The Nightmare Begins
There was rain falling on his face. Slowly, his eyes opened. His eyelids were almost stuck together with some substance. He rubbed at them with aching hands. The sky above him was dark and cloudy. He slowly began to get up, his back killing him. Looking around, He noticed he was on the viaduct between the water tower and Lorenzo's house. What happened? Why was he here?
Then it all came back to him in a rush of memories. He had brought Fiona to the water tower... Yet somehow she'd escaped. He had come after her, but even after giving her that drug, she still made it to the top and raised the viaduct... and then... He remembered chasing her around up on the top, he almost had her... But then something struck him square in the chest and he stumbled backwards, and the next thing he knew, he was falling, screaming, knowing it would all end...
Yet here he was, Aureolus Riccardo Belli, alive and more or less well. There was no way he could have survived a fall like that. How am I still alive? He wondered in disbelief. Fiona was more than likely long gone by now. Either Lorenzo finally took her or she had escaped. He hoped that would be the case. There were certain people who were counting on her capture. He had at first planned to kill them both, to kill Lorenzo and Leonardo if he had to... he was going to keep Fiona for himself, use her to recreate him, to give him a son, a son that had what he himself could never hope to attain, to continue the Belli lineage... But that's not what the old man had wanted.
Lorenzo wanted to take her and steal her Azoth to try and discover his "Great Truth"... He wanted to live forever. Not just through his clones, the greedy old bastard wanted to know how to keep himself alive forever. And, of course, he had no intentions of sharing any of this with Leo... by now, he realized, the whole family had fallen apart. Just a bunch of imitations of the same person, fighting each other for their own personal desires. It was all madness.
He realized he'd been letting his mind wander, and knew what he had to do. Now that he was alive, no matter what, he had to get Fiona back. He had to find her, wherever she was. He should have had her... His plan could still work. It would still work. It was all that kept him going.
There it was. Parked right behind one of the old cars- it was Fiona's car. He had gone back in to question Fiona some more, but she claimed her car had never been there in the first place, that it was being repaired. He couldn't prove anything, so he left, getting extremely frustrated. On his way back out to his car, a miracle. Weston had found the soaking piece of paper in the driveway next to his car. If he wouldn't have been staring straight at it, he'd never have noticed it. And it had led him here... to a huge, creepy-looking mansion outside the range of civilization. And he had no doubt that this is where he'd find the girl. He just wanted to get this all over with and return to his family.
He approached the large, adorned oak doors that made the front entrance of the huge house. Seeing no doorbell, he knocked hard on the door. There was no answer. After some time, he put his hand on the big brass handle and pulled on one of the doors. To his surprise, it was unlocked, and swung open quite easily for its massive size. He stuck his head in and looked around. Inside it was completely silent, no sign of movement or noise at all. The room was gigantic, befitting a mansion of this size. Slowly, he stepped through the doorway and walked inside.
The sound of his footsteps echoed as he walked around the impressive foyer. A quick inspection showed that nobody was here. He walked into the center of the room, taking everything in. All the lights were on. She was here... somewhere. Suddenly, he heard a noise to his right, a deep grumbing noise. He looked over to see a large dog, its teeth bared, walking slowly toward him. His wife Anne was a veterinarian, and by now he knew most dog breeds by sight. It was a Japanese breed, that he could tell immediately... an Ainu from the looks of it, a dog seldom seen outside of Japan and similar to the Akita or the Kai, judging by the structure, color, and the curved tail, and it didn't seem too happy with him entering the house. He stopped, seeing movement across the room. There she was. Standing in a doorway on the bottom level was his target. She had started to enter the room, but stopped dead in her tracks when she saw him.
She took one look at the growling dog, then back to him, fear entering her eyes. Quickly, she spun around, going back the way she'd come and slamming the door behind her. He ran toward the doorway, but the dog jumped in front of him, barking loudly and showing even more sharp teeth. He couldn't allow a stupid dog to get in the way of his mission... but how to get past it? He couldn't shoot it, he'd never forgive himself, not to mention the laws he'd be breaking. He sighed, walking slowly toward the dog.
He had stopped at a service station on the way here, and that's what saved him. If there was one thing he knew about dogs, it was that unless they were extremely well-trained, they couldn't resist something that smelled good. Luckily, he still had a half-eaten candy bar that he had stuffed in his pocket, which he started to take out. He remembered something about how chocolate was bad for dogs... but this was his only option. He took it out and showed it to the dog. Slowly, the growling faded away, and the dog sniffed the air, coming toward him. Bingo.
He threw the candy bar, wrapper and all, as hard as he could across the room. The dog raced after it as if it were playing catch. As soon as the dog was far enough away, Weston made a break for the door. He reached the handle and ripped open the door, running into the next room. It was apparently a storage room, as it was lined with shelves filled with different supplies. He noticed a ladder leading up to a wire mesh balcony above him. And there she was, huddled at the end of the balcony. She'd already cornered herself.
And although he hated what he was doing, chasing a poor, terrified girl around... he had to admit, this little game of cat and mouse was more action than he'd had in a long time. He started toward the ladder.