Chapter Text
Content notes: violence, blood, body horror, voice mimicry, psychological horror, abduction, restraint, and coercive recruitment.
The streetlights were going out behind them.
Intern counted three before they stopped looking. The fourth died with a dry electrical click, and the darkness advanced another stretch of pavement.
They ran harder.
A delivery driver shouted when they stumbled into the road. Headlights washed their yellow-tan fur white. Intern threw up a paw in apology without slowing, their long ears flattened against their back, and plunged between two shuttered shops.
They had noticed the cat outside the late-night grocery store.
Then again at the crossing.
Then in the reflection of a window, standing behind them when they were certain the pavement had been empty a moment before.
Perhaps they should have stayed beneath the lights. Perhaps they should have approached the driver. But what would they have said? Please help me. Someone has noticed what I am.
Their shoe struck a puddle. For an instant, the reflected rabbit beneath their feet took another step after they had stopped.
Intern wrenched their gaze away.
Not now.
They turned left past an overflowing bin, squeezed between a fire escape and the wall, and found the end of the alley.
Brick rose beyond their reach. The windows above it were dark. There was no gate, no ladder, no narrow opening their much-too-large body could squeeze through.
“No.”
They pressed both paws against the wall, as though pressure might reveal a door. Their breath came in painful little catches. One knuckle had split somewhere during the run; blood darkened the fur without them remembering the injury.
Behind them, water dripped from a gutter.
Then something interrupted the light.
A shadow climbed the building ahead of them, shoulders spreading across the stained brickwork, pointed ears reaching toward the windows. Its head tilted.
Intern turned slowly.
A small black cat stood at the mouth of the alley.
He should not have been frightening. Intern was tall enough to look over him without trying. They could probably have lifted him with both paws. His coat was damp at the hem, and one cuff sat slightly higher than the other.
Then they met his eyes.
Gold, steady, watching them finish the thought.
“Poor choice,” he said.
Intern drew a sharp breath. “W-what do you want?”
“Nothing.” His mouth curved. “Just wondering—how could an anomaly hide in plain sight without us knowing?”
Their paws went cold.
“W-what?”
He glanced at the narrow strip of pavement beside them.
Intern looked down before they could stop themself.
Their shadow had lifted its head.
When they looked back, the cat was gone.
A weight touched their shoulders. Gloved fingers caught their collar and drew them into a startled bend; warm breath brushed the base of one long ear.
“Gotcha.”
He dropped soundlessly beside them.
Intern recoiled, striking the wall hard enough to rattle the pipe fixed against it. They hadn’t heard him approach. They hadn’t seen him jump.
“P-please go away.” They raised their paws. “B-back away if you don’t want to get hurt.”
“Oh my.” His eyes moved from their face to the pavement. “Interesting.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
He took a step closer.
Four ears now stretched across the ground. The extra pair unfolded beneath the shadow’s shoulders, twitching independently of the ears pressed against Intern’s head.
Intern planted their heels. Sometimes stillness helped. Sometimes they could make it remember where their body ended.
“Please,” they said again.
The cat studied them for another moment. His smile faded, though his voice remained mild.
“Keep your paws where I can see them.”
“I haven’t done anything.”
“I didn’t say you had.”
“Then let me leave.”
“No.”
Beyond him, a car passed the alley. Music drifted from an open window, bright and absurdly ordinary. Intern could almost imagine reaching it, stumbling into a place with other people and lights and things that cast the correct number of shadows.
The cat followed their glance.
“Don’t.”
Intern swung.
Their fist struck brick. The cat moved beneath it, one gloved paw catching their wrist before the broken mortar reached the ground. He tried to turn them; Intern dragged him sideways instead.
His boots left the pavement.
For an instant, surprise crossed his face.
Then his feet struck the opposite wall, and he pushed away from it just as Intern’s second blow landed where his head had been. A loose section of plaster burst outward. He landed several feet away, coat settling around his legs.
“Strong,” he observed.
“Stay away!”
