"Fear grasped Central Park Zoo this afternoon, when a powerful explosion occurred in one of its exhibits: the penguins' habitat, to be exact, which is actually the most popular exhibit in the zoo. The explosion reached a four hundred feet radius and, literally, blew up the aforementioned habitat to pieces. It is believed to have been caused by a terrorist attack. Why a terrorist would want to plant a bomb in a zoo is currently unknown though. Fortunately, no casualties were reported from this assault. The damage report, on the other hand…"
"Turn it off," the captain ordered drily. The younger soldier immediately pushed the red button in the remote control and the TV screen went black with a muffled click.
Rico blinked, not having realized he hadn't done it since the reporter had started talking. The explosion that had occurred in the zoo only a few hours ago was now all over the news.
He saw through the window they had entered Alice's office; some of the bigger animals were peering through it, also interested in knowing what the news said. Other smaller animals, such as Marlene and the lemurs, were standing on the zookeeper's desk. When Skipper ordered to turn off the TV, most of the animals started leaving, talking among them about the explosion. Not even the lemurs had noticed the absence of a fourth penguin in the team, since they had also retreated almost immediately. Or maybe it was that they didn't want to bother the team with intrusive questions right now.
Rico blinked again and sighed heavily. The last hours had been so surreal to him. He could barely believe they had taken place. Anyhow, they should already leave if they wanted to…
"Skipper" He turned to see in the otter's direction, who had called the unit's leader to stop him before he left. Skipper had already walked to the edge of the desk to jump out the window. Rico looked at Marlene again: she was hesitant whether to speak or not. "H-how is…?"
"Marlene," Skipper interrupted with a tired sigh, knowing perfectly well what she was about to ask. "Please, right now I'm not in the mood to… well, to listen to you, actually. Let's roll, boys."
After that, the three penguins left the office and hurried to their next destination.
They had no notion of how long they were standing at the door of the clinic before finding the courage to go into the room and face what was awaiting them in there. It had been a great relief to learn that Kowalski had survived to everything (the explosion, the injuries, the surgery) but they still had no guarantee that he would live and, after seeing what they had seen at the destroyed HQ, the condition he was couldn't be good. They finally took a step forward and climbed the bed.
From that moment on, Rico devoted himself to observe intensely the body of the penguin lying in the bed, but his attention was somewhere else.
Why did it have to be Kowalski?
The genius penguin had shown understanding to him; he had even tried to help him keep his pyromaniac impulses under control, disobeying Skipper's orders to do so. And this is how Rico had repaid him.
Why didn't he stop to think about the consequences? He had. He remembered perfectly having anticipated that Kowalski would get hurt. He wished he had listened to that weak voice of reason and reconsidered what he was doing. The memories that followed in his mind were of the minutes before the explosion. He had sought to get Skipper and Private out of the HQ before the explosion happened. He had cared about them.
Why hadn't he done the same for Kowalski?
It was an answer he didn't know at this moment.
He blinked a couple of times to return to reality; where Private was sobbing softly in Skipper's chest. The leader had allowed him to do so and he even laid a flipper on the young penguin's back to comfort him. Other than that, the captain's expression didn't show any emotion. Not a clue of what he was feeling in the inside. He just stared at his fallen soldier. Rico decided to do the same; but he really wanted to see this time, not only lay eyes on the penguin and get lost in his own thoughts.
The bloodstained bandages wrapped around most of his body to hide the many burns and stitches left in his feather-naked skin by the multiple surgeries he had undergo would make anyone want to turn around and get out of there. The number of machines –including a heart monitor measuring the penguin's feeble heart rate- he was hooked up to through tubes and cables stuck into his body, in addition to the oxygen mask the injured penguin had to breathe through, had made even Skipper nervous. But there was something else out of place that Rico couldn't identify yet. Some would think it would have been the first thing he had noticed, but it took him a few more minutes to realize what was wrong.
