A fine silver mist hung over the vacant lot, so dense it blurred the moon. The usual sounds of the city had been reduced to hallucinatory echoes, high-pitched and distant. Approaching the imitation-hotel, past sunset on a winter night, Sao was half expecting to see ghosts rising into the air.

He was still staring into space when she tugged his arm in the direction of the lobby.

Not a soul approached them, living or dead - in fact they did not see a single person in the lot or in the lobby. In the elevator he thought he heard voices around the third floor, an unhappy argument that faded as the elevator continued to rise.

He let her lead them to Marina’s apartment, down the same dim, musty corridor he had passed through weeks before. The old woman was nowhere to be seen. The lightbulb that had been flickering and buzzing during Sao’s last visit had gone dead. They passed through the slice of darkness under it and there was Marina’s door.

Three padlocks. With three silver keys they went down with unexpected ease, and the door swung open.

Sao peered in from the doorway. There was a faint violet imprint of a window in the darkness. She had been right about one thing, at least the heating was in operation.

He felt neither hot nor cold.

“Why don’t you come in?”

She wasn’t standing in front of him anymore. She was behind him, one slim hand loosely held on the door, a small smile raised. It was hard to say no.

“Sure,” he said. “Thank you very much.”

---

The lights flicked on. It was the warm, muffled amber glow of old lamps and candles, coming from an simple electrical bulb. Marina had possessed some artistry when it came to lighting.

“Why don’t you sit down?” she asked, stepping in behind him again.

He moved up the hall. A sour scent hung about the flat, thin in the air. He paused to take it in. Behind him, the door creaked, and closed. The security chain slid into its notch.

“What a nice little place,” he said.

“Don’t lie,” she laughed. “This place is terrible. It’s always so dark.”

“I don’t think so. What you’ve done with it, it’s most definitely a home.”

“I… I try.” She stood by her shoes a while, shifting on her sore heels. “These shoes...”

“Forget about me, you look like you’re the one who needs a seat.” Sao tentatively lifted a cushion to plump it. It had a velvety casing, too delicate for sleep. Ocean blue. The couch body was white, though not the immaculate bleach-white of his apartment’s own loungers.

Seeing him pat the pillows down and settle among them, leaving copious space for her, Marina exhaled, slung forward as if she were considering it, but held back.

“No, not yet. Why don’t you wait here while I get you something?”

“Hm?”

“I know, why don’t I make some tea for you?”

He could nearly feel the reins of nerves in her voice. So he smiled. “That’s something I don’t hear often. Tea would be perfect.”

“It could take a while.” Marina rubbed her foot at a gap in the floorboards. “To heat up the water.”

“Take your time. I’ll be warming up myself. God, and to think I was going to take us back to my icebox apartment. Where would I be without you?”

A pink flush rose on her cheeks, real enough for a fake face. She smiled and quickly slid into the kitchen.

He heard the snapping of a gas stove being started up.

The kitchen was the room nearest to the front door. He couldn’t leave unnoticed.

Sao rose to his feet and started collecting his bearings. A bit like looking for directions and waypoints in a new land. What he was looking for were signs. When he had first left the greens and glassy reflections of Wishfort school (it had been so many years now) that was what he had done. He had been with a friend, not knowing a damn thing about life, but running free. They strode farther and farther away from those safe white walls because one knew nothing better than to follow the other. To take their minds off their mutual mistake, they talked and talked, relentlessly pointing out any and everything with smiles like lead, any little highlight would do. Freedom was terrifying.

Look over there. You could block a sword with those books. And look at those photos. Step right up, off the roadside and through the door have a look at Miss Marina and company’s greatest feats.

His friend was no longer with him, but he had grown adept enough at holding conversations with himself.

Marina’s study was encased in books, with a wooden desk and banker’s lamp set at the center. A wave of realization washed over him, it was the storybook library he’d expected from Rai’s office, the day he arrived there. The thick, picturesque books looked to be texts from her school days, though if they were in fact for post-graduate quantum engineers he would know no better. Quantum, quantified, quark, the words between were just as specialized. All he knew was that such alliteration of Qs was a rare sight.

She had a diploma in a dusty frame, but the frame was leaning against the desk, on the floor. Her honors were hand-written in explosive looping script - he could make out letters (severals Qs too) but it appeared to be in another language. He propped it against the desk. There was little free wall space for a the diploma among the hanging photographs.

The photos were varied, a kaleidescope of colors and subjects. Marina with her high school classmates. In an aquarium. With friends again. Marina with a large orange cat. Marina with and older couple who must have been her parents. Marina leaning out of the driver’s seat of a run-down convertible.

So the doppelganger’s ability to drive was technically part of the disguise. He wondered if that fit its criteria. Moneyed, good looking, ability to drive.

Small, inconsequential thoughts now.

Not all of the photos contained people. There was a bright fuschia sunset and another frame of a clear night. Several of cats and fish solo. Lilies on a pond and a poppy field. The pictures trailed the hallway into the bedroom.

By the time he reached the end of the trail he could feel the gentle calm of the homeowner enclosing him - the real one, not the impostor in the kitchen. Her soul had been entirely inoffensive - intelligent but not beyond touch (like certain self-induced scholar-slash-investigators he knew). Her little exhibit had no shocks or protrusions, they were perfect prints yet it was not factory-made. There were human faces and just enough mismatch in color, angle and blur - it was simply the perfect median of comfort. There was only one feature that surprised him, or rather a lack of it - end of the trail and he had not seen a single cityscape. In that way, his idea of comfort differed from hers.

