“You are coming out tonight, Nikki,” Tessa’s voice on my comm left no room for argument. “We’re going to the Limelight. You’re going to put on something that isn’t sweats, and we are going to dance until you remember how to have fun. No exception.”

  And so, here I was. Stuffed into a pair of tight purple leather pants and a matching jacket, standing in the queue for a nightclub designed by someone who hated human eardrums. The Limelight wasn’t just a club; it was an assault. The bass line wasn’t music; it was a series of controlled explosions thumping through the pavement, vibrating up my spine, and rattling the monster in its cage.

  Just a few hours, I told myself, rocking back and forth on the heels of my boots. Smile, dance a little, then fake a migraine. You can do this.

  “See? Isn’t this better than moping in your room?” Tessa linked her arm through mine. She looked electric, her cyberpunk accessories glowing in shifting patterns that matched the club’s pulsing neon sign.

  “It’s definitely… louder,” I said. The crowd was a breathing thing, a sweaty, laughing, shouting organism packed between velvet ropes. My hypersensitive hearing was going haywire, picking up a dozen different conversations, the clinking of glasses, the synthetic whir of a security drone overhead. It was a roar, and it was making the thing inside me restless.

  Cody just offered a small, hopeful smile. “Good to have you back, Nik.” Questions layered his eyes, which he was too polite to ask: What’s wrong with you?

  The bouncer, a mountain of chrome and muscle, waved us through. The moment we stepped inside, the volume tripled. The air was thick with the smells of synth-alcohol, expensive perfume, and hot, recycled air. A storm of strobing lights—blue, pink, white—flashed across the dance floor, turning the writhing crowd into a jerky, stop-motion film.

  Every single one of my senses was screaming. The lights scraped against my retinas. The noise was a physical pressure against my skull. The sheer number of bodies, the heat, the movement—it was all too much. A primal urge to bolt, to find somewhere dark and quiet, clawed at me.

  “First round’s on me!” Tessa shouted over the music, already dragging us toward the bar.

  I followed, my movements stiff. I felt like an alien trying to mimic human behavior. Smile. Nod. Don’t let them see the freak.

  We found a small booth overlooking the dance floor. Tessa and Cody launched into a recap of school gossip, their voices barely audible over the thumping beat. I just nodded along, my eyes darting around the room, tracking the movement, the flashing lights, the exit signs. Every shadow seemed to hold a threat. Every sudden movement made my muscles coil.

  The bass dropped, a deep, gut-rumbling womp-womp-womp that seemed to sync up with my own frantic heartbeat. The strobing lights smeared into one long, nauseating streak. The bite mark on my arm, hidden beneath the purple leather, burned.

  No. Not here. Please, not now.

  “You’re doing it again,” Tessa said, her voice cutting through the haze. I blinked, realizing I’d been staring into space, my hands clenched into white-knuckled fists on the table.

  “Doing what?”

  “Zoning out. You look like you’re a million miles away.” Her bubbly tone was gone, her expression concerned. “Nikki, we’re worried about you.”

  “I’m fine,” I lied, the word feeling like gravel in my mouth. “Just… championship stress.”

  A bead of sweat trickled down my temple. The air in the club thickens, unbreathable. The itching in my arm intensified, a spreading fire beneath my skin. A sharp pain lanced down my spine. I bit back a gasp, my knuckles turning even whiter.

  The strobing lights seemed to speed up, faster and faster, each flash a physical blow. The world broke apart into a series of jagged, disconnected images. A face in the crowd. A flash of neon. Cody’s worried frown.

  Get out. Get out now.

  “I have to go to the bathroom,” I said, the words catching in my throat as I pushed myself up from the booth. My legs felt unsteady, like they weren’t quite my own.

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  “Are you okay?” Cody stood up.

  “Fine!” I said, the single word a gunshot of pure panic. “Just—stay here.”

  I turned and shoved my way through the crowd, each accidental bump sending a jolt of agony through my overstimulated senses. The beat of the music was inside my skull now, a relentless hammer pounding against my bones.

  Then came the first real wave of pain.

