Business of Broken Ethics Chapter 7

Starker ran toward Esther, practically tripping at her feet, “Es! It’s finally over! They let me go!” he woofed at her gleefully, tail wagging. Esther only stared blankly at him.

Starker blinked at her. She appeared rigid as well. Her eyes were dull, and lifeless while her body was paralyzed in fear.

The fawn opened her mouth wide, appearing to unhinge her jaw. She shrieked in a painfully high pitch, and Starker’s paws planted themselves against his ears reflexively.

“YOU CAN’T TELL ANYONE!” she screeched, “YOU CAN’T TALK!”

Starker shook his head, blinking in shock at Esther, “Wh-what?”

Rosemary appeared suddenly behind him, and as he turned a 180 to face her, she shoved him onto his back and sliced a large gash down his middle with her bare claws. The action was so sudden, the pain so immediate that Starker barked loudly, crossing his arms over his body as if he could hold the slice shut. Black liquid seeped out of the wound, dousing his hands and burning them.

The leopard smirked, “I’m afraid you’ve been sentenced to life in prison for your actions Starker.” She mewled, grabbing Esther’s motionless form by the arm roughly, “Good riddance.”

Starker snarled and launched at her, ignoring the black puddles of ooze forming under and around him, “Get yer fucking paws off’a her!” he snarled, but she vanished.

Steel bars rose around him, and even the ground raised up under him. He felt like he was being risen up on a pedestal.

His black puddles of blood formed an ocean of obsidian in seconds. With a leap of his heart he spotted Esther’s head bobbing in the black waves. Her face was panicked and pleading up at him as she struggled to stay afloat at the dark surface.

“Help me!” she cried. He wanted to call back to her, but his mouth suddenly stung. He felt stitches knit themselves onto his mouth, they kept him silent.

Starker threw himself against the steel bars that surrounded him, to no avail. They were too narrow to fit through and rose too high. He thought he could hear Minty’s wheezing laughing in the distance.

He stared down in disbelief as Rosemary herself walked across the surface of the black ocean like it was solid ground, right up to where Esther was floundering pitifully. He shrieked out a whine of pleading, as if he were begging the cop to help his friend.

Instead she raised a foot and planted it down on Esther’s head, sinking her below the waves without a sound.

Starker let out an unearthly roar, ripping the stitches wide open. He clawed at the bars and spat acidic vulgarities at Rosemary, who smirked up at him, “Looks like you can’t do much behind those bars,” she murmured, “But this is still our little secret, right?”

Fuck you!

Something suddenly clicked in the back of his mind, and a new voice weaved into the miasma of death, “Wake up! Kid, open your eyes!”

The vision suddenly snapped off. The unforgiving lights of the infirmary scraped at his head and the pain all came crashing back, forcing a wheeze out of his lungs.

There stood a fuzzy silhouette, Nighthoof, grabbing a handful of his vest. He opened his eyes just in time to see and feel Nighthoof’s hand slapping him across the cheek.

“What the hell?!” Starker snarled, and Nighthoof immediately let him go. The dog used his free paw to tenderly rub at the smarting part of his face, blinking until things got a bit less blurry. His heart was at top speed.

The deputy huffed quietly, “Sorry. You weren’t responding to anything else.” He muttered. He even looked a bit embarrassed, tucking the offending hand into a coat pocket.

Starker was just about to ask what happened before a voice suddenly broke in before him, “Open wide!”

Accursed Minty was here, and shoved something small and glass into Starker’s mouth.

The dog growled, biting on the glass lightly and tempted to use his full force to shatter it in spite, though he decided that would be unnecessarily painful for him to scatter glass shards into his mouth. He crossed his eyes to see a fuzzy red line moving inside the glass.

“Came in to check on you, and you were freaking out.” Nighthoof muttered, “It’s almost four in the morning.”

“Nngh…” Starker groaned, turning his eyes to a dark window off to his side, “Great…”

Minty suddenly yanked the glass instrument out of his mouth, and slapped his own cheek in a surprised gesture, “112 degrees, mercy! I didn’t think the thermometer could go that high.”

