"l'm leading these guys around in circles and they're blowing the crap out the wall and ceiling trying to shoot me."
"l can't make the stairs. We need more fire-power. Marco, Cassie, morph!
Tobias, keep it up. Keep leading 'em on."
A bird trapped in a house, being chased by two guys with shotguns. Had I just sentenced Tobias to death?
I started to demorph as fast as I could. But while my thought-speak was still functioning, something occurred to me. "Rachel! Ax! Can you guys hear me? Rachel! Ax!"
". . . unh . . . what?"
"Who is that?"
". . . unh ... it is me, Aximili," Ax said.
He sounded dazed. I wasn't surprised. "Ax! Demorph! Time's up!"
"But there are humans here watching me, Prince Jake." Another decision. "Just do it, Ax, we're coming for you! Do you -" My thought-speak went dead as I became more human than rhinoceros.
"Yes, Prince Ja -" Ax fell silent.
I was shrinking. My armored flesh became tender human skin. My face was flat and delicate. But my legs could handle stairs. I still heard the sounds of gunfire from upstairs. And the sad thing was, I was glad. As long as they
were still shooting, it meant Tobias wasn't dead yet.
Marco and Cassie were just becoming human again. They were three-foot-tall lumps of feathers and shrinking beaks and emerging skin.
One wrong move and Tobias was gone. Ax might be demorphing in front of people who might be Controllers. Rachel ... no one knew whether Rachel was even conscious and capable of demorphing. Or alive at all. And now the three of us were utterly vulnerable, weak, pathetic.
I just kept thinking: This wasn't even supposed to be a very dangerous mission. And now, we were as close to being wiped out as we'd ever been.
"Come on!" I said, slurring my words with a mouth that was not yet human. "No chime kleft!"
I started up the stairs, staggering on my shifting, changing legs. The joints weren't right. The toes weren't toes, and my ankles seemed to have no flexibility. But time was up. I dragged myself up those stairs, hoping desperately that I had not killed us all.
J. was human by the time I had reached the top of the stairs. But human isn't a great morph when you're thinking about going against guys with guns.
As I ran I saw, to my horror, something emerge from the flesh of my shoulder. About as big as a fingertip, smashed, the color of mud. It was the bullet that had lodged in my shoulder. By good luck it had ended up outside my body as it morphed into a smaller form.
The bullet dropped to the carpet.
A hawk zipped by overhead, scraping the walls with its wings. A loose feather drifted down.
"What are you guys doing, looking like that?" Tobias demanded.
"Are they still after you?"
"Yeah, but I lost them temporarily. The room they were guarding is down the hall, then through this big, massive bedroom. You'll see a doorway.
Last time I went past, there were still a couple of guys guarding it."
"What do we do?" Marco asked.
I swear, I almost punched him. If one more person asked me what to do ...
"Morph again. Combat mode. Tobias? Try and reach Rachel and Ax with thought-speak. If you get Rachel, tell her to demorph right now, no arguing. If you get Ax, tell him to -"
"l hear my guys coming," Tobias interrupted. "lnto that side room! It's unlocked. I'll lead them away!"
Marco, Cassie, and I all dodged into the side room. I heard the sound of heavy, weary feet tramping by.
"Where is that lousy bird?"
"What I can't figure is why we're chasing it and blowing holes in the walls and ceiling."
"'Cause we want to keep our jobs, that's why," the first man muttered.
By the time they were gone, I was in tiger morph. The rhino was great for busting things down. But I wanted eyes and ears and reflexes to go along with my power. And nothing I'd ever morphed could do as much damage as the tiger.
Cassie had morphed a wolf, Marco a gorilla. In a fight they were our standard morphs.
"Rachel!" I yelled, as soon as my thought-speak was back. "Rachel! If you can hear me, demorph! Demorph now!" To Marco and Cassie I said, "Come on! Let's do this!"
Marco opened the door with his almost-human fingers and we ran. Down the hall, through a bedroom that I swear, without exaggeration, was as big as a basketball court, and up to the doorway, where two very scared-looking guys stood cradling weapons.
One carried a shotgun. The other a small submachine gun. They were thirty feet away. For a frozen moment, no one moved.
I could cover thirty feet in two seconds.
In those same two seconds, the guy with the machine gun could fire ten rounds. He could easily kill me. If he failed, the force of my leap, my desperate need to defend myself, would ensure that he died.
It was time to gamble. "Look, you two men . . ." They stared at me like they were going nuts. They could guess that it was me they were hearing in their heads. But they had never even imagined talking to a tiger before.
Then again, they'd never expected to be face-to-face with a small, angry zoo, either.
"Yes, it's me, the tiger. Don't worry about how
or why. Here's all you need to know: I don't want to hurt you. But I have to go past you. You may shoot me, but you won't kill me fast enough to keep me from taking you down. See this paw?"
I lifted one paw. My tiger paws are about as big around as a frying pan.
I extended the cruel, yellowed claws.
"With this paw, I can literally knock your heads from your shoulders and send them rolling like bowling balls. Now, I don't know what you're getting paid for this job -"
"Not enough," said the man with the machine gun. "I can't believe I'm talking to animals. But that tiger makes sense."
"We're not getting paid nearly enough," his partner agreed. "We put down our weapons and walk away. Agreed, Mr. Tiger?"