Lying in bed, Linda thought about all the things that her sudden change in fortune had opened up to her. Lifting a hand, she examined it in the light of the bedside lamp, turning it this way and that. It was her hand, and yet not her hand.

Ianthe had done exactly what she'd said she would do. This body, everything about it except her brain, was entirely new, no more than hours old.

And made from fucking onions of all things!

That made her laugh whenever she thought about it.

She'd watched with amazed respect as the big lizard had carefully and expertly crafted a whole new brain out of plant biomass, explaining it was a convenient source that was easily available and energy-dense. She'd built the thing in a tank full of some odd looking yellowish goop she called suspension gel, Saurial making little structural supports to order when required. The initial process had taken only about half an hour, which was simply incredible, if you had any idea at all how insanely complex a human brain actually was.

When the basic form was done, Ianthe had requested that Linda sit down and relax, putting one hand on her head, the other one in the tank with the cloned brain, although she'd also said that 'clone' wasn't actually the right word. It was a far closer copy than that in some way that Linda herself had no frame of reference to even begin to understand.

The reptilian biosculptor had stood there for another twenty minutes, while the constructed mass of neural matter changed in tiny, tiny ways, until she announced it was a perfect duplicate, leaving aside the matter of not being conscious. It was even genuinely alive and capable of running the autonomous systems of a human body quite effectively.

Linda had spent some time staring at it in wonder, while Ianthe finished off the final tweaks. "It even has the corona pollentia and gemma, although they're not functional," the lizard had remarked. "There's no way to distinguish this from yours, aside from the way we can talk to you and not to it. It's blank, but I did copy enough neural links across to make it look like a brain with some twenty-five years of experience. Even if someone went to the trouble to examine it on a sub-cellular level I'm sure they'd believe it to be genuine. The DNA and RNA is an exact copy, of course, but so is everything else. I'm confident there's no way to tell them apart. Even I would have trouble and I made the thing!"

"Don't mix them up, then," Saurial had grinned, causing her cousin to look at her with an amused expression.

"I'll try not to have some comical problem with dropping them and picking up the wrong one," she'd noted with a smirk. Linda had stared at them both, then shivered at the thought.

She had still been very, very nervous about putting her fate in the hands of these people. And her fucking brain literally in the hands of Ianthe. But they somehow managed to give her the feeling that they could do exactly what they said they could, and would do it very carefully.

Not to mention, as she'd told them, that she'd thought it was probably her only hope, anyway. Most of the other options probably left her dead in short order, or worse than dead.

On balance, this idea, as mad as it was, seemed preferable. If nothing else, if it all went to shit she'd probably never have known.

Of course, it had worked exactly as Ianthe had assured her it would.

All three of them had spend more than three and a half hours crafting a new body, one that looked exactly like her as she did at the moment, Saurial at Ianthe's direction making a skeleton out of nothing on the workbench, Metis carefully observing and suggesting corrections as they went. It was incredibly creepy and at the same time totally fascinating to watch. The bones looked like normal ones, but Ianthe assured her they were wildly stronger and tougher than a normal human. She commented that she could do much better but it might cause problems now if for any reason she had to have a medical examination. The implication was that later this could be changed.

When the skeleton was finished, Ianthe had produced the rest, basically molding new biomass around it using a machine that Saurial created, onions going in a hopper along with the purple lizard's hand, her other one guiding and controlling the flow of goop that came out the far end as it flowed over the bones. The goo didn't move normally, it was more like some weird protoplasmic life-form, like a giant amoeba, that engulfed the skeleton and quickly became a human figure.

A couple of hours later, there was a copy of her lying in a vat of suspension gel, Saurial having made it on demand and got rid of the machine in a wonderful demonstration of how flexible her abilities were. Linda had peered in at it, shaking her head in astounded respect for the talents of the Family.

"OK, if you want anything changed, now is the time," Ianthe had commented with a smile. "I've added a number of useful upgrades, like I said you'll be stronger, faster, and tougher than a normal human, will heal faster, and won't get sick. Later, when you're used to it, I can improve all those a lot if you want me to, but I think it's best to start slowly. However, I can change eye color, hair color, height, overall build, pretty much anything you care to name. Even fur like you joked."

