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cassie

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Even with Finch here, John hasn't found a way to really relax.

Then again, he doesn't feel as if Harold is particularly relaxed either. If nothing else, he's at least sleeping in the apartment provided to him because Harold has convinced him he should, although he doesn't especially like it and spends most of his days out and about in Darrow, trying to establish what's really happening here or how they might get out, but even after all this time he's yet to come up with anything. If they're being watched, which he's sure they are, he hasn't yet found evidence of who or what might be doing the watching.

So he explores the city. He does it all under the guise of a well meaning detective, affable and prone to smiling. It's a role he doesn't have any real problem taking on, even though whenever people leave him on his own, the smile slides away and his thoughts stray back to everything that's just so terribly wrong about all this.

Today he's in a less populated area of the city. There are still people around here and there, but for the most part the streets are empty. People who live here are at work and there isn't much in the way of any businesses lining the streets, so he's more or less on his own.

A sound distracts him and he pauses, listening, unable to pinpoint what it might be, then decides to follow it. It's as close to a lead as anything else he's seen or heard today.

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"Hey," John calls, though he keeps his voice low. For a moment he doesn't move, strangely distracted, but then he's off after the dog, worried about the course its taking, certain a car is going to come out of nowhere.

He can see exactly where the dog is headed and that makes it worse somehow. If one of them doesn't get there in time, there could be real tragedy here today. He'll never outrun a dog, but that doesn't stop John from putting in an extra burst of speed.

"Hey!" he calls again, this time hoping to catch someone's attention, someone closer to the boy. "Grab that kid."

Before the dog runs into the street, he wants to add. Before the damn dog gets hit by a car.

<Move!> I cried. The kid was looking around, afraid and confused. And not moving out of the road.

I heard the driver of the car curse through the open window, heard the stomp of his foot on the pedal. I shoved my wide doggie chest against the kid just in time.

Another yelp ripped from my throat when something heavy and unforgiving struck my side. But the little kid was alright. A few scuffs from hitting the pavement, but otherwise unharmed.

I sprawled on the asphalt and coughed a little. That hurt. A lot.

The kid is crying, but unhurt from what John can see, and it's mere seconds before his mother is there, scooping him up, exclaiming over him. There's the slam of a car door as the driver jumps out, hurriedly trying to explain, trying to tell anyone who'll listen he just hadn't been able to see, hadn't been able to stop in time, but John is ignoring him.

With the child safe, it's the dog who matters now.

"You're okay," he says, though he doesn't know if it's true. Dropping into a crouch again, he holds out his hands, first as a question, then running his fingers gently over the dog's side. "Let me see if anything is broken." Either way, he'll have to get the dog to a vet. It's just a matter of whether the dog will be walking or if John will be carrying it.

His hands were surprisingly knowledgeable about broken bones, but that didn't mean it didn't hurt while he was probing. I yelped again, but it trailed off into a whine and I felt my tail wag. My back wasn't broken at least.

I reached out with a paw and rested it on his knee.

<The boy?> I asked. I figured it was too late, by this point. He'd already heard me. If he were a Controller, I'd already be dead or captured.

"He's fine," John answers instinctively, although it takes him a moment or two to catch up with what's just happened. There's a voice, someone has asked him a question, but it hadn't been aloud. The question had come from inside his head and it hadn't felt like something Samaritan might have done.

Looking down curiously at the dog, he doesn't say anything else. Instead he runs his hands over the dog's ribs, down the dog's legs, then sits back, satisfied nothing is broken.

"You're alright," he says. He doesn't know what to make of what he's just heard. "Come on, let's see if you can walk."

I tried to stand, but pain shot through my side and down my leg. I whimpered and leaned against him. With a deep breath, I tried again.

The dog is listening to him, there's no doubt of that, and John doesn't think that's possible, not in the way it seems to be happening. Bear is extremely well trained, but he's still a dog and he doesn't respond to John quite like this.

If he talks to the dog openly like he expects it to respond, someone is going to notice, so instead John crouches, wraps his arms around the dog and lifts.

"You'll be okay," he says again and suddenly it feels like he needs to really mean it. He'll take the dog somewhere safe and figure out what this is.

I rested my chin on his shoulder. It was weirdly soothing, hearing someone bigger and wiser than me telling me I'd be okay. I knew it was true, but sometimes I needed to hear it from someone else.

