Chapter 1: 99 Pieces

People referring to a "shapeshifter" mean one of a few things, sorted into four loose definitions.

Type A: The Uncanny. Can falsify themselves into a person or animal, to some extent, but imperfectly upon closer inspection.

Type B: The Doppelgänger. Can look entirely like a person, may even share some memories and emotions.

Type C: The Mimic. Can turn itself into any object of a similar mass, but not into organisms.

Type D: The Implementer. High level of shapeshifting ability, consumes flesh for biomass, doesn't really try to mimic anything.

Then there's me. Logically, I know I can't be the only one, though logic never really applied to me.

My consciousness is held inside a durable black mass that can bend and distort slightly, but can't break. That, in technical terms, is me, that anti-luminescent three dimensional conduit unbound by gravity. I'm the rough size and shape of a golf ball, though the small little divots on my surface are constantly alternating position, and project my false self outward from them in thick struts of whatever my shell is made of at the time. I need the base elements for anything I project myself as. Oxygen. Carbon. Phosphorus. Nitrogen. That kind of thing. I only have so much space to store chemicals, though it's gotten bigger as I've gotten older. I'm unsure exactly how it works, but my running theory is that there is very little space between the atoms I keep within me, letting me cram in exceptional mass within the finite but expansive void with me.

I'm 25. Or maybe 30. My first memory is me, semi-conscious, spawned from nothingness and placed inside the third floor of an abandoned office building. It took me five years to learn that I could be more than indeterminately shaped appendages that could gather nutrients. Another ten after that to be good at it. And now, I usually store myself within a human shell, under the name Lena Sendurmir. It means sleepless in bastardized Galician. As much as I try to approximate humanity, not needing to sleep will always separate me. Not that I mind. Losing those eight or so extra hours a day would be torturous.

I work as a spreadsheet monkey for a company I can't fathom the business model of. One of billions of imperfect gears in the infinite machine. I blend in. I have work friends. I eat similar foods every day because I still can't figure out how to make the human gag reflex stop harassing me. I'm very eagerly awaiting the day I can eat a generic, tasteless nutrient block once a day and not have to worry about damaging the form I've taken.

Every so often, while sitting on my roof in the driving snow and pumping antifreeze through my shell of a body, I consider giving up. I bet, somewhere deep within humanity, there are others just like me. Faking it. Pretending to be the thing that would try to kill them. Maybe if I become notorious through turning the tables and killing humans, others would show themselves.

That thought keeps me a semblance of sane, and ironically keeps me from giving up. Because if I gave in, what would it be like if it turned out I was the only one of me?

-

I stare into the computer screen, as I have been for an hour and a half now, accomplishing nothing. I'm an expert at faking it, but the "making it" part still seems to elude me. Music plays through wireless earbuds that fit perfectly into my shell's ears, which process sound for my mind. I like to keep myself next to the heart of my shell so I can distribute any chemicals I need to quickly, and I can connect easily to the shell's pseudo-brain for instantaneous intake of stimuli.

"Fear not the withering of ageFea not winter's deathly touchSomewhere deep below us a fire glowsWaiting to emerge once again"

I feel a tap on my shoulder. Human resources. An older man, been here since before the corporatization of the formerly family-owned company. I know why he's here. I follow him to a conference room, where my boss and boss's boss await.

"Lena. We all like you here. You know that, right?" My boss asks. Abel Burns. A good guy, and a hard worker, if a bit spineless sometimes.

"Sure."

"Well... you haven't been performing. You're on your phone more often than you aren't, you're slow on deliverables, and-"

"Okay." I interrupt. The three of them look at me, HR disapprovingly so.

Abel tents his hands in front of his mouth. "Lena, we-"

"I quit."

