Meghan hung up the phone and grabbed the tokens out of the bedroom before slipping her shoes back on. She’d made herself comfortable on the couch for a while, paging through random books she’d found in boxes that had yet to be unpacked. She found it difficult to focus on anything, having not yet acclimated to the level of background noise of the city. Then, she took it upon herself to unpack the boxes themselves, organizing the contents in neat piles on the floor before finding appropriate pces for them.

  Finishing the job would have to wait for ter. She didn’t want to keep Isabel waiting.

  Throughout the day, she’d heard a streetcar or train stopping a few streets over and decided that would be a good pce to start to put her tokens to work. With a final look in the mirror, Meghan stepped out of the apartment and hoped for the best. With the door locked behind her, there was no turning back.

  Walking quickly down the main stairs, Meghan gave a little wave to an old woman with a walker, slowly returning to her pce somewhere on the first floor. “Afternoon!”

  The old woman smiled back and gave her a brief wave before Meghan was out the front door and onto the street. It was a little warmer than she expected, but she welcomed the sun on her skin. It represented the pinnacle of freedom for her. It was unfortunate that she couldn’t enjoy it without sungsses to keep her from going blind. Her vision was simply too sensitive to light.

  Meghan followed the side street to the end, where it joined with Harvard Avenue and Commonwealth. There, she found the tracks for the train and the corresponding ptform, as expected. Half a dozen people stood there waiting for the next train, passing the time with newspapers or paperback books they had on hand. As she crossed the street to the ptform, a few people joined them from the nearby corner store, carrying drinks in pstic cups.

  The Changeling felt like she stuck out like a sore thumb, as though all eyes would be on her, but was surprised when that didn’t turn out to be the case. Despite the torment she’d gone through over the past few decades, life had simply gone on as always. She had rejoined it without any fanfare, completely unnoticed, and it was a surreal experience. It was almost like being a ghost walking among them. Existing alongside society rather than truly rejoining it.

  The screeching on the tracks as the car approached pulled her from her depressing contemption. Gncing back at the map posted on the ptform, Meghan tried desperately in the span of a few seconds to figure out if this was the right train to get on.

  When the doors to the car opened, she waited for everyone else to get on before leaning in to speak with the conductor. “Excuse me, do I take this train to get to Mass General?”

  “You can,” the conductor replied in a dry Boston accent. “How much walking do you wanna do?”

  “Uhm,” Meghan shook her head and shrugged. “Doesn’t matter to me. I just have to get close.”

  The conductor motioned for her to get on before the light changed. “Alright, yeah. I can help ya.”

  The Changeling smiled, stepped on, and fed the required tokens into the receptacle at the front as she’d seen everyone else do before her.

  “You new, ‘round here?” the conductor asked as she stepped behind the line but remained standing with her hand fixed firmly on the overhead railing.

  “Sort of, I used to live in Jamaica Pin a long time ago,” she admitted while deliberately keeping things vague. The conductor nodded, keeping his eyes on his work while carrying on the conversation.

  “You staying long?” He asked. Meghan realized too te that his willingness to help her may have been rooted in ulterior motives. She gnced down at her shirt and how she looked without a bra on, and scolded herself silently for a second.

  “I’m not sure yet. I’ll have to see how things work out,” the Changeling answered a little quietly. “How uhm... how do I get to Mass General?”

  The conductor switched over to giving her instructions without missing a beat, putting some of her fears to rest. Maybe he had just wanted to be nice and make small talk with her, after all. From what he described, it wasn’t exactly a short trip, so he wouldn’t have been in a hurry to get the information down for her. She committed as much as she could to memory before increasing numbers of passengers forced her to move further back in the car and take a seat to get out of the way.

  Meghan passed the time observing her surroundings in the daylight rather than the scattered streetlights and neon from the night before. It took a lot of focus to tune out the various conversations on the train and the beeping, trilling, squeaking, and rumbling of every piece of machinery they passed by. So much had changed that it was almost as though she had stepped into a distant Scatter Realm. Some of it was familiar enough for her to get her bearings, but the specifics differed. Music, art, and even the smell hanging in the air were different from what they had been.

  Entering the tunnel finally gave her a little relief from the ambient noise of the city streets, but she exchanged it for the echoing screeches of trains. The tunnels would have been more interesting if she’d properly adjusted to the acoustics, but as it was, she just wanted to be out. By the time she got to her stop, she practically sprinted out of the underground station, emerging into the open air with a sigh of relief.

  The conductor had given her options for walking, switching trains, or taking a bus, but after the darkness and noise of the underground, she found her heart racing so fast that a walk seemed like just the thing she needed. Unfortunately, she changed out one sensory torture for another. Various scents from restaurants, corner stores, and even gas stations caused her mouth to water, and she had no money to do anything about it. Of course, looking at the prices advertised in some of the windows, perhaps that had been for the best.