Once we were out of earshot of the bulk of the people, I used thought-speak to say, <Thank you for helping me.>

While it seems like it should be absolutely insane, it does seem as if the dog is speaking directly to him. John doesn't particularly like it or trust it, it feels a little bit too easy, like Samaritan finding a way to whisper in his ear, but it's still a dog. He can't just leave the poor thing lying injured on the road.

Of course, now that the dog is in his arms, he isn't entirely sure where to go.

It takes him a few moments, a few alleys, but eventually he finds out that leads to what appears to be a deserted building. The lock on the door has been broken already and repaired clumsily, so John only has to give it one good kick before the door flies inward and he's able to step into a dusty maintenance room where he can carefully set the dog down on the floor.

"Have I gone crazy?" he asks, staring straight at it.

<No,> I said. <I'm sorry. I didn't mean to scare you.> Once I was laying down, my aching body felt like it let out a sigh of relief. I felt a little bad, because I was just going to scare him more.

Morphing was different every time. Body parts changed in different orders. I could control it, to an extent, which was good, because morphing wasn't usually pretty.

My face started changing first. I remained covered in fur, but the dog muzzle shrank back into my face and slowly became a human mouth and nose. My brown eyes moved closer together and shrank a little bit.

Schloop! My ears sucked into my scalp, then crawled down the sides of my head. My arms changed next, forelegs shortening and pulling my elbows down to where they belonged. Fwoop! My tail disappeared! My spine shortened, sucking it back up into my body. I was almost completely human-shaped, and still covered in the pretty black-gold-white fur of my Frolis Maneuver dog morph. I pushed myself up slowly so I could sit up properly, and the fur started to suck back into my skin, sort of rippling as it did.

The other good thing about morphing? It healed all injuries. All of the pains from getting hit by that car were gone. It was pretty handy, and I was really glad I'd been in morph when it happened.

Once I was sitting there, in my morphing suit, I looked up at the man, a bit apologetically.

". . . Hi."

John watches it happen, not disconnected from it, not entirely disbelieving, but at the same time he can't quite make sense of what he's seeing. There's a girl instead of a dog suddenly and he looks at the suit she's wearing and wonders when the military would weaponize something like that. How long it would take before they were sending squirrels and mice across enemy lines, how long before there was a hundred girls just like her taking orders from a stone-faced general.

It makes him ill just to think about it, but he knows if anyone were to see this, if it were to get out, it would happen in an instant.

"Hello," he says cautiously. He wants to tell her to run, to hide. If Samaritan sees something like this, it will track her to the ends of the earth and in a place like Darrow, there really isn't anywhere to hide. Instead he stays silent and waits for her to explain a little more.

I hesitated, feeling weirdly reassured. I knew that Yeerks were tricky creatures, but the expression on his face is really reassuring. He isn't hateful towards me, or suspicious. He just looks concerned.

"My name is Cassie," I said. "I can't tell you my last name, or where I'm from. But I promise, I won't hurt you."

That almost makes him laugh, though he manages to control himself, to keep his reaction to a brief twitch of his lips. If she can turn into animals, his safety should be a priority, she could turn into a bear, for all he knows, rip him to shreds, but he's been thinking about her and her safety instead of his own.

Finch would claim that's nothing new, of course.

"Hello, Cassie. I'm John." Technically he can't tell her his real last name either, but he leaves that part alone. "No one in government knows you can do this, right? No, they can't. I don't think you'd be out here if they did."

"I don't think so," I said. "I hope not, anyway." I couldn't imagine if the Yeerks had managed to get someone into the government! They'd been trying, I knew that much, but if they actually succeeded, then it might be too late. "It's— it's a secret, that I can do this. I'm not the only one, but. It's complicated. No one is allowed to know. I shouldn't even have let you see me, but, the car, and I got hurt, and—"

I shrugged helplessly, feeling a little lost.

"I'm sorry! I shouldn't have gotten you involved."

"Good," he says. It would be best if it were kept that way, but he doesn't say that part. It's clear Cassie knows as well as he does that keeping what she can do a secret is of the utmost important.

"It's fine," he tells her. "I'm very good at keeping secrets, you don't have to worry about me." John can withstand the kinds of torture that would have most people screaming within moments and while he's sure there's someone out there who would be able to break him, he's yet to meet that person.

"Are you alright, though?" he asks. "It sounded like that car hit you pretty hard."

"It did," I agreed. "But I'm okay, now. Morph— I mean, changing shapes like that, it makes all of my injuries disappear, like they never happened at all." I thought it was pretty cool!

