Wally tosses and turns in his bed, to the point that the rustling of his sheets and creaking of his mattress prompts an unintelligible groan from his sleeping roommate. He wills his body to be still, but has no such luck with his mind. Adrenaline rushes through his veins as he thinks about how close he is to having Whiz Kid in his grasp. He shuts his eyes and imagines having the killer at his mercy, clutching his throat, wringing the life out of him the same way he did to Anna.

Wally shakes his head, trying to clear away his macabre thoughts. He had always seen himself as a pacifist. He shied away from violence and was opposed to capital punishment. And yet, now that the loss is personal, all of those reservations disappear. In his eyes, no punishment is too severe for the man who took Anna’s life. He laughs inwardly at his own hypocrisy.

Hoping to distract himself, Wally sits up and snatches his phone from the corner of his nightstand. Without thinking, he opens his photos, pulling up rows and rows of images interspersed with shots of Anna. He scrolls through them, lingering on every picture of her. Reliving the precious moments he managed to capture is as wonderful as it is painful. He can almost hear her mirthful laugh, see her bright smile, smell her scent of lavender and honey, feel her soft embrace, but every whisper of her slips away as soon as it appears. This is something he does often, though it never numbs the pain. It isn’t meant to numb the pain. No, he torments himself this way to ensure those precious memories never fade, to remind himself of what’s been taken from him, and to reaffirm his resolve.

He reaches the end of his camera roll: a video of Allie, not Anna. Her transformation is a horrid distortion of Anna’s features, an insult to her memory. It’s still unsettling, but when he watches it now, he doesn’t feel the same terror and rage as before. In the past few days, Allie has proven to be earnest, even naïve in some ways. He used to see her ravenous eating habits as savage and animalistic, but now she reminds him more of a child forgetting her table manners. It’s almost amusing whenever she asks him about mundane things he considers common knowledge, revealing unexpected gaps in her understanding of the world despite how quick she is to learn.

Even her personality makes her difficult to hate. She’s cooperative and amiable despite how cold he’s been to her, and she’s considerate of his feelings in a way he would never have expected from an extraterrestrial being. He used to resent that, too, because of how human she seemed, which made it that much more difficult to separate her from Anna in his mind.

It was so much easier to despise her when there were no other suspects, but now his animosity towards Allie is quickly fading. He’s beginning to feel guilty about how harsh he’s been to her. If it weren’t for her, Anna may have just become one more missing person, another Melissa Bordeau. She would still be gone forever, but with an uncertain fate and no way of finding the culprit. Thanks to Allie, he could get closure and Anna could get justice.

His thumb lingers over the delete button. Keeping the video almost feels like a betrayal. After all, hadn’t Allie proven herself to be trustworthy? She’s been working just as hard as him to find Anna’s killer. Ever since he found out her secret, she had been nothing but open with him. The fact that she let him film her transformation in the first place was a testament to that. Still, he can’t bring himself to do it. There’s still a nagging doubt in his mind, a worry that she could still be lying, or at the very least hiding her true intentions. It wouldn’t hurt to keep it, he thinks. At least until we catch Anna’s killer.

***

After we arranged our meeting with Whiz Kid, Wally retired to his room for the night. We agreed to meet up at noon the next day so we could search Alder Park for an ideal meeting place. Falling asleep was unexpectedly easy, perhaps because I had been left exhausted by an eventful day. With no classes on Friday, I was free to sleep in. However, late in the morning, I was roused from my deep slumber by a familiar, cavernous ache in my stomach.

I grabbed Anna’s phone to check the time: 11:25 AM. Wally would still be in class, and regardless, I didn’t want to remain reliant on him for every meal. Unfortunately, campus would be bustling with people by this time, which meant hunting was off the table. I clamored out of bed and crouched in front of Anna’s backpack, unzipping the front pocket. I fished around for a moment before excitedly yanking out my prize: a handful dollar bills and a few coins of spare change, remnants from the meal money Wally had lent me two days before. I hurried to get dressed.

After some searching, I was able to find a fast food place where I could get a sizable meal for cheap. I ordered as many servings of chicken nuggets as I could afford. As soon as my order was ready, I rushed home with my haul and began stuffing my face. Though the nuggets were crispy and succulent, and abundant enough to entirely fill my stomach, I was somehow left unsatisfied. The telltale prickling that often accompanied my hunger began to run along my arms. I looked down at my distended belly with a perplexed frown. How could I possibly still be hungry when I felt so bloated?

