Kenzie, who'd sat on the comfy dog bed and buried her face into her knees, lifted her head and looked around the room.
"Who said that?" she asked, her voice hoarse.
"Over here."
Kenzie swiveled her head toward the sound of the voice, but all she saw were a couple of cats in cages.
So when one of those cats opened its mouth and a human voice, as opposed to a meow, emitted, she thought she'd lost her mind.
"What...how?!..." she stuttered.
"You know all about the experiments," the orange tabby replied. "This is one of the side effects. I'm not actually a cat. I'm a human, but my mind is trapped in here. My human body, well, you can guess what happened to it."
"A cat's mind is in it?"
"Exactly. So I'm being held here until those so-called geniuses can find a cure."
"But where did you come from? And what about these others animals? Do they talk?"
"The other animals in here haven't been tested on yet. But there are some others like me who can talk, but there's still no cure for us. The other talking animals are somewhere else, but I didn't talk at first, so they put me in here. I guess I didn't want to know where I might end up if they heard me talk. At least I knew where the other animals were, which was in here. As for where I came from, I'm sorry to say that I was an intern. Those guys told me about a big experiment they'd love me to be a part of, so I agreed. And this is what happened."
"I'm so sorry."
"Don't be, you had nothing to do with it."
"But this is so terrible. I'm an animal rights activist, and this is making me sick."
"Tell me about it. After it was determined that the cure didn't work on me, they started trying to come up with that first. I've been experimented on so many times I can feel needles in my sleep."
"That's horrible. So this is why all the pets are missing. They ran out of wild animals or something?"
"Yes, and they're running more tests to see what may or may not be fatal to different breeds depending on their genes."
Kenzie wiped the smudged mascara off her face. Why was it that every time she was working on a case, she got caught and barely made it out alive? Would this be the one she wouldn't make it out from? One of these days her luck with escaping would run out. She hoped that wouldn't be today. Not for this case. For the sake of the animals, she had to make it out alive. Even if she had to do it as another species, if the scientists' threats were made a reality.
"I feel like I've seen you somewhere before," the cat said, "Who are you?"
"I'm Kenzie Howell. I'm a detective from Riverview."
"Oh yeah, you're in the paper a lot. I'm Braden."
"It's nice to meet you. I'd shake your hand, er, paw, if I could reach it."
"Don't worry about it."
"Do you know who those scientists are? The ones behind this project?"
"The woman is Melinda, the big guy that threw you in here is Lucas, and the other guy is Ethan."
"Good, now I have names to go with faces for when I get out of here and bust them."
Just then, the door banged open yet again. Lucas stood there with a smug look on his face.
"All right animal lover," he said, "it's time for you to unleash your wild side."
Lucas laughed at his own idiotic joke. Then he made his way toward Kenzie's prison with a key in his hand. Kenzie was trying to come up with a plan on how to get away, but she should have known Lucas would be the one to come get her - he was the strongest of the three, and the one she'd be less likely to escape from.
He inserted the key into the padlock and twisted it open. His body blocked the only means of exiting, so Kenzie couldn't have run away. He then grabbed Kenzie by the wrist and dragged her like a rag doll out of the room. Kenzie shot one last look back at Braden, who had sadness in his yellow-green eyes.
Lucas ushered Kenzie back into the room that contained the chair with the computer in front of it. The same room with the animal cage in the corner.
Kenzie was brutally shoved into the chair and strapped down by Lucas, who then spun the chair around to face the computer. Melinda appeared out of nowhere and stood at the computer.
"Go watch through the glass," she instructed her underling. "This should be interesting. Sweet irony, an animal lover becoming an animal. You just can't make this stuff up!"
Melinda chortled as Ethan quickly brought a shaking pug into the room, placed it in the makeshift cage, and closed the gate.
"Perfect choice, Ethan," Melinda leered. "A pudgy dog for a pudgy person."
Kenzie struggled to get free, but it was no use. She was bound too tightly. She looked at the poor pug in the corner, which began to whimper.
"Oh shut up!" Melinda barked. She was barking more than the dogs. Kenzie was getting angrier by the minute.
"All right," Melinda said, "brace yourself!"
Kenzie's chair made a strident noise, and a metal blanket began to cover her body. She was getting more and more frightened, convinced this was the trap she'd never break free from.
The pug began to bark profusely, much to Melinda's chagrin. She chastised it once again while adjusting dials on the monitor in front of her.
Kenzie wondered if she was supposed to feel something, since her mind was going to be migrated into the brain of another species, but she felt nothing.
