Chapter 3: The Hunt Begins
The air in Ellie’s study tasted like ozone and old paper. It vibrated with the low hum of her primary terminal, a wall-sized screen currently displaying a wireframe map of the city. Jules paced behind Ellie’s chair, a restless mountain. Each footfall was a deliberate, softened step, but they still sent faint tremors through the floorboards that Jess felt in her teeth. Jules hadn’t spoken since her declaration on the lawn. Her silence was a physical weight.
Alex and Jess stood on a specially-designed tiny balcony built into the bookshelf, a perch that gave them a view of the screen and the room. From here, the scale was manageable, but no less daunting. Ellie’s focused profile was like a cliff face etched in the glow of the monitor.
“Sloane’s data stream is live,” Ellie said, her voice all business, a dam against the emotion swirling in the room. Her fingers flew across a keyboard the size of a swimming pool. On the screen, the city grid sharpened. A pulsating red dot marked the park. “The emitter signature is distinct. Crude, but cleverly masked within standard municipal bandwidth. It was designed to look like background noise.”
A cascade of data lines, financial records, and communication logs began to populate the side of the screen. “Sabine didn’t build this in a garage. She had funding. Logistics.” Ellie zoomed in on a downtown sector. “The components for that emitter were purchased through six shell corporations, all tracing back to a single holding group. ‘New Dawn Realities.’”
“A tiny-front?” Jules’s voice was rough, unused.
“Primarily. But they’ve been leasing warehouse space in the Dockside District. A mixed-zone, low-traffic area. Perfect for R&D you don’t want noticed.” Ellie’s cursor hovered over a large, seemingly abandoned cannery on the river. A second, fainter signal overlay pulsed in time with the park’s emitter data. “Residual energy signature. It’s a match. That’s where they built it. And where,” she added, her tone dropping ten degrees, “they are likely building the next one.”
“Send me,” Jules said, stopping her pacing. The words were stone.
Ellie finally turned to look at her partner. The monitor’s light caught the tracks of dried tears on Jules’s cheeks, the furious set of her jaw. “No.”
“Ellie—”
“No.” Ellie stood, the chair rolling back. The difference in their heights was minimal, but in that moment, Ellie seemed to tower. “You are emotionally compromised. Sabine is a strategist. She will have scouts, sensors. The moment she detects a giantess—especially you—approaching that facility, her protocol won’t be to fight. It will be to scatter, or worse, to trigger a failsafe. She’d destroy the evidence and blame the ‘raging giantess’ for leveling the block. She wants martyrs. I will not hand them to her.”
Jules’s fists clenched, the knuckles cracking like tiny gunshots. The helplessness was worse than the hunger had been.
Ellie’s gaze shifted, dropping from Jules’s agonized face to the bookshelf balcony. To her daughters. “Sabine’s paranoia is directed upward. She’ll be watching for giants. She won’t be watching for her own kind moving through the infrastructure.”
The meaning landed in the pit of Jess’s stomach, cold and heavy.
“Oh, you have got to be kidding me,” Jess breathed.
Alex’s eyes, however, lit up with that terrifying, familiar spark. “Infiltration.”
“It’s the only viable option,” Ellie said, her voice leaving no room for debate. “You are small, agile, and you can use the tiny utility tunnels that run along the riverfront. They connect to that cannery’s basement level from the old sewer access. It’s on my blueprints from the city retrofit project five years ago.”
“We’re not commandos!” Jess shot back, her voice climbing. “We’re an art student and a pre-med! She’s a terrorist who poisons water supplies!”
“You will have backup. And a mission that does not involve confrontation.” Ellie’s tone became instructional, firm. “You locate the primary workshop. You plant a non-destructive tracker on the central server or the largest prototype you can find. Then you leave. Sloane and I will use the signal to orchestrate a coordinated, legal intervention with the authorities. We take the whole network down at once, cleanly.”
“Backup?” Alex asked.
As if on cue, the study door opened. Miley Smith stepped in, followed by the slow, graceful stride of Sloane Merrick. Miley had a heavy-looking duffel bag slung over her shoulder, her red hair tied back in a severe ponytail. Sloane held a small, metallic case.
“You called for a tech,” Miley said, her usual bubbly cadence replaced by a focused flatness. She nodded to Alex and Jess. “Sarah’s at class. Told her I was helping you guys with a project. Which, I guess, is technically true.”
