Morty’s sense of unreality washed away in a roar of adrenaline.
Water sprayed from the ruptured pipe in wild arcs, drenching him head to toe.. Alejandro’s body lay twitching in a heap, a gory anchor tugging at Morty’s focus — but he couldn’t afford the distraction. Not now.
A deep voice yelled from down the ramp. More shouting from above. Panic spreading through the second sublevel like a fire catching dry leaves.
To his right, Kassur crouched behind the truck, trembling, bracing himself against the floor as if to keep from vomiting.
Breathe. Focus.
Morty let muscle memory take the reins. He ejected the mag. Checked how much ammo was left. Still good.
A sharp crack echoed. This time not gunfire. The pipe fully gave way. The broken line burst into a full stream, blasting a geyser across the wall, filling the air with fine mist.
Water pounded the concrete in a relentless rhythm.
He switched the firing mode of his gun from single to burst. While still crouching low, he moved away from Kassur, exhaled and raised his hand. Gun poking over the top of the hood of the stalled delivery truck and squeezed the trigger.
The gun barked in rapid succession.
Yelps of pain and a hasty retreat echoed back. Music to his ears.
He dove back just before the return fire started. Kassur’s eyes were wide but locked on him now. He nodded once and gave the cats a shaky thumb-up..
Another barrage. More shots. Then a pause.
Click. Swearing. The unmistakable sound of someone trying to reload.
“Go!” Morty barked, grabbing Kassur’s jacket and pulling him toward the ramp.
They sprinted, boots splashing through the thin sheet of water spreading across the floor. Rounds whistled past them, a few biting into the stairs behind.
Morty’s lungs burned from the effort. His boots slipped on the soaked concrete.
He looked up. His stomach dropped.
The crowd from sublevel 2 had clustered at the entrances on both sides of the ramp, peering down. Behind them, he could see armed figures were coming down. At least two. Maybe more. Moving fast while pushing past the people that were running away.
Morty skidded to a halt, dragging Kassur into the stockyard throng, trying to get lost in the press of bodies. People yelped and jumped away from them.
“Tell me that there is a way out of this place! besides the ramp!” Morty panted, pulling Kassur along.
“Huh?”
“Kassur. How do we get out of here?”
Morty flipped open his badge. Inside, a big red button. He pressed it and felt the badge get warm. A rescue beacon. He just hoped the distress signal he sent wasn’t going to be choked by the metal and ground above their head.
“There’s just the ramps on sublevel 2”
“Fuck.”
We are trapped. This is a killbox. I brought him here to die.
Morty crouched down behind an empty stall where he could still have a view of the ramp’s opening. Kassur sat down next to him, grimacing when his butt hit the cold stone floor.
“You know,” Kassur muttered, “this doesn’t look like a good hiding spot.”
“I get it,” Morty grumbled while rummaging through his coat pockets. “It’s a shitty and uncomfortable hiding spot.
Kassur nodded at him.
For a moment, the two men just stared at each other. The air between them thickened, filling the silence with meaning of its own.
Morty shrugged. The held an ampoule and twisted the end adjusting the release dosage.
“You’re not seriously going to get high right now,” Kassur growled, voice incredulous.
“Not like that,” Morty muttered. “Battlefield surge. Stimulants. Ugly stuff, but we are on the knife’s edge here. So it might help.”
Loud exclamations echoed nearby. Shop owners were shoved around as the predators spread, looking for them.
Morty worked faster, laying out his gear. He had a thick baton with a red button on the handle, a few spare magazines for his gun that he slotted into place in his belt. His gun had half a burst left.
Kassur was unarmed. Running on fear alone.
Lost in thought, Morty dared a quick glance peeking his head close to the floor.
He took in the lumbering shape of a striped hyena carrying the mallet that killed Alejandro..
The guy was wearing a gas mask for some reason. Built like a hammer himself, dense, long-armed; more than regular hyenas, same for the girth of his neck. Upper body heavy with muscle narrowing at his waist. He was missing an ear and his mohawk stylized mane was tinted with green streaks. He had a gun in his hand, but tossed it away.