But she did hear something. She heard the sound of shattering glass. Then she heard the sound of something spontaneously combusting just as the two-way mirror partially exploded out of its frame. And then, to her utter surprise, the glass door to the room she was in shattered, and through it stepped...
...the unicorn.
"Plumbob!" Melinda screeched as she took her hands off the monitor. The unicorn whinnied angrily, and its horn and eyes began to glow an ominous color. Dark red sparkles surrounded Melinda, and she began to float right off the ground.
"Put me down you vile beast!" she screamed. Lucas rushed into the room, clearly the first victim of the unicorn's ire in the glass-shattered next room.
The unicorn put Melinda down, very roughly, onto the ground. He faced Lucas and Ethan and snorted, sending the two men scampering. It was a wonder the two had even been able to get into the tiny room, since the immense unicorn was blocking most of the doorway.
The unicorn then approached Kenzie, who was still locked in the device. A flame began to form on its horn while its eyes blazed orange, and Kenzie's eyes got wide.
So unicorns did have magical powers.
The unicorn's horn was now alight with fire, and then the flame shot forward and smacked into the monitor that Melinda had been using. This scrambled its circuits, which caused the metal blanket concealing Kenzie to come off of her. It also unlocked her shackles.
Kenzie shot off the chair and looked at the unicorn. The pug was still barking maniacally, but the unicorn ignored this. Melinda was unconscious behind him, and the fire that had been on the chair's monitor was now extinguished (also done by the unicorn's power).
Kenzie couldn't restrain herself. She glided to the unicorn and began stroking its head gingerly.
"Thank you so much," she said to him, as though he'd answer. "How did you get here, and how did you even find me?"
"I brought him here," a familiar voice said from behind the creature. Kenzie let go of the unicorn, and around him walked Austin, a relieved look on his face.
"Austin," she breathed, not believing her eyes. "How...why...?"
"I knew you'd come here. And I had a feeling you might get hurt. Those three don't leave this place too often, so it was more than likely you'd run into them. I was trying to figure out how to get down here without causing suspicion, since I'd have no reason to be here while on hiatus. But then I thought, if I had the cure, they'd let me in."
"You have the cure?"
"Some possible ones. I've had a few saved up, but haven't been able to use them yet. I don't know that any of them will work. By the time I left the house, it was already dark. I figured you wouldn't come here until night time anyway - it's better to sneak around at night. So I was hurrying here, and I saw that aura you described. And lo and behold, I saw this guy," Austin indicated the unicorn, "so I had to stop and check it out. It's said that unicorns can sense if a person is a friend to all creatures, so I went out on a limb and told him that you were in trouble and that you were trying to help animals that were in danger. And wouldn't you know it, he followed me here."
Kenzie's eyes swelled with tears. Austin had come here to save her life, and by pure coincidental luck, he'd found the very unicorn she'd seen, which had also come to save her. She was then overwhelmed with guilt for what she'd said to Austin earlier.
"I'm sorry about earlier," she said as she began to sniffle. "I should have known..."
"It's okay. I guess it did look pretty bad. Besides, I deserved it after causing you all those distractions."
"Let's not talk about that right now. We have to help these animals. You'll never believe what I found."
Kenzie led Austin to the kennel while she explained everything that she'd discovered. He was understandably intrigued by the talking cat, who agreed to be the first subject to test Austin's possible cures.
It was determined that the people who had tubes in them were in a dormant state, but Austin was able to safely disconnect them so they could wake up (though they had animal minds inside them). The rest of the talking animals were also found, in the same room that the dormant humans were in.
Austin instructed Kenzie to stay with the animals and people while he went to tell his boss what had occurred. The unicorn took off, and the two promised each other not to tell anyone about it for fear another animal experimentation might ensue.
When Austin came back with his boss, who didn't look very happy to find out that three of his top scientists had completely lost it by kidnapping Kenzie and not working on the cure like they said they were, he took one look at the mess and said that he'd take care of Melinda, Lucas, and Ethan as soon as he could. Melinda was still lying on the ground, out cold, so an ambulance was called to take care of her. The police would have to find the other two miscreants.
Austin assured his boss that Melinda had passed out from something going wrong with the experiment, as opposed to the unicorn cursing her, which Kenzie had witnessed. A quick examination of the equipment showed that it was still functional enough for Austin to test his possible cures. His boss told him to get started right away. Kenzie wasn't authorized to be in the lab while these tests were being conducted, so she told Austin she'd catch up with him later and headed to the police station to report what was going on to Chief Allington.
