Young Writers Society

A/N: Quite a bit of explaining necessary here. As per Stella's suggestion, I've come up with motivation for Patrick agreeing to take care of the kids. It will become clear here that Helen has some mixed views towards what he does for a living, so when he agrees to help even though he's clearly busy, that's because he wants to please her whenever he can. I think I'm just going to take out the bit with Chip... I'm not sure... I'll think about that.

Okay, so this one chapter then we meet the panda next time. I hope the revelation at the end of this one is worth it, but I'm fully prepared to hear that it's too infodump-y.

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"Up, no left, no up, no left!" Scott screamed, darting from one end of the bridge to the other for the fifth time in thirty seconds. Patrick smiled and wondered if he'd ever had as much bright, sparkling energy as his youngest grandson. He looked over at Holly, Scott's older sister. She was shaking her head, and even smacked her palm against her forehead, but Patrick was certain he spotted a smile trying to win over her face.

Treego glared up at Scott until he finally decided between the two directions. Scott giggled, a grin wide on his little freckled, dimpled face. If this had been after closing time Treego would have been shouting his indignation at the top of his lungs by now, but Scott had taken Patrick's instructions not to talk to the animals in the way they normally did and really run with it.

"Shut the hell up, Scott!" Holly shouted, "You're going to drive Treego mad!"

"Language, Holly!" Patrick snapped. He was sitting next to her on the bank of the pond, watching Treego's progress with glazed, bemused eyes.

Holly looked up at him through a strawberry-blonde fringe that was getting far too long, though Patrick knew it wouldn't stop until her phase of listening to My Chemical Romance did. At twelve years old she was right on schedule with patches sewn on her backpack like a moody teenager. How long before that hair was dyed black?

"Sorry, grandpa," she murmured. She lowered her voice even lower and said, "I'm just saying what Treego would have."

"Be careful with how you talk about Treego though." He leaned in and whispered conspiratorially. "You wouldn’t want to arouse any unnecessary suspicion."

Holly started and whirled around, which did seem a little dramatic. Perhaps she was just playing along with the game, Patrick thought, until he twisted round and found himself looking up into the eyes of one of the construction workers. It was the dark skinned young man with cornrows, who'd asked Patrick if he was alright.

"Sorry to bother you, sir," he said, fidgeting with the edge of his trouser pocket. "We weren't sure if we had to ask your permission before we take our break. We get one for every six hours we work, but sometimes people have specific time slots of that sort of thing."

Patrick shook his head. "No, no. I'm sure you know best when-"

"Left, fishface!" Scott screamed.

The worker peered across the pond at Scott and asked, "Who is he talking to?"

Patrick forced out a chuckle and prepared to test out their cover story. "The frog on the lily pad down there isn't responding to left commands for some reason. Scott! Treego is an amphibian, not a fish, remember?"

Scott looked up at the three of them, eyes widening only for a moment as he took in the new arrival. Then he pointed an indignant little index finger at Treego and called back, "Yeah but he's being like a fish! Cos fish cannae understand wit ye say when they're no in the water!"

Patrick sighed. You couldn't really fault his logic, though Helen would kill him if she knew how often she let the kids get away with "cannae" instead of "can't" and "water" like "batter" instead of "daughter". It was an insecurity Helen had developed ever since she realised that her own lack of qualifications, plus Danny's joblessness before he left, had left the kids without much to their name. Patrick guessed she wanted to at least give them good grammar. He was really the only one who could give them much more than that.

"Thanks, sir," the young worker said. He smiled at the sight of Scott running back and forward along the bridge, and looked down at Holly with his head cocked to one side as if she was the zoo exhibit, not the well trained frog. Then he gave them all a quick wave before jogging back over towards the far side of the zoo.

"Well done, grandpa!" Holly grinned up at him. "He definitely bought it."

Patrick's heart fluttered at the glee plastered all over her face. It was that love of playing spies that had saved him from the possibility of the children telling their whole school about their friends the talking animals.

Treego had not been pleased to be singled out as the defective frog for this particular subterfuge, but Patrick had explained that it got the rest of the frogs off the hook so they could go have a leisurely swim wherever they liked. A little pressure on the fact that he was supposedly the frogs' team leader, and he'd taken the hit.

