The Battle Begins (7 page)

12

F
ROM INSIDE THE DARK, MUSTY TUNNEL,
C
ASTOR COULD
already hear the commotion. He tried not to panic—the tunnel was so narrow that there was no way to go but forward—but even though he steeled himself to face whatever might lie ahead, when Castor emerged into the light, he was still shocked at what he saw.

The two creatures before him made Enza's bear body seem like a mini's. One was almost as tall as the ceiling, with legs that were thicker than the trees in Castor's
dreams. It was hairless, with gray skin stretched like a human's and stuffed too tight, and instead of a nose, it had eight long, waving arms. This must be the elephant, but its trunk was now different.

Castor recognized the other beast from its thick-plated armor—it was Rainner, the lizard from the cages that first day—but he'd doubled in size, and with a new spike of a horn jutting out of his face, he wasn't someone you'd want to make angry. It looked like the other guy had done exactly that.

“FIGHHHHT!” Enza roared beside Castor, as Rainner charged the gray giant. Her feline eyes were dilated with excitement.

“What's going on?” Castor barked in alarm. The hair on his back stood up and he assumed a defensive stance—who knew if he'd be next?

“S-s-samken wanted s-s-some breakfast,” a familiar voice answered. “S-s-so did Rainner.”

Deja, the snake Castor had met before, slithered past him. All he could do was stare—just as shocking as the other animals' transformations was the fact that Deja hadn't changed. From her pale, diamond-shaped head all the way to the black rattle at the end of her tail, she looked the same as she had before.

Castor didn't have time to ask her how she'd managed
to escape the serum, though. The ground beneath his feet shook as the animal Deja had called Samken crashed around the room. Castor had to leap out of the way just before he was crushed.

“Castor!” someone called to him. He spotted Jazlyn's long, white ears under the food trough. It was the only shelter he could see in the room, and Castor ran to join her.

Though Jazlyn now had a sleek, black cat's body and claws to match, she was as frightened as she'd been before, and Castor could feel her trembling next to him.

“We're safe under here,” Castor said, though he wasn't totally convinced of that himself.

“I'm not worried about us,” she answered. “I'm worried about Samken!”

Castor looked at the hulking giant across the room. “He looks like he can take care of himself.”

Jazlyn shook her head. “He'd never want to hurt anyone. He's way too sensitive.”

Castor saw that the gray mammoth was on his knees now, cowering as the horned lizard loomed over him. He remembered what Rainner had said before:
And others are destined to fall.

“Please,” Samken blubbered. “I swear I didn't mean to offend you. I was just hungry.” He looked longingly at
the food trough, and Rainner slashed at the air with his horn. “Let's be rational about this!” Samken squeaked, snapping his eyes back to his attacker. “You can eat first, and then I'll eat.” He fluttered his huge ears hopefully.

But Rainner wasn't swayed. “Kings don't share,” he snapped, and lunged for Samken's big belly.

Samken jutted his head forward, his tentacles waving in defense. He managed to wrap them around his attacker's horn and keep from getting skewered, but Rainner grunted and pushed, and the spike inched ever closer to Samken.

Castor's muscles tensed—he should do something! But what good was he against these giants?

“ENOUGH!” a voice boomed, and then there were more horns flying as someone butted his head into Rainner's scaly side, sending him sprawling away from Samken.

Everyone looked toward the new animal. He looked like a horse with stripes, but he had a different animal's face, and two curved and pointed horns stuck out sideways from his forehead, a dark tuft of hair sprouting between them. His nostrils flared as he glowered at Rainner and Samken, sprawled on the floor.

“Do you know who I am?” Rainner sputtered furiously as he got to his feet.

Though the weird-looking horse hadn't hesitated to break up the fight, now he looked wary and exhausted. Castor noticed that all of his ribs were visible beneath the stripes.

The horned lizard didn't wait for an answer. “I am Rainner, a dragon from the island of Komodo, where my family has ruled for centuries. I am the nephew of the Hellion, a fearsome fighter in the Dome. And I am your
king
!”

“Hilarious,” the horned horse said dryly. “Well, Your Highness, my name is Moss. Some king you are to get kidnapped and dragged here just like your uncle.”

Rainner lowered his horn as if to charge again, but Moss's striped leg shot out behind him, and when his hoof slammed against the wall, the sound was so sharp and sudden that everyone froze.

