by Devon Hughes
“What does it . . . do?” Leesa asked.
“It makes you feel like a superhero! Right, Mayor Eris?” Antonio asked, his voice a little nervous.
The mayor didn’t answer his question directly. Instead, she smiled with tight lips and laid her pale hand on Antonio’s arm. “Why don’t you find out and tell us, little man?”
“Antonio, don’t . . .” Leesa started to protest, but Antonio brushed her off.
“Why? You don’t want to be my girl. If you’re ever going to go for me, I guess I gotta turn it up a notch. Cheers!”
Antonio threw back the vial in one gulp. “How do you like me now?” he asked. He made a fist and flexed, showing off his strength, but his smile faded to an expression of uncertainty. “I don’t feel so good,” Antonio murmured.
Just then, the main door to the lab banged open, and there was commotion as the animals behind the fencing caught the scent of something new. Vince strode in trailing six white tigers on leashes, their segmented scorpion tails arcing over their heads. Leesa recognized them as the Laringo clones she and Marcus had saved from the fire in Bruce’s lab. A giant lizard lumbered a few steps behind them.
“Did you find her?” the mayor asked sharply.
Vince nodded, but his expression was grave.
“Well?” The mayor took a few steps toward the group, her high-heeled shoes clicking on the floor. “Where is she? Where’s my daughter?”
“Uh . . .” Vince started.
“I’m right here, Mama,” a voice said. The mayor was still craning her neck past Vince and the animals, toward the lab door, but the lizard stepped forward. “It’s me, Francine.”
Leesa gasped. That was Francine? In the hologram Leesa had seen in the mayor’s office, Francine was a skinny girl with light brown hair, bound to a hoverchair. This was a lizard. It had rough scales covering its flesh, a long tail trailing behind it, and a green body that was turning a bit paler under the mayor’s shocked gaze.
“I’m okay.” The lizard—Francine—blinked at her mother with warm, brown human eyes.
“Okay?” the mayor shrieked. She rushed over to her daughter. “Okay?! How is this okay? What happened? Who did this to you?” She glared at the scientists in yellow.
“We didn’t give her anything,” one of them said, holding up his hands defensively.
“We found an empty vial next to the bed in H-Ward after Francine disappeared,” another scientist explained. “It was from one of the earliest trials, when Bruce believed the common chameleon was the most adept at surviving in earth’s hostile environment. But the testing showed it wasn’t hominid—human—compatible . . .”
“No kidding!” the mayor cried, gesturing at Francine’s reptilian face.
“I drank the serum myself,” Francine said, flicking her forked tongue. “Vince brought his brother into my room and was telling him about how lucky I was to get to try it first, how it would make everything better. I just couldn’t wait anymore. I couldn’t stay in that bed getting poked and prodded one more second.”
Leesa glanced over at Antonio, wondering how long ago he’d been down here in the lab, how long he’d known what was really going on. But Antonio did not look well. He was hunched over clutching his stomach, shaking in pain.
“Antonio?” Leesa said, worried.
“What did you give me?” He looked at Marcus and Leesa accusingly. When he reached out a hand to steady himself, Leesa stared. Antonio’s hand was starting to change. Before her eyes, his nails were growing into points—claws—and thick fur was sprouting along his knuckles and all the way up his arm. A black-and-white striped pattern was forming.
Marcus looked from the Laringo clones back to Antonio, making the connection. His face was white as a sheet.
“What’s happening?” Vince demanded, rushing over to his brother. “Someone help him!”
The scientists in yellow looked at one another and started to back away.
“We need Bruce,” the mayor said decisively. “He can fix this. He has to.” Her voice was shrill with desperation, and there was a wild glint in her eye. “He’ll just have to run more trials. Horace, please escort our volunteers to their beds, where they’ll be comfortable until we can get him in here.”
She was opening a door marked H-WARD.
“No,” Leesa said, backing up. Horace was right behind her, and he grabbed her arms behind her back with one big hand. “NOOOO!”
