A light rain misted onto Carol’s glasses, as she removed her helmet and put down the motorcycle’s kickstand. What she could see of the sky was gray, and all around her was the sound of water showering on thick forest leaves.

Gravel crunched under her feet, as she walked around the ranger’s jeep and past the sign that said “WILDLIFE RESCUE.” She took a moment to steel her nerves, before walking up to the front porch and knocking on the old metal screen door.

Footsteps, from inside the building. Then the ranger came up to the door. She didn’t look much older than Carol, but she was a lot taller, and her khaki uniform made her seem much more professional.

Her voice sounded like it had on the telephone. “You’re Leslie, right?”

Carol nodded, a little too quickly, and looked away.

“Well, c’mon in!” The screen door pushed open with a creak, and Carol held it open before stepping in. It was not much warmer inside.

“Let’s see about getting you set up.” The ranger went deeper into the building. Carol adjusted her glasses and looked around. It was an old building, dusty but with lots of natural light, and it smelled like zoo animals …

Oh. That was why. The imported Egyptian Fruit Bat hung silently inside its floor-to-ceiling cage, which took up about a third of the room. Toys dotted the floor, covered in newspaper clippings, and pieces of oranges and shards of rind hung on a string made the room smell faintly like air freshener.

Carol’s gaze, though, was fixed on the bat itself. All she could see was its softly-furred backside, and its brown wings wrapped tightly around it. It was only about half a foot long, and there was a metal mesh cage in the way. But Carol thought it was beautiful.

Footsteps came up from behind her, and stopped. “You like the Rousette, huh?”

Carol blinked and turned around, broken out of her reverie. “Huh?”

“The Egyptian Rousette. The bat.” The ranger was carrying an armful of medical paraphenalia, including a syringe.

“Oh. Um, yeah … ” Carol was looking at what she was carrying.

“You know they’re the only large bats that use echolocation.” The ranger tore open a package, and affixed a needle to the syringe.

“Yes.” Carol couldn’t help but watch.

“You like bats?”

“Oh, yes.”

“I think they’re cute.”

Carol just nodded, and swallowed.

The ranger finished what she was doing, and started wrapping a long elastic cord around Carol’s arm to cut off the blood flow. “Okay, Leslie, now hold still. This is going to sting a little, so we only want to have to do this once.”

Carol felt the pressure build up uncomfortably, and watched as the ranger got the needle ready. She closed her eyes and clenched one fist as it pierced her arm; then it got pulled out, and immediately a cloth bandage was pressed over it. “Hold that while I get you a Band-Aid.”

Carol held it in place, and let out her breath. While the ranger’s back was turned, she pulled the gauze away and stole a glance at her arm. A drop of blood had soaked into the gauze, but her arm had already healed.

She hurriedly replaced it as the ranger came back, and put an adhesive bandage over the gauze. Then the ranger untied the cord holding back her blood flow, and put it back in the first aid kit before holding up the syringe, partway full with Carol’s blood.

“It’ll take us a day or two to get the test results back,” she said, squinting at it. “You can start volunteering before then, though, so no worries about that.”

The ranger went back down the hallway carrying the first aid kit and syringe, and Carol followed, stealing a glance over her shoulder back towards the bat as she went. A little ways down the hall was an infirmary, and the ranger put up her gear there, and set the vial of Carol’s blood inside a rack next to empty vials. Carol took note of that.

“So … what will I be doing, here?” she asked, struggling to find the words.

“Oh, it depends. See-”

The phone rang.

“Hold on one sec.” The ranger left the infirmary, and went down the hall into another room.

Carol’s eyes fell on the vials, and on the first aid gear right beside them.

* * *

Carol unlocked the bat cage, with the key that she’d found in the ranger’s desk, before quietly stepping inside. The ranger had a loud voice, and it carried all the way out here and drowned out what she was doing. It sounded like she was on the phone with a friend … or a relative. Or an ex-boyfriend, judging from her tone of voice.

The bat stayed sleeping and motionless as Carol tore open the wrapper in her mouth, and got out one of the long needles. Affixing it to an empty syringe, she approached the bat and held still for a second, conflicting thoughts in her head.

It’s so cute, all huddled and sleeping like that …

I wonder where I ought to stick it at.

Just a tiny bundle of fur and wings …

How much should I draw? Will I hurt the thing?

I want to pet it, right now.

I need to do this. But how?

