Dark. Everything was so dark as pinpricks of consciousness began to riddle Glitz's mind. The first thing he was aware of was that he hurt all over and that his head was pounding....typically, the way he felt when he woke up after he had been heavily drinking the night before. But had he been? He couldn't remember. In fact, everything was a blur to him. As his brain continued to wake up from the uneventful sleep it had taken, he summoned the strength to clumsily turn himself over, lulling bonelessly onto his back with a grunt.
Beneath him there was a faint crunching sound and, as he breathed, the faint scent of pine laced his nostrils. Things started to slowly creep back....and the last thing he remembered was that he and Karma had gone to the Haunted Woods and had gone off of the path to sit for moment. But then what? His eyes slowly opened, revealing a crazy circus of blurryness that made no sense. He wondered briefly if he was still in the woods...but how he could possibly have fallen asleep THERE of all places escaped him.
Things swam and slowly came into focus around him until he found himself staring vacantly at a sterile white ceiling. Somewhere nearby, the droning motor of a refridgerator made a grinding sound as it came on, filling wherever he was with a gentle hum. He groaned and tried to gather his elbows beneath him to sit up, failing the first time but catching himself the second time as he drunkenly pulled himself into a reclined sit.
As best as he could gather, he was lying on the ground of some sort of enclosure. Around him were large transparent walls and he found that the crunching noise was due to the fact that he was sprawled on a thick layer of wood shavings that had been scattered on the floor. Through the walls he could see several tables that stood in the middle of the room, lined with scattered beakers, centrifuges, and microscopes.
He wearily drew himself into a kneel and then stood on legs that had little strength as the distant aching in his head became more prominent. In the enclosure, there were several blankets and pillows clumped together on the floor in the far right corner as a makeshift bed and a water faucet over a small metal basin. along the left side. Other than that, the enclosure was fairly barren.
"Hello...?" he tried to call, his voice coming in a stale croak. He swallowed and tried again. "Hello??" No answer. Was this someone's idea of a joke, he wondered as he began to pace the perimeter of his confines. If he knew Neopia like he thought he did, he wouldn't put it past someone who had issues with him to set up an elaborate prank like this. Maybe it was some fanatic who was using this as a half-cocked attempt to show him what the animals in the pound felt like. If it was, he didn't know if he'd be able to restrain from hurting someone once his head cleared. "Hey, whoever's out there, joke's over." he grumbled, hitting the heel of one hand against the plexiglass. It rattled a bit but nothing more. "HEY!" he barked, knocking again with both hands this time.
A high-pitched alarm squealed from a small box affixed to the outside of the wall, accompanied shortly by a distant clattering and frantic muttering. As he watched, a door swung open and a yellow scorchio with impossibly large eyes hurried in, skidding to a stop and goggling at him.
"You fool! Youve zet off ze alarm!!" he squawked, virtually LEAPING toward the enclosure and fumbling with the buttons wildly. "Oh no oh no oh no...." he chanted to himself, trying again and again. "Zees is not goot. Not goot at all!" After a moment of not being able to silence the alarm, he turned and loped hurriedly out of the room, disappearing through the doorway he had come through for a moment and then returning, dragging something with him. Glitz squinted, trying to make it out. He was still a bit groggy and it took him a moment to recognize that the scorchio was scuttling back with Karma in tow.
Her head lulled limply to the side and she looked to be very soundly asleep. His hopes that this had been a prank began to shrivel and be replaced with confusion and terror. What the hell was going on? As the scorchio approached, he withdrew a small apparatus from his pocket, clutching it in one hand as he dragged her with the other.
"You've cauzed enuff trouble, yes?" the scorchio asked him indirectly. "Zloth will be here any moment becauze of you and my experimentz haff been cut short! Now back away from ze door and zere will be no trouble." he gave the air a jab with the device he held, making it emit a few sparks. Knowing he was too out-of-it to challenge the scorchio even if he had wanted to, Glitz obediently stepped backward. A tazer being jabbed into his chest didn't sound like it would help his headache much, after all. The scorchio keyed in the access code to the cage, a bit more successfully than his attempt to key in the code to silence the alarm and drew open the door, dragging Karma inside behind him.
When she was safely laying on the wood chips, he hurried out again, slamming the door shut and racing to a nearby table to pretend to be busy with something else even as approaching footsteps from outside drew nearer and the labroatory door suddenly exploded open, revealing a flustered Dr. Sloth.
"Ahh, Doktar! I vuz just about to call you and---" the alien scientist ignored the scorchio, storming across the room to quickly punch in a sequence that would silence the blaring alarm. After a short pause, everything fell almost disturbingly quiet as the evil doctor turned to the professor, his fists clenching and unclenching.rhythmically.
"I believe we went over this, Professor." he growled. "Didn't I expressly SAY to contact me as soon as they had awakened??"
"Yez....yez you did, Doktar...!" the scorchio agreed hurriedly. "But I didn't want to dizturb you, zir....and only one haz avakened after all!" he added hurriedly, cowering as Sloth advanced on him, seizing a beaker and throwing it to the floor scant inches in front of the scorchio's feet.
"I honestly don't know why I keep you." he sneered. "I have important matters that need attending and I can't drop what I'm doing every time one of you goddamned idiots sets off an alarm." he sighed, looking at the scattering of glass shards on the floor and then back at his assistant. "Clean that up." he ordered. The professor quickly dropped to his knees and began gathering the glass up with his paws as Sloth turned his attention to the enclosure.
The techo, frankly, didn't know what to make of his current situation. He had heard of Dr. Frank Sloth on many occasions. He was a household name in Neopia, really, and was talked of badly by almost everyone. But he had never actually seen the man for himself...and now, as he found himself almost face-to-face with the mad doctor, he was spellbound.
"Well...awake, I see." Sloth smirked. "Confused?" Glitz found he could give no reply and simply continued to stare. "Hrmmm....apparently techos get less intelligent as well as uglier when they get older." he quipped, chuckling at his own joke. The frosty-maned techo gave him no reaction and remained frozen. Dr. Sloth narrowed his eyes a bit. "No doubt you wonder why you're here." he said, leisurely pacing in front of the plexiglass enclosure.
"H---How did you---" he began, tentatively finding his voice again.
"Capture you?" Sloth interrupted. "Mild tranquilizers." he informed him matter-of-factly. "Though I suppose I ought to adjust their potency." he chuckled. "You've been out, as far as I know, for the better part of two days. Strange....the darts, on average, only render our other subjects unconscious for a few hours." A smile curled his lips. "It seems I have much to learn about your adult forms....but no matter. There is plenty of time for that. I'm sure you and your mate will prove to be more than adequate subjects."
Dr. Death felt a hot flush rise in his cheeks upon Karma being referred to as his "mate", but said nothing on the subject. His love life wasn't the issue here.
"Why us?" he asked, his anger beginning to seep out from where it had been hiding and make itself evident. "There must be millions of neopets and you had to take us?? Karma's not even a---"
"You DO realize, of course, that even if I had taken one of them, they'd be saying the exact same thing right now." Sloth smirked and then raised his voice to a mockingly high pitch "Why me, why me?? Its not fair!!" he squealed and then burst into peals of laughter. The techo leered at the doctor, his awe at being nearly nose-to-nose with the Evil Dr. Frank Sloth evaporating as quickly as it had overtaken him. "Pleasantries aside, whether you'd like to or not, you are taking part in a study I'm performing." Sloth continued. "Cooperating and surviving should be your two main concerns at the moment....they're what will earn you your freedom when I've learned all I need to."
"And what if I say no?" Glitz asked, trembling in outrage. Sloth scrutinized the techo disinterestedly through the plexiglass wall.
"Well, that would make things difficult, wouldn't it?" the doctor said cryptically. "I'll inform you...." he trailed off. "Dear me, I've not gotten your name, have I?" There was a pregnant pause between the two of them. "Well, it doesn't really matter." Sloth shrugged. "I'll inform you that we don't destroy pets here. Any pet that has died has done it of their own accord."
"Their own accord." Glitz repeated icily.
"Again, not here." Sloth interrupted. "They don't die here and never will. Too many questions would be asked and I'd have Neopia's law forces, such as they are, crawling all over me in no time. But we DO have some cases...." he trailed off, waiting for the techo to ask him to continue. When Glitz didn't humor him, he continued on his own. "We have some cases where pets that have been in our care have....well...they've been unable to handle themselves after all that's been done to them. Silly beasts."
"So you're saying they've committed suicide after you've mutated them and let them go, then. Is that what you're telling me?" Glitz felt his molars grind together in anger as he said this.
"You said it, not me. All that matters is that its not happened while they've been here." Sloth smirked. "You see, while Neopia's laws say that I can't kill or maim you, they say nothing about testing and detaining. Aren't loopholes grand? Though it would seem that sometimes one doesn't need to kill pets to get a bad reputation." His smirk drew itself into a large toothy grin as he noted the fire in Dr. Death's eyes. "Did I strike a nerve, son?" he inquired.
"Shut up." the techo hissed.
"My people and I have been watching you for the past couple of days." the doctor continued. "You work in the pound, my sources say." he stepped closer to the glass until the tip of his pointy nose brushed against it. "Not very well-liked either. You see, that was the crucial factor, really. We couldn't very well make off with an upstanding Neopian citizen and have their absense be noticed in minutes. I highly doubt you'll be missed much during your 'visit' with us. Or even if you never came back at all...."
"SHUT UP!!" he snapped, his voice sounding dry and brittle in the silence of the laboratory. Behind him he heard a muffled mewl and a dry scratching and he turned his attention away from Sloth, watching as Karma slowly began to come awake, her eyelids fluttering.
"Ahh, she joins us." Sloth remarked, watching as the tree frog roused herself. Glitz abandoned his "chat" with the doctor to kneel beside her and help her up.
"Glitz......?" she asked woozily. "Where...."
"Not somewhere good." he told her. "Don't panic."
"Panic?" she groaned, squinting in the light. "About what?"
"Professor..." Sloth ordered, never taking his eyes off of the caged duo. There was a musical tinkling as the scorchio dropped the handful of shards he had been picking up and raced to the doctor's side.
"Yez zir?" he inquired, wringing his hands.
