Richard walked away from the Taylor’s home after reporting in with Alethia. She intended to spend the night with his sister Rachel and a friend of hers. Richard told them all he planned to spend the night in, maybe painting an army.

  That had been partly true. He hoped he would be able to tackle that project tonight. But only if his first mission went smoothly as hoped. As soon as he was out of sight of the Taylor’s house and Alethia had driven away, Richard poured on his speed. He flew home, like a bird skimming over water. He held his hands out like a weird anime heroine as he transformed himself into the nurse he had practiced with the night before.

  At his own house, he jumped into his own car and drove back to the apartment where Alethia and he had left Tammy. Her car was still parked in the lot; he did not miss them. Richard stayed in the random nurse’s shape until it occurred to him that she might take the heat from his activities. So he changed into goon number two, the one who had not gone with Tammy earlier that night.

  He walked over to their car and literally sniffed around. Eventually going to all fours, he was able to sniff out a surprising number of details. Tammy was using meth, so was her friend. They were sexually involved, but Tammy was also involved with someone else. They brought a large amount of cash with them to this place, though Richard could not say how much. He was pretty sure goon number one had a pistol on him. One of them had shot Richard previously.

  Richard heard something out of place and froze. He listened more carefully and thought he heard Tammy’s voice in the distance, unblocked from anything. He crawled across the parking lot, staying as low as possible and sticking to the sides of cars where he could.

  Tammy was not coming downstairs. She stood on a balcony overlooking the parking lot. She smoked from an e-cigarette and handed it to a different man, Richard had not seen before. He was fat, as fat as Richard was pre-serum, and he had snorted in laughter at something Tammy said. Richard could see the balcony they stood on now and could therefore reason out which apartment they were in.

  He could call the police now. That would probably result in Tammy’s arrest. But he wanted to confirm that she had the stolen goods on her. Of course, it might already be too late. Richard had not smelled any copper or metal in the car other than the pistol. But he guessed that those scents might have faded or blended into the atmosphere. He was certain she was not storing the goods in the car.

  So Richard waited, laying down in the dirty parking lot while he strained to hear Tammy’s conversation. That proved to be harder than he expected. Richard had spent little of his youth sneaking around stealing from people. This was not his area of expertise.

  Later, that was the excuse he would use.

  Tammy seemed to be ensconced in place upstairs on the balcony. Even the cold winter air — such as it was in Austin — did not send her back inside. Richard crept through the parking lot and back into his car. No one followed him as far as he could see, so he started the car up so he could enter the parking lot and watch from his car.

  He pulled into the lot where he could barely see the balcony from his window. A spot presented itself when he was in the lot earlier. It proved to be ideal for his purposes. Richard turned his car off and turned the lights off too. He left the doors locked while he watched he balcony from his current position.

  Tammy’s companion opened the door and stepped back inside. He returned with drinks for himself and Tammy shortly thereafter. One flaw in Richard’s location was that from here he could not see the front door to the apartment. A second person would have been really helpful here. After a few minutes, Richard rolled the window down.

  Later, he would say that saved his life.

  As the window rolled down, he thought he heard someone moving around in the bushes near the front of his car. His attention had been focused on Tammy and the balcony. Anyone could have been up there. Richard started his car and put it in reverse.

  Richard pulled toward the exit to the lot as a car drove up ahead of him. They blocked the drive and Richard’s senses fell into overdrive automatically. His subconscious detected the threat and responded before he was fully cognizant of the danger.

  He ducked and rolled out of the car as a sharp report sounded and the windows shattered in his car behind him. Around Richard, the world blurred. To his disappointment, he was not as fast as the Flash or Superman. But he was faster than the fastest living human. He knew because the speed limit on the road was 35 and he started passing cars as his awareness came tumbling forward, still catching up.

  Holy shit! They shot at me!

  Richard’s car was back at the apartment. That in itself was problem. He still looked like goon number two and ran faster than any person should have been able to. For a fleeting moment, Richard hoped he had lost his pursuers. But squealing tires and honking horns behind him told him otherwise.

  To his right a new apartment building rose. The security doors would block him enough that he might be hurt going through them. He just needed to run by the building to turn off the street and escape. But the cars behind him did not heed the speed limit.

  Bullets sounded behind Richard. None of them hit him, but soon after the guns fired, people started shouting. I need to deal with these guys myself now. With that thought, he recognized the screaming behind him, it was Alethia.