Sloane set the case on Ellie’s desk with a soft click. “Non-negotiable parameters,” she stated, opening it. Inside, nestled in foam, were three devices the size of matchboxes, and three sleek, wireless earpieces. “You are scouts. Not soldiers. Your objective is intelligence and tagging. If you are detected, you disengage. The moment you plant a tracker, you retreat. Your survival is a higher priority than the mission’s success.”
She plucked one of the matchbox devices out. “Low-frequency tracker. Adhesive mount. Slap it on anything that looks important. It will piggyback on local power sources and emit a signal only our receivers can parse.” She handed it to Miley, who scaled a ladder to the balcony to pass it to Alex.
“The earpieces are encrypted,” Miley explained, handing them over. “We’ll be in your ears. I’ve got a feed of the old tunnel schematics. Sloane and Ellie will be on comms directing from the macro view. I’m your eyes on the tech side.”
Jess took the earpiece. It felt absurdly light. A tiny piece of plastic that stood between them and being erased in a place no one would ever find. “And if Sabine sees us?”
Sloane met her gaze. Her steel eyes were impassive. “Then you have failed to be scouts. And the situation becomes… messy.”
“Sabine respects me,” Ellie said, cutting through the chill Sloane’s words left behind. “In her own twisted way. She believes I am naive, but principled. She would not expect me to send my own children into her den. It is an advantage. Use it.”
Jules had sunk into a giant armchair, her head in her hands. She looked up, her eyes red-rimmed and desperate. “Please,” she whispered, the word meant for Alex and Jess. “Please be so careful. Don’t let her… don’t let her make you see what I saw.”
It was the raw plea that did it, more than any tactical argument. Jess gave a stiff, terrified nod.
Two hours later, the world had narrowed to damp concrete, the smell of stale water, and the dim, flickering glow of emergency lighting strung along a pipe-lined ceiling. The tiny utility tunnel was just tall enough for Jess to walk without hunching. Condensation dripped somewhere in the darkness ahead with a steady, ticking rhythm.
Alex took point, her movements confident as she consulted a tablet Miley had synced to their network. A blue line traced their path through the labyrinth. “Next left. Then it’s a fifty-yard crawl to the cannery’s sub-basement access shaft.”
Jess’s heart hammered against her ribs. Every distant rumble—a truck passing overhead, the groan of the city’s plumbing—sounded like an approaching giant.
“Signal is holding,” Miley’s voice said in her ear, crisp and calm. “You’re approaching the edge of my schematic clarity. The last survey of this section was… let’s call it optimistic. Watch for floor degradation.”
“Optimistic,” Jess muttered. “Great.”
They turned left. The tunnel constricted, forcing them into a crouch, then onto their hands and knees. The concrete was slick with algal grime. Alex shoved her tablet into a waterproof pouch and crawled forward.
“Access shaft should be a maintenance hatch in the ceiling,” Ellie’s voice came through, a low, steadying rumble. “It may be rusted shut.”
Alex reached the spot first. She shone her flashlight upward. A circular, iron hatch was set into the tunnel roof, a recessed ladder leading up to it. It looked ancient. She reached up, gripped the lever, and threw her weight into it.
It didn’t budge.
“Let me,” Jess said, crawling beside her. Together, they pulled. Metal shrieked in protest, and a shower of rust flakes rained down on their heads and shoulders. With a final, grating shriek, the lever turned.
The hatch popped open an inch, releasing a wave of colder, drier air that smelled of machine oil and sawdust. Alex pushed it fully open, the hinges screaming into the vast space above. She pulled herself up, then turned to help Jess.
They were in a basement cavern. Giant, rusted machinery—conveyor belts, pulping vats—loomed in the shadows like fossilized dinosaurs. But in the center of the space, under the glare of powerful halogen work lights, was something new.
A makeshift workshop hummed with activity. Several tinies moved between workbenches cluttered with electronics and machining tools. At the heart of it, suspended in a reinforced frame, was a device. It was a larger, more refined version of the metal crate from the park. Its housing was polished alloy, threaded with glowing conduits. Wires snaked from it to a bank of servers that blinked with orderly, malevolent lights.
And standing before it, pointing at a schematic on a large monitor, was Sabine Cross.
