Enter the Hound: The Origin of Inu

Chapter 23: Viva ze Bool!

 

            Though he would have rather jumped in the car and sped off immediately to rescue Inu, Frostfire knew better than to attempt a rescue unprepared.  While Jack took Austin back to the Tau house, Frostfire returned to his apartment to change his clothes and grab a new necessities.  He emerged from his apartment wearing faded jeans, a white button-down shirt, the special boots he had ordered from Hero-Gear, and a long leather duster he had purchased for a Halloween costume the previous year.  It wasn’t the most stylish jacket and he greatly regretted having spent the money on it, but it was comfortable; besides, he wasn’t about to risk setting his good winter jacket on fire.

            In his hand he held a small duffle bag containing a first aid kit, bandages, and the gift he had intended to give Inu at dinner.  He hoped and prayed he would only need one of those items.

 

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            The average human body contains roughly eight pints of blood.  By the time Dr. Moreau was done drawing samples for further analysis, Inu had six pints.  In any case, that’s how she felt.  She felt dizzy and sleepy, and for the time being she wasn’t too upset about being strapped to the table.  However, she was beginning to regret leaving her apartment in a dress and heels.

            “I’m freezing,” Inu muttered to herself.  “This is the last time I wear a dress in February.”

            “This will be the last time you wear a dress at all.  Good thing it’s black.  It’ll look so nice at your funeral.”

            Snapping her eyes open, Inu found Nadine standing near her left hand at the table.  She growled low in her throat out and glared Nadine.

            “Traitor,” she growled.  “How could you do this, Nadine?  You were my friend.”

            Nadine’s mouth twisted in disgust.  “There is no ‘Nadine,’ baka inu,” she spat, as if the name itself left a bitter taste in her mouth.  “Nadine is gone.  I am Aria.”

            “You’re a fool,” Inu said.  “Moreau will only use you the way he used his employees, and then he will discard you when you are of no more use to him.”

            Aria laughed.  “Master will never discard me.  I am too valuable to him.”

            “Until he catches another guinea pig and creates a more powerful minion,” said Inu.  “Then what, Nadine, hmm?  Though about that one, have we?”

            Moreau entered the room at that moment and made his way to Inu’s table.  He did not look pleased.

            “What is it, Master?” Aria asked.  Inu was shocked to see that Aria was genuinely concerned.  Her face twisted as her gaze shifted back and forth between Aria and Moreau, and she could not keep from voicing her disgust.

            “Nothing to be too concerned out,” said Moreau, “but I fear our guest may prove less useful than originally anticipated.  Still, all that blood will not go to waste.  I’m sure I can find some use for it in the future.”

            “So, what?  Are you letting her go?” Aria asked incredulously.

            Moreau laughed.  “Let her go?  No, are you mad?”  Seeing the look Aria gave him, Moreau stopped laughing and cleared his throat.

            “Right, don’t answer that,” he said.  “Anyway, no, we can’t possibly let her go.  Not after she helped ruin my lab and free all those test sub- I mean, most valued participants.”

            Aria gave him another look.  “Yeah…sure…whatever you say, Master….”

            Moreau rolled his eyes and sighed.  “Just get rid of her.  Use the gurney; I’ve need of the table.  Do whatever you please, just be sure to dispose of the body properly afterwards.”

 

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            Austin thundered down the front porch steps of the Tau house wearing old jeans and a red, zip-up, hooded sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off.  Had the situation been less serious, Jack would have made stampede jokes and questioned his friend’s choice of shirt color.  He knew better, though, and sat silently behind the steering wheel, motor running, as Austin hoisted himself into the bed of the truck.  Frostfire was sitting in the cab with Jack, but not at all patiently.  His hair was frosted white and he could feel heat building up in his chest.  He focused on calming down lest he blow up Jack’s truck, relying on Austin to direct Jack where they needed to go.

            “And just where is this Genome place again?” Jack asked.

            “About thirty minutes east of Skiffytown,” Austin said through the sliding window that separated him from the cab of the truck.  He didn’t mind riding in the bed of the truck since there was more room for him to stretch out back there.  He did, however, have an issue with the cap and had to duck down to keep his horns from punching though the top.  “It’ll take forty-five minutes to an hour to get there from here.”

            Jack’s lips curled in a wicked grin as he put the truck into gear and tore out of the driveway.  “Forty-five, huh?  Let’s see if we can’t shave a bit off of that.”

 

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            As she was rolled out of the dark room and down the familiar corridors of the Genome facility, Inu thought about her impending death.  She was hardly surprised, really, that Moreau had told Aria to kill her.  He did, after all, have that horrible habit of discarding anything that wasn’t immediately useful to him.  She was sure that he would one day regret getting rid of her, but he would find a way around that problem.  Besides, he still had a lot of her blood stored away for future experiments.  Her stomach churned at the idea that despite her death she would still be aiding him in his work.

            Still, even when Aria wheeled her into a large open storage area in one of the subbasements, Inu remained relatively calm.  She had very few regrets, and most of those were trivial matters that should have stopped plaguing her long ago.  The few major regrets she had were that she would never see her family again, nor would she ever see Frostfire’s reaction to seeing her in the little black dress.  Otherwise, she attributed her calmness to the blood loss.

            At last the gurney stopped and the straps were undone.  Inu was roughly pushed off of the gurney and fell in a heap on the concrete floor, very nearly braining herself in the process.  With the head strap gone, she was able to summon a clone to help her up off the floor, but that was the most she could do.  Her mind was too foggy to summon and maintain another clone.