  She paused while describing her father’s phone call. A man wearing a sports jacket ran down the sidewalk faster than humanly possible. Her mind filled in the math automatically. He ran right about forty three miles per hour. Impossible.

  Behind the man two cars wove through traffic, guns hanging out of both of them commenced firing. Alethia spotted them too late to react before the first shells hit the street. She pulled Karen down behind the fence, flipping their stout wood table over as she did. Her movement had been too slow, twin spots of blood blossomed on Karen’s chest, very close to the center. Alethia’s biologist mind filled in the anatomy. Depending on ballistics, at best the bullets only struck her lungs. At worst, Karen was already dead.

  Alethia screamed instinctively as she checked Karen’s pulse.

  Then she screamed from two places. One, staring over the table at the sound of squealing wheels. The other voice coming from above Karen’s irregular pulse. Blood sprayed from her mouth from one viewpoint and from the other, the gunmen braced themselves as their drivers stopped the cars in the middle of the street. The man they chased had stopped himself, Karen wondered who he was that he had powers too. At the same time, she considered Karen’s injuries and contemplated how she could best treat or deal with them.

  The opposing thoughts boomed in Alethia’s mind and she reeled in both positions. Something snapped and her perceptions fully separated. She stood in one place, looking at the events on the street and in the other, she knelt near Karen. Though their thoughts ran in parallel, she felt like both had a wall between them, as if the other’s mind was muffled. Both chose her future course and both burst into motion.

  Alethia lifted Karen like an injured child. The nearest hospital was Brackenridge, “Brack” At fifty and ignoring the roads, she could reach it in minutes, faster than any ambulance. Not only was she faster than Richard or Rob, that night she discovered that she could leap. Like superman originally could, she leaped tall buildings in a single bound. Well, at least one story homes. The others, she ran alongside like some sort of parkournista.

  What do they call themselves?

  Both minds echoed the other with that thought.

  Back with the gunmen, Alethia-sub-one charged the first car like a bull. She knew her average bone density, somehow, and knew exactly where to strike to knock the gun man out in a single blow. The option of killing him presented itself and for a dreadful moment, Alethia considered it. Subduing him was just as easy, so she chose that route. She could feel sickened about that thought later, so she stuck in it a cubby in her mind.

  She crashed against the man and threw him into the car door before he could swing his gun around at her. Two of his bones broke as he crumpled. Alethia snatched the gun and twisted it into a circle as she crouched down.

  The gunmen shouted something behind their cars, another crash and a second gun fired twice. Alethia peaked over the car and a graceful, elegant blond woman wearing a kimono hit the other gun man seven times in quick succession. Like Alethia, the other woman chose to subdue her foe rather than kill him.

  The balance of the car she used for cover shifted and Alethia ducked down as several more bullets bounced off of the car near where she stood. She used her speed to try to circle around the car, but she could see that both cars’ drivers were trying to escape and that even more people were at risk if she continued to engage.

  Alethia chose the direction where the fewest people were and ran in a serpentine pattern toward the corner of the apartment behind her. The other woman followed her to the corner, the cars and shooters did not. She focused on the fleeing cars and thought,

  What do they call themselves?

  The woman beside her said,

  “Oh, thank you. I am Sandy!”

  Alethia smiled and held out her hand, curious to ask the new woman questions as her original body landed on the ground near the hospital. Without the further need for this second body, she faded into mist, her last vision was of the blond, fair skinned Sandy turning her head, eyes widening in concern.

  Richard shouted,

  “Alethia? What is wrong?”

  But this second version of her faded in front of him. The adrenaline of combat faded and Richard stared at himself in a reflection off of a nearby window. He looked the way he intended, shoulder length blond hair with thin, almost elven features. He even wore the kimono he had visualized. What had been different about this transformation than all of the others? He had never managed to turn into someone he had not personally encountered, but this woman was the product of his imagination.

  He would have to worry about that later. His car was still back at the bad guy’s apartment and the police would be here soon. Probably very soon.

  Richard changed again, this time into the nurse who treated him and ran normal speed down to the apartment. Just to check.

  Sure enough, the gangsters or whatever they were, had already driven his car away. Richard recalled all of the bills and prescription packets he left in his back seat.

  Crap crap crap.

