“Double cappuccino for Mary?” The barista called, and you grabbed your drink from her, then turned to search for a seat in the busy cafe. Against a wall there was a young woman packing up her and her infant’s things, so you took a moment to stir a few spoonfuls of sugar into your drink before heading over there. You were able to swoop up the table before the businessman circling the room like a shark could, he gave you a dirty look as you sat down. His loss. You sat with your back to the wall, scanning the room and blowing on your coffee.
You were waiting for one of the smaller breeders in the city, a woman named Leona Broussard of Sky High Fluffies. After a few long nights of googling you found a memorial page to a white and blue alicorn named Cirrus. The pictures were a dead ringer for Ella, the same pastel blue mane, same pure white fluff, same trusting smile. She was a cute foal, there was a picture of her with her multicolored siblings and a dusty rose alicorn that must be her mother. Her breeder clearly loved her, with the long eulogy on the site and the amount of pictures of them doing activities together she must have been more than a prize winning broodmare. You just wished there was more on how she died, it just said her death was accidental.
Across the room a middle aged woman with bleach blonde hair entered, looking around. You waved at her, and she made her way over to you.
“Hi, are you Mary?”
“Yep!” You hopped up and pulled out a chair for her. “You must be Leona, thanks so much for coming!”
“Oh it’s no trouble. Always happy to have some free publicity!” She smiled warmly at you and you returned it as best you could around your guilt. Getting an interview with her required a few lies, mostly a fake website for a podcast that didn’t exist. You made Romero record an episode with you so you’d have something on the site, it took four takes to get him to stop making shitty jokes.
“So, you mind telling me a little about your setup?” You asked, pulling out your small notebook.
“Absolutely.” She folded her hands very neatly in her lap. “So lots of breeders are focused on profits and pumping out as many good looking fluffies as fast as they can, but I really thought we could find a middle ground between making a profit and the welfare of the fluffies, you know?”
“Mh-hm.” You made some small scribbles under the questions you pre-wrote out as if you were taking notes. “What does high welfare look like then?”
“No cages, every fluffy gets a five foot by five foot breeding pen. They’re paired up based on genetics of course, but temperament is taken into account. The breeding pairs are never split up, they are allowed to stay together for their entire lives.”
“And if they aren’t producing quality foals?”
Leona looked aside uncomfortably. “It’s… not something that happens all that often, we pay good money for genetic testing but when it does we get the… offender fixed quietly. For the males it’s easy, vasectomies are cheap and we can quietly inseminate the female with another male’s sperm. They raise the foals together and never know the difference. If the female is the problem it’s a bit more of an issue, we’ll spay her as quietly as possible and keep her around to raise foals.” She gave you a sheepish smile. “It works about half the time.”
“As in… they get depressed?”
“Yes. And then start looping, you know? It’s awful, I wish I could let them have more foals but… we do need to make some money.”
“And the foals?”
“Oh! We actually have a deal with a group that trains service fluffies. I promise, the only culling we do is for health reasons, every fluffy that’s born to us gets a happy loving home.”
You believed her, at least you believed that she wasn’t lying. There was no way of knowing that none of the people she sold to were secret abusers, you knew now how hard it was to identify them. Scribbling again on the sheet you looked to your next question.
“I’ve been hearing a lot about proper upbringing for fluffies and the effects it can have on their behavior down the line, do you think there’s a correlation?”
“Certainly! Our foals are some of the best behaved you can find. Being raised with both parents in a stress free environment is crucial to their early development. Fluffies that know that there will always be enough food rarely beg, ones that know that love and affection will always be available don’t act out for attention. We do some training starting after the foals are weaned, but it’s mostly positive reinforcement, we do more carrot than stick, if you know what I mean.”
“It makes sense. It’s impressive though, most places are very… physical with their training.”
“We can’t ever hit the foals meant for service duties, the group we work with said it can lead to false positives with things like medical alerts. We had to find ways to manage behavior that don’t traumatize them, and we found that social punishments are by far the most effective.”