She was just as Ellie had described from her old government IDs: severe haircut, sharp features, dressed in practical tactical gear. But the intensity radiating from her was palpable even from across the room. She was speaking to a technician, her gestures quick, precise.
“That’s it,” Alex whispered, ducking behind a giant, discarded gear wheel. “That’s the mark.”
“I count eight hostiles,” Jess breathed, her medical training kicking in to assess numbers, postures. “All armed. Sidearms, at least.”
“You don’t need to engage them,” Sloane’s voice reminded them, sterile in their ears. “You need to place the tracker on the central console or the device itself. Then egress.”
Egress. Like it was a simple door.
The route to the workshop was a gauntlet of open floor, dotted with debris. They’d have to move from shadow to shadow, using the giant defunct machinery as cover.
“Okay,” Alex said, her adrenaline making her voice tight but clear. “On three. To that conveyor support.”
They ran, heels scraping softly on the concrete. The noise of the workshop—the hum of fans, the murmur of voices, the tinny ping of a metal tool being set down—covered their movement. They made it to the support, pressed against cold iron.
Another dash brought them to the shadow of a workbench sized for tinies, just twenty feet from the edge
of the illuminated workshop floor. They could hear Sabine clearly now.
“The modulation is still too localized,” Sabine was saying, tapping the screen. “We need it to propagate through standard emergency alert frequencies. When the big ones hear that sweet, compelling chime on their devices, they’ll stop thinking altogether.”
A technician nodded nervously. “The broadcast relay is almost ready. We can run a city-wide test within 48 hours.”
Alex’s eyes met Jess’s. 48 hours. The tracker in Alex’s hand felt suddenly infinitesimal, a feather against a tsunami. She nodded towards the main server rack, humming beside the polished emitter. It was three strides across open concrete.
“Now,” Alex mouthed.
They broke from the shadows together. Their footsteps, soft on the dusty floor, seemed deafening. They were halfway to the server when a metallic clatter shattered the room’s focus.
Jess had kicked a stray socket wrench, sending it skittering across the concrete with a screech that echoed off the high ceiling.
Every head in the workshop snapped towards the sound.
For a fractured second, there was only the hum of machines and eight pairs of eyes locked on them. Sabine’s expression shifted from technical frustration to icy, calculating recognition.
“Well,” Sabine said, her voice cutting through the silence. “Ellie’s daughters. I should have guessed she’d try something sentimental.” She didn’t yell. She just gestured with two fingers. “Detain them.”
The guards moved with a speed that spoke of training. Alex spun, ready to bolt back the way they came, but two figures blocked the path. Jess looked for another exit—nothing but sheer walls and giant, immovable machinery.
They were surrounded in seconds. Rough hands grabbed their arms, wrenching them behind their backs. The tracker was plucked from Alex’s grip. An earpiece was torn from Jess’s ear, crushed under a boot heel with a sickening crunch.
“Comms are dead,” one guard reported.
Sabine walked over, her boots clicking on the concrete. She stopped mere feet away, looking down at them with an expression that wasn’t quite anger. It was more like vindication. “The great Ellie Vance sends children to do her dirty work. How pathetically predictable. She always did confuse compassion for strategy.”
“She didn’t send us,” Alex spat, struggling against the grip. “We came to stop you from turning everyone into a monster like you!”
Sabine’s laugh was a short, dry thing. “A monster? I’m trying to save our species from monsters. You lived it today, didn’t you? Out in the park. One of your loving giantesses got a taste of her true nature.” She leaned in, her eyes burning. “How did it feel? To see the love in her eyes get swapped out for hunger like changing a channel?”
Jess felt the question like a physical blow. The image of Jules’s blank, acquisitive stare flashed behind her eyes. The phantom sensation of that warm, terrible breath.
“It wasn’t her,” Jess whispered, her defiance cracking.
“It’s always them!” Sabine’s composure finally splintered, voice rising to a sharp edge. “Under the surface, that’s all they are! Walking, talking appetites who see us as things! Pets, or pests, or snacks!” She gestured wildly at the humming emitter. “I’m just turning their own volume up so everyone can finally hear the noise! So we can stop living in fear of the day they finally stop pretending!”
Jess stared at her. The fervent, absolute certainty. The deep, marrow-deep terror that twisted every fact to feed its own reality. It was a dark mirror held up to her own soul. She saw her own constant, low-grade anxiety—the calculations, the cautious routes, the way she braced for every footstep—but amplified, fermented over years into this all-consuming poison.
