/TW:\ canon-typical violence, mentions of medical malpractice, kidnapping and just hate crimes in general
As I said last update, the plot is back!
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The building, both from the inside and the outside, looks deceptively normal.
It's Agata that led them there. The day before, he went to check on a ship discreetly, alongside with Sabu – hide somewhere on the docks, watch for any suspicious activity around the merchandise. (It's meat, of course. And meat, in the Back-Alley Market, tends to attract all types of thieves – those who steal only a small piece for themselves and are beaten up if they got caught, and those who have an arrangement with the providers. That day, it was the second kind they were on the lookout for.)
They did catch sight of something sketchy – of the hem of a white kimono peeking out from underneath a black hooded trench, of a few spots over the golden fur of a bare ankle. Agata felt his blood boil. It's them, again? He knows Melon shot one multiple times, teetering on the edge of torture. Wasn't that enough for them? Or are they stupid enough to be after vengeance?
The leopard and the seller talked for a few minutes, voices hushed, their bodies half-hidden by the shadow the ship projected over the pavement. One was insistent, the other scared. Agata saw something passing from hand to hand, but it didn't look like money.
(It wasn't money.)
He found out a few minutes later, with the throat of the seller caught inside his hand, her back pressed to the side of the ship, feet dangling helplessly in the air and her head in the direct line of fire of Sabu's gun. She gave him the piece of paper, trying to babble an explanation and excuses through the fingers pressing against her trachea, and the lion loosened his grip to look at it. It's an address, from somewhere far outside the Back-Alley Market. He turned to her again.
"What is it?" he asked, no, demanded, and the seller was more than eager to answer:
"The leopard, he- he wanted to buy from us, was trying to convince me to switch buyers. I told them no, that we value our contract with you-"
"Or rather, that you value your life."
"Well, uh… and, I- so I said no," she repeated, "but he wouldn't take that as an answer. Told me I could get more interesting prices doing business with them, and that I didn't have to worry about consequences. I just had to get in touch with the people at this address and tell them our next place and date of meeting, and they- they would do the rest. Protect us."
"How?"
(Once again, the answer came right away. He was beginning to see why Melon found fear so appealing.)
"They- he… he said they were going to take care of your boss. That they are specialized in… in… uh…"
"In what?"
"Hybrids," she let out, her voice barely above a whisper. "But!" she adds with renewed vigor. "I swear, I still refused! I was going to tell you about it! Please, oh, please!"
Agata looked at the card still in his hand, then back at the seller. Should he kill her? She had been nothing but honest as far as he could tell – except, probably, for that last part, but could he really blame her? He met Sabu's gaze; noticed he has lowered his gun slightly. He decided to follow his example – that he would simply relate everything to Melon, and see how it would go from there.
(For now, apparently, the seller will live. And they are on their way to the address on the paper, him, the hybrid, and three other lions. Just in case it's a trap.)
"Are you sure about this, kitty?"
Agata nods. And steps a little closer to the hybrid, who can't help but smile at the gesture.
"What, are you trying to protect me?" he whispers, to be heard only by the Congo lion – whose eyes widen, go from the gun in his hands to the very little distance between them, then dart away. He reaches up to rub at his nape.
"Eh, no… I'm cautious, that's all."
"Sure."
Their footsteps echo almost eerily along the beige walls. This corridor is empty, as well as the rooms lining up on each side. They can see inside through little round windows pierced in each door. It's reminiscent of a submarine, in a slightly unsettling way. The fact that the thick walls muffle the sounds from outside, coupled with the bright fluorescent neon above their heads, only reinforces that impression.
The whole complex is rented by several small businesses as affordable office rooms. There is some AC, electric outlets everywhere, water fountains at each corner, a few green plants too, even a reproduction of a Japanese woodblock hanging off a wall. The basic furniture apparently comes with the contract too, or else everyone went to the same place to get it, probably a random sitcom after-sale given how comically generic it all looks – desks covered with a thin layer of wooden chipboard, grey office chairs, metallic filing cabinet painted in all shades of boredom, from off-white to taupe, without forgetting lead and charcoal. Melon thinks that working there for more than a week would be enough to achieve what years of living as a hybrid didn't push him (yet) to do; namely, put his gun into his mouth, barrel pointing up, and shoot.
"Here," Agata says, breaking the silence.
It's a room just like the others, a few meters on their left. "4", the door reads. It's not written with the ideogram, though, unlike all the others. Maybe it's to make the occupant forgets that it's spelled like death. *
(There is something especially unsettling in the way everything looks so bland around there. It could not be furthest away from what a villain lair should look like – it's evil hidden in plain sight.)
