by Bella Jacobs
I bite my bottom lip and immediately wish I hadn’t as I get a mouthful of earthworm-flavored mud. “Yuck. Gross.” I turn my head, spitting onto the wet ground.
Unexpectedly, this earns a chuckle from Kite.
I glance up at him, eyebrows raised. “My unladylike behavior amuses you?”
He shakes his head. “Nah. You’re just cute when you spit.”
“You’re crazy.” I sniff, brow furrowing. “And I’m too worried to be cute. What if Carrie Ann gets stuck? Is there any way to bring her back?”
Kite’s expression sobers. “Not that I know of. But…that’s the thing, Wren. That’s what I was trying to prepare you for the other day. It isn’t always something that’s done against someone’s will. Sometimes shifters decide to go kin bound. They choose to give up their human life. And if that’s what Carrie Ann wants…”
Pain flashes through my chest and the backs of my eyes begin to sting. “No. You can’t believe that. You said you’re going to break the cage if there’s no other way to get her out. There’s no way you’re on board with letting her die.”
“She won’t die,” Kite says gently. “She’ll go wild, become an animal and lose all memory of who and what she used to be. She’ll have a simpler life. Different, shorter, but no less worth living.”
I shake my head. “No. That’s not what she wants. I know it. She has so many dreams for her future. She wants to start a band and learn to speak French and kiss a boy on every continent. She can’t do any of that if she’s a squirrel. She’s sick. Out of her right mind. She doesn’t understand the risk she’s taking.”
“Maybe not,” Kite says. “That’s why we have to break the cage. Before we honor her decision, we have to be sure she understands the full implications of her choice.”
Fighting to swallow past the lump bobbing in my throat, I nod. “Yes. We’ll do that.” As we near the entrance to the cabin, I swipe my muddy hands on the front of my muddier shirt, but the overall effect is just more smearing and more dirt crusted under my fingernails.
I pause by the back steps, shaking like a dog to the get the worst of the mess off before I remember who I am.
And what I can do.
What I can do…
I look up at Kite, heart racing. “I have an idea.”
Chapter 17
Wren
I don’t get it right on my first try.
I’m not sure what I change into, but it feels unnatural—twisted in my guts and too tight in the spine—and the sight of me makes Kite go so pale I’d laugh if I still had human lungs.
If I weren’t trying to focus…
And if a part of me wasn’t terrified that I’m going to end up stuck in a monster body and not be able to get out. I’ve never tried to control my kin form. I’ve always let the shift take me wherever it wanted to go.
Now, this reaching, molding, searching blindly through the dark with nothing but instinct to guide me, is maddening. If I could enter my spirit realm, it wouldn’t be like this, Kite’s mother assured me, I’d have more control. But my spirit world is occupied by an evil dictator. I can’t risk popping in there for even a moment. It might tip Atlas off to our location, and another monster under our beds is the last thing we need right now.
So I stretch and roll, clawing my way out of the creepy-feeling skin and into something that feels closer to squirrel. When I’m done, I’m trembling and sweating, but when I lift my chin up, up, up to catch a glimpse of Kite’s face, his expression is soft with relief.
“Good work,” he says, his words loud and garbled. Squirrel hearing is different than fox or rabbit, and when Kite reaches down to pick me up off the porch, I realize I can see his hands moving closer and the door opening behind me at the same time.
Squirrels apparently really do have eyes in the back of their heads. Or so far to the side they have a close to a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view, maybe?
I’m not sure, but the fisheye lens on the world makes me queasy and it becomes even harder to focus on drawing meaning from the rumbling sounds Luke makes as he gestures toward the far side of the room.
I hunch lower in Kite’s cupped hands, willing my stomach to stop pitching and my eyes to focus forward. After a moment, I home in on the cage on the table by the fireplace and Dust crouched beside it, a worried look on his face. Carrie Ann is still inside, her front claws wrapped tight around the thin bars and her sides heaving as she fights for breath.
In this form, I can hear her heart pounding and the rattle of air in her lungs. I can hear the scratch of mice in a nest on the far side of the fireplace and the flap of tiny moth wings near the candles flickering on the mantle, and other faint scritch-scratch melodies of indeterminate origin.
There’s music in the natural world if you listen hard enough.
It’s the first thing I say to her in the new language that rises inside me with an ease so much more organic than the initial shift into this body. But that’s something I’m learning about shifting and life in general—if the infrastructure is sound, everything else will follow. But if something’s rotten at the core, nothing is ever going to be right.
Carrie lifts her head, her eyes wide. Is that you, Wren? she asks with a weak chitter and a flick of her tail.
It’s me, I assure her, circling to the side of the cage closest to her and curling my claws around the bars. I’m here to talk you out of that cage, babe. You need to make a visit to your human form.
Her chin trembles. I can’t. The virus is active in my human form. It will take my memories again, and you won’t be safe. None of you.
Blood going cold, I lean my face between the bars. What are you talking about, Carrie? What have you remembered?
I put the tracker on your truck at the gas station, she says, wincing as another shudder works through her small body. Your parents didn’t know. They thought I was telling the truth about being on your side. I’m sorry. I didn’t think I had a choice, but I did. I should have taken Highborn’s plans to the grave and kept you safe. Her hind legs curl closer to her stomach. I’ll do the right thing this time.
