The day was overcast, yet far too bright for Thomas. The nussians at the top of the prison ramp were on sentry duty, yet their minds were noisy and judgmental.

Dangerous, one thought as Thomas floated outside.

Should not be allowed so much freedom, another thought.

Thomas gave no hint that he overheard their mistrust. He told himself that he didn’t care. Besides, he had no room to process anything extraneous.

He wanted minimal sensory input. It would be best if he could just sit alone for a few hours. In silence. And darkness.

An assistant awaited him on the boulevard. Today, his assistant the speckled govki who used to serve him as a personal slave. Nror was pacing on all six stubby limbs. He wore a net over his furry body—his species favored nets instead of clothing. Upon seeing Thomas, he reared to a quadrupedal arrangement, the govki version of civility. He dusted off his hands, opened the satchel he carried, and unfolded Thomas’s wide-brimmed sun hat.

“Was everything all right in there?” Nror asked.

Thomas didn’t think he could be civil right now. Not even to someone who was trying to be his friend. Lately he kept waking up with the sensation that his bed was actually a heap of corpses.

“Oops, let me put your hat on.” Nror sped after him.

Thomas tolerated the kindness. He quelled the part of himself that insisted that he did not belong in a dusty street amongst inferiors (slave species) who made noises to communicate. That wasn’t his opinion. It came from the lifetimes he had just absorbed.

Mostly, he just felt numb. Flattening his emotions was the only way to endure the proximity of terrified victims without falling apart and weeping.

The Academy was uptown, which meant uphill. Pedestrians crossed to the far side of the street upon seeing Thomas. Nror trotted by his side, keeping up a companionable stream of one-sided prattle. Thomas feigned interest by saying “hm” or “ah” at appropriate pauses.

Tall buildings lined the streets, their ground-level floors inviting with shops and restaurants. Hovercarts whooshed up or down the central lane, like cars. Passengers did double-takes when they saw Thomas. He sensed their reactions. At a quick glance, Thomas looked like a disabled Alashani who was brave enough to use evil technology. Their moods curdled as soon as they realized that he wasn’t albino; he was one of the two rekvehs who attended war councils.

Thomas figured he would be able to pass as an albino teenager once he could walk unaided. The sunhat helped. He just needed to build up his strength.

Ahead of them, a flying sky crocodile tried to land on the overhead wire mesh that protected pedestrians from carnivorous megafauna. It emitted a piercing caw of pain, slipped between the razor wire, and plummeted. It became entangled amidst clotheslines.

“Oh!” Nror interrupted himself.

Thomas recognized the beast as a hatchling. Adult sky crocs were far too big to fall through the rooftop meshwork. This one was already the size of a slim alligator. Except it could fly. Those wings added a lot of extra mass.

It looked like an alien pterosaur. A human might mistake it for a dragon.

Blood streaked its reptilian scales as it clawed against the side of a building, struggling to take off again. It hit the razor mesh from the wrong side and fell again, hitting signs for shops.

“Uh, let’s skip a visit to the butcher’s shop.” Nror sighed. “I would have liked to pick up a roast for tonight, but not now.”

Onlookers filled both sides of the street. The injured hatchling flapped upright, scaring the crowd. It made another attempt to fly away.

A nussian butcher stood with a raised cleaver, yelling threats at the frantic beast. Thomas figured the sky croc must have smelled the meat racks. That explained why it had attempted to land in the first place. Nussian shopfronts were broad and open to the air.

“Let’s take another way home.” Nror backtracked a few steps.

“Wait.”

Thomas knew that this mob would kill the hatching sky croc even if the butcher did not. Ariock had gently relocated all indigenous megafauna away from their coastal city, but sometimes, sky crocs found their way back. They were apex predators without any natural enemies. The species had not yet learned the habit of avoiding people and guns.

Sky crocs had been known to swoop down and attack people out in fields. There were rumors that a whole chain gang of penitents had been devoured by a pair of the adult predators.

And yet.

Thomas could see that this hatchling was frightened and alone. It kept trying to launch skyward, as if in search of missing parents.

