The Battle Begins (16 page)

34

W
HEN
C
ASTOR RETURNED TO TRAINING,
T
EAM
S
CRATCH
greeted him with cheers all around the Pit. He was still limping on his leg a bit, and the wound on his nose had turned into a tender scar, but Castor felt safer than he'd expected to among these animals. Deja had been sneaky and cruel, and she slithered off to the other side of the Pit with Rainner. But looking at the concerned faces of Jazlyn, Moss, and even ornery Enza, Castor knew they had his back.

The grizzly-tiger ambled over, ready for her specialty: giving orders. “You're on flying duty today,” Enza informed him.

When Castor grimaced—he hadn't flown since that night with Deja—Enza actually looked vaguely apologetic.

“You can take it on the easy side, but I want you off the ground. Samken choreographed a stellar routine for your match against him coming up, and we both want you to feel comfortable and know exactly what to expect.”

“I guess I can do that.” As much as he hated flying, he was grateful to just have a routine he could rehearse, and since his wings hadn't been injured, they actually felt stronger than a lot of other parts when he tested the muscles with quick stretches.

“Swipe, swipe, swipe!” Enza was directing Jazlyn now. The rabbit-panther was swatting at the air on the grizzly-tiger's command. “What is that? Do you plan to give them a pat on the head?”

“Teamwork is not about negativity, Enza,” Moss reminded her.

“I'm not being negative!” the grizzly protested, but the next time Jazlyn hopped by, shadowboxing, Enza said, “That's better. Way more feline,” and even batted playfully at Jaz's fluffy cottontail as she passed.

Moss flashed Castor a square-toothed grin. They were starting to feel like a real team after all.

That feeling changed later that afternoon, though, when Laringo's trainers had to drop off something at the office, and they parked the private transport truck right outside the Pit. It was bright red, and its sides were painted with elaborate images of the Invincible mid-strike.

All season, they'd only seen his poster glaring down at them as they trained while the whispered threat of last season's Mash-up stayed in the back of their minds. The handlers had been keeping Laringo from them until they were more seasoned fighters.
Or more worthy victims,
Castor thought as he folded his wings uncomfortably.

Enza stopped ramming her punching bag and drew in a sharp breath. “Do you think
he's
in there?” she asked, her gruff voice softened by wonder.

There was a loud bang in response, and then another, and then the whole vehicle started to shake.

Moss was shaking, too, but in a different way: from snout to hoof, the striped bull was the picture of fear.

“Enza!” the veteran neighed sharply. “Don't go near there!”

“It's Laringo!” she breathed with awe. She dropped down to all fours and eagerly lumbered over to the fence.

A white-striped face suddenly filled the window behind the bars, and immediately goose bumps crept over Castor's whole body, and next to him, Jazlyn shivered.

Unlike the flat blue eyes in the poster, the eyes that stared out at them were paralyzing. They were hyper-focused. Pale as ice and electric blue. And above all, consumed by utter madness.

Castor had seen rabid dogs before. Dogs that gazed into the distance but that couldn't seem to see. Dogs that couldn't quench their undying thirst. Laringo's stare held the same horrors, but Castor could tell that Laringo's rage didn't come from the kind of sickness that makes a dog rabid. It came from humans. Only humans could take a creature and transform it into something so unfeeling. The humans had tried to do it to Castor and he'd bitten his handler. Transformed, embattled, and beaten down, he was far from the scrappy street dog who'd entered the NuFormz facility weeks ago, but Castor knew his heart was still true.

As Castor looked into Laringo's cold gaze, he was grateful that he was learning to fight—not in the ring—but for himself. Even without giving them a look at his deadly tail or his slicing claws, with a single glance, the Invincible had managed to put every animal in the Pit on high alert.

Except Enza. She seemed enthralled by his power.

“I just want you to know, I wanted to be on your team from the beginning,” she called out to him.

Laringo stared at her with those terrifying eyes, but he didn't speak.

Enza had enough to say for both of them, anyway. “I followed you from your very first match.” She clutched the chain fence in her big bear paws as if trying to pull Laringo closer.

Laringo stared unblinking.

“Then I left the zoo because they didn't appreciate me, didn't respect me, and I knew I could be better. Stronger. Like you.”

“You are not like me.” When the Invincible finally spoke, his voice was not the booming growl Castor had expected, but rather soft, like velvet.

