The fingers tightened around the corner.
For several seconds, that was all Adrian could see.
Long fingers. Dark claws. A hand large enough that it shouldn't have belonged to anything he particularly wanted to meet.
Behind him, the woman had stopped trying to stand.
Adrian could hear her breathing.
Fast.
Shallow.
Afraid.
That frightened him almost as much as the hand did.
He had watched this woman stand over him while people pumped something into his body and discussed whether he would survive it. He had heard her talk about subjects as numbers and rejection as if both belonged in a spreadsheet.
Now she sat against the wall, staring down the corridor like she already knew how this ended.
Her hand moved slowly across the floor toward the pistol beside her.
Something shifted behind the corner.
The claws disappeared.
A moment later, their owner stepped into view.
Adrian stared.
For the first few seconds, he tried to work out what he was looking at.
That wasn't as strange a question as it once would have been. Adrian had grown up in a world where sharing a train with someone covered in scales barely deserved a second glance. There were species from other worlds whose bodies followed rules completely different from his own.
So he looked for something he recognized.
A species.
A body plan.
Some reason for the shape coming around the corner to make sense.
He couldn't find one.
The creature was huge, but that wasn't what made Adrian's stomach tighten.
It was the fact that nothing matched.
One arm hung almost to the floor, thin and much too long for the torso attached to it. The other was thicker and seemed to divide below the elbow, bone pressing beneath stretched skin before ending in two malformed arrangements of fingers.
The claws he'd seen belonged to the longer hand.
Its legs weren't much better. One looked almost normal beneath the knee. The other bent slightly inward and forced the creature into an uneven, hunched posture. Something else protruded from one side of its torso—perhaps another limb, perhaps something that had tried to become one.
The thing took another step.
Its shoulder struck the wall.
It continued as though it hadn't noticed.
Adrian had seen people with four arms. People with horns, scales, fur, bodies adapted to worlds he'd never visited.
They looked different.
They didn't look wrong.
This did.
Not because it wasn't human.
Because parts of it still were.
Pale skin covered most of its chest. Darker patches climbed one shoulder and disappeared around its back. Hair grew in irregular strips along places where Adrian was fairly sure hair wasn't supposed to grow at all.
And then there was the face.
That was human too.
Or had been.
There was enough left to make that obvious.
One side looked almost untouched. An eye. A cheek. Dark hair hanging across the forehead.
The other side had changed with everything else.
The cheekbone extended farther than it should. The jaw sat slightly crooked beneath it, wider on one side than the other.
Adrian found himself wondering who it had been.
The thought arrived before he could stop it.
Subject 17 had been dead.
This one wasn't.
The remaining human eye moved.
It passed over Adrian.
Then settled on the woman.
Her fingers closed around the pistol.
“No.”
The creature stopped.
For a moment, nobody moved.
Then the woman dragged the gun toward herself and raised it with both hands.
The first shot hit Adrian like a physical blow.
Pain stabbed through his head. His ears flattened so hard that for one confused second he thought something had struck them.
He jerked sideways and slapped both hands against the sides of his skull.
There was nothing there.
Of course there wasn't.
His ears weren't there anymore.
The woman fired again.
Adrian flinched.
“Fuck!”
The word came out in the unfamiliar voice he'd discovered only minutes earlier.
He barely heard it.
The creature staggered.
That got Adrian's attention.
Blood ran down its chest.
The first bullet had punched into the upper torso. The second had torn through the shoulder.
It could be hurt.
For one brief, stupid moment, that helped.
Whatever it was, it wasn't invulnerable.
Then the woman fired a third time.
The creature stumbled into the wall.
And kept moving.
That helped considerably less.
Its mouth opened.
Adrian had already seen enough of the body to know he wasn't going to like what came next.
He was right.
The jaw lowered farther than a human jaw could. Old tears at the corners of the mouth stretched open with it, revealing teeth that looked as mismatched as everything else.
Some were human.
Some weren't.
Several had grown at angles that made Adrian wonder how the creature could close its mouth at all.
A low sound came from somewhere inside it.
Not a roar.
More like air being forced through something that no longer had the correct shape for breathing.
The woman fired again.
This time the bullet hit its face.
The creature's head snapped sideways.
It stayed there.
Adrian stared.
One second.
Two.
Then it turned back.
Blood covered half its face now.
One eye was gone.
The other remained fixed on the woman.
“Oh, fuck.”
Adrian wasn't sure whether he'd said it or she had.
The creature came forward.
It didn't run the way a person ran. New chapters come out on g.com first.
The long arm struck the floor first, taking part of its weight. One leg followed, then the other arm, then the malformed limb at its side hit the wall and shoved.
Awkward.
Ugly.
Fast.
The woman fired repeatedly.
Each shot made Adrian's head hurt.
Each one hit.
He saw flesh tear from the creature's shoulder. Saw one leg buckle when a bullet struck somewhere near the knee.
It fell hard enough to shake the floor.
The woman tried to stand.
Her injured leg collapsed immediately.
She caught herself against the wall and raised the gun again.
The creature pushed itself up.
She fired.
The gun clicked.
Nothing happened.
The woman stared at it.
Pulled the trigger again.
Click.
“No.”
Again.
Click.
“No, no, no.”
The creature kept coming.
Adrian watched her reach for something that wasn't there, patting at the side of her coat as though another magazine might somehow appear if she looked hard enough.
There wasn't one.
She looked at Adrian.
Not for help.
He knew that immediately.
There was no sudden recognition in her face. No apology. No realization that perhaps kidnapping people and experimenting on them had been morally questionable.
