by Jess Keating
Mary was the first to make her way down the stairs. “Nikki, we’re here. We came as fast as we—”
She stopped short in front of me, her hair still dripping from the shower. As the rest of the team crowded into the room behind her, Mary searched at eye level. Then her attention dropped to the floor, where I sat motionless.
“Oh.” Her hand whipped up to cover her mouth. “Oh, dear.”
“NIKKI IS A RODENT!” Mo’s high-pitched shriek made everyone jump. He leaped away, grabbing Bert for protection. From what? From me.
Charlie squatted down and held out her hand to Pickles, who still sat protectively by my side. “Technically, ferrets are mustelids, not rodents. Nikki’s probably so scared right now! Here, girl! It’s okay!” She waved her hand at Pickles.
I rolled my ferret eyes and scurried up to Charlie. “That’s Pickles, Charlie,” I said. “I’m Nikki.” I rose onto my hindquarters and batted her hand with my paw.
I have to hand it to Charlie—she handled our little high-five moment like a champ. The others were so thoroughly freaked out, I expected them to turn on their heels, march off the ship in single file, and hop into the ocean.
“Crikey, Nikki.” Charlie lifted my paw. “And it was the ring that did this? Are you sure?”
I rolled my eyes. “No. I was getting bored waiting around for my shower, so I devised a secret and totally plausible experiment that, boom, turned me into a ferret while you all were getting lunch ready—of course it was the ring, are you crazy?!”
“All right, everyone,” Grace said. She clapped her hands together and stood taller, lifting her chin. “I think we’ve seen enough. Whatever has happened to Nikki is our top priority.”
She began pacing around us, whipping everyone out of their stupor. As she took her place at the front of the room, everyone instinctively shifted positions to form a semicircle around her, mimicking their seats in the Situation Room. With Martha away, Grace took her place in the central position.
A small flutter of relief grew inside me. If there was even a tiny sliver of a chance I could get back to my old self, these guys would find it.
“Brainstorm. Now,” Grace said. “What have we got, and what do we do?”
Bert spoke first. “We need to figure out exactly how the ring works. What it does, other than turn our friends into ferrets.”
Mo nodded. “Also who this tech belonged to in the first place.”
“And how they were planning on using it,” Grace added. “Before we were asked to secure it, that is. We need to know everything about it so we can make some sense of what’s happened to Nikki. There has to be some explanation.”
A stir of agreement circled the room, and I was eager to help them. But one thing was missing …
It was Mary—sweet, brilliant, empathetic Mary—who finally said the words I was desperate to hear.
“Um, guys?” She moved into the middle of the circle to sit cross-legged beside me, a show of solidarity and kindness. “I think we definitely need to figure out what the ring is, of course. But the first thing we need to do is get Nikki back. That has to be our priority.”
I gave her a small ferret smile. But it looked like I was baring my tiny little fangs at her, which caused her to jump back in alarm.
“Sorry!” I said, leaping over to touch my paw to her knee. “Old habits. I was only trying to smile!”
Leo pinched his lips together. “Agreed. To get Nikki back, we need to know how we lost her in the first place. Retrace your steps, Nikki. Do you remember what happened before you changed? What you were doing?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. I mean, I put on the ring, but nothing happened right away. It was emitting a weird humming sound. And then it went berserk and started to … pulse. The metal flattened out and took over my hand, and my skin began to burn. The last thing I remember was seeing my skin ripple—which stung like heck—and then I blacked out!”
The others let out their breaths all at once, shoulders sinking.
“And nothing happened between you putting the ring on and turning into a … a mustelid?” Mary asked, darting a glance at Charlie.
“Nope,” I said. I plunked down next to Pickles on the floor, suddenly feeling more tired than I’d ever been. Either it took a lot of energy to be a ferret, or the whole transformation was taking more of a toll on me than I realized. I leaned into Pickles’s shoulder and yawned. She nuzzled her face into me protectively.
“Wait!” I said, hopping back up. “Pickles!”
