

Kellie nodded.

"Did you get a look at him?" She sighed dispiritedly. Tommie also sighed.

Kellie didn't like the burning sensation in her leg. It reminded her of when she'd broken her wrist and the shot of painkiller had made her arm burn from wrist to shoulder. She wished her wrist was broken now.

"An ambulance is on the way," the 10-year-old's not-mother said. She held her phone open just in cae. Someone had injected her with something and had her ready to panic. The 10-year-old and he real mom were exchanging ideas in hushed whispers and Kellie wished they'd go away; just get the heck out of there. They were enjoying this way too much. So were the mirror teens. She wanted to scream at them and kick the door shit and lock it. She wanted to go pee. She wanted to...

Kellie opened her eyes. She was in a bed, in a hospital room. She looked around, blinking groggily. Her mouth felt stuffed with cotton balls. Her head throbbed and her leg ached. Twin scraping sounds followed a hushed voice saying, "She's awake." Her mother and dad appeared at her bedside.

"Oh, Kellie. Are you okay?"

Without remembering why, Kellie thought she'd been asked that question a lot today.

"What happened to me?"

Her mother took her hand and patted it gently. "Don't worry, sweetie. Just you relax." Her mother's expression was both comforting and frightened. Her dad looked angry, seething under the surface. Lifting her head, she saw that her younger brother Sean and her younger sister Crissy were asleep on a long black divan. No light came through the blinds behind the divan, telling her it was night. The blinds stretched the entire distance from wall to wall. It was a private room, she guessed, and surprisingly big. She noticed the chairs pulled up to her bed. "What happened to me?" she repeated.

Her mother shook her head and smiled benevolently. "Don't you worry, dear. The doctors are taking good care of you."

"What happened to me?" Kellie insisted.

Her dad started to speak and then winced as her mother kicked him in the shin. "I told you, dear. There is nothing to worry about here."

"Mom!"

"Everything's fine," her mother soothed. "You're perfectly okay." The furious glance shot by her father told Kellie she was not perfectly okay. She struggled to sit up. Her mother pushed her back down again. Kellie pushed her mom away. "Stop it," her mom scolded. "You'll pull out your IV's."

A needle was stuck into the back of Kellie's left hand and another in the meat of her right forearm. A glance down her front revealed one of those horrible hospital gowns, the kind that opened in the back, leaving you completely exposed. She involuntarily hunched her shoulders for another reason. They had removed her clothing.

On the divan, Sean moaned and shifted to face the rear, pulling his legs up tight to his chest. This made Crissy turn over and draw up tight at the other end. Sean was 9 years and Crissy 6. Neither looked like Kellie.

Mom forcibly recaptured Kellie's hand and patted it gently. Kellie unsuccessfully tried to take it back, but the ache in her right thigh had her distracted, so mom won out. She suspected the pain had something to do with her being there, though what presently eluded her. She did not remember being stuck in the leg or any of the conversation with her girlfriends afterward. In fact, she remembered nothing since about lunchtime.

"What time is it? At least tell me that," she said.

Her mom consulted her wrist watch. "It's late. You go back to sleep now."

"Mom!"

Still clutching Kellie's hand, mom located the cable connecting the handset to the wall, then the handset itself and pressed a button on the face. After a moment, a scratchy voice asked: "Can I help you?"

"My daughter needs something to help her to sleep," mom said.

"I do not!" Kellie objected stridently.

"I'll send her nurse," the voice said and clicked off. The light on the face of the handset disappeared but her mother said "Thank you" anyway, and draped the handset out of reach over the top of the bed. Kellie glared at her resentfully.

"You're treating me like a baby, Mom."

"You are a baby," her mom said absentmindedly. She checked the settings of Kellie's mattress, lowered the head slightly and raised the knees. "That should make you more comfortable."

"Thanks," Kellie grumbled, though it did the opposite. She tried to cross her arms in a snit, but pulled both IV's, one of them painfully. Mom told her to be careful, which only irritated Kellie more. She wondered what potions the bags were dripping into her veins. A sudden thought made her blanche and raise her head with a snap.

"Mom, was I... ?"

Mom shook her head adamantly no. "Nothing like that. I promise you. Now please relax and try not to wake your brother and sister. They've been here since 6 o'clock and need their sleep."

At least Kellie now had a general timeframe. Whatever happened to her happened this afternoon-was it even Friday anymore?-and she'd been admitted some time before 6 o'clock. Where were Michelle and Tommie? The realization she'd been with them came along with the thought. They'd been at the mall, shopping.

She furrowed her brow, ignoring her mother's admonition not to think. They'd been in Simmons looking at clothes. They planned to have pizza later and take in a show, though Kellie couldn't remember what. She remembered talking about the stars though. Something about cheating.

