Growing into the Job, Post 566: Reverberations

“What is that?” asked the young blonde lab technician “I can feel it in my chest…”

“It’s just HVAC feedback,” muttered the darker haired tech, Marcia.

The hum of Evolution Pharmaceutical’s testing labs’ ventilation system did indeed fill the sterile room with a low, constant breath. But even with the white noise of circulating air and the faint buzz of overhead fluorescents, there was an unusual, atypical pressure in the space this late morning - an invisible density that wasn’t coming from any machines. The blonde knew that. It came from the study subject, MM-1A. Melissa.

Melissa sat on the reinforced testing bench, long legs crossed with athletic grace, the matte gray of her leggings catching the blue lab light. Her sports bra - black, stretched taut over enormous breasts that defied gravity and swelled each larger than the techs’ heads, against shoulders that looked sculpted rather than grown - gleamed faintly where her pulse beat under her collarbone. Wires traced from her temples and upper arms to a nearby monitor, its line of green spikes fluttering faster than it should.

Marcia noticed.

“Heart rate’s still climbing,” she muttered, stylus flicking over her tablet. She glanced at the blonde, and then at MM-1A. Through the past few years, Marcia had watched Melissa like a physicist watching an unstable star - beautiful, and terrifying, and heedless of its own growing gravity.

Melissa smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “I’m just thinking, I guess.” She knew these two got nervous when she got nervous, these days. 

“Thinking about what?” said the blonde tech, standing by the counter and unwrapping a straw for Melissa’s protein drink. 

This girl was different, Melissa thought, than most of the other handlers here. Her tone was cautious, not because she was afraid of Melissa (like some of them, honestly, were getting), but because everyone else was cautious around her.

Melissa shrugged, shoulders rolling slow and liquid, the attached cables tugging slightly against her skin. “Something’s wrong. I can feel it.” Her long, powerful legs uncrossed with a flex of toned thighs

“Something wrong here in the lab?” Marcia asked, distractedly checking the readouts. Marcia was smart. A little nerdy. 

“No, not here...” Melissa’s voice trailed off. She stared toward the mirror on the far wall - two-way glass behind which she knew another cluster of analysts was likely watching. “It’s just… a feeling I get.”

Marcia exchanged a look with Emily. “Well, we’ve run through three rounds of bloodwork and four imaging scans today. The only thing wrong is that you’re adapting faster than the software can keep up.”

“I know.” Melissa’s hands flexed in her lap, long fingers curling and uncurling. “But this isn’t about me. It’s like-” She stopped herself, frowning, her gaze drifting downward to the pale tile floor. “Like there’s static in my head. Like someone’s trying to tell me something, and it’s all…scrambled.”

The blonde tech moved closer, holding out the protein drink like an offering. “You should sip this, okay? You haven’t eaten since breakfast.”

Melissa took it, the plastic bottle looking almost miniature in her hand. She was just under seven feet tall at this point, and made lots of things look miniature. Including these techs. 

“Oooo, chocolate,” Melissa cooed in thanks, “my favorite.” Her sultry green eyes, full curved lips and gloriously high cheekbones were perfect components of a perfect face - framed by waves of dark hair as she brought the straw to her mouth

The lab’s LED panels flickered faintly as she exhaled through her nose and took a pull of enhanced-protein nutrition. That was also happening more often - lights stuttering when she got emotional. No one ever mentioned it aloud, but they all noticed.

“Everything alright, Melissa?” the blonde tech asked softly.

Melissa gave a half-laugh, the sound airy but strained. “Yeah. Just nerves. I hate being stuck in here. Can I go home soon?”

“Well,” Marcia said dryly, tapping at the tablet again, “until we understand what’s triggering your new…developments so quickly, so acutely, we can’t risk you out in public.”

Melissa tried to smile again, but her shoulders stayed tight. Her breathing deepened. She didn’t like this anymore. She wanted some fresh air. She wanted to be back at work. And mostly she wanted to be back with him.

