Chapter 6 Linoleum
After his initial panic. Tortie looked around to find his way into the house. The front door was always an option, however as he would have to turn back into his human form, which was not practical. After all, a naked man skulking a suburban neighborhood at twilight was probably going to cause a commotion. The high brick wall surrounding the vacant house provided a lot of coverage, but it would be just Ethan’s luck to turn back to human to open the front or back door, and some noisy neighbor would spot his bare ass and call the police. He really didn’t need things to get more complicated, so he’d just have to look for a different way in.
It only took a few minutes for Tortie to notice that the kitchen window was ajar just enough for him to squeeze through. Although the brick ledge was at an angle, it still should be an easy enough jump and climb through that window. Behind his eyes, the unconscious part of his mind started to solve the equation of mass vs force vs gravity that was required to make this jump. Most didn’t realize it, but cats are mathematical geniuses, or least they were when it came to getting into places that they’re not supposed to be.
The equation was complete; it was just a butt wiggle and an exhalation of breath and Tortie launched himself at the ledge and the window. It was a great jump. It had all of the force necessary for him to make it to the ledge. Too bad it had too much force. Although cats are great at crunching the numbers, the execution sometimes leaves much to be desired. As he reached the apex of his jump, Tortie realized that not only would his not stop at the ledge, but he also wasn’t going to be able to stop at the window. Well, at least he’d be inside, and due to his cat reflexes, he’d land on his paws, a little rougher than he meant to but, still as quietly as ever.
It was when he sailed through the window that he realized his second mistake. The kitchen of this house had linoleum flooring and to make it even worse, it looked like it has been freshly cleaned. A fraction of a second later the smell of pine scented cleaner accosted his nose and made him almost gag on his way to the floor. When had William the Scab mopped the floor? He’d been watching him almost all day and he’d not once seen the bastard lift a finger to clean anything. Not even his dishes. He must have done it early in the morning before Tortie arrived. His next question was, did the man ever sleep? It was then that paws touched slippery floor and tried to take off in different directions even though his momentum was carrying him straight towards the door jamb leading to the back hallway to the bedrooms. He had to do something fast.
Shit, shit, shitty, shit was all that was racing through the front of his mind at that moment. Thoughts behind that were trying to decide what to do in the short amount of time before he hit that door jam. Should he change back to human? He might be able to stop his slide and in turn get to a safer spot of the floor. There were two things that he might risk with that. One, if he didn’t get control of his slide in time then he risked making an even larger ruckus and two, as he didn’t know where William the Scab was at that moment he risked having his cover blown. He could also stay in his cat form and let the slide progress to the obvious end. As long as he didn’t cry out, he would likely make almost no noise at all and any damage that he took could be repaired by one of the Super healers on the team.
In the end, inaction choose for him and he solidly hit the door jamb with a muffled smack. He had hit his head against the wall and jam, causing an almost instant headache and blurry double vision. At least that’s what he thought happened. This blurred vision was odd, almost as if he was seeing to sides of the same room. Tortie really hoped that the damage wasn’t permanent but with the healers he had worked with before, anything short of death was usually fixable. Now that he thought about it, it almost felt like there was an echo in his head too.
In fact, there was a second voice in his head, it was Bedlam. Tortie, the team is on the way, ETA five minutes. Your current mission, ensure the target doesn’t leave and the victim remains alive and unharmed. Do you copy?
Copy, Bedlam. I am in the house and working my way around to find the girl. He gave his head one more shake and that seemed to clear the cobwebs from his head. Right, now that is all sorted, time to go and find my targets. With that he moved quietly and perhaps a little drunkenly towards the bedrooms and the stairs that led towards the basement,
Ashley had managed to stop crying, at least for the moment. She knew her tears were a waste of precious fluids but sometimes the emotions can just override common sense. She didn’t even really understand how she had ended up in this musty old basement. Two days ago, she’d been on a bit of a shopping spree, looking for new clothes for that office job working downtown. She’d been very excited and had jumped through a lot of hoops and red tape to land this job in the first place.
She really didn’t understand why this job had been so hush-hush. As far as she knew, she was going to be working at a campus extension/cell phone switchboard of sorts, she really had no idea what that entailed, but it was apparently very important and somewhat classified. She had never had to go through such an exhaustive background check, including allowing the FBI to go over all her life with a fine-tooth comb. She been asked about a paper that she wrote in fourth grade on Superheroes of all things, and what her feelings towards Superheroes were now as an adult. What a weird question. Superheroes were fine, she didn’t feel like they added or removed anything from the basic equation of life. There had always been good and evil and hadn’t good always triumphed in the end? She thought of Supers no differently from police officers, fire fighters, or emergency room doctors and nurses. They were just one more group of people that protected normal people like her from dangerous people like the one upstairs, that William guy.
Of course, it had been two days since he’d snatched off the street in broad daylight. Two days of him using his awful powers on her to get her to tell him the location of some secret Supers hideout. She didn’t even know any Supers, and since he hadn’t believed her, her body was now covered in scabs that had appeared shortly after he’d used his power to cause the wounds in the first place. Every time he gave her a new scab it was like he was peeling the skin off her body with a dull but scorchingly hot blade. It hurt so much that she’d passed out a few times from the pain. Her throat was raw from screaming and crying. Ashley kept looking for a way out of here.
He’d bound her arms and legs tightly to the chair she was in right now. There was also a dog collar around her neck with a chain attached to a nearby wall when he had finally unbound her so she could use the bathroom. Unless he’d unbind her limbs and remove the at least the chain if not the dog collar entirely, she just could see a way out. That wasn’t true, she could see a way out but not one she’d survive. Just as she was being to mourn her inability to escape her current situation. She heard a that froze her blood. Footsteps coming down the stairs.