“I'm sorry to tell you that even kings have to play by the Whistlers' rules,” Moss continued as if nothing had happened. “Since I'm the only one here who's been through any of this before, if you want to survive longer than your uncle did, maybe you want to get a hold of your little temper and pay attention? There are only three rules, so even someone with a brain as small as yours should be able to remember them.”

Rainner huffed angrily, but he didn't move.

“Great,” Moss said, and started to walk around the room, his tail swishing as he sized up the new animals. “Well, since you made it to the slop room, I guess you've all already figured out the first rule: when a door opens, you walk through it. Second rule: when a match begins, you fight. And third rule: when you're not in the Dome, you play nice.”

“And if we don't?” Rainner grunted.

Moss's face was grave. “Let's just say there are far worse things than a whistle. Understand?”

“I don't,” Castor spoke up. He scooted out from under the trough, climbed to his feet, and shook out his wings. “What's a Whistler?”

“Uh, the people with the whistles. The humans!” Moss said impatiently. “Scientists, guards, vets. The worst are the handlers—you'll meet them soon enough. A word of warning: don't let them think you're weak.”

Castor still didn't understand. Not at all.

“But why are they keeping us in this place? What is the Dome? And what's a match?”

The striped bull sighed. “You don't even know why you're here?” Moss walked past Castor toward the far end of the room, and the rest of the animals followed. “We're here to compete in front of adoring fans,” he explained, nodding at the back wall.

With all the commotion, no one had noticed the floor-to-ceiling posters. Now, they gawked up at the glossy paper and the bright images.

“It's us,” Jazlyn said breathlessly, hopping over to a poster that showed her mid-race, with her panther legs fully extended and her rabbit ears whipping back. “They're all pictures of us.”

“Look how big and tough I look!” Samken trumpeted. He used one gray tentacle to point. The picture's perspective was from the ground looking up, so the octo-elephant seemed to tower even taller than usual.

Everyone looked bigger, fiercer, and more impressive on the posters, though. Deja's was an extreme close-up shot, but you couldn't see the diamond pattern on her head or her pale reptilian eyes; her unhinged jaw and two long fangs took up all the space.

Moss's showed a younger, more defiant version of himself, with his striped legs spread wide, straighter horns poised to strike, and clouds of steam puffing out of his nostrils.

“I look like a real hero, don't I?” Moss asked, but his tone was bitter. He looked at Castor with red-rimmed eyes and asked gruffly, “Don't you feel like a hero?”

Castor gazed up at his own illustration. His chest
was puffed out proudly, and strong, spectacular wings reached high above his head. Light shined on his face as he looked off into the distance, chin raised. He felt proud for a moment—maybe he didn't have to be an omega after all—until he saw the writing.

The text introduced him as
THE UNDERDOG
, which was depressing, but that wasn't what worried Castor most. At the very top of the poster was a banner, and in fancy, slanty font, it read:

A memory came to Castor suddenly—a flash of the day he was taken. He saw Runt, blinking up at the neon advertisement in wonder.

“We're Unnaturals?” Castor whispered. “The game is . . . real?”

“Real gruesome entertainment,” Moss confirmed.

“Where'th Laringo?” Enza asked eagerly. “When do we meet the Invinthible?”

In a sort of daze, Castor walked to the end of the row of posters, where the saber-toothed grizzly was standing. There it was: the white cat's head, the strange scorpion tail—the same image that he'd seen on the building that
day with Runt, with the intense, 3D eyes that seemed to track you.

“He doesn't train with us. You don't need to worry about Laringo,” Moss said. The bull was trying to sound confident, but Castor caught the defeat in his voice when he added, “At least not yet.”

“I'm not worried,” Enza purred. “He's the reathon I came here. All I had to do was thlash at a little girl during visiting hours, and I got a ticket to meet the Invinthible.”

“You tried to scratch a child?” Samken was appalled.

Enza flashed her toothy grin.

Moss stared at her. “You . . . came here . . . on purpose?”

“Better than staying in Lion's Head Zoo.”

This was too much for Moss. He crossed the room and walked in a slow, deliberate circle around Enza, studying her from every angle as if he were utterly baffled by her existence.

“So let me get this straight,” he said, stopping in front of her. “You got yourself shipped out of a nice, cushy spot at the zoo so you could make friends with Laringo?” Moss started to snicker.

“What? Just because he's a thelebrity doesn't mean we can't be friends.” Enza puffed out her chest. “I mean,
we have a lot in common. We both started at a zoo. We both started as tigerth. . . .”

Moss laughed harder, snorting through his nostrils, but to Castor, the laughter sounded strange—it sounded dark.

