I felt myself suddenly lifted off the floor, snatched by the back of my neck. A yelp nearly escaped, but I choked it down, realizing any sound would draw the masked stranger. Alan, cradling me in one arm, closed the door behind us as quietly as she could.

My whiskers curled. My nose scrunched up. The air hit my lungs. Dear god! It reeked. Like death laced with a chemical tang that stung my nose. Burned my eyes. Gagging, I fought the urge to retch.

I wriggled free from Alan's grip and landed silently on all fours, glancing around to get my bearings. There was something about this room that felt so warped. And then I realized– the Kill Room.

The room felt off, more uncomfortable from the others, which had been dim and cramped, crammed with cages and tanks. This space was larger and white. A bright light filled the room, its source a half-dome fixture embedded in the ceiling, humming faintly.

I caught sight of Flynn, curled up in the corner, nervously looking up at Alan.

“She won’t harm you,” I reassured him.

“Can you blame me for not trusting humans?” he shot back. “I’ve seen her and others eat my kind. Now, they’re taking us, using us for their twisted experiments.”

“Hey, both of you! Take a look at this,” said Ziggy, who had wandered over to the other side of the room, taking in the sight before him.

Sprawled across the floor was a maze of twisting paths and dead ends. Streaks of dried blood stained the passageways, while small clumps of feces lay scattered throughout the maze.

Then I saw it. A ball of brown fur. It was curled up in a corner. An unfortunate victim. Ziggy walked over and leaned in as close as he could without leaping over the mini-walls and into the maze itself.

“It's dead,” he said, his whiskers twitching with apprehension and disgust.

Flynn rushed to where Ziggy stood, but when he looked over the maze’s wall and saw the lifeless rat, he lost his grip on the wall and slid down to the floor. His breath came in ragged gasps, the sight had shaken him to his core, and he crawled as far from the maze as possible.

“Did you know the rat?” Ziggy asked.

“No, but it’s hard to see one of your own like that,” Flynn replied, clearly upset.

Ziggy glanced around, studying the maze’s perimeter with interest. “What do you think this maze is for?”

I mulled over the bizarre sights we’d encountered so far—the map projection of Floating City, in blue light; the rats trapped in their tiny prisons; the blobs in glass tanks.

But what gnawed at me most was Wynn. The way he had snapped to attention, stiff as a puppet on strings, when that shrill frequency sliced through the air. His entire demeanor changed again, the instant the sound became a low hum, as if he’d been shaken awake from a dream he hadn’t known he was trapped in.

I pieced each clue together, trying to solve an impossible riddle that may not even have an answer. Then, something clicked, once I had wedged a piece of the puzzle into the picture. A light went on inside my head. The truth was: it wasn’t just Wynn who was being controlled, but the blob inside him, and the masked stranger held the remote. But for what purpose?

“To see if the rat could find its way through the maze,” I finally answered, “under the masked stranger's control–mind control. And he must've used sound.”

Ziggy tilted his head in confusion. “Using sound to control?”

“Didn't you notice how Flynn's brother's behavior switched when the pitch of the sound changed?”

“Yes, but come on! Sounds used to control the animals? That’s ridiculous,” Ziggy scoffed.

“It is possible.”

“But how?”

“It’s the blobs.”

Flynn and Ziggy muttered, “The blobs…”

I nodded. “Once they're infused in the body, you control the blob, and through the blob, you control the animal.”

“Control the blob-infected animal with sound.” Ziggy's eyes lit up; he was starting to follow the thread of thoughts I was weaving together.

“That's right, with sound. But it seems that most of the experiments haven't been so successful.”

“Why do you say that?”

I pointed at the rat in the maze. As I leaned in, I saw its jaw unnaturally split wide, flesh hanging like a cracked, brittle husk. Not far from the body lay a shriveled blob, pale with streaks of sickly red where blood had dried and crusted, its hundreds of tendrils curled and withered.

Meanwhile, Alan paced the room in a panic, muttering under her breath, “Shit, shit, shit, what am I going to do?”

She frantically searched for an escape, but there was nothing—no other door, no window. We were trapped. She stopped at the table, her face twisting in disgust at whatever she saw there.

Of course, naturally driven by curiosity, I climbed up to the table’s surface for a closer look. What I saw nearly made eyes bulge from my skull. I stumbled back, nearly losing my footing, overwhelmed by a nauseating sight unlike anything I could have imagined. It made my soul shrink back in horror.

“What is it? What's up there?” I hear Ziggy asking me from below.

More dead rats.

Three of them lay in a row, their abdomens split wide open, skin pinned down to the surface. Inside each of them, infecting every inch of their exposed organs, was a blob, shriveled and motionless.

What made it even more horrifying was the fourth body. Except it wasn’t a rat… it was a cat. One that looked like me. Deep red and orange fur. He was cut open and pinned in the same manner, only this time with a larger blob nestled inside. I leaned over the edge, catching sight of Ziggy gazing up at me, his head cocked to the side, waiting patiently for my answer.

