Chapter Two
Okay, so when I said that espionage was easy, I may not have been clear. See, it isn’t particularly difficult, especially not when you can change your face into whatever you want, because it involves skills that just about anyone can learn. But there is a lot of legwork involved. I was faster and better at it than just about anyone, but that was because I could spy on people as a bird, or a lizard, or a fly. But, if anybody had access to the same information I did, they would be able to get Lucky to tell them whatever they needed. I simply knew what Lucky liked, and followed through to get where I needed to go.
None of that was hard for me, but even easier was breaking into Josh’s house. The guy had a state of the art security system, motion sensors covering every bare inch of the exterior and the perfectly manicured lawn, sensors on every window and door, and even one covering the skylight above his bedroom. And those were just the things I could see. For all I knew, he might sleep with a gun under his pillow. He was, after all, in a dangerous business.
But none of that mattered to someone like me. It doesn’t matter how secure you make the obvious entrances to a building; spiders, flies, ants, and even larger animals like mice could virtually always find a way inside. They only needed the tiniest crack, and they’d be in. Something that size with the intelligence of a human was even harder to keep out.
I waited until the wee hours of the morning before I did anything. Then, under cover of darkness, I shifted into a squirrel.
Shifting doesn’t exactly hurt, but you know it’s happening. One of my brothers who was too stupid to realize that he could literally replace any teeth he wanted had had a particularly large cavity filled at the dentist once, when he was fourteen. He said that the grinding, drilling sensation against his numbed tooth was really, really close to how it felt, except it was experienced everywhere. I have no idea if that’s true, and I don’t plan on letting anyone go prospecting around in my mouth long enough to find out.
And, before anyone asks, I have no idea what happens to the extra mass of my body when I shift into something smaller than my normal human form. The cells that don’t get used have to somewhere, I guess, but it’s not something I’m keen to find out. The only way I would be able to really learn would be in a laboratory, and, if I’m being honest, the thought terrified me.
If a scientist of any kind found out about skinchangers, even if there was only one of us, it would not go well. We weren’t just proof of the supernatural, we would be regarded as a finite resource, and treated as such. I’d be stuck in a lab for the rest of my life—which could, potentially, be a very long time, if my grandfather was any indication—probably held under constant sedation. My individual cells could be harvested to produce all kinds of things.
Stem cells, for one; a limitless supply, ready to go at a moment’s notice. Maybe even more obscure things, if they figured out what allowed me to shapeshift. Organic fibers, carbon nanotubes… hell, I could probably provide enough internal organs to take care of every patient on the transplant lists.
Maybe it’s selfish of me to not do that. I don’t exactly work in a friendly industry, but I’d never killed anyone, and only ever used force if there was no other option. Generally speaking, I don’t hurt people. I’m a skinchanger, and though I can look like one if I really wanted to, I’m not a monster.
But I never felt guilty about refusing to sacrifice my freedom, my life in the name of science and progress. I’m not a lab rat.
At that moment, I was, in fact, a squirrel.
I scampered across the lawn, too small to trip the motion sensors, and skittered up the fence enclosing the backyard with careless ease. Quickly, I hopped over to the patio, about a foot away from the back door. Then I concentrated once again, shifting back to my original body.
One of the limits of my abilities is that I usually have to revert to normal before I can shift again. When I shift to double someone, I’m still a human, and am really only moving parts of my body around. That means I can do it quickly and on the fly. But shifting from one animal to another was something entirely different, and can have really nasty consequences. One of my grandfather’s brothers did it too many times, and wasn’t able to quite get back to normal again. He looked normal enough, if you didn’t count the excess hair, but he wasn’t the same anymore; something in his mental state had changed, and nobody was sure exactly what it was.
He never really laughed much after that, and always seemed tense, ready to run at a moment’s notice. It took us a while to realize that he had shifted from a polecat to a deer for some reason. It looked like some of the basic instincts of the animals—the hardwired fight or flight reflex in particular—had carried over when he shifted back out of it. He was never able to get his head back on straight.
Anyway, I had to shift back before I could shift again. I wasn’t about to end up like that.
