Marlow Quinn - ASTERWICK 15 – 1983 Part 2

01.15.83 – 5:52 p.m.

Ash Lake Annex – Northwest of Asterwick, OR

Evelynn Powers - Current: 5’6” 131 lbs

The blast doors remained open for eleven seconds after Evelynn Powers decided not to close them. She would later object to the word hesitated. Hesitation implied uncertainty. Conflicting evidence. A failure to identify the correct course of action before the available time expired. None of those conditions had existed.

The controls were functioning. The emergency circuit had power. The hydraulic pressure was well above minimum. Major Keene’s order had come through the speaker clearly enough to make the thin metal housing rattle. “Seal the corridor!” Evelynn Powers had understood him. Her right hand had been resting on the guarded switches. She had simply not moved it.

Jennifer crouched beneath the bulkhead and forced her broad shoulders through, her enormous frame briefly filling the opening. Michelle, Stephanie, and Tara were already clear on the other side, still close to their ordinary size, though the first changes had begun tightening their clothes. Through the wired glass, Evelynn Powers watched Jennifer pull her trailing foot clear of the still-open bulkhead. All four women were beyond the containment line.

Then she threw the switches. The blast doors came together with a concussion that shook dust from the ceiling. Four red lamps burned across the control panel. CONTAINMENT FAILURE. Evelynn Powers stared at them. Her pulse was elevated. That was appropriate. Her breathing was fast. Also appropriate. Perspiration beneath her blouse, vasoconstriction in the fingers, mild tremor in the right hand. All explainable by acute stress. What she could not explain was the sensation beneath those reactions. Relief.

“Doctor.” Major Keene stood behind her. Half the control room seemed to have stopped breathing with him. Evelynn Powers kept her eyes on the panel. “Did those controls malfunction?” Keene asked. “No.” “Did you fail to hear my order?” “No.” A warning siren continued its ugly two-note cycle overhead. Keene came closer. “Were you physically prevented from operating the controls?”

“No.” “Then why did you wait?” Evelynn Powers finally turned. Keene’s face had gone beyond anger. His expression was almost serene. That was worse. She could have lied. Hydraulic response delay. Electrical fault. Conflicting indicators. Temporary motor impairment. Smoke inhalation. Acoustic confusion. There were six plausible answers within reach. She chose none of them. “I don't know.”

Something moved behind Keene’s eyes. Evelynn Powers hated the answer the moment she heard it. Not because it sounded weak. Because it was true. Keene stared at her another moment, then turned. “Lock this station down.” A captain near the communications board hesitated. “Sir, pursuit teams are requesting authorization to—”

“They have it. Highway checkpoints within twenty miles. County roads first. Notify State Police through the prepared cover channel. I want every vehicle leaving the western sector stopped.” Evelynn Powers listened without interrupting. That part was predictable. Jennifer was powerful, but none of the women were trained. They were college students. Frightened ones. They had no prepared transportation, no secure communications, no false identities, no money. They had no intelligence network and no understanding of the resources already moving against them.

Jennifer could outrun a soldier. She could overturn a Jeep. That was not the same as escaping the United States government. Helicopters would own the roads before they reached the county line. Their families would be watched. Their friends would be watched. Bus stations, hospitals, airports, campuses. Every obvious refuge would become another net.

They might have hours. A day if they were clever. Two if everyone hunting them became suddenly incompetent. Evelynn Powers knew all of that. She had known it while her hand rested on the switches. Which made what she had done worse. She had not freed them. She had given them a head start.

No reasonable calculation justified the cost. Yet while they had been running toward those doors, some certainty had risen inside her without evidence or argument. Let them go. Not words exactly. A feeling. Evelynn Powers did not trust feelings. “Doctor.” Keene again. Two military policemen had appeared behind him. There it was. Evelynn Powers straightened her jacket. “I assume I'm being relieved.” “You're being placed on administrative leave pending review.” “That's a prettier sentence.”

His mouth tightened. “You deliberately failed to execute a containment order during the escape of four classified human subjects.” “Civilian subjects.” “Not today.” “They did not enlist while I was distracted.” One of the policemen looked very carefully at nothing. Keene stepped closer. “This is the part where you would normally threaten to call Voss.” Evelynn Powers said nothing. “Go ahead.”

Still nothing. They both knew. Whatever protection she had accumulated over the years had burned away in eleven seconds. Keene leaned toward her. “You let them go.” The accusation should have angered her. Instead that warm impossible satisfaction moved through her again. Not triumph. Recognition. Her stomach tightened. That frightened her enough to keep her face still. “I expect you'll want my credentials.”