There are so many questions John wants to ask, but he doesn't feel entirely comfortable with that either. The less he knows, the better. The less likely someone will ask anything of him if they find out about her.

The less he can tell someone interrogating him, the better.

"How old are you?" he asks instead.

"Sixteen," I said, feeling a bit shy. "It's okay, I've been doing this for a . . . awhile." I stared up at him, then let out a weak, shaky sigh. It felt so good to not be the only one to know I could do this. I wanted to tell Miles, but I was positive he wouldn't understand. He was so normal! He didn't need my stupid baggage, right?

"I really shouldn't have let you find out," I said. "But . . . I think part of me really wanted you to know. Or, maybe not you, exactly, but someone else. Someone besides just me. My friends . . . the people I do this with, the people I fight with . . . they're not here. They're all back home."

John nods his understanding, because he finds himself missing his friends more and more often, even Root, who would probably only use Darrow to find some way to drive him crazy.

"And now someone knows," he says, then smiles. "Someone who's very good at keeping secrets, so you won't have to worry about anyone finding out from me."

He studies her for a moment longer, then says, "I guess you can't go walking around the city in that suit, can you?" Which means she'll have to turn into something else and John can't deny the chance to see that again is rather interesting to him.

I blushed a little and let out a shy laugh. "You're right," I said. "It'd be kind of weird." I was wearing just a short sleeved leotard that Rachel had helped me pick out, and some Lycra bike shorts over it for the sake of modesty.

We'd learned early on that we couldn't morph clothing. If it was too bulky or loose, it sort of just slid off and billowed up around us — or ripped to shreds! But tight clothing like what I was wearing morphed with us, which was a huge relief.

"Maybe I should start leaving clothes around the city," I said thoughtfully.

"That might help," John agrees with a small smile. He doesn't have cards yet, having made no attempt to join the police force in Darrow at this point, still not entirely certain he even wants to, but he reaches into his pocket and finds a receipt, turning it over to scribble his number onto the back.

"But if you need anything or find yourself in a tight spot, you can call me," he tells her, passing her the paper.

"Oh," I said. I took the receipt and read over his information. "Thank you. I don't— I've never had help from anyone but my friends." It felt . . . kind of weird, but also kind of cool, to have someone offer their outside help. Even if I didn't ask, even if he wasn't serious, it was nice.

I wasn't entirely sure where to stick the paper just yet, though. My morphing suit didn't really have pockets, after all! I set it on the floor. "Um, one second," I said.

I focused on a fresh morph, something that I was familiar with. In a moment, my mouth and nose sort of melted together and pushed outward. My upper lip curled down into a ripping beak, and my fingers began to stretch and flatten into primary feathers. While this was happening, my feet started to change. Some of my toes shrank back and vanished, and the remaining toes lengthened while the bones of my feet shortened. My toenails grew black, then elongated and curled sharply, becoming ripping, gripping talons.

As my body continued to change, my skin sprouted white and brown feathers that unfurled like fresh spring leaves.

And then I began shrinking. Fwoom! I wasn't moving all that fast, but it felt like I was falling off a building! The world grew bigger as the ground drew closer, and if my insides hadn't been squishing into new shapes and sizes, my stomach might have flipped.

The morph was nearly complete. My eyes changed from chocolate brown to bright gold, my beak became hard and black. As my tail feathers unfurled and fanned out, I could feel the familiar osprey instincts bubble up under my own mind. There.

John makes no effort not to watch. What she can do is absolutely fascinating and he knows he's made her a promise, but he can't help but wonder what Finch might say to this. He watches as she shifts into a bird, an osprey, he believes, then takes a step back and gets to his feet.

They'll have to part ways, John can't fly along with her, so he opens the door they'd come through and steps back into the daylight.

"Keep yourself safe," he says. "And don't hesitate to call if you need."

<Thank you,> I said. I lowered my head and pecked at the paper with his number on it, then bird-walked forward and grabbed it in my talon. <I'll try not to. Usually the kind of trouble I get into . . . I wouldn't want someone involved in.>

I didn't mean to sound so ominous. But John seemed like a nice guy, and I didn't want him to get hurt. If the Yeerks were here, then he'd be a perfect target, I thought.

I flapped my wings a few times, trying to get some lift. It wasn't easy, in this warehouse, so I hop-flapped forward, until I'd made it to the door. Once I had, I transferred the paper from my talon to my beak so I could properly push off the ground. Once I was in the air, it was easy to catch a thermal and ride it straight up.

<Be safe, okay?>

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