The large office windows were shut against the light of the bright sun. It seemed to be mocking Gareth's misery with its cheery light. He had his head in his hands and was staring blankly at a stack of paperwork he'd been trying to fill out for the past three hours.

All he could think of was the face of his son. He remembered the small but curious child Brutus had been who learned the sacred sign language quicker than he ever thought possible. It just didn't make sense how Brutus could just abandon everything Gareth ever taught him.

A knock on the door made him raise his head and a gorilla stepped into the office.

"Gareth," He nodded his way inside.

The chimpanzee representative nodded but didn't say anything. Gorillas aren't usually natural conversationalists and he stood there for an awkward amount of time trying to think about what to say.

"Have you finished those?" The gorilla finally asked tentatively.

Gareth glanced downward at the scrolls he was meant to be filling out as if they'd offended him and his ancestors.

"No, I haven't, have I," He said bitterly.

The gorilla looked at him with concern, again at a loss of what to say without help. He decided to try to comfort the old chimpanzee.

"my apes are doing everything they can to find your son and Franklin. They've been ordered to terminate the dangerous human, and the loss of Anthony has only increased their efforts," he said.

Gareth looked up again into the gorilla's hopeful face.

"Thank you."

The gorilla seemed to search for something else to say, but he gave up.

"I'll come back later then," he said, leaving quickly.

After the echoes of the shutting door had died away, Gareth stood and rounded the desk to stare out the window. From here he could see the lab building where his wife was most of the time. He started to pick at the fur on his arm.

Was that what went wrong? Had he and Claudia spent too much time on their jobs and not enough on Brutus? He was their only child, but not their only responsibility. Should they have paid more attention? Perhaps that's why he was drawn to Julius.

The chimpanzee representative thought back to his own childhood when his mother was in an equally important position. He remembered the lonely nights when he had nothing but his studies. His mother never told him what she did in her office, and his father was often away on business.

Gareth's stomach started to feel queasy and he stumbled back to his chair. He'd become his parents, abandoning his son just the same as he had been.

–

The crowd pressed in on all sides, suffocating the trio and trying to force them apart. Brutus kept a tight hold on the leash and found Jayda's arm. Franklin grabbed Jayda's hand and they passed the many bodies, furry and not.

The gorilla on the platform was shouting something, but it was hard to make out over the buzz of the crowd. Brutus led the way, trying not to lose the Chimpanzee Delphi had called Sirius.

Sirius was making his way to the right side of the platform where there was a set of stairs leading to a large door which was open. A strong smell of wet hay came from the opening. Brutus glanced back at his companions.

A female chimpanzee dressed in a blue tunic and holding a writing tablet was standing next to the door. As the trio broke through the crowd they could see a short line of apes making their way to her and she wrote down a few things before they were permitted to enter.

Sirius passed through easily after only a short delay when the chimpanzee wrote something down for him. The three of them joined the queue waiting to get inside. The sun was bearing down on all of them and Brutus thought wistfully of the soft grass and mild temperatures of his city. The line moved forward and they moved to enter.

"Excuse me, sir."

Brutus jumped and noticed the chimpanzee was tapping her writing tablet impatiently, "I can't allow your human inside, it upsets the other animals."

"Oh, right," Brutus said, turning to meet Franklin and Jayda's eyes, "I guess you'll have to wait with her then."

He could tell the other's uncertainty, but it would have to work out with him going in alone. Franklin looked ready to protest, but Brutus shook his head and handed him the end of the leash. They went to stand in an inconspicuous corner next to the crowd.

Brutus's palms began to sweat as he was allowed in, and he didn't have to wait long before he saw the first caged human to know this reaction was justified. It was an uncomfortable thing to come back to ape society after spending so long alone in the company of an intelligent human.

The building was a room with tall ceilings like a storage house, but it was larger than any that Brutus had ever seen before. Inside was row after row of six-foot square cages that were labeled with a number and letter. He assumed they were organized by rows and columns.

Each cage contained a human. Some were sleeping and others staring off at nothing with their eyes empty of any complex thought. A line had been drawn on the floor with a reminder not to cross it repeated over and over. After a moment, he figured out why.

Two gorilla children were trying to shove each other over the line. A human woman was watching the exchange before her arm shot out from between the bars. The children lept back with cries of fear before being scolded by a gorilla who must've been their mother.

Had Brutus seen this place before meeting Jayda, he would've been impressed by the cleanliness of the cages and the efficiency of keeping the men, women, and children separate. Now, he noticed how they mindlessly paced in their cells with bars of metal and stone and hay cushioning their bare feet. He felt sick to his stomach.

He searched among the children's cages for a flash of red hair, but it was hard to see when he had to keep pushing pass apes gathering around humans that seemed strong or attractive.

After moving through a crowded spot gathered around a human man who was hissing aggressively, he spotted the glittering of the necklace worn by Sirius. He was standing in front of a cage with another human man. Brutus approached, glancing up at the man's face. His heart leapt as he realized it was the man he'd freed from the lab.

The man didn't seem to notice him but Sirius turned at Brutus's approach.

"Good to see you've finally decided to reveal yourself," he said.

Brutus froze, "What?"