The green line on the monitor began to climb again.

“Melissa-?” the blond tech started, but then a sharp buzz cut through the room.

Melissa’s phone - lying on the counter next to her gym bag - lit up, screen flashing a familiar name.

Randi

The hum in the air seemed to sharpen, the lights over their heads dimming for just a second.

Melissa didn’t move at first. Her pupils dilated, her whole body going still as though the air itself were waiting. Then, with a small tremor that passed through the bench beneath her, she reached for the phone.

“I knew it,” she whispered. “Something’s wrong.”

Marcia watched her take the phone into her hand, the glass screen glinting under the bright overhead lights.Though she already knew the answer, it was her turn to ask: “Everything okay?” 

Melissa didn’t answer her. She turned on the speaker but brought the phone close to her ear, the cords running from her skin to the monitor trembling as if from some internal voltage. “Randi?” Melissa said, “Is everything okay is he okay I know something’s wrong.”

Even before Randi’s voice came through, something in Melissa’s tone made both techs go still. The hum in the vents seemed to thicken, vibrating faintly in the floor.

“Missy, hey,” came Randi’s voice, thin with static and stress. “Listen, I don’t want you to freak out, okay? Everybody’s fine - well, mostly fine. There was some kind of, um, situation here. A scare.”

Melissa’s jaw tightened. “What kind of scare.”

The way she said it - flat, low - made the blond tech take a step back.

“Just a false alarm. Probably nothing,” Randi said quickly. “Somebody dropped off a package, and Security thought it was… I mean, they called the bomb squad, but it wasn’t real. I swear.”

A pause. 

“Well, I mean it was a real bomb but it didn’t, like, work.”

“Randi.”

The name carried weight. A low tone slipped under Melissa’s voice, almost subsonic. The water in the techs’ cups quivered.

“Where is he.”

A pause on the line. A noise like Randi swallowing hard.

“That’s, uh… the thing. We’ve been trying to find him. We thought he was in your office, but Aubrey said he went somewhere with Jewel, and Jewel said she left him with Angie, and…”

Melissa was standing now, monitor wires snapping free from her skin as she rose. The bench creaked. The phone cable in the wall outlet, charging her phone, vibrated audibly.

“Randi, where is he.”

“We - we found his shirt,” Randi said, her voice barely above a humbled whisper now, “In the stairwell. And his phone - it was in a bush, by the road, when Josie tracked it.”

Marcia’s stylus clattered to the floor. The blond tech’s hand flew to her mouth. Not because of what Randi was saying, but rather Melissa’s reaction. That’s what alarmed them. 

Melissa’s breath had hitched. The room lights flickered again, brighter this time, a pulse that - the blond noticed, looking at the screen - was in sync with Melissa’s heartbeat.

“His car’s gone too,” Randi added quickly, “but listen, listen, it’s probably nothing, Missy. Maybe he just - I dunno, maybe he went home, maybe-”

“He doesn’t have a home.” The word came out in a trembling whisper. “I am his home.”

A pause. There was a low rumble - barely sound, more like vibration - rolling out from Melissa, maybe from her feet, maybe from somewhere deeper, spreading across the floor in slow ripples.

“And he’s running away.”

The monitor screens danced with static.

Randi’s voice on the line faltered, uncharacteristically contrite, “I’m so sorry, Missy. We - I just lost track of him. I swear we were keeping an eye out, we just-”

“I’ll have the car bring him home.”

“What?”

“His car. I can do that from here.”