The hyena took a few into the stockyard, moving his head around.
Morty exhaled through his nose. “Shit.”
“Stay down,” he muttered to Kassur, pulling him tighter into cover.
The space around them was turning into chaos. Even the livestock was starting to panic in their pens. Some of the workers and customers had run away previously. The ones that stayed were being corralled at gunpoint by the hyena’s friends.
A deep voice boomed across the sublevel:
“So here’s the rule!” There was a pregnant pause, and Morty saw that the speaker was a jaguar wearing riot gear and holding a big rifle.
“Next asshole who pushes anyone, I’m going to shoot them. Move in an orderly fashion. We are going on a little trip downstairs.”
Beside the jaguar stood a badger. Short guy. But as jacked as it could be, muscles packed onto his small frame. He was almost as wide as he was tall.
Someone shouted, “The fuck we will. This is not your turf, loco.”
There was a heartbeat of silence.
Kassur had his mouth wide in awe at the fool running his mouth to the armed trio. Then it all went to hell.
The first shot didn’t come from the invaders. It came from a butcher — an old warthog with a cleaver in one hand and a hidden shotgun under the counter.
He fired point-blank into the badger’s flank. Blood misted across the livestock pens. The blast was strong enough to knock the stocky predator off his feet.
The badger stumbled away and got up fast, face twisted into a snarl. He roared, staggering, and then lunged. One meaty paw grabbing the butcher by the snout and slamming his head into the stall wall with a sickening crunch.
That was the spark.
Screams tore through the air. A young leopard, just a customer in regular clothes, slammed into the hyena near the pig pens. They tumbled into the straw, fists and claws flying. Another attacker fired, missed, and blew open a goat pen instead. The animals shrieked and scattered in panic.
A ram from one of the meat counters lunged at the jaguar, horn-first. He was almost as fast as a speeder and knocked the jaguar against a wall.
The feline barely reacted. He held his gun pointing down and fired twice to the back of the ram’s head.
The caprid fell dead..The vendors snapped.
Predators and regulars alike. Not organized, it wasn’t tactical, just the desperation of people that want to live.
The jaguar just gunned them down. Controlled bursts. Surgical. Two dropped instantly. The others broke off, running blind through the chaos.
A smoke bomb hissed.
Gas bloomed in streaks of green and grey. Someone screamed as one of the pens burst open with the fighting, making several feral pigs run around.
Shots hit the huge fiberglass tanks holding the live fish. Those just cracked open under pressure instead of leaking. A wave of cold water rushed across the tile, slippery bodies flopping across the floor like silver debris.
Overhead, the lights flickered, but held.
The striped hyena, the one with the mallet, rose from the straw. The crude mallet dripped blood. The leopard who’d tackled him was limp in the straw.
Morty watched all of it in a blur of violence, shouting, and red mist. He could barely hear over the sound of his own pulse. The stimulant vial was warm in his palm. Every instinct screamed now.
Kassur was still frozen. Eyes darting, breathing too fast.
The badger got his hands on small machine guns. He and the jaguar were busy murdering everyone, and some of the store owners were making a stand. Same for some of the customers. Others were just trying their best to defend themselves.
In the middle of it, the striped hyena walked forward with unshakable calm, dragging the mallet behind him. Water dripped from his coat. His gas mask stared straight ahead. Like death, the hyena walked as if this was just a trip to the park. Casually hitting people that got too close with the mallet. Turning bones into paste with each swing.
There was a strange delay to his actions, like he was sleepy or drunk. But the power behind each hit was real.
Kassur gasped beside Morty as the violence ramped up. “They’re going to get slaughtered!”
From the rabbit pens, a jacked panther in an apron vaulted the divider and crashed into the hyena, knocking him off his feet. They rolled in a tangle of punches and snarls. The hyena lost the grip of his mallet. Another vendor roared and lunged at the downed hyena..
Overhead, the lights flickered again, plunging the far half of the floor into strobe-lit confusion.
