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She nodded. The sensation grew stronger as they approached the labs, until it felt like every inch of her skin was itching. The door swished open as they approached. There was no one inside.
“Odd,” he murmured, moving across to the com-unit. He ran a finger along one edge of the screen, and then held it up to her. “Blood.”
She hoped it wasn’t Finley’s. Hoped it didn’t mean he was dead. As much as she loathed the tests, Finley himself had been okay. She reached back for the laser and saw that Gabriel had already drawn his gun. “The shifter is in the next room,” she said quietly. He nodded and walked to the next door. She followed, keeping to the opposite side of him.
There wasn’t a sound to be heard. Even the hum of the test units seemed silenced. Soft light washed through the room, giving the walls a waxy appearance. She glanced up at him. He motioned to the left, and then held up three fingers. She nodded and began to silently count. At three, she moved in, laser raised.
Two people looked up from the com-screen. One was Finley, the other a woman with bright blue hair and a body any wrestler would be proud of.
Finley raised an eyebrow in surprise. “You have a problem, Assistant Director?”
“I think we might.” Gabriel’s voice was cold, his weapon centered on the young doctor. “Don’t move.” Heat washed a warning across her skin. This was the shifter, and he was not the real Finley. Then the woman moved. Almost as if it were in slow motion, she saw the gun in the woman’s hand, saw her finger curl round the trigger. Sam raised the laser and dove to her right, firing as she fell. The blue bolt missed by a hairsbreadth, zinging past the woman’s ear and searing into the cabinets behind her. Almost simultaneously, she heard Gabriel’s gun bark—a sound that was echoed by the shifter’s weapon. A bullet hit the floor near her toes, tearing away a huge chunk of carpet and concrete.
She scrambled to her feet and saw the shifter lunge at her. She dodged and fired the laser. Again she missed, the blue bolt bouncing off the wall near his head and sizzling back along the desk. Then he was on her, his weight hitting with the force of a tree. She struck the floor with a grunt, the air forced from her lungs as she took the brunt of his weight. Then his hands were grabbing her, trying to pin her arms. She swore, avoiding his hands even as she punched him with her free hand. Though her blows landed with enough force to jar her arm, he didn’t react, simply shifted his weight so that suddenly it was hard to breathe. She bucked, trying to move him, but he was as unmovable as a brick wall. Her lungs began to burn with the need for air. He caught the hand that held the weapon, his grip bruising her flesh as he forced her arm back over her head. Cursing him, and wasting precious air in the process, she drove her free hand between them and grabbed his testicles, squeezing hard. He yelped in surprise, simultaneously jerking back and releasing her arm. She bucked him off, and then fired the laser at his face. He fell back, howling in pain as his skin blackened and began to peel away.
She scrambled to her feet, then sent him spiraling into unconsciousness with a kick to the head. Gabriel swung round, weapon raised. The blue-haired woman lay at his feet, pinned by the foot he’d ground into her throat. Yet another sign how little the SIU cared about prisoner rights.
He seemed to relax slightly as their gazes met. “You okay?”
She nodded, then bent and lightly touched the shifter’s neck. He had a pulse, which was good, but his face was never going to be the same, even though the laser had been set on low. She walked over to Gabriel.
“You know either of these two?” he asked.
The woman shifted her arm slightly. Gabriel pressed a little harder on her throat, and all movement stopped. Sam stared at their blue-haired prisoner. The woman had a hole blown clear through her thigh, and blood poured down the side of her face from another wound near the hairline. Yet, despite this, it was anger and hate, not pain, that filled her dark eyes as she glared at up them.
“No,” she replied. “You?”
“This one,” he said, pushing his heel deeper into the woman’s throat, “goes by the name Ruby Lee. Works part-time down at the Body Beautiful Gym, and the rest of the time as a high-class thief.”
Ruby Lee obviously wasn’t human. Otherwise she’d be suffering a crushed larynx right about now. “What the hell is a thief doing sneaking into the SIU?”
“Good question.” He motioned to the machines lining one wall. “Why don’t you go see if the real Finley is alive so we can find out?”
She nodded and walked across to the machines. The young doctor was in the third unit, unconscious. Squeezing in beside him, she lightly touched his neck. His pulse was steady and strong, but he had a decent-sized egg on his skull. He’d probably have a hell of a headache for several days to come.
“Hey, Finley, you okay?” She pinched his cheek, trying to get some sort of response. A soft groan was her only reply. She climbed out of the machine and walked back to Gabriel. Three men and a woman, all clad in SIU gray, had joined him.
“Finley’s alive, but he’s out of it for the moment.”
He nodded and glanced at the woman in gray. “Take these two to security, Briggs, and get the medics in here for Finley. And watch the woman carefully—she’s something of an escape artist.”
Briggs nodded and motioned to one of the men to help her with the woman. The other moved across to the shifter.
She watched them leave, then looked at Gabriel. “I was under the impression shifters could take only one alternate human form, with the second identity being ordained when they were young. So how come this shifter was able to walk right in and take Finley’s form?”
“Because there’s a strain of shifter that can take alternate forms at will.”
She raised an eyebrow. “That’s something of a well-kept secret, isn’t it?”
He shrugged and crossed to the com-screen. “Why prejudice humans against shifters any more than necessary, especially when multi-shifters are considered relatively rare?”
“ ‘Relatively rare’ meaning what?”
“It means there are only a small percentage of shifters overall who are capable of taking multiple forms. I believe the figure is somewhere around ten to fifteen
percent.”
“Which isn’t exactly a small number, when you think about it.”
