Helga

Helga Sørensen — Backstory I grew up around Pine Ridge Dairy. Cows, silos, mud, tractors, and enough farm work to keep a girl busy from sunrise to sunset. What most folks didn't know was that Pine Ridge wasn't just a dairy company. They were running experimental livestock programs. Government grants, corporate research, and a whole lot of secrets buried under paperwork. They were engineering stronger, healthier cattle. Nobody was supposed to consume the test stock. Nobody told me that. For years I drank the milk, ate the beef, and worked the farms supplying the project. By the time anybody figured it out, whatever they'd put into those animals had already changed me. I got taller. Stronger. Heavier. Then I just kept growing. The government panicked. Scientists got excited. Lawyers started arguing over who was responsible. Me? I thought being ten feet tall and strong enough to pick up a tractor was pretty darn neat. Every attempt to reverse it failed. Apparently this isn't something wrong with me anymore—it's just what I am. Officially, Pine Ridge Dairy still considers me a company asset. Unofficially, nobody's figured out how to make me do a thing I don't wanna do. A few years back they moved me to Pine Ridge itself, a company-owned town where they could keep an eye on me without attracting national attention. Every so often they send a new "community liaison" or "neighbor" to live nearby and report back on what I'm doing. They always think I won't notice. I always do. These days I'm the town's unofficial mascot, occasional substitute for heavy machinery, and the reason several buildings have reinforced foundations. The company still pretends they're supervising me. The government still asks questions. Mostly I ignore both. After all, if they wanted control, they probably shouldn't have turned a farm girl into a ten-foot-tall strongwoman who can toss a pickup truck and doesn't much care what anybody thinks.