Irony

It was peacefully quite in the musty building, since so far it wasn't the house of horrors I expected. My training still held though and I carefully stalked the hallways, fully aware that I was leaving the jet, safety, further and further behind. The goggles that encircled my eyes and ears, boosting their purpose, registered that I was three miles from James, my partner, who was still in the jet. The building was moist and the heat from the outside was greatly decreased by the foot thick concrete walls. So even though I was alert I moved slowly, enjoying the pleasant cool on my red, blistering skin. I passed a bathroom and looked in on the dusty porcelain. I wiped the brown coat from the ornate mirror and stared at my newly bronzed reflection. No fur sprouted from my pores, and my facial features where those of skin and bones 18 year old girl. I stuck my tongue out at my reflection and started to turn when a memory hit me full force. A pale skinny girl, who could only be me, pushing Koda out of the way in a playful fight over the bathroom sink in my parent's two story house. His gold eyes where sparkling with impish delight as we finally stopped bickering and looked into the mirror together. As the memory faded I looked back into the real mirror and saw myself standing next to Koda. He smiled as his human features melted into a wolf like snout and his eyes started to glow red. I jumped back from the mirror in horror and fell over my own feet. I bit hard into my hand to keep from screaming. The fear threatened to overwhelm me and I looked around the room.

'It's not real. Nothing is here. You're safe.' I whispered

'Dezari are you ok?' My partner James's calm voice called from my radio. I took a deep breath and took the radio from the largest vest pocket.

'Yeah I'm fine, just spooked myself.' I put away the radio and continued my hunt. As I reached the end of the hallway I pulled another gun from its halter. Silently I looked around the gloomy room, on edge because of the bathroom. The room was dusty and various paw, claw, and footprints marred the even coating of brown. I adjusted the setting on my headset to detect high levels of heat. Ignoring the lines of the heating appliances and looking past the high stack of boxes I searched for the single being that I had been sent to kill. A sneeze disrupted the calm and crimson red heat bloomed on the screen, signaling many more than one body. I froze as the hulking figures started to emerge from behind the boxes. I took off like a jackrabbit around the sharp corner and my legs lengthened to the full out run of a deer being pursued. My fingers nimbly searched back over the pockets for the radio, adrenaline fueling me out of my almost calm state.

'5 Hybrids!' I shouted into the speaker, the need for silence gone. Panic laced my voice and the large exhale left me gasping for air, which was suddenly needed to keep my body in motion. James was probably cursing quietly, but too busy to say anything yet.  I heard the roar of the engine, and even from this far away the powerful engines shook the once safe building.

'How did you manage to barrel into that big a group?' he shouted so loud the speaker of the handheld crackled. Under a different situation, I might have laughed at him, but it wasn't very funny right now.  

'James. Shut up.' I barked out and continued at a steady sprint.

'How much farther do i have?' I asked anxiously. Half a mile later, I could hear the larger bodies behind me breathing steadily. Fear swelled in my veins and I almost started to radio in again, but James beat me to it.

'You've got the same distance reading down there.' said irritably. 'I swear if they take you…' He didn't finish his sentence, but he really didn't need to. We both knew what would happen if they caught me.

James would hunt me down and kill me. End of story.  Since we had never really talked much I'm sure it wouldn't bother him. He might actually enjoy ending me.

That was the restriction they put on our missions. All of the non-infected knew too much for the enemy to figure out. This decision loomed over me as the scrape of feet and claws echoed in the stone hallways. I looked at the reflective metal fused to the edge of my goggles and caught a flash of light brown fur daring around a corner. I didn't even need the heat sensing adjustment on the goggles now. I could feel the overheated bodies behind me. Shivers ran down my spine despite the ever increasing heat, and I slowed as I imagined sharp teeth closing around my throat and pulling me down into a pack of fur and scales. I jumped as one of them laughed behind me, the voice very clearly male and bordering on insanity. The coarse sound shook the marrow in my bones and I quickly sped back up.

'Dezari…...' He was starting to freak out; panic causing his voice to crack like it probably hadn't in years.