“I want everything.” “Then your search team should be meticulous.” His eyes narrowed. Evelynn Powers held out her identification badge. He took it. For the first time since the project began, she stood without permission to be there. It felt surprisingly ordinary.

Cleaning out her office took twenty-three minutes. Sergeant Daniel Hart remained by the door for all twenty-three of them. Hart had been assigned to biological research eight months earlier under the official title of laboratory security liaison. Nobody had bothered pretending after the first week. He was there to watch Evelynn Powers.

Hart was intelligent by Army standards, which was unfortunate because it had convinced him he was intelligent by laboratory standards. He knew enough biology to recognize a culture vial, enough chemistry to read a label, and enough procedure to stop Evelynn Powers from walking out with anything valuable. He did not know enough to understand why half the things he watched mattered. Today that distinction was irrelevant.

Three technicians inventoried her office while Hart watched her fill a cardboard records box. Family photograph. Two books cleared for removal. A spare pair of shoes. Ceramic coffee mug Laura had painted with WORLD’S MOST SCIENCE MOM in crooked blue letters. The Army kept everything else. Her files. Her research notes. Her formulas. The growth curves. Blood studies. Histological sections. Suppression trials.

The locked cabinets had already been sealed. Hart watched when her gaze stopped there. “I'm sorry, Doctor.” “No, you're not.” He blinked. “You're sorry the situation is uncomfortable. That's different.” “I didn't mean—” “I know what you meant, Sergeant.” She put the mug into the box. Hart cleared his throat. “I'm required to ask whether you have any classified material on your person.”

“No.” “Biological samples?” “No.” “Research material in any form?” “No.” All true. That was the wonderful thing about well-designed questions. Evelynn Powers could not remove the organism. They had made certain of that. Every vial was numbered. Every sample weighed. Every refrigeration unit required two signatures. The Army had spent a year treating the alien material like enriched uranium.

The suppressant had interested them less. Useful, certainly. Necessary for controlling expression. But nobody had built the project to make extraordinary women ordinary again. Suppression was a brake. Generals did not fund vehicles because they admired the brakes. Evelynn Powers carried the box toward the door. Hart stepped aside. “For what it's worth, Doctor, I learned a lot working with you.” She looked at him. He seemed sincere. That made it worse. She walked past him.

Gerald Powers was stacking firewood beneath the back porch awning, keeping the split logs out of the January rain. Evelynn Powers entered through the kitchen carrying the cardboard box. Laura sat at the table surrounded by schoolbooks. Peter lay upside down across the couch watching television, his feet hooked over the back cushions. Laura looked up and then at the box.

“Are you fired?” Evelynn Powers stopped. Peter twisted around. “You got fired?” “I did not say she got fired.” “You literally asked if she got fired.” “That's not saying she got fired.” “Children.” Both went quiet. Laura pointed at the box. “You have the fired-person box.” Evelynn Powers looked down at it. Apparently, decades of professional norms had been successfully decoded by a thirteen-year-old. “I have been placed on administrative leave.”

Peter sat upright. “Is that fired?” “No.” “Finish your reading.” Laura smiled down at her book. Personality traits were hereditary punishment. The back door opened. Gerald Powers came in carrying the cold with him, his rain jacket beaded with water and his gloves dusted with bark. He pulled off the gloves, then saw the box. “Uh-oh.” “Your daughter already conducted the interrogation.” “Our daughter.” “She gets this from you today.” Laura called from the table, “She means the good qualities.” “I know,” Gerald Powers said.

Evelynn Powers set the box on the counter. He studied her more carefully. “Everything okay?” “No.” The answer surprised her. She usually protected the household from work by reducing catastrophe to inconvenience. Long day. Budget fight. Equipment problem. Nothing important. Today the machinery failed.

Gerald Powers wiped his hands on his jeans. “Want to tell me about it?” “I can't.” “Want to complain about the parts you can?” “Also no.” “Excellent. Marriage flourishing.” She almost smiled. He kissed her forehead. Evelynn Powers let herself lean into him for one second longer than usual. Just one. “I'm going upstairs.” “Dinner in forty-five.”

“What are we having?” “Something involving ground beef.” “That narrows western cuisine considerably.” “I haven't reached the planning stage.” “Clearly.” She took the box upstairs. Normal life followed her. Peter accused Laura of stealing a pencil. Laura pointed out that the pencil had been purchased with communal household funds. Gerald Powers told both of them he had access to additional pencils.

