Sierra Slater ran down the corridor, her high-heeled sandals clicking against the linoleum floor. The guards following her would be in view again soon, and she was struggling to even keep balanced in her shoes. Sure enough, as she rounded a corner one of her heels gave out and sent her tumbling to the ground. As she fell, the strap holding the sandal to her ankle also snapped and it flew off her foot. Sierra barely gave the ruined shoe a moment's thought before she pushed herself back up, hopping on her now-bare foot as she removed her other sandal. She was about to fling it away when she came across a fire escape and had an idea. She opened the door, dropped her shoe and closed the door on it, leaving the sandal wedged in the doorway. Then she swung herself up to the ceiling, bracing her feet against the wall to hold herself up.
The guards soon ran down the corridor beneath her and not one of them thought to look up. One of them saw her shoe in the fire escape and picked it up, then they were all running down the stairs. With a smirk, Sierra quietly lowered herself back down and headed back the way she had come. Now she could move much more slowly and methodically, and was almost completely silent in her bare feet, except for her soles sticking slightly to the floor.
She could finally enter the laboratory that she had been forced to flee from earlier. As soon as she slipped inside she could see a collection of jars and vials filled with various liquids. This must have been the super-soldier research she'd been looking for.
Suddenly, one of the guards appeared in the doorway, levelling a submachine gun at her. Sierra ducked down just as bullets began flying into the tables and shelves, shattering the glasses and spraying their contents onto the floor where they began to pool around Sierra's bare feet. She could feel them oozing between her toes.
"Stop, you idiot!" another guard shouted, shoving the first's gun down. They fanned out into the room, searching for her. Sierra took her chance, leaping up and springing to the door. She gasped in pain as she ran. Both of her feet had been cut by the broken glass. Rather than worry about it, Sierra ran faster, jumping out a window to lose the guards in the foliage around the building. Her feet had a hot stinging sensation and they itched. She hid in a bush and tried to wipe off her feet to look for the cuts. She couldn't find them. The only sign was from little white marks on her skin. The itching, burning feeling was still there though; in fact, it felt like it was spreading completely across the soles of her feet. Who the hell knew what she'd been stepping in? She needed to get out of here and wash her feet.
Sierra took off running to her evac point, tripping the panic button hidden in her clothing. It was hard to run: not only was the hot itching in her feet getting even worse, her head was beginning to throb and her vision was getting blurry. She put on an extra burst of speed as she neared a clearing, now hearing the thumping of helicopter blades in the air drowning out the thumping of her feet on the ground. She was struggling to run in a straight line as she came to the landing site. As she slammed into the helicopter door, she could feel herself blacking out. Two surprised agents grabbed her and dragged her onto the chopper as it lifted off.
...
Sierra woke up in what she realised was a hospital bed. She swung her feet out and shuddered as they hit the cold, sterile floor. She staggered as she stood up. At first she though she was still woozy like before, but then she realised something was off with her balance. She stuck her arm out and knocked several items off the bedside table. She stared at her arm, not having expected to reach that far. The whole room, in fact, seemed oddly small. Sierra took another step, ungainly, and put her arm up on the bathroom door, which was now level with her head. There was no doubt: she was taller than before. Sierra looked over her body, taking in the new length of her arms and legs. She was much more muscular and toned than she'd ever been in her life as well. And her feet! Her feet were huge! She marvelled that it had taken her til now to notice. She took a few more steps, watching her soles squish against the floor. She made her way into the bathroom and looked in the mirror, at which point she gasped out loud. Her face was the same, thankfully, but her hair had turned pure white.
Sierra spent several minutes sitting on her bed, trying to take in what had happened to her. Then some doctors came in an asked to examine her. She had no problem with that, though she found it difficult to keep still as they touched her. She was feeling far more ticklish than usual. The doctors left her a set of clothes and informed her that she had an escort waiting to take her to her debriefing. Sierra changed into a black blouse and jeans and a pair of flats that were too small for her feet, leaving her heels to squash down the backs and hang over the edges. She shook her head at the sight. She'd already worn a Size 9 shoe before and now it felt like her feet had nearly doubled in size. She had no idea what she was going to do about new shoes.
Keeping the shoes on her feet was a pain. In fact, just walking at all with her new giant feet was awkward. Still, she made it to the meeting room and was shown inside where her handler, known to her only as Cypher, was waiting.
"Agent Slater, good to see you up and about again," she said. Sierra took a deep breath.
"Ma'am, I'm afraid I failed my mission. I was unable to procure a sample of any of the experimental formulas." Cypher actually chuckled.
"Actually," she explained, "that's not entirely true. You see, we were in fact able to recover some samples... from the soles of your feet." Sierra stared down at her feet, then back up at Cypher in shock.
"Why don't you sit down?" Cypher asked. Sierra complied.
"I assume you've noticed how your body has changed," Cypher went on. "Apart from the obvious changes to your hair and overall body size, we monitored several changes to your body between when we recovered you and when you woke up. Particularly regarding muscle and bone density, as well as an almost complete restructuring of your metabolism. Neural activity across your whole body has shot up, particularly around your nerve endings." She stood up and walked around the side of the desk.
"The most radical changes appear to have occurred in your feet, presumably because that was the point of exposure." Cypher looked down at Sierra's feet, which she currently had resting on top of her shoes. She quickly shoved them back inside. Noticing Sierra's uneasiness, Cypher sat back down to look her in the eye.
"In light of these discoveries, we would like your permission to continue tests to see exactly what is happening to you, and evaluate you for returning to active service."
"How can I refuse?" said Sierra. Privately, she meant it literally.
"Excellent!" Cypher replied. "I'll send for the agent I lined up to monitor your progress. She is codenamed Spider." After a few minutes another woman entered the room and Sierra stood up to survey her. Her first thought was that Spider looked like her exact opposite. Whereas she had dark skin and light hair (now), Spider was a textbook case for the phrase "raven hair and ivory skin". Sierra had always been rather tall and athletic, even before her exposure to the cocktail in the lab, while Spider was skinny and, while Sierra would not have exactly called her short once, at her size now Spider felt almost petite. Spider looked her up and down, making her feel nervous again.
"Pleased to be working with you," Spider said at last. Sierra didn't feel any better.
Nevertheless, she left with Spider and before long had changed into a sports bra and athletics shorts, and was standing barefoot in the agency's training facility. She began to run the obstacle course and was amazed by how easy it felt. Scaling the course's inclines and climbing walls took no time at all as she used her bare feet to find seemingly impossible footholds. Bars swung out in her path and she zipped out of the way almost effortlessly. Even she was surprised by how fast her reflexes were. While even the best agents usually filled the obstacle course with the sound of them being knocked down, the only sound from Sierra was her soles slapping against the floor. She wasn't even breathing heavily. Sierra had broken every record on the training course within hours. The tests went on to testing endurance, as Sierra pounded her feet on a treadmill and sat underwater holding her breath, strength, where she pushed against ever-increasing weights, performed endless bicep curls and ran laps with increasingly large loads on her shoulders, and speed which similarly escalated until she was dodging rubber bullets being shot at her. After stunning all of the examiners with her results, retrieving a blood sample proved difficult as her skin repeatedly resisted the needles and, eventually, a knife that a rather adventurous researcher had proposed testing on her.