Brock wasn't too thrilled when he heard about the activities of Wolfson's Research Facility. He put out a broadcast for the other officers to be on the lookout for Lucas and Ethan. Austin’s boss would give him all the details later.
"Thank you for your help, Ms. Howell," Chief Allington said from across his desk. "I imagine it wasn't easy for you getting out of there. How did you manage to escape anyway?"
Kenzie bit her lip before saying, "Austin figured out that I'd probably go to Wolfson's to look for information. So he saved me. He already had access, so getting in wasn't an issue."
"And you said he might have a cure for this...condition the people and animals have?"
"Yeah, he has some possible ones, but nothing's for sure yet."
"Well, the only thing that will be done involving Project Metamorphosis is finding a cure. Once everything's back to normal, that project is going to be shut down permanently."
Kenzie was glad to hear that. Finally, she thanked Chief Allington, and drove back toward the hotel. She was exhausted, physically and mentally. Her emotions weren't too alert, either.
She jumped into the shower to wash away all traces of the evening from her body. She still felt bad about what she'd said to Austin, but it did make her realize something - she had the answer she'd been seeking. Maybe Austin still loved her, but she only had her memories. The two hadn't seen each other in person for nearly six years, and all they really knew about each other was what they'd known in high school. She couldn't live in the past. She had to go forward.
After she toweled herself off and dried her hair, Kenzie threw on a robe and contemplated what to do next. She was so tired, she just wanted to crawl into bed. Instead, she decided to see if Jillian was online. Or maybe Austin was home already.
Jillian was signed in, but Austin wasn't. Was he going to work on that cure all night? Probably, as persistent as he was. He'd always had a large amount of perseverance.
WolfKen: Hey, Jill.
LifesABeach: Hey! Good timing, I was just about to sign out and go to bed.
WolfKen: I'm sorry, I just thought I'd tell you what was going on.
LifesABeach: I want to hear it. Are you okay?
WolfKen: Well, sort of. I feel even more guilty about Austin now, but it's not because of last night. It turns out he was telling the truth. His colleagues took his idea and turned into an animal science fiction nightmare. I found where they were doing all this experimenting, but I got caught. They actually threw me into a cage.
LifesABeach: Oh no! How is it that you always manage to get caught?
WolfKen: Maybe I'm losing my touch. I have no idea. But anyway, they were going to use ME for one of their experiments. They got me in the mind-switching chair and everything, but then, of all things to happen, that unicorn I saw the other night busted in. He saved me.
LifesABeach: Seriously? How?
WolfKen: He had magical powers, just like we heard. He lifted up one of the scientists and then threw her down, and I'm sure he cursed her too. Then he fried the circuits in the chair I was stuck in, so that let me out. Austin led him there to me. He said that unicorns can sense if a person is a friend of all creatures, and since I love animals, and I'm an animal rights activist, the unicorn decided to save me.
LifesABeach: Wow, that's an awesome story. I wish I could have seen it!
WolfKen: Well, this story is top secret. No one can know about the unicorn. Some other insane scientist may try to kidnap it to run tests on it, probably trying to figure out where its powers come from.
LifesABeach: I promise I won't say anything. So, how did it go with Austin? After you found out he wasn't involved?
WolfKen: Well, before I went to the research center, I was up in his face, yelling at him, accusing him of lying to me…I was downright hostile to him. I shouldn't have been, but I was. But he still saved me. But, well, he said that he still loves me, even after all this time. But I don't feel that way. All we have is our past. We haven't seen each other in six years, he hasn't had a girlfriend since me...I just think it's weird. I think we should just stay friends.
LifesABeach: That's up to you, but I can see where you're coming from. You guys have changed a lot in the past six years. You need to catch up and figure out who you are NOW, not who you were back then.
WolfKen: My thoughts exactly. And I'm going to tell him that as soon as I can.
Kenzie wrapped up the conversation, telling Jillian how exhausted she was and how she needed to get some sleep. Jillian said she had to get to bed for classes anyway, so the two said goodnight.
As Kenzie began to climb into bed, she thought of what had transpired in the sheets the previous night. She really hoped a maid had changed them for her while she'd been out. Although she'd heard that the bedspreads at hotels never get washed. Or, if they do, it's very rare.
Too tired to even think about it, she slid under the covers , with her robe still on because it was so cold, laid her head on the pillow, and fell asleep almost instantly. Still, in the back of her mind, she could see images of herself and Austin before she completely lost consciousness.
No comments:
Post a Comment