Jason was hiding in a spacious rubbish bin from the Controlled Society Officers. While this certainly wasn’t the best place to be seeking refuge in London, it temporarily provided a basic shelter while the face shifting took place. Everybody in the world had possessed one of the neck-implanted devices that allowed the user a brand new identity just a few years prior to the current year of 3022, but the governments had soon realized the error of their stupidity in allowing the general population this extremely capable technology. What had started as an outlet for vanity soon evolved into a method for evading law enforcement, and the governments repossessed the majority of the technology in a surprisingly vicious surgical manner that had become known as “slitting,” whereupon the user of the technology was required to give the device up and if they refused, they were tied down against their will while an Officer wielded a scalpel and did the necessary before leading them to a tiny cell for putting up resistance. The problem was that they couldn’t regulate every single person with the technology in the entire world, so a percentage of the criminal underworld still possessed the chips, and being a criminal himself Jason was one of the few that could still shift to avoid the Officers, because if they couldn’t see your chip and you had a new face every few hours, by definition you would be impossible to apprehend. This is how Jason lived, and by this point he had shifted his face so many times that he couldn’t quite remember what he had looked like initially. 

A small beep in his brain let him know the process had finished, and without a mirror on hand he had to hope whoever he now appeared as was good enough to fool the Controlled Society. At the moment, he wore an expensive business suit so hopefully the Officers would see him as a member of the upper class, although he had tried the business suit tactic before and there had been a very close call when that bloody Officer with Visispectacles had spotted the chip buried in his flesh, locking down the entire street just in an attempt to capture him. But that had only happened once, and this was a somewhat deserted street, so he hoped the Officers had better things to do with their time at the moment. He opened the lid of the bin and hopped out into the misty cobblestone street, and he hoped nobody had seen him, as it was very uncharacteristic given as his appearance now suggested a well-combed bon vivant entrepreneur. He began to strut down the street in a haughty manner, perfectly fitting into his new face. If an Officer were to corner him, he would greet them with stereotypical aristocratic speech, perhaps something like, “Hullo, chaps. I was just on my way to a cocktail party at the Fifth Floor and I seem to have lost my way. Might you be able to point me in that direction? Lord Percival will be very displeased should I be late.” He would just have to hope the Officers didn’t have Visispectacles on them. 

He looked around and over his shoulder for anybody that could be watching, lurking behind in the shadows. The Officers loved that sort of thing, to post up behind building walls and behind cars so that they could always remain the predator in their little game of cat and mouse. Right now, the street was deathly quiet. So far, so good. As he walked, he felt the sudden urge that he needed a drink. And he figured now was as good a time as any to visit his old mate Ayzen, the bartender of an extraordinarily illegal pub that was frequented by all manner of murderers, thieves, and illdoers. The only reason Ayzen hadn’t been shut down was because he had shifted a number of times himself, and he always kept the pub lit by only candlelight so it seemed dark and abandoned by any average citizen who happened to walk by. Ayzen’s was only a few blocks down, so Jason started to head right when he spotted two Officers walking his way. No, no, no, he thought. Not now. Not now. He tried to appear as if he hadn’t seen the men, and calmly started to walk past them. He even nodded his head in greeting. “Gentlemen,” he said. One of the Officers who was quite stubby and had a bushy mustache nodded back, but his partner, who was tall and had the face of an ill-tempered donkey stared Jason down, suspecting that something was amiss. He continued on his way, when just as he had passed them he felt the taller one’s hand on his shoulder. 

“Oi!” the man said. Jason froze. “Gonna have to see your identification. City regulation. But being a respectable member of society, of course you’ll be more than willing to show us the proper information.” 

Jason turned to face the Officer’s hideous smile and stuttered, cursing himself silently in the process. 

“Yes. Yes, of course. Let me just…get it here. You know how it is, always misplacing these things,” he said, fumbling around in his pockets for an ID that wasn’t there. “Oh, where has it gone now?” The Officer turned to his partner and his smile grew even wider, then directed his eyes back at Jason. 

“Would you, by any chance, be hiding something from us?” the Officer said, obviously toying with Jason like a lion messing with a gazelle before ripping its head off. 

“No, no. That’s…that’s positively absurd,” Jason said, and then he had an idea. He puffed up his chest. “In fact, I’ll have you know that I preside over one of the largest businesses in this country, and I will be more than pleased to have my legal team pay you a visit.” 

“Are you saying that you are above the authority of the Controlled Society?” the Officer said, leaning closer to Jason. “Why, to claim such things, you are guilty of blasphemy. Maybe we could even stretch the offense to terrorism against this country. And you wouldn’t want that, would you, sunshine? Identification…if you please.” Jason kept fishing around in his pockets trying to maintain the guise, but it soon became clear there was no ID, and that Jason wasn’t an entrepreneur by any means. 