They charged before he could answer.
He met them in the narrow centre of the alley. Intern caught a sleeve, lost it, felt a hard impact against their shoulder. They swung again. He was already at their side. Every attempt to seize him closed around empty cloth or air, and each failure left another bright point of pain behind.
He wasn’t retreating toward the street.
He was keeping them away from it.
The realisation brought a surge of anger sharp enough to cut through their fear. When he moved behind them, Intern drove backward with everything they had.
They caught him against a metal service door.
The frame buckled. Air left him in a short, involuntary sound.
Intern seized the front of his coat and threw him.
He hit the pavement shoulder-first, rolled, and came up on one knee. A thin red line marked his mouth. He touched it, looked at his glove, and raised his eyes.
Intern had hurt him.
For a sick instant, they almost apologised.
Then they ran for the opening.
He intercepted them before they reached it.
There was no smile this time, no remark. The next few seconds broke into separate impressions: black sleeves, a violent shift in balance, their own weight carrying them somewhere they hadn’t intended to go.
Pavement struck their shoulder.
Their shadow tore loose.
It rose against the wall, too long to fit the body that should have cast it. Extra joints unfolded. The ears peeled apart. Where a face should have been, a pale indentation swelled outward beneath a surface that resembled neither skin nor fabric.
Intern’s nose appeared.
Then their mouth.
The mouth continued downward after it should have stopped.
They clamped their teeth together. Somewhere outside their body, they could still feel their jaw opening.
The cat looked up.
“Oh,” he said softly.
The thing drew breath.
He was already moving. A small metal object struck the pavement beside Intern and opened in a burst of hard white light. Every shadow in the alley flattened.
Pain pulled through them from somewhere they had no name for.
They screamed. Another voice came through their throat with theirs, deeper and horribly patient, asking the cat to come closer.
When the light stopped breaking their vision into pieces, he was kneeling beside them. A cold device touched their upper arm.
Click.
Intern tried to wrench away. Their arm had already become heavy.
“What did you—”
“Easy.”
They tried to crawl. Their legs would not obey properly. A paw caught their shoulder before their face struck the ground, and the cat lowered them onto their side with care they did not want from him.
“Please…”
His eyes remained sharply focused while everything else blurred.
“You’re not dying,” he said. “Though I appreciate that leaves several other objections.”
He tapped the device fitted inside his ear.
“I got them.”
A voice answered. Intern couldn’t understand it.
The cat looked down at them one last time.
“Try not to bite anyone when you wake up.”
Then the alley disappeared.
_ _ _
Someone was discussing their teeth.
“I’m only saying the number could be relevant.”
“It will remain relevant after they wake up.”
“You’re always postponing scientific discovery.”
“Nurse.”
Intern opened their eyes into a light so bright it hurt.
They flinched and tried to raise a paw. Something tightened around their wrist. Leather creaked. Their other wrist was fastened too, and when they tried to stand, a broad strap across their chest held them against a metal chair.
The chair was bolted to the floor.
“Oh!” A pink feline leaned into view. “Hello! Welcome back. Can you hear me? Any nausea? How many fingers? Are you seeing one of me or several? If several, are they all doing the same thing?”
Intern stared at her.
She smiled encouragingly.
“That last question is important.”
“Where—”
“Nurse. Move.”
A white-spotted cat drew her back by the collar. Nurse went reluctantly, still looking at Intern’s face.
“Their pupils are even. No visible tremor. Breathing faster, but they’ve noticed the restraints.”
The report was so quick and precise that Intern almost missed it beneath the bright tone.
Then she added, “And their ears are adorable.”
“You can admire them from over here,” Head Nurse said.
The room assembled itself around the pounding in Intern’s skull. White tiles, a steel trolley, a drain. Low lights had been fitted along the walls, angled beneath the chair. Wherever their shadow tried to collect, another beam broke it apart.
They pressed their heels down.