Starker frowned, ignoring Minty, “I th-thought your shift starts…later…” he muttered, trying not to react so hard to another violent spasm of pain in his stomach. It’d been two days now, he couldn’t gauge if he felt better or worse.

Nighthoof however was looking at Minty in horror, “112? That’s impossible!” he flicked a glance at Starker, “He’d be dead if that was right, is your thermometer broken?”



Starker sighed as they ignored him, and noticed with a start that Rosemary was in the room, standing a little ways off from the two. She was watching Minty with narrowed eyes. Starker blinked as he felt himself become distracted by the gray walls melting behind her, and wondered irritably why she was always hanging around him.

He felt his pulse speed up as he recalled the weirdly vivid vision he had, specifically how clear Rosemary’s image was as she stepped on Esther’s head and drowned her…

He stifled a whine at the memory.

He heard some dim protest from Minty that his equipment was never broken, and caught a split-second silent exchange between the goat and the leopard. They found his temperature very interesting.

He forced himself not to look at Rosemary again. The longer he seemed to look at the rosy feline, the more unsettled and jittery he was getting.

Nighthoof looked rather disturbed, and stared down at Starker, “I came in…early…” he muttered in reply to his earlier question, scratching behind his ear, “Official business…”

Starker narrowed his eyes at the horse, rubbing them briefly as the walls started folding in again and distracting him. The way they moved spiked his nausea feeling and he groaned softly under his uneven breath.

Nighthoof looked up and flicked his eyes at Minty and Rosemary, “Can you two give me a moment? Need to discuss some business about the upcoming trials with him.”

Minty looked a bit puzzled, and he exchanged a look with Rosemary, who turned to stare evenly at the dog and the deputy. The two exited the room dismissively, shutting the door behind them.

Nighthoof followed them to the door, and waited right next to it, even leaning an ear toward it, much to Starker’s surprise.

The horse huffed, “Listen kid, I think we both know by now that you weren’t in any kind of fight.”

Starker felt chills, either from the deputy’s sudden prompt or the absurd fever, he wasn’t sure. He shook his head slowly, “I’d r-rather talk about those tr-trials…” he muttered, and seemed to relax and close his eyes as a gesture to dismiss Nighthoof with.

He ignored it, “No, we’re talking about that cut. Trials later.”

Starker gritted his teeth, trying to blink clouds and floating dots out of his eyes, “N-no…” he wheezed, “Nothing to…say…” he flinched at another internal strike of the methanol.


Nighthoof sighed and rubbed his head, “More worrying, that wound’s infected too. The anesthetics are still unresponsive?”

Starker’s pained look of silence answered his question.

The stallion started drumming his fingers again, “You’ve been acting weird ever since you got that wound. Not just out of pain, either. You’ve been getting jumpy around whoever gets near you or your cell. Don’t tell me it’s normal for you, because you weren’t at all like this when you first got here,” he crossed his arms, “And don’t tell me it was the fight in the cafeteria, either. You stood off against Jim Harrinose without all the anxiety afterward. You need to start telling me what’s really going on.”

Starker scowled, and unconsciously bit down on his forearm.



The deputy looked a bit startled at his sudden choice of movement. Nighthoof huffed and removed the teen’s arm from his mouth, trying not to look disturbed at the other tooth marks marring his arm, “Quit biting yourself, it’s not going to make the pain go away.”

He realized how many times he’d caught Starker biting down on himself. He contemplated finding him some kind of alternative from distracting himself from the pain, but couldn’t think of anything he could immediately find that would be potent enough.

Starker shook his head, “Just leave…me alone, okay…? Tired…” he blinked sluggishly, “The walls keep folding in…just leave…?”

“Now I know there’s not much around here to make a shiv out of…” Nighthoof muttered, ignoring Starker’s request and murmuring and continuing on his original train of thought, “but on the chance someone DID make one, it wouldn’t make such a straight line, probably.”

“St-stop…”

“Claws don’t do that either. And Jim’s horn wouldn’t slash, it’d puncture you straight through.”

