Page 55 of Shaped to Be Yours

What was I?

What was happening with the portal?

And if people were disappearing through it, what was taking them?

What took my dad?

Later that morning, I was too in my head to tell Mom more than, “Back to the lab today. We still don’t know much, but we’re doing all we can. I’ll be fine.”

I had to be fine eventually, right? After all, I had Ricky with me.

I had Ricky, and he had me.

He also very much needed to wear a scarf today to hide the hickeys I’d left on his neck.

We weren’t bringing in Mickey yet, but he’d likely have his vet visit soon. Whitmore wasn’t going to meet us at the facilitytoday, sobonus. He’d messaged me that he was checking on something else and just told me to send him an update once we finished. The plan was to start with the same blood draws, scans, and peeing in a cup routine as yesterday, only now in my mixed form, and to submit to whatever other tests the scientists might think up. They were very excited to learn about my antlers. Then, in the afternoon, we were going to head to the monster realm.

I had almost bolstered myself up for the idea when Zinnia and Beck had to go and talk about how they couldn’t wait to see how I reacted to the trip.

“Meaning?” I pressed. “What do you think will happen?”

“We have no idea!” Zinna exclaimed. “Anything is possible given your unique chemistry. The makeup of your DNA is entirely different depending on which form. Going to the monster realm might change it into something entirely new all on its own.”

“Great.”

Once again, I was back to feeling like a guinea pig.

Another plus at least was that the cafeteria here served a pretty awesome lunch. Ricky went to bring stuff back for all of us. Then, once we were officially ready to leave the lab for our field trip, I was able to put on pants.

“Now!” Beck led us from the lab area toward the portal room. Even just nearing the thing made me feel like I might lose control of my molecules, and there was no way to be certain if that was nerves or something else until I crossed over to the monster world. “There is just as much likelihood that nothing will happen as something, but as scientists we must catalogue any change to your readings and physical structure.”

I took a breath. Not like heading to the gallows at all. Nope.

Ricky slipped his hand into mine and gave it a firm squeeze. That helped.

Remembering him giving myknota squeeze last night helped even more.

“Doctors!”

We had just passed the hallway leading to the main entrance, when one of the guards rushed around the corner to stop us.

“We had to call more guards to the front!” he huffed, clearly out of breath. “We had to lock down the main entrance after letting your son in for safety from a mob gathering outside.”

“What?” we all sputtered over each other, and Zinnia and Beck raced around me and Ricky to reach the panting guard.

“Where is—?” Beck began, but another guard turned the corner with Kai slumped against him. Because Kai was limping and needed help walking. Because he was bruised like he’d beenbeaten. Because one of his eyes was nearly swollen shut!

“What the fuck happened?” I demanded.

“They’re starting a protest outside,” the second guard explained, passing Kai to his parents, who immediately devolved into concerned questions in their purring, clicky language. “We’re handling the situation and have called the local authorities as well. We ask that everyone stay inside until the police arrive.”

“Oh,mi jhavi,” Zinnia dripped concern, matched by Beck’s as they continued to dote on Kai like good parents should. But they shouldn’thave to.

“What happened?” I asked Kai.

He hushed his parents with a few weak, pleading clicks, and said, “I… I was tricked. There is an English word for it, but I can’t remember. Someone pretended to be a match for me on the app. I went to meet him, but he was not who I thought.”

“Someonecatfishedyou?” Ricky snarled.

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