Hyrees dropped to his stomach and wrapped his paws around his face. “Oh tahg. Oh tahg, what was I thinking?”
“Calm down, Hyrees. We’ll get through this. It may not be okay, but we can deal with it. I know you can deal with it, because you are a strong, capable tomcat, and you will make it through this.”
Hyrees didn’t reply. He remained on the ground, shivering and mewing little whimpers. Cloud groomed the top of his head and whispered comforts.
‘This was a lot more than a passing thought, and you know it, Hyrees. I guess I’m going to have to watch out for you for a while. Well, I can do that for you. I’m a border guard and advisor. It’s part of my job.’
At long last, Hyrees sat back up. “Please d-don’t make me go back to the Glade yet.”
“I’m not going to.”
He coughed up a lump of mucus. “Ugh. Th-thank you, sir.”
Cloud nuzzled his side. “Don’t get yourself so worked up.”
Hyrees nodded.
‘Should I ask him? Is it too soon?’ He sighed. ‘It’s not like we have anything else to talk about or do.’
“You know, until Ember gets back, I’m going to need someone to patrol with me. The border won’t guard itself. If you like, we could take a walk to the ravine to calm down, and perhaps think of some nicer things than jumping off of cliffs. Maybe see how well we work together. If not, we could just sit here and admire the view. For real this time.”
“But sir, I’m going blind.”
“You’d only be doing it for a little while. Just until you finished your clayworking apprenticeship. It’d be nice to have some company for the time being.”
His ears perked up. “You mean it?”
Cloud forced a smile. “Every word.”
Hyrees drew a deep breath. “Just until Ember comes back.”
Cloud nodded. “Just until Ember comes back,” he echoed.
‘If she ever does.’
Chapter 8
Ember
[Thai 3.1_boot sequence initiated]
[boot sequence successful]
[autotest results: system is stable]
[network setup required]
‘Huh?’ Ember thought. ‘What was that? Who’s there? Anyone else here? Inside my head? Hello? No?’
The words lingered in her subconscious, then faded. She wondered if she’d imagined the little voice and symbols. She could bring them back with her memory if she concentrated enough, but they looked and sounded like passing muses.
Beyond the confines of her head, she heard something. No, she heard multiple somethings: the soft, distant murmur of voices she didn’t recognize, clanks, thumps, and a faint rush of air. It was warm air with a burnt smell that mixed with the scents of urine, scat, and something strong and bitter. She couldn’t ignore it, or tune it out, but she could listen, and let the strange new ambience welcome her.
Blue and yellow appeared. The colors formed little dots and swarmed around her mind. Nothing hurt, and there was nothing to be alarmed about, but a sense of dread came with them. Beyond the dots lay a backdrop of black. Tiny stars of indigo purple joined the jumble of color and sense. She contorted it all into a quad-toned picture of the Glade. The image morphed into one of full-color, which she then placed her family in.
Something barked. A canine of some kind. She opened her eyes enough to get a blurry line of white—everything was white.
‘Bright! Bright! Bright! Ow.’
She closed her eyes again.
‘What was that thing? Am I—I don’t think I’m in the Glade. Doesn’t smell like the Glade. It smells like . . . I don’t even know what, but it’s burning my nose. So if you aren’t there, where are you, Ember? Are you dead? Unlikely. You wouldn’t be this tired if you were dead. And I don’t think there would be any coyotes, or wolves, or anything like that nearby. Or, at least, I certainly hope not. If that’s the case, though, can I go back to living? This is mildly terrifying.’
“HELP! Let me out,” a voice called.
Her eyes snapped open. Her replica of the Glade exploded into solid yellow. She blinked furiously until her eyes adjusted to the brightness, then stared at the alien scene in front of her. It was so unlike anything she’d imagined, all of her mind colors disappeared.
Directly in front her, a clear panel with paw-sized holes in it separated her from the outside world. Beyond it, several more metallic dens sat in two horizontal rows against a wall. Some of the dens contained other cats, but these cats all looked tiny and out of proportion, even for young cats. Their legs were too thin, their tails were too short, their heads were too narrow, and their paws were too stubby. None of them had oily fur or leaf debris in their pelts. A few of them had coats so short they wouldn’t last a day in the snow.