“Stop.”

“You all won’t even tell me who did it. I can’t just buy this story about a prison fight with no identifiable culprits.” Nighthoof paused, flicking a glance at Minty’s desk in the room and then staring down at Starker hard, “If you ask me, it looks like the work of a very professionally made blade, by someone who knew exactly what they were doing. It honestly looks like the scar left after an operation, I know from experience.”

Starker cringed visibly, a shriek of a growl ripping out of his throat, “J-just stop already! There’s n-nothing to t-talk about anymore…! Get off my fuckin’ back about this…” he paused to catch his shallow breath, it felt like the whole building was sitting on his chest, “It d-doesn’t…matter. I don’t care if you care…It doesn’t…”

Nighthoof raised a brow, “That was quite the reaction.” He observed pointedly.

The dog looked thoroughly uncomfortable and flustered, shaking his head with emotional yet minimal movements. The horse swore he saw tears starting to invade the canine’s eyes from behind his sweat-sticky bangs, “Please just…leave me alone…” the dog pleaded, his voice hitting a new weaker, softer tone than the stallion ever heard come out of him, “I c-can’t say anything…don’t make me say anything…Jus’ let me deal with the rest of my life here in peace…I can’t say anything…”

The deputy blinked, his form lost a bit of its rigidness, though he became awash in a new sense of dread from the dog’s words and his tone especially. He sounded so hopeless suddenly, he practically just implied he wasn’t expecting to get out of jail again, contrasting sharply and startlingly with his attitude all before now. He looked at Starker, catching a glimpse of glassy red irises hidden behind hair..

He was scared…no, he was absolutely terrified.

And his warnings only drew in Nighthoof more, “Starker…” he said softly, lowering a bit so he was almost eye-level with the teen, “Listen to me, you need to tell me what happened to you, truthfully. Nothing bad is going to happen to you.”

The dog stared at him blankly through foggy, half-lidded eyes lined with unwanted tears. His chest heaved with another difficult breath, “I can’t tell you…” he repeated feebly, resting his arm over the pained area of his stomach. He seemed to suddenly diminish in size, he appeared like a completely different person than the one who was snapping sarcastic remarks during the interrogation session, several days ago. He didn’t look like some punkish crook with no respect for authority or the law, not now. He looked like a broken kid on the brink of tears, torn apart by this mysterious force he refused to name.

Something or someone screwed this kid up badly, and he wouldn’t even speak about it.

Nighthoof frowned and replied emphatically, “Yes, you can. Please just give me a name, just something.”


Starker’s eyes were fixed on the ceiling now, as if he were intently watching something up there that no one else could see, “Can’t tell…” he wheezed. He repeated those two words softly to himself for a short time before growing quiet again. He appeared to forget he was even standing there.

Nighthoof sighed, wondering if he’d slipped into a state of delirium just then. He looked unresponsive again, staring intently at things in front of him as if they moved. The stallion sighed, deciding he’d try again later, though he kept the fact that Starker appeared to be keeping quiet out of fear in the front of his mind.

He opened the door, inviting Minty back into the room, “See if you can get him to sleep, Minty,” the horse muttered to him, “…and cool him down, too.” He added too, remembering that according to the goat doctor, the kid had an impossible fever of 112, somehow.

Minty scurried past him, and he watched as the goat went for his desk, suddenly grabbing the toxic samples on his desk and rearranging them in his cabinets, almost hurriedly.

Rosemary looked a bit fidgety as he turned to her, “Rosemary?”

The leopard quickly flicked her gaze up at him, “Sir?”

“You’re fidgeting.”

“Ah, just concerned.” Rosemary muttered, dropping her paws to her sides to still them, “Poor kid, right? Could you get any conversation out of him?”

Nighthoof frowned for a contemplating moment, “…No, not really,” he sighed, “he went delirious on me, kept talking about nonsense.”

“Oh…poor thing…” Rosemary muttered, “I’ll go run the coffee machine for you, sir.”

Nighthoof nodded, casting one last look at the infirmary behind him. He stifled a yawn irritably. He never came in early.

