“Yeva, I’d like to introduce you to someone. This is my boss, Mr. Nergal. He is a very important man, and one day, you too may work for him.”

  “Hello Yeva. It’s a pleasure to meet you. I hear that one day we shall expect great things from you.”

  “Why?”

  “Your father thinks very highly of you.”

  “You don’t sound very convinced.”

  “Yeva-”

  “It’s fine, Dzhon. She is correct. Your father is a brilliant man, child. But, I have known countless brilliant men that fell prey to the blindness inherent in paternal instinct. One’s progeny does not hold merit because of lineage. And one’s objectivity must be treated as suspect when tainted by familial kinship.”

  “You shouldn’t say that. My daddy told me that it’s rude to call someone an ignoramus.”

  “Hmhmhmh, I meant no offence, child. Do you know what your father does in my employ?”

  “He is a scientist.”

  “He unravels the mysteries of the universe. As his superior, it is my job to call him a fool, and it is his to prove me wrong. Will you do the same, Yeva? Only time will tell.”

  ***

  After I'd filled my belly, Nim healed my broken legs and regrew my missing secondary arm. I had also suffered a myriad of smaller injuries that needed to be taken care of after my misadventures, but those too were no trouble after eating over fifty kilograms of poultry. How I had been able to eat such a large volume of food was beyond me, and Nim hadn't been any help either, only saying some nonsense about the comparative difference in bone density between species. Seemed like more warp magic fuckery to me, like a decanid's gravity manipulation or a stalker's electromagnetic cloaking, but if Nim couldn't explain it, no one could.

  I had also managed to ruin my only clothes. In hindsight, I probably should have taken the clothes off before going hunting - especially the boots - but in some ways, I guess I was still human because the thought hadn't even occurred to me until after I'd gotten them soaked in blood. Fortunately, Nim did have a solution this time, though it was a little weird. He'd explained that my normal - non-acidic - saliva was infused with nanites that could form into long carbon polymer chains that would bind to whatever he designated. It was the same process that gave the webbed saliva of warp weavers the strength of braided steel cable and the stickiness of gecko skin. Using it to bind with organics, I could simply lick my clothes clean like a Mr. Hamburger licking pilfered queso from his paws.

  Also like the barrack’s cat of infamy, I spent the next few hours wandering the reactor compound while hacking up slimy, half-digested feather balls. I guess the fluffy things weren't all that integral to my anatomy, though Nim insisted useful collagen had been extracted before they were ‘discarded’. My new avian companion, who I'd named Baba Yaga, found my discomfort most entertaining, and would hop up and down on my shoulder whenever I hacked up a steaming ball of gunk. He'd then pick at it, which was disgusting, but I guess his body needed the materials more than mine.

  The facility didn't have much of interest left to find. The decontamination crews had picked the place clean of valuables. I'd gotten excited when I found someone's old smartpager, but it was dead. And probably pass-code protected. And the service had probably expired months ago. And it was teal. Yeah, maybe I’d gotten excited for nothing, but at least I might be able to pawn it for a little cash. I held onto it, just in case.

  The smartpager - and by extension, the idea of walking into a pawnshop and trying to haggle with a store clerk about the price while sounding like I was gargling acid - had me thinking about my other other biggest issue. You know, now that I'd solved the whole food and clothing thing. I needed a way to communicate. If the birdpocalypse had taught me anything, it was that my mere existence was an existential threat to the world’s population. So no living out the rest of my days in hermitage. I needed to figure out what was going on with the warp before anyone else got killed. To do that, I needed my team.

  The only problem was that if they had even survived the Zion breach, they would now be hunting me. I'd stolen the tube train, which should have delayed them, but eventually they would get another sent and be on my trail. In order to stop that, I'd have to convince them that I was still me and still on their side. Not the easiest feat, considering the danger I represented. And so we came back to communication.