For a few minutes Evelynn Powers stood inside her bedroom and listened. The Army had taken her badge. Downstairs her husband was threatening their children with stationery. The contrast was absurd enough to steady her. She unpacked the box. The family photograph went on the dresser. The books returned to the shelf. The mug stayed in her hand. WORLD’S MOST SCIENCE MOM. She looked at the uneven letters. Then at herself in the mirror.

Nothing unusual. Five feet six. One hundred thirty-one pounds that morning. Resting pulse sixty. Blood pressure one fourteen over sixty-eight. She opened the nightstand. Beneath a stack of old receipts sat a brown prescription bottle. She stared at it. She could not remember taking her morning dose. The call, the consultations, the escape—she could reconstruct everything except that small routine. She closed the drawer without opening the bottle. One missed dose should not matter.

Later, dinner involved ground beef. Gerald Powers had converted it into meatloaf through a process he claimed was cooking and Evelynn Powers considered structural engineering. Peter drowned his portion in ketchup. Laura declared ketchup on meatloaf redundant because meatloaf already contained ketchup. A twelve-minute argument followed.

Evelynn Powers ate more than usual. She had a second helping before recognizing she'd finished the first. Gerald Powers noticed. “Hungry?” “Yes.” “Careful. Next thing I know you'll be stealing my dessert.” “I don't like your dessert.” “That's never stopped you.” The children laughed. Evelynn Powers looked at her plate. Increased appetite. Possible stress response. Nothing more.

Later she washed dishes while Gerald Powers dried. Their shoulders bumped twice. The second time he did it deliberately. “You're in my workspace,” she said. “My kitchen.” “I cook breakfast.” “You cook eggs.” “Eggs are food.” He put the towel down and kissed her. She kissed him back. That surprised neither of them. The intensity did.

Something inside her loosened. Not emotionally. Physically. Warmth opened low beneath her ribs and spread outward through her abdomen. She drew a breath. Gerald Powers interpreted it differently and kissed her again, one hand settling at her waist. The warmth sharpened. For one dangerous second she wanted to ignore it. That thought frightened her.

She stepped back. “Not now.” Gerald Powers blinked, immediately releasing her. “You okay?” “Yes.” She said too fast. He knew the difference. “Eve?” “Stomach.” “Meatloaf?” “Probably.” “That seems like a cruel review.” Another pulse moved through her. Evelynn Powers stepped away. “I need the bathroom.”

“Romance lives.” She was already leaving. She climbed the stairs without running. Running would alarm him. Running would alarm her. She entered the bathroom, locked the door, and switched on the light. The woman in the mirror was flushed. Evelynn Powers gripped the sink. “Observe.” She said it aloud.

Observation before conclusion. Heat. Elevated pulse. Muscular tension. Appetite increase. Altered inhibition. Possible dimensional change. That last category ceased being possible. Her sleeves tightened. Evelynn Powers watched the cloth draw across her upper arms as muscle filled beneath it. Not swelling. Not edema. Growth.

Her shoulders moved outward. A minute adjustment. Then another. The bathroom counter seemed lower. “No.” Her voice remained calm. That pleased her. Pressure entered her thighs. Her slacks tightened as muscle accumulated with impossible efficiency. The waistband drew firm around her hips. Her blouse pulled across her back. The buttons across the front of the silk shirt strained. Her breasts overfilled her now-small cotton bra.

She stood against the doorframe. There were old pencil marks there from the children. None for her. She found the tape measure in the cabinet. Five foot seven. She measured again. Five foot eight. Another pressure moved through her spine while she watched the tape. Five foot nine.

Months of suppression undone in minutes. Evelynn Powers suddenly understood why Jennifer’s results that afternoon had troubled her so much. After suppression faltered, Jennifer’s growth had not simply returned along the original curve. It had accelerated and carried her beyond her previous size. The organism had not gone dormant. It had been restrained. There was a difference. A profound one.

She turned back to the mirror. Her upper arms had become visibly athletic, biceps rounding beneath sleeves cut for a smaller version of her. Her shoulders filled the blouse. Her thighs pressed together differently within her slacks. And still the growth continued. A strange clarity accompanied it. Heat. Strength. Confidence. She felt magnificent. That frightened her more than the growth.

Evelynn Powers leaned toward the mirror. Her pupils widened. Color moved around them. Green. Then violet. A thin iridescent ring shimmered at the edge of each iris and vanished when she blinked. She knew those colors. She had seen them beneath microscopes. In blood plasma. Across culture dishes. Inside the transformed women.

