The lights faded theatrically, drawing the audience into an anxious hush.

Max leaned back into his seat, resting his right foot on his left knee as he turned on the recording feature built into his glasses. He smiled, stared forward, and waited.

"Ladies and Gentlemen!"

The voice thundered through the auditorium, booming through dozens of speakers, shaking the seats, rattling the doors, and stabbing at Max's ears.

As the echoes died off a spotlight illumined the stage, to reveal a woman in a white dress. She wore absurdly high heels, her hair was so blonde that the strands may as well be plated in chrome, and her manic smile didn't reach her wide, terrified eyes.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, my name is Candice McTorman, and it is my privilege to be the first to tell you that MonsantoGenome has done the impossible!" the woman cried out, cheering in a convincing imitation of a victorious cricket player. Her bloodshot eyes, and the small steaks in her mascara, were the only hint that her mood might not be genuine.

"Ever since the world's population has reached nine billion, we've struggled to bring new meats to the world's hungry mouths," Candice said, beginning to spin her tale. Max grinned, and let a Wikipedia feed scroll in a semi-transparent font in a corner.

Max added a few headlines to the recording feed being broadcast by his glasses. He added a news story about a ban on the sale of any non-domesticated meat and followed it with a later story about an active ban on all factory farming. He added one or two news articles about cricket flour and the fake hamburger fiascos of 2021.

"We only have three animals to eat, and even then, only sparingly. Beef, chicken, and pork. The last time someone was legally allowed to sell a bison steak, they made enough money to buy an island!" Candice announced.

Candice smirked and paused for dramatic effect. She then added, "not a big island, but still!"

A sizeable portion of the crowd laughed at that. Mostly the expensive suits up front, where the potential investors were seated. The press, and other riffraff like local politicians, were held as far away from the moneyed people as possible.

"But MonsantoGenome has found a legal way to sell exotic meat to a hungry world. There's a fortune to be made!" Candice exclaimed, clapping her hands and stretching her face in a smile, like she was trying to remind herself to be happy.

As the applause died down, Candice added, "it's safe, natural, legal, and most importantly; tasty."

"Now, some of you might be wondering why we're making this announcement here, at this backwater little continent that can't even manage to be the largest country in the world," Candice said, eliciting more guffaws from the moneyed guests at the front. "And what sort of exotic meat could we be allowed to cultivate legally in a land where pretty much everything is poisonous?"

Candice paused for dramatic effect, before she asked, "and how did we get around the 2027 treaty banning the sale of non-domesticated meat?"

Candice paused again, letting the question hang in the dead air.

Max leaned forward, the amused grin fading from his face.

"We find an animal, and domesticate it." Candice said with the same demeaning tone that Martha Stewart used when she uttered her famous catchphrase 'it's just that easy'.

To judge by the audience's reaction, her news was delivered to exactly the right audience. Cheers erupted in the front rows, with a crowd of people rising to their feet, chanting; "Genome! Genome! Genome!"

"Which is what brings us to Australia. Using the wisdom of both natives and outback ranchers, partnered with science, we have bred a kangaroo that is larger, more docile, and less dangerous than any found in the wild," Candice explained.

Candice smiled, turned sideways, and rested a finger under her chin. "I've taken to calling it the Wallaroo-Rex."

"Now, who wants to see one?" Candice asked.

Predictably, the crowd was comically enthusiastic, the manic cheers congealing into a steady chant, with hundreds of very wealthy men and women demanding to see whatever animal Candice hid behind the stage.

"Okay! But only because you've been such a wonderful audience. Let's turn the lights up a little, and be quiet. He's as calm as an animal can be, but he's still an animal. Ladies and gentlemen, give a warm, gentle applause..."

"For Rex."

The lights rose to a gentle reading light, just as a cowboy dressed in what a fashion designer imagined cowboys wore lead a creature onto the stage.

Bunny-like ears sat on top of a distinctly marsupial face. Soft brown fur, a gently sloped back that lead to a long, thick tail. The creature certainly looked like a kangaroo.

Only the creature was probably a little bigger than the average Canadian black bear.

The gasps were nearly as loud as the earlier cheers, as the cowboy lead the massive creature in a slow circle around Candice.

Max whistled, and had to suppress the urge to shake his head in disbelief.

*****

"MonsantoGenome outdid themselves," a reporter beside Max commiserated, as he swallowed a shot of whiskey.