  By the time she finally reached Massachusetts General Hospital, it looked like Isabel had been waiting for her out front for a while. As she approached, the Gnasci jumped to her feet and tossed a small paper bag in her direction. “I picked something up for you on the way over, thought you might be hungry.”

  “Sorry,” Meghan murmured. “I ended up walking because the subway was a bit much for me. I’m still getting adjusted to things. What’s this?”

  “Take a look,” Isabel smirked, gesturing toward the bag. “One of the modern marvels of our time: fast food cheeseburgers.”

  “We had cheeseburgers in my time,” Meghan muttered dryly, looking into the bag to find a double cheeseburger in a wrapper with a stylized M printed on it along with some fries. They were still warm, so maybe Isabel hadn’t waited as long as she thought. More importantly, they smelled delicious.

  Meghan didn’t hesitate to unwrap the cheeseburger and scarf it down. It didn’t matter what was on it. It was food, and it was warm. “Oh! Oh, Ohhhh!”

  “Take it easy, or people are going to get the wrong idea,” Isabel snickered, amused by Meghan’s savory moans over her meal.

  It might have been a concern for Meghan if the meal had sted more than a minute or two. The burger practically vanished from her hand while the fries followed soon after. She didn’t even take them individually, instead electing to use the paper they came in like a cup to feed her face with.

  “Can we get some more after?” the Changeling asked, licking the salt from her fingers. “I know it’s expensive, but I’ll find a way to pay you back.”

  “Expensive?” Isabel ughed, turning to walk into the main building of the hospital. “That’s literally the cheapest meal out I can afford right now. Besides, I had a coupon.”

  Meghan looked at her hopefully over the top of her sungsses. “Do you have another one?”

  “I might,” Isabel shrugged nonchantly. “I guess we’ll see how this goes, first.”

  The Changeling looked up at the building as they stepped through the main entrance. “What are we doing here?”

  Isabel fished around in her jacket pocket and fished out an ID, though she didn’t appear to need it just yet. “I’m here to visit my cousin. Josephine told me he’s staying here.”

  Embarrassed with the casual tone in which she’d asked, Meghan looked away, feigning an itchy nose. “I’m sorry. Is he alright?”

  Isabel stopped at an elevator, and a look of ambivalence settled on her face. “He’s in rough shape. If he wasn’t a Gnasci, like me, he’d probably be dead.”

  Stepping onto the elevator alongside her, Meghan fell silent, unsure what to say. Had she realized the situation was so serious, she wouldn’t have asked about food after they finished like a child. The Changeling pulled the sungsses off her nose and pushed them up into her bushy blonde hair. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

  “Just keep an eye out,” Isabel responded after punching a number on the panel. “Most of my attention will be on him, and I won’t be able to remain aware of our surroundings.”

  “Are we expecting trouble?” Meghan asked, her brow furrowing with concern. “Wait, did someone hurt him on purpose? Are they going to try and finish him off or something?”

  Isabel shook her head uncertainly. “I don’t know. We’re still in the beginning stages of figuring it all out. But I’d feel a lot better sitting with him knowing you were keeping an eye out.”

  Meghan nodded quickly in agreement. If that was what Isabel needed from her, then she was more than happy to oblige. “You got it.”

  Isabel gave her a brief, brittle smile. Obviously, the weight of the situation was getting heavier as they neared her cousin’s floor. By the time the elevator dinged and the doors opened to let them off, most of the color had gone out of her entirely.

  They made their way casually down the hall until they reached a desk with a few nurses sitting behind it. Isabel held up the identification card. “Which room is Ivan Crowley in?”

  The nurse gnced at the identification and then grabbed a clipboard to have a look. “518, but they have a guard posted at his door. Don’t know how much luck you’ll have.”

  “Guess we’ll find out,” the Gnasci responded, waving goodbye before continuing down the corridor toward 518. The bright, sterile white light put Meghan on edge and made her consider putting her sungsses back on due to how disorienting it was.

  Meghan nodded her head toward the ID as Isabelle shoved it back in her pocket. “Must be pretty impressive credentials.”

  The Gnasci pursed her lips and shook her head. “Not really. You don’t want anything to grandiose. That’s the sort of thing that pulls attention. I’m just a person who collects bs and delivers them to other floors, other facilities, etc. It gets me in pces, but then the rest is typically up to me. These credentials aren’t going to be worth the paper they’re printed on by tomorrow, though, so we gotta move quick.”

