I am an ape, just another resident of the zoo. Then one day, a girl told me I used to be human. In front of the gorilla enclosure, a tour guide waved a small red flag. "Welcome, everyone, to the Zenith Zoo's gorilla habitat." "If you fail the mission, the consequences will be more than you can bear." Their mission, it seemed, had something to do with me. 01 The iron bars of the enclosure gleamed under the sickly white moonlight. Three days ago, a group of twenty people had stepped into this place. Now, including the girl clutching her arm before me, her face a mask of pale agony, only five remained. She knelt on the sand not far from me, pain twisting her beautiful features into a grimace. The moonlight starkly illuminated the gash on her right arm, so deep I could see the bone. The edges of the raw, torn flesh were already taking on an ominous, grayish hue. Biting her lip so hard it could have drawn blood, she fumbled in the pocket of her filthy jacket and pulled out a small, plastic-wrapped pastry. With a rough tear, she ripped open the packaging. Then, she did something that sent a primal chill down my spine. She didn't eat it. Instead, she took the soft, flimsy pastry and ground it into the bloody mess of her arm, smearing it with the thick, dark-red fluid until it was soaked through. Plop. The pastry, now stained beyond recognition, landed at my feet. A few of my fellow apes, drawn by the scent of blood, let out restless growls, their eyes glowing red as they closed in. The girl's gaze was fixed on me, cold and piercing, filled with a profound disgust and a scrutinizing intensity. A familiar, nauseating temptation washed over my mind. As if moved by some unseen hand, I extended a coarse finger, dabbed the sticky liquid on the pastry, and licked it. Then I snatched the blood-soaked bread and shoved it into my mouth. The coppery tang of blood mingled with the cloying sweetness of cheap flour, an assault on my senses. The moment she saw me swallow, the last flicker of hope in the girl's eyes died, leaving only a dead, hollow emptiness. A mocking smirk twisted her lips, and she spat on the ground with utter contempt. "Tch." "A beast is a beast." "I'd rather die for good than become... that." Her voice was a hoarse, curse-laden whisper. Ding! A sharp, monotonous bell suddenly shattered the night. Feeding time. The girl's body jolted, every expression on her face freezing into one of pure, bone-deep terror. She scrambled to her feet, half-crawling, half-stumbling, and threw herself toward the locked gate of the enclosure, dragging her ruined arm with her last ounce of strength. Outside the gate, several figures in bulky, hermetically sealed green hazmat suits appeared, right on schedule. Masks, gloves, goggles—they were covered from head to toe. One of the keepers mechanically set down a bucket of vegetables and unidentified meat scraps while another blasted the ground with a high-pressure hose. Their movements were precise, efficient, and lifeless, like pre-programmed routines, executed without a second's delay. After they left, a brief, dead silence fell over the enclosure. I leaned against a dead log, chewing on the lingering taste of blood in my mouth. This zoo had pathetically few visitors, just the occasional group of intruders. They never seemed to be here for the animals. But I was just an ape. These were not things I was supposed to think about. As midnight descended, casting a frost-like glow over the sleeping apes, I silently opened my eyes. After confirming that no one was watching, I slipped into the shadows of the rockery, into a cave hidden deep within. 02 In the darkest corner of the cave, I used my fingernails to dig through the soft earth, unearthing a small, rectangular metal box. The moment my fingers touched it, the box lit up with a soft chime. Several messages glowed on the screen: "Blade, what's the status?" "You taken care of the alpha ape?" "Blade? You there?" "Answer me, man!" The sender's icon was a snarling wolf, the name listed as "Mo." I had swiped this box from the pocket of the man they called "Blade" the night he'd snuck in. The screen's faint light illuminated my own short, coarse-haired fingers. Without hesitation, I moved my thumb, clumsy yet precise, and tapped the cool glass. "Hit a snag." "Lay low for now. Text me." Yes, I knew this thing was called a "phone." And I knew how to use it. After replying, I reburied the phone deep in the earth and crept back to my spot, curling up as if I'd never left. A moment later, moonlight seeped through the crack of the heavy iron gate, along with the furtive faces of the five survivors. They were back. They moved like startled birds, their eyes scanning every dark corner, clearly terrified of the keepers who had just left. "Hmph. Another one bites the dust," a man in a sharp suit said, his arms crossed. His hair was slicked back, and the glint off his gold-rimmed glasses was as cold as his voice. He was the only one in the group who still looked remotely put-together. A scrawny, rat-faced man standing next to him gave a weak laugh. "Stark, Blade's still kicking. Just had some urgent business to take care of." A young woman with a ponytail, looking like a college student, broke the tense silence. "If we want to live, we have to solve the riddle." A little further away, an old man in a tattered security guard uniform nodded vigorously, like a pecking chicken. "Faye's right!" The girl who had just fled, her arm still bleeding, hung her head, pressing her wound. She gave a barely perceptible nod in agreement. Stark pushed his glasses up his nose and spoke first. "The sage dreams he's a butterfly, the butterfly dreams it's a sage." "It has to mean something, but we still haven't cracked it." "Let's keep looking." 