"I'll say so. That thing must have weighed over three hundred kilos," someone else agreed. "And it was so meek you could have put a saddle on it."

"Yeah. They're going to make an absurd amount of money. I don't mind admitting that I bought a few shares," a third reporter said.

Max chuckled, and took another deep sip of his beer.

But his eyes were on a coworker from his paper, a veteran of the investigative reporting scene, who sat apart from them with enough alcohol to not only kill her, but likely preserve her corpse afterwards.

Max excused himself and made his way over to her, taking one of the shots of whiskey from the row of glasses in-front of her.

"Matilda," Max said, as he drank the shot and sat down in the booth next to her. "That doesn't look like happy drinking."

"You know, Captain Obvious, I think you picked the right profession," Matilda said, just before dropping back another shot. "But I'm guessing you didn't see what I saw in there."

"I saw a three hundred kilo kangaroo. It stinks to high-heaven of some genome meddling, but finding a freakishly large specimen isn't unheard of," Max admitted.

Matilda gave him an appraising stare for a long moment before she took another shot.

"Nope. You didn't see what I saw," Matilda said. "But you're still suspicious. So I'll tell you what I saw, and we'll see if you stop judging me for trying to make it hurt less."

"Okay," Max said. "Try me."

"That was a joey," Matilda said.

Max dropped the glass he had just picked up. It bounced twice off the wooden bar and fell to the floor.

Max reached for his wallet and wordlessly handed a twenty to the barkeep.

"You can't be serious," Max said, disbelieving. "I know its fur was more felt-like than it should be, but there's no way a three hundred kilo animal can be a Joey. That would make an adult the size of an elephant, or bigger."

"It wasn't just the fur. Did you see the short nails? The awkward hops it made? Or that the handler was feeding it out of a bottle? Adult animals don't drink milk, Max," Matilda explained.

"God damn," Max muttered.

"That's more than just cross-breeding. To make a marsupial that big, you need to do some serious genetic editing. That animal wasn't natural in any way, shape, or form," Matilda concluded, as she dumped a shot of whiskey into a nearby beer and started to drink.

"So how do we prove it?"

"We don't," Matilda said, between gulps. "I'm going to drink until I can stop thinking about how damaged a full-grown animal must be."

"What do you mean?" Max asked.

"An eight-ton kangaroo? Look, evolution is a slow process. Small changes over a long period. Hundreds of thousands of years to change a butterfly's wings by just a few millimetres. Now, making a kangaroo the size of an elephant in just a single generation? I don't even want to know what MonsantoGenome did to those animals," Matilda said, as she kept drinking.

*****

It must have been the alcohol.

Because it certainly wasn't his sober, sombre good sense standing on the far side of a three-metre tall concrete wall. His senses were busy trying to reconcile how a coil of razor wire could look so much like icing on a cake.

But whatever brought him here, looking at this fortified compound, wasn't letting go of his guts, or letting him turn his legs around and walk away.

Instead, Max stumbled up to the checkpoint, and started the nearly teenaged boy minding the entrance. The kid jumped backwards, but recovered quick has Max held out a placating hand and smiled.

"Hey, kid," Max said, pointing towards the compound inside. "I'm, uh, supposed to meet that lovely Candice woman inside. For an interview."

"Uh, really?" the kid asked.

Max fumbled in his jacket for a moment, and drew out the press pass he had been issued earlier in the evening. "Yeah. Personal story, about how she's bonded with that animal she showed-off a few hours ago. She said she'd host me in her office."

"Oh, okay," the kid said, turning to the phone. "I can call her to let her know you're coming."

"Please don't," Max said, waving his hand. "I was told to keep this one quiet. Something about smuggling a bottle of red into a corporate office. Wanna just point me in the right direction?"

For added emphasis, Max held a bottle of wine up to show the kid.

"Oh, yeah, sure!" The kid replied. "It's the first building straight behind me. She's on the ninth floor, southeast corner office."

Max leaned into the window a touch, and raised an eyebrow. "I'm surprised you know that, kid."

"I uh, see her a lot, sir. She leaves an impression," the kid admitted.

"I get it, kid."

"Not like that. She's just seemed really sad lately. Like she's been wiping away tears before she checks-in. I, uh, I don't think those animals have all been good news, sir."

"I see. If she were looking in on those animals, where would I find her?"

"Rear warehouse. Security's usually pretty tight, but with all the celebrations, it's pretty much just me tonight," the kid admitted. He reached into his desk, and handed max a small card.