"Prepare the ray and one of our subjects. I'll return shortly." he informed the neopet as he left the laboratory in a whisper of his black robe. When he was gone, the scorchio turned to the two captives and assumed a thoughtful look as it looked first at Glitz and then at Karma.
"You." he said flatly, pointing at the techo as he retrieved the same device he had threatened Glitz with earlier when he had returned Karma to the enclosure from his pocket. "Come along now." he said authoritatively, reaching for the access keypad. "Don't make zis harder zan it haz to be...." He kept one bulbous eye on Glitz for any sign of uprising. The yellow techo, however, had moodily resigned himself for the moment. What was the point in trying to make an escape when Sloth likely had hundreds of guards? Plus, he doubted it would help the situation much if he WAS caught....especially since Sloth had inadvertantly agreed to let them go if they both cooperated.
"What's going on...?" Karma asked, coming a bit more awake and clinging to the rumpled lapels of Dr. Death's labcoat. "Who's that guy?" she asked, starting to sound afraid. He noticed for the first time that the ends of her hair were singed and that she smelled faintly of smoke. What had the scorchio been doing to her before bringing her back in such a hurry, he wondered? The professor entered the confine and lightly touched the tazer to the back of Glitz's neck, making him jolt and cry out.
"Come now." the scorchio ordered. "Let'z move!" Glitz favored the pushy neopet with a glare and then turned back to Karma.
"I'll be back soon, I guess..." he muttered, taking her hands in his own and gently unhooking them from his labcoat.
"Where're you going?" Karma asked, eyes wide and shining. He didn't answer as he got to his feet and the scorchio gave him a shove, making him stumble a bit. "Where are you taking him???" she demanded of the bug-eyed professor. When he, too, refused to answer, she struggled to stand, falling once and landing falsely on her left wrist, whimpering as it twisted a bit.
Just as she managed to stumble to her feet and lurch forward a few steps, the door to the enclosure swung shut and the electric lock's latch clicked into place, trapping her, as she uselessly pounded a fist against the transparent wall. As she watched, the scorchio took a strap out of another coat pocket and made a loose loop out of it, tossing it neatly over the techo's head and pulling it snug around his throat.
"That's not necessary, damn you." she heard him say indignantly. "I'm not a---hurk!!" he was cut off as the scorchio yanked the strap tight with a sharp jerk of his arm. He reached up, attempting to hook his thumbs under the strap to loosen it to no avail. After a moment, the scorchio let up on the tension on the strap and allowed him to breathe again.
"Ze first thing you vill learn iz not to talk back, yez?" the professor said mildly. "Ve don't much care for inzubordinatez." he gave the makeshift noose a short tug and began walking, the humiliated techo in tow as he led him into the experimentation quarters. Karma watched helplessly, tears streaming down her face as they disappeared behind the door and it closed slowly behind them. She trembled heavily in mingled misery and terror as she was left alone in the meager light and stood quietly for a few moments to see if they would return. When there was no sign of anyone, she retreated away from the side of the enclosure and approached what served as the bed, taking up one of the pillows and hugging it tightly against her chest as she sank into a huddling position in the corner, crying softly.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Rose was never one to complain when things didn't go her way, but this was getting to be a little much as she sat at the edge of the desk, trying to breathe shallowly so that she wouldn't have to smell the creature beside her. The temp that the faerie agency had sent was a monstrous human woman both in temper and in size that called herself simply, Ms. Whorley. No first name, accent on the "ley", she had told Rose. At first, Rose had done her best to be polite, but found that Ms. Whorley grated on her nerves horribly. Before long, she found herself wondering simply how long it had been since the woman had last taken a bath.
As the afternoon had worn on, Rose learned that the woman had, long ago, run the pound on her own before turning her position over to Dr. Death when she had lost interest in it. Speaking of the doctor, the scout they had sent to his house had turned up only a rather irate and hungry doglefox in the backyard, but no sign of the techo himself. Having an idea, Rose had looked up Karma's number in the pound records and tried her place, wondering if he had spent the night there. Instead, she had gotten Karma's cybunny who had informed her that the last he had seen of her was when she had gotten dressed and left to meet Dr. Death at the pound. Confused, she had decided to leave things where they were for now and worry about it further after her shift was over.
"You got a vending machine around here, horsie?" Whorley grunted. Rose shook her head, afraid to inhale to speak, lest she fill her lungs with the woman's pungeant body odor. If nothing else, it seemed to have kept most of the abandoners away for the day. "RASVAR!!!" she squawked, making the pink uni cringe. A very tired-looking green blumaroo poked its head out from around the corner of the desk, looking up at its owner. The luster had long gone out of its black eyes and it appeared to be much older than it really was. Ms. Whorley leaned to one side, fishing into her pocket with meaty fingers and withdrawing a handful of neopoints. "Go get me some nachos and a neocola." she commanded the neopet. "Step on it!"
"Right away, mum." Rasvar replied quietly as it bounced out of the pound on the tip of its tail. Rose watched him exit into the bright neopian afternoon and found herself envious of the bedraggled creature as she rested her head on her hooves, looking wistfully at the clock. The first thing she would do, she decided, was take a long bubble bath to relax....and after that, she'd take a walk over to Dr. Death's and fish Snap out of his backyard, take him back to her place and at least give the poor doglefox a meal.
She wondered for the umpteenth time just where he had gotten to....he and Karma just couldn't have up and disappeared. She ran through her mental checklist of options again, crossing them off one by one as they had been ruled out. Her first assumption, that they had gotten too friendly with one another and spent the night together seemed to have fallen through. Maybe they had gotten lost...the land in the Haunted Woods, after all, was very uncertain and the trees seemed to have a bad habit of changing position. But then again, she knew the doctor better than to go wandering off half-cocked with no map.
Her puzzling was cut short as Rasvar returned, a neocola and a bag of nachos in his arms and balancing a rainbow doughnut between his ears. Ms. Whorley perked up instantly and held out her hands to accept the food as the neopet delivered it. Rose winced in disgust as the bag was torn open and the temporary poundkeeper began to loudly crunch on the corn chips inside.
She heard the door open again and looked up eagerly, while not particularly eager for another incoming adoptee, hoping for a temporary distraction from her new co-worker. As she watched, a blue cybunny and blue chomby both lumbered inside.
"Hey anybody seen a frog around here?" Yahoo called out impatiently as he and Chomby approached Rose's corner of the desk. "Ya know, brown hair, yellow, likes to hang around grouchy guys with bottlebrush hair...."
"Karma's not turned up, I'm afraid." Rose informed him regretfully. The two neopets looked disappointed.
"I don't understand....why'd she just disappear?" Chomby asked worriedly. "Do you think she doesn't like us anymore, Yahoo?" he gasped. "I don't wanna go back to being in a cage...."
"I bet you dubloons to omelettes that she followed him home last night." the cybunny grinned mischeviously, nudging the chomby in the ribs.
"No she didn't." Rose chimed in. "Nobody's at the doctor's house either."
"Then where the heck did she get to??" Yahoo demanded to know, crossing his paws over his chest. "Hmph....she could have left a note or something."
"I'm hungry." Chomby complained as his stomach rumbled. "We haven't eaten all day and she hasn't been home to make us breakfast."
"And.....WHAT....is that?" Yahoo asked, pointing at Ms. Whorley as she continued to feed, taking no notice of the two.
"That's the temp..." Rose sighed.
"Geez, and people thought Dr. Death was scary??" the cybunny asked, his brows shooting upward in surprise.
"I'm starting to think this is serious, you two." the uni informed them. "But I wouldn't get all riled about it yet. For now, I think its important that you take care of one another until we find out where the two of them went. Do you think you can do that?"
"Not a problem." Yahoo shrugged. "I was basically taking care of myself before Ashley got rid of me anyway."
"Well, I highly doubt Karma 'got rid of' either of you, so let's not jump to conclusions." Rose assured him. "In the meantime, I have work to do. My shift isn't quite over yet and I don't want to be caught sitting around." the cybunny and chomby exchanged a look and then turned and left without a word. Rose winced as Whorley belched wetly beside her and looked at the clock again. Five more minutes....just five.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Sloth sat idly at the control panel, waiting patiently as three mutant kacheeks and a mutant chia scuttled busily about the laser platform, affixing restraints to Glitz's ankles and wrists. His tail nervously twitched back and forth along the backs of his legs as they did so. They had stripped him of his labcoat and charcoal-colored shirt, at least being respectful enough to leave him his black slacks...thank lord for small favors. He looked distastefully at his shackles.
"They're just a precaution." the mad doctor chuckled, noticing the techo's look of utter exasperation.
"So I don't fall down and hit my head while you're frying my guts...how generous." the techo growled as the last restraint was pulled tight. He tried them experimentally and found that he was held quite helpless against the metal slab the laser was aimed at. Sloth grinned, his fangs glinting in the flourescent light of the laboratory.
"All set, daddy-o!" the mutant chia burbled, hopping down from the platform and leaving a residue of brown as it went. The two mutated kacheeks followed after their brother as they all waddled out of harm's way.
"Good. Goggles on, everyone....or off, I really don't care." he told the rest of the laboratory as he took up a pair of black goggles from the console and affixed them over his eyes.
"That's in case I explode, right?" Dr. Death inquired nastily.
"Such a pessimist. Honestly." Sloth said, feigning hurt.
"Ready when you are, Doctor." Wizlow informed him from where she stood nearby, no longer in her soiled labcoat but clad, instead, in a dark trenchcoat reminiscent of Sloth's black cape and robe. She wasn't attempting to mimic the doctor, but like him, she enjoyed dressing in dark colors. In her hands she held a clipboard and a pen, ready to take notes on the results. Sloth poised a finger over the button that would fire the ray, fixing his eyes on the techo.
With no warning given, he quickly pressed the button, immediately bringing the mechanics of the massive ray gun to life with a high-pitched humming for a split second before it emitted a blast of powerful light at the platform, temporarily blinding all present. As the smoke and light faded, everyone eagerly looked to see what had been done to the captive techo.
Glitz, bewildered, the light from the blast still fading from his eyes, coughed weakly as a tendril of smoke curled from his mouth and didn't hear the first murmurs of approval from those in attendance. Sloth looked at him bemusedly, nodding faintly and Wizlow's pen scratched wildly on her clipboard.