"I don't think I'm ready for fur," Linda had smiled. "Or scales, thanks all the same."

"Fair enough. You might change your mind at some point." Ianthe had looked amused. "No one ever wants me to give them any proper extra limbs, though. Sad. What about hair color, that's easy? Brown is nice, but a bit plain. I can do a very nice blue."

"Blue hair..." That had taken Linda by surprise and she'd actually considered it for a moment. She liked blue. However, she'd quickly come to her senses. "I think the entire point is to blend in at the moment, right? Blue hair would be sort of distinctive."

"True. Boring, but true."

"We still need to think about a suitable cape identity for you, though," Metis had remarked thoughtfully. "That's probably going to be needed sooner or later. Costumes and the like are easy, of course, but perhaps it's worth thinking about something a little… more involved."

Saurial and Ianthe had looked interested, then at each other, before inspecting Linda who had suddenly felt a little worried.

"Hmm." Walking around her, Saurial had nodded slowly, scratching between her eyes for a moment. "Now that's an interesting idea. Some sort of mild Changer ability, maybe?"

"That's what I was considering. Can you do that, Ianthe?"

All three of them had looked at the purple reptile, who was deep in thought. She'd eventually nodded a couple of time. "I think so. I'll need to make a few modifications to this first, then think about the best way to implement it, but… yes, it's doable. We'd still need to work out exactly what changes were required. Making her a completely free-form shapeshifter is complicated, but a preset form change… I can see a few ways to do that which would be fairly straightforward."

"It's a good way to differentiate her from Squealer, even beyond the different body and the fact that the authorities will have a dead Squealer," Saurial had remarked with an interested expression. "A Tinker/Changer, assuming that we manage to discreetly get that point across to the PRT without giving too much away, is definitely not what Squealer was."

"Tinker/Changer/Brute, actually," Metis had corrected. "We could obviously add other things as well but no point overdoing it. It would only worry them."

"Interesting… very interesting." The slender blue lizard had seemed fascinated. "There's another possibility which might also help us, although it's slightly rubbing it in..."

Everyone had turned to look at her.

"Which is?" Metis had asked curiously.

"Well, if we backdate the application to the DWU by a few days, to make sure that when and if they check, they find that 'Linda Morgan' arrived before Squealer died, not after, then in a week or so, we approach them very quietly and ask them to power test her..."

"You mean… get the PRT to help us create a new identity for her?" Metis had sounded delighted. "That's a really funny idea."

"Would it work, do you think?"

Metis had gone thoughtful and quiet in her own turn, pondering the matter for a while, as the others waited. "I think so. I was wondering about passing her off as a Case 53, those odd memory-loss Parahumans that seem to pop up from time to time. They normally have some physical difference from a base form human, varying from very simple to extreme. And since they can never remember their backgrounds, the government gives them a new identity, so it's completely legitimate."

"I've read about them, yes," Saurial had mused. "And Vista actually asked me if I was one when I first came to Brockton Bay. She sent me the documentation on them. They always have a specific tattoo on them somewhere, but no one seems to know anything more about what happened to them to cause the memory loss and the common physical changes."

"Right. So it would certainly be possible. Ianthe could do the marking easily enough."

"That's simple," the other lizard had nodded.

"However," Metis had carried on, "I'm not sure we want to try that. It would fix one problem but add others that might be worse. The first one is faking the complete memory loss well enough to pass muster. That's more difficult than you'd think, they're bound to have some very effective tests for it. Not impossible to fool, but a lot of work to do perfectly. There is also the problem that we don't know what causes Case 53 Parahumans in the first place."

"You think someone is creating them deliberately?" Saurial had seemed surprised, then very thoughtful. Metis had simply shrugged.