Kowalski's flipper. One of them was… shorter than the other. Amputated. Almost half of it was gone, maybe a little more. Rico's heart sank upon seeing this. But maybe that wouldn't be the worst of the damage caused by the explosion. There was still the possibility of Kowalski not surviving this. And besides that, his eyes were hidden under the bandages; they had been severely damaged and the doctor had said there was a high probability the penguin lost his eyesight permanently.
If Kowalski recovered from this, his life from now on would be that of a crippled penguin.
He had ruined his life.
"Rico, could you take Private with you?" Skipper's voice pulled him out of his trance and he was finally able to lift his gaze and fix it on his teammates. He got the impression that Skipper had been talking for a while.
Private's crying had soothed and he was now standing a distance from his leader, watching the mattress they were on just to avoid looking at Kowalski. Rico looked at him with pity and with guilt.
"Rico," Skipper called again gently, thinking his weapon expert perhaps hadn't heard him.
"Okay," Rico replied with a soft grunt. He reached his flippers out to Private, expecting him to come to him. The kid glanced at the leader with a pleading look.
"Go with him," Skipper said simply. Private nodded meekly and walked over to Rico.
"And you?" Asked the penguin of the mohawk to Skipper once he and Private had come down from the bed. The captain was standing with his back to them now; his eyes still fixated on the lieutenant.
"I'll go in a moment. Now leave me alone. It's an order."
Rico nodded even though his leader couldn't see him and went to the exit with Private in tow. When he got out, he made sure to leave the door slightly ajar. By then, Private was already far ahead of him; the kid was walking with his head down and not noticing that no one was by his side. The weapon expert decided to stay behind for a little while and stood against the wall while he listened to the conversation his leader was having.
Everything was silent for a whole minute; Skipper was hesitating to say anything. It felt ridiculous to be doing this. When his voice came out, it did it as a whisper.
"Stupid… Stupid Kowalski" His voice sounded broken at first, as if it had been stuck in his throat all this time. "You finally did it."
Rico could hardly believe it. It was bad enough to know it was his fault this had happened, but knowing that Kowalski was being blamed for it…
"I always knew something in your lab would blow up and would kill you. I just never realized that meant you would die."
There was a little pause in which Rico stopped holding his breath.
"I should have worried more about instilling discipline in you rather than Rico. You've always been undisciplined, insubordinate. You didn't know how to live without experiments, nor science. You did this to yourself."
Rico finally chose to retreat. He didn't want to hear one more word.
Since their habitat had been completely destroyed, the zookeepers had moved the penguins to a temporary habitat while they finished the reconstruction of the other. It was located in the reptiles' exhibit; one of the many empty spaces had been acclimatized with an ice floor and a few snow mountains drawn on the walls. The penguins had as much trouble to get in and out from this new habitat as with the previous one. There was an air vent that allowed them to come and go as they wished.
That night, Skipper returned late to the habitat; only Rico knew what he had been doing. When Skipper came back, he told his recruits he had something very serious he wanted to tell them. Rico froze. Had Skipper found out that the explosion in the lab hadn't been an accident? He started to think he should confess.
DON'T you dare!
Skipper asked them to take a seat. Private did so; the kid looked like he didn't have enough energy left to stand on his feet, but Rico decided to decline the offer and keep standing. Skipper didn't consider it important.
"Boys," he began gently. "I'm not pretending to be the optimist in all this. So I'm just gonna say it. And by saying this, I want you to know I only do it to prepare you."
"What's it about, Skippah?" Private asked.
"Soldiers, I'm afraid the Kowalski you've known till now has died today. If he lives after this, he'll never be the same. He won't be able to function as my second in command anymore, and much less take part in the missions. Therefore…"
"Wait a minute, Skipper," Private intervened. "What do you mean by "if he lives"?"
Skipper stared blankly at his cadet. After thirty seconds of silence, Skipper walked towards the youngest one and took a seat at his side with a solemn expression on his face. He opened the beak slowly and started talking with a very soft and gentle voice.
