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This one is for Dorothy Colleen. You know why.

Maggie

That isn't going to help, you know.” Shane Duncan told Zack while he watched him in his corner of the dingy, dirty alley holding the bottle of cheap wine that he obviously intended to drink.

“What's left to me, Shane?” He asked simply. “I've lost everything, even my self respect. What else could I lose now?”

“I don't know.” The other man quite honestly told him. “Maybe yourself, that chance that might come to pull you out of this?”

“Won't happen.” He shook his head while turning the top on that cheap bottle of rotgut.

“It has.” Shane I answered and held out a slip of paper. “If you have the guts to start over.”

“What is this?” He asked, while hesitantly taking the innocuous piece of plain notebook paper Shane was holding out.

“An address.” Shane shrugged. “Somewhere that can help refine the skills you have, and improve on them, maybe even get you a real job in time.

“So what have you got to lose?” He asked while pointing at the bottle of wine. “Try it. If it doesn't work out, there's always that to fall back on.”

The derelict looked at Shane, then at the bottle, then at the piece of paper he'd been handed . “You think this would make a difference?”

“That's up to you, Zack.” The other man shrugged. “Take the chance or not. I won't even try to force you into it, it's your choice to make.”

“Yeah, it is, isn't it?” He looked up at Shane then stood up, leaving the wine behind. “What the Hell, I can try again, right?”

“Yeah, you can.” The other nodded.

“Thanks, Shane.”

“Glad I could help.” Shane answered then added. “The place is open for another hour and it's only a couple of blocks away.”

“Going, going!” Zack answered as he hurried off.

“Good luck, my friend.” Shane whispered once he'd left the alley.

That's what I did. And no, I wasn't some well off guy out to toss some things around to the less fortunate. I was barely making it myself and knew that I was probably one bad thing away from being on the streets myself.

I had a crap job, on the loading dock of a local discount store, a crappier apartment — room actually that came with a hotplate and a can to boil coffee in. The one bathroom in the place was shared by about twenty people, and wasn't all that clean to begin with.

My clothes were ragged, and dirty. There were no laundry facilities where I lived, and the closest one with machines that actually worked was five miles away and I couldn't spare the money to put in the machines.

So I did what most of the people in my home did. Rinsed my clothes in the kitchen sink (cold water only) and hoped I could get the worst of the grime out of them.

That's me. Shane Marshall. I had a degree, but with the current economy, and some past indiscretions, no one wanted to hire me. No one want's to take a chance on an IT guy who took advantage of his position and knowledge, even if doing that had helped someone and saved a life. I had done the unthinkable and violated the one major rule for IT people. You don't dig into people's lives. Ever. So I took what I could get, and tried to help others as much as I could.

That IT thing did help me find things for other people who needed it. Hey, computer access at the library is free.

So I passed along information, places to go for help, and when I could a little money for food or clothing that would help a person survive just a bit longer. I even passed out the meager canned goods I had off and on. I wasn't starving, they were. I could go hungry for a few days if someone who really needed it got enough food to go on.

And no. I was no angel. I would steal, con, mug someone, or whatever it took, to get things that would keep me alive and with a chance to have something better.

But I shared what I got.

Good. Bad. I didn't know how that would balance out when I had to finally face things once my life was over. I did what I had to do to survive, and tried to help others do that, too.

Morality, scruples, just go away when you're at the bottom and just trying to get through another day.

I was bad, I was good, I was just what I needed to be when I needed to do things.

Kind of human there, right?

“That one.” I heard someone say just before something stung me like a bee.

“Don't worry.” The voice told me. “We aren't going to kill you. You're going to become a productive member of society here.”

I tried to fight the sedative, and did manage to see five or six figures moving towards me before I just sank into the oblivion the drugs they had put into my system really took hold.

After that, all I remember for a long time is pain.

Hines

Christian Hines was roused from sleep by the insistent beeping of his secure phone.

“What?” He asked but heard the alarms clamoring in the background of the call. “What happened?”

“Sir.” A voice he recognized as belonging to Bill Stewart, his second came through the other noise. “We have a problem.”

