by Devon Hughes
H-Ward was even darker than the Room, but there were metal posts at her eye level—more lab tables, she assumed. Anyway, she didn’t need to see. She could hear the howls just fine, so she knew right where the dog was.
She crept toward the back corner, and as she neared the cage, the dog peered out at her with bright, pained eyes.
Suddenly the creature felt the fur along her spine stand up, and her flight response kicked in. What was she doing, approaching an unknown animal? This went against everything she had learned about how to survive in the Room!
She almost bolted right then, but now that she was close enough to see his muzzle moving, the creature could make out the dog’s voice inside the howls. “Help,” it begged. “Help me.”
It jogged some memory in her, some piece of a dream, and she thought of a nest, and warm bodies wriggling against her, and screeches and squeaks, and she couldn’t leave him.
“Shh!” she whispered. “Quiet now!”
The animal didn’t have that wary look to him like most of the new ones did—the look that said he had been through this before, in one place or another. This one looked brand new. Panicky, anxious. He didn’t even seem to know how to stand in the cage, and his paws kept catching on the wiry floor.
The dog’s whimpering tapered off a little, as his curiosity got the better of him. “W-w-what . . . are you?”
“I do not understand.”
The dog said the same thing twice more, in different, goofy accents. The creature almost laughed, despite herself. What a weird thing he was!
“I can understand the words. I mean I don’t understand what you mean by them. I’m just me.” The creature was what she was, nothing more.
“Well, I am a dog, you know! Ma was a German shepherd and they say my daddy was part Mexican wolf, which is why I’m so resilient, my brother says, even though I’m the littlest one and the pack doesn’t take me serious and they laughed when I said I’d find him but I know I will if I can just get out!” He took a deep breath and looked away for a moment, his eyes turning sad, but then they snapped back to her and he was panting again. “Are you a dog, too?”
“I don’t think so, I . . .”
He stuck his nose through the bars, inhaling her scent, and the creature backed up instinctively.
“Your legs kind of look like a dog. Maybe your face, too, with that snout.” He cocked his head, considering, and one of his triangular ears flopped to the side. “It’s smaller, though, almost like a cat. But your tail is so big and bushy!” He turned around in the cage, angling to get a better look.
The creature had never felt so interesting. Or so strange. For a moment, she wished she’d never left the safe haven of the rafters, where no one could see any part of her.
“I haven’t seen that color before on a dog, no, not ever. It’s like the sun. Or the sky when the sun lights it on fire.”
“You’ve seen the sky?” the creature asked in surprise, but the dog kept chattering on. He talked so fast the creature could hardly keep up.
“And you have wings, too! Like Castor. Castor, that’s my brother. Have you seen him? Castor has wings, but they’re like a bird’s. An eagle’s. That’s what it said on the posters. Eagle-dog. Underdog. Yours are different, though, they’re black and stretchy, can I feel?”
He pawed at the bars, trying to touch her wings. The creature took another, bigger, step back.
“They’re actually gray,” she said, stretching her wings. “And I haven’t seen a dog with wings. Just a snake.”
“They told me I wouldn’t find him when I left home. The pack said I was stupid, but I wouldn’t listen, and now look what’s happened. Maybe they were right, actually, do you think they were right?” Now the dog let out another mournful cry.
There was that word home again! Maybe it wasn’t just where the humans went. “Where is home?” she asked the dog over his howls. “And where is outside?”
“Outside?” the dog sniffled. “It’s where the sky is. And the sun.”
“Outside.” The creature repeated the word. She liked the feel of it in her mouth. It almost had a taste. Something juicy, she thought. Filling. “And you say you’ve been there?”
“Yes. Yes, of course.” He perked up a little. “I am from outside. I am from the alley on the Southside of Lion’s Head, near the trash mountains.”
“I am from the Room,” the creature replied.
The dog looked at her strangely. “What about your name, huh? My name is Runt, what’s yours?”
“I . . . I don’t know.” The creature had never thought about having a name before.