No, I bark loud enough to cause some uncomfortable shifting from the three men standing in a semi-circle around the cage. They can’t understand squirrel, obviously, but I guess fear translates into any language. You’re not going to die. You’re going to tell me what’s going on and let me help you.
You can’t help, Wren. Her lips curve on one side in something almost like a smile. He’s in my DNA. As soon as I go human, he’ll run the Trojan Horse protocol.
My tail ripples in response. What is that? What does it do?
It doesn’t do anything. It’s me, Wren. I’m the Trojan Horse. He made me sick so you would take me in, and stole my memories so I couldn’t warn you about the danger until it was too late. But there’s a glitch somewhere. I shouldn’t have been able to shift without a trigger, but I did. She clings more tightly to the bars as another seizure grips her full-force, arching her spine and making her voice almost unintelligible as she adds, But he’s pulling. Calling. I can feel it tearing away inside me. If I leave this body, he’ll be in control, and I can’t let that happen. I won’t tell him where you are. I won’t help him destroy my best friend.
But if you don’t shift back, you’ll be stuck, Carrie. Panic makes my heart pound faster, though not nearly as fast as hers. I wouldn’t be surprised to see it punch right through her heaving chest and spill out the other side.
She doesn’t have much time.
I have to make my case and make it fast.
You’ll get stuck in this form forever. I crouch low, bringing my face closer to hers. You’ll become a squirrel for real. You won’t be human, you won’t remember me or Kite or any of your dreams. Paris is waiting for you, honey, and sweet French boys who love to sing as much as you do, and a whole world waiting to be explored.
I want to do this. Her stomach draws in sharply and her eyes squeeze shut. To do the right thing. Don’t try to stop me. Let me be pro
ud of something before I go.
No, Carrie, please, I beg, reaching an arm inside. But I’m still too far away to take her hand, and she’s shivering so hard I don’t know if I would be able to hold on to her even if our paws could touch. Please, Carrie! You’ll have the lifespan of a squirrel, too. Even if you can avoid predators, you’ll only have a few more years. Don’t let Highborn steal your life away. We can fight him. We’ll tie you up, keep you from betraying us until we can figure out how to help you. There aren’t any phones here, no way to get a signal out. Or we can send you to Dust’s people and—
Atlas! She pants for air, her heart galloping behind her ribs as something irreversible draws so close I can feel its breath hot on my neck. He owns Highborn. He calls the shots. They both want you gone, all of you. All of us. He’ll kill his own creations before he’s finished. Every last one. Oh God, Wren, it hurts. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.
Get her out! I back away from the cage, jabbing a frantic arm at the enclosure. Get her out now! Now!
Kite launches into motion, lifting the cage and swinging it into the stone fireplace, sending cedar shavings flying and the water bottle sailing across the room. Carrie clings to the bars for the first few hits, but then she lets go, going limp. I watch her too-still, too-heavy body knock back and forth with a sick knot in my stomach.
After only a minute, maybe less, the top of the cage breaks away from the solid metal base, but it’s too late. I know it the moment Dust reaches in and gently lifts Carrie Ann’s body from the wreckage.
She’s not there anymore. Not the way she was before.
I look into her glassy eyes and see…curiosity. Fear. A wondering in the flick of her tail that makes it clear she isn’t sure what she’s doing in this place. But no pain. No suffering, no regret, no sense of humor.
No humanity.
After a beat, she skitters out of Dust’s hands, zig-zag-dashing across the room as she retreats to the currently unoccupied corner of the cabin. She hops onto a chair by the open window and then onto the sill itself.
And then she leaps out into the rain and bounds across the wet leaves toward the trees without looking back. Not even once.
My brain goes hot and my chest tight, but no tears rise in my eyes.
Squirrels can’t cry, I guess, not even with a human soul inside of them.
Carrie Ann will never cry again.
I try to take some comfort in that as I shift back into my girl body, heart bruised and sobs squeezing miserable sounds from my throat.
Chapter 18
Dr. Martin Highborn
As she leaves the cabin, the movements of the camera embedded in Subject 7’s corneas—the ones my tech crew are so proud to have made undetectable by even the most sensitive scanning equipment—grow increasingly jerky and unpredictable. There’s no rhyme or reason to her direction, and repeated signals to her shifter trigger produce no response.
Because she’s not a shifter anymore.
She’s a squirrel.
“Fuck. We’ve lost her. Fuck!” Gareth shoves his headset off onto the table between us. There are four other members of the team in the control room, but it’s quiet enough to hear the leaves crisping from his headphones as the thing that was once Carrie Ann crashes along the forest floor before leaping onto a tree and clawing her way to higher ground.
She was once human.
She was once one of us.
It’s a bigger loss than one of our pretty monsters. Subject 7’s shifter DNA could have been deactivated. She could have returned to her mortal life, would have been granted another shot at humanity and salvation if she’d done as she was told.
Instead, she gave it all away—gave her life—to protect her friend.