  The bad guys would know his home right away and they had already shot Karen. He didn’t know if she was fine, but no one had texted him yet. He also had no car now.

  He turned and ran back the way he came, considering what Alethia would have done and how he would explain what happened to her. He suspected that he would have to take responsibility for this.

  Right on schedule, Alethia called him,

  “Allie, what’s up?”

  “Richard? Karen’s been shot. I’m at Brack. Were you downtown today?”

  Shit shit shit.

  “Oh my god! I’ve been trying to figure out what happened.”

  A lie was forming in his head. Richard felt pathetic and sick with himself as he elaborated,

  “I was spying on Tammy and they made me. Two, maybe three cars pulled up trying to pin me in. So I ditched my car and ran. I didn’t realize how close to me they were. I passed an apartment building and turned. I never looked behind me.”

  He breathed carefully, knowing that someone like him might be able to hear a lie when spoken. Richard was not sure.

  “Damn it, Richard. You idiot. You need to get down here to Brack. I have a bad feeling about this. Call Rachel and have her pick up the green thing. You know what I mean.”

  “Okay, did you call Rob?”

  “No, not yet. Should we?”

  Richard was nodding,

  “Yeah, he needs to know his wife was shot.”

  Alethia sighed on the phone,

  “Yeah, you’re right. I will get on that.”

  “Okay, I will get to the hospital as fast as I can.”

  Alethia hung up without saying anything else. He called Rachel and asked her to bring the package from his trunk to him at Brackenridge.

  He reached the ER and was already in his natural shape. Alethia raised her head from the waiting room. She did not look happy with him.

  “Did you call Rob?”

  Alethia said,

  “You are a damn fool, Richard Kain.”

  He nodded to her. He could not dispute that at the moment. Alethia went on,

  “You should have called me if you were planning on another stakeout.”

  “Would you have come with me?”

  “No, I would have talked you out of it.”

  Richard could only nod at that. She was right, as usual.

  “So what happened?”

  Richard knew, of course. But he wondered if Alethia would tell him.

  “I think I met someone else like us. A woman. I think she is a shapeshifter.”

  Bile rose in Richard’s throat. He knew what he was doing was wrong, might even hurt Alethia. But a part of him did not care and right then that part made the decisions.

  “What? How?”

  Richard welcomed his own damnation. The truth was, he would give anything for Alethia to love him. To care for him. Truth was a simple price for the chance.

  Alethia shook her head,

  “If you don’t know, then I don’t know either.”

  “What’s happening with Karen?”

  “She has two bullet wounds in her chest. I have to explain to the police what happened. They aren’t here yet.”

  “Shoot, maybe I should leave then, huh?”

  “That might be best. I am going to try telling the truth to them, except for the super powers part.”

  Richard nodded and stood to go.

  “I am sorry about this, Alethia.”

  “If something happens, we can try to give her the serum. Bye Richard.”

  That sounded so final to Richard, but then again he deserved it. Not just for the reasons Alethia knew about. Richard walked out of the ER, changed into a different doctor’s shape and walked back in a few minutes later. His sister would be here soon and Richard wanted to keep tabs on Karen. Even if something bad happened, they had that option.

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  The cops took Alethia’s statement and left. Richard changed faces a few times in the bathroom so that no one ever suspected that he was the same person. He knew he had to be close to a person before he could take their shape. He was starting to suspect he needed to smell them.

  Rob arrived and spoke to Alethia next. He was upset and Richard wanted to talk to him. But who knew how Rob might feel right then?

  Richard swallowed the threat of nausea and walked outside. Around a corner of the hospital he returned Richard’s call.

  “Hey man.”

  “Richard. Karen’s been shot because of you.”

  “Yeah.”

  Rob was silent on the phone. Richard said,

  “I am so sorry man.”

  “She could die and that is the best you got?”

  “I didn’t know this would happen. If I’d known she was… never mind.”

  “That’s right. If you had kept us in the loop, she would be fine, wouldn’t she?”

  Richard did not want to admit the truth of what Rob said. But he could not deny it either. Rob said,

  “That is what I thought. Shit! Damnit!”

  He did not hang up. Instead he lowered his voice.

  “I need to go, I can’t keep talking to you right now.”

  Then he hung up.

  Richard looked down at his phone wondering how he had gotten here and what he could do to possibly fix this. Now that Rob was here, he could probably go back to the waiting room himself. In a way, not being there would raise more questions than being there.

