Chapter 2
Chapter 2:

Chapter 2:

THE NEXT FEW days were unbelievable to me! I was truly impressed by the Amazons technology as they showed us the sights. Computers, robots, medical advances, and even some of the simple things like phones were at least twenty years ahead of us. We’d been given a tour of Emerson University the day before and I was truly impressed by everything we’d seen there!

What I wasn’t impressed about though was the adults forcibly made to be babies. We’d witnessed several atrocities over the days that I continually documented. I’d seen more of the breast feeding, public diaper changes, spankings, and… what seemed to be a number of instances of physical modifications to those adults. Twenty-year old’s did not normally have all of their teeth missing, so I was pretty sure that their ‘parents’ were ripping their teeth out!

Most of the other members of our group, other than the mother of the one teenager, were all below six feet in height now. I’d learned that was the standard for being a ‘little’ in this dimension. From my height until about the eight-foot mark you would be considered to be a ‘betweener’ or ‘tweener’ by this dimension. I saw plenty of them being pushed about in diapers too, but for the most part we seemed safer. I managed to have a side conversation with another person just above my height on the fourth day.

“You’re one of those tourists, huh?” She asked as I watched the group looking through a clothing store in the mall we’d been brought to.

I looked at the woman, about a foot taller than me and nodded, “That’s me…”

“Beth,” she said, holding her hand out to me.

“Travis,” I said back to her, while activating the video camera function. “So… I’ve been curious… what’s up with all of the adults being babied? My tour guide is pretty evasive about it, or says that they asked for that treatment?”

The girl snorted, “Asked for it, huh?” She shook her head, “Maybe one in a million might actually ask for it, the others are basically forcibly kidnapped and turned into baby slaves.”

“Why?”

She shrugged, “Amazon women get crazy… A lot of them can’t have kids due to some sort of genetic disorder that seems to be spreading. To deal with their maternal urges they find a ‘little’ to become their baby.”

“How long do they keep them?”

“Most of the time until one of them dies…” she said sadly.

“Really?” I couldn’t help but ask in shock. “A lifetime of being babied?”

“Yes… some have it worse than others of course. The lucky ones are only diapered and paraded around as a toddler who can still pick up a fork. Occasionally they might even be able to be toilet trained and kept in their ‘big kid’ pull-ups.”

“The best they hope for is Pull-Ups?” I asked incredulously.

“Yep. Of course, the smart ones that are free will wear at least a Pull-Up just in case.” She added, “There aren’t that many anymore though…”

“Why? How?”

“Ever not wiped your ass well enough after you went and found a brown streak in your underwear?” She paused, “Actually don’t answer that… Let’s just say that if they want to, they can check your underwear. If there’s even the slightest skid mark or dribble of pee in your underwear it’s grounds for adoption. If you’re at least mature enough to wear protection you might get a chance to run away.”

My mouth dropped, “Really?”

“Then there’s the ones who will say ‘someone’s not mature enough’ because they argue with the ‘adult.’” She proceeded to give me a quick lowdown until my group came to the edge of the store. “Stay with your group, you’re tall enough to be a betweener here… a little short, but still mostly safe. The laws specifically address under six-feet with adoptions. Stay smart and safe though, or you could be getting your pampers changed too…”

“Thanks for the info…” I told her and joined behind the parents of the teenaged girl.

The group had been split up between Dara and Grace today, ‘randomly,’ for some reason. It had seemed kind of odd to split the girl off from her parents, but for the most part the tour company had been running things really smoothly. When we got back on the bus the other group was already on, so we quickly pulled away to go to the next destination. A half-block from the mall I heard, “Where’s Lily?”

THE TOUR COMPANY had refused to turn the bus around to look for their daughter stating that ‘the rules were clear.’ The whole thing kind of stunk to me, but I couldn’t prove anything. They tried calling the police, but were told they’d need to wait twenty-four hours to file a missing person report because she was an adult. ‘Sure… that’s what she is right now…’ I couldn’t help but think as I watched her mom cry hysterically. The next day while they waited at the hotel in the hope she might return there, I traveled with the group to a huge zoo with many animals in it that had either gone extinct in our dimension, or hadn’t existed at all. It was pretty cool, but throughout the visit I was documenting more and more cases of ‘littles’ being forced into their roles as surrogate babies.