He clamped his other hand behind Marcus’s neck. Joni was still across the room by Pete, and she glanced toward the door like she was about to make a run for it. But the Laringo clones stalked toward her, and Joni’s eyes blinked in terror. She obediently walked over to H-Ward, and Horace shoved them all inside before turning and heading back out the door toward Antonio.
“You’re not taking him.” Vince was crouched over his seizing brother, and he shook his head from Horace to the mayor. The look in his eyes was deadly. “You’re never touching him again.”
Horace took one more step toward them, but Vince heaved Antonio into his arms and ran toward the fence, yanking the gate open. As the Kill Clan mutants started to stream out of their pen and toward the open cave door, Vince fled the lab, and Horace retreated back into H-Ward, slamming the door behind him.
Leesa and Marcus tensed. Now they were trapped in the little room. It smelled like pineapple lotion and antiseptic. Each bed was fitted with restricting straps, and wires with suction cups dangled ominously from beeping machines.
Marcus was finally beginning to understand a lot of what Bruce had been babbling about in his lab. “So that’s what it was?” He sneered at the mayor as Horace tightened the straps around his arms. “You were blackmailing Bruce into fixing your daughter? You did all this, caused all this pain, destroyed lives.”
“No sacrifice is too great for a mother to make for her child,” Mayor Eris snapped. When she turned back to Francine, her tone shifted back to fawning. “We’re very close to finding the right mix to get you sorted though, aren’t we, sweetie?” She smiled adoringly at the badly deformed girl. “Hop up into bed, now.”
Francine shook her head. “Please, Mama, no more. The serum worked. I can go outside now. I’m fine.”
“We’re so close, sweets.” Mayor Eris grabbed her daughter’s scaly hand and dragged her toward the middle bed. “Especially now that we can run human trials with subjects who are your age, not to mention your species. With enough experiments on them, Bruce is bound to have a breakthrough!”
Leesa started to scream.
She didn’t stop screaming when they strapped her to the bed or when they placed the suction cups on her arms. She kept right on screaming until her voice was hoarse, and by that time she couldn’t distinguish her own voice from those of the few remaining caged animals crying out in the great white room.
58
THE DOOR TO THE CAVE OPENED UP, AND MUTANTS STARTED to rush out of the room. Some of them were dazed, others frenzied, but some seemed clear headed and were weeping with joy, shouting about being free.
Free? Was the Greenplains really theirs for the taking?
Castor plastered himself against the wall of the cave to avoid the stampede, and Runt and Jazlyn kept close behind him. Kozmo had flown up into a crevice.
It was hard to tell what that place was, or what was happening. There were too many bodies squeezing past them through the door, a blur of horns and hooves. But they didn’t see any saber teeth. Or trunks. Or striped bulls.
Where were their friends?
“We’ll have to search inside!” Castor said.
“I can’t,” the fox-bat squeaked from the crevice above. “I can’t ever go back to that place.”
“But you’re the only one who knows it. You’re the most important creature to help us.”
The most important creature. That was what the man Bruce had said about her once. She didn’t trust him, not now. But she trusted Castor.
“Please,” the eagle-dog begged. “They’re my family.”
“Then they’re my family, too,” Kozmo said, and swooped down from her perch, leading them back into the Room that was as familiar to her as breathing.
“Enza!” Castor barked at the top of his voice.
“Sammie!” Jazlyn called out.
Kozmo saw right away that the gate of the Kill Clan’s fence was hanging open on its hinges. That explained the stampede. “Over here.” She flapped toward the cages on the other side of the room. Sure enough, the grizzly-tiger and the octo-elephant were side by side in two of the biggest cages.
“I knew you’d come!” Enza said, starting to cry. For an animal as big as she was, it sounded more like a kitten’s mewl.
Jazlyn squealed as one of Samken’s trunks reached out to her and pulled her into a relieved embrace through the bars.
“Is that the Mighty, the zebra-bull who was the only survivor of the Mega Mash-up last season and famous coach of Team Scratch?” Runt asked in awe. His nose was pointing toward a cage in a shadowy corner.
