No Chance, Ch 1
No Chance
Chapter 1
©2005 comidacomida
Courtney sat with her back to the wall. A detective had spoken with her one week previous, informing her that the San Diego Police Department had received a missing persons report. Her ex-fiance's sister, a quiet and usually mellow individual had become worried when she hadn't heard from Daryl the two days before the wedding and, obviously, the fact that he missed it. Courtney was devastated, of course, waiting by the priest for the groom who never showed.
She had to fight hard to hide the anger and betrayal she felt for the man who left her waiting at the altar, but in so short a time she'd begun to analyze her reaction to the abandonment and the events surrounding it. The woman couldn't help but still be in love with the man who, (whether purposefully or accidentally) ruined her life. While Courtney was far from willing to forget she promised herself that she would learn to forgive... but now she wasn't sure she'd get the chance.
At first, Courtney thought it was some kind of joke, some kind of sick stunt to poke fun at her being alone at the chapel, but as time went by she couldn't help but second-guess her first assumption. And then of course there was the paperwork she had received a few days after the interview with the detective. Within the packet of papers was a note from Daryl. He'd gotten into something big; at least that's what the note had said.
The conflict of feelings kept Courtney on an emotional roller coaster. She argued with herself that if he truly got caught up in something it may not have been his fault that he missed the wedding but then the other side of her argued that a filing clerk is not a secret agent and nothing should have been more important to him than his wedding. In the end she sat in the coffee house looking over the papers he had sent, unable to make heads or tails of them. She couldn't understand why he would bother to send them, or why she had been directed to keep them safe.
"Ms. Porter..." spoke a voice, pulling her attention out of the papers on the table in front of her. She looked up at a middle aged man in a business suit, brown, thinning hair eased back in a subtle comb-over.
Courtney casually took a sip from her coffee, "What?"
The man didn't offer a response, simply taking a seat across from her at the table as he sets his hands atop it, closed together and folded in front of him, "I am looking for Daryl Rogers."
"You and me both." she countered flatly, "So what?"
"What have you got there?" he asked, extending a hand towards one of the papers.
Courtney snatched them back, putting them away into the folder. "Do you mind?" she demanded in a harsh manner, stuffing the folder away into her bag.
"I was hoping to have the opportunity to talk." the man stated, "Thomas Grant." he offered her his hand.
"I don't have anything to say." she contested, staring down at the hand, taking another sip of her coffee and not bothering to acknowledge the introduction.
"Fair enough, Ms. Porter." replied Thomas, "I will see you later then." and without another word the slightly overweight businessman was on his way. Unable to shake the uncomfortable feeling about the man, Courtney quickly pushed her newspaper and make-up compact back into her purse and headed for the opposite door.
She moved quickly towards her car, keys jingling as she pulled them out of her pocket, sifting through the dozen or so keys on the ring looking for the right one. Her heart almost stopped as she heard the voice speak up behind her.
"You did not even bother finishing your coffee?' she turned around slowly to find Thomas Grant looking at her.
"I said I have nothing to say." she answered, "Leave me alone."
"We have business to discuss." the man replied, putting his hands on his hips, the motion moving his sports coat far enough to reveal the hilt of a gun. Courtney's heart almost stopped, and an errant wish that her feelings would occasionally be wrong swam through her stunned consciousness. ~This can't be happening.~ she told herself.
"This should not have to be difficult." Thomas offered.
"I haven't even finished my coffee." Courtney said. Thomas raised an eyebrow, and the woman drew her arm upward with a quick snapping motion, flinging the open-lidded cup right into his face. She turned and ran-- right into Thomas Grant.
Courtney couldn't make her mind work, taking a half-glance behind herself to Thomas holding his face, drenched in hot drink, then gazed back to Thomas in front of her in time to see a stun gun. "Oh shiâ€"
She didn't lose consciousness right away, rather her mind clung resiliently to the world around her. At first her body grew very numb, followed by a strange sense of vertigo as her vision started to grow hazy. Finally, her sight went black, and the last sense to go was her hearing which slowly dimmed out, the words of both Thomas Grants drawing farther and farther away. The very last thing she remembered was a nearby gunshot, the impact of a body landing atop her, followed by shouts.
