The Battle Begins

by Devon Hughes

  “Slow down,” the white rat warned as he snuffled, spilling some of the precious liquid. “You’ll make yourself sick.”

  She was right. Castor retched a little and saw he’d almost drunk the entire bowl. He looked up guiltily, the fur on his neck dripping. “Don’t you want some?”

  Her nose twitched. “I . . .”

  “The poor widdle wabbit only knows how to drink from a bottle,” the massive orange cat taunted.

  The “wabbit” froze, her whole body quivering in terror.

  “Leave her alone,” Castor growled at the alpha, surprising himself. He didn’t understand the pecking order of this place, but he did understand kindness. And cruelty.

  “Says who? You?” she roared. “A scrappy dog thinks he’s going to fight a royal tigress?” She hissed the last word and slammed her body forward, rattling Castor’s cage.

  “Alert, alert!” shrieked a colorful bird in the corner, bobbing its head. “Alert!”

  The cat pulled back from the bars immediately, as if the bird was the alpha. “You’re lucky, street dog.” Her pupils dilated. “This time.”

  Castor shrank back farther into his cage, too. He knew he’d overstepped, but the white rat had given him water, and that was something a littermate would do—something he would’ve done for Runt.

  “I’m Jazlyn, by the way,” the long-eared rat said shyly. She nodded toward the alpha cat and whispered, “That’s Enza.”

  “Castor,” he answered, and then looked toward the bird, who seemed to have the most power. “Who’s that guy?”

  “Oh, that’s Perry,” Jazlyn said, her voice uneasy. She maneuvered her body so the bird couldn’t see her face and scooted closer to the bars of Castor’s cage. “But he’s not one of us,” she whispered. “He’s a spy for the humans.”

  Castor stared at the bird with contempt. He had no love for winged creatures to begin with, but this one was a traitor to all animals. Perry stared right back at him from his wooden perch and made long, vaguely threatening clicking sounds with his beak.

  “But over there, that’s Deja, a snake from the desert,” Jazlyn said. The rope creature rattled her tail in acknowledgment. “And Rainner.” She glanced toward the oversized lizard on the floor. “He doesn’t really like to talk.”

  But Castor wasn’t interested in small talk, anyway—he needed some answers. “Do you know where we are?” he asked. “Or how we get out?”

  “It’s called a lab,” she answered. “As for getting out of here . . .” She shot Perry an anxious look. “I’ll let you know when I figure it out. I’ve spent my whole life in places like this.”

  “In a cage?” Castor was horrified.

  “Humans are fond of cages.” Deja peeked out over her coiled body. “It makes them les-s-s afraid.”

  “Next question,” Castor said. “Why do the humans look like bugs?”

  Jazlyn looked at him, puzzled, but then her nose twitched with understanding. “Oh, you’re talking about their gas masks. All humans wear them outside.”

  So they really did look like the advertisements Castor had seen and not large fly-faced monsters.

  “I knew it,” Castor said. “They’re weak. They can’t even breathe without help. When my pack gets here they’re going to be sorry.”

  Jazlyn just smiled at him sadly.

  “Your pack can’t help you now,” Rainner said, breaking his silence. “In this place, we fight alone. Some of us were born to conquer.” He flicked his forked tongue at Castor through the bars of his cage. “And others are destined to fall.”

  8

  AS MUCH AS CASTOR WANTED TO IGNORE RAINNER’S ominous prediction, the lizard was right about one thing: Castor’s pack didn’t come. In the end, it was the humans who came for him, just like they came for everyone else.

  It wasn’t even dawn. It was still the dead of night, and all the animals were asleep in their cages. Castor was dreaming of the Greenplains again, yipping in his sleep, innocent as a puppy.

  But as he padded through the lush forest, gloved hands were reaching into his cage to yank Castor back to reality. He woke up howling in terror—reality was harsh.

  Several dark figures stood over the street dog. Crinkly paper masks covered their mouths, making them breathe all weird, like monsters full of wind. “Ready?” one said. “Let’s go.”

