III

When the sun came back up, I was still tired. That night I had the same dream as before, and I could still feel barbed wire tearing me apart. Lucky and me got up and caught three fresh mice, like I had promised. We went back to the hole, and I offered to carry all the mice. I let Lucky have two mice since she liked them so much, and since I had that squirrel yesterday.

We both decided that we needed to take the ten o'clock ferry back to the city. My mechanical side told me it was 9:25, so we had to leave soon.

We walked back to the boat, hiding in the shadows of the trees. I heard helicopter blades, and turned invisible. lucky jumped, and squealed. “Where’d you go?!”

“I’m right here!” I barked. “I can turn invisible if I scratch my right ear. I bet those helicopters are looking for me.”

“Oh. Well, then how can I follow you?”

I pondered this for a heartbeat, then an idea popped into my head. “I’ll scratch the ground every now and then, and you can follow the sound of it.”

Lucky nodded, warming up to the idea.

We continued, and I scratched in the dirt every minute. A few times Lucky would be wandering a little, I would scratch the ground, and she’d run to me so fast she hit her head against me. (She was really smart like that.)

Once Lucky and I got to the island’s gift shop, we found a churro vendor un-attended, so we snapped up a few. Since dogs can’t taste sweetness, the churros just tasted like bread, but crunchier.

We waited in the shade of a bush for the ferry that was now giving tours around the island. Two smaller statues of the green lady stood guard at the gift shop, and one of them had a grass skirt.

“So… you asked me about my family. What about yours? And why do you have that metal on you?” Lucky asked while she licked the sugar off her paws.

I had to stifle a growl. I didn’t want to remember what had happened, but how could I  forget?

My mother taught me that the first step to forgetting something bad was to tell someone about it.

I took a breath. “I never knew my father. He left before I was born. I had  three other siblings, but they all died after they were born.

“I was really sick, and I couldn’t walk. My mom had to take care of me herself. When I was about a month old, a gray dog and some other cats and dogs came to our place. The gray dog killed my mom…” I stopped for a second, promising myself not to break down. “And he ordered the rest of the animals to torture me. Not to kill me, but make it feel like I wanted to.

“A few hours after, a woman picked me up and brought me to the Uniblue laboratory.  They put me on life support-”

“What’s that?” Lucky interrupted.

“When someone is dying, they hook you up to wires and machines. The machines help you do things you need to do to live, like breath and have your heartbeat.” I  told her.

“Then they attached this metal. They kept working on me till I was almost done, putting me in a cage with no windows or light when night came around. I escaped through a window yesterday.”

“Do you think the gray dog that killed you mom could be the same one that killed my mom?” Lucky asked.

I avoided her gaze.

“Yes… yes I do.”

⭑⭑⭑

The ferry pulled up about five minutes later. I turned invisible, and lucky followed the same way she did before. We got ahead of most of the human traffic, but Lucky got separated from me a few times and we both got stepped on. We sat down in the same area I had slept in before. The ferry started moving, and I became visible again.

50% charged, The left side said in my mind.

A little while after the boat started moving, Lucky bombed me with a question.

“Will we get my family back? And the families of the other animals?”

Honestly, I didn’t think we could. I didn’t think twenty of us could, let alone two. The moving barbed wire was a problem of its own, and with the huge army of animals that Doom had would easily overtake us. But I didn’t want to burst her bubble, and there were other families that needed our help.

“Yes, but we will need to work out a plan and get more animals to come with us. So when we get back to the city, we’ll need to find animals crazy enough to help us. We’ll work out the details with the other animals, but we’ll need to sneak in while some other animals create a distraction. We will also need to know our way around the place and where doom is keeping all the animals caged.”

“Finding recruits will be easy. Many animals around the city have family or friends trapped by Doom.”

“Getting in and out of the place will be the hardest. Lucky, how did you escape?”

I asked. She wouldn’t meet my eyes.

“The wire was bolted in against the wall behind me, but a really small wire connected a few cages then led into an outlet.  When a guard went to take a break, I asked the closest cat to the outlet to pull the wire out. Since she had little paws, she was just able to get it out.

“Then the whole line of cages loosened and stopped moving. We all got out, sneaking past the guards. Some of us got captured, but me and two other dogs got out safely.”

A plan started clicking in my mind. I really wanted to share it with lucky, but I was too tired.

I yawned, exposing my sharp metal teeth. “Well, I need to sleep. if you haven’t noticed, carrying this metal with me everywhere isn’t fun.”

Lucky giggled, and I placed my head between my paws.

“I’ll wake you up when we get back.” She said with a newfound courage.

She said something else, probably good night, but I was already falling asleep.