Taking a deep breath, she stepped forward and took hold of the bat in one hand, then stuck the needle in it with the other and drew out a tiny amount of blood. It turned to look at her, eyes wide with shock, and she sweated as she withdrew the syringe and unclipped the needle from it.

Carol had almost gotten to the door when it started chirping at her, loud. Now she was really sweating. She tried to get the lock back in place-

“You can’t turn your back for one second these days, can you?”

Carol froze.

Heavy, booted footsteps came up the hall behind her. One hand grabbed her shoulder and turned her around, hard. “Alright,” the ranger said. “Let’s see it.”

Carol’s heart was beating so hard it felt like it would give out. Slowly, carefully, she reached into her pocket and withdrew a vial of blood, then handed it to the ranger.

The ranger snatched it up without looking. “I don’t know why I give people the benefit of the doubt anymore. I was just telling my friend the other day that we shouldn’t judge people like you. Now I’m not so sure.”

There was a long moment of silence. The ranger did not speak again until Carol looked up, and saw her hard, stern face.

“Get out.”

* * *

Carol hopped down the wet, wooden steps and out into the rain, filled with adrenaline and trying to keep from showing it. She was scared, and she didn’t think she would stop being scared until she’d gotten ten miles away. Her guilt barely registered, she was so scared.

But she was also excited, because she’d gotten what she came for.

After getting back on her motorcycle and pushing the kickstand back up, she checked in her pocket to make sure. The tiny vial of bat blood was still there. And the vial of her blood was not, anymore.

The screen door pushed open, and Carol hastily threw on her helmet. A second after she’d gotten it in place, a rodent-like snout pushed out the front beneath the visor.

“Hey! What do you think you-”

Carol took off, kicking gravel up from her tires, and sped back towards the main road, a whiplike tail trailing out behind her.

* * *

Carol knew she couldn’t go out the main gate, so she took a barely-marked dirt trail out through the west side. After making sure she was not being pursued, she unwrapped another needle and injected herself with the bat’s blood, wrapping the needle and syringe up afterwards and pocketing them to throw away later.

She forced herself into human form and got back on her motorcycle, at the edge of the park where the dirt trail just met the road. No cars were coming, and there were no traffic noises for as far as she could hear. Just water dripping off leaves.

Carol grinned to herself, inside her helmet, and noted the time on her watch. It’d been fewer than three hours since she’d set out. At this rate, she’d be home by dinner.

The drive to the wildlife rescue had taken two hours. The drive back took six.

She didn’t take the main roads, for fear of being spotted. But in under an hour Carol started to feel lethargic, as though she’d been running all day. At first she dismissed it as being the effects of stress, and tried to settle into her ride and enjoy herself. But after not too long, she realized that she could barely keep her eyes open. It was the middle of the day, and she was starting to fall asleep.

Carol pulled off the road at a fast food restaurant, somewhere on the edge of a town in the hills, and almost let her motorcycle fall over she was so tired. There wasn’t a line at this time of day, so she walked up and ordered something small just so she could sit down. While getting a straw she noticed they had a free newspaper sitting on one of the counters, so she grabbed it on the way to her seat.

She only managed a few bites of her snack before realizing that she was about to faceplant on top of it. Stretching out in her seat, she took off her rainjacket and used that as a pillow. Then she covered her face with the newspaper, half-sitting and half-laying down.

Carol only meant to rest for a few minutes. She was used to feeling drowsy in the middle of the day, and laying down for a half-hour or so and feeling much better afterwards. Besides, it wasn’t like it would be easy to fall asleep on a hard bench like this …

* * *

She tries to wrestle the gun away from him, but he is too strong. He slams her against the wall, scraping her knuckles across the brick. Then he kicks her away when she lets go, smacking her into the concrete.

She looks up through the haze and the ringing in her ears, up into the barrel, and he-

* * *

“Ma’am?”

Carol gasped for breath, her dream cut short.

There were sounds all around her. Sounds of sizzling, and beeping, and people talking and eating and walking around. And deeply interesting smells, of grease and dead things that were good to eat. Where was she, again?

“Ma’am.”

Something shook her shoulder and she recoiled, jumping to her feet up on the hard plastic seat and putting her hands against the windowblinds. The newspaper fell away, as she stared in fear … down at the middle-aged woman, with a restaurant uniform on and a cleaning rag in one hand.

If the woman was startled, she gave no sign of it. “Ma’am, we’ve let you sleep there for hours. People are coming in now, and you’re making noise and it’s scaring them.”

Carol’s heart was still beating fast. She could barely remember why she was there. The gunbarrel seemed more real, and she felt like it was still pointed at her.

