The Battle Begins by Devon Hughes

sat a water dish.
    What was it doing up there?
    Castor scrambled to his feet, his eyes locked on the dish. He licked his parched lips and walked in a few circles, puzzling out how he could reach it. He stood on his hind legs and leaned against the wall. He even tried to jump a few times. Then, he had a revelation: You’re a mutant now, Castor! You can fly!
    But of course he couldn’t fly. Simply having feathers didn’t make you a bird, and after a few painful, frantic flaps of his wings, it was pretty clear they were more for decoration. It was just another one of the humans’ cruel tricks. He’d never be able to reach that water. Ignoringthe useless cushion this time, Castor sprawled out on the cold floor and heaved a great sigh.
    â€œGibbing up tho thoon?” a saliva-soaked voice asked.
    Castor looked up. His cell was in a corner, and from this angle, he could see the first three rooms along the perpendicular wall, but he hadn’t seen anyone in them. And he hadn’t realized anyone could see him.
    He stood up and peered through the glass into the cell closest to his, just around the corner. The room looked identical to his own, but from this angle, the back corner of it was concealed in darkness.
    â€œHello?” he barked. “Who’s there?”
    â€œMe!” Two glowing, yellow eyes snapped open in the darkness, and when the beast stepped forward into the light, Castor instinctually stepped back, despite the glass that separated them.
    She was monstrous. Even standing on all fours, his neighbor was almost as tall as the humans, with a hulking body that seemed to fill up her whole cell.
    â€œLooks like water juth ithn’t your thing, huh, Cathtor?” Her eyes turned to slits as she smiled, and two thick, white tusks of bone curved down over her lips.
    Castor flattened his ears, suspicious. “How do you know my name?”
    â€œYou don’t recognithe me?” she asked. She paradedback and forth behind the glass, amused. He didn’t recognize that furry, brown face, not at all, but Castor’s eyes lit on the long, switching tail. It was orange. And though her speech was made clumsy by those new tusks, Castor realized he recognized the velvety voice, too—a threatening purr. Castor’s eyes widened. “You’re . . .”
    â€œEnza.”
    The alpha female from that first day. The large, striped cat. Castor could hardly believe it.
    â€œYou look so . . . different,” Castor marveled.
    She stalked the cell like a tiger would, and those golden eyes with their diamond-shaped pupils were definitely feline. But her stripes were gone, and her fur was now a coarse medium brown that barely verged on orange near her hindquarters.
    â€œWhat’th that thuppothed to mean?” Enza’s bear face hissed.
    â€œNothing,” Castor said quickly. “I just meant your fangs.”
    Enza rolled her shoulders back and pressed her felted pink tongue against her incisors. “Saber teeth,” she corrected, and didn’t even stumble on the s . Castor wondered how many times she’d practiced saying it to herself. “Aren’t they perfect? One chomp and I could thkewer a mongrel like you. The only thing more pitifulthan a dog is a bird. Especially a bird who can’t fly.”
    Castor looked down at the concrete floor. She was right. She was a ridiculous cat with a lisp, but she was still better than he was. Castor was an omega now, the lowest of the low. He couldn’t even manage to get food or water for himself, and he would probably be stuck in this cell for the rest of his life.
    Hearing a faint clanging, he and Enza both fell silent. Castor recognized the jingling keys and the squeak of sneakers, and he peered eagerly through the glass door. The man was coming back. Castor remembered his guilty expression. Maybe he had decided to set him free!
    But the footfalls were the wrong rhythm, and the smell was strange and