"I'm not certain, I have to admit, but when I've considered the matter, that is definitely one possibility. So is the one that it might be an accident, caused by someone experimenting and getting it wrong. Either is possible, but I don't have enough data to know for sure if either is the true cause. But, if it is, we probably don't want to attract their attention with a Case 53 that they would know for sure wasn't one of theirs. I might be being over cautious but why take chances?"

"Good point."

"On the other hand, it's a known fact that there are Parahumans that Trigger with physical alterations, usually not as severe as Case 53s, and of course there are Changers too. Lung is a good example of the latter. Not to mention that a Trigger event is by definition a highly traumatic one, usually of an extreme nature. If we put all that together, perhaps a suitable cover for Linda would be something like..."

Metis had thought again for a few seconds, before continuing, while they waited, Linda with interest to see what the obviously very smart reptile would come up with.

"OK, how about this. Linda Morgan, which she herself admits is not her original name, joins the DWU, after an extremely traumatic and unpleasant Trigger. When she Triggered, her appearance changed, to what we see in front of us at the moment, which we can use to help create a fake identity. None of her former acquaintances would recognize her any more, and she doesn't want to meet them anyway, since she had a very bad life and she's happy to escape it. Which is basically true in the first place."

"Go on." Saurial had been nodding along, looking like she was thinking it over carefully.

"Her power-set not only changed her base form, it regenerated her completely, after a Trigger event that nearly killed her. Lisa can find some suitable circumstances in the past couple of years or so that would fit, I'm sure. She discovered that not only was she a Tinker now, she had a limited Changer ability which lets her alter her appearance enough to separate a cape identity from a civilian one. The Rules would mean that even if the PRT worked out the civilian ID, they couldn't actually risk doing much about it. Which plays neatly into our hands. We tell them up front that she bought a new ID, both because she's running from people who tried to kill her and would complete the job if they found her and that she didn't look anything like she used to."

"But we don't tell them what that ID is, and if they research it, they already know it's fake, but can't do anything about it because of the Rules." Ianthe had looked pleased.

"Exactly. Use a mix of truth and deception with a liberal dose of misdirection to confuse the issue. As far as the Federal government goes, I believe that as long as the ID has all the suitable social security numbers and the like needed to ensure that she pays her taxes on time and in the right amount, they probably don't actually care all that much. From my research, since Parahumans came to this world, the laws surrounding alternate identities have become much more nuanced and complicated, but at the same time less strict. It will take some careful work but it might well be simpler than coming up with a totally bulletproof civilian ID from scratch. Lisa is extremely talented at that, but why not take advantage of the situation?"

"You think it will work?"

"I think it has a very high likelihood of working, definitely, and the best part is that we can basically enlist the help of the PRT in aiding us, like Saurial suggested. Director Piggot wants the Family to be friendly, I expect she wouldn't be above pulling a few strings here and there to keep us sweet. Especially if we let them have access on occasion to our new Tinker." The grin that Metis had been wearing was the smuggest one Linda had ever seen, making her laugh.

"Armsmaster would probably help too, if we can make sure that none of the old Squealer aesthetic comes through. He found it very inefficient, but you know what he's like when he meets someone who knows their stuff. Just think how much he respects your sister."

"Good point." Saurial had glanced at her, asking, "Would you be OK with that? None of us will insist on it if you don't want to do it, but it sounds like a good idea to me."

"I'd still be working here?"

"Of course. You're DWU now, no one is going to make you leave." Saurial and the others had smiled at her in a way that made her feel surprisingly happy. "But it might solve a number of problems. We'd need to separate the timing a little, but backdating the records would hopefully sort that out. I wouldn't be entirely surprised if some of them get a little suspicious, but with a corpse as positive, unassailable proof of the former Sherrel being entirely deceased, I doubt that anyone would get very far trying to force the point. Especially as it would mean attempting to unmask a cape, against the Rules, which while unwritten are pretty powerful."

"A Family-associated cape as well," Ianthe had smirked. "Very few people would try that. They know damn well we wouldn't be pleased about it."

"There's also the point that Squealer was considered a vehicle Tinker specializing in cars and trucks, basically road-going vehicles." Metis had been looking pensive. "But from what you say, you're far more versatile than that. Ridiculously so. If you alter your methods and goals a little, concentrate on other things for a while, like boats, or aircraft, or something like that, it would also help separate whatever you end up calling yourself from Squealer."