What they were. Did it matter? He wouldn’t be able to argue aesthetics unless she was alive.

This was a bad track to go down. His hands were cold. He slid them into his pockets. His face was cold too, but there was nothing to do about that. Not much he could do about any of this. What in the world was he going to do?

Take a breath, the seafoam bed reassured him.

The bedroom shared tones with the rest of the flat - pale wood and blue paint. Sand and clouds. On soft down comforters and a paper lampshade they padded out his nerves and muted out his inner voice as it started to rattle. Reminders to breathe. He could nearly hear her voice. The air eased a little around him.

In his pockets, his hands loosened.

“Marina? Sorry to bother, may I use this restroom?”

At first, no answer. Was his tour over? But no, from several walls away he heard an answer, “Of course. It’s at the end of the hall, you gotta go past the bed...”

“In the bedroom?”

“Yeah.”

Sao entered the small tiled room and closed the door. Another room the color of shells and clear water, down to the steel feet of the tub. He hadn’t seen a tub with feet in a long time. He brushed away some dust and rested against the edge. With the pale colors it was difficult to see, but there was an awful lot of dust for a bathroom. It had not been used for a while.

The pleasant signs of Marina’s old presence were struggling.

That’s okay. Warning signs are only informative.

There was a ball of some soft material hidden in his pocket, retrieved from the couch. It was the same deep blue as the cushions so the shifter must have overlooked it. Sao pulled the crumpled shape from his pocket. Four teardrop corners unfolded into a small butterfly made of sequined fabric. The shape was missing its head, with a fraying edge where it had been torn off.

It was Marina’s keychain, sans its giant ring of keys.

It doesn’t look good, but what did you expect? We know she’s more than likely gone- That didn’t sound like him.

It’s okay. This doesn’t tell you anything didn’t already know. That was a bit better. You’re only here to see the sights and to confirm for yourself - again - what you should already know. So have you seen enough yet? What can you do? Let someone else take over.

He yawned. For the first time in days, he was getting sleepy while on the job. He wanted to return to bed - his own bed, which had been occupied for far longer than he should have allowed.

With a final stretch he lifted off the edge of the tub and gave the toilet handle a press before exiting. The room was still empty, with not much more than a bit of the mottled sour odor drifting in from the hall. His host was still in the kitchen - now that was a good sign. He was still breathing easy. But he wasn’t out the door.

It was just a little lump on the sky blue bedspread. It was angled against the light such that it was only visible when leaving the room. A faint, oval shadow. It looked so easy to just smooth down.

Sao tugged the blanket. The shadow hardened and there was a metallic clink.

He frowned and shifted the comforter back.

The first thing to catch his eye, the glint of steel-banded watch. Heavy, square and familiar, the sort seen on rugged wrists in a costly men's magazine.

Oliver's? Locke’s? One of the missing men. Well - they’re not missing anymore. But it’s nothing you didn’t expect, right? This creature has taken two-

Now what caught his eye was a beetle-brown triangle still half-hidden by the blanket. Sao pulled and stood back. Spread across the sheet were a dozen or so wallets. At least half were leather, pricey pieces. It would be a terrible idea to pick one up. But that was what he did.

There was a company identification card, expired in the last year. The face on it was unfamiliar, a decent-looking man with thin stubble. Sao was dim enough to feel relief. Picking up another, an unfamiliar name and face. But by the third, the pattern was clear.

Locke T_____. The same photo seen on his missing persons poster. The gold-lover, beaming like nothing could get him down.

Sao flipped through the remaining wallets, and sure enough, Oliver’s image was soon gazing out at him among ten other faces that - he now realized - were all brown haired, groomed, well paid and a good number sporting drivers licenses. Forget about their three theoretical links - the chain was emerging from the sea like an anchor, massive, going over his head, each link more worn and mangled than the last.

Sao placed the wallets back in their nest, smoothed them down and yanked the blanket over them. The room screamed at him to breathe but it was not so easy now.

Things were bad. The words of Rai’s good old grandpa Cadmus - what was his name again? - remember where you stand. Well gramps, I’ve just found myself standing in front of a dozen corpses and I wish I could forget. Yes, there were signs, landmarks and information, warning signs and then there were baldfaced bad signs.

He had been trying to avoid categorizing any of the sights so cruelly - after all, after two bodies and a missing third, there should have been nothing he did not already suspect. But the world continued to surprise him, even after so long. Apparently he had learned nothing from his childhood - idiotic camping trips, too much smug childish pride to turn back, then walking straight into a strange forest, now straight into a cannibal’s lair. There were years of disappearances here - the investigation had been too late from the moment it started.

Men who must have gone missing long ago, from other cities, cut up and sunk or burned or locked away. Any of them could be rotting in cars that were never found, fully hollowed out by crows and wolves. People he would never meet.

Now Rai’s words, hot on the tail of his grandpa: What are you smiling at?

Sao raised his head. On the opposite wall was a framed photograph, in a place he’d only see when exiting the room. Marina, in a day when her hair went below her shoulders, standing in the sun. Behind her, the a sweep of sand and the ocean.