  Across the room, Perry bobbed his head excitedly. “Go! Go!” he repeated, and the bird’s voice sent Castor into a panic. He squirmed away and circled the cage, desperate to get away from the humans’ reaching hands. “They’re taking him! They’re taking Cas-s-stor!” Deja hissed, and flicked her forked tongue.

  Rainner started to rattle his broad body against his cage in agitation, and once again, Jazlyn froze, shuddering so hard she spilled her food pellets.

  Only Enza the alpha tigress was calm. She just licked her paws, calmly bathing her face. Her yellow eyes followed Castor as he spun around and around in his cage, whimpering.

  There was no way out.

  Castor backed into a corner, trembling as the blue gloves descended on him. His captors handled him roughly, grabbing handfuls of fur and pinching his ears, and Castor realized they were pulling him out of the cage! He was more scared than he’d ever been—even more than when he’d faced the enemy pack—because with humans, he had no idea what to expect.

  Would they crush him up, like the street cleaners did?

  Would they put him to sleep again?

  Frantic, Castor started to struggle and snarl. “Help!” he barked sharply, pitifully.

  “Help!” the colorful bird mocked in a dog’s yip, flapping his blue-and-yellow wings until it felt like wind was whipping through the room. “Help! Help!”

  “Don’t struggle,” Jazlyn advised, since she’d had experience. “Just stay still or you’ll make it worse.”

  But Castor didn’t want to be like Jazlyn. He didn’t want to spend his life in a cage. So he struggled as much as he possibly could. He dragged his hind legs and stiffened his front paws. He scrabbled and snarled, whined and begged.

  Of course, they just poked him with another tranquilizer.

  Castor felt his body go slack, and when they attached clamps to each of his legs and flipped him onto his back, the fight went out of him completely. With his belly up and legs splayed, Castor was in the most vulnerable position he could imagine. He was utterly at their mercy.

  9

  THE NEXT PART HAPPENED SO QUICKLY, BUT CASTOR knew the memories would haunt him for the rest of his life, the trauma of each detail burned brightly into his brain.

  He imagined how he would describe it to Runt, if Castor ever saw him again, which was doubtful.

  He would tell him that the light above the table had blinded him at first and then seemed to turn to dark spots, winking at him. White and moon-shaped, he didn’t realize how comforting its hum had been until they’d switched it off.

  Details like the way the inside of Castor’s nostrils burned when the men swabbed his skin with a damp cloth.

  And how slippery the examination table was beneath his paws, how he skidded and scratched at the metal.

  Or how when he saw the needle, as long as a rat’s rib, he thought they were going to kill him right then and there, and how afterward, for a long time, he wished they had.

  And he’d remember that when they sent the serum hurtling through his system, he felt fire in his muscles and ice in his gut, and it seemed like the absolute worst thing that had ever—or could ever—happen to him.

  “But really, the worst part of it came after,” he would tell Runt someday. “When they left me alone.”

  Castor heard the door click shut and, still lying chained to the table, he felt the poison starting to work its way through him.

  His mouth started to foam, like something rabid.

  His whole body shuddered, hot and then cold.

  His legs stiffened, splaying out to the sides.

  His nails became harder and sharper and thicker, and they push
ed out from his paws, so long they began to curl under.

  His back arched, the fur standing on end as the feathers started to poke through and unfurl. It felt like sharp, tiny claws were scratching, trying to push out of his shoulders. And it felt like his whole spine was snapping in half.

  He wanted so many things in that moment: to shake off the white cone around his neck so he could lick at his unfamiliar body; to go back to yesterday, a day he had hated, when he was just a dog in a cage; to be a puppy again, snuggling against his mother. He wanted his pack and his brother and his scrappy street life.

  But more than anything, Castor wanted someone to turn on the light. He was so afraid, alone in the dark.

  10

  “THERE’S A GOOD DOG,” A MAN’S VOICE SAID AS HE BENT Castor’s ears back and forced a collar over his head. Never in all of his days did Castor imagine he’d be seen in a collar, but he was still too weak to fight it.