An orange deer waited near the door, white coat immaculate. A green rabbit with a thick moustache stood beside him. At a desk, a lavender sheep scrolled through a tablet while a folded-eared rabbit lounged with his shoes on an equipment case.
Something heavy struck the doorframe.
“Ow.”
A tall, antlered worker reversed out of the doorway, turned, and tried again with his mug held closer to his chest.
“Your other sideways,” the rabbit at the desk said without looking up.
“There aren’t two sideways.”
“And yet you’ve chosen the wrong one twice.”
The orange deer sighed like a manager having a very ordinary evening.
And behind the examination trolley, leaning against the wall—
The black cat.
Intern pulled against the straps. The chair gave a sharp metallic complaint.
Nurse stopped smiling.
Three knives appeared between her fingers. The lounging rabbit’s shoes touched the floor. The sheep set down her tablet, one paw disappearing beneath her cardigan.
At the doorway, the antlered worker turned his body between the room and the corridor. His mug remained perfectly level.
No one gave an order. No one asked what was happening.
“Don’t,” the black cat said.
Intern froze.
The deer looked at Nurse’s paw.
“Put those away.”
“They bent the chair.”
“Yes.”
“That’s reinforced.”
“I approved the invoice.”
The knives vanished. The sheep’s empty paw returned to her lap. At the doorway, the tall worker lowered his shoulders.
Nurse smiled again.
“Sorry. Reflex.”
Intern could still picture the exact distance between her fingers and their throat.
“What is this place?”
“Animal Hospital,” the deer said. “I’m Dr Harlow.”
Behind him, the antlered worker finally cleared the doorway. His mug clipped the frame. Coffee spilled down his sleeve.
This time, Intern wasn’t sure whether to believe the accident.
_ _ _
“A hospital,” they repeated.
“Yes.”
“You kidnapped me.”
Harlow turned toward the cat. “Did you introduce yourself?”
“No.”
“Agent.”
“They ran.”
“People do that when strangers chase them through dark streets.”
“He turned the lights off!”
Agent folded his arms.
“Visibility control.”
“Our recruitment presentation,” Harlow said, “continues to require attention.”
Intern looked between them. The exchange had the comfortable rhythm of a familiar disagreement. Their wrists hurt. These people were discussing manners.
The green rabbit stepped forward and stopped beyond reach.
“I’m Therapist. Are the restraints causing numbness?”
“They’re causing me to want to leave.”
“I understand.”
“Then untie me.”
He met their eyes without offering a reassuring smile he couldn’t justify. “I can ask for that. I can’t promise the answer.”
Intern swallowed. The straightforwardness was almost worse.
“What are you going to do to me?”
Harlow drew a chair across the floor and sat down.
“I intend to offer you a job.”
Intern waited for someone to laugh. No one did.
“A job.”
“With accommodation, medical support, and training.”
“And deductions,” someone behind the desk said.
“Ron.”
“They should understand the package.”
A calculator clicked. Intern located its owner behind a stack of folders, looking personally injured by whatever number the machine had shown him.
“You also owe me a service-door estimate,” he told Agent.
“Send it to Harlow.”
“I am sitting directly here,” Harlow observed.
“Efficient,” Agent said.
Intern shut their eyes briefly. When they opened them, the straps were still there.
“What job?”
“Special operations.”
Harlow watched them take in the answer, then continued in the same conversational voice.
“The hospital upstairs is our cover. Reception, appointments, staff rotas, complaints about parking. We maintain a public clinic. We also belong to a restricted branch of Animal Corp.”
Doctor, a deer beside the medical trolley, looked up from a chart. “The patients receive actual treatment.”
“Doctor is very particular about that.”
“It is a hospital.”
“Technically,” Secretary One murmured.
Doctor gave him a mild look. He stopped talking.
Harlow continued. “Animal Corp sends us commissions. Investigations, retrievals, containment, and, when necessary, extermination. Cases beyond the capability of its ordinary response teams.”
Intern glanced at Agent.
“So they paid you to bring me in?”
“No,” Agent said.
