Into Focus (Focus Series Book 1) (2 page)

I went inside, and, after I bought the guard
(whose name turned out to be Sam, though his friends called him
Lucky) a few drinks, then a few more drinks, I started to learn
some things. Lucky had washed out of the Marines, for example,
because he had had “disagreements” with the CO. He had worked for
Blackstone for two years, though he had never seen any action. He
and most of the guards were bored most of the time.

And they all hated their boss, Josh Breckan,
to whom Lucky referred as “a pencil-pushing pencil-neck.” Josh
Breckan, according to the file provided by my employer, was high up
enough in the organization to have the information I was looking
for on his personal computer in his office at the compound.

Lucky, who plied me for about a dozen drinks
in exchange for information that he thought was worthless but was
actually worth at least fifty grand, eventually was driven home by
the bartender, who had apparently done it often enough that he
wasn’t particularly bothered at the prospect.

That was how, eight days after I had had a
conversation with a nervous wreck in the humid Miami heat, I stood
across the street from the home of Josh Breckan, Pencil-neck of
Blackstone’s New Mexico compound.

Okay, so when I said that espionage was easy,
I may not have been clear. See, it isn’t particularly difficult,
especially not when you can change your face into whatever you
want, because it involves skills that just about anyone can learn.
But there is a lot of legwork involved. I was faster and better at
it than just about anyone, but that was because I could spy on
people as a bird, or a lizard, or a fly. But, if anybody had access
to the same information I did, they would be able to get Lucky to
tell them whatever they needed. I simply knew what Lucky liked, and
followed through to get where I needed to go.

None of that was hard for me, but even easier
was breaking into Josh’s house. The guy had a state of the art
security system, motion sensors covering every bare inch of the
exterior and the perfectly manicured lawn, sensors on every window
and door, and even one covering the skylight above his bedroom. And
those were just the things I could see. For all I knew, he might
sleep with a gun under his pillow. He was, after all, in a
dangerous business.

But none of that mattered to someone like me.
It doesn’t matter how secure you make the obvious entrances to a
building; spiders, flies, ants, and even larger animals like mice
could virtually always find a way inside. They only needed the
tiniest crack, and they’d be in. Something that size with the
intelligence of a human was even harder to keep out.

I waited until the wee hours of the morning
before I did anything. Then, under cover of darkness, I shifted
into a squirrel.

Shifting doesn’t exactly hurt, but you know
it’s happening. One of my brothers who was too stupid to realize
that he could literally replace any teeth he wanted had had a
particularly large cavity filled at the dentist once, when he was
fourteen. He said that the grinding, drilling sensation against his
numbed tooth was really, really close to how it felt, except it was
experienced everywhere. I have no idea if that’s true, and I don’t
plan on letting anyone go prospecting around in my mouth long
enough to find out.

And, before anyone asks, I have no idea what
happens to the extra mass of my body when I shift into something
smaller than my normal human form. The cells that don’t get used
have to somewhere, I guess, but it’s not something I’m keen to find
out. The only way I would be able to really learn would be in a
laboratory, and, if I’m being honest, the thought terrified me.

If a scientist of any kind found out about
skinchangers, even if there was only one of us, it would not go
well. We weren’t just proof of the supernatural, we would be
regarded as a finite resource, and treated as such. I’d be stuck in
a lab for the rest of my life—which could, potentially, be a very
long time, if my grandfather was any indication—probably held under
constant sedation. My individual cells could be harvested to
produce all kinds of things.

Stem cells, for one; a limitless supply,
ready to go at a moment’s notice. Maybe even more obscure things,
if they figured out what allowed me to shapeshift. Organic fibers,
carbon nanotubes… hell, I could probably provide enough internal
organs to take care of every patient on the transplant lists.

Maybe it’s selfish of me to not do that. I
don’t exactly work in a friendly industry, but I’d never killed
anyone, and only ever used force if there was no other option.
Generally speaking, I don’t hurt people. I’m a skinchanger, and
though I can look like one if I really wanted to, I’m not a
monster.

