THE CHOICE

Taylor lingered in the ruins, half-hidden in the shadows of a collapsed building. The battle with the cannibal was over. The scavenger she had saved had long since fled, but one other person remained.

Brian.

He stood at the edge of the wreckage, scanning the area with narrowed eyes, his posture tense. He had arrived too late to see the fight itself, but the aftermath told enough of a story—scattered debris, a smear of blood, and the unmistakable remnants of her swarm constructs.

She saw the exact moment he realized something was off. His expression shifted, his dark eyes narrowing as he stepped forward, taking in the scene with a trained focus.

Then he looked straight at her.

She wasn’t sure how he saw her. The dim light played tricks on the ruined streets, and she was little more than a dark, shifting mass in the shadows. But something in his stance changed. A flicker of hesitation. A breath held too long.

Recognition.

Or at least, suspicion.

Taylor tensed. She could leave now. Slip away before he could be sure. But she didn’t move.

Brian took another step forward.

“…Who’s there?” His voice was quiet, but edged with something she couldn’t quite name.

She hesitated for only a moment. Then, slowly, she stepped forward, pulling her form together into something vaguely human-shaped—arms, legs, an approximation of what she had once been. It wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t her. But it was enough.

Brian’s breath hitched.

“…No way.”

Taylor didn’t speak.

His expression flickered through a dozen emotions in the span of a heartbeat—confusion, disbelief, something dangerously close to hope. Then, just as quickly, his walls slammed back into place. His jaw tightened. His hands curled into fists.

“What are you?”

The words cut deep.

She wanted to say It’s me. Wanted to tell him she was still here, still Taylor, still Skitter. But was she?

She had spent so long adapting, evolving, changing. The Taylor he had known was gone, and in its place was a blob of mutation and instinct. She had abandoned her old body, her old life.

She wasn’t Taylor anymore.

She took a step back.

Brian moved forward, his stance shifting, muscles coiled—not in aggression, but in uncertainty.

“…Taylor?”

Her form wavered. Hearing her name hit harder than she expected.

Then, before she could second-guess herself, she stretched thin and slithered away into the distance.

She didn’t stop moving until the city faded behind her, the broken skyline swallowed by the tree line.

She had a choice to make.

Would she go back? Face the people she had left behind, risk their fear, their rejection?

Or would she leave Brockton Bay behind entirely—let them believe she was dead and embrace what she had become?

She didn’t have an answer yet.

But sooner or later, she would have to choose.