When the light appeared to be completely absent from the sky, Kenzie got in her car and headed for Wolfson’s Hospital and Research Facility. She tried not to cringe at the name of the place – a science lab doing grotesque, illegal experiments on animals shouldn’t have the privilege of an animal being in its name, much less a wolf.
When she reached the building, she parked away from the lights and crept toward a side door that, for some reason, didn’t appear to have an alarm on it. Using a credit card to slide inside, she closed the door behind her before shuffling down a nearby hallway. The facility's colors were so monotonous, Kenzie was surprised no one had dropped dead of boredom yet. Or gone blind.
Lights were on in the science facility, and she saw a few receptionists sitting at computers. Like any other science facility, one was required to show some sort of ID to gain access to the rest of the building. But since she’d come in via a side door instead of the front door, Kenzie wouldn’t have to abide by that rule.
Trying to camouflage herself into the wall and the shadows, Kenzie looked around, taking in her surroundings. Blueprints that she’d looked up earlier hadn’t told her where the underground lab was, but she didn’t have to wait long.
As she proceeded down the hallway, careful not to attract the attention of anyone, and cautious of surveillance cameras, a couple of people in lab coats suddenly appeared from an elevator that was molded right into the wall. Had she not seen them come off it, Kenzie would have thought the elevator was the wall.
As soon as the other people got off the elevator and headed in the opposite direction, Kenzie didn’t hesitate before sneaking toward it. She made sure to mind her footing so she didn’t cause unwanted noise (sneakers were good for that) as she dashed toward the elevator, though not before the doors closed.
After getting inside, Kenzie rapidly tapped the Close Doors button. The interior of the elevator looked like that of any other, but it had a diagram of an arrow shooting straight down with a button above it. Kenzie pushed that button and the elevator jerked to life. It descended rapidly, carrying her into what felt like the depths of the earth.
When the doors opened at last, Kenzie found herself staring at yet another hallway with a few doors on each side. Each door had a small window, so she could peer through them to see what was happening behind them.
She chose the first door on the right. She could make out the shadows of an empty conference room. Chairs surrounded a large oblong table and a bulletin board was plastered onto the far wall. Kenzie opened the door and went to have a look around. She turned on the overhead light and proceeded toward the bulletin board.
Notes were posted on it, the contents of which stated that there was still no cure available for Project Metamorphosis, and that horses would be the next step.
“Horses,” Kenzie thought to herself. “So that’s why no horses have been taken – they aren’t ready for that yet. They started with something smaller, hence the cats and dogs.”
Kenzie exited the conference room and headed for the door directly opposite. Peeking through it, she saw a small room with two doors, one glass and one metal. There was a card slider next to the door she was peering through. She wouldn’t be able to get in without an ID card that was approved, or without a valid ID number.
Of course, that would be the case if she weren’t good at hacking. How fortuitous for her that she’d brought a bag with her, filled with items she’d need such as her digital camera, and the item she was retrieving now, which was a cable attached to a small computer that resembled a calculator. Its purpose was to crack security codes.
This one was surprisingly simple to decipher. A valid code appeared on the small computer, and Kenzie entered it into the card slider's keypad. The light on the device turned green, and the door swung open. Kenzie stuffed her gadget back into the bag and proceeded inside.
The overhead lights in this room were on, but it was dark behind the other two doors. Kenzie walked toward the first door, the one that was all glass, and cupped her hands over her face to peer inside. She couldn’t make anything out. It looked like there was some weird mechanism in the middle of the room, and maybe a table of some sort off to the side. Curious, she pulled open the door and entered. She flipped on a light switch and the room came into focus.
The mechanism she’d seen was some sort of chair facing the wall with a monitor behind it. The table she’d seen was a chemistry table, upon which was a notebook with ineligible writing on it. In the far corner was a small chain link fence, undoubtedly consummating a cage, since it had an animal food bowl and animal toys inside it.
Kenzie clenched her fists. So this was where the brain swapping took place. Or rather, the minds swapped brains. She looked to her right and saw a mirror. But that wasn’t just a mirror. She knew better.
Vacating that room, she pulled open the door to the next one and confirmed her theory. The mirror was a two-way mirror. This room had a window that looked into the adjoining room. Computers lined the wall in front of the window, and wadded up papers were scattered across the floor.
Getting angrier by the minute, anticipating the confrontation she’d have with what she’d call her nemesis for doing this to animals, Kenzie left the show room and went back to the main hallway. She saw two more doors, one of which didn’t have any windows on it. She headed for that one and turned the knob. It creaked open, and there, bathed in fluorescent lights, she saw several abominations.