“I can hear that.” Chris growled as he got out of bed and started getting dressed. “What kind of problem?”

“Zephyr.” Stewart answered. “She's escaped.”

“On my way.” Hines growled, suddenly very awake. “Have some answers for me when I get there, Stewart.”

I didn't know where I was.

I didn't know who I was.

Or even what I was.

But I did remember the pain. A white room, with what I took to be some pretty advanced scientific equipment, a tube I had been put into, and the agony I had experienced while there.

I also knew that what — who — I had been would have been horrified at what I did once I finally realized the people doing this to me couldn't hold me if I didn't want them to.

But I also knew I wasn't that person any more. What I'd done to escape the torture let me know that.

And I was covered in blood.

Blood that smelled good, like a really great dinner at a fancy restaurant, and tasted better than anything I'd ever had when I started licking my hands clean.

Oh, dear lord. What have I become?

Who did I used to be?

Why can't I remember?

“How the Hell did you let this happen?” Hines asked, after he'd seen the chaos and carnage in the facility and had settled into a conference room with his subordinate.

“She was calm, even docile.” Stewart answered. “We gassed her, as per protocols, then sent in the usual security team to take her to testing.”

“Then?”

“She -- she killed them, all of them.”

“The security team?” Hines asked.

“Yes.” Stewart nodded. “She was so fast even the cameras had trouble following her, but she killed her escort in seconds.”

“Then?” Hines asked as his stomach was trying to do somersaults.

“She got into the control center.”

“How many dead there?”

“Two.” Stewart answered, then added. “If someone wasn't trying to stop her, she ignored them. But she opened the outer doors, and the cell doors.”

“Crap.” Hines used a few more curses. “How many got away?”

“We were able to contain it once she got out.” The man, anxious and afraid, replied. “We managed to contain the rest before they could get out.”

“Good.” Hines nodded then looked at his subordinate. “I take it that a search for Zephyr is ongoing?”

“Of course, sir.” Stewart nodded. “If she feeds, we'll find her.”

“Make sure of that.” Hines replied. “If what we're doing here gets out, I don't have to tell you about the consequences.”

“No sir, you don't” Stewart answered.

Hines knew that nothing they did would hide this, and that the project he headed would come to light. Too many people had died, too many things were out of control.

All because one subject had gotten away.

Zephyr

Okay, the blood was gone.

I had licked myself clean where my mouth could reach and I could get to a lot of places most people can't with that. The other places, I scraped with hands on arms that were way more flexible than I recalled having. Oh, it wasn't a Mr. Fantastic thing, where I could stretch my body to do things like that, I was just a lot more limber than I ever recalled being.

I didn't quite recall why, but discovering I was female was jarring, and just seemed wrong somehow.

“I need to see.” I muttered to myself while the body sensations that I knew were alien to my old self made themselves known. Breasts shifting with every move I made and just feeling — heavy — on my chest when I held still. Hips that swung side to side whenever I took a step. My butt felt like it was sticking out a yard and quivered whenever I moved.

And my hair.

“What is this?” I asked the air around me and noted that my voice sounded wrong, too. Husky, but not in a range I thought I should have.

Back to my hair. It fell past my shoulders, trickled down my chest in unruly midnight tangles, and I could feel it tickling my bare back just above my unfamiliar butt.

Naked as I was, I didn't feel cold at all, and just as an aside, noted the lack of swinging between my legs that I couldn't recall feeling but seemed as if it was right to miss that.

“Crap.” I muttered while walking to the end of the alley I'd found myself in. “What did they do to me?”

My hands, and what else of myself I could see told me I was female, Though that would have been kind of hard to miss with all the body sensations I was getting.

Another oddity. There was no light where I was. But I could see just fine even if the colors were all washed out or not there at all.

Oh yeah, I had to see what I was.

What I looked like.

See what I had to deal with in life. Whatever my old one had been, and I knew there had been one even though I didn't quite recall what that had been, I had the feeling that now was worse. A lot worse.

But I had to SEE.

