The attacker let go and staggered back with a yelp, clutching their arm, and Marcella slammed her heel into their chest, sending them to the floor. She knelt on top of them, fingers closing around the front of the soldier’s helmet.

“Come on, darling,” she said, “let me see your face.”

The helmet warped, weakened, until she could tear the faceplate away.

A woman stared up at her, pain contorting the lines of her face.

Marcella tsked. “Not a good look,” she said, wrapping her hand around the woman’s exposed throat to stifle her scream as her body withered.

Then, the harsh metal sound of someone racking a round. Marcella looked up and saw a third soldier, his gun already leveled at her head.

Her own weapon sat discarded several feet away—she’d dropped it when she went to catch the baton.

“Stand up,” ordered the soldier.

Marcella considered him.

He was so focused on her, he didn’t register the shape moving behind him, not until it reached out and wrapped an arm around his throat.

The shape—a man built like a heavyweight boxer—wrenched the soldier back, and the gun went off, a steel dart grazing Marcella’s cheek before burying itself in the wall behind her head.

The soldier didn’t get a chance to fire again. The other man gripped

the soldier’s mask and wrenched it sideways, breaking his neck with an audible crack. When he let go, the soldier’s body crumpled to the floor.

Marcella hadn’t wasted any time. She was up again, the gun back in her hand and trained on the man who, for his part, seemed unfazed.

“Careful, now,” he said, in a broad, musical voice. “Shoot me and you’ll just kill a twenty-three-year-old from the suburbs who loves his ma.”

“Who are you?” she demanded.

“Well, now, that’s a little complicated.”

And then, in front of Marcella’s eyes, the man changed. Rippled, and was gone, replaced by a young woman with loose brown curls. “You can call me June.” Marcella’s eyes narrowed, and the woman smiled at her surprise. “Didn’t think you were that special, did you?” She looked down at the three corpses, arms crossed. “You shouldn’t leave these here for anyone to find.” She knelt, and just like that, she was the boxer again, getting his hands under a pair of shoulders.

Marcella stared down in genuine surprise.

June looked up, impatient. “A little help?”

* * *

MARCELLA pressed a hand towel to her cheek, her gun balanced on the edge of the sink. The thin line was still weeping blood. She checked her reflection in the bathroom mirror and hissed in annoyance.

The cut would heal, but they’d ruined a perfectly nice shirt.

“Who are you?” Marcella called over her shoulder to the living room, where the shapeshifter was patting down the soldiers’ bodies.

“I told you,” June called back in a lilting voice.