03 Shortly after they left, I slowly turned my stiff neck. Their words clung to my mind like a cold spiderweb. The Butterfly Dream? Suddenly, a sharp image stabbed through my thoughts. The gorilla enclosure! The only one! Here! My head snapped around, my gaze locking onto a cluster of hydrangeas at the foot of the rockery. They were artificially planted, but blooming with an unnatural, vibrant intensity. Resting on a large, purple-blue flowerhead was a huge, iridescent swallowtail butterfly, utterly out of place. Its wings shimmered with a demonic, phosphorescent light in the moonlight. Its presence was both impossible and critical. Was this why they kept coming back, why they saw this enclosure as some kind of focal point? I climbed to the highest branch and lay on my back, staring up at the thick, churning clouds that pressed down on the zoo like a physical weight. I don't know how much time passed before the wind began to howl. The clouds, like a rotting curtain, slowly tore apart. It was a full moon tonight. The enclosure was instantly bathed in a light so bright it was like daytime. Suddenly, without warning, an excruciating pain ripped through my entire body. "Ugh—AAAAAH!" It felt like a million red-hot needles erupting from the marrow of my bones. Every inch of my skin, every muscle, convulsed and tore apart. My soul felt like it had been thrown into a blazing furnace. An agonized scream tore itself from my throat. In my distorted vision, my long, gray-black fur began to curl and peel away, like paper licked by an invisible flame. It fell off in dry flakes, revealing smooth, human skin underneath. My bones cracked and popped, a sound like a string of firecrackers, as an unseen force brutally straightened my crouched limbs. The powerful, hunched form of the ape vanished. In its place was the naked, lean, and powerful body of a young man. As I stared in horror at my own unfamiliar human hands and feet, my mind a complete blank, a keeper in a full white hazmat suit walked up to me. He stood there, perfectly still, betraying no emotion. The eyes behind his goggles were cold, inorganic, devoid of any sign of life. The keeper tossed a neatly folded green hazmat suit at my feet. His voice, filtered through the mask, was the grating sound of rusty gears—flat, monotonous, and utterly without inflection. "No. 2517, you're on duty tonight." Without another word, like a robot whose program was complete, he turned and melted back into the thick darkness. Me? 2517? On duty? The aftershocks of the pain still gnawed at my nerves, and the cognitive dissonance of my sudden transformation nearly tore me apart. But the coldness in his eyes and the unquestionable authority in his voice instilled a fear in me that crushed any thought of defiance. 04 After I put on the suit, I tried to ask, "Who are you? How did I become human?" The keeper didn't respond, as if he hadn't heard me. He simply walked away, disappearing from the enclosure. The only answer was the wind whistling through the park and a low, distant, unidentifiable gnawing sound. As if pulled by invisible strings, I began to walk on these strange, heavy legs, starting my patrol. The zoo was caught in a kind of silent, deathly carnival. The herbivore enclosures I passed were terrifyingly quiet, their gentle inhabitants nowhere to be seen. I rounded a few more empty pens and finally arrived at the iron gate of the staff dormitory. The sound was coming from here. A thick, almost solid stench of blood, mixed with the metallic reek of torn flesh, hit my mask like a physical blow. Even through the filter, the nauseating smell seeped into my nostrils, triggering my gag reflex. My stomach churned. I pushed open the half-closed iron gate. The hellscape that greeted me seized my heart and made it stop. Viscous, dark-red blood carpeted every inch of the floor and walls, like a cheap, tacky rug. A massive Siberian tiger, its amber eyes reflecting a crimson glow, was tearing at a twitching mass on the floor that was barely recognizable as human tissue. On the fire escape door nearby, long, dark-red streaks of blood mixed with bits of internal organs were smeared across the metal. A few thick, scaly, grayish-brown tails protruded from behind the door. Komodo dragons. They were working in concert, using their powerful claws and serrated teeth to rip apart a corpse. Beyond them, a giant golden eagle perched on a light fixture, its sharp beak pecking at an eyeball hanging from the lampshade. A muscular kangaroo was frantically stomping on a body lying face-up on the ground. A brown bear was wedged in the doorway of a small break room, trying to pull half a human torso through the frame. A pack of gray wolves fought over a severed arm by the conference room door. A tall elk stood silently in a corner, a length of intestine dangling from its massive antlers. Even a colorful macaw was perched on a severed head, its thick beak digging into an eye socket. The air was a horrific symphony of guttural growls, the tearing of muscle and sinew, and the crunching of bone. My legs went weak, and I could barely stand on the slick, bloody floor. A chilling cold shot up my spine and froze my entire body. My mind went blank, filled only with a primal scream for survival. The moment I pushed the door open, the moment the smell hit the air, every single act of tearing and chewing stopped. Every pair of cold, emotionless animal eyes locked onto me. In that suffocating silence, I felt something tug at the cuff of my hazmat suit. Terror turned my muscles to rusty iron. I lowered my head, slowly, stiffly. Less than two feet away, a man—or what was left of him—was lying in a pool of still-congealing blood. His entire lower body was gone. From the torn wound at his waist, the white nubs of his spinal column and purplish-red coils of his intestines soaked in the gore. His remaining upper body twitched. A mangled hand reached up, clutching my pant leg. His face, gray from blood loss, turned an infinitesimal degree toward me. His shattered lips moved, and a gurgling, bubbling sound, like a dying man's last breath, escaped his throat. His last shred of consciousness focused through his dying pupils, staring at my goggles. "Run..." He choked on the word and went still. Run? My brain issued the command, but my legs were filled with cement. Run where? Behind me was the unknown darkness of the park; before me was a hall of carnivorous beasts. They had stopped feeding, but their pure, primal, investigative stare was more terrifying than a direct attack. Just then, a leopard that had been lying in a pool of blood stirred. It seemed to have lost interest in the frozen tableau. It rose gracefully, stepping over the chunks of gore, and padded down the hall to a row of employee lockers. It pressed its wet nose against the cold metal seam of one. The next second, its eyes flashed with predatory light. A massive paw slammed against the locker door. BOOM! The thin metal door, along with its wooden frame, twisted and exploded like paper. Shards of metal and wood shot out like shrapnel. Behind the shattered door, a figure was curled into a ball.
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