"Michelle and Tommie all right?"

"Perfectly all right." Her mother patted her hand again. "Michelle called from your cell phone right after you passed out and-"

"I passed out?"

Her mother looked chagrined.

"My leg really hurts. Really bad." She tried unsuccessfully to push down the covers to get a look but her mom was having none of it. And more came back. She remembered the stranger jostling her as he passed and the sudden sting in her thigh. The sting corresponded exactly where her leg really ached. She felt gingerly through the covers and grimaced. It hurt like hell.

A middle aged matronly nurse, armed with a hypodermic syringe, entered the room and joined them at the bed. Kellie recoiled at the sight of the sheathed needle.

The nurse smiled down at her. "Don't worry, sweetie, no one's poking you again." She took up Kellie's left hand and pointed out the built in port, a short section of Y on the IV. She made a show of cleaning the port with an alcohol swab, and then inserted the needle and depressed the plunger. The syringe was small diameter and contained only a small portion of clear liquid. Despite this, Kellie felt an immediate drowsiness.

"Wow," she mumbled. "Can I have some more?"

The nurse laughed and her mom frowned disapprovingly. Kellie didn't care. Her attention was absorbed by the rain suddenly filling the air. She tried to catch a drop on her tongue.

"Keradol," the nurse explained. She listened to Kellie's heartbeat and breath sounds with a stethoscope, and then checked her pulse and blood pressure. She appeared not alarmed by her observations. Then she cautiously raised the blanket, moved aside Kellie's gown and inspected the injection site. Mom raised her eyebrows questioningly. The nurse only shrugged. "It doesn't appear any worse. The discoloration appears not to be spreading," which was good, because the entire outside half of Kellie's thigh, from hip to just above the knee, was a horrifying purple. The nurse led Mom and Dad a safe distance away.

"The truth is, we don't know what the coloring signifies." Hesitating, she glanced back at Kellie, still absorbed in the falling rain. "It's not a bruise." Lowering her voice to a mere whisper, she continued: "We thought at first it might be gangrene-" Mom and Dad jointly recoiled. "-but there's no sign of necrosis, and the biopsies revealed none of the markers associated with decomposition. It's got us all stumped."

"But it's related to the injection?" Mom asked.

"Oh, it's definitely related to the injection," the nurse agreed. "We just don't know how."

Mom looked worriedly at her daughter. "It seems to be painful."

The nurse joined her look. "Only around the puncture site itself. There doesn't seem to be any sensitivity in the broader, discolored area. Luckily."

"And you still don't know what it was?"

The nurse shook her head. "Toxicology--the reports that are back, anyway--shows nothing out of the ordinary. Except..." She frowned, her lips twisting in consternation.

"Except what?"

The nurse hesitated. "Is your daughter on birth control?"

Mom was shocked. "She's 14 years old! Barely 14 years old. Why?" Her brows drew down and her mouth puckered. "Are you saying she's sexually active?"

The nurse shrugged. "I'm not saying anything. No pelvic exam was done-none was called for as there was no sign of sexual trauma. We only know that her hormone levels are slightly out of whack, but that could be a result of whatever discolored her leg. We just don't know."

Mom eyed her daughter, anyway, her eyes narrowed. Then sighed.

"You'll keep us informed?" she said.

"Of course," the nurse said. A moment later she left. Kellie failed to note her leaving, or if she did, failed to remember it later. Her attention was wholly engrossed in the beautiful rain.

It was 3 A.M. Kellie wasn't aware of the time, only that she was awake and felt like absolute shit. Looking woozily around the room, she was glad to find that her parents and brother and sister had gone. God, her head hurt. What had they given her? Her hand went unconsciously to her right leg; she grimaced.

"That should go away very soon," a rough, low, masculine voice said. Startled, Kellie looked over to find a man sitting in one of the chairs, against the wall wall. It took her a full five seconds to recognize the face, and surprise replaced her fear.

"Mr. Grove?' she said wonderingly. "What are you doing here?"

Grove pushed his bulk free of the chair. He was 6'2", bespeckled, dark-haired, swarthy, unshaven, rumpled looking even in a crisp white lab coat. A stethoscope hung around his neck, doctor-like. He shambled closer to the bed and nodded in greeting.

"How do you feel, Kellie?"

Kellie was confused. She knew it was late, knew from the quietude of the building it was the middle of the night; so why was Mr. Grove was here, regardless of the improbability of his being here at all? Blinking, she looked at the door, back to her biology teacher, at the door again, and then back to Grove.

Grove joined her at the bedside. She controlled her urge to shrink away. Grove was slightly menacing, even at the best times, which this most assuredly was not. She was fairly certain it was Grove that had stuck in the leg that afternoon.

