Instead of responding, Harold began ruffling through his bag for the necessary chemicals. He wasn’t frightened. Not completely, anyway. He'd been in this kind of predicament before. Many times, in fact. So many that, had he not been keeping extensive notes from each incident, he would have lost count long, long ago.

The leonine monstrosity currently plowing through row upon row of bookshelves and vandalizing several decades’ worth of academic literature was only a minor disturbance. The sounds of people screaming and hollering as they clamored to get out of the library before the lion swallowed them whole were just background noise. This was what Harold told himself as he began mixing together the various ingredients that he had assembled. In spite of the impending threat to his life, Harold smiled. A wonderful mental trick it was, the art of self-deception; It made it remarkably easy to hold a syringe.

“Uh, Harold?” Theodre said, dodging a piece of wood that had been sent flying in his direction. “I think you might want to take that somewhere else.”

Harold barely heard him. “Not right now,” he murmured as he waited for the red powder in the bottle he was holding to dissolve. “I’m working.”

“Harold, it’s coming straight for you!”

Harold looked up from the bottle and saw that Theodore was right. The lion was, indeed, flying towards him. It wasn’t slow, either. If he hadn’t looked up when he did, he wouldn’t have been able to duck under the table in time.

The lion crashed into the wall that Harold had been obstructing from its view just a few seconds before. He knew that it was the inappropriate response to what he was seeing, but Harold couldn’t help but smile again. Let it never be said that the Great Harold Baker has dull reflexes, he thought. Still, if the monster kept attacking him, it would make the final steps of the chemical reaction that much harder.

He peeked his head over the edge of the table to shout at his friend—that is, his companion—“Hey, Theodore, can you keep that thing distracted for a minute? I don’t want this thing bothering me while I work.” The lion succeeded in retrieving its head from the wall that it had inadvertently burrowed into. It promptly turned around and fixed Harold with a look of pure malice. He ducked back under the table.

“Wha—distract it how? And what are you doing under there anyway?”

This time Harold didn’t bother leaving his makeshift shelter. “I don’t know, throw rocks at it or something. Just keep it away from me.” He went back to mixing.

“Rocks? What ro—?” Theodore stopped when he saw the pile of rubble that had been created by the monster’s dramatic entrance. He swiveled his head back towards the lion, and saw that it would be bolting for Harold in another second if he didn’t do something, and that Harold, in spite of this fact, appeared to have no intention of moving.

Had he the time, Theodore would have sighed in exasperation. Why was his friend like this?

Quickly, he dashed over to the pile, picked up a sizable piece of brick wall, and hurled it at the creature. It thankfully connected, and the lion stopped mid-flight, switching its attention to Theodore. In less than a second, it was flying toward him instead. Harold, meanwhile, was still working on his science experiment.

Why was his friend like this?

But instead of complaining,  Theodore grabbed another stone and dashed away. Unfortunately for him, however, the winged lion had apparently learned from its previous mistake, and instead of crashing into the nearby bookshelf, it turned in midair to continue its pursuit. All the while, the creature picked up speed, getting faster and faster, until Theodore abruptly stopped in his tracks, realizing that there was no hope of outrunning it.

Theodore threw the stone at it, but the lion batted it away like a crumpled piece of paper. It landed with much more grace than might have been expected from a creature its size, and let loose a roar that turned Theodore’s blood to ice. He sighed and let the fight leave his body. Now the monster was this close, there was no real point in fighting.

But rather than devour him immediately, as Theodore had quite expected, the monster began circling him slowly, eyeing him with a look of pure satisfaction. Theodore eyed it back, his emotions a confused mixture of panic and curiosity. Was the lion…gloating? He hadn’t realized that lions could do that.

Eventually, however, the creature stopped and simply stared down at him. It was mere inches away, now. Theodore now saw with perfect clarity the copious amount of blood that stained the lion’s snout, and the chunks of meat from who-knew-what that were stuck between its gleaming red teeth. He noted with sardonic amusement that lions were messy eaters.

The lion licked its lips, and Theodore’s life fairly flashed before his eyes; but before the flashback made it past Theodore’s sixth birthday, he saw the monster’s eyelids slam shut. It began swaying, to the left, to the right, to the left again, before it began leaning forward drowsily in Theodore’s direction. He had barely enough time to sidestep out of the way before the lion fell in a massive, slumbering heap before him. On the other side of the lion from him was Harold, who had a needle filled with some strange liquid in one hand and a wry smile on his face.

Theodore sighed in relief and dusted himself off, even though his clothes hadn’t really gotten dirty. “Hmph. Well I’m glad that’s over.” The lion stirred a little in its sleep, and Theodore took five large steps backward. “So… what exactly did you do to it?” 

Harold entered the rest of the contents of the syringe into the lion’s body, wiped off the end of it with a handkerchief, and stuffed it back into his bag. “I dosed with a sedative I made just now. It’ll keep it knocked out for five to six hours—which should be more than enough time for the police to come and retrieve it.”

“Hold on,” said Theodore, not believing his ears. “You’re telling me you made that just now while you were hiding under the table?”

“Yes.”

“And you were just carrying all the materials you’d need to make it around with you in your bag?”

Harold shrugged. “In a city where this can happen,” he gestured to the lion’s sleeping form, “wouldn’t you?”

Theodore looked back down at the monster, and then at the destruction that it had caused: furniture smashed, countless books ripped to shreds, and of course, a massive hole in the wall from where the lion had flown in. It would take months to repair the library, and probably hundreds of dollars as well. Around the room, those who had not managed to flee the building were cowering under tables and behind bookshelves. No one appeared to have been killed, but several were injured.

All of this, Theodore thought, because one guy with too much free time and access to a laboratory had thought, you know what the world needs more of? Lions. Giant lions with bat wings!

But that wasn’t even the truly scary part. No, what was most disturbing was the fact that, as Harold had said, this sort of thing was practically par for the course in Xantrak. Actually, if Theodore recalled correctly, this was the fifth incident involving a genetically-altered monster in nearly as many weeks. And as far as anyone could tell, there were no signs that the attacks would end anytime soon.

Theodore turned back to Harold. “You know what? Fair enough.”

“I’m glad you agree with me.”

“Also, I was totally right about the bat thing.”

“Whatever.”

Harold then kneeled down next to the monster and took one of its paws in his hand. He retrieved another syringe from his bag—this one smaller than the one before—and stuck it into the paw. The smile from before was gone; he now looked as one who had some sort of solemn duty that only he could undertake. With a start, Theodore thought that, in that moment, Harold reminded him greatly of the way his parents always looked whenever they were about to lecture him about something. He shuddered.

In an effort to shake off the horrible thought, Theodore asked, “What. The hell are you doing?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Harold muttered under his breath.

But Theodore got a full view of what was happening. Harold pulled the handle on the little syringe, and the container began to fill with the lion’s blood. When the syringe was about halfway full, Harold removed it from the lion and returned it to its place inside his bag.

Abruptly, he stood up and looked at Theodore with the same wry smile that he’d been wearing before. Only now, Theodore thought that it was wry because he was hiding something.

“Well, I’m starving,” Harold said. “Let’s get something to eat, shall we?”

There were a million things that Theodore could ask. But he wasn’t really the type to pry into the lives of others, and anyway, he’d rather not be here when the police eventually arrived. So it was probably in his best interest to just forget about it.

“Sure,” he said. “Let’s go.”