Disclaimer: Hey Arnold. Not mine. But I like it anyway.
Ice Water
By Pyrus Japonica
Prologue
One year after the end of Hot Air
Hillside City
Colic-Hyerdahl Laboratory
Phoebe was working late again. Or possibly working early, depending on how you categorized being at work at three in the morning. Hot Air had proven to be even more difficult to crack than she had thought, and she had spent much of the year here in her lab, shut off from the rest of the world, working on her project. It was an obsession to her, one that she could not keep away from, and she wasn't quite sure what she would do when it was finally finished.
Though that day was a long way off. It was only now, after an entire year that she was able to see just a tiny piece of the huge puzzle that was the antidote. Unlocking the secrets of the actual solution of Hot Air was easy enough, but to combat it…she shook the doubts from her mind. She would do this. She had to.
A noise from outside her door startled her. She turned but there was nothing there. You've been in here too long, Pheebs old girl, your mind is playing tricks on you. But she made no move to leave. Instead, squinting in the near total darkness of her lab, she carefully, carefully, added just a drop of acid to the mixture she was concocting. Nothing happened. She let out a breath she hadn't realized she was holding.
"Saving the world, Ms. Hyerdahl?"
She started again and looked towards the sound. Her partner, Dr. Edward Colic, was standing in the doorway. She smiled slightly at him and he did the same to her. They hadn't dated in almost a year now, but he was still allowed to tease her about her work ethic.
"That's Doctor Hyerdahl to you. And not quite yet."
He moved quickly towards her, making her draw a quick breath of surprise. Then he stopped and looked at her very strangely, as if he had never really seen her before and was trying to memorize her face.
"But you're close, aren't you Phoebe?" He picked up a few sheets with experiment results on them before she could stop him. Glancing through them, he nodded to himself.
"Of course you're close. No one else could have gotten this far in so short a time. You're a genius, after all."
Somehow, Phoebe did not feel that this was a complement. Her gut was telling her something was wrong here, and as she looked around her familiar lab it seemed to turn into a haven for sinister-looking shadows before her eyes. Stop it Phoebe, it's just Edward after all. Your partner, remember?
"Perhaps…perhaps you'd better go now, Dr. Colic." she told him as firmly as she could, trying to calm her stomach, which was twisting itself into knots.
"Edward." he corrected without looking at her.
"Edward. Well, I was just about to leave…I just need to clean up a few things so if you'd like to wait outside…" It was all she could think of to say.
"I don't think so Phoebe." He looked up at her briefly, all the smile gone from his eyes. Phoebe froze. She'd never seen him look like that before. Her eyes swept the room quickly, looking for possible exits. He watched her and let out a low laugh, then neatened the pile of papers in his hands. Still looking at her, he ripped them in half.
Now Phoebe was looking for a weapon. But Edward ignored her for the moment, focusing instead on her work table. With a sweep of his arm, glass test tubes, beakers and air-tight containers crashed to the floor. She gritted her teeth. A month's worth of work, at least. Gone. He looked back to her and smiled again, a different kind of smile that made shivers run down her spine.
"Sorry about that. Have to have a bit of a mess, you know. You should see my lab, it's even worse." And he tipped her computer onto the floor. A few sparks shot out of the power supply, making Phoebe cringe involuntarily.
Edward wrenched a leg from the bottom of the work table. "These are nice, these detachable legs. Very convenient." he told her as he used it to smash in a few of the cages on the walls.
He was blocking the door. Phoebe looked behind her to see if she could maybe escape out a window, but they were on the fifth floor. Even if she survived a jump, she'd hardly be in shape to run. Her heart started to race. Was there anyone else left in the building? She opened her mouth to scream, but Edward was there before she could draw a breath, holding something against her mouth and nose.
She fought briefly against an overwhelming smell that seemed to envelop her, then her eyes stopped taking orders from her brain, and shut tight. And the world evaporated.
A/N: Well guys, here's the start. Be prepared for quite a ride on this one, even I'm not all that sure about how a few twists will turn out. I'm not promising anything. ~PJ