“Social punishments?”
“Say we have a fluffy here with us.” She gestured at the empty chair. “And he really wants a cookie but for whatever reason he can’t have it. When he starts screaming and crying I just-” She crossed her arms and spun in her chair, turning her back to the hypothetical fluffy. After a moment of silence, her nose in the air, she turned back to you. “And you wait like that until he calms down.”
“That… works?” You were taking notes for real now, flipping to the next page.
“Mh-hm! Very well actually! Once they burn themselves out they’ll do just about anything to win your attention back.”
“That’s… kinda amazing.” You would have to try this. She was a crazy fluffy lady for sure, but you could see it working. Fluffies were obsessed with human approval, even smarties at some level thought if they were bossy enough humans would like them.
“We sell an ebook if you want to know more, it’s on our website. It’s just sold for the cost of production, so it’s pretty cheap.”
The mention of the website stopped your pen mid-letter. You momentarily forgot you had ulterior motives to be here.
“Right, speaking of the website,” you pulled out your phone, pulling up the picture of Ella, “what can you tell me about her?”
Leona sighed sadly. “Oh, little girl. What a good picture of her.” She pulled your phone towards her. “Where is this from?”
“Uh… The memorial page?” Shit shit shit of course she would want to know why you had a picture of her fluffy.
After a pause long enough for a bead of nervous sweat to make it all the way down your neck she smiled. “I haven’t looked at that page in so long. Cirrus was such a sweet girl.” You released a small relieved sigh as she sat back in her chair, staring up at the coffee shop ceiling. “Cirrus was a personal favorite of mine. She didn’t have the coloration of her siblings but something about her just spoke to me. Her mother was my mother’s last show mare, Desert Rose. She retired from the show circuit the same time Mom did, she went to the breeding pens and Mom went to the retirement home. Cirrus was in her… third litter I think. Mom died just before they were born. Her cigarette habit caught up with her finally.”
“I’m so sorry for your loss.”
She wiped a tear from her cheek. “It’s alright. To love is to lose, you know? Anyway, I couldn’t bear to part with all of them. There was a pink colt in that litter that would have made a perfect stud, but something about that little girl spoke to me. She was so perfect, never broke a rule, never missed the litter box, always said please and thank you… She took to training like a fish to water too.”
You scribbled that down as quickly as you could. “So… What happened?”
“We had her paired off to a stallion about her age and she had her first litter. The first one is always something I like to be there for as much as possible. You never know what could go wrong with the first time moms, you know? She was nervous, which was normal, but other than that she was doing great. I could have stayed the night but she had the foals really late and I was tired. I told her to watch them for me. That’s where it started.”
You continued writing while she sipped her drink, gathering her thoughts.
“When I got back in the morning she had done exactly what I told her to. She watched the foals. All night. Nothing else. Never fed them, wouldn’t let the stallion help them feed either. She just… watched them waste away. Those first few feeds are so crucial, they weren’t dead when I got there but… well, they didn’t last much longer.”
“Wow… she just let them starve?”
Leona nodded. “I told her to feed them and she did, right away, but missing a few feeds and sleeping in the cold took their toll on the poor things. That was when I noticed it. She would only do something if I specifically told her to. She had been obedient before, but it was like pregnancy did something to her. Now she would only act if I or another human told her to. And specifically to, you couldn’t just tell her to take care of the babies. You had to tell her to feed two of them, and then the next two, and then clean them one by one… like really step by step.”
“That’s…” You tried to find words for it that didn’t give away what you knew of Ella. It was certainly her. She played with the blocks when Walters told her to, used the litter box when he asked, hell you even saw her try to bite Nugget’s legs off when he asked her to. That was certainly the same fluffy.
