Nanites IV (WG)

00:18:12:55 SINCE DISPERSAL

“You don’t need us to, like, come in with you, right?”

Lindsey scoffed. Her voice was still a little wet, which wasn’t good, but on the whole, she sounded much better. “I’ll be fine, Blair.” Shoving the other girl backwards, she stuck her tongue out and slammed the door shut. Blair waited until she could hear the bath start to run before turning on her heel and stalking back out into the living-room, which opened out onto Lindsey’s immense patio.

Isabelle was on the balcony, sprawled out over one of the loungers. She turned as Blair made her way over to her. “Showering?”

“Yeah.” Blair settled onto the lounger beside Isabelle’s and exhaled gustily. “So…”

“Yeah.” Isabelle held up her phone. “I’ve ordered a bunch of stuff. Kale salad, smoothies, yoghurt, fruits, more salads…”

“It’s a start.”

“Mm-hmm.”

The two girls sat in silence for a moment.

“You know, I used to think I was the heaviest.”

Isabelle looked up, eyebrows raised. “You’re shorter than me.”

“I’m also shorter than Lindsey,” Blair retorted. “Remember when we went to that spa in Bali and she made us all weigh ourselves?”

“That was months ago.”

“I know.” Blair waved a dismissive hand. “Just saying. I mean, her obsession with her weight… it’s been a bit of an albatross. Hasn’t it?”

“This isn’t an intervention.”

“Yeah, but I think we could stand to… I don’t know. Encourage her a bit? To be kinder to herself? I mean, she’s vulnerable. In this state, she might be more receptive. Right?”

“Seems a little manipulative to me.”

“We’ll just see what she says,” Blair decided. “I’m not going to guide the conversation.” The bell rang, and she glanced up. “Who’s that?”

Isabelle shrugged and stood. She tapped at Lindsey’s intercom uncomprehendingly and bit back a curse as the door unlocked, then swung open, revealing Laura and Lynette. “What’re you doing here?”

“What’re you doing here?” Laura retorted. Kicking off her heels, she led the way into her sister’s apartment. Lynette trailed in after her. “Where’s Lindsey?”

“Showering,” Blair said. At the same time, Isabelle responded, “Dropped by to see how she was doing.”

“Same,” Lynette chirped, making herself at home on one of Lindsey’s velvet couches. “Is she… um. Is she okay?”

Isabelle and Blair exchanged a glance. “Oh, fuck,” Laura muttered. “She isn’t, is she?”

“She had a bit of a panic attack,” Isabelle said. “Uh, she doesn’t really know what to do about her…”

“Weight gain,” Blair interrupted, bluntly. “Getting fat.”

Lynette and Laura winced.

“We’ll be taking care of her,” Isabelle added. “Buying food, you know. If she’s hungry. Which she is. You don’t need to, like… vet her food, right?”

Lynette made a disgusted noise. Laura shook her head emphatically, ponytail bouncing. “We’re not going to tell anyone, though.”

“That’s… for the best.” Isabelle took a deep breath. “So,” she continued, bravely and with false cheer. “How’s the weather?”

-----

While her siblings made stilted conversation with her two closest friends, Lindsey sat in her bathtub and soaked.

Earlier – before she’d started cleaning up her soiled table – she’d taken a quick shower in her luxurious cubicle, which was so large that she could stretch her arms out to either side and still fail to graze the walls. Now, though, she felt that she could afford to waste a little time. Treat yourself, Blair had said. Take a nap. Stop caring about this for a few hours. It can wait.

Could it wait, though? Lindsey sighed, sliding down until only her face was above the water-level. Bubbles rose around her, obscuring her vision, and her hands slipped down, running over the unfamiliar bulges and ripples of her body. Her breasts filled her long-fingered hands as she cupped them; they’d grown. Biting her lip unconsciously, she let them be and moved on, skirting lower, a sigh rising from her open mouth as her fingers sank into her newly-soft abdomen. It was a small, convex curve – slightly distended, and warm to the touch. Love-handles, Lindsey thought, trying to muster up the instinctive repulsion that her mother had tried to instil in her, but there was nothing left. Here, immersed in warm, bubbly, lavender-scented water, she was free to be herself, free to fantasize and dream and build castles from the frothy, light-pink foam. Her mother had always respected her privacy when it came to her baths. This was a cardinal rule in the Zhang household.

