A week had passed, slowly and painfully. There wasn’t a lot to do in the confines of his cage and the Doctor refused to treat him any differently than he did his other beasts. Even the same food was given to him, although considering the doctor’s eccentricity when it came to what constituted food on any given day this didn’t mean much. Chris had been fed everything from raw meat to moss with no apparent rhyme or reason. And when he tried to refuse the meals were practically shoved down his throat while the damn dog laughed at him.

The dog was the absolute bane of his existence. It stared at him every second it was awake and didn’t respond to any attempts to communicate with it beyond its all too human laugh. Today seemed to be more of the same, which suited the rough plan he’d begun to finalize just fine for now. “God what the hell do you want you creepy damn dog?!” Chris shouted at the animal to at least bleed the very edge off his stress.

“You’re pathetic aren’t you?” The dog spoke back in a deep, raspy baritone. Its milky white eyes bored into Chris' own.

Chris blanched momentarily, then rallied. “What finally learned to speak then boy?”

“Of course I can speak. Everything can, in the Tower. But of course you don’t know that, because you’re just a lost cause.” The beast sniggered, its lips peeling back over its cursed teeth with all the visual artistry of a rotting corpse. “A failure, undeserving of the life he stumbled ass first into.”

“You don’t know the first damn thing about me or my life you bitch!”

“I know enough. You don’t even have the will to fight against your own imprisonment. Every one of the animals here fought before going into their cages. You capitulate, practically bowing before your master. You might call me a bitch, but even bitches have teeth. You? I’m not so sure.”

Chris narrowed his eyes. That explains why the doctor was still so wary of him, if everything else in these cages fought when they were first brought in. He knew it would probably be abnormal, but unique was outside of his expectations. “And yet we’re both in cages. Why should I suffer pain when I can’t change the facts. Though I suppose that’s a concept animals like you just aren’t advanced enough to understand.”

The dog stood, its fur rising in fury. “I was forced to live on the scraps of you ‘advanced beings’ watching without being able to even understand while you and your ilk raped the world right in front of my eyes. My existence is to rail against fate, while you were born into a world so twisted and mangled that you forgot that you could starve.”

“Well then be happy! The world is gone, and you and I can sit and rot in these cages as equals until the good doctor tires of us.” Chris laughed back. The unease the creature had built in him had vanished now that it spoke, that it could be understood.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“I’ll enjoy it.” The beast calmed itself and went back to angrily staring at him.

Chris put him out of his mind and went over the plan again within his mind’s eye. He had done this a lot when he was labbing matchups, just replaying events and problems in his head over and over until he’d found a solution. Now he turned that same tenacity to his escape. The key to everything was the lock on his cage. Chris had no idea how to pick locks so that was neatly discarded as an option. He couldn’t even practice because of the possible cameras in the room. So he had to either steal the key, wait until the doctor opened the cage for him, or break the cage in some way.

The last one could be discarded entirely. He couldn’t break the cage even if he tried. The second one seemed more promising but there was another problem. The doctor watched him too closely, and if he had the same strange power that The Raksha had then Chris had no chance of winning in a straight up fight. His only chance of getting out was with the element of surprise.

So he had to steal the key, without being noticed. If the doctor noticed his key was gone there was no point. And the only time he could steal the key was when the doctor let him outside of the cage. When he was watching him super closely. If Chris was a master thief then he could probably pull it off. But the dog’s accusations of his worth were closer to the truth than Chris was willing to admit. So what was he going to do?

Every other problem he’d foreseen he’d found at least a workable solution to. The doctor chasing him? Kill him with the axe that laid on the bottom of the trolley. He was forced to assume that the doctor didn’t have a magical forcefield all the time. But if he did Chris was probably just fucked anyway, and part of getting good at games was accepting that there were certain hands you just couldn’t win against. As for faring in the world outside? Seethis had walked in with books on occasion, and a man like him probably had quite the hoard of valuable knowledge. He’d steal everything the toad had and use it to survive. Even his disgusting food would be useful until Chris could fend for himself. Until he was strong enough to kill The Raksha.

But none of that mattered if he couldn’t get past the damn lock. And he just couldn’t think of a way to get it open once it was closed. Without getting caught at least. But what if it doesn’t close? The synapse in his brain fired, leaping to an actual intelligent thought. He almost stood and started pacing, so energizing was the idea. Again the threat of the cameras stopped him cold. The lock was a simple bolt action affair, and the bolt clicked into place, sealed in by the locking mechanism. But if he could stuff something into the bolt-hole, a piece of cloth, like from his bandages, he could pull the bolt back out with no need of a key of any kind.

It was possible, even more than that it wasn’t even that hard. There were risks of course, but this was the only way. If it didn’t work, nothing would. There were some hands you just couldn’t win against. So Chris retreated back into the world of his mind's eye. He held every single action under scrutiny, replaying them again and again. His muscles twitched in a ghostly response to his imagined movements. He would minimize every risk, each step, each action would be perfect. He would make them perfect.

He would spend every waking moment hashing and re-hashing every single step until it went beyond simple muscle memory and beyond simple imagination. He would practice until the reality in his mind was indistinguishable from reality. Failure was not an option.