Log 30

Inuyasha paused, taking a deep breath of the air around him.

Without thought, without care for consequence, Inuyasha was ripping his way through the mansion Kikyo called home. Behind him was a clear path of destruction. Doors ripped from their hinges, furniture upended and shredded, even a few walls Inuyasha had no patience to find a door through.

He was beyond thought, beyond rationality. He was all instinct and drive. Drive to find that which meant more to him than even his own life.

He sniffed the air, searching for the familiar, loving scent of the woman who he sought.

Yet again, he smelled nothing.

It didn't mean much. She might still be too far away, through too many barriers, for him to smell. She might be underground. She might even be in a room that had a separate ventilation system than the rest of the mansion.

But Inuyasha was determined. Even more than his desire to kill the woman named Kikyo, he needed to find Kagome and assure himself that she was safe. Only then would he be able to calm himself down.

Deciding that she wasn't here, Inuyasha ran on, crashing down another door as he did so.

Nothing would stop him.

Nothing.

XXXXXXXXXXX

"Damn." Sango paused, breathing hard as she looked around her.

Inuyasha's path was easy to follow but the damn hybrid mutant was so damn fast Sango was never going to catch up to him. Part of her thought it might be best to try and head him off but she had no idea where he was going or how to get there herself.

She decided to recheck some of her notes from their interviews with Yura, maybe there was some clue about a prison or some kind of holding area for captives she had missed.

However, when Sango pulled out her phone she saw she had 18 missed calls, all from Miroku.

"Jeez." she mumbled. Deciding he wouldn't blow up her phone for no good reason, and that he wouldn't do it just because she hand Inuyasha left no note about where they were going, Sango clicked the call back button.

The phone had barely started to ring before Miroku's irritated voice filled her speaker, "Why in the hell haven't you answered!"

"Nice to hear from you, too." Sango rolled her eyes. She should really continue her futile chase of Inuyasha but it was tiring. "What did you want?"

"Where are the two of you? We have some serious issues here!"

"Yeah, yeah. We know." Sango thought maybe this call really had been pointless. "Kagome's been kidnapped. Don't worry, we're already on it. I've got everything under...control." Okay, the last part was a lie but she would get it back together eventually.

"No, she wasn't!" Miroku snapped making Sango's back straighten in surprise.

"What?"

"That's what I've been trying to tell you!" he sighed exasperatedly. "It wasn't Kagome, it was Myoga. And it wasn't Kikyo, it was Naraku!"

"Naraku?" Sango repeated. "Why would he kidnap Myoga?"

"So he could get Kagome to come to him willingly."

"Well, damn." Sango shook her head. "Don't worry, we'll change directions and head there now."

"Don't bother." Miroku sighed. "She's already there and well beyond our reach. We're moving up our schedule. You and Inuyasha stay there and take down Kikyo."

"And leave Kagome alone?" Sango began running after Inuyasha again. He would not be happy when he heard about this. "Like dog boy would let that happen."

"You have no choice." was the reply. "Things are already in motion and we're on a deadline."

"Are you okay?" Sango asked, noticing the hitch in his voice. He sounded winded, almost distracted. "What's wrong?"

"Don't worry about it." he said unhelpfully making her roll her eyes again.

"Miroku." she growled. "Now is not the time for you to be cryptic and mysterious. I have some serious issues here, you know."

There was a pause followed by, "Please tell me Inuyasha is right beside you."

"I wish." Sango smiled. "Don't worry about it. He's a big, bad boy and can take care of himself."

"No!" Miroku groaned unhappily. "That was the other thing I needed to tell you. Kagome needs me to pass on a message."

"Why the hell did you let her go off alone anyway?" Sango asked. "Inuyasha is going to kill you."

"I owed her one. A big one." Miroku hedged.

"This wouldn't happen to be about whatever the hell it is you two are keeping from us, would it?" Sango glared at her phone wondering if he could feel the heat of her gaze through the line.

Another pause. A sigh. "I asked her to make another hybrid for my bosses."

"You did not." Sango reminded herself to smack him later then she realized that Kagome must have done it. "Oh, no. She didn't, did she?"

"She did exactly as I asked." Miroku said.

Which, Sango realized, didn't actually answer her question. She opened her mouth to question him again but remembered that the very bosses who asked for the hybrid could be listening in on the call. So she changed her words to, "Miroku, what the hell is going on?"

"Just listen." he said instead, his voice stern and serious. "Kagome told me to tell Inuyasha that he's not infallible."

"What?" Sango asked.

"Do you honestly think that someone as smart as Kagome would create a being so much stronger than us without giving us a way to destroy him if things went south." Miroku asked. "If he put any effort into it, he could do some serious damage to the human race and, if there were enough of them, they might be able to destroy humans completely. He has built in fail safes to keep things like that from happening."

