So his eyes bulged larger than the others’ did when Nik’s skin abruptly lost its shape.
Nihkil’s arms, shoulders, chest, face and neck began rippling and shifting under our stares, sliding into what looked at first like scales and then brown fur then bright orange feathers before the stumps of wings sprouted out of his back.
The last of these grew so rapidly that I pressed my back to the kitchen cabinets to get out of the way as one swiped vaguely in my direction.
Nik’s face flattened. His black hair sprouted into more of those purple and orange feathers around features that included two slits in the place of his nose.
Within a few heartbeats, Nik had transformed entirely into one of those birds with the vaguely person-like faces that I remembered from the planet, Trinith.
Stomping his considerably thinner and now down-covered legs, he managed to extricate himself from the human pants before falling on his face, but only just. He let out one of those strange, scream-like cries which reminded me of a peacock I heard once...
Right before he changed again, this time growing taller and losing the feathers.
Within a few more seconds, we found ourselves staring at a green-scaled, semi-human-shaped biped with webbed hands and feet. In that form, Nik stood about eight feet tall and had thick, seaweed-like hair. Since he’d lost the pants with the bird shape, he stood naked before us once more, although with a decidedly un-human-like shape below the waist.
“Nik,” I said, averting my eyes with an embarrassed sigh. “What is it with you and the pants right now? Can you find something less...exhibitionist?”
Jake let out a hysterical-sounding cackle.
Irene just stared, her coffee cup held at chest height.
The green-skinned Nik gave me a faintly offended look with his baseball-sized, deep-black eyes, blinking a set of transparent lids before his shape changed again.
That time, he transformed back into the shape of a human, but instead of the Nihkil shape I knew, he looked exactly like Gantry...including the naked parts. I couldn’t help wondering, how, exactly, he’d managed to get that part right.
Because it was right.
A little too right, frankly.
My wondering must have gotten through that thread we shared in the lock, because Nik answered the question as if I’d spoken it aloud.
“There’s a DNA element,” he told me.
“DNA?” I said, frowning. “But you didn’t touch him.”
Nik shrugged, as if my question were irrelevant.
Deciding getting answers out of Nik on the specifics of how the lock and shifting worked, I glanced at the original Gantry. His normally cinnamon-colored skin had paled to the color of rancid milk.
He also looked like he’d forgotten how to breathe.
“Okay, Nik,” I said, as the morph blinked at Gantry with his own face. “Okay,” I said, sharper. “That’s enough. Seriously. You’re going to give him a coronary.”
Nik immediately transformed back into his usual form, the human version.
When I pointed at his pants, which now lay on the floor in an inelegant heap, Nihkil dutifully picked them up, untangled them, and shoved his now human leg into the correct pant leg. Only then did I spare another glance in the direction of Irene and Jake.
Jake looked pretty similar to Gantry, actually.
Irene, on the other hand, now looked at Nik with pure, unfettered adoration.
I might have to nip that little crush in the butt, honestly.
Avoiding the twinge of jealousy that arose at the thought, the one I’d been pretending wasn’t there, I looked back at Gantry.
“Well?” I said. “You wanted the truth...Tonto.”
Gantry swallowed.
It seemed to take most of his concentration to get it right after the first two tries. He looked up at Nik, his irises and pupils like two black dots punctuating the white of his eyes, then up at me, then back at Nik again, as if trying to decide if I’d conjured Nik there somehow, if it was all some kind of trick with computer animation and projection screens.
Then Gantry cleared his throat, motioning towards Nik with a muscular hand for a few seconds, as if trying to remember how to work his vocal chords.
“...that...that thing...” he said finally. “...Could I see that again?”
Nik looked at me, maybe for permission.
After another pause, I sighed. Shrugging, I leaned back against the cabinets, raising my mug of coffee to my lips.
“Sure,” I said. “Whatever. Knock yourselves out.”
3
Breakfast and a Poorly-Conceived Plan
That went on for awhile.
I think Nik took at least twenty different forms during that time, including imitating the shapes and faces of every one of us in the room, down to each excruciatingly embarrassing detail. He also made himself into the blond golfer guy from that day in Washington Park, and I hadn’t even known he’d seen that guy.
By the last handful of transformations, Gantry was walking around Nik in increasingly tight circles, touching the different forms Nik took, maybe to feel the textures of feathers, fur, skin and hair. All the while he did it, Gantry kept frowning and muttering to himself, as if still trying to convince himself it wasn’t some kind of elaborate hoax.
When he finally seemed to get it through his head that, yeah, Nik was telling the truth, and that yes, he really could change into pretty much any animal or person with which he had sufficient familiarity, Gantry seemed to relax, strangely.
Well, maybe not relax.
But he seemed to accept it.
Moreover, he seemed to accept the other things Nik had said, too...like the fact that there really were other morph in Seattle now, and that those morph could do the same thing Nik was showing him. Also, it seemed to sink in that those other morph might not be particularly benign about how they used that ability, given their previous experiences with human beings.
In the end, that’s the part that seemed to stick in Gantry’s head the most.
Meaning, the image of other shape-shifters, less friendly ones, wandering around Seattle and its surrounding environs, taking on whatever form they chose.