"Why are you here?" Her voice was a tremolo. She flinched when Grove reached out and placed the back of his hand against her forehead. A shiver ran down her spine, shaking the bed. She cowered, looking up at him fearfully.

"No fever," Grove observed. He placed his fingers against the pulse in her neck; Kellie flinched in response. "Don't be concerned. I'm not going to hurt you."

"You already have," Kellie countered. "Today at Simmons." She withstood another deep shiver. "Did you inject me with something?"

Grove ignored her question. "How's your leg?"

Kellie shook her head. She felt around inconspicuously, or tried to, for the nurse's call button. Grove removed it from the top of the bed and hung it out of reach over a plastic assembly attached to the wall. He moved the phone as well, placing it atop a table out of reach. She made to shriek as he began to move the blanket, but he clamped a meaty hand over her mouth. Kellie's eyes shot open to maximum roundness.

"I assure you..." He knocked Kellie's hands aside and bared her right leg. "I have no intention of hurting you. I need to see the injection site, that's all." Kellie struggled vainly to keep his free hand from exposing her thigh.

"Please be still. I have no interest in you sexually." He bent to look more closely at the discoloration. "Hadn't expected that," he murmured, and then grunted when Kellie recoiled at his light probe of the wound with a fingertip. He stood erect, looking down at her. "Don't scream." He lifted his hand an experimental inch away above Kellie's mouth, and then dropped it to his side when she didn't suck in breath for a shriek. He snorted as Kellie frantically covered herself again.

"What did you do to me?" she demanded. "What was in that syringe?"

Grove pursed his lips. In the corridor, a hushed voice requested Dr. Stanton to call the 4th floor nurses station. An alarm, another of hundreds she'd heard in her 10-hour stay in the hospital, bleated softly from across the hall. Grove ignored both.

"Nanobots."

She blinked. Grove shook his head. "I knew injecting a child was a mistake."

Kellie bristled at being called a child. Grove shook his head at that reaction also. "Unfortunately, my research indicated that anyone older might suffer anaphylactic shock unbearable to the body. Noting your own adverse reaction, my research was right. A lot more study needs to go into the technology end. Frankly," he muttered darkly. "I'm surprised you recovered at all. It looked pretty touch and go there for a while."

Kellie looked at him in horror. Grove held up a bottle, an ordinary medicine bottle from the looks of it, clear, with writing and graduations printed on the side. He held it upright, gripped between his thumb and middle finger.

"Thirty years," he said.

"Excuse me?" Kellie could see a skim of liquid coating the bottom of the bottle. It was greenish in color, and slightly fluorescent. It seemed to waver in intensity, like aurora's she'd seen on television. She experienced a fundamental feeling of dread, like a swimmer might, identifying a dark shape gliding through the water. She gripped herself across the chest.

"What is that?"

Grove gave her a crooked little smile. "I call this Shrinx."

The grin did nothing to calm Kellie's nerves. "Shrinks? What is that?"

Grove spelled it out for her. "It's a concoction I brewed up from the most complex formulations you could imagine." He cocked his head and gazed at the bottle, or the shimmering green liquid inside, almost reverentially, Kellie thought. Or lovingly.

"What does that do?" she asked tremulously.

Grove put the bottle away. "It shrinks things. At the quantum level. Actually, that's not true, because there is no quantum level, per se. In conjunction with the nonobots I injected you with earlier-"

"What? You injected me twice?"

"-Shrinx generates billions of electromagnetic fields that distort the surrounding fabric of space-time-"

"You injected me twice?" Kellie repeated, not comprehending the larger picture, or in the case, maybe the smaller.

"-creating a differential in the quantum foam, actually manipulating the quantum foam, so that you fall below the threshold of what I call-"

Kellie tried to shriek ... and couldn't. The muscles in her throat had frozen solid and when she opened her mouth to scream, that didn't happen either. She was paralyzed, right down to her pinkies and little toes.

Grove leaned forward and cocked his head. "What's going on?" Kellie started at him with unblinking, terrified eyes. Grove lowered his face to hers and listened to her breathing. Luckily, she still was. Her heart was beating also, pounding against her ribcage.

"This is unexpected." He placed his fingertips against her throat and counted. Then he checked her respiration with a hand against her solar plexus. "Don't worry. I won't touch anything I shouldn't touch. True to his word, he touched her nowhere inappropriate. He stood back, arms folded, a finger to his lips, frowning.

"Must be the nonobots. For some reason, they're blocking transmission of your neurotransmitters. Or counteracting your muscular contractions, which seems more reasonable given the indications. This could be a problem," he mused.

Kellie blinked, and his eyebrows rose.

"Could you do that before?"

Kellie shook her head.

"Do that again."

Kellie couldn't, which really scared the poopy out of her.