“You’re from this room and you don’t have a name? How can you not have a name?”
She thought of Mai. Being given a name by the Yellow Six didn’t seem like a good thing. It just meant they were paying attention to you, and that was the last thing the creature wanted.
But then he said, “What do your friends call you?”
The creature stared at him, confused.
“Hang on, there’s a tag on your ear,” the dog said, smushing his face into the bars to get a closer look. “I was learning to read from the advertisements, just like my brother Castor. Here, turn your head this way, I can’t see it.” His eyeball bulged as he peered at her tag and read the code aloud. “K-07M0. Kozmo? I think it says Kozmo.” The dog called Runt grinned with satisfaction, his tongue hanging out of his mouth.
Now the creature had a name. It felt no stranger than not having one.
“Kozmo, what happens here?” Runt whispered, suddenly serious again.
At last, a question she could answer. “You will get a shot.”
“And I’ll be a mutant?” His eyes went round and white.
“It’s not so bad,” she insisted.
“Not for you. But you’re different. The other ones, the ones by the fence, they look . . . rabid.”
The creature was different. But she didn’t quite know why.
“And why aren’t you in a cage? Why am I in one? I want to get out.”
For a moment, the creature thought about trying to use the human tool to pry open the cage door, but freeing a strange animal seemed like a very bad idea. How could she trust him to not attack her? Maybe it was time to leave. She set the clamp down on the floor.
“No, don’t go!” he whimpered. “I’m scared of the sounds.”
“What sounds?” she asked, twitching her ears. This was the first time the dog had stayed quiet for long enough for her to hear anything else but his barking. She realized there were machines in the room with them. The whirs and beeps were so much a part of the creature’s normal life that she barely registered them, but for the dog, they must have seemed frightening. “That’s just lab equipment. Nothing to be afraid of.”
“What about something watching me?”
The creature felt that way, too, sometimes—like there were eyes on her, even in the darkness.
“You don’t have to worry about that right now, either. The humans are gone until morning.”
“Please don’t leave me alone.” He whined, and she was afraid he might start howling again.
No one had ever asked the creature for anything, and she was surprised to find that she wanted to stay, to comfort the dog. She had all night to hunt, after all. She could stay for a little while—at least until he fell asleep.
She knew this was foolish, of course. There was no use worrying about other creatures—especially weak, doomed creatures such as this one. Soon Bruce would give him the shot, and he would be like all the rest: deranged, dazed, pliable. No matter what type of animal they were, with horns or hooves or spots or stripes, the serum gave them all the same vacant eyes, the same blood set to boil.
All except her.
But foolish or not, the creature curled up next to his cage. She liked how warm it felt to lie next to someone. She even pushed her bushy tail through the bars so that Runt could rest his head on it. It made her imagine that she had a different sort of life—one
outside, one with a home. At least now she had a name.
Kozmo, she thought to herself. It’s what your friends call you.
5
KOZMO WOKE TO THE MUFFLED SOUND OF HUMAN VOICES. Not only had she missed the best hours for hunting, but she had also missed the click of the lights and the commotion of waking mutants. She had been so tired that she’d slept through the whole night. Any other time, safe on her perch, losing a night to catch up on sleep wouldn’t have been such a big deal. But this night, she wasn’t safe on her perch. She was still huddled next to the dog’s cage—inside a forbidden room!
Hearing a gurgling across the room, Kozmo leapt to her feet, bumping into Runt’s cage and rattling the metal bars as she did so. The dog didn’t budge. He was lying with his belly up and tongue out, yipping softly, still safe inside some happy dream.
Meanwhile, Kozmo was living a nightmare.
Now that the lights were on, Kozmo could see that there weren’t more lab tables in this room, as she’d thought last night. Instead, beds lined the walls. They had lots of fancy straps and gadgets attached to them. All twenty beds were empty—except one.