At first, Enza looked uncomfortable, then annoyed. When Moss started stamping his hooves like he just couldn't stand how funny it was, she got angry.

“You're scared of him, aren't you?” Enza's eyes smoldered and her tail switched. “I heard you didn't even fight in the last match because you were thuch a coward. You're afraid of the Invinthible.” The saber-toothed grizzly reared up on her hind legs, which made her almost ten feet tall. She loomed over Moss threateningly. “Are you afraid of me?”

Moss finally stopped laughing, but he wasn't looking at Enza. Castor followed the bull's gaze back up to the poster of the scorpion-tiger. It said
THE INVINCIBLE
, but in his mind's eye, Castor could picture other text. He saw the sentences scrolling across the advertisement that day in the Lion's Head alley. He could see the words as he'd read them to Runt—two words, in particular, flickering in a capital shout:
MURDEROUS MUTANTS
.

“Do you know what happened in the final match of
the last season?” Moss asked quietly.

“The Invinthible won,” Enza replied.

“Yes, by killing all the other Unnaturals. All of those on Team Scratch and even his own team, Team Klaw. Sometimes it's just common sense to be afraid,” Moss said solemnly. “In here, fear is what keeps you alive.”

13

M
ARCUS GOT OFF THE ELEVATOR AT
S
KYPARK
S
IX, SKATEBOARD
in hand. S-Six was a former rooftop farm that had become defunct after the crops died out, and it was the perfect place to practice his kick flips and frontside pop shove-its. It was also pretty much the only place outside the apartment that Marcus was allowed to go—deemed safe because it was as far from ground level as you could get—and even then, his mom would only let him go early in the morning, before the sun got dangerous. That
meant Marcus was usually stuck skating alone, like he did everything else.

Not today.

From the entrance, Marcus could see a group of older guys making passes in the dried-up fountain–turned half-pipe, or grinding the edges of the raised garden beds. He rolled his board back and forth under his foot, itching to join them.

“Hey, check it—it's the recluse,” one dude said, pointing his way. His grin revealed a chipped front tooth, and he was old enough to have what passed for a scraggly beard.

Marcus was caught off guard by the remark—he didn't expect anyone to know who he was—and he stopped rolling the wheels, feeling a flush crawl up his neck.

“You gonna try something, Bubble Boy?” another called out. “Or just creep all day?”

Marcus was now sweating inside all the padding his mom made him wear, and most of the guys had stopped skating to smirk at him. They didn't want to hang; they thought he was a little baby.

If he could nail a hardflip, they'd respect him—he doubted any of them could do that. Marcus wasn't sure he could, either, but he couldn't just walk away. Not now.
He ripped off the stupid protective gear and started up the stairs with his board.

When Marcus reached the top step and lined up his board, the first guy shouted, “Mean tricks are for big kids, little man.”

That got a few chuckles, but Marcus ignored them. This was as much his park as theirs.

Pop the tail, kick flip, then jump,
he rehearsed the trick in his head.
Easy.

He inhaled deeply, getting his courage. Then, feeling the board beneath his feet, Marcus took two hard pushes and kicked off. As the wheels rolled over the edge, he stomped on the back of the deck, then kicked out his front foot to spin the board.

Jump!
he thought.

But he was already getting serious air.
Keep it fluid, quick,
and he knew he could land it.

“Marcus! HEY!” someone yelled.

Marcus jerked midair and lost his balance. His skateboard careened away, but he couldn't get his feet back under him because of the steps. Not that there was time—there wasn't even time to put his hands out before he smashed into the concrete.

Then the world went fuzzy.

“Marcus!” Someone was shaking him. “Oh, man,
Marcus, I'm so sorry.” Pete was crouched over him, practically cooing with concern as he assessed the injuries.

“I'm fine, Pete,” Marcus grunted. Pete was twenty years old and lived in his own apartment, but sometimes Pete would meet Marcus at the skate park on his days off to hang out. Though Marcus wasn't expecting him today.

Marcus sat up, trying to shrug his older brother off him, but a stab of bright pain in his shoulder made him cry out.

“Don't move it,” Pete said, pursing his lips. “Something might be broken.”

As his brother helped him up, Marcus winced. Beyond the shoulder, his hands and knees were scraped up pretty bad, too. With everyone watching him, he felt like an amateur, but then one of the older guys yelled, “Duuude!” in this voice of pure awe, and some of the others started to hoot and clap.