"What? No, don't quit, we just-"

"Bye, everyone. If you need passwords or someone to handle whatever until you find a replacement, just text me. No hard feelings, I don't need you as a reference." A stunned silence follows me from the conference room as I leave to my desk, packing away my various desk ornaments and decorations into an empty cardboard box that once held printer paper. Halfway through, my desk neighbor, a 30-something guy named Mark who laughs at my jokes, looks over in concern.

"Moving desks, Lena?" He asks, half-joking.

"Nope. I quit."

"Oh. What happened?"

"A wake-up call. Want my collection of actually good pens? The kind that you don't have to mess around with to get them to work?"

"No, that's okay... Hey, can I give you my number?"

"Sure. And your loss about the pens."

He scratches it only a business card of his pretty quickly. I take it, and drop it into my purse.

"See you around, Mark."

"If you need a reference or anything, let me know, okay?"

"Yeah."

I bring the cardboard box out to my car, through the sodden empty lot the company cannibalized to use for parking, but never bothered to pave. I've lost several pairs of shoes to the mess, and may be the thing I miss the least here. I close the door, and get into the driver's seat, adjusting my rear view mirror like I seem to have to do every time I get in.

I'm good at faking it, but I'm tired of it.

What else is there, though?

-

The glass doors of the apartment open for me, as I add to their patina of scratches and grime that seem to leave then eternally smeared at the center like an ice hockey rink. I ignore the security guard's cheerful hello, and wait for the elevator while making direct eye contact with him.

I'm so very tired of faking it.

When it arrives, I step through the sliding doors with a neutral expression. Maintaining facial expressions has become second nature, but still only a habit. I still catch myself slipping to a monotone voice and empty eyes. My neighbor, a forty something retiree named Chuck, jogs over to the elevator, which I hold open for him. Chuck something. He looks as average as everyone else in the world.

"Tell me your last name again, Chuck."

He sniffs, looking over at me with a half-smile. "You're in a particularly weird mood today, huh?"

"Fine, don't."

"I didn't mean it like that." He looks at my face, dropping his eyes to my statically posed hands at my side. "It's Tessel. Charles Tessel."

"Tessel. Thanks. Makes it easier to lie about who I am."

"Huh?"

"My shapeshifting, Chuck. I can be anything, but I'm bad at mimicking brains. I needed your last name."

He furrows his brow, but maintains the amused half-smile. "A shapeshifter. Why not just kill me and take my wallet, though? Assuming you were a shapeshifter, that is."

"Damn. You got me." I sigh as the elevator reaches out hallway, stepping out to my door with Chuck next to me. "I'm not actually planning on being you. I don't even have your DNA. It's so difficult to mimic someone without having their blueprints, and no offense, but you're not the kind of person I want to be."

"Harsh, Lena. As a sasquatch myself, I'm very offended." He winks at me as he enters his apartment. I enter my own, swiping my key card a few times.

My room is a mess, and I'm much too lazy to clean it right now. Still, I need to get rid of those plastic fast food cups of melted ice and a trace of whatever soda was in them before. I retract my shell into myself with little effort, and absently consume all the garbage in my room. Plastics are almost always oxygen, carbon, and hydrogen. The same things flesh is made of, funnily enough, making them easy to upcycle into a new form. I extrude my human shell again as I start absentmindedly breaking down the plastic I've absorbed while laying down in bed with my laptop. It takes conscious effort to decompose a material, but at least it gives me something to do. Its almost meditative, like putting together a jigsaw puzzle, or untangling a complicated knot. While I play with the polymers inside myself, I start scrolling through job listings.

Maybe something more interesting this time. Perhaps something dangerous? My shell getting damaged doesn't physically harm me, and although I understand the concept of pain and can feel it within the borrowed nervous system, it doesn't affect me like it does to a human. Similar to how something very cold can feel wet to the touch, pain is a very similar sensation to any other kind of nerve stimuli.

The jobs are boring. All so very boring. A dozen important-sounding names for retail worker, far too many nursing jobs, probably illegal unpaid internships, attorneys... military? Intriguing. I've always wanted to kill people.