At that point in the demonstration, Gantry sat back down on one of the chrome-plated kitchen chairs.
He sat heavily enough that the chair’s screws let out another of those loud squeaks.
“Well, shit,” Gantry said, glancing up at Irene. “Is anyone else hungry, besides me?”
“I am,” Nik volunteered.
He was putting on his pants for like the fifth time, having somehow managed to not destroy them in all of the changes, despite Gantry’s somewhat overly-thorough need to watch the shifts occur in various ways. Maybe being a shape-shifter made Nihkil all-too-familiar with the risks of shifting while he wore clothes, enough that he knew when to take them off...and when to shift into something smaller than the body wearing the clothes in the first place.
In any case, he put them back on matter-of-factly, as if demonstrating shape-shifting to a handful of uninitiated Earth humans was just another day in the life.
“...Shifting makes me hungry,” Nik explained to Gantry as he began shouldering on the black shirt once more, too. “It takes some energy to change forms. It takes additional energy to maintain them, unless the form is one we have taken often enough for it to solidify into a base form that can be evoked more easily. Even then, we can only have one of those base forms per species-type...with very few exceptions.”
Gantry blinked at him, then seemed to let that mouthful of whatever pass.
“Gotcha,” he said, nodding to Nik. He looked back at Irene. “Do you have anything to eat? Or do we need to go out?”
Irene tore her eyes off Nik with a kind of sigh.
“No food,” she explained simply. “We could get donuts? Sit in the park?”
She meant the nearby coffee shop for donuts, I presumed, and Cal Anderson Park, which was only a few blocks away, in Irene’s neighbo
rhood of Capitol Hill.
To clarify, Irene’s house wasn’t in the super-hip section of Capitol Hill, which is what most people think of when you tell them that you live there. Irene’s part of the neighborhood was a bit warehouse-y, the houses were a lot more run down, and it was probably a good mile and a half, maybe two, from the main strip on Broadway and even further from any part of the neighborhood that might be considered hip.
Walking around at night wasn’t exactly a picnic by her place, either, and not only because there weren’t a lot of places open.
Still, the park was a close walk, and the bus downtown closer still, so it wasn’t a bad place to live, all in all, and Irene inherited the flat so she didn’t even owe rent.
As for the park itself, it wasn’t fancy, but a decent-sized fountain broke up the middle of it and it had a baseball field on one side, along with other assorted greenery, benches and lawns and a reflecting pool where Irene and I would occasionally drink coffee and talk.
Since I was reasonably sure it was a Tuesday, there wouldn’t be a ton of other people around mid-morning, so it wasn’t a bad suggestion, really.
Jake wrinkled his nose at the mention of donuts, but he seemed to have more or less gotten on board with the rest of the proposal. He also appeared to have more or less recovered from Nik’s demonstration. Looking Nihkil over with a slightly more cautious expression on his face, although more than a small amount of fascination, too, I noticed, Jake folded his arms. He frowned as he looked between the three of us, then settled for staring at me.
“Well?” he said, as if prompting me to make the decision.
Rolling my eyes at how slow their brains all seemed to be moving, I hopped off the counter. I didn’t bother to explain I was leaving the room to scrounge up some actual clothes, but everyone seemed to get the idea, since they were waiting for me by the door when I emerged from the bathroom.
Nihkil had buttoned up the dark shirt by then, too, and added shoes to the pants.
About thirty minutes later, we all sprawled on a stretch of lawn in the park, about a hundred feet from the fountain and the nearest foot path, with no other people around.
We all had various pastry, coffee and sandwich combinations in our hands.
Mine was a scrambled egg sandwich on a poppyseed bagel.
I chewed on it with a lot more energy than I would have expected...at least until I had the thing right under my nose and realized I was famished. Moreover, given that I’d only been back for a relatively short time, Earth food, even the most basic, generic––and okay, unhealthy, processed crappy––Earth food still made me ridiculously happy.
“So?” Gantry said, chewing on a piece of bacon from his own sandwich. “What’s the plan?” He looked pointedly at Nik. “...I mean, with those other morph-people? You said something about stabilizing another portal. I need you to explain what that means exactly...in a way I’ll get it. And how you plan to get them through it, even if you succeed.”
“I mean it exactly the way it sounds,” Nik said, taking a very cautious bite of an oversized apple fritter.
He winced a little as he chewed, mostly because of how sweet it was, I could feel.
I felt his reaction through the lock...and regardless of the content of what I felt, feeling him there so strongly sent a different kind of shivery feeling under my skin, one I felt a lot more in my lower belly than in my brain. Biting the inside of my cheek, I pushed the feeling out of my mind...as well as the way Nik filled out that black shirt that used to belong to Irene’s ex-boyfriend.
As I did, I looked back at Gantry.
Gantry was already watching me.
When I met his gaze, he raised a questioning eyebrow. That eyebrow still lifted, he glanced at Nik, as if trying to discern what just happened between us. A few seconds later, he looked back at me, his eyes holding a denser question.
I blushed.