But I never felt guilty about refusing to
sacrifice my freedom, my life in the name of science and progress.
I’m not a lab rat.

At that moment, I was, in fact, a
squirrel.

I scampered across the lawn, too small to
trip the motion sensors, and skittered up the fence enclosing the
backyard with careless ease. Quickly, I hopped over to the patio,
about a foot away from the back door. Then I concentrated once
again, shifting back to my original body.

One of the limits of my abilities is that I
usually have to revert to normal before I can shift again. When I
shift to double someone, I’m still a human, and am really only
moving parts of my body around. That means I can do it quickly and
on the fly. But shifting from one animal to another was something
entirely different, and can have really nasty consequences. One of
my grandfather’s brothers did it too many times, and wasn’t able to
quite get back to normal again. He looked normal enough, if you
didn’t count the excess hair, but he wasn’t the same anymore;
something in his mental state had changed, and nobody was sure
exactly what it was.

He never really laughed much after that, and
always seemed tense, ready to run at a moment’s notice. It took us
a while to realize that he had shifted from a polecat to a deer for
some reason. It looked like some of the basic instincts of the
animals—the hardwired fight or flight reflex in particular—had
carried over when he shifted back out of it. He was never able to
get his head back on straight.

Anyway, I had to shift back before I could
shift again. I wasn’t about to end up like that.

Once I was human, I looked around to double
check that everything was clear, then moved right up to the door.
The bottom of it rested about half an inch above the ground, and
had a black rubber flap that prevented rain (what little of it fell
in New Mexico anyway) from flowing into the house. I checked
around, and, making sure to stay as close to the house as possible
to avoid the motion sensors, found a barbecue fork on the patio
table. I picked it up, then leaned down and wedged it under the
door, holding the flap open at its corner.

I concentrated once more, felt my skin ripple
and my bones collapse upon themselves, and plummeted toward the
ground at a lunatic, breakneck speed. My arms split into two, my
legs did the same, my head shot backwards, receding toward what had
been my shoulders, and my torso widened, even as it shrank. In less
than a minute, I had gone from a tall man to a tiny wolf
spider.

All I needed to get through the door without
tripping any alarms was a body small enough to fit under the gap in
the rubber I had made with the barbecue fork. A layman might wonder
why I didn’t simply shrink myself down until I had enough clearance
to get through. Theoretically, I absolutely could do it. There
really isn’t a limit on how much I can shift; I can rework
individual parts of my body, or, if I felt like it, could transform
into some massive Lovecraftian monster. But skinchangers tend to
avoid the latter.

The problem is one of physical limitation.
I’m no expert by any means, but I made sure to pay close attention
in biology in school, given the nature of my abilities. And the
truth is that geometry plays a greater role in biology than most
people realize. There’s something called the Square-Cube Law, which
was outlined by none other than Galileo himself. Basically, as
something shrinks or grows in size, the volume of it shrinks or
grows at a faster rate than the surface area. That doesn’t sound
too important, right?

But we keep our body temperatures stable
mostly through our skin and our circulation. When the ratio gets
disrupted too much—like if I shrink down to the size of a gnat—I’d
actually lose body heat faster than I could replenish it. I’d
freeze to death pretty quickly, in a matter of minutes at most,
seconds at best. It’s why smaller people always seem to be
cold.

And if I instead decided to grow myself into
something larger than a house, my lungs wouldn’t be able to draw
enough air to handle the extra volume. I’d suffocate pretty much
immediately. Then there’s the problem of having a skeleton that’s
actually strong enough to support the extra weight. It’s why
elephants don’t look like giant mice; they have to be different in
order to be that big.

In other words, when you hear some guy say
that an ant the size of a car could lift the Chrysler Building,
just tell him that the ant would die in seconds. That usually shuts
them up.