Marcus nodded at them shyly, and he couldn't help grinning as he followed Pete out of the park, cradling his arm. It must've been a pretty sick trick before he bailed for them to cheer like that, so maybe it was worth it.

But by the time he was settled beside Pete in his aircar, the glory had faded as Marcus realized what the injury meant: his mother was going to flip. He'd gotten
roughed up skating before, of course, but those were little cuts he could hide with long sleeves. A broken arm?

“Mom will never let me skate again,” he said dejectedly, slumping into the seat.

“Sure she will.” Pete hit a button that locked them onto a cable track and then typed in their parents' address at the Eris Escape Tower, floor 247.

“Do you know how long it took me to convince her to let me come to the Skypark the first time?” Marcus asked as they started to glide down the cables. “She wanted me to wear a gas mask, even though the park's enclosed in glass, and then she finally agreed only if I wore zinc sunscreen and an insane amount of padding.”

“Maybe you should've been wearing the padding just now, eh?” Pete countered, cocking an eyebrow. When Marcus rolled his eyes, he sighed. “Look, give Mom a break, okay? She's just a little protective is all.”

“Understatement of the century!”

It's not like Marcus didn't get why she worried. After their dad died from radiation exposure in the Greenplains, they were all pretty freaked. She wanted to keep her boys close. But there was close, and then there was claustrophobic.

“At least you have your own place,” Marcus told Pete.

“Yeah, right next door.” Pete rolled his eyes. It was
the only way their mother could cope with the prospect of him moving out.

“But you get to leave the high towers for work every day. When Mom sees my arm, any tiny bit of freedom I had is gone. It's going to be simulated reality and filtered air and sky living for the rest of the summer.”

Pete chewed his lip, obviously feeling guilty. Then he pressed something, and the aircar came to a sudden stop. It swung a little on the cable as Pete started typing new coordinates into the navigation system.

“Where are we going?” Marcus asked.

“I'm taking you to the NuFormz facility,” Pete answered. “There's a care center there where we can patch you up.”

Marcus's heart skipped a beat. NuFormz was on the island where Pete worked with the Unnaturals—the only things Marcus loved more than skateboarding. Bruce was a geneticist there and had helped get Pete a job as a tech when he was first trying to woo their mother. But the island had always, always been off-limits to Marcus. As was pretty much anything outside the high towers.

“Are you serious?” he asked Pete.

“I can fix you up myself, and this way you can have one last hurrah before you're on lockdown. Just don't tell Bruce, okay? I don't really feel like getting fired.”

“Like I'd ever tell Bruce anything,” Marcus said, offended at the suggestion.

“Come on, he's not that bad,” his brother insisted. For some reason, Pete felt like he had to defend their stepdad, even though Marcus could see the way Pete's lip twitched every time Bruce called him “Peter” in that condescending voice of his.

“Not that bad?” Marcus repeated. “Bruce is the enemy of fun,” Marcus said.

Pete and Marcus's dad had been fun. He'd been hilarious and goofy and up for any adventure. He was an explorer who took risks other people were afraid to because he thought he could save the world. Bruce was his total opposite, a boring, anal-retentive lab geek.

“He even smells weird,” Marcus added. “I still don't get what Mom sees in him.”

“Formaldehyde,” Pete muttered. “That's what he smells like. But speaking of Mom.” Pete wagged a finger. “She'd better not find out I took you to ground level without a gas mask.”

“We're not even going outside,” Marcus said. “Isn't there an aircar port right in the building?” Pete raised an eyebrow in response, waiting. “My lips are sealed,” Marcus promised.

Pete nodded and the aircar jerked to a start again. It
shifted onto a different cable track, this time toward the river, and they zipped down hundreds of stories in seconds. Marcus tapped the deck of his skateboard against the door of the aircar excitedly. It was cool enough to be descending below the fiftieth floor, but to be going to the place where they trained the Unnaturals was unreal.

“You are seriously the best brother ever!” Marcus beamed at Pete. “Major props.” He reached over for a fist bump and then grimaced at the ache in his shoulder.

“Careful,” Pete said, but he was grinning. And when he ruffled Marcus's shaggy blond hair—a gesture that never got any less annoying, no matter how often he did it—Marcus didn't even pull away.

They were gliding above the river now, with Reformer's Island just ahead. On one end of it, something gold glittered in the sun, and Marcus recognized the rounded roof of the Unnaturals stadium. As he imagined all the newly designed mutants getting ready to fight inside of it, Marcus could hardly remember to breathe.

This was going to be the best day of his entire life.