It was something that she was even awake, considering what those people – though that term was of questionable applicability when used for those shitheads – had been doing to her when she'd passed out. The fact that she was even able to move under her own power was also something to be excited about. Given some of the syringes and tools and shit those sickos had been waving around just before they'd put her out, Deborah hadn't even been sure that she was going to wake up at all.

She felt like she was in pretty good shape—not just pretty good considering what had happened, but pretty damn good overall. Whatever had happened during the time that she'd been out, it had given her a tremendous boost in energy. She didn't think that she had ever felt quite this good, except for maybe those times just before recess at school. But that had been a long time ago, back when she was just a kid.

As a scriptwriter, she really didn't get much of a chance to get out and exercise, though that was also partially due to her own sedentary nature. She'd figured that going to Africa would be a good way to broaden her horizons, but she'd never figured on getting captured by a bunch of guys who could give the mad scientist in those old films she liked a run for their money in sheer inventive nastiness. But then, they always said that truth was stranger than fiction.

The fact that her vision was tinted noticeably red and there was a weird feeling beneath her feet – like she was standing on mud, only she was very clearly inside a building – sank in then. Standing back up, she only then really noticed that she had been crouching for some reason. Once she was back on her feet, the feeling like she's been sinking in mud didn't go away. If anything, it got even worse now that she was putting her full weight on her feet.

"What the holy, ever loving, tin plated fuck?" This was in response to looking down at her feet and finding that they were, for all intents and purposes, on fire.

Or maybe made of fire, since she couldn't actually feel any heat radiating from them at all. Looking up towards her legs, Deborah found that they were in the same condition as her feet. When she looked at her hands, it was to find that the same effect had been repeated there, and on her arms as well. Reaching up to touch her face, Deborah found that she couldn't tell whether or not her face or head had been affected the same way as the rest of her.

When someone else came into the room, tinted red in her vision like everything else, Deborah paused in her self-examination. There was now a man standing in the room with her, but she couldn't see much more than his basic shape through the red haze. She almost thought he was wearing a suit.

"Hey- whoa," the man—definitely a man from the sound of his voice—said.

Then he started to change, shredding the suit he'd been wearing and becoming some kind of giant beetle creature. Deborah was a bit more surprised than she would have been under anything that resembled normal circumstances, but considering what had just happened to her, this didn't shock her all that much.

"Are you all right over there?" he asked.

"I-" She paused, getting severely annoyed for some reason. "I'm on fire, you idiot! Do I look like I'm all right?!"

"No, but you're starting to sound like it," the beetle-man said, chuckling heartily, which only pissed her off more. "If you're well enough to complain about what's happened to you, then you're well enough to walk. Now get to it."

Deborah gritted her teeth, angry for no real reason. The buggy-guy was trying to help her, irritating as he may very well have been. There wasn't any cause for her to be snapping at him. Looking down at her feet, she found that the standing-in-mud feeling she had gotten was coming from the molten remains of the metal that she had been standing on. She'd known that her feet were on fire, but to see that the flames were hot enough to melt solid metal… that was just strange.

"Well, are you coming or not?"

"I'll be there. Keep your shell on, beetle-breath," she snapped.

"Beetle-breath," he repeated, chuckling. "That's one I haven't heard before."

Rolling her eyes, Deborah continued forward. The sound and feel of metal melting beneath her feet as she walked made her slightly uneasy, but she took a deep breath and tried to ignore it. Moving across the melting floor – the floor that she was causing to melt – Deborah made it to where the buggy-guy was waiting for her.

"All right, that's good," he said, and as he reached out to her she got the impression that he'd be grinning if his mouth worked that way. "Now, if you'll just come along with- Jesus fuck!"

That was said in response to her grabbing his hand. Now he leapt back, probably burned by contact with her skin. Her skin that was on goddamn fire!

"Having problems, beetle-breath?"

"The fuck kind of Zoanoid are you?!" he demanded, looking at his hand and then back at her. "I've had my body engineered specifically to resist high temperatures! Maybe not as high as Darzerb can stand—" Beetle-breath seemed to be talking to himself now, so Deborah just stood, listening and watching and wondering just who the hell he was talking about. "But that actually hurt."

"Hey, beetle-breath, are you going to help me out here, or are you just going to stand there kvetching and talking to people who obviously aren't there?"

"Hyper Zoanoids don't kvetch, flame face," beetle-breath said, sounding somewhere between amused and annoyed. "Just hang tight. I'm going to go get Darzerb, and then he'll get you out of there; just try not to melt the floor any worse, hear me?" he tossed over his shoulder as he started out of the room again.

Beetle brained little bastard, she grumbled internally. Okay, so he'd been probably three or four feet taller than she, and just about twice as broad, but she stood by what she had said.

When said little bastard came back into the room leading some kind of huge, gray rhino-looking guy, Deborah abruptly decided that nothing else she saw would ever surprise her again. First there had been the kidnapping itself; she hadn't known just why anyone would want to kidnap a TV scriptwriter like her, unless it was some crazed fan who had a problem with the way one of her plots had turned out, but none of the people – if they really could be called "people" anymore given what they could do – struck her as the kind who would be caught watching daytime TV. Maybe they did; maybe on whatever off-time they had, they would all gather around their various television sets and watch soaps. She didn't think it was really all that plausible, but in a place this weird, who really knew what was plausible anymore?

XxXxX

The fact that this… bizarre new Zoanoid – a female Zoanoid no less – had been able to burn his hand didn't make him as annoyed as someone who knew him would have thought. This girl had probably been one of the Hyper Zoanoid prototypes that the tech guys were working on. Having actual female Hyper Zoanoids around would be kind of interesting, though he suspected that some of the guys would be more interested in that kind of thing than he was. They were the ones who spent every spare moment chasing skirts, after all.

Once Darzerb had gotten a good hold on her, picking the lady up so her feet wouldn't melt any more holes in the floor – something that he would have done himself if she hadn't burned him when he tried to touch her – Zektor led them out of the laboratory. He'd check on the lab jockeys who'd been in the room working on her later. It looked like most of them were dead – scalded or burned or impaled or just plain bled out from dozens of wounds – but there were still a few moving around.

If they were still alive when he got back, he'd pick them up and take them to the infirmary. If not, he'd just toss them down the nearest incinerator chute with the rest of the garbage. It wasn't like anyone would miss them or they couldn't be easily replaced, but for now, he wanted to get some information on the new girl.

There was no way she could be anything but a Lost Number—not with the way the 'tank she'd been in had splattered itself all over the floor—so she'd have to be shoved someplace where she wouldn't cause any trouble to the Zoanoids who were actually useful to the organization. She'd probably be stuck down in the lower labs with the rest of the freaks that were being studied to see if Chronos could get any actual use out of them. Still, it'd be interesting to at least see what the little lady was originally supposed to be. Just for kicks, really.