Navy, Army... Counter-Magic? Magical Beast Research, too. Now I'm very intrigued. Seems they're hiring for the position of 'hunter'. Someone who kills magical beasts like myself. I wonder...

No. That is a terrible idea. Perhaps something else is on the table...

Magical crime investigator? Now we're talking.

I run it through in my head. Puts me right in front of the worst humanity has to offer. People who use their own abilities to hurt other people.

I've never known who I was. I've always been someone else. I don't even know if there is a 'me' within my little dimpled sphere, or if I'm only a collection of reflected attitudes and traits. Whichever it is, I'm sick of it. Whoever I am right now, I'm not me.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

I'm going to discover who I am beneath the ever-present shells. Make something concrete. A destination to the upcoming journey.

I stole a small composition notebook from work before I left, with a red and white splotchy cover, and one hundred pages. I start writing in the first.

'I am Lena. These are the 99 layers that make up my being, good and bad. I'm going to find out who I am, or die trying.'

I look for Mark's number in my purse. Truthfully, taking on the mantle of 'woman' was partly guided by the ease of access to a purse without standing out. I tried pockets with my last identity, and they didn't compare. I find the business card, and type the number into my phone.

Me: It's Lena.

Mark is still at work, but that doesn't stop him from a near-instant reply.

Mark: Hey! Happy to see you actually messaged me. I'll talk more after work. Abel's forcing himself to be a hardass right now, since you left.

Me: I wonder how much of his life is faking enthusiasm for dumb bullshit.

Mark: He likes the job to much to need to fake it.

Me: Wonder what that's like.

Mark: Me too lol

-

Open interviews, in my opinion, should be the only legal method of hiring. Resumes are a huge waste of time. As if there's anything related to a college degree in being a magical crime investigator. There's seven other people here. It's not like there are limited positions available, but I'm under the impression that they're pretty picky.

The guy next to me is maybe fifty, dark-skinned and eyes so deeply brown they're almost black. I know this because he's been staring at me for a solid sixty seconds.

"Can I help you?" I ask, finally annoyed enough to look up from my phone.

He says something I can't hear, to which I take out my earbuds. "Sorry, was ignoring you. Try again?"

He keeps his eyes on me. "You're young for this line of work. You need experience before you're gonna be an investigator."

I tilt my head, condescendingly speaking softly and slowly, like he's dying of old age. "That's very interesting. Stop staring, or I'll break my fist on your skull."

He huffs. "Stupid dickhead." He does actually turn away, though. Guess this disguise is working. I broke into someone else's apartment while they were away to steal some DNA, casting myself as a rather impressively fit early twenties college student. Hopefully, I don't need to deal with requirements like 'social security cards'.

A petite woman steps around the corner. "Lena?"

I raise my hand, and walk over, trying not to stumble in this new shell. It's a solid six inches taller than my usual one, and adjusting to the new structures is tough. As is the colorblindness. Every human has their own little quirks, and I can't fix all of them on short notice. I could always use my default form's eyes, but then I start to lose track of what parts are native and which ones aren't. In layman's term, I can read the blueprint at a glance, but I need to spend some time to understand how it works.

I walk into the office of a balding police chief with a broad nose and asinine dark sunglasses. Not who I expected to be talking to. Not that it matters anyway.

He looks at me in mild amusement.

"You're Lena Sendurmir?"

"Yep."

"Pretty interesting name you have there... you know, we have a photocopy of your license."

"Makes sense, since I sent it to you."

I tap my oddly thick fingers on my knee. Even with this fit body, I'm not as strong as I am in my usual shell. My musculature in my daily 'Lena' shell is a lot denser than a normal human's. I've made a lot of small alterations like that over time, but the lack of strength always surprises me when I wear a different shell.

"You look different in the photo." He holds up a picture of Lena's license. After an eye roll, he holds up a few papers, skimming through them aloud. "Experience: computer typer. Age: not sure."