“Are you ready for our next game, Pet?” William the Scab said without emotion, “ I apologize but, I think this will be our final game.” As he came into her sight, most of his face seemed placid except for his eyes. His eyes burned with hunger and need. Ashley began to weep uncontrollably again. She knew what he meant by final game. Panic began to grip her mind, and she started to scream before William had reached her.
“Now, now, my Pet. No one can hear you but please scream out your last gasps of life. It will be over soon. Well, not to soon.” Again, his words were flat, emotionless, the exact opposite of his eyes. They burn even brighter if than was possible.
He reached her in a few short strides. He looked down at her and began to lick his hands. He hadn’t done this before. He was causing wounds on himself first. He shuddered with every lick of his tongue, and every lick scored a new wound on his hands and arms. “Didn’t you realize that I had to hurt me to hurt you? Every wound I give myself is one more I can give to you. Now, where to place my first kiss? Oh yes, let’s start with those hateful eyes.” He reached towards her face with a finger and Ashley closed her eyes in fear.
There was a sound that came out of the darkness that made both of them pause. A low guttural growl, quiet as first rising in volume and pitch the longer it went on. Then sound multiplied. What was one became two, then three. William the Scab stood frozen in place looking for the source of the growls but know the type of throat that uttered them. Cats! Somehow there were three cats that had come into the house and now were slowly padding towards William and Ashley.
When they first emerged from the shadows, Ashley looked at them in surprise. There were three identical tortie colored cats coming towards them. She wonder how they got into the house. William had ranted earlier in the day about some cat that been sitting on the wall and he swore up and down that it was spying on him. Ashley had thought that his last screw had finally come loose but seeing the cats here inside the house, she was starting to think he had been on to something.
Ashley had heard of people gibbering, but she had never seen it before. William had dissolved into a maniac, incoherent muttering imbecile as the sight of the cats. He stuck his scab covered fingers in front of his face as if he blocked the image from his sight, it would cease to exist. Ashley was stunned into silence at the swift shift in her captors demeanor. She decided to go for it and hoped the cats could understand her.
“Please, cats, if you can understand me, help me!” she said as loud as her abused throat would allow.
At her words something happened to the cats. They stopped and looked at each other as if they’d never seen the others in their lives, even though it was fairly obvious even by a frightened and half-starved captive like Ashley that they were siblings if not twins. All of the cats at the same time puffed out all of their fur and the growls became hisses. They had been staring at William before but now they couldn’t have been less interested in him than if he’d changed into a can of dog food.
William took advantage of the distraction and bolted for the stairs; the only way he could have climbed them faster was if he had flown up them. The cats all shook their heads and suddenly two of them vanished into the darkness. The last cat shot a brief glance at Ashley and then ran up the stairs after William. Ashley wasn’t sure what do to as she was still bound and the dog collar was around her neck. Well, at least the cat had chased William off, she could only hope it would come back with help.
Several minutes later, Ashley heard the sound of footsteps on the stairs. Her fear came back but then she realized that the footfalls were much lighter than William’s had been. A tall, thin woman with short, cropped hair and amber colored eyes that seemed to glow with their own light stepped into the room.
“Ashley Yarrow? My name’s Bedlam. I’m a Super with SUAVE your new employer. We are here to rescue you.”
Ashley’s body relaxed and she passed out from all the strain her body had been maintaining. This time the sleep would be welcomed as Bedlam made sure that she was comfortable both in body and in mind. It was best to start the healing process right away.
“What in the hell were you doing Tortie?” said Bedlam in that said in tone and words that she was far from happy with him, “You left the victim alone, you managed to lose the criminal, and you are telling me that it was what because you hit your head? You were both seeing yourself from the inside and the outside? That’s not how your power works. You turn into a fricking cat! All you had to do was keep William the Scab in the house but nowhere near the victim!”
Tortie, back in human form and in his uniform, had his eyes downcast. His head still hurt like crazy, and his vision still blurred at the edges, but he was no longer seeing double, or triple. It had to have been some sort of trap that William the Scab had set up. That was it, it must have been a trap. He was going to say as much to Bedlam when he looked up into her eyes and saw the disappointment that had settled there. His heart was still defiant, but he couldn’t look into those eyes and try to excuse his actions/ Trap, bonk on the head, or whatever else it could have been. He had to own his failure.
“I failed in my duties, Bedlam. There is no excuse for that. I will except whatever punishment you deem necessary.”
Bedlam sighed heavily and closed her eyes. “Some of the fault lies with me, Ethan. You needed a second spotter, and we had no else to spare at the time. I should have found you back up or at least had the infiltrate team ready nearby. I’m sorry for my part. We need to get your head checked to make sure there’s no brain damage. Once that’s done, however, I’m afraid you will be assigned to a new team. A less critical team, at least until you can prove yourself to reliable and cool in a crisis. She put a hand on his shoulder. She might as well have slapped him after all, the words had.
Reassigned. To a less important team. He knew what that meant. He was going to an Omega level cleaner crew. She should have just sent him to jail. It would have been less insulting, and he would have actually stood a chance of getting back on an extraction team. The fire that raged in his heart to prove that he was more than an Omega stirred. He was going to prove to everyone that his power was important, that he was important and that regardless of where the very ludicrous system had determined the usefulness of his power, that he was powerful and needed. He just needed a chance to show it. He would have to bide his time.
“Thank you, Bedlam. I will prove to you any way that I can that I deserve a second chance.”
“I know you will, Ethan. I really do.” Bedlam said with a slim smile on her face.
What in the seven hells did that mean? I guess I’ll find out soon enough, Tortie thought.
Silver Moon Stories 
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