"Squick? Yiff? Care to show our subject his new look?" Sloth asked as the two mutant kacheeks instantly sprang into action, scurrying across the floor and out of sight. New look? What was he talking about, Glitz wondered. The two mutants returned shortly, carrying between the two of them, a large mirror which they bumbled up the steps of the platform and set up in front of him. Glitz looked blearily into it, not sure what he was supposed to see at first.
And then he noticed it. His yellow pelt had been replaced with a creamy white color, adorned here and there with orchid-colored stripes. He blinked and then blinked again, trying to confirm that it really was him. He bit back the groan in his throat at how utterly ridiculous he looked....like some sort of malformed circus-clown.
"Ms. Pendragon, make a note please. So far the ray seems to be having the same effect on adult neopets as on the children." Sloth said loudly, focusing his gaze on the techo. "But we're far from done yet....so we'll see." Far from done yet....Glitz didn't like the sound of that much. "Clear the platform." Sloth announced as Squick and Yiff hurried back down the stairs, clumsily carrying the mirror with them. When they were gone, he punched the button again. Glitz's already-burned skin tingled painfully as the ray's light engulfed him again. Coupled with the burning, there was a shifting feeling within himself and a deep-seated crackling as he cried out.
"Ewww....talk about falling out of the ugly tree and hitting every branch...." Squick remarked from his perch near Wizlow's feet. The green being scowled down at the mutated neopet and, taking her clipboard in both hands, brought it down on the kacheek's head as hard as she could. Squick made a sound like a strangled question mark and scurried away.
"Ms. Pendragon....." Sloth said warningly.
"Sorry." she shrugged with a smirk and then turned her attention to the techo. "Mutant this time. Nice. He looks like Beethoven." she commented, snickering.
"Let's not mock the test subject." Sloth told her. "There's time for that later." he added. Glitz was tempted to ask for the mirror again, though he was almost certain he wouldn't recieve it. He felt terrible and, knowing what mutated techos looked like, supposed he looked to match how he felt. "Clear the deck." the doctor said sharply. The techo was engulfed in the ray's light a third time, this one feeling as though a thousand knives were piercing his flesh from every angle. Helpless to stop it, he threw his head back and screamed.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Karma didn't know how long she sat alone in the dark. As the poison from the tranquilizer dart left her system and she became more awake, it occurred to her how frightened she was of this place. The fact that she was wearing nothing but the lavender dress made her feel even more vulnerable. "Bastards didn't even have the decency to kidnap me when I had jeans on." she thought bitterly to herself, drawing her knees close to her chest. She started to wonder if she was ever going to see Glitz again as the minutes ticked past. The door to the experimentation room must have been thick enough to bar out any sounds because she hadn't heard a thing since they had taken him away.
She guessed about an hour had gone by and, just as she felt herself about to be overcome by tears again, the door banged open and Sloth, the professor, and a procession of the others who had been in assembly for Glitz's testing began to filter out of the room. She bolted upright, eyeing the crowd hopefully but didn't see him among them. Instead, the professor led a defeated-looking gray creature toward the enclosure and opened the door. Karma gasped as she looked at it, tensing herself. Was this part of their "experiment", she wondered? Were they going to see how long she'd survive with this...THING in the cage with her??
"Two pelt changes and otherwise no noticable effect." Wizlow informed Dr. Sloth.
"I'm pleased." the doctor informed her. "In some ways, exactly the same as the younger neopets and other ways different. We'll continue tomorrow with the female." As Sloth strode out, followed by his crew, Karma locked her eyes on the monster they had put in the cage with her. It didn't seem to be outwardly aggressive at the moment and simply stood, its back to her as it groaned and rubbed at its face.
And then it began to turn toward her. She drew in a sharp gasp, scrambling backwards as it faced her, its bulbous black and red eyes regarding her maliciously as it swung its spiked club of a tail. From its mouth protruded a long purple forked tongue and dangerous-looking spines sprouted from its upper arms and haunches, tearing through the tattered remains of what had been pants at some point. And now it lumbered toward her.
"....get away from me...." she said in a ragged whisper, shrinking against the wall as far as she could.
"Karma...?" it asked. Though raspy, the voice was painfully familiar. Still trembling, she peered at the creature warily. "Karma, what are you cringing at?" the monster asked. She looked harder this time....noticing the mane of gray-white hair. But no...! It couldn't be! "Its just me..." the creature said, sounding hurt.
"Glitz...?" she squeaked breathlessly. The mutant nodded.
"They screwed me up royally, didn't they?" he muttered, shambling across the floor and squinting to try and see his reflection in the faint sheen of the walls. He couldn't see himself clearly, but the twisted outline of his body staring back at him was answer enough...that and, younger, he had experience with what a mutant techo looked like. He tried to summon the energy to be enraged, but found that he was too exhausted. He hurt all over, had been humiliated beyond belief, and right now felt that he could sleep for weeks.
"Oh my god....Glitz...." she whimpered, her eyes enormous. "Wha--what did they do to you??"
"I don't know." he sighed, sinking against the wall and wincing as his back rubbed against the plexiglass, irritating his burnt skin. "They've got some sort of laser in there that changes pets. I think I blacked out the fourth time they blasted me with it. God only knows how many times I got it. When I came around they were untying me.
"What are they trying to do?" the frog asked, tears prickling at her eyes again as she blinked them back. "And why us??"
"I already asked those same questions...." the techo muttered, tentatively touching a taloned hand to his forearm and drawing it back with a hiss. "We're test subjects, apparently. Sloth wants to see what the laser does to adult neopets."
"But I'm not a neopet!" she shot back defensively.
"I tried to tell him that too..." he grumbled. "Damned if they'd let me get a complete sentence out." His malformed and ridged eyes seemed to collapse in on themselves in tired resignation.
"So now what?" Karma asked, at a loss.
"I don't know." he replied. "I just don't know." He slumped forward, his club-like tail thrumming against the floor as he thought amid his exhaustion. There was a long pause between them and then he scooted forward, taking the corner of one of the rumpled blankets in the corner and pulling it toward him, draping it over his malformed body. "I'm going to sleep." he told her flatly.
"Sleep? Glitz, how the hell can you sleep??" she demanded to know. "What if they want to kill us??"
"I'm tired, Karma." he replied simply, closing his eyes and laying gingerly on his side, wincing as the bed of wood chips pressed against his tender skin. She bit her tongue, feeling the rest of what she wanted to say dying in her throat as she realized screaming at him wasn't going to help. Even if Sloth DID mean to kill the both of them, she doubted there was much she or he could do about it.
"Alright..." she whispered, forcing herself to lean her back against the wall and curl up, trying to at least make herself comfortable even if she knew she wasn't going to be able to sleep. In fact, she didn't think she'd sleep for a very long time. She watched as the mutant techo shifted position a few times and then, with a deep breath, fell into a sound sleep. She half-wondered if she'd calm herself better if she cuddled up beside him, but was unable to bring herself to as she eyed the clusters of spines on his shoulders and haunches.
As she laid on her side, curling herself into as tight of a ball as she was able and burying her snout in the flannel of the blankets and overwhelming scent of pine, a door opened somewhere nearby, making her freeze as she listened. Footsteps approached and stopped outside of their prison. There was a long pause and then a beep and a click as the door was opened. Karma lay still, willing whoever it was to go away. Hadn't they done enough? She remained perfectly still as the person scuffled through the shavings, not daring to move her head. Maybe if whoever it was thought that they were both asleep they would leave.
However, she soon learned that the intruder had no intention of simply going away. Something made of cloth was pressed against her nose as a hand alighted on the back of her head to keep her from pulling away. She tried to gasp, inhaling fumes that were thick and dizzying. As she drew in another breath to cry out, she found that the only sound she could make was a thin ribbon of whisper that squeaked weakly out of her throat. "No not again..." she thought desperately as she felt her awareness slipping away. "Not again, not again, notagainnotagainnotagainnotagain...." the plea became a faint drone in the back of her head as she lost her grip on the world and everything was black once more.
The intruder drew the ether-soaked handkerchief away from her nose when she ceased moving and cast a quick look around the laboratory to ensure he hadn't been seen. He looked warily down at Glitz for a moment to ensure that the techo hadn't awakened. Satisfied, he worked his arms under Karma and began to drag her toward the door of the cage.
"Experiment in moderation....I'll give HIM moderation." he muttered to himself. "Trying to hold back zcience mit hiz ztupid moderation...oh vell. Vhat he doezn't know von't hurt me." The professor smirked, gently closing the cage door behind himself. "Unt now, my little doe, vee shall continue vhere we left off vhen ve were interrupted yezterday, yes?"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Wizlow sat alone in her quarters, having changed out of her trenchcoat in favor of something more comfortable as she lounged at her computer desk clad in a baggy black T-Shirt enscripted with the pleasantry "If I Throw A Stick, Will You Leave?" and a pair of faded jean shorts as she waited for her reboot to finish so she could log the notes she had taken for the day. She had pulled her long red hair back into a simple ponytail to keep it out of her face and drummed her fingers impatiently on the spacebar of the keyboard.
"Come on..." she grumbled at the machine as it went through its customary whirs and clicks. After what seemed forever, the menu bar appeared and she eagerly double-clicked on her WordAccurate program, opening her latest log of notes and casting a quick look at the paper she had had in her clipboard while they had experimented on the techo. She keyed in his basic biological stats directly below the finished notes of a skeith that they had taken into custody earlier that month that had been released a week ago.
"Two pelt changes...." she said aloud as she transcribed the ray's results, her fingers working quickly over the keys. "Striped...and....mutant." She paused, flipping the sheet over and peering at the backside, keying in that, after the two color-changes, no effect had been noticed. It was a bit strange that seven more blasts hadn't brought out even a bit of a change, but everything had flatlined. The techo seemed to be just as weak as he had been when he had come in. Blood tests and nerve analysis showed no change in his strength or agility.
She wondered if the ray was to blame or if, as neopets got older, they developed a resistance to being altered. Eh...it wasn't her concern. Maybe Sloth's ray was shooting blanks or something. She didn't doubt it....lately her colleague had become too full of himself for his own good and it would serve him right if something like that were to go awry. Damned lab ray seemed to be all he talked about lately after his last attempt to take over Neopia had failed.