It’s beautiful. And stupid. And any moment, I expect a message from Atlas that it’s time to move in on their location. There will be no more waiting, watching, or observing Wren and her people without Carrie Ann’s camera in the same room with them. We’ll be blind and deaf. They could pack up and head out tonight, and we’d be none the wiser.
I’m not sure what he’s watching or waiting for, anyway. The girl is a threat that should be neutralized as swiftly as possible.
At least, that’s what I would be thinking if I were the man she was training so hard to kill. She’s getting stronger faster than any of us believed possible. She has at least four kin forms that we know of, but there could be more, and with each passing day she moves more like the predator she is. She glides, graceful and powerful and sure of herself, no longer the awkward girl with the sloped shoulders and the halting stride.
If I were Atlas, I’d want her dead.
But as the sun sets and the night vision on Carrie’s camera clicks on, there’s still no sign from the man himself. No note delivered by cockroach, no message eaten by a swarm of flies into the cheese of the pizza we have delivered a little after nine.
I call Bea to say goodnight and ask Gloria, her nurse, to stay late, still certain I’ll be needed to call a mission before sunrise. But by eleven thirty, we all realize the hammer isn’t going to fall.
Not tonight.
I’m about to send the team home, leaving our second string to keep watch, when the feed suddenly leaps sharply in my peripheral vision. I turn to see the world jerking back and forth.
“Shit,” Gareth murmurs, leaning closer to the screen. “Are you seeing this, sir?”
“I am,” I confirm, my skin crawling.
“Something must have her in its mouth,” one of the others offers as a final, sharp jolt rocks the feed. A hot, squelching sound fills the room, and then the camera is still again.
A moment later, Subject 7’s head rolls away from her body.
Someone behind me makes a gagging sound, and Gareth curses again. I sit down hard in my chair.
Carrie Ann is dead.
Subject 7, I remind myself. She isn’t that kid who looked at me like I hung the moon for handing out free antibiotics. She hasn’t been for a long time, not since the day she decided to sell her humanity for a used car and a few thousand dollars cash.
She was tested, and she failed.
But so have I.
Hours later, after more radio silence from Atlas and a shift change that takes Gareth home to sleep off his failure to control his Trojan Horse, I fall asleep at the surveillance desk, the sounds of the faraway forest wild in my ears, weakly wishing I could go back to the day that skinny girl arrived on my clinic’s front steps and keep the door locked against her.
Keep her outside, where the mean streets and her abusive father were the biggest things she had to fear.
She was safer then. So was I. Back before I made so many ethical compromises that it’s getting hard to see the difference between the monsters and this man.
Harder with every passing day.
I wake with a stiff neck hours later, with still no word from Atlas. The next day passes and then the next. Soon, an entire week has rolled away, eaten up by classes and surgeries, by physical therapy for Bea and counseling for Wendy and trips to the gym that leave me feeling on edge, no matter how hard or long I run.
One week becomes two and then three, and still there’s no word from Atlas, no directive, no orders to storm into the mountains and slaughter every living soul. If I were a more optimistic man, I might dare to believe the nightmare is finally over, that my life is, once again, my own, the way it was before I heard the name Atlas or realized there were scarier things in the world than garden variety shifters.
But I know better.
The axe will fall. It’s already swinging.
Sometimes, when I wake up in the middle of the night in the tomblike silence of our bedroom, I swear I can hear it singing as it arcs through the air.
The only question is, who the target will be.
The girl? Her men? Or someone closer to home?
If Atlas thinks I’ve failed him…
If he decides I’m no longer as useful as I once was…
I pause at my
assistant Delilah’s desk early one morning, tapping my fingers gently near her nameplate. “Can you get me an appointment with Bruce? This afternoon, if possible. Tell him I want to review my estate plans, make sure everything is in order for Bea and Wendy.”
“Of course, sir,” she says. “Right away.” The look in her pale green eyes is somber, maybe even concerned, but she doesn’t ask if everything is okay. She’s ranked high enough in the organization to know that all is not well.
And that it might never be again.
Chapter 19
Dust
We fold Carrie Ann’s clothes and tuck them into an empty shopping bag from my last flight into town for supplies. Wren writes a letter, telling the story of the girl who gave her human life to protect the people she loved, and tucks it inside.
We bury it at dawn the next day, standing in a circle around the grave with our heads bowed. Even Sierra, who has barely set foot outside for more than a few minutes since we arrived.
When it’s over, and we’re walking back to camp, she says, “I’ve been thinking… The day Atlas was spying on you in the park… Afterward, he had me place a call to a man he called the doctor. I don’t know why I didn’t make the connection before, but it must have been Dr. Highborn, which would line up with Carrie Ann’s story.”
“I thought you were sick,” Luke says in a soft but dangerous voice. “Stuck in your kin form with a nasty bug?”
Sierra holds up a hand, fingers spread wide. “I can dial a phone in my kin form. Raccoons don’t have opposable thumbs, but we’re pretty close. A keypad isn’t a problem.”
“So, Highborn speaks raccoon?” Luke shoots back, making me want to pop him in the nose. For a man who’s been lying to all of us since the moment we met, he’s awfully quick to get up on his high horse.
