by Devon Hughes
“So you think you can take us to the Greenplains?” Jazlyn pressed.
“Oh, sure, the Greenplains! It’s right on the way.”
Finally, they could see the trees of the Greenplains directly in sight. Captain Castor and his crew didn’t have far to go.
“Hop on,” the sharks invited, and one by one, the mutants climbed onto the slippery pink backs. They clutched tight to the fins, and the fleet started to drift slowly downriver.
“It’s too shallow near shore for us to drop you right on the beach.” The shark carrying Castor gestured with its pointed nose. “Will you be able to make it from here?
The outlines of the trees were visible through the fog just across the river.
“It’s so close,” Castor said. “We can fly, I’m sure of it.”
“I know I can take Jazlyn that far,” Kozmo confirmed.
Castor turned to Runt. “Ready, brother?”
“Greenplains, here we come!”
Castor grabbed Runt by the scruff of his neck, and when they took flight, he felt a moment of total exultation. He found himself holding his breath as he flew over the island. He saw the squat gray buildings, the high electric fencing. From here, even the golden egg of the Dome stadium looked small.
The eagle-dog glanced behind him one last time. Lion’s Head was all sharp lines and small compartments, the people boxed up tight. How strange that they thought they were keeping themselves safe, when man was the most dangerous animal of all.
He turned away from the city. Castor was ready to finally stop running. He was ready for a new journey to begin.
PART THREE
PARADISE OF PREY
“Mayor to City: ‘I Can Save the World!’”
“INVINSIFY: ‘The Miracle Drug’ in Trial Stage”
“Stampede in Central Square as Citizens Rush to Volunteer”
54
AS THE MUTANT ANIMALS FLEW ACROSS THE RIVER, THE smog started to clear, and the sight of the shoreline was so shocking that Kozmo almost dropped out of the sky and into the river. It was like the land itself was breathing, and for the first time Kozmo realized what the word paradise meant. She realized how simple her dreams had been. How plain.
Kozmo released her grip on Jazlyn’s shoulders, and they both dropped down to the ground. It wasn’t a gravelly ledge, like she’d seen on the other side; her feet sank into the lip of cool white sand. Castor and Runt had landed a little farther up the shore, and Kozmo and Jazlyn climbed up onto jutting rocks to join them.
Before them was a vast jungle. For several minutes, no one spoke.
“I didn’t realize leaves came in more than one shape,” Castor murmured, as if afraid to disturb the peace of this place. He was right. There were broad, flat leaves as long as Jazlyn’s legs. Delicate, springy leaves coiled as tight as Flicker’s tail. There were leaves that looked like stars, leaves that looked like cat tails.
“Or color!” Kozmo added.
All her life had been lived in dull, muted shades: a white room under harsh light, a gray tunnel or pale sand. She had been the bright spot, the orange anomaly. But what she was seeing now was so pure, so saturated, that it almost hurt to look at it.
Rusty red bushes and neon yellow grasses. Not to mention the green.
The trees, the land, even the tree trunks were green, covered in different types of dense moss. There was a vine winding around one with great, green globes of berries dangling in bunches.
Castor buried his nose in them. “It smells so . . . alive.”
“What do you think they taste like?”
He raised a furry eyebrow—a dare.
She bit down and the fruit burst inside her mouth. “It’s sweet,” Kozmo reported. “And it tastes like . . .”
Like what? It wasn’t like anything she could remember. It tasted like the opposite of everything she had eaten in the tunnels, the things that thrived in the darkness.
“Like the sun.”
Kozmo had spent so much time running away from danger, she never thought she could enjoy running. But it was different when you were running toward something. Without the tightness of fear, her legs felt light. Without the anxiety stealing away her breath, her lungs felt full. Kozmo thought she might be able to run forever.
Until she saw Castor take flight.
Flying in this place was even better than running. While Castor spread his long eagle’s wings in a clearing where he could soar untethered, Kozmo sought out the cool forest. She dipped and dodged between vines. She played in shadows.
