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They’d done it. They were out. The dusk air was glorious and everyone drank it like nectar.
“So much space!” DogDay bounced on his toes. “Can you imagine running out here?”
CatNap looked at the darkening sky. “The books did not do this justice.”
Little toys darted here and there, sniffing and looking at whatever they could. Doey kept them corralled but also found himself distracted by the new things around him. Kissy was trying to climb into a tree.
Yin let the GrabPack fall into the dirt. He’d done it. He was out. He lifted his arms to the breeze and felt dizzy with relief. Or maybe his health was in trouble again. He checked his nose.
Blood.
Great. Couldn’t catch a break even now.
“Hey. What’s with the face?”
Javadi gave Santos a side eye. “What face?”
“You look like you’ve been sucking on a lemon and it’s barely noon.”
Javadi sighed and picked herself up from the counter she was leaning on. “I just…. A few years ago I went into class in the morning and got this… feeling. I just knew that something was going to happen. And then later that day my mom got rear-ended and I was left stranded in a bus stop and we spent the night in a hotel.”
“Uh…huh. So you got spidey sense?” Santos’s eyebrows wiggled.
“What?”
The eyebrows went down. “God, you’re uncultured.”
“My point is that I’ve got that weird feeling again. Not like something bad just… memorable?”
“Sure. Well if anything can phase out the Fest or the Fourth then I’m all for it.”
DogDay dodged past the people in the doorway and stepped blinking into the main room with Yin cradled in his arms. “Help! Someone help! He’s bleeding!”
Yin’s nose hadn’t stopped dripping blood. It soaked his shirt and was oozing down his side. His skin was clammy and breathing staggered.
A doctor with greying hair and kind eyes hurried toward them. “What happened?”
Things happened all at once. DogDay tried to focus on talking. Several people had gasped or audibly yelped when he ran in. Now someone had a gurney at his side. He put Yin on it. “He… he hit his head. Several times, really. Knocked out at least twice that I know of. The last time he bled like this Medic said it was because of a brain bleed. H-he’s hurt other places too…”
The people started saying strange things, letters and numbers that made no sense. They were taking Yin away! DogDay followed.
The doctor directed another question at him. “How long has he been bleeding?”
“Um. Couple minutes?”
“Said he hit his head?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“F-falls, I think. He got into fights.”
One of the younger people chuckled. “Furry fight club?”
“What?”
The doctor interrupted. “Forget that. Trauma 1, we could be dealing with an intracranial bleed and CTE.”
DogDay tried to follow. The doctor stopped him at the door. “We’ll take care of him but we need space.”
Just like that, he was shut out.
“What have we got?” Robby looked over the man laid out on the table. He started working on intubation to make sure the patient breathed through the blood pouring from his face. Robby had never heard of a brain bleed draining through the nose but hey, first time for anything.
The other doctors gavel their triage. They needed x-rays, had to see where the blood was.
“He looks like he’s been in a cat fight with actual cats,” someone said.
Robby could see it. The patient’s skin was littered with small cuts along his arms and legs.
He’d been bandaged in various places which they carefully snipped away, going slow in case there was a pressure binding. His left arm was red. “We got burns. Looks like friction down the forearm, and something else up to the shoulder, maybe electrical?”
Weird. Maybe the guy in the DogDay suit knew how that happened.
A bandage on his side covered a deep laceration. The bandage over his neck revealed a bruise and a clear rope burn. Had this guy tried to hang himself? Had someone tried to lynch him? Robby blinked hard. Focus on triage. Wonder about cause later.
The patient’s chest and back were bruised nearly from collarbone to navel. Maybe he was pinned under something? Hit the ground too hard? He might have a fractured rib.
“Got some stitching. Looks pretty clean but it’s fabric thread, definitely done at home.”
“These long bruises are weird.” Santos pointed them out and held her hands up as if gauging something. “Definitely weird.”
“Was this guy put through a rock tumbler?”
Robby spoke up. “We can speculate later, let’s focus on treatment.”
The guy in the DogDay suit paced. Whittaker watched, wondering if he should approach. Eventually he worked up the nerve to do so. “Uhm, DogDay?”
The mascot in question instantly turned, his white disks of eyes falling on the young doctor. “Y-yes? You know me?”
