Theodore followed Harold to the buffet line, seeming to him very much a lost puppy. “Is something wrong?” he asked, his big blue eyes shining in the light of the chandeliers. “You seem a little… down.” Harold shrugged and grabbed a plate. 

There was quite the variety of food at the Institute. The school’s small army of chefs knew how to make just about anything, and there were even a good many dishes which incorporated ingredients that were… less than naturally grown. Of course, in most places, neogenic cuisine was considered taboo. But the Xantrak Institute wasn’t known for following traditions.

Normally, Harold was excited to try the various foods that the Institute provided. Now, however, he didn’t have the energy. Apathetically, he shoveled a pile of vegetables onto his plate. Included in the pile was a hybrid of what Harold suspected was broccoli and corn. Theodore, as usual, loaded up on anything that looked sugary or unhealthy. It was a wonder that the boy stayed as thin as he was.

“Oh, I get it,” Theodore said as they sat down at a table. “You’re still thinking about that monster from before, aren’t you?”

Harold shrugged again. “You could say that.” Abruptly, something occurred to him. “Oh, that reminds me,” he said. “I have something for you.”

He reached into his bag and retrieved a glass jar. Contained within it was a tiny lion with fierce fangs and bat-like wings.

Theodore nearly choked on his casserole. “Hold on,” he said with a mouth full of food, “Is that the lion that attacked us?”

Harold shook his head. “Not quite. This is a replica that I made using the lion’s DNA. Biologically, it's completely indistinguishable from the original, except for a dwarfing gene I added to make it smaller. You can have it if you want.”

Without hesitating, Theodore took the jar and unscrewed the top. The lion leapt out and began prancing around the table, which they fortunately had all to themselves. “You made this?” Theodore asked in disbelief.

“Yes. I was in my lab earlier—”

“The secret lab that you don’t show or tell anyone about?”

“Yes,” Harold said, voice strained. He really regretted telling him about that. “The very same. And I’d really appreciate it if you kept your voice down about that.”

“Of course, of course,” Theodore said. He began playing with the little lion, offering it scraps of food only to yank them away at the last second. Unsurprisingly, the lion began scratching and biting him. Harold quickly scooped it up and put it back into the jar.

“Sorry about that,” Theodore said, sucking the wounds on his fingers. “You were saying?”

Harold rolled his eyes and went on, “I wanted to learn more about it, and I figured that making a miniature version to study was the simplest and most efficient way.”

“Ah. And did you reach any grand conclusions?”

Harold shook his head again. “Not really.” He paused for a moment. “Except that, apparently, daffodil genes are very good for the spine.”

Theodore nodded, clearly confused. “Hmm. Strange.”

He began badgering the lion again, poking at the glass and every once in a while shaking the jar gently. Harold was about to tell him to knock it off when he suddenly said, “You know, if I didn’t know any better, I’d think that you made the creature from before.”

Harold found himself becoming unreasonably angry, even though he knew that Theodore didn’t mean any harm. His grip on the fork he was holding tightened, and he stabbed into the plate of vegetables with a little more force than was probably necessary.

“It’s not the same at all,” he said in an exasperated tone. “What attacked us at the library was a monster. It was spawned by some crackpot in a shed with no regard for human life. What I made is an anthroparian. It’s a scaled-down version of a bigger animal created for the purpose of study. It’s supposed to help people, not hurt them. It’s not the same. At all.”

Theodore gave him a wary look. Harold knew the cause. He usually hated repeating himself, to anyone about anything. Also, it was clear that Theodore’s remark had been intended to be a compliment, so his response was more than a little strange, even if it was completely justified—no one wanted to be compared to the kind of person that would make monsters for fun, after all. Harold felt a little embarrassed, but couldn’t bring himself to apologize for the outburst, so he just kept silent.

“…Anyway,” Theodore eventually continued, “I only brought it up because I was wondering if you were gonna do that whole Creature Fair thing.” He shoved a spoonful of soufflé into his mouth.

“Is that something I should care about?” Harold asked. He wasn’t really interested in whatever it was; he just needed something to distract him from his previous anger. Even so, the question had come out with a bit more bite than Harold had anticipated, so he quickly appended it: “I don’t think I’ve heard of it.”

“You know, the Creature Fair,” Theodore said. “The one that’s happening on April 9th.”

Harold racked his brain for anything related to that date, but came up empty. “Doesn’t ring a bell.”

Theodore looked sidelong at him. “You really haven’t heard of it?”

Harold shook his head.

Theodore sighed and took another bite of soufflé. “Geez. I always forget what a hermit you are.”