“Give me just one more moment. I swear I had it earlier,” Jason stammered. The mustached Officer whipped out a stunning device. 

“You’re coming with us now,” he said. 

“Oh, bugger,” Jason whispered as the Officers began to advance on him. He had only one option - run. And that’s exactly what he did, hastily thinking of a new face to adapt while the Officers pursued him. His skin color started to become darker, and glasses materialized on his face. He was transforming into a mild mannered bank teller, and quickly he swooped into a dark alley when the Officers were too far away to see him clearly. “Get back here! You’ll be going away for a blummin’ decade!” he overheard them shouting in the distance. He stayed in the alley until he heard the beep once more. The change was complete. And when he was certain the Officers had passed, he headed to Ayzen’s, resolving that this kind of amateur mistake would never happen again. 

****

When he arrived at the pub, it was as if Ayzen had never seen him in his life. “Another face, Jason? Really, mate?” said Ayzen as Jason sat at the bar, downing a pint amidst the dim light of the candles. The pub was nearly empty today, other than two lowlives sitting at a table who appeared to be comparing their knives. “You’ve got to stop this at some point. Every time I see you, you’re a different person. And you always give me the same blummin’ excuse.” 

“It’s what has to be done,” Jason said at the same time as Ayzen. 

“You can’t outrun them forever. What happened today…you could have been shot down if they knew who you were.”

“Hey, there was a little flaw in the plan. I had it under control.” 

“That’s what old Jeff Morgan thought a few weeks ago when he came in here. Just last Thursday, they nabbed him, slit him, and now he’s in the ground.” Jason sighed. He had known Jeff well. But he knew the dangers of shifting. They all did. Surely he was smarter than Jeff. Surely they wouldn’t be able to get to him. No, he was quicker, sneakier than the Controlled Society. 

“Well, it was a one time thing,” Jason said. “You know how it is. You know that I have to keep on the run to survive, better than anybody.” 

“I miss you,” said Ayzen. “My best bloody mate, and now you’re living behind a face that isn’t yours. It isn’t right, isn’t natural.”

“They will kill me, Ayzen. If I don’t keep running, if I don’t keep shifting, I will have no options.” 

“Maybe facing them is the best option. Don’t you feel any remorse for what you’ve done? Anything at all?”
“I was desperate. I needed the money. It was a clean job.”

“Clean? I saw you, not just overheard, but saw you execute an entire family because you were so scared of the consequences that would come with leaving them alive. We’ve all done horrible things, but someday you can’t fight the Officers any longer. Can’t fight your own demons any longer.” 

“Well, I’m sorry I’m not pure enough for you. You’ve gone so soft, Ayzen. You don’t know what it’s like out there now. To live, you have to do what you need to do to get the job done.”

“All I’m saying is that you could give this up now, and maybe if you turned yourself over the Officers would show more mercy. You could spend twenty or so years in prison, and then you could go out into the world as a changed man. You could actually live like you’re meant to. Stop this, Jason. It’s gone too far.” 

Jason swigged the rest of the pint and got down from the barstool, walking to the door. “Goodbye, Ayzen.” The bartender watched solemnly as his friend left to continue living in falsehoods, and he was silent.

A few hours later, Jason had taken on the appearance of a homeless man with a long scruffy beard and holes in his clothes, staggering down the street and looking at everybody he passed with an aggressive stare so they would steer clear of him. Ayzen’s words swirled around in his mind, but he tried to shove them out. He wasn’t going to turn himself in. The notion revolted him, and yet something was simmering in his stomach that revolted him more. As much as he hated to admit it, he felt his conscience poking him with a stick, telling him to give it all up. He could end it now, and proclaim all of London that he was a shifter. But if he did, they would surely end his life. He knew Ayzen was wrong on that front. People who had done what he did, they didn’t get jail time. They got slit and turned over to the firing squad. And he wasn’t about to let that happen. He continued down the bustling street, this time trying to blend in with the masses rather than take the alleys, what Ayzen had said haunting him with every step. You’re living behind a face that isn’t yours. You were so scared of the consequences that would come with leaving them alive. Don’t you feel remorse for what you’ve done? And then he saw the family, the family that he had ended, with a different face. The mother screaming. The father rushing to protect his wife and children. He was standing there with a bag, a knife, and there was Ayzen behind him, shouting at him to leave. But he couldn’t. If he didn’t do what he was considering, the family would call the Controlled Society. He and Ayzen would have no chance of escape. The entire thing would be over, and they would be torn apart by the Officers. So he had done what he had to do, and they had walked away from the house with a bag full of valuables and four less people living in it. 