"Private" But Private already knew what he wanted to say. He stood up instantly and ran to the air vent.
"No! I won't give up that easy!" He cried out firmly; seconds later, he was outside the habitat. Skipper only heaved a sigh, but he had already expected that reaction from young and innocent Private.
Rico knew perfectly where Private had gone to unburden himself of his woes. He found the little one standing on Kowalski's bed, beside the injured penguin; his shoulders were trembling repeatedly but it still seemed like he was trying to hold his crying. Rico watched carefully, but he didn't want to barge in and he just stayed hidden in the shadows to listen.
"I'm sorry," the little penguin cried. Rico felt a strong pain in the chest and a lump formed in his throat. How many more were going to blame themselves for what had happened to Kowalski? "I didn't invite you to go for a snow cone. If I had, none of this would have happened. I didn't want to invite you. I knew you'd yell at me for interrupting you, so I thought: what do I invite him for? He's gonna say no anyway. I was too selfish…"
By the time Rico considered he had heard enough, Private was crying hysterically on Kowalski's pillow.
Days later, it was Skipper the one at the scientist's side. He thought he was alone, but in fact Rico was once again eavesdropping from a safe place.
The leader was holding a bouquet of flowers on his flippers and was trying to form a smile, but he still looked plain sad.
"I brought you flowers," the captain said, leaving the flowers on the foot of the bed with delicacy, as if he was touching fragile glass. "It's… what you're supposed to bring when a friend is at the hospital, right? I know you don't like them in particular. Neither do I. You've always called them insect nests. And they're not very manly either. But I didn't know what else to bring."
A frustrated sigh was the next thing that came out of the distressed leader's beak.
"What do you like, Kowalski? I have no idea. Science? How can I give you science? Science was what left you like this in the first place. I never worried about knowing you better, or any of the boys for that matter. I feel like I don't know my own men… I wanna change that."
He kept silence for a while that extended as an eternity for Rico.
"Things are going great with the team. Without you…. Rico's almost gone the week without explosives; he's been able to behave himself. You were right, Kowalski. This has really taught him some discipline."
Rico felt his leader's words take his heart and crush it painfully. It took all his might to not bent over and cry out. The pain he was feeling was worst than any physical pain.
Skipper had kept quiet for a few minutes again.
"I'm scared, Kowalski," Skipper confessed in a weak voice. "Yes, I am scared. What if I'm right and you don't survive to this? What are we going to do then? It doesn't matter how well things are going now. We may be able to manage in missions without your help… without options, without inventions, without experiments. But never without you. Please, don't go, soldier. We can live without a scientist and an options guy, but not without our Kowalski.
After that, Skipper's voice came as a distant murmur to Rico's ears. He couldn't hear it anymore; something was burning on his cheek and had distracted him. He lifted a flipper and touched the cheek that burned: a single teardrop had rolled from his eye. He dried it with a quick movement and left the clinic.
The sinister voice… It had kept strangely quiet until now, but only cause pain made it sleep. Rico could feel it becoming stronger little by little. He wasn't strong enough to stop it. His previous actions had only fed the voice. Now there was no way he could escape its grip.
Now he knew the answer.
He had not only become addicted to explosions, but also to hurting others. That time when he blew up the car and everyone had resulted unharmed; he remembered there was something that didn't feel quite alright; he wanted someone to get hurt. When he destroyed Julien's throne; he wanted to hurt the ringtail. And the explosion in Kowalski's lab; he hadn't tried to get the scientist away from there because he didn't want him to be safe from the explosion.
He wanted nothing more than to hurt others with his explosions. Cause them harm and pain and enjoy their suffering.
He had crossed the barrier between madness and sadism. And there was no turning point after that.
He had made a terrible mistake and he couldn't fix it.
He was also scared. Scared of himself and what he'd do next.