Hearing her name made Pickles’s ears perk up.
“What about her?” Grace asked.
“She started to freak out,” I said. I waved my tiny paw in the air. “When I put on the ring, nothing happened. But within seconds, Pickles was right there, nipping at me and trying to tug it off. At the time I thought she was scared by the sound it made, but maybe …” I turned to Pickles, who was staring back at me with her bright chocolate brown eyes. “Maybe she knew the ring was bad news.”
“Or maybe Pickles turned the tech on?” Bert asked. “Accidentally, of course. Could she have hit some kind of switch?” He mimicked pushing a fake button on his own hand.
“I didn’t see anything like that.” My whiskers drooped out of my eyeline as I frowned. “But …” I trailed off, pondering those last moments as a human.
The others perked up. “But what?” asked Mary.
I sniffed, suddenly feeling embarrassed. What had I said to Pickles just before the transformation happened? “I was jealous of her,” I admitted, avoiding their eyes.
“Jealous? Of Pickles?” Grace made a face.
“I might have said that I wanted to be a ferret … ?” I shrugged, sending my furry shoulders near my ears.
“Why on earth would you want to be a ferret?” Charlie crossed her arms.
“Well, I didn’t know this was going to happen, obviously!” I began pacing around Pickles. “I only said it as a joke! She lives a life of leisure—she’s totally spoiled! I just said it in passing, but I think that may have been just before the transformation started.”
Leo let out a loud whoosh of air. “Is it even possible?” he turned to Bert.
Bert blinked, and pointed at me. “She’s a ferret, isn’t she?”
“You know what I mean,” Leo urged. “Nikki is still able to talk to us and speak English. She remembers all of us and has clearly retained all of her memories from before she became a ferret. Can it be possible?” he asked again.
Mary interrupted. “You’re talking about cellular realignment?” Her face paled.
“Someone going to tell me what that is?” I whined, sinking to the floor.
Mary pinched her lips together before speaking, like she was weighing her words carefully. “History has been filled with stories of shape-shifters for as long as we’ve had stories themselves. It’s possible that whoever invented this ring has found a way to restructure someone’s body into a different shape.”
My heart began to beat louder in my chest. “And it works by using the wearer’s thoughts?” I asked. “Because I wanted to be a ferret? Or said it out loud?”
“It seems so, yes.” Mary shook her head in a daze. “This ring makes a sought-after superpower a reality. Whoever wears the ring can turn into whatever they want they want. That is some pretty dangerous tech.”
A beat of silence settled over the group, and the gravity of Mary’s words crushed the air out of my lungs.
“So,” Grace broke the silence. “I guess that means the million-dollar question is this: Nikki, have you considered thinking about being a human again?”
Unfortunately, I didn’t get a chance to answer her.
Why?
Because that’s when the ship exploded.
Once, when I was a little kid, I accidentally blew up the tub in our bathroom. I was mixing some chemicals to see what would happen. (How else was I going to find out?) One minute, I was pouring a beaker of green liquid into a test tube; the next, I was lying on m
y back in a pile of burnt wood and wet puddles.
That’s what it felt like when our ship, or, rather, the ship we had borrowed, went up in a smoky, clanging, soppy blaze.
Dust billowed in clouds around me, and the sound of cracking planks made my eardrums quake. There was no sign of where the explosion had started. The belly of the ship was unharmed, but the unmistakable tang of smoke and salt stung my eyes. Had a grenade detonated on the main deck?
“Someone’s here!” Charlie bellowed. “Protect Nikki!”
Leo scrambled to his feet and yanked me up to his shoulder by the scruff of my neck. I would have been peeved at how unceremoniously he was handling me, but we had bigger fish to fry. And by “fish,” I mean “armed robbers.”
Three men in all-black outfits thundered down the stairs. They held guns close to their chests. Grace and the others moved fast, shifting protectively around each other. But instead of taking his usual place next to Mo, Leo dove for the closet. In the murky dust, I clung tightly to him as he used his legs to brace himself in the tiny space and slammed his shoulder against the ceiling.