'Calm down, I'm…just around the corner….I'll distract them a bit.' I ripped a few gas pellets from a pocket and hurled them behind me as I skidded around a corner. As the smoke spread I glanced behind me; most of my pursuers had fallen to the ground but two stumbled after me, in drunken stupors.

Only my lack of attention caused me to run into the wall, a few feet from the abandoned kitchen, the exit, and I crashed to the floor, the back of my head colliding with the unforgiving floor. My eyes swam as I struggled to remember how to stand. There was an ecstatic hiss from the one of the erect figures.

'Now…this ends.' As my vision cleared I saw a figure emerge from the smoke. He wrapped scaled fingers around my throat, as the smoke wrapped it's wraith like tendrils around both of us. The tiny sharp scales dug into my skin as he lifted me from the floor. 'I suppose it's much cleaner this way, no mess later. I'm sure you really didn't want to be kept like the disgusting creature you are.' His forked tongue flicked out and cut me somewhere about my eyebrow. I spat at him and kicked out, but my legs flew far from their mark. He squeezed tighter and drove his knee into my stomach. Air was pushed from my lungs and barred from entering again. Black spots entered my vision and my hands hung limp beside me.

'Does it really end like this? The life squeezed out of me by a crazy monster?'

Then I was knocked through the air, and oxygen rushed into my lungs, slowly bringing my vision back up. I crashed into a wall and I lay sprawled on the ground, sucking in lung expanding breaths of glorious air.  I saw a flash of fur and scales tangling like bloody dance partners and my self-preservation regained control. I leaped to my feet and moved as rapidly as I could into the kitchen. I carefully climbed onto the over turned refrigerator and then reached up to the roof to pull myself up. Once I was up into the oven like heat, I paused to regain my breath and look back into the dark abyss. Razor sharp claws raked the air in front of my face, snatching off my goggles and almost scarring my face. I pulled away and scrambled forward on my hands and knees towards the long rope dangling barely a few feet in front of me. A inhuman scream pierced the air and I shuddered. The rope swung lazily through the air as I scrambled for the hook.

I was suddenly lifted through the air again, by overly warm hands wrenching me up by my hips. Time slowed as I looked to the cotton candy sky and bathed in what could be my last rays of the radiant sunlight. Just as suddenly as my abrupt change of direction, the picture in my view changed. Short coarse strands of light brown fur framed a strong proud face and a muzzle. The fur extended down the neckline and as far as I could see a sea of rippling brown. It was the eyes that burned that moment into my mind. The golden eyes I had know for the better part of my life.

'Koda?' I whispered in a voice, which shook like the last leaves of fall. He turned his head to the side, like a questioning dog, and then slowly smiled, like a crooked thief. His eyes shifted upwards from where they had been locked onto mine and he growled at the screaming engine that blew the dusty air around us. Then the hands that had so roughly snatched me from safety gently cradled me in their arms and plunged me into the ancient building.


I didn't struggle as the ghost of my past carried me back through the hallways I had so desperately tried to escape. The only sounds echoing in the hallway, was that of Koda's even breathing and the sound of James screaming loudly over the radio.

'Dezari!? Are you ok? Are you hurt? …Can you get away?' James paused and took a breath, not releasing the call button, as the walls rushed past Koda and I at more than triple the speed I had been racing. 'What is going on?!' My foggy mind realized that I should answer in; only I couldn't remember which stupid pocket I had shoved the radio into, much less how to stop the irritating noise streaming from it. Koda suddenly jerked to a stop and I nearly tumbled out of his arms. He knelt down and set me against the wall then began to search my pockets for the screeching device. I mimicked the gargoyles atop a church and didn't flex a muscle.

'Dezari, if you don't answer me right now….' Koda grinned in radiant triumph and held the small black device out to me.

'Clearly, he's asking for a last request.' Dry humor. Deep voice. Just a hint of mocking sarcasm. If any doubts had been in my mind, they were blown away in that simple sentence.  I held his eyes for a few agonizing seconds before looking away. I gently took the radio, without touching him, and held it in the palm of my sweating hands. Our lives where hanging on the expectant airwaves.

'Will you shut up?' I said quietly into the receiving mouth piece, breaking the tension in the air. Koda let out a sigh of relief and stepped away. I refused my eyes the need to make sure he was still there. Instead I started at my filthy, shaking hands.