Harlow rested his paws on one knee. “I asked him to find you. Your recruitment is an internal matter, not a commission.”
“Recruitment usually involves asking.”
“It does.”
“You keep agreeing with me while I’m tied to a chair.”
For the first time, nobody interrupted.
“Yes,” Harlow said. “You are entitled to notice that.”
Intern’s anger had nowhere useful to go. It sat behind their ribs with the fear, making both harder to contain.
“What happens when Animal Corp wants something you don’t want?”
“We negotiate.”
Ron made a quiet, disbelieving noise.
Harlow ignored him.
Secretary Two glanced up, polite as someone answering a visitor’s question. “Headquarters prefers to submit its concerns in writing.”
“From a distance,” Secretary One added.
“An appropriate administrative distance.”
“Several districts.”
“Are they scared of you?” Intern asked.
Harlow’s pleasant expression did not change.
“They’re very relieved that we’re usually busy elsewhere.”
Intern looked around the room again.
They had mistaken the case beneath Secretary One’s shoes for office equipment. It contained a rifle. Beneath Secretary Two’s cardigan, the edge of a holster was visible when she leaned over her tablet. Ron shifted a folder, briefly revealing the handgun secured beneath it.
The tallest worker had a shield resting against the wall. Something had bitten through one corner. Head Nurse wore a long folded weapon down her back.
Nurse caught Intern looking.
“Everyone’s armed,” she said helpfully. “You can stop counting.”
“All of you know how to use them?”
“Every person in this room is trained for lethal operations,” Head Nurse said.
She used the same tone with which she had told Nurse to stop counting Intern’s teeth. Nobody looked embarrassed. Nobody corrected her.
“Even—” Intern glanced at Therapist.
“Yes,” he said.
“I handle negotiation,” he added after a moment. “It remains my preference.”
“It’s everyone’s preference when you’re handling it,” Secretary One muttered.
Nurse held up an empty paw. Then it held four knives.
“I like these.”
“She also likes writing on them with glitter,” Doctor said.
“For identification.”
“Which is why they are not surgical instruments.”
Intern stared at the blades. “And if you don’t have them?”
Nurse looked genuinely puzzled.
“Then I use something else.”
There was no boast in it. That made the answer linger.
A valve hissed near the shield. A calico in a hazmat suit crouched over a heavy containment unit, one gloved paw holding a component still while the other coaxed it back into place.
“Please tell me that’s medical equipment,” Intern said.
“Parts of it,” Sam answered.
“And the rest?”
He considered them through his visor.
“Depends how much you like the room it’s used in.”
Head Nurse looked at him.
“That was not reassuring.”
“It was accurate.”
Intern looked back at Harlow. The ordinary jobs, the bickering, the coffee stains: none of it explained what had happened when the chair bent.
They hadn’t become different people.
They had stopped letting Intern misunderstand them.
“Why me?” they asked.
Harlow’s gaze flicked toward the low lights.
“Because there are things our training and equipment cannot reach. We believe your abilities may give us another way.”
Intern planted their heels more firmly.
“You don’t know what my abilities are.”
“Not yet.”
“You want to use me.”
“I want you to become a special-unit operative. Whether those are the same thing is a question I expect you to keep asking.”
Before Intern could answer, Secretary Two’s tablet chimed.
One soft note.
Her paw stopped above the screen.
“Director.”
_ _ _
The change passed through the room without a raised voice.
Nurse put away the knives she had been displaying and selected three different ones. Secretary One stood, lifting the rifle case. Ron closed his calculator. Head Nurse moved away from the only exit so the others could reach it.
“Location?” Harlow asked.
“Public reception. East entrance. One unverified arrival.”
“Behaviour?”
Secretary Two enlarged an image.
“It entered through the glass.”
“Broken?”
“No.”
No one spoke while she checked another view.
“The glass is intact.”
A monitor on the wall flickered to life.
Intern saw plastic chairs, a reception counter, and the closed entrance doors. Beyond them, the pavement lay dry beneath the exterior lights.