An escape hatch. He was leaving the others behind.
“What are you doing?!” I yelled at him. My eyes watered at the bright sunlight filtering in through the crawl space. How had he known the ship had a secret hatch to the main deck in the closet?
He ignored me, bolting down the deck at a breakneck pace. His sneakers skidded against the wet planks until he reached the mast.
“Hang on,” he whispered. He spit in his palms and began climbing the mast, clearly headed for the small barrel-shaped crow’s nest at the top. Proper sailors would have used this nest as a lookout, but I hadn’t given it a second thought. He scaled the mast in a few moments, then hoisted his leg over the top of the lookout. Panting with exertion, he ducked his head out of sight and caught his breath.
“Why did you bring us up here?” I scurried off his neck to sit on his knee and glare at him. “Everyone is fighting down there and you abandon them?!” I shook my head in disgust. If I had to scramble down the mast and fight these goons alone, I was ready for it.
“No!” Leo ordered. He whipped his hand out to block me from leaving. “You can’t! Listen!”
The commotion on deck got louder.
“Where is it?!” a voice shouted. It had to be one of the robbers. “Give it to us now, and nobody gets hurt!”
Leo’s eyes widened and he crouched lower. “Nikki! Get down!”
“We don’t know what you’re talking about!” That one was Grace. Whatever was happening to the team down there, I could tell from her voice that they were scared, but nobody was hurt.
Yet.
“We have to help them!” I begged. “They’re in trouble. Those guys have guns!” I moved again to dash away, crossing my paws that I would somehow be able to manage the steep descent of the tall mast.
“Stay here, Nikki!” Leo let me peek my head over the crow’s nest to see the scene below, but one inch farther earned me a poke in the shoulder. “Hey! Get down! Are you trying to be seen, or what?!”
“No, Leo!” I screamed, and nipped at his hand. “Our friends need us!”
“Don’t you get it?” Leo hissed. “We can’t let them capture you! They’re looking for the ring. The last thing we need is for that cellular-realignment technology to fall into the hands of guys with guns. Trust me!”
Can ferrets cry? It was a question I’d never considered before, but one that I had the answer to pretty quickly. Leo and I hid out in the crow’s nest above the ruckus as the intruders continued their assault. It was heartbreaking to hear my friends in such dire trouble and to do nothing to help them. By the sounds of the loud crashes and splintering wood below, the men in black were ransacking the ship, searching for the ring in every possible hiding spot, every nook and cranny. But Leo’s instincts seemed to be sharp—nobody thought to look up where we were hidden, above the fray.
“It’s not here!” another voice bellowed out, and was immediately followed by a loud thwap.
“Of course it is! Get out of the way, Stretch!” a third man yelled.
I cringed at the thought of Bert facing his assailant, who no doubt had a gun trained on him.
“Out of the way, I said!” the voice bleated again. “You three—beat it, or you’ll regret it!”
My friends were helpless down there, but nobody made a move to reveal where Leo and I were hiding. Would I be that brave in the same situation? A sudden chorus of protest had my fur standing on end.
“You! Out of the way, kid!” A lone burst of gunfire rang out, and I clutched Leo’s shoulder in terror, straining to hear the voices of everyone I cared about. Had someone been shot?
“They’re okay.” Leo wiped the sweat from his face and continued to peer down at the scene. “One of those dudes shot the side of the ship.”
If only that had made me feel any better. Whatever the man had in his sights, he wasn’t taking no for an answer.
A quieter voice cut through the commotion. I couldn’t make out the words, but I was certain from the muffled lilt that it was Mary.
Loud crashing below us made my heart plummet. “Leave her alone!” Charlie’s and Grace’s shrieks gave away the truth. “She doesn’t have it!”
“Oh no,” Leo breathed out, shaking his head as he watched.
“What?!” I tried desperately to get a better view, but he kept shoving me back to safety.