“It’s messed up, huh. When the stallion wanted nothing more to do with her I decided that she needed real help and I took her to the hospital. They said it was maybe OCD, maybe some sort of postpartum psychosis. Either way she would need intensive care, they wanted to keep her in the ward. They promised I’d be able to visit as much as I wanted, that they’d make her better. Two days later I got the call that she’d had an accident. Someone had left her cage open and she fell, I guess. Not totally sure what happened, all I know is that the hospital gave me her body and a pretty hefty check to not sue them.”
So they told her Cirrus died. You hadn’t seen many fluffies with her coloration and alicorns were still pretty rare, but it wasn’t impossible to find one similar enough. They then paid her off to not talk about it. Fucked, but it sounded like something the hospital would do. You needed to speak carefully here, figure out how much she knew without blowing your cover.
“That’s horrible, do you think it was like negligence on their part or…?”
“Oh no, I’m sure they did everything they could!! I got called in to talk to one of her doctors, I think his name was Dr. Tempest?”
Victor Temple. You wrote that down. “And what did he say?”
“Oh he was so heartbroken, almost more hurt than me. I got into his office and there were flowers on the table and some treats for the other fluffies. He explained that it was a total accident, she must have leaned against the door or something like that, the nurse heard her fall and came running but it was too late. I won’t lie, I was mad coming in. Cirrus was my girl. She was my personal fluffy.” She paused briefly, wiping her eye. “You try not to get too attached in my line of work. If the mummahs can’t have favorites, neither can I. But Cirrus was my favorite. We went everywhere together. My mother… my mother would have loved her.”
“I’m sure. She sounded like quite the fluffy.” And she still is.
“She really was.” Leona sat back in the chair, clasping her hands in front of her again.
“That’s about all I have for you.” You closed your notebook, and picked up the remains of your coffee. You wished you could bring her home, but with her tumors she would continue to need intensive medical care. It would be a shame to bring her home to her owner just for her to think the swelling in her abdomen was a pregnancy and not to get her treatment because the hospital faked her death.
Unless.
Unless those weren’t tumors at all.
You suddenly felt very stupid. She was pregnant. Her stomach grew steadily, and you weren’t allowed to give her any pain medication for the occasional cramps that were fairly common with fluffy pregnancies, especially with big litters.
“Um, is everything okay?” Leona asked.
“Yes, sorry.” You shook your head, clearing your thoughts. “Would you like to be on the podcast?”
“Oh! Uh-”
“You-you don’t need to answer now, I’d just like to get your number or something to work that out with you.” God, you sounded like you were asking her out.
“Oh, yeah let me get you my card.” She dug through her purse for a moment before handing you a beat up blue business card.
“Thank you, I’ll be in touch.” You gave her a small smile as you left the cafe.
It was a long shot, it really was, but you needed to at least try to get Ella home. You had no idea what Victor and the others were doing to her, but you had to try. Unlike the fight club, you could save just this one.
You went back into work the next day and didn’t see Walters on your way in. Primrose had missed you it seemed, she was happily chattering about all the fun stuff her and Victor had done together while you kept an eye out for the slimy bastard.
“That all sounds super fun.” You said absentmindedly, pouring her breakfast out onto a paper bowl. She had recovered enough to be eating normal fluffy food rather than the high fat critical care stuff and her fluff was almost fully grown in. It felt good to see her with the proper layer of fat and fluff on her bones even if her mane didn’t fully grow in.
“It bewwy fun, nice wady!” She said before digging into her vaguely spaghetti flavored goop.
She still didn’t remember you. You considered asking Davis about it but you weren’t sure if you could keep your cool long enough to learn properly. You had really come to like Primrose, she was a sweet fluffy. You still weren’t fond enough of fluffies to go out and get one for yourself but if you absolutely had to keep one you’d pick her. You patted her on the head as you went to toss the can.
From the hallway you heard Walters’ voice. “Hey, where’s Ella?”
“I’ll be back in a little bit, when you’re done you can go color.” Primrose made a muffled excited noise around her breakfast as you slipped into the hallway.
