Unnaturals #2 Read online

  “I thought he was coming back with you?” His mom and Bruce locked eyes over Marcus’s head, her forehead creasing. “Bruce?” she said sharply.

  “I don’t know.” Bruce sighed.

  Marcus looked up, feeling worried for the first time—Bruce almost never admitted that he didn’t know something.

  His stepdad was already headed back toward the door. “I’ll go find out what she wants,” Marcus heard him mutter.

  13

  The squeaks announce a visitor. You guzzle milk from the nozzle. You snuggle your littermates. The prayer of “you’re special, special, special,” whispered over and over.

  It’s always the same, until the day everything changes.

  This time, you aren’t taken back to the nest.

  Instead, you are placed inside a small container with sides too smooth to scale. There is a whirring overhead that makes the icy air rush over your fur, which is not much more than fuzz, and you shiver. You pull your tail up to your chest to keep warm, since the others are no longer beside you.

  You can still hear them, though. The pitch of their screeches tells you that they are enduring the same things you are: more gloved hands poking and prodding and pulling.

  The other unfamiliar sounds blend together—the chatter of people as they communicate, the squeak on the floor that tells you the man is coming, the click click and scritch scritch after each test—so you focus on the screeching of your littermates, and find comfort.

  The screeching gradually gets less frequent, though, and at last, yours is the only voice you hear. You stop yelling, too, because there is no one to hear you, and the next time a gloved hand picks you up, you freeze, because you are so scared to be alone in the world.

  “Looks like we lost this one, too.”

  The man comes over, his shoes going squeak squeak squeak, and now that there is no more screeching to focus on, he is hard to ignore. He pokes you, and you think your heart will stop in your chest.

  “That’s the last of Vulpes pongo chiroptera then. I really thought we had it—the perfect combination.”

  “Do you want me to dissect it?” the human holding you in her hands asks.

  The man does not answer for a long time, so you play the woman’s sounds in your head over and over, wondering what they mean.

  Click click, scritch scritch.

  “Bruce?”

  Click click.

  “Sorry, just jotting down some notes,” the man says. “Don’t bother with the autopsies this time. It doesn’t matter, anyway. We’re right back where we started.”

  14

  KOZMO WOKE TO THE SOUND OF BRUCE’S VOICE, AND SHE froze. Below her, the door to H-Ward still hung open, but now she could see the shadows of people moving inside.

  “This can’t be happening,” Bruce moaned. “This could mean we’re right back where we started. My work . . .”

  “Your work?” a woman’s voice trembled. It was high pitched and full of rage—tonally, it reminded Kozmo of the kill drive being activated. “You’re telling me she just vanished, too? Is there no area in this whole place that is secure?”

  Kozmo’s ears perked up. Were they talking about her? One of the Yellow Six must’ve told him they’d found her.

  “What kind of lab are you running, Bruce? Are there no protocols?”

  “Vince deals with security. I just—”

  “You just stormed in here screaming about an emergency and telling everyone to abandon their posts,” Vince said, entering the lab.

  Bruce stormed out of H-Ward, but he stopped short when he saw that Vince led two mutants behind him on gold chains. One was a tiger with a scorpion’s stinging tail, and the other was a squat Komodo dragon with a rhinoceros’s horned head—Kozmo had never seen either before, but after so long in the room, she quickly recognized different animal parts.

  “Doctor Petey fixed these guys up good as new with a little of your magic sauce,” Vince said. “The zebra-bull is still out cold, but he should come around. No sign of the others yet.”

  The woman Bruce had been talking to followed him out of H-Ward, and the air seemed to shift around her. For a moment, Kozmo thought she was a mutant instead of a human, since she wore a white furry covering puffed around her shoulders. Her hair was the color of blood, and her skin looked like the blood had been sucked right out of it.

  “Those violent creatures are still on the loose? What if they find her before we do?”

  “Not a chance,” Vince said, and Kozmo noticed that he seemed to be puffing himself up, too. Only Bruce was shrinking back behind them. “I’ve been working with my Clan here, and they’ve been evolving without ol’ Bruce’s help. Got ’em so trained they’ll do anything I command.”

