Chapter 1: Humiliation in the Hallway
The hallway smelled like bleach and hopelessness. Hank leaned against the cold wall, the rough texture of peeling paint catching on the threads of his asylum-issued sweatshirt. The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, a sound that drilled right into his molars. He watched, arms crossed tight over his chest, his own fluffy tail twitching in a slow, agitated rhythm against the linoleum.
Down the hall, Kaidan Miki was on his knees. The straitjacket made him look even more breakable, the thick canvas swallowing his lanky frame. His long, white hair pooled on the floor like spilled milk.
“Please, Nurse Anya,” Kai’s voice was a thin, reedy thing. “Just for a minute. Just a touch. I’ll be good, I’ll be so good for you.” His fox ears were flat against his skull, and his fluffy tail lashed behind him, a frantic metronome.
Nurse Anya stood over him, a monument in sensible scrubs. Her lynx ears, sharp points in her tight black bun, didn’t so much as twitch. She looked bored. “Stand up, Kaidan. You’re making a scene.”
“I need you. I need to mate. It’s… it’s buzzing in my head. Please make it stop.” Kai’s forehead thudded gently against her shoe. It was a polished, ugly clog. “You’re so real. The others… I think they’re made of glass sometimes. But you’re solid. Let me mark you. Let me make you mine.”
Hank’s lips curled into a sneer. Pathetic. His own bunny ears flicked, catching the desperate edge in Kai’s voice. He remembered his first day, the shock of those bony hands grabbing at his waist from behind, the hot whisper in his ear. He’d broken Kai’s nose with the back of his head. The crack had been deeply, shamefully satisfying.
“Last chance, Kaidan. Up. Now.” Anya’s voice held no room for negotiation.
Kai went still. His pleading stopped. For a second, Hank thought he’d finally given up. Then Kai shifted, rolling his shoulders within the constraints of the jacket. He tilted his head back, looking up at the nurse with wide, empty eyes.
“You’re not real either,” Kai whispered, his paranoia surfacing through the breeding haze. “You’re a trick. A test.”
He began to fumble, his body contorting in the straitjacket. There was a strained, awkward movement of his hips.
“What are you doing?” Anya’s stern voice finally held a note of something else. Warning.
Kai didn’t answer. He just kept shifting, a strained, humiliating dance against the floor. A dark patch bloomed on the front of his pale gray pants, spreading rapidly. The sound was a faint, shameful trickle against the absolute silence of the hallway. The acrid, ammonia stench hit Hank’s nose a second later—sharp and animal and desperately sad.
Kai had peed on Nurse Anya’s shoes.
Hank’s breath caught. A shocked bark of laughter climbed up his throat, but he choked it back, his ears standing straight up in alarm. It wasn’t funny. It was gross. It was insane. But a dark, warm wave of amusement flooded his chest anyway. He watched the nurse’s face.
Anya Petrova looked down at her damp, stained clogs. She didn’t scream. She didn’t flinch. Her expression hardened into something colder than the wall tiles. She let out a long, slow sigh through her nose, the sound of a person adding a tally to an infinite list of grievances.
“Right,” she said, her voice flat.
In one fluid motion, she unclipped a key from her belt, grabbed Kai by the bound arms, and hauled him upright. He was limp, unresisting, a puppet whose strings had been cut. She began steering him down the hall, away from the puddle and the smell.
She passed Hank without a glance. But Kai’s head lolled toward him. Their eyes met. Kai’s were glazed, far away, but in them Hank saw a flicker of something—not triumph, not shame. Just a hollow, terrible relief. He’d marked his territory. The world made sense again, for about three seconds.
The sight of that relief snuffed out Hank’s dark amusement. It left a cold, sick feeling in his gut. He pushed off the wall, his tail snapping behind him like a pissed-off metronome. Freak. They’re all freaks.
“Don’t stand there dripping, Alley.” Anya’s voice called from farther down the hall. She hadn’t even turned around. Her lynx ears had probably heard him move. “Clean-up cart is in the supply closet. You’re on mop duty.”
Hank froze. “The hell I am,” he muttered under his breath, a tic pulling at the corner of his eye.
“Now.”
The word was a steel door slamming. He stood there, fists clenched, the fluorescent hum suddenly deafening. The metallic scent of blood from some past, poorly cleaned incident mixed with the fresh, salty reek of urine. He could fight it. He could yell. He could tell her where to shove her mop.
He saw Kai’s broken, placid face in his mind. He wasn’t that. He wasn’t kneeling on the floor, pissing himself.
He turned on his heel and stomped toward the supply closet, his every step a protest. His ears were flat back against his wolfcut, his green eyes narrowed to slits. He’d clean the damn puddle. But he wasn’t one of them. He was just biding his time.
The mop handle was cold and slick in his hands. As he slopped the yellow-tinged water over the linoleum, spreading the smell wider, he knew it was a lie. The only thing separating him from Kai was a matter of degrees, not kind. The realization tasted like bleach, bitter and clean and poisonous.