In the middle bed on one wall, a human girl lay sprawled out on the soft padding. Dozens of stickers were suctioned to her body, and the wires attached to them fed into one of the machines. A thick coat of blue goo had been spread over her arms, and the substance sizzled and bubbled in places. The tube shoved into her mouth appeared to be the cause of the gurgling. Her face was so pale and dry, it blended in with her paper gown, and her unsettling brown eyes stared out of hollow sockets. The researchers were treating their test subject as if she was some kind of toy!
Kozmo had thought a shot of serum was the most awful thing that could happen, but whatever the Yellow Six were doing to this girl, it was worse.
When she noticed Kozmo looking at her, the girl started to gurgle louder, making desperate groans. The machine next to the bed let out a series of beeps. Surely someone would be coming in soon to check on it.
“Runt!” Kozmo whispered urgently. She nudged the cage harder. “Wake up!”
“Hmm?” the dog murmured, still half dreaming.
The tip of his tail was sticking out of the bars of the cage, and Kozmo nibbled it with her pointy incisors. That got his attention.
“YOW!” he barked, fully awake now. “What did you do that for?”
“There’s something else in here with us,” Kozmo squeaked. “Look!”
“Oh, her,” Runt said with a yawn, arching his back for a stretch.
“You knew she was in here?” Kozmo couldn’t believe what she was hearing.
“I told you she was watching me. Eyes following everything I did, rolling, rolling around. Creepy, huh? And the gurgles. Yikes. Lucky for me you stayed, huh!”
Lucky for Runt, but not so lucky for Kozmo.
“I should have left sooner,” she despaired. “The humans are already in the lab. How am I going to sneak past them now? And what if she tells on us?”
Runt looked at the girl on the bed. “Stop that gurgling!” he barked. “You’re making Kozmo very nervous!”
“Shh!” Kozmo snapped.
Runt shut his mouth for the first time and looked at her with wide eyes. “I think she’s actually quite friendly,” he whispered.
Had the people heard them? Luckily, their ears were too weak to hear the commotion through the door. Still, Kozmo could hear them just fine. Their voices were clearer now. Close.
“Antonio, what’d I say about trailing me when I’m working?”
Kozmo recognized Vince’s voice right away. It had an edge to it this morning, an irritation that he rarely expressed with the animals, and certainly not with Horace.
“Sorry, V. It’s just that I need help. I . . . I need a truck.”
Kozmo didn’t know the second voice, but it sounded a lot like Vince’s. It was in the same tonal range, just a bit higher and with some weird cracks in the middle of words.
Vince burst into laughter. “A truck? Bro, you’re thirteen! What do you need wheels for?”
“It’s actually for Leesa.”
“Oh, man, you got it bad for her, huh?” Now Vince’s voice was lilting cheerfully. “You want me to give you a loaner so you can take your little princess on a date? Sure, I can swipe something in a few days.”
Kozmo could hear the scrape of the gate as Vince opened it. She thought of the snake on the other side now, and the morning growls of the Kill Clan made her stomach turn. Vince gave them a command, and the mutants settled down.
“That won’t work,” the new voice insisted. “I need it now!”
“Antonio, I don’t have time to get you a ride right now. The Mega Mash-up is about to start in the Dome.”
“That’s exactly why I . . . Nevermind. I knew you couldn’t help me.”
“Whoa, little brother. What’s going on? What aren’t you telling me?”
There was a long pause. So long Kozmo thought they might’ve left. But then finally, the one with the higher voice—Antonio—started talking again.
“You know how Leesa’s obsessed with the Unnaturals because her Chihuahua used to be one of them? How she’s always going on about how someone should help the animals when we watch the matches?”
Runt panted excitedly. “The Unnaturals! They’re talking about CASTOR!”
Kozmo hushed him, her ears straining to hear through the heavy door. Vince had closed the gate and his footsteps were getting louder again.
“Tell me you’re not thinking about doing anything stupid.” Kozmo heard the familiar threat in Vince’s voice. “Tony, that girl is screwing with your head. Look, Leesa doesn’t understand how life works, okay?”
