have taken up the whole plateau on top of the ridge. Zoos, cattle yards, and abattoirs were not my favourite places for the same reason, as the flood of animal distress was often more than I could take. But this place… It set my teeth on edge and made my skin itch in a way I hadn’t experienced since I was a kid. I was forced to moderate my breathing, take in one breath, then another.
“Come, let me show you the labs, Stuart, as that’s where you’ll be working most. We’ll put your support staff to work alongside you, so you have a team you can trust, but I believe you’ll find the rest of our employees an asset.”
“In what?” Stuart said. “I get what you’re trying to achieve, but this?” He shook his head. “This is way more than what I was trained to do.”
“Trained?” Hollingsworth’s eyebrow raised. “Of course, this is cutting edge technology. Far beyond the scope of your university degree, but done? I've seen your papers on experimental gene editing on big cats. It’s where we got our ideas for the institute. Your research and findings have been extrapolated, taken to the next logical step.”
“Ideas I never explored, as there was never any funding for them,” Stuart said with a frown. “This is a multimillion-dollar facility. Where are you getting your money from?”
“Come, come. All will be revealed.”
Did anybody ever trust anyone who spoke like that? I wondered as we walked towards the lifts. Animals shifted in their glassed cages as we went, something that Nick noticed as well.
“They’re…they’re looking at you,” he said as we watched two big cats pad towards the front of their enclosures.
One was a black jaguar, prowling towards the glass with an effortlessly lazy gait. The other a lion, watching us with golden eyes, then weirdly, the two animals glanced at each other. A long look passed between them, as if they were…communicating? That couldn’t be right. I pushed my awareness out towards them, expecting to get yet more waves of misery thrust back, but instead, I felt…nothing. I got not one impression or feeling from either of them.
I broke ranks, people’s heads turning as I approached the barriers, the two animals looking down at me with the implacable gaze of a predator, synchronised in their motion, which was odd enough. I looked into their eyes, searching, feeling a prickle in my scalp as, for the first time in my life, I had to actively try to connect with an animal.
They just stared back, as if they could sense what I was doing, watching my struggles, and still refused that mental contact.
“Ms Bruce?”
My eyes jerked around to see Hollingsworth standing beside me, regarding me with a curious look.
“You’ve found two of our best specimens. Nero,” he said, nodding to the lion, disregarding the slow shift of the animal’s muzzle, those sabre-like teeth emerging like drawn daggers, “and Zane.”
“You named them?” I asked, frowning slightly, as I gave up reaching out for now.
A sense of relief and frustration washed through me. I’d been managing the constant stream of information thrust at me from animals since I was a kid. To have that taken away, no matter for how long for, was disorientating.
“They came with names,” was all Hollingsworth would say, before turning on his heel. “Now if you’d follow me.”
“So what do you think?” Janey asked in a low voice as we stood inside the gleaming white lab. Stuart and Hollingsworth talked rapidly about all the well-polished equipment.
“I don’t like it,” I replied, glancing around the sterile facility. “The animals aren’t happy. This guy feels like something straight out of Pinky and the Brain.”
“Pinky and the Brain?”
“Warner Brothers’ cartoon? ‘Gee, Brain, what are we gonna do tonight? The same thing we do every night, try to take over the world!’”
“I don’t think I’ve seen that before,” Janey said.
“Well, let’s just say if the guy starts breaking out in an evil plan monologue while zapping us with fricking lasers, I wouldn’t be shocked. I like the HG Vets. I like my clients. I like you guys.”
“But it looks like that wasn’t on the cards for long anyway.”
We both sighed as Nick ambled over.
“What do you think?” I asked. “Does any of that make sense to you?”
“It’s beyond my pay grade,” he said with a shake of his head. “I got halfway through my vets qualifications, but fuck, I focussed on farm animals not genetic splicing.”