The treatment room fell eerily quiet.
Only moments ago, alarms had been blaring as another "patient" was rushed into the Animal Hospital. It had looked injured enough to fool most of the staff—but the moment the door shut behind Intern, the creature's disguise melted away.
It wasn't a patient.
It was an anomaly.
For a heartbeat, Intern simply stared at it.
Then instinct took over.
The struggle was brutally short. By the time the room settled again, the anomaly was gone—its remains disappearing as Intern fed in desperate silence. It wasn't hunger that drove them.
It was survival.
No one knew the truth.
Intern was an anomaly too.
The only reason they could work beside the doctors and nurses without losing control was because they secretly hunted other anomalies whenever they could. If they didn't... sooner or later, their instincts would turn toward the people they'd sworn to protect.
So they hid it.
Every hunt.
Every meal.
Every terrible secret.
"...Intern?"
The familiar voice made every muscle in their body lock.
Standing in the doorway was Secret Agent.
His pistol was already drawn, having rushed over after hearing something was wrong with the patient. He'd intended to protect the newest intern like he always protected the hospital staff.
Instead...
He found Intern kneeling on the bloodstained floor, remnants of the anomaly disappearing between their claws and teeth.
For the first time since anyone had met him...
Secret Agent looked completely speechless.
The room fell into suffocating silence as his grip tightened around the gun—not firing, not lowering it.
Just staring.
Waiting for the intern he'd sworn to protect... to explain why they looked exactly like the monsters he hunted.