"Oh, good Kami." Sango groaned. "Please don't tell me he melts or something with the push of a button."

"Don't be ridiculous." Sango could practically hear his eyes roll. "It's nothing so sci-fi. But you have to find him and tell him."

"Alright." Sango nodded turning to follow Inuyasha's path of destruction. "I'm listening."

XXXXXXXXXXX

Kagome groaned as she slowly regained the consciousness she hadn't even realized she had lost. Her head felt foggy but her awareness was returning.

She ran through the last things she remembered.

She had returned to the burned out lab, opened the basement doors.

Then she walked down the stairs then...

Kagome shook her head, trying to help clear the fog faster.

Then...

At the bottom of the stairs, against the far wall. There had been a sign.

Kagome sat up, she had been laying face down on the floor. She grabbed her head, clenching her eyes shut trying to remember.

The sign said...

The sign said...

What did the sign say?

'Breath deep'.

That's right.

Breath deep.

Then a hose fell from the ceiling, spraying some kind of gas in her face.

It must have knocked her out.

How much time had passed? And, more importantly, where was she now?

Kagome opened her eyes.

It was a small room, smaller even than a prison cell. It had no decorations and only a single bulb burning dully from the ceiling.

Besides that, there was a door and a small monitor beside it just a bit bigger than her hand.

This was Naraku's game, Kagome reminded herself. She was playing by his insane rules.

She got to her feet, only losing her balance once, but felt better once she was upright. Whatever he had sprayed her with, it didn't have any long term affects.

Knowing better than to think it was unlocked but still willing to try, Kagome reached for the knob and turned.

No surprise.

Locked.

A dark laugh filled the tiny room, coming from the screen's tiny speakers.

It flashed once then Naraku's face filled it, looking mockingly at her.

"You fell right into my trap." he gloated.

"It's not a trap if I knew it was coming." Kagome rolled her eyes. True, she hadn't known exactly what to expect but she wasn't so stupid to think that Myoga would be waiting for her at the end of the basement stairs with a bow around his neck.

"Shut up!" Naraku snapped. "I am the one in control here, not you."

"Alright, Naraku." Kagome nodded once. "I'll play your sick game. What's going on here?"

"This." Naraku smiled gleefully, glad she had acknowledged his superiority. He clicked a key on the keyboard in front of him then the screen changed.

"Myoga!" Kagome cried thankfully as the old man's face filled her view. Then the camera zoomed back, showing his environment.

He was trapped, cuffed, on a long metal grade suspended about ten feet above a big vat that was boiling, what appeared to be, water.

"You can only see it, so I doubt you recognize what he's suspended over." Naraku's voice came over the speaker. Myoga obviously couldn't see or hear her. "But I'm such a nice guy, so I'll tell you. That is a 15 percent sodium hydroxide with water mixture boiling at a very toasty 93 degrees Celsius."

"You wouldn't!" Kagome cried out in horror.

"I would." she could hear the joy in his voice. "In about an hour, the mechanism on that lift will switch on and the old man will be lowered into the vat. I'm not sure what will kill him first. The boiling hot temperatures, drowning, or the pain of being dissolved by the lye."

"How could you?" Kagome felt terrified as she watched the screen and the weekly moving Myoga. Tears pricked at her eyes and she wished desperately for Inuyasha to be beside her.

"You can stop it." Naraku promised. "See that switch there, on the far right? That controls everything. All you have to do is flip it and the entire thing stops. The bed wont fall and the heater for the lye will turn off, letting it cool. Then you can maneuver him down and get him off safely."

"And how do I get to the switch?" Kagome asked, feeling nauseous.

She was a scientist. She knew it would take about 3 hours for a body to completely dissolve in lye, not including the bones which would turn brittle. However, the burns sustained from being totally submerged in the stuff would be enough to kill the poor old man. She couldn't stop her brain from playing out the scenario, horrifically, in her mind. The base would dissolve his flesh, liquifying him the moment it breached his skin and got to the softer, easier to destroy, organs inside. It would take three hours to liquify the body, but only a few, painful, agonizing moments, to kill him.

The screen flashed back to Naraku who was grinning widely, unable to hide his glee at Kagome's horror.

"Well, you have to play my game." he said. "I've gone through quite a lot of trouble to make this place for you. Think of it as a maze and you're my lab rat. Only, instead of twists and turns to go through to get to the old man, there's a serious of doors. Each one can only be unlocked by solving the problem I've set for you. They start of easy and get harder as you go. There are ten in total, not including the one in front of you now, if you get through them all in time you can save the old man."

The screen flashed again, this time bringing up a dark red clock reading 60:00. "You have one hour, Kagome. Ten doors, less than ten minutes a piece. Move fast and you can save him."

"Go."

Kagome heard the click of the door unlocking.