"What do we do?"
Miguel steps forward as nobody else moves, and knocks on the door.
"Come in, it's not locked!"
The voice sounds so normal, so pleasant – it can only come from an herbivore, or at the very least from a small animal. No one threatening in the slightest. Lions and hybrid exchange a glance.
"This is what the chick at the docks told me," Agata says, almost sounding like he's apologizing.
Melon shrugs.
"Let's see. Worse is, we terrorize someone."
"Uh…" Miguel starts, but the hybrid already has a hand on the handle. The door opens with a small creak. "Well," he adds to himself, before following him.
A stoat sits on the office chair, his feet dangling in the air, little round glasses perched on top of his nose. His pure white fur contrasts with the dullness of the room. It's almost impossible to picture an animal less intimidating than that.
Melon catches the stoat's eyes going from his horns to his predator maw, then to the gun in his hand and the lions behind him – worry and confusion quickly taking over whatever passed over his expression when he realized he was dealing with a hybrid.
"… What can I do for you?"
The pleasantness is obviously feigned, he's trying to grasp at routine to not lose himself to panic entirely, but his smile is strained and his eyes dart around the room like he's a mouse caught in a trap. Which, to be fair, isn't that far from the truth.
"Can you begin by telling us what your job is over there?"
The stoat blinks a few times – his eyes keep going back to the guns in their hands, for now safely down at their sides, but… – then, with that small voice getting so high that it's grating on the hybrid's nerves:
"I'm- I- uh, I keep records of calls we get through non-emergency helplines. It- it's mostly, eh… it ranges from teenagers looking for advice on how to get medicine or contraception behind their family's back, to abusive households, wives finally speaking up or neighbors worried about a child next door… there is suicide watch, too, and people that just needed to talk… this kind of thing. My colleagues are social workers, I keep the tabs and they act on it when needed."
Social workers… Is this how he met Grace?
"May I ask why are you here? Are you looking for someone we got in touch with, maybe…? In that case, I'm sorry, I can't disclose personal information and- … What is that?"
Melon has thrown over his desk the piece of paper the seller gave Agata. It's the address, down to the floor and the room number, with an addition of two letters: "CH". The stoat takes it after a few seconds of hesitation. His tiny hands are shaking.
"Who gave you that?" he asks after a long time of staring at the paper as if it could make it disappear somehow.
"Unimportant. But they told us it was where they were told to go to contact a… peculiar organization."
"I don't underst-"
"One that kills people", Meon cuts him off. "People like me."
"I swear!" The stoat hops off his chair, hands raised in front of him – halfway a prayer, halfway acting as if in front of a police officer. "I don't know anything about them! I have nothing to do with the Chimera Hunters, you have to believe me!"
His round black eyes go to each lion, pleading – between each face, they go back to the gun barrel, a deadly magnet. Not once do they meet Melon'sgaze, though.
"The Chimera Hunters, uh? I never said their name."
Shocked, the stoat finally turns to him. And his face contorts into pure terror as he realizes his mistake.
"No, wait, I-"
The gunfire echoes painfully loud in the small, enclosed room. The bullet went straight through the stoat's fragile skull, finishing its course into the nearby printer. On the white linoleum floor, slowly, lazily, blood meets ink.
"Maybe he could have told us something," Miguel notes.
Melon lowers his gun. Barely spares a glance to the small corpse as he pushes it slightly away with his foot to access the desk.
"We have the computer", he simply says. "It's unlocked."
He sees from the corner of his eye Agata approaching, stopping, looking down. The legs of the stoat are in the way, he doesn't dare push them away. He backs down. Ultimately electing to stand with the two other lions. The hybrid acts like he didn't notice.
His attention shifts back to the screen. It looks like a normal desktop, files neatly arranged and named all in the same manner – six numbers, not one more or one left. All begins with either 1, 2, or 3. He clicks on the first one his cursor lands on.
The computer asks for a password.
His eyes are drawn to a colorful post-it stuck just above the keyboard. Blue ink on pink. He tries the combination. It works. Seriously, who keeps their password on a po-
His mind finally catches on to what the screen displays.
He doesn't want to believe it, he goes back to the folder, opens another file randomly. It's the same thing. He is acutely aware of the lion's gazes boring into his skull, waiting for a reaction, an explanation, but he can't take his eyes off the monitor. His hand cramps around the mouse, nails rasping against the cheap plastic.