“You need to order something if you’re going to stay here longer. And if you’re going to sleep, you need to get yourself home or to a motel. Okay?”

The words were starting to make sense. She realized that people were looking at her, and it would’ve scared her if she hadn’t just been afraid for her life.

“Okay?”

” … okay.”

Carol slid back down into her seat, as the cleaning lady went on and washed the next table. She took a deep breath to center herself, still ignoring the people looking at her. Then she looked down, and her eyes fell on the meal that she’d barely touched.

Putting her rainjacket over one arm with shaking hands, she got up and wadded up her trash and tossed it into the bin. Then she went into the ladies’ room to clean up, her face turning red as she tried to ignore the stares on her back.

There was no one in there. Which was good, because when Carol saw her reflection she jumped up and gasped, and dropped her coat on the floor. Her face was a hybrid of bat and opossum features, darkly furred with radar dish ears and a pink nose on a long snout. Her arms were covered with fur, and her tail was whipping against the wall in her panic.

She fought to control her breathing, as the reality of what had just happened struck her. They saw me! They all saw me! I must have scared them to death — I must have seemed crazy to them — they probably saw me flailing my arms and things and … and …

She took a deep, shuddering breath, and made herself hold it for a few seconds before letting it out. I’m going to be alright. Everyone knows that people like me exist. No one’s going to try to hurt me or anything … not here, not out in public. I’ll be okay … I’ll be okay.

Even so, she locked herself in there, until she was satisfied that everyone who’d been in the restaurant just then had left.

* * *

Carol didn’t eat anything else there. By the time she got home, she was famished.

She walked her motorcycle up to the driveway, after cutting the engine a couple of streets down. The streetlights were on outside, over the suburban lawns. A couple of dogs barked at her from inside their fences, but dogs were always barking at something.

The gravel driveway was empty, just like it had been since her parents had left on their cruise. Carol went around back and leaned her cycle against the outside wall, then unlocked the side door before stepping in. The house was dark, even though the moon shone in through curtained windows.

Now that she was inside, Carol let the changes come, and found it a lot easier to see afterwards. She tried clicking her tongue to echolocate, but nothing happened as far as she could tell.

She shut the door quietly and went into the kitchen, without turning any lights on. The refrigerator was whirring, and the noise made her ears flatten. She opened it, squinting inside, but the scent of old grease and leftovers no longer smelled as good as it once had.

Looking over at the table, her eyes fell on the fruit basket. She shut the refrigerator door and ate three bananas, before realizing that they were brown. Oh well, she thought. I would’ve just made banana bread with them anyway.

Washing an apple in the sink, she looked out the window at tree silhouettes. Things were moving between them, little flying things, and Carol knew what they were.

She turned off the water and opened the window a crack, listening through the screen, and her ears perked at the sounds of clicking and chirping. She could hear more of the bats’ calls now, the higher-pitched parts that human ears couldn’t detect. Her heart leaped at the sound, and she  held her breath in, listening and waiting for an epiphany. An understanding of what their calls meant.

After a minute or two of holding still and breathing quietly, she finally stopped and sighed and went to go get a knife for the apple. Something about their chirping did call to her. But she wasn’t sure if it was because of her nature, or just because of her bat ears. She felt like they were talking too fast and speaking a foreign language, one that sounded like one she knew but was too different for her to interpret. Maybe if I lived in Egypt, she thought.

Carol had a long dinner, plowing through most of the fruit basket (peels and all) and half of a jar of peanut butter. She finished with a tall glass of milk, not questioning her cravings but taking the time to satisfy them. She knew what was happening to her, and that it would take awhile to finish … awhile for her wings to grow in.

As it turned out, “awhile” was “about a week.”

It was slow and painful at times, and she was lethargic and sleepy for most of it. She slept for almost the whole time that the sun was up, and if she couldn’t get back to sleep around noon she read one of her manga until her eyes were too heavy again. The nights she spent eating and drinking almost constantly, gulping down gallons of milk and bringing a snack to eat on the way to the store. After a little while, she didn’t even try to hide the bony protrusions sticking out of her back, or to hold her animal features in. She just smiled at the cashier, and hoped that it didn’t look like she was snarling.

She took two multivitamin pills daily. Her shopping basket was filled with dense, nutrient-rich foods; avocados, a couple of pomegranates, and lots of citrus fruit. Meat was too expensive, so she stacked tubs of cold, wet tofu into her cart, and ate peanut butter and bananas while marinating it at home. It wasn’t half bad, although after a couple of tries she found that she liked it better when mixed into fruit-and-milk drinks than when fried up with soy sauce.