Once I was human, I looked around to double check that everything was clear, then moved right up to the door. The bottom of it rested about half an inch above the ground, and had a black rubber flap that prevented rain (what little of it fell in New Mexico anyway) from flowing into the house. I checked around, and, making sure to stay as close to the house as possible to avoid the motion sensors, found a barbecue fork on the patio table. I picked it up, then leaned down and wedged it under the door, holding the flap open at its corner.
I concentrated once more, felt my skin ripple and my bones collapse upon themselves, and plummeted toward the ground at a lunatic, breakneck speed. My arms split into two, my legs did the same, my head shot backwards, receding toward what had been my shoulders, and my torso widened, even as it shrank. In less than a minute, I had gone from a tall man to a tiny wolf spider.
All I needed to get through the door without tripping any alarms was a body small enough to fit under the gap in the rubber I had made with the barbecue fork. A layman might wonder why I didn’t simply shrink myself down until I had enough clearance to get through. Theoretically, I absolutely could do it. There really isn’t a limit on how much I can shift; I can rework individual parts of my body, or, if I felt like it, could transform into some massive Lovecraftian monster. But skinchangers tend to avoid the latter.
The problem is one of physical limitation. I’m no expert by any means, but I made sure to pay close attention in biology in school, given the nature of my abilities. And the truth is that geometry plays a greater role in biology than most people realize. There’s something called the Square-Cube Law, which was outlined by none other than Galileo himself. Basically, as something shrinks or grows in size, the volume of it shrinks or grows at a faster rate than the surface area. That doesn’t sound too important, right?
But we keep our body temperatures stable mostly through our skin and our circulation. When the ratio gets disrupted too much—like if I shrink down to the size of a gnat—I’d actually lose body heat faster than I could replenish it. I’d freeze to death pretty quickly, in a matter of minutes at most, seconds at best. It’s why smaller people always seem to be cold.
And if I instead decided to grow myself into something larger than a house, my lungs wouldn’t be able to draw enough air to handle the extra volume. I’d suffocate pretty much immediately. Then there’s the problem of having a skeleton that’s actually strong enough to support the extra weight. It’s why elephants don’t look like giant mice; they have to be different in order to be that big.
In other words, when you hear some guy say that an ant the size of a car could lift the Chrysler Building, just tell him that the ant would die in seconds. That usually shuts them up.
So, yes, I have to shift into things that could exist or I’d die, and spiders aren’t all that complicated. And before you ask, no, I don’t understand how I can still have my own mind when I’m walking around as a freaking spider without an actual brain. By all rights, I shouldn’t, but I shouldn’t be able to turn into a spider in the first place, right?
It’s freaking magic. Clap your hands if you
believe.
Anyway, I scuttled across the short distance, pumping my eight legs madly. I made it through the gap beneath the door, and found myself in a small kitchen. My eyes as a spider were designed to see movement, mostly, and I couldn’t really get a good look around. So I crept to one of the corners that seemed to be out of the way, and shifted back to normal.
The kitchen was nicely furnished—granite countertops, a lovely little kitchen island, and a gleaming gas range all shone from recent cleaning. The table across the room was made of some kind of highly polished wood, maybe oak, and looked large enough to seat ten people comfortably. I looked around a bit, hoping to get a sense of my target, and opened the door to the refrigerator. It was fully stocked, the shelves filled with fresh fruit and vegetables.
And, I noted, with a groan of displeasure, juice boxes.
Kids. The guy has kids.
Crap.
That complicated things. I don’t like violence generally, but I’m willing to break a few bones if I have to put someone down. Kids, though… that was a different story. Hell, I don’t even want to scare kids, let alone actually hurt them. I liked them. Sue me.
I’d have to change my plans. If the guy had been a bachelor, I would have just marched into his bedroom, turned my hand into a sword, quizzed him about his work, knocked him out, impersonated him, gone into his office, and dumped the files onto a portable hard drive. Easy enough.
My head buzzed as I made adjustments. After a few minutes, I had a new plan. I made the decision, and left the way I had come.