Something clicked in the back of her hazy mind and sent bright green flaring through her subconscious. These weren’t even her own kind; they were her less-developed relatives: domestic cats. The humans had her, and she was at their mercy.
‘Oh no. Oh no, oh no, oh no. Am I dreaming? Please, please, please be dreaming.’ She tried to lift her head. Pain shot up and down her spine, giving her a headache. A quiet mew escaped her throat. ‘I’m not dreaming. That hurts. Why am I here? They must be so angry at us for escaping. What are they going to do to me? They’re going to punish me, and experiment on me, and hurt me, and I’m going to die, and—oh tahg, what did they do to him?’
The cat across from her snapped his head in her direction. He was the fattest creature she’d ever seen, so obese he looked more like a lump of clay with legs than a living thing.
“Who are you?” he asked. “Can you get me out of here? I need to get outta here. Help!”
Ember’s eyes watered as the pain faded. ‘He needs help escaping? That means I really am stuck here. They really do have me, and I really am going to die.’
“Please! Please help me,” the fat cat said.
“I can’t . . . help you,” she replied. The words came out so raspy and slurred, she didn’t recognize her own voice. Each meow made the back of her head ache even more. “Where . . . are . . . we?”
“Don’t know. Don’t know. Gotta get out!”
‘Oh, I really need water. I need to get up. I need to get away from here before the humans come back, but I can’t. I can’t move.’
She stuck her tongue out and bit down on the tip. It drew away some of the pain from her back, but not enough to get comfortable. Ember mewed a dull, barely audible note to herself in an attempt to keep herself calm. The tone raised and lowered, loosely following a series of two-dimensional mountains and valleys in her head. With each thump, or meow, or bark, the tune changed. Like the creek, it flowed with the landscape and never repeated itself.
“Oh, hey, the new cat’s finally awake. And for real, this time,” a voice said.
Ember’s ears perked up. Her eyes searched the cubes in front of her, but none of the domestic cats visible were the speaker.
The overweight cat backed into a corner. “Ohhh, not him!”
A big, fluffy face popped in front of her. Ember jerked her head back. She squeaked in surprise, then moaned in agony. Her eyes watered from the sudden surge of pain.
“Don’t . . . do that,” she whispered. “What do you mean ‘awake for real’?”
The cat, a brown and white tabby, smiled. His paws were latched onto the holes in the clear panel. The piece of blue metal dangling from his neck clinked against her enclosure. “Sorry,” he said. “Didn’t mean to scare you. Last night you started yowling about how much you miss the leaves, or something like that, but I don’t think you were actually awake. Those painkillers are pretty strong, huh? Anyway, I’m Yegor, the Center’s resident feline therapist. You are?”
The purple stars came back, along with flashes of silver. Some of his words didn’t sound like Felid. “Ember. What happened?”
“You got hit, remember? And you almost died. I honestly didn’t think you were going to make it, but here you are, all aliv
e and—whoopsie!”
His claws slipped, and he fell back to the ground. Four soft thuds indicated he’d more or less landed on his paws. Ember snorted. He’d flopped back so casually, as if he’d done it a hundred times a day. She imagined him jumping in front of the other cats at random. No wonder they didn’t like him.
“Hit?” she asked. “What does . . . oh.”
A cold, hard lump settled in her stomach. Every muscle in her body tightened at once. Her heartbeat echoed in her ears. Breathing. She needed to breathe. She couldn’t breathe. ‘I killed her. Oh tahg, I killed her, didn’t I? And, oh, Commander Aspen is dead too. Oh, tahg, the ambush! Are they all dead? What if they all died? Is everyone gone? And what if they’re not? There’s gonna be a war.’
A battle played out in her head. Every last Westerner fought hard, but Jade and her forces kept coming. One by one, everyone she knew got picked off, or left to suffer with fatal wounds. Those closest to her suffered the most, and all she could do was watch, helpless, stupid, cowardly. An overgrown kitten—like everyone always said when they thought she couldn’t hear.