  The red-plumed woman seemed uncertain. “They can track?”

  “All I’ve gotta do is tell them to play a little game of fetch, and they’ll retrieve the prize, and kill anything else that gets in the way.”

  “Only if you take Laringo,” she said, scratching the white tiger behind the ears. “He’ll keep the others in line.”

  “Eva, you can’t be serious,” Bruce scoffed. “You’re going to trust this gangster and a snarling group of failed test subjects to find her?”

  “Your failed test subjects,” the red-plumed woman said sharply. “Right now, I trust just about anyone more than I trust you, Bruce. After what you did . . .”

  “What I did was research!” Pink dots appeared on Bruce’s cheekbones.

  “I need results, not research. You’ve had more than enough chances to get the serum right, all the test subjects and funding you could want. Thanks to that stunt your kids pulled and that twit Joni Juniper, we’ve got lots of eyes on us now, so I can’t have any more animals coming in. We’re moving on to the next phase.”

  “I already have volunteers,” Vince said.

  Bruce looked at him with disgust, and then turned back to the woman. “Eva, I can’t support that. It’s unethical. You can’t put one life at risk to save another.”

  “No? Don’t forget I have your stepson.”

  “You can’t just hold Pete indefinitely for no reason!”

  The woman smiled with lips as red as her hair, and to Kozmo, it looked like a gash against the white of her skin. “I’m sure the media will give us a reason. Give them a little whiff of meat and they’ll dig up a carcass.”

  Bruce took a deep breath in and out. “I’m on the verge of a breakthrough. I can find it . . .”

  “Two weeks,” the woman said. “And in the meantime, I want her found, whatever it takes.”

  In her nest, Kozmo shuddered. Vince and his Kill Clan were hunting her now, and when they found her, she would be back in that harness. Back under Bruce’s microscope. And soon he would silence her screeches, too.

  If only she had left with Runt and the lizard! If only there were another way out!

  Kozmo rocked herself back and forth rhythmically, trying to brainstorm what to do. It was hard to concentrate, though, because each time she clenched her toes on the metal slats, the screw in the vent got a little looser, thanks to the snake from earlier. Before long, the vent would come completely free, and she wouldn’t even be able to hang from it to relax.

  Kozmo looked up toward her toes suddenly. What if the snake had been right? What if Kozmo had made her home on a secret door all along?

  While the humans argued below, Kozmo worked ever so slowly and ever so quietly to unscrew the vent. When it finally came free, she poked her head up through the hole just to see if outside was as real as the snake had claimed.

  Her head was out of the room, and what she saw was very different from what she was used to. There was a tunnel that seemed to go on forever. The air smelled earthy. Kozmo could go farther, she realized. Nothing was holding her inside the room—not the men, not a cage. Was this the freedom the snake had been dreaming of?

  Kozmo hesitated. She did not know where the path led. She knew the room, knew every inch of its walls. She understood it
s secrets, and she had learned how to survive. But that was over now that the humans knew she was different.

  The lizard was different, too, it seemed. It had not attacked, and it had not been dazed. It had actually helped another animal, which was something the creature had never witnessed.

  There was no one like her left in the room. No littermates. No Runt. No lizard. Only Bruce and his serums.

  Kozmo climbed up into the tunnel, leaving the room and all of its dangers behind. Sound traveled well in the tunnel, and it wasn’t long before Kozmo’s triangular ears twitched.

  “Hello?” she called. Perhaps she’d already found the dog and the lizard?

  But the echo back told her it was a pack of animals, not just two, and they were stampeding. They were almost upon her! Kozmo fled up to the ceiling in a panic and wedged herself into a tight crevice.

  The first mutant she saw was a giant gray beast with eight writhing tentacles. Its body took up the whole tunnel. It barreled toward her, making the walls quake. She huddled tighter in the crack, only poking her head out when they had passed. The last thing she could see was the backside of something four legged and furry down the tunnel, with ragged wings trailing behind it.