Wizlow finished her notes, saved them, and got up, crossing the room to fish a can of soda out of the small refridgerator on her dresser. As she popped the tab on the can and took a drink, she pondered how to draw Frank away from his obsession for a bit. To say she was enamoured with him was a bit of an understatement...and why shouldn't she be? He literally WAS the last man on earth as far as she was concerned.
Wizlow Pendragon and Dr. Frank Sloth had been the sole survivors of a mass culling of their race when their home planet had collided with its sun. Those who had been fortunate enough to make it to the escape pods before impact had been launched into space in kamikaze directions, some being shot directly into the sun's massive heat and others being sent to tumble through space until their oxygen ran out. Wizlow and Sloth had been among the last of the escapees and had, instead of fighting over the escape pod they had come upon, simply agreed to share it.
Fortune had been with them that day and the two had, after three days of drifting, found themselves pulled into the gravitational field of a new world. One that hadn't yet been populated, but that teemed with possibility. In its infant days, Neopia had been a savage world, ensnared in thick tangles of untamed foliage and rolling stormclouds that never rained but thundered constantly with the threat to. Frank and Wizlow had clung to one another's company as they had more or less claimed the planet as their home.
As time went on, Sloth had become more and more interested with the possibility of other creatures existing on the lively husk of a world and had taken to experimenting on the DNA structures of the various plants, attempting to anthropormorphize them. Wizlow, having no interest in playing God, had sat out for the mostpart until she rarely spoke to Sloth at all and saw him only when the two of them regrouped for dinner each night. She felt they had grown further apart when the first of the creatures they had come to call "neopets" began to make their appearance and Frank had instantly begun chasing after them to learn all he could.
The sudden population was still a mystery to her. Having gotten ahold of a copy of The Last Tome Of The Jubjubs, she had read a long-winded belief that the creatures, one day, were created by the mighty god Adamices and goddess Donnamakite as a gift to the barren world and in hopes that it would grow and prosper. What a load of rubbish, she thought. Whatever the reason, Sloth had drifted beyond her reach as time had worn on....and even today, though he still showed her a passing glint of attention here and there, she felt as though there was a wedge between them. One she meant to remove by any means necessary.
She drank off another swallow of her soda, returning to her computer with the intent of closing out her word program and then retiring to her desk to draw until her appointed bedtime. However, as she took her seat, something occurred to her. In habit, she kept her favorite pens in the pocket of her labcoat...the same labcoat that usually hung on the hook behind her door but that had acquired a purple stain earlier and she had wadded up and thrown into a corner of the laboratory in a fit of anger at Squick's stupidity earlier when she had been unable to change immediately upon Frank's suggestion she do so.
"Nrrghh....Wizlow, you IDIOT!" she cursed herself, getting up again and angrily looking for her shoes and at the same time, grabbing up her trenchcoat from where it laid in a rumpled mass near the computer and hurriedly pulled it on. She never ceased to amaze herself with how she could be graced with such a vast knowledge of science and technology, but forget something as simple as removing her pen from her pocket as she seized her black sneakers out from beneath the bed and pulled them on, storming out the door and down the hallway without bothering to lock her room behind her. Everybody knew enough to stay out of her quarters, after all.
The hallway was deserted and darkened as most everybody had gone to their respective quarters for the night, the only stragglers being a few maintenance grundos and techos that scuttled through the dark, checking the lights and wiring to ensure everything was in smooth working order. They cringed as she walked past, paying them no mind as she mounted the staircase that led to the second floor. Upstairs, everything was eerily silent as she rounded a corner and pushed open the door to the testing quarters, going immediately to the corner she had left her labcoat it.
It still laid there in a rumpled heap, for which she was grateful as she grabbed it up and shook it out to get rid of the dust moozies it had gathered throughout the day. As she draped it over her shoulder, ready to leave, she paused, swearing she had heard something. After a moment, deciding it had to have been her imagination, she moved to go again. But then....there it was again, the same distant sound that sounded like the brief humming of a generator. As quickly as it had started, it stopped, leaving her confused.
She wondered if some of the lab staff might be doing some late-night work, but then dismissed the notion, knowing that once Sloth called it quits for the night, no one questioned him and immediately stopped what they were doing. Puzzled, she walked slowly toward the doorway leading to the holding quarters and put her hand around the knob. It turned easily in her fingers and she drew it open a crack, peering inside. Everything seemed quiet. The tables stood stoically in the darkness and, from where she stood, she could see the unmoving hulk of one of the test subjects as they slumbered.
BZZAP!!
This time she was sure of what she had heard as she pointedly walked across the holding quarters. Somebody was violating the rules and about to get in big trouble, she decided with some degree of satisfaction, as she neared the door to the testing facility and eased it open as quietly as she was able. What awaited her on the other side, however, made her stop short and gawk. Strapped to the ray platform, slumping and unconscious in her bonds, was the female test subject. Strapped, Wizlow could have dealt with....unconscious, again, not a big deal....but what struck her, was the fact that, all over the creature's body were large red welts, blackened and burnt at the edges where the ray had struck her. The air was thick with the smell of cooking flesh and small tendrils of smoke rose from her body.
Never, in all of her career working for Sloth, had she seen a creature respond to the lab ray as this one was. It seemed to be having no effect on her at all and rather was repeatedly wounding her each time it struck her. She drew in a gasp as the room filled itself with a blinding flash of light, momentarily dazzling her eyes as she blinked wildly against the colorful spots blocking her vision.
"You ztupid girl!!" a familiar voice screeched. When Wizlow's sight cleared, she winced as she noted a new crater in the yellow female's skin, smoking faintly and she swore she could hear the yellow hide crackling from where she stood. "Ztupid, ztupid girl!!!" the voice repeated. She froze for a moment, positive that the angry words were directed at her....but then relaxed as she watched the stout form of Sloth's lead professor storm toward the platform and hold an analysis wand up to Karma's skin, sweeping it slowly back and forth to check her vital stats. It blipped to show its results...apparently not giving what the scorchio had hoped to see. "Vhy won't you change, eh??" He put his hands on his hips as though expecting the unconscious female to reply. "Feh! I can vait az long as you can!" he announced, storming back to the panel.
Wizlow, though she considered herself to be evil on many levels, never had a stomach for suffering or torture. Despite the fact that Karma was unconscious, it was hard to watch all the same. Was the professor really that loopy that he couldn't see that the ray was having no effect other than wounding her? She didn't know WHY it wasn't effecting her, but the fact remained that no changes were taking place other than the burnt gouges in Karma's skin.
Another surge of light filled the room, making her compulsively bite her tongue as Karma was blasted again. Wizlow fought the urge to gag as another burn appeared on her skin and she made herself withdraw her head and close her eyes. Her first impulse was to storm in and beat the offending scorchio senseless with his own tail, but decided it would accomplish nothing. She might stop him tonight, but she couldn't be playing bodyguard to the test subjects 24/7.....and she knew that Sloth fully intended on continuing the tests. It would take him a few days to become satisfied with the fact that Karma wasn't effected by the ray but then he'd want to perform further tests on her.
By the time everything was said and done, in fact, Wizlow doubted much would remain of the yellow being save for a tortured shell of a creature. And that she could not excuse. In the past, the few pets that had been reported as suicides after being released from their testing had bothered her, but she had quickly brushed them off. The idea that this girl would likely die in the laboratory, if not from Sloth's scrutiny then from the professor's insane administrations, struck a sour note with her as she hurriedly crossed the room to a gray box that perched non-intrusively on the wall to the right of the cabinet that housed the extra beakers and microscopes.
She fumbled with the latch a moment before successfully opening it and running her fingers over the series of switches inside of it. In the dim light, she couldn't read the labels beneath them and decided it didn't really matter. The alarm systems all ran on a separate generator in the basement anyway so she wouldn't do terribly much damage as she methodically switched all of them off. She could hear a few protesting beeps from the computer networks in the neighboring rooms as everything fell into inky blackness and there was a dismayed cry from the testing room.
"Vhat?? Vhat iz zis??" the professor demanded to know. "NEIN!!!" he roared. From the enclosure there came a rustling sound as the other subject, the male, awoke.
"Karma...?" he asked in a groggy voice. Wizlow took this as her cue to leave, carefully feeling her way out of the blackened laboratory just as the crashes and angry yelling began from the room where the professor had been "testing" Karma. Not three seconds after she had found the door and slipped outside, the scorchio stormed into the vacant laboratory.
"Of all ze rotten luck!!" he cursed, smacking his elbow smartly on the edge of the table and wincing as he surveyed the black laboratory...or at least tried to.
"Where's Karma?" another voice floated out of the darkness, making him whirl on his heel in the direction of it.
"Vut?? Who'z zere??"
"Where is she?" the voice asked again, sounding lazily impatient. It took the professor a moment to realize that the voice belonged to the other subject who had awakened "What are you doing with her?" he pressed.
"Nngghhh....one shite at a time!!" he growled, realizing that as long as the power was out, it was rather pointless to keep experimenting on Karma. Yet the why of it still nagged at him. WHY did she refuse to change? Stubborn bitch, he thought waspishly to himself as he felt his way back into the testing quarters to retrieve her and put her away for the night.
After a few moments of stumbling and stubbing his toes twice as he found the stairway leading up the ramp to the ray platform, and some difficulty, he had removed Karma and dragged her back into the observation room. Glitz, if he was still awake, didn't give him any problems about depositing Karma back into the enclosure as he made an unceremonious retreat for the evening and punctuated his exit with a loud slam of the laboratory door.
Glitz waited a moment before feeling through the dark slowly on his hands and knees until his palm brushed against the limp flesh of Karma's shoulder. "Karma?" he whispered, giving her a shake. No response. "Karma, come on..." he urged, shaking her a bit harder. When she remained limp, the mutant techo bit his lip worriedly, wincing as his needle-like fangs sank into the flesh....he had forgotten about his transformation.
He worked his arms under her, lifting her into a sitting position and held her a moment, waiting to see if she'd move or make any noise. Growing worried, he wet his palm with the tip of his tongue and held it in front of her mouth, feeling a surge of relief as he felt the warm breeze of her breath wash over his fingers.