He inspects me a little closer. "So what is this? A gag? Lose a bet?"

"Not quite. See, I'm a sorcerer. I can do magic, including disguising myself as someone else."

Sorcerers are humans who have an inherent ability to manipulate magic, like magical beasts do. It's not too far off to call myself a sorcerer, and they're weird as a rule. Should be an easy cover to maintain. It's almost funny how easy it is for me to blatantly lie to people like this. I lie so much every day. 'Yeah, I'm having fun.' 'No, you're not annoying.' I sometimes catch myself making up answers to things I want to tell the truth about on accident.

He scoffs. "If you show me a card trick, I'm going to arrest you. Don't joke about that kind of thing."

I lean forward on his desk, resting my folded arms on it. "Name an object."

He cocks his head. "What?"

"Smaller than... a coffee mug for the moment."

He pushes my arms off his desk. "How about handcuffs, so I can arrest you for wasting police resources?"

"Sure. Why not?"

I made sure to leave my core exposed on the surface of this form's chest, so I could easily produce objects from myself without having to fully retract my shell. I reach down my shirt, making sure my core is well hidden still, and after around thirty seconds I hold out a pair of stainless steel handcuffs. "Forgot to make a key, so... be careful."

I can create a copy of anything I've placed inside my void, provided I have enough matter. For a long time now, I've been throwing random things into my void, and over a decade and a half or so I've amassed an enormous collection of templates. It's strange how I manage to remember them. So much of wherever my mind is housed must be full of nothing but those schematics of random mundane objects.

The police chief takes the handcuffs from me, tugging on the stainless steel in confusion. "How the hell... okay, do a... a hot dog?"

"Certainly." I can certainly approximate one, anyway. Flesh is flesh, and hotdogs are mostly salted beef or pork. I take a hotdog out from my shirt after a minute and a half, due to the difficulty of making meat. I waggle it a bit. "Convinced?"

He nods, a bit disgusted.

I slip the hotdog back down my shirt, consuming it with my core while keeping it out of view. "Give me the handcuffs back, too."

When he hesitantly offers them, I drop them into my shirt as well. I don't enjoy manufacturing and decomposing items like this. Separating them from my body makes them inert, and I have to begin the entire decomposition process again. With a shell that stays attached to me, though, I can decompose it almost immediately. I will say that creating bottle openers, pens, and screwdrivers at will is worth the effort it takes to decompose them after, though I mostly store odds and ends inside my void anyway.

"Jesus... that's a bit scary."

"Uh-huh. Pair me with someone who actually knows what they're doing, and we'll be golden."

He grimaces as he looks away. "You still don't meet minimum requirements..."

"Then call me an assistant junior investigative associate or something. I'm not here for the 401k."

He turns his eyes back to me. "So why are you here, then?"

"Because I'm really god damn bored of working in an office, and this is almost the opposite of that."

"That's it? Nothing else?"

"What's left for me to say? I'm a sorcerer, sorcerers go into fields where they're needed. Unless having someone who can produce a handgun from thin air is someone you'd prefer to be working in an office, of course." I lean back, watching him try to wrap his head around it. I can tell what he's going to say.

-

I walk past the fifty-something man who called me a dickhead earlier. He smugly looks at my neutral expression as I leave. "Told you."

I hold out a laminated piece of paper marking me as a "Magical Crime Investigative Specialist In Training," waggling it for a moment after I'm certain he read it.

He sneers at me, but I leave before he has a chance to say anything. There's nothing I'd want to hear him say, and I don't feel like pretending to be interested in this stupid squabble. A surge of dopamine floods my shell. Being honest with myself and others feels good, but I knew that already.

-

Before being a magic cop, I need to take a couple months of training. Entirely bullshit, of course, but hardly a big deal. The funniest part to me is the people they hire to give "talks" about how everyone you see is a potential enemy, to always be on guard, and not trust anyone. Even I'm not that paranoid, and for me, everyone is a potential enemy if I revealed too much about myself.