She shuddered. ‘But I really did kill her, didn’t I? She’s dead, and it’s all my fault. I lost control and killed her. That wasn’t supposed to happen. How did this happen?’
“Ember? Are you still there?” Yegor asked, momentarily dragging her away from the violence of her own thoughts.
She ignored him.
‘I have to go back. Unless this is a dream. Please let this be a dream. A really, really bad dream with a lot of very real-feeling pain. Go away, please, go away! Let me wake up in the tree; let everything be okay.’
Loud, slow pawsteps tapped against the ground. Ember flicked back her ears. Even they hurt to move. She clenched her jaw more tightly to keep her teeth from chattering. A new scent entered the chamber, or rather, a stronger version of a scent already present. She shuddered all over.
“You aren’t tormenting our patient, are you, Yegor?”
The voice spoke in Felid, but the voice itself wasn’t feline.
“No, no, I was just performing my therapist duties,” Yegor replied. “All is fine.”
She shivered harder, closed her eyes, and rested her head on the den’s floor. ‘Play dead, play dead, play dead.’
“I see. How about you step out and tell Miss Castell she can come in?”
“She’s here?” Yegor mewed.
“Just got here. I told her our special patient might wake up today.”
Before the new voice even finished speaking, Yegor’s pawsteps were fading.
When they disappeared altogether, Ember closed her eyes tighter. ‘I’m dead. I’m dead. I’m dead. Please think I’m dead.’
“Don’t be scared,” the voice said.
A tiny whimper escaped her throat as the speaker’s footsteps drew closer. She opened her eyes. A creature looked back at her, taller than a stag and standing on two slender legs. Flappy things the color of pain draped his body. His furless skin was the tone of wet sand, and his undersized eyes were almost black. The patch of fur covering the top and back of his head was also black.
He closed his eyes slowly and tilted his head away, a gesture she’d learned to be non-threatening. “Ember, was it?” he asked. “I’m Doctor Hye-sung Sagong. You can call me Hye. Welcome to the National Center of Veterinary Science and Animal Research. N-C-V-S-A-R for short. Or, more simply put, ‘the Center.’ ”
Ember blinked a few times. Each time she reopened her eyes, she expected him to disappear, but he didn’t. Her vision lost focus for a moment, so she blinked again to bring it back.
Ember swallowed hard. “I don’t . . . know what that means.”
Her tail thrashed, as if it wanted to detach itself and wiggle away like the tail of a desperate lizard. Part of it felt cold against the metal of her den.
“I know,” he replied. “Most of it’s in my language, because Felid, not surprisingly, doesn’t have the right words. Basically, all it means is this is a place where people help creatures of other species. In other words, you’re safe here.”
“Why am I here?” she asked. “I sh- . . . should’ve died. I think. I don’t understand. W-what did you do?”
His lined brows raised. He opened his mouth, then closed it. Ember bit her tongue again, ignoring the taste of blood coating her mouth.
‘Not supposed to bite yourself. Not important right now.’
He lifted an elongated paw, a hand, to his chin. “You know, I kind of expected, given your size and features, that you were an appala, but . . . hmm.”
Another human entered the room, speaking in some strange human language. ‘Appala,’ the word he’d used to describe her, came up again. She leaned her head forward as gradually as she could. It still hurt, but not as much as before, and it didn’t add to her headache.
The second human also had black hair, but unlike Hye’s lighter tone, her skin was the same shade of brown as Ember’s fur. The flappy things on her were less flappy, and made of two different colors: red on her top half, and grey for the rest. Two black rectangles framed her eyes.
Ember lowered her chin to rest once again between her paws. Her head felt heavy. Out the edges of her peripheral vision she noticed the tips of her toes. Both sides were dark, instead of just one. And discolored. She swallowed hard, then moved them closer. Her legs hissed. Her heart sank to her stomach. Both of her paws were furless and segmented, with a dark grey coating on each piece resembling cooked skin. She moved the toes on one of her forepaws, each one in turn, creating a little toe wave. A series of whirs followed the motions.