These abominations were actually people, covered in some sort of tubing, lying on tables like they were…well, like they were corpses. Kenzie walked closer to examine one of the specimens.
Men and women alike were bound to the tables, and Kenzie couldn’t help wondering where they came from. But it was clear that these were the humans whose minds were switched with animals.
Suddenly, she heard activity behind her. She spun around and stared into the angry eyes of a young man in a lab coat.
“What do you think you’re doing?” he demanded.
Kenzie’s first instinct was to run. But this guy was blocking the only exit. She tried to sidestep around him, seeing if she could get him to move away from the door by subconsciously trying to corner her, but that didn’t work.
“I asked you a question,” he snarled. “This place is off-limits. How did you even get down here?”
Kenzie didn’t respond. Instead, she gripped the strap of her bag and hurled it at the man’s face. He stumbled backward, letting out an agonizing bellow. Kenzie shoved him out of the way and dashed down the hall.
Unfortunately, she didn’t get that far. Because two immense hands gripped her arms, halting her to a stop, making her double over due to her sudden lack of momentum. She heard the click clack of high-heels coming toward her. She looked up and saw a woman with raven black hair and blue eyes frowning at her.
“So, this is who triggered the silent alarm,” she said in a snide voice.
Silent alarm. No wonder she hadn’t heard anything trigger. Great.
“She tried to make a run for it,” the familiar voice behind Kenzie declared. “I found her poking around in the store room.”
“Did she touch anything?”
“Not that I saw. She just threw her bag at my face, the little…”
“Wait,” the big guy said, his grasp tightening on Kenzie’s arms, nearly cutting off her circulation. “’I know this girl. She’s that detective from Riverview. I should have known she’d come here and stir up trouble.”
“Let me go!” Kenzie demanded, but her protests were in vain. She couldn’t physically fight this guy off, but she could tell all of them off.
“I know what you people are up to. You’re putting human minds into animals, and vice versa. That is barbaric, and it flat out goes against nature. I’m going to put you all away for animal cruelty, illegal experimentation, and now, thanks to this guy who won’t let me go, kidnapping.”
The woman in front of her threw her head back and cackled. Kenzie knew it was fall, but this woman must have already been practicing her Halloween witch voice.
“Animal cruelty?” she retorted with a smirk. “I beg your pardon, but we’re not hurting animals here. We’re trying to read their minds. If you really want someone to go after, you should go see the head of this project, Mr. Austin Crowley.”
“Why should she do that?” the guy who’d caught her wanted to know. “Austin quit. He doesn’t work with us anymore, he flat out said he didn’t want anything to do with it.”
The woman shot the young man a look that could have melted steel. “Can’t you keep your mouth shut? At least if we told her Austin was responsible, she’d leave us alone. But now she knows the truth. I can’t believe you qualify as intelligent enough to even be down here. You lack common sense like animals lack the ability to feel things.”
So that was why Austin had been hesitant when she'd asked him who might be responsible for these animal abductions. He was actually trying to remain loyal to these tyrants! Or maybe it was because he really did want to protect her, knowing how crazy these people were.
Kenzie became infuriated. She struggled against her captor and spat at the woman, “How dare you! Animals most certainly do have feelings! So help me, when I get out of here…”
“That won’t be happening,” the hulking giant said. “If you like animals so much, why don’t you go live with them?”
With that, he dragged her by her aching arms to the final door in the hallway – the one she hadn’t yet tried. Behind it was a kennel. Dogs and cats sat caged, and there were even some smaller animals along the wall. Kenzie’s captor opened one of the empty kennels and hurled her inside, snapping the padlock shut behind her.
“That should keep her out of trouble for a while,” the woman declared. “The good news is, we now have a very good subject for our next experiment. But I wouldn’t waste a test cure on her. If she loves animals so much, maybe she should be one.”
Kenzie sucked in her breath as the three scientists left, laughing hysterically, further giving them the appearance of mad scientists. They were going to transfer her mind into an animal’s brain? When did her life become a science fiction movie?
Science fiction. Austin’s favorite genre of books and the like. She’d been unforgivably hostile to him, and it turns out that all along, he really had been telling the truth. He’d tried to warn her, begged her to stay away from this place because it was dangerous. And now it was too late.
Kenzie finally gave in and let the tears fall down her cheeks until she began downright blubbering. What had she done? The past 48 hours had been nothing but mistakes, she’d lost one guy and had most likely turned the other against her permanently, and now this. She felt her mascara start to form tear-shaped tracks on her cheeks, but she didn’t even care anymore. How was she going to get out of this one?
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