"We're going to get out of here." he assured her, lowering his head and nuzzling her a bit, wrinkling his nose at the acrid stench of burnt hair and flesh. "I promise we are." Karma, however, remained soundly unconscious as, out in the hallway, the first angry calls between the maintenance crew were exchanged about the lack of lights.
TBC..............
Beneath him there was a faint crunching sound and, as he breathed, the faint scent of pine laced his nostrils. Things started to slowly creep back....and the last thing he remembered was that he and Karma had gone to the Haunted Woods and had gone off of the path to sit for moment. But then what? His eyes slowly opened, revealing a crazy circus of blurryness that made no sense. He wondered briefly if he was still in the woods...but how he could possibly have fallen asleep THERE of all places escaped him.
Things swam and slowly came into focus around him until he found himself staring vacantly at a sterile white ceiling. Somewhere nearby, the droning motor of a refridgerator made a grinding sound as it came on, filling wherever he was with a gentle hum. He groaned and tried to gather his elbows beneath him to sit up, failing the first time but catching himself the second time as he drunkenly pulled himself into a reclined sit.
As best as he could gather, he was lying on the ground of some sort of enclosure. Around him were large transparent walls and he found that the crunching noise was due to the fact that he was sprawled on a thick layer of wood shavings that had been scattered on the floor. Through the walls he could see several tables that stood in the middle of the room, lined with scattered beakers, centrifuges, and microscopes.
He wearily drew himself into a kneel and then stood on legs that had little strength as the distant aching in his head became more prominent. In the enclosure, there were several blankets and pillows clumped together on the floor in the far right corner as a makeshift bed and a water faucet over a small metal basin. along the left side. Other than that, the enclosure was fairly barren.
"Hello...?" he tried to call, his voice coming in a stale croak. He swallowed and tried again. "Hello??" No answer. Was this someone's idea of a joke, he wondered as he began to pace the perimeter of his confines. If he knew Neopia like he thought he did, he wouldn't put it past someone who had issues with him to set up an elaborate prank like this. Maybe it was some fanatic who was using this as a half-cocked attempt to show him what the animals in the pound felt like. If it was, he didn't know if he'd be able to restrain from hurting someone once his head cleared. "Hey, whoever's out there, joke's over." he grumbled, hitting the heel of one hand against the plexiglass. It rattled a bit but nothing more. "HEY!" he barked, knocking again with both hands this time.
A high-pitched alarm squealed from a small box affixed to the outside of the wall, accompanied shortly by a distant clattering and frantic muttering. As he watched, a door swung open and a yellow scorchio with impossibly large eyes hurried in, skidding to a stop and goggling at him.
"You fool! Youve zet off ze alarm!!" he squawked, virtually LEAPING toward the enclosure and fumbling with the buttons wildly. "Oh no oh no oh no...." he chanted to himself, trying again and again. "Zees is not goot. Not goot at all!" After a moment of not being able to silence the alarm, he turned and loped hurriedly out of the room, disappearing through the doorway he had come through for a moment and then returning, dragging something with him. Glitz squinted, trying to make it out. He was still a bit groggy and it took him a moment to recognize that the scorchio was scuttling back with Karma in tow.
Her head lulled limply to the side and she looked to be very soundly asleep. His hopes that this had been a prank began to shrivel and be replaced with confusion and terror. What the hell was going on? As the scorchio approached, he withdrew a small apparatus from his pocket, clutching it in one hand as he dragged her with the other.
"You've cauzed enuff trouble, yes?" the scorchio asked him indirectly. "Zloth will be here any moment becauze of you and my experimentz haff been cut short! Now back away from ze door and zere will be no trouble." he gave the air a jab with the device he held, making it emit a few sparks. Knowing he was too out-of-it to challenge the scorchio even if he had wanted to, Glitz obediently stepped backward. A tazer being jabbed into his chest didn't sound like it would help his headache much, after all. The scorchio keyed in the access code to the cage, a bit more successfully than his attempt to key in the code to silence the alarm and drew open the door, dragging Karma inside behind him.
When she was safely laying on the wood chips, he hurried out again, slamming the door shut and racing to a nearby table to pretend to be busy with something else even as approaching footsteps from outside drew nearer and the labroatory door suddenly exploded open, revealing a flustered Dr. Sloth.
"Ahh, Doktar! I vuz just about to call you and---" the alien scientist ignored the scorchio, storming across the room to quickly punch in a sequence that would silence the blaring alarm. After a short pause, everything fell almost disturbingly quiet as the evil doctor turned to the professor, his fists clenching and unclenching.rhythmically.
"I believe we went over this, Professor." he growled. "Didn't I expressly SAY to contact me as soon as they had awakened??"
"Yez....yez you did, Doktar...!" the scorchio agreed hurriedly. "But I didn't want to dizturb you, zir....and only one haz avakened after all!" he added hurriedly, cowering as Sloth advanced on him, seizing a beaker and throwing it to the floor scant inches in front of the scorchio's feet.
"I honestly don't know why I keep you." he sneered. "I have important matters that need attending and I can't drop what I'm doing every time one of you goddamned idiots sets off an alarm." he sighed, looking at the scattering of glass shards on the floor and then back at his assistant. "Clean that up." he ordered. The professor quickly dropped to his knees and began gathering the glass up with his paws as Sloth turned his attention to the enclosure.
The techo, frankly, didn't know what to make of his current situation. He had heard of Dr. Frank Sloth on many occasions. He was a household name in Neopia, really, and was talked of badly by almost everyone. But he had never actually seen the man for himself...and now, as he found himself almost face-to-face with the mad doctor, he was spellbound.
"Well...awake, I see." Sloth smirked. "Confused?" Glitz found he could give no reply and simply continued to stare. "Hrmmm....apparently techos get less intelligent as well as uglier when they get older." he quipped, chuckling at his own joke. The frosty-maned techo gave him no reaction and remained frozen. Dr. Sloth narrowed his eyes a bit. "No doubt you wonder why you're here." he said, leisurely pacing in front of the plexiglass enclosure.
"H---How did you---" he began, tentatively finding his voice again.
"Capture you?" Sloth interrupted. "Mild tranquilizers." he informed him matter-of-factly. "Though I suppose I ought to adjust their potency." he chuckled. "You've been out, as far as I know, for the better part of two days. Strange....the darts, on average, only render our other subjects unconscious for a few hours." A smile curled his lips. "It seems I have much to learn about your adult forms....but no matter. There is plenty of time for that. I'm sure you and your mate will prove to be more than adequate subjects."
Dr. Death felt a hot flush rise in his cheeks upon Karma being referred to as his "mate", but said nothing on the subject. His love life wasn't the issue here.
"Why us?" he asked, his anger beginning to seep out from where it had been hiding and make itself evident. "There must be millions of neopets and you had to take us?? Karma's not even a---"
"You DO realize, of course, that even if I had taken one of them, they'd be saying the exact same thing right now." Sloth smirked and then raised his voice to a mockingly high pitch "Why me, why me?? Its not fair!!" he squealed and then burst into peals of laughter. The techo leered at the doctor, his awe at being nearly nose-to-nose with the Evil Dr. Frank Sloth evaporating as quickly as it had overtaken him. "Pleasantries aside, whether you'd like to or not, you are taking part in a study I'm performing." Sloth continued. "Cooperating and surviving should be your two main concerns at the moment....they're what will earn you your freedom when I've learned all I need to."
"And what if I say no?" Glitz asked, trembling in outrage. Sloth scrutinized the techo disinterestedly through the plexiglass wall.
"Well, that would make things difficult, wouldn't it?" the doctor said cryptically. "I'll inform you...." he trailed off. "Dear me, I've not gotten your name, have I?" There was a pregnant pause between the two of them. "Well, it doesn't really matter." Sloth shrugged. "I'll inform you that we don't destroy pets here. Any pet that has died has done it of their own accord."
"Their own accord." Glitz repeated icily.
"Again, not here." Sloth interrupted. "They don't die here and never will. Too many questions would be asked and I'd have Neopia's law forces, such as they are, crawling all over me in no time. But we DO have some cases...." he trailed off, waiting for the techo to ask him to continue. When Glitz didn't humor him, he continued on his own. "We have some cases where pets that have been in our care have....well...they've been unable to handle themselves after all that's been done to them. Silly beasts."
"So you're saying they've committed suicide after you've mutated them and let them go, then. Is that what you're telling me?" Glitz felt his molars grind together in anger as he said this.
"You said it, not me. All that matters is that its not happened while they've been here." Sloth smirked. "You see, while Neopia's laws say that I can't kill or maim you, they say nothing about testing and detaining. Aren't loopholes grand? Though it would seem that sometimes one doesn't need to kill pets to get a bad reputation." His smirk drew itself into a large toothy grin as he noted the fire in Dr. Death's eyes. "Did I strike a nerve, son?" he inquired.
"Shut up." the techo hissed.
"My people and I have been watching you for the past couple of days." the doctor continued. "You work in the pound, my sources say." he stepped closer to the glass until the tip of his pointy nose brushed against it. "Not very well-liked either. You see, that was the crucial factor, really. We couldn't very well make off with an upstanding Neopian citizen and have their absense be noticed in minutes. I highly doubt you'll be missed much during your 'visit' with us. Or even if you never came back at all...."
"SHUT UP!!" he snapped, his voice sounding dry and brittle in the silence of the laboratory. Behind him he heard a muffled mewl and a dry scratching and he turned his attention away from Sloth, watching as Karma slowly began to come awake, her eyelids fluttering.
"Ahh, she joins us." Sloth remarked, watching as the tree frog roused herself. Glitz abandoned his "chat" with the doctor to kneel beside her and help her up.
"Glitz......?" she asked woozily. "Where...."
"Not somewhere good." he told her. "Don't panic."
"Panic?" she groaned, squinting in the light. "About what?"
"Professor..." Sloth ordered, never taking his eyes off of the caged duo. There was a musical tinkling as the scorchio dropped the handful of shards he had been picking up and raced to the doctor's side.
"Yez zir?" he inquired, wringing his hands.
"Prepare the ray and one of our subjects. I'll return shortly." he informed the neopet as he left the laboratory in a whisper of his black robe. When he was gone, the scorchio turned to the two captives and assumed a thoughtful look as it looked first at Glitz and then at Karma.