“Yeah, do it, that’s good, do that,” Randi said quickly, relief flavoring the panic that had spilled into her tone. She was remembering the weird features of Melissa and Dr J’s new vehicles, how they were paired, his like the little duckling to hers, how Melissa had remote access to his. She could send it commands from anywhere, have it stop in its tracks. But what if he were on some highway, somewhere where that might not be safe. “Just -  let’s check first, maybe he’s just-”

But Melissa had already swiped to the Valkyrie Motors app and pulled up the options, what she could do to his car. Which, really, is MY car. She saw, on a map, where he was, headed away from the city and already quite a ways out, in the middle of some forest. Trying to get away, hm? Her fingers trembled - in hesitation? Or in anger? - only slightly as she tapped <Return to Mother>. The confirmation tone was only a soft chime, though the sound seemed to echo, sharp and metallic, bouncing off the walls. “Oh, he is going to have a talking to…” she found herself saying out loud. She smiled as she saw the speed of the car start to slow. 50…40…35…

But then, after a few moments where she allowed herself a little smile:

“The little shit.”

On Melissa’s screen: <Command Aborted by In-Vehicle User>

35…40…55…65

Her brows narrowed. So, the car gives the driver that option. Even if they are a male. He was obviously driving. And he doesn’t like my idea, she thought. And, also: I’m going to have to remove that feature.

She looked again at the app. There were other commands, ones designed more for instances of theft. She didn’t hesitate.

<Disable Vehicle>

65…50…40…

Somewhere unseen, there was a faint echo - a distant motor choking off, headlights dying in the fog.

“I can’t get the car to come home,” Melissa told Randi, “but I did stop him.”

30…20…10…

Randi heard it in her friend’s voice, a hint of the unhinged mania that could surface when she was upset. She hadn’t seen ‘Crazy Missy’ in quite some time, certainly before she’d grown into all these new powers, and it chilled her to picture what she could be like now if she let herself go. “Missy, please, don’t-”

0.

“I’m going to find him,” Melissa said.

Randi pictured Dr J being, among other things, torn in two. “Missy, no - wait, we’ll come help-”

But she clicked the line dead.

For a second, there was silence. The two techs stood motionless. Then a noise like the air itself cracking. The lights above them flickered once, twice - then blew out with a sharp <pop>. Monitors in the room flickered slightly, as though reacting to frequencies unheard, unseen.

A female voice over a speaker, from someone behind the two-way glass: “We’re getting weird temperature and seismic readings, Marcia. Can you run some system diagnostics?”

Before anyone could move, the blond tech screamed, flinching as the monitor aside her exploded into shockingly loud white noise. The reinforced bench skidded several inches backward across the tile. The floor trembled underfoot, a deep, seismic pulse like something vast exhaling.

“Melissa?!” Marcia shouted over the rising hum, shielding her face from the shower of sparks as a light panel burst overhead.

The dark-haired, statuesque young woman stood in the center of the room, her tremendous chest rising and falling, eyes wide and wet and lit from within with green and gold. The pressure in the air was growing, a physical force pressing against the walls.

“She’s resonating again!” Marcia shouted to no one in particular, tablet held up like a shield.

But Melissa wasn’t hearing them. Her gaze had gone distant - through walls, through miles, through everything. She could feel the empty space between him and her. The bond had gone quiet.

A low thunder rolled from nowhere, rattling the windows.

“Mellissa - please stop!” the blond tech cried, voice trembling.

Melissa blinked, her pupils contracting, the light fading slightly. For a heartbeat, everything seemed to pause - like the building itself was holding its breath.

Then she exhaled.

Every screen in the lab went black.

The silence that followed wasn’t silence at all. It had weight. The air seemed to thrum at the edge of hearing, a pressure that suddenly made the fillings in Marcia’s teeth ache. Somewhere deep inside the walls, a relay clicked. A red emergency diode sputtered to life, strobing dim light through the haze of faint ozone.

“P-power surge?” Marcia said automatically, though her voice shook. She glanced at her tablet - dead. Static licked the corners of the room, crawling up the metal tables in a shimmer of pale green that had no business being there.

The blonde tech staggered toward the emergency panel by the door, having felt her own pulse fall into some new rhythm, aligning itself to - oh my - what she saw on one of the screens. The reinforced glass of the specimen tanks behind her spiderwebbed with soft cracks.

“M-Melissa, please don’t move!” barked a voice from the speakers.