No more than a foot away from the frame, was the open door. On the floor, there was a shadow. He had set his head down too long. It was too late to make a run for it.

He had never been much good at running, anyway. He cleared his throat.

“I see you have been to the beach after all,” he said. “When was that?”

The shadow remained where it was.

Sao softened his next words, almost tearful in acceptance. “There’s no tea, is there?”

Still, nothing.

“The washroom was dusty. You haven’t been in here a while. I doubt you have milk in the fridge. The smell in here - no, from the kitchen - that’s spoiled food. Someone should take the trash out.”

This got a quiver, so quick it was almost unintelligible. He heard the sound of air escaping, or being suctioned, like in a balloon.

“It was a bad idea for me to come here. I’ll admit I… led you to invite me. But my heater - did you break it?” Sao searched the room for support. Everything looked so damnably soft. “Did you ever consider the reverse? Where I may have invited you into a trap? Nothing so devious but - oh, let’s start with today. Do you remember the name of the place we had dinner? Our waitress.”

The shadow may have grown closer in the time he took his eyes off it.

“You should have remembered it all,” Sao murmured, “I was giving you a chance because I suppose I had some hope that you may have been innocent. Or you had settled, at least... That this really was a misunderstanding. But you’re not who you say you are. In case you never found out - that waitress was your friend. Or rather, the friend of the girl you ate. But you, whatever you are, you wouldn’t have known. You never got to meet her. Icey was familiar, you saw her when you met Marina - let’s see, at the time, were you posing as Oliver, scoping out Locke?”

He considered the bathroom again. No, that door wouldn’t hold.

“Marina was the brains of her group. She was the only one who could name my condition, off the top of her head. She was an engineer. Why did you try to replace her, of all people? Judging by your past... achievements, you favor mens' forms, and a particular appearance. You took at least three of them. So the question then is, why did you suddenly take Marina?" The old wallets and cards were burned in his mind. "And why pose as her? Corporate women of Central are fastidious - dark underwear with a sheer white shirt? I know it’s hard to catch before you leave the house. And- and stilettos to a casual dinner? And the night with Zeke, and Icey - the massive men’s watch? An impressive piece for sure, but a bit too stand-out for one playing the role of Marina. Did you forget to take it off? Or did you just like the feel of it?”

Could he slide under the bed? No, it was years since he was small enough for that.

“Since it seems I’m not going anywhere, let me just get this off my chest,” Sao said, feeling that his words were coming a bit too quickly. “You could have gotten away. You could have taken any of your bodies and just… lived. But you had to try to fit yourself into the life too, the life you yourself destroyed. Did you not even observe them before taking a bite? A mustard suit with Oliver’s complexion, to a nighttime dive? The most expensive jackets with off-colored pants? Rubbing your sleeves all over the table? On the surface, their lives looked wonderfully easy, but that's the misconception. They didn't attain coherency without thought or effort. It takes years for a person to learn, to become what they are. Tearing off and pasting a face over your own won't just entitle all that to you. It's just... it's such a waste.”

He sighed.

“A waste of perfectly good humans. Look, I can understand not liking the skin you’re in. Everybody wishes they could look like, even be someone else, at least once in their lives. I couldn’t blame you for switching out once, or even twice; you might have gotten away with it, landed a good life. You're lucky in that sense: humans can't make transformations on whim alone... but I suppose that’s also why you don’t understand commitment to life. When people change, it hauls along everyone and everything that’s been built around them. So it should come down to a little more than your own little likes and dislikes if you’re killing - hunting people for their skins, tossing innocents in the path of police a--”

“The cops know what I am. You told them.” The voice was undulating away far from Marina's light tone, the waves sweeping Sao away from his ramble.

“I didn’t have to. Once they found the bodies, it was clear.”

“The bodies. Which ones?”

A crack formed in Sao’s throat. Air escaping. That voice was no longer someone he'd ever have chosen to speak to.

“Oliver and Locke. They were in the forest, in your car. The car you used to take me home the night you-”

“I don’t need a reminder. I’ve been matching those names to those bodies for weeks.” The voice took on an uncomfortable rasp, like the static of an unadjusted television. “They didn’t last long. I don’t try to take on strong bodies anymore, but they could have lived longer, if they hadn’t been so difficult.” Rasp, gargle. Then a deepened tone. “It’s not skins I care about. Its what that skin brings with it. Being a man in the city is supposed to be safe, easy. That’s all I wanted. Simplicity. I studied - it was never supposed to take this long - I was planning to settle as soon as I found the right fit. And Oliver had so much money - he told me as much when I met him. But as I found, he lived in a box. The roof falling in, next to a hundred other boxes. I couldn’t live there, I couldn’t even figure out how to get to the funds. I could have let him go, if only he’d given me that.”

“How difficult for you,” Sao droned.

The croaking voice ignored him.”The second - you saw where he lived. Gold all over. A house I could actually live in - hide in. Not nose-to-nose with neighbors, or up some moldy slab like this place. But just my luck - he was sick or broken — didn’t take care of himself — in any case we weren’t compatible. I tried, but from the start... something about his flesh bled me inside out. I could hardly breathe, couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t live a day in that skin of his. I would have died. So I made a jump - and that’s when you caught me. She wasn’t a pretty girl, not too smart either, she followed me right out when I looked a bit sick-”

“She was being kind. You might have fit the role better if you’d picked up that characteristic.”

