We set a time. 10am. A few minutes later, Jake called back to let me know that everyone was okay. I breathed a sigh of relief even as I reminded myself that "okay" meant "not dead", it didn't mean "not captured".

But they hadn't come for me in the night. So if they were going to come for me, it probably wouldn't be until our meeting. I went back to bed, while my mother went outside to force-feed probiotics to a badger.

Rachel arrived at nine.

She and Jake, playing distractions as they had, were who I considered the highest risk of capture. But she smiled, and hugged me, and I couldn't help sobbing a little into her shirt.

"It's ok, it's ok," she murmured, even though it really wasn't. We went out to the barn.

"You tried it yet?" I asked eventually.

"Tried what?"

"Changing into an animal. Morphing."

Her eyes widened. "No. We don't have any pets." She glanced contemplatively around the barn. "Have you?"

I raised an eyebrow.

"Which one?"

"Horse."

"Show me."

Was it her? Was it an alien in her brain, waiting until I was a mess of limbless flesh to attack me? There was no way I could refuse. I started to get undressed. Horse.

Let's try to do this without tearing anything, ok?

Fur started spurting along my body. My fingers started to meld no, no I need those, they stopped and I kept undoing the buttons on my shirt. My feet started to change; I kicked my boots off before they were shredded. My spine itched, no, not yet, I'll fall over; I felt my tail shoot from the end of my tailbone just as I got my pants off. Then my spine adjusted, I fell forward onto hands that were merging into hooves, and I grew.

I was almost done before I realised that I'd controlled the morph. Not completely, but I'd chosen, broadly, which parts to do first and last.

Rachel was staring at me, mouth open. The probiotic badger was making a ruckus in his cage. Some of the birds were screeching. Not taking her eyes off me, Rachel asked, "Won't your parents come because of the noise?"

[No, things disturb the animals all the time, they'll ignore it unless it gets really bad.]

Rachel's eyes widened and she started looking around, startled.

[Uhm. You can hear me, can't you.]

She nodded, slowly. "Can you hear me?"

[Yes, of course.]

"Did you hear what I thought, I mean."

[Oh. No. Maybe you have to be in morph to do it.]

She nodded. I morphed back and got dressed. "You should try it."

"I, um, I wouldn't know what to turn into."

"We have a barn full of animals. Pick one."

"Maybe later." Was Rachel scared? Rachel was never scared. Not of anything. She'd held my hand while we watched a warrior get eaten alive, but she was scared of turning into an animal? I didn't press the issue.

She got out a newspaper, opened it to a particular page and thrust it at me. "Look at this."

It was obvious which article she meant. It was a short one, detailing some strange lights and sounds over the construction site. A few people had reported seeing UFOs. The sort of thing I'd normally scoff at. The police clearly felt the same; they'd dismissed it as kids setting off fireworks.

Fireworks had been found at the site.

The police were looking for the kids.

I met Rachel's eyes. "Controllers."

She nodded. "Definitely."

I handed the paper back. "Makes sense. If you were a secretly invading army of body-snatchers, wouldn't you hit the police force first?"

She nodded again. "Police force, media, maybe politicians."

"Military."

"No point. Their footsoldiers are better than ours and so is their technology. Our military aren't relevant unless their invasion stops being so secret. Same for military research; they only need to see that we're not prepared to deal with aliens and our R&D becomes irrelevant to them."

I wished we had pen and paper for this.

Idly, I started half-morphing as we talked. Horse hair. No horse hair. Horse hair. No horse hair. Occasionally my shoulders would widen or my feet would threaten to tear out of my boots, but I managed to stop before breaking anything. Rachel looked away, more content to scan for my parents through the doorway. "They could be our parents, you know. Our friends."

"My parents are just vets. Your mum's a lawyer. She's who we should watch out for."

Rachel shot a glare at me, then shrugged. "We need to watch out for everyone."

"I know." Even you, Rachel. Are you my friend? Or are you an alien puppetting her body, waiting until we're all here together?

"So I'm guessing you can't... morph... with clothes?"

"Nope." Once again, I watched horse hair suck itself into my skin. I felt my own hair inch out of my head.

Hair wasn't alive.

Hair strands didn't have DNA.

How did my body "know" how long my hair needed to grow back to? That information wasn't anywhere in any of my cells.

Morphing made no sense.

Mental command... you had to concentrate on what you wanted to be and that new body built itself from your own body...

I sat on a sack of oats in one corner of the barn, closed my eyes, and took several slow, deep breaths.

"What are you doing?" Rachel asked.

"Experimenting. Give me a minute."

My hair had no DNA. Its length wasn't recorded anywhere in my body, except my own memory. But it still, according to the morphing, counted as 'me'. The morphing 'remembered' it.

I am Cassie. I have bones and organs and muscles and skin and hair. I have underwear. My jeans and jacket were loose-fitting; I'd never be able to convince my body that they were a part of me, but maybe something skintight...

Horse.

My face stretched out. Hair sprang across my body. My underwear sank into my skin. I opened my eyes and grinned with my freaky half-horse face at Rachel, who just stared back, puzzled. As far as she could tell, I hadn't done anything different than I'd been doing all along.

"What?" she asked.

I morphed back. "I think we might be able to morph skintight clothing."

She grinned. "Leotard."

"Leotard."