He seemed to be regretting his decision. The look on Treego's face as Scott screeched the word "left" at the top of his eight-year-old lungs was one of quiet, seething fury. Still, he dutifully hopped to the right after each one until he could go no further, at which point he just jumped up and down on the spot.

Scott grinned. "Right!"

Treego hesitated and clenched a webbed fist, but eventually hopped to the left. Patrick began to wonder if they were going to need a bigger reward for him at the end of this than the latest copy of a film and television magazine he liked.

Still, the grins on the children's faces eased the tension he'd been feeling all morning. When you're trying to develop drugs to boost brain activity, and your company decides to experiment on animals and forces you to be the one taking all the blame because you need the money, your daughter's mixed opinions are unsurprising. So he tried to please her whenever he could, like agreeing to look after the children at probably the worst time Helen could have chosen.

Why Neuromax had needed a whole zoo's worth of animals rather than just a few lab rats was still beyond Patrick, but it had happened, and he'd had a part in it. And somehow a mistake he'd made had caused all this. He was just glad Helen still talked to him.

But as he watched Holly and Treego play catch with a zoo-logo marble, he was awash in gladness that the children saw the talking monkeys as furry friends, not unholy aberrations.

"Grandpa," Scott said, plopping down at Patrick's other side. "Can the panda do tricks?"

Patrick put an arm around Scott's slightly chubby shoulders. "I'm afraid not. Just a perfectly normal panda. Not talking, no playing catch, no torturing it with pointless orders."

"No, Grandpa," Holly said, "We know that. But can it do anything? It’ll stick right out if it’s just sitting around…”

Patrick's breath caught slightly. "You know what, it is unlikely. But I'm sure we can figure something out."

"I don't want this place to go away," Scott said, his voice rising to the high pitched moan of a child about to cry. But he coughed, and said in a much quieter voice, "And I don't want the scientists to open Treego's brain."

Patrick looked from the stricken Scott to Holly, who was biting her lip. Softly, he said, "And where did you hear that, then?"

Scott craned his neck and tilted his head to the side, pointing it at Treego, who held Patrick's gaze. It was true, Patrick was possibly the least invasive scientist that the animals would ever encounter. But that didn't mean Treego had to give the children nightmares.

He ruffled Scott's wavy brown hair. "Don't you worry about it, kiddo. I'll teach the panda some gymnastics, we'll still make enough money for my research, and nobody will cut anybody open. Okay, buddy?"

A brief squeak came from somewhere in Scott's chest, and Patrick was about to lean down to hug him, but he simply drew himself up to full height and shouted a new stream of directions at Treego.

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That night more memories clawed at Patrick and stopped him getting to sleep than usual. First there was a quick recap of the more energetic parting of the construction workers when it was no longer seven in the morning, the flood of relief that washed over the animals as they settled into their night-time routine, the twinge of loneliness as his grandchildren headed home with Helen.

But as vivid as these memories were, they were only the precursor to the torture his brain inflicted on him. His old life at Neuromax, the money he accepted to start work on the animals. Treego's first word in that horrid bright white box the company insisted on keeping him in. He remembered meeting Dexi too, and knowing that these newly aware people were paying to put his grandchildren through university.

He shot up straight in bed from the shock of his old boss's face jumping out at his mind's eye, and without remembering lying down he was suddenly entangled in his bedsheets and tossing around again. When he finally found the calm to shut his eyes, he heard only the words of that agonising meeting when the plan for the zoo was explained to him. Wrenched away from the people he had worked alongside for decades, with the care of forty odd sentient souls solely down to him and a few interns.

But the worst part, his payment - his whole reason for doing this - suspended until he could fix his mistake. Fix the animals.

His eyes flickered open and he stared over the side of his bed. Three slow, careful breaths, and he still didn't feel any better. He knew he would never leave the zoo, and he had no idea what would happen to the animals after he was gone. But never, as long as his fingers were arthritis free and could control the machinery, would he ever reduce the animals to anything other than what they were now.

He just hoped Holly and Scott would stay in love with the animals long enough to forgive him.