I was sitting down for lunch with the group and noticed a family of littles nearby. There was a father and mother in their late forties, along with a teenage boy and daughter that looked to be towards the end of high school in age. An Amazon woman walked by and spilled her drink all over the fronts of the two teenagers and proceeded to claim they had wet themselves. Their parents tried fighting the woman, but security was called and soon all four of them were in diapers and some spare clothing one ‘helpful’ mother had provided.

You could tell that everyone around our table was nervous as they watched the incident. I couldn’t help but wonder if they would be stopped from pulling the same stunt with the tourist group?

“Could that happen to us?” one woman now just under five foot asked of Dara.

“Not as long as you stay with us sweetie! Tourists are protected from being adopted so long as they are with their licensed tour guide.”

I suddenly twinged to what might be involved in this circle of disappearances. ‘So the tourists get distracted, separated, and then…’ I thought looking over at a ‘mom’ spoon feeding some disgusting pureed mush to a man only wearing a diaper to go along with a beer gut. ‘Then your life is over…’ I thought.

I followed the tour guide I was with for the afternoon, taking care to stay a bit closer than I had yesterday on the off chance someone decided that a taller ‘baby’ was more their style. Spending the day in a ‘family’ park setting let me get the idea that while I might be taller than a baby, I could easily fit in with the height of a kindergartner or first grader… The first few of those I saw that were still diapered showed me that it wouldn’t be a big stumbling block for some crazy wannabe mom to do the same to me!

That being said I noticed a clear deference towards me in my dealings with ordering food versus the shorter tourists. I was still pretty much treated like an adult, while they all got ‘honey,’ ‘sweetie,’ ‘pumpkin,’ and ‘munchkin’ nicknames. It was clear that I was older in their minds!

In the end it we did a lot of walking that day before we boarded the bus to return to the hotel. A headcount was done and we were three people short. “Does anyone know where Riley, Paul, and Libni are?” Dara asked.

No one seemed to know, and I noted that once again the three missing were with the opposite group that I was in. “Well, hopefully they find their way back to the hotel!” she said with a smile. “Just a reminder that you need to stay with the group and on-time with our itinerary! We’re all adults here and that shouldn’t be a problem, right?” she asked rhetorically.

“Now we’re going to give you a couple hours to take a nap and change before we go to dinner and then a late theater show,” Grace told us as we pulled away.

I walked into the hotel and noticed that the girl’s parents were sitting in the lobby chairs with apparent worry. The tour guides gave them a wide berth… but it wasn’t in my nature to just let someone be kidnapped from their parents like that. “Hi, I’m Travis,” I told them.

“John, and this is my wife Carrie,” he told me.

“Any sign of Lily?”

The woman looked at me and shook her head, “None… we almost have enough time gone to report her missing to the police… but… but… what if…?” She choked back some more sobs.

“Look,” I glanced around and ensured no one was around, “I have some experience in these types of matters. How about I go with you to the police station?”

“You’d do that?” The man asked, “What’s in it for you?”

I shrugged, “I don’t believe in leaving people behind.” I happened to rub the sleeve of my shirt just then and I noticed recognition as I realized I had flashed my tat at him.

“You were a SEAL?” He asked quietly.

“Fifteen years,” I told him.

“What grade?”

“I mustered out as an E-8,” I told him.

“Well… let’s go then honey,” he told her. “How are we getting there?”

“Let’s get a cab,” I told him and left them to organize one at the desk.

John was placed into a booster seat by the cab driver, but his wife and I were tall enough to ride in the regular seats. I was actually a bit surprised by that as we drove, thinking about how back home the age of eight, or fifty-six inches had become the standard age for most states. ‘That’s about seven-and-a-half feet,’ I thought to myself. ‘Not about to bring attention to that though…’ I thought as we drove on.

The police station was actually a really close building to where we were staying. Just about seven city blocks down the road from the hotel in a straight line. I noted the route in case I needed to find our way back later.