A raincoat stood just inside.
Water dripped from its hem.
It might have been an ordinary visitor if Intern had not been able to see all the way into the hood. The lining was visible. A small manufacturer’s label lay against the back. A loose thread trembled in air that had nothing to breathe it.
Something swallowed.
The coat tightened around an invisible throat, then sagged empty again.
Intern held their breath.
Under the hem, two wet patches formed the shapes of bare soles. The toe marks sat too close to the heels. One patch lifted, peeling from the tiles without any foot above it, and the coat took a step.
“Audio,” Harlow said.
Secretary Two touched the tablet.
“…appointment.”
The voice sounded breathless and embarrassed.
“I have an appointment.”
It was Nurse’s voice.
Intern looked at her. Nurse’s thumb moved once along a knife handle. Her face had become very still.
“That isn’t me.”
The empty hood dipped politely.
“That isn’t me,” it agreed.
“Civilians?” Head Nurse asked.
“Two patients in the waiting area. One cleaner in the west corridor. Three verified.”
“Get them behind the inner barrier.”
Paramedic set down his mug. He lifted the bitten shield, and his body seemed to settle around its weight. Nothing about the movement was awkward.
“West corridor is mine.”
“Rooftop,” Harlow told Secretary One.
The rabbit nodded and left. No complaint about the stairs. No delay.
“Opening roof access,” Secretary Two said. “External camera feeds looping. Internal feeds isolated. Local dispatch sees an electrical fault.”
Her public-facing phone rang. She answered it with exactly the soft voice she had used to discuss administrative distance.
“Animal Hospital. I’m sorry, we are temporarily unable to admit new patients. Security will direct you to the alternative clinic.”
She ended the call. “Public access closed.”
Sam shouldered the containment unit. Head Nurse unclipped her weapon; it extended with a hard metallic snap.
“No ignition indoors,” she said.
“I remember.”
“Make sure the equipment remembers.”
Ron opened a hard case beneath his paperwork.
“East structural charges available. Inhibited until civilian clearance.”
Harlow looked at him. “Only on my order.”
“Understood.”
Doctor selected cartridges for the compact launcher mounted beside his medical equipment. Therapist helped him move the trolley through the door, his expression as calm as it had been beside Intern’s chair.
On the monitor, the raincoat turned.
There was still nothing inside the hood. Nevertheless, Intern knew it was looking at the camera.
It lifted one sleeve and pointed down.
Toward the room beneath reception.
Toward them.
Something pulled beneath their ribs.
Agent saw their face.
“You know it.”
“No.”
His eyes narrowed.
“I don’t know it,” Intern whispered. “But it knows I’m here.”
The sleeve stretched across the reception counter and brushed a seated patient’s shoulder.
For one frame, that patient’s face appeared inside the hood.
Their real face remained where it was. Their mouth fell open, and the face in the coat opened its mouth a little wider.
Secretary Two cut the sound.
“Voice mimicry confirmed. Verify personnel independently. Do not grant access on voice alone.”
The empty end of the sleeve curled. Beneath the fabric, too many narrow joints rearranged themselves until they resembled fingers.
Harlow stood.
“Agent, remain with the candidate. Secretary Two, control room.”
“Is this one of your commissions?” Intern asked. The question escaped before they knew why they needed the answer.
“No,” Harlow said. His voice had lost its conversational softness. “This came to our door.”
Then he was gone.
The locks engaged behind the team. Agent moved beside Intern’s chair, watching the monitor.
For a few seconds, the coat did nothing. It waited among the chairs with one long sleeve stretched across the room, as though confident someone would eventually help it.
Nurse entered the picture.
Her paw moved once. Three knives struck so close together that Intern saw only one jerk of fabric. The sleeve snapped against the counter, pinned in three places, and Nurse was already moving the nearest patient behind her before the coat began to pull.
