by Ho, Jo
“I wish Chase hadn’t told you that,” I grumbled under my breath. “Not everything needs to be shared.”
Although the place wasn’t being used (other than by these bad guys), it was still owned by the government or some such entity as they had done a decent job of keeping the school free of vandals, although they didn’t go as far as to fork out for wired security alarms — I could find none of the usual blue and white signage that signaled an ADT presence. It looked like the buildings had basic water and power supplies, however, as I couldn’t see a generator anywhere, unless one was tucked away around the back.
Huddled together we approached the first building. A giant rusty chain wrapped around the handles on the front door. Even if we could get the door open, we would never get through that chain. I looked over the brickwork until I came to a window, almost hidden behind a curtain of ivy. “We get in through there.”
Sam nodded and pulled her gun from its holster. As I parted the ivy, Sam held her gun by the handle and smashed it against the glass. The window cracked then broke into a thousand pieces, raining glass around us. I cringed at the sound, impossibly loud in the near silence.
“I hope they didn’t hear that.”
Sam shrugged. “If they did it’s too late, and if they didn’t, we have the upper hand.”
“I like how you think even if it is strange logic that got you there,” I replied.
Sam shot a smile at me, eyes flashing with life. It was at that moment that I realized how she thrived on this kind of excitement. Seeing how bright her eyes were and how red her flushed cheeks were, I realized just how much I loved this woman. When we got through whatever this was, I was determined to win her back.
76
Sully
Climbing through the window, we found ourselves in a dark corridor. Light slanted in at angles that illuminated patches of ground ahead of us but left the rest of the corridor shrouded in darkness. Dust covered every inch of surface giving the place a musty, unpleasant scent that had me scratching my nose. Unperturbed by any of this, however, Sam put her analytical eyes to work.
“The dust hasn’t been disturbed, I don’t think anyone’s been in this wing for a while,” Sam said.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “Let’s see where it takes us though, hopefully, it connects to one of the other buildings. It’ll be a lot quieter than trying to smash through another window.”
I turned on the flashlight on my phone, using it to highlight the way ahead. Sam went to walk before me but I pushed her behind. “Single file. Me first, you after. Got it?”
She looked at me, unimpressed with my bravado. “Really? We’re doing this now?”
I nodded, not messing around. Whatever she thought of my capabilities I was going to do my damnedest to protect her. I expected her to put up more resistance, but her eyes suddenly softened.
“Okay tough guy. Lead the way.”
We walked down the corridor, eyes, and ears peeled for any movement or sound, but other than a mouse scrabbling past when it saw us, all was silent. We walked until we reached a set of double doors. Grabbing the handle I turned and pushed, but there was something on the other side of the door, wedging it closed. “Give me a hand with this,” I said.
Sam came up behind me, put her shoulder to the door and waited for my count.
“Ready?” I asked. She nodded. “Three, two, one… push!”
Together we shoved the door hard and got it open about a foot before we stopped, unable to move it any further. I could see the corner of what looked like a steel cabinet lying horizontally behind the door. Either it had fallen down of its own accord or someone had put it there to dissuade visitors. I was pretty sure I knew what the answer might be.
We squeezed through the gap and found ourselves in a gymnasium. Empty bleachers loomed eerily, the ghost of past crowds, haunting the place. Although the room can’t have been used in years, I could almost hear the sound of a whistle blowing followed by a stampeding team as it raced up and down the court. It’d had been over a decade since I’d last stepped foot in a place like this, and truth was, I hadn’t missed it, never having been a fan of school, remembering how stressful it was when I realized early on that I wouldn’t become the surgeon my parents had expected of me. This had eventually lead to our estrangement. So much time, wasted because the two of us were too stubborn to pick up the phone. Thinking of my dad now, lying in the hospital bed alone, I felt the guilt torment me, even as my head knew that he would want me to save Chase and Bandit first.
Hold on, dad. Be the usual stubborn goat you are, and just hang on…
We moved through the sports hall towards another set of double doors at the opposite end when I heard a sound. I stopped, as hope flared up in me. The sound was small but distinctive and one I recognized immediately.
It was the sound of paws.
“Bandit?” I asked softly.
Sam stared at me quizzically. “You heard him?”
“I think so,” I said.
Re-energized, I sprinted towards the double doors and pushed them open to find myself in another endless corridor. This one wasn’t as dark as the last, however, so I could see very clearly the dog standing in front of me.
It wasn’t Bandit, but it was a dog I recognized.
Pixie.
77
Sully
Shock and disappointment tore through me.
I couldn’t believe my eyes. “Pixie? ” She tilted her head at me and listened as if she was trying to understand what I was asking of her.
“You think whoever took Bandit and hurt Zeb, kidnapped Pixie?” Sam asked.
“It seems likely though I’ve no idea what they would want with her?”
Sam looked thoughtful as she studied the dog. “Maybe they were just told to grab a dog and didn’t know what Bandit looks like?” Sam offered. “Until we found her, we only had the one dog.”
“They had a camera in the ranch though? Shouldn’t they have seen her through that?”