“Her house is so... juvenile. And this sort of body is a nightmare... but I did learn that as a woman, everyone will look at you differently. It wouldn’t be hard to move on. Women can get so close to people, so easily...”

“To who? I’m the only one here, and your game is over.”

The shadow rippled.

It was now speaking easily in the newly formed sandpaper tone. Marina was long gone. “So you always suspected that I wasn't the girl. You saw what happened to the others. And you still followed me. You still wanted to come here - you made yourself look like the perfect catch. I only imagine you wanted to be eaten.”

“Of course not.”

“But it’s what you wanted me to believe, so you could come here.”

“Did you believe that” he asked.

There was a lull. He heard pipes creak and his bones jolted. But the shadow on the floorboards didn’t move.

“I thought…” the strange voice trailed. “I never believed all of it. You always knew too much. I could have ended you any time, but there was something about you... that you probably never intended. I thought you might...”

Creak.

“I thought you might be like me.”

Sao lost himself and released a high pitched laugh. The shadow did not move. “My boss thought the same thing. Thought I was a shapeshifter. He’s something of a specialist.”

“You former boss. That all a ploy too?”

“That it was. He knows about this, no doubt he’s on his way now. And he’s already suspicious of me without any body-double business, so taking on my body probably won’t end well for you. One thing I wasn’t joking about: he doesn't hesitate to be touchier than he should, when he's sure of himself.”

There was no movement. No noise. Even the pipes were silent, as though they were listening for the magic words.

“What happened to her?” Sao said at last. “That’s the only reason I’m here. We both could have ended things at any time, and maybe you thought I was one of your kind, but this is my reason – you'd be the only one who knew where she was. Whatever her condition is – I know what to expect – but where is she?”

“She’s gone.”

His jaw tightened. “That’s not an answer.”

“I don’t have any reason to say more.”

“At least tell me if she’s dead.”

“I’m not saying any more to you.”

“Is it so much trouble to give a yes or no? Or even an ‘I don’t-’”

“What the hell’s wrong with you? Are you picking a fight? You, of all people?”

Sao felt the dresser at his back. He couldn't say more.

The shadow shrank back towards the living room. Sao gathered enough of himself to take a step forward.

“Tonight’s little get-together won’t go anywhere further for either of us. Someone like me can’t hold down a fight, and I’m sure you’re tired, and things will only get worse once the police get in. They have taken down massive groups of shifters before, you won’t stand a chance. Don’t give them a reason to do anything dramatic.”

He stood before the study and straightened his shirt.

“I recently got through a report where over thirty shifters were killed in their own home. A gruesome case, big news back in the day. They were rounded up, marked and shot. I don’t think it’s necessary, but I don’t know what a raid team can do. Even you don’t deserve that. So, whoever you are - put on a form you like, and let’s let this end peacefully. Please.”

With that offer, he rounded the corner and instantly let out a high-pitched wheeze. In the center of the room was a corpulent shape, at least a head taller than he was, broad and trunk-legged, with wildly mismatched arms, one still pulsating into shape. Muscles wrapping, sculpting into a hand that could dash his head to pieces easily. The delicate ladies blouse and pantsuit were just resisting being split at the seams, a second skin to an abdomen that seemed to be moving too much, of its own accord.

One hand, the larger of the two, had completed its transformation and was wrapped around a knife. As if it too had mutated and grown, what Sao was seeing was not a small, slender blade to be hidden in a pocket but the square block of a meat cleaver.

Marina was a vegetarian, he thought. This was not her knife.

But that was not her hand either. Because she was gone - for the most part.

Atop of the mass of skin and muscle perched a head something like Marina’s, peering down, disconnected as a plastic doll’s on a mound of meat. Her cheeks were moving, not in expression, but pulling the face into a shape that would better matched those arms. The brow grew, darkened.

Sao stood poised in the entrance to the living room, framed in the shadow for a full second before he hurtled back into the hallway.

---

He could admit that he had gotten a little smug in the moment, but did he really deserve all this? Why had this creature's battle-ready bruiser form not made an earlier appearance? It was fruitless to beg the universe for courtesy but Sao had thought his luck better than that. And were all of the reasonably sized knives used up? Was the cleaver punishment for all the situations he had dodged with his ‘condition’? Divine retribution?

Don’t overthink things. Too late to be reciting that. Backed into the study, Sao ran over fifty questions in his head. He scanned the walls and picked at the edges of his face. He contemplated every god he knew while braced behind the hardwood desk. Across from him was the knife, the large hand, the human in parts but not altogether.

“Y-you don’t want to do this,” Sao rattled off so quickly he wondered if his words were coherent. “When the police arrive and see you looking like-”

“I’ll take care of it when they come. If they come at all.”

“They’re on their way.”

“If you aren't lying.” Pinprick eyes peered down at him, too sharp for Marina’s face, too small for the body below it. “You lie a lot. But it’s not always lies is it? You mix in little truths - what you’re feeling, the way people are - that’s what makes it hard to tell....”

“I get it. You think I’m lying so I can just walk out. If you need gunmen swarming in as proof, then I’ll wait with you, but let's sit--”

“No.” The deep, scraping voice enclosed his. “I only know, no matter what happens, you won’t be on my side. But if the cops walk in, and only see you waiting for them--”

In other words, a fake Sao - the real one chopped up and stuffed under the sink.