Paramedic appeared in the adjoining feed. His shield hid most of the cleaner as he guided them around the corner. He made room for the patients without exposing any of them to the spreading wet marks.
The copied patient tried to speak.
Nurse shook her head once and pressed their paw into Paramedic’s waiting grip.
Then the raincoat unbuttoned itself.
One button. Another.
Intern leaned back until the chair pressed painfully between their shoulders.
Inside was a depth the garment should not have contained. Elbows pressed outward where ribs ought to be. A face rolled slowly beneath the lining, flattening against it, lips forming words the muted feed would not give back.
Something resembling a shoulder turned all the way around without the rest of its body following.
There was no person wearing the coat.
The coat was trying to wear the people-shaped things inside it.
Head Nurse crossed the image. Her blade severed the pinned sleeve before it could drag the counter toward the escaping patients.
The detached fabric dropped to the floor and continued crawling.
Doctor caught it with a discharge from his launcher. Pale material spread over the sleeve and hardened. Finger-like bumps pressed against the shell from within, testing it one at a time.
Nurse stepped back to cover him. Her knives stayed in the counter. A handgun was already steady in her paw.
On the second feed, something thin uncurled toward Paramedic’s exposed side. Therapist moved between it and the shield. His coat opened; a short, abrupt discharge struck the advancing fold and drove it back against the wall.
Then he turned to the cleaner and spoke. Intern couldn’t hear the words, but they recognised the patient, attentive expression.
Neither part of him looked like a performance.
“Three civilians behind the inner barrier,” Paramedic reported through Agent’s earpiece.
“Cleaner breathing. Both patients responsive,” Doctor answered. “No visible contact residue. Moving them to isolation.”
Only then did Harlow enter the main camera view.
He carried a sidearm low at his side. Nurse gave him a brief signal. He acknowledged it without looking away from the open coat.
For an instant, Intern thought of his comfortable chair, his folded paws, his mild complaints about invoices.
The thing in reception pulled its own lining outward.
The camera image bent.
Wallpaper folded around the shape of a shoulder. The counter’s drawers opened and closed like fingers testing their joints. Somewhere beyond the visible corridor, a door stretched into something with the wrong number of hinges.
The picture went black.
Moisture gathered along the monitor’s lower frame.
Something tapped the other side of the screen.
Agent disconnected its power.
“Eyes on me.”
Intern obeyed, but they could still hear it.
Three taps. A pause.
Then nothing.
_ _ _
“You brought me here because of that?”
“No.” Agent kept the dark monitor in view.
“Then how did it find me?”
“We don’t know that it followed you.”
“It pointed.”
“I saw.”
“And that’s all you’re going to say?”
He turned toward them. “Would you prefer an answer I made up?”
Intern stared at him. Above them, something heavy struck the ceiling. Dust fell from a seam between the tiles.
They jerked against the straps, and pain burned across their wrist.
Agent looked down. The leather had rubbed the skin raw beneath their fur.
He reached for the buckle. Intern recoiled.
“Easy.”
“You said that before you drugged me.”
His paw stopped.
“Fair.”
He let them see what he was doing before loosening the strap. Not enough to release them. Enough to stop it cutting into their skin.
Intern hated the relief almost as much as they hated needing it.
There was dried blood along his glove. They looked at the split in his lip.
“You could have killed me.”
“Yes.”
“Is that supposed to make me grateful?”
“No.”
His earpiece crackled.
“Containment compromised,” Nurse said. “It’s wearing the corridor now.”
Agent touched the device. “Define wearing.”
“The walls have sleeves.”
Behind her voice, someone sobbed with precisely the same breaks in their breathing.
“Main body still in reception,” she continued, each word clear. “It is using the wet surfaces.”
“Keep it above ground. Cut the internal displays. No secondary feeds.”
“Already done,” Secretary Two answered.
Something scraped inside the drain.
Intern looked down.
“Please.”
Their voice rose softly through the grate.
Not just the sound of it. The small break before the word. The breath caught behind it.
The alley.