Harold wanted to contest that statement, but was allayed by Theodore’s explanation of the Fair. Apparently, it was a competition in which students of all skill levels created hybrids or anthroparians in the span of about a month. At the end, there was an exhibition at the Institute, where everyone at the school would be able to see the students’ creations.

“Why haven’t I heard about this before?” Harold asked, incredulous.

“Maybe if you weren’t always sneaking off to that secret lab of yours, you would have.” Now finished with both the casserole and the souffle, Theodore moved on to a slice of apple pie. “But anyway, I think the Fair actually used to be really popular at the Institute. Everyone in town showed up to see the exhibits, and the prizes were pretty extravagant. But then, some twenty-odd years ago, someone got injured by the creature that one of the students made, so they stopped doing them. They’re only just now bringing it back, so I guess word hasn't gotten around yet.” He took one bite out of the pie and immediately spat it out. “Okay, this is awful,” he said. “I’ve tried every pie at this school, and they’re all crap. But everything else is amazing. Why is this the only thing they can’t get right?”

While Theodore was going on and on about pie, Harold considered the matter of the Creature Fair. The fact that it had been banned was certainly interesting—he made a mental note to check the Institute’s archives later—but what really intrigued Harold was the prize. Of course, prize money didn’t matter much when you could be eaten alive by a six-legged rhinoceros the next day, but if he couldn’t solve the Monster problem, then it’d be nice to at least accomplish something.

Try as he might, Harold couldn’t get the idea out of his head, so after dinner he went searching for more information. Eventually, he managed to track down a flyer promoting the Fair, which offered more details than Theodore had been able to give him. Apparently, the projects were supposed to be judged by a trio of professors, including Richard Tailor, the Director of the Institute. What was more, there were two prizes for winning the Fair, the first of them being a cash prize of 300 dollars. With that amount of money, he could buy all sorts of new materials for his lab, which make the process of analyzing the monster DNA much faster. Still, it wasn’t enough to justify spending a whole month of work on a new creature when he had a slew of unfinished projects already. He continued reading.

“Additionally,” the poster divulged, “The student lucky enough to win the professors’ favor will also be given one foot of kraken tentacle to do with what they wish.”

It was by this line that Harold became convinced that he had to compete. Money and recognition from the highest neogenic authority in the world were, of course, rather desirable to him. But the kraken tentacle was easily equally as valuable, probably moreso. One of the rarest creatures on earth, and one of the few organisms that even neogenics couldn’t replicate, krakens had the mysterious ability to detect when neogenics had been used on other lifeforms. In this aspect, they were totally unique, and for it, they were heavily sought after.

Harold hadn’t dreamed of owning a piece of kraken flesh—at least, not yet—but now that it was within his grasp, he couldn’t help but imagine all the things he could do with it.  No one had ever been able to replicate the kraken’s neogenic-detecting abilities before, but then again, none of them had been Harold Baker, the best student that the Xantrak Institute had seen in decades. Surely if it was possible to crack the secret, he would be the one to do it. Once he did, he’d be able to use the kraken’s cells to track down the Monsters dwelling within the city, and once he did that, it would be only a matter of time before he found the source of the Monsters and destroyed it.

Or at least, that was what Harold told himself as he got into bed that night. In reality, Harold knew that his plan was as flimsy as a piece of swiss cheese, and riddled with about as many holes. But he was tired of feeling helpless, of feeling like there was nothing he could do to change things. And as far as he could see, winning a school competition was as good a course of action as any other that lay before him.

On the other side of the room, his not-friend was shoving his ruined clothes under his bed—the old adage about things being “out of sight” seemed to be something of a personal motto for Theodore—and pulling on a pair of silk pajamas.

“Aren’t you going to throw those away? I don’t think you’ll be getting any more use out of them.”

Theodore shrugged. “I can think of a few.”

Harold shook his head. Theodore could think of uses for anything, the majority of them illicit. “Of course you can.” Something occurred to him. “By the way, what did you end up doing with the anthroparian? I don’t see it anywhere here…”

“You mean the little lion you gave me? Ah, well, let’s just say that someone’s life is about to get a lot harder.”

Meaning, it’s probably wreaking havoc in one of the dormitories, Harold thought, rolling his eyes. “Well, whatever you did, just make sure no one finds out that I made it, alright?”

“Of course,” Theodore said as he slid into bed. “I’m nothing if not discreet.” He switched off the gas-powered lamp on the nightstand. “Speaking of secret abominations, are you going to be competing in the Creature Fair or not? You could probably win if you wanted to.”

Harold nodded. “I probably could,” he acknowledged. “And I think I just might.”