Now or never.
Morty crouched behind the shattered stall, breathing hard, the ampoule resting in his palm, warm from his grip..
Kassur huddled next to him, soaked and shaking, pressed into the corner like it could protect him. His eyes weren’t on the exit, or the gunfire, or the chaos blooming in every direction. They were locked on Morty. Wide, scared, pleading.
“Don’t leave me. Not alone. Not like this.”
Morty looked back at him and something squirmed behind his ribs.
This wasn't just Kassur afraid. This was a man whose life Morty had pulled into the line of fire. Who hadn’t asked to be part of this. A man that was trying his best to just be a regular person
A man he liked.
And they didn’t have time to figure it out.
Morty reached up and cupped Kassur’s cheek.
The jackal flinched, eyes darting back to the pandemonium raging on and then fluttering shut. He leaned into it like it was the only stable thing in the world.
Morty’s voice was low. Steady. But beneath it was grief wrapped in steel.
“I’m sorry. I’d like to earn this… but I might not get the chance. So I’m going to steal it tonight.”
Before Kassur could fully grasp the meaning, Morty leaned in and kissed him.
It wasn’t long or graceful. It was rushed, wet from the mist, the edges trembling with too many things left unsaid. It was real, raw, and desperate.
Kassur didn’t pull away. Didn’t hesitate. He made a soft, broken sound when it ended, pressing his forehead against Morty’s.
Morty drew back barely an inch. Just enough to look him in the eye.
“I want you to live,” he said, voice harder now. “So when this goes to hell, you run.”
“What? Have you seen those guys? What the fuck you think you can do?”
Morty gave a small crooked smile. “I can do enough.”
Then he jammed the ampoule into his leg.
=================================
The stimulants, also known as field surge, were a double-edged sword. Some of the predator enforcers would occasionally use them to train each other, bouncing back from side effects as long as they had the energy to spare. But even they would rarely use it on the field. It was considered a last resort.
There is a limit to the muscle potential one can use, regardless whether you are a pred or a regular. But adrenaline and stress can circumvent those limitations.
For predators, whose baseline strength already eclipsed most people, the surge pushed them into monstrous territory. For regulars, it would make them strong as a pred, for a brief period, but the cost to the body turned it into a survival gamble.
Enforcers often called it a "break-glass-in-case-of-doom" move.
=================================
Morty knew the math.
Predators survived stimulants by raw biology. Regulars survived by luck.
A cold bite pierced through fur and skin. He pressed the button on the back of the ampoule and felt the burn. The stimulant hit his bloodstream like a fuse line catching flame.
He shuddered. It felt like an orgasm without the pleasure. He could feel conscience and inhibition sliding away like bad dreams.
Then there was a flash and a blue square dominated his field of vision.
Sharp edges. Floating midair. Bright against the dark. Just there.
It hung in the air like it had always been part of the world but hidden behind reality’s curtains.
Then it went away. Blinked out.
He’d seen it before. Some of the regulars who had used the surge talked about it — a glitch in how the brain processed the chemical overload.
He didn’t know what it meant. But the sight of it always came before the world changed.
The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
Morty’s back arched. Breath punched out of him. His vision snapped into focus as the stimulant poured complex chemistry into the flow of his veins. He was fully awake and alive. But in a different way. As if the more primitive version of his brain was taking charge.
His heartbeat went from frantic to a sewing machine pace. Too fast. Too strong. Exactly what he needed.
He rose from behind cover like someone had rewired his spine.
Kassur stared at him, speechless, half terrified, half astonished.
The whole posture of the cat had changed, and when he stared at him with vertical pupils so thin they looked like just lines, the jackal felt himself in the presence of a creature that was pure instinct and intent.
Morty rolled his shoulders once, the tremor in his fingers gone.
His muscles grew tense and tight. The taste of copper filled his mouth.
Time slowed.
What to do? What to do?
The hyena with the mallet on the floor was the closest target.
But the other two had guns, and that was a priority.
He moved before he finished the thought, gravity’s oppressive grip just a suggestion..