“Please…”
Agent crossed the room and pressed a control beside the trolley. A solid plate slid beneath the grate. The voice stopped halfway through its next repetition.
“Did it hear me?” Intern whispered.
He watched the indicator until it steadied.
“I don’t know.”
They looked at the monitor, then the drain, then the door. Each had been an ordinary object a few minutes earlier. Now they couldn’t stop imagining what might be waiting behind it.
Agent returned to the chair and crouched, tilting his head back to meet their eyes. His body remained angled toward the sealed drain.
“In the alley. You were holding it back.”
Intern pressed their heels down.
“You told me to leave before you swung. Every opening you tried to make led toward the street.”
“Because I wanted you to leave me alone.”
“I know.”
“Then don’t make it sound like you were helping.”
He was quiet for a moment.
“I wasn’t.”
Something in Intern’s chest loosened, painfully and against their wishes. They didn’t forgive him. They were simply exhausted by people putting polite names on what had happened.
A sharp report reached them through the ceiling.
“Anchor severed,” Secretary One said. “East threshold compromised. Do not cross.”
“Holding,” Head Nurse answered.
A scrape of metal. A controlled breath.
“Sam. Now.”
The overhead light dimmed. A deep vibration passed through the floor, low enough to make Intern’s teeth ache.
Agent watched the light until it steadied.
“Harlow wants to know if you can learn to control it.”
“So he can point me at things like that?”
“So you can work with the team.”
“As a weapon.”
His gaze stayed on theirs. “As a special-unit operative. Not a receptionist. Not bait.”
“That’s a very nice way to say it.”
“Then judge what happens next.”
“While I’m tied up?”
He looked at the strap across their chest.
For once, he had no quick answer.
Above them, something screamed. It began like metal tearing and became a voice asking to be let inside.
“Please let me—”
A stranger.
“Please let me—”
Nurse.
“Please let me—”
Intern.
Then too many voices crowded into the same breath.
A thin extension of shadow lifted beneath their chair and reached toward the drain. Intern forced their heels against the floor. The extension trembled, flattened, and stopped.
Agent saw it.
“And if I can’t control it?” they asked.
He reached toward their other wrist and loosened the second strap.
“Then we find out what it takes.”
His earpiece clicked.
“Outer shell contained,” Sam reported, breathing hard. “Last section still outside.”
“All personnel hold position,” Harlow said.
Three knocks sounded beneath the floor.
Intern held perfectly still.
The next three came from the door.
“Agent. Open up.”
Harlow’s voice.
Agent remained beside the chair.
Over the earpiece, Harlow said, “I have not left reception.”
Black water pressed against the gap beneath the door. Something pale curved upward inside it, smooth and small as the edge of a fingernail.
“Open up.”
Agent rose and drew a short blade.
There was no dramatic movement, no threatening remark. He simply placed himself between the door and Intern, his attention narrowing until the rest of the room might not have existed.
This was what his face looked like without the sardonic smile.
The lock did not move.
The water withdrew so abruptly that it left a line of sediment beneath the door. Somewhere overhead, a heavy mechanism closed.
The voices stopped.
Intern waited for another one. They listened so hard that the hum of the lights began to resemble breathing.
“Containment confirmed,” Harlow said at last. “No one touches standing water. No one removes protective equipment until clearance.”
Agent kept his blade out until Secretary Two verified the corridor.
Only then did he lower it.
_ _ _
Harlow returned eight minutes later.
Before the door opened, he spoke over communications. Secretary Two confirmed his position. The outer locks disengaged one after another.
He stepped inside with his coat spotless and his sidearm out of sight.
Intern watched his feet. They made dry, ordinary sounds against the tiles.
Behind him, Nurse was missing a shoe.
Head Nurse carried it in a sealed evidence bag.
“It moved on its own,” Nurse said before anyone asked.
“It attempted to enter the ventilation system,” Head Nurse corrected.
Inside the bag, the laces tied themselves into a knot. A narrow groove opened along the sole, then closed again.