  It was a group of mutants—out of their cages! Were these the violent creatures the red-haired woman had said would tear her apart? If their kill drive was unregulated, they would attack anything that came in their path.

  Including the dog and the lizard!

  Kozmo raised her voice through the tunnels, hoping to warn them.

  “Friends!” she called, remembering the word Runt had used, but her screeches bounced back to her, unanswered.

  15

  “WHERE ARE WE GOING?” ENZA ASKED, HER VOICE ECHOING into the void. She must’ve asked that question ten times already.

  “The Greenplains,” Jazlyn answered once more. Castor gave her a grateful smile. His friend was ever patient, ever positive.

  Still, Castor knew she had to be getting tired. They all were. The initial rush of excitement had long since faded, and with it, the feeling that they were untouchable. It was replaced by a dull anxiety that Castor could sense humming in the spaces between them, and a profound exhaustion that none of them could give into—not yet.

  He’d imagined escape as something quick, something final. But once you escaped, you had to keep escaping, or else you’d be caught again.

  “Just a little farther,” Castor said. It sounded unconvincing, even to him.

  “You said that two hours ago,” Enza huffed. With each limping step, the grizzly leaned more of her weight onto Castor’s shoulder. Her long, striped tail hung limply behind her, dragging through the grime. “I thought you were supposed to lead us out of here.”

  Castor grit his teeth in response. He might’ve been raised on the streets of Lion’s Head, but he’d sure never been inside the tunnels that ran beneath them before. He thought he knew where the Greenplains was located—back in the arena, when the red door had swung open, he had glimpsed the trees just across the river. But then the handlers had rushed in, and Laringo had attacked, and Team Scratch jumped into the hole in the floor on a wing and a prayer and . . .

  And now Castor had no idea where they were.

  A little farther. One step, then another. Forward was what mattered.

  Sometimes it was hard to tell that they were moving at all, though. It didn’t help that everywhere they went, the path looked the same: dim light and a damp floor, with iron support beams curving up the rounded walls every few feet. It might’ve been the adrenaline crashing out of his system, but that endless, repetitive spiral started to make Castor dizzy. It started to mess with his mind.

  The rounded beams looked like ribs, and Castor felt sure they were in the belly of some giant beast. As Samken and Jazlyn walked ahead, their long shadows seemed to take on new shapes, reaching for Castor’s ankles, dragging him down. And somewhere, maybe locked away in some forgotten corner of his mind, Castor could swear he heard Runt’s voice calling his name.

  “What was that?” Samken said, his eyes round. The octo-elephant paused with one tree-like leg still lifted in the air, the skin of his enormous gray ears rippling. “Did you hear that?”

  Castor snapped out of his daze, his ears standing tall and alert. Had Runt’s voice been more than a hallucination?

  But the faint sound Castor heard was definitely not his brother. It was some kind of . . . screeching. He froze, and the hackles on his back stood straight up.

  For several minutes there was nothing, so finally the group started to move again, cautiously, but quickly, too.

  Then, “EEEEEEE!” It was louder this time, and the echo of the tunnel made it seem like the sound was coming from all around them.

  “Ah!” Samken gasped. He recoiled backward, and Jazlyn, Castor, and Enza tripped over one another, crashing into his broad backside.

  “It’s okay, Sammy,” Jazlyn said soothingly, rubbing her sleek panther coat against him. “It’s probably just mice.”

  “M-m-mice?” Samken sputtered. He shot a wild look at the ground beneath him. “But I’m scared of mice!”

  “Rats, more likely,” Enza said, flashing her saber teeth. When she was grouchy, it seemed she couldn’t stop herself from tormenting everyone else.

  “RATS? We need to get out of here!” Samken wailed. He could be fiercely intimidating in the arena, but Castor knew that half of that had been performance art. When it came to real-world obstacles, Samken’s terror was even bigger than he was.

  Castor shot Enza an exasperated look, and her feline eyes dilated with satisfaction.