“Okay, that’ll be…” he told us and I handed over my credit card for the bill. It was one they issued us on this side and his little computer had no problems processing the charge. “If you need a ride back, call this number,” he told me giving me a card.

“Thank you, sir,” I told him with a smile. We made it into the lobby and it was apparent to me that no little was in consideration with the size of the furniture.

At the front desk we approached and I said, “We need to report their missing daughter.”

“How long has she been missing?”

“A bit over a full day,” I said looking at the special watch I had bought in a gift shop. “At least thirty-one hours?”

“Age?”

“Eighteen,” Carrie told him.

“Are you sure she didn’t just go out for a night of partying?”

“Yes, we’re sure, we’re tourists from the other dimension - trust me she didn’t go off on her own willingly,” John told him angrily.

“Okay… you’ll need to fill out these forms,” he said handing over an electronic tablet. “If you have a picture you can scan it in there with the camera on it.”

“Thanks,” Carrie said, taking the tablet and walking over to the large benches in the corner. She hopped up with a little bit of effort. John had to practically climb his way up it. I chose to stand by and watch the lobby and the people within it. Something about the officer’s glance right then, and a quiet conversation he was having with another one to the side made me think something was up.

Carrie had tear streaks down her eyes as she filled out the tablet’s questionnaire. “May I see what they asked?” I asked when she was done.

I looked through the paperwork and it was fairly standard stuff from back home even. One thing I noticed is that with height it automatically populated a mark in ‘Little,’ ‘Mid,’ or ‘Big.’ It looked like because she was a little it also asked what age she was potty-trained. ‘Twenty-eight months,’ she’d typed in. Where things went off the beaten path back home was their request for detailed medical history information. It seemed more like a full medical history request like when you went to a doctor.

‘They don’t need that much information to find a missing person…’ I thought skeptically. I walked back up with them to the counter and the man said, “Okay, we’ll enter the information in our system and be on the lookout for her.”

“You’re not going to have someone go check out where she was last seen?” I asked.

“Doesn’t usually do any good. We’ll be in touch if we hear something,” he said.

Warning bells went off in my head as we were essentially dismissed without meeting with a detective or anything. Sensing I needed to get them back to the hotel for our safety, I directed them gently outside. There was a convenient cab driver there, but somehow, I didn’t trust that convenience. I kept them walking on the street instead of taking the cab. “Why not take that cab back there?” John asked me quietly.

“Gut feeling…” was all I said. It was a long walk back to the hotel, and by the time we returned the group had left. I picked a random place out of a phone book and got us a delivery of pizza… Huuuuuge pizza! It reminded me of the pizza places I saw on TV back home that were like four feet in diameter! I sat with them and talked to them for a while before heading back to my room and planning what I could do.

‘Something wasn’t right at that police station…’ I thought to myself. Over the years I had been ingrained to follow orders, but as I’d risen through the ranks of the enlisted, I’d also been given advice to follow my gut. My gut was screaming at me that something wasn’t right about the whole situation. ‘I already have more than enough information and evidence for the client…’ I thought to myself. The problem since I’d come to work for the firm I just couldn’t let go of a good mystery.

Making a decision I found my most nondescript clothes that I’d brought and waited for the dimensions two am to come around. Hoping it was late enough I slid out the back of the building through a stairwell unnoticed. Before I closed the door, I jammed a piece of cardboard from the pizza box in the door to keep it from latching fully. I had no idea what the door sensor would think with it, but I hoped to be able to pull it back open without using the card and documenting my re-entry.

The eight blocks to the station were as nerve wracking as any mission I’d been on. Several times I saw vagrant amazons passed out on the street. One or two of them had poorly dressed littles with them. I noticed one had a dog collar around its neck and a leash tied to the amazon’s arm! At the police station I knew I couldn’t just go in the front door so I made my way around back. The building featured some pretty large brick, but no obvious entrance in the back that wasn’t guarded. ‘I bet I could grab onto the brick though…’ I thought to myself. Before I approached, I placed a face mask on to help avoid identification later. ‘I assume they have cameras…’ I thought to myself. ‘Hopefully no one is watching it in real-time…’

Fifteen minutes later I was on the roof of the eight-story building and looking at the hatch there for any sign of an alarm system. Unfortunately, there was one! I sighed and decided that for such a high-tech culture, they had some low-tech security. They left the sensors on the outside, apparently more worried about keeping people in than out, and I was able to simply unscrew one side of the sensor and taped it to the other without breaking the connection. The door itself was fortunately unlocked and I found myself inside the building.

