Page 26 of Shaped to Be Yours

Zinnia’s skin was a bright green color with lighter green stripes. Beck’s was magenta with paler pink stripes, and his head fin was taller than hers. All of his fins were longer and more elegant, similar to the sexual dimorphism in most animal species, like with peacocks. I wondered if they had any type of mating rituals where the malespresented—but I wasn’t going to ask that!

Not on day one.

“So! Lick—Ricky,” Zinnia tried extra hard to get it right and seemed delighted when she succeeded. “We are so sorry youdiscovered the portal before our first meeting. But it means our work is even more important.Retmeexprain.”

We were in an office they shared, but it was just one small area of a much larger lab they ran together. If I’d thought the outside of this facility seemed intimating, then entering it had been truly humbling.

It was as white and sterile on the inside as outside. Zinnia and Beck had met me by the front desk to help finalize my security badge, since every section of the building had guards or security of some sort, and most places required a badge for access. There were visible cameras everywhere, which made me wonder how many I couldn’t see.

Through a main set of double doors, we’d followed a corridor until it forked, where we headed left. There were rooms of all sizes and people of every species about once we reached the research area, and Zinnia and Beck’s lab was of considerable size, as it was also their residence. I didn’t see that area, but they explained it had its own kitchen, several bathrooms, and enough bedrooms for them and their two children.

They had zero staff besides me. I was it, though they said their son had been helping here and there. Neither of the kids were present now, but I saw them in several pictures on the desk—their daughter with similar coloring to Beck, and their son a lovely teal.

“As most humans understand it,” Zinnia began, “travel between the human and monster worlds is only possible because of the official man-made portals in each tester town. But! As many have speculated and we can confirm for you, Ricky, natural portals have opened across our worlds many times.”

“That isn’t a surprise,” I said. “It would explain why we had so many monster myths centuries before your realm’s discovery. Some of you had to have come over to our realm previously.”

“Precisely!” Beck agreed. “We did not expect this to seem, uh.. controverseal?”

“I’m guessing you’ve been discovering some things that arecontroversial.” I said the last word slowly, taking a guess that he’d appreciate it, and Beck’s lips stretched into a smile.

“Yes! Very good. And true!”

“Those contro… um…divisivetopics,” Zinnia chose a different word, “is that such portals still come into existence and could prove quite dangerous if not monitored. Even we do not know every species in our realm, and manyrocationsare, um…” She clicked and purred in their native language to Beck.

“Thoselocationsare, uh… deadly!” he concluded. “Yes. Filled with carnivorous monsters that might eat humans. Unlike us!” he hastened to assuage me. “We do not eat anything with sentience.”

Everything about the monster realm was fascinating and entirely justified in being scary to people, but I was not going to let my fears show. “Understood. So, you’ve discovered one of those natural portals here and need to study it?”

“Correct,” Zinnia said, “and to discover where in the monster realm it opens, what monsters might reside there, and if it necessary or possible to ensure it closes and does not open again. For now, it is inconsistent with activity. We are working to understand how to monitor when it is active and what conditions cause its activation. Unfortunately, we have only recently begun to notice some added dangers about this portal.”

“Missing people?” I ventured.

“Yes,” they answered, sharing a look of concern.

“So people are being sucked through this unstable, natural portal?”

“We cannot say for certain without witnessing someone go, um, poof,” Zinnia said with a flourish of her fingers, “but it seemsrikery.”

“Likely,” Beck corrected.

“Yes! Likely. Which is why it is so important we speak with your friend. Your, um… lover?”

“Boyfriendis, um… what we say. But about Jason—”

“You said his father disappeared in that same location?” Beck asked.

“Twenty plus years ago, but yes.”

“And he was attacked also in that location?”

“Yes.” I’d hated that I’d had to tell them so much about Jason when he didn’t want to be studied, but they sort of already were studying him. They couldn’t not when this was all tied up with his family history and how he’d become a monster.

“We know his situation, his, um… stance on coming here,” Zinnia said, “but please, try to explain to him the importance.”

“I plan to. I hope I can convince him, but it might take a while.”

“We can be patient,” Zinnia assured me. “No one should be studied without choice. But if people are being sucked in, and something possibly got out that attacked him and turned him into a new species, this occurrence, this information, if it got out to the public, could destabilize much more than a portal, yes?”

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