The jaguar had his back to him, shooting indiscriminately at the scattered people of the stockyard, laughing like a madman.
The black cat didn’t need to be stronger than the jaguar. He needed to be stronger than the joint on the jaguar’s knee.
He grabbed a cleaver from a butcher’s body and slid his baton between his teeth. Sprinting low, he closed in, then drove the cleaver into the inside of the jaguar’s leg.
The blade sank halfway in, stopped by the armor on the side.
The jaguar roared and swung wildly, his rifle slamming across Morty’s face, sending him sprawling.
Morty spat blood, dropped the baton from his mouth, and caught it in his hand mid-fall.
“I’m going to kill you, gato.”
Morty didn’t react and the jaguar felt a shiver as those green eyes stared at him.
That was enough for the mob to dogpile him — fists, kicks, boots, claws. Someone wrestled the rifle away. The jaguar hit the ground under a tide of bodies and a barrage of fists.
The badger was next.
He moved close and kicked him in the kneecap, the little beer coaster of bone ripping free of its tendons and sliding up his thigh like a puck on wet ice. His enemy’s face twisted in cartoonish surprise and alarm.
As he began to crumple, Morty lifted his other knee, driving it up into his descending larynx. He’d been aiming for his face. Throat just as good, he thought as the cartilage collapsed against his knee.
He pressed his own gun against the side of the badger's head, squeezing the trigger until it ran out of bullets.
He had only counted three attackers.
But there was a fourth that came along as the fight started.
A buffalo charged at him. He was fast, too fast. A speeder, but one just a step above a regular person. Perhaps a predator that had just started on the path. Still, it gave him an edge when he was fighting most people. His hand fastened on Morty’s shoulder, wide, hard fingers grabbing at him.
Morty turned around to face him, dropping to pull him down. He flickered the hand with the baton and the metal thing unfurled, extending 3 feet. The top with a small metal ball with two prongs. The cat used it to strike the inside of the Buffalo’s elbow, breaking it.
None of his attacks were conscious or intentional.
The movements came flowing out of a hindbrain that had been freed of restraint and given the time to plan its mayhem. It was no more a martial art than a feral crocodile taking down anyone that came too close to the margin; just speed, strength, and a couple billion years of survival instinct unleashed.
The Jaguar was screaming on the floor somewhere behind him. It sounded painful and desperate.
The badger sloped down to the floor, blood pouring from its mouth and from the crater on the side of his head.
The buffalo pulled away from him.
Wrong move.
That neck got exposed.
Morty raised his hand and started to slam with the metal tip of the baton.
Whack.
Whack.
WHACK.
There was the crunchy sound of bone and cartilage being pulverized and the buffalo went down twitching.
He heard the mallet whistle through the air.
The hyena was next to him, and the cat side-stepped, feeling water and pieces of tiles flying his way as the big mallet crashed down where he had been a second before..
Morty was forced to dodge as the hyena surged forward, his mask cracked.
The movements were explosive, but the mallet was so heavy that it was easy to spot the beginning of the attacks. Morty didn’t backpedal. Retreating would get him killed.
He moved sideways, skimming across the slick concrete. His footing was sure despite the thin film of water now spreading from the burst pipe overhead.
He tracked the mallet’s rise — watched the shoulder twist. Too wide. Too much torque.
His hand snapped. The long baton crashed down right at the base of the hyena's clavicule.
Thunk.
The predator howled in pain, muffled by the gas mask. Then Morty hit him just above the knee. Perfect for shocking the common peroneal nerve. The hyena’s leg folding under him. The mallet's arc veered wild, slamming into a pack of crates as Morty dodged.
Morty struck again, the baton slamming against the hyena’s shoulder with a crack. The predator reeled, mask slipping sideways from the blow, straps loosening.
Morty saw his chance. He jabbed again, and this time the hyena opened his jaws and caught the baton with his teeth. Morty tilted his head and pressed the red button. The prongs at the end of the baton flared to life with electrical arcs inside the hyena’s mouth.