  In fact, he didn’t dare move much. With unfamiliar body parts protruding in weird places, it was all Castor could do to stand steady on the table.

  The man leaned over him and smiled. As he listened to Castor’s heartbeat and checked his ears and shined a flashlight in his eyes, Castor studied him. It was the first human Castor had seen without a mask. Up close, the man’s skin looked as pink and soft as a new puppy’s; it made him seem young, but from the sparse hairs of tawny fur stubbling the bottom of his face along his chin and cheeks, Castor decided he must be a full-grown human. He wore glass circles on either side of his nose, and when he bent forward, Castor saw his own scared eyes reflected in them.

  As the man gathered up Castor’s body into his arms, the bandages on his back pulled and stretched, feathers crunched, and Castor whimpered. The man set him down, and Castor heard the snap of a metal clip connecting with his collar. “It’s okay, boy,” the man soothed.

  It wasn’t okay, though, and the man’s gentle tone felt almost cruel after what Castor had been through. Castor bayed louder in distress.

  It wasn’t just the way his head swam with the medicine. It wasn’t just that his footpads were especially tender or that his shoulders ached or that his usually strong stomach was clenched against waves of nausea. It wasn’t even the collar strangling his throat. It was something far more basic: Castor didn’t feel like himself anymore.

  How could he? Just look what they’d done to him.

  Look at these wings!

  “All right, let’s go,” the man commanded, giving the leash a short tug.

  With the first step Castor took, his legs slipped and sprawled in four directions and his snout slammed hard against the floor. He didn’t know how to walk with these new long talons sprouting out of his toes or how to balance the heaviness of the feathered appendages that now weighed down his back.

  Sighing, the man helped Castor back up and opened the door, pulling Castor behind him.

  In the hallway, instead of the wide, gray sky Castor was used to seeing above him, a low ceiling pressed down, lit by long tubes of light, and cold air made the skin on his tummy pimple with bumps. He was being led somewhere new. Castor considered making a break for it. He could bite the man, or bolt through his legs. He could just run away, the metal leash clattering behind him!

  But each way he looked, there were white walls, boxing everything in, and locked doors that led to who knew where. Then there was the humiliating cone around his head, and the collar around his neck that said he belonged to someone. Even if he knew how to escape, even if he could actually make this foreign body of his run all the way back to his territory and his pack, Castor wasn’t sure they would accept him anymore.

  He couldn’t go home, not until he figured out how to return to how he was. So instead, he followed the man’s jingling keys and the squeak of his rubber shoes and started the long, awkward march to wherever it was he was supposed to live now.

  The place was a fortress. The man led him through a series of heavy, glass doors—Castor lost count of how many—and each time, Castor felt a small twitch of a charge inside his neck collar, and from somewhere he couldn’t see, a woman said, “Processing.” Castor was certain he’d never find his way out again. The only thing to do was go forward.

  Finally, they passed through the last door into a large, square room. There were clear doors all around the space, and each one led to a smaller room you could see inside. The ceiling was much higher than in the hallways—as tall as some of the buildings in Lion’s Head—and Castor could see each floor leading up to it had the same layout, with the glass doors running along the outside walls. Behind each one of those glass doors, on every floor, was a captured animal.

  Creatures with spots, and scales, and stingers peered down from the upper levels as the man led Castor across the length of the ground floor. Their eyes were haunted, their postures cowed, but they looked whole and unchanged—not a mash-up of parts, like Castor. They weren’t making any sounds, but he could smell their fear. It hung in the air and stuck in his nose.

  What was this place?

  “Come on, boy.”

  Castor hadn’t realized he’d stopped until the man tugged harder on the metal chain, bunching the skin at his throat. His tail disappeared between his legs, but he made himself move forward. They walked along one wall, and Castor peered into the rooms as they passed, but they were all empty. He was the only animal on this floor.

  Finally, the man stopped in front of an empty cell at the end. When the glass door slid open, Castor didn’t even have it in him to put up a fight. He stepped inside.