"You." he said flatly, pointing at the techo as he retrieved the same device he had threatened Glitz with earlier when he had returned Karma to the enclosure from his pocket. "Come along now." he said authoritatively, reaching for the access keypad. "Don't make zis harder zan it haz to be...." He kept one bulbous eye on Glitz for any sign of uprising. The yellow techo, however, had moodily resigned himself for the moment. What was the point in trying to make an escape when Sloth likely had hundreds of guards? Plus, he doubted it would help the situation much if he WAS caught....especially since Sloth had inadvertantly agreed to let them go if they both cooperated.
"What's going on...?" Karma asked, coming a bit more awake and clinging to the rumpled lapels of Dr. Death's labcoat. "Who's that guy?" she asked, starting to sound afraid. He noticed for the first time that the ends of her hair were singed and that she smelled faintly of smoke. What had the scorchio been doing to her before bringing her back in such a hurry, he wondered? The professor entered the confine and lightly touched the tazer to the back of Glitz's neck, making him jolt and cry out.
"Come now." the scorchio ordered. "Let'z move!" Glitz favored the pushy neopet with a glare and then turned back to Karma.
"I'll be back soon, I guess..." he muttered, taking her hands in his own and gently unhooking them from his labcoat.
"Where're you going?" Karma asked, eyes wide and shining. He didn't answer as he got to his feet and the scorchio gave him a shove, making him stumble a bit. "Where are you taking him???" she demanded of the bug-eyed professor. When he, too, refused to answer, she struggled to stand, falling once and landing falsely on her left wrist, whimpering as it twisted a bit.
Just as she managed to stumble to her feet and lurch forward a few steps, the door to the enclosure swung shut and the electric lock's latch clicked into place, trapping her, as she uselessly pounded a fist against the transparent wall. As she watched, the scorchio took a strap out of another coat pocket and made a loose loop out of it, tossing it neatly over the techo's head and pulling it snug around his throat.
"That's not necessary, damn you." she heard him say indignantly. "I'm not a---hurk!!" he was cut off as the scorchio yanked the strap tight with a sharp jerk of his arm. He reached up, attempting to hook his thumbs under the strap to loosen it to no avail. After a moment, the scorchio let up on the tension on the strap and allowed him to breathe again.
"Ze first thing you vill learn iz not to talk back, yez?" the professor said mildly. "Ve don't much care for inzubordinatez." he gave the makeshift noose a short tug and began walking, the humiliated techo in tow as he led him into the experimentation quarters. Karma watched helplessly, tears streaming down her face as they disappeared behind the door and it closed slowly behind them. She trembled heavily in mingled misery and terror as she was left alone in the meager light and stood quietly for a few moments to see if they would return. When there was no sign of anyone, she retreated away from the side of the enclosure and approached what served as the bed, taking up one of the pillows and hugging it tightly against her chest as she sank into a huddling position in the corner, crying softly.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Rose was never one to complain when things didn't go her way, but this was getting to be a little much as she sat at the edge of the desk, trying to breathe shallowly so that she wouldn't have to smell the creature beside her. The temp that the faerie agency had sent was a monstrous human woman both in temper and in size that called herself simply, Ms. Whorley. No first name, accent on the "ley", she had told Rose. At first, Rose had done her best to be polite, but found that Ms. Whorley grated on her nerves horribly. Before long, she found herself wondering simply how long it had been since the woman had last taken a bath.
As the afternoon had worn on, Rose learned that the woman had, long ago, run the pound on her own before turning her position over to Dr. Death when she had lost interest in it. Speaking of the doctor, the scout they had sent to his house had turned up only a rather irate and hungry doglefox in the backyard, but no sign of the techo himself. Having an idea, Rose had looked up Karma's number in the pound records and tried her place, wondering if he had spent the night there. Instead, she had gotten Karma's cybunny who had informed her that the last he had seen of her was when she had gotten dressed and left to meet Dr. Death at the pound. Confused, she had decided to leave things where they were for now and worry about it further after her shift was over.
"You got a vending machine around here, horsie?" Whorley grunted. Rose shook her head, afraid to inhale to speak, lest she fill her lungs with the woman's pungeant body odor. If nothing else, it seemed to have kept most of the abandoners away for the day. "RASVAR!!!" she squawked, making the pink uni cringe. A very tired-looking green blumaroo poked its head out from around the corner of the desk, looking up at its owner. The luster had long gone out of its black eyes and it appeared to be much older than it really was. Ms. Whorley leaned to one side, fishing into her pocket with meaty fingers and withdrawing a handful of neopoints. "Go get me some nachos and a neocola." she commanded the neopet. "Step on it!"
"Right away, mum." Rasvar replied quietly as it bounced out of the pound on the tip of its tail. Rose watched him exit into the bright neopian afternoon and found herself envious of the bedraggled creature as she rested her head on her hooves, looking wistfully at the clock. The first thing she would do, she decided, was take a long bubble bath to relax....and after that, she'd take a walk over to Dr. Death's and fish Snap out of his backyard, take him back to her place and at least give the poor doglefox a meal.
She wondered for the umpteenth time just where he had gotten to....he and Karma just couldn't have up and disappeared. She ran through her mental checklist of options again, crossing them off one by one as they had been ruled out. Her first assumption, that they had gotten too friendly with one another and spent the night together seemed to have fallen through. Maybe they had gotten lost...the land in the Haunted Woods, after all, was very uncertain and the trees seemed to have a bad habit of changing position. But then again, she knew the doctor better than to go wandering off half-cocked with no map.
Her puzzling was cut short as Rasvar returned, a neocola and a bag of nachos in his arms and balancing a rainbow doughnut between his ears. Ms. Whorley perked up instantly and held out her hands to accept the food as the neopet delivered it. Rose winced in disgust as the bag was torn open and the temporary poundkeeper began to loudly crunch on the corn chips inside.
She heard the door open again and looked up eagerly, while not particularly eager for another incoming adoptee, hoping for a temporary distraction from her new co-worker. As she watched, a blue cybunny and blue chomby both lumbered inside.
"Hey anybody seen a frog around here?" Yahoo called out impatiently as he and Chomby approached Rose's corner of the desk. "Ya know, brown hair, yellow, likes to hang around grouchy guys with bottlebrush hair...."
"Karma's not turned up, I'm afraid." Rose informed him regretfully. The two neopets looked disappointed.
"I don't understand....why'd she just disappear?" Chomby asked worriedly. "Do you think she doesn't like us anymore, Yahoo?" he gasped. "I don't wanna go back to being in a cage...."
"I bet you dubloons to omelettes that she followed him home last night." the cybunny grinned mischeviously, nudging the chomby in the ribs.
"No she didn't." Rose chimed in. "Nobody's at the doctor's house either."
"Then where the heck did she get to??" Yahoo demanded to know, crossing his paws over his chest. "Hmph....she could have left a note or something."
"I'm hungry." Chomby complained as his stomach rumbled. "We haven't eaten all day and she hasn't been home to make us breakfast."
"And.....WHAT....is that?" Yahoo asked, pointing at Ms. Whorley as she continued to feed, taking no notice of the two.
"That's the temp..." Rose sighed.
"Geez, and people thought Dr. Death was scary??" the cybunny asked, his brows shooting upward in surprise.
"I'm starting to think this is serious, you two." the uni informed them. "But I wouldn't get all riled about it yet. For now, I think its important that you take care of one another until we find out where the two of them went. Do you think you can do that?"
"Not a problem." Yahoo shrugged. "I was basically taking care of myself before Ashley got rid of me anyway."
"Well, I highly doubt Karma 'got rid of' either of you, so let's not jump to conclusions." Rose assured him. "In the meantime, I have work to do. My shift isn't quite over yet and I don't want to be caught sitting around." the cybunny and chomby exchanged a look and then turned and left without a word. Rose winced as Whorley belched wetly beside her and looked at the clock again. Five more minutes....just five.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Sloth sat idly at the control panel, waiting patiently as three mutant kacheeks and a mutant chia scuttled busily about the laser platform, affixing restraints to Glitz's ankles and wrists. His tail nervously twitched back and forth along the backs of his legs as they did so. They had stripped him of his labcoat and charcoal-colored shirt, at least being respectful enough to leave him his black slacks...thank lord for small favors. He looked distastefully at his shackles.
"They're just a precaution." the mad doctor chuckled, noticing the techo's look of utter exasperation.
"So I don't fall down and hit my head while you're frying my guts...how generous." the techo growled as the last restraint was pulled tight. He tried them experimentally and found that he was held quite helpless against the metal slab the laser was aimed at. Sloth grinned, his fangs glinting in the flourescent light of the laboratory.
"All set, daddy-o!" the mutant chia burbled, hopping down from the platform and leaving a residue of brown as it went. The two mutated kacheeks followed after their brother as they all waddled out of harm's way.
"Good. Goggles on, everyone....or off, I really don't care." he told the rest of the laboratory as he took up a pair of black goggles from the console and affixed them over his eyes.
"That's in case I explode, right?" Dr. Death inquired nastily.
"Such a pessimist. Honestly." Sloth said, feigning hurt.
"Ready when you are, Doctor." Wizlow informed him from where she stood nearby, no longer in her soiled labcoat but clad, instead, in a dark trenchcoat reminiscent of Sloth's black cape and robe. She wasn't attempting to mimic the doctor, but like him, she enjoyed dressing in dark colors. In her hands she held a clipboard and a pen, ready to take notes on the results. Sloth poised a finger over the button that would fire the ray, fixing his eyes on the techo.
With no warning given, he quickly pressed the button, immediately bringing the mechanics of the massive ray gun to life with a high-pitched humming for a split second before it emitted a blast of powerful light at the platform, temporarily blinding all present. As the smoke and light faded, everyone eagerly looked to see what had been done to the captive techo.
Glitz, bewildered, the light from the blast still fading from his eyes, coughed weakly as a tendril of smoke curled from his mouth and didn't hear the first murmurs of approval from those in attendance. Sloth looked at him bemusedly, nodding faintly and Wizlow's pen scratched wildly on her clipboard.
"Squick? Yiff? Care to show our subject his new look?" Sloth asked as the two mutant kacheeks instantly sprang into action, scurrying across the floor and out of sight. New look? What was he talking about, Glitz wondered. The two mutants returned shortly, carrying between the two of them, a large mirror which they bumbled up the steps of the platform and set up in front of him. Glitz looked blearily into it, not sure what he was supposed to see at first.