It was only when she felt like she’d covered every inch of it and her heart was going to beat out of her chest that Kozmo dropped back down to her feet. With her tail swishing back and forth through the leaves along the forest floor, she padded out to join her friends.
Jazlyn and Runt were in a meadow, watching Castor soar high overhead. Here, there were more colors, too—flowers bursting open into shades that hadn’t even been named yet.
Kozmo brought her snout in to sniff one, and it snapped shut, its sticky serum spattering on the tip of her nose. It burned, and for the first time since they’d come ashore, Kozmo thought of Flicker’s warning.
When Castor dropped down, Runt tackled him. “It’s perfect! Isn’t it so perfect, Castor?” he barked excitedly, licking his brother’s face.
“It is,” Castor yipped in response, sounding almost like a puppy. “You were right. It really is paradise.”
55
WHAT WAS IT THAT OLD GRAY, THE PACK ELDER, HAD SAID about paradise, when Castor and Runt were just puppies?
In this new world, it only exists in dreams.
Well, Castor was living out his dreams. All his life, he had heard stories about the majestic place across the river, where nature ruled and humans didn’t dare venture. He’d never quite let himself believe they were true. And even when he was flying across the river with the wall of trees in sight, a part of him thought it would all be a mirage, like an oasis in the desert—that he could keep flapping his wings forever and never reach it.
Yet here he was, feet firmly planted on the shore of the Greenplains at last.
It was as beautiful as promised. They were safe, and nothing had tried to kill them. Still, Castor felt unsettled by the things that Flicker had said. Maybe she was just trying to scare them? Maybe she just wanted this whole place to herself.
He saw that despite their celebrations, his friends looked a little nervous, too.
“Awfully quiet here,” Jazlyn remarked.
That was it—the silence. It was total, and that made it eerie. Even in NuFormz, a highly controlled environment, you heard guards coughing or the buzz of lights, the creak of doors. And in the desert, where so few things were even surviving, they had still heard the rustle of other life—Kozmo had actually heard it several feet below the surface.
Here, there was nothing. It was like every tree, every blade of grass, was holding its breath.
“Where do you think everybody else is?” Jazlyn asked softly. She stood still, her long ears rotating out, and Castor could see her heart beat fast in her ribs, vibrating the sleek dark fur of her coat.
“Maybe it’s all ours,” Kozmo suggested. “I mean, how do you know anyone else is here? Isn’t it quarantined off?”
“Back in the city, we saw the videos of NuFormz being emptied out,” Castor explained. “They shut down the Unnaturals matches after our escape, and announced that all the other mutants were being brought here.”
“Our friends.” Jazlyn glanced at Castor.
That was the reason they’d come. When Castor closed his eyes, he could see Samken’s many trunks hanging limp in defeat as the claw machine plucked him off the ground and carried him off into the sky. He could hear Enza’s angry roars as she was returned to chains. They had promised their friends they would make it here, no matter how many obstacles they faced. Castor had hoped the whole team would be waiting for him, but if not, they would bring them back here. He owed them that.
&nb
sp; But if his friends weren’t here . . . where were they? And what was being done to them?
“Maybe the other animals are out playing somewhere,” Runt suggested brightly. “Maybe paradise is so big, they’re all spread out.”
“Maybe.”
Castor couldn’t help but think of Old Gray’s words as some kind of warning, now. He remembered the warning on Flicker’s face, and the lizard’s irrational desire to lead them away from a lush wonderland. Had Flicker really not told them more about this place out of strange malice? Or had whatever happened here been so traumatic that she couldn’t bear to speak about it?
The fur on Castor’s spine stood up, and his brother instantly sensed the shift. Months apart hadn’t made them any less attuned to each other.
“What’s wrong?” Runt asked anxiously.
“Nothing.”
It was nothing, Castor reminded himself. Nothing had happened. There had been no threat, not one single reason to worry.