The few hours she didn’t spend eating, cooking and shopping, she spent surfing the ‘net on her laptop, with the lights off and brightness turned all the way down. (And the window open to listen for bats.) Mostly she looked for videos by other ‘morphs, and blogs with tutorials on how to deal with a changing body. Links to recipes started to fill up her favorites list.

Every now and then she browsed for news stories, about First Federal or her disappearance. They hadn’t talked about it for a while, in the town that she had been working in. And apparently, no one had caught the killer.

Carol did not like to think about that. She spent one day in a haze of half-awakeness just because her dreams were so terrible. The whole time she was asleep she spent trying to run, or to fight him off. And all she could think about while she was awake that day was the feel of the cold gunmetal, or the way her hands clawed at his until they were slammed into the wall.

She had been shot only once, but she’d relived it six times now, each one just as horrifying.

For all that, she found that revenge didn’t drive her. She tried to think about her death as little as possible, because all that she felt about it was fear. Likewise, her plan was not an obsession. It was just something that had to be done.

She wanted it to be over soon. Preferably before her family came back. Then she could reveal herself, to them and her friends online and her boyfriend. She missed every one of them, even the annoying ones. But she dared not call them, or pick up the phone, or log in to sites with her old accounts. She didn’t even surf the web without using a proxy server.

Soon this will be over, she thought, doing pushups while stretching her wings to their lengths and trying to feel their tips. And soon I’ll be able to fly.

* * *

Despite exercising whenever she could, Carol still put on a bit of weight, and it wasn’t just in her wings. She used a flashlight to look down at the scale, frowning to herself and being glad that she was sewing her stealth outfit with some give to it.

And that she was going to be getting a lot more exercise, soon enough.

That night was the first time she tried flying, as her wingspan was already greater than her height. There was a creek beside her house, behind the suburban neighborhood, and there was an open area in the trees behind it. After wading the creek, she ran as fast as she could into the clearing, then started flapping her wings wildly. But it only drove her to crash in a tumbling heap.

She rubbed her bruised elbow, the color not fading even as the pain did. Then she got up, took a deep breath and tried again. I don’t care how many times I’ve got to do this, she thought. Being shot didn’t stop me. This isn’t going to either.

Carol tried five more times to get up the speed to fly, and to hold her leathery wings at the right angle to produce lift. On her last try she almost did, and her heart leapt as she felt her wings carry her feet off the ground. But then they clipped a tree, and she rolled to a stop, instinctively curling her wings around her.

She looked up at the tree in dismay. Then she started climbing it.

It took her ten long, agonizing minutes to get up to the branch that she wanted. Her wings kept getting caught on things, and trying to get them out without being able to see behind herself brought her close to tears in frustration. But she closed her eyes and took a handful of deep breaths, then continued and finally freed herself.

Crouching on the thickest branch, twenty feet off the ground, she looked out at the creek and the clearing and at her house’s distant roof. Then she closed her eyes, and jumped.

Her wings caught the air, and she soared.

It was just like the first time she’d managed to ski. The same feel of gliding, over ground that she’d once had to tread. And the same feel of silent exhilaration, the only sound in her ears that of wind rushing past. It was hard to hold her wings out rigid, but she barely noticed she was so excited.

After a couple of seconds, she realized that she was dropping slowly and tried flapping her wings to compensate. But she underestimated how much force she would need to apply against the stiff cushion of air beneath her, and her wings folded up and she dropped like a rock, falling into the creek with a splash.

This is what she was thinking right afterwards.

Aghpttb-

I flew! I was flying! I …

AGH, there are rocks stuck in my knee and it stings!

I still remember what it felt like. I want to do it again …

Cold! Wet! Pain! Cold!

That was the awesomest thing EVER!

She finally stood up off of the slippery rocks, and finished brushing the pebbles off of her skinned knees, her hands moist with blood and water. Then she looked back up at the tree she’d jumped down from, and thrust her fist into the air, before shivering.

Hugging herself with both arms and wings, she managed a grin in spite of chattering teeth.

That was so worth it.

Carol wanted to try it again right away, but decided she’d better not. That turned out to be the right choice. She spent the rest of that night shivering and sniffling, and drinking a warm mug of lemon tea.