“Hey, team,” Moss said with a snort. “About time you all showed up.”
Their friends were alive! Alive and lucid and stuck in an awful human lab.
“We were coming back for you,” Castor said quickly. “As soon as we had a clear path, we were going to find you, so we could all be together at last.”
“So we’re together,” Moss said dryly. “Think you could get us out of here, hotshot?”
Kozmo was already flying over to the hook where Vince always left his keys. It took some fumbling—paws were not so adept at such a task—but soon she had sprung open their cages. When Castor and Jazlyn embraced their friends, Kozmo went along the row of cages, freeing the other animals. It was something she should’ve done long ago.
Each animal thanked her and made for the open door, and Castor started to follow, leading the group. Now they could all be free in the Greenplains. Together! “It really is paradise, Enza—green and fresh and big. We’ve seen it. I can’t wait for you to see it!”
But the mutant grizzly’s dark, round eyes were frantic.
“Castor, we can’t leave them.”
The eagle-dog’s heart sank, and his pulse quickened. “Who?”
“The Whistlers have the boy Marcus and the girl Leesa. The ones who saved us. They’re behind that door.”
59
AFTER LEESA HAD STOPPED SCREAMING, THE KIDS LAY IN H-Ward in silence for a few minutes, each wrestling with his or her own thoughts and fears. Marcus realized this might’ve been the first time in his life that he was truly afraid. He’d taken risks before, with skateboarding tricks and sneaking out of his house and going into the ring during a match to help the animals escape. But, he now realized, he’d always felt a sense of security, a belief that it would all work out. Doctors could fix broken bones if you fell off your skateboard. His parents could ground him for sneaking out, but he still had a room full of gadgets and virtual games. And even in the ring, there were trainers and police nearby if he needed saving. His parents had even been able to pay to keep him out of a detention center when he and Leesa had been caught. Now, though, there was no safety net.
Bruce was in the hospital, and even if the mayor brought him back, she was going to force him to perform experiments on them. Marcus’s mom had no idea where he was. And he’d been watching Unnaturals matches long enough to know that mutations could cause strange shifts in personality, not to mention the obvious physical changes. Plus, the mutations were, you know, permanent.
“What does it feel like?” Marcus asked, turning his head to look at Francine. The lizard’s strange human eyes blinked at him from inside her green face.
“Being the mayor’s daughter?” she asked. It was clearly a question she’d been getting all her life.
“No. . . . The, um, change.”
“Oh, that. Awful! Like your insides are being pulled apart and glued back together.”
“Awesome,” Leesa said from the bed on the other side of Francine. “Thanks for the pep talk.”
“But afterward, it’s not so bad,” Francine added quickly, flicking her tongue. “You get used to it. Adapt, I guess. At least I can go outside. I really missed seeing the sun. Actually, to tell you the truth, my life is a lot better as a lizard than it was before.”
Okay, now she was just going overboard.
“It’ll be worse for us, anyway,” Joni whispered. Her voice was hoarse, like she’d been holding in the tears. “You heard the mayor. They’re going to experiment on us again and again until they get it right. We’re going to be like Laringo.”
“Laringo was actually really nice,” Francine said. “He was my mom’s pet growing up, and he’d always trot over to my hoverchair and lick my face.”
“What about now, after he’s been given serum after serum?” Joni asked.
Francine’s silence said it all.
“What are we going to do?” Marcus asked. The words came out as more of a wail. He was starting to feel really hot, awfully constricted. He pushed against the straps, but they just seemed to tighten around his arms and legs with each movement. The suckers pulled at his skin and the machines beeped in his ears and his breath was coming faster and faster.
Strangely, Leesa was calm. “We’re never going to get out of here,” Leesa said flatly, as if she’d been expecting this all along. As if she’d known that one day, her bad luck would lead her to this room.
Marcus heaved a huge, dejected sigh and stopped straining. And as soon as he’d stopped making so much noise, he heard something.
The handle of the door was rattling.
Everyone looked toward the door with wide eyes, and Joni called out in a high, thin voice, “Who’s there?”