"Just in case someone's set the security doors. Save you having to come back and bug me to open the elevators or something," the kid added, as Max took the card and slipped it into his pocket.

"Gotcha. I'll try to avoid causing any trouble. Hope you have a quiet night, kid," Max wished the boy well, as he waved and started away.

He walked with the slow saunter of someone who knew he belonged, careful to leave his bundle of flowers and his press badge visible as he walked.

The front doors opened with nearly the same hissing sound that the doors on Star Trek made, parting to reveal the fountain saturated room plastered with company logos. Max scowled as he made his way to the next hall, and scanned the nearby map.

Walking through the halls was strangely unnerving. The wide halls, nearly as large as a move theatre, were deathly quiet. The bright lights gave the building the appearance of a museum exhibit.

Max smiled a vicious, humourless smile at that thought.

He reached the far end of the building and stepped offside to the short walk to a nearby warehouse.

The door was unguarded, and to Max's relief as soon as he opened it, unlocked.

Max pushed the door open and stepped inside. Immediately, he noticed the small, overhanging plastic awning, with another set of automatic doors less than a dozen feet ahead.

The nearby sign said 'Decontamination Room', but the sliding door was wide open, bootprints marred the concrete floor, and the plastic siding had mildew clinging to it.

Max stepped through, and into what looked like a comically oversized stable.

The path forward cut straight to the far end of the warehouse, with rows of pens set on each side. The pens were over two storeys high, made of steel pillars that ran from the floor to the distant ceiling.

Inside the nearest cage, wiry brown fur lay in a massive heap on the ground, a mountain that rhythmically rose and fell. The mountainous form ended in a tail nearly as long as a bus.

And staring at him, framed by floppy ears as tall as Max, a pair of massive black eyes filled with tears.

It was a kangaroo. It took Max a long moment to realize that. It was a kangaroo roughly the same size as Jurassic Park's T-Rex.

"Rex," Max muttered to himself. "That's why she started calling the animal she took on stage Rex."

Its mouth was large enough that Max could practically walk inside and let himself be eaten. Each tooth was as large as his fist, and the nostrils could easily fit his arm.

Max reached out with his hand, extending his fingers to reach the end of the animal's nose. It shuddered, whimpered a little, but it held its face still as max rested his fingertips against it.

Max reached into his pocket and drew out his glasses. He set them to record, and set the transmission to live-stream.

"Wow," Max said to the massive beast, as he slowly slipped through the bars. "You are something else."

The massive kangaroo didn't raise its head but flinched as he rested his hand on its nose. It eyed him warily, even as he stepped beside its chin and examined its massive arms.

It wasn't too surprising to see how weak the kangaroo looked. Max recalled seeing them in the wild and remembered the males, in particular, had arms a bodybuilder would envy, rippling muscle visible even beneath the fur.

But this kangaroo's arms were disturbingly thin; with fat and skin hanging off the bones like as if only the skin kept them attached.

And those arms bent at odd angles. It's arms twisted in places other than joints, and the fingers were splayed in different directions. The legs looked even stranger, jutting back and forth more like a collection of pipes than what bones ought to look like.

"What is," Max asked, just as he slowly stepped around the kangaroo's chin and stepped close to the nearest arm.

He rested his hand, as gently as he could, against the massive arm. Just where one of those unnatural juts terminated in a sharp, strange looking triangle.

The bone shifted beneath his hand, and the kangaroo's whole body convulsed. Its limbs twitched, its eyes opened wide, and it screamed.

It sounded like someone made a dog's whimper into a musical note. The sound wrenched at Max's stomach, and squeezed. He pulled his hand away and scrambled back to its nose, putting his hand on its nose and patting it gently.

"I'm so sorry," Max said, stroking its nose and looking it in is massive eye. "I'm so sorry."

The massive kangaroo's legs looked like a set of stairs for how badly broken the bones were. Its arms hung limply along the ground because every motion would grind the shattered segments into what was left of the muscle tissue.

Even screaming must have hurt.

"Who the hell are you?" a woman's voice asked from behind Max. He turned his head, his hand still resting on the top of the beast's nose, to see a woman in a white dress, absurd heels, and hair that looked like someone ran a chrome-stained page through a paper shredder.

"You're that woman who lead the presentation. Candice something or other, right?" Max asked, his voice quiet, rage ripping through his body and lingering in the fists at his sides.

