Chapter Text
“Agent Chongqing, you are aware that you and your team are not rescuing anyone, correct?”
Ratthew nods subconsciously, sucking in a breath. “Yes, boss.”
“Then say it.”
His ears flatten as he must force himself to repeat the order.
“We are not rescuing anyone.”
“Good.” The voice on the other end of the line is quiet. Almost bored, dull, before it begins to crackle through the encrypted phone once again. “Remember: Animal Corporation is not your concern. Their employees are not your concern. Their patients are not your concern. You are there to observe, gather intelligence, and leave.”
Ratthew’s right paw tightens around the edge of his chair, left tight on the cheap phone hovering by his ear.
“…And if I find someone who needs help?”
A pause.
“You won’t. You of all animals should know, you just… can’t.”
Ratthew looks down at the photograph on his desk.
A young rat in an employee uniform, pink bow on her left ear, smiling at the camera.
His sister.
Rattina.
He slides the photograph beneath the mission briefing.
“Understood.”
“Make sure Agent Osaka gets accepted as an intern. As for you, your cover is simple; you’re a patient. Keep your head down, and don’t attract attention.”
Ratthew almost laughs.
That would be considerably easier if he weren’t a spy.
“And Chongqing?”
“Yes?”
“Don’t become a hero.”
The line goes dead.
For several seconds, Ratthew remains perfectly still.
Then he reaches for the photograph again.
“I wasn’t planning to,” he whispers. He folds it carefully and slips it inside his suit vest’s pocket.
“I was planning to find my sister.”
——————————
ANIMAL CORPORATE HOSPITAL CENTER
RESTRICTED INPATIENT NEUROLOGICAL REHABILITATION RECORD
PATIENT NAME: Ratthew Sou
PATIENT IDENTIFIER: Patient 412
DATE OF BIRTH: 10/14/1972
MRN: [REDACTED]
ADMISSION DATE: 05/10/1998
ADMISSION CLASSIFICATION: Corporate Benefactor Protocol — Restricted
PRIMARY DIAGNOSIS: Severe Spastic Quadriplegic Cerebral Palsy With Acute Exacerbation of Generalized Spasticity
SECONDARY CONDITIONS: Chronic Neuromuscular Pain; Severe Functional Mobility Impairment; Dysarthria; Fatigue-Associated Motor Dysfunction
CURRENT STATUS: Inpatient / High-Dependency Neurological Rehabilitation
FUNCTIONAL PROGNOSIS: Guarded during acute exacerbation
Ratthew groaned as he looked closely at the page.
“Severe?”
His eyes remained fixed on the first line, as though staring at it long enough might somehow make the words less absurd.
SEVERE SPASTIC QUADRIPLEGIC CEREBRAL PALSY WITH ACUTE EXACERBATION OF GENERALIZED SPASTICITY.
He slowly glanced down at himself. His paws rested loosely against his lap, fingers relaxed, his posture reasonably steady despite the dull ache that had settled along his back from sitting too long. He flexed his right paw experimentally. The familiar tightness pulled through his fingers before easing again.
That part was real. The diagnosis wasn’t.
At least, not entirely.
He knew the frustration of muscles refusing to cooperate and the exhaustion that followed when he pushed himself too far. But this file had taken those truths and inflated them into something almost unrecognizable. He had spastic cerebral palsy, but much milder than on the page that trembled with his paws.
Ratthew’s nose twitched in disgust.
“You have got to be kidding me.”
He turned the page, his expression slowly becoming more incredulous as he read.
PATIENT REQUIRES ASSISTANCE WITH ACTIVITIES OF DAILY LIVING
His ears twitched.
That was the part that bothered him.
Not the diagnosis itself, but everything it required him to pretend. Tomorrow, someone would have to help him dress. Someone would have to assist him with transfers. Someone would ask whether he needed help eating, bathing, reaching for things, moving from one place to another.
Things he could actually do would suddenly become things he was supposedly incapable of doing.
He leaned back in the chair and exhaled through his nose, rubbing his forehead with one paw.
His agency hadn’t merely fabricated a medical condition.
They had fabricated an entire version of him.
The thought made his stomach tighten. Ratthew had spent years learning how to understand his own body: which movements were difficult, when his muscles were beginning to fatigue, when he needed to slow himself down, and when stubbornness was no longer enough to get him through something.
He knew his limitations better than anyone, but now, he was being asked to pretend those limitations were far greater than they actually were.
He continued through the file.
There were therapy assessments, mobility evaluations, physician notes, medication schedules, and carefully worded observations from specialists who did not exist. The attention to detail was almost unsettling. Whoever had constructed the file had anticipated nearly every question the hospital might ask.