Also, she was tired. I need to sleep, Lindsey thought, and yawned. Yes. After I finish bathing. Her hands travelled lower, feeling out her hipbones from where they had been masked by a few additional layers of padding, and groped at the swell of her buttocks. Her thighs had grown, and her calves had too. Her thigh-gap, which she’d been so proud off, seemed to be on the verge of disappearing completely. I could get used to this, she thought. Now, if only my stomach hadn’t bloated out so much… 

And then a thought occurred to her.

It’s the nanites, isn’t it? Mom can’t touch me. It’s the government. The government came up with the nanites. Even if I get a little chubby – and here Lindsey’s mouth contorted – perhaps even a little fat – even if that does happen, she can’t say anything about it. What can she do?

Lindsey cast that thought out of her mind, but it had left an impression, however slight. I’ll see where it goes, she decided. Blair and Belle have bought food, haven’t they? They said they’d buy food. Well, I’ll eat their food, and if I want more… I’ll just ask them what they want to buy for me. 

Lindsey opened her eyes, noticed that she’d sat up, and sank back beneath the water, trying to relax. But the moment had passed, and she was hungry again. Slowly, and then with increasing urgency as her pangs intensified, she hauled herself out of the tub and drained it, wiping herself down. She refused to look at herself in the mirror. For the first time in a while, she regretted installing a fog-proof mirror in her bathroom.

Her walk-in closet was in a parlous state; nothing fit her. Lindsey paced its length, agonizing over what to do, and boiled her options down to a binary choice: she could either buy some new clothes or have her measurements retaken. Given that the latter option was likely to be excruciatingly humiliating, she opted for the former. She’d never bought clothes before, though. Her garments had always been personally tailored to her exact measurements.

And look how that turned out.

Lindsey tossed her hair, threw on some (ill-fitting) lingerie, and followed that up with a bathrobe. This one, at least, fit. She headed out into the living-room and came to a halt.

“What’re you doing here?”

“Thought we’d see how you were doing,” Laura sniped. “Feeling better?”

Lindsey narrowed her eyes at Blair and Isabelle. Traitors. “Yeah,” she said, a little dryly. “Anything else?”

“Did you try a cleanse?” Lynette piped up.

“I intend to.” Lindsey turned to Isabelle. “You bought that, right?”

“They’ve all arrived, actually.”

“Oh. Good.” Ruthlessly, Lindsey quashed the utterly unexplainable waft of disappointment that welled up in her chest. Cleanses are good, she reminded herself. Grease and sugar and salt and meat are bad. These cravings are normal, and they will go away. (They’d better.) “Anything else?”

“We won’t tell anyone else.”

Lindsey nodded tightly. There was a brief silence. As if on cue, Laura and Lynette stood up. “Yeah, so…”

Another nod from Lindsey. “Bye.”

“Bye.”

The two girls beat a hasty retreat. Isabelle and Blair watched them go, a vaguely amused look on their faces, then followed Lindsey into her dining-room, where she devoured at least eight salads in the span of as many minutes. (At least five of them contained a generous helping of meat and eggs.) She roamed the length of the table, her frilly white bathrobe flapping behind her as she snatched up item after item. At some point, she grabbed her iPad and started ordering some new clothes. “I’m not leaving the house until I have something that actually fits,” she said, briskly, sucking liberally on a smoothie as she tapped at the device. Blair and Isabelle, of course, nodded.

“Are you okay?”

Lindsey continued to pace, still nibbling on her fifteenth salad, eyes roaming distractedly. It had been fifteen minutes, and she’d almost finished the veritable avalanche of food that Isabelle and Blair had bought for her. “Yeah, sure.” A long pause. “Thanks for coming.”

“We’re still staying overnight, though,” Blair said.

“What? No.”

“We haven’t had a girls’ night in forever,” Isabelle groaned, folding her arms and slumping dramatically against a pillar. “Come on, Lind. Let’s watch a movie or something. Just the three of us. Paint each other’s toenails. Giggle about boys. Have a sleepover. A pillow fight!”

(“I’m not letting either of you untrained heathens near my toenails,” Blair snapped.)

“Oh, all right,” Lindsey groaned. But she was smiling.

-----

01:07:43:18 SINCE DISPERSAL

Isabelle was startled awake by a thundering roar. Flailing about blindly, she rolled to the side and fell off Lindsey’s immense bed, landing atop her carpet in an undignified heap. There was a soft oof from beside her, and she opened her eyes, head throbbing, only for her gaze to meet Blair’s.

“Morning.”