Castor shook out his coat and cleared his throat. “We should find a place to sleep before dark.”
“We should stay in the meadow,” Kozmo suggested. “I can’t wait to hunt fireflies under the stars.”
She inhaled the fresh, grassy scent of the air, and though Castor tried not to focus on it, the musky undertone of the moss and wet leaves smelled slightly rotten to him now.
“No,” he said a little too sharply. Now the whole group felt his tension. “We should find shelter. At least for the first night.”
At Kozmo’s mention of hunting, a flash of a dream had come back to Castor—the nightmare he’d had before his fight with Deja. He’d been in the middle of a hunt when the perspective had shifted and somehow he’d become the prey.
Standing in the big meadow, in paradise, Castor shivered. Even with his closest friends surrounding him and a cathedral of trees standing guard, Castor felt vulnerable, exposed on all sides.
56
THE BAT HALF OF KOZMO SEEMED TO HAVE A HOMING device for finding secret nooks and crannies. Just a little ways up from the rocks lining the beach, she located the mouth of a cave, carved into the slope. Castor had seemed on edge, and though the Greenplains seemed perfect to Kozmo, she was glad she could help the group find shelter.
It started to rain just as the animals were climbing inside, and Kozmo made a few circles before settling down onto a nice dry patch. Runt plopped down beside her, stuck his tongue out and folded his ears back in a dramatic yawn, and then lay his head on her shoulder. Kozmo curled her pillowy tail around him. Soon both Castor and Jazlyn had dropped down to join the pile as well.
They watched the water come down in sheets, and Kozmo was transfixed. “This is my first storm,” she said softly.
Jazlyn leaned in closer. “It’s nourishing the soil. The water will make things look even greener by tomorrow.”
Fantastic. Kozmo’s eyes twinkled. “It’s beautiful.”
She thought about how much things had changed for her. Kozmo had spent the first part of her life in dark solitude, clinging to security by the tips of her toes and screeching at anything that got too close. The ceiling of the room had even once seemed big to her!
Now, she saw that the sky was forever. Snuggled up in the warm pile of fur, she hoped that her friends were, too.
A short time later, she woke up to the animals around her snoring, thinking she could use a little snack. Traveling with all these other animals, Kozmo had been forced to get off her nocturnal schedule, but she still had night cravings sometimes.
Not having any desire to get drenched in the downpour, Kozmo set her sights within the cave. There were sure to be some tasty insects hanging out at the back in the damp dark.
Strangely though, as Kozmo ventured farther into the cave, it didn’t get darker, but lighter. She noticed reflected light, and she started to hear voices—both animal and human.
Before, Kozmo might’ve run, or she might have investigated on her own, with only her own fear to guide her. Now, she was part of a pack. They needed her, and she could admit that she needed them, too.
She sounded a screeching alarm, throwing her voice around the contours of the cave, and soon her three friends appeared, anxious and alert. They huddled together and crept forward, inch by inch. Whatever this cave led to, Kozmo was grateful she didn’t have to face it alone.
The voices and scents grew in intensity as they approached, and Kozmo was surprised to have a familiar feeling about all of it.
Around the last corner, the cave abruptly ended in a door with a strip of light streaming brightly from underneath. Looking at one another and taking a deep breath, they pushed it open.
“Vince and Horace!” Runt whined.
“Enza and Samken!” Jazlyn gasped.
“Leesa and Marcus!” Castor barked.
The animals were blinking under the bright lights and looking around in confusion, but only Kozmo understood what was going on, and she was the most shocked of all.
“This is . . . the room.”
“Which room?” Castor asked, the hackles on his back rising as he took in the cages, the clamps, the rows of shots.
“The room where I come from.”
Somehow, her journey had ended right back where she began!
57
AFTER FOLLOWING THE MAYOR UNDERGROUND, THE group walked though a metal door and stepped into a large white room. The smell hit Leesa first, and then the noise. There must’ve been hundreds of animals in there. Countless types of mutants, pressing their bodies against a chain-link fence along the wall to the right. Leesa looked around her in horror.