* * * * * *
Courtney awoke with a splitting headache and a burning sensation on her right shoulder. She could recall trying to throw herself out of the way of the electric shock but she was far too slow, even against her overweight businessman assailant. Having no idea where she was, or even how long she'd been out, Courtney looked herself over. Her purse was gone.
~Assaulted, kidnapped... and thinking about my purse.~ she mentally chastised herself, ~God, you're a strange one, Courtney.~
Looking around the room, Courtney's outlook didn't improve much. She was seated on a cot with a simple throw-pillow and a thin blanket. Other than the cot the only item in the room was a simple metal bucket. Even through the concrete walls she could hear the sound of a low pitched hum off in the distance. The room was cold and gray. A stout, metal door blocked any hope of escape from the concrete prison. Courtney fought valiantly to keep the tears out of her eyes and had just started to fail when the sound of metal on metal from the door signaled the handle turning.
Courtney moved to the side of the room, picking the pail up by the handle, "Back the fuck off!" she threatened, readying her only option for a weapon, "If you think I'm gonna snivel and beg for-" anything else she had planned to say was erased from her mind when she came face to face with a dog.
While in any normal circumstance Courtney might not be intimidated or surprised by a dog, this was not a normal circumstance; the dog stood on two legs and was about five and a half foot tall. It wore a loincloth as well as a leash and tags, and looked at her in an astute manner, its form resembling almost as much a human as a canine.
"Please don't..." requested the dog in perfect English, looking at her from behind the door, "I bruise easy." Courtney paused, staring at the dog, the pail starting to feel incredibly heavy. Her knees were shaking faintly and the world began to spin. ~Pull it together, Courtney... you're NOT going to faint... you're not--~ and she passed out.
* * * * * *
Coutney awoke with a sigh, coming to with almost complete coherence. Liberated, professional woman... nothing at all like the useless damsel in distress. It was only a few more moments before she really gathered her wits, and she sat up again still in the same room she had been in before though the door was open. She wasn't sure how long since she had fainted, and was almost starting to second-guess her first view of the dog-man before the same head poked back through the door, it was a golden retriever.
"Did... did you just talk?" Courtney inquired, almost feeling silly for it.
"No." replied the dog man, slowly moving into the doorway again, "I talked almost an hour ago before you... um... went back to sleep." he offered hesitantly. The discussion stalled there for many long, awkward moments before he spoke up again, "Do you feel better?"
The humor in the question almost made Courtney laugh, "Other than being kidnapped and held prisoner? Yea... peachy." she contended.
"Kidnapped?" the dog asked, raising his head and ears, the expression adding to his animalistic appearance with the ear-perk.
"Why am I talking to a dog?" Courtney asked, as much to herself as to the creature before her.
"People talk to dogs all the time... why does it matter if you do or don't this time?" asked the dog man.
"Because usually dogs don't talk back." responded the woman.
"So... um... maybe you should be wondering why I'm talking back and not why you're talking to me." Courtney actually lost track of the conversation as she saw a tail wag behind the dog man.
"Actually, I'm still wondering why you kidnapped me."
The dog man's tail stopped wagging, "We didn't. We saved you."
"We?" asks Courtney, "Wait..." she lowered her head into her hands and covered her eyes, taking a deep breath, "Please tell me what the hell is going on before I scream."
"It's hard to explain," spoke a voice from beyond the door, "Just calm down, Courtney." the woman froze at the words; she knew that voice.
"Daryl?!?" she stood up in a moment and pushed the golden retriever aside. Courtney turned to face the speaker and stopped dead in her tracks as she stood face to face with a six and a half foot tall humanoid black panther. "Daryl?" she whimpered quietly, her knees almost buckling.
An enormous paw latched onto her arm before she could faint. Thin, black claws lightly grazed her flesh as he kept her stable in a firm hold. "Hey Courtney..." the panther's lips pulled back, revealing lines of pointed, carniverous teeth. It might have been a smile, "Miss me?" he asked.
* * * * * *
Courtney sat in a collapsible metal chair provided for her. Her hands were crossed on top of a heavy metal table in front of her. She couldn't help but stare at Daryl, now a black panther of sorts, who was seated across from her, looking back. Daryl had always had green eyes, which Courtney could plainly see on the panther, albeit, his pupils were almost closed in a vertical slit and the color was far greener than anything she had seen before. Her gaze took in the features on his face, including the long whiskers that jutted out from his pronounced, animalistic muzzle.
