Here, in a darkened chamber deep beneath the city, the herd gathers before dawn.
Observe the specimen: mounting a stationary steed it will never ride anywhere, adjusting the saddle with the practiced fussiness of a creature that has done this many times and trusts the ritual more than the reason. All around, others of its kind mount their own motionless mounts, a full congregation of them, facing forward in the gloom, waiting.
Then the alpha arrives.
From a raised platform at the front, a single dominant individual begins to call, and the herd responds as one, legs churning, faces set with a fervor usually reserved for genuine escape. But there is no predator here. There is no distance to close. The specimen pedals furiously toward a wall it will never reach, sweat darkening its flank, and when the alpha cries out a number, the whole herd turns an invisible dial and pedals harder against nothing.
Watch closely now. In the low red light the specimen's eyes are half-closed, its breath ragged, its whole body given over to a migration that covers no ground at all. It suffers willingly. It has, in some sense, paid to suffer, arriving in the dark and departing in the dark, and it will return tomorrow.
And here is the mystery the wilderness rarely offers: the specimen is not fleeing. It is not starving. Nothing hunts it. It has manufactured, in this small hot room, the one thing its comfortable life no longer provides.
Something to run from.