The incident at the courthouse replayed to him as he sat over his desk with his coffee in hand.  He’d noticed how Starker faltered as he walked then, though didn’t think to say or do anything until it was too late.

Those who were still in the courtroom at the time to witness it were startled, bustling in close and asking questions while Nighthoof had urged them away. He remembered some of the wild things those few witnesses began passing back and forth to each other in the span of a few seconds,

“Oh, he fell! Is he alright?”

“Yikes, that’s a lot of blood on his bandages there, what happened over the weekend?”

“Man, you cops mess him up or something? Prison fight?”

Nighthoof hadn’t answered any of them, as he was busy trying to gather up Starker’s body and ward away the onlookers. When they finally agreed to be warded off, he heard them start speculating about poor prison conditions or brutality from the police force as a means to explain Starker’s very obvious injuries and collapse. He knew this gossip would be all over the town by nightfall.

He was also rather unsettled at the fact that the dog’s body was unresponsive to the medication they had given him. Not even pain killers proved to be effective; he continued to writhe in pain from the conditions afflicting him. Honestly, he seemed tougher than the deputy could even have imagined, trying to sit through the suffering. In fact, given his age and size perhaps, he wondered how that dog was even still in a coherent state still. Surely an infection that big would have killed a child? Not to mention it seemed to be coupled with some kind of chest cold, whatever it was that was causing the dog to wheeze like that.

Breathing difficulties, severe abdominal pain, weakness…the way he had walked before he had been slightly tottering, perhaps from a dizzy spell as well. It didn’t sound exactly like a cold, though he wasn’t sure. He swore he dealt with a similar set of symptoms before, in someone else.

Either way, he wasn’t sure. Today however, the horse decided he’d patrol around the cells a bit, ask around for that prison gossip, though the idea of any of these inmates sharing gossip with law enforcement sounded unbelievable. He still had to try and piece together what really happened to Starker, what violent and apparently traumatizing incident befell the teen within the walls of his jailhouse. He was a character of justice after all, he wouldn’t let whoever scared this kid so bad get off for free.

...

The day wore on in a quiet kind of melancholy. The weather rained relentlessly outside and inside the prison seemed cold; all of the convicts acting despondent.

Nighthoof took it upon himself and his shift to do that asking around, eager for his possible chance at an answer. Something was wrong, he just needed to know what, and for some proof. He politely asked a few of the inmates closest to Starker’s cell. Most of them had nothing interesting to say, except for two. A rooster complained of hearing a strange sound the night before Starker was acting weird, and it was Nighthoof’s first lead.

The second inmate had something more interesting to say.

“Your name?” Nighthoof knickered gently.

“Piper.” The cat responded. She was a ragdoll, with a bad attitude but more scrappy than anything.

“Right. Do you know Starker?” The horse asked, not even getting out his notebook, expecting her to say no.

“Actually, yeah,” she began. “He’s that sad looking dog isn’t he? The one who murdered Orthorne?” She chirped. “What about him?”

“Do you have any reasons why he may have been acting strange lately?”

Piper narrowed her eyes in thought. “Not sure, but I do know what came down the night before he got that gross looking scar on his belly.”

Nighthoof brightened, and pulled out a notepad. “Go on.” He ushered, a new excitement taking place.

Piper cracked a smile, and leaned forward towards Nighthoof. “Here’s what I heard. I never saw any of this very clearly, but I heard it all. You know officer Rosemary?”

“Yes,” Nighthoof nodded. “She’s my subordinate.”

“Well, it sounded to me that night like she was thirsting after Starker. I even spotted her in a cute little dress on the way to his cell.” She blushed subtly, at the mention of said outfit. “But their conversation was like, she was trying to get him to come out of his cell. To go and get laid, and stuff. Starker wasn’t catching on, he was actually getting kinda pissed off at her, but she got him to come out anyway.” Piper’s ears pinned back, and she frowned. “I heard a dull clang, and that’s all I got.”