Keep it together, Whittaker, he begged his brain. It didn’t stop the stupid grin. “Yeah! I’m a big fan! My parents loved the Smiling Critters when they were kids and my mom collected all the plushies when she was younger, e-even the CatNap one before it got recalled! She let me play with the toys too, but DogDay was always my favorite. Well, him and CatNap both, really. Though I technically wasn’t supposed to play with the CatNap toy even though the scent sprayer dried up a long time ago.” Now would be a good time to stop talking. “They just kinda fit together, y’know? Sun and moon? To be fair, I always figured DogDay and Bobby Bearhug would end up as an item.” Oh god please stop, where am I even going with this?? “Uh, I guess I wanted to ask where you came from? Like— I mean— the costume. The toys are like forty years old and I didn’t think anyone nowadays who’s younger than my parents would even recognize you.”
Whittaker exhaled, finally slamming the brakes on whatever the hell kind of ramble he just hurled at this clearly anxious cosplayer. Yet at some point during said ramble, DogDay had seemed to relax. His shoulders were down and his ears were more forward. He knelt down to be more at eye level though Whittaker still had to look up a little. “I’m glad you and your parents had such fun!” DogDay said with remarkable sincerity. Even his tail wagged. Was that possible for a mascot suit?
Nevertheless, it gave Whittaker permission to relax as well. He didn’t even realize DogDay hadn’t answered his question. “Y-yeah, I’m glad too. After Playtime had its whole scandal I was wondering if I’d ever see anything Smiling Critters-related again. And now there’s a whole mascot at my work!”
DogDay’s head tilted. “Scandal?”
“Y-yeah, you…” Whittaker squinted. “Do you not know?”
“Not fully, no. Do tell.”
Was that vanilla he was smelling? “Well, a whole bunch of workers ‘supposedly’ died in some kind of accident. No one could decide if it was an explosion, some kind of collapse, a gas leak, or whatever, but a lot of people got really hurt. Enough so that Playtime apparently put whatever was left of its money into dodging lawsuits and locking up its factory. Honestly a lot of it is speculation, but from what I’ve read, it’s all somewhat possible.”
“What about the children in the orphanage?”
Whittaker shrugged. “Went missing. No one ever found them. There’s so many missing persons cases that tie back to Playtime somehow. S-supposedly, I mean. You should see some of the theories around that place, things that would make Frankenstein shudder.” He tried to laugh it off, but the intensity of the look DogDay was giving him made the mirth die in this throat.
“So there’s… nothing concrete? No one really knows what happened?”
Whittaker’s brain raised a little flag. “No. At least nothing official. Playtime just kind of… silently put itself away.”
That intense gaze looked elsewhere. “They likely had their reasons to do so…”
Did the room get warm or was that the awkwardness rising again? “Uhuh. Sssssso… I-I should probably get back to—”
“No, please, I’m sorry, you… you wanted to see me, not get lost in old gossip.”
Should he? He could. He really wanted to. “Can I get your autograph?”
DogDay blinked at him. Then he wheezed so hard he had to lean over. The awkwardness turned to full embarrassment. Whittaker wished the floor would open up. He glanced around and caught one of the nurse’s eyes but she looked away as if to say you dug yourself that grave, kid; now lie in it.
DogDay lifted his hand, having recovered a little. “Sorry, I—hahah!—it’s been so long since someone has asked me that. I kind of forgot how normal that used to be.” He took a deep breath and looked fondly at Whittaker. “I’d love to give you an autograph. Just no pictures.”
Whittaker’s heart swelled. “O-of course! Uh…” he fumbled to get his notebook out of his pocket and flipped to a blank page. “Here.”
DogDay pinched the pen between two large digits (how did those big gloves have such fine motor control?) and carefully wrote his name across the little paper. He even added a little sun and moon doodle. “For me and my brother.”
Whittaker gasped. “You are brothers?! I freaking knew it! I always knew!”
DogDay laughed and Whittaker smelled more vanilla.
DogDay’s leg bounced as the doctor sat across from him. The doctor—Robby, he said his name was—started listing things they found were wrong with the angel. Cuts, burns, bruises, broken bones, general fatigue, and dehydration. Most concerningly of all was the head trauma.
DogDay felt detached from the conversation.
How long ago was he knocked unconscious? The first time, maybe three days ago. Time was a bit of a blur.
How many times was he knocked out or otherwise hit in the head? Thrice, at least.
Has he shown any unusual forgetfulness, spacing out, or trouble moving? He spaced out badly once. His hands have been shaking ever since he punched a… window.
The doctor nodded gravely. They took Yin to get scans of his head and brain. He’d likely need surgery if there’s bleeding in his skull.