So, yes, I have to shift into things that
could exist or I’d die, and spiders aren’t all that complicated.
And before you ask, no, I don’t understand how I can still have my
own mind when I’m walking around as a freaking spider without an
actual brain. By all rights, I shouldn’t, but I shouldn’t be able
to turn into a spider in the first place, right?

It’s freaking magic. Clap your hands if you
believe.

Anyway, I scuttled across the short distance,
pumping my eight legs madly. I made it through the gap beneath the
door, and found myself in a small kitchen. My eyes as a spider were
designed to see movement, mostly, and I couldn’t really get a good
look around. So I crept to one of the corners that seemed to be out
of the way, and shifted back to normal.

The kitchen was nicely furnished—granite
countertops, a lovely little kitchen island, and a gleaming gas
range all shone from recent cleaning. The table across the room was
made of some kind of highly polished wood, maybe oak, and looked
large enough to seat ten people comfortably. I looked around a bit,
hoping to get a sense of my target, and opened the door to the
refrigerator. It was fully stocked, the shelves filled with fresh
fruit and vegetables.

And, I noted, with a groan of displeasure,
juice boxes.

Kids. The guy has kids.

Crap.

That complicated things. I don’t like
violence generally, but I’m willing to break a few bones if I have
to put someone down. Kids, though… that was a different story.
Hell, I don’t even want to scare kids, let alone actually hurt
them. I liked them. Sue me.

I’d have to change my plans. If the guy had
been a bachelor, I would have just marched into his bedroom, turned
my hand into a sword, quizzed him about his work, knocked him out,
impersonated him, gone into his office, and dumped the files onto a
portable hard drive. Easy enough.

My head buzzed as I made adjustments. After a
few minutes, I had a new plan. I made the decision, and left the
way I had come.

Josh Breckan was an early riser. He briskly
walked to his car that morning at six-thirty sharp, dressed in an
immaculate pinstriped suit. His tie was held in place with a rather
lovely stick pin, which, if the diamond was real, probably cost him
as much as the car. His hair was neatly groomed, parted on the
left, and his face was perfectly clean-shaven.

I noticed this from my vantage point in the
backseat of his car, a rather comfortable sedan with windows so
tinted that I wondered if they were legal. Before he actually
opened the door, I shifted once again, into a gecko.

Don’t look at me like that. Geckos are hard
to spot when you aren’t looking for them, and I needed to be both
small and aware enough to know when it was time to take the next
step.

I darted to the floor, where he would have no
chance of seeing me, and settled down to wait. He’d be in the car
for at least an hour before he got to work, assuming he drove
within speed limits, and judging from the way he dressed and
groomed himself, I thought that was a fairly safe bet. I needed to
wait until he was out in the desert before I did anything, away
from anyone who would be able to help him.

Away from his kids.

I used an old trick to keep track of time:
music. When I was a kid—not that I’m exactly old or anything, but
younger than I am—I went through a pretty intense classic rock
phase. The old bands—Led Zeppelin, The Doors, The Eagles, Jimi
Hendrix, and a hundred others—all had one thing in common: they
really liked long, sprawling songs that had plenty of time to shred
a few good solos in between bridges. And I had listened to enough
of them to have the exact runtimes of each permanently ingrained in
my head.

So I sang—mentally, I mean. Geckos can’t
sing. That would be crazy. I let the music play through my head,
taking care not to miss a single note. It was a lot easier than
counting, at least for me.

Several songs later, just under a half hour,
I finished the final riff of “Crossroads,” thanked Eric Clapton
silently, and made my move.

I shifted back to my human body in a matter
of seconds, concentrating as hard as I could on doing so as quickly
as possible. As I finished the shift, I kept my face ducked down
low, obscured behind the headrest of the driver’s seat. Rapidly, I
contorted the features of my face, disguising myself adequately,
assuming that my new friend Josh would have a decent memory after
today’s events. As I did that, I swung one arm around the front of
the seat, wrapping my elbow around Josh’s windpipe before he could
react.