Nighthoof had it all written down, and he pocketed the notepad. “That’s awfully strange,” he muttered to himself. “And you know for sure it was Rosemary?” He asked.

Piper nodded. “Positive, officer.”

“Okay. This was a big help, Piper. Thank you.”

The ragdoll flicked her ears in acknowledgement and curled up back on her bed again, dismissing Nighthoof. He left without another word and closed the door to her cell, his mind thinking up all sorts of theories of what could’ve gone down. He was certain now that Rosemary had something to do with his behavior, but he wasn’t sure where to connect the dots.

Rosemary’s medical knowledge didn’t extent to skillful enough cuts like the one on Starker’s belly. Her records clearly showed she never took a medical class in her life, but she still had a hand in it, somehow.

Was she the mastermind? Or a tiny piece to a bigger puzzle? Was he even in the right, accusing her of doing such a cruel thing to a young pup?

Rosemary was an impulsive, aggressive feline but he never would’ve assumed her in a position of genuine malice and sadism.

Nighthoof snapped out of his thoughts and found himself outside of Starker’s cell. He peered in and frowned at the sight of the poor teen strewn on the floor, breathing laboriously. He wasn’t struggling, as if his body had found a small reprieve from the pain.

“Ahem, kid?” Nighthoof unlocked the door, stepping in once. “Are you awake?”

Starker opened one eye and heaved a long, defeated sigh. “Mm.”

“I need to ask you about Rosemary.”

Starker uttered a low, dangerous growl in the back of his throat, baring his teeth defensively. “What?”

“Why are you so nervous about her?” Nighthoof questioned, at first.

The dog stopped growling and swallowed uncomfortably. His joints shifted in what could’ve been a shrug.

Nighthoof stepped closer. “Starker, has Rosemary hurt you?”

Starker hesitated. Then, he shook his head slowly and subtly.

“You don’t seem so sure.”

Starker shook his head again, and brought his arm up to tenderly lick the wounds there. “She hasn’t.. Hurt me.” He managed.

“Starker.”

“I’m hurting, officer. Everything hurts. I’m tired as fuck from the pain, and that’s why I seem unsure. I don’t have the energy, I hardly have it in me just to stifle myself from this damn agony anyway.” Starker spat bitterly. He sat up on his knees to emphasize his point, and his hand gingerly went over his cut. “I just don’t feel up to talking right now. Leave me alone.”

Nighthoof was silent. He opened his mouth to continue, a kind word only making it halfway out of his mouth before Starker barked again.

“Leave me be!” His words came out in a snarl, and flopped down on his side, facing away from Nighthoof.

The deputy remained where he was for another second or so, before sighing and making his exit. He locked the door, made his rounds, and got ready to leave the facility.


He genuinely felt bad for the kid, he couldn’t deny that. It was a mystery how the painkillers weren’t working on him, but he could only imagine how bad it must be for him. He pulled on his coat from his office, said goodnight to his coworkers, and stepped out into the cold.


A group was standing outside of the jailhouse as he paced out, their heads bent toward each other as if they were discussing something quiet and important. Nighthoof frowned, and began making his way toward them, driven by curiosity.

“Something the matter, citizens?” He murmured in an authoritative tone. The group raised their heads, all of them appeared to be around teen-aged. They shot him hostile looks, which he supposed was normal for kids of their ages in confrontations with beings of authority. The cold looks were reminiscent of Starker’s attitude, honestly.

“Nope…” One snapped, a young lynx, “We were just going home.”

“Yeah…” quipped the youngest looking one, a bat, “Gotta be up early for the protests.” The tigress next to him hissed loudly at his words and swatted him almost hard enough to knock the kid over.

Nighthoof blinked in surprise, “What protest?” he prompted. As far as he knew, there was nothing really to protest against in Arasthayne, at the moment.

A piglet with a mottled hide and large circular glasses blinked at him, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose, “Protests toward the jailhouse, sir. Haven’t you heard? There’s something illegal going on!”


The tigress shoved her at her words, “Shut up! Can’t you see that’s a cop?! If you show ‘em that we’re onto them, they’re gonna shoot you dead for knowing too much!”

