The trip back through the tunnels could be described as "uneventful," if you ignored everything leading up to it. Once we'd escaped the science building unnoticed, our immediate stress levels dropped substantially, and the quiet rhythm of walking - plus our individual challenges - managed to distract us until we arrived back at the access elevator for the women's dorm.

"Alright," Emma said, finally breaking the silence, "c'mon. We need to get out of sight for a bit."

Tammy nodded. "We can use my room. The Little Divas are supposed to be at some workshop tonight, so we'll have the bathroom to ourselves; they won't be back until at least two or three." She grimaced, recalling some precedent. "Hell, with the weather they'll probably just stay out all night and barge back in at five once the buses start running."

Emma opened the door, and Tammy wheeled into the stairwell and hit the call button; then they glanced back at me expectantly. I frowned. "Um, guys, that's the women's..." I trailed off, realizing what I was saying - but I wasn't really a woman, was I?

...Was I?

Tammy read me like a book. "Look, it's fine," she said, trying to smooth it over. "We're allowed to have guests. Plus, it's still crazy weather out there, and the tunnels don't run over to the men's dorm - they built that later, when the school went co-ed and they needed a new building."

"And nobody's gonna give you a second look, now," Emma said. "Well, not for that, anyw-ow!" She winced as Tammy gave her a tail-slap to the shins; I winced at her coming out and saying it. But then the elevator arrived, and we got in. There'd be time to sort that out after we were safely out of sight.

Thankfully, it was quiet enough that we got to Tammy's room without meeting anyone; the rain was still pounding outside, and people had apparently decided to call it a night. She ushered us in, and I took a look around. As a handicapped student, she'd gotten a room to herself (aside from the shared bathroom,) so it was more spacious than I was used to; the bed on one side was gone, and she had a little couch and some bits of exercise equipment there instead. The rest of the decor was sparse, but neatly-kept.

I gravitated to an empty corner of the room once we were inside, as usual. Emma followed behind us; she shut and locked the door, and we breathed a heavy, collective sigh of relief. Which was a little surprising, since I still wasn't breathing as such. But I put that aside for now, as Tammy went into the bathroom and cautiously opened the door to the other room. "Yep," she said, "they're gone."

That was it, then. We were, for the moment, safe from discovery and left to wonder: what were we supposed to do now!? I looked to my classmates, wondering if they had any idea how we were supposed to react to this.

Emma had settled in on the little mini-sofa and was busily examining herself: holding her head out at arm's length, looking back at her own body, tilting it this way and that. "This is so weird," she said. "What even is this...shimmer-thing? I can't even see where my neck was." She frowned. "Can I just...?"

She carefully tried to set her head back on her body. "Yaugh! Ugh, no." She yanked herself away, grimacing. "Gah. It's like chewing on tin foil." A thoughtful expression crossed her face. "Wait, do I have something like that under my head?"

"Uh, no," I said, feeling another twinge of strangeness at the sound of my new voice, then cringed when she tipped her head backwards to show me the underside of her jaw.

"Hey, tell me what's under there," she said. "I definitely can't see that without, like a double-mirror setup."

"J-just skin." It was a bit of a relief; I was still half-expecting a ghoulish cross-section of a human neck, especially with no mysterious haze to obscure it. But it was still freaky to look at; humans weren't supposed to have a blank expanse of skin there... Of course, humans weren't supposed to look like disembodied heads at all, in a normal, sane universe.

Emma laughed. "Freakin' bizarre."

"I'm glad this is so entertaining to you," Tammy interrupted, "but we really need to talk about what we do now."

"Aww."

"I'm serious!" the new mermaid snapped, teeth clenched; her pelvic fins thrashed under her skirt, even as her hands clenched the armrests of her chair. "They're definitely going to figure out that somebody was using the machine - did you even clear any activity logs or whatever?"

Emma shook her head - meaning, again, that she twisted it from side to side using her hands. It was fascinating to watch...did she even know she was doing it? Was it just a brain-tweak that came with her change, like mermaids instinctively switching from lung-breathing to gill-breathing underwater? It seemed a bit high-level for that - the concept of gesture might be instinctual in humans, but the exact gestures are often cultural. But who knew?

"We were in too much of a hurry to get out when we saw Dr. Curtis coming," she said. "But it was under his login."

"Yeah, and that's another problem," Tammy said. "That's not something you're supposed to do. If you just went in and pulled a lever, that'd be one thing, but hijacking someone's account? That's definitely against the rules, if not actually illegal."

Our classmate the disembodied head grimaced, and her decapitated body shrugged. "You watched me do it, y'know. But look, I'll take the rap on that, if you're seriously worried about it. You guys shouldn't get in trouble over my idea."

"It's a little friggin' late for that," Tammy hissed. "We're already in trouble. And even if they don't have a billion security cameras set up around their expensive new toy, there's no way we can just show up for class like this without everyone in the school realizing what happened."

Emma raised an eyebrow. "Shit, I hadn't even thought of that."

"And at least you and I are still recognizable," she continued. "If we weren't witnesses to it, Stuart would probably have a hell of a time just proving that sh-that he was Stuart."

I caught the slip and winced, but I was more worried about what she was implying. Was I that different? I must be, from what I did know happened to me, but...

"Oh, right, you haven't actually seen yourself yet, have you?" Emma said casually. "Here; the closets here have a mirror on the inside." Her body went to the closet and cracked the door, waving me over. I was hesitant to confirm this to myself any further - but another part of me was desperate to end the uncertainty, and my not knowing wouldn't make it any less real. Slowly, I stepped over to the door; she opened it, and I gazed into the mirror.