by Tania Hutley
The needle stings as it slides into my arm.
My fuzzy brain clears and I squeeze my eyes closed. I want to transfer into my Skin so badly I’m shaking. My fists clench and it’s all I can do not to transfer.
But awareness is rushing through me. A brilliant clarity that’s come from whatever drug she injected me with.
And with the clarity, comes a realization.
I can smell the alluring feline scent of my leopard, making it even harder to resist the transferal. But over that, the scent of the doctor is clear. There’s excitement in her smell, and I can sense it as clearly as if I were in my Leopard Skin. With my eyes closed, I can tell exactly where she’s standing. I can hear her starched coat rustle and detect the movement of her hand through the air.
And I feel strong.
I have no idea how long she kept me knocked out, but my body has done more than just heal. My veins feel like they’re on fire. I feel almost as good as I did when I was the leopard. Somehow, I have my leopard’s sense of smell and hearing. Could I have gained its strength?
She’s tied me down with a webbing strap around each wrist. Am I strong enough to break the straps?
Though I’d give anything to be able to transfer into my leopard, it’s trussed up so tightly it won’t be able to get free. She knows how strong the leopard is. But she hasn’t tied my human body up as securely.
I focus everything I have on my wrists, pulling against the straps with all my strength. As I feel them start to give, a cry of effort squeezes from my lips. I feel the veins pulse in my neck as I strain.
The doctor makes a shocked sound. “What are you doing?”
My restraints tear open.
As I leap from the bed, the electrodes rip free from my skull. The doctor staggers backward, her eyes wide. Glancing down, I see how thick the broken straps dangling from the bed are. No normal person should have been able to break those straps.
I’m not sure I’m entirely human any more.
That’s okay. I don’t want to be human. There are better things to be.
The doctor scrambles backward, away from me, but I grab her by the shoulders, swing her around, and press her onto the bed I’ve just vacated. The broken straps are useless, but I jerk some of the machine’s wires free and use them to tie her hands to the bed. It’s not as secure as I’d like, but she’s deathly pale, and her excitement has turned into a fear is so strong I can taste it. She’s not going anywhere.
Grabbing a scalpel from the doctor’s tray of instruments, I turn to my beautiful leopard.
The straps are so thick around its body, I don’t know how long it will take to cut them off. Frantically, I start sawing. Once it’s free, I can become the leopard and carry my human body out of here. It can dangle from my jaws.
There’s a noise from a long distance away, only audible because my hearing is sharper than it should be. Boots are pounding down the hallway. Stompers’ boots, getting closer. At least four stompers. No, six.
Of course, there must be cameras in here. They saw me get loose. And I don’t have time to get my leopard free before they’ll burst in here.
Shit.
I hesitate for several precious seconds, staring at my leopard, my hand in its fur, desperate to find a way out of this without leaving it behind.
The boots are getting closer.
No time.
Sobbing with frustration, I slam out of the lab room, turning away from the oncoming stompers. A hallway stretches out in front of me. I have no idea where I am. All I can do is run. My legs pump hard as I fly down the corridor. My feet are bare and all I have on is a hospital smock. Still, I’m faster than the stompers. Not nearly as fast as my leopard—
I push the yearning for my Leopard Skin away. No time for regrets now. If I make it out of here alive, I can figure out a way to get my leopard back.
The thumping of the stompers’ boots gets more distant as I race past more lab rooms, most with glass doors. Inside, I catch glimpses of terrible things. An ugly dog creature the size of a horse. A metal animal skeleton with a human face that turns to look at me as I run past. What looks like a human heart in a jar. It’s pumping, and wires snaking out of it connect to a pair of hair-covered legs.
The lab rooms are filled with doctors or technicians wearing white coats. I even push past some doctors in the hallway, but they’re too startled to try to stop me.