The response was sullen. “And you do? You’re supposed to be some big shot gangster, but we’re still scratching around underground for sky scraps.”
There was a hard bump against the door of the H-Ward, and from the inside, Kozmo and Runt both flinched. The girl’s strange eyes shot toward the door.
“Who do you think you’re talking to?” Vince’s voice was hard. “Haven’t I always taken care of you? Why do you think I’m working in here, with the mayor’s people?”
“I don’t know!” the younger one whimpered. “I thought you hated rich sky queens like Mayor Eris.”
“Oh, I do. But like I said, we just gotta play by her rules for a little while, and then everything’s gonna be different for us Drain peeps. If you want to be a man, you have to make some sacrifices. You trust me?”
“Always.”
“Good. Then don’t screw up this gig for me by messing with the mayor’s virtual reality stars.”
The door shuddered again as the boy slumped against it.
“I told Leesa it was a dumb idea. I just, I wanted to make her happy, you know?”
Runt whispered that it sounded like the boy’s tail was between his legs. Kozmo knew humans didn’t have tails, but she knew what Runt meant.
Vince seemed to take pity on him. “Hey, Leesa likes dogs?” the trainer asked brightly. “Well, I happen to have a dog. Follow me.”
Footsteps. Then the knob started to turn. They were coming inside this room!
Kozmo zoomed up to the ceiling and landed on the large rectangle of the fluorescent light. It swung wildly for a second, but when Vince and the boy walked in, they were looking down, anyway, toward Runt’s cage, and didn’t notice Kozmo up above.
“Wow, with that tan-and-black coloring, it looks just like the Underdog,” the boy called Antonio said, peering at Runt through the bars of the cage. “Minus the wings, of course.”
“Give your girl that German shepherd mutt and she’ll be so smitten she’ll forget all about her little jailbreak scheme.”
Runt whimpered in his cage, but it was the girl who let out a loud moan in protest. Antonio jerked his head around.
“Whoa. What is that?”
“That is Francine, the luckiest little girl in the world.”
Kozmo didn’t think she
seemed very lucky, but she kept her mouth shut.
“She gets first crack at the serum when it’s ready.” He nodded toward the vials lined up along one wall. “According to those eggheads, one little drop will make everything better.”
“When will it be ready?” Antonio asked. “Sky kids always get everything first. You said it was our turn!”
“Not so fast, little man. First Bruce has to figure out the right mixture. We could be testing for a long time still.”
“But Vince—”
Antonio didn’t get to finish his thought, though, because the chain gave way with a crash, and both humans looked up to see the light sparkling as Kozmo dangled.
“How’d that thing get in here?” Vince roared, already reaching for his pocket.
Kozmo dove down, flapping her wings and screeching as she circled the small room, but Vince already held the whistle to his lips. At the first note, her body went limp, and she slammed to the floor.
Vince crouched over Kozmo and yanked on her ear, twisting it to read the tag. “K-group,” he muttered. “Never heard of that one. Let’s get her in the pen.”
6
KOZMO WAS ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE FENCE NOW—A place she’d never imagined she’d be. The quarantine pen had been sectioned off in the far right corner, but there was still only a flimsy wall of chicken wire separating her from the most violent mutants. They pressed against it, snouts and horns poking through the links, trying to get at her. The snake was right up front, her eyes blank, her tail rattling its warning. The kill drive overpowered everything else in her now.
Kozmo was shaking, and she could hear her breath coming quickly. She longed to run away, or to snap her wings open and soar into the rafters.
That wasn’t possible anymore. Not only had she been seen, she’d been caught, and now a clamp rooted one of her hind legs to the floor and kept her from flying away.
On the other side of the fence, Kozmo could hear Runt barking his head off, sounding even more frenzied than he had the day before.
“Want to see an Aggression Appraisal test first?” Vince cocked an eyebrow at Antonio. “Standard protocol for new mutants.”