The dog heard a distant rumbling.
Chipper peered into one of the tunnels and saw a headlight. He knew all about subways and other kinds of transportation. Learning how to use various modes of travel had been part of his training. There’d been countless days out in the field, as the White Coats liked to call it. Riding in cars, on buses, getting onto trains, commercial jets. There’d even been a trip in a motorcycle sidecar. Once, he’d gone with one of the White Coats on a hang-glider.
That was fun.
He liked open-windowed cars and motorcycles and hang-gliders best, because he could feel the wind blowing over his face, the hundreds of outdoor scents tantalizing his very sensitive nose.
Chipper wasn’t sure how long he’d stay on once he’d boarded the subway car. Not to the end of the line. Maybe a few stops, then hop off. He might cross the platform and get on the southbound line, double back, confuse anyone who might be following him.
The train had nearly come to a stop when Chipper saw the rat.
A rat!
A grey rat, nearly a foot long — not counting the tail, which added several more inches to its slithery length. It was scurrying along where the wall at the platform’s end met the floor.
No, must resist. Forget about the rat. Stay focused. You must get away. You cannot worry about some stupid rat but it’s so big and it’s right THERE AND I HAVE TO CATCH IT!
Chipper bolted after the rat.
He hadn’t seen any rats at The Institute. Within its walls, it was clean to the point of sterile, certainly free of rodents. Chipper had rarely even seen a spider there. But when they would take him outside for training, he encountered squirrels and chipmunks and birds, and whenever he did, no matter what exercises his trainers were putting him through at the time, he took off after them. Which was exactly why the White Coats were trying to put him down. Well, they weren’t here right now, were they? At least, not yet.
Chipper reached the wall just as the rat went around the edge of the platform, into the tunnel, finding a tiny outcropping no more than an inch wide along a row of bricks. Chipper craned his head around, watched the rat getting away from him. Frustrated, he barked at the tiny animal twice, as though that would persuade it to surrender and come back.
Nuts, Chipper thought. The rat would not be his.
He whirled around.
The train was leaving the station.
If a dog could kick itself, that’s what Chipper would have done at that moment. No wonder they were scrubbing him from the program. There were times when he just could not keep his head in the game.
Now he’d have to wait for another train. He’d lost valuable escape time, all because of some stupid little rat.
Dumb!
Chipper padded around the platform and parked himself behind a pillar, thinking he could not be seen. But anyone coming down the escalator to catch a train would see the black and white butt end of a dog sticking out from behind the pillar.
It was hard to hide behind a post when you were constructed horizontally instead of vertically.
Chipper heard a train approaching on the opposite track. Seconds later, it slid into the station and the doors parted. People standing on the other side of the platform waited for passengers to disembark, but not Chipper. He darted onto the car, found himself a spot under one of the benches, and took a moment to catch his breath.
The doors closed. The train began to move. Posters, faces, huge tiles bearing the station name, slid past the windows. Then, beyond the windows, darkness.
Chipper took a moment to assess his surroundings. The car was barely half full. It was neither morning nor late afternoon, so this was not a rush hour crowd. At the far end of the car, a man in tattered clothing who gave every indication of being homeless — the wonderful number of scents coming off of him was one clue — was holding out his grey and dirty hand, asking people for money. Most acted as though he was invisible, looking into their laps, pretending not to see him.
At the other end of the car, closer to Chipper, a young woman was playing a musical instrument. It looked like a violin, but was much bigger. Chipper locked his electronic, million-dollar eyes on the instrument, scanned images in his database. Ah! This was a cello. By the woman’s feet, blocking an entire seat that would have held three people, lay the case for the instrument, open to allow people to toss in money if they enjoyed her playing.
As the man begging for money approached and glanced down into the cello case, the woman stopped playing and eyed him fiercely.
“Don’t even think about taking my money, Jack,” she said.
The homeless man turned and started walking back to the other end of the car.
Then, suddenly, Chipper’s view was blocked.
A woman with very thick legs and a large shopping bag dropped down onto the seat above him. When the dog tried to work his snout between her ankles so he could see what was going on, she let out a startled scream.
She looked down to see what furry thing had touched her, probably fearing it was a rat like the one Chipper wanted to chase, and when she saw that it was a dog, she laughed. Chipper took in her upside down face, which was round with a bulbous nose.
“Hey you,” she said. “Howya doin’?”
Chipper’s tail thumped twice. No matter how dire his situation, he always enjoyed it when people talked nicely to him.
“You’re a pretty dog,” the woman said. “You’re such a pretty dog. How’d you get on here? You belong to someone?”
She asked nearby passengers if any of them owned this dog.
“Not mine,” said someone.
“Nope,” said the woman who’d been playing the cello.
“So who do you belong to, then?” the woman asked, returning her attention to him. “Maybe there’s something on your collar that says who you are.”
She reached down, tried to grab hold of the ring around Chipper’s neck and managed to drag him out from under the seat far enough that she could get a look at it.
He did not want her looking at his collar. She absolutely should not look at his collar. He knew that he might have to snap at her if he couldn’t pull himself away. He didn’t want to have to do that. He could still taste Simmons’s blood in his mouth, and he didn’t want to have to bite anyone else.
The woman was trying to get her fingers under the collar, but she couldn’t. It was as though the collar was glued to his fur. It seemed attached to his body.
“Someone sure has put that tight on you there, buster. And what the heck is this? It’s not a leather collar. It’s like it’s made out of metal or something. Who’d put a metal collar on a dog?”
Chipper tried to pull his head away but the woman would not let go of him.
As the train rounded an underground curve in the track, the metal wheels squealed and the lights flickered, going out for nearly three seconds before coming back on.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” the woman said. “It’s like this collar is welded onto you. And what — what the heck is that?”
Maybe he was going to have to bite her after all.
“Is that something... is that something you plug something into?” To the passenger next to her, the woman said, “Doesn’t that look like one of those openings like on your phone, when you plug in the wire to recharge it? Why would he have one of those on his collar? That is totally—”
Chipper said, “Grrrrr.”
The woman quickly withdrew her hand. “Whoa! That’s not nice! Bad dog! That’s a bad dog!”
Chipper scurried back under the seat.
“If you don’t belong to somebody,” she said, “somebody needs to do something with you. You need to go to the pound!”