The Kennel tasted like copper.

  It wasn’t just the blood from last week, where I’d cracked my head against a support beam. It was the taste of ozone, of old batteries, of anticipation. I stood in the center of the space, arms loose at my sides, breathing slowly. In. Out. In. Out. My bare feet had picked up a coating of fine gray powder from the floor, turning the white rubber a dirty pewter.

  No more running from it.

  No more cramming it down into the basement of my brain and pretending I was still the same girl who gave a damn about chem tests and whether my jeans made my butt look good. Those concerns belonged to someone else now—someone who’d existed before the bite, before the transformations, before everything went sideways.

  Jackie was out there. Somewhere in Pandora’s white-walled rooms, my baby sister sat in a room with monsters who wore expensive suits and smiled with too many teeth. The image burned hotter than any transformation I’d ever gone through. I could picture her small fingers gripping the edge of some metal chair, could imagine her trying to be brave the way I’d taught her. The thought made my hands shake.

  I closed my eyes.

  The wolf stirred. Not a separate thing—I’d been wrong about it being some parasite hitching a ride. It was me. The part of me that wanted to rip through a hundred Deathloks to get Jackie out. The part I’d spent weeks treating like an infection when it was really just… evolution. Violent evolution I hadn’t asked for.

  “Are you ready for this?” Handy’s voice came from the wristband, low and serious.

  “I’m not sure about anything anymore.” My voice came out rough, scraped raw from the inside. “But I’m done pretending I can fight them as… as what I was.”

  “Your previous classification was human, Nikki.”

  “What I am is a specimen they want.” I opened my eyes. The Kennel’s walls seemed closer now, or I seemed bigger. Hard to tell which. The support beams cast shadows across graffiti someone had spray-painted years ago. “Time to point myself at the right target.”

  I dropped to my knees, palms flat on the cold floor. My fingernails scraped concrete, leaving thin white scratches in the dust.

  The change started in my chest—a heat that spread outward like spilled gasoline looking for a match. Before, I’d fought it. Screamed at it to stop, to wait, to please God not now. I’d white-knuckled my way through transformations, trying to hold on to the girl I used to be.

  Tonight I invited it in again.

  Come on. Come on. I did this before.

  My spine arched. Bones shifted, lengthened, reformed with a sound like wet branches bending. Instead of gritting my teeth against the sensation, I breathed into it. Let it wash over me like a wave I’d been trying to out swim for too long. My shirt stretched beneath my jacket, seams popping. The fabric of my jeans pulled tight across thighs suddenly corded with new muscle.

  The heat became pressure became strength.

  My hands twisted, fingers thickening, nails pushing out into claws that could shred kevlar. Muscle piled onto muscle, my shoulders broadening, my chest expanding. My jaw cracked and reformed, teeth sharpening into points meant for tearing through armor plating. White fur sprouted along my arms, dense and coarse. My feet grew big, too big for me to wear any shoes.

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  And it didn’t hurt.

  Again, since the night that engineered nightmare sank its teeth into my arm, the transformation didn’t shred me from the inside out. There was no tearing, no screaming nerve endings. Just a heavy, metallic click, like a round chambering in a gun. The wolf and I weren’t fighting anymore. We were the same thing, pointed in the same direction.

  Get Jackie. Kill anything in the way.

  “Vitals are off the charts but stable,” Handy said, his voice clipped and precise. “Heart rate elevated but controlled. Neural pathways are green. No conflict detected between the limbic system and the frontal cortex.”

  I tested it to be sure. I lifted one massive, clawed hand. On the floor, amidst the dust, lay a tiny, rusted washer, no bigger than a dime.

  In the past, the wolf would have just smashed it. But I wasn’t just the wolf.

  I reached out. With the very tip of a curved claw, I hooked the washer. I lifted it slowly, balancing the fragile ring of metal on a lethal point. I turned my hand, letting the washer slide down the length of the claw to rest in my palm. I closed my fingers over it—gently. When I opened them again, the washer was still there. Unbent. Unbroken.

  I was in control.

  The wolf saw through my eyes—sharper now, picking up details I’d miss otherwise. The hairline crack in the far wall where water damage crept. Smelled through my nose—cement, rust, the faint ozone scent of Chicago’s polluted rain starting outside. Heard through my ears—Handy’s processors humming their electronic lullaby, my heartbeat slow and powerful as a drum.

  “Download,” I growled. The word came out distorted, torn between human vocal cords I didn’t quite have anymore and a throat built for howling. “Give me the files.”

  “Affirmative. Schematics coming through now.”

  The wristband projected a hologram—Deathlok’s chassis laid out in wireframe blue light.

  “Ceramite plating here, here, and here.” Blue highlights appeared on the hologram’s torso, shoulders, thighs. “Military-grade hydraulics in the joints—those are vulnerable but hard to reach. Plasma cannon integrated into the left arm—don’t let him get a bead on you with it. It’ll punch through a tank. I’ve seen the test footage. Slagged a tank in three seconds.”

  I studied the schematic, committing it to memory the way I used to memorize cheer routines. Eight-count combinations, formations, timing. Muscle memory. Only now the muscles were different, and the routine ended with something dying instead of applause.

  “The power core is here.” Handy highlighted a point below the sternum, a glowing red dot pulsing in the hologram’s chest cavity. “It’s shielded—titanium casing, reinforced with a polymer composite. But if you can get through the plating—”

  “I can get through anything.” The confidence in my voice surprised me. This wasn’t bravado. This was a certainty. “I’ll shear through his ceramite like it was wet cardboard.”

  “Calculations suggest a 40% chance of success if you engage in close quarters,” Handy noted. “Which is a significant improvement over zero.”

  I dropped to all fours, testing the stance. Faster this way. Lower center of gravity. The world looked different from down here—threatening, predatory. I could hit harder, move quicker, use my legs to tear while my claws found weak points in armor. The concrete was cold against my palms, grounding me. Real.

  Jackie’s face floated in front of my mind—big blue eyes, the gap-toothed smile.

  The memory didn’t make me sad. It made me sharp. Focused. A blade with a purpose.

  “So what is the counter-play?” Handy asked.

  I bared my teeth. “Deathlok thinks I’m his prey, but he is my prey.”

  I prowled toward the Kennel’s exit, muscles coiled, ready. Each step silent despite my increased mass, instinct teaching me how to move without sound.

  “Open the door,” I said.

  Handy complied. The rusted metal swung wide with a squeal of protesting hinges.

  Rain poured down outside, catching streetlight and turning the alley into a blurry mess of rain and neon. Pink from the strip club two blocks over, sickly green from the bodega’s sign, harsh white from the LED streetlamps. I stepped into it, lifted my muzzle to the sky, and let the city’s sound and scent fill me. Wet asphalt. Car exhaust. The sweet-rot smell of garbage.

  Somewhere at the tower, my sister waited. And somewhere else, the thing I’d created waited too.

  The rain plastered my fur flat, cold and clean. My claws flexed against wet pavement, finding purchase.

  Time to hunt.