“I’m sorry,” the shifter said.

Tensed behind Marina’s leather desk chair, Sao blurted, “That won’t work.”

He didn’t have chance to explain why. One hulking arm lashed out and swept the desk aside like cardboard. The cleaver came down on him. Sao flopped back and the blade slashed air.

He heard the screaming air behind him as he rolled away and promptly collided with a bookshelf. He set a hand on it, head spinning. Another swish, inches away. There was no time to look, he scrambled, half crawling, alongside the bookcase and when he landed the shelves behind him exploded.

Loose sheets fluttered to the floor. Spirit Studies Quarterly. Theoretical Quantum Mechanics III.

An enormous hand with dusty haired knuckles fastened onto his collar.

“Wait,” he said, grasping for anything he could reach. “Wait, wait-” He wasn’t sure what else to say.

He could smell the skin from where he stood, could see it dripping. A small woman’s head balanced precariously on body of completely different color, size, poise. Shoulders bare. Sweat sliding against his neck. The knife was the most believable thing about the whole situation. Eyes watering, Sao swung as hard as he could.

His bones shook. He reeled back from he impact like a ragdoll.

The cleaver landed deep in Volume III of reactor terminology and construction. 600 wafer thin pages hugged the blade in place. So the book were thick enough to stop a knife - almost. The tip of the blade pierced through the back cover and gouged a small way into his palm.

He kept his mouth shut.

The tiny dots of light set in Marina’s face turned to the book, its fingers loosed for a second and Sao dropped on his rear. He squeaked and crawled out. It was nothing to be proud of, but maybe…

Bloody hand smearing across the floor, he crashed into the living room, pushed himself to his feet and launched himself down the hall to the door.

He heard the old textbook hit the floor with a thud.

The length to the doorknob was interminable. He could hear the footsteps of two mismatched feet, and a lumbering shadow fell over him - the lights went out, the shifter hit the living room switch. But hands outstretched, he knew when he had reached his goal.

Now it was the set of locks that were interminable, why did Marina have so many, what sort of place called for this, how could it be worth it - clockwise or anticlockwise? - up or down - and then they were done too.

Finally, no more, time to go to bed -- Sao turned the knob and pulled. CLACK.

The chain was still in place.

Chains, fucking chains.

“Wait, just wait,” he muttered to nobody.

Okay. One more time. Slam the door closed, curse, to hell with courtesy, grab the chain. Pulling it did nothing, no way did he have the strength to simply break it but in the dark he could barely see past the shadows now, would it open? Was it left or right? Left? A tiny click was all he got for confirmation. But the chain swung out.

“Yes!” he hissed. Dropped a hand on the knob again pulled and-

Something collided with the back of his head, then across his shoulders and back and legs. He realized he was on the receiving end of a considerable full-body tackle. He was thrown forward, and smacked flat against the door. His ribs compressed, all thought and reason went out out of him. The door slammed shut.

The air returned the vaccuum within him as his assailant regained their footing. The center of his body seemed to have caved. Sao winced, swayed and collapsed. It was lucky moment of weakness as the next impact soared just wide of his head and hit the door. Closing it again - Sao saw the lock snap so hard it sparked - but didn’t hear the crack of the latch. Instead, there was a sort of puff, and a muffled crinkling. Against his back, the door bobbed back open, just a sliver.

The shifter, one arm still extended, was looking over his head at the door. Sao twisted to see. In the moment he had opened it, something had wedged in. Crushed in the opening was a hand - five fingers in a black glove, curled around the door’s edge. They must have smashed or at least dislocated in the impact.

But another gloved hand rounded the corner and took hold. A single rust red eye, shadowed in the frugal hallway lights, slipped into view. Sao and the shifter both drew away by reflex.

The hands tensed and the door was pushed open. Quiet and casual, a dinner guest. But the air was nowhere near ready to defuse.

Rai pressed the door to its magnetic reciever and snapped his fingers back into place. Crack, crack - left hand first, then right - and stepped over the threshold.

Staring dead ahead, he passed Sao and closed in on his retreating target. He grew closer and closer on the collapsed shape that seemed to be growing smaller and smaller. Sao rubbed his eyes. Rai stopped in the center of the room, processing, making his judgments. He eclipsed the shape of the shifter - but it was no longer a monster, it was Marina, small and holding the tattered remains of clothing to her chest. He didn’t say anything until footsteps joined him. Sao swivelled again, feeling a bit like a dumb puppet.

Heavy breathing and fabric shuffling behind him. Boots lowered beside him.

“Don’t touch him unless he asks. He’s got a condition,” Rai said without turning.

The uniformed officer at Sao’s shoulder stopped. Sao felt his mind returning, his nerves and muscles slowly easing back to their original states. He exhaled softly and held a hand up against the, pulling himself up. A splash of red spread across the off-white wallpaper. Sao lurched back, inspected his hand. An officer moved to support him. He teetered the other way, and landed against the wall.

“I’m alright,” he said to nobody in particular.

“You learn anything interesting?” Rai asked.

Sao saw the shifter - no, now it was fully Marina’s face - flinch, and tip towards the sofa. Reality was setting in for her too.

“There are a pile of wallets on the bed. This case has more than three victims.”

“And Marina?”