I couldn’t stop the heat there, but I did look away. I didn’t really want to confirm from Gantry’s expression that he’d noticed that, too.
I knew he had, though.
Nik’s voice grew flat, “We need Razmun and the other morph to have a viable alternative.” Nik looked between Gantry and me, and from the look darting through his now-violet eyes, it occurred to me in a semi-irritated flash that Gantry wasn’t the only observant one watching me that morning. “...An alternative to their remaining here, I mean,” Nik added, still studying my face. “On Earth. Otherwise, Razmun will likely cause problems for your people.”
Gantry’s expression had gone unreadable again.
“And you don’t want to go with them?” Gantry said mildly, glancing quickly at me then back at Nik. “You’re sure about that?”
Nihkil looked at me for a long moment.
Then he turned back towards Gantry.
I noticed his irises had changed to a near black again.
“I am sure,” Nik said. “Do you have a problem with that?”
Gantry looked at me, too.
A few seconds later, he looked back at Nik and shrugged.
I noticed he didn’t answer him, not even indirectly.
“How do you plan to find them?” Gantry said instead. “They can look like anyone, right? Will you be able to ID them, even if they don’t look like how you know them?”
“No,” Nik said.
“Could they be animals?” Jake asked, from the other side.
As if thinking about his own words after he said them, Jake looked up at the trees, eyeing the birds warily, then a bulldog dragging its owner down the path on a leash not far from us.
“They will most likely be in human form,” Nihkil said, following Jake’s eyes to a cat in the window of a house across the street. He took a larger bite of the apple fritter. “...Providing we find them soon. It will take most of them time to learn the non-human forms here. They will likely remain with their base forms most of the time, so that they can establish those around a local alias of some kind.” At Gantry’s somewhat puzzled look, Nik added, unnecessarily, “...So they can blend in. Obtain food and housing. Learn about the culture here, etc.”
“No, no,” Gantry said. “I get that part. But won’t they know you’ll be looking for them? Why would they stay here?”
Nihkil looked at him, an equal amount of puzzlement on his own face.
Then his expression cleared.
“Razmun would stay here for several reasons,” Nik explained. “They would not risk travel before they have an opportunity to learn this world. They will spend time learning how to emulate what lives here, particularly the humans but also other common life forms. They will want enough familiarity to choose at least two base forms from among the indigenous species. They will want to know the basics of the language. They will want to know more about the political make-up of the human civilization and how the law enforcement and security systems function.” Shrugging, Nik took a bite of the apple fritter. “...I suspect Razmun would stay, anyway. He will not want me here, on this planet...outside of his control.”
Gantry raised an eyebrow, looking back at me.
“You sure about that? After you screwed him?” Gantry’s voice turned skeptical. “Why would he want to be anywhere near you, Nik? Or are you thinking he’d be after payback? Revenge,” Gantry added, to clarify.
Nihkil chewed the apple fritter, staring off into the trees.
Swallowing, he shrugged.
“He might stay near to kill me, or Dakota,” Nik conceded. “But there is no reason for him to leave. The only gate he knows is here.”
I cleared my throat, choosing to talk over the “kill Dakota” part of that speech.
I saw Gantry’s eyebrows go up when Nik said it, though.
“So what about that contract?” I said to Gantry. “Do you think it’s connected somehow? You can see why I thought it might be government...some kind of agency, right? I figured if they knew anything about the gates...or somehow got footage of the shape-shifting thing that day...or just found a few of
the witnesses convincing enough to follow up...they might have created some kind of task force to come after us? Or handed it off to Homeland Security. Or the military...or the CIA...whatever...”
Realizing how watches-waaay-too-much-televison I probably sounded, given that Gantry was ex-special forces, I shrugged again, my fingers plucking at the grass.
“I just mean, what would they do, Gantry?” I said. “If the government got involved?”
Gantry’s eyes briefly blanked.
He watched my fingers pull at the grass.
“Honestly?” he said then. “I don’t know for sure. They’d probably spend a few weeks freaking out and having committee meetings and all that, trying to figure out how best to spin the story in case it got out, and whether they should go more strongly for capture or kill.”
Glancing at Nik, he added more somberly, “They’d definitely see them as dangerous. Truthfully? If they really, truly believed it, they probably would have picked you up already, Dakota. They’d definitely authorize the use of deadly force...likely from day one. But they’d also want any technology they could get their hands on...and bio-samples, at least a few live ones...so it would depend to some degree on how much they know about this gate thing. It would also depend on how long it takes someone in the Pentagon to get ambitious about weaponizing them. If that happened, they might even pull in independent contractors...”
Thinking about his own words, Gantry paled.
“Yeah, okay. You’re right. This might not be a coincidence,” he muttered.
Thinking again, he went on more slowly that time.
“...Depending on who they put in charge, they might put feelers out to general contractors, trying to scare up a few live ones that way, while they figured out how to handle the security threat from the military and H.S. side. So yeah, this could be them. Personally, I doubt it, though, even if they wanted to distance themselves from any direct involvement in the op. If that hit was government, and it had something to do with this whole...thing...”
Gantry gestured towards Nik’s body.
Crash Morph: Gate Shifter Book Two Page 4