“No.” This time the word came softer. A memory returned. The blast doors. Her hand resting on the switches. Four women running toward freedom. That certainty inside her. Let them go. She had called it empathy afterward. Stress. Identification with the subjects. Professional frustration made emotional. All garbage. Not one explanation possessed supporting evidence. She had made a decision based upon feeling and then searched for facts generous enough to excuse it. Evelynn Powers hated scientists who did that.

A knock touched the door. “Eve?” Gerald Powers. She looked down. Her body had gained another fraction while she stood there. “I'm fine.” Her voice an octave lower than she remembered. “You've been in there ten minutes.” “Is that how time works.” A pause. “That sounded healthier.” She fought down a pleasure moan that threatened to escape her lips. “I’ll be down in a bit.”

“You sure?” “Yes.” She waited until his footsteps retreated. Then opened the medicine cabinet. Nothing. Wrong location. Bedroom. The pills were six feet away. Evelynn Powers unlocked the bathroom door and crossed quickly into the bedroom. Every step felt too easy. Her body wanted movement. She wanted to run. Lift. Push. See what it could do. She also wanted Gerald, in a way she never thought possible, an ache to have him inside her. She ignored all of it.

The brown bottle waited in the nightstand. She opened it. Twenty-eight tablets remained. She tipped two into her palm. Stopped. Protocol called for one. Observation demanded one. Fear suggested three. Evelynn Powers took two. Dry.

She sat on the edge of the bed with the bottle in her hand and watched the clock. Two minutes. She could feel her self still growing. The back hasp of her bra broke, unable to contain her larger breasts any longer.  Her chest surged with fullness, the 2 center buttons of her blouse gave way. Four minutes. Heat continued moving through her. Five. The blouse was skintight across her thickening, powerful upper body. Then resistance. The growth did not stop instantly. It slowed as though two forces had met beneath her skin and begun pushing against one another.

Six minutes. Her shoulders stopped widening. Seven. The pressure in her spine eased. Eight. Pain arrived. Not severe. A deep muscular ache as newly built tissue began surrendering ground. Evelynn Powers watched her forearms narrow. The blouse loosened. Her thighs receded within her slacks. The bedroom climbed slowly back into its proper dimensions. Strength drained with it. That part bothered her. She had not expected to miss it. Another observation. Another problem.

Ten minutes. Her chest lost its fullness in degrees until it was back to normal size and she reflected how small she felt, how weak, how unattractive. Five foot seven. Twelve minutes. Five foot six and a half. Fourteen minutes. Five foot six. She returned to the bathroom. The iridescence in her eyes faded last. For several seconds green and violet lingered around her pupils while everything else looked normal again. Then ordinary hazel returned.

Evelynn Powers rested both palms on the sink. Her hands were trembling. She looked at them. Not fear. Chemical response. Probably. She almost laughed. There it was again. The instinct to turn uncertainty into something smaller by naming it. She had injected herself eighty-three days earlier. Not accidentally. Not through contamination. Deliberately. A measured dose derived from the same active material that had transformed the Ash Lake women.

The decision had felt reasonable at the time. Necessary, even. Animal models had stopped producing meaningful answers. Cell cultures could demonstrate mechanisms. They could not demonstrate cognition, impulse, appetite, perception, or the subjective experience of transformation. The Army would never have authorized what she required. So she had.

The first changes began within twelve hours. Strength first. Then appetite. Then height. The suppressant stopped them. For eighty-three days she had remained within tolerances. Until today. One missed dose. One. Evelynn Powers looked at her restored reflection. The suppressant worked. That conclusion remained valid. The more troubling conclusion sat behind it. It was working less well.

She returned to the bedroom and opened the bottom dresser drawer. Sweaters. She removed them. Beneath a false panel sat four sealed brown bottles. Under those lay two laboratory notebooks, vacuum-packed precursor compounds, glassware wrapped in cloth, and the compact pieces of equipment necessary to reproduce work the Army believed existed only behind controlled doors.

They had watched the organism. They had watched Evelynn Powers. They had watched the refrigerators, the freezers, the blood samples, the cultures, the waste bins. Nobody paid enough attention to the brake. She counted the tablets. Two hundred forty-six finished doses. More if she resumed production. Months. Not enough.

She looked toward the hallway. Gerald Powers was downstairs. Laura. Peter. The ordinary house. The thought arrived without warning. What if the suppressant failed entirely? She closed her eyes. Jennifer. Michelle. Stephanie. Tara. Jennifer’s rebound had been violent. Fast. Her body reclaiming something the suppressant had denied it. If Evelynn Powers stopped treatment now, what would her own body consider unfinished business? Height? Mass? Strength? She did not know. Worse, she could no longer guarantee the question was purely physical.