Hines

There was going to be an investigation. Any time a secure facility had problems, that was a given.

How was he going to explain, mitigate, the one glaring fact that one of his subjects had escaped?

While downplaying just how dangerous Zephyr is?

“Time to throw someone to the wolves.” He told himself. “Someone needs to take the blame for this one and it won't be me.”

It didn't take much thought to come up with a scapegoat.

After all, Stewart had been in charge when the bitch escaped. Let him take the heat, pay the price for failure. It was his fault, after all. If he had been more vigilant, more careful, this incident would never have happened.

“Yes.” Hines nodded, beginning to believe that hinself. “He screwed up, it's his fault.”

I screamed when I saw myself.

In horror, and not because I was female, even if that did feel kind of wrong for some reason.

I was pale complected, almost white. My naked form wasn't really voluptuous, oh it was something that men would like but not overly eye catching. The worst thing about this was that it was like looking at a woman in a picture done in chalk.

And that was wrong from every shadowy memory or feeling I had.

Even my eyes were white. Without a discernible pupil. Not to mention that they were wide, almond shaped, and oddly beautiful as weird as they were.

And my teeth.

Even with my generous mouth closed, the sharp canines, long, narrow, and needle sharp, that I could see when I opened my mouth, weren't hidden at all. They pushed my upper lip out and glimpses of them peeked out even with my mouth tightly shut.

“What, what the hell did you people do to me?” I asked the reflection in that shop window.

Of course, that stranger in my reflection had no answers either.

I just didn't know what to do.

And my stomach was churning, like yours does when you are hungry.

But what the hell would I eat? The thought of things I'd liked, even if hazy, did nothing for me.

Then it hit me. Right between the eyes, so to speak.

I'd licked the blood off myself, and it had tasted good.

Then a memory came back. About my getting away.

Oh dear God. I'd killed people, a lot of people.

And had ravenously drunk their blood as I did it, then licked what was all over me clean after I'd gotten away.

What? What the Hell had I become?

What had those people done to me?

Could I ever trust myself to be near people again? Without killing them?

Would I even care if I did kill them? Would I be able to keep myself from doing that kind of thing?

“Oh, gawd.” I whispered in the voice I knew was husky, velvety, and yes — sexy as I lowered myself to the broken pavement, curled into a tight ball and cried.

Zack

Zachary (Zack) Constansez had been looking for Shane for some time. The guy had just dropped out of sight and no one knew where he'd gone or why.

Others, street people, or ones close to being that, had been looking too at first. But after a month most people decided that like everyone else who found a way to claw out of this gutter they lived in, the man had turned his back and moved into a life that was better without more than a second thought.

Abandoning them all to the misery he had escaped.

Zack didn't believe that. Shane had spent too much of his meager resources to help people in worse shape than he was even if it caused him to lack things. A person like that wouldn't just go away if something better had come along. And the police? A street person, or close to it going missing? They said the words, went through the motions, but weren't all that interested in one man who had decided to leave the dregs and go somewhere else.

But it had been months since Shane had disappeared. And Zack couldn't give up. Even if everyone else had.

He had a job, a real job, even if it didn't pay a lot, and a place of his own that wasn't some cardboard box, or pile of rags behind a dumpster with a bottle of cheap wine for comfort. Food when he wanted it if he was careful and hadn't shared too much of it with others, and a real roof over his head, and walls to separate him from the other people in the building if he wanted to be alone.

Plus, he was taking classes that would lead to something better in time. Oh, shaking that hollow craving for booze had been hard, but the place Shane had sent him to helped with that before anything else. He wasn't clean by any measure at all, but now at least the booze, and the forgetfulness it used to give him was nowhere near so necessary. He had goals, chances again.

All because a man who was nearly bad off as he was took an interest and goaded him into trying again.

“I'll find out what happened to you Shane.” Zack promised, then he heard the sobbing when he passed the mouth of a very normal, dingy and dirty alley.

“You aren't here right now, Shane.” Zack whispered. “But someone needs to do what you were doing.”

He turned into the alley to find who was so obviously in distress.

.