Chapter 5: The Morning After
Roy woke to the slow, tectonic shift of Rosa breathing. His world was a warm, dark canyon of skin and the soft cotton of her shirt, the rhythm of her heartbeat a deep, grounding drum against his back. For a blissful second, it was just warmth and safety.Then memory, cold and precise, inserted itself.
He wasn’t in his bed.He wasn’t six-foot-five. The faint, metallic scent clinging to him was his own altered body chemistry, a permanent marker of what Silas had done.
He shifted, and every muscle protested with a dull, deep ache that felt disproportionate to his size. It was the ache of being crammed into a space too small, of muscles that had spent hours clenched in flight-or-fight, now rebelling in miniature. He sat up, his head brushing the underside of her chin.The scale was still incomprehensible. Her collarbone was a smooth, curved ridge wider than a highway.Above him, Rosa’s breathing changed. A subtle catch, then a slow, deliberate exhale. Her green eyes opened, staring at the water-stained ceiling tiles for a moment before glancing down.Her gaze softened when it found him.
“Morning,” she rumbled, her voice sleep-rough and enormous.
“Morning,” he squeaked back, then cleared his throat, trying to find a deeper register.It was pointless. “You snore.”
“Liar.” A faint smile touched her lips.“You okay?”
He considered lying. It was his default—protective, deflective.But this was Rosa.She’d carried him through a sewer.“No. I feel… compressed.And everything is loud. Your heartbeat is a bass note.”
She didn’t offer empty platitudes.She just nodded, her head a planet moving in its slow orbit. “What do you need?”
“To move.To assess. To do something.” He pushed himself to his feet on the soft landscape of her shirt. The journey from the hollow of her collarbone to the pillow seemed like a trek across a vast, fabric-covered desert. “Getting off the bed is step one.”
“Logistics,” she said, the word a quiet acknowledgment of his mindset. She moved with a careful, deliberate slowness he knew was for his benefit. Sitting up, she scooped a hand under him, lifting him clear of the blankets. The world tilted, the room swinging into view. Her desk, with its clutter of wires and canisters, looked like a skyline.The door was a distant, monolithic rectangle.
She walked him to the desk, her steps causing gentle quakes in his universe, and set him down next to a coiled USB cable that lay like a massive, black tree root. “Secure enough?”
“For now.” He put a hand on the cable to steady himself. “Thanks.”
A soft knock at the door, then it opened just enough for Jason’s face to appear, his hair a messy cascade from a restless night. His eyes, shadowed with fatigue, scanned the room and instantly locked onto Roy. The relief was instantaneous, a physical softening of his shoulders.“Hey. You’re awake.”
“Mostly,” Roy said.Jason slipped in, closing the door behind him.He smelled of stale sleep and determination. He came to the desk, crouching so his face was level with the surface. “Rosa said you had a rough night.”
“It was… open,” Roy said simply.Jason understood. He reached out a finger, not to pick Roy up, but to rest it on the desk beside him, an offered connection. Roy walked over and leaned against it, the solid warmth a brand against his side.“I have the tank,” Jason said, his voice low and excited. “The 20-gallon.Lee and I cleaned it last night. It’s on a rolling cart in the common room.We can start building today.”
“Good. I need a workspace before I lose my mind.” Roy patted Jason’s finger. “First, though, I need a field trip.”
Jason blinked.“Where?”
“The bathroom. Basic human functions are now a strategic operation.”
Rosa snorted a laugh from the bed, the sound echoing in the quiet room. “He’s not wrong. You need a escort, big guy?”
“I’ve got him,” Jason said, his tone leaving no room for argument.He carefully cupped his hand, and Roy stepped on. The transition from desk to hand was smoother now, a practiced motion. Jason stood, bringing Roy up to chest height.“Okay.Standard procedure. I’ll be your elevator, your shuttle bus, and your bodyguard. You direct.”
“Aye aye,” Roy said, clinging to the ridge of Jason’s thumb as he began to move.
The hallway outside was a cathedral of dust motes dancing in the weak morning light filtering through the boarded transom windows. Each of Jason’s steps was a minor earthquake, a boom followed by a settling tremor. The door to their own room passed by, a familiar landmark now from a giant’s perspective. The bathroom door, half-closed, loomed ahead.Jason pushed it open with his foot. The bathroom was large, a communal style with three shower stalls and a row of sinks. The mirrors were mostly gone, removed to prevent broken-glass hazards long ago. The air was cool and carried the faint, clean scent of bleach Sandy insisted on using.
“Right,” Jason said, his voice taking on a hushed, tactical tone.He walked to the nearest sink.The white porcelain basin was a vast, sloping valley. The drain was a dark, bottomless pit.The chrome faucet towered above like a polished sculpture. “Okay.This is… bigger than I thought.”
“No kidding,” Roy murmured, staring up. The scale was ridiculous, almost comical if it weren’t so utterly disabling.