  It started in my back, a hot, searing agony, as if my spine were being twisted into a new and impossible shape. My breath hitched. My vision swam. I stumbled, catching myself against a wall. The texture of the cool, synthetic wallpaper felt alien against my overheating skin.

  Breathe, Nova. Just breathe.

  But another wave hit, stronger this time. It was a sound as much as a feeling—a low, wet, cracking noise that came from inside me. My bones were breaking. I choked back a scream, turning it into a strangled groan. I had to get out of sight. I staggered toward a hallway, my body already contorting. My shoulders broadened with a pop, stretching the seams of my leather jacket.

  The pain was blinding. My body was tearing itself apart from the inside out, and I hadn't even stretched first. A hot, prickling sensation erupted across my skin. Great. Now I'm growing fur. That's just fantastic.

  I glanced down at my hands. Thick, white fur was sprouting from my knuckles, pushing through my skin like some kind of monstrous mold.

  My boots. My feet were on fire, swelling, changing shape. The expensive leather groaned, then split with a loud tearing sound. The seams of my pants ripped at the thigh, my muscles bunching and expanding beneath the fabric.

  I finally reached the hallway, collapsing against the wall just as my knees buckled, my joints reshaping themselves into something not quite human. I looked up, and my reflection stared back at me from a chrome panel on the wall.

  It wasn't my face.

  My features were elongating, my jaw pushing forward into a muzzle. My ears were migrating up the sides of my head, becoming pointed. And my eyes… my eyes were glowing with a stark, feral, yellow light.

  Oh no. Not a dream. This is not a dream.

  A blind, animal panic seized me. I was Nikki Nova. Cheerleader. Girl with average crushes and math tests. Not this… this thing.

  My only thought was a primal scream: Escape.

  I scrambled back the way I came, my movements clumsy and uncoordinated in this new, twisted body. I burst back out into the main club, a horrifying creature of white fur and shredded purple leather.

  The music was still pounding, the lights still flashing. For a second, no one noticed. Then a girl screamed. Cut short as someone else saw me, and then the panic spread like a virus. The dancing stopped. The crowd recoiled, a wave of terror parting before me.

  I didn’t see them as people. They were just shapes, obstacles between me and the exit. My new body was humming with a terrifying power, my senses overloaded to the breaking point.

  “Nikki?”

  The voice cut through the noise. I turned my head, a low, guttural snarl rumbling in my new chest, a sound I didn’t recognize as my own.

  Tessa and Cody stood there, frozen, their faces masks of pale shock.

  My panic redoubled. They couldn’t see me like this. They couldn’t know. I had to get away. I lunged toward the main entrance, my only thought was to get out, to run, to hide.

  They were in my way.

  I lashed out. A blind, instinctual swipe, not meant to harm, only to clear a path.

  My hand, now a paw tipped with long, sharp claws, sliced through the air.

  It narrowly missed Cody’s face. So close that he flinched back, stumbling into Tessa. So close that I felt the whisper of air against his skin.

  And then I stopped.

  The blind panic, the agony of the transformation, it all receded for one moment. I saw them. I really saw them.

  Tessa was clutching Cody’s arm, her knuckles white, her mouth open in a silent scream. Cody had his arm out, shielding her, his face a canvas of utter, soul-deep terror.

  They weren’t looking at their friend. They were looking at a monster. A rabid animal that had just tried to kill them.

  The sight of their fear didn’t just hurt. It shattered me. It broke something deep inside. In their terrified eyes, I finally saw the truth. I wasn’t Nikki Nova anymore. I was a weapon. A monster that hurts everyone it touches. And I was a danger to the two people in the world who meant the most to me.

  They're safer if I'm gone. The thought was a shard of ice in my chest. It was the only choice.

  I turned and smashed through the glass doors of the entrance, the sound of screams chasing me into the night. I didn't look back. I couldn't.

  I ran. I abandoned my phone, which had fallen from my ripped pants’ pocket back in the club. I abandoned my home, my family, my team. I abandoned my life.

  I ran into the shadows of the city’s underbelly, choosing a painful, lonely exile over the certainty that I would one day hurt the people I loved. I ran until my new lungs burned and the neon lights of my old world were just a distant, mocking glow in the sky. I ran until there was nothing left of Nikki Nova at all.