Sensus Supra: The New Girl - C.5

***Part 5 of 14. Alicia faces the consequences of standing up for herself.***

Principal Muir’s office sat appropriately high in the college, near the top floor of one of Fiacre House’s grand turrets. It was a great circular chamber with a massive wooden desk, a curved wall of bookshelves, a big wardrobe and an old leather sofa. The latticed windows looked out across a nighttime landscape of rocky peaks and trees, under a star-studded sky. It would’ve been an almost magical location, if Alicia wasn’t standing at the centre of the room waiting to be reprimanded by the severe woman.

“The facts, as we have them,” Muir said, also standing, still in her brown jacket and trousers. Her faint Scottish accent sounded especially stern. “Are that Bayley shrank in your room and triggered her Buddy alarm. In the time Dara took to arrive, whatever else might have transpired, you picked up and manhandled her. Then you tried to hide her.”

“I didn’t know who Dara was; I was worried she might want to hurt Bayley herself,” Alicia replied, the only defence she’d been able to come up with in the long journey through the corridors and up the stairs to this office. It was thankfully late, so she hadn’t run into anyone in the halls during this walk of shame, but that also meant a crankier Muir, whose expression had said from the outset that she did not appreciate being disturbed. Never mind that Muir had been in her office, still dressed as if for a meeting, so wasn’t exactly sleeping.

Having led Alicia up there, in mute authority, Dara had knocked politely on the door, laid out the case as she saw it, and left to take Bayley to the Small Wing, a place where the shrunken girls were taken care of. Muir had variously studied Alicia with cold eyes, then looked out the window, and finally come back to glower at Alicia.

“And you thought someone wishing Bayley harm,” Muir said, “just happened upon the room right at the time when Bayley shrank?”

“I didn’t think,” Alicia said. “It happened so fast.”

Muir titled her head and looked over her round glasses as though deciding whether or not to believe Alicia. Pretending to decide, anyway, because it was obviously a lie. The principal said, “Your very first night here, it’s not a good look, Ms Vincent.”

“Bayley was a –” Alicia paused as Muir’s gaze fell on her expectantly. She couldn’t call her roommate a bitch or a monster. It was her word against a vulnerable, seemingly popular six-inch tall girl’s, and anyway a squabble between petty girls was not a good reason to threaten to eat someone. Instead, Alicia took a breath and said, “I didn’t threaten her. Or hurt her. I admit I got a little carried away, but she provoked me – honestly she did.”

“Of course she did,” Muir said, her crocodile smile resurfacing. She leaned back against her desk, hands either side of her, as if relaxing from the topic. “Believe it or not, Ms Vincent, I know what kind of girl Ms Lynch is. But in this school we do not give in to our base instincts. Sensa Supra Magnitudine.” Muir pointed up to a crest on the wall, a simple school logo with a wreath and a book and two women’s silhouettes of different sizes. The Latin was written around it. She translated, “Reason above size. We use our brains and do not give in to the confusions of our bodies. That is the whole point of St Fiacre’s.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Alicia replied contritely.

“You’re new here, so consider this a warning. Your only warning. Never let something like this happen again. Whatever the circumstances, if you are alone with a shrunken girl, you alert a member of staff. Now, with that said, I want to talk to you seriously about what happened. No holding back.” Muir held Alicia’s gaze with that last comment, eyes imploring trust, and somehow softening, to indicate the conversation was shifting direction.

Alicia bit her lip. “Okay?”

“Would you like a drink?” Muir indicated a crystal decanter on the desk, filled with whisky. Alicia shook her head and said thanks, but the principal took two large tumblers and poured. She handed a glass to Alicia and the smell made her nose curl – not whisky, brandy? Muir sipped hers and said, “Tell me honestly. Whether you threatened Bayley or not, did you feel tempted to? I don’t ask to judge you we are still trying to understand this affliction, so the more you can tell me the more it will help.”

Alicia frowned, thinking back to holding the small woman in her hand, and the unnatural urge it sent through her. The thrill of that power, and the possibilities.

“I see,” Muir responded to her expression. “But you were able to control these desires?”

Alicia nodded.

“Now you’re here, you’ll start to learn a lot more about what we really know of the substance Xm-96 and its effects. Growth and shrinkage is just part of it; we’ve come quite a way in understanding how it connects to emotions. For now, I’ll offer this advice. The closer you are to someone made small by the Hiccups, the stronger your urges will be. Likewise, any emotional connections you already have will be heightened by shrinkage. It creates irrational thought. It makes monsters out of people. If you should grow, then the problem is compounded, because in your perception everyone is small.”

Muir paused to take another sip, letting all that sink in. Alicia knew the rumours of these ideas, of course, but here they must have seen it for real. It made sense, with how holding Bayley had made her feel, and how she had lost control when she grew. Then another detail gripped her. Muir had said us, speaking of first-hand experience. She was one of them?

“I operate with a carrot and stick approach here,” Muir went on. “The carrot is your education, and developing your self-control for your own sake. Behave and you will be taught well, and learn mastery of this affliction, in a supportive community. The stick, though, is simple. If you step out of line, you will be on your own. Society hates and hunts monsters, whatever you might like to believe.”

“I’ll be good,” Alicia insisted. “Please – I never even got detention back in school, I’m not going to cause any trouble –”

Muir raised a hand for quiet. She gulped down what was left of the brandy and set down the glass. “Save it. I don’t need your assurances, just your understanding. And for that, I wish to show you something. It would usually wait, but, well.” Muir gave a flash of her false smile again. Then she gestured to the door. “Shall we?”

