Author: Peter M. Ball

Length: short story

First Publication: Apex Magazine, 2009

Awards: Aurealis Award, best short story 2009

What the Story is About: “Jackson said she’d been hanging with the Corvidae before he found her, that she was one of those girls that bounced between gangers named Jackdaw6 or Raven8. They’d pumped her full of genemorphs laced with avian DNA, hoping she’d be lucky and avoid the bad reaction. It had already affected her teeth, turning the molars into rotting shards. Her lips were growing hard, thickening into dark cartilage, and I could see the shadow of her organs beneath the bleached skin stretched across her ribcage.”