Chapter 1: The Piss and the Fury
The common room air hung thick with the smell of antiseptic and collective unease. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, their sickly green glow catching on the peeling murals of chimera-like figures that seemed to watch from the walls. Hank leaned against the cinderblock, his shoulder blades pressing into the rough paint. His ears—long, brown, and supremely irritating—twitched of their own accord, picking up every rustle of a straitjacket, every whisper from a huddled group in the corner.
He scowled.
His focus, like everyone else’s, was on the spectacle in the center of the room. Kai was having one of his episodes again. The white-haired fox hybrid was a convulsing knot of pale limbs and off-white canvas on the polished linoleum floor, his long hair fanning out like spilled milk.
“Please,” Kai’s voice was a breathy, desperate warble, cutting through the low hum of the room. “Nurse… please, mate with me. Please.”
Nurse Greaves stood over him, her posture impeccable, her shoes a stark, pristine white against the dull floor. She didn’t move. Her face was a mask of professional detachment. Hank watched her knuckles, bone-white where she held her clipboard. He fought back the familiar surge of frustrated anger. It was the same every time. Kai would beg, writhe, and everyone would just… watch.
“Is this real?” Kai mumbled into the floor, his fox ears flattening. “Am I real?”
Hank’s own ears flicked backward. Fucking hell. He remembered his first day, the shock of the uniform, the dizzying wrongness of the place. Then he’d met Kai. The fox hybrid had approached him with a stagger, sniffing the air, and had immediately, violently, tried to mount his leg. Hank had reacted on instinct, shoving him so hard he’d skidded into a wall. The orderlies had descended, needles out. He’d spent a week in isolation. The rage from that day still simmered under his skin, a low-grade fever.
Now, watching Kai degrade himself, that rage felt sour. It curdled into something else.
“You’re making a scene, Miki,” Nurse Greaves stated, her voice devoid of inflection.
Kai’s writhing stopped for a second. His head tilted, his glazed eyes finding the nurse’s shoes. A strange, lucid calm seemed to pass over his features, replaced by a spark of deliberate malice. With a grunt of effort, he arched his back, his body straining against the canvas.
A yellow stream arced through the green-tinged air.
It hit Nurse Greaves’s shoes with a sound like fat spattering on a hot pan. The smell hit a second later—ammonia sharp and sour, cutting through the antiseptic. A collective gasp rippled through the common room. Someone let out a shocked giggle that was quickly stifled.
Nurse Greaves did not flinch. She looked down at her soiled shoes, then back at Kai. Her expression did not change. “Clean-up in common room. Sedation for Miki.”
Two orderlies moved in, their heavy boots squeaking on the linoleum. Kai began to thrash again, his pleas dissolving into wordless, high-pitched whimpers. They hauled him up, his feet dragging through the small, spreading puddle.
Hank watched. He watched the utter humiliation of it, the brutal, clinical response. The anger was gone, completely drained away, leaving a hollowed-out feeling in his chest. He saw not the nuisance who’d assaulted him, but a creature so utterly lost it would piss on its only captors just to feel something.
As they dragged Kai past his spot against the wall, the fox hybrid’s head lolled. His clouded eyes met Hank’s. There was no recognition, no plea, just a fathomless, terrified void.
The orderlies carted him away, leaving the smell and the stunned silence.
Nurse Greaves finally moved, stepping carefully out of the wet patch. “Anyone else require attention?” she asked the room, her voice still perfectly even.
No one spoke. The hum of the lights seemed louder.
Hank pushed himself off the wall. His bunny ears, usually a source of constant, nagging self-consciousness, drooped. He walked—not back to his usual isolated corner, but toward the hall they’d taken Kai down. He didn’t know why. He had no plan. The hollow feeling in his chest had simply become a pull.
He turned the corner just in time to see a heavy door swing shut at the end of the hallway, sealing Kai away in whatever silent room they used for that. The echo of the lock engaging was a final, dull sound.
Hank stood there, alone in the empty corridor. The rage was gone. All he felt was the cold of the tiles seeping through his slippers, and a question, sharp and unexpected, cutting through the monotony of his own contained fury: What do they do to him in there?
He didn’t move. For the first time since he’d arrived, his thoughts weren’t churning about his own confinement, his own height, his own ridiculous ears. They were elsewhere. The momentum of the day, of the spectacle, had carried him this far, to this silent hallway. He found he didn’t want to walk back.