1, 2, 3.
Carnivore, herbivore, both.
What he's going through, it's a listing.
The second number is the animal's gender. 1 for female, 2 for male. The next ones are their age. Last ones the position of their initial in the alphabet.
3-2-24-13
He finds it more quickly than he would have liked.
Stares at it until the numbers seem to peel out from the screen, black on white, floating in front of his unblinking eyes. Branding themselves into his retina. The mouse lets out a crack under the strength of his grip.
He feels a hand on his arm, startles. He looks up, muscles tensing up, adren- his eyes find Agata's. He breathes out. Looks away.
"What is it?" the lion quietly asks.
Melon double-clicks on the file wordlessly. From the change of luminosity, he knows it has opened, but he doesn't gather the courage to tear his gaze away from the one corner of the keyboard it has landed on. There are the faint remains of a coffee spill-out on the wood underneath. It looks like such a normal desk, and yet-
He hears Agata gasp. His hand comes on top of his, index searching for the mouse wheel, scrolling down. The sound grates against his ears. He wants to get away from the computer, but the lion's body is blocking his way, the edge of the desk chair digging into his thigh on the other side – he doesn't want to look up, but-
The hybrid caves in, reads it alongside Agata. There are things he doesn't even know about his own body, medical data they should never have access to – his blood type, an alleged allergy to some kind of antibiotics (how comes he isn't aware of that, if they are?), the police reports from the "breaking in" in his mother's apartment that officially led to her death, school reports from kindergarten to college and a link to a copy of his thesis. He wants to laugh at the absurdity of it.
(He barely registers Agata stepping away, giving him privacy to go over the file. His file.)
Most of the data, past his teenage years, was added very recently according to the dates in the upper corner. Gathered, he can only guess, after the Chimera Hunters picked his trail back up. His eyes glaze over years he barely has any recollection off – but, they do. They have everything. Down to the university he's working at, his lecture schedules, and down to his role in the Back-Alley Market activities too, the tusk trade, the drugs, the Shishigumis. It was only a matter of time before he ran into them – before their carefully laid trap closed its jaws around him.
In this situation, a prey is only faced with two choices: gnawing its own leg off – disappearing, again, leaving everything behind and hoping to make do even with the missing pieces – or waiting for the hunters to find and kill it as they please.
His other hand tightens around the cold weight of his firearm. A cornered animal can still bite – and will, until it tastes blood, until it can feel its teeth scraping against bone.
He guides the cursor up, changes the tab. It's another kind of report – a list of deeds. The year they first heard about his existence, tipped off by their neighbors and the parents of his classmates, then the year they first tried to get their hands on him – after the death of his mother, via a social worker… there are no names; he wonders if that might have been Grace already –, then the first kidnapping attempt. Melon furrows his brow, racks his brain, but can't even remember it. According to the date, he was living with the impala couple at his point. It's strange, especially since he's pretty sure his so-called adoptive mother would have been glad to see him taken away. Follows another attempt, disguised as adoption, but by this point, he had already fled the foster care system – then, the incident that led him to be declared legally dead.
There is just one thing he doesn't quite get, something that must be out of place – a mention of an operation, for appendicitis, when he was twelve. He remembers it clearly, can even point at the scar without looking (it's easy, it goes all around his lower abdomen, just above his pelvis). But why isn't it in the tab with the rest of his medical information? He clicks on it to expand the section.
He reads it. Re-reads it. The words don't make sense. He feels sick.
Amongst medical terms he doesn't quite place and initials he has no idea what to link to – D somewhere, then several instances of KL –, there are some words sharper than knives. One, in particular. Experimentation. He reads it a third time, but the meaning hasn't changed: there is someone, maybe a surgeon, or someone with high relations in the medical field, that used this surgery as an excuse to look at how hybrid bodies are made – to look at him, inside him. Melon can't help but wonder now if there truly was any real need for the procedure to begin with.
He feels betrayed by his own body, once again. He thought he knew it – knew where the scars came from, at the very least. What else does he…?
Despite himself, he reads the last entries. Grace running into him at the university – merely a test – and just before that, how they told the Madaragumis about carnivore-herbivore hybrids' inability to taste anything. Of course. He was right about that, after all. The Chimera Hunters were behind that unexpected assault, and behind the clinic's attack too.
(The only fact that makes him this whole shitshow a little less bad, though, is how Agata's name never even appears. It finally dissolves the last shreds of doubt, and he didn't realize how deeply they had burrowed within until they were gone.)