“It’s Mary.” Leo’s face twisted with pain as he listened to the whole thing unfold below. “She’s pointing to a small dinghy docked next to the ship. Probably the one those creeps came on.”
I squeaked with panic. “What on earth could she have to say to them? Why are the others even letting her get so close?”
Something was very wrong. The men with guns had ceased their yelling, and instead, their voices were low and measured. Was Mary trying to reason with them?
Beside me, Leo fidgeted, almost like he was trying to stop himself from standing and rushing to her aid. His hands flexed and stretched automatically, and he gripped his knees hard.
“Don’t do it, Mary,” he whispered.
“Don’t do what?” I demanded. I poked my nose up over the crow’s nest to get a better look.
Mary’s hands were now bound behind her, and the three men were leading her to the side of the ship.
Leo forced his eyes shut, and his voice cracked as he spoke. “They’re taking her with them.”
“What do we do, Leo?!” I cried. “We have to help her!” The back of my throat seared with pain at the thought of my best friend being taken by these awful men.
Leo’s defeated, sunken expression was numbing. He knew what I didn’t want to accept. My attention moved to the dinghy the men were leading her toward, then to a speedboat listing in the water a couple hundred yards away.
Those men thought she either had the ring or knew where it was secured. Had she told them as much?
“We can’t do anything, Nikki,” he said. He opened his eyes and lifted his face to the sky, listening intently below. “If they find me, they find you. I can’t risk it. Mary must know what she’s doing.”
“No, she doesn’t!” I said. “And neither do we! Why would she risk her life for some dumb ring?”
“Don’t you get it?!” Leo said. “If she’s going with them, she does think it’s worth her life! We have to listen to her. She’s telling us what to do without saying it. Taking the fall so we can escape. She would not be going if she had another choice. She must have figured out something about these men or why they’re here. You know what Mary is like.”
Rage and guilt stormed through me. Sure, Mary had a knack for reading people and their actions. But this? It was much too dangerous.
I let out a small whimper as I watched Mary board the dinghy. Her face was a mask of indifference. Whatever these men wanted with her, she wasn’t going to give in. Admiration and pride swelled through me, but it was tainted by the massive tsunami of shame I
felt. It was my fault that she was being captured. All because I was dumb enough to try on a ring—a weapon—I didn’t understand. And now Mary was paying the price.
Waves crisscrossed out behind them as the dinghy sputtered its way to the larger speedboat. From there, Mary was only visible for a few seconds before she disappeared from view.
Soon, the only sounds I could hear were the lapping water and gentle thumps below as the team assessed the damage. Everyone was uninjured, except for a few bumps and bruises. Nobody spoke. I wanted to hide in the crow’s nest for the rest of my life. Anything to avoid facing the others.
But I wasn’t going to stop until Mary was home safe, and I was useless as a ferret.
I needed to be myself to help her.
A faint tingle began to spread out over my body, and immediately my attention leaped to our earlier conversation about how the ring worked. Was it responding to my thoughts right now? Is that why my toes and fingertips were burning? I tried to focus my thoughts, willing every cell of my body to return to its usual self. Closing my eyes, I envisioned looking in a mirror and seeing my own face staring back at me, then let the image drop down past my neck to the rest of my body, right down to my toes.
I had to get this right. Mary’s life depended on it.
“Hey,” Leo said, leaning away from me and giving me some air. “Are you okay?”
The transformation happened quickly this time, with only a little spark of pain. One minute I was a ferret, clinging to the wooden lip of the crow’s nest with tiny claws. The next? I was myself again, bonking my human-sized knee against the side of the crow’s nest.
I squeezed my hands together—actual flesh and blood hands with fingernails and zero fur—and let out an enormous sigh. Then I patted my face and arms to be certain. Everything felt normal.
“Holy moly,” Leo said, blinking fast. “You’re back!”
I should have been ecstatic: I was human again! But the pain of losing Mary was too much. I wanted nothing more than to get started on our plan to rescue her.