“There was a small complication with her surgery.” Dr. Jackson called back from her office.
“What’s wrong with her? Is she okay?” Walters stood just outside her office, fingers tightly clutching the doorframe.
“She is being cared for.”
“But what went wrong?!”
Dr. Jackson sighed heavily. “I was unaware that you were in charge of her care.”
“I-I-” Walters stammered.
“Right, you aren’t. And since you are also not a surgeon, or an oncologist, or even a doctor at all, I would recommend you continue your duties and wait for the professionals to be done with her.” You could hear her tap the side of her mug with her spoon as she spoke.
Walters gritted his teeth but stepped back from the door, turning back towards the residents room. You quickly darted up to his side, linking your arm in with his.
“M-Mary! I-”
“Can you help me get a box down in the stock room?” You didn’t wait for him to reply before dragging him towards the room.
“I-I-I need t-t-t-to-”
“Thanks!” You shoved him forward through the door and slammed it shut behind the two of you, pressing your back against it to block him in.
“Wh-wh-what do you want??” He backed away from you slowly as if you were armed.
“What did you give that fluffy?” You crossed your arms, staring him down.
“I-I-I-I didn’t-”
“Yeah, you did.” You pulled your phone out of your pocket, waving it in his face. “But that’s alright, I can send the video to your friends and they can decide if you injected her with something or not.”
“Th-They’ll kill me!”
“Then tell me.”
He stared at you for a moment before sighing. “It’s a… stimulant.”
“I know that. What exactly is it. What is it called?”
“I don’t know! It’s some experimental stuff, I didn’t catch the name of it!!”
“Where did you get it then?”
Walters paced around the room, hands in his pockets. “There’s a lab two streets down from the hospital, on the top floor of that big brick building with the white pillars.”
“And… you took it from there?”
“Yeah. I swear, I don’t know what it’s called or what it’s made from, just that it works. I got tasked with cleaning that place and I-I-I snooped in some files and found this shit. That’s all I know, I swear.” He paused in his pacing, looking at you. “Please, Mary. If they see that video they’re going to kill me. You saw how they are when they think you’re cheating.”
“There’s no video.” you said, putting your phone away. “You’re fine.”
“Wh-What??”
“I lied. I didn’t take a video.”
Walters stared at you, slack jawed. “Y-Y-Y-You…”
“I. Lied. You heard me.” A secret lab, huh? “How did you get in?”
“I-I-I-I just… scanned myself in, like th-th-th-the door here.”
“Alright. Thank you.” You turned to leave, putting your hand on the doorknob. “If I catch you mistreating any of the fluffies here I will tell them that you cheated, got that?”
“Y-Y-Y-Y-”
“Great.” You left him stammering in the stock room. You pulled your phone back out, shooting a text to Romero.
“You want to get dinner after work?”
After a moment the reply came. “For a date?”
“No, jackass. Just business.”
“Understood. I will return the roses.”
You rolled your eyes, tucking your phone back into your pocket. God, you hoped he understood what you meant.
“So your plan is to… just walk in?” Romero dug through the Burgerfluff bag looking for stray fries as he spoke.
“I… Well, yeah. Basically. It sounds stupid when you put it like that.”
“I’m still down for it if there’s no plan.” He pulled out a fry and popped it into his mouth.
You sat in your car just down the street from where Walters said the lab was, watching for any sign of the entrance. Romero insisted that “spy shit” couldn’t be done on an empty stomach so you drove through and got you both burger meals. You picked at yours, watching the lights on the upper level of the building turn off one by one. What could be hiding in there? Why did the hospital need experimental stimulants?
“THERE!” Romero shouted, making you jump and spill your fries across the interior of your car. “LAB COAT!” He leapt out of your car, the door slamming shut behind him. You tossed your burger into the passenger seat and ran after him.