Remembering the signs from earlier I found my way to the sixth floor where most of the lights were off. Clearly most detectives didn’t work nightshift hours around here. I checked a few offices, finding some unlocked, but no unlocked computers. Just as I was at another door a janitor came in and the lights of a large bullpen area began to come on. I pulled on the handle and dived into what was thankfully an empty office. Making my way to the other side of the desk I discovered I had gotten lucky twice - as this system was still logged in!

I found a program to search cases and typed in ‘Lily Hendrickson’ into the search field. A quick look found the case entered that afternoon, but instead of being marked ‘Open,’ it sat there with the marking of ‘Closed.’ My gut wrenched and I felt nervous that I was probably right. Sure enough, there was a marking of ‘Little Feet Orphanage,’ as a location for her. Another note said that they had transmitted the required medical records to the orphanage and that fees would be paid accordingly to the department. I saw a printer and printed the record off.

‘Fees?’ I couldn’t help but wonder.

I wasn’t the best computer user on the team back home, but all of us were given some training in the last couple years on hacking in case we needed intel in the field. Shooting and enhanced interrogation were not off the table depending on the tango too, but the hope was we wouldn’t need that to get more reliable intel. In this case that training paid off. I discovered hundreds of files with the same setup and case codes. All of the names seemed to also have references to a DT with them. ‘Diamond Tours?’ I thought. Each of them listed a fee of ten thousand dollars paid to the department!

I took pictures and video as quickly as I could to try and locate names and take more information back home. My agency could probably backtrack families and figure out what they might have had in common. I was just getting ready to dive in one level deeper when the door jiggled.

‘Shit!’ I thought in my head and exited out of stuff and quickly found a hiding spot behind a couch. It wasn’t a good hiding spot, but maybe the janitor or whoever came in wouldn’t figure that out. Unfortunately, two things went wrong… it wasn’t a janitor… and the detective noticed straight away something was wrong and turned around the room to find me.

“What are you doing in here?” She asked.

She reached for me and I dug into all of my training to put her down. I dived underneath her and delivered hard blows to her knees and ankles. I used the chair to help make a massive leap up, and grabbed her in a choke hold around her neck. It wasn’t as easy as putting a regular human to sleep, but I had discovered in our exercises that if I could manage to get to their neck I could still put these giants down. She tried hollering but with her airway closed she didn’t have a lot of hope for that. Eventually she went still and fell flat on her face. I checked for a pulse and was relieved she wasn’t dead. ‘Time to get out of here!’ I thought to myself, grabbing the record from the printer and making my exfiltration the same way I came in.

Getting back down the wall was not as much fun, and I really wished I had rope to just rappel, but twenty minutes later I was heading back down the street to the hotel.

When I arrived at the back door, I was happy to see the cardboard still in place that I had left. To my relief the door even opened without me using my card. I made it back to my room where I used the same trick to get in without ever using the electronic locks to give myself away. I knew cameras could be reviewed, but hopefully I’d be home in our dimension before someone got around to that!

Making sure the tells I left in the room to mark no one had been in there were undisturbed I quickly showered, hid the clothes I was wearing in the bottom of my laundry bag, and hit the bed for an hour of sleep before I needed to get up.

THE NEXT MORNING, I drew the two of them over to a pool area where I hoped the noise of a hot tub gurgling away would distort anyone, or anything, that might have been listening.

“We need to keep this quiet as I don’t think we can trust the tour company.” I told them quietly.

They nodded, “I wondered,” John said.

“I have a good lead at this point.”

“Where is she?!?!” Carrie said far louder than I wanted her to, but I was pretty sure no one would have heard.

“I’m not specifically sure, but I think an orphanage or something. I want us to go to the embassy together and see if they can help us out.”

