My world dissolved into a game. A nightmare called the Terror Zoo. A voice, cold and metallic, crackled to life through unseen speakers, laying down the rules of this twisted park. 【Welcome to Harmony Zoo!】 【Defy a Keeper, and you die.】 【Die in the game, you die for real.】 The broadcast cut out, and in the sudden silence, they appeared. Monstrosities—humanoid in shape, but with the heads of beasts. They towered over us, seven feet tall, all crammed into the blue uniforms of park staff. They herded us, sorted us into four groups, a grim cataloging of our past sins against the animal kingdom. Then the torment began. They caged us. They made us fight each other. They put us on display for a new breed of visitor: mutated animals who stared at us with cold, intelligent eyes. Our only choice was to beat the game. To escape. 1. One moment, I was at my kitchen table, toast in hand. The next, darkness swallowed my world. When my eyes fluttered open, a synthetic voice echoed in my mind: 【Welcome to the Terror Zoo scenario. Players, please familiarize yourselves with your surroundings.】 I was standing in a sprawling, bewildered crowd, shuffling toward the entrance of a zoo. A ticket was clutched in my hand. "How did I get here? I should be in class!" "What's a 'game scenario'? I've never heard of anything like this! I want to go home!" The queue was a mix of faces—students, office workers, even elderly people who looked utterly lost, their confusion a mirror of my own. This place was alien, yet I recognized so many people from my city. It seemed we had all been pulled from the same pool. But something was off. The tickets. Everyone's was a different color. Jessica, the pet influencer from my apartment building, held a green ticket. Old Man Abernathy, who bragged about poisoning the stray cats in the neighborhood, clutched a red one. Mine was yellow. I even saw a few people with blue. A knot of dread tightened in my stomach. It felt like we were being graded, sorted like livestock for some unseen purpose. The line moved with unnerving speed. Soon, we were all inside the park grounds. There were thousands of us, but the zoo was vast, and the space swallowed our numbers easily. Just as people began to drift off, that metallic voice returned, booming from the park's speakers. 【Welcome to Harmony Zoo! Please remember the following rules.】 【Abuse an animal, and you die.】 【Defy a Keeper, and you die.】 【Do not raise your voice, or you die.】 【Die in the game, and you die for real.】 【If a cobra speaks to you, ignore it. The consequences are your own.】 【The countdown begins in one minute. When it ends, the rules will be in full effect.】 【Initial Player Count: 1,309. Current Players: 1,309.】 The voice ceased. The crowd erupted. "What kind of messed-up game is this? All these rules!" "This is just a game! How can it be linked to real life? That's insane!" "Don't do this, don't do that? Who the hell do they think they are? I'm outta here!" "It's gotta be a bluff, right? Just to scare us. Like I'm really gonna get in trouble for talking loud!" I said nothing. I was afraid to die, and in a place like this, it was better to be a coward than a corpse. While others shouted, my eyes found the massive digital screen looming over the main plaza. A countdown was already running. 60, 59, 58… The seconds bled away. As the timer hit zero, a chilling silence fell over the plaza. I followed the terrified gazes of the crowd and my blood ran cold. Eight colossal figures were stalking toward us, walking on two legs. Their expressions were pure predator, their bodies like something from a mad scientist's lab. Their legs were thicker than my waist; a single stomp could crush me into paste. And impossibly, they were all wearing the blue uniforms of the park staff, complete with employee ID badges. They were the Keepers. Mutated animals as zookeepers, managing human guests? The thought was pure insanity. 2. "Is that… silicone? Some kind of hyper-realistic mascot costume?" someone near me whispered in awe. "But how are they so tall? Are they on stilts?" "Look, the crocodile one is drooling! That's a neat trick." Amid the murmurs, the Crocodile Keeper’s head snapped toward the crowd. Its cavernous maw, lined with daggers of teeth, opened wide. It lunged, its jaws snapping shut around a man who had been shouting just moments before. A wet, crunching sound followed, sickeningly loud in the quiet plaza. Blood, shockingly red, trickled from between its teeth and spattered onto the pristine pavement. The movement was fluid, primal, utterly devoid of humanity. These weren't costumes. The teeth, the blood, the raw bestial power—it was all real. For some reason, in this game, they had evolved. They walked like us, wore clothes like us, and it was the most terrifying thing I had ever seen. "Aaaah!" A woman screamed. In the next second, a massive serpent's tail whipped out, coiling around her and hoisting her high into the air. Then, with brutal force, it slammed her into the concrete, shattering the ground on impact. The Black Snake Keeper hissed, its voice a dry rasp. "Such noisy little things. Did you not understand the rule about silence?" It was only then that the rule registered in our panic-addled minds. They were serious. The rules were real. The plaza became a tomb. You could have heard a pin drop. But it was too late. One by one, the Keepers descended upon those who had been yelling, devouring them, tearing them apart with a casual brutality that turned my stomach. We were trapped. We were terrified. Just then, the metallic voice returned. 【Player Alert: A significant number of animals have been infected with a mutational virus, granting them human-level intelligence and immense size. Harmony Zoo has specially appointed a selection of these animals as our new Keepers.】 