She was terrified.
That was all.
Adrian could work with that.
Because so was he.
He looked away from her.
There had to be another direction.
Another door.
Anything.
The corridor continued past the woman before ending at a heavy security partition.
Adrian had noticed it earlier without really thinking about it.
Now he saw the gap beneath it.
The door had almost closed.
Almost.
A metal equipment trolley had become trapped underneath one side, its frame crushed between the descending door and the floor.
It had left perhaps forty centimeters of space.
Adrian stared at it.
Then looked down at himself.
The answer was immediate.
Yesterday, absolutely not.
Yesterday he had been a hundred and eighty-five centimeters tall, broad enough through the shoulders that trying to squeeze through that gap would have been ridiculous.
Today—
Adrian looked at his hands.
At the narrow arms disappearing into the oversized lab coat.
His stomach twisted.
He hated that this was even a consideration.
Behind him, the woman screamed.
That settled it.
Adrian moved.
Standing lasted three steps.
The first was bad.
The second worse.
On the third, his balance shifted unexpectedly and one hand hit the floor.
He didn't bother getting back up.
Fine.
Apparently they were doing this.
Adrian dropped onto all fours and moved.
The difference was immediate.
His arms and legs found a rhythm he hadn't consciously chosen. His back lowered. His tail shifted behind him with every change in direction, correcting movements before Adrian even realized they needed correcting.
It should have been disturbing.
It was.
It was also fast.
At the moment, fast won.
The lab coat dragged around him. His hair fell across his face. His bare hands slapped against cold tile.
Behind him came another scream.
Then an impact.
Adrian did not look back.
The security door was closer now.
So was the gap.
It had looked larger from the other end of the corridor.
Of course it had.
Adrian reached it and stopped just long enough to realize he had no idea how to do this.
Then his body made the first decision for him.
He lowered himself.
Turned one shoulder.
Flattened his ears.
Adrian noticed that last part only because he felt them press against his hair.
“Okay.”
One arm went through.
Then his head.
He twisted farther and pushed.
His shoulder cleared.
The opening pressed against his back and chest.
For one unpleasant second, Adrian was acutely aware that the security door probably weighed enough to turn him into something considerably flatter than Subject 17.
He pushed harder.
The coat caught.
Adrian stopped.
“No.”
He pulled.
Nothing.
Behind him, something heavy struck the floor.
Fabric tore somewhere behind his shoulder.
Good enough.
Adrian pushed forward.
His chest cleared.
Then his waist.
His hips reached the gap and stopped.
Adrian's heart jumped.
He twisted.
Pushed.
Something tugged sharply behind him.
Not the coat.
Adrian froze.
His tail.
“Oh, you've got to be kidding me.”
He looked back.
The oversized coat had twisted around the base of the tail, and part of the fabric was caught against the edge of the door.
For perhaps half a second, Adrian considered the absurdity of being murdered because he'd forgotten he had a tail.
Then survival took over again.
He reached behind himself, grabbed the coat and pulled.
The fabric tightened.
His tail did something frantic and entirely unhelpful.
“Stop moving.”
It didn't.
Adrian pulled harder.
The coat tore.
His tail came free.
He shoved himself through the remaining space and landed awkwardly on the other side.
For a few seconds, Adrian simply lay there.
His breathing sounded impossibly loud.
His hands hurt.
His knees hurt.
His shoulder hurt.
His ears hurt.
Everything else could wait.
Then the woman screamed.
Adrian lifted his head.
The sound ended abruptly.
He didn't move.
Something shifted on the other side of the security door.
Wet.
Heavy.
Adrian slowly turned around.
From the floor, the gap gave him only a narrow view of the corridor he'd left behind.
He could see one of the woman's boots.
Part of her leg.
The handgun lying several meters away.
Blood spread across the floor.
Something moved through it.
Adrian backed away.
He didn't need to see more.
He already knew.
For several seconds, nothing happened.
Then the creature's face lowered into view.
One eye remained.
It found him.
Adrian stopped breathing.
The creature moved toward the opening.
“No.”
Adrian scrambled backward.
A long arm shot beneath the door.
The claws swept across the floor where his leg had been a moment earlier.
Adrian kicked himself farther away.
The hand reached again.
Couldn't get far enough.
The creature withdrew it.
Adrian stared at the gap.
The door separated them.
Heavy steel.
Security-grade.
Probably designed to contain exactly the sort of thing currently trying to crawl underneath it.
For the first time since waking up, Adrian felt something dangerously close to relief.
Then the creature hit the door.
The entire partition shook.
Adrian's relief disappeared.
It hit it again.
Metal groaned.
The crushed trolley shifted beneath the weight of the door.
Not much.
A centimeter at most.
Adrian stared at it.
The creature shoved an arm through the gap again and dragged its claws across the floor.
It still couldn't reach him.
That wasn't the problem.
The problem was the trolley.
If it moved—
Adrian looked down at himself.
At the smaller body he still didn't recognize.
The body he'd spent the last several hours wanting back to normal.
Yesterday, he couldn't have made it through that opening.
Today, he had.
Adrian wasn't ready to decide how he felt about that.
Another impact shook the door.
He got up.
Or tried to.
His legs managed well enough this time to get him moving.
The corridor ahead disappeared into darkness.
Adrian had no idea where it led.
No idea how large the facility was.
No idea whether there was another way around the security door.
Behind him, the creature hit it again.
The trolley scraped across the floor.
Adrian didn't wait to see how far.
He ran.