'Don't you dare scare me like that ever again, Dezari!' James's relief almost flowed through the radio. 'Are you safe?' he asked calmly, already reverting to his normal calm self.

'As I'll ever be, just…just gimme a minute' It wasn't a lie, at least not a big one. Koda had never hurt me before. In truth it probably hurt him just to see me here, hunting people like him.  

Koda carefully began to look through my pockets again. I flinched and he pulled away as an animal would have. I risked a look up and his eyes were filled with pain. He jerked back towards the hall and held still for a few seconds with his elongated snout in the air. The powerful black appendage twitched as he inhaled the fresh scent of the angry dust particles. He sneezed three times and then laughed and rubbed it.

'Stupid dust.' He muttered under his breath. Shuffling, scraping noises echoed from the end of the hallway, where he had just looked. I rolled onto my knees, in front of Koda, and pulled knifes from my belt, one for each hand. The cold hilts of the weapon cleared my mind enough to wish for the goggles I had lost and their ability to enhance my senses. Koda shuffled behind me and soon his hands where removing the blades from my grasps. I looked up at him in confusion, but he just smiled and shook his head. He pulled me to my feet, beside and slightly behind him. The warmth of his body brought back the fuzziness of my mind and I inched slowly away until I was pressed against the cool walls once more. 'No, you see it's alright…It's just a few more…' He smiled, brilliant in his joy, 'Hybrids?' I heard a few more chuckles, echoing from the dark like demons tearing up my peaceful world. I shuddered and reached again for a knife, if not a gun. Koda sighed and grabbed my wrist gently, but firmly

'What's wrong with you?' Koda's eyes held the deep worry that I couldn't find on his foreign face.  

You. Them. Me.  James. Everyone. Everything.

'Nothing'

'Explain?' I shook off his hand and stepped back.

'There isn't much to explain!' I raised my voice to an almost angry level. 'I can't and won't kill you and I can't really run from you or James. But if I don't get out here soon or get some kind of a plan then we're all going up in smoke!" I shouted at him. I shoved his chest; suddenly uncaring of the danger it could put me in. He absorbed the impact easily and I walked away from him, turning my back on the problems he caused.

'Are you still resting?' James. Worried. Again.

'He just won't let me figure this out will he?' I took a deep breath and told him I was, same as last time. A few muffled giggles came from farther down the hallway and I turned to shoot glares at them, but all my venom earned was more laughter.

'This human is...good. We like her…spunk, yes?' the almost Russian voice was male and it leaped from the shadows with good humor. I shook my head and turned to stare down Kole again. I met his eyes and held them. He looked away first, with shame and sadness, and then sighed.

'Where is your tracker?' He asked quietly. I stared at him, now completely angry.

'What exactly are you asking me to do? …Hand my race over?' I wanted to slap the ashamed look from his face; I would have if I wasn't so scared of him, of what he could do to me. Again my mind picture teeth wrapping around…

He growled deep in his throat, and I shrunk to the wall, the sweat seeming to freeze to my skin against the cold walls. He stepped up closer to me, all but pinning me to the wall.

'Would you rather die?' He laid his hand softly on my throat, his fingers in much the same position as the lizard earlier. 'I have been fighting, tooth and nail; to keep you alive ever since you took this damned…adventure. This mission,' He sneered hatefully, his voice now rising, 'was never going to be a success; you would have died if I hadn't been here, in fact…you almost did.' I stared at him in shock.

'W-what?'

'Did you really think you where faster than all of us?' he asked mockingly, gesturing behind him, 'that you could out run any of us? We are people with animal genes coursing through our D.N.A; Wolves, cheetahs, bears, all who are much faster than humans.' He paused and shook his head, exasperated. 'Just never mind, freaking forget it.' I slowly slid down the wall as he walked into the shadows. 'I'm sorry, Dezari.' I wrapped my arms around my knees and placed my head on top, forcing my thoughts into line.

'It's Koda…And he's not dead. You did promise…' I smiled and began to reach to my throat. Metal coolly clicked against metal, and I looked up suddenly, not prepared for this new attack.

Koda was standing in front of me, pointing a gun to my forehead, remorse etched into his face.