Blair made an incomprehensible sound. She’d probably been kicked off Lindsey’s bed at some point last night. (Lindsey was not a particularly gentle sleeper.) As the two girls regained their bearings, Isabelle’s vision cleared, and she sat up properly, surveying the room. The curtains had been drawn, but she could still smell grease, and salt, and… yeah. It wasn’t a good smell.

“She’s on the bed,” Blair muttered, eyes scrunched shut despite the lack of light, and clambered to her feet unsteadily. Groaning, she stumbled into Lindsey’s bathroom, neglecting to shut the door behind her. As she retched, Isabelle twisted her lips and heaved herself upright. Her bare feet came into contact with what felt like a greasy pile of cardboard, and Isabelle couldn’t help but emit a soft, restrained shriek.

There was another thundering roar, and Isabelle turned around, zooming in on the source of the sound. To her very mild surprise, it had come from Lindsey, whose entire frame had been obscured by a veritable pile of blankets. When she turned back, she noticed that a pile of empty pizza-boxes had built up on the carpet, resulting in a rapidly-spreading grease-stain. Gross. Still, there was no other way but through. Gingerly, Isabelle dipped into a squat and grabbed as many empty family-sized soda bottles as she could before tossing them onto a nearby table and rising once more to her full height. Bracing herself, she covered her eyes with one hand and opened the door with the other.

Fortunately, the curtains surrounding Lindsey’s living-room were drawn as well, but it was still quite… messy. That’s an understatement, Isabelle thought, blanching at the thought of cleaning all that up, and wondered if she ought to call housekeeping on Lindsey’s behalf. The coffee-table had been blanketed in discarded wrappers, and as Isabelle advanced, squinting, she realized that there was a large lump underneath all those wrappers.

When Blair emerged from Lindsey’s bedroom, wrapped in one of Lindsey’s bathrobes, she found Isabelle pacing back and forth. “What happened?”

Isabelle threw her hands in the air. “Lindsey ruined my favourite clutch.”

“That’s not a clutch, Belle. It’s a literal bludgeon. A mace. You could beat someone to death with it.”

“I bought this in Paris for forty grand,” Isabelle whisper-shrieked, brandishing its ruined exterior at Blair, and tossed it over her shoulder, whereupon it landed on the floor with a wet-sounding thump. “Fuck. Fuck!”

“You’ll wake Lind up.”

“God, how much did we eat last night?”

Blair shrugged and held up a bottle of wine. “I think it was mostly Lindsey doing the eating, actually. I don’t feel very bloated. Do you?” Bending down, she swept a few empty wrappers to the floor and set a pair of wineglasses on the table before fishing out a pair of phones from the pocket of her bathrobe. “Found your phone, BTW.”

“Thanks.” Isabelle unlocked it, scrolling down, and sucked in a breath. “Oh, shit.” She pulled Blair close. “Look.”

Blair’s eyes slipped over the screen, cataloguing the dozens of fast-food joints that Isabelle had signed up for over the past night. “You’re kidding,” she murmured. Unbidden, her brain produced an image of herself downing a glass of wine as Lindsey pulled her close, one arm wrapped around her shoulders as the other hijacked Isabelle’s phone to order…

“Morning.”

“Morning,” Blair and Isabelle chorused, on instinct, and blinked as one. “Are you feeling okay?”

“Me?” Lindsey shrugged. “I’m fine.” She’d fallen asleep in her bathrobe, and it was clear that her lingerie no longer fit her in the least. Folding her arms over the shelf of her burgeoning potbelly, she yawned luxuriantly and squinted at them. “Pour me a glass?”

Blair rolled her eyes, but did as she commanded. Lindsey glided over the floor, downed it, and shook her head vigorously, sending her lank locks bouncing every which way. “Fuck, I need a shower. I feel so bloated.” Turning around, she ambled back into the darkness of her room; Blair and Isabelle watched her go. A long moment passed.

“Was she this big yesterday?”

Isabelle shrugged expressively. “We got drunk on her Le Pin Merlot, dude. Even if she was, I don’t think we’d remember.” She glanced at Blair. “Another glass?”

“God, yes.”

They were halfway through their second (shared) glass when they heard Lindsey scream so shrilly that Blair almost lost her grip on the stem. Isabelle caught it before it fell to the carpet, and the two girls rushed in, only to find Lindsey on the floor of her walk-in closet, bathrobe fluttering open as she stared down at her scale.

“What,” she whispered, hoarsely, “the fuck?”

