“Hey! Kid!”

A gruff voice snapped Sam out of her idle thoughts and she looked to its source to find an older man approaching her at a quick pace. She blinked as he got closer, realizing that he wasn’t as much old as he was prematurely gray. The guy was probably around her age, which meant…

“Kid? You’re barely older than me.” The redhead scoffed to him, rolling her eyes.

“Yeah yeah, ignorance is bliss. The point is, you’re going to want to get out of here.” He growled, his eyes flashing with something Sam was a little too familiar with, having seen it in the mirror more than once. It was the look of someone who was ready to pick a fight.

“Yeah?” She arched her back, rolling her shoulders. “Listen, if any punks think they can take advantage of me, then they don’t know Sam Allen.”

The man groaned at that, covering his face with a hand. “Bit of advice, don’t use your real name so often-not the full one. Something very old and very powerful is coming to this city, and… Just trust me, okay? I can see in your eyes that you don’t believe me, but there’s trouble coming.”

“Yeah… Trouble. So… If something so bad and scary is on its way, then what are you doing here?” Sam smirked, cupping her right hand over her left elbow as she spoke. It was an old habit of hers, one she did to project confidence and hide her inner fears.

Because… In truth, she was afraid. This guy seemed to be completely serious, and there was something about his tone that lended him an air of credibility.

A new voice spoke up, a female one this time. “Oh, poor little Apostle. Trying to warn little miss ‘Sam Allen’, not knowing she’s already damned herself.”

The voice came from the shadows-no, it was the shadows. Every word was smothered in darkness, an impossible rasp to them that no human voice could produce. A chill ran down Sam’s back, and she shuddered.

Then the pain started, coming sharply from her nose and her jaw. She cupped them with her hands, screaming aloud, feeling them begin to twist and bulge beneath her palms. It was like her body was shifting, an invisible force molding her to its will.

“Traitor!” The man cried, cocking a hand behind his head. Then he threw it forward into a punch that made the air explode. The shadows that had made the sound scattered a second before the wall they clung to exploded.

They slid along the ground as the man pulled his fist back again, but he was too slow. They wrapped around Sam’s body, forcing her to stoop forwards as her spine, shoulders, and hips all cracked at the same time.

The redhead screamed loudly, not knowing what else to do. Tears stung at her eyes from the pain, and from terror. Her motion had forced her hands away from her face, and she could now clearly see a snout-her snout.

“Sam Allen Sam Allen Sam Allen…” The voice chanted in her ears, the shadows clinging to her body. “What. Do. You. Fear.”

Her tailbone exploded out behind herself and she shrieked. Gasping for air, the girl turned to find a long, hairless tail behind herself, twitching from side to side madly. It was a rat’s tail, there could be no question.

She was afraid of rats, deathly so, always had been. And now she had a tail just like one, and a snout…

“Stay calm!” The man cried, extending a hand towards her.

At the same time, the shadows whispered into her expanding ears. “Run, my little rat.”

There was never any question which voice Sam would listen to. All of her bravado evaporated in the face of her biggest fear and the impossible magic that was affecting her body. She turned and ran, her shoed slapping at the ground even as the shadow’s laughter filled her word.

They were still clinging to her, warping her, changing her. As she ran, she could see her hands deforming, her fingers losing their feminine grace in favor of becoming the scrabbling claws of a rodent. Her skin traded a silky smoothness for the toughness of hide, and a chitter bubbled its way from her throat.

All of this was terrifying, the worst experience of her life, of even her nightmares. Sam ran even faster, feeling the shadows slipping from her as the man became little more than a pinprick in the distance. The laughter didn’t quiet in the slightest, that slithering of shade clinging to her ears.

“No! PlEEse!” She squealed, running and freeing herself of the last of the darkness’s embrace, much too late. It had already marked her as its own, and nothing she could do would free herself of its grip.

The girl fell against an alley wall, her small chest heaving. The shadows were gone, but she could feel her body continuing to change, an invisible vise squeezing her tighter and tighter. Tears dripped from her eyes as her clothes started to grow around herself, billowing out.

“N-no…” Pleaded Sam, her green eyes wide as she looked to her ratlike paws. The girl hiccupped, then a lance of pain drove her to fall to her side.

She screamed loudly, so loudly that she thought it was impossible for anyone in the city to not hear her cries. In spite of this, nobody came to help, and she changed alone in the shadow of the alley.

Her body dwindled further and further and further still, until she was the size of a large dog in human clothing. As if sensing her impending nudity, fur covered her bare skin, drab grey fur that was the color of all her fears combined.

Sam pawed at the hairs desperately, trying to pull them out-but rat’s paws are weaker than human hands, and she ended up doing little more than pawing at her arms. She could hear the rustling of hair in her ears and she sobbed, knowing that they had changed as well.

She wheezed as her lungs compressed within her chest, her shrinking heart beating all the faster for it. The girl looked to her wormlike tail with a squeak of fear, watching it agitatedly flick at the ground behind herself.

Sam wasn’t used to this, wasn’t used to being…

Helpless.

The word clung to her mind like tar, and she rolled onto her belly, trying to stand-trying being the key word. No matter how hard she struggled to rise to a bipedal posture, she always wound up falling onto her pink paws.

Her nose twitched at the end of her face as it began to pick up new scents. None were more apparent than the thick, cloying musk of her fur. It was another constant reminder of what she was becoming, of how inhuman she already was.

Sam started to crawl towards the darkness of the alley, that same fight of flight instinct betraying her again. She wanted to run, wanted to escape the nightmare that was her life. For some reason, the darkness seemed safer than the light behind her.

The girl was too scared to notice that her mind was dwindling away, and in a matter of seconds she was too dumb to comprehend it. Her red hair fell from her head in clumps, her dimming eyes catching sight of the crimson locks fluttering to the ground.

Sam didn’t know why the sight filled her with fear, but she knew that it did. So she continued to crawl, her clothing slipping from her shrinking body as she dwindled further and further. She was the size of a cat by the time she finally freed herself of all of her clothes, and by the time her skull cracked and popped and shrank to its proper proportions, she had reached the proper height for a rodent.

Dimly, Sam could feel terror, loathing, disgust for her body. Then these last emotions of the girl she had been vanished, taking with them everything that made her human. A chittering squeak escaped her lips as she realized, too late, that she had forgotten what it was like to be a person.

The echoes of her cry bounced around the alley, and the rat twitched her ears. She didn’t know why she had made that sound, or why she was outside before dark. Quickly, the rat scampered deep into the alley, finding a hole to burrow into with ease.

It was much better there, in the dark, surrounded by the reassuring smell that was hers, that marked her territory. Outside there were large things, people and their devices. She would wait until the darkness claimed the world before venturing out again, and until then would sleep.