Sirius's eyes narrowed, "You've been following me from the market. I saw you in the next stall, and it's hard not to remember such an exotic necklace."

Brutus looked down instinctively at his mother's handiwork. It didn't seem so strange, some feathers and special river stones perhaps some of the poorer apes couldn't afford. He glanced up at Sirius's which seemed so much flashier than his.

Brutus was about to reply when the man in the cage slammed against the bars and began reaching for Brutus with a desperate look in his eyes. Sirius jumped and backed away from the cage, looking from Brutus to the man.

"I think he likes you," Sirius said, "an unusual man."

Unusual?

Brutus looked around and noticed that the majority of the rest of the humans around seemed to have lighter hair and were shorter. He wanted to ask the man to see if he could tell him in any kind of primitive way where the child was, but this chimpanzee seemed to be suspicious of him already.

"Where was the child that was with him?" He asked the chimpanzee.

Sirius looked confused, "how would I know that?"

A crinkle from his hand drew Brutus's eye and he noticed Sirius was gripping a piece of paper.

"Back in the market, didn't you say your cousin saw this man and another human?"

"So you were following me," Sirius said, taking another step back.

Brutus cringed at himself for revealing so much, he had to be careful.

"You see…" He searched for the right words, "The two humans belong to my company, they were lost in the woods and we believed them dead until we found them here."

The chimpanzee looked suspiciously at Brutus. Then he looked at the man again who was still reaching desperately for Brutus.

"Do you have the humans' licenses?" He asked.

Brutus sighed, "No, we don't license our humans where we come from."

"Then you'll have to pay for the humans and the licenses."

Brutus grit his teeth, "we can't possibly have enough money for that, and we've already run into that with our third human."

Sirius jumped back in surprise, "Three! You'll likely be robbed in a place like that with three humans. What on earth are you planning?"

Brutus caught the accusatory air to the words, but he needed Sirius's help more than being right.

"I'm not planning anything, I just want my humans back," he pleaded.

Sirius studied him, Brutus kept eye contact, not daring to look away. The man continued to throttle the bars like they personally offended him.

Finally, the chimpanzee sighed, "What does the other one look like?"

—

Franklin was bored, there were only so many times he could scan the crowd before he grew tired of the constant flow and noise. The gorilla on the platform wasn't helping with that, his constant incomprehensible shouting had him covering his ears and sitting on the ground.

He wondered what Brutus was seeing at that moment, or what he was doing. He didn't know which of the humans Brutus was referring to. The line of them from before that were chained had at least six of them and it could've been any of them.

He glanced up at Jayda, now that he thought of it, she looked altogether different from the other humans in the city. She had dark hair that was restrained into a long plait, the other humans had hair that ranged from a golden brown to a mousy color. He wondered if there was something significant in that detail.

"Even if he finds the humans, I don't know if there'd be a way to get them out," Franklin said, his voice full of anxiety.

Jayda looked at him, her eyes showing what Franklin figured out to be an exaggerated expression of worry. She couldn't talk here, and he realized that she'd been communicating this way back at Julius' hut as well. Really, now that he thought about it, they should've figured out her true intellect much earlier. It made him wonder what else, if there was anything, that she'd been hiding from them.

—

"Are you sure it's this one?" Sirius asked, looking uncertainty at Brutus.

"Yes," He said firmly.

The child's red hair was unmistakable, even in the crowded child's cage. There wasn't a warning line in front of this one, which was larger than the rest. Inside were human children of a wide range of ages, but none of them had the fiery red locks that the girl did.

A crowd of apes had gathered and many attempted to poke their hands in to try to pet one, only to retract them before their fingers were bitten off by the wild children.

Brutus got close to the bars, closer than the others dared after one particular gorilla almost had his index finger bitten by a particularly rowdy little male child. The rest of the crowd watched in only mild interest after that. He beckoned to the girl who was cowering in The corner.

"Hey, It's me, Brutus, remember?" He coaxed in a friendly tone.

The girl looked up, then she caught sight of him and he could see the recognition in her eyes. Cautiously, she moved forward until she was right at the bars of the cage. Brutus extended his fingers out to the girl and her little pudgy fingers closed around his like she had before.

"Incredible, I've never-" Sirius began.

But then, perhaps guessing that the chimpanzee had some sort of treat, a bigger child pushed the red haired girl out of the way and swiped at Brutus. He quickly retracted his hand, but anxiously searched for the girl in the sudden influx of human children.

"Stop it!" He cried, waving his arms at the cage and causing them to scatter.

He saw the girl, but she was cowering alone in a back corner, crying and covered in new scratches. Brutus didn't think she was going to try to approach him again.

He turned on Sirius, "I have to get her out of here. Isn't there a way I can say that they were mine?"

Sirius shook his head, "there's no proof of purchase without a license, and unless you have proof of some kind of an official contract, I'm afraid they won't believe you."

Brutus looked back at the girl and his heart sank.

"Please, I need them," He begged, not sure who he was pleading to, whether it was Sirius or if he was praying.

The chimpanzee looked from Brutus to the girl and back and sighed, "I don't have the money to buy them for you, but I might know someone who can help."