Sliding around a corner, there are windows in front of me. The ground looms far below. I’m too high up to jump, even if I could get the window open. I must be inside the Morelle scraper, higher than I’ve ever been, on a much higher floor than when I stayed here.
From up here I can see the streets of New Triton laid out in neat rectangular shapes. Through the holes in the center of the rectangles, Old Triton looks dark. A buried city. And there’s the wall between Deiterra and Triton. I’ve never seen it so clearly, but I don’t have time for more than a glance before I turn away. The stompers will be on me in no time.
A blinding flash of light from the window makes me duck. BOOM! The sound is so loud, it rocks the building. I brace my feet against the shaking, and hear glass crash in a nearby lab room.
Somewhere on this floor, people start screaming. Straightening, I see thick black smoke pouring from a nearby scraper. What the hell? Could a bomb have gone off in New Triton?
Was it the Fist? No, it couldn’t be. That was a massive explosion. The Fist can’t possibly have bombs that size.
Sirens shriek, and I clap my hands over my ears. Men and women in white coats pour out of lab rooms, hurrying toward a door marked with green.
I stare, perplexed, as they file through it. Beyond, I catch a glimpse of a stairwell. Is that the exit?
Making a snap decision, I rush for it, overtaking workers as I hurtle through the door. I run down the stairs, shoving through white-coated workers. Some are babbling about a Deiterran attack, but surely that has to be speculation.
More people are pouring into the stairwell from lower floors, filling the staircase and making it difficult to push my way through.
I could easily get trapped in here.
The next door I get to has the number 25 on it, so I must be on the twenty-fifth floor. Struggling down that many flights of stairs through all these people will take too long. Long enough for stompers to be waiting for me at the bottom.
A bunch of workers are streaming through the door, joining all the others descending the stairwell. I shove against the tide, working my way through them. They shout and protest, but I push with my head down and manage to struggle out the door.
The hallway on this floor is similar to the one above, with more lab rooms coming off it. But at the end of the hall, I spot a sliding glass door leading out to a balcony. I run and tear the door open. Outside on the balcony, I can smell smoke from the burning building, and hear the wails of fire engines, competing with the alarm still sounding inside the Morelle scraper. Flames lick the side of the scraper the explosion came from.
The wind whips up my hair and the hospital gown as I lean over the chest-high rail, peering down.
The ground is so far away, it makes my legs weak. But below me, on the next floor down, is another small balcony. And below that, another one. There are no balconies above me, so this must be the highest floor that has one. But from this floor down, there’s one on every level.
Even as I climb over the rail, I’m afraid I’m making a terrible mistake. It’s a long drop to the balcony below, and it’ll be tricky to land inside the balcony rail. If I miss, I’ll fall twenty-five floors, and bits of me will splatter all over the street.
If I still felt completely human, I wouldn’t even attempt it.
Taking a deep breath, my heart thumping, I lower myself over the side of the balcony. I dangle for a moment, then drop, twisting my body toward the building as I fall.
I land as well as I could have hoped for, though the force of the drop jars through my bare feet. But there’s no time to celebrate. I hav
e twenty-four more balcony jumps to survive.
By the time I’m at the last balcony, looking down to street level, an ever-increasing crowd throngs the sidewalk. Seems like the entire population of New Triton is standing outside, gaping at the building that’s on fire.
A few are staring and pointing at me. They must have spotted me dropping from balcony to balcony. But there’s no sign of stompers, or of the director’s red-uniformed guards.
As I dangle from the last balcony, I crane my neck, peering down to see the people below pushing and scrambling to get out of my way. I drop onto the sidewalk, conscious of how strange I must look to them in just a hospital gown, with my hair blowing messily around a face that looks nothing like theirs.
But the thick crowd is a blessing. I can disappear into the throng.
Dashing through them, I keep my head down. My blood is pumping, and I know I can run faster than I used to.
A big guy just ahead is holding a raincoat. I come up behind him, jerk it out of his hand and take off. He shouts and tries to come after me, but I lose him easily.
