The Games by Ted Kosmatka Page A

always when he watched it, he felt uneasy because it seemed he was looking at something completely alien.
    Putting the clipboard down, Silas walked over to the refrigerator and pulled out a large jug of milk and a square plastic container ofdried prey food. With a heavy wooden spoon, he stirred the milk into the crunchy mix until the consistency was about right.
    The biochemists had had a field day with little Felix. After doing a complete metabolic workup, they’d found that the organism could profitably digest an amazingly wide variety of foodstuffs, from grains and cereals to raw meat. Though they guessed that simple dog food would probably have sufficed, they ended up synthesizing their own dietary blend, which, when combined with a hefty pour of whole dairy, seemed to do the job well. The little thing was growing fast and was now cutting a second row of jagged teeth.
    Silas opened the outer door of the nursery with his left hand, being careful not to spill the brimming bowl in his right. When he heard the latch click behind him, he opened the inner door and stepped into the nursery chamber. The scent of disinfectant and wet cardboard assailed his nostrils.
    The little creature squealed with delight. Silas quickly found it clamoring at his feet for its dinner. Long, thin arms fluttered about his torso, reaching up at the bowl.
    “Hold your horses,” he said, trying not to stumble over it as he crossed the room. He placed the bowl on the floor in the center of the chamber and watched with satisfaction as the creature dug in ferociously. He made a mental note to increase the feeding again. The thing ate like an elephant.
    He smiled, marveling at its vigor. Thin, stumpy wings positioned high on its wide back bobbed rhythmically with the pleasure of eating. Its large gray eyes maintained a position just above the bowl’s rim, alternately looking down at the food, then up at Silas. Silas liked that. It would be easier to train the gladiator if it associated humans with the arrival of food. Tay Sawyer, the resident animal trainer, had made a point of stressing that.
    When the creature finished the bowl, it sat back and licked its chops, snaking a thick tongue around the outside of its short black muzzle. Gray eyes looked into Silas’s brown.
    As they stared at each other, Silas wondered what might be going on in its head. What kind of mind worked behind those eyes?
    Silas stood and crossed the room. When he stooped to pick up the bowl, the creature made a noise. A strange sound Silas hadn’t heard before. He hesitated. This was new behavior. The creature’s ears flattened to its skull, and its back arched. Not catlike. Nothing like that. Instead, it reared up like some angry black baboon—but like something else, too. Something not at all like a baboon. Something Silas couldn’t place.
    The thing moved forward, guarding the bowl.
    “Back off,” Silas snapped. “Back!”
    He clapped his hands, and the creature slunk backward a few feet.
    It was still young, he reminded himself. Despite its size. Barely out of infancy. At this age, animals as predatory as genus Panthera were still docile cubs that could be petted and played with.
    “Come on, back up!”
    But the creature didn’t move, only hunched down lower to the floor. Silas whispered, “What a strange thing you are.”
    He slapped his foot on the ground to drive the creature away from the food dish, but it stood its ground, staring up at him.
    “I need the bowl,” Silas said, by way of exasperated negotiation.
    The creature hissed in response—a sound something between a cat’s hiss and a hyena’s cackle.
    “Enough is enough.” Silas bent to pick up the bowl, reaching past the creature.
    He wasn’t, at first, sure what happened.
    Pain.
    Like being kicked in the hand. A jolt.
    And the creature spun away, a dark streak.
    Silas flinched, blood spattering the floor. First in fat drops like rain, then in a gush.
    Silas clutched his other hand to the wound,