This didn’t look like a health center, like she’d been imagining. It didn’t even look like an army. It looked like a graveyard.
There were more cages, too, beyond the lab tables on the left side of the room. She recognized the grizzly-tiger and the octo-elephant from the Unnaturals teams locked up in two of the biggest cages.
“What are you going to do to them?” she demanded.
To her surprise, the mayor waved her hand dismissively. “Oh, we’re done with them now. We’re letting them run free in the Greenplains, just like you wanted. Isn’t that sweet?”
She nodded to Horace, whose face was satisfyingly scratched up. The cats must’ve gotten to him after the kangaroo. He glowered, but obeyed the mayor. With the flick of a switch, a trapdoor in the wall opened.
“The cave leads right outside,” the mayor explained.
Marcus couldn’t believe it. “You’re just . . . letting them go?”
“They were just the beta phase of the project—it’s common practice to test on animals first before you put a new product in the marketplace. But we don’t need them anymore. Now we’ve got you.”
Marcus narrowed his eyes. He wasn’t getting it yet, but Leesa was starting to understand. So was Joni, judging by the way her brown skin had gone ashen.
There were six scientists dressed in yellow scrubs, yellow caps, and yellow masks. She couldn’t tell who they were, or even if they were men or women, but they all gazed at her and Marcus with the same strange, detached look, assessing them from head to toe like you might look at ingredients to make a meal. It made Leesa’s skin crawl.
Leesa’s mind raced to add everything up in her head. The Unnaturals as trials. The importance of the winners. Bruce’s guilt. Antonio’s arrogance. It all blurred together. She couldn’t make sense of it. All she knew was that she had been dead wrong, and it could have some awful consequences.
“We were wrong,” Leesa sputtered, gripping Marcus’s arm. “We were wrong about the serum. About everything.”
Marcus was barely listening, and she followed his gaze across the room. The mayor had told the truth about one thing: Pete was not in jail, and he was, indeed, helping out with the animals. He was in the corner with a mop, cleaning up waste.
“Pete!” Joni said, running over to him. She shook his arm and looked up into his face, but he didn’t seem to be responding. His shoulders were hunched, and he k
ept his head down. Even after only meeting him a couple of times, Leesa could tell he didn’t look like himself. He looked . . . like a zombie.
“What’s wrong with him?” Marcus called, his voice cracking. “Is he all right?” He didn’t seem to want to leave Leesa’s side, though, for which she was grateful.
“We want the same things, you and I,” Mayor Eris was saying.
What else had she said? Leesa needed to start paying attention. She had a feeling her life might depend on it.
“Freedom. The opportunity to improve our position in life. The strong will to take things into our own hands. To beat the odds.”
“What’s inside the serum?” Leesa asked. Right now, that seemed like the only thing that was truly important.
“Oh, just a little specialty cocktail.” The mayor smiled. “Bruce took the very best genes from our winners and shook them up. Add a dash of compliance, a pinch of aggression, and the human component—or H for short—and you have the perfect creature, able to survive in any environment!”
“Perfect?” Leesa repeated. She thought she was pretty happy as she was.
“Well, not yet. That’s the goal. We have a few final kinks to work out first, but luckily we’ve already had hundreds of volunteers just since the speech this afternoon. The citizens are very excited. I promised Vince that the public of the Drain would get preference to start, though—he’s been so helpful in orchestrating this, after all. And you, you lucky girl, you get to be first!”
“One of the first,” corrected Antonio.
“Ah, yes. Antonio is a little overeager.”
“By the way, thanks for slipping me that serum, Marky. Vince wanted me to wait until the trials were all done, but I wanted to be the first. No one is going to give you anything in this life, right? You have to take it.”
Leesa gritted her teeth. He had said that to her once, too—it’s what made her decide to try to set Pookie free. Now the words had a sourness to them.