Sky crocs formed close family units. A well-cared-for hatchling would not have ventured into city airspace at all. Only a starved animal would take major risks.

It looked scrawny. This beast was clearly too young to catch prey on its own.

Its parents would have attempted a rescue, if they were alive. In all likelihood, Thomas knew, the parents of this hatchling were dead. Soldiers and transport pilots were happy to kill flying predators as a means of target practice.

“Excuse me.” Thomas floated into the crowd. “Will you let me through?”

The reactions ranged from !!! surprised to sullen to fearful. People might shuffle aside for a shani warrior, but they leaped out of Thomas’s way. No one wanted to be within his range of telepathy.

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Their fear and resentment distorted the atmosphere like heat waves. Thomas saw himself reflected in their minds. Unlike his victims in the prison, these people viewed him as terrifyingly ordinary. He wore drab woolens. His face was shaded by a hat that any typical albino would wear. Many people wished he looked more monstrous just so they could more easily steer clear of him.

Maybe someday, average people would feel just as comfortable around Thomas as his lab assistants did. And Nror.

“Thomas, what are you doing?” Nror scurried to catch up.

“Don’t!” Thomas yelled at the butcher.

The nussian paused, one immense arm raised with a cleaver. The blade was large enough to slice through the hatching’s long neck.

“What is your objection?” the butcher rumbled.

The hatchling fluttered, its glossy black scales rippling.

“Let the injured animal go,” Thomas said.

“Why?” The butcher goggled as though he had heard only gibberish. “We can’t let a beast like this go free in the streets.” He launched into a long explanation, defending the good people of Freedomland, his shop’s reputation, and the fact that sky crocs were good for nothing. Besides, the animal was injured and orphaned. It would die anyway.

All very good reasons for killing it.

“Please.” Thomas held out his hand. “Let the animal go. I’ll guarantee that it will stay away from your shop, and it won’t bother you again. Can I buy a family-sized cut of sauropod steak? You can scan my credit code.”

He held out his wristwatch. Much of the city had shifted to a currency system of legal tender war credits, enabled by trust in the current leadership.

Disbelief surrounded him.

Thomas was taking a risk, and he was painfully aware that he did not have any logical, rational reasons for doing so. A few of the surrounding people guessed that he wanted to torture the animal with nefarious experiments. Some feared that he would zombify it, then use it to wreak havoc on anyone who defied him.

On top of stoking unwanted rumors, Thomas wasn’t sure he could do much for an orphaned wild predator. Could he even trust the animal not to bite his head off? Its toothy, scissor-like jaws would easily fit around his head. It could swallow an adolescent boy like Thomas in four or five shakes of its long, powerful throat.

But it was shivering with pain and exhaustion.

It lay in the dirt, too weak to fight, cocking its head to glimpse the faraway sky. Thomas sensed its yearning.

The hatching awaited a rescue that would never come.

He knew exactly what it was going through. He knew—not just from absorbed knowledge, but from bitter, firsthand experience.

Thomas was an orphan, too. He had been alone and trapped amidst strangers on Earth. And he had waited desperately for his birth mother and father to show up and rescue him.

They had never come. Nor would they ever come.

He was alone, neither human nor Torth. People everywhere reviled him. He was like this sky croc hatchling: neither crocodile nor pterosaur, but reviled by everyone.

Thomas was not going to turn his back on an orphan like himself. Wild creature or not, he could at least offer the animal something other than hatred.

“One salted family-sized roast,” the butcher said with dry skepticism. He eyed Thomas’s weak arm, and did not slap the meat down into his outstretched palm.

“I can’t lift that,” Thomas admitted. The cut was the size of a ham, rolled in protective layers of burlap. “Just put it in the compartment on the back of my chair, please.”

“Sure.” The butcher loaded the ham onto Thomas’s hoverchair, all the while emanating incredulity and a perverse sense of anticipation. He wanted to see what the rekveh would do with a wild predator.

The whole crowd wanted to see. They stood back, watching.