"Oh God no, you're press. This is going to kill us-" Candice began to say.

Max reached between the bars and pulled Candice through, pushing her into the beast's pen. Candice stumbled on her heels and collapsed near the kangaroo's mangled arm.

"What the hell is this? Every bone in every limb looks like a crew took sledgehammers to it! Even its ribs are still broken! It can't stand, in can barely take a feeding tube and whimper!" Max screamed at her, barely keeping himself from lashing out and letting her feel what the beast suffered.

"Is this how you keep it contained, so you don't have some freakish version of Jurassic Park on your hands?" Max asked incredulously, struggling to string his words together. "By keeping it broken? This is the sickest shit I have ever-"

"We didn't do this to her!" Candice screamed at him, sobbing as she voiced her denial.

"Who else could have?" Max asked.

"Gravity. The gene editing process worked to make them larger. But an elephant can't survive a six foot fall, and it's had millions of years to work out its little ecological niche. Imagine a seven ton animal that thinks it can jump like it weighs ninety kilos. Imagine bones snapping like a dry twig trying to hold up a boulder. Have you ever heard a kangaroo scream before now?" Candice asked.

"None of these animals can support their own weight past adolescence. Rebecca here broke her back and both of her legs four months ago, trying to jump over a small fence," Candice was pointing at the kangaroo as she spoke, tears streaming freely down her face.

"But you're going ahead with all of this anyway?" Max asked, stepped back through the bars and looking down the hall towards the other pens. "How many broken beasts are you leaving here?"

Candice didn't answer immediately, struggling to stop her sobs. Max watched her rest her hand on the massive animal's nose, which only brought on a new bout of tears.

"How many!" Max shouted, his voice echoing through the building. Candice flinched at his voice, burying her forehead into the kangaroo's fur.

"Three dozen," Candice admitted eventually. "There are over fifty Joeys in the outdoor pens, except for Rex. He's never wanted to be away from his mother for long."

Max glanced over to one of the pens down the hall, where a head curiously similar to a field mouse had poked its head between the bars. Max waved at it, just before he realised that the Joey wasn't looking at him.

Max turned around, and saw a man in a suit approaching, flanked on either side by a pair of burly looking security guards.

Max tensed, clenched his teeth, seeing the guns holstered at their sides.

"Candice? Who is your guest? A special investor you wanted to impress with our facility?" The man in the suit asked.

"Oh no," Candice said. Max watched her push herself to her feet and skitter towards the man in the suit.

"Yes, Mister Marley. He's an investor. Very happy with what he's seen so far," Candice said breathlessly.

"Right, luv. Because I didn't drag myself out of that drunken binge party in the main theatre hall because these two heard a man shouting like he was going to burn this place down," the man in the suit, Marley, said scathingly. "No, he's a reporter. You can tell by those glasses he's wearing. Reporter's eyes, they can record and live-stream from anywhere in the world."

"We'll be okay. We can weather the popular disapproval. The masses weren't going to buy the meat anyway. We can even claim it's being sold cheaper because of the controversy," Candice insisted.

Max was surprised to see her put herself between Max and the others.

Behind him, Rex began to make loud, high-pitched squeals.

"Look, Candice, you did well in that presentation today. But bringing in a reporter is corporate sabotage. I'm not about to continue your contract after this," Marley said.

"As for your reporter friend, I'm probably going to take his glasses, dump his body into some hole, and hope we can snatch the live-stream before the feed is disseminated. I'm told the IT department can work miracles."

Marley gestured to the two goons, who advanced towards Max, parting around Candice.

Max's heart hammered in his chest, and he instinctively took a step backwards, forcing himself to keep staring forward. His glasses would record everything that happened, pushing it a stream that might already be watched by hundreds of people.

"Boss, that's insane! The government will tear this place to pieces if it comes out you killed a reporter! You've already put your admission out into the world. We can't recover from this unless you convince him that was a bad joke!" Candice said breathlessly, waving her arms and stepping backwards, trying to keep the goons from passing.

"You think he's the first reporter a corporation like MonsantoGenome has buried?" Marley asked, with a grin.

Max smiled when he heard that. One more damning confession.

Behind him, Max heard the screech of bending metal. He turned around, to see a massive paw pulling at one of the cage bars. The animal inside was screaming in pain as it pulled, and the steel only gave a few inches at a time. Not nearly enough for the fully grown, elephant-sized kangaroo to hope to climb through.