Linda had been thinking about that ever since. She loved cars and driving, but the black reptile had been correct. There were so many ideas she had for things she'd never thought she'd be able to even contemplate building. But now… With Saurial's ability to make anything she wanted, and Metis able to apparently just look at something and somehow infer a huge amount of data about it, its function, and possible improvements…

The sky might literally not be the limit.

"So we make her a Changer, admit that she's a Changer, and a Tinker, and a low level Brute, get the PRT to officially test her for us, which also means they'd certainly sneak DNA samples which would prove beyond doubt that she wasn't Squealer, and hide her right out in the open. I like it." Ianthe had been looking very amused.

"So do I," Linda had grinned. "It's very sneaky, but it sounds like it would probably work."

"I'll talk to Lisa and we can work out all the details," Metis told her. "There are obviously other things that need to be sorted out, but we can probably get that done in a week or so. Then we talk to Director Piggot and see what happens."

"The only issue then would be working out what your Changer power actually does," Ianthe had mused out loud, inspecting her. "Obviously, good taste would suggest something reptilian, but that might be a little too convenient. Although we could always say that when Linda found out about us, she realized that her new scales and tail meant she'd fit right in." The lizard had been grinning the whole time.

"We're not limited to that, though, right?" Saurial had also looked amused.

"No, of course not. I can do pretty much anything you want. Mammal, reptile, insect... plant even if you want. Although being rooted in place might make for some awkward Tinkering."

"I don't think I could work very well from a pot," Linda had chuckled. "Insects are also a little weird. Do I have to decide now?"

"No, not at all. There's no hurry, I can make any changes you want when you want them. We can even go through a few and see how they work out before we settle on one. Keep it entirely human, for example, or add something else a little more unusual. I'd suggest making it distinctive and imaginative, both because it will probably be more effective and because you should do these things with style."

"You can mix and match, too," Saurial had laughed. Waving her tail, she'd added, "I don't know how humans get along without one of these, myself."

"Let me think about it for a day or two," she'd giggled, picturing herself with several feet of reptilian tail and finding it very funny. "I'll get back to you."

"OK."

"Let's get on with the main event, in that case," Ianthe put in after smiling again. "Then you'll want to have an early night, to let things settle down. There might be a little disorientation for a day or so, and I won't enable the Brute boosts until you're fully acclimated, because that would probably confuse things."

Swallowing hard, Linda's good mood had abruptly evaporated. The violet reptile had put a huge hand gently on her shoulder. "Trust me, I really do know what I'm doing, and I promise you'll be fine."

After a moment or two, she'd pulled herself up by the metaphorical bootstraps and nodded firmly. "OK. What do I do?"

"Lie down on that table."

"What tab..." Turning around, she'd found herself almost sitting on a table that hadn't been there moments before, Saurial standing next to it and grinning. "Oh. Right."

"We need more space if we're going to do this again," Ianthe had commented as she helped Linda into position, looking over her shoulder at her relatives. "This room is a little small for all of us." That was true, between two huge lizards, one tall but slender one, the table, and all the other stuff, there was almost no room left to add anything else.

"I'll make it larger tomorrow," Saurial had smiled. "I also want to make the tunnel to the water soon, too." She and Metis had moved back as far as they could to watch, but give their sister/cousin room to work.

"OK, Linda, I'm going to basically turn you off now," Ianthe had said in a calm tone of voice, leaning over her. "You'll just go to sleep, then wake up when I'm finished. Ready?"

After another hard swallow, and a deep breath, she'd nodded again.

"Ready."

"See you soon." A large scaled hand had landed on her head and that was the last thing she remembered.

When she'd woken up, she'd blinked at the light in the ceiling above her, then turned her head to see Ianthe smiling at her. Both the others were gone, as was the suspension tank, which she assumed contained her original body, presuming things had gone to plan.

"How do you feel?"