  As promised, a uniformed police officer was posted outside of the room, sitting in a chair he’d grabbed from another room. He had a newspaper on hand, but looked as though he’d finished it quite some time ago. When he saw them coming into view, he got to his feet and positioned himself directly in front of the door.

  “I need to see him,” Isabel said, motioning to the room. “I have bs I need to collect from him.”

  The officer frowned, looking between them skeptically. He took a moment to pointedly observe the state in which she was dressed. “You don’t look like a nurse to me.”

  Again, Isabel whipped out the ID to dangle in front of him like someone jingling keys for a baby. “That’s because it’s supposed to be my day off, but the other guy called out.”

  “Geez,” the officer said, gncing at the ID for a brief moment. “Ain’t that always the way, eh? I’m not supposed to let anyone in besides the doctor, though.”

  “Alright, but if you have to call him down here to take the bs, he’s going to make it everyone’s problem,” Isabel ughed incredulously. “Not just mine. Those assholes hate being forced to stoop so low.”

  “Ugh,” the officer cringed in disgust before looking away. “Alright, but just you. I gotta take a whiz anyway. You better be done when I get back, alright?”

  Isabel winked at the officer pyfully. “Quick as a bunny, promise.”

  “Is it all right if I sit here?” Meghan asked, pointing to the officer’s chair. He looked her over, seemingly trying to decide something, but was unable to reach a definitive conclusion, whatever it was.

  “Sure, paper’s right there too, but I already did the crossword,” he responded, gesturing to the chair before stepping around her. “Be back in a few.”

  Isabel slipped inside as Meghan took the seat, not bothering to reach for the newspaper. Her day had been disorienting enough already, and she wasn’t sure she was ready for whatever she might stumble across in print. With no one left there to judge her for it, Meghan slipped the sungsses back over her eyes and breathed a sigh of relief. The intercoms overhead went off a couple of times, paging Dr. So-n-so or Nurse some-such, but she tuned it out. For the first time in a while, she was able to focus past the more overt audible distractions and rex.

  “Ivan, I need you to talk to me,” Isabel said quietly inside the room. Meghan heard the bed squeak and shift as the woman sat down next to him. Chains rattled, and the Changeling realized that the poor man was probably handcuffed to the bed. He wasn’t just a victim--- he was a possible suspect. “Just tell me what happened.”

  The cousin didn’t say anything. His breathing didn’t even change, indicating that perhaps her words weren’t registering for him at all.

  “Alright, if that’s the way you want to do this,” Isabel said, fishing something off of a nearby tray table. Meghan smelled the coppery tang of blood in the air a moment ter, and then everything went silent for a while.

  Then something began to shake violently in the room, rattling the chains and causing one or both of them to bump up against the edges of the bed. Without hesitation, Meghan got to her feet and stepped into the room, only to see Isabel holding Ivan’s hand while they both seized or went into some kind of fit.

  “Oh, shit,” Meghan hissed gncing back at the door to yell for a nurse. The Changeling managed to realize how much worse that would make matters and caught herself before uttering a single word. But without someone coming to assist, she had no idea what she was supposed to do about it herself.

  “Isabel,” Meghan whispered, but as the Gnasci began to slide sideways on the bed with her eyes rolling into the back of her head, she knew that she would have to do something more drastic. Reaching out, Meghan took both Gnascis by the hand and tried to separate them.

  Images fshed in Meghan’s mind, memories that weren’t her own. She saw a bus ride at night and a suspicious individual in a hooded robe of some kind. She felt fear beating in her chest as well as in her loins that ached for release. As the blood between their hands oozed over hers, she saw herself through Ivan’s eyes and felt that insatiable need grow like a fever across her---his---body. He wanted to pin both of them down and suck on their tits while forcing his way inside of them. He had to have them. The shackles had to come off.

  Meghan felt a need to comply with his desires as she slowly reached for the shackles.

  “No,” Isabel said, grabbing her outstretched arm with her other hand. “It’s alright. I got it now. I have him. You can let go.”

  Until Isabel told her that she could, Meghan wasn’t sure that she would have been allowed to do it. Even with clear instructions, she found her body struggling to comply with what her brain was telling it to do. Finally, she let go and took a few steps back to stare at the two in shock.

  Isabel had used some form of blood magic to share memories with Ivan and see what he saw. It had overwhelmed her at first, like stepping on a live wire, but with Meghan’s interference, enough of the power had been diverted between them to allow her to get her bearings. Moreover, it had allowed Ivan to realize where he was and that something was very wrong.

  “Isabel,” he rasped, his lips chapped and dry. He was bruised from head to toe with several bandages obscuring even more heinous injuries he’d suffered. “Thank Christ it’s you. I thought it had come back for me.”