She sat at her desk and opened the first notebook. The latest entry waited in her own neat handwriting. EXPRESSION: SUPPRESSED. BODY MASS: STABLE. STRENGTH: +8.2% PRE-EXPOSURE BASELINE. APPETITE: MILD ELEVATION. SLEEP: NORMAL. BEHAVIORAL EFFECT: NONE OBSERVED.

She stared at the last line. Then drew one straight line through it. BEHAVIORAL EFFECT: She held the pen. Possible impairment. No. Nothing about her decision at the blast doors had felt impaired. Altered judgment. Also imprecise. She had understood the consequences. She had simply assigned greater value to an outcome without knowing why.

She wrote: SUBJECTIVE IMPULSE OVERRIDDEN ESTABLISHED RISK ASSESSMENT. She hated the sentence. So she underlined it. Then beneath it: POSSIBLE HOST-ORGANISM BEHAVIORAL INTERACTION. She stopped. Something cold moved through her despite the residual heat. Host. She had avoided that word until now.

Patient implied illness. Subject implied experiment. Carrier implied transmission, for which she had insufficient evidence. Host described the observed relationship without pretending she understood it. Evelynn Powers looked at her wrist. At the faint blue-green veins beneath the skin.

The Army would take the project away from her. That conclusion required no speculation. Keene would argue she had become ideologically compromised. Voss might defend her competence, perhaps even her prior service, but nobody in Washington would hand classified biological research back to a scientist who had knowingly permitted its only human subjects to escape.

They would recover the women. They would bury the incident. The organism would disappear into colder storage under tighter locks. A new committee would form. Then another. Men who had spent years asking how quickly a transformed woman could carry a machine gun would decide the discovery lacked military utility. The project might survive on paper. Its purpose would not.

Evelynn Powers should have been devastated. Instead she felt the strange calm that had come when the women crossed the doors. She looked at the hidden supplies. The notebooks. The suppressant. Her own hands. They could take her laboratory. They could take her clearance. They could prevent her from removing a single drop of active culture. That did not change the material already circulating through her blood.

For the first time since leaving the bunker, the future arranged itself into something resembling a hypothesis. The Army believed this project belonged to them because they had funded it. Evelynn Powers knew better. The work had begun before them. Whatever waited beneath Ash Lake was older than their appropriations, their committees, their uniforms, perhaps older than anything built above it. She did not know what it wanted. That fact now mattered enormously.

But Evelynn Powers knew what she wanted. Humanity was unfinished. The evidence was alive in the women running somewhere through Oregon. It was alive beneath Ash Lake. And it was alive in her. Downstairs, Gerald Powers called her name. “You alive up there?” Evelynn Powers closed the notebook. “Yes.”

“Dessert.” “I thought you said I would steal yours.” “I planned for that and made more.” She smiled despite herself. “Give me five minutes.” She replaced the hidden panel. Sweaters on top. Drawer closed. Normal. Almost. She removed the blouse which now missed 2 buttons and donned an easy fitting t-shirt.

Before leaving the bedroom, she took the brown prescription bottle from the nightstand and slipped it into her pocket. She would not miss tomorrow's dose. She would reformulate. Increase potency if necessary. Determine whether resistance was metabolic, adaptive, or something else entirely.

She would study the behavioral component. She would determine whether the impulse at the blast doors had been hers. That question came first. Everything else could wait. Evelynn Powers reached the bedroom door and stopped. No. Not everything. She looked back at the dresser.

For six years she had believed the United States Army was frustrating her work. Only now did she understand how dangerous it had been to depend upon them for its survival. Administrative leave would become dismissal. Dismissal might become surveillance.

She would need another laboratory eventually. Private funding. People she trusted. Scientists overlooked by the same institutions that had overlooked her conclusions. Infrastructure that could not be shut down by one angry major and a revoked identification badge. Those were not plans yet. They were requirements. She could work from requirements.

Downstairs, Laura shouted that Peter had taken her dessert. Peter shouted that possession established ownership. Gerald Powers shouted that neither of them understood property law. Evelynn Powers stepped into the hallway. Halfway down the stairs, she felt for the bottle in her pocket. The pills rattled softly beneath her fingers. A brake. Nothing more. The thing inside her was still there. Waiting.

Evelynn Powers did not know whether it had helped four women escape that afternoon. She did not know whether it could influence her thoughts. She did not know what another missed dose would make her.

For once, uncertainty did not make her want to stop. It made her want better data. And if the Army intended to bury the greatest discovery of her lifetime because it frightened them, they were welcome to try. They no longer controlled the only living evidence. Evelynn Powers carried that downstairs with her.