Alicia raised her eyebrows, not sure what the invitation was for, but the principal walked past her. She exited to the spiral stairs and Alicia hurriedly put down her own glass and followed. Without talking, Muir led her down five storeys of steps, only the echoes of their feet on the stone for noise. At the base of the turret, they took a door out into the night air. Exposure to the Highlands cold in only jeans and a t-shirt sent a chill through Alicia, hairs pricking up, but Muir strode out completely unaffected. The principal marched up some steps that took them to the turning circle courtyard, opposite the impossibly huge building of Fiacre Heights. It filled the sky, immense and lit only along the base by small spotlights.

Muir continued to its huge, hangar-sized door as Alicia skipped to keep up, the principal surprisingly fast for a short woman. In the door was another, normal-sized door, which Muir unlocked and opened with a creak. She stepped inside and Alicia followed.

Alica paused on the other side, hit by sudden awe, immediately feeling that this must’ve been what Bayley had felt like, reduced to tiny size. They were standing in an utterly immense reception area, sparsely lit with more small spotlights, with a giant desk to one side and a wall with two huge metal-panel doors to the other. It was industrial and unfriendly as a warehouse, the walls exposed brickwork with occasional metal supports. The room stretched far to the right, back to the front of the building, where it had a set of three chairs designed for giants. They were basic metal and wood constructions, like an elaborate art installation, with the bizarre touch of a fully-grown tree looming in a corner, taking the role of an office pot plant. At the centre of the room, the desk formed an enormous canopy of wood and metal, big enough to shelter a small house under.

Big as the room was, it was made all the more enthralling by how otherwise empty it was. Thankfully, Alicia told herself. She couldn’t imagine the scale of a person needed to use one of those chairs, with their seats at least thirty feet high. Sure, she’d seen footage on the news of people turned giant – everyone had watched Bell Sanchez stomping around Mexico – but those videos were detached and unreal. To actually be in the presence of a giant was still so abstract. Hell, to be near a tiny woman still was, now Alicia reflected on it. Snatching up Bayley had been pure instinct and emotion. In a calmer moment, she might’ve freaked out and run away.

“It was Chloe Devine,” Muir said, “the daughter of an incredibly successful property mogul and a highly prominent woman in her own right, who had the foresight to construct Fiacre Heights. Her family already owned the land, from decades past, and she predicted that as matters with the Xm-96 effects evolved, people would need a place to contain the worst cases. So she designed and constructed one of the most ambitious building projects the world has seen. All in secret, of course, with a very restricted staff. It took twelve years to build.”

“Twelve years?” Alicia echoed, trying to quickly do the maths. At the latest, they must’ve started work in 2007. “But the problem didn’t seriously spread until two years ago.”

“As I said,” Muir replied, “Ana was a very forward-thinking woman. Come on, we’re not done yet.”

The principal walked to the closest door and opened another human-sized door at the base of it. They entered a corridor that stretched further than Alicia could see, as it ran off into huge, daunting darkness. Muir continued and Alicia followed, until they reached another door for giants. This one had a small viewing window in it, which Muir gestured for Alicia to approach and look through. She squinted through murky glass to get a rough idea of the room on the other side. It was similarly on a massive scale, with another desk and chair to one side and an immense platform to the other – a bed.

Someone was lying on the bed. The mound of the blanket was big as a hill, and a foot stuck out the bottom, facing their way. Bigger than a truck. The bare sole twitched, toes wriggling in sleep – startling Alicia. She almost took a step back in surprise, but Muir was suddenly at her side, an arm up behind her, urging her closer to the window. Alicia went stiff, forced to watch the sleeping giant. The huge mound rose and fell with her breath – it was a she, Alicia could tell somehow from the curves, maybe from the slender foot, elegant despite its tremendous size. The room was unthinkably huge, and the bed far enough away that it could be an illusion, a trick of the eye, but Alicia’s body reacted in a way that knew it to be real. That foot, and the giant it belonged to, was massive beyond belief. If the giant woman woke, she’d move with unstoppable power. They’d be rodents before her.

“She’s lived here ever since,” Muir said, softly, as though they might disturb the giant. Alicia’s eyes widened as she understood. The principal was still referring to Chloe Devine. The architect of this place. She went on, “The facility is large enough for dozens of private rooms for people of her size. It stretches back underground, into the mountain. A phenomenal project. Most of the time, thankfully, we have no more than ten or so who have reached such a scale. It’s hard to keep such girls fed, and sometimes hard to control them. I’m sure you can imagine how easily they could cause trouble.”

Alicia felt Muir’s breath on her hair, and resisted the urge to look at her, the principal clearly wanting to make her feel uncomfortable.

“Mostly, by Chloe Devine’s mandate, the girls stay confined to this building. Sometimes they come out, though. Sometimes there are accidents, as I’m sure you can imagine.” The repetition invited Alicia to picture it, still staring at the enormous example before them. That single foot would be capable of terrible accidents, for sure. A girl could easily go missing underneath it. And was Muir saying about having difficulty feeding the giants?

“Let me repeat what I told you in my office,” Muir concluded. “You are here for your benefit, and with our help you can thrive. If you step out of line, however, you will be on your own. St Fiacre’s is a very dangerous place to be on your own.”