The coat’s so big, it hangs to my thighs and covers my hands. Good. I pull the hood up so it flops over my eyes and hides my face.
On the other side of the street is a glass barrier. It’s there to stop people accidentally falling into Old Triton. But that’s exactly where I want to go. Though I’ve already dropped twenty-five stories, I have another twenty-eight to descend.
Climbing over the barrier, I find a foothold underneath the street. Thick metal beams hold up the road, and below the beams is a building. Old Triton is twenty-eight stories high, and almost all of our buildings are exactly that tall. Every inch of Old Triton’s space is used. Our city is overcrowded, dirty, and dark.
Perfect for hiding in.
The side of this Old Triton building is brick. There’s a fire escape a little way along, and I inch across, hanging on to the metal beam that holds up the New Triton street, until I’m above the fire escape. I should be used to dropping from heights by now, but this fall is the scariest one yet.
Heart racing, I let go of the beam and drop. I grab hold of the top of the fire escape, cutting my hands on the rusty metal. Then all I need to do is climb down the ladder.
Once I’m finally at ground level, the Old Triton gloom feels like a comforting blanket that wraps around me to hide me and keep me safe. I take off down an alley that leads to exactly the kind of place I need, a long underpass where a solid section of New Triton stretches overhead in all directions, turning the dimness into pitch black.
From the buildings around me, faint lights shine half-heartedly out of grimy windows. A few weeks ago they would have been barely bright enough to guide me, but now my night vision’s sharp and I move fast, sure of every step. I’ve spent my whole life in Old Triton, in darkness. This is my arena.
I can hear the tiniest sounds, detect even the faintest scents. In one apartment, an old man is frying food with the window open, and his sweat stinks even more than the charred meal. He calls to a woman, but I can hear her snoring. Next door, canned laughter comes from a holo. Above them, a mother shouts at a child. Washing lines are strung from windows, the clothes stinking of damp, of never drying completely. These people live too close and work too hard. They’re people of darkness. My people.
We’ve let ourselves be pushed down for far too long.
In a boarded-up doorway, I find a place to catch my breath. I sit with my back against the boards, waiting for night to fall and for New Triton to get as dark as it is down here before I go back up there.
From the moment I walked through her door, an impostor wearing a stolen band, Director Morelle must have known she could use me however she wanted. I was her private science experiment. Cale too, probably. No wonder she didn’t stop us training at night. Much better to watch and see what happened. Easy enough to get rid of us afterward.
But without knowing it, she gave me exactly what I needed. I don’t know how I have the leopard’s abilities, but maybe it’s because I refused to give them up.
For the first time in my life, I’m strong.
The only question is, what am I going to do with what I’ve gained?
For too many years I’ve let myself, and the people I love, be pushed around. We’ve been bullied, relocated, assaulted, and beaten. I’ve let everyone I care about be taken away.
No more.
Curling my hand into a fist, I clench it hard. It’s time to stop being a victim. I’m going to fight back, and I know exactly what I want. I’ll save Ma and Tori from the director’s factories and shelters, and William from her academy. And I’ll get my Leopard Skin back.
Without a working band, there’s only one place I can go for help. 133 Birchel. As soon as it gets dark up top, that’s where I’m headed, to the address that Doctor Gregory gave me. The doctor will know where Cale is, so I can find him too.
Rescuing the people I love won’t be easy, but for the first time, I think there might be a way. One thing for sure, I’m done with running from the director. Now I’m ready to show her just how sharp this leopard’s teeth really are.
Whoever I am now is up to me to decide. What matters most is that I’m very much alive, and somehow the leopard’s alive in me.
So watch out, Director Morelle. You think I’m unpredictable? You won’t even see me coming.
Skin Rebellion
Chapter One
I was ready to smash a window to get inside the house. Instead, I find one that’s unlatched. It’s small, high up, and awkward, but I think I can climb up to it.
