I’m not just the freak that sprouts fangs and fur and hurtles into a fight. I’mnot.
I could take the messed-up boards… and bring them to some kind of electronics store. See if they could make a functional copy of them.
A smile darts across my lips. That’s an actual plan. It’d mean having to leave and come back, but totally worth it if we can get access to the computer systems afterward.
We could find out exactly what the guardians did to us when we were just babies. How it all began.
And if we can see how the freakishness started… that might also tell us how we can end it.
High on hope, I reach for the nearest panel without giving myself a chance to second-guess my idea. My fingers grasp around it, feeling for the connection points where it can snap free—
And another electric jolt, twice as potent as the last one that shocked me, crackles up both my arms simultaneously.
The bolt of electricity sears through my nerves and stabs pain all the way to the roots of my teeth. My body rears back defensively.
In all of a second, fur ripples across my back, fangs gnash in my extending muzzle, and I slam my fist into the circuit board.
It sputters and sizzles, and I roar at it. Only as I catch a shaky breath do I come back to myself, staring at the bashed panel that’s now way more of a mess than when I found it.
The metal bits have fractured. Most of the green board is cracked into little shards. A few of them patter to the floor as I watch.
There’s no way any tech expert is piecingthatdisaster back together.
My face snaps back into human shape. I stare at the damage I did, panting, my fingers opening and closing at my sides.
Fucking hell. Of all the times to lose my grip on my temper…
But that grip is tenuous even at the best of times. I shouldn’t have even tried.
“It’s okay,” Riva says softly. “Even if we could fix it, they must have wiped all the data too. There might be people like that hacker guy who could dig something out if they got the power on, but none of us know how. And we can’t lug this whole console to a computer expert to ask for help.”
I know that’s all true. And when I glance over at her, braced for her expression, I don’t see the slightest hint of horror in it.
She just saw me partly transform—right in front of her under the beaming lights, not at a distance in the dark like during the fight at the college—and she didn’t cringe away. She’s looking at me like I’m the exact same person I always was.
Fuck, how much do I wish I was that person.
My body starts to lean toward her as if drawn by a magnetic pull. She always understood better than the others, with all that savage strength in her own tiny frame—
My gaze drops to my hand lifting as if to touch her arm, and an image blazes up through my memory. This hand, clawed and bloodied. A scream ringing in my ears. Blood, so much fucking blood, on me and around me…
I jerk myself away, shoving to my feet in the same motion. “You don’t know anything!”
Riva blinks at me, her body tensing exactly the way I expected it to before. “Zian? I was just trying—”
My voice tumbles out with a growl woven through it. “Don’ttryanything. Just get out of my way. You have no idea what I’m dealing with. Allyouever do is grow pretty little claws and pointed ears.”
“I—”
I don’t want to hear a single thing she has to say. “You have no fucking clue how bad—You don’t know anything. So just stay the fuck away from me.”
Because I hurt people, and even after everything, I don’t want to hurt you.
I don’t say that last part out loud. It sticks in the bottom of my throat, but maybe it wouldn’t make any difference anyway.
Riva’s expression twitches. Then she scrambles up and darts out of the room, giving me the space I demanded.
And leaving me feeling like even more of a monster than I did before.