  The man followed, sliding the glass door shut behind him. Then he knelt down next to Castor and unclipped the leash from his throat. He wound it up and clipped it to his belt, and then he carefully removed Castor’s plastic cone. “You should be okay without this now,” he said. “Just don’t lick, okay, boy?”

  Castor stared at the floor, shaking all over as he waited for the human to leave. The man stayed in his crouched position, though, hesitating.

  “Maybe this doesn’t need to be quite so tight,” he said, testing the collar. He chewed the skin of his lips.

  No, it doesn’t! Castor whined, pleading with his eyes.

  The man looked back at him with something like pity and started to reach for the buckle on the collar.

  “What’s going on in there?” another voice snapped. Through the glass, Castor saw a man rushing down the hall toward them.

  “N-n-nothing,” the man next to Castor stammered as he scrambled to his feet.

  “Peter! You’re not supposed to be in the cells!” The other man stopped outside Castor’s little room and rapped on the glass urgently. Castor noticed he had one of those paper masks dangling from his neck.

  And a familiar blue-and-yellow bird bobbing on his shoulder.

  Castor wasn’t one to hold a grudge, but when Perry fixed him with his white, unblinking traitor’s stare and said, “Help! Help!” in a perfect imitation of a dog’s howl, Castor couldn’t help but grumble a little.

  “It’s fine,” the man called Peter insisted. He grabbed the leash and opened the door, quickly stepping through. “It’s not fine!” the man with the blue mask scolded as he yanked the door closed behind Peter. He was older, Castor saw—he had the gray-and-white streaks around his temples that you saw in dogs that were past their prime. “Listen to him—he’s growling!”

  Both men peered through the glass at Castor, whose hackles were still up. He couldn’t help it—he was anxious and scared, and the yelling wasn’t helping.

  “He’s just freaked out about that stupid, squawking parrot,” Peter muttered.

  “Freak out!” Perry crowed for emphasis. “Freak!” he repeated, looking right at Castor.

  Castor barked at the bird, and the older man glared at Peter pointedly. “You think I need a lawsuit on my hands? These creatures are designed to fight. Have you forgotten about the damage the Invincible did in the last match?”

  The Invincible . . . Castor thought, his head still groggy
. Where had he heard that name before?

  “I know, Bruce.” Peter sighed. His forehead was getting shiny. “The dog was just scared, and I—”

  “He’s not a dog!” the older man’s shrill voice rose. “Just like you’re not a handler. You’re a medic, and I told your mother I didn’t think you were even ready for that much responsibility. I stuck my neck out for you, Peter.” He pointed a finger in warning. “Now get the cell locked up before that monster kills us both.”

  Monster? Castor looked at them. Was that what he was now?

  Peter was fumbling for the keys in his pocket. His eyes met Castor’s through the glass, and Castor stared back defiantly, daring him to do what was right.

  But despite his apologetic look, the man still slid the key into the lock. He was no different from the rest of the humans, after all.

  Long after he’d stopped hearing the jingle of keys and the squeak of sneakers, the click of the dead bolt echoed inside Castor’s eardrums, along with Perry’s mocking cry: “Freak! Freak! Freak!”

  11

  CASTOR HAD NO IDEA HOW LONG HE’D BEEN IN THE CELL. Time was funny here; instead of the sun’s slow progress, there were artificial lights that crackled brightly no matter the time of day.

  He’d passed out for a while when he was still medicated, but once the sedative wore off, he woke full of nervous energy. Castor wasn’t used to being cooped up. He paced the room, not that there was any point—the rough concrete floor snagged his talons with every step, and there was absolutely nowhere to go. The cell was a small cube of space, with the thick glass door he’d entered through and three gray walls pressing in on him. The back wall looked slightly different from the others, with four square doors set into it.

  Castor was definitely curious about those doors, since they seemed like his best chance of getting out of here. But none of them budged when he pushed his weight against them, so after a few hours spent futilely scratching at their edges, he lost interest.

  The only other features in his new home were a straw-covered grate that he absolutely refused to go to the bathroom on, and a sorry-looking blue cushion. No food that he could smell. And no water.