Jason thought for a moment, then set Roy down on the broad, cold lip of the sink. The ceramic was chilly through the thin soles of his salvaged sneakers.“Wait here. Don’t move.”
He rummaged in a cabinet below and came out with a clean, shallow plastic food container—one of the ones they used for seedling starters. He rinsed it meticulously under the tap, the water roaring like a waterfall.He dried it with a piece of cloth. Then he placed it carefully on the sink lip next to Roy.It was a small, white-plastic pond.
“Your… facilities,” Jason said, his ears turning pink.“We’ll figure out plumbing later. For now, privacy.” He turned his back, presenting a wall of flannel shirt.“I’m right here. Call when you’re done.”
Roy was hit by a wave of such profound, absurd gratitude it nearly buckled his knees.The simple, mortifying act of preserving his dignity had been engineered in seconds. “Thanks, Jay.”
He managed. It was awkward and humbling, a stark reminder of his infantile dependency.When he was finished, he called out softly.Jason turned, his face carefully neutral. He disposed of the container’s contents efficiently, rinsed it again, and placed it to the side. “Next challenge: washing up.”
He produced a thimble from his pocket—a scavenged silver one. He filled it with a few drops of cold water from the tap and set it beside Roy. Next, a piece of paper towel, torn to a quarter of its size, which still resembled a stiff, vast blanket.A dab of liquid soap on another tiny scrap.
Roy washed his face and hands, the water shockingly cold, the soap sharp and clarifying. The act was normal, but the mechanics were foreign. He felt like a doll being tended to, and the flicker of hot frustration was immediate.He squashed it.Frustration was a luxury.Analysis was a tool.
Drying himself on the oversized paper towel, he looked up at Jason.“Okay. I’m ready.”
Jason’s expression was tight, his jaw working. He’d been watching the whole, painstaking process.“Roy…”
“Don’t,” Roy said, his tiny voice firm. “It’s just physics.A new set of parameters. We adapt.” He walked to the edge of the sink lip. The floor was a terrifying distance below, a sea of cracked black and white tiles.“Now, the extraction.”
Jason nodded, swallowing whatever emotion was thick in his throat. He placed his hand on the lip. Roy stepped on, and was lifted back into the safer, mobile world of Jason’s grip.
As they left the bathroom, Roy looked back at the sink, now a monument to conquered inconvenience. The seed tray, the thimble, the scraps of towel—they were the first artifacts of his new scale.They were proof of concept.
Jason carried him not back to Rosa’s room, but toward the common room.The rumble of voices grew as they approached. Lee’s quick, excited patter.Sandy’s calm interjections. The low murmur of Joan.They entered.The common room had been transformed overnight. The coffee table was pushed against a wall. In the center of the room, on a sturdy library cart, sat the empty 20-gallon aquarium, gleaming under the LED strips. Books were stacked around it—engineering manuals, chemistry texts, physics primers. Tools were laid out on a cloth: pliers, wire cutters, rolls of mesh and clear plastic sheeting.Everyone was there. Everyone stopped talking when Jason walked in, Roy in his hand.All eyes went to Roy. The pity was mostly gone, replaced by a focused, collective intensity.Lee stepped forward, pushing his glasses up. “Power source analysis,” he said, holding up the SR device.It looked so innocuous now, a clunky remote. “The battery isn’t a battery.It’s a capacitor bank, charged by a piezoelectric element. Probably harvesting kinetic energy from Silas’s movements. It explains the limited, focused charges.”
Roy felt a spark ignite in his chest, the first pure, clean flame since the drain. “So it’s not magic. It’s just very, very efficient energy redirection.”
“Exactly,” Lee said, a grin splitting his face. “And if it can redirect energy to compress local space-time fields…”
“It can redirect energy to expand them,” Roy finished. He looked from Lee’s excited face to the empty tank, to the tools, to the faces of his family, waiting, ready to build.The weight of his vulnerability was still there, an anchor tied to his soul. But alongside it now was a filament, thin and strong as spider silk: the beginning of a plan.
“Alright,” Roy said, his voice carrying clearly in the silent room.He pointed a tiny hand at the tank. “Let’s build me a universe.”
The room erupted into motion. Lee immediately began sketching capacitor diagrams in the margin of a physics textbook. Sandy headed for the makeshift med-bay to check Rosa’s bandages. Amie and Ally started sorting through a box of scavenged electronics components, pulling out tiny LEDs and watch batteries.
Jason carried Roy to the library cart, placing him carefully on the clean surface next to the aquarium’s open top. The glass walls rose around them like cliffs of green-tinged clarity. “Where do we start?” Jason asked, his voice barely above a whisper, meant only for Roy.“Infrastructure first,” Roy said, pacing along the rim. He felt the focused energy of the room at his back, a fuel line.“I need a stable platform inside. Multiple levels.Access points you can reach, but walkers can’t.” He pointed. “That mesh wire.We can cut and layer it. Create a grid.”