He jogged down the sidewalk, you caught up to him quickly. A few yards down the sidewalk a couple in matching green scrubs and white lab coats walked down, chatting idly. Romero turned down a pathway nearly invisible in the shadow of the building where a narrow set of stone stairs led up.
“Ladies first.” He made a grand gesture as if he was a gentleman offering you space in an elevator.
“You’re just scared.”
“Yep.” He followed closely behind you as you made your way up the stairs.
At the top was a solid metal door, the grey paint chipping off to reveal layers of colors from its past. The knob was an old metal latch, worn down with years of use but next to it was a very new looking badge reader.
“You have a key or something?” Romero asked.
You pulled your badge out and pressed it to the scanner which made an affirmative chirp. The door unlocked with a clunk and you pulled it open, straining under its weight.
The lab smelled of the industrial cleaners from the back rooms of the psych wing, you and Romero slipped into the darkness. There was an eerie silence, even the very much soundproofed psych wing had some fluffy noises at all times. You expected a lab doing fucked up experiments on fluffies to be at least somewhat loud. You didn’t see any fluffies though, you were in a dark hallway and could see many doors going further down. Wordlessly you gestured for Romero to follow you as you made your way down the hall. The doors had small glass windows looking into the rooms and you peeked into each one as you went by. The first few you saw were storage rooms containing rack after rack of boxes of unknown substances. You saw a slight glow coming from a door down the way and looking in saw the blue bouncing screensaver of a lab computer.
You pulled the doorknob and the door opened readily. The two of you slipped in, closing the door gently behind you. It was a small office space, with a few desks and computers surrounding a round table in the middle of the room.
“Watch the door.” You whispered.
“But I want to-”
“Watch. The. Door.” You had no time for Romero’s bullshit. This was not a game or some sort of heist movie, you needed him to have his shit together.
Moving the mouse the computer flashed to life, the previous user still logged in. Lucky for you, a huge breach of cyber security for the user. A shame, they’ll have to do cyber security training if you get caught. While you’re in prison. You shook the thought out of your head while you clicked through the file system.
The files were sorted by experiments rather than fluffies files, and “OGA RESEARCH” was at the top of a good chunk of them. You picked a video at random and opened it up.
[EXPERIMENT 4, SESSION 2, CONGENIAL OBSERVER]
The video opened up with a red unicorn foal pinned down to a metal plate, a wire connecting to its horn. It stared up at something behind the camera, terror in its eyes. A hand came into the shot, showing the foal a blue card. It flinched at the card, but nothing seemed to happen and it relaxed somewhat as the hand withdrew. Then the hand returned, holding out a red card. The foal’s eyes widened in terror at it, then there was a click.
“SCREEEEEEEEE!” You watched the foal arch its back and flail as electricity was pumped into its sensitive horn. After a moment the foal went limp, panting on the metal plate.
The hand returned once again, holding out a small green wooden block. The foal barely glanced it over, and the hand pulled it back. The hand returned, holding out an orange block, then withdrew once again as the foal showed no recognition. Then once more, but with a red block.
The foal reacted immediately, “Nu, pweEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!” Again the shock traveled through its horn, you could see a small wisp of smoke rise up and clearly the owner of the hand did as well because the power was immediately cut and the foal went limp once more.
The video ended there, but as you went to exit the file you saw a link to another video. You weren’t sure if you wanted to see more of this poor foal getting tortured but you had to know what became of this.
You gritted your teeth and clicked.
[EXPERIMENT 4, SESSION 3 BASELINE, CONGENIAL OBSERVER]
The foal sat in a wire cage, staring down at its hooves. Someone snapped and his head shot up, eyes once again filled with fear. A closed hand entered the shot, opening up to show the foal the small green block. The foal studied it carefully before looking up at whoever’s hand that was. The hand closed again, pulling out of the shot. It then returned, closed once again, and opened up to reveal the red block.