“We should have gone there yesterday…” Carrie said despondently.

“Wouldn’t have been as good without the intel I got. Now, I want us to slip out the back and we’re going to go straight there. I’m not planning on letting the company know where we are.”

They nodded and followed me out the back way I had used the night before. We found a cab, and after dealing with another booster seat for John, managed to get to their Embassy Row, and the American Embassy there.

We approached the gate and were questioned heavily by a Marine stationed there. It took me stating I was a retired SEAL before we made traction in getting inside. “Sorry sir, but we don’t just let random people in the gates… we’ve had some issues with people from this dimension coming here trying to claim asylum protection.”

“I bet you have,” I told him.

“Go on in sir, there’s a receptionist that can get you to the right person…”

It took the better part of two hours before we were seated in a conference room with the ambassador, someone from a group who called themselves ‘the bureau,’ and a person who was supposed to be a clerk. I instantly read them as a spook though, making sure not to let them know I knew, or let John and Carrie figure it out.

“So you say this Diamond Tours group is operating as an illicit human trafficking ring?” The ambassador asked.

I nodded, “Here, this was… acquired... from their police station a few hours after they made the report of their missing daughter. You note that it says that the case is Closed there, and the information about transmitting her medical information.”

“You realize this looks to be just a normal legal adoption?” The Bureau officer stated to me. I brought out my small computer that I had brought with me and opened the files of photos I had taken. I laid out the evidence in clear detail and stated, “The law here says we’re safe with a tour guide, right?”

“You’re supposed to be…” the ambassador hedged. “I for one don’t trust them any further than I can throw the giants!”

“Now sir…” the bureau agent implied a warning.

“I know…” he said, “So how are we going to recover this girl? This is clearly the act of a duplicitous tour agency from what I’m seeing here.”

“Let me get my team in here,” the agent said. “It’s going to probably take at least a night to get things in order to go to that orphanage.”

“May I recommend that we stay here at the embassy for tonight? Maybe I can go with a bureau agent to recover all of our things?”

“I think we can make that happen,” the ambassador said.

THAT AFTERNOON I went back to the hotel with a team of five human agents and two Amazons that belonged to this ‘Bureau’ group. From what little I could tell they had something to do with the legal immigration options? ‘Or maybe they were just as involved in trafficking...’ I wondered darkly. We had recovered all of their luggage and mine from the hotel, and stayed the night at the embassy in their housing to ensure our safety.

I participated in helping the Bureau people plan the raid to rescue Lily and a few of the others believed to be at the same center. The final planning session had involved her parents too. “I think that’s it,” the lead agent said. “Mr. and Mrs. Hendrickson, can you stay back for a moment so I can talk to you about some things…?”

I had thought about staying behind and waiting for them, but an invite from the marine that had helped me get setup with a bunk had left me deciding to go hang out with them.

That evening as I hung out with the off-duty marines that were serving as security, I learned a lot of details from them to add to my report… None of it positive for this dimension, or our own government’s complicity. It was apparent to me that our government was well aware of the kidnappings, and forced babyhood, but chose not to do anything due to large gifts of precious metals and technology coming in. The whole setup smelled to high heaven… and I wasn’t surprised in the slightest by that!

The next morning, I was dressed in regular plain clothes attire with Lily’s parents, while the twelve Littles, and eight Amazons were all suited up in protective combat gear. We had been setup to observe from the outside of the building and I felt my stomach sink. ‘Little Feet Orphanage’ was painted above the entrance in primary colored fonts appropriate for a daycare. A chain link fence surrounding a play yard was built along the side, with playground equipment fit for toddlers. Nothing too tall or scary, and all looked to have soft spots to land on. It looked like no ‘kids’ were outside just then.

The teams were armed with some serious automatic firepower and approached the facility with speed and precision that impressed me. ‘Not my units’ level, but better than an average SWAT team,’ I thought to myself.

The whole place looked completely like an innocent daycare back home until the raid began. We heard a ‘go’ over a radio from an agent that stayed behind with us and watched them breach the building from multiple sides.