“You want us to just…” The butcher looked pained by his own doubts. “Let the animal go?”

“Yes,” Thomas said. “Please.”

While the butcher backed away, Thomas hovered closer, well into range of the hatchling sky croc. Not that he particularly wanted to absorb yet another lifetime … but if he was going to attempt to befriend this thing, then he needed to understand the way its alien mind worked.

He drilled down into its core.

He went beyond its fog of fear and pain and found the things it loved. Like the freedom of flight. Days full of wonder. Sailing on thermal currents.

Food, of course. It preferred soft, fatty prey. It had the instincts of a raptor.

And curiosity, too, like that of a wolf pup. It was primed to learn.

The hatchling’s life was simple and light, like a refreshing dessert after the serious heaviness of all the Servants of All and Rosy Recruits. Thomas was surprised to find that he enjoyed it.

“Come to me.” Thomas offered words in the slave tongue, then followed that up with a hissing, clicking sound, similar to a croon made by the hatchling’s parents.

Onlookers stared. To them, Thomas had uttered a bestial, alien sound.

The baby sky croc snaked its neck, and flapped its leathery wings once, to stretch them. Then it scissored its long, beak-like snout, displaying shark-like teeth in a terrifying grin.

Thomas sensed the sky croc size him up as possible prey.

He held his ground and met the gaze of the animal. A prey animal would back away or flee. Instead, Thomas invited it to observe how he floated on air.

He rotated his hoverchair, offering the food. He emitted the inviting click-hiss sound, and repeated, “Come to me.”

“He’s crazy,” someone in the crowd said.

Perhaps they were right. Thomas didn’t like having his back to the hatchling. Especially when he heard it launch into the air.

It landed heavily on the back of his hoverchair, the way it might cling to its mother or father. Thomas did not turn around, but he kept an eye on the hatchling through the visual perceptions of the butcher, who stood within his range. The beak was very close to his head.

It tore into the ham, swallowing the meat whole and leaving the burlap empty.

Thomas prepared to use wildfire, just in case he needed to defend himself from the enormous toothy maw.

But he sensed that the hatchling was no longer hungry. Now it only wanted to feel safe and cared for.

Only Thomas could sense that. No one else.

He click-hissed and loosened his arms. That made his body into a nest-like shape.

Onlookers gaped in shock when the hatchling crawled over the hoverchair’s backrest and folded itself across Thomas’s lap.

Instead of snapping his head off, or stabbing him to death, it folded its wings and neck, and nuzzled Thomas. Most of its weight rested on the armrests. It was being gentle, careful not to crush the being that it regarded as a surrogate parent.

Perhaps Naglitay or Vy would be willing to wrap the animal’s wounds with herbal poultices and painkilling drugs? Thomas would refrain from asking Ariock or Evenjos for the favor of healing. They were always busy, and they might not approve of his new friend.

Besides, he did not want to fuel more rumors that he was a puppet-master who forced the most powerful people in the universe to do his bidding.

“What are you doing with that beast?” Nror asked. “It’s a dangerous wild animal.”

Disturbed by Nror’s tone, the sky croc uncoiled its long neck. The govki leaped back.

Thomas smoothed the shimmery black scales. Contentment radiated from the animal, and it folded back into a sleepy position.

Nror was right, of course. Thomas figured he ought to give the hatchling some training on what meals to avoid—people—and then release it back into the wild.

Perhaps he could do more for it, though?

An adult of this species was larger than most transports. Its jaws would grow to more than twelve feet long. And Thomas had toyed with the idea of secretly experimenting with brainwashing animals.

A mild form of brainwashing should be possible, according to the ancient knowledge Thomas had soaked up from Evenjos. He should be able to brainwash victims without completely destroying their free will and individuality forever.

Not this animal, Thomas decided.

He might try to train it as a pet, instead. It wasn’t a suitable pet … except, well, Thomas could detect its intentions before it acted. He felt sure that he, of all people, was perfectly suited to raising a monster.

He knew how its alien mind worked.

He was a monster himself.