“GA-AAAAAH!” Ember shrieked.
She jumped into a stand, hyperventilating, then yowled again. Her head and torso throbbed. A sharp ringing filled her ears, clogging her senses. She closed her eyes and bit the tip of her tongue harder.
‘Stop! Stop! Stop! Stop!’
The word repeated itself, echoing for what felt like an eternity.
“My gosh, cat! Calm down. You’re okay,” Hye said. “Look, calm down, and lay down, and we’ll tell you what’s going on. Ember? Ember, hey! Listen to me. You’ve got to calm down. You’ll hurt yourself if you don’t.”
His voice was so muffled and distant she almost didn’t hear it.
The second human said something, but she couldn’t make it out at all. Her eyes watered. Her ears went numb. Grey swirled around her head, snuffing out any additional verbal thoughts before they could form. Only a few patches of yellow escaped the fog. Somewhere behind it all, her mind formed an image of a sleek, cat-like contraption with glowing eyes. She closed her eyes more tightly and clenched her teeth as hard as she could.
These humans, they’d turned her into a machine. She wasn’t even real anymore, or, at least, her legs weren’t. She didn’t know about the rest of herself, and she didn’t know if she wanted to.
There was a faint click. Something pulled at her legs. Her front end lowered with another ear-grating whir. Her back end lowered too as her hind legs were bent by someone stronger than her. The voice spoke again, but she couldn’t hear what it said, or even if it was speaking Felid. Everything still hurt. Her jaw trembled.
“Take it easy, Ember,” Hye said. His voice was so close, it almost sounded like it was coming from inside her own head. “Calm down. I’ll explain everything.”
But she couldn’t calm down. Not now, not with this. Not with Tainu murdered by claws she no longer controlled. Not with a human telling her to be calm in her own language. She opened her eyes. A familiar darkness crept along the edges of her vision. She tried to focus on breathing.
‘Stop thinking about it. Stop! Don’t pass out. Not now. Oh tahg, what did they do? What am I?’
Hye held his hands up, as if their presence might somehow comfort her. “It’s going to be okay. I promise.”
Yegor’s scent re-entered the chamber. “Treats?” he asked.
The second human replied in her own language.
“Oh, sorry,” Yegor said.
Some kind of canine barked. Another replied. Things clicked and thudded from everywhere. Voices, terrified meows, human laughter, and a screeching series of clangs as countless objects fell to the ground—the noises attacked her. Ringing, her ears were ringing.
“First, could you tell me if anything still hurts?” Hye asked. “I may need to get Michelle here to run a diagnostic on you to make sure everything is still working properly.”
She bared her teeth and growled. “D-don’t touch me! W-w-what did you d-do?”
Hye and the other human, Michelle, exchanged a glance. Michelle spoke something in her own language. Hye ran a hand through his fur, sighed, then replied. Michelle walked away. Ember’s ears perked up when she returned carrying a flat, shiny thing. Michelle held it up for her to see. Ember leaned closer, trying to make sense of the image. It took a moment for her to realize it was her own reflection.
Pain forgotten, she stared at herself in shock. All four of her legs were coated in the blackish-grey ‘skin.’ The material extended all the way up to her shoulders and hips, where it joined again with her real skin. One of her ears was cut off almost entirely. She moved her tail closer to see its reflection, and felt sick all over again. The white-furred tip was gone, along with a third of the rest of it. Part of what remained was almost furless. Much of her torso was also furless.
The grey fog lifted. ‘That’s me. This is what I am now? No. No, no, no.’
Michelle pulled back the reflective thing, but Ember kept staring. Her eyes widened as the darkness came back. The noises around her deadened to a muffled growl.
‘Ohhh, I don’t feel good.’
Hye crouched closer to her. His lips moved, but she couldn’t comprehend the garbled noises that came out. Ember lifted her head to look at him. These two creatures—these humans, of all things—had taken the time to learn her language, make these machines, and both save and ruin her life. Nothing made sense anymore. The greens and yellows of fear and shock faded. All that remained was a shimmery, surreal turquoise.
Wildcat Page 14
