Novel Excerpt

	The B.O.S.S. holiday party had an easily identifiable color palette. The costumes of the agents themselves-- which most of them had opted for over more traditional formal wear-- were all the government-issue black and purple spandex which, though it was initially designed to be both tactical and stylish, it was in fact neither in this situation. The various banners and posters plastering the walls sported the same colors. The men from Admin and Accounting and PR all wore black suits with purple ties, the women long black gowns with purple jewelry. There hadn’t been a dress code, they’d all just decided to show up like this. That was the kind of place B.O.S.S. was.
	Alana Schrieck was one of the few agents who had chosen to wear a dress instead of her costume. She found the costumes tacky and didn’t like how they were skin tight to the point of being revealing. The dress she wore was black, but not the same long evening gown as the other women. Hers ended at the knee and had long sleeves that reached her palms. But the highlight of her outfit were the shining purple stud-earrings which glittered in a way that seemed to defy the physics of light. They were made of pure amethyst, a gift from her late grandmother.
	Alana was inclined at parties to circle the perimeter, like a kid too afraid to skate out to the center of an ice rink. Unfortunately, that was proving to be impossible. Alana was the talk of the town as it were at the Bureau, she being the youngest agent ever hired. And what an agent she was! Tall and slender and beautiful.
	So people kept coming up to her and asking her when she was recruited and saying things like So this is your first holiday party, huh? Even Carlos Debiedma AKA Straightshot, known worldwide as an upper-echelon agent in terms of raw power and political influence, walked up to her and introduced himself and shook her hand. And it all made her extremely uncomfortable. She rubbed her arms up and down as if she had caught a sudden chill.
	There were only two reasons Alana was at this party. The first was that during her meeting with the director, the one where she’d been hired originally, it had been subtly insinuated that it was mandatory. The second was that as a new recruit, she was essentially an intern, and all interns are given a sort of mentor at B.O.S.S. The one she’d been assigned, Anita Anderson AKA Cornix, was supposed to be there, and Alana felt afraid enough being surrounded by the group of bureaucrats with the highest concentration of power in the world that she was willing to risk going to a holiday party if it meant meeting someone who could possibly help her.
	Alana found her performing a party trick for a group of men who looked like marketing executives. She would ask one of the men, who at this point were all red-faced and visibly inebriated, the point at one of her body parts and then she would morph that body part into an animal’s version of said body part, e.g., one of the accountant-looking men pointed to her eyes and so she made them grow and the pupils dilate until they were exact copies of bush babies’ eyes then she sort of pouted her lips-- whether she enhanced their size with her power no one could say-- which made every spectator squeal the way children squeal when they see puppies. Alana, when she saw this, had to suppress her own involuntary vocalization by putting a palm to her mouth.
	And so maybe the bush baby eyes gave Anita a lasting vision enhancement because she picked Alana out of the crowd even when Alana was trying to hide her face.
	“I think I’m supposed to talk to you,” Anita called out in a deep voice and it made Alana’s cheeks bright red. She increased the size and length and presumably strength of her legs subtly and strode over the edge of the room where Alana was trying to hide.
	“Are you Alana?” asked Anita.
	“Yes, and you’re Anita?” asked Alana.
	“I think I’m supposed to be, like, your mentor.”
	“Yes, the director told me that.”
	“Okay, cool. So, um, I actually prefer my codename. Cornix.”
	“Oh gosh, I’m sorry. I really like your codename. It’s from Metamorphosis, right?”
	“I’m impressed. Have you read it.”
	“No, I looked that up to impress you. But I read the story it’s from. Cornix was the woman who begged to be turned into a crow in order to save her from being raped by Poseidon, if I remember correctly.”
	Cornix frowned. “You don’t need to try so hard to impress me.”
	Alana turned scarlet. “I’m so sorry. But I really am a huge fan of yours. I’ve followed your whole career ever since that thing with the Redcoats. I nearly screamed when the director told me you were my mentor.”
	“Well, I’m honored. I thought most of that stuff was confidential.”
	“It was. I had to invoke the Freedom of Information Act.”
	“Wow, you’re precocious, huh? How old are you.”
	“Seventeen, ma’am.”
	“You don’t need to call me ma’am. But that’s, well, impressive. You must be strong, to be picked up so young. I got recruited when I was twenty, and I was so smug about it. So, uh, what can you do, if you know what I mean.”
	The color vanished from Alana’s face and she looked for a moment as if she was about to scamper out of the room. Then she took a deep breath, moved the hair from her face, and started to move her hands in a way that looked anachronistic somehow, like she was about to perform a magic trick for a theater of Victorians, with tiny, delicate motions of the fingers. Slowly, Cornix began to realize that the motions of her fingers corresponded to changes in Alana’s appearance, e.g., the little flick of the pinky made her nose slightly longer, and over time the shape of Alana’s face was entirely different.
	“Damn.” Cornix said. “So that’s, what? Facial-reconstruction-kinesis?”
	“It’s actually a type of photokinesis, like light manipulation. And I can do more than my face,” Alana muttered, and she subtly made her amethyst earrings more radiant.
	“Damn! Wow, that’s crazy,” Cornix laughed. “Hey, I tell you what, if you get two glasses of wine for me I’ll give one to you. Then we can tell each other all our secrets.” Then she morphed her hand into a large bear-looking paw and patted Alana’s shoulder.
***
	Alana, who’d always considered herself a sort of nerd/overachiever type, was unused to the taste of alcohol and grimaced every time she took a sip of the wine, which everyone had agreed was fairly weak. Cornix on the other hand was perhaps overdoing it, but also maybe she was enlarging her liver in such a way that she was always the perfect level of tipsy without being too drunk or too sober. But both of them were weighed down somewhat and they had moved to Cornix’s office and had foregone the mahogany chairs to sit on the blue-carpeted floor. Cornix alternated her leg between zebra, giraffe, and tamarin monkey.
	“It’s a nervous tic.” Cornix explained.
	“What are you nervous about?” Alana asked, slurring her words slightly.
	“I mean, you, honestly. Sorry, I don’t mean that, really. It’s just I’m worried not only about you but your effect on me. I also don’t mean that.”
	“Oh don’t worry about it. I’m also worried, mostly about myself as well.” she said, slurring her words more and taking another sip of the wine (which was growing on her, the taste).
	“It’s just, this career really is the only thing I have, you know. Like the only thing. God, I mean, really like the only thing.” Cornix’s legs briefly became the legs of lions, then went back to the singular leg exotic animal rotation.
	“Oh, really, ma’am-- no, sorry. I mean don’t-- hic--don’t worry about it.”
	Most of the party had gone home, and the bright fluorescent lights were somehow getting brighter, turning the purples and blacks and greens of the decorations neon. Several of the more accountant-looking types had fallen asleep at their desks. One of Jerry Bergman AKA Slipshod’s blue orbs, which caused a kind of laziness in whoever got near them that could also be used recreationally, rolled lazily along the empty carpeted floor.
	All at once, Cornix adjusted her liver to be that of an Irish Wolfhound’s which was just large enough that she wouldn’t die or do any serious damage but small enough to cause an instant, memory-erasing blackout, and she slouched over, her head landing in Alana’s lap.
	Alana, whose inhibitions were basically zero at this point, removed Cornix’s head from her lap and stood up, wobbled, and strode out of the office. She basked in the excitement of being alone in a large place which is normally filled with the people. Her face was red and sweating. Then, realizing that she didn’t know where her dorm was and that there was no way she was going to be able to find it in her current state, she walked back into the office and fell asleep against Cornix’s body.