"Fine," she'd replied, after a quick mental inventory. Lifting her arms, she moved them, then sat up, finding it effortless and smooth. "Better than fine, I feel fantastic."

"Good. That body is much more durable than your original one, and should last you a very long time. But if you have any problems with it, come back and I'll fix it under warranty." Ianthe had been grinning as she spoke.

"How long did it take?"

"Just over an hour. Everything went very smoothly. I can show you a video if you want, but if you don't, we'll delete it for security purposes."

"No, I don't think I need to see that," Linda had replied, feeling queasy. "But… can I…?"

"See your old body?"

"Yes."

"If you're sure. It's in the next room, we didn't think you'd want to be staring at it when you woke up."

Opening the door into the storage room, Ianthe had turned on the lights, then waved her in. She'd hopped down, walked over, and looked in, seeing a figure in the clear gel in the transparent tank that she instantly recognized. Feeling suddenly faint, she nearly fell over, Ianthe snapping out a hand to steady her. "You OK?"

"Sorry, it suddenly hit me. That's me over there."

"No, that's you in here," Ianthe had smiled, tapping her on the forehead very gently with one claw. "Over there is only meat. All that makes you, you, is inside here. Think of it like that and you'll probably find it easier, but I'm not surprised it's a bit of a shock to you. You'll get used to it, I'm sure. This body is a huge improvement in every way."

"It's still fucking creepy."

"In a way. But think of it like this. A normal human body replaces practically everything except the brain in months to years, depending on what part you're talking about. In a decade, there's basically nothing of the original left except for what's up there." She'd tapped Linda again, as the woman listened.

"All I did was do the job in one shot, and do it better."

Weirdly, it had helped.

After another thirty seconds of examining her old face from a viewpoint she'd never in a million years expected to have, the yellow tint of the suspension gel smoothing out the ravages of her drug-fueled life over the last few years, Linda had sighed, and nodded. "I've seen enough. Thank you."

"You're welcome," Ianthe had said quietly, closing the door again.

After that, and a little more talking with Saurial and Metis who had been sitting outside in the main room, discussing something in that weird language, she'd headed for a bite to eat, then bed, at Ianthe's instruction. A good meal and another conversation with Brian, who she found interesting, followed.

Now, mere hours after the most bizarre experience she'd ever had, she was lying in a comfortable bed, in a room with no one else it in, no threats hanging over her, and feeling tired but pleased.

And freer than she'd ever have thought she could be.

Feeling the back of one hand with the fingers of the other one, she smiled, turned the light off, then rolled over and went to sleep.

Lying in bed, Amy pondered her most recent project, very pleased with how smoothly it had gone. Her power was more or less lying on its back purring with pleasure, having had a wonderful time doing all the intricate work she'd spent hours on, and was suggesting ways to improve things next time, and how to add a Changer ability to Linda. She had come up with about six different methods so far, ranging from interesting to extremely odd. Nothing anywhere near as over the top as Taylor's, of course, she didn't have Varga magic to draw on, but she could see some very good uses of some of the fractional dimensional methods that her friend was coming up with at a vast rate.

Not to mention how it fed on, and back to, some of the wilder and more exciting ideas she'd had already for new bioconstructs… She was very keen on trying some of them, especially since Taylor and the Varga had shown them that amazing dragon form. Amy knew her friend, she was going to be testing that one out as soon as she could.

There were going to be some very odd rumors on PHO pretty soon, she thought, giggling a little.

All things considered she was very happy with how things had gone. Linda seemed pleased, and very relieved, the poor woman was finally free of a whole series of horrible choices she'd more or less been forced into after the first few.

Taylor was pleased, they'd helped someone who needed it, her father wasn't too upset although he was obviously wondering where the next peculiar thing would come from, and the DWU now had a live in Tinker who was bound to be very useful. Just as a skilled mechanic, Linda was certain to earn her place and respect very fast.

And Lisa was pleased. She'd managed to pass on the good fortune she herself had received from Taylor, when their friend had saved her and her friends, which Amy could see made her happy. The blonde girl was a good friend, 'Family' relative, which made Amy grin, and a lot of fun to be around. All in all, things seemed to have worked out pretty well.