In particular, they seem to mention the danger of magical beasts a lot. There's at least a token attempt to make the sapient ones like myself seem like people, but largely, we're dangerous and unstable monsters who will do anything in our power to kill, eat, despoil, and destroy humanity. I'm probably who they're talking about. I hardly want to destroy humanity, and I wouldn't call decomposing a body "eating" but as for killing and despoiling? Yeah, I can see that happening.

It's strange, as the weeks drag by, how much fun I'm having despite how dull the situation is on the surface. I feel like I'm playing a social deduction game, where everything I do is scrutinized to see if I'm secretly a fake. I have to be careful to limit myself as well, letting myself be flipping during sparring, pretending to have difficulty on an obstacle course, that sort of thing. What's even more fun are the little things I didn't think of ahead of time. For example, a drug test nearly exposed me. My shell doesn't urinate, typically, I instead simply repurpose water when I retract my shell for daily maintenance, not to mention the bizarre cocktail of imbalanced hormones I have running through me. I had to do something I'm not proud of the day before, and the upshot is that I now know how to synthesize urine. Disgusting.

Also, I've learned that I am completely hopeless with a firearm in this shell. Something about the tiny differences in how I've altered my eyes make aiming a nightmare. With luck, it won't come up too much. It's only a potential gunfight, after all, nothing life or death.

I admit, I may be getting in over my head. There is a lot that can go wrong. Still, I'm genuinely enjoying myself, for the first time in years.

-

I'm supposed to meet my partner tomorrow. One 'Mirka Schovajsov'. She's thirty-three, not that far from me, and apparently she's already experienced. I'm certain there's a story there, one I'm admittedly interested in.

I dip into an alleyway, and decompose my temporary shell. No need for it now that I already got the job. I take my preferred transportation form: a raven, which is a patchwork of black and white feathers due to poor diet. I found the template dead on the side of the road, and took the whole thing home. I've given it a few modifications here and there, but evolution took care of most of the work for me.

There are a few forms I've committed to instinct: my Lena body, a dozen other humans, the raven, a horse, a cow, and the smallest thing I could reasonably be considering the size of my core: a rat. I only keep my main human disguise and the raven ready, though, as each shell is stored in the same place as all of my materials. I don't want to waste that finite space on forms I rarely use.

I flap my wings, my core neatly held within the center of my body, and take off back to my apartment. I always leave the window open for this exact purpose. With a soft flutter of feathers, I dive in, and stop just inside my living room where I switch to my usual shell again, along with some loungewear.

Maybe I should clean my apartment... or just play video games. I like the latter option more.

-

I check the time. 5:00am. Time for energy. I don't need to worry about nutrition, since if my shell gets damaged, I can simply withdraw it and repair it. Instead, I focus on collecting glucose that my shell can digest and use to keep active. Mostly candy. Mostly mint-flavored. I pour myself a bowl of diner mints along with a multivitamin, and eat them passively. I managed to turn off the process that makes me feel hungry. Of all the human sensations, hunger is the most unpleasant.

With a spin, I look into the mirror. An average white girl is looking back. Bluish-green eyes, hair that's brown with blonde highlights, a mouth that's slightly wider than average and acne scarring prevent me from looking uncannily perfect. For clothes, its professional looking pants, a simple top with a dark gray jacket over it. Inconspicuous. I take a sharp knife from the kitchen, and cut a hole through the bottom of one of my pockets. I'm leaving core half-exposed on my shell's thigh, for easy access to pulling anything I manifest from my pocket. Subtle as I'm going to get.

I hail a taxi, looking around through my purse for cash. Damn it... I reach into my pocket and withdraw a fifty, handing it to the driver. I can't create bills: something about dyes are very tough for me to do with precision. Not to mention, if the government found two identical bills, one of which had a faint magical trace, they'd be on me in a matter of days. The problem is that was my last bill stored in my void. I need to remember to visit an ATM.

