43 - 13 - Ax and Tobias Get Taxxon

I bent down. Reached out my good hand and touched the Taxxon's side. His soft side heaved laboriously, up and down, as he struggled to breathe. Yes, he was dying.

I could see Ax in the faint light, already acquiring him. I began to demorph. When the transition was complete, I reached out a talon and placed it on the disgusting flesh.

I could feel life draining from his body, and the firm folds of bloated tissue collapsing like a torn hot air balloon. I concentrated on the acquisition.

Usually, you don't feel anything about an animal while you acquire it. This time, I sensed something. Fierce and elemental, like a scream of rage.

I finished acquiring the Taxxon's DNA. And realized there was something inside me unlike anything I had ever known.

Maybe it was just my own tormented mind at work. Or maybe it really was the DNA, screaming at me on some microscopic level. It was something terrible.

Something dangerous.

A tortured shudder moved the length of the Taxxon's body, from head to tail and back again. He shook for one violent instant, then stopped.

And I realized that he now lived only in Ax and me.