            “Pathetic,” Aria laughed, watching as Inu leaned heavily against her clone.  “And to think Nadine admired you.”

            “But not you, huh?” Inu grunted, closing her eyes to keep the room from spinning.

            “Me?  Admire you? That’s rich,” said Aria.  She approached slowly, smiling as Inu sank back to her knees and pressed her fingers to her temples.  Her clone stood over her in a protective stance, ready to act as a shield if necessary.

            “I really shouldn’t fight you like this,” Aria sighed in mock pity.  “It would hardly be fair, after all.  I mean, you can barely stand as it is.  Can’t imagine you’d present much of a challenge.”

            She hummed, focusing her gaze at Inu’s throat.  A tune came to her mind and she sang a line.  Inu’s throat tightened and her eyes flew open.  She clawed at her throat in an attempt to free herself from the invisible hand.  Aria smiled and stopped singing.  The invisible hand released its hold, and Inu gasped for breath.

            “No, not much of a challenge,” said Aria, “but there is still some fight in you.  This should be most satisfying.”

 

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            How they managed to avoid being pulled over, Austin would never know.  Still, for all of Jack’s efforts, he only managed to shave twelve minutes off the trip.  He pulled up to the Genome facility at 9:18 and watched as Austin and Frostfire scrambled out of the truck.  Jack didn’t need them to tell him to stay at the truck.  He knew his limitations, and he knew he was no match for whatever was in store for his friends in that building.  No, his job was to get everyone back home safely, and he was fine with that.

            Jack also knew that it would be foolish not to call for reinforcements.  He had his cell phone out and ready.  Austin and Frostfire had half an hour to find and rescue “puppy girl.”  After that, Jack was calling Detective Matthews regardless of whether they were back or not.

            Staying low and sticking to the shadows, Austin and Frostfire crept up to the building and searched for a way in.  Unsurprisingly, the hole that Frostfire had blasted in the side of the building to evacuate the employees last December was still there.

            “You’re kidding, right?” Austin whispered as he and Frostfire slipped through the hole and into the building.  “How careless is this guy?”

            “Don’t question it,” Frostfire whispered back, “just be thankful.”

            The facility was a mess.  It looked as if a mad man had torn the place apart looking for something.  The corridors smelled of old peanut butter and something else…something sour and musty…

            “I don’t want to know what that smell is,” Austin said, snorting in an effort to clear his nose of the stench.  “I’ve been in locker rooms that smelled better than this.”

            “If I had to guess,” said Frostfire with a frown as he buried his nose in his coat, “I’d say it was cheap perfume, urine, and…”

            “Dude, I said I didn’t want to know.”

            “Sorry.”

            A voice at the far end of the corridor caught their attention.  Snapping their heads toward the sound, they saw Dr. Moreau walk out into the corridor.  He was oblivious to their presence, concentrating instead on the Beatles record playing in the room he had emerged from and singing along.

            “You better run for your life if you can, little girl…hide your head in the sand, little girl…”

            Frostfire and Austin exchanged glances.

            “Do you want to flip a coin?” Frostfire asked.

            “Nah, no need,” Austin said, turning his head and popping his neck.  “I got this one.”

            “…Well you know that I’m a wicked guy and I was born with a jealous mind…and I can’t spend my whole life tryin’ just to make you to the line…you better run for your life if you can little girl…”

            The floor vibrated and caused the record to skip, causing Dr. Moreau to pause and open his eyes.  He looked up in time to see a large Minotaur stampeding towards him.  He scrambled to get back into the room, but merely succeeded in grazing his fingertips on the doorknob before the raging beast slammed into him and threw him back against the wall at the end of the corridor.

            “Where is she?” Austin demanded.

            Moreau blinked up at Austin, seemingly unable to comprehend the question.

            “Where is she?!” Austin repeated, grabbing the front of Moreau’s shirt and hoisting him up so that the scientist was eye-level with Austin’s horns.

            Moreau swallowed and eyed the horns uneasily.  “Who?” he asked.

            “Ashley,” Austin ground out.  “The puppy-girl.  Where is she?”

            Moreau smiled then.  “I could tell you,” he said, “but you’d have to let me go to get to her in time.”

            “Now that’s a load of bull if I ever heard it,” Austin snorted.  “Tell me where she is, and I might consider knocking you unconscious instead of pile driving your sorry ass into the pavement outside.”

            “Use your ears,” said Moreau, the smile on his face growing broader.  “Aria’s had her for the past half hour.  If you’ve seen anything of Aria’s work, you’ll know it will take more than a rampaging bull to stop her from killing your friend.  Now, you can stay here and waste time with me, or you and Mr. Icy-Hot back there behind you can go find rescue your girlfriend.”

            Austin stepped back and dropped Moreau unceremoniously on the floor.  “She’s not my girlfriend,” he said, turning his back to Moreau and walking away.

            “No?” Moreau asked, looking oh so smug as he rose to his feet.  “Hmm…and here I thought this with mission of love.  Would have been fitting considering the holiday.”

            He was slammed into the wall again as large blue fireball slammed into his chest and turned to ice.  The force of the impact was enough to wind Moreau and bring him gasping to his knees.

            “Right idea,” Frostfire said, glaring at the scientist.  “Wrong person.”