Isabelle inched towards the scale and saw that it was blinking furiously. A single number flashed across the screen: 165.

“What,” Lindsey repeated. “The fuck? I’m – I’m double my – seventy-five pounds in two days – what the actual Jesus fucking fuck.” Her face was white, and the buzz of her hangover had clearly worn off. “I was one-two-five when Gilbert brought me to his thing.” She tipped backwards, looking for all the world like a beached whale, and stared blankly at her eggshell-white ceiling. “You’re telling me that I let myself go so hard last night that I gained another forty pounds –”

“We should’ve called Gilbert last night,” Isabelle snapped, whipping out her phone. “Fuck it. I’m going to call him now.”

-----

01:08:21:34 SINCE DISPERSAL

When Gilbert woke up, his phone was buzzing. Blearily, he heaved himself out of bed and stretched, the warm sunlight kissing his bare back as he fumbled for the device and raised it to his ear. “Hello?”

“Gilbert,” Eddie drawled, “we’re on the course already. Where the hell are you?”

“Oh, fuck.” Gilbert shot to his feet. “Sorry. Yesterday was… way too busy.” The Johore facility blocked all signals from entering save those connections expressly provided for; for this reason, he’d not been able to access his messages for most of the day before. “Start without me; I don’t think I’ll be able to drop by today.”

“Uh, okay.” Eddie cleared his throat. “Also, uh… Belle told me to tell you to drop by Lindsey’s place whenever you’re free. It’s fuckin’ weird, man.” His voice grew serious. “There’s nothing going on between the two of you, is there?”

“What? God, no. I’m confused about this as you are.”

“Sure. Whatever.” Gilbert could hear Alfred shouting in the background. “Anyway, don’t miss next week’s match, okay?”

“I’ll let you know beforehand if I can’t make it. Sorry. Matter of national importance.”

“Don’t tell me anything,” Eddie agreed, amiably. “Long live the Republic.”

“Long live the Republic.”

Gilbert showered, had his breakfast, and drove over to Lindsey’s place in quick succession. As he emerged from his car, he entered Lindsey’s private lobby, thumbed the button on the panel… and waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Oh, come on. That’s just petty. 

When the lift finally arrived at Lindsey’s penthouse, Gilbert knocked on her door and blinked when Isabelle answered it, elegantly draped in a fluffy bathrobe. “Oh, good,” she said, briskly. “About time. We’ve got some questions for you.”

“Where’s Lindsey?”

“Sleeping,” Blair called, emerging into the foyer. She was wearing a pair of sunglasses, which told Gilbert that they’d been drinking. (Blair had always been a relative lightweight compared to the rest of them.) “Oh, dude. You will not believe what Lindsey told us.” She scoffed. “Like, she said you’re working on a bunch of nanomachines that give people superpowers. Apparently, you’ve been working on it for years. And never told us.” Her tone turned sarcastic. “But there’s no way that could be happening, right?”

“Look, look, look. It was a matter of national security…”

“Fuck off. I expect that sort of bullshit from my father, but not from you.”

“I dropped by yesterday afternoon ‘cos I was concerned about Lindsey,” Isabelle said, trying to defuse the tension. “She wasn’t doing well, so I called Blair here. We stayed the night. No one else knows. Not even Eddie.”

“Hell of a way to have that intervention.”

“This isn’t an intervention,” Isabelle growled. “Is she –” She tried again. “Like, how much weight –” She coughed. “How fat is she going to get before it stops? Can it be stopped?”

“We ran tests,” Gilbert seated himself on a nearby couch, rolling his shoulders. “We don’t know if it’s going to stop, because this is literally the first time that it’s happened. My theory is that there’s an equilibrium point past which her weight will stabilize. The hunger will disappear, and she’ll be able to go without food for the standard six hours. Give or take. The basic idea is that the nanites work best on people of average weight. Lindsey is below average; there was nothing for the nanites to feed on, so they responded by making her eat.”

“Yeah, but she’s, like, legitimately heavy. I’m pretty sure that’s above average.”

“Kaiser Max designed these nanites, you know.”

“So? Does that mean her gut’s going to blow up to the size of a beach-ball? I mean… fuck. I sure hope not. It’d be an international incident, but if we were to get on Turkestan’s bad side…”

“There are no good options. If your father has to choose between Turkestan and SML, he’ll pick Turkestan every time.”