Desperation pushed me to resolve an issue I had been putting off. I pulled out Anna’s phone and texted Anna’s mother, explaining that my debit account had run out of funds. She replied almost immediately, rebuking me for waiting until the last minute to tell her. I apologized, but was greatly relieved when she said she had transferred a few hundred dollars to the account. Unlike before, I was determined to spend it wisely.

However, my relief was short-lived. Despite finally being able to afford my own food, I still felt so full that the prospect of taking another bite made me queasy. I retched at the thought and had to fight to keep my food down. Yet, much to my dismay, the cells in my arms and face were quivering restlessly. Were the nuggets so greasy and processed that my body was rejecting them? That must be it, I thought, despite the fact that I’d had no problems with similarly unhealthy meals before. I didn’t want to consider the possibility that my hunger couldn’t be sated by normal food, or worse, that I was craving something else entirely. Instead, I resolved to endure my discomfort and eat a healthy lunch. Then I remembered that Wally and I were going to Alder Park at noon—ten minutes from now. I’ll just have an early dinner, I consoled myself. I hoped I would last that long.

Just before noon, Wally knocked on my door. “You ready?” he called out from the other side.

I readied myself by clamping down on my cells, forcing them to behave. Once everything was under my tight control, I opened the door and stepped out. “Ready,” I replied through gritted teeth.

Wally raised an eyebrow. “You seem tense. Nervous already?”

“Yeah, a little.” I was, but not for the reason he was thinking. While I had a handle on myself now, I was worried my control would slip. Even in the best case, with no one else around to witness it, Wally would still realize I’d been keeping something from him. After I’d worked so hard to gain his trust, it would be a devastating setback.

Wally gave me a look of sympathy and an awkward pat on the back. “Don’t worry, tomorrow’s what you should really be nervous for.” As soon as he finished the sentence, his gaze dropped to his feet. He blushed and pulled his hand back. “That uh… wasn’t very reassuring, was it…”

I chuckled, and my apprehension lessened, if only for a moment. With that, we headed for the park. When we arrived, we decided to take the trail closest to campus. A worn-down sign posted off to the side read “Loggerhead Trail”. A few feet away, there was another sign which read “Beware of deer”.

About a quarter mile down the trail, a small side-path split off from the main track, windings its way through the thick of the woods. We decided to follow it, wanting to see where it would lead. The narrow footpath was littered with branches and large rocks, forcing us to watch our step as we trekked along. I noted that, if one were in a hurry, the rough terrain would make running back to the main trail difficult. After several minutes of walking, the path dead-ended into a small clearing—the perfect meeting place.

Our plan was simple. I would meet Whiz Kid in the clearing, seemingly alone to keep his guard down. When he got close enough, Wally would jump out from behind and subdue him, and I would assist if needed. Then, we could begin our interrogation. The densely packed trees surrounding the clearing would provide ample cover for Wally to hide in, as well as a convenient buffer to any sounds of distress the would-be killer might make once we captured him. It was far enough away from the main trail that I could transform without much fear of being seen by passersby, though I hoped it wouldn’t come to that.

We spent a while working out fine details, deciding exactly where I would stand and where Wally would lie in wait. Once we were confident that we were sufficiently prepared for tomorrow’s confrontation, we began our careful hike back to the main trail.

Our planning had distracted me enough to take the edge off my hunger, but as we started heading home, it returned with a vengeance. The usual tingling rapidly intensified. After only a few minutes, my skin literally began to crawl, with small ripples travelling across the surface of my arms. I rushed to cover the patches of wriggling flesh with my hands, desperate to hide the unsettling phenomenon from Wally’s view as I tried to quash my own cells rebelling against me.

Wally shot me a concerned look. “Allie? Is something wrong?” he asked. While he didn’t seem to catch the unnatural movement of my skin, he certainly noticed my panicked attempts to conceal it.

It took all my concentration just to keep my body still. I struggled to form the words for a reply. “F-fine,” I managed to choke out, though it was rather unconvincing given that I was trembling from the strain.

He frowned, taking a step towards me to get a closer look. “You don’t look f—" Picking up the sounds of branches snapping and foliage rustling nearby, I stopped paying attention to his words. It was as if part of my mind shut off, overtaken by a primal instinct that refused to be held back any longer.

My head swiveled wildly in the direction of the noise. I caught the telltale scent of deer carried on the breeze, making my mouth flood with saliva. There was an instant release of tension as my arms split into several fleshy tentacles. Wally let out a startled yelp at my sudden transformation, but I barely registered his presence as my mind narrowed onto a singular focus: my prey.