“SCREEEEEEEE!” The foal exploded into motion, hooves flailing in every direction as if it was being shocked. You couldn’t see any wires leading to the cage, however, and as the foal slowly calmed down rather than falling limp you realized that this was a Pavlov reaction. The poor foal had been caused harm so many times when shown anything red it now assumed that it was only seconds from pain at the sight of a block.
The person behind the camera let the foal devolve into a sobbing puddle on the bottom of the cage before returning to the shot holding a small plastic hand mirror. They snapped their fingers and the fluffies head shot up, freezing as it saw its reflection in the mirror.
“SCREEEEEEEEEEE!” It screamed again, slamming itself into the walls of the cage.
The hand holding the mirror retreated. A white coated figure stepped into the shot, only their waist was visible with the camera pointed at the fluffy’s cage. They waited for the foal to fall still on the floor of the cage, panting heavily, before jabbing them in the rump with a small syringe of a pinkish fluid and shot it into them. The foal yelped and the video ended abruptly.
“That’s fucked.” Romero said.
“You’re supposed to be watching the door.” You grumbled. You didn’t disagree with him though. What purpose did traumatizing the fluffy with the same color he was serve? What was in the syringe? You saw another link at the bottom and clicked it.
[EXPERIMENT 4, SESSION 3 RESULTS, CONGENIAL OBSERVER]
The red fluffy had grown slightly, it was less pudgy and was just starting to take on the body shape of an adolescent fluffy. You glanced at the date at the top of the video, about two weeks had passed since the last one. The foal was walking in small circles around its cage, looking curiously around the room. You would assume it was another good body double if not for the small scorch mark on its horn.
A closed hand entered the shot, getting the attention of the foal. It opened up, revealing the orange block.
“Bwockie!” The foal chirped happily.
The hand withdrew and returned again after a moment, opening to reveal the red block.
“Tuu bwockies!!” The foal giggled, clapping its hooves together.
The hand withdrew, returning with the small mirror. The foal looked at it, smiling widely.
“Hewwo! Nyu fwend?” He dropped into a play bow, wiggling his tail in a friendly manner.
The video ended there, with a short note at the bottom.
“Trial 4 is a complete success. Subject showed no aversion to previous objects after two weeks and no abnormalities upon dissection. More trials are necessary before human trials, but the outlook is good.”
…Human trials of what? You clicked out of the file and scrolled down the list, looking for the word “Human”. You didn’t find it, but you did see a name on the last video file.
[PERRY, TREVOR; APPLICATION INTERVIEW]
A young man sat in a chair in a room not dissimilar to the one you interviewed Primrose in.
“Can you state your name?” A woman’s voice spoke from behind the camera.
“I’m Specialist Trevor Perry.”
“And what are you applying for?”
He sighed, sounding somewhat annoyed. “Bro, I don’t even fucking know. The psych and the CO brought me into a room a few months after the “incident” and said I should volunteer for this. That it would help with the nightmares. You got some of that synthweed or enhanced LSD they are trialing at the VA for us?"
“No, there will be no illicit substances in these trials. Can you tell me why you want to apply?”
“Yeah, I guess.” He sat forward in the chair, resting his elbows on his knees. “I did one tour of duty, and got sent home after my entire unit was blown up.” He sat there in silence for a minute before sighing heavily. “Fine. I was off duty and had to take a shit. The latrines were pretty goddamn gross so I went out into the desert to dig myself a hole. I heard some whistling, I was looking around for the source when…” He trailed off, looking away.
“It’s okay, take your time.”
There was a long silence before he continued. “Someone in the artillery fucked up. I don’t know who, or what, but they launched an artillery strike right onto our FOS. I got knocked onto the ground, I didn’t know what was going on. I wandered back into camp, my ears were ringing and there were just… body parts everywhere…”
He stopped, staring off into the middle distance. You could see the light leave his eyes slowly, his fingers gripping his biceps firmly.
