Submitted for the January 2025 prompt: Galactic Brackets

The elephant is the first to wake, raising ten-foot tusks and trumpeting an angry alarm. It stomps and rams the walls of its crystalline cage.

 

A seven-hundred-pound white tiger stirs and lunges at the snarling lion in the next cube, making it claw the glass and roar. The clash causes a jackal to howl, which sets off the Kodiak and polar bears. Next, the apes join in with guttural grunts and huffs.

 

Soon, every animal in the circle of cells is awake, confused, and infuriated. The only creature remaining silent is the human. One moment, they were tracking a deer across a snowy meadow and the next, they were… here.

 

The human is too frightened to look at the baying beasts on either side — afraid it will make this nightmare more real — so they fixate on the field in the center of the ring. The uniformly green grass is cut short, the most perfect patch they’ve ever seen. There is no sun to feed it, no clouds to give it rain. There is no sky at all, just a starless abyss hanging overhead.

 

This black ceiling is transparent from the other side, a glass floor that allows discreet viewing by the beings who built it. Two of them hover above the stunned human.

 

“Why waste resources to capture this hairless little ape?” the Selector inquires.

 

“They have the potential to be a dominant lifeform,” the Seeker responds. “The population grew from several thousand to several million during a period of global glaciation that killed off many other mammals.”

 

“But it has tiny teeth and no claws.” The Selector scans the human again. “I detect no natural armor or defenses of any kind.”

 

“They are also slow and much weaker than their fellow primates,” the Seeker adds. “Which makes them even more interesting.”

 

“Or lucky.” The Selector processes for a moment. “How else do helpless lumps of meat become an apex species?”

 

“They exploit natural resources and work in packs.”

 

“Neither of which will be useful here,” the Selector asserts.

 

“No,” the Seeker agrees. “But still worthy of observation.”

 

“We will soon find out.”

 

* * *

 

The feline family is dominated by the Siberian tiger, the most agile and adept at fighting on its back legs. The gray wolf conquers canines, and a three-ton rhinoceros routs all ungulates, using a broadside blow with its five-foot horn to skewer an African elephant while it’s busy goring a hippopotamus.

 

The human watches it all, amazement and terror turning to curiosity. They’ve never seen most of these creatures but recognize behavior. Every animal is cornered and fighting for its life.

 

When the reptilian round ends with a saltwater crocodile defeating a forty-foot reticulated python, the human detects the acrid tang of blood in the air and holds their breath.

 

The other primates begin hyperventilating, muscles tense and pulses pounding. A silverback gorilla thunders fists against its chest, and a mandrill’s crimson maw erupts with an ear-piercing shriek.

 

The window wall facing the field ripples, and the floor rises at the opposite end of the cell. Apes and monkeys eagerly rush into the open while the human tumbles out against their will. They stay low, rolling to dodge a galloping baboon. It collides with an orangutan instead, chomping twice before banana-sized fingers grip the baboon’s arms and rip them from the sockets.

 

The human is shocked into a gasping panic. They jump up and slam into the glass perimeter as it contracts, shrinking the ring. A chimpanzee grapples with the mandrill, bites its face, and tears off the upper jaw. The silverback barrels into them and pounds the mandrill into the ground as the chimp is knocked free.

 

It wheels and pounces on the human, who quickly loses three fingers and an ear. A kick to the chimp’s chest creates space for the orangutan to grab it from behind and deliver fatal bites. The human curls in the dirt, playing dead.

 

The orangutan turns to face the bigger threat, the charging gorilla. Both are bleeding, losing strength. The brawl leaves the silverback exhausted but victorious.

It hoots in triumph, then sniffs the air and glances down at the motionless human. The gorilla grabs their ankle with a vise grip that shatters bone.

 

The human cries out and is flung fifteen feet.

 

As the king of the primates approaches to finish them off, the human spots a glint of white in the grass. The silverback lifts them by the hair and opens its jaws to crush their skull.

 

THWACK — they stab the gorilla in the eye with a four-inch fang.

 

It bellows, releases its grip, and the human slashes the dagger-sharp mandrill tooth across the gorilla’s gut. It spills entrails as the human leaps onto its back, stabbing the ape’s neck until it collapses in a heap.

 

When the silverback takes its last ragged breath, the human breaks into furious sobs. They curse their unseen tormentors and scream into the void that has swallowed the sky.

 

The sickly aroma of rotting fruit reaches their nose, but the human does not resist this time. They pray to their gods and embrace the sweet relief of oblivion.

 

* * *

 

“Decent performance overall.” The Selector observes the clean up on the field below. “Though the aerial bracket was rather weak.”

 

“Thankfully we acquired flying reptiles on a previous round, before they died out,” the Seeker states. “What do you think of our primate champion now?”

 

“Clever.” The Selector processes for a moment. “Perhaps too clever for its own good.”

 

“You think they will self-destruct?”

 

“Take this one back and return in another fifty-thousand years,” the Selector orders. “If these apes survive themselves, I will reconsider the species for conservation.”

 

* * *

 

The human wakes in the meadow with multiple wounds and no memory of how they happened. Why the predator only took fingers and an ear, they have no idea. And it doesn’t matter. All that matters is moving forward, finding that deer.

 

Surviving.