Chapter 1: The Limp and the Drool
Garfield Logan watched Rachel from across the cafeteria table, and a cold, unfamiliar knot tightened in his stomach.
She was chewing a bite of cafeteria pizza with a slow, mechanical rhythm, her jaw moving as if disconnected from her thoughts. Her eyes, usually a sharp, intelligent violet, were glassy and fixed on the far wall where a faded poster for the Spring Fling dance hung crookedly. A thin, shiny string of drool escaped the corner of her full lips and stretched toward the cardboard tray before breaking, landing silently on the pizza crust.
“Rach?” Gar said, his voice softer than he intended.
She didn’t hear him. Her hand, pale against the dark fabric of her dress, drifted absently to her lower abdomen. She shifted in the molded plastic chair, and a subtle wince flickered across her features. The movement made her massive breasts, impossibly large beneath her black top, sway with a heavy, pendulous weight. Her wide hips, already pressing against the sides of the chair, shifted again, and Gar had the sudden, disquieting thought that she was trying to accommodate a deep, secret ache between her legs.
This was the third day. The third day of the limp, a slight but definite hitch in her step as she walked the school halls. The third day of this vacant, dreamy distraction.
He tore his gaze away and caught Dick Grayson’s eye from two tables over. Dick wasn’t laughing with his usual crowd. He was watching his own girlfriend, Kory Anders, with a mirrored expression of quiet concern. Kory, a full head taller than anyone else in the room, was staring into the humming glow of the cracked vending machine, her fiery red hair a brilliant cascade down her back. A droplet of saliva gleamed on her chin. She didn’t seem to notice.
Dick saw Gar looking. He gave a tight, almost imperceptible nod toward the double doors leading to the courtyard.
Gar stood up, his chair scraping loudly. Rachel didn’t flinch. He shouldered his backpack and weaved through the crowded cafeteria, the din of shouted conversations and clattering trays feeling suddenly oppressive and far away.
The late afternoon air outside was cool, a relief from the cafeteria’s greasy heat. Dick was already there, leaning against the brick wall, arms crossed.
“You see it too,” Gar said. It wasn’t a question.
“Yeah. I see it.” Dick ran a hand through his black hair, his usually cheerful blue eyes shadowed. “Kory forgot where her locker was this morning. She just stood in the middle of the hall, looking lost. Then she smiled this… this empty smile and walked to class without her books.”
“Rachel drooled on her trigonometry textbook yesterday. She just closed it and kept going like it was normal.” Gar shoved his hands in his pockets, feeling a chill that wasn’t from the weather. “What the hell is happening to them? They came back from that field trip and they’re just… fading.”
The field trip. The West-Reed Applied Sciences Center. The “career day” tour that included the cold, sterile viewing gallery overlooking the main geothermal reactor core. They’d all gone—him, Rachel, Dick, Kory. It had been boring, just a deep hum and a blue-ish glow through three-foot-thick glass.
“It has to be connected,” Dick said, pushing off the wall. “Nothing else makes sense. They were fine before. Now they’ve got the same limp, the same spaced-out look. They’re both just… physically massive now. I mean, they always were, but it’s like it’s… accentuated. And they’re in some kind of pain.”
“Or pleasure,” Gar muttered, the words tasting bitter.
Dick glanced at him sharply. “What?”
“The way Rachel moves. The wince. It’s not just pain, man. It’s like she’s… remembering something. Something intense.” He shook his head, his green hair falling over his forehead. “I tried to talk to her about it last night. She just turned to me, looked right through me, and whispered ‘It’s okay, Mother understands.’ Then she went back to staring at the wall.”
A long silence hung between them, broken only by the distant shout of a coach from the athletic fields.
“Kory said something similar,” Dick said quietly. “She was in the shower. I heard her talking. I thought she was on the phone. She was saying ‘Your seed is so pure, it sculpts me.’ I knocked and she just went quiet.”
A jolt of revulsion, sharp and electric, shot through Gar. This was far beyond weird. This was a crack in the world.
“We have to find out what happened at that reactor,” Gar said, his voice low and firm. “There has to be records, something they weren’t told. A leak, a malfunction, something.”
Dick nodded, his expression hardening into resolve. “My uncle has access to the municipal database. He’s out of town, but I know where he keeps his keycard. We can use the terminal in his home office tonight.”
“What are we looking for?”
“Anything. Emergency protocols for West-Reed, environmental reports, health inspections.” Dick looked back toward the cafeteria doors, his face grim. “Before they’re too far gone to even know our names.”
The bell rang, a harsh electronic scream that signified the end of lunch. The doors burst open, a flood of students pouring out. Among them, Rachel and Kory emerged side-by-side, moving with a slow, synchronized gait. Their limps were identical—a slight catch on the right foot, a subtle roll of their exaggerated hips.
They spotted Gar and Dick. Rachel’s glassy eyes focused, just for a second. Her lips, still glistening wet, curved into a small, private smile. It wasn’t for him. It was for a secret she held inside. Kory looped her arm through Rachel’s, and they turned down the hall, their towering, altered forms moving in a dreamy, shared rhythm.
Gar watched them disappear around the corner, the cold knot in his stomach turning to ice.
“Tonight,” he said.
“Tonight,” Dick agreed.
They walked back into the school, the buzz of the fluorescent lights now sounding like a warning. The investigation was no longer just about concern. It felt like a race against an invisible clock, ticking down to a point of no return they couldn’t yet see.