“Which suggests initiative.”
“No.”
“I haven’t asked anything yet.”
“You were about to.”
Paramedic came in with a new dent in his shield. He set it down carefully before rubbing a patch of dried coffee on his sleeve. Sam followed, a faint thread of smoke lifting from the outer casing of his containment unit.
Doctor stayed by the door to finish a quiet report. Three civilians, all alive, still under observation. Therapist listened, then went with him to check on them.
No one treated that part as a joke.
Secretary Two entered with her tablet against her chest and a phone at her ear.
“No, this was not an accepted commission. It was an incursion at our facility. You’ll receive the incident report when the director releases it.”
She listened.
“The clinic remains closed pending clearance.”
Another pause.
Her voice stayed sweet.
“If headquarters wishes to expedite the inspection, I can arrange for you to attend personally.”
The reply was too faint for Intern to hear.
“I thought so. Thank you for your understanding.”
She ended the call.
Harlow glanced at the loosened restraints, then at Agent. Whatever passed between them needed no explanation spoken aloud.
He drew his chair forward again.
“Now. Where were we?”
The shoe twitched.
Head Nurse lowered the bag into a rigid container and snapped the lid shut. Something struck it once from within.
“Recruitment,” Agent said.
“Ah.” Harlow folded his paws. “Yes.”
Intern looked around the room.
Nurse was rearranging the small things on her belt. Secretary One had returned and was complaining about a stairwell bulb while checking the rifle he had carried upstairs. Ron’s calculator was clicking again. Sam had begun an argument with a valve.
They had watched these people move together without hesitation. They had heard their voices stay level while the walls changed shape.
Now they were talking about maintenance.
“You’re all insane.”
Nurse looked almost pleased. “You’ve settled in quickly.”
“That wasn’t a compliment.”
“We work with what we’re given.”
Harlow waited until Intern looked back at him.
“The offer includes accommodation, medical support, training, and hazard pay.”
“Conditional hazard pay,” Ron said.
“Hazard pay.”
Ron sighed and pressed a button harder than necessary.
“I’m not joining you,” Intern said.
“Understood.”
The ease of Harlow’s answer hurtled straight into the hope they had been trying not to feel.
“Then I can go?”
His expression became quieter.
“Not until we establish whether that entity was following you, and whether another may come.”
“That’s not a choice.”
“No. Not yet.”
Intern looked down. Beneath the overlapping lights, their shadow lay where it should.
They no longer knew whether that meant it was behaving or waiting.
Secretary Two approached with the tablet.
“Provisional designation?”
“I don’t need a designation.”
“The system disagrees,” she said gently.
Secretary One looked at the bent chair and Agent’s split lip.
“Trouble.”
“Taken,” Head Nurse said.
“By who?”
She looked at him.
He sat down.
Harlow considered Intern. “Special-unit candidate. No formal field training. Restricted deployment pending assessment.”
Secretary Two typed.
“What did you call me?” Intern asked.
She turned the screen.
Beneath a blank identification photograph sat one word.
INTERN
They stared at it.
Somewhere upstairs, the reception bell rang.
Every conversation stopped.
Nurse’s paw stilled at her belt. Agent’s moved toward his coat. Even Ron’s calculator went quiet.
Secretary Two checked the door log and listened to a report over her headset. The camera display remained dark.
“West entrance. Scheduled patient. Security has verified them. Reception rang for assistance.”
Only then did the room move again.
“Oh,” Nurse said. “A patient.”
Head Nurse looked at the handgun now visible in her paw.
Nurse looked down too.
“Right.”
It disappeared beneath her uniform. She left with a bright smile to direct the visitor to another clinic.
Harlow rose and adjusted his cuffs.
“Welcome to Animal Hospital.”
Behind him, a framed poster showed a smiling cartoon animal beneath the words:
YOU’RE IN SAFE HANDS.
Someone had crossed out SAFE.
Underneath, in bright pink handwriting, they had written:
VERY CAPABLE.