Lost Dog 4
Less than twenty minutes later, Lavene had a bag over his head, struggling against two Rept thugs held his arms behind his back.
It was a morning of unexpected turns.
He'd gotten the peanut butter gum he favored by going a little out of the way. So, he had something if he needed a little extra sugar. He might have worried about being merely on time for their meeting rather than punctually 15 minutes early, but he'd seen his boss Archie pulled over by a cop.
Not just any cop, but the biggest Sport Reptile that he'd ever seen in uniform. The cop was a bright orange with a crest that defied description. He wondered species he might be with that crest... but maybe he was a throwback also. He'd never heard of a Sport with Throwback traits, but if such a thing was possible, then he imagined the chip on such a rept's shoulder would be massive. Archie was a card carrying bigot with a bumper sticker collection that supported everything from "Deporting all the Coldbacks." to "They taste just like Snake."
It would serve him right if the big guy in blue gave him a hard time. And from the look of it as he passed Archie and the big cold cop, Archie was about to be pulled out of the car for a sobriety test at 7am. He gave a supportive honk and drove on, wishing he'd taken a picture with his cell phone.
Only he knew his supportive honk wasn't for Archie.
He pulled into the parking lot of Hooka with ten minutes to spare and he had been surprised that there were only a few cars in the parking lot. Even if the meeting were just for the USB guards, there should have been dozens of cars here. He supposed people would be wondering in whenever they felt like it. Not all of them where ex-cops with college tuition bills to help with.
He was still new enough to be puzzled by the lack of cars without being suspicious of it.
It was probably his first mistake.
He was jumped the second he walked in. His snout too short to even give them any resistance as the burlap bag went over his head. The arms were grabbed and for a split second he thought he was having a heart attack of sorts. That he was flashing back to his bachelor party.
Merely wishful thinking, before the panic poured hot silver into his veins. But they held him firm and then whispered his wife's name into his ear.
They whispered his address. They whispered the names of his three girls. The dorms they lived in.
The whispered the names of his pets, the mini-horse, the mice, and the koi fish.
His blood had turned cold by the time they mentioned his mother's name and the home where she sat, knitting sweaters her her own shedding fur. It was overkill. He knew they wanted to kill as little as possible. Or he hoped. Or so he believed.
They'd made it clear that if any one died, it would be because of him. They never threatened. They didn't have to.
He couldn't fight them.
He'd have to fight his co-workers, who - he was certain from the sobbing he could hear – had also had a list of facts whispered to them as they walked in.
He put his tail between his legs and made himself as submissive looking as possible.
He would only be able to fight them later. So, he listened. He listened for clues that he could use later.
"The bulldog is the last of them." a voice announced. Dry but melodious. "All of them early birds. A credit to their race."
Gecko, Lavene decided. A rept for sure, but probably a Gecko.
"Port key open and ready to engage."
"Frank, our guests are coming through. Please don't let them choke on their own vomit."
Lavene was trying to parse that sentence, when he heard the buzz of a radio voice answer. Frank was on a scrambled line... or frequency... from the background distortion. He still wasn't sure what the maybe Gecko meant when suddenly the floor dropped out from under him.
He was twisted, inside out. His eyes screamed at his own musk flooding the sack over his head. His ears rebelled at the taste burning his inner balance. His skin tried to focus against the strobing light and sound of a realm where distance and time was some sort of sick joke.
His stomach arrived first and the rest of him slammed to the ground instantly a hundred years later, swallowing the bile as he impacted the steel grating on the other side of the teleport.
He blew chunks into his bag and pulled it off his face, startled to find that he had arms and legs that would actually obey him. He gulped at the air and then wondered what all this was going to do to his blood sugar levels.
Then a large red and black bird was standing over him with a needle and his only clear thought was, "Oh good, I hate giving myself needles."
Then Frank jammed a needle in his neck and it didn't really hurt at all.
Lavene woke up in a room, feeling frozen to the core. It wasn't very well lit.
He was naked. Or he thought he was. There were three others on the floor with him. Reptiles in matching white underwear, their long slender tails sticking out and up limply as the struggled to move. Poor things. If he was this cold, they must be freezing. Torpor would be coming for them.
His eyes had trouble focusing. The after effects of whatever drug they'd injected him with, he assumed. Or worse, his blood sugar was totally out of control. He wasn't sure. He'd never felt this way before, so alien within his own body.
The cold was sapping his wits. He struggled to sit up before he realized that he shouldn't move, that he should not let his captors know he was coming around. He stilled himself and tried to look around beyond his three cell mates.
It took him a moment to realize that he was in a walk-in cooler. For a convenience store. Abandoned. Nothing on the shelves in the cooler. Nothing on the dull white metal shelves beyond the glass doors. He couldn't see into the darkest corners, although there seemed to be enough light. Damn drugs again... he'd always had pretty good eyesight. Was he concussed? His head felt stuffed with cotton.