The hyena spun sideways, arm twitching violently. The mallet wrenched from his grip and bounced across the floor, skittering away.
He turned as the jaguar rose.
The big feline was a ruin. Patches of fur torn off, bloody gashes framed hanging flabs of skin. His face and upper body were a mess of red. People around him were downed. Hard to tell if dead or unconscious.
He pointed his gun at the cat and pulled the trigger.
Out of bullets.
The baton came free in one practiced motion. Morty aimed it at the jaguar.
Click.
The contact tip hummed to life with blue-white arcs licking between the prongs. A low, electric purr hungry for skin. Morty’s weight shifted forward.
There was a squeeze inside his chest as if a big creature grabbed his lungs and squeezed.
Time skipped.
Morty’s feet weren’t touching the ground. A massive paw clamped around his throat, making it hard to breath. The jaguar's face filled Morty’s vision — teeth bared, eyes mad with anger.
“I’ll eat you bit by bit” he growled, tightening his grip. As if to prove a point he gave a long lick to the cat’s face.
Morty saw black spots creep into the corners of his vision.
He tried to bring the metal baton up — sideways strike, shaft-first — jamming it into the jaguar’s forearm. But his hands were empty. The jaguar chuckled.
Morty couldn’t overpower him.
Not in raw strength.
Even with the stimulant, physics was physics. And now he was on the last dregs of the stimulant, he had just a few more seconds. If he was lucky. He didn’t need strength. He needed cruelty.
He grabbed the Jaguars wrists and cried in surrender.
“What was that?” the big feline purred in derision. Getting his snout real close. “Do you want me to end it now?”
Morty jammed two fingers straight into the jaguar’s left eye. He felt the squishy wet pop as his claws went in.
The big cat screamed and flinched. Morty shoved hard, gasping as the pressure around his throat released. He drove his knee upward and bucked, rolling them apart. The floor was slick beneath them now — water running across the concrete in a shallow film.
Morty dove after the baton. But got a kick to the stomach and rolled away.
“Stay down,” barked the hyena, now back up..
From somewhere beyond the crates, Kassur shouted, voice cracking:
“Morty!”
=================================
The jackal’s panic punched through the noise.
The hyena grabbed Morty’s baton. moving it in his hand to test the weight. He smiled and then charged. Not at Morty. But at Kassur.
The jackal’s leg buckled as he tried to backpedal. He fell down in the ankle deep water, trying to scramble away as the hyena came for him. He had nowhere to run, backed to the end of the stockyard space, next to the space where they kept the sheep, the frightened animals bleeping in distress.
Kassur felt something with the tip of his fingers under the straw.
The hyena gave one of those wild maniacal laughs only they could do. Leaping, baton ready to strike.
Kassur grabbed the thing and pulled up.
A pitchfork.
He gripped it with both hands, pointed upward, at the hyena.
The other predator had a second to register it. Trying to twist away midair and failing.
Too late.
His own weight carried him into the tines, impaling him on the farming tool.
Kassur and the predator locked eyes.
The hyena let out a tired chuckle. As if he’d just heard a bad joke.
Then he went limp. Dead.
=================================
Neither Morty nor the jaguar saw any of that.
Morty was crashing.
His muscles seized as he struggled to breath. He vomited, body lurching from the recoil of the stimulant burn-out. That was one of the reasons most people didn’t risk using the stimulants.
He felt the sensations of pain and sounds coming back full force. His hands fumbled inside his coat. Found the second ampoule. He stared at it.
Stupid. Dangerous. Probably lethal if misused.
And then he heard footsteps. The jaguar was on top of him.
“Ready to die?”
He jammed the ampoule into his neck and squeezed. The second hit came like lightning.
the blue square flashed back. Bright. Hanging dead-center in his vision. Morty gasped, pupils snapping wide, the world around him fracturing at the edges — movement distorting, sound warping, colors collapsing into unnatural contrast. The square flickered then shattered. Gone.
And the world snapped back in with brutal clarity.
