Free The Battle Begins by Devon Hughes Page A

be the best day of his entire life.

14
    D ESPITE HIS HOPES, M ARCUS DIDN’T GET TO GO INSIDE THE Dome stadium. Instead, they entered the compound through a squat, gray, windowless building on the opposite side of the island, where they took a painfully slow elevator underground, went through a zillion checkpoints, and walked down a maze of hallways that, even though they had the most perfectly waxed floors Marcus had ever seen, Pete forbade him from skateboarding.
    It didn’t matter, though. Marcus was willing to crawl if it meant he could see the monsters.
    First, Pete insisted on dealing with his arm. Marcus expected Pete’s lab to be like a factory, full of all sorts of cool tools and wires and stuff for fixing the Unnaturals, but the care center turned out to be a tiny room with a gurney and an antiseptic smell that reminded Marcus of when his dad was in the hospital. It turned his stomach and made his heart feel weird and tight, and he would’ve walked right back out if it weren’t for the promise of mutants.
    Instead, Marcus obediently sat on the gurney and let Pete torture him with all sorts of stinging swabs on his scrapes and totally unnecessary gauze wrapped too tight around his knees. Marcus got excited when he saw an X-ray machine—that would’ve been cool at least—but after making him move his arm into all these wavy, modern dance–type moves that hurt so bad he gasped, Pete said he could tell it wasn’t broken.
    â€œIt’s just a nasty sprain,” he said. “You got lucky.”
    Marcus still had to wear a sling that his mom would notice, and he didn’t even get a tough-looking cast out of it.
    He turned to Pete, eyebrows raised high with hope, and finally, finally his brother asked, “You ready to seethem now, or what?” Marcus leapt off the gurney so fast it collapsed.
    â€œLet’s go!” he shouted, and raced into the hallway.
    Marcus forgot about the pain in his shoulder as soon as they entered the Pit. He wasn’t sure what to expect. Charging stations? Autotransistors? Warp receptors to enable the virtual fight simulation? This looked more like a gymnasium. Hearing the snorts and screeches and stampeding feet, he got goose bumps. He couldn’t believe he was really here!
    The Pit was at least four times the size of the Skypark, with a twenty-foot high chain-link fence running around the perimeter, and a parrot perched on top. Having spent his life in the Sky Towers, the bird was the first animal Marcus had ever seen. It had brilliant blue and yellow feathers, and eyes that watched him intelligently.
    â€œDon’t stare too long at Perry,” Pete said under his breath. “Bruce has got that evil-eyed bird trained to report my every move.”
    Marcus nodded. That wasn’t too hard. As beautiful as Perry was, he was the least interesting creature in the room.
    Pete wouldn’t let him go inside the fence, but Marcus could see plenty from where he stood. The Swift, ananimal with a black panther’s body and white rabbit’s ears, was running loops around the steep-banked track that ran along the gym’s perimeter, and every time she streaked past, Marcus’s hair whipped around his face. In the center of the gym, other new monsters were training on machines and working with handlers. Marcus watched as a woman tossed basketballs to a giant bear, and it popped one after another with a set of curved teeth so big they almost looked like tusks.
    â€œThat’s Miracinonyx ursidae ,” Pete rattled off the scientific name automatically. “Saber-toothed grizzly bear.”
    Marcus nodded. The Fearless. He’d started reading about the new teams the moment the stats were posted to the network feed. The creature turned her head as if she’d heard, fixing them with her golden stare. A long, striped tail swished behind her.
    â€œAnd there’s the Underdog,” Marcus said, recognizing the