Sorcerybound (World's First Wizard Book 2), Aaron Schneider [accelerated reader books .txt] 📗

the parcel before even reading the missive it came with. From the feel of the package, he’d been expecting clothing, which he would have to take care of on his own, but instead, he drew out a small rectangular box and a large expanse of what seemed to be crudely stitched vellum. The box contained a bronze knife that was so sharp he nicked his finger handling it. At first, he couldn’t tell what any of this could be used for by an agent like him. That, combined with the creeping sensation of dread he felt when his finger touched the hide, left Reinhart quite put out.

Confused and assuming there was some bungling involved, he’d opened the missive and read the terse lines with great bemusement.

It was a suit, somewhat akin to full body tights that also went over his face, and according to the directions, he was to slip the whole thing on to act as his disguise. The note explained that the suit was self-sealing and that once he put it on, he would need the knife to remove it. What followed was a series of rather peculiar instructions concerning the suit, describing how it was to be stored until use, the proper frame of mind to be in while wearing it, and how to remove the suit in the most careful of terms. Warnings that came with the instructions gave the sense that failure to comply would lead to catastrophic injury. It all seemed like nonsense, and as he stared at the grisly-looking thing hanging from a coat hook, Reinhart felt that the instructions implied the suit might have a will of its own.

For three days, he avoided the suit and his cozy hideaway, using the meager money they'd given him to lose himself in alcohol and partners of negotiable affection. It couldn’t last, though. On the evening of the third day, looking out of the dingy window as his recent expenditure snored softly, Reinhart knew he had to go back and finish the job. If he waited much longer, the opportunity would be gone, and then Berlin would start wanting answers. Long-term plants could get away with letting operations fail, but a rapid insertion operative like him was expected to produce results. If he let this operation lapse, he might as well not return.

So he’d gone back to the nest and found to his dismay that things were not as he’d left them. The furnishings and mementos he’d procured had been…not so much rearranged as left askew. It was as if someone had picked them up or turned them about to examine them and had not had the presence of mind to put them back as they were. None of the equipment had been so handled, but everything he’d brought in to adorn his little sanctuary had. The suit of skin still hung where he’d left it, vacant eye slits in a deflated face watching him.

Reinhart had cursed and muttered to himself, turning twice to leave and face whatever Berlin’s wrath was, but each time, he stopped short of the door. The suit watched him through all of this, mocking in its hollow silence. Finally, spitting invectives like a rabid tomcat, he’d yanked his clothes off, stormed over to the suit, and put it on.

The queasy feeling he’d felt handling the thing was worse by a hundredfold as he slipped into the hide, and when he felt the self-sealing action occur, he cried out in fright. The suit felt as though it were alive as it seemed to adhere to his entire body, the change occurring so rapidly and completely he wasn’t sure where he ended and the suit began. As he stood naked, he shivered and felt goosebumps rise across his arms, and looking down, he saw impossibly that the suit sported goosebumps across its surface. That wasn’t the only change, because instead of the stitched vellum, he was looking down at an arm that was not his own, thicker and hairier. Gaping, he’d looked down and seen his toes concealed by a paunch that was not his, and a tactile inspection told him that farther down, there were modifications to his manhood that he’d never received.

Stumbling on legs that were thicker and shorter than his own, he’d lurched to the mirror over the washbasin and found that he was not himself. Reflected in the mirror was the nude form of Douglas Murdoch, supervisory foreman for the Maritime Brush, a ship-painting company. The thickset and hirsute man was the director of several teams that painted the nautical camouflage for every British vessel that emerged from Newcastle’s shipyards for military service. Reinhart’s plan had been to pose as one of the man’s assistants and then falsify instructions so the teams of painters would use a different shade of paint in their camouflage, a shade that German naval spotters could be trained to expect.

It seemed Reinhart would be going as the man himself, and with the deed now done, he knew it could not have gone better. The idea of posing as an assistant to Murdoch had been risky at best, dependent on proving himself in so many nuanced ways that even his considerable skills would have been put to the test. With the suit, though, all he’d needed to do was show up and growl a bit like he’d observed Murdoch do during surveillance, and the job was quickly done. He’d sent runners from the painting company to go inform the other teams of the changes, saving him time and the risk of discovery.

Practically dancing as he rushed back to his hidey-hole, the job done, Reinhart had slapped the large belly hanging from his body. Though he knew it was not his, he marveled at how he felt every wobble, as though it were his own flesh. It was amazing what the development workshops could come up with, though half the time, the stuff was less than reliable. Reinhart decided that he could appreciate something