I had the terrifying sensation of knowing that all the bones inside my body were dissolving, as a hard, fingernail-like crust covered me all over.

My human body was melting away.

My human vision was fading. I could no longer see the way a human sees.

Which was a good thing. Because I really did not want to see what I was becoming.

I think I might have just started screaming and never stopped. But I no longer had a mouth, or throat, or vocal cords capable of making sounds.

I had four sets of legs. I had two huge pincers. I could see them, kind of. They were a fractured image in my lobster eyes. I couldn't see much of the rest of me. But I could see other lobsters in the water.

I was very frightened.

Eat.

Eat.

Kill and eat.

The lobster brain surfaced suddenly, bubbling up within my human awareness. It had two thoughts.

25 Eat.

Eat.

Kill and eat.

I was getting input from senses I couldn't begin to understand. My extraordinarily long anten nae felt water temperature, and water current, and vibration. But I didn't know what any of it meant.

My eyes were almost useless at first. They showed fractured, incredible images, with none of the colors I knew.

I could see my pincers out in front of me. I could see my antennae. And behind me I could see a curved, brownish-blue surface, with humps and bumps on it.

My body! I realized with a sickening sensa tion. That was my back. My hard shell.

I could not look down and see my belly, or the hairy swimmerets scurrying away, back beneath my tail. I could not see my eight spiderlike legs, but I could feel as they propelled me suddenly, scrabbling along the glass bottom of the tank.

"Jake?" I called out.

"Yeah. I'm here," he said. He sounded shaky. Which was fine, because I was on the verge of crying. If lobsters could cry.

"You okay?"

"Yeah. This is not my favorite morph, though."

"No," I agreed. It was good being able to talk to him. I mean, you'd think you were losing your mind otherwise.

"Ax?" Jake called.

"I...I feel. ... I am hungry. This animal wants to eat," Ax answered.

"Yeah, well, that's pretty normal for morphs," I said. "Most animals care about food and not much else. I don't think lobsters are exactly geniuses^ "It wants to find prey," Ax said wonderingly.

"I know. Who'd have figured lobsters were predators?" I said.

"It's easier to deal with a predator brain than with prey. That prey fear can be overwhelming," Jake said.

I saw a lobster close by. "Is that you, Jake? Wiggle your left pincer." 26 The left pincer did not move. I realized this lobster had a rubber band around his pincer.

None of us had rubber bands. Rubber bands were not a part of the lobster DNA.

I saw a lobster to my left, unbanded. And another behind him. That was the three of us. There were half a dozen rubber-banded lobsters floating or just sitting.

"Speaking of fear," I said. "Can anyone see out of the tank ?"

"Just shadows," Jake said. "These are pathetic eyes."

"Yes, even worse than your human eyes," Ax commented.

"This is really creepy," I said. "I've never had an exoskeleton before."

"These pincers are most excellent, though," Ax said.

I saw him opening and closing them.

"Ax?" Jake said. "You say you can keep track of time accurately? Start tracking."

"Yes, Prince Jake," Ax said. "So far, ten of your minutes have passed."

"That much?" I was surprised. "Ten minutes? The cops must have come in by now."

"l was thinking the same thing," Jake said.

"We better wait as long as we can. Close to the full two hours," I said. "Although I really don't want to spend any more time than I have to in this creepy morph." 27 Chapter 6

According to Ax, an hour had passed when it happened.

I felt a strange disturbance in the water. Something large had splashed in. I sensed something above me.

Before I could think or react, I felt pressure on my shell.

I was rising rapidly through the water, being lifted.

"Jake! Something has me!"

Sudden shock!

I was out of the water.

Dryness. Heat. My antennae waved wildly as I tried to understand. My eyes registered nothing but bright light and huge, indistinct shadows.

Something large closed my right pincer forcibly. I could not open it. Then my left.

Rubber bands! I couldn't see them in this waterless environment. I was nearly blind. But I knew what had happened.

Someone had picked me up and rubber-banded my pincers.

Then I was tumbling, sliding, rubbing against things I could tell were other lobsters.

"Jake! Are you in this, too?"

"Yeah, but don't ask me what it means. I can't see or hear very well."

"Is it them? Is it Controllers?"

Something very cold dropped on me and slithered around my body.

Ice?

I felt a sensation of swinging back and forth for a while, like being on a swing.

"Ax?"

"Yes, Marco. I am here, too. What is happening?"

"You got me," I said. "Maybe the cops have us. Maybe the Controllers have us. I don't know."

"Let's stay in morph as long as we can," Jake said. "Maybe we'll figure it out. But if the Controllers have us, the last thing we want to do is demorph." The ice seemed to be making me sleepy. Or not exactly sleepy, just slow. Sluggish.

28 I guess I kind of zoned out for a while. I didn't know for how long, until I became suddenly alert and heard Ax's drowsy voice in my head saying, "We have only seven minutes left." That jolted me. I was not about to spend the rest of my life trapped as a lobster.

"Okay, I am out of this morph, I don't care who sees," I yelled.

"Agreed," Jake said. "Time's up. We have to take our chances."

"At least it's warmer now," I said. I tried to look around, but my antennae felt nothing in the air. And my eyes only saw meaningless, blurry gray forms.

I focused on demorphing. I wondered if I could close my human eyes when Jake started to reappear. I really did not want to watch Jake and Ax demorph. Once had been enough. I would already have nightmares for a month.

"Here goes," I said. I began the change.

But just then I again felt the sensation of pressure on my shell. My pincers came free.

Someone, or something, had removed the rubber bands.

And suddenly I felt a warmth billowing up around me.

Steam.

"Oh, no."

53 "MOOOOOO!" I screamed silently.

I knew where I was! I was in someone's hand, about to be dropped into a pot of boiling water.

"NOOOOOOOOO!"

And maybe it was because I was so desperate to scream, or maybe it was just the luck of the morph, but my human mouth was one of the first things to emerge.

Small, open lips appeared in place of my lob ster mouth.

I didn't have normal lungs or vocal cords yet, so I couldn't make a sound.

But I guess I didn't have to.

I guess suddenly having lips appear on a lobster was enough to make the woman drop me.

I fell. My front pincers caught the edge of the pan. Sheer dumb luck. I hung onto the edge of the pan as my tail curled up, inches above the boiling water in the pot.

29 I grew rapidly, becoming a baby-sized creature half-covered with hard cuticle, half flesh.

Human eyes grew in place of the useless stalk eyes. The antennae sucked back into my forehead. I heard a grinding sound as my spine reappeared inside me.