A shift variant they haven't categorized.
The other voice again: "And the blood?"
"Third sample remains unidentified. The specialist team ran it against Jones's current blood chemistry — the draw from last week."
My blood. From the lab. The vials that were drawn and labeled and placed in a rack.
"And?"
A pause. Longer than the others. The kind of pause that means the next sentence changes something.
"Partial match."
My hands grip the edge of the bench.
"Not conclusive," Gavin continues. "The markers have shifted — her current chemistry isn't identical to the intake draw from four years ago, which is consistent with what we're seeing in her transition. But there are overlapping allele patterns between her current sample and the unidentified sample from the scene. The team puts the probability of same-source origin at sixty to seventy percent."
"Sixty to seventy."
"With the caveat that if her blood chemistry was in active transition at the time of the incident — mid-shift, elevated, unstable — the variance would account for the mismatch with her original intake draw. The third sample could be hers. In a state her body is no longer in."
Silence.
"So the scenario is — a fourteen-year-old latent shifter, untriggered, undergoes an involuntary partial shift in a basement. Produces bite and claw wounds consistent with a shifted canid but without full skeletal force. Leaves a blood sample that doesn't match her human baseline because she wasn't in her human baseline at the time. And has no memory of any of it."
"That's one scenario."
"What's the other?"
"The other is that someone else was in that basement. Someone in partial shift. And the fourteen-year-old was a witness or a bystander, not the attacker." Another pause. "The evidence supports both interpretations. The re-review doesn't resolve it. It complicates it."
"The specialist team's position?"
"They believe the claw pattern is wrong for Jones. Her current physiology — grip strength, bone density, hand span — doesn't match the wound dimensions. The claws that made those marks came from someone larger. Significantly larger."
"But the blood —"
"Partial match. Not conclusive. Sixty to seventy percent."
The other voice exhales. Long. Controlled.
"This goes to the Board. Not just the Panel — the Board. If we've got an unresolved homicide with shifter-specific forensic evidence and the primary subject is currently bonded to multipleresidents in a containment facility, this is above the Panel's jurisdiction."
"Agreed. I've drafted the escalation request. It'll go out today."
"And Jones?"
"Remains in current placement pending Board review. Her evaluation continues. The team is running additional comparisons — the bite impression overlay, the blood degradation timeline, the scent marker analysis from the scene. If there's enough to definitively include or exclude her as the source, we'll have it within the week."
A chair creaks. Footsteps. The meeting is ending.
I stand up from the bench. My legs feel wrong — steady but disconnected, like my body is on autopilot while my brain processes what I just heard.
The bathroom is three feet away. I push through the door. Small — single occupancy, a toilet, a sink, a mirror, a lock. I lock it. Lean on the sink.
Partial match. Sixty to seventy percent. My blood, maybe. In a state my body is no longer in.
Or someone else was in that basement.