There was a second of silence, and then the door slammed open with such force that it banged into the wall. Mutant animals burst into the small space, and the kids started screaming, sure they were about to be torn to shreds. All except Francine.
“It’s okay,” she said. “They’re my friends.”
“Your friends?” Leesa asked.
“At least they were. I’m not sure they like me anymore. Hi, Kozmo,” Francine called to a fox with bat wings that was whirring around the fluorescent lights. “Hey, Runt!” she giggled as a German shepherd mutt bounded in and started licking her face.
“It’s the Swift!” Marcus said, as the other mutants entered the room. “And the Fearless!” he shouted, seeing the limping grizzly-tiger. Then the eagle-dog trotted in and sniffed his hand, whining, and Marcus thought his heart would burst.
The Fearless snapped Leesa’s binds with her sharp saber teeth while the Enforcer pulled at Joni’s straps with his eight-tentacled trunks. They were all free in no time.
“Pete!” Marcus burst from H-Ward and rushed over to his brother, who was still leaning against a mop in the middle of the room, despite the stampede and everything.
When Pete was still unresponsive, Marcus started to cry. He didn’t even care that Leesa and Joni were watching. His brother was forever changed, and it was all Marcus’s fault.
Overhead, the fox-bat screeched. “Kozmo says he’s just tranquilized,” Francine said. “The Yellow Six give tranquilizers to animals before they run tests.”
“You can understand them?” Leesa asked. There was awe in her voice. “That is so cool.”
Francine smiled shyly. “She’s bringing you the antidote.”
They watched as the fox-bat swooped low over the lab tables and snatched up a vial in her jaws, dropping it in Marcus’s hand. Marcus looked down at the serum doubtfully, but what choice did he have? As Joni tilted Pete’s head back, Marcus dumped the liquid down his brother’s throat. In less than a minute, the light had returned to Pete’s eyes.
“What’s going on?” he asked, blinking.
“Oh, Pete!” Joni said, and planted a big kiss on his lips right in front of all of them.
Marcus involuntarily looked at Leesa, and she blushed and averted her gaze. Now he felt like a real dork. “We have to
get out of here,” he said, hoping to break up his brother’s little smooch session.
“We can’t just leave Francine,” Leesa said, surprising him. She’d been hostile to the mayor’s reptilian daughter at first, but now she seemed to have a kinship with her. Francine was hanging back by H-Ward with the dog, Runt, and both looked uncertain, like they didn’t want to leave each other’s sides.
“Come with us!” Marcus said.
“My mom will find me.” She shifted her stance. “I know how she seems. But she really does mean well. I’ve heard her and Bruce talking, and they did hope to save the world. I mean, how amazing would it be if we could all go outside again, without fear of being poisoned?”
“And the people of the Drain could finally move aboveground,” Leesa said wistfully. They all knew how desperate Drainos were to get out of the tunnels.
“Even if we leave, they’ll bring in new kids from the Drain to test on,” Marcus pointed out. “You heard Mayor Eris. There’s already a waitlist. Soon they’ll all look like . . .” He trailed off. Everyone knew what he meant. They’d look like Francine. Or Antonio. Which was probably not what they’d signed up for.
Then Leesa’s eyes locked with his, and Marcus could see them brighten as if an idea was suddenly taking shape—as if all the clues had finally clicked. “What if we could find the key to the right serum?”
Joni laughed, as if Leesa were joking. After so many years of adult scientists plugging away, what made some kid think she could suddenly solve the problem? But Marcus trusted Leesa more than anyone, and he knew she was serious.
“What do you mean, Lees?” he asked.
“That’s a fox-bat,” she said, pointing to the creature Francine had called “Kozmo.” The animals were sitting off to the side near the empty cages, watching them carefully. Kozmo huddled closer to the eagle-dog as if she knew they were talking about her. “So that’s what is in Bruce’s notes, right? The thing he goes on and on about being so special? Vulpes . . .”
“Vulpes pongo chiroptera.” Marcus nodded.