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floor. The pains didn't stop.
    The old man held on doggedly. He stumbled again under the incessant blows from his prisoner, a step backward, another. Jackson heard the crunch of the tablet's screen as it gave way under Thorn's foot.
    The bone-stabbing pain was instantly gone and Jackson stopped punching. He felt the cold blowing from the chamber, smiled and changed.
     
     
     
    Thorn tried to hold on but Jackson's yeti form was far too big. He broke away and tried to run, but Jackson reached out and grabbed his arm. Jackson flung him across the lab to crash into a bank of metal shelves. Thorn saw the yeti coming toward him, more animal than human, intent on doing harm.
    Instead, he stopped and looked down at Thorn. "I want nothing to do with you," Jackson said in his guttural voice. "Stay away from my mom or I'll do worse than this." He raised his giant foot and brought it down to break Thorn's ankle the same way he'd broken the monster's.
    He missed.
    Thorn rolled backwards onto his shoulders, bracing his hands on the floor behind his head and brought both feet hard into Jackson's stomach. The old man whirled, getting to his feet so fast that Jackson was still bent double by the attack and unable to defend himself. He ripped the heavy granite top of a lab table from its base then swung it around smashing Jackson into the far wall of the lab.
     
     
    Jackson pulled himself from the broken wall and tried to stand. The hand he used to brace himself slipped and he fell back to the floor. He grunted, exhausted, and changed back to himself. Thorn advanced through the debris, laughing.
    “ You’ll die just like your father, then,” Thorn said.
    Thorn snarled as he got to his hands and knees. “I’ll KILL YOU!”
    Jackson launched himself at Thorn, only staggering him. The old man batted him away. Every urge he had was to get up and fight, to try to kill Thorn for what he’d done to his father. The crazy tilting feeling was spreading through him again, taking him over, making him forget who he was.
    Jackson closed his eyes and gritted his teeth, knotted his hands into tight fists. He could beat the old man if he could just stay in control. He needed space to work in.
    Jackson crawled, stumbled to his feet and tripped toward the door. “You can’t escape,” Thorn said.
    Jackson made it to the hall. He heard the old man coming for him and ran for the opposite end of the building without looking back. He heard Thorn’s footsteps behind him and pushed himself to move faster. “Just like running for distance,” he said. “Kick it, Jacks.” He tried to run.
    Something hit Jackson in the back of the head, tossing him forward. Thorn was over him, throwing hard fists into his back and kidneys. He struggled forward but the old man grabbed him by the ankle and pulled back. Desperate, angry that he’d been caught, Jackson concentrated.
    “ Gotta stay in control,” he said to himself as he grew scales for a third time and twisted loose of Thorn’s grasp. Orange and black in the dim light of the hallway, Jackson stood ready to fight again. Thorn grinned.
    “ Come on, then,” the old man said.
    They collided with terrible ferocity, tearing at each other. Jackson used his lizard-like claws to rip at Thorn’s suit, looking for the man underneath. He hissed at his foe.
    A flurry of fists, elbows and feet hit Jackson seemingly everywhere at once. Jackson heard the old man shout something that sounded primal: a victory cry. Thorn, almost feral, caught him in the throat with a roundhouse kick.
    Jackson skidded across the floor and through a closed door. He shook the stars from his head and looked to his left. The animal part of him was receding and his human mind saw a chance. He was in a janitorial closet and there was a canister stamped with at least three warnings and skull and crossbones. He grabbed it....and next to it another chemical that really shouldn't have been stored so closely together. His dad would be proud, Jackson