The disco ball scattered fractured light like broken teeth across the gymnasium. Leo tugged at his rented tuxedo collar, sweat soaking through the polyester where the bracelet fused with his radial artery. Across the punch bowl, Jessica's goldenrod dress shimmered with sequins that made his new night vision flare like flashbangs.
"Last dance," the DJ slurred through blown speakers. "Time to get those freak flags flyin'!"
Brad Carson's gang circled in cheap cologne clouds. Their tuxes reeked of formaldehyde – rental shop corpses playing dress-up. Leo's tongue caught the metallic tang of silver fillings in their molars.
"Lookee here," Brad drawled, spinning a chrome Zippo engraved with the Nightwatch Genetics logo. "Mutt cleaned up nice."
Jessica's perfume spiked with cortisol. "Leave him alone, Brad. It's prom."
The lighter snapped open. Blue flame danced across Brad's grin. "Let's light up those freak eyes of his."
Leo's vision tunneled. The bracelet's pulse synchronized with the bassline – thump-thump-THUD – as the track warped into tribal drums. The overhead fluorescents exploded in showers of sparks, plunging the gym into blood-red emergency lighting.
"Jesus, his hands!" someone screamed.
Leo stared down at his claws slicing through satin gloves. Muscle memory from three lifetimes ago – his forty-year-old self cowering in a Greyhound bus station bathroom, current self tearing open a cryo-tank in Dad's lab – coalesced into something feral.
Jessica stepped between them. Her pulse fluttered at her throat like a caged sparrow. "Leo, don't–"
The punch bowl erupted.
Brad's goons splashed holy water laced with colloidal silver. Leo's skin smoked where it landed. The smell triggered flashbacks – Mom dousing her tumors with blessed oils, Dad injecting mercury compounds into chained test subjects.
"Kill the lights!" Brad shouted.
Darkness.
Then glowing eyes everywhere – students' smartphones switched to UV mode, their camera flashes reflecting off Leo's retinas like wolf eyes. Brad's crew advanced with tire irons wrapped in barbed wire, silver spikes glinting.
Jessica grabbed Leo's wrist. Her touch burned cleaner than holy water. "Run, you idiot!"
The bracelet spasmed. Leo's claws retracted with a sickening schluck sound. They burst through the fire exit into the parking lot, where limousines blared Ludacris under sodium vapor lights.
"Get in!" The vagrant's pickup truck screeched to a halt, bed overflowing with burning lab files. Samuel tossed a Molotov cocktail into the gymnasium dumpster. "Family reunion time."
As the science wing exploded, Leo glimpsed Dad's shadow through third-floor windows – frantically smashing server racks with a fire axe.
Jessica clung to his shredded tux sleeve. "Your father's lab..."
"Was never about curing cancer." Leo watched flames consume the genetic database logo. The same symbol glowed on his bracelet.
Police choppers thundered overhead. Samuel jammed the gas pedal. "Windy City, cub. Your cousins will love you."
In the rearview mirror, the burning building's smoke plume formed the Othala rune – ancestral heritage. Leo's phone buzzed with a News Alert: "Arson Suspect Matches Genetic Profile of 1998 Cold Case Victim..."
Jessica gasped. The mugshot showed Leo's face under someone else's name. Born 1983. Died 2001.
"Don't look," Leo muttered, crushing the phone. The bracelet pulsed in time with the highway dashes. Somewhere near Cleveland, he caught his reflection in a rest stop mirror – eyes fully gold now, jawline sharpening.
Jessica's fingers brushed his rewiring vertebrae. "Does it hurt?"
"Only when I pretend to be human."
The truck's radio crackled to life. "–reports of wolf-like creatures on I-90..."
Samuel chuckled darkly. "Welcome to the family business."
As they crossed into Pennsylvania, Leo's claws tore through the seatbelt. The hunger returned – not for food, but for the silver-flecked fear wafting off Jessica. Her carotid pulsed like a metronome.
So easy, the bracelet whispered. Just a nick.
Chicago's skyline glittered ahead. Leo counted twelve smokestacks erupting crimson flames. Twelve safehouses. Twelve chances to become something worse.
Under his rented patent leather shoes, blood seeped through the floor mats. Not his.
Jessica's.