  He resolved to walk back as he ran into his sister.

  “Why did you need this, Richard? What is it?”

  “It’s just a joke for when Karen wakes up. It needs to be a surprise so don’t mention it.”

  Richard stuffed the packet into his backpack. This way they had a contingency plan.

  Rachel and Richard walked up to Rob and Alethia.

  Richard braced himself for Rob’s fury. But his best friend hugged him and called him an idiot instead of taking a punch at him.

  While they hugged, Rob whispered,

  “I know you didn’t do it on purpose, you dumb lug. I wish you had called me.”

  Richard whispered back

  “I am sorry man. I should not have gone off on my own.”

  Rob seemed really upset about Karen. The nurse had stopped by. Karen was still in critical condition, but the initial assessment was promising. She was undergoing emergency surgery, they already had one of the bullets removed and part of the damage to her pericardial sack repaired. The other bullet hit her lung and they were having trouble removing it. Rob had to sign a bunch of heartless forms while the nurse assured him that the surgeons were doing everything they could to help her.

  Hours passed, the four said only a handful of words during the wait. The surgeon did eventually come out to talk to them,

  “Mrs Taylor has been moved to the CICU for now. Her condition had been upgrade to critical, but stable. The next few hours we are monitoring her for infections and complications related to the surgery…”

  Richard felt numb. At least she was improving. Rob would be allowed to look in on her from a distance, but the rest of them had to stay here.

  He returned looking grim,

  “She’s on a ventilator. They say they want it out soon, but she does not look good.”

  Richard put his arm around his friend, Rachel and even Alethia joined him. Rob cried quietly under the canopy of his friends. Richard and the other two joined him just as quietly.

  Eventually they broke apart and resumed waiting in their seats.

  Richard’s patience eventually started to run out. He could find out more by sneaking into the CICU than he could waiting here. Almost eight hours had already passed. Everyone waiting had shut down their normal responsibilities so they could continue to wait.

  Richard put on a departing physician’s face after leaving his friends and sneaking behind the secure area in the guise of a random nurse. He had waited until he spotted a doctor saying his farewells before Richard picked him.

  Back inside the hospital, he checked out Karen’s chart as a small crisis erupted around him. He replaced the chart at the nurse’s station and followed the commotion to see Karen’s room filled with people. She just lay there while the people in the room struck terror into Richard’s heart. They moved quickly and efficiently, but the concern on their faces spoke volumes to Richard. Karen was about to die.

  But after a few minutes, the doctors and nurses relaxed. That reassured Richard, but he wanted to know more.

  “What happened with the patient in 203?”

  The nurse stepping out said,

  “She has a serious infection. She may die from septicemia in a few hours.”

  Richard translated her medical speak automatically in his mind, nodded, and walked away.

  He made himself busy watching that nurse go into and out of Karen’s room. Eventually she excused herself and took a break. Richard hid in a bathroom and changed into her form after he removed the green serum from his pack.

  He hid it in the folds of the nurse’s uniform and stepped into Karen’s room alone. With the glass to his back, he injected the contents of the green syringe into her IV bag. He hid the syringe and left the room before the serum started to take effect.

  He was back in the bathroom and changed and nothing had happened yet. As the doctor who had already gone home, he checked on Karen. As far as he could tell, nothing else was wrong with her. Richard debated his course for a moment and decided that he did not know how to get her out of the room without being caught right then. Sure, he was taking an enormous risk on behalf of Karen, but he felt it was worth it.

  Anything he could do to make up for his earlier mistake.

  Richard returned to his friends. Alethia noticed his absence. When Rob stood to go the bathroom, she said,

  “Where did you go?”

  Richard cringed without showing it on his face. I am supposed to be smarter than this now. He had no exit strategy or escape plan. He could see the next several questions from Alethia, all of them reasonable and fully expected, once he thought to turn his mind this direction.

  Richard touched his nose and smiled at Alethia, he tried to prepare a lie when a scream broke through his consciousness. Alethia winced along with him.

  She said,

  “Did you hear that?”