The next day (or next night, given her sleeping schedule) her back and her wings ached all over. She could barely even move her arms, which made sewing her stealth outfit hard. She had to rest that day, and the next, stretching her stiff wings when she could and making a couple of feeble attempts at doing stitches. It had only been a few seconds of flight, but she felt like she’d tried to lift a car.

The day of her parents’ return was approaching, and she still wasn’t ready. It looked like there was only one thing for it: She spent the whole last day packing and cleaning up, then got on her motorcycle and drove back to the city she’d worked at.

It was a long drive, especially with a sore back and wings, and she had to share the road with humans who couldn’t see as well as she could at night. Worse, the prices at the downtown hotel were sky-high. But as she flopped down onto the big, cushy bed in her room, she thought it’d been worth it for two reasons:

One, the generous fruit basket on the table.

And two, the lights of First Federal, right outside of her window.

* * *

Midnight. Still not as dark as she would’ve liked. The lights of the city shone red on the clouds behind her, as though sunset had never ended.

Carol finished hauling her bag up to the rooftop next to her, and looked out at the bank building as she got her things out. There weren’t too many lights on in it, and there weren’t any other large buildings nearby. The office that she was headed for was on the other side of the building, so she couldn’t see in it, but she’d made sure to check when she’d driven back with snack food and energy drinks. An hour ago, the light had been on.

Her fingers were unsteady as she strapped the gun to her hip. She wondered if it’d been a good idea to drink so much liquid sugar, or if she was just nervous. For a second, she thought of just climbing back inside. Then she shook her head and dismissed it, and finished strapping her gloves and her gear to her night-black stealth outfit.

There wasn’t a lot of gear to strap on, because she had to pack light to be able to fly. Stepping up to the edge of the roof, she looked out across the street at the lower ledge of the bank building … a flat platform with air vents and boxy things on top, to the side of the main part of the building.

Carol swallowed as she looked across at it. It seemed so far away now. And the lights of the streetlights seemed brighter, and the noise of distant traffic seemed louder. Every now and then a car drove past below, and she felt silly and conspicuous, like everybody could see her.

She clenched her fists, and told herself that if she did this right, nobody would.

Carol went to the center of the roof, walking lightly on bare paws, the noise of the central air conditioning getting louder in her ears. She stretched her arms, legs and wings, and did a basic warm-up routine. Then she looked out at the bank building and took a deep breath, before running towards it and leaping over the edge of the roof.

It was like doing a pullup while wearing a full-sized backpack. The first time she’d barely noticed, because the feeling of flight was so novel and she didn’t have any place she was flying to. But this time she immediately panicked, her breaths fast with fear and exertion, and as she looked up into the rushing air she realized that she was not going to make it.

Do I flap?

She couldn’t bring herself to, because she knew she would certainly plummet. So instead, as the roof of the building approached she put out her arms and

SMACK

One second she was flying, the next she was grappling with the ledge. She felt it beneath her arms, then her forearms, then only her hands were holding onto it as her footpaw-pads slipped on squeaking glass.

Heart racing, breaths rapid, brain telling her I am going to die, she fought to clamber on top. Her foot gained traction on scratchy concrete, and she just about tore its pad off getting the other one off the glass and pushing with all her might. One elbow got above the ledge, then the next, then she flung herself over the side and landed on top of the building.

Carol’s heartbeat was so rapid she thought she would die just from it, and trying to catch her breath felt like fighting to keep from drowning. Her tail and her wings were squashed underneath her, but she didn’t care. She could barely feel them.

She wasn’t there long before her ears perked. There was a squeak, of skin on the glass of the window she’d been kicking. Like someone had pressed his hands or his face up against it.

Carol jumped back to her feet, blood rushing to her head and making her stagger, as pins and needles crept into her wings and her tail. Then she shook her head, trying to clear it, and looked around for an entry point.

She had to rest up against the side of the door for a second, before taking out her glass cutter and carving a square through the inset window.

* * *

Carol crept through the dark hallway, towards the light spilling out from the open door.

A woman’s voice, laughing. “Are you kidding me? Those mortgage bonds are backed by the country’s top three lending institutions! Of course your money’s safe. It’s safer than it’d be in our vault.”

She got out her phone from its belt case, softly closing the magnetic cover before switching it on and turning on the Voice Memo feature. Carol pointed its microphone towards the door as she crept closer, quietly, holding her gun at the ready.

“Well, okay, maybe not that safe … ” Carol’s pointed ears heard a trace of the other voice on the phone. “But you know me, Ron. I’ve never let you down before, have I?”