They had a job to do tomorrow, dealing with the Merchants, but that part wasn't going to be too difficult, and hopefully might even forestall Skidmark and whatever stupid plan he was working on. Even if it didn't, it would reduce massively the ultimate problem with the fool, and make a huge difference to the city crime rates. She could fully understand why Taylor was reluctant to do it, and had been all along, and even agreed with that viewpoint. But at the same time, she felt it was the right thing to do, and more or less the only thing to do at this point.

Looking forward to an interesting day, although slightly puzzled why Vicky had been wandering around with a pensive expression all evening, hardly saying a word to anyone, she turned out the light and went to sleep, smiling a little to herself.

Lying in bed, Vicky mulled over a whole series of confusing ideas and observations, trying to put them into some sort of order.

She'd had an embarrassing time talking herself out of the problem she'd literally flown into, leaving a rather large hole in a window downtown. The office manager had been ruthlessly sarcastic, while she could only apologize, since the man did have a point. She should have been paying more attention.

It hadn't helped having several people standing around and snickering, or the way he'd finally handed her a broom and suggested she should sweep up all the broken glass. Those photos were going to haunt her on PHO for a while…

When she'd come home, she'd avoided talking to her mother about it, although she knew the woman would find out sooner or later. Luckily she didn't use PHO very often. Aunt Sarah, on the other hand, did, and it was bound to come back to bite her in the end.

She wasn't looking forward to that conversation.

However, she'd managed to avoid it for now, and had instead rather distractedly finished her homework for school on Monday, then gone and sat in the living room, thinking. Amy had come in looking pleased with herself, had dinner with them, tried to make conversation without a lot of luck, then gone up to her room. Vicky had eventually done the same, bidding their parents a good night.

Now, she was having odd thoughts.

What had gone through her head while she was flying along minding her own business was how similar Saurial and Taylor Hebert were in some specific ways.

Obviously, they were very different in other ways. Species, for example. Saurial was very definitely some sort of reptile, while as far as she could tell Taylor was a perfectly ordinary, if very smart and talented, human.

But…

They were both preposterously good at math for one thing. She had no idea if Taylor could actually understand the sort of thing she'd seen at the BBFO office, but she wouldn't put it past her friend. Some of the books she'd seen her reading and obviously understanding were nearly as heavy going. She'd even spotted her making corrections in the margin of a book on physics, which had amused her quite a lot.

They shared a pretty unflappable outlook on life, too. Neither one seemed very surprised by much, if anything, and they were both so laid-back they were sometimes in danger of falling over. Their speech patterns, if you knew both well enough, and were actually looking for it and could overlook the different voices, accents, and so on, were… oddly similar. Not identical, at all, but close enough that it could be like a pair of sisters.

Which on the face of it was ridiculous.

And, when you thought it through, was still ridiculous.

There was also, and this was something she'd never even thought about until that afternoon, the way that she'd never seen Saurial and Taylor in the same place at the same time…

Obviously there could be any number of totally innocent explanations for that, including the ones she'd been working on, which is that Saurial was normally either running around town jumping criminals, or doing whatever at the DWU yard, while Taylor was at school or at home, making up for two years of bad schooling at Winslow. Having talked to people who knew the place, it was entirely believable that even someone as talented as Taylor would take months to make up the difference, and she'd only been at Arcadia for less than eight weeks so far.

But, that said, there were other possible explanations as well...

She shook her head a little, trying to come up with alternatives.

'I've never seen Saurial and Raptaur in the same place at the same time, either,' she mused. 'But Amy has so obviously it's possible, it's just unusual. They said a while back that the Family didn't like letting too many of them run around at the same time, for various reasons, and that's certainly plausible. Not to mention that Raptaur is at least eight or nine times heavier than Saurial. Kaiju is insanely larger than either of them put together. There's no way Raptaur and Saurial could be the same person. Too much physical difference, Raptaur has more arms for example.'