Digging my fingertips and toes into the rough brick exterior, I scramble up the side of the house. Climbing would be a lot easier if I still had a leopard’s body instead of a human one.
At least my human body is stronger and faster than it used to be. The old Milla would never have been able to scale the vertical outside wall of a house, rough brick or not. But even the new, enhanced me is weaker and slower than my leopard was.
In my Leopard Skin, I would have bounded up in an instant. I wouldn’t have had to struggle and curse.
Pushing the window open, I squeeze through and drop soundlessly inside. I stifle an exclamation as I land on bare feet that are bruised and cut.
My heart is pounding. I’m not certain the house I’ve broken into is the right one. In fact, the only thing I am sure of is that I have stompers after me, and if they catch me, they’ll probably hand me back to Director Morelle so her scientists can cut me open. I need to stay silent and undetected while I figure out who’s in the house.
Whoever’s here, they must be asleep. The house is quiet.
It’s dark in here, but my night vision is a lot better than it used to be. I limp forward, trying to figure out what kind of room I’m in. In Old Triton, people live in shelters or small apartments, so I’ve never been inside a house like this one. The room I’ve landed in is huge. There’s a couch in the corner facing a switched-off holo, which means this could be a living room. But there are also tables cluttered with electronic equipment. Tangles of wires snake around monitors and into exposed circuit boards. Delicate-looking tools lie among the mess. And is that a robotic head?
Easing forward to see the head better, I accidentally bump my hip against the table. A metal pipe falls off it, striking the floor with a deafening crash.
Shit.
My cat burglar skills could do with a little work.
I wait, breath held and body tense, listening for sounds of anyone waking or moving. All I can hear is the drumming of my own heart. Could the house be empty? Is its owner away somewhere?
I should search the place, and I’d kill for a drink of water after a day spent running and hiding. But I can’t walk past the robotic head on the table, because it’s facing me, making me feel like I’m being watched. Letting my breath out slowly, I pick it up and study it in the moonlight that comes from the window. Its face is smooth, made from some kind of flexible polymer. Its cybernetic eyes glint,
like my old one used to. It gives me the creeps.
But I’m being paranoid. There’s no way it could really be watching me. Unless… could those eyes hide a camera?
A harsh voice comes from behind me, making me jump and drop the robot head.
“The police will be here in a minute. Leave now, and you might get away.”
The room floods with light. A woman stands in the doorway, her expression grim. Her face looks more lined and care-worn than the last time I saw her, though perhaps that’s because I’ve woken her. I can smell both her fear, and her determination to defend her house and protect what’s hers.
My face is still mostly hidden by the T-shirt I tied around my nose and mouth. Moving slowly so as not to scare her any more than I already have, I reach up and tug it off.
“Doctor Gregory,” I say. “It’s me.”
“Rayne?”
Doctor Gregory is dressed in pyjamas and soft slippers, which helps explain why I didn’t hear her approach, though my enhanced hearing should still have caught the shushing of slippers on her hard floors. Problem was, I let myself get distracted.
“What are you doing here?” she demands.
Not exactly the welcome I was hoping for.
“You said…” I falter, aware of how badly I’ve been counting on the doctor’s help. “You gave me your address. You said if I needed you, I could come.”
If Doctor Gregory’s called the police, I need to leave. But I have nowhere else to go.
“What happened to you?” She frowns. “Are you okay? How did you get in? The front door is locked.”
I take a step toward her without thinking about my injured feet, and wince. After escaping from the Morelle Corporation wearing only a hospital smock, I found some clothes on a washing line. I’m wearing baggy jeans and a giant T-shirt, and I stole a second one to tie around my face. But I couldn’t find any shoes, and running on bare feet has left them raw.
“I came in through the window.”
“The window? Why?” Her gaze drops to my feet, and her frown deepens. “You’re bleeding. Sit down and tell me what’s going on.”