Multiple concussion syndrome. The proper term was chronic traumatic encephalopathy or CTE. When someone was hit in the head a lot it kills nerve cells in the brain which can lead to complications in the future. Worst case scenario, Yin may develop memory problems, behavioral or emotional dysregulations, and motor degradation.
Before DogDay could start spiraling, the doctor assured him that the worst case was just that, the worst. Not the most likely. Regardless, he would need some help while he healed. DogDay affirmed he would be there to help Yin no matter what.
Dr. Robby smiled and called him a good friend. The complement felt nice.
“Can you tell me anything about what caused all this? What happened to him?”
DogDay stared. There was the big question. Logically he knew it would help the doctors if they knew the method of injury. But he also knew that never in a million years would they believe or begin to comprehend what actually happened. And if they found out what he actually was….
No, he couldn’t risk that. He hugged himself and let his gaze drop to the floor.
The doctor shifted a little. “Is… what happened…. Is it possible it would happen again? Are you safe now?”
DogDay wouldn’t feel safe until he was far away from these doctors and this hospital. He wouldn’t feel safe until he and his brother and his friends were tucked into Yin’s home. But as for what hurt them in the factory, that was far behind them.
He nodded.
The doctor set his elbows on his knees, leaning forward and lowering his voice. “Is there someone you want to talk to about this? Anyone, not just me? Because I can tell both of you have been through something very bad and I know how… confusing, and…” he waved his hand near his head, “it messes with you.”
DogDay glanced up. The doctor’s eyes were steady, sincere, and haunted. DogDay recognized the expression. He’d seen it in the eyes of the toys and the eyes of the angel.
“We do have people who are better at this than me,” the doctor continued with a slight smile, “people who can help you work through this or connect you with resources. It doesn’t have to be you and your friend on your own.”
DogDay looked at his hands. “... He’ll be okay?”
The doctor inhaled slowly. “Yeah. He’ll survive this. He’ll have a long road ahead of him, but from what we can tell he’s going to be okay.”
“Dr. Robby? Can I show you something?” Santos showed him her phone. It had a drawn picture of a blank mannequin with a handful of red lines drawn across it. “These lines are bruises on our nosebleed guy.”
Robby’s brow knit. “He’s bruised all over, what do these ones have to do with anything?”
“Don’t they look like a grip pattern?”
“A what?”
Santos shifted on her feet and huffed. “Hold up your hands, left over your right.” She waited for Robby to do so. “Now make your fingers form those lines.” Again, she waited. “Four longer lines and a fifth shorter one. These are finger marks.”
Robby studied his posed fingers and compared them to the mapped lines. He then mentally compared scale. “If these are finger lines, whatever made them would have needed hands that went clear around a human body—he would have been doll-sized compared to this.” He pushed Santos’s phone down. “I understand you’re looking for patterns and I applaud that you’re thinking outside the box, but that box does have to stay within the realm of physical reality.”
He turned to leave but Santos grabbed his sleeve. “That guy in the suit isn’t!” she hissed.
Robby’s eyes instantly glanced toward the DogDay guy combing through the food cart for a sandwich.
“You can tell his anatomy is off, right? And since when were fursuits advanced enough to allow fine motor control over a tail?”
“Santos—”
She wouldn’t let go of him. “His limbs are so long, he could walk on all fours easily! Even his ears move according to where sounds are coming from, and those glowing eyes certainly aren’t LEDs. That and there can’t be much—if any—padding between his body and the ‘suit’ or else we wouldn’t be able to see him breathe, much less see ribs that correctly slide under the skin!”
Robby put his hands on Santos’s shoulders to silence her. He’d noticed. His brain had instantly noticed as soon as he saw the strange suit. He knew down to his bones that the suit wasn’t a suit, but the alternative was above his pay grade and far beyond his sanity. “It’s not our job to learn every little secret about our patients. Our job is to treat our patients, heal them, and send them on their way hoping we never have to see them again.”
“But—”
“That person is not a monster, he’s not a freak, he’s someone’s worried friend. Worried enough that he’d come here despite everything he may or may not be.”
Yin didn’t want to wake up. It wasn’t because he was in pain this time. Quite the opposite in fact. He felt great. He didn’t want it to end, was all. If he opened his eyes, the pain might come back. He might be back in the factory. Escaping might have been a dream. He didn’t want to wake up from that.
He heard soft beeps. They matched with the sound of his heart. Lights shone on the other side of his eyelids. He opened one. The light was bright. The beige pattern he saw was blurry and meaningless. He looked down. White blanket, white wrappings, a clear tube in each arm, a black box on his finger….