And then he noticed it. His yellow pelt had been replaced with a creamy white color, adorned here and there with orchid-colored stripes. He blinked and then blinked again, trying to confirm that it really was him. He bit back the groan in his throat at how utterly ridiculous he looked....like some sort of malformed circus-clown.
"Ms. Pendragon, make a note please. So far the ray seems to be having the same effect on adult neopets as on the children." Sloth said loudly, focusing his gaze on the techo. "But we're far from done yet....so we'll see." Far from done yet....Glitz didn't like the sound of that much. "Clear the platform." Sloth announced as Squick and Yiff hurried back down the stairs, clumsily carrying the mirror with them. When they were gone, he punched the button again. Glitz's already-burned skin tingled painfully as the ray's light engulfed him again. Coupled with the burning, there was a shifting feeling within himself and a deep-seated crackling as he cried out.
"Ewww....talk about falling out of the ugly tree and hitting every branch...." Squick remarked from his perch near Wizlow's feet. The green being scowled down at the mutated neopet and, taking her clipboard in both hands, brought it down on the kacheek's head as hard as she could. Squick made a sound like a strangled question mark and scurried away.
"Ms. Pendragon....." Sloth said warningly.
"Sorry." she shrugged with a smirk and then turned her attention to the techo. "Mutant this time. Nice. He looks like Beethoven." she commented, snickering.
"Let's not mock the test subject." Sloth told her. "There's time for that later." he added. Glitz was tempted to ask for the mirror again, though he was almost certain he wouldn't recieve it. He felt terrible and, knowing what mutated techos looked like, supposed he looked to match how he felt. "Clear the deck." the doctor said sharply. The techo was engulfed in the ray's light a third time, this one feeling as though a thousand knives were piercing his flesh from every angle. Helpless to stop it, he threw his head back and screamed.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Karma didn't know how long she sat alone in the dark. As the poison from the tranquilizer dart left her system and she became more awake, it occurred to her how frightened she was of this place. The fact that she was wearing nothing but the lavender dress made her feel even more vulnerable. "Bastards didn't even have the decency to kidnap me when I had jeans on." she thought bitterly to herself, drawing her knees close to her chest. She started to wonder if she was ever going to see Glitz again as the minutes ticked past. The door to the experimentation room must have been thick enough to bar out any sounds because she hadn't heard a thing since they had taken him away.
She guessed about an hour had gone by and, just as she felt herself about to be overcome by tears again, the door banged open and Sloth, the professor, and a procession of the others who had been in assembly for Glitz's testing began to filter out of the room. She bolted upright, eyeing the crowd hopefully but didn't see him among them. Instead, the professor led a defeated-looking gray creature toward the enclosure and opened the door. Karma gasped as she looked at it, tensing herself. Was this part of their "experiment", she wondered? Were they going to see how long she'd survive with this...THING in the cage with her??
"Two pelt changes and otherwise no noticable effect." Wizlow informed Dr. Sloth.
"I'm pleased." the doctor informed her. "In some ways, exactly the same as the younger neopets and other ways different. We'll continue tomorrow with the female." As Sloth strode out, followed by his crew, Karma locked her eyes on the monster they had put in the cage with her. It didn't seem to be outwardly aggressive at the moment and simply stood, its back to her as it groaned and rubbed at its face.
And then it began to turn toward her. She drew in a sharp gasp, scrambling backwards as it faced her, its bulbous black and red eyes regarding her maliciously as it swung its spiked club of a tail. From its mouth protruded a long purple forked tongue and dangerous-looking spines sprouted from its upper arms and haunches, tearing through the tattered remains of what had been pants at some point. And now it lumbered toward her.
"....get away from me...." she said in a ragged whisper, shrinking against the wall as far as she could.
"Karma...?" it asked. Though raspy, the voice was painfully familiar. Still trembling, she peered at the creature warily. "Karma, what are you cringing at?" the monster asked. She looked harder this time....noticing the mane of gray-white hair. But no...! It couldn't be! "Its just me..." the creature said, sounding hurt.
"Glitz...?" she squeaked breathlessly. The mutant nodded.
"They screwed me up royally, didn't they?" he muttered, shambling across the floor and squinting to try and see his reflection in the faint sheen of the walls. He couldn't see himself clearly, but the twisted outline of his body staring back at him was answer enough...that and, younger, he had experience with what a mutant techo looked like. He tried to summon the energy to be enraged, but found that he was too exhausted. He hurt all over, had been humiliated beyond belief, and right now felt that he could sleep for weeks.
"Oh my god....Glitz...." she whimpered, her eyes enormous. "Wha--what did they do to you??"
"I don't know." he sighed, sinking against the wall and wincing as his back rubbed against the plexiglass, irritating his burnt skin. "They've got some sort of laser in there that changes pets. I think I blacked out the fourth time they blasted me with it. God only knows how many times I got it. When I came around they were untying me.
"What are they trying to do?" the frog asked, tears prickling at her eyes again as she blinked them back. "And why us??"
"I already asked those same questions...." the techo muttered, tentatively touching a taloned hand to his forearm and drawing it back with a hiss. "We're test subjects, apparently. Sloth wants to see what the laser does to adult neopets."
"But I'm not a neopet!" she shot back defensively.
"I tried to tell him that too..." he grumbled. "Damned if they'd let me get a complete sentence out." His malformed and ridged eyes seemed to collapse in on themselves in tired resignation.
"So now what?" Karma asked, at a loss.
"I don't know." he replied. "I just don't know." He slumped forward, his club-like tail thrumming against the floor as he thought amid his exhaustion. There was a long pause between them and then he scooted forward, taking the corner of one of the rumpled blankets in the corner and pulling it toward him, draping it over his malformed body. "I'm going to sleep." he told her flatly.
"Sleep? Glitz, how the hell can you sleep??" she demanded to know. "What if they want to kill us??"
"I'm tired, Karma." he replied simply, closing his eyes and laying gingerly on his side, wincing as the bed of wood chips pressed against his tender skin. She bit her tongue, feeling the rest of what she wanted to say dying in her throat as she realized screaming at him wasn't going to help. Even if Sloth DID mean to kill the both of them, she doubted there was much she or he could do about it.
"Alright..." she whispered, forcing herself to lean her back against the wall and curl up, trying to at least make herself comfortable even if she knew she wasn't going to be able to sleep. In fact, she didn't think she'd sleep for a very long time. She watched as the mutant techo shifted position a few times and then, with a deep breath, fell into a sound sleep. She half-wondered if she'd calm herself better if she cuddled up beside him, but was unable to bring herself to as she eyed the clusters of spines on his shoulders and haunches.
As she laid on her side, curling herself into as tight of a ball as she was able and burying her snout in the flannel of the blankets and overwhelming scent of pine, a door opened somewhere nearby, making her freeze as she listened. Footsteps approached and stopped outside of their prison. There was a long pause and then a beep and a click as the door was opened. Karma lay still, willing whoever it was to go away. Hadn't they done enough? She remained perfectly still as the person scuffled through the shavings, not daring to move her head. Maybe if whoever it was thought that they were both asleep they would leave.
However, she soon learned that the intruder had no intention of simply going away. Something made of cloth was pressed against her nose as a hand alighted on the back of her head to keep her from pulling away. She tried to gasp, inhaling fumes that were thick and dizzying. As she drew in another breath to cry out, she found that the only sound she could make was a thin ribbon of whisper that squeaked weakly out of her throat. "No not again..." she thought desperately as she felt her awareness slipping away. "Not again, not again, notagainnotagainnotagainnotagain...." the plea became a faint drone in the back of her head as she lost her grip on the world and everything was black once more.
The intruder drew the ether-soaked handkerchief away from her nose when she ceased moving and cast a quick look around the laboratory to ensure he hadn't been seen. He looked warily down at Glitz for a moment to ensure that the techo hadn't awakened. Satisfied, he worked his arms under Karma and began to drag her toward the door of the cage.
"Experiment in moderation....I'll give HIM moderation." he muttered to himself. "Trying to hold back zcience mit hiz ztupid moderation...oh vell. Vhat he doezn't know von't hurt me." The professor smirked, gently closing the cage door behind himself. "Unt now, my little doe, vee shall continue vhere we left off vhen ve were interrupted yezterday, yes?"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Wizlow sat alone in her quarters, having changed out of her trenchcoat in favor of something more comfortable as she lounged at her computer desk clad in a baggy black T-Shirt enscripted with the pleasantry "If I Throw A Stick, Will You Leave?" and a pair of faded jean shorts as she waited for her reboot to finish so she could log the notes she had taken for the day. She had pulled her long red hair back into a simple ponytail to keep it out of her face and drummed her fingers impatiently on the spacebar of the keyboard.
"Come on..." she grumbled at the machine as it went through its customary whirs and clicks. After what seemed forever, the menu bar appeared and she eagerly double-clicked on her WordAccurate program, opening her latest log of notes and casting a quick look at the paper she had had in her clipboard while they had experimented on the techo. She keyed in his basic biological stats directly below the finished notes of a skeith that they had taken into custody earlier that month that had been released a week ago.
"Two pelt changes...." she said aloud as she transcribed the ray's results, her fingers working quickly over the keys. "Striped...and....mutant." She paused, flipping the sheet over and peering at the backside, keying in that, after the two color-changes, no effect had been noticed. It was a bit strange that seven more blasts hadn't brought out even a bit of a change, but everything had flatlined. The techo seemed to be just as weak as he had been when he had come in. Blood tests and nerve analysis showed no change in his strength or agility.
She wondered if the ray was to blame or if, as neopets got older, they developed a resistance to being altered. Eh...it wasn't her concern. Maybe Sloth's ray was shooting blanks or something. She didn't doubt it....lately her colleague had become too full of himself for his own good and it would serve him right if something like that were to go awry. Damned lab ray seemed to be all he talked about lately after his last attempt to take over Neopia had failed.
Wizlow finished her notes, saved them, and got up, crossing the room to fish a can of soda out of the small refridgerator on her dresser. As she popped the tab on the can and took a drink, she pondered how to draw Frank away from his obsession for a bit. To say she was enamoured with him was a bit of an understatement...and why shouldn't she be? He literally WAS the last man on earth as far as she was concerned.