Enza chuckled awkwardly. “Well, I know I can't be exactly like you. There is only one Laringo—I get that. But maybe we could be friends and—”

“You don't want to be like me,” Laringo corrected.

Castor could swear he heard a bit of desperation in Laringo's voice, but this was a champion. It could be that his speech patterns were just erratic—as if he were speaking a different language from his native tongue.

“Of course I do,” Enza insisted. “We're already really
alike. For one thing, we're both tigers. Second cousins actually.” She twitched her orange-striped tail as if to show proof. “I know we'll have to go against each other in the match tomorrow, but once we finish the season and we're both winners, we can be together and—”

“If we fight, you won't win.” It wasn't up for debate. “Not unless Master says so. If we fight, you will not even survive.”

Enza's gushy enthusiasm faltered. “Sorry?”

“You don't want to be like me, but you have to be like me to win and keep winning. I dream about fighting. Tonight while you lie awake, I will dream about killing you.” There was no emotion in his voice whatsoever. It stayed soft and steady, as if listing what he had eaten at his last meal.

There's a reason he's not among us,
Castor remembered Moss saying.
He'll murder us over breakfast.

Enza blinked, the horror on her brown, furry face plain. Then she fell back hard onto her rump, and the giant she-alpha seemed to shrink into herself.

Laringo continued to stare her down until his handlers returned and started up the truck. Then, as it started to roll away, he called to Enza in a voice neither taunting nor cruel but scary all the same, “See you at the match.”

35

B
ACK IN
C
ASTOR'S CELL THAT EVENING, HE WAS JUST SETTLING
himself in for a couple of hours of sleep before Pookie arrived for his lesson, when he heard a noise—a sort of yowling. At first, Castor thought it was some new training method Pookie had cooked up to catch him off guard, but then he realized it was coming from the neighboring cell.

He walked closer to the shared glass wall, the fine hairs in his ears twitching keenly. Castor heard the
yowling again, along with some sniveling and whimpering and a fair bit of anguished howling.

“Enza?” Castor asked, not quite believing those sounds could be coming from the tough, quick-tongued giant. “Is everything all right?”

“LEAVE ME ALONE!” Enza roared fiercely from the corner. Her face was turned away from him, and Castor was grateful he couldn't see her maw of curving teeth.

“You got it!” he barked back.

So much for trying to help.

He was headed back to his deflated sleeping mat, but then the mewling started up again. Castor thought back to the conversation he'd had with Jazlyn once, about how everyone needed a break sometimes.

“Enza, I'm worried about you. What's wrong?” Castor asked again. If she really didn't want to talk, the worst she could do was hurl a few barbed insults his way and bang on the glass wall.

This time, the grizzly-cat tearfully opened up. “It's just that Laringo was my idol and he was so, so different from I thought.” Enza hiccuped.

Castor thought of Laringo's emotionless eyes, his monotonous voice, and shivered. Now didn't seem like the best time to mention the fact that Moss had warned her repeatedly about Laringo's true, sinister nature, so
Castor kept his mouth shut and waited for Enza to continue.

“I'm different, too, I guess.” She sniffed. “The Whistlers took my stripes and my swagger, and the bones in my throat, so I can't even purr. I'm barely even a cat anymore.” She curled her long tail up and stared at it forlornly—the last sign of her old identity. “I'm worthless.”

“Come on, Enza, you know that's not true,” Castor said. “Besides, you've got other things now, like your teeth! You're the only animal in the world who has sabers.”

“And a lisp . . . ,” she complained, though to Castor, her speech sounded nearly perfect.

“Didn't you want to change, though?” Castor said as gently as possible, but he was getting a little impatient. It seemed like Enza didn't want to be comforted; she just wanted to feel sorry for herself. “I mean, I thought you came to NuFormz on purpose.”

“Sort of.” Enza shrugged. “In the big-cat exhibit, I was the only tiger. The other cats were always talking about how Laringo had made it big, teasing me and asking why I wasn't famous yet. Laringo's face was on the plastic cups from the zoo food stand. He didn't even come from the zoo, though—I'm pretty sure he was raised in
the circus or the lab. I'd never met one of my own kind before. I lived with the other cats but never really had a pack like you. Somehow, Laringo's fame made him feel like I knew him. Like I was connected to something.”

Enza finally turned from the corner, shifting her weight so she could look at Castor. She scooted closer to their shared wall and he leaned forward to hear the story.