But now he felt positively sick, and thinking of the family’s faces, faces that were pure, that had never been shifted once, suddenly his body collapsed in the middle of the street without warning. His head smacked against the stones. A woman noticed him, and shouted, “Somebody help! I think he’s ill!” 

“Blimey!” 

“Does anybody know the proper medical procedures?”

Two individuals came over to aid Jason, and helped him sit up, but all he could see was a whitish blur, most likely from the impact of his head. “There you go,” said one of them. “Can you hear us? You’re fine, just bleeding a little bit.” 

Jason mumbled “yeah,” but it most likely sounded like an incomprehensible noise to everybody else. 

“Alright, make room!” the other one said, and the crowd started to back away. “We need an ambulance over here as soon as possible.” Jason felt himself being lifted onto a stretcher, and that was when his vision began to return to normal, just in time to see his savior, the donkey-faced Officer, inspecting his neck. The Officer stepped back quickly and removed a firearm from his belt. “He’s a Shifter!” shouted the Officer, and several ladies screamed. “Everybody get on the ground! George, slit him!” The fat little officer removed a scalpel and pushed Jason back on the ground, trying to dig into the skin of his neck. 

Jason let out a cry of anguish, and tried to punch the Officer to no avail. “This is going to pinch a bit,” said George, grinning as he moved the scalpel closer and closer to Jason’s flesh, just beginning to dig in when a pair of arms grabbed the Officer and threw him aside before a beep indicated somebody had shifted. Jason looked up and saw…himself. The same homeless man he now was. 

“Run,” hissed the doppelganger. “Run while you can.” But Jason didn’t run. He just stared at the reflection. 

“Who are you?” he asked. 

“Honestly, can’t you recognize your best mate when you see him? I told you this was going to happen,” Ayzen said. “Now, shift one last time. Do as I say.” Jason didn’t put up a fight and quickly imagined a random face, something, anything, and his face began to morph. He heard the beep. Ayzen smiled, and said, “You finally look like my friend again.” Jason put a hand to his face and realized that in his panic he had shifted back to his original look. His brain must have subconsciously materialized the memories, and for the first time in years he felt normal, natural in his own skin once more. Ayzen picked up the scalpel. 

“Wait, what are you doing?” Jason asked. Ayzen raised the metal tool, and Jason knew what he was going to say before the words escaped him.

“What has to be done,” said Ayzen, and Jason felt the scalpel pierce his skin, groaning as the chip was removed from his neck. Ayzen had slit him. “Now, run.” 

Jason suddenly put two and two together. The shift. The slit. And what Ayzen was saying to him. He knew what was about to happen.  “Ayzen, no. I’m not leaving you here.” 

“Go and live like you’re meant to. Live like who you were before shifting,” Ayzen said.

“No! I’m staying right here! You can’t do this!” Jason shouted. 

“Don’t be stupid. Live for me, mate.” Ayzen stood up and held the bloody scalpel in his right hand, facing the now very confused and terrified crowd.

“I surrender!” Ayzen shouted. “I am the shifter, and now I will strike this man down, ending him as a symbol that we are above you all!” The bullets sliced through him and his eyes became glassy before he hit the ground. 

Jason found himself screaming, unable to process what had happened as they loaded him onto the stretcher, got him into the back of an ambulance, and drove him away. 

****

He awoke in a hospital bed the next day with a nurse at his side, propping his head up with pillows. “Hello there,” she said cheerfully. “Finally awake.” 

“What happened?” Jason asked, even though he knew exactly what had happened. Ayzen had sacrificed himself, and Jason didn’t deserve it in the least. 

“Well, you certainly suffered a lot of damage to your head and neck from that horrible shifter, but they managed to fix you up pretty good. You’ll be out in a week or so. To be honest with you, you could’ve died,” said the nurse. 

She was right. He could’ve died, if Ayzen hadn’t been there. If Ayzen hadn’t turned himself over so he could survive. None of it was right. He should’ve just faced the firing squad and gotten it over with. Ayzen should have been alive instead. After all the things he had done. After all the identities he had assumed over the years. He deserved to be executed. 

“So…what are you going to do when they let you out?” asked the nurse. Jason looked at her and then remembered the last thing Ayzen had said to him before he had accepted Jason’s fate. His friend’s final selfless wish. After everything he had done, he wanted Jason to have a good existence, a chance to forget everything he had done and to correct his past mistakes. And for the first time in weeks, he smiled. 

“I’m going to start living.”