cortex
ˈkɔːtɛks/
noun
1.
ANATOMY
the outer layer of the cerebrum (the cerebral cortex ), composed of folded grey matter and playing an important role in consciousness. The Anterior cingulate cortex is also involved in rational cognitive functions, such as empathy and impulse control.

After the event it was perfectly clear that we were total, class one idiots. That kind of thing is always super obvious once the universe has pointed it out and you have absolutely no way of turning things around. Remember those choose-your-own-adventure books you read as a kid? Life really, really isn't like that, even when you're skipping around parallel dimensions. You still can't go back.

So, yeah. We were in the guy's house, back when it was still a functioning building. Marv had already put this little spark of confusion into my brain and now the guy whose house we were invading was claiming that Cal was up to something. Either one of those in isolation and I wouldn't have cared, but it was all a bit much when put together.

"In situations like this," Cal said to the man, ignoring me, "you're not the one who gets to ask questions."

"Alright, OK," he said, "what else?"

"What else?" Cal let out a short laugh. "We're a long way from done. I've got a lifetime of questions up here." He tapped the side of his head. "For example, I've never met anybody like me, but I know there were others. Now they're all dead - on the entire planet, I'm the only one left."

The man, I think he said his name was Simons, shook his head. "That wasn't us. That was your government. They hated what you are, what you stand for. They knew you'd disrupt everything. The wings have been in power for too long to let go. You ever noticed how every fifty years-or-so there's conveniently a new genotype series of wing-equipped births?"

"My teacher mentioned that once," I said, feeling conspicuously young as I said it, as if I was about to be told off. "He said that no other common themes could be detected, but that wings repeated just enough to maintain a power hierarchy."

Simons nodded and smiled wryly. "Your teacher sounds like a clever man," he said. "He should be careful, saying things like that. It's no coincidence. It's part of how we keep a handle on things - they rely on us, which means we get to exert some control. And the Aviary never falls."

"What about me?" Cal said, impatient.

"You weren't planned. There was a bug in the system, and out you lot popped. This was way before I worked there. It caused some headaches upstairs."

Marv was still stood on the other side of the room, as if ready to escape at a moment's notice. "Shapeshifters are inherently better," he noted, "because they can be the best of all people. At least in terms of abilities and power. Wings wouldn't stand a chance once Cal and his brothers and sisters grew up."

"Like I said," the man said, touching the back of his hand to his jaw tenderly, "it caused some headaches."

Cal took a step towards him. "Headaches?"

The man held up a hand. "I only found out about all this when I was brought in to help track you. They didn't even tell me all of it, but I'm a researcher. It's what I do."

"You're part of it," Cal said, enormous teeth visible in his double-sized jaw.

"Reluctantly. I wish I wasn't. But there's nothing I could do to make a difference."

"You could choose not to work there," Marv said, slinging his words across the room. He shrugged. "Just an idea. But that's a choice you make every day, right? You don't have any moral high ground here, man."

The man nodded. "I don't claim any for myself," he said, "but leave my family out of it."

"Now that, there," Cal said, "that's a choice you don't get to make."

"We should be going," I said, feeling suddenly uneasy. "We've been here too long."

"I didn't come this far to only get five minutes with this guy," Cal growled.

"She's right," Marv said, "something is not feeling right about this."

"He's too calm," I said, moving in and licking the air. "He's worried, but not as much as he should be."

There was a slow whine from overhead, above the house, and an enormous searchlight loomed into view, flying over the skylights above and swinging around until it was over the garden. Water was whipped up from the pool, spraying the glass windows. I couldn't see what was out there, but it was big. At the same time I heard a crash from the front of the house which sounded an awful lot like the front door being smashed in. There was more movement in the blindingly illuminated back garden and six heavily armed soldiers dropped out of the sky onto the ground, clad head-to-toe in black and wielding some nasty looking guns.

They opened fire.