【All players are advised to proceed with caution. Do not break the rules.】 【All players, present your tickets. You will now be divided into groups based on your ticket color for a tour of the zoo's special exhibits.】 【Those holding red tickets will follow the Lion and the Tiger. You are Group A.】 【Those holding blue tickets will follow the Crocodile and the Snake. You are Group B.】 【Those holding yellow tickets will follow the Elephant and the Giraffe. You are Group C.】 【Those holding green tickets will follow the Dog and the Cat. You are Group D.】 【Exchanging tickets is forbidden. The penalty is immediate death.】 【You have five minutes to form your lines. Refusal to queue will be considered forfeiture. Forfeited players may be consumed at the Keepers' discretion.】 【Initial Player Count: 1,309. Current Players: 1,300.】 The broadcast ended. A wave of silent, frantic motion swept the crowd. The game had just begun, and nine people were already dead. There were no laws here. Only rules. The boisterous attitudes had vanished, replaced by the meek obedience of lambs to the slaughter. Everyone pulled out their tickets and scurried to their designated Keepers, forming neat, silent lines. But there was always an exception. A blond teenager, maybe seventeen or eighteen, nervously approached the Crocodile Keeper. "Excuse me," he stammered, his voice barely a whisper. "I... I think I lost my ticket. What do I do?" The Crocodile Keeper's demeanor was surprisingly professional. It pulled out a smartphone with its massive, clumsy-looking claws. "Your name, please? I can look up your ticket status for you." The kid, Kyle, quickly gave his name. The Keeper's claws tapped away on the screen with unnerving dexterity. After a moment, it looked up, its reptilian eyes glinting. "According to the system, you did not 'lose' your ticket. You threw it in a trash can upon entering the park, accompanied by the phrase, 'What a garbage zoo.'" "That's not important! The timer is almost up, just tell me what to do!" Kyle was frantic now. He had tossed the ticket, thinking it was useless once he was inside. A fatal mistake. Suddenly, the dreaded voice of the broadcast cut in again. 【EMERGENCY BROADCAST. TWO NEW RULES ARE NOW IN EFFECT.】 【Insulting the zoo or its Keepers is forbidden. The penalty is immediate death.】 【Intentionally discarding your ticket is forbidden. The penalty is immediate death.】 The Crocodile Keeper said nothing more. It simply opened its mouth and lunged. A moment later, all that was left of Kyle was a few tufts of blond hair, a dark, spreading stain on the concrete, and a pair of cheap flip-flops. A wave of panic rippled through the lines as a few others who had also carelessly tossed their tickets turned pale, some collapsing in terror. Their fate was the same as Kyle's. When the electronic voice returned, the lines were perfectly formed. 【Initial Player Count: 1,309. Current Players: 1,273.】 3. My luck held, for now. I was in Group C, led by the Elephant and Giraffe Keepers, who seemed marginally less homicidal than the others. I had no idea where the other groups were being taken, but our procession of a few hundred people was marched toward a large, sterile building: The Specimen Exhibition Hall. Unlike any zoo I'd ever seen, these weren't animal specimens. They were human. The Elephant Keeper gestured with its trunk toward a wall lined with preserved human bodies, its voice thick with pride. "These are our trophies from the last month of hunting." It all clicked into place. The string of missing persons cases that had rocked the city. The police thought it was a trafficking ring. The truth was so much worse. A few people in our group broke down, sobbing as they recognized a loved one mounted on the wall like a prize buck. "Don't waste your tears," the Keeper rumbled. "They were not innocents. They belonged to the worst of you—the Double-A tier." "Fortunately for you, we have already... processed... all of the Double-A humans before your arrival." "That one," it gestured, "the one with only the head remaining. He was the owner of a famous local cosmetics company. He tested his products on lab rats. Before they died from the experiments, he'd sell their bodies to underground slaughterhouses that supplied restaurants. Thousands of rats died by his hand every year." A woman near me gagged. "Oh god... I ate at that barbecue place last week. I thought my rabbit skewers tasted like... foundation. I thought I was going crazy." "My spicy rabbit heads tasted like lipstick!" another man whispered in horror. "The owner swore I was imagining it!" So it wasn't rabbit at all. It was poisoned lab rats. Several people doubled over, vomiting onto the polished floor. "And that one," the Elephant continued, pointing to a desiccated figure hanging from the ceiling, "he was a poacher. Used poison darts to kill over a hundred dogs. Not for food, not for money. Just to satisfy some sick, twisted part of himself." The tour continued, a macabre gallery of human monsters. Each specimen had one thing in common: they had inflicted immense, cruel, and senseless suffering upon animals. By the time we were finally allowed to leave the exhibition hall, most of us looked like shell-shocked survivors. The very thought of eating meat was enough to make my stomach churn. As we stumbled out into the blinding sun, a notification sound chimed. 【Initial Player Count: 1,309. Current Players: 1,024.】 What? We looked at each other in confusion. Then, the giant screen on the exterior of the hall flickered to life, showing live feeds of the other groups.
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