  The easiest way to do that would be through a smartpager - like the teal brick I’d found. If it worked, I could just page them a whole explanation without needing to speak a single word. The problem was that this one was teal and my own personal device had been destroyed along with all my other stuff. The way I saw it, I was left with two options. Either convince someone to let me borrow theirs or steal one. Stealing one would be easier but had some complications. First among those was credibility. My story would be hard enough to swallow coming from a reliable source, if it came from an unknown, out of network, and registered stolen ID, my chances of persuading them would only be that much worse.

  No, my best option was to get someone credible but outside of the military to vouch for me. Which, again, I wouldn't be able to do if I couldn't communicate. Gah, I kept going in circles. I wasn't going anywhere with this train of thought. The core of the problem was that no one understood my speech… except that wasn't strictly true, was it? Nim understood me, and by extension, so did Baba Yaga.

  The crow was frighteningly intelligent and currently entertaining himself by pecking at a computer terminal keypad to try different pass-codes. They were all gibberish of course, but it was the thought that counted.

  “Hey Baba Yaga,” he'd taken to the name immediately, “can you say ‘hello’?”

  “Hhllhuhh,” the bird gurgled happily, mimicking the word just as I'd said it. God, was that really what I sounded like? No wonder everyone had adopted a shoot first ask questions later policy… except Duncan. Man, that guy was dumb. Rest in peace.

  The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  “No, not like that. Like a human would say it.”

  “Hhllhahw!” he cawed confidently.

  “That was… closer, keep trying buddy.”

  “Hhllwalhh. Hhaa hhlahh. Hhhaaa!”

  Okay so that wasn't going to work. It would get weird enough having a bird speak for me, but we wouldn’t get anywhere if his words were almost just as unintelligible as my own. It had been a good idea though.

  I appropriated an office chair and let out a sigh, giving it a lazy spin. There had to be a way to make people understand me. I didn't know any sign language and learning would take too long. I could do the classic pen and pad of paper strat, but that put a lot of faith in people reading it before they tried to kill me. In my experience, that wasn't how exterminating warp beasts typically went. But, it was the best idea I'd had so far, so I leaned over and ransacked the nearest office space until I found a notebook half full of doodles and grocery lists and a fancy pen that said Exotech HQ on it. Trophy from a competitor, perhaps?

  I resisted the urge to chew on the pen as I thought. It was a habit I'd picked up that wouldn't end well nowadays.

  “Hey Nim, when you went into that crow, you said you changed it, yeah? Gave it extra muscle mass or whatever?”

  I did, he said a little stiffly. He still hadn't quite forgiven me for killing and eating his entire flock.

  “Could you make changes to my body too?”

  If you are wanting me to change you back into a human, I cannot. The changes the warp made are irreversible.

  “No need to get snippy. I figured as much, anyway. Nah, what I had been thinking was that if you can add muscle mass, you could probably add or at least bulk up other body parts too, right? What about my lips and larynx? The vocal chords perhaps? Anything that would help me speak clearly. I mean you were able to speak just fine as a bird, right? And I ate tons of those guys, so surely I’ve got the parts.”

  Well for starters, you already have vocal chords, a larynx, and lips. They have all simply been coated in a protective layer of tungsten carbide, which makes them far less dexterous and gives your voice that sound of sandpaper on asphalt. Additionally, corvids have syrinxes, not larynxes, which sits far lower in the throat, near where the trachea splits to enter your lungs. It is completely different.

  “Wait, that’s perfect,” I said, getting excited, “give me a syrinx. If it’s down by my lungs, surely it won’t be anywhere near my nanite acid gland, right? And so it won’t need a tungsten carbide coating like my larynx does. What do you think? Would it work?”

  I… I do not know about this. I have never deviated from your DNA before. The way that I repair your body is by following the DNA blueprints housed within your cells. That is why I cannot change you back, the warp altered your DNA. Even if I made changes, your body would reject them because they would no longer match with the DNA blueprint. I could add muscle mass to the crow because that was in line with its DNA’s original design. I was simply boosting its natural muscle growth. This, however, would require growing entirely new muscles, which are not present in your cells’ genetic structure.

  “Okay, but isn’t that like how tumors work? They mutate to grow like nasty meatballs?”