Melissa was still standing in the center of the room. The cords that had once connected her to the monitors hung from the machinery in limp arcs, their ends fused and smoking. Her eyes - no longer the pretty green of the overgrown girl who’d chirped about chocolate shakes and giggled about boys an hour ago - were luminous now, with flecks of molten gold, catching every red flash of the alarm lights.

The hum deepened.

Everything on a surface - clipboards, silver pens on the counter, even cabinets on the floor - began to slide a fraction of an inch in towards the center of the room, where Melissa stood, as though gravity itself were bending toward her. Lights overhead flickered, strobing to the beat of her pulse, her heart rate.

“Melissa,” Marcia said carefully, forcing calm into her voice, “you need to breathe, okay? You’re safe here. Just-”

The floor shuddered. A tremor, short and sharp, rattled the reinforced one-way window. The blond tech yelped and dropped to one knee, clutching the counter.

Melissa’s chest rose and fell too fast now, her hands balled into fists at her sides. “He’s scared,” she whispered. “I can feel him. He’s scared and he needs me.”

“Alright,” Marcia said, inching closer, one palm up. “We’ll help you find him. Just sit down for me, okay? Let us check your vitals and-”

The air flexed; that was the only word for it. The space between them bowed, invisible but tangible, and then-

Birds scattered from the rooftop.

“HE’S SCARED!” she boomed, no longer in a whisper, but rather in a voice like thunder, and the next instant a circular ripple spread out from Melissa’s bare feet across the tiles. The glass in the observation booth shattered in towards whoever sat on the other side, the metal door that led in to the lab bowed outward to the hall, but held. The bass-deep soundwaves from Melissa hit Marcia like a physical blow - an immense, concussive <WHUMP> that threw her back and made her ribs vibrate.

The lights burst again, one after another, each pop accompanied by a flicker of heat and sparks. The backup alarms stuttered and failed.

Marcia fell against the counter, gasping. The blonde tech was all but crying now, her voice thin and terrified and at the same time rapturous: “Marcia - Marcia, wh-what’s happening-?” She was on both knees now, clutching her chest.

“I don’t know,” Marcia rasped. “But it’s her.”

Melissa took a step forward, her eyes on the door across the room. The soles of her athletic shoes left faint dark prints on the tile, as though the energy radiating from her was scorching through the floor coating. The pulse in the air began to recede, shifting from deafening vibration to a steady, low resonance - like the last echo of thunder rolling away.

Then, as suddenly as it had started, it stopped.

Dust floated through the strobe-lit stillness. The emergency sprinklers hissed somewhere overhead but didn’t release.

Marcia straightened, her ears ringing. “Melissa?” she said hoarsely. The blond tech, meanwhile, was still on her knees, hands clasped in front of herself.

The huge woman turned toward both of them, calm now, her nearly seven-foot silhouette a towering vision: athletically muscular legs striding with motive, tiny trim waist swaying, bulbous rear rolling in her stretched leggings, and enormous breasts casting shadows that swallowed the strobing red light. Her expression, though, was strangely vacant - no longer anger, just purpose.

“I’m going to bring him home,” Melissa said. Her voice was even again, but the words carried like a current, resonating in Marcia’s bones. 

Then, without another word, Melissa walked toward the exit. The lab’s reinforced door - electronic, security-sealed, but now bent outward as if it had been hit by a truck - gave a low metallic groan as she neared, anticipating its own demise. Then, with a single press of her palm, it warped the final bit outward and fell open as if the laws of physics had simply given up on it.

“Oh my god,” Marcia marveled. The instruments around her began to reboot, but she somehow knew nothing would ever read right again.

“Watch your language,” Melissa said, over her shoulder, and then stepped through the gaping doorway and out into the hall.

The lights flickered once more behind her, and for several seconds after she was gone, the floor kept vibrating in a slow, steady rhythm - like a colossal heartbeat receding into the distance. 

The blond tech was still on her knees, hands folded, muttering something that sounded like a prayer.

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thanks to EndlessRain for the base image in the first pic