quarantine 1

The air of the cavern-like dining hall was literally filled with insects: butterflies, dragonflies, beetles, but no bees or horseflies. The ground was carpeted with small, harmless furry animals: rabbits, mice, ferrets, gerbils, and everything in between. But the benches were
also filled, with humans.

Mycha started to walk through the fray.

“This is the Harmless Animal Sector, pretty self explanatory,” she explained, as she dodged a butterfly and stepped over a rabbit. “We don’t have to worry about them much. They know that one foot, or antenna, out that door and who knows what could happen? If someone happened to swat them or, god forbid, step on them, it would be such a tragic
accident. But after all, only an accident, of course.” Mycha’s smile made the air seem colder, and harder.

Next was the Semi-Harmful Animal Sector. It was bigger and felt a little less homey.

They walked through multiple sub-sections: stinging insects, biting insects, venom-less snakes, wild dogs, birds of prey. There were even more in the wings, Mycha told him.

After that, Mycha, who smiled too often and too cold, took him to the Dangerous
Animal Sector.

And this section felt like a prison. The air was somehow even harder. The walls were grey cement, the only furniture was hard and metallic, and hardly anyone was around, especially not in animal form.

Mycha motioned Neal into a smaller hallway decorated with its own set of locked stainless steel doors. Mycha pushed him through a smaller door at the end of the hallway. It was lead to a stairway and a small observation room with a one-way window. Even before he looked, Neal didn’t want to see through that window. Mycha gave him another chilly smirk.

“They were waiting for you. How nice.” She held down the intercom button.

“Bring her in, Vanessa.”

“Acardi, call me Acardi. We’re not on a first name basis, Barton.” Mycha released the intercom and shook her head, still smiling.

“Oh, Vanessa, always so formal.” But Neal wasn’t watching Mycha anymore. He was
looking through the window, and he knew he would regret it.

The guard called Acardi came through a cleverly hidden door on the far side of the room, roughly pushing a girl, short and almost too thin to be healthy. Neal guessed that it wasn’t by choice.

From the high observation window, he felt like he was watching a movie. No, dolls.

He was watching a game of make-believe that felt all too real. [He dissociates here] He was far away, so much bigger than that small, struggling figure, but he felt so close.

But he kept his jaw steel and his face hard. Mycha was grinning.

“You know, it’s your first day, let’s get closer.” Neal wanted to shake his head quickly and back away, like the shy kid he had been just a few years ago, but he [suppressed the instinct and] instead he gave his sadistic colleague a curt nod and followed her down a narrow metal ladder that took them to the stage of the scene that had started just minutes ago. And Neal looked where he knew he would regret.

Acardi had forced or maybe allowed the short, thin, handcuffed girl to fall to her
knees. Neal pursed his lips.

“Those handcuffs look…different,” he noted. Mycha shrugged.

“Iron, stops them from shifting as long as they’re touching it.” Neal nodded but he
wanted to scream.

“This is the fox that’s been causing all the trouble,” Mycha smirked. “Used to be a
Semi-Harmful animal, now she’s a little bit more, and gets her own…special treatment.” Acardi kicked the girl with her rubber boot. The girl barely flinched. She looked so broken; Neal doubted they could break her anymore.

“No moving,” Acardi ordered. The fox’s eyes were clenched shut and she didn’t
move. Acardi nodded at the door. “Subject ready.” Neal wanted to shiver but he was already
cold, hard, steel. A man in a white lab coat came through the door with a petri dish, a
scalpel, and some tweezers. The fox’s back was facing Neal, so he was forced to look where
he would regret. The man pulled the stretched and bloody collar of her T-shirt down to
expose her shoulder blade. He made an unceremonious incision. The blood started again,
Neal supposed, to flow. The fox flinched her eyes shut tighter but made no sound, and she
did not move. The man was not done. He pushed the tweezers even less ceremoniously into
the incision and pulled. The flesh ripped. The girl’s lip curled up, but still she did not move
and she made no sound.

“Flesh sample,” Mycha grinned.

Neal knew his eyes were wide, but at least his jaw was still steel. He wanted to
throw up.

The flesh sample went into the petri dish and out the door with the man in the white
lab coat who was too bored for the blood that poured down the back of this small
unmoving fox-girl. Acardi forced the girl off her knees. The blood still ran on pale skin like
wax, but it was too fast for dripping.

Neal wanted to do something that he hadn’t done, or even thought about, for years, almost a decade. Neal Grover wanted to cry