Cal was already genoshifting, faster than I'd ever seen him do it before. His bulk diminished and he left his fur suspended momentarily in the air like dust as he leaped towards me, dark blue plates sliding out of his skin as he did so, folding one over another and locking together. I have pretty good reflexes but the arrival had caught me off guard, leaving me frozen to the spot as the horizontal rain of bullets sliced through the windows towards us. But Cal was there, putting himself between me and the projectiles, which impacted heavily into his back, sending us sprawling across the room, me onto a sofa which tipped over and him onto an open area of floor. I didn't see what had happened to Marv.

Feathers and cloth erupted from the sofa as more bullets hit and I kept my head down, hands on top, staying as low as I could. I think I might have been screaming.

I looked forwards to see Cal, staggering to his feet under the onslaught. The scaled plates were tough - really tough - but they couldn't withstand that forever. He stumbled to find cover behind a plush armchair and, as he ducked down, he shifted again, the scales almost exploding away and leaving nothing but air.

He'd become a spectre.

The weapons fire paused and I heard the glass running the entire length of the back of the house collapse under its own weight and shatter into the floor. Shards sprayed out across the polished floor, dispersing a carpet of glass in all directions. I shifted around on my stomach to look the other way, towards the kitchen, and spied Marv crouched behind the worktop counter.

"Infrared!" I heard one of the guards shout. Sounded like going spectre wouldn't help Cal for long.

There was a cry from another soldier and I risked a look around the side of the couch in time to see one of them fly through the air and splash into the pool as Cal reappeared right in the middle of the squad, genoshifting back to the ursidae form and punching another soldier all the way into the next house's garden. The remaining soldiers turned to aim but he had already shifted again, eyes igniting with blue fire as the air warped around him and he vanished from sight. Bullets whizzed through empty air, then a moment later he reappeared right behind the soldiers, shifting again to become an agama, fire belching from his mouth. The soldiers never had a chance to react. One of them had the presence of mind to dive into the pool, though that only served to intensify the oil-based flames, while the other two flailed about horribly, unable to comprehend an enemy like Cal. Before the soldiers had hit the floor, Cal was already shifting back to spectre, drifting away into the night air.

That was when the interior wall to the rest of the house blew out, disintegrating in blue sparks just like we'd seen happen to the guards in the Aviary. Standing in the hole was the scarred man, flanked by another two soldiers.

"Hello again," he said jovially, pointing his weapon towards me. "She dies," he continued, "unless you stop with this tedious misbehaving."

There was no response.

The man angled his head towards the kitchen. "We know you're hiding in there, too," he said. "How's the arm?"

It occurred to me that Cal could quite easily just jump away to another dimension and not come back. That was a luxury me and Marv didn't have. The man's face was scarred, but not just from injuries. Some of it looked like surgery.

The air rippled and puckered behind the trio. The two soldiers didn't notice but Scar Guy moved instantly, diving forward and twisting. Cal formed in mid air, tumbling down on the two soldiers and all three of them falling to the ground. The scarred man was clear and had landed on his back, his weapon now trained on Cal.

I moved, springing from my now useless cover and diving over the top of the man, wrenching the weapon from his hands as I went. He let out a startled yelp but was on his feet before I'd even landed.

Cal was rising up as well, gripping the two slumped soldiers and actually genoshifting as he moved, bulking up as fur pushed its way out. The increased muscle density seemed to engage immediately and he brought the soldiers round like twin battering rams. The man threw himself backwards, leaping up onto the tipped-over couch. Cal threw the soldiers aside, grunted and closed the distance in two giant-sized paces, grabbing the scarred man's neck and hauling him up into the air.

"Not so scary now, right?" Cal said.

"I'm not like you," heaved the man between breaths, "but you should know, I have had some upgrades."

He took hold of Cal's arm with one hand, then in a single jabbing motion brought his other arm around and collided with the opposite side of Cal's elbow, which gave way with a gross crunch and pop. The stranglehold released, the man found his footing and kicked out, sending even Cal's bulk skidding backwards. The man's size belied some kind of unexpected strength.

Cal had shifted to my squamata form, opting for speed instead of brute force. The scarred man kept pace, dodging and weaving even as Cal reacted with enormous speed.