“My buddy Mike was laying on the ground, big giant guy, used to say he was bulletproof. I… I couldn’t find his head. I spent a good long time looking for it like… like if I could put it back on him he would… he…” Trevor made an odd hiccupping noise, putting his head in his hands. “I couldn’t save him. Couldn’t save any of them. It was just me… and the guys on patrol and when they got back they… god they wouldn’t help them. I couldn’t help them. I just… I…” He trailed off into sobs and the video ended.
“Oh my god.” Romero was hovering over your shoulder now.
“So… It’s like a memory wipe serum…” You dug through your pockets, pulling out the flash drive you brought.
“I mean I wouldn’t want to remember that either but… this can’t be okay.”
“There’s no way.” You dropped to your knees, searching the computer for a USB port. They had glued some sort of cover over them, probably to stop people like you from downloading the files. Clever, but not clever enough. “Romero, can you find me something sharp? I need to get the cover off the port.”
“Sure.” Romero wandered off while you searched the dark space under the desk. There was plenty of dust, which didn’t help you much. Lots of cables leading into the wall behind the computer as well, you were sure this place didn’t have wifi with its thick brick walls. “Here,” Romero handed you a screwdriver over your shoulder.
“Thanks.” You pried off the cover, only damaging the plastic computer case slightly. With your flash drive plugged in you were able to start a transfer of a good chunk of the files chosen more or less at random. You had no idea what else was hiding in these, but you were not going to get another chance like this. You should have brought a flash drive when you snooped through Walters’ files, but there was no warning for that.
After a few minutes the computer dinged, letting you know the transfer was complete.
“Alright, I have the files. Let’s go.” You turned around and Romero was nowhere to be seen. “God damnit.” You muttered to yourself.
At the back of the room was a small door, and peeking through the window you could see a proper lab set up, the metal tables and industrial fridges and bio waste bins. In the middle stood Romero, with his back to you.
You cracked the door slightly. “Romero, what the hell are you doing?”
“Mary…” Tucked under Romero’s arm was a reddish brown fluffy with a close cropped orange mane.
“No, absolutely not.” Damn his soft heart. This was not a fucking rescue mission!
“But she was crying in the bio waste bin…” She kept her face pressed into his armpit, shaking lightly.
“Romero, no. If you take her they’ll know someone was here and look into the badge reader and we’ll go to prison.”
“What’s your name, little thing?” He ignored you, carefully rolling her over to hold her like an infant.
“… Am numbah twewbe.” She looked up at him with big wet eyes. You looked away sharply.
“Oh that won’t do. Why don’t we call you… Yam.”
“Yam? Seriously?”
“Yeah! Brown fluff, orange mane, it’s perfect. It’ll be short for Yamantha.” She stared up at him, eyes wide with wonder.
“I am not calling her that.”
“Oh, but you will be calling her something?”
“Yes, I’ll call her Yam. Not that stupid thing.”
“So it’s settled then, girl! You’re coming home with us!” Romero hugged the shocked fluffy tightly to his chest.
“Wha- no! No no no! I did not-”
“Mary, no one will be looking for her.” Yam began to cry quietly into his shirt as he spoke. “She was thrown into the bin without even making an attempt to put her down. She’s garbage to them. We’ll be fine.”
You chewed your lip for a moment, watching Yam’s sobs shake her entire little body. She could have some sort of tracker, a microchip that would report back to whoever was in charge of this lab and tell them wherever you went. She could be some sort of proprietary lab breed, taking her out of the lab could be some sort of felony. However, she was the sort of color that a breeder would pay a lab to take off their hands and probably worth less than the cost of properly disposing of her body. You reached out and stroked her back, feeling along her spine for the telltale lump of a microchip. Feeling nothing, you sighed. She could be useful, she could tell you first hand what was happening at this awful place.
“Alright.”
“Thank you, it means a lot to me.” Romero smiled at you, taking your hand. “To both of us.”
“Yeah yeah, whatever.” You turned away before he could see your smile. “Let’s get out of here before you adopt anything else.”