There was no sign of his captors. He tried to whisper to the closest lizard. His lips were hard and stiff, refusing to move right. He didn't recognize the fluttery sounds coming from his throat. He reached out to touch the lizard instead and the sight of his hairless arm froze him solid.
He brought both of his hands to his face.
Neither of them were really his hands. His black pads had been replaced with a smooth green skin. His fingers were long and delicate, with needle like nails ending in pinprick points.
And brought his new hands to his face and he wasn't overly surprised to found his short muzzle with its floppy jowls had been replaced with something smooth and long and so very cool to the touch. Had they swapped bodies with him...? Oh, the joke was on them, then.
The cooler door opened and a bulldog stood in the doorway. "We're the Reptile Liberation Army and you have been randomly selected to participate to help educate your fellows, your peers, your family, and co-workers what it like to be cold blooded." The dog smiled and his tail wagged. "We apologize for the inconvenience."
Lavene thought this might be his body. But it didn't look like him. It looked younger and lean and had scars where Lavene never had scars. But there were more than one way this magic could have been pulled off.
He tried to speak, but could not at first. The bull dog seemed attentive. Or maybe he was looking at his old body. His former body, now old, but with fewer scars and more fat... assuming reptiles got fat. He wasn't sure. He couldn't think to be sure.
He cleared his throat and, with dry and soft words no more than a whisper, told the bulldog the only joke he could think of at this moment.
"I... am... Pale Umber."
And then he laughed, an alien warble in his own ears. Even if he didn't know where his ears were.
"Port key, activated," a voice cried from outside the cooler. "Step away from the circle."
"Clear," The dog who wasn't really a dog called out. "Stay warm, Pale Umber." Something in the air sparkled.
And then the world twisted inside out again.
This time, the space between coming and going wasn't so bad. Yes, his eyes smelled things it should not have. Yes, his ears had to deal with unnatural colors. Yes, his skin was battered with sounds that would curdle milk. His nose tasted foods never meant to be eaten and his tongue felt all the universe slipping past him. Yet, for all this, finding himself back in the real world was not jarring.
It was an instant of discomfort and he was simply elsewhere.
He felt the warmer air begin to seep into him instantly. He knew his first aid for Repts, never realizing that he'd need it for himself one day. He needed to find hot lamps quickly. And these other repts were probably his fellow guards. They'd also need lamps.
He struggled to sit up. The marble floor was cold and sucking heat from him. Not as badly the cooler floor had, of course. The smoothness meant none of them, however, was having a good time of getting back to their feet.
People were huddled away from them. Probably startled by their sudden appearance.
Lavene saw that he was in the USB branch he'd been meant to guard today. Assuming it was still today. He had no way of knowing. It occurred to him that the underwear was to make them look harmless. Even more than mere nakedness, there was something about whitey-tighties that said here's a harmless, sad person. But he had no idea what that might mean.
He was too busy looking at the pile of money on the floor in front of him.
Once you notice that, it's hard to notice anything else.
Heat lamps. Or sunlight.
Yes, he had to think of something else. He had to get to a heat lamp. Torpor meant a lot of bad things. Things he thought of as funny. Like being poseable. Or imprinting. Horrible, horrible thing he used to laugh at because he did not know. Would never know. Should never know.
Things that were suddenly possible.
He saw a fur come to him with a chair. He wanted to say thank god, but there was something frightening about the way the man was holding that chair.
Lavene realized that he was going to be hit by the chair about the same time it came crashing down on him. He began to scramble, pain and self-preservation overcoming the deep body cold that made him not want to move. He knew this last-ditch, all or nothing effort would leave him in torpor, but he could not help himself. Nor did he want to. His new body was just too slow to defend itself against flying chairs. He didn't think about the others, except to hope the furs got themselves under control soon.
He cleared the doors, the sunlight hitting his exposed reptilian skin. It drank up the heat, but it too little too late. He could feel things shutting down for a big nap deep inside of him. He saw the flashing red lights, the news vans, and a SWAT team running towards him.
He raised his hands, thanking them, thanking god, begging for help.
He fell to his knees, knowing that he was safe in their hands, his fellow officers. The uniforms he respected, the only ones that mattered.
The first bullet that went through his body took out his the right hand's thumb. He instantly flinched his hands gone, close to his torso.
They would later claim they thought this naked man was going for an invisible gun with this movement.
The air before the string of SWAT officers sparkled and Lavene might have thought he was being teleported away, except he felt the rifle bullets rip into his body. His knowledge that these things were leaving bigger holes behind him as they left his body seemed out of place.
He should have been having flashbacks of his life.
Instead, all he could of think of was the training and the paperwork he'd have to do if it were him firing into an unarmed Rept. And his first aid.
With the fifth bullet grazing his skull, he suddenly found himself falling into his past. One of his girls' soft ball games. He hadn't made many, but he made it to more than a few. Christine was with him, the golden hairdo on her head catching the sun like it belonged there. She was so goddamn beautiful. He loved her so much. She said something to him that he couldn't hear.
Lavene leaned in closer and she told him the most wonderful news...