Grove looked pleasantly surprised. "I'll be damned. Selective paralysis. I wonder..." He taped a finger against his lips. "Shrinx is controlling its environment." He tapped his lips some more, pursed them and drew his eyebrows down into a deep V. "Really interesting. I'm going to assume..." He broke off, bent down and clumsily disengaged Kellie from her IV's, tossing the parts inattentively to the floor before scooping the helpless Kellie into his arms. Then he set her back down again.

"Don't get ahead of yourself," he grumbled. Working carefully, he disengaged the plugs terminating the jumble of lead wires from under Kellie's gown from the plug connected to the monitor cord. He then did a quick check to make sure he'd missed nothing else, and then picked her up again and carried her across to a wheel chair Kellie had last seen collapsed and sitting between the end of the divan and the wall. She was still paralyzed.

"Where are you taking me?" she whispered, not quite paralyzed after all.

"To a safer place," Grove said quietly. He wheeled her to the door and peeked outside. The way was apparently clear because he wheeled her into the corridor and hurriedly toward an intersecting corridor twenty feet away. He seemed to have no more idea where they were than Kellie did because he glanced hesitantly back and before making a turn to his right. Kellie reassured herself that even now a nurse was dashing toward her room to see why Kellie's vital signs had dropped to zero. Moments from now an alarm would wail, security would lock down the building and guards would begin scouring the building from top to bottom, starting with this floor. She would have laughed in her smugness had not she been paralyzed. Fucking moron, she thought.

At the next corridor Grove turned left. He could not turn right as the way was blocked by double doors requiring a swipe card. Kellie felt herself sliding limply forward in the wheel-chair; Grove hadn't thought to belt her in and any moment she might tumble loose-limbed onto the floor. There was no telling what she might do to herself, paralyzed like this. Then Grove stopped at a door marked Maintenance Closet and she looked up, then found herself unable to further move her head. Her paralysis was maddeningly unpredictable.

Grove looked up and down the hall. "Best you'll probably find," he muttered, trying the door and finding it open. He backed her into the close and maneuvered the wheelchair between a grungy yellow mop bucket and a gray steel shelf filled with supplies. The he returned to the door, peeked outside and gently pushed it closed. Kellie heard the lock snick into place.

"The is your safer place?" she croaked.

He grunted and bent down to inspect her throat. "Are you having difficulty breathing?" She shook her head. "Talking?" She nodded. He scratched his head, and shrugged. "Beats the hell out of me. Lets hope it wears off soon."

Kellie found that not at all reassuring. Unconsciously she reached up and rubbed her nose, then couldn't put her arm down again. She fumed as Grove reacted with a smirk. From his coat pocket, he removed a 2" block of dull gray metal and placed it carefully on the steel shelf between two bottles of bleach. From his other pocket he fished out a pair of headphones. These he placed absentmindedly around his neck while he messed with what Kellie initially identified as an old fashioned cassette player. Then Shrinx let go of her arm and she dropped it into her lap. But when she tried to rub her right shoulder, sore from being immobilized, Shrinx said no again. She continued to silently fume.

Grove said: "This a communicator. It'll allow us to talk while you shrink, and let me track your progress.

Kellie had rejected this shrinking nonsense as Grove's insanity. But this paralysis business and its unpredictability gave her pause. Was it possible that Grove... ? She snorted, laughing at the stupid idea. Grove gazed down at her.

"You're an asshole, Mr. Grove. You know that? They're gonna lock you up in a loony bin--for ever."

Grove grinned down at her. "I doubt that. I've been fairly careful about avoiding cameras, and as you can see..." He held up his hands, which Kellie for the first time noticed were encased in examination gloves. "No fingerprints. And I've never been DNA fingerprinted, so there's little danger of lost hair or skin cells. Regardless--the benefits outweigh the risks. In a months time..." He shrugged. "I won't be around to prosecute anyway."

Kellie shook her head. "You are nuts."

Laughing, Grove inserted the headphones jack into the top of the cassette player. "Have you ever wondered exactly what the world is?"

Kellie shook her head, not in answer, but in disgust.

"For 30 years I've researched that question. Hammered away at it through three marriages and two heart attacks."

Too bad one of those heart attacks didn't kill you, Kellie thought bitterly.

"At one time, I looked to the stars for the answer. Built my own telescope, studied the star charts, poured over the calculations. I spent years staying up nights. Then I got into physics. And then into quantum physics. And guess what? Not one person on Earth, not even myself, had a clue. All these years of particle theory, unified field, weak and strong atomic interactions--it's all bunk." He laughed, and Kellie laughed with him. Then she gasped as pain, hot and as searing as fire shot through her limbs. Grove observed her closely. She exhaled, trembling.

Chapter 2 »