Briefly, Melon wonders what has happened already to the hybrids from all the other files. Are they still living in blissful ignorance, are they hiding? Are they even alive? Then his eyes catch the word "leopards" and his stomach constricts-
There is a note, in the section about the Madaragumis, saying that the spotted bastards would probably not manage to kill him, and an update, in italics – "they didn't", followed by data they must have found at the clinic, about his injuries, about the rape too.
Melon lets go of the mouse, steps backward in a daze, away from the computer. Away from what it contains. He trips on the stoat's leg on the floor, barely catches himself against a cabinet. His heart is beating so strongly in his chest it's uncomfortable. The whole room is spinning. He closes his eyes until red darts against his eyelids, bites the inside of his cheek. He feels the wetness of blood against his tongue. The pain is a small spark through the fog, a lighthouse in a storm. Not enough.
He doesn't feel his hand slipping from the cabinet he was holding onto, doesn't register his legs giving out under him. He hears Agata's voice, a few steps away, then closer, but refuses to open his eyes. His senses are already picking up on every little smell and sound in the stuffy office room, even on the rumbling of the city life, he can't add sight to it – but his mind is doing it anyway, it doesn't matter if his eyes are closed, he sees anyway – hands and darkness and splashes of blood. The nausea is coming back, stronger than before. (He hasn't eaten since the night before, anyway, what would he have to throw up?) It feels like he can't breathe, like his lungs can't draw air. His body doesn't respond to his brain, he has lost control over his limbs and senses.
Even though, he can make out that Agata has gripped his arm, fingers digging into his flesh at the edge of pain. He remembers the Congo lion is still there and- and the others too. A surge of electricity runs through his body, lightning up his instincts.
"Get your hands off me," he hisses, low and menacing, lips drawing up to reveal his fangs.
Agata's eyes widen, he takes his hand off as if burned.
"Sorry, I thought y-"
"Well, don't do that."
He pushes the lion away, harsher than he intended to – taken off guard, Agata wobbles, puts a knee on the ground to stabilize himself – Melon isn't watching him anymore, getting back to his feet, glaring at the other lions.
"What are you doing, just standing there? Am I the only one that saw there were other rooms in this building, um?"
Miguel and Dope exchange a glance, and the hybrid bites back the almost overwhelming urge to jump at their throats, he has his knife on him – it will go through their manes this time, he will make sure of it – make sure they can never speak up – he imagines how it will feel if it goes into their eyes, so they would never look at him like that again. His hands shake, his breathing picks up. Anger burns up his chest, sickening, on the verge of eruption.
Melon catches the spark of alarm in their expression, the way their tails snakes in between their legs, the curt nod as they hurriedly escape the room. Tension leaves his body all at once. He looks at the stoat's corpse, still laying there, his white fur soaking up his own blood.
It's strange, how easy it is to make everything stop.
"It's not their fault that they saw you…" Agata searches for the right word, fails, finishes pathetically: "… like this. Anyway, anyone would react the same. That shit… those records, that's- it's terrifying."
"I'm not scared."
"They tried to kill you. Since years. Melon, it's not about courage or anything, this shit is scary."
The hybrid doesn't bother to correct him.
(I'm not scared of death if it's on my own terms. And right now… Yeah. I'm not.)
"… Can I touch you?"
He looks up at Agata, briefly meeting his eyes again. There is a sound, somewhere in the building, like something falling over, that catches his attention for a brief second before he goes back to the lion.
"Yeah. Sorry for snapping up at you."
"It's fine. You were not yourself."
"I wonder…"
He sees the confusion in Agata's eyes, but he doesn't elaborate. He looks at the lion's hand over his shoulder, in what he supposes is a comforting gesture. Lays his own hand on top. Waiting for it to mean something else than just a body touching another.
"You can talk about what you… hum, saw on the file. If you want."
Melon stays silent for a few seconds, then shakes his head. There is no trace of the other three lions, he doesn't sense them anywhere in the corridor, but his eyes dart for the briefest moment to the door they exited through.
"Not now," he says, stepping away – and Agata's arm falls back to his sides, useless.
Melon eyes it, then goes back to the sweet face. He forces a smile. Wishing, for the first time in years, to be somebody else.
(Somebody who could return what he reads in Agata's soft gaze.)
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This doesn't feel like a cliffhanger? Re-read these two sentences: "There is a sound, somewhere in the building, like something falling over" and "There is no trace of the other three lions, he doesn't sense them anywhere in the corridor" :P