She stopped outside the door, recording for a second.

More laughter. “And you’ll never let me forget that, will you?”

Carol let them finish their conversation, and waited for the phone to hang up. But a second later she heard it being lifted off the receiver again, and a number dialed into it. This time a man’s voice spoke, a deep one that sounded like plaid shirts and facial hair. “Hey, Mark. Remember those subprime mortgage bonds that I told you about?”

Carol’s ears perked.

“Uh-huh. Uh-huh.” A chuckle. “Yeah, those’re the ones. Anyway, I think they’re going downhill.”

She holstered her gun, and crouched down low to hold a knife out around the corner. In its mirrored surface she saw feet under a rainforest wood desk, along with an energy bar wrapper on the floor next to a wastebasket. The feet moved, kicking the wrapper out of the way, as the chair swiveled to face away from the door.

“Heh, I know. Sorry for getting you into that mess. And First Federal has spent a ton on them, haven’t they? Listen, maybe we should … “

Carol’s pounding heart drowned out the man’s words as she stepped into his office, the scent of central heating and pretzels and peanut butter and wheat-oat bars all assaulting her nostrils. His desk was messy, his suit jacket was tossed over the guest chairs next to the plant, and there was a screensaver going on his PC as he twirled the phone cord in his finger.

She stepped closer, crouch-walking, holding her wings pressed to her sides. She crept around the side of his desk, closer and closer to his high-backed leather chair. Finally she stood up, between the chair and his desk, and put her gun to his head. “Don’t move!”

Carol had tried to make it sound forceful. Then she realized the person on the other end of the line must have heard. There was silence for a long moment, and then her heartbeat drowned out a question on the phone.

“I’m going to have to call you back,” the deep male voice said, cracking. He hung up the phone, slowly and carefully, without turning his head.

Carol waited another long, painful moment, sweat running down her sides, before he spoke. This time it was silky and young. “The voice sounds familiar, but I’m afraid I can’t place it. Can I at least look to see who is pointing a gun at me?”

“G-go ahead.” Agh, she thought, I stuttered!

She stepped aside a pace or two, holding both arms straight out to aim at him, trying to keep them from trembling. The white-shirted young man in the chair spun it slowly to turn and face her. When he saw her, he looked confused. “Carol?”

She nodded, too quickly.

An incredulous look, for a second. Then he burst out laughing, and she really began to sweat. “Carol, you- this-” He was laughing so hard he couldn’t talk.

She said nothing, and couldn’t help but wonder just how dumb she looked.

He reached for a tissue, and wiped at his face. “Well, Carol, congrats on your rebirth! Welcome to the club.”

“I know what you are.” All of a sudden she wanted to cry, and she knew it came through in her voice.

“Yes, I know.” The man regained his composure and looked up at her. “And you’re lucky that you weren’t dumped in a creek. Did you know that?”

She said nothing, and he went on. “And now that you’ve got your life back, you’ve decided to … to dress up in a costume and come up here and kill me. For revenge, I guess. Is that it?”

She shook her head, unable to speak.

“What is it, then?”

“You’re going to tell everyone what you are.” She shook the cameraphone in her hand. “I’m going to take a video of you changing. Then you’re going to say how you cheated everyone. And killed me.” Carol tried her best to keep her voice level.

“You’re wasting your time,” he said.

“Y-you’re not going to talk?”

“No, I mean this is a waste of your time.” He gestured at her. “Just look at yourself. You risked your life getting in here, and for what? To put some small-time corporate con artist away?”

“Murderer.” She growled at him.

“Yes, well, there was a reason for that. And as you can see, you’re not dead, now are you?” He clasped his hands underneath his chin, leaning his elbows on the arms of his chair, and smiled at her.

“I didn’t come here just to put you in jail,” she snarled, anger taking over where fear left off. “I want you behind bars so that I can go back to living my life, without having to worry about you killing me again.”

He shook his head, sadly. “Rule number one of rebirthing. You don’t get to have your old life back.”

“I will if you’re out of the way!”

“No, you won’t,” he said. “Think about it. What are you going to tell your family? Your life with them will never go back to normal.”

“They know I’m a ‘morph. They just don’t know all what that entails yet. And they already think I’m weird.”

“Do you really think you’ll get your old job back?”

She narrowed her eyes. “Do you really think I want it?”

He leaned back in his chair, and put his hands behind his head. “You have all the answers, don’t you?”

“And now, I want answers from you.” Carefully, without taking her eyes off of him, she thumbed the controls on her phone and set it to record video.