“You’re scared,” Jess said, the realization leaving her mouth before she could stop it. “You’re just as scared as I am.”
Sabine froze. The raw exposure of the truth flickered across her face before she locked it down behind a mask of colder disdain. “Fear is a biological imperative for a reason, child. It keeps you alive. I’ve just chosen to stop cowering and start fighting back.”
“By making them eat us?” Alex yelled. “That’s your solution? You’re gonna get thousands of our people killed!”
“A necessary cost!” Sabine shot back. “A war requires casualties. When the giantesses run amok, when the streets are stained with the proof of what they are, the world will have to choose. Segregation walls a mile high. Or, better yet, a real war we can finally win with weapons that target their biology. A world where tinies don’t have to look up and wonder if today’s the day they get loved to death or stepped on for fun.”
The scale of her madness unspooled in the dank air. It wasn’t just one device. It was a catalyst for genocide.
Sabine looked at Jess, her gaze oddly intense. “You know I’m right. You feel it. That knot in your stomach every time a shadow falls over you. My own mother,” she said, the words dropping to a haunted whisper. “A ‘careful’ giantess. I was seven. She was eating a sandwich. She looked at me, nestled in her palm where she’d been cuddling me, and her eyes just… went empty. She brought me to her lips.”
She blinked, the memory still fresh after decades. “I screamed. It startled her. She dropped me. I fell twenty feet into a pile of laundry. She sobbed for weeks, begged forgiveness. She was ‘herself’ again. But I never forgot the smell of her breath, the wet darkness of her mouth. The look. I never will. You could live without that fear, Jessica. If they were gone.”
The profound, twisted empathy in Sabine’s offer was horrifying. It was a promise of safety, built on a mountain of corpses.
Before Jess could form a response, a new voice cut through the tension.
“Maybe she’s not entirely wrong.”
Everyone turned. Miley stood at the entrance to the basement access shaft, her duffel bag gone. She wasn’t looking at Alex or Jess. Her eyes were fixed on Sabine, wide with a mixture of fear and a terrifying, dawning admiration.
“Miley?” Alex breathed, utterly confused.
“I heard everything. Over the comms before they cut out,” Miley said, stepping fully into the light. Her usual cheerful mask was gone, replaced by a stark, serious expression. “I’ve been Sarah’s girlfriend for two years. I love her. I really do. But sometimes… when she’s playful, when she holds me a little too tight, or pretends to drop me as a joke…” She swallowed. “There’s always that second where I don’t know. That second of pure terror. Sabine’s right. We live on their whim. Every single day.”
“Miley, don’t,” Jess pleaded, seeing her friend slipping away.
“You heard Jules today,” Miley said, her voice gaining strength. “You saw it. That switch is in all of them. What if next time no one’s there to stop it? What if it’s Sarah?” A single tear traced a path through the dust on her cheek. “Sabine isn’t talking about fear. She’s talking about freedom. Real freedom.”
Sabine watched Miley, a slow, genuine smile spreading across her face. It was the most frightening thing Jess had seen yet. “An engineer. With access to giantess homes and networks.” She extended a hand. “You see the structural flaw in our existence. You want to help build a real solution.”
Miley hesitated for only a heartbeat. Then she stepped forward, past Alex and Jess, and placed her hand in Sabine’s. “I do.”
“Miley, you traitor!” Alex screamed, lunging against her captors.
“Lock the emotional liabilities in the storage closet,” Sabine ordered, her attention already returning to her machine, her new disciple at her side. “We have a broadcast relay to finalize. The schedule has just moved up.”
The guards dragged a kicking Alex and a shell-shocked Jess across the room. A heavy metal door was wrenched open, revealing a pitch-black closet smelling of old wood and rust. They were shoved inside.
Jess stumbled, her hands slapping against the back wall. Alex crashed into her.
The door slammed shut. The sound of a thick, mechanical lock engaging was deafening in the absolute darkness.
The last thing they heard was Sabine’s voice, already fading as she walked away with Miley. “The first broadcast will target the central business district at noon tomorrow. Let’s give the giants a lunch break they’ll never forget.”
Then, there was only the dark, the silence, and the distant, mocking hum of the machine that was going to start a war.