  Yeva, your immune system is constantly hunting down and destroying malignant cells. Your DNA mutates trillions of times a day, but your body has checks in place to stop these mutations from growing malignant. It takes a very specific set of mutations to form a tumor. In theory, I could manufacture these kinds of mutations, but by doing so, I would risk potentially engineering mutant cells that are impervious to your immune system and kill you from the inside. Besides, what you are asking me to do is literally the same kind of genetic manipulation that the warp uses to create breach tumors and warp beasts in the first place.

  My sharp teeth punctured the thin metal pen. Whoopsie. It took a mental effort to slip the slightly damaged writing implement into my sweatshirt’s big front pocket.

  “Alright, fine, you win. So we cannot change my DNA without taking some serious risks. But, my immune system already ignores the presence and actions of nanites, yeah? So why don’t you just create a carbon nanite structure in the place of a syrinx that mimics its function without actually manipulating my genetics?”

  That… that actually might work.

  “Not bad, right?”

  But how would I know what to say? The muscles would be synthetic and completely controlled by me.

  “Oh, that’s easy, you already read the signals coming from my brain before they reach my lips. Just repeat whatever I say as I say it. I’ll talk like normal, and you can be my instantaneous syrinx interpreter.”

  You know what? This sounds fun. Let us give it a try. Okay, this may feel strange. Just relax your throat and try not to breathe. With that alarming suggestion, I felt a swelling in my throat just under the clavicle. I held my breath, seconds crawling by. Tightness began to build until I wasn’t sure I could breathe if I wanted to. My lungs started to burn, but I kept it in, refusing to breathe. It felt like a softball had formed in my windpipe, and pain from the pressure steadily grew. Oh dear, it seems I needed more room than anticipated. I did not properly account for how much bigger your lungs are than that of a crow. I will just need to clear out some extra space. This may hurt.

  White hot agony burned down my lungs. It was like the feeling you got when you accidentally got water in your windpipe while showering; only instead of water, it was hydrofluoric acid. I screamed. There was no sound. No air. My windpipe had been destroyed.

  Oops. Dampening pain response. Do not worry, you still have plenty of oxygen in your blood to avoid hypoxia, and I will be done in a moment.

  The pain ebbed into a dull heat. I was still in a state of extreme discomfort, but at least I was no longer convulsing. My fingernails dug deeply into the office chair’s plastic armrests. I felt the ball in my throat shifting and contracting. The tightness faded, and through the sensation it was clear that Nim had melted away large amounts of existing muscle tissue to make room for his nanite construct. Once it was oriented to his liking, the flesh started to regrow around it, sealing it into place as the internal wound healed. Finally, something clicked and air rushed out of my raw throat. I sucked in the stuff greedily. Stagnant as it was in the abandoned office, it still tasted sweet on my oxygen starved tongue.

  “Nim you little shit, you could’ve warned me,” my voice reverberated, still just as monstrous, but intelligible.

  It is a little degrading to have to call myself a little shit on your behalf. Please refrain from insulting me in the future.

  “Fuck you.”

  Much better, the lack of proper nouns allows me to mentally direct the insult to whomever I want.

  Huh, I think that was the first time he had ever cursed at me. I mean technically I forced him to, and it was technically possible he had ‘mentally directed’ his insult at Baba Yaga - rude if true - but still. Good on you, little buddy, stick it to the man… or woman in this case.

  “Whatever,” I said, listening with fascination to my own voice. “Sally sells sea shells down by the sea shore,” I said experimentally. My tone was strangely melodic. It was still undercut by my normal grinding guttural rasp, but now it had this modular double singsong high tone that played clearly over the top of it. It created a haunting reverberation effect. Cool. Not ideal for blending in, but still cool. I could probably do sick vocals for a metal k-pop fusion band and even sing my own harmonies. But perhaps most importantly, I could clearly understand my words. Hurdle one was down.

  Now for the second part of my terrible master plan, I would need to find someone who was credible with my squad but wouldn’t be able to kill me the second they realized what I had become. And for that, I needed to get the help of a very specific, and judgemental, individual. I’d have to pay my old foster counselor a visit.

  This was gonna be awkward.