The mutants parted, hands dripping red to the wrists, to expose what was left of Kaa’s old teacher, Knack-erman. The norm no longer had a face or eyes, and his belly had been clawed open from sternum to groin. His dead heart floated in a cavity awash in blood; it had a chunk bitten out of it
The mutie worm had turned, all right, turned most vicious.
The shrill noise that surrounded him made Kaa’s head reel. “Enough!” he shouted. And when they wouldn’t be quiet, he let Joyeuse gavel the inmates to silence. The M-60 roared in the concrete building, its ricochets singing merrily off the walls and bars.
The effect was instantaneous.
No one even breathed.
The piebald lord sent Rogero to Knackerman’s office for the keys to the cages. When Rogero returned, Kaa sent the paladin on to the slave quarters to free the muties there.
Then Kaa moved to the center of the zoo, where all could hear him speak. His voice was loud and deep and it made the prison walls ring. “I am Kaa,*’ he said, “once called Zit, once called Blotch. Once shamed like you, once defamed like you, once degraded like you, I have liberated myself from the tyranny of the norms. And I have come to liberate you.”
He did a quick circuit of the zoo’s cells. He did this
trotting with his arms raised over his head, turning to display his mutant skin and his mutant eye. He wanted each of them to know who was responsible for their release, that it was a brother freak they owed their lives to. When he was done with the victory lap, it took a second burst of 7.62 mm tracers to quiet the ecstatic prisoners.
“The baron’s hotel is surrounded,” he said. “His sec men are in full retreat. With your help we will soon chill them all. There will be blasters and beaters and stickers for you. There will be revenge for all your suffering. And there will be booty. As much as you can carry.”
Kaa started to open the cells himself, and he laid hands on each of his new recruits as they were freed. The former zoo specimens didn’t rush out of the building where they had been kept and abused for so long, but remained in the corridor to watch the liberation of the very last captive.
He had released about half the prisoners when he came to a cage with two beings in it Unlike the others, they weren’t frantic to be freed; by comparison, the red-eyed teenager with shoulder-length white hair and the enormous mutie mountain lion seemed almost tranquil. The youth had his hand resting on the big cat’s back. Both were smiling fierce, proud smiles. The lion’s grin exposed canines like yellow daggers.
Kaa put the key in the lock and turned it. “Come out,” he said, swinging open the gate, “and help me fight for the freedom of our race.”
The boy and the lion didn’t move for the exit
“Can you speak?” Kaa asked.
“I can speak,” Jak replied.
“What are you waiting for?”
“Friend,” the teenager said. “She put her same time I was. She’s here somewhere. I not tight anyone or go anywhere without her.”
“Come out and follow me. We’ll find your friend.”
Jak and the lion hopped down from the cage. The other muties gave them a wide berth, practically falling over themselves to clear a path. It wasn’t because of the slim teenager with the ruby eyes; it was because of his new sidekick with the curving, yellow fangs.
Kaa continued through the cells, releasing all the prisoners. The first thing most of them did was to throw themselves at his feet and kiss or lick his muddy boots. Most were crying as they ran down the corridor. They had never expected to live to see this day.
“There. That’s her,” Jak said.
The lord of the mutants stopped short, stopped breathing when he saw the red-haired female with the luminous green eyes. Even through the bars of the cage, he sensed the immense gravity of the power at her center. And he knew at once that she was the one he sought