“Did you know of any other cats, besides Tinker, who’ve been missing or infected?” I asked.

“Um, let me think…” Ziggy replied, scratching his head. “Well, I heard that Blink from New Shire has been missing for a week now. His forever partner mentioned he went up to Old Rig for some food and just never came home. Why do you ask?”

Flynn scrambled up the leg of the table and joined me on the surface, but once he saw the grisly scene, he stumbled back, slipping off the edge. He would have fallen if I hadn’t grabbed him by his long tail just in time. I set him down beside me.

“It's Blink, isn't it?” Ziggy said. “He's up there…”

“Oh, my dear god!” Flynn gasped, putting a hand over his heart. “And more of my kind are dead. We're being dissected like we're nothing!”

I stepped carefully around the carcasses, making my way to a tray of syringes and scalpels. Beside it sat a small glass dish filled with clear liquid, and next to that, a large bowl holding a deflated pufferfish, its body split open down the middle. Its insides had been removed and were now floating in the water.

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Once Flynn regained his composure, he approached the syringes, inspecting them closely. His eyes went over to the dish and scrutinized the clear and odorless liquid before leaning in to sniff the bowl containing the dead pufferfish.

“I wouldn't touch that if I were you,” he warned.

“It's the pufferfish poison.”

“Yup, it is,” he confirmed with a slight nod. “It could kill you in seconds. If you're lucky, it'll only paralyze you for life.”

“I'm very much aware of that.”

Alan reached for the scalpel on the tray, gently pushing Flynn aside with a wave of her fingers.

“Alright, boys, time to make our move,” she whispered to herself. Her face was set, though there was fear in her eyes. “If he’s out there, waiting… Well, we’ll fight him off. Then we’ll run. Just keep running.”

She turned to me, her expression softening with a slight nod and a wry smile. "You'll have my back, won’t you, Page?”

I answered her with a proud meow as I puffed out my chest, whiskers twitching in agreement.

She responded with a feeble but fond grin, her fingers finding that familiar spot behind my ear, the one that always made me purr.

“Stay close behind me,” she instructed, her grip tightening around the small, sharp scalpel that was her only defense.

She pressed her ear against the surface, waiting.

Listening.

I jumped down from the table and moved across the floor to the door without a sound. Ziggy trailed behind. Both of us listened, too, hoping to catch the faintest hint of danger prowling on the other side.

She glanced my way, and with a firm nod, she grasped the doorknob. Ever so slowly, she twisted it. Holding her breath, she pushed the door open, just a sliver at first, and then after a few more seconds of silence, she pushed it wider.

I crept past her feet and poked my head out.

No one was there, except Wynn, still trapped in his tiny prison, pacing around. I could almost feel his frustration, his growing rage. But then, I realized something. There was no low hum. The place was quiet. Too quiet.

"Looks clear to me," Flynn whispered, having slipped out of the Kill Room and now inching toward the table leg to climb.

"What do you think you're doing?" I hissed, barely containing my panic.

"I'm not leaving without my brother!"

"He's not the same—" I lunged to stop him, but a shadow fell over me.

Slowly, I glanced up, only to find my own reflection staring back at me in the glossy, black surface of the full-faced mask.

The masked stranger stood tall in a metallic blue suit that hugged his body like an artificial second skin. And he wore a long, silvery coat that rippled like liquid metal with each subtle movement. Strapped to his back was a cylindrical tank with a tube attached to the mask.

He stared at me for a long, uncomfortable time. Then, slowly, his attention turned to Alan, who hovered in the doorway of the Kill Room, her expression unreadable. One hand was hidden behind her back. Without breaking her gaze from him, she began inching toward the far door, her aim clearly set on reaching the staircase.

“You see,” she began, her voice a strained attempt at calmness, “I came here to find you. There were a few questions—questions about a purchase made by one of the NOAH 1 residents.”

She paused, glancing nervously toward the door. “But the front door... it was wide open, I swear! I thought maybe someone had broken in, that something was wrong, so I came up here to investigate.”

The masked stranger tensed up, metallic fists clenching as one foot slid forward, ready to lunge. I realized his intent too late, throwing myself in his path just as his brutal, steel-tipped boot crashed into my chin. Pain exploded through my skull, distorting everything into a dizzy blur for a split second. My senses all snapped back into focus just in time to see him hurtling toward Alan.

My instincts fired before I could think—fight or die. My claws were out, sharp and ready. As I leapt onto him, I felt it: the suit was too hard, designed not just to protect but to erase any vulnerability.

I couldn’t tear into it. My claws slid uselessly over its metallic surface. But then I noticed—the suit wasn’t perfect. It had seams, tiny rivets and grooves. I used them, scrambling up his leg, clinging to these fractures in his armor, moving up his back. Finally, I found myself atop the cylindrical tank strapped to him.