“Hey!” Nighthoof chastised the tigress, “Don’t push people, and yes, I am the deputy. Though I’m not sure what you mean that illegal things are going on.” He crossed his arms, “Do you know anything?”

The lynx looked over at the tigress, grimacing, “I think it’s safe to tell him.” He muttered, flicking his long tufted ears, “It’s all over town now, they wanna get justice for that kid that was put in jail because people are apparently doing really illegal things to him.”

Nighthoof blinked, surprised at this sudden puzzle piece, “The kid…you mean Starker Harynn? And what illegal things, who told you?”

This time the tigress stepped forward, a mean look in her large eyes, “We mean some grown-ups heard some police at the bar the other night, bragging about how they sliced up ‘that kid’ the other night and found a lotta weird stuff. Like, mostly they were going on about all the money they were gonna make from the discoveries and what they were gonna buy with that money.” She shrugged, “Everyone’s really mad and they think this is what the police are doing to the prisoners now, since they also like, mentioned that the Starker kid showed up to a trial all patched up and in pain. I heard he fainted there too.”

Nighthoof blinked in surprise. He knew gossip traveled fast in this town but it had barely been a full day since the trial, “I see…” he murmured, “Is that all you can tell me? Do you know who these officers were, what they looked like?” He started to reach into his coat for his notepad, but the girl only shrugged,

“I don’t know, mister. I wasn’t at the bar and no one’s mentioned who they were around me. Just that they were talking a lot about profiting off of this kid.” She blinked hard at the deputy, “Are you really torturing the prisoners in the jail?”

Before the stallion could even reply to her question, the lynx chimed in, “Hah, like he’s gonna tell you that.”

Nighthoof huffed loudly, “I can assure you that I have no part in this, but I need to know if some of my subordinates are acting out of line. Are you sure you don’t have any more information?”

The kids didn’t have much else to say, and Nighthoof left them alone, along with a parting warning to get home before it got too late.

As he reached his home, he flipped through his notepad and reviewed his evidence quietly. A prisoner’s account of what happened the night before Starker’s injury, that Rosemary had been heard trying to lure the dog out of his cell. Now these kids’ reports of some of his officers boasting about what sounded like experimentation going on in secret, possibly after his shift.

It all seemed to fit together in a rather disturbing series of events. Illegal experimentation, as outrageous and cruel as it sounded. It explained the professionally cut scar. It more or less explained his frightened behavior. The strange symptoms…oh god, did they inject him with something? He remembered back to the time he saw all of those toxic substances out on Minty’s desk, out of place for no reason. As far as he knew, none of his officers had any advanced medical knowledge to the point of being able to perform an operation successfully. Was Minty involved in this too?

He couldn’t imagine why Starker of all people should be subjected to such inhumane acts, the deputy tried to think of a ‘valid’ reason anyone would choose to do this to him, and all that he could think of was the fact that the dog apparently held a lot of strength in his body, hence how he decimated Orthorne’s body. He frowned. The kid was a bit toned for his age and size, but not completely, it didn’t look like he was the kind to exercise frequently. In all honesty, despite the traces of muscle in his body, he still didn’t look like he would be capable of the strength it would take to completely destroy a body. That was the only thing Nighthoof could assume that was an incentive for experimentation. His strange resistance to medicine was odd as well, but that wasn’t discovered until after the incident.

He couldn’t wring any more answers out of Starker, and he had a feeling he wasn’t going to get much more, though he knew that all of the scared and adverted responses the dog had given him was almost like a confirmation in itself. He wasn’t sure of the identities of the two boasting cops, and he still was hesitant to confront Rosemary of doing something of this degree. He knew he would have to, though.

He decided tomorrow he would attempt one last time to interrogate Starker. He knew he’d be pissed off and difficult about it, but if he asked specific questions, perhaps his reactions would give the answers he’d been suspecting. It was worth a shot.

Though Nighthoof had to grimly wonder what these people had done or said to him that would make the teen so adamant about keeping the incident a secret.