Once Jennifer makes it out of her neighborhood and onto the highway, she floors the gas pedal. Her heartrate is zooming almost as fast as the car. Seventy, eighty, ninety miles per hour... it's an old car, but it won't matter before too long. She doesn't know how much time she has left, but self-preservation instincts are preventing her from allowing herself to die.
"Aaghh!" she yelps as the tingling pain rushes back. She can feel the scales sliding higher up her body - sliding up her abdomen, getting closer to her rib cage... something's poking out of the side of her calves, and from the feel of it underneath her sweatpants, she can only assume they're more fins.
A hundred miles per hour. She'd never driven so fast in her life. Sadly, she thinks she'll never drive this fast again, if ever. She's probably going to have to live the rest of her life in the ocean. At least, she reasons, there are worse places to be.
The sound of a siren interrupts her thoughts. Glancing into her rear-view mirror, she sees a policeman on a motorcycle directly behind her, motioning for her to pull over. Not wanting to start a chase, she decelerates and pulls off to the side, slowing to a stop.
The police officer approaches as Jennifer's heart races ever faster. She glances down at her hands and notices that her fingers are longer, thinner than before, and it seems there's a thin layer of webbing starting to grow between them. Her skin, even the part that isn't covered in fish scales, has a slightly bluish tint to it.
She's so wrapped up in what's happening to her that she's visibly startled when the officer knocks on her window, which she obligingly rolls down.
"Ma'am, do you have any idea how fast you were going?" he asks, looking down at her in that condescending manner than traffic cops tend to have.
"Yes, sir, I..."
"A hundred and fifteen miles per hour. You're damn lucky this stretch of highway's so empty, you could have killed someone. Now what the hell is so important that you needed to go a hundred and fifteen miles per hour?"