Limitless Evolution As a Snake

Like she’s not just planning a party, she’s already celebrating something I haven’t seen yet.

It’s too convenient, too smooth the kind of slow-acting poison that lets the killer stick around for the encore.

The alarm hits before I even know something’s wrong.

Not a beep. Not a little notification chime. A full siren, ripping through my skull like someone dropped an air raid horn straight into my brain.

Lyra sways. Just a little, just enough that I catch it out of the corner of my eye, and my brain goes, wait, what.

Then her glass just slips right out of her hand.

Not drops. Slips, like her fingers forgot what a glass even is, and it hits the floor and explodes into a hundred little glittering pieces, champagne splashing across those nice boots she likes so much.

Something in my gut drops with it. Not a feeling, not a metaphor, an actual weight, cold and heavy, like someone shoved a chunk of lead straight down my throat and it landed right behind my belly button. The bond doesn’t ping. It doesn’t buzz. It just slams, one single gong going off somewhere behind my ribs, and my whole body goes cold before my brain even catches up to why.

I flip to heat vision without even deciding to. Lyra’s always this warm orange-yellow glow in my sight, steady, alive, the kind of warm I could find in a pitch-black room from a mile off. Right now that glow is draining out of her like someone pulled a plug. Her fingers go from orange to a dull, sick blue-grey in the span of like two seconds. Her chest, her face, the colour’s just sliding off her like water off glass.

That’s not normal. That’s not tipsy-swaying-at-a-party normal; fuck me, that’s something is actively killing my girl right now normal.

”Lyra?”

My voice comes out weird, too flat, like it’s not sure if it’s allowed to panic yet.

She blinks at me slowly, confused, like she’s trying to remember what my name means. Her mouth opens, and nothing useful comes out, just a little huff of air, and then her knees just stop working.

[System: ATE! SHE’S CARKING IT! SYSTEM TOXIN DETECTED, GET HER OUT OF THERE YOU USELESS REPTILIAN CUNT!]

I freeze for half a second, and that half a second feels like it lasts a year. Old Mate never yells like this. Old Mate is the guy who narrates my life like he’s three beers deep and can’t be bothered standing up. He jokes about my mistakes. He gives me shit for bad decisions. He does not scream.

He’s screaming now.

[System: TOXIN LEVELS CLIMBING, MATE, SHE’S GOT MAYBE MINUTES, MAYBE LESS, MOVE YOUR SCALY ASS!]

I’m moving before I even tell my coils to move, but of course, of course, right as I catch her, right as her whole dead weight flops into my scales, cold and shaking, I catch Channel out of the corner of my eye.

She’s not looking at Lyra, hell she’s not looking at me either.

She’s sipping her drink. Slow and deliberate. Little pinky out like she’s at some fancy tea thing, blue eyes doing that wide innocent blink over the rim of her glass, watching the whole scene like it’s a show she paid good money for. Her drink’s not spiked. I don’t need heat vision to know that, I can just tell, the way you can tell a snake’s about to strike from the way it’s not moving at all.

”Oh my gosh,” she says, syrupy sweet, not even bothering to sound surprised. ”Is she like, okay?”

She is very much not okay. Her skin is clammy, and the bond hammers away, a frantic alarm trying to cut through my own rising panic. But something else is rising with it. A low hum starts in my chest, a vibration I barely recognise as my own. Mine. The thought is cold, simple. That bitch hurt what’s mine. And now she’s going to find out what that costs.

”What did you do?”

It’s not a question. My voice doesn’t even sound like mine; it’s flat and low and something underneath it that scares me a little.

Channel just smirks over the rim of her glass and doesn’t answer. It’s the cold, sharp kind you save for after you’ve already won, a pure ’got ya’ expression.

”Matt, my son’s got a great fu-” Dad’s voice, somewhere behind me, still talking business, still not getting it.

I don’t hear the rest.

The bond in my chest yanks like someone tied a rope to my ribs and slammed a truck into reverse. It’s not subtle, and it’s not a feeling. It’s a physical pull, dragging my attention across the room to Lyra like gravity just decided she’s the only thing that matters.

Her skin is turning blue, not bruise-blue but corpse-blue. Starting at her lips, crawling up her cheeks, and her eyes are losing focus, rolling, and her knees buckle and she’s going down, actually going down, hitting the floor like a puppet with the strings cut.

Channel’s smile gets wider.

That’s the last thing I register before my body just moves.

Fins snap out of my ribs with a crack loud enough to turn heads, and I don’t think, I don’t plan, I just go. Smoke pours off my fins mid-flight, coiling forward, and I’m across the office in half a second flat, faster than I’ve ever moved in my life, faster than should be possible for something my size.

Tendrils of smoke, half-solid and shaking, scoop under Lyra before she even finishes falling. She’s freezing; she’s not breathing. I don’t have time to process that fact; I just feel it slam into me like a fist to the gut.

”Matt, what the fu-” Dad’s voice, finally catching up, finally realising something’s happening.

I don’t answer him. I put my head down and go straight through the window. Glass explodes outward in a hundred directions, catching the light like confetti, and cold air punches into my lungs as I burst out into open sky above the warehouse district.