Enter the Hound: The Origin of Inu

Chapter 9: Watch Dog

 

            As much as she wanted to return to Genome that night, Inu knew better than to attempt a rescue unprepared. She spent the next three days staking out the facility from various vantage points.  That was the cool thing about the rest of neighborhood being deserted: there were a great many hiding places from which to spy on Genome.  Having the clones around helped, too, as they allowed her to watch from several angles at once.  Even the weather seemed to be on her side; despite the fact that December had arrived and the winter solstice was mere weeks away, there wasn’t so much as a trace of frost on the ground in which to leave footprints.

            When she wasn’t watching the facility like a hawk, Inu fired up her laptop and scoured the internet for any and all information about Genome and its employees.  She found an article about an explosion in the original facility that forced them to shut down for a few years.  Several of the bodies had been charred beyond recognition.  In the obituaries section of the next day’s paper was a list of people presumed dead in the explosion.  Dr. Akita’s name was on the list.

            She also found reports pertaining to an incident that occurred during a sleep study long before she was born.  A team of scientists who were studying brain function during sleep cycles had been forced to abandon their project when some of the scanning equipment malfunctioned and sent random energy pulses into the test subject’s brain, causing irreparable brain damage.  The test subject had been one of the scientists involved with the project, and had been using the equipment without authorization.  No name was given in the report, but Inu had a pretty good idea of who the unfortunate scientist was.

            On the fourth night of her stake-out, Inu finally made her move.  She knew she was still horribly unprepared, but she couldn’t bare to make her friends spend one more night in the bowels of Genome.  If what Dr. Pembroke said was true – that Genome was easy to break into, but difficult to escape from – then trying to prepare for the rescue from what she saw on the outside was useless.  She needed to get closer if she was going to learn anything.

            Under cover of darkness, Inu crept towards the little brick building and slipped inside through an office window someone had carelessly left open despite the cold December weather.  Once inside, she instantly understood why: the building was unspeakably hot.

            “Holy...did they set the heat on ‘Hell’?” Inu whispered to herself.  She was immediately glad that she had tied the bandana around her forehead, because it kept the sweat from trickling down into her eyes.  Staying low, she crept to the door and listened for footsteps.

            Nothing.  Only silence.

            Cracking the door open, Inu peeked out and found the hallway deserted.  There were no guards, no janitors, not even a cranky night-shift nurse; no one was there to stop her at all.

            “This is absurd,” she muttered.  “It can’t possibly be this easy.”

            She sniffed the air, venturing out into the hall as she caught a trace of the blonde’s perfume.  It was an old scent, but trackable.  The blonde had been in this hallway within the past forty-eight hours.  The scent grew stronger as she turned her head to the left.

            ‘Damn perfume actually came in handy,’ she thought, cautiously making her way down the hall.  ‘Go figure,’

 

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            Austin watched in horror as the blonde writhed in her bed, moaning and sobbing in pain.  They had been down in this hellish little room for days receiving numerous injections without any explanation as to why they couldn’t leave the facility.  The blonde was experiencing averse reactions to the injections, but Dr. Moreau insisted that she continue to receive them.  She had been screaming up until last night; and if the nurses wanted to keep her from screaming again, they would keep her far away from a mirror.

            The blonde’s skin had darkened to a sooty gray color, and her hair had gone from golden blonde to platinum white with thick streaks of black.  Her face was as dark as the rest of her skin, save for a thick stripe of white that ran from her hairline and tapered as it reached the tip of her nose.  Her eyes were beady and black, and her mouth was bloody and swollen from several mishaps with her sharp, jagged teeth. The perfume she wore on the first day should have faded by now, but instead was stronger than ever.  It was as if her skin had absorbed the scent and was reproducing it in her sweat.  It was a wonder that no one had been physically ill from the smell.

            Dr. Moreau was not at all alarmed by the change in the blonde’s appearance.  In fact, he seemed fascinated, and even a bit pleased.

            “Interesting,” Moreau said when he made his rounds.  “It would seem that CX-1247B chemically reacted with the subject’s cheap perfume.  The resulting mutations seem to reflect the more undesirable aspects of her personality.  Fascinating.”

            The only other test subject to experience strange side-effects from the injections was Cori-O.  The poor guy was sweating so profusely that if one would think he had jumped into a swimming pool with his clothes on.  There wasn’t a dry patch to be had on his clothing, and the nurses had given up on changing the sheets on his bed.

            “Please,” he begged when Dr. Moreau came to stand next to his bed and take notes.  “Please, let me have some water.  I feel like my insides are on fire.”

            Cursing under his breathe, Moreau had Cori-O taken to another room for observation.

            “Make sure to fill the tub with ice,” he said as the nurses wheeled Cori-O out into the hallway.  “I don’t want him combusting.  You know what happened last time.”

            Ten feet up the hall and around the corner, Inu crouched with her back flat against the wall and prayed that the voices she heard weren’t heading her way.  More importantly, she prayed that she had not just heard someone mention combustion in relation to on of the research participants.

            She lucked out.  The voices were softer as they moved away from her.  The perfume had led her down into areas that couldn’t possibly be under the little brick building alone.  The maze of corridors and stairwells had to stretch well into the surrounding neighborhood.  Perhaps, then, there were other points of access into and out of Genome.  For now, though, Inu was more concerned with finding and liberating her friends.  Escape plans could be made later when she knew exactly what she was dealing with.

            Hearing only her own breathing, she peeked around the corner to see if anyone was coming.  Once again, there were no signs of life.  She inched her way around the corner, ears perked for any sudden noises.  The smell of cheap perfume grew stronger and stronger, forcing Inu to stop and remove the bandana from her forehead and tie it around her neck to cover her mouth and nose.  Her keen sense of smell led her to a room with double doors.  There were no windows in the doors like there were in hospitals, so there was no way to know just how many people were in the room.  Her only choice was to crack the door open and peek inside.

            She took a few deep breaths.  She was nervous and scared at the possibility that she had come too late.  She was afraid that Dr. Pembroke was right and that her friends were dead.  Still, she had come this far; there was no sense in backing out now, not when she was so close.

            She reached out to touch the door when she heard approaching footsteps coming from the other side.  Before she could so much as blink, the door swung open.