“Ask me how I survived the last person who tried to kill me,” he said, smiling.

“H-” She coughed. “How did you survive?”

“I didn’t,” he said, and spun his chair around slowly.

“Don’t move!” she said, and waved her gun helplessly at the back of his chair.

When he came back around, he had the face of a cat, with glossy black fur and emerald green eyes. His hands pressed together beneath his chin, and sharp claws came out from them and tapped each other. “I didn’t survive,” he repeated. “But I have nine lives.”

“Wh-”

He screamed as he sprang at her.

* * *

Carol had seen her cats get into fights before. They were so fast she couldn’t even tell who was winning until one broke off and ran. There was just an explosion of fur, and then two cats would run out of it, one of them chasing the other.

Those cats meant business. So did this one. One second she had a gun trained on him, the next it went off and she was rolling around on the floor, crashing into furniture, trying to get this whirlwind of blades off of her. It was like being attacked by a million pairs of scissors, and it was all she could do to keep them from cutting her open. Fur went everywhere, and so did pieces of fabric and upholstery, and after only a few seconds the room was a cloud of flying debris.

If someone had watched it in slow motion, they might have seen her grabbing his arms, and then him pulling his hind claws up to her stomach, and then her pulling away while still holding onto him and the both of them crashing into the plant. But Carol couldn’t watch in slow motion, and so she could barely tell what was going on. Except that everything in the room was being destroyed, and she wanted to keep this from happening to her.

Hadn’t she been holding a gun at one point? There it was, on the floor. She grabbed it in one hand, and he grabbed her arm, and she swung the gun into the side of his head and it went off as she did so. Plaster and insulation clouded the room from the new hole in the ceiling, followed by potting soil as she grabbed a handful of it off the floor and flung it in his face.

Clutching his face, blinking dust out of his eyes, he dropped to one hand and swung his legs in a clawed spin-kick. Carol dove towards the door, but he caught her tail and it stung and threw her off-balance.

There was a pause of about one second as she stood there leaning against the doorway in pain, looking into the clouded room and then down the hallway, as two men in security outfits rounded the corner. Then he pounced her again, and they were in the hall tumbling and kicking holes in the wall. And people were shouting at them, but she couldn’t hear, because he was screaming. (Or was she?)

Then a gun went off again, and she didn’t know if it was hers or someone else’s, but blood sprayed across her as he recoiled and let go. She didn’t stop to think but took off, down the hall, stumbling and staggering but running as fast as she could. There was another gunshot as she rounded the corner, and she couldn’t feel anything but didn’t know if it was because they had missed or because she was so high on adrenalin.

All Carol knew was that she had to get away, right now. And that running footsteps were chasing her.

* * *

He approaches the man from behind, unable to see his face in this light. Or his tail.

“Sir! Are you alright?”

The man just stands there clutching his chest, taking deep shuddering breaths and coughing. It looks like he’s bleeding.

“Sir!”

He comes up next to the man, and something taps his leg. He looks down, and it’s a swishing tail. He looks up just as something hits him in the side of his face, and he loses consciousness.

A cat in a tattered, stained shirt leans against the wall and grits his teeth for a second, before something tiny and metallic PLINKs from his chest to the floor. He wipes at his muzzle with the back of his hand, then lurches forward, unsteady at first but soon settling into a run.

* * *

Carol turned sideways to slam into the crossbar on the door, going through without losing momentum, then stopped at the head of the winding staircase. Stairs! was all she could think.

Running footsteps, rounding the corner behind her. For a second, she had a vision of herself jumping over the railing and floating down dramatically, wings outstretched. Then she had another vision, of herself smacking into the concrete. She winced.

Carol jumped, as a shot bounced off the door, and took off running again.

It occurred to her, in between smacking into the wall at each landing and scrambling to take off down the next flight, that this had been a long night and she really wanted to go home. Hey, maybe I’ll get to go home now! she thought. Having to be with her family seemed downright happy compared to that cat fight.

She grabbed the rail of the last flight, trying to round it without smacking into the wall, when a gunshot from above bounced off of it right next to her hand. She fell backwards, landing on her wings and tail in a heap and so filled with adrenalin that all she could do was flail and kick her legs, not sure which way was up.

While she was doing that, a cat was knocking a person out several stories above her. Then she got back on her feet, just as a dark-colored blur dropped down between all the stairs. It rolled to a stop as she ran down the last flight, then came up at the end of it while she was about halfway down. A shaft of light from the window behind her shone on his fur, and his glowing eyes.