  “Thought what came back?” Isabel asked, gripping his bloody hand tight with her own. The mingling of their blood was the key to the magic, which allowed her to use it without the use of incantations, perhaps. “What the hell happened?”

  “I don’t know what it was,” Ivan responded hoarsely, shaking his head. “I swear. It was beautiful yet terrible at the same time. I’d never seen anything like it before. It felt overwhelming just to be in the presence of and when it looked at me... it felt like I was the most important thing in the world.”

  Meghan’s nose scrunched up as the man’s tone, hoarse as it was, began to lean toward manic.

  “I was humbled by its attention. I just wanted to serve it in any way that I could, you know? I had to make myself worthy of such recognition.”

  “Ivan,” Isabel said in a calm and soothing tone in an attempt to bring him back down. He was quickly getting carried away. “What did you do?”

  Ivan stared into space for a moment, as if only just remembering at that very moment. He looked embarrassed, horrified, scared, and disgusted all at once. It was a range and mixture of emotions that Meghan had never seen on a person’s face before. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Just tell me what happened,” Isabel insisted, gripping her cousin’s hand a little tighter. “It’s alright.”

  “Everyone was fucking,” Ivan replied quietly, smacking his lips. “You could taste it in the air. I had this... overwhelming need to rut like a feral animal. It pulled my clothes off. It... scratched me.”

  Looking down at Ivan’s chest, Meghan realized that the pattern of red in the bandages did look like cw marks.

  “It hurt, but I liked it. I wanted more. Each time it got better, then eventually it bent me over one of the seats and...” Ivan winced as though reliving the experience all over again. “Then it was inside me. It wasn’t gentle at all, but I liked it. Its cws tore my back to shreds. When I felt it cum inside me it was like glimpsing the face of the almighty. I came harder than I think I ever have.”

  Meghan cringed and looked away toward the door, peeking out through the little window to see if the officer had returned yet. The seat outside the door was still vacant. Ivan continued to rey his tale, confessing his crimes that he felt compelled to do in the name of the creature that had “blessed” him with such ecstasy. He’d helped it take another woman. He’d wanted her to know what he knew, to experience what he’d experienced. Everyone whooped and shouted and ughed as they took turns with her and each other.

  “Then I took her to the front of the bus,” Ivan said distantly, his affect completely ft and emotionless, yet there were tears streaming down his face. “I wrapped my hands around her throat and squeezed. I squeezed and fucked her until the light went out in her eyes. I felt her whole body climax right before she did. She died with a smile on her face. I was happy for her. She was happy I had done it for her.”

  Meghan stared wide-eyed at the Gnasci in horror. She realized that the man had been magically compelled somehow to perform this atrocious act, mentally dominated so completely that he thought he’d done the woman a kindness, but he was going to have to live with the memory of having done it regardless. Could someone live with such a thing? Could he?

  “It made no sense,” Ivan muttered dryly. “She died. I killed her. But she was happy. Then the others... they started to drink the blood from her wounds. Then they began to... to eat her. We carved her up and passed her around like a Thanksgiving turkey. We were eted to taste her st moments of bliss, but I know that can’t be true. That’s not how that works, right? Isabel?”

  “Jesus Christ,” Meghan muttered, tempted for the first time since she was a child to make the sign of the cross. Isabel remained steadfast and patient, though the Changeling could see that all the color had drained out of her once again.

  “It wasn’t you,” Isabel assured him. “Whatever it was. It was in your head.”

  “I can still feel it in my head,” Ivan confessed, his eyes widening as he looked desperately upon the Gnasci woman. “I want to do more. There’s so much more to explore---to feel!”

  Isabel inclined her head, squeezing his hand again to reassert control, but it appeared to be slipping away from her. “Ivan? Ivan, I need you to calm down. Take a breath.”

  “You don’t understand!” Ivan protested, pulling against the shackles on his bed. “I have to get out of here, I can’t live like this.”

  Isabel gnced back at Meghan helplessly before turning her attention to Ivan. “We’ll get you help, I promise---.”

  “Help!?” Ivan spat incredulously. “Part of me is horrified and can’t stand to be in my own skin, but another part---a louder part---says that we can always just wear your skin, instead.”

  “W-what?”

  “Okay, and we’re done here!” Meghan interrupted, reaching out and grabbing Isabel to pull her clear of her cousin a second before he ripped the shackles free of the hospital bed. Stunned by the severed connection and the sudden shift in her cousin’s demeanor, Isabel stumbled back against the closet while Meghan stepped between them.

  Ivan’s eyes were wide, crazed with a mixture of hunger, desire, and complete murderous intent. When he locked his gaze with the Changeling’s, she felt like he was penetrating deep into her soul, making pin what he wanted from her. “Yes. Your skin will do just fine, too!”