Ah, the prisoner thought. I’m supposed to get sleepy.
He would play into that. With this tranquilized treat in his mouth, it made sense to fake some symptoms soon. He stood there, cocking his head slightly to one side, as though he really cared what this man had to say.
“It’s too bad about you, Chipper. You’re a mighty fine dog. You’re the kind of mutt anyone’d be happy to have around the house, but that just doesn’t cut it here. And it’s not like I can just hand you over to some family, let them raise you like a normal dog. Not with everything we’ve put inside you.”
The prisoner named Chipper blinked. Let his eyes close for half a second, allowed his head to droop.
“I mean,” Simmons said, leaning in close to the cage and whispering so the other animals wouldn’t hear, “we’d have to cut you open and take everything out first, and that’d probably kill you anyway, so this is the way we’re going to have to do it. Look at you, getting all dozy. Why don’t you just move back a bit there while I open up the cage?”
The prisoner took two steps back, then sat down on his haunches, front legs extended, head lowered. A passive posture.
The cage opened with a squeak of its rusty hinges. Several of the other animals continued to whine and bark. The room smelled of fear and fur.
“That’s a good boy,” Simmons said. “I want you to know this isn’t going to hurt. It’ll be over before you know it.”
That was when the White Coat man began to withdraw his right hand from his pocket. There was something in it. About six inches long. Narrow and cylindrical.
Shiny at the tip.
The prisoner knew what that was. Any second now, Simmons would be injecting that needle deep into the fleshy part of his hind leg. Forcing down the plunger with his thumb.
Filling him with sweet, instant death.
That’s how smart the prisoner was. He knew about all these things. It was Simmons who’d taught him. It was Simmons, and the other White Coats, who’d filled his memory banks with the knowledge of such things. And yet, ultimately, they still thought they were so much smarter than him. They were foolish enough to think he wouldn’t figure out what was coming.
Chipper knew much more than they could ever have imagined. He slowly and non-threateningly rose up on all four paws, positioned his hind legs against the back wall of the cage.
“Just hold still there,” Simmons said soothingly, raising his hand with the syringe as the other went to hold him down.
Suddenly, the prisoner drove his back legs hard into the wall, using them like pistons to shoot himself out of the enclosure, a missile with fur.
The poisoned treat slipped out from beneath his tongue a millisecond before his jaws clamped down on Simmons’s wrist. He drove the teeth in, causing the syringe to fall and clatter to the tile floor, barely making a sound.
What did make a sound was Simmons. He screamed in horrific pain as the animal’s teeth broke skin and pierced an artery. The man fell to the floor, clutching his wrist with his other hand, the dog’s jaws still clenched on his arm.
“Help!” he screamed.
The other dogs went into a frenzy. A symphony of canine rage and fury and excitement.
The smell of blood filled the air.
The prisoner was able to read more into the sounds the other dogs made than his human captors ever could. In those barks and snarls he heard anger, fear and more than a hint of satisfaction. All the prisoners here shared contempt for their master captors, these cold people who worked to turn them into high-tech tools.
Chipper relaxed his grip on the man’s wrist and turned his attention to the security card hanging around his neck. Simmons jerked back in fear as the dog clamped his teeth on the elastic strap, snapping it so that the card broke away and skittered across the floor.
“Help me!” Simmons screamed again, looking up to the corner of the room where the surveillance camera was mounted. But it was the middle of the day. Chipper hoped no one was watching. Didn’t they mostly keep tabs on this room at night, in case agents of some foreign power or a competing agency tried to break in and steal, or kill, the animals? Was it even likely anyone would hear his cries for help over the chorus of barking and growling?
Chipper couldn’t get his mouth around the card lying flat on the floor, so he used his tongue to lap it up, as if it were a cracker. Then, once the card was in his mouth, he moved it around, held it gingerly between his front teeth, and ran over to the door while Simmons writhed on the floor, clutching his arm. The card reader was mounted next to the door, about three feet up. The prisoner had watched the White Coats use these cards a thousand times. All they had to do was wave it in front of the small green light that was no bigger than the end of a pencil.
The prisoner raised himself on his hind legs, put his front paws on the wall to steady himself, and positioned the card in front of the light, prompting the door to retract sideways into a pocket in the wall.
As he scooted through the opening, he glanced back to see Simmons struggling to his feet.
“Stop!” Simmons said, scrambling towards the door. “Get back here, you miserable mutt, or—”
The door whipped shut before Simmons could reach it. And without his card, he couldn’t get out.
Chipper sprinted down the long hallway. He knew the way out. They took him and the others outside all the time for exercise and training purposes. As he neared the end of the hall and the next door, he put on the brakes, but the floor was marble and had been waxed overnight, and he slid right into the door with a thump, nearly losing his grip on the security card. He reoriented himself, got up on his hind legs again, waved the card in front of the green light.
The door opened.
Now he was in the main lobby. People — some in white lab coats, others in suits — were briskly walking from here to there, going about their daily rituals. That’s the way it was at The Institute. No one dallied. Everyone moved with purpose.
The main door — the door to The World — was open. Cool, fresh air wafted into the building between the two retracted glass panels. A million scents from outside — every last one of them smelling of freedom — found their way to his nose.
Everyone stopped. They were not accustomed to seeing one of the subject animals free, unleashed and unattended. They certainly weren’t accustomed to seeing one with the fur around its mouth matted with blood, a security card held gingerly between its teeth.
Maybe they’d think he’d been taught a new trick!
Chipper, his eyes on that open door, poured on the speed, allowing the card to slip from his mouth. He didn’t need it any more.
“Stop him!” someone shouted.
“Get that dog!” shouted another. “Don’t let him get out!”
The first person yelled, “Shoot him!”
“Don’t be crazy!” said another. “He’s worth a fortune!”
No time to look over his shoulder and see who might be taking aim at him. All he could do now was run.
The glass doors were starting to close. Someone had hit a button.
The prisoner ran faster.
The doors were nearly shut.
Chipper slipped through, the door closing on the tip of his tail. He gave a small tug, and he was free.
He was a prisoner no more. Chipper was free.
But simply getting free was not the point. There was something very important he had to do.
Find the boy.
One
“You call this clean, Jeffrey?” the woman said, pulling back the curtain and inspecting the shower stall. “This isn’t clean.”