And on the gun in her hands.

Oh right, I’m still carrying this! She held it pointed at him, the stairwell silent except for their echoing breaths.

Carol remembered their last standoff, and how badly it’d ended for her. But whatever had happened between then and now, it looked like he’d gotten the worst of it. She felt exhausted, but he looked even moreso. And as she watched, he dropped to one knee, gasping for breath and not even looking at her.

“You’ve lost a lot of blood,” she ventured, “haven’t you?”

He just nodded.

She wanted to lean up against the wall herself, but she was afraid to show weakness. They stood there for a couple of moments, long enough for Carol to feel dizzy as the adrenalin started to wear off.

“Bet you can’t … ” The cat gasped for breath. ” … finish me.”

“Huh?” Carol blinked.

“Got to do what it takes … ” He took several breaths. ” … to stop me. From going after you.”

“Y-you’re going to go after me?”

“Didn’t you?” He glared at her.

As she watched, he rose to his feet, a murderous look in his eyes. And then he began to climb the stairs towards her.

“Stop,” she said.

He went on.

“I mean it!”

The next few seconds would have ended badly for Carol, no matter what she had decided to do. But just then, she heard cars screeching and pulling up outside. Sirens wailed, and colored lights shone in through the windows.

The cat turned to look, and his ears flattened.

Carol looked between him and the door, her brain frozen. Then somebody pulled the door open, and without thinking she turned around and shot out the window on the landing above her.

“Don’t move!” someone shouted. But she wasn’t listening.

Pounding footsteps, gunshots, screams and noises of fighting echoed off of the walls behind her … as Carol ran through the window, jumped off the ledge, and flew.

* * *

The next day, the phone rang at her parents’ house. On the other end was a voice that sounded like their daughter’s, or like hers would if she were in massive pain. It wanted them to come get her, at a certain motel in a town in the next state, and to get her motorcycle at another motel in the same town.

They got there around noon. Carol had been up the entire day, unable to fall asleep because of muscle pains in her arms, legs, back, side, wings … pretty much everywhere. And she hadn’t taken anything for it, because she didn’t have anything to take.

She was still part-bat and part-possum, and was still wearing her torn stealth outfit. At least the color helps hide the bloodstains, she thought, gritting her teeth against the pain as they helped her into the car. A couple of tablets of painkiller and a pillow bought from the motel helped her fall asleep on the drive back, and the last thing she thought was I hope it isn’t too hard on them when the police catch up with me.

As it turned out, she needn’t have worried.

Carol woke up that evening when her mom walked into the living room and turned on the TV, after letting her crash the entire day. The lights were off and the volume was low, but it was loud enough for her to hear.

She winced, still wrapped up in blankets, and tried to shut her ears to it. But then she heard something about First Federal … and slowly, trying not to move her neck too much, she looked back over at the TV set.

She expected to see footage of the place where they’d fought. Of the torn-up office, and the stairwell where she’d flown off. But instead they were interviewing people, about how the bank had gone belly-up. Apparently they’d bought too many worthless loans from other banks, all so a ‘morph with ties to the others could profit from it. The police had him in custody now, on charges of fraud and assaulting a police officer, and the bank was closing down.

Carol’s heart sank as she watched, because she remembered that she’d left her phone there. It had everything on it … but was it even still working? Were her fingerprints recognizable? She didn’t know. And over the next few days as she recovered, nobody called them or showed up asking about her. Eventually, she forgot. And to all appearances, so did her parents. They never asked her any questions, and she never told them anything.

* * *

Halloween was that weekend. Carol spend the late afternoon giving out candy at the door, and the evening talking with her boyfriend and friends online. She didn’t have any proof of what she’d just been through, and it seemed almost like a dream. But somehow, it was one that she kept reliving.

It had been scary at times, but it had also been exhilarating. And she kept coming back to the fact that she’d done it, that she’d made her plan and carried it out and kept from being killed again or captured. She’d never known that she had it in her. And it made her wonder if maybe she shouldn’t be looking for a new line of work.

The next weekend, she heard how another ‘morph somewhere in New York had brought down the gang that had “killed” him and his family. And when she looked, she read similar stories from all over the world, of ‘morphs and people with other abilities. Everyone was suspicious of them, but they were doing things that no one else could.

People like her were making a difference.

The next evening she said goodbye to her parents, and rode off into the night. Somewhere, somebody needed her help, and she wanted to be there for him or her.

And maybe get a pet dog …