COMMUNICATION: Patient demonstrates moderate-to-severe dysarthria. Speech may become increasingly difficult to understand with fatigue.
Ratthew stared at the sentence for several seconds before a dry smile crossed his face.
“Oh, that’s going to be fun.”
His speech was not perfect, but it was functional. He would have to remember to slow himself down, to allow certain words to catch, to let fatigue show in his voice when necessary.
Every little habit could become evidence.
Every moment of forgetfulness could become a mistake.
He flipped another page and stopped when he reached the functional assessment.
MOBILITY: Dependent.
TRANSFER STATUS: Requires assistance.
UPPER EXTREMITY FUNCTION: Significantly impaired.
Ratthew’s fingers tightened around the paper.
For a moment, he could almost hear the agency handler’s voice again.
Keep your head down. Don’t attract attention.
That would have been much easier if his entire mission didn’t require him to notice everything.
He was going to have to watch doctors without appearing observant, listen to employees without appearing interested, remember conversations without looking like he was memorizing them. And all the while, he had to maintain the illusion that he was one of the most dependent patients in the building.
His eyes drifted toward the photograph lying beneath the file.
Rattina’s pink bow was slightly crooked in the picture.
She had always hated when it sat that way.
Ratthew reached for the photograph, his thumb brushing over the corner.
She looked so alive.
That was the first thought that came to him, and he regretted it every single time.
Not beautiful. Not happy.
Alive.
Rattina had always moved differently from him. She could run when he couldn’t. She could climb stairs without having to think about every step. She could dart across a room while Ratthew was still figuring out how to get his body to cooperate.
He had hated how jealous he could become of that.
Not her.
Never her.
Just the ease of it.
There had been times when he watched her disappear around a corner and felt something bitter twist inside him because she could simply go. She didn’t have to calculate whether a distance was too far or whether his muscles would give out halfway there.
She had freedom he had spent years wishing his body would give him.
And now—
Ratthew’s thumb stopped moving.
Now she was gone.
His ears lowered.
All that movement had not saved her. All those stairs she could climb, all those doors she could open, all the places she could go without thinking twice about whether her body would let her, none of it had mattered when someone decided she shouldn’t come home.
Ratthew swallowed.
That was the part he couldn’t reconcile.
Somewhere deep inside him, there had always been an ugly little thought that his disability made him more vulnerable. That if something terrible happened, he would be the one who couldn’t run. The one who couldn’t fight. The one who needed someone else to get him out.
Rattina had never had that problem.
She could run.
And they took her anyway.
His eyes lingered on her smile.
Maybe that was why the photograph hurt more than the file. The file told him to pretend to be helpless.
The photograph reminded him that being able to move had never meant being safe.
Ratthew carefully placed it against his chest before setting it back beneath the folder.
“Where are you?”
The question escaped before he could stop it.
For a moment, he imagined her answering: probably somewhere telling you to stop being dramatic.
His mouth twitched.
That sounded like her.
He wished it were real.
Ratthew turned back to the file.
PATIENT 412.
SEVERE SPASTIC QUADRIPLEGIA.
HIGH-DEPENDENCY REHABILITATION.
GUARDED PROGNOSIS.
A stranger stared back at him from the page, constructed from fragments of the truth and stitched together with fiction.
His sister had been taken from the world despite having every physical freedom he had once envied. And now Ratthew was deliberately surrendering those freedoms to enter the place that had swallowed her.
The irony wasn’t lost on him.
His paw tightened around the folder.
Tomorrow, he would become Patient 412. He would let them believe he couldn’t move. He would let them underestimate him.
But somewhere behind those hospital walls, he would find out what had happened to the sister who could.
His expression hardened.
“I’m not here to rescue anyone,” he whispered, eyes dropping to the photograph one last time.
——————————
The Animal Corporate Hospital Center was larger than Ratthew had expected.
Its exterior had the polished appearance of a place designed to inspire confidence: tall glass windows, clean white walls, and the Animal Corporation’s familiar logo mounted above the entrance in bright metal letters. Inside, however, the illusion began to thin. The reception area smelled of antiseptic and old carpet, with the faint sweetness of something medicinal lingering underneath. Fluorescent lights stretched across the ceiling in long, humming rows, their cold glow reflecting off the waxed floors. Every few seconds, somewhere deeper within the hospital, a machine gave a soft electronic beep. Wheels squeaked across tile, doors opening and shutting, and somewhere, a muffled voice called for a nurse before disappearing behind the walls.
It was busy, yet it did not feel alive.