Vicky frowned. 'Or legs. Whatever, she's really different. She speaks totally differently, the body language is different… no chance. And Kaiju is just silly. And I've seen Metis and Ianthe at the same time as all of them several times, so I know they're exactly who they say they are.'

But what did that leave? She was suddenly, since this afternoon, certain that there was something she was missing.

'OK. What are the choices?' Ticking them off on her fingers, she tried to think of every possibility that she could.

'Taylor Hebert and Saurial have no connection except that they know each other. That's one. The obvious one, that everyone believes. The Family and the Heberts know each other, although how they met I have no idea, and it's exactly what it looks like on the face of it.'

Certainly very plausible, and very likely.

'Two...' She shook her head slightly. 'It's nuts, but it's not impossible. Saurial is Taylor. Somehow. It would have to be a Changer power, I guess. It sort of fits, but… I don't know. Then there's the weirder possibility, three, that Taylor is Saurial.' That one made her eyes widen as she thought about it. 'Shit, that would be… very strange. A Changer, but Saurial turns into Taylor! How fucking weird would that be? A Family member just wandering around with the rest of us without anyone the wiser.'

She sat up in bed, thinking that possibility through. How could it have come about?

'Danny's wife was Family? How the hell would that even work? Or is he a disguised Family member? Or were both of them, living quietly in the city for years.' Her eyes were getting wider and wider. 'How many years, though? Long enough to remember the glaciers…?'

Vicky shook her head, hard. 'No, that's getting crazy. People have known Danny for ages, Mom's told me he's been in the DWU for nearly twenty years, and his father was involved in the docks before that. I can't see how there could be a whole series of hidden reptilian creatures pretending to be human for that long, and all they did was run a trade union!'

Lying back, propped up on her pillows, she tried to put her other ideas into place. 'Maybe Saurial was adopted? Like Amy?' That was a lot more plausible, although still very weird. 'Possibility four. Grew up in a human family, which is why she's so much more normal than the others. Depending on what you mean by normal, of course. More used to people, then. And she's been training her real relatives on how to interact with us. Wherever the hell they actually come from. They must have been around for a hell of a long time, and I bet they've met us before. Hey, maybe that's the whole idea… Saurial was sent to learn more, because they knew they'd be discovered sooner or later, and they needed to be ready. They found a sympathetic human family and got them to raise a little lizard-girl as a human to help them fit in. Although I have no idea how they could hide it.'

It was out there, but it sort of fitted.

'I suppose there's one other possibility, which sort of fits the evidence as well. Maybe both parts are true in a way. Saurial was raised by the Heberts alongside their own kid. That would probably work even better, I bet. Like me and Amy, Taylor and Saurial are sisters. Adopted sisters. That would explain how why they're really similar, but still different in the details.'

Puzzling over it for some time, she sighed gently. 'I don't know, I don't have enough to go on. But I'm sure there's something to it. The best choices seem either to be the girl I know as Taylor is actually Saurial in some form of disguise, probably some sort of Changer ability, or she's Taylor's adopted sister. Or it's something I haven't thought of, but those seem the most plausible.'

She slid back into a supine position, then rolled over on her side, reaching out to turn the light off. 'I'm going to have to watch and see if I can figure it out, for my own curiosity. But I can't talk about it. One way or the other it's a violation of the Rules, and I'd never do that to a friend. Especially either one who's my sister's best friend, or one who could unscrew my head and eat it. Or both.'

She fell asleep with a mildly puzzled expression of concentration on her face and had a very weird dream involving being turned into a flying lizard and chasing other flying lizards around the city, while a fox laughed at her.

Lying in bed, Taylor read a book on advanced topology, making notes and giggling at comments from her demonic companion, while idly working out the best time to test the first flying form. She had plans for that one.

When she finished, she put her notes into the book, closed it, turned out the lights, rested the tip of her tail across her ankles, and went to sleep, contented with the way things were working out.

Chris didn't get to bed for the second night running.

He was far too busy and having a hell of a lot of fun, although the amount of energy drink he'd consumed meant he was starting to invent some very weird things.