Chapter 1: Curious Cat
The lecture on post-modern color theory was a slow, suffocating death. Alex Vance watched a fly crawl across the window, its world vast and simple. Her own world—a massive auditorium where every giantess shift in her seat sounded like tectonic plates grinding—felt suddenly, unbearably small. Jess would kill her. Ellie would be disappointed. Jules would just laugh, later, after the panic subsided.
But the buzz from her headphones wasn’t just the droning professor. It was a real sound, leaking in from the outside. A sharp, electrical pop, then a crunch, like a soda can being demolished under a boot. A giant boot.
Her curiosity, that feral, often stupid little engine inside her, revved to life. Adventure over safety. Always.
She slid her tiny sketchbook into her bag, waited for the professor to turn toward the holoscreen, and slipped out the side door. The hallway was a canyon of lockers and echoing footsteps. She darted past ankles and shoe towers, a practiced maneuver, and pushed out into the damp afternoon.
The alley was a forgotten seam in the campus fabric. It twisted between the towering brick dorms, all ivy and leaded windows, and the crumbling rear wall of the science building. The air here smelled different—stale coffee grounds, wet concrete, the sharp tang of ozone. Tiny cars, no bigger than her thumb from this perspective, were parked haphazardly along the curb, their owners scrambling between them. Above, a campus bus hissed by on the main road, a silent, monolithic shadow that briefly plunged the alley into deeper gloom.
There. Another sound. Not a pop this time, but a low, frustrated mutter. A voice. Giant.
Alex pressed herself against the cold brick, her heart a frantic bird against her ribs. She peeked around the corner.
The giantess was impossible to miss, even crouched. Sloane Merrick was a monument of sleek, muscular efficiency in dark tactical gear, her hair a shock of white-blonde tied in a severe knot. She was focusing on something on the ground, her back to Alex. Before her, glittering with internal ruin, was the twisted carcass of a campus security drone. Its spherical body was cracked open, wires spilling like metallic guts. Sloane prodded the wreckage with a tool, her movements precise, utterly absorbed.
Alex’s breath hitched. This wasn’t just skipping class. This was something else. Something real. She took one step, then another, leaning out to see better. Her shoe scuffed a loose piece of gravel.
The world froze.
Sloane’s head turned. Not slowly. It was a whip-crack motion, eyes the color of Arctic ice locking onto Alex’s hiding spot. There was no surprise in them. Only a flat, weary recognition.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Sloane sighed, the sound like distant thunder.
Alex didn’t think. She ran.
Tiny legs pumped, her backpack bouncing, the alley exit a sliver of light a hundred miles away. The ground shook. Once. Twice. A shadow engulfed her. A hand, vast and terrifyingly fast, slammed down on the wall in front of her, blocking her path. Fingers as thick as her torso curled, caging her. Another hand descended from above. Before she could scream, she was plucked from the ground.
The world became a blur of speed and dizzying height. She was brought up, up, level with Sloane’s face. Those cold eyes examined her, sharp and analytical, like she was another piece of broken tech.
“You people,” Sloane said, her voice a low rumble. “So damn stupid. So incredibly, fatally nosy.” She held Alex between thumb and forefinger, tilting her this way and that. Alex dangled, kicking helplessly, the streets below now a dizzying dollhouse landscape. “You see something you don’t understand, and your first instinct is to tiptoe right into the middle of it. Like a moth to a blast furnace.”
Sloane’s other hand came up. With a casual flick, she popped the strap of Alex’s backpack, letting it fall away. It plummeted, a tiny speck, and landed with a soft, faraway plop in a puddle.
“Do you have any idea what happens to nosy tinies?” Sloane mused, almost to herself. Her gaze drifted from Alex’s face down to her own grasp, then back up. The decision was made in her eyes, a flicker of utter indifference. “They become a problem. And I tidy up problems.”
She brought Alex closer. Her lips parted. Her breath was warm and smelled of mint and something metallic. The cavern of her mouth was a dark, pink tunnel. Her tongue, a massive, wet muscle, shifted.
This was it. Not an adventure. Just a snack. A trivial, messy end. Alex squeezed her eyes shut, a whimper escaping her.
A pause.
The warmth receded. Alex dared to open her eyes.
Sloane was staring at her, but the indifference had shattered. Those ice-chip eyes were wide, scanning Alex’s features with a new, intense focus. They lingered on her eyes, the shape of her nose, the defiant set of her jaw despite the terror.
“No,” Sloane breathed. The word was soft, disbelieving. “Vance. Ellie Vance’s kid. The little artist.” She blinked, and the entire universe of her demeanor changed. The predatory tension drained from her shoulders. She pulled Alex back to a respectful, almost careful distance. “Shit. You’re Alex.”
Alex could only nod, trembling violently.
“God damn it,” Sloane muttered, not with malice, but with profound irritation, as if she’d just realized she’d almost stepped on a priceless heirloom. She shifted her grip, cupping Alex gently in her palm instead of pinching her. “What are you doing out here? Does Ellie know you skip class to investigate mysterious alley noises? She’d have a synchronized double heart attack.”
“I… I heard a noise,” Alex stammered, the banality of the statement almost hilarious.
“You heard a noise,” Sloane repeated, deadpan. She pinched the bridge of her nose with her free hand. “Of course you did.” She glanced back at the destroyed drone, then down at Alex in her hand. “Look. This never happened. You weren’t here. I wasn’t here. That,” she pointed a giant finger at the drone, “is a pile of garbage. You got it?”
Alex nodded again, more vigorously.
“Good.” Sloane stood, her movement smooth and powerful. In two strides, she was at the mouth of the alley. She crouched, bringing her hand down to eye level with the sidewalk. “Your class. Which building?”
“F-Fine Arts. Room 214.”
Sloane rolled her eyes. “Naturally.” She stood and began to walk, her strides consuming blocks. The world became a rushing panorama of building tops and sky. In less than a minute, they were at the steps of the Fine Arts building. She knelt, a goddess descending, and deposited Alex onto the stone banister with surprising delicacy.
“Go. Back to class. Now.” Her tone was stern, but it lacked the terrifying finality of before. It was almost… maternal. In a scalding, no-nonsense kind of way. “And for the love of God, tell your mom I said hello. Tell her Sloane says hi, and that she’s…” Sloane trailed off, her eyes growing distant for a second. “She’s right about some things. Now scram.”
Alex, her legs still wobbly, scrambled down the banister toward the door. She turned back once.
Sloane was already gone, vanished back into the rhythm of the city. But the image was burned into Alex’s mind: the giantess in the alley, the destroyed tech, the momentary, terrifying void of her open mouth, and the sudden, saving grace of recognition.
She walked back into the building, the echo of her own footsteps small in the quiet hall. The fly was still on the window in her classroom. Her seat was empty. The professor droned on.
Nothing had changed. Everything had changed. She had a secret, and a message to deliver, and the eerie certainty that the drone in the alley hadn’t just broken. It had been taken apart. By someone Ellie knew. Someone who, for a second, had looked at Alex and seen nothing at all.
She slipped into her seat. Jess shot her a worried, angry glare from across the room. Alex just shook her head slightly, staring at her blank sketchbook. Her hands finally stopped shaking. She picked up a pencil.
She didn’t draw colors. She drew the stark, sharp lines of a shattered sphere, and the looming shadow that fell across it. She had to tell Ellie. But first, she had to understand what ‘hi’ from a woman like Sloane Merrick really meant, and why it felt like both a warning and an apology.