  A second scream blew across Richards mind like a wildfire. It consumed the air, ripping his breath and words away. In its wake it left only searing pain. Alethia gurgled as she fell out of her chair. Red flashing warnings filled Richard’s vision again. In the forefront was a single question:

  “New processing system online: accept binding: y/n”

  Wracking pain paralyzed Richard, but he could still think, even though he did not want to. He accepted the offer to bind and his vision flashed blue. Three quarters of the warning messages vanished as Richard’s mind shut down in shock. With his last effort, he whispered to Alethia,

  “Accept the binding.”

  Karen opened her eyes to see a steady stream of numbers and letters racing across her field of view. Like an AR interface, the words were transparent and let her see the lights and machines towering over her beyond the data.

  The streams ran out and she was left with a prompt:

  “EMERGENCY SYSTEMS ONLINE: ENGAGE COMMAND DATA MODULE? Y/N”

  The last thing Karen remembered was Alethia crouched over her. Something had smashed into Karen’s chest and taken her breath away. Breathing grew difficult and she passed out. She had been shot.

  Oh, they gave me the serum then. She thought to herself. A new prompt appeared:

  “Command Level Enhancements Active, confirmed. Engage Command Data Module?”

  This one was not in bold and lacked the urgency of the prompt above it. Karen ignored it and it faded from her view.

  I was shot and I am in a hospital. But I am alive.

  Karen’s throat was obstructed by something. She should have been concerned, panicked even. But her consciousness was disassociated from her body. Sensation was strictly limited to awareness. Karen knew her legs were there. A breeze licked her toes under the sheets. In any other circumstance, that feeling would have driven her crazy until her feet were properly covered. She could feel the wires and leads on her chest and arms leading to the machines beeping in the distance. They assured her that her body was alive and mostly intact.

  She redirected her attention back to the large bold request before her. Karen figured she had to agree to unlock the command data module, whatever that was, before she would learn anything more. So she chose yes.

  The prompt blinked once and Karen was reconnected to her body, which turned out to be mid-healing and enhancement. The only thing that kept her mind whole when the pain flooded into it was that morphine and something else still remained in her system and took the barest edge off of the pain. For minutes that felt like hours, Karen’s brain struggled under the weight of an ocean of pain.

  Blinking warnings and buzzers sounded in her ears, sounds she somehow knew were only audible to her. Outside of the pain desert that was her tortured brain, she could hear the machines and monitors steadily blinking away.

  She was retching due to the tube in her throat while her paralyzed limbs begged to scratch at the unholy burns covering her. Three prompts appeared in the middle of her vision, one of them larger than the others. They blurred too much for her to read them. On the brink of unconsciousness and vomiting into her intubation tube, which would probably kill her, she chose the central blinking prompt.

  The pain and physical sensations once again retreated and Karen read what she had chosen,

  “Begin internal sensation management.”

  Huh.

  She could read additional prompts at the bottom right of her vision. Three different colored circles, one red, one white and one black grew and resolved into Rob, Alethia, and Richard respectively. She selected Rob’s condition and discovered a cascade of prompts. During the module activation, the pain had spread to her team. Team members could share sensations and thoughts. Normally this was metered by her own system, but during the initial sync, the ‘volume’ gets turned to max. Karen’s own body had stricken her friends.

  The whole interface explained itself helpfully to her as she thought about each choice. She turned the pain sharing systems off temporarily and saw that all three, Rob, Alethia, and Richard, had fallen unconscious. Their own internal systems had engaged to protect them.

  She next learned that her own serum course contained a full “initialization protocol”. Her mind and body acted as a central data router for her team. With this system she could coordinate their movements, taken control of primitive data access points and allow her team the full use of their internal computational enhancements.

  A cascade of improvements followed. Her team’s cognitive enhancements would stabilize faster. One of the control mechanisms she possessed allowed her to tweak the neurotransmitter protocols available to her team. She could manipulate their brains and bodies directly. Karen left that particular control alone for now. With the computers online again, the healing protocols had fully activated. Karen’s wounds and severe infection were already recovering at an impossible rate.

  Computer models helpfully informed her that she had been within an hour of brain death due to the massive infection she had contracted by being shot. Without the serum treatments, she would have died. Using the healing systems, she manipulated her own biochemical makeup, enough that the pain receded fully from her consciousness.

  Her mind was clear and sharp. She had a series of obstacles before her. A stray thought wondered how long she would have the breathing tube in and she knew without knowing how that she would have it for no more than 24 hours, unless something went very wrong with her lungs or the physicians decided to induce a coma. For some injuries, the standard for intubation demanded even less time with the tube inserted.