“We didn't get very many visitors because we weren't as cool to kids as the mutants, but sometimes we'd get school groups. And sometimes, if the children were big Unnaturals fans, the zookeepers would point at me and say that I could be the next Laringo. I liked that—the other cats called me ‘Hippo Butt' and stole my territory, but someone thought I could be a champion!”

Enza's eyes shined at the memory.

“So one day, when the zookeeper got to that part of the tour, I played along.”

“That's when you scratched the girl?”

“All I really did was snarl,” Enza scoffed, but when she looked at him, her eyes were earnest. “And it was just pretend, Castor, like we've been doing in training. Mimicking Laringo.”

Castor thought of Enza that first day in the cages,
before they'd transformed. All catty confidence and extra swagger, he'd thought she was an alpha for sure. But maybe the tough tigress had been an act all along.

“I believe you.”

“Yeah, well, the teacher didn't,” she said with a quiver in her voice. “She threw a tantrum and I ended up here. Where there's no fresh meat, no fake grass or hollow boulders to stretch out on, no zookeepers to toss balls of yarn for you to play with. . . .”

The zoo wasn't exactly sounding like the awful place she'd hinted at. Castor was getting the picture now.

“I thought I'd at least have a friend in here.”

Castor cocked his head at the slight. Was he not sitting here in the middle of the night, trying to cheer her up?

“I thought that with Laringo, I could meet another tiger. That I really could be a champion. But he hates me.” Her shoulders started to shake again, and the tears returned. “And he's probably gonna kill me in the match tomorrow. I'm just this weak teddy bear and—”

Castor guffawed, and Enza's puffy eyes narrowed.

“How is this funny?”

“I'm sorry, Enza,” Castor said. “But you are the last thing in the world from a teddy bear. Trust me, you're terrifying.”

“Really?” Enza sniffled, a hopeful lilt in her voice.

“Oh, yeah. That first day I saw you, I thought you were going to bust right through the bars and tear me in half.”

Enza cracked a small smile, and Castor took her silence as his cue to go on.

“And you know everything about hunting and pouncing—I've seen you train our whole team—so just because you have brown fur instead of stripes doesn't make you any less of a tiger than Laringo. Did you see those dead eyes? He's probably half robot.”

Enza snickered in agreement. “He's basically an automopooch.”

“Only he's way less fun than the posters promised,” Castor pointed out. “Someone should ask for their money back.”

The grizzly was laughing hard now, and she slapped her bear paw against the back wall to steady herself. She must've hit it full force, though—it sounded like the cement was crumbling.

“Uh-oh,” Enza said ominously.

“What?”

“The, um, door opened.”

This wasn't news. Doors were always opening and
closing around here, but Castor didn't realize they'd been talking so far into the night. “Is it time for morning slop already?”

“No. Not the Slop door or the Pit door, or even the Dome door. It's the last door.”

“The one that's cemented shut?”

Castor was on his feet now. Nose pressed up against the glass, he strained to see the place Enza was gesturing at, but there was too much of a reflection, and it was hidden in shadow. Enza was walking back to her corner now, away from the strange open door.

“You're not going to check it out?” Castor was aghast.

She shook her head and settled back onto her bed. “Not unless some Whistler makes me. It's dark. And scary. And probably sealed for a reason.”

“What if it could take you away from Laringo?”

“And what if it leads to something worse?”

Castor had an identical door in his room, still sealed up tight. If it were to open, he definitely couldn't resist exploring. But Enza knew about regret better than he did, and she was right about one thing—none of the other tunnels had led anywhere good.

“We should probably get some sleep, then,” Castor said, knowing how unlikely that was—he'd be craning
his head at the mystery door all night. He flopped down onto the shredded remains of his blue mat, anyway, and sighed. “Big day tomorrow.”

“Yeah . . .” Back in her corner, Enza's voice sounded small. “Would your friend have any tips for me when I fight Laringo?”

“My friend?” Castor asked, hearing the guilt in his voice.

“The old one. I hear you talking sometimes,” she explained. “Don't worry—I won't say anything.”

Castor was torn. Pookie had explicitly told him to keep his existence a secret. But Enza needed his help. Without specifically mentioning Pookie, he repeated the first thing his mentor had taught him, the truest thing. “Remember who you are,” he told her. “It worked for me.”