Wizlow Pendragon and Dr. Frank Sloth had been the sole survivors of a mass culling of their race when their home planet had collided with its sun. Those who had been fortunate enough to make it to the escape pods before impact had been launched into space in kamikaze directions, some being shot directly into the sun's massive heat and others being sent to tumble through space until their oxygen ran out. Wizlow and Sloth had been among the last of the escapees and had, instead of fighting over the escape pod they had come upon, simply agreed to share it.
Fortune had been with them that day and the two had, after three days of drifting, found themselves pulled into the gravitational field of a new world. One that hadn't yet been populated, but that teemed with possibility. In its infant days, Neopia had been a savage world, ensnared in thick tangles of untamed foliage and rolling stormclouds that never rained but thundered constantly with the threat to. Frank and Wizlow had clung to one another's company as they had more or less claimed the planet as their home.
As time went on, Sloth had become more and more interested with the possibility of other creatures existing on the lively husk of a world and had taken to experimenting on the DNA structures of the various plants, attempting to anthropormorphize them. Wizlow, having no interest in playing God, had sat out for the mostpart until she rarely spoke to Sloth at all and saw him only when the two of them regrouped for dinner each night. She felt they had grown further apart when the first of the creatures they had come to call "neopets" began to make their appearance and Frank had instantly begun chasing after them to learn all he could.
The sudden population was still a mystery to her. Having gotten ahold of a copy of The Last Tome Of The Jubjubs, she had read a long-winded belief that the creatures, one day, were created by the mighty god Adamices and goddess Donnamakite as a gift to the barren world and in hopes that it would grow and prosper. What a load of rubbish, she thought. Whatever the reason, Sloth had drifted beyond her reach as time had worn on....and even today, though he still showed her a passing glint of attention here and there, she felt as though there was a wedge between them. One she meant to remove by any means necessary.
She drank off another swallow of her soda, returning to her computer with the intent of closing out her word program and then retiring to her desk to draw until her appointed bedtime. However, as she took her seat, something occurred to her. In habit, she kept her favorite pens in the pocket of her labcoat...the same labcoat that usually hung on the hook behind her door but that had acquired a purple stain earlier and she had wadded up and thrown into a corner of the laboratory in a fit of anger at Squick's stupidity earlier when she had been unable to change immediately upon Frank's suggestion she do so.
"Nrrghh....Wizlow, you IDIOT!" she cursed herself, getting up again and angrily looking for her shoes and at the same time, grabbing up her trenchcoat from where it laid in a rumpled mass near the computer and hurriedly pulled it on. She never ceased to amaze herself with how she could be graced with such a vast knowledge of science and technology, but forget something as simple as removing her pen from her pocket as she seized her black sneakers out from beneath the bed and pulled them on, storming out the door and down the hallway without bothering to lock her room behind her. Everybody knew enough to stay out of her quarters, after all.
The hallway was deserted and darkened as most everybody had gone to their respective quarters for the night, the only stragglers being a few maintenance grundos and techos that scuttled through the dark, checking the lights and wiring to ensure everything was in smooth working order. They cringed as she walked past, paying them no mind as she mounted the staircase that led to the second floor. Upstairs, everything was eerily silent as she rounded a corner and pushed open the door to the testing quarters, going immediately to the corner she had left her labcoat it.
It still laid there in a rumpled heap, for which she was grateful as she grabbed it up and shook it out to get rid of the dust moozies it had gathered throughout the day. As she draped it over her shoulder, ready to leave, she paused, swearing she had heard something. After a moment, deciding it had to have been her imagination, she moved to go again. But then....there it was again, the same distant sound that sounded like the brief humming of a generator. As quickly as it had started, it stopped, leaving her confused.
She wondered if some of the lab staff might be doing some late-night work, but then dismissed the notion, knowing that once Sloth called it quits for the night, no one questioned him and immediately stopped what they were doing. Puzzled, she walked slowly toward the doorway leading to the holding quarters and put her hand around the knob. It turned easily in her fingers and she drew it open a crack, peering inside. Everything seemed quiet. The tables stood stoically in the darkness and, from where she stood, she could see the unmoving hulk of one of the test subjects as they slumbered.
BZZAP!!
This time she was sure of what she had heard as she pointedly walked across the holding quarters. Somebody was violating the rules and about to get in big trouble, she decided with some degree of satisfaction, as she neared the door to the testing facility and eased it open as quietly as she was able. What awaited her on the other side, however, made her stop short and gawk. Strapped to the ray platform, slumping and unconscious in her bonds, was the female test subject. Strapped, Wizlow could have dealt with....unconscious, again, not a big deal....but what struck her, was the fact that, all over the creature's body were large red welts, blackened and burnt at the edges where the ray had struck her. The air was thick with the smell of cooking flesh and small tendrils of smoke rose from her body.
Never, in all of her career working for Sloth, had she seen a creature respond to the lab ray as this one was. It seemed to be having no effect on her at all and rather was repeatedly wounding her each time it struck her. She drew in a gasp as the room filled itself with a blinding flash of light, momentarily dazzling her eyes as she blinked wildly against the colorful spots blocking her vision.
"You ztupid girl!!" a familiar voice screeched. When Wizlow's sight cleared, she winced as she noted a new crater in the yellow female's skin, smoking faintly and she swore she could hear the yellow hide crackling from where she stood. "Ztupid, ztupid girl!!!" the voice repeated. She froze for a moment, positive that the angry words were directed at her....but then relaxed as she watched the stout form of Sloth's lead professor storm toward the platform and hold an analysis wand up to Karma's skin, sweeping it slowly back and forth to check her vital stats. It blipped to show its results...apparently not giving what the scorchio had hoped to see. "Vhy won't you change, eh??" He put his hands on his hips as though expecting the unconscious female to reply. "Feh! I can vait az long as you can!" he announced, storming back to the panel.
Wizlow, though she considered herself to be evil on many levels, never had a stomach for suffering or torture. Despite the fact that Karma was unconscious, it was hard to watch all the same. Was the professor really that loopy that he couldn't see that the ray was having no effect other than wounding her? She didn't know WHY it wasn't effecting her, but the fact remained that no changes were taking place other than the burnt gouges in Karma's skin.
Another surge of light filled the room, making her compulsively bite her tongue as Karma was blasted again. Wizlow fought the urge to gag as another burn appeared on her skin and she made herself withdraw her head and close her eyes. Her first impulse was to storm in and beat the offending scorchio senseless with his own tail, but decided it would accomplish nothing. She might stop him tonight, but she couldn't be playing bodyguard to the test subjects 24/7.....and she knew that Sloth fully intended on continuing the tests. It would take him a few days to become satisfied with the fact that Karma wasn't effected by the ray but then he'd want to perform further tests on her.
By the time everything was said and done, in fact, Wizlow doubted much would remain of the yellow being save for a tortured shell of a creature. And that she could not excuse. In the past, the few pets that had been reported as suicides after being released from their testing had bothered her, but she had quickly brushed them off. The idea that this girl would likely die in the laboratory, if not from Sloth's scrutiny then from the professor's insane administrations, struck a sour note with her as she hurriedly crossed the room to a gray box that perched non-intrusively on the wall to the right of the cabinet that housed the extra beakers and microscopes.
She fumbled with the latch a moment before successfully opening it and running her fingers over the series of switches inside of it. In the dim light, she couldn't read the labels beneath them and decided it didn't really matter. The alarm systems all ran on a separate generator in the basement anyway so she wouldn't do terribly much damage as she methodically switched all of them off. She could hear a few protesting beeps from the computer networks in the neighboring rooms as everything fell into inky blackness and there was a dismayed cry from the testing room.
"Vhat?? Vhat iz zis??" the professor demanded to know. "NEIN!!!" he roared. From the enclosure there came a rustling sound as the other subject, the male, awoke.
"Karma...?" he asked in a groggy voice. Wizlow took this as her cue to leave, carefully feeling her way out of the blackened laboratory just as the crashes and angry yelling began from the room where the professor had been "testing" Karma. Not three seconds after she had found the door and slipped outside, the scorchio stormed into the vacant laboratory.
"Of all ze rotten luck!!" he cursed, smacking his elbow smartly on the edge of the table and wincing as he surveyed the black laboratory...or at least tried to.
"Where's Karma?" another voice floated out of the darkness, making him whirl on his heel in the direction of it.
"Vut?? Who'z zere??"
"Where is she?" the voice asked again, sounding lazily impatient. It took the professor a moment to realize that the voice belonged to the other subject who had awakened "What are you doing with her?" he pressed.
"Nngghhh....one shite at a time!!" he growled, realizing that as long as the power was out, it was rather pointless to keep experimenting on Karma. Yet the why of it still nagged at him. WHY did she refuse to change? Stubborn bitch, he thought waspishly to himself as he felt his way back into the testing quarters to retrieve her and put her away for the night.
After a few moments of stumbling and stubbing his toes twice as he found the stairway leading up the ramp to the ray platform, and some difficulty, he had removed Karma and dragged her back into the observation room. Glitz, if he was still awake, didn't give him any problems about depositing Karma back into the enclosure as he made an unceremonious retreat for the evening and punctuated his exit with a loud slam of the laboratory door.
Glitz waited a moment before feeling through the dark slowly on his hands and knees until his palm brushed against the limp flesh of Karma's shoulder. "Karma?" he whispered, giving her a shake. No response. "Karma, come on..." he urged, shaking her a bit harder. When she remained limp, the mutant techo bit his lip worriedly, wincing as his needle-like fangs sank into the flesh....he had forgotten about his transformation.
He worked his arms under her, lifting her into a sitting position and held her a moment, waiting to see if she'd move or make any noise. Growing worried, he wet his palm with the tip of his tongue and held it in front of her mouth, feeling a surge of relief as he felt the warm breeze of her breath wash over his fingers.
"We're going to get out of here." he assured her, lowering his head and nuzzling her a bit, wrinkling his nose at the acrid stench of burnt hair and flesh. "I promise we are." Karma, however, remained soundly unconscious as, out in the hallway, the first angry calls between the maintenance crew were exchanged about the lack of lights.
TBC..............