“I don’t think we ever had Pixie in the living room. She stayed mostly in the den or with Gideon. And you know she didn’t like Bandit, so if he was around, she usually wasn’t.”
“But why is she roaming around on her own?” I wondered aloud.
“Maybe she snuck out from wherever they had her contained. She’s done it before after all,” Sam replied logically.
Her explanation made sense. I crouched down until I was eye-level with the dog. “Pixie, do you remember me? I got you that nice food and toys. Gideon would be really excited to know that you’re okay.” The little dog didn’t react until I mentioned Gideon. At his name, her ears pricked up.
“That’s right. Gideon’s your friend.” Pixie did a little dance with her paws that let me know she had understood at least some of what I had said. “You know who else is your friend? Bandit. Can you take us to him Pixie? Can you take us to Bandit?” She tilted her head the other way. For a moment, I thought she didn’t understand, but then she barked three times and started moving away. She stopped a few feet away then turned back to look at me.
“She’s going to take us to him!” I said excitedly.
“Good girl Pixie, good girl!” said Sam.
We took off after the little dog. She led us through twisting corridors and empty classrooms, never hesitating in her direction. She barely even sniffed at her surroundings so I knew there was no doubt that she knew where she was going. I could feel the edge of my panic lessen, knowing that any minute we would be reunited with Bandit. I hoped to God he wouldn’t be in the same condition as the last time I had found him when he was lying across the operating table with his head cut open. The Doc wasn’t with us this time and I wasn’t sure I would be able to save him without her help.
We must have been going for some ten or so minutes when Pixie turned to look at us, barked three more times and then started racing forward.
“This must be it!” I sprinted after her as she ran through a doorway, Sam following close behin
d. We were still running when I found myself skidding to a halt. There was a barrel of a shotgun in front of me and it was pointed right at my head.
A man in a white lab coat with long hair and a younger guy, who looked just a year or two older than Gideon stood ahead of us. They both had shotguns that were trained on us. In that brief first moment of seeing him, the man in the lab coat reminded me of those scientists we had seen at Platinum Industries except this man didn’t bustle about like those did. He was calm and considered, clearly in control. Despite our circumstances, he had a mild-mannered air about him. He seemed perfectly ordinary, like someone you would never give a second glance at. It was either a cunning disguise or something that he’d need to spend a lifetime discussing with a shrink.
I looked past them to see a cell — and trapped inside, was Bandit. Seeing me, he jumped to his feet and barked excitedly.
The scientist looked down at Pixie. “Well done, dog. You brought them right to me.”
Shocked by her betrayal I could only stare as the scared and sweet little dog I had come to know suddenly changed demeanor completely. Her eyes turned cold as she bared her teeth at me, snarling viciously. She looked wild and ferocious and utterly terrifying.
I could have kicked myself. We should have listened to Bandit when he had warned us she was strange. Looking at her and the man, the truth came to me. “You’re a spy. You were working for him the whole time,” I said to the dog.
“You’re not as dumb as you look,” the scientist said to me.
“Oh I don’t know, I’m feeling pretty stupid right now,” I replied.
I stared around our surroundings, hoping to find something to help us out of our predicament. There were a row of windows set high into the wall but they were tiny, put there just to let more light in. An odd assortment of scientific apparatus covered the benches — I had no idea what they were used for. The young guy, who I guessed must be his assistant, came at us with cable ties that he tied around our wrists.
“Not so tight unless you’re deliberately trying to stop the blood flow,” Sam said through clenched teeth. Immediately the boy looked apologetic.
“Sorry, I’ve never done this before.”
“You don’t say,” Sam said, peeved at being caught.
After he had restrained us, he started backing away when the scientist stopped him. “Aren’t you forgetting something, Dick?” He stared pointedly at the gun still in its holster around Sam’s shoulder.
“Right,” Dick said as he relieved Sam of her weapon. “Do you want me to put them in the utility room?”
The Scientist shot him a withering look. “I don’t want them in the same room as the dog, so what do you think?” It wasn’t really a question if his scathing tone was anything to go by. Dick flushed, embarrassed, then gestured with the gun at us. “Follow me, please.”
I gave Bandit one last look as we were lead away from him, into another area that contained several small metal tanks — around the size of a dog I realized — that were connected up to a complicated system of liquids and gases. The tanks had long been empty, however, and I couldn’t see any signs of what they might have once contained. My mind flicked back to Pixie suddenly, who had stayed in the room with the Scientist. For her to be as deceptive as she was, required abnormally high intellect… of Bandit proportions essentially. But that wasn’t all she would need. Despite Bandit’s cleverness, like all dogs, he was a straight shooter. The kind of deviousness Pixie displayed was alien to their kind.
I had been silent a while now, and Dick finally noticed. Worried that I might be up to something, he stopped suddenly and looked at me. “Whatever you’re thinking, it won’t work. Xavier would have already thought of it before you.”
“Xavier? That’s his name?” I asked. Dick nodded, not the least bit concerned that we now knew his boss’s identity.
“I was thinking about Pixie. How she behaves isn’t normal for a dog,” I began.