Ratthew sat quietly in his wheelchair, his hands resting against the armrests as he watched the hospital around him. He had been inside for less than fifteen minutes, and already he had memorized the locations of three security cameras, two stairwells, the main reception desk, and a set of double doors marked AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.
The records department was behind them.
That was where he wanted to go.
Instead, he had been placed in the waiting area while someone processed his admission papers.
He glanced down at the folder in his lap.
PATIENT 412.
He still hated that.
The nurse who had taken him from reception had been pleasant enough, but there had been something rehearsed about her smile. She had asked him the same questions twice despite having the answers directly in front of her. Name. Date of birth. Diagnosis. Mobility requirements. Assistance requirements.
Ratthew had answered exactly as his file instructed.
He hated every second of it.
A cart rolled past him carrying neatly stacked medication trays. Behind it followed a pair of nurses speaking quietly about a patient in the neurological wing. Ratthew caught only fragments of their conversation before they disappeared around a corner.
He looks behind himself to confirm his suspicion of the pair of large doors.
RECORDS.
His eyes lingered on that sign for barely a couple of seconds before a voice, refined yet tired, caused him to stop and turn.
“Looking for something?”
A blue-furred lop bunny stood several feet away, holding a stack of folders beneath one arm and a simple tote bag in the other paw.
Strangely enough, there was a bottle of maple syrup peeking from the bag.
Ratthew blinked.
The animal looked exhausted.
Not ordinary exhausted, either. The kind of exhausted that seemed to have become a permanent feature of his face. His tie was slightly crooked, his shirt sleeves were rolled unevenly, and there were dark circles beneath his eyes. He looked like someone who had spent the last several years losing arguments with paperwork, if they could argue.
His gaze followed Ratthew’s toward the Records sign.
Then back to him.
“No,” Ratthew said, voice flatter than usual.
Seems training to make his state believable was going to be more difficult.
In response, the stranger raised an eyebrow.
“I wasn’t asking you to confess to anything.”
Ratthew narrowed his eyes.
The stranger lifted his round, black glasses.
“I’m Ron.”
He shifted the folders under his arm and extended a paw before letting out a sigh.
“From Accounting. That’s my surname, I work in management.”
Ratthew stared at the paw.
Then at Ron From Accounting.
Then at the maple syrup.
“Management?”
“Yes.”
“You’re carrying syrup.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Ron looked down at it.
There was a long pause before he answered with a subtle shrug. “Long story.”
Ratthew’s ears angled forward.
He knew a suspicious answer when he heard one.
Ron noticed.
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Ask.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were about to.”
Ratthew’s mouth twitched into a smile. Maybe he liked this guy. He was interesting. Maybe, if he was lucky, he would be useful.
Nevertheless, his interest was unfortunate.
Ron withdrew his paw and tucked it back around the folders. “You’re the new inpatient, correct?” His eyes lingered on Ratthew’s face for another moment. “Sorry if this is bad manners, but you look awfully familiar.”
Ratthew paused.
Shit.
He felt the muscles around his jaw tighten before he could stop them. He took a small breath through his nose, then softened his expression into a polite smile that never quite reached his eyes.
“My twin sister,” he said. His voice came out slightly uneven, each word shaped with deliberate care. His speech had always carried the subtle effects of his cerebral palsy: consonants could blur at the edges when he was tired, and certain words took more effort to push out cleanly. Today, he made no attempt to hide it. He slowed his pace and allowed a faint stiffness to linger in his pronunciation, letting the occasional pause suggest greater difficulty than he actually felt.
“She’s… probably who you’re thinking of.”
Ratthew swallowed before continuing.
“Rattina.”
He watched Ron carefully.
“She worked for the Animal Corporation, too.”
“Past tense?”
“It’s… a long story.”
Ron’s expression seemed to darken, understanding the weight behind the phrase.
“So… what records do you work with in management? And what are you doing here?”
“You ask a lot of questions, rodent. Shouldn’t you be trying to recover from your ailment? And to answer your second question, I’ve got chronic migraines.”
“That sounds terrible.”
Ratthew could feel the wheelchair shift slightly to the left.
“Mr. Sou, we’re going to take you to the rehabilitation wing now. Are you finished your conversation with Mr. From Accounting?”
He looked back to meet face to face with a white male fox.
Ron answered for him, “yes. We are finished, Head Nurse. Thank you for your wait.”
Before Ratthew can mention any other word, the nurse wheels turns him from the blue bunny.
“Oh, and Ratthew? Don’t trust everyone just because they’re nice to you.”
The nurse sighed and shook his head before looking at Ratthew. “Ready to go up?”
He could only nod.
“It’s a long way from here, but don’t worry, you’ll be in perfect hands with our professionals.”
A pat on his shoulder sent a shiver down his spine.