But enough for Rex, who stepped through and devoured the distance in just four hops.

He hit the goon approaching on Max's right first, striking the man in the chest with a sickening crunching sound. The blow hurled the man backward as if he had been hit by a truck, knocking him a few meters through the air before he struck and skidded along the ground.

Rex hit the second goon almost as quickly. Three hundred kilos of muscle threw itself through the air in front of Max and struck the side of the other goon's pelvis. The bow spun the poor fool like a top, as he whirled in place twice before collapsing on the ground.

Marley dropped his briefcase and turned, sprinting away.

Marley made it about eight steps before Rex jumped on his back, dropping him like a stack of blocks hit by a toddler. He screamed once, as he fell, but as Rex hopped away, the man made no move to rise again.

"Holy shit," Candice said, as Rex hopped towards her. Max tensed, his eyes wide, but to his relief the massive Joey only approached her slowly, and looked at her.

"Oh Rex, thank you. But God no, what will they do to you?" Candice asked.

"We can't stay," Max said. "Do they have transport trucks?"

"Surplus army ones," Candice answered.

"We'll take one. Will he follow you safely?" Max asked.

"Yeah. He's always liked me," Candice said, scratching behind Rex's ear.

"I can see that," Max said. "I can see that."

*****

Max's video feed was distributed worldwide long before he reached a friend's ranch, a few hours away. By morning, just as Rex had settled into a horse stable and Candice fell asleep on a futon, the government announced that the police were raiding the building, collecting evidence and doing their best for the broken animals.

For a few weeks, it even seemed like real justice might be done.

Executives were arrested over the coming months, and MonsantoGenome paid enormous sums to the Australian government over the fiasco. Their share price had plummeted, speculators gleefully talked about the corporation's demise, and animal rights activists hailed the event as an important milestone.

But Max knew better.

"You're buying shares from MonsantoGenome?" Candice asked him incredulously, as she watched his computer screen from over his shoulder.

"Yep. I know how these things play out," Max replied. "As the hysteria dies out, the people who funded this project in the first place will see the successes in that project, and help them start again. Smarter, quieter, but thanks to this they'll know how to find the project again. We only helped make sure it'll be harder to find the next genetic mutation they try to pass off as a domesticated animal."

Max paused and took a sip from the glass of scotch sitting beside his computer. "And after another decade, we'll start getting wishy-washy about our moral indignation. Especially if we start eating more meat. It's who we are."

Candice swore and reached into her purse. Max saw a small handful of twenty dollar bills in them.

"Put me down for a hundred," Candice said before she stepped outside.

Max finished, and followed her to the grasslands behind the home they now rented.

In the field, they watched the now massive figure of the adolescent Rex as he hopped happily, chasing a flock of birds. He didn't catch any of them, only bounced into the middle of the flock, delighting in watching them fly off into the air.

Rex had grown quite a lot in the last few months. His arms were already developing the imposing musculature of an adult male kangaroo, and he stood nearly five metres tall.

"He's adorable," Candice sighed.

Max glanced at his phone, scrolling through the notifications. His boss was offering a rather significant signing bonus if he returned earlier than he said he would, especially if he was willing to do a few interviews with other news agencies.

His phone rang as Max held it, and he hit the answer button before his brain processed the motion.

"Shit," Max muttered, as he put the phone to his ear. "Hello?"

"Max? It's your editor, Nancy. How long until I can convince you to come back to work?"

Max scowled, and said, "I told you. I'm here until it's done. You promised me as much time as I needed."

"I know what I said. But we have dozens of agencies bashing on our office doors. Book deals, television spots, there's a lot of people out there trying to give you money, Max."

"Look, Nancy, I promised him as much time as he can get."

"It's a promise you made to a bloody mutant freak that MonsantoGenome made. You have obligations back here that you're fu-"

Max hung-up, and shoved the phone into his pocket.

"Trying to get you back to work again?" Candice asked, looking up at him from the step she was sitting on as she watched Rex leap over a small boulder in the field.

"Yeah, I-"

Rex tumbled, rolling on the ground. Candice was on her feet immediately, and Max's hand immediately went to his right leg.

Max's hand rested on the small holster strapped to his thigh. The leather strap was a gift from a friend who used to work in fruit harvesting, but was deathly allergic to bees and wasps.

An Epipen holster.

Only inside Max's holster was a syringe with more than enough carfentanil to kill a fully grown elephant.

Max hoped it would be enough when he needed it.