Yin opened his eyes and lifted his head. The room swam but not painfully. He laid back down and took stock while the room settled down.
Small room. Hospital bed? A lot of bandages on his arms and over both hands. A tube in each arm dripping half-empty fluid bags into his body. A monitor on his finger with numbers on it. The light was bright.
A woman entered the little space and Yin startled. The woman startled too but kept composure, lifting her palms and keeping her voice low. “Woah, easy. It’s okay, sir, you’re safe. You’re in a hospital. I’m Doctor Collins.”
Yin stared. The woman looked normal. Was this a trick? A last hallucination brought on by poppy gas and the Prototype’s mimicry? He reached out to her, looking at and gesturing to her hand, wanting her to give it to him.
She hesitated but slowly put her hand in his.
Yin scrutinized her hand. Five fingers. Skin. Warm, brown skin, with a pulse underneath. A person. A person. A real, flesh and blood human!
He looked into her eyes. His own welled with tears.
Santos led DogDay into the private room and closed the door. DogDay was holding his arm nervously. “Is everything okay? Did something go wrong with my friend?”
Santos shook her head. “No, no, he’s fine. Surgery went well, he’ll just have to recover for a bit.”
“Oh, good.”
“I actually wanted to address a different problem.”
DogDay’s ribs felt like they started closing in on his lungs. “Oh?”
“Yeah, so, the thing is, when you go to medical school and learn about how humans work on the inside you start to realize that there’s certain… specificities about how humans are shaped. How long bones are, which organs go where, stuff like that. What doesn’t happen in normal humans, is limbs long enough to walk on all fours, or sensation of touch in long fluffy ears, or twitch muscle in a tail.”
“It’s—”
“Now, I could chalk most of that up to really good fursuit with robotics that frankly belong to a billionaire more than a cosplayer. But then how do I rationalize fingers that reach your knees? Or that concave mouth that isn’t big enough for a human skull?
“By all accounts, you are not wearing a suit, but I can’t make my mind accept that you might be—”
“I might be the suit itself?” DogDay finished for her. He was standing straight, looking at her dead on.
Santos’s jaw clacked shut. The tension in the air shifted and she suddenly felt like she was on the wrong end of a knife.
“What would you do, if you were right?” DogDay asked, his voice several pitches lower. “What if you lower this zipper and you don’t see a human who can crawl out of this skin? What if all you see is blood and bone and a dead man’s beating heart? What would you do?” DogDay cocked his head and stepped closer as he continued talking.
“People who’re called ‘Doctor’ take a certain oath to do no harm. Yet, I’ve been done much harm by those who call themselves ‘Doctor’. I wonder if you think I would then trust you, Doctor, by confirming anything you assume.
“Assume—just assume—that I am the worst of what you think I am. What would you do? Would you take me apart, stitch by stitch, burning and cutting and tearing at me until you find out how many people’s pieces are inside me? Maybe you’ll decide my friend isn’t human either and try to find cotton in his bones.
“Would you cause me harm all over again? When I’ve already risked everything Angel nearly died for?”
Santos’s back was against the wall. All she could see now were white pupils and a gaping maw. She smelled something putrid on the breath that slid across her face.
“What would you do?”
The question came via a whisper. A dare. A threat. There might be teeth in that maw. There might be claws in those hands. That patient was human, but this thing….
DogDay backed up and stood straight again. “I don’t want to hurt anyone. But I can. I don’t want anyone to know what I am, for my sake and yours. Believe what you want, doctor. My only concern is Ang— is Yin’s safety.” He went to the door. “I’m gonna go find more food.”
Collins hurried over to the charge nurse desk. “Robby? Our Trauma 1 guy is conscious and you’re the only person I know who knows ASL.”
Robby’s head cocked. “He’s deaf?”
“No, mute.” Collins walked with him. “It might be selective mutism, he’s made sounds but no words.”
“Do we have that fancy tablet available?”
“I sent someone to find it but this guy is eager for someone to understand him.”
“His friend?”
“Doesn’t know ASL.”
“Ah. How’s he signing when his hands are…?”
Collins smiled and shrugged. “Uh… guess we’ll see if any of it is understandable.”
Yin was exhausted. Trying to sign properly when both hands were bandaged and both arms were stuck with IVs was a task in and of itself; answering questions he neither wanted to answer nor knew how to answer was taxing in a way the whole factory wasn’t. DogDay was with him, which helped his nerves at least.
The kind doctor with crow’s feet was able to translate most of Yin’s signs. The social worker asked most of the questions, even if Yin didn’t answer many of them.