"It's called science," the man said, landing a punch, "but you probably haven't heard of it. We thought it best to keep that on the down low for you lot."

I looked at the gun in my hands. It seemed fairly straightforward - trigger, some kind of safety. Pointy end. I aimed and squeezed but nothing happened other than a low beep.

"That only works when I'm holding it, my dear," the man said, even while fighting. "Give it back and I'll show you."

Cal was clearly waning, unable to find any kind of advantage and suffering a probably broken arm. He was being so harried that he had no time to shift to a different form, and had already been pushed out of the room and into the front half of the house. The building creaked, riddled as it was with bullet holes and missing half an internal wall.

That was when the scarred man seemed to receive some kind of signal which we couldn't hear, because he suddenly responded to nobody in particular. "Just do it," he shouted, "I can get clear."

With that, he disengaged the fight and threw himself clear, rolling along the floor, through the shattered glass. There was a low boom and a force pushed its way into the house from outside. Whoever was piloting the vehicle that was hovering over the back garden had clearly had enough of the situation. What remained of the back wall disintegrated in blue flame and a shockwave flowed across the floor, obliterating the couch and only just missing Cal, who dodged to the side at the last moment. The beam sliced into the already damaged house, taking out half the ceiling as it arced away.

The other man, Simons, cried out. "What are you doing? You'll kill us!"

"Then get out of here!" the scarred man shouted dismissively as another beam tore through the house, homing in even closer on Cal.

Over the noise of destruction another sound became crystal clear in the night. An infant crying.

Simons was crawling along the floor, apparently unable to walk. Cal must have hurt him more than I'd realised. There was no way he was going to make it upstairs to his son. Structural supports fell from the ceiling and the entire upper floor of the house sagged down, cracks snaking along every wall.

I looked to Marv, who already had the unconscious woman over his shoulders. He nodded to me, in a way that felt very final. He heaved his way out of a side door to the outside.

Looking back to Cal, I saw him staggering as masonry fell all around him and a beam of energy from the vehicle outside finally caught him a glancing blow, catching his ankle and sending him tumbling to the floor. His foot was simply gone. Even while falling, he was making one last, desperate genoshift. The squamatan scales fell away like burnt paper and his eyes reignited. The scarred man was already moving, was faster, and, as the air warped and sucked itself in, reached out and grasped Cal's shoulder. They both vanished, jumping away to any-goddamn-where.

Class one idiots, remember? That's for sure. Me, especially. It's fair to say that I'd never seen this one coming.

I looked at Simons, a man who clearly knew he was never going to be able to rescue his son before the entire building collapsed around him, but was going to give it a try anyway. The devastation of his life rained down around him. It had looked pretty cosy before we showed up.

"I got this," I said, actually trying to smile.

Then I moved, fast and with more precision than I'd ever managed. The staircase was gone, so I used the walls, leaping from one to another, clambering up one jump at a time, grasping at the exposed framework of the house, clawing my way up past pipes and wiring, up to the first floor of the house. In the corner of the building was a room with two of its walls gone, revealing a nursery with a cot. Standing at the bars of the cot was a tiny child, bawling his eyes out and looking like he'd had his whole, safe world shattered.

The house was on fire. Flames licked every surface, spreading rapidly and flowing unnaturally up walls and across what remained of the ceilings. Framed family photos lay broken on the floor, the barely recognisable corridor now skewed and shifting by the second. I ran, floorboards collapsing as I passed over them, and reached the nursery. The child looked at me and took in my appearance not with terror but with hope. He reached out his arms.

I'd never wanted to have kids. My parents fucked that one up for me.

I reached in and grabbed the little guy by the armpits. That's when the floor gave way and the entire structure started to concertina down upon itself. I held the boy tight and leaped blindly at the remains of the window. We sailed through and were in the air, twenty feet above the ground. I glimpsed Marv below, at the side of the house, dragging Simons out just in time.

I twisted in the air, rolling around and getting myself between the child and the ground. It was only about three seconds, but it felt like longer.

  Long way down, I thought.