“No,” he said. “He won’t say anything. Just that she’s gone.”

Rai’s head dipped. Paying his respects - or more likely sharpening his gaze on the culprit. Marina’s wide blue eyes in the creature’s head stared back, hands stiff at her sides.

“Careful Rai, she has a knife,” Sao said. “A big one.”

All of a sudden, from the two officers at his side, guns had materialized. Sao’s puppet-strung head swivelled wildly again; Marina, monster or otherwise were swept from his thoughts by an utterly separate fear. “Hey! Hey-- it’s just - there’s no need for that.”

“It’s their job,” Rai said. “Take it easy. Nobody’s going to get shot. Right?” That was for the petite shape before him. “I’m making sure of that, by standing in the way. Nobody's shooting anyone tonight.”

“What’s happening,” Marina’s head mouthed.

“I heard you two from the hallway. My friend here would prefer it that nobody else dies, so let’s cooperate here.”

“So what’s going to happen?” Such a tiny, frail voice.

“Depends on what my higher-ups say. But I’ll just say, creatures like you - ”

There was a sound like a sob. “I just wanted to be human. It was hard, I needed…”

“I know,” Rai bowed his head, it looked like he was adjusting his gloves. “But ordinary people are punished too.”

“Just don’t let them kill me.” A small hand pawed across the ground, and the shifter slid into his shadow. “I’ll go. I’ll do anything.”

“Nobody’s going to kill anyone,” Rai said.

Sao’s neck was set turning like a carousel again. No tact whatsoever from Rai, no comfort and worst of all, no clarity. Shifter-Marina looked as mystified as Sao, god save them. Did the officers really have nothing to offer?

One of the officers pulled on a pair of sunglasses. In the dark hall, at night. His partner then did the same.

Sao was still pondering when Rai peeled off one of his gloves. His hand set the dark room aglow, picture frames and windows filled with neon blue. Marina’s stolen face, a canyon of shadows, gazed up at it in horror and confusion.

“You’ll get an assessment and trial, but as a human,” Rai said. He flexed his fingers, and held out his glowing palm. “I have to make sure it’s fair for both sides. Can’t have you becoming a different person when the day comes. Unfortunately, that’s how human courts work.”

The hand drew close. The shifter slid onto the sofa.

“I won’t. I…”

“Yeah, but you understand, we have to take precautions. Just hold still. This shouldn’t hurt.” He paused, and tilted his head. Sao saw the tired edge of his face illuminated against his own light. Rai was looking at him.

Sao smiled, exhausted. “What?”

“She didn’t even notice the shoulder, right?”

“What do you-” Sao began, but his throat dried out in when he caught the metallic flash in the dark. The cleaver swung above Rai’s head. He raised his gloved hand and caught it, but it kept going down, landing a corner in his shoulder with a thump. Rai choked, and his knees locked.

The shifter rose. It was Marina’s torso, with someone else’s heaving shoulder, and another’s bulging arm. Rai wasn’t going to be able to wrestle that away. Sao's voice felt limp as the shifter-Marina surged upward, arm rising in an arc and threw Rai down. As it did, Rai's hand rose up.

A thud, loud as any of Rai's past conclusions, rattled the room as Rai was dashed against the floor. He let out a slight grunt but his hand remained outstretched and Sao though he was seeing things. What Rai did was deliver to the shifter a limp open-palmed slap.

Pat. It wasn't even a moving slap. His hand landed on her face like a spider.

In spite of it all, Sao let out a sharp gasp of laughter. The officer nearest to him did too.

The shifter, puzzled, reached its free hand to its face to unpeel the odd glowing fixture, but as soon as its fingers made contact with Rai's it released a sharp cry, in a voice Sao had not heard yet.

The cleaver clattered to the floor where it would remain. The shifter’s hands both flew to its face, then down, clawing at its cheeks but not quite able to tear Rai’s hands away. When a fingertip made contact with the blazing glow it snapped away, like it had been burned. Rai pushed himself up on his elbow, pressing his hand harder now and Sao heard something of a fizz, like a can opening. Skin sizzling.

A burn.

Skin and hair flowed desperately around Rai’s fingers in gold and brown and black, melting like tears down Marina, or Oliver or Locke or whoever’s face that was, as if trying to escape in liquid form.

“Stop,” Rai grunted, pulling his hand away for a brief moment. “You'll get stuck between faces like that. Just... put on the one you like, it's gonna be a while.”

Sao recalled Marina - no, it wasn’t her, it was the killer - under the tin bus stop. Under her coat, under her white collared shirt. On her shoulder, where Rai had pressed his hand - in a glove, but the glove had been cut. His blue aura had made contact with shifter flesh, leaving an almond shaped patch of reddened skin. An identifying mark that persisted; why the false Locke refused to show his arm, and even now it held fast even as the false Marina shifted around it.

This was why Life Fountains were of such use to the police.

Eventually, the breathing of the locked duo settled and Rai pressed his hand back again. The shifter pawed at his face, in limp retaliation. Leaning back, Rai muttered, “Just wait, hold on, a little more. I know it seems unfair, but think of the humans you’ll be jailed with. They've already lost their fights, they don't need you snatching their faces. So just hold still." His voice lowered, nearly below the crackle of the deepening burn. “You’re okay.”

Rai had left a mark. And now he was leaving a second.