His spine arched. His hands clenched. Blood roared in his ears like waves against a rocky cliff. He felt his pupils snap wide and narrow again. The whole world burned into color and noise and raw information. Too much and barely enough.
“What the hell?” he heard the jaguar shout.
Morty twisted and kicked the leg he had cut before. Jaguar yelping in pain and faltering.
Behind them reinforcements arrived. Not for Morty
There were five of them. Two wolves, one panther, one rat in body armor, and a ram with a shotgun slung across his back. Not local workers. Morty didn't recognize their markings. But the eyes told him everything. They were here to clean up.
The rat spotted them.
“There!” he shouted. “DAIR’s alive!”
The wolves aimed shotguns at him and fired. Morty dove sideways.
The slug tore through the corner of a crate behind them, blasting animal feed into a cloud. He scrambled up behind a tower of boxes. Morty rolled, came up against a concrete column. His breath was shallow and fast. Too fast.
His body wasn’t working right. His hands were trembling. Neurological misfire.
“Up here. Now” someone said next to him.
Morty tried to punch but missed completely. Which was good.
Kev the weasel that he bought eels from helped him on top of a crate. Morty’s muscles spasmed and fell back. The stimulant surge making his body shiver, heart hammering too fast, skipping beats. His vision blurred around the edges. His limbs felt like iron rods with bad wiring. He slumped against the weasel.
“Hey, Ferros. Do it. Do it now.”
On the other side of the room, Kassur blinked.
He hauled himself up, climbing a tower of sealed containers like a mechanic scrambling over a burning engine. His fur was wet and streaked with blood from the hyena. He looked like a man held together by adrenaline and panic.
The water below was now nearly a foot deep. Another shot rang out. A crate exploded.
Morty tried to stand and Kev shouted again. The jackal saw the newcomers rushing at him.
Kassur was shouting something now. Morty couldn’t track the words.
He saw the jackal standing up on top of a pile of crates now. Looking down, blood covering his chest and face. Face twisted into something between rage and panic. He held something in his hands.
A bundle of sparking cables.
Live. Frayed. Hissing.
Morty’s eyes widened.
“Kassur…”
“Fuck all of you, pendejos.” Kassur yelled, voice cracking.
He didn’t wait for permission. He threw the wires into the rising water. There was a blast of electricity and a loud bang as the electric grid short circuited, sparks flying everywhere. Emergency lights turning on.
The flooded floor became a conductor.
The wolves jerked. One collapsed. The rat convulsed mid-step. The shotgun ram arched backward, eyes rolling, foam bursting from his mouth.
Kassur dropped to his knees on the crates above — breathing hard, shaking.
All around them, survivors moaned, gasped, staggered. Stockyard workers and customers — the ones still alive — sagged where they stood as their adrenaline burned out.
Kassur raised his hand and yanked the huge electrical cord from the ceiling. Even if the system had short circuited, he didn’t trust it to not fry him too.
Most of the livestock was dead or stunned, floating, twitching, or silent in their pens.
Kev stood in it.
The weasel was soaked to the waist, standing knee-deep in water and ash. His stall was gone — just a scorched hole where his fish tanks used to be. The bodies of two crumpled friends lay not far from it. He wasn’t looking at them. Not directly. But his eyes didn’t leave the floor either.
Kassur jumped down, boots splashing, and trudged through the wreckage. He checked on Morty, the cat still breathing, but barely. Then he turned to the weasel and placed a big paw on his shoulder.
“Thanks, Kev,” he muttered.
Kev didn’t answer at first. He just glanced at the damage, then at Morty. His voice, when it came, was flat. Cracked.
“Yeah... You’re welcome, boss.”
A long pause.
Then he swallowed hard. And looked around again.
“This place is done.” His voice became hoarse. “Not ‘damaged.’ Not ‘needs repairs.’ Just… gone.”
He wiped his nose on the back of one shaking hand, eyes fixed on a cracked fiberglass tank where he used to keep the salt eels.
“They killed Dima. Just shot him. Didn't even look. He gave me my first tank.”
