The Scientist had nodded off in his chair and fallen into a nightmare from which a desperate argument had broken through the paralysis of sleep, his words ringing through the laboratory “you call that a choice?’ She eavesdropped on his half of the dream conversation for a time, but when she couldn’t make any sort of sense from it, she cautiously tried to wake him. What woke was not The Scientist she knew.
The man with the red eyes and pasty skin shot his clawed hand out to snatch her by the hair, ripping locks from her scalp. “You risk your soul over THIS? Another PET?" he growled. Wren yelped at the pain, her small hands grasping at his to no effect. He held her firmly with one fist at the back of her head hand as the other hand clamped over her crying mouth. The contempt in his voice was more than she’d ever heard, much less had directed toward her. "He insults his -real- children by making these dolls,” he spat.
Wren stilled, a sense of alarm chilling her chest at the dehumanizing language. If the creature thought of her as only a doll or a pet, and an insulting one at that, it would mean nothing to take her life. Her voice held a tight edge as she asked “who are you?”
In answer, he lifted a medallion from the table beside them. She’d been unaware of it before but it now dangled before her eyes, demanding her attention. The symbol on it was a stepped pyramid with demonic wings at the apex flanking a pyre. He pressed it into her hand to let her feel its power crackle. "I am the Founder that your maker invokes under his breath! My name is feared throughout these lands, even by my own kin!” He rose as he spoke, lifting her by her upper arms in a bruising grip. Her feet kicked helplessly above the ground and she held his forearms to keep from falling if he suddenly dropped her.
He peered at her, his glowing eyes flaring red as he studied her. She had the distinct impression he was peering into her mind and soul. “You’ve been through worse, much worse. You have the potential to be more.” He interrupted himself to snarl “Stop screaming, Darien. She can’t hear you.” Wren pressed her lips together to stifle a whimper. The Founder leaned over her, his voice lowered and more menacing in its softness than it had been in a scowl. "I have an assignment for you.”
Wren listened closely as the Founder informed her she was to seek out and bring to The Scientist his son, a Bloodtail Neko by the name of Koen who has forgotten what he is. If she were to succeed, he would be made to remember and she was given the vague promise of being made into more than she is. If she were to fail, The Scientist’s soul would be ripped apart by the reanimation serum which gives him life, and by extension, her as well.
Sixteen hours later, the child buried her face in her bunny’s soft fur and sobbed. She had no notion how to find the young man. She’d spent all day in the Department of Records and Archives but had turned up no information on him and she had no idea where to look, or how to get him to The Scientist .
Having allowed herself a minute’s self-pity, she raised her head and put it aside. She stared at the columns upon columns of cards she had yet to search through. From the corner of her eye, a shadow scurried along the skirting board, followed by an almost simultaneous snap and squeak.
Wren blinked. A trap! That’s what she needed, a trap!
She knew not where the neko was, but she knew something of neko habits, often up on rooftops and always interested in stalking small, twitchy creatures. She smiled down to the bunny in her arms and with an optimism which must fully ignore her previous failures in order to exist, she started making plans for a neko-trap.
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