The celebration of Max and his friends' victory lasted well into the night. In the neighborhood, laughter still echoed, mariachi bands played off-key, and children tossed confetti like their lives depended on it. Severino's shop had been shut down for "magical reasons," according to Carlos, and Alex could finally breathe easy... or so he thought.
Max slept soundly on a donut-shaped rug, snoring so loudly that a cookie box on the shelf rattled with each breath. Marta, still with her face painted like a unicorn, had passed out on the couch holding a cow-shaped horn. And Carlos… well, Carlos was wide awake.
Carlos' garage was gloriously chaotic. Cables hung like jungle vines, monitors blinked at random, and a tower of soda cans defied gravity. In the middle of it all, Carlos typed furiously, eyes wide with urgency.
"Come on, come on… it has to be here…" he muttered, typing away. "If that collar had an active chip, it had to leave a digital trail."
Suddenly, one of the monitors flickered on by itself. Static flashed across the screen, followed by a blurry image: bulging eyes, scaly skin, and a tongue tapping the glass with a sharp thwack.
Carlos froze.
"No… it can't be…"
"Carlos?" Marta's sleepy voice came from the doorway. She held a cold slice of pizza in one hand and a sneaker in the other, unsure which was for eating. "Why are you awake at this hour?"
"Look at the screen," he said, without taking his eyes off it. "I think... I think Rex is back."
Marta squinted and stepped closer. The moment she saw the image on the screen, she dropped her pizza.
"What kind of badly rendered Pokémon is that?"
"Rex!" Carlos insisted. "He was… well… he was my pet. A chameleon I was modifying to respond to voice commands, visual patterns, and, well, a touch of AI."
"A touch?" Marta crossed her arms. "That thing looks like a Marvel villain with a radioactive cricket diet."
Carlos sighed, guilty.
"It was a failed experiment. He escaped the terrarium months ago. I thought he froze to death. But... look."
The image sharpened. Rex was no longer a regular chameleon. His eyes moved with mechanical precision. A visor covered one, and a glowing metallic collar pulsed with light. Then he spoke.
"Hello, Carlos. Remember me?" The voice was deep, distorted, and sounded rehearsed. "Thanks for giving me life... now it's my turn to return the favor. The animal uprising begins tonight."
Marta stepped back.
"Uprising… what?"
"This is bad!" Carlos jumped up. "Very, very bad! If Rex has developed consciousness... and accessed the network… he could control systems! Appliances! Robotic vacuum cleaners!"
"And what do you plan to do? Unplug the entire city?"
Carlos fell silent.
"We need Alex. And Max."
Marta gave him a look.
"Again?"
Carlos nodded solemnly.
"Yes. This isn't a sequel. This is a new level."
The emergency alarm —a bicycle horn strapped to an alarm clock— blared through the house. Alex bolted upright, smashing his face into a pillow shaped like an empanada. Max, alert, launched himself like a croquette cannonball.
"What now?! The pet-pocalypse?" Alex shouted, disoriented.
"Something like that!" Carlos yelled back. "Rex is back!"
"The chameleon with attitude problems and a laser obsession?"
"That's the one. And now he talks. And he has artificial vision."
Minutes later, the group was huddled in the garage. Carlos connected the monitors and pulled up a satellite view.
"He's moving. He activated one of my old drones. Lost it in a wind test... now he's using it to map the city."
"What else can he control?" Marta asked, dreading the answer.
"Anything with Bluetooth… cameras, alarms, even blenders."
"An army of appliances?"
"No. Worse. Rex had access to my prototypes from Project Beast: robotic animals for surveillance. Armadillo infiltrators, mice with ocular cameras, a GPS crow… all decommissioned. Or so I thought."
Alex swallowed.
"So, what do we do?"
Carlos opened a map.
"There's one place Rex could be assembling his army: the recycling center. That's where all my failed inventions are stored."
"Does that include the meowing cat robot that exploded?" Marta asked.
"Yes… and the spy fish that recorded underwater conversations."
"You used that one to record chemistry class through the lab fish tank," Alex remembered.
"It was for science!"
An hour later, the three friends —plus Max, now wearing swim goggles— crept into the recycling center. The building was massive, full of dark aisles, junk piles, and warning signs that read "DANGER: SEMI-ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE LOOSE."
They moved between cable heaps and rusted shelves. Suddenly, a buzzing sound.
"Watch out!" Marta whispered.
A drone zipped overhead. It had a sticker that read: "Hi, I'm your pal Rex :)"
Carlos scanned the area with his tablet.
"Multiple signals. There's coordinated movement. He's not alone."
They ducked behind an old industrial oven. Max sniffed the air with purpose.
"What did you find?" Alex asked.
Max barked once and bolted down a side corridor.
"Max!" Alex chased after him.
What they found wasn't what they expected.
A room lit by green lights revealed a sort of tech-nest: tangled cables, linked screens, and in the center, a chameleon wearing a fiber-optic cape and a crown made of paper clips.
"Hello, visitors," Rex greeted from atop a giant toaster. "Took you long enough."
"What are you planning?" Alex demanded.
"Animal justice," Rex replied. "Do you know how many years I spent in a terrarium with faulty heating and a diet of virtual flies?"
"You were my pet!" Carlos shouted.
"No. I was your experiment. You gave me consciousness. Internet access… and abandoned me with cooking videos and lizard karate tutorials."
"That… does sound traumatic," Marta admitted.
Rex extended a claw.
"Now I'll use the network to free every pet tracked, dressed up in ridiculous hats for likes. The world will be ours!"
Alex pulled something from his pocket.
"What about this?"
It was a toy bone with an embedded microchip. Max had retrieved it from Severino's store. Carlos recognized it instantly.
"That's the reset key!"
"No!" Rex shrieked.
Without hesitation, Max leaped, snatched the bone, and plugged it into Rex's central node. The lights flickered. Drones fell. Screens flashed "REBOOTING IN PROGRESS."
Rex growled as power drained from him.
"I'll be back... with faster Wi-Fi... and revenge…"
Then, silence.
Hours later, back home, Alex dropped his backpack. Marta collapsed on the couch. Carlos was busy reprogramming a toaster to only burn bread with Rex's face on it.
Max, once again, slept atop a tower of pillows like the hero of the day.
"What if Rex returns?" Marta asked.
"We'll make sure he has no signal," Carlos replied.
Alex looked at his dog and smiled.
"It all started with one pet. And it ended with one."
Half-asleep, Max wagged his tail. As if to say, "It's not over yet."
And maybe… it wasn't.