Part of him wanted to tell everything. He wanted everyone to know that all those cold cases and missing kids and rumors of man-eating monsters were true. He wanted to say it was all over now.
But to what end? Sure, some of the kids were technically still alive. Yes, the monsters were dead (or tamed) and their master was gone for good. Finally, in some way, the victims were put to rest. But what then? How else were the kids supposed to stay safe if not hidden from others who might repeat the factory’s mistakes? How could he even explain how the toys are alive without recounting the nightmare all over again?
He explained with pieces of truth. He said he was an urban explorer and went to a building his old company used to own. He fell into an extensive basement level without an easy way out. There he found some people and animals, including DogDay, who was wearing the suit because it was all he had for clothing at the time. He had trouble with old machinery and feral creatures and other hazardous conditions, hence all the injuries.
The doctor and the social worker didn’t believe him; Yin could tell just by their expressions. But he would rather they disbelieve digestible lies than try to stomach horrible truths.
The social worker then asked one last question. “Are you and your friend safe?”
Yin didn’t look at DogDay even though he could see him glance over. Yin hesitated just for a moment. He was safe from the factory, safe from its depths and its monsters, but he was also bringing a handful of the horrors home with him and was truthfully underprepared. He knew how dangerous even one of those toys could be and he’d be living with nearly a dozen of them.
But right this moment? In a real hospital with real people and a friend by his side? Yin nodded his hand. Yes. He was safe.
“He’s lying,” Kiara said to Robby as soon as they got to a quieter corner. Robby had reached the same conclusion. He rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah, well we can’t really force him to say anything.”
“Then what’s your diagnosis, Doctor?” Kiara’s brow was bent upward. “What do you think happened to him to cause all those injuries? And that friend of his—.”
Robby hung his head and lifted his hands. “Don’t bring that up, I don’t even want to try to wrap my head around—.” He clenched his fists. “If half of what I think happened to that guy did happen, i-if half of what Santos believes is true, then that guy’s been through some kind of hell and—again—I do not want to comprehend that possibility.” A derisive laugh forced its way through his teeth. “Otherwise I’d have to contend with the fact that the guy was manhandled by something with hands three times his size, and that’s before I acknowledge that the other guy isn’t actually wearing a suit.”
Kiara’s expression darkened and fell. She studied a spot on the wall for a moment. “He’s lying for a reason,” she asserted. “He likely thinks he’s protecting himself. Or us.”
“Why not just let him?” Robby crossed his arms and shrugged. “If he took care of it and came out looking like that, maybe it’s best we don’t know what he took care of.”
Kiara didn’t look convinced. Robby however didn’t want to linger on it. “Let’s just… keep the rumors to a minimum and focus on the medicine.”
“... Right.”
DogDay held the angel’s hand as he slept. DogDay would have taken the nurse’s offer to find an empty room to sleep in but he was too worried and restless to think of sleeping. He couldn’t relax in a place like this, not when he was surrounded by lights and antiseptics and so, so many doctors. No matter how many times he told himself these doctors were here to help and they weren’t going to take Yin away to cut him apart and stuff his pieces into a polyester husk, he still startled at the sight of those scrubs and coats.
But the angel trusted them. And he’d told DogDay to trust them too. At least until they could leave. He didn’t know where his brother or friends were. Hopefully they found some place nearby to hide.
For now, his place was here. He had to stay and keep watch. The angel was even more covered in white bandages. A patch on his head had been shaved and covered with a thick bandage. The doctors had needed to drill into his skull and drain the blood that had built up both around his brain and under his skin.
Izzy’s stitching had been praised for its neatness, but had to be replaced with actual stitches and not just fabric thread. DogDay had a feeling she’d be proud her work was acknowledged.
There were ointments for the burns and bruises, and antiseptics for the scratches. The cut across Yin’s ribs needed more help than DogDay thought. CatNap had indeed gouged him to the bone and the wound was starting to fester despite DogDay’s treatments. The infection wasn’t at all bad, though; nothing a shot of antibiotics couldn’t help. DogDay decided not to tell CatNap about any of that.
DogDay studied the hand he held. Both of Yin’s hands were wrapped from the fingertips onward so not even his nails were showing. His hands had shaken when he signed to the doctor. He had cried about it when the doctor left. His hands were so important. What if they shook forever now? What if he couldn’t sign or paint anymore?
He shook the thoughts away. They wouldn’t help the angel heal.
He would heal. They both would heal. They all would heal. It would take time and likely more tears, but they wouldn’t be alone.
The angel had freed them.