  Samken took shaky, tentative steps forward, his head on a constant swivel as he searched for another path, and Jazlyn loped along by his side, murmuring soothing words. “If we do see a mouse, remember, we’ve got a half tiger on our side, and Enza’s a great hunter. You’ve seen her pounce in the arena!”

  Jazlyn was half panther herself now, and Castor was about to protest that he wasn’t a bad rat hunter, either. But when he saw the way the saber-toothed grizzly was puffing out her chest and walking a little taller, leaning on him a little less, Castor kept his mouth shut. Somehow, Jazlyn always seemed to know what each of them needed.

  “How about that way?” Samken pointed one of his trunks to the right at the next split. “You don’t think rats could be down there, too, do you?”

  Castor had seen enough rats in the alleys of Lion’s Head to know that there had to be millions of them underground whichever way they turned, but Samken didn’t need to know that. The truth was, Castor didn’t think it was the rats that were making those sounds. Rats scritch scritched, and squeak squeaked, but these screeches sounded like something else. Something bigger.

  “Looks good to me,” Castor answered. They were lost, anyway. If turning down a new path helped them avoid whatever creature lay hidden in the darkness, Castor was all for it.

  As it turned out, this path was a little bit different. There were the same rib-like beams and the same hard, damp ground, but now there was also a set of raised metal rails running down the center. Castor had no idea what to make of them.

  “They’re probably from the old trains!” Jazlyn said excitedly, her white ears flopping forward.

  “Trains?” Castor repeated. He’d never heard of such a thing. He put his nose to one track, sniffing the metal cautiously. It smelled like old grease and rust.

  Luckily, Jazlyn had a lot more experience with human things than the rest of them. She’d lived as a pet, and in a science classroom, and in a research lab, all before coming to NuFormz, and she had learned a whole lot just from paying attention. “It’s how the humans got around before the aircars. There used to be a whole subway system down here,” she explained. “One of these lines definitely would’ve led across the river to the Greenplains!”

  At the mention of the Greenplains, the animals perked up. Castor’s tail began to wag as he broke into a trot. Even Samken grew more confident. He pulled his shoulders
back, and his big feet were moving so quickly that Castor could feel the vibrations around them, sending little showers of dirt trickling from the ceiling.

  When they rounded the next bend, the sudden flood of light made Castor press his front legs into the ground, skidding. In the fraction of a second before his hind quarters came to a stop, Castor registered three things: a large metal box that cut off the track in front of them; a wide platform checkered with tents and small leaning buildings made from materials from the trash mountains; and the small group of humans that stood in front of them with their mouths slack—drawn out, no doubt, by the shaking of the tunnel.

  One of the humans was a dark-haired boy with a lanky build, and Castor recognized him from a day, months ago, at the Pit where the mutants trained. It was the boy who had been with Leesa—Pookie’s Leesa—and Castor remembered how the boy had talked to her like he was growling, and how this boy had looked at the good boy Marcus like he had stolen his bone, and Castor remembered how in that moment, all the way across the gym, he’d thought about biting this boy’s leg.

  Now, as the boy turned his head to shout to someone, Castor’s body caught up with his mind, and he barked to his teammates, “RUN!”

  Jazlyn had already pivoted and was racing back toward them. The look on her face reminded them all what capture would look like, and somehow they found new reserves of energy. Enza did not need Castor’s help at all as they tore through the tunnel, and if the walls were shaking before, now the rhythm of Samken’s feet was so thunderous it sounded like the earth would cave in around them. They did not think about the path. They just thought GO, GO, GO.

  Until the mouth of the tunnel narrowed suddenly.

  “Why are we stopping?” Enza snapped. “Come on, Samken, move it!”

  “I . . . I can’t,” the octo-elephant said in a small voice. “I think I’m stuck.”

  16

  SAMKEN WASN’T THE ONLY ONE WHO WAS STUCK. JAZLYN was in front of the mutant elephant, and Castor and Enza were trapped behind, and the walls squeezed around Samken’s middle, preventing any of them from getting through.