He didn’t cry. Just said it like he was trying to make a list. Trying to keep it straight.
“Didn’t even say anything. Just…” He gestured vaguely toward the ground. “Like he was trash.”
Another silence.
“Twenty years in this place. All of us. Some of them... just kids who wanted to work.”
Kev blinked hard. His next breath caught in his chest like it was too big to breathe.
Then he looked at Morty again. And this time, there was something sharp behind his eyes.
“You make your DAIR friend there get whoever did this, boss. You don’t let this become just another fucked-up day in the district. Please.”
He nodded. Kassur wasn’t an enforcer. He was a repairman with a shop. But he made the promise anyway.
“We will.”
Kev’s shoulders sagged. Like those words were all he had left to carry.
He turned away without another word, trying to find anything worth salvaging..
=================================
Morty’s world was narrowing.
Sounds were warping. His body felt hollowed out, like the stimulant had scraped him from the inside. Then he sniffed the scent of spice and oil. He saw Kassur’s face overhead. His golden eyes were so full of worry. Felt hands grab and lift him. Heat and strength and panic, all in one.
“You’re okay,” Kassur whispered. “I got you. I got you, Morty. Don’t die.”
Morty tried to speak. Failed. His eyes fluttered once, then closed.
The only light came from emergency strips mounted to the walls.
Kassur made his way across the stockyard. Some of the survivors were checking if any of the thugs survived the discharge. One of the wolves had and was being tied down. Morty was hot on his arms, like a bad fever. The air reeked of ozone, burnt fur, and animal waste.
He’d killed people.
He’d electrocuted them. Like livestock. Because it was the only way.
He looked down at the unconscious cat in his arms. Morty’s fur was matted, his coat torn, eyes shut, ears limp.
He was at the point where the stockyard connected with the ramp. Then he heard it, a groaning of effort followed by a terrible metallic shriek.
Kassur froze. It came again. Then a sudden crash. The massive bulk of the still stalled truck was pushed aside, toppling on its side as if it was just scrap.Impact shaking the walls.
Kassur’s heart stuttered. His grip tightened around Morty’s limp body. He curled forward slightly, as if trying to shield him from whatever came next.
From the doorway something big entered. Lumbering. Enormous. Bigger than life.
Its shape hunched to clear the low ceiling, but even bent, its head and shoulders brushed the pipes. Thick fur. Tense, powerful limbs. And above it all — antlers so vast they scraped against hanging wires, knocking down what remained of the flickering emergency lights.
The hallway was too small for it. The world was too small for it. Varro moved slowly while keeping low, like , like a child afraid of breaking a toy.
Kassur whimpered. The noise escaped him before he could stop it.
The towering figure paused. just a few meters from him. That vast head turned. Antlers gouging part of the mortar of the ceiling. Two wide, glassy eyes blinked down at him. He smelled bad, like sewer.
Then he spoke. His voice surprisingly soft. Uneven. Confused.
“Uh… Where…
It was wrong. Too wrong.
The voice came from something huge and monstrous but sounded like a boy lost in the dark. Kassur took a step back knowing all too well he couldn’t escape that monster’s reach. and when the moose closed the distance, his brain screamed to run, but his body stayed still — locked, trembling, water up to his knees, Morty limp in his arms.
The thing — Varro, he realized — took another step inside.
The sound of its breath filled the room. Everyone paused to look at him.
“Where’s… the teacher?” it asked, voice cracking like old ice.
Then more sounds echoed down the ramp. Footsteps. Rapid. Heavier. Flashlight beams strobing in the back corridor. Boots on metal. Gears. Guns.
Varro turned sharply toward the sound. His body tensed. He looked scared. Not dangerous. Scared. And that seemed absurd.
His voice dropped lower, panicked.
“No. No. I… I don’t wanna…”
He turned. And ran. Back the way he came, down the ramp. Varro vanished into the dark, antlers smashing sideways into the doorway as he went.
Just like that. He was gone. And for the third time this night, Kassur didn’t die when he thought he would have.