JMJ

Chapter Five

Escaping Half-intact

My brain!? Gone? I was already too late?

No, no! I insisted to myself. You're out now. You're not a monster or anything. No tails, not even a set of fangs like in the green. You got out just in time, Ace. You got this!

"Should we start him up again, then?" I suddenly heard Form ask miserably, as if this really was hurting him in some way. Like I was his pet dying at the vet.

I hated him more than Ham Lady and Pole Spider together.

I hissed through my teeth, but before I started reminding myself of Snake, I turned so violently I almost hit a pipe. I ducked just in time to only scuff my back, and the hair there stood on end like a scared cat as I stared in panic out in front of me. It was the zombie mall now and me slinking in the roof. Any second I expected to see a colorless hand reach up from one of the tiles, but I continued on.

To cars with people going home from normal work or going to normal bars or whatever they were doing. The City of Townsville! Did that phrase ever sound so sweet?

Cold air. Not vent air. Cold swirling, smoggy air charged up my nose, snatched my hair and clothes. It was a windy night. I pushed down the vent cage with both hands out in front of me, and I already was dazzled by living lights and the moon and the clouds glowing faintly with the ambience below it. It was like that fresh air they say is in the mountains that I sucked into my lungs. I was out on the roof like the freest peek of Mount Everest.

No one knew I was there. No friend. No foe. No one! I looked out across the roof, and without more than a flickering thought I raced across it, trusting the adrenaline. I jumped. I almost felt like I was flying for a second. I never felt so free. I landed hard but not too painfully not to still enjoy the fact that I landed on the next roof like a squirrel from one branch another.

Half-transformed was not so bad, after all!

I grinned.

This could still work out for Ace. Not only was I no longer caged like an animal, I was freer than any normal human again.

I laughed but did not linger on it too long. I dashed on across this new roof to another. Spiderman eat your heart out! I jumped a few more. Then I slid down a pipe into an alley and scared a few cats. I chuckled feeling pretty good about myself as I stuffed my hands into my pockets with full Gangreen leisure. I felt my stride move to the beat of fading hip-hop somewhere.

These were my streets. My lights! My smells! My dirty grime scuffed up under my boots. The city? She loved me. Together we were flying already, and I was never going to feel like I did in that lab ever again!

Not bad, huh? I asked myself tall and confident into the bracing wind. Ha! Watch out, Townsville, your boy Ace is home!

Then I felt a shiver.

It went through me like a serrated knife against another, and I stopped in a second. I waited after it subsided. Nothing happened, though I felt a little funny now. I could not explain it entirely, but my heart sunk. It had been just like a shake at the lab. It could happen any time, and I sure didn't know what it meant. It was the unknown that got me most.

The only thing I could think, even though I didn't want to admit it, was that I was still turning. Into what? I knew even less.

I wanted to stop and rest a little. Maybe find something to eat, sort things out, but there was no chance of that either. There was a growl behind me worse than the growl of any monster. It was the growl I knew to be from that old truck, that death buggy, that hearse Form had driven to bring me to the lab in first place.

I spun around.

I guess it was a little further away than I thought it was. Not even the headlights shone yet.

What had they said?

They could track me?

Could they?

Was that a lie?

I didn't know.

I didn't know anything.

But I bolted unwilling to know the answers.

I ran not knowing where I was going or for how long I would be running like a hunted-down dog into the night.

My city had no sympathy for me, after all. The phantom words from the lab were passed right through her and we sure weren't crying together on this one. I was alone. All alone. If I wasn't running so hard I might have sang a ballad myself.

You should have just learned music like people said you had the ear for all along, the city told me. Great, now she was my conscience! Well, I guess since I never had a mom, someone had to take that place and it sure was never going to be Sedusa. You know you should have. You could have had a famous band right now, Ace; if you'd only never left the place you were before!

Except she didn't say "Ace". She said my real name— the one I pretended to have amnesia about, but it pressed upon my mind like a rock against a hard place more than any old song— classic or not. We were talking about my soul, here, and not the kind under my boots.