I'm dropped off on a street corner, and check the address again. Sunchaser Diner, between two pharmacies, and near a bank. Easy enough. The meeting is set for 8:00, and I enter the diner promptly at 8:02. I take a look at my new partner.

My partner is going to be a pain in the ass. That's the first thing I notice. I don't care what people say: you can tell a lot about a person by how they look. She's smiling and cheerful at eight in the morning. I don't sleep, but I can tell there's something profoundly wrong with it. Obvious laugh lines give her square face a bit of character, as her upturned and bright hazel eyes follow me without making me feel watched.

I sit down next to her at a small, slightly sticky table pushed against the wood paneled wall. I wait for her to go first.

"Good to meet you. Lena Sendurmir?"

"Yep. Mirka Schovajsoc."

Her smile gets a little wider. "On your first try, huh?"

"I have a lot of free time to look up videos on how to pronounce your name. It's a nice name, too."

"Thank you! It's Czech."

"Are you from there?"

"My parents are."

The waitress comes over, taking her breakfast order, and a glass of water for me.

Mirka's smile drops, suddenly serious. "So. You're a sorcerer. Tell me about that."

"With a little time and privacy, I can disguise myself as someone else. Oh, and I can conjure things. Nothing bigger than a handgun, which is both the upper limit I can reliably produce, and not too complicated." Sulphur can be a pain in the ass to get, but I need it for the gunpowder. A good reason not to shoot someone.

Her dropped smile isn't picked back up, instead falling further into a concerned frown. "Two powers? That's incredibly rare. Sorcerers usually get one, maybe one and a half if the main one relies on something else."

I shrug, not having known that. I assumed sorcerers were as versatile as magicians, but I was wrong. I'm already on the back foot. "What can I say, I'm a talented man. Woman."

"Manwoman, huh? Must be hard to keep track of disguises." She lets out an amused exhale, but doesn't smile again.

"You have no idea."

Breakfast is set on the table, and the waitress refills my water.

Mirka starts eating, and doesn't comment on the fact I didn't get anything. A shame, I crafted a great excuse this time.

"So. As for me, I've been in magic crimes for a while." She pats the small spellbook on her hip. "I'm not the greatest magician, but I know a few basics. Also, I have a sidearm I'm sigil-trained on, which usually outclasses the kind of people we'll be hunting down. I hear you have no experience?"

"None. Think of me as your personal toolbox. Nothing too complicated, a handgun is as complex as I can do. And I'm bad at making anything that uses electricity." It's a small lie. I can make pretty damn complicated things, especially biological ones, but I don't want her to know that. A few secrets can only be good for me.

I watch her silently eat, curious but not suspicious yet. I was right. This is far more entertaining already.

-

We spend the last few weeks of training working together. She shows me the basics of actual police work, having me tag along with her and her soon to be retiring partner. It takes a minuscule amount of restraint not to kill him two weeks before retirement, if only for the hilarity of the cliché. I'm not so far gone that I'd murder someone for a joke, of course, but the idea does bounce around my head a bit. If only I were what MCIS thinks I am, there would be so many easy jokes I could set up...

Mirka and I start getting meals together, staying a bit after shifts to chat, bullshitting during car rides. It's fun, learning about a new person, discovering what makes them work. Her partner is someone boring enough I can't even remember his name, but Mirka holds my interest. She's funny. She's afraid of insects. She's a half-decent spellcaster and she's sigil-trained with her gun, an apparently rare combination. Talent in spades, in narrow applications.

By the time I 'graduate' I'm even more confident this will work out for the better. I truly hope I'm right. I've been eagerly awaiting killing someone, and Mirka is entertaining enough during the downtime to keep me engaged. A perfect scenario, for me.