Jiang Wei was halfway through lying to his mother when the woman in the alley told him to keep walking.
"I'm leaving the office now," he said into his phone. "Yeah, I ate. I'll call when I get home."
The paper bag in his other hand held dumplings he had bought six hours ago and forgotten beside his keyboard. His employee badge still knocked against his belt. Behind him, the office tower shone with the particular cruelty of a place that could afford lights for empty rooms but not another person for Jiang's shift.
His mother said something about sleep. Then she heard the scrape from the alley.
"What was that noise?"
"Garbage truck. Love you."
He ended the call before she could catch the second lie.
The scrape came again, shoe leather dragging over brick. The noodle shop and pharmacy on either side of the service alley had shuttered for the night. Jiang could have reached the subway without looking inside. He had a train to miss, a shower to stand under, and a manager who would discover the concept of personal time only after dying.
"Keep walking," a woman said from behind the pharmacy dumpster.
Jiang stopped beside the curb.
"That usually works better when you don't sound injured."
"I am not asking for help."
"Great. I wasn't excited to give any."
He took three steps toward the avenue. A wet cough followed him.
Jiang shut his eyes and pictured his bed with real concentration. It failed to make him a worse person.
He swore and turned back.
The woman braced one shoulder against the brick. A travel-stained coat covered clothes that belonged at a historical reenactment or a very expensive disaster of a party. Her bare foot rested in gutter water, and blood had dried from her wrist to her palm.
She was holding a kitchen knife against her own shadow.
Jiang lowered his food bag. "I'm calling an ambulance."
"No uniforms. They find us."
"Then a cab. A clinic. A stranger with bandages and low standards. Pick one."
Her gaze went past him to the avenue. She had the exhausted focus of somebody counting doors in a burning room. "You need to leave before it notices you."
The shadow beneath her coat moved.
Jiang watched a black strand pull itself across the pavement. It wound around her ankle, tightened, and dragged her bare heel toward the wall. The mortar softened around her skin and swallowed her foot to the ankle.
She drove the knife down. The blade struck pavement and snapped near the handle.
That settled the ambulance question. Jiang grabbed her wrist with both hands and pulled.
Her skin was winter-cold.
"Idiot," she said through her teeth.
"You can thank me in the cab."
"I warned you to leave."
The strand split. One end held her ankle. The other slid over Jiang's shoe and climbed his trouser leg with the quick curiosity of a finger testing fruit.
He kicked at it. His heel struck brick. The strand squeezed through the cloth and touched his skin.
Something sniffed inside his head.
Jiang had no better words for it. A pressure moved behind his eyes, nosing through his name, his mother's voice, the office badge at his hip. He clamped both hands around the woman's arm because letting go felt like offering that thing the rest of him.
Her hair shifted as she twisted toward him. A pointed ear, furred black at the tip, lay flat against her head.
Jiang stared at it.
"There are several questions ahead of that one," she said.
"I was going to ask where you bought the coat."
The corner of her mouth moved. It might have become a laugh on a night when the wall was not eating her.
She planted her free palm against Jiang's chest.
Heat punched through his shirt. The black strand recoiled hard enough to tear his trouser cuff.
"You came back," she said.
"You made it sound like a challenge."
"Four others died before dawn."
The hand over his heart began to glow through the gaps between her fingers, green at first, then white.
Jiang tried to step away. Her grip closed around his wrist.
"What are you doing?"
"Choosing the shape he will understand least."
"Then choose somebody else."
"There is nobody else."
The thing inside the wall pulled. Her shoulder struck the brick, and the black strand climbed to her knee.
Fear stripped the weariness from her face. Beneath the blood and strange clothes, she looked young enough to be lost herself. Young, furious, and already sorry.
"Hold on to your name, Jiang Wei."
He had never told her his name.
The light entered his chest.
His knees folded. His shoes shot forward, empty. Every joint in his hands clenched at once, fingers pressed together so tightly he expected bone to break. His coat dropped over his head as his shoulders drew inward. The alley rose around him. The pavement rushed close enough to smell: rainwater, old cooking oil, mouse droppings, and his dumplings leaking vinegar through the paper bag.
He tried to shout. His jaw pushed forward with the sound trapped behind it.
The woman's palm grew wider than his chest. Her fingers slid away through a layer of stiff new feathers.
"Forgive me," she said.
The wall took her.
Jiang landed inside his own shirt.
For several ugly seconds, he fought cotton.
The collar trapped his head. His arms had become flat, stubborn paddles that found every useless opening in the shirt. He kicked, rolled over the employee badge, and stabbed something hard through the cloth.
The beak tore through the fabric.
His face came out first, except it was not his face.
A black beak parted where his mouth should have been. White feathers covered his chest. His coat and trousers lay around him like laundry abandoned after an evacuation.
"No," Jiang said, and the alley answered with a harsh barking call.
Inside the heap of clothes, he went rigid. His phone rang beside the paper bag.
MOM filled the screen.
Jiang lunged for it. Two webbed feet caught in his shirt, and his body tipped forward without a human waist to save him. He struck the pavement on his belly. The impact hurt less than the indignity.
The phone kept ringing.
He dragged himself close and slapped the screen with a flipper. The call vanished. A jab from his beak woke the glass, which showed his reflection and asked for his face.
The face looking back belonged on a sheet of sea ice.
Black head. White cheek patches. A small orange mark near the ear. He looked sleek in the way all penguins looked sleek while standing still. The effect ended when he tried to turn and stepped on his own flipper.
The phone went dark.
Jiang pecked the side button. "Call Mom."
What came out sounded like a furious toy horn.
His next attempt came out louder, loud enough to open a window above him.
"Shut up down there!"
Jiang stared up at the fire escape. He wanted to explain that he had been turned into a bird by a bleeding woman with fox ears. He wanted to ask the man to call the police, animal control, his mother, and possibly a priest.
His beak produced another honk.
"Unbelievable," the man said, and slammed the window.
Jiang sat in his shirt while the city carried on at the mouth of the alley. Tires cut through puddles. A couple walked past arguing about a restaurant, and neither looked down long enough to see him.
The smell of vinegar pulled his head toward the dumpling bag. His stomach tightened with a hunger so sharp it felt newly installed. He hated that his first useful instinct as a penguin concerned dinner.
Blue light opened across his vision.
[SOUL EVOLUTION SYSTEM]
[Current Form: Emperor Penguin]
[First Trial: Survive Until Sunrise]
Jiang read it twice.
"I have work in the morning," he told the panel.
The alley heard a penguin complain.
A shoe stepped onto his phone.
Jiang craned his new neck and looked up.
A man stood between him and the avenue, narrow in a dark suit, one hand tucked in his pocket. Rain dotted his shoulders. His eyes held a red shine that had nothing to do with the pharmacy sign across the street.
He lifted his shoe and looked at the name glowing on Jiang's screen.
"Jiang Wei," he said. "Aylin's fifth mistake."
The system added one line.
[Run.]