  First goal: escape this room. She considered all of the factors there. Insurance paid most of the visit, so she should be able to sign herself out with a credit card. That would be at least two more hours, assuming they removed the breathing tube at the first opportunity.

  Second goal: do not draw attention to herself. Or her friends, she amended. The police would want to interview her. They would definitely interview Alethia, they probably had done so already. Karen’s mind sped through a virtual representation of the hospital she lay in. Signing out was the best option bar none. Even that would draw attention to her.

  She wondered if she could communicate with her team — scratch that, her friends — when the hospital lights blinked and went dark. The emergency power system kicked in as Karen wondered what had just happened and how this might affect her plans. Nurses and doctors rushed in to initiate all new protocols. Karen opened her eyes and scared the nurse nearest her, who alerted a doctor. The two removed her breathing tube while a third person leaned over to her and said,

  “Blink twice if you understand me.”

  Karen blinked twice.

  “Good, this might pinch.”

  Karen could not laugh, but if a large bore tube were not shoved down her throat she might have. Removing that thing would do a heck of a lot more than pinch, if her nerves had been allowed to feel discomfort right then.

  With the tube out of her throat, Karen tried to speak while the medical staff busied themselves over her injuries. She wondered what they would find when they looked. Time, which had been flowing precisely until now, began to stretch and deform. Her mind had trouble sorting out the source of the distortion as she experienced hopping forward in bursts. The computer console in her vision informed her that she was losing consciousness, as part of the effect of the systems ongoing efforts to enhance her body, a process that would not be done for approximately seventy two hours.

  She revised her plans. Right now her best hope was rescue. Preferably by her friends, but Wonder Woman or Xena was not out of the question today. That last delirious thought brought a chuckle to her throat as Karen passed out.

  Richard lay on the floor, information flooding back into his mind. All of the alerts he suppressed came alive. This time, they slowly turned green as the intense pain faded from his body. His tracking and computer assist had returned. Richard wondered where Karen was and received an AR path in his mind that showed him the shortest route.

  He lay on the hospital floor for a few minutes, hearing people around him panicking and seeking help. These people were really annoying, but then again, he could not respond to their repeated questions, so what they were doing was pretty natural. He was lifted up and brought to the Emergency room along with Alethia and eventually Rob. His computer informed him of where they both were.

  Can you two hear me?

  No response. Richard waited for several minutes without receiving any reply. It had been a long shot anyway. Harried nurses came to check on him and started to draw blood, something Richard had been afraid of since he retuned from the future. As she prepared the table, his control of his own body was restored. People had come to rescue them quickly, only maybe ten minutes passed between his collapse and arriving in the ER. Of course, they had fallen over in a hospital. He wondered if they had initiated a contagion response when he opened his eyes and saw that his nurse had several masks on.

  “Can you hear me sir?”

  The words were so similar to what he had said in his mind that he had to chuckle.

  “Yeah. I can hear you just fine.”

  His voice felt raspy, like he was dehydrated or hoarse from yelling.

  He could hear Rob and Alethia in the other rooms responding to their own nurses.

  Good. Now to get out of here.

  That thought was followed by the lights fading in the hospital momentarily, replaced by the emergency lights while the backup generator spun on. Thirty seconds later, a small boom rocked the hospital. The emergency lights stayed on, but the generator did not start up.

  That was the generator

  The nurse treating Richard shouted,

  “I will be right back!” and turned to check in with her station.

  “That’s probably true, but I won’t be here when you do.”

  Richard stood and checked for Karen’s position again. She was up in the CICU still; the path showed him where to walk.

  “Allie, Rob? Can you walk?”

  They pulled their curtains back in unison. Rob said,

  “Let’s go get my wife!”

  All three ran out of the ER, the shouts of the nursing staff lost behind them. They moved quickly, but not quite at superhuman speeds. Those they turned on when they reached the stairs.

  Richard had a vague sense of deja vu about this whole situation when he heard another small explosion. Alethia pulled open the door to the CICU floor and Rob took up a position a few feet in front of the door. Richard wondered at the move, he would have thought crouching at the doorjamb made more sense. But maybe Rob knew something he did not.