Two of the littles had gone in through the playground with an Amazon and I watched in disbelief as some weird mechanical arms flew at the littles. They reminded me of Bender’s ‘extendo-arm’ from Futurama as they followed and kept grabbing at the littles. One of the sets of arms managed to grab one of the little officers and began trying to spank them while the other little quickly used some sharp knife to slice the arm off.

I heard a few sounds and noises from inside too, and then all was quiet. I heard a ‘Clear’ from each of the three teams before the agent said, “We can go in now.”

“Is Lily in there?” Carrie asked nervously.

“Is the Primary Objective present?” They asked.

“We believe so, confirmation of ID by parents is needed.”

“Let’s go get her,” I told her parents and led them inside.

I felt my stomach drop as I looked around at adults in various states of distress. Dirty diapers, missing teeth, vacant stares, and many were still happily playing - clueless of the situation around them. The worst were the cries from adults that sounded like they were newborns… As I walked past several of them, I could smell the poop in their diapers and it took my strong stomach to not vomit. All of the workers appeared to have been taken into custody alive and were lined up sitting down along a wall with two of the littles and an Amazon covering them.

“Over here,” one of the littles said to us and led us to an overgrown playpen that I came up to my chest in height.

“Mom!!!!!!!!!! Dad!!!!!!!” Lily cried out when she saw her parents.

The poor girl was sitting in a short dress and a diaper. A baby bottle was still clutched in her hand, but she didn’t seem to feel the need to drop it now that she was saved. In fact, I watched as she took a nurse on it right then. Her diaper, fully on display, was yellowed and swollen. As I grew closer, I could smell something and there was clearly a brown stain on the back of the diaper.

“This is positively her?” the lead agent asked Carrie.

“Definitely, though what did they do to her? And why is she in a poopy diaper? Don’t they change them at least?!?” Her mom seemed outraged.

“We’ll get her changed really quick and then escort you all to the portal,” one of the Amazons from the team said.

I watched as the enormous woman easily picked up Lily like a small toddler and carried her to a diaper changing table. I watched morbidly as the shitty diaper was pulled off and the lady cleaned her up. To my surprise, her being exposed in the full room of people, including her parents and a stranger, didn’t seem to embarrass her all. ‘Just a few days ago she turned as a bright a tomato when I looked at her sitting in a car seat…’ The Amazon agent pulled another diaper out and used it on her before pulling the bottle away that the girl had started nursing again.

“It may take a while before she recovers…” She handed Carrie a large diaper bag with some more diapers, the bottle she had just been using, and it looked like other normal baby care stuff in it.

I watched Carrie grimace, and John looked green, but she happily took her daughter back from her and hugged her tightly. The poor girl had shrunk so much in the trip she looked like almost a toddler even with her own mom.

“Lily I’m so glad we found you!” Carrie told her daughter and I smiled as I watched the family hug together and cry happy tears of joy.

“As much as I would like to let you have time to have a reunion here, I think it’s best we get you moving…” the leader of the team told them.

“Yes sir,” Carrie told him and set Lily on the ground and pulled her by the hand to the vehicles that waited. In the time we had been inside the news crews and a lot of bystanders had begun watching the scene. I watched the family get into a large van with Lily buckled in a car seat.

I was going to join them, but one of the Amazon Bureau members said, “We don’t have room for you in here, come to this vehicle please sir.”

I shrugged and followed them as they walked to an SUV that looked like a standard black government issued vehicle from back home. I climbed in the back seat and was joined on either side by an Amazon while a third drove. They began driving and following the family, but all of the sudden at one intersection changed directions away from the portal.

“Umm… The portal’s that way guys?” I said.

“Awww… He’s such a smart wittle boy,” the woman next to me on my right cooed. “You’re right pumpkin, but we’re not taking you there. You’ve made too much of a mess here and we don’t think it’s a good idea for you to go back to your home. So… we’re taking you to a new one…”

I started to try and bolt over to the front to get out, but both of them had the element of surprise on their sides and managed to pin my arms completely down.

“Don’t worry baby, we’ll make sure you get a comfy new home soon!”

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Please leave me a comment and let me know what you think!