Sao turned towards the wall, put his hands in in pockets. So much for a future handshake. He could have been the one flailing on the ground, in a tattered suit…

Howling.

He stepped forward and flicked the lights on. The officers blinked, the shrill wailing trailed.

Rai shook his head in a daze. As if the light showed him he was done, he raised his hands and palms came up, trailing light such that it seemed to drip. Sao expected the smell or sounds of burning, but cries aside, there had been not a wisp of smoke, and Rai’s light did not for a second spare a thought for heat.

And while the sound had indicated burning, the person before him didn’t look singed. But they did not look like the person he’d last seen when the lights were out.

The body still rippled, morphing and compacting, but the face was something new, and would never shift again so easily. Marina's dark hair coming from two points in an otherwise brown covering. A pale twist going down the left temple, the beginnings of a beard in one color, a sideburn in another, a soft angled eye socket holding a green eye, while the other was hazel brown. It was unique, almost beautiful.

Rai let the shifter settle to its knees and took its hands, almost kindly, and pressed them into his palm. There was the sound of air escaping. The shifter had no voice now, just wet breaths. No doubt they realized what had happened.

Sao waited. He found he was hoping for a fight, one that wouldn't happen. He had to step in. “Rai, isn’t that enough?”

A scowl. “You think I like doing this?”

“That’s not what I said.”

“Yeah...” Rai blinked as if his eyes stung. “It isn't supposed to hurt much, it's probably just the shock of... losing it. Stiffness in the face, I've heard. But it stops soon, when it's not the whole body. I'm nothing compared to the LFs at the top of the ladder. But you get that I need to make sure. Three murders -- no, more. Sorry. I have to make sure you can't change these either.”

His muttering had slowly changed target from Sao to the prone form before him. With a final inspection, Rai pulled back. The shifter’s reddened hands dropped, one then the other.

Avoiding any further eye contact, Rai lumbered away, nursing his shoulder with his glowing hand. To the officers he flipped a thumb towards the living room, where Sao was attending to his victim. “You have your proof and preparations. That face and those hands won’t be changing anymore, so get them registered.”

Sao slid a tissue box from the coffee table. The shifter raised a hand, but dropped it, wincing. The entire front face of both hands were a mottled red. Their mismatched body sagged like an empty sail. Sao was afraid of a sudden collapse.

“Can you stand?”

The officers stepped up, grabbed the body by its arms and rendered the question useless.

“Do you have a real name?” Sao asked.

The mouth moved, speaking in the unfamiliar voice which had only been put on during their confrontation.

“Take your time,” Sao said.

“Unfortunately, we gotta get moving,” the officer said, the first clear line Sao had heard from either of them. In the light, compared to their charge, the two looked irrevocably human, and he was surprised to find, unpleasant as the creature before them, but in a bland, faceless way.

“The case is over, Sao. Our part in it, anyway,” Rai grunted. Blood was running down his sleeve.

Sao looked at them all in turn and could not help but feel sorry for the shifter. Burned and drained, about to be dragged off, surrounded by creatures of another kind, it was not an enviable position. In comparison, even Rai in his bloodied jacket looked somewhat composed, even proud. It was a hard task to feel sorry for him. He knew what Sao was thinking.

“I’d just like to try one more time to clear things up.” Sao stepped into the living room. The floorboards that had seemed so loose that were suddenly stiffened to silence. Even the pipes had hushed. He lowered his shoulders to their shuddering captive and said, “I asked you before, and you didn’t want to answer. So I may as well ask again, since we may never see each other again. The girl you took. The last victim - Marina - I know she was here." The butterfly in his pocket was tucked against itself silently. Sao tilted his head, so the shifter's face could catch light - so they could see each other. "I'll ask you again: where is she?”

An eye flicked beneath a swollen lid of skin. The mouth seemed plastered shut, lips broad and brown on one side, but thin where Rai had laid his hand.

“You told me a lot. I appreciate it - and I understand some of it, but at this point, I know what you are and what you’ve been doing. Those men you took, in their prime, it was hard to resist, especially when you have nothing. But that’s a lot of bodies going down on your records. What's one more?"

The patchwork face remained shuttered, lips twitching. Sao felt that wedge of guilt.

“So many victims. You could even have held that fact over me, got me before I made it to the door. There was something different about her, wasn’t there? Have lived long enough to learn a sense of chivalry? Moments of compassion? Or was there an accident?”

The shifter only hunched further at his suggestions. The officers tightened their grips on its arms and stared blankly at each other.

“Those are my ideal outcomes. For her to be alive. Because from what I've heard, all you need is a taste of their meat - you don't have to kill to take a form." Sao sighed. "If what happened to her was outside your control, it can’t hurt now to admit it. Even I can see things look bad for you, but it is such that even the smallest grain of help you can offer may make all the difference at trial. Of course, I can’t force you to talk.”

Rai materialized beside him, balling a neon fist. “If it’s force you need...”

“Stop it, Rai. I’d prefer if he talks on his own. After what you did, I don’t know if he can even move his lips. Give us a moment.”

Rai frowned deeply at him and for a moment Sao wondered if the fist would come flying his way. But Rai pressed his glowing hand back to his injured shoulder and sniffed. “Whatever. It can still talk. My burns don’t get past the skin.”

“Is that so.”

