The control room erupted in noise. Keepers crowded around the monitors, voices overlapping. “What was that?” “Rewind it again—slower this time.” “It moved, I swear it moved.” The footage played back frame by frame, the black shape caught in King’s jaws twitching faintly before being set down.
“It’s alive,” one of the keepers muttered, his face pale. The room went cold. A lion guarding food was one thing. But a lion guarding a living creature—that was something no one had seen before. Ben pressed his palms against the console, his jaw tight. “We have to get it out of there. Whatever it is, it won’t survive long like this.”