“You two are going off in the wrong goddamn direction,” Isabelle said, heatedly, drawing their attention back to her. “What I’m hearing, Gilbert, is that if Lindsey starves herself, she’s just going to prolong the inevitable. Better to hit her equilibrium point earlier rather than later, so she can… get her powers? What powers does she get?”

“It usually takes a week for them to manifest,” Gilbert replied, sneaking a glance at Blair, who was pacing back and forth. “Some manifest in a day; others take a month. I don’t know how long it’ll take for Lindsey. Her situation is… atypical. The nanites are dispersed throughout her body. They’re not clumping together anywhere. We couldn’t draw any conclusions.”

Blair stopped pacing. “So, you don’t know anything.”

“I know something. Look, I don’t think Kaiser Max is the type of person to impose his weird fetishes on someone else.” (Blair snorted.) “He’ll probably bloat her up to, like, two hundred? Three? She’ll be able to lose the weight by then. And if she doesn’t… well, it’s not the end of the world.”

“Easy for you to say. You’re a man.”

“Yeah, but Lindsey’s family has some really weird views on weight. You know this. We’ve fucking talked about this.”

“Not an intervention.” Isabelle brushed her hair out of her eyes impatiently. “Anyway, who gives a shit about Lindsey’s family? They’ll fall in line once the whole situation is explained. They won’t go against the PM. My problem is how Lindsey feels. Let’s say she stops at two hundred – best-case scenario. What if she can’t lose the weight? What if she spends the rest of her life trying to work it off? And say she stops at three hundred. It might fucking destroy her.”

“I think Lindsey is more capable of introspection than either of you are assuming.”

“You weren’t here yesterday. She was having a panic attack. She literally just had another one an hour ago when she weighed herself.”

“Right.” There was a brief pause, and Gilbert hastened to change the subject. “Anyway, as an affected individual, she’s got certain… uh… responsibilities. Of course, it’s up to her whether she wants to discharge them, but I’m not exaggerating when I say that she’s worth a whole regiment by herself. Regardless of what specific abilities the nanites have given her. We’re going to be, uh…”

Blair squinted at him.

“Pre-emptive strike.”

“Holy shit.” Isabelle threw her hands up. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

“I’m sorry, are you implying that you don’t remember when we were an international pariah?”

“What’s going on?”

Lindsey had appeared on one of her many couches. She’d fallen onto it, actually, sprawling out over its velvet expanse, and was rubbing her red-rimmed eyes as her gaze flicked from Gilbert to Blair and back again. Gilbert’s mouth almost dropped open. He held it shut, though, and it was good that he had, because neither Blair nor Isabelle reacted to her new appearance. Because Lindsey… Lindsey had grown.

“Oh, hey.” Isabelle adjusted the belt of her bathrobe. “Gilbert dropped by.”

“I can see that.” Lazily, Lindsey scratched at her chin, which had softened remarkably. It was possible to just-barely make out a substantial second chin beading below. Like Blair and Isabelle, she was wearing a bathrobe, but it was at its absolute limit; her fluffy belt had been discarded and replaced with what looked like an actual belt, and even that looked to be nearing the end of its tether. “Hey, Gilbert. When is this going to stop?”

“What?”

Lindsey pursed her lips and swept her hand up and down, encompassing her expanded form. “This. Yesterday, your weird fucking machine told me that my weight had increased by fifty percent. Today…” Her lips tightened further. “When will I be able to start working out?”

“Oh.” Gilbert nodded. “Oh. Yeah. Right.” He cleared his throat. “You can, uh… you can try to work out right now, you know. Are you hungry? Do you feel weak?”

“No comment.” Lindsey folded her arms over her belly from where it was pooching out against her bathrobe, a thin sliver of pale flesh peeking tantalizingly out from between its two halves. “As for weak… huh.” She narrowed her eyes. “No. No, I don’t. Feel weak, I mean.” She shook her head, something flickering in her eyes as she tied her hair back. “Hey. I think I’ll try my treadmill, then.”

“Don’t push yourself –”

“Gilbert, shut up.”

Gilbert shut up. The three of them – him, Isabelle and Blair – stood in silence as Lindsey disappeared into her personal gym and slammed the door shut behind her. “Okay,” Isabelle said, finally. “Well, whatever. Thanks for dropping by.”

“No problem.” Gilbert rebuttoned his jacket. “Next time, just call me yourself, okay? I’m pretty sure people are starting to think that me and Lindsey are dating.”

“That’s the least of your problems,” Blair growled, and Gilbert hastily made himself scarce.