"The tux wouldn't have fit." Daryl explained, deadpanning the humor in the statement. Courtney couldn't bring herself to respond, simply continuing to stare at the creature in front of her trying to find some similarity or some shred of a connection that would allow her to see her fiance beneath all the fur and claws and teeth. Daryl's tail lashed. "Say something." he insisted, "please."
"How?" Courtney said. She wasn't entirely sure how her mouth managed to move, or how the word escaped her throat but it was all she could manage while sitting there at the table, body as tight as a guitar string.
"Alright... now we're getting somewhere." Daryl replied, idly flexing and relaxing his paws, little curved claws extending then retracting with the motion. He took a breath, whiskers twitching as he began to explain. "The Federal Drug Administration seems like a cushiony job but once you've been there long enough you start to see more things going on than you ever thought possible. They're the kind of things that would whip people up into a frenzy if they heard about it... PETA... the EPA... heck... religious foundations and probably even the NRA for god's sake... they'd all be calling for blood. Still, the government is pretty damn good about what is made public and what isn't."
"I was called in to do an on-site inspection of a developmental procedure... but something went wrong. There was some kind of rupture in one of the holding bins and most of us in the lab were sprayed by the fumes. The other two agents and I... well... we changed. So did some of the scientists and experimental animals like Rex." he motioned to the humanoid golden retriever who was seated on the floor towards the corner of the room idly chewing on a rawhide bone.
"You mean... whatever that procedure was changed you into... this?" Courtney tried valiantly to jump start her brain and get some kind of understanding out of the nightmarish story, her eyes gazing at his impossibly feral face.
Daryl nodded, eyes glinting as his head tilted, "Yes."
"And... that thingâ€"
"He is a person, Courtney, just like you or me, even if he didn't start that way."
"Alright..." Courtney took a breath, pausing after the correction, "So... he was a dog?"
Daryl nodded again, "You got it."
Courtney remained quiet for several seconds, waiting for the panther-- for her fiance to continue.
"I'm still not sure exactly what was involved but..." he tapped at the stack of papers seated next to him on the table, "the files I sent you have more than enough information to help us find out exactly what's going on."
"Those men who came after me... didn't you know these files were dangerous?" she demanded, absently rubbing the burn mark on her shoulder where she had been hit by the stun gun.
"Four of us followed you since you left the house yesterday." responded Daryl, "We had to find out who was after the papers and stop them if we were going to get you here."
"So why send the papers to me in the first place if you already had em? If this place is so safe why risk it?" she questioned, just starting to see a hint of Daryl in the panther... a complete lack of foresight or preplanning. Courtney couldn't figure out if she was relieved or angry.
Daryl shrugged, "Fred wanted revenge... David wanted to know what we were against... Rex wanted to make everyone happy...and I wanted... well... you... here." he looked down and away from her for a moment before raising his eyes back to meet her gaze, "I'm sorry I missed the wedding, Courtney but things got out of hand."
The woman closed her eyes, taking a deep breath as she digested the information. She could have been angry; she could have felt betrayed; she could have felt hurt and abused; she could have felt many different things but all she could think to herself again and again was how crazy it all was.
"Last week we had a normal life." she said quietly, still looking at him.
"It got out of hand." he replied sheepishly, ears slightly down as he gazed at her.
"Out of paw." she offered, a hurt smile hitting her lips.
"It got out of paw." he acknowledged, hesitantly offering a comforting smile in return.
"Daryl... I'm glad you're alive, no matter what form you're in." she offered after another long pause. The words flowed out of her before she had time to think about them, realizing just then how much she needed to know that it wasn't her and that it was a real emergency that took him from her... and a wave of relief cascaded over her as a weight was lifted from her shoulders. She actually managed a half-way genuine smile, "But you're in a shit load of trouble, mister... you said you wouldn't miss the wedding for anything short of death."
She saw him visibly begin to melt with relief in his seat; he knew here well enough to see that she was calmer, "I'm going to have to take a mulligan. Random acts of science-fiction gone awry is close enough." The snappy comeback was all-too-Daryl.
"Just one question... hon." Courtney spoke up.
"Anything."
She marveled to herself at the way her own mind worked, "Where IS my purse?"