Alan moved fast, ducking just as the masked figure charged at her. She swung her arm around, revealing the scalpel clutched tightly in her hand. The blade glinted as it sliced through the air, but it missed its mark. She swung again, more desperately this time, but the masked stranger blocked the strike with his armored forearm, the sound of metal-on-metal ringing through the room.

Alan lifted her leg and drove a hard kick into his stomach. The impact sent him staggering backward, just enough to create a moment of breathing room. But he regained his balance fast. In a flash, he was on her again, his hand locking onto her wrist.

Alan fought back. She twisted and shoved, and suddenly they were head to head, their bodies tangled in a struggle. They spun together in a violent dance of survival knocking over the rows of blob tanks that lined the room. Glass shattered everywhere, and water flooded the floor.

The blobs stirred. From the broken tanks, they awoke, their gelatinous forms convulsing with life. Long, pulsating stringy appendages slithered out, growing longer and longer as they writhed through the air, searching blindly for something—anything—to latch onto. They wrapped themselves around metal pipes, furniture, and broken shards of glass.

Ziggy was already in the thick of it, clawing at the appendages. He fought them off, tearing at them, thwarting their attempts to ensnare him. But they kept coming, multiplying, stretching farther.

I held on tight, atop the cylindrical tank. My claws dug into the tube that connected to his mask, and I tore at it, desperate to sever whatever kept this monstrous figure moving. The tube was taut, resistant. But then, with a sudden snap, it gave way, hissing. The strap around the mask tore loose, and the mask itself dangled limply from his face.

What I saw beneath wasn’t the hardened monster I expected, but the face of a young man, pale and smooth like porcelain. But then, the moment the sea air of Floating City touched his skin, everything changed. Blood rushed to the surface, reddening his face as if the air itself was poison.

His features warped; his cheeks swelled, his flesh bubbling like it was being burned from the inside out. Thick ropes of saliva oozed from his lips, which bloated and thickened into a sickly pink mass.

His eyes bulged in their sockets, straining to stay within the shape of a face that was no longer human, no longer anything recognizable. The more he breathed, the worse it became.

I jumped off his back just as he collapsed onto the floor. Landing beside Alan, I rushed to help her fend off the tendrils that sought to ensnare her legs. She slashed at them with the scalpel. But as the blade sliced through the blobs’ appendages, a shower of acidic spray erupted into the air, hissing.

The mist burned our skin. Alan screamed. I could see the pain flash across her face.

“There are too many of them!” Ziggy shouted, his voice choked as the blobs’ tendrils wrapped around him, their slick forms pushing against his lips, desperate to breach his mouth.

Alan didn’t hesitate. She brought her boot down hard on one of the gelatinous creatures, the impact causing it to burst into a pool of hissing acid. The puddle spread quickly, but before a single drop could reach Ziggy, she grabbed him by the collar and hauled him up, securing him under her arm.

Flynn managed to unlock his brother’s cage, but what came out wasn’t Wynn—at least, not anymore. Slithering, rope-like appendages spilled from his brother’s mouth as Wynn rushed at him. Startled, Flynn staggered backward, falling off the table, and crashed to the ground, Wynn falling with him in a tangle of writhing limbs.

“Wynn! It’s me Flynn! Please, wake up!” Flynn cried.

Perhaps his brother's desperate pleas reached deep into him as Wynn seemed to snap out of the trance, if only for a heartbeat. He pushed Flynn away, growling at him to leave. His eyes then locked onto the masked stranger, now staggering to his feet. Wynn’s body jerked into motion, charging.

The rat leapt first, landing on the man’s face with a squeal, sending him crashing back to the ground. Before he could recover, Wynn’s tendrils seized the moment, forcing the man's mouth wide. Then, from Wynn’s throat, a pale wet blob emerged. It tore through his jaws, splitting them wide open, before launching itself onto the man’s face with a sickening splatter.

He clawed at the creature, desperate to tear it off, but the tendrils tightened their grip, wrapping his face in a suffocating embrace. Slowly, relentlessly, it forced its way into his mouth.

With a final shudder, his body buckled then slammed against the floor with a heavy thud. His throat bulged, distending as the creature slithered further inside, making its way down toward his organs, where it would infuse itself and take control. Then, he went still.

“Wynn! No, Wynn!” Flynn sobbed and ran to his brother's body but stopped when the man sat up with a sudden jerk.

Something far from human stared back at us. The man groaned, staggering upright, then violently slammed himself against the wall, as if wrestling some inner demon. For a second, he thrashed, and then, with sudden clarity, he turned to the white tablet on the table. Its green lights flashed and danced across the surface. Whatever command he entered triggered a mechanical voice: “Countdown to destruction. Fifteen seconds.”

My whiskers bristled. "We need to leave—NOW!"

As if she understood what I had said, Alan scooped me up and tucked me under her other arm, and started sprinting toward the stairs. Just as the front door came into view and we neared the brink of escape, I was suddenly airborne.

A fiery inferno exploded behind me, its roar as deafening as thunder. The scorching heat licked my fur, the tips of my whiskers curling in the blaze.