“On it,” Joan said, snatching up the wire cutters.Her movements were efficient, precise.
Jayden joined her, holding the mesh steady.“We should reinforce the corners.Braid the ends together. Nothing snaggy.”
The squeak of the common room door sounded.Everyone glanced over.
Rosa walked in, a cane scavenged last year from the on-campus drug store supporting her weight. The smooth black aluminum was slick under her grip. Each step was a calculated transfer, her jaw tight against the pain in her burned thigh. She navigated the cluttered floor with a weary expertise before she sat down on the love seat next to Jason.
“Don’t stop on my account,” she grunted, propping the cane against the sofa.Her eyes swept the activity, landing on Roy atop the cart. “Looks like you’ve got a crew.”
“They’re taking my specs seriously,” Roy said.He couldn’t smile, not really, but he felt a thread of warmth. This was a problem they could attack together.
“Good.” Rosa leaned back, the old cushions sighing under her.She watched Joan and Jayden fabricating a small platform of mesh.“Lee.That device. You said piezoelectric.Harvesting movement?”
Lee looked up from his notes, pushing his glasses up. “Yeah.Every step he took, every jerk of his arm, fed the capacitor a tiny bit. It’s why he could use it multiple times without a power grid. The shrink pulse itself must be incredibly energy-dense, but fleeting.”
Roy stopped pacing.The facts clicked into a new configuration. “It’s not sustained.The field collapses after initiation. That’s why I’m stable, not… flickering. The change is a one-time catalytic event.”
“Like pushing a boulder off a cliff,” Jason murmured, looking from Roy to the device. “The energy to push is one thing. The drop is permanent.”
“Until we find an equal uphill slope,” Roy finished.He turned to look into the vast, empty tank.His new universe.“The platform first. Then we replicate its power source.Not to shrink.To probe. To measure.”
Sandy returned, holding a fresh roll of gauze.She paused, following Roy’s gaze into the tank. “It’ll need climate.Moisture control.You’re tiny. Dehydration would be fast.”
“A sealed chamber within the structure,” Roy directed, his mind building layers. “Plastic sheeting.Micro-humidifier from a broken CPAP machine. We have those parts.”
“We do,” Amie spoke up, his voice softer than the rest. He was already digging through a secondary bin, his long fingers pulling out a small, plastic reservoir and a whisper-quiet fan assembly.He held them up for approval.Ally smiled at him, a quick, proud gesture. “We can integrate it. Make it accessible from the top for maintenance.”
For the next hour, the common room buzzed with a low, productive hum. Joan and Jayden finished the primary mesh platform, lowering it into the tank with fishing line. Lee and Amie collaborated on the humidifier, splicing wires to a small solar battery. Sandy prepped a tiny med-kit from a mint tin, filling it with slivers of bandage and drops of antiseptic in a thimble.
Jason was Roy’s hands, translating his pointed directions into precise actions with tweezers and glue. Roy stood at the very edge of the cart, directing the placement of a zip-tie ladder, the angle of a clear plastic observation wall.Rosa watched, silent.Her leg throbbed. The cane was a cold, necessary weight against her knee. Her brother was a figurine, shouting instructions about ventilation ducts made from straws. The surreal horror of it had hardened into a core of pure, undiluted purpose in everyone’s eyes.No one was grieving a loss. They were engineering a solution.
The platform began to resemble a habitable space: multiple floors, a secured sleeping alcove, a designated work area from the shell of a smartphone calculator. It was a bonsai fortress.Roy surveyed it from his vantage point. “It’s a good start.” His voice carried a fatigue that wasn’t physical. It was the strain of constant projection, of thinking ten steps ahead on a board where every square was a potential pitfall. “We need to test the environment.Before I move in.”
“Right,” Sandy said. “We should monitor temperature fluctuations for a full day.Check for condensation.”
Jason’s hand hovered near Roy, a silent offer. Roy stepped on, and Jason brought him closer to the tank opening for a final look. The mesh platform sat six inches below them, a world awaiting its first inhabitant.
From the love seat, Rosa shifted, the movement stiff. She picked up the SR device from where Lee had left it on the sofa cushion.It was cold and heavy in her palm. “This is the key, isn’t it?Not just the power source.The way it focuses. The way it tagged that walker.”
Roy nodded from Jason’s hand.“The field emission can be tuned. Silas tuned it to me.To mark me.”
A quiet settled over the room.The implications unfolded, dark and branching.
Joan broke the silence, her voice pragmatic. “If he’s alive, he knows we have it. He’ll want it back.”
“Or he’ll try to use it again,” Jayden added, her hand resting on the knife at her belt.
Rosa turned the device over.The single, dark LED stared back like a blinded eye. She looked at Roy, so small on Jason’s palm, then at the nascent habitat in the tank. “Then we don’t just build a universe.” She met Roy’s gaze, her green eyes sharp. “We build a vault.”