  Rob lead the way down the hallway. Smoke and dust filled the air here and Richard was starting to feel nervous. His sense of deja vu grew more intense as the dust cleared and three liquid silver creatures turned to look back at Richard and his friends. Their bodies looked like fat sausages supported by spindly fractal legs. They branched hundreds of times as Richard watched and he realized that was how the creatures moved. The heads that turned to examine them were continuous mercurial pools. They looked like a single insect antenna turning toward them, revealing the impression of eyes, nose and mouth alone once side of the antenna.

  In a flash, the liquid silver appendages materialized an elongated rifle-looking addition. Richard shouted as a second Alethia sprang from her body toward the first liquid silver creature. Rob moved swiftly, not even looking in the other two’s direction. Twin blue explosions of light burst from in front of Rob, his body obscured whatever happened. Liquid silver metal clung to the second Alethia, who continued to rip and tear at the creature. It fell twitching along with Alethia’s clone who vanished in midair. Rob turned after the first silver being fell, the other two dead before him, gaping holes where the front sections of the creatures were missing.

  Rob turned without comment and saw that Richard and Alethia still stood. He beckoned them forward and they moved faster toward where they were treating Karen. The three pushed their speed to its maximum breaking through the clouds of dust and smoke. Richard jumped through to see Alethia and Rob neck and neck, straining themselves to reach Karen’s room. A single liquid silver creature stood in the room with her. Its straight branching appendages touched Karen’s body, forming a cage over or around her.

  Alethia seemed to hit a wall, she crumpled as if smashed in the head and Rob roared as he jumped into the room with Karen. Bright light shone in the room that blinded Richard for a moment. He blinked the flash away and saw that the room was empty save for the bodies of hospital staff on the floor around the bare gurney.

  Richard could hear blaring alarms all around him. Alethia did not move, so he checked her first. Her pulse was steady, but she had a large red mark on her forehead and nose. Like she smashed her face into something. Richard lifted her in his arms and checked Karen’s room a second time. Not even a trace of Karen or Rob remained. He spotted movement on the edge of his vision and saw that the people in the room were still breathing. Huh. That was probably relevant.

  Richard turned and fled the hallway, pausing to retrieve a sample of the silver creature using the now empty syringe. He found a wheelchair and laid Alethia in it. His computer vision had returned to dormancy, but his mind felt clear. So much clearer than before today. He could easily escape the hospital in the chaos, wheeling Alethia out would make him blend in more.

  Richard effortlessly assumed an amalgam shape. Just like he had done when Alethia spotted him during the fight with the gangsters. That felt almost like it was a week ago, not this morning. Amalgam number two was combination of several doctors Richard had smelled earlier. Scent was definitely the key to adopting a form. Stress had been the key to unlocking both the initial ability and his subsequent advancement.

  Those thoughts lead him out of the hospital, pushing Alethia before him. He resumed his face as he turned a corner and saw that Rachel was at her car waiting,

  “Richard! I’ve been trying to text you! Is Allie okay?”

  Rachel ran to check to make sure he was okay then she turned to Alethia.

  “She looks like she hit her head. Does she need to see a doctor, Richard?”

  Rachel felt the back of Alethia’s head, Richard did not know what to feel for or he would have tried that himself.

  “She seems fine I guess. What happened in there?”

  Richard lifted Alethia into the front seat of Rachel’s car and buckled her in.

  “Let’s get out of here if we can, I will tell you on the way. Let me put this up.”

  Richard pushed the cart back up to the hospital doors. People flooded out of the building still, so he left the chair at the corner of the building and ran back to his sister. He jumped in the back seat and said,

  “Do you know any good ways out of here?”

  Rachel shook her head,

  “I think this parking lot might be cursed.”

  They encountered a line of cars waiting to leave the tower. Richard could feel the alien monsters waiting for them. Why did they wait to attack until now? It had to do with Karen’s serum, but what? He believed that her coming online is what dropped the other three to their knees. So perhaps she held the computer system Richard used to find her? That made sense as he considered the possibility. The computer had disappeared again once she was gone.

  The next question was: what hit Alethia in the face? Not that Richard wanted her gone. He preferred Alethia safely here with him, just like Rob and Karen. But something had clearly smacked her in the face by way of existing and being relatively immovable. What could that have been?

  Rachel eventually escaped the crush of traffic and drove back to their house. Alethia started to wake as they arrived, but Richard insisted on carrying her into his house.