A sniff. “Can't get past the boss, huh.” The mismatched face had organized itself into something of a smile. “Is this another act? Got to say, for all your lies and stories, I still believe that you can’t stand him.” the shifter waved a restrained hand at Rai.

Sao smiled. “All stories are at least somewhat based in reality.”

“Hey, I have a question. What the hell is he?”

Rai rested against the wall and scowled. Sao gave him a smile too. “I wonder that myself.”

The shifter's head jerked, not quite laughter. “Do you hear yourself talk? That really tripped me up when we met. You really don’t watch any television?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t quite follow...”

“You’re full of it.” The lips strained like rubber rafts, but the voice was unnaturally clear. “You're treating this like a game, like this is all a story that's supposed to give you a happy ending. The worst of it is that you try so hard to look like the good guy. It’s disgusting. Blabbling along with the anyone would have done what you did... And my… my face... I shouldn’t be here, I should have at least gotten a fight. I shouldn’t be here because of you.”

“At the start, you honestly had me. The whole situation was shrouded in doubts, but I wanted to believe you were Marina up until recently. You can ask him -"

Rai only bared his teeth a bit.

“And your reasons. Really, plenty of humans would love to try what you did, take on a new look, new life at will, in fact, I..." Sao bit his tongue. "But you took her as a stepping stone. Bait, to be tossed aside when you caught something. You understand, after the bodies turned up, we could not continue our friendship.”

“There you go again.”

“Hm?”

“You,” the contorted face spat, “are lying. Real friends? You're not the kind.”

“Evidently you’ve had enough here. Why don’t you try answering my original question? Where is Marina?”

“This is ridiculous. Just arrest me. I get how that works, get me away from here.”

For whatever reason, attention turned to Rai. The wall he was leaning on had become rather blotchy with blood from his shoulder and Sao’s hand. “Why don’t you try to answer to the best of your ability. Before you lose more than your face and hands.” His bare hand flashed in agreement. The shifter flinched.

Sao cut in. “Rai, stop. You don’t have to do that.”

“You won’t find her.”

The voice had dropped several tones, it was a darker voice, it seemed some inner parts were fully operational.

The shifter continued, “I told you, I don’t understand how women work. She definitely broke her leg, when I got her off the roof - I heard the crunch when she fell. And that wasn't me- she only fell because she was trying to run on the pipes - it wasn’t my fault. She was stupid. I would have caught her, but she just fell and snap. When she landed I saw her legs bend out. No more running. But she was alive when I took her.”

“Where did you take her?”

“Here. I wanted to know where she lived before--” The smaller of the mismatched eyes slanted to the floor. “It doesn’t matter because she got away.”

“How?” Sao asked.

“Thought you said her legs were broken,” Rai added.

“I just don’t know, that's why I don't know! What do you want? That’s the answer. She might have tricked me. I thought she couldn’t walk, thought she was asleep but I was wrong. Shouldn’t you be happy about that? Anyway, one moment she was in here, on that couch. Then she wasn’t. I took a few of her fingers but that’s all. If she’s dead, it wasn’t me that did it.” The shifter looked to Rai. Sao didn’t deserve such respect. “Officer, it’s true. I don’t know where she is now. She could be dead, or she could be alive, but I can’t help you figure that out.”

“So you scared her enough to follow you, dropped her off a roof, drove here here – all that but really didn’t see her get away? I find that hard to believe.”

The shifter reluctantly turned to Sao with a torturous grimace. “I don’t care what you believe, it’s not like you were ever truthful to me. How did you know her anyway? I could have ripped your head off any day and if you knew what I was, and I get the feeling you knew that. So why did you stay? Did you really believe you could save her? You were really friends, then? No, I bet you two were an item.”

“Not even close. But I did care for her. And that extended to those around her.”

One of the shifter’s eyes narrowed while the other raised a brow. A dual look of discontent on one face. “This is making me sick. If this Marina girl is alive, I’ll bet she wouldn’t want to come back to this. To you breathing all over her. Lying until the end.”

Sao smiled. There wasn’t much else he could do.

The unbearable standstill drove Rai back into motion. “The burn might be making you nauseous. You can wash your face at the station.”

“Great. Fucking great. Everyone talking about this face I can't even see, anyone have a mirror?”

Rai ignored the jab and instead pulled out his phone, holding it between two glowing fingers, the blood on them dirt-black. “We’re done here.”

The officers nudged their captive towards the doorway. Sao stepped aside, but as they went he could not hold onto his smile as well as he'd liked. He hoped his face was sufficiently shadowed.

“You may not have been who you said you were,” he murmured at the mismatched ears passing by. “But I didn't entirely dislike the person you allowed me to met. If it were another time, we could have been...”

What he got was a long, dull glare which fell into a chuckle. A smile came across that streaked face, five layers of victims in one, all dismissing him. “Suck it in, honorable sir knight. I can't believe you really don't watch TV.”

And out they went. Another set of officers was waiting for them on the ground level, ready to take over. The vacant lot remained vacant, the fog had not raised. The case was not so much solved as it was deflated.

With a newfound lack of purpose, Sao sat on Rai’s battered passenger seat while they trickled down the highway. It was not even so late that they could avoid traffic. Rai turned on the radio. But no matter how he turned the dial, all he got was static.

“I’m getting a coffee,” Rai said.

Sao simply followed along in agreement. It was over.