“That’s because she isn’t a normal dog,” Dick replied. “She was created, right here.”
“Created?”
Dick hesitated, possibly wondering if he should let me in on the big secret, but then he shrugged. “Well, I guess it doesn’t matter if I tell you now since neither of you will be getting out of here. Pixie was genetically grown, cloned from the DNA of a regular dog but then adapted into the creature you know now. Xavier created her out of nothing but a few minuscule cells. When she became fully grown, and Forbes was making headway with his Alzheimer’s research, Xavier copied the placement of the tumor that is inside Bandit and put it into Pixie. It’s why she’s as clever as he is.”
Sam and I looked at each other, reeling by what we were being told. “But that’s not all he did, is it? He did something else to make her so devious?”
A grudging respect grew over his face. “Yes. During Forbes’ research with the tumors, they found that if they placed the tumors on different parts of the brain, there were differing results. For example, placed in one area, the tumor made the dog very aggressive, in another, the dog became very controllable.”
I pictured Pixie changing her personality like Jekyll and Hyde and the horrific answer came flooding to me at once. “He put multiple tumors inside her brain, didn’t he? That’s why Pixie is the way she is?”
Dick nodded. “Yes. Her head’s riddled with the things. We think that the many tumors might also be tampering with her personality, causing her mood to swing, but that suits his purpose so they have been left as they are.”
Sam had been watching the two of us closely while we spoke. I knew she was looking for the right moment to stage an attack, but before she could do anything, we arrived at a metal door. The old metal sign on it had lost a screw and now hung precariously on one end. The writing was faded but I could make out the words “Utility Room”. Dick opened the door and moved us inside ahead of him.
Barring a few boxes of old files with past school kid’s names that someone had forgotten to deal with, it was empty.
“But Bandit was suffering from convulsions with just the one tumor, Pixie must have physical side effects?” I asked, unable to stop feeling concern for the dog, particularly now that I knew her behavior was through no fault of her own.
“Oh she’s dying for sure. Probably doesn’t have more than a few weeks left, but she’s already served her purpose so it isn’t a great loss to Xavier, especially now that he has Alpha back.”
Sam suddenly spoke up, her voice filled with concern. “Has him back… he had him before?”
“Oh, sorry, I thought I’d already explained that. Alpha was created here too via the same cloning process. He was actually Xavier’s greatest success until Forbes took him away when he was barely a pup. Xavier’s thrilled to have him home.”
The boy’s eyes turned bright thinking of the scientist’s happiness, and I realized at that moment, just how much Xavier controlled this kid.
“Xavier is a lunatic. I’ve met his partner and Forbes was no better. Do you have any idea how brainwashed you are?”
Dick’s eyes glittered angrily. “Don’t you dare talk about him like that! Xavier is a God amongst men. You have no idea how important his work is!”
“So important that he kidnaps little girls and conducts unethical experiments on the powerless? Don’t be so stupid.” I didn’t bother to hide my disgust. He needed to hear the truth, no matter how much it hurt.
“Stupid?” Dick said. “You’re the one who thought his wife was messaging him from the grave. If anyone’s stupid, it’s you!” He stopped, waiting for my reaction, convinced that he had won over me. And he was right. I felt like I’d been punched in the gut.
“That was you?” I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.
“Xavier wanted you preoccupied, so I came up with the idea to mess with you. I knew you were going back to visit your wife’s grave — hell, the whole town knew — so I dug it up a bit, and left that hair clip for you to find. Then I messaged you using an app that makes it seem li
ke the message came from a particular phone line. You were so hung up over your wife that you lost your mind over it completely. So who’s the stupid one now, huh?” Dick gloated. He turned to Sam next, determined to stick the knife in. “If I were you, I certainly wouldn’t be marrying this guy, not when he’s still so in love with his wife.”
I couldn’t breathe, knowing what this idiot child had done to me. It was all I could do not to kill him: my hands might be bound but I could still wrap them around his scrawny neck. I counted to three in my head, desperate for the rage to quieten. I had to keep reminding myself that this boy was under the thumb, that he didn’t know any better. I couldn’t take it out on him, no matter how badly I wanted to. Through the haze of red, I saw Sam looking at me, her face filled with sorrow, regretful now that she knew I hadn’t made up the message.
Dick marched us to the corner of the room, then backed away. He kept looking at me, hoping that I would say something he could use against me, but I was numb. Disappointed, he left. Moments later the door closed in front of us and I heard it lock.
We were trapped.
Silence enveloped us. Trying desperately to regain a small sense of myself, I turned to Sam. “Told you we should have split up.”
She shot me a withering look.
78
Bandit
Sully was here! Oh boy oh boy oh boy!
Bandit knew he would come. He knew they wouldn’t leave him here like this. But seeing them, Bandit was also worried now. Dick had taken Sully and Sam away with a gun pointing right at them which Bandit knew were terrible things. He was there when Chase had used one on the bad man. After the loud sound when Bandit thought his ears had exploded, the bad man had died and Chase had cried. They could not die — not only did he and Chase love them, Sully was also their pack leader.
