Crocodile Shoes

Chapter Four

Lek.

I woke up with a pounding headache and intense nausea. When I sat up - too fast! - the entire...room span around like a crazy carousel, and I had to lie very still until the urge to vomit had completely passed. Then I sat up again, slowly this time, and looked at my surroundings.

I appeared to be in a large glass cage, full of plants and a large pond.

"What the hell is going on?" I murmured, frowning in confusion. Why had our captors put us in what was, essentially, a large fish tank? Then I remembered.

"Tani!" I cried, jumping up and looking around franticly. Ah, I though with a sigh of relifef, there she is. She was lying a few feet from where I had been, curled into a ball under a bush. I went over to her and shook her shoulder. She stirred in her sleep a little, but didn't wake up.

"Tani, wake up," I said, then louder, "Tani! Wake up!" This time her eyes snapped open and she jerked upright.

"Where are we?" she asked, looking as confused as I must have when I woke up.

"I don't know. Maybe it's a part of that lab thing the wolf-men were thinking about when they took us," I ran a hand through my hair and sighed.

"Come on, let's see if there's a way out of here."

Twenty minutes later, we had searched every inch of the tank, and the only exits we could find were a skylight twenty feet above us in the middle of the ceiling, and a steel door, that didn't budge an inch when I rammed it. So now we were stuck in some tank, feeling horribly depressed, and my right hand side was throbbing with pain from ramming the stupid door.

"Well, this sucks," I announced, picking up a piece of gravel and flinging it at the glass that held us prisoner.

"Can we get you on Mastermind, Lek? Catergory: the frickin' obvious?" Tani snapped. She loved to be free, and have enough space to run. This tank was so small compared to the land around the lake.

Just then there was a high pitched whine from somewhere above us. We both winced and covered our over-sensitive ears.

"Testing, testing, one, two three?" A womans voice spoke out of nowhere.

"There must be a speaker system hidden in here somewhere," I whispered to Tani, looking around to try and spot the speakers.

"This is the Director. You have been captured and returned to the School."

"Returned? School?" I wondered out loud, "What's going on?"

The womans voice gave a harsh laugh, "You were experiments, failed ones, I might add. You were supposed to have been terminated, but it seems that didn't go according to plan."

"Where are we?" Tani asked in a small voice, sounding scared. I wrapped an arm around her, hugging her tight. When I looked at her face, I saw that her eyes were wide and filled with tears.

"You are in an experimental terrarium. It was built with the purpose of holding you, should you be succesful. The calculations said that you would be, but the two percent that said you wouldn't be decided to rear its ugly head. So we wasted a lot of money." The woman sounded angry now, "So, you can understand that I am not too pleased about this. And, as such, we will terminate you, like you were meant to be when you were born."

Beside me, Tani gasped, and turned her head into my side. I felt her tears soak into my shirt, and salty ones of my own welled up in my eyes. I rapidly blinked my extra eyelid, forcing them away.

"But...but...why?" I asked, not really knowing why I did.

"As I believe I said; you two are failures. You were failures at birth, and you're failures now. The termination is scheduled for tomorrow. But first we will test your skills, to see if anything at all went right with the experiment, and whether it's worth trying it again." She coughed, and I heard the beep of a button she must have pressed wherever she was.

"Send in the Erasers."

Erasers. The wolf -men. Our kidnappers. Our attackers. And, if they were too strong for us, our killers. Maybe the termination wouldn't be necessary. Maybe we'd have a quick death.

The door clicked open, and the wolf-men, sorry, Erasers, flooded in, eyes murderous.

"Tani, what are they thinking?" I whispered, standing up and pulling her to her feet. She turned her terrified face up to me, and I saw the dark streaks on her scales where the tears had run down her face. Her eyes were steely now, afraid still, but cold and hard as well.

"They want to make it a long kill. They want to draw it out. They haven't had a fight in ages."

Or maybe our deaths wouldn't be so quick.

Tani.

Their minds were, when you got down to it, I reflected, dodging a hairy paw as quick as lightning, quite interesting. The wolf, uh, what's the word? I kicked out, knocking an Erasers legs from under him. Oh yeah, DNA, that's it. Made them think differently to humans. They had better instincts, pack instincts. If it weren't for their orders to focus only on us, then they'd automatically shift attack or defense patterns to protect the weaker or more heavily injured members of the group. Very interesting indeed, I mused, rolling under an Eraser that had leapt through the air towards me.

As he crashed to the floor I slid over to his legs, and bit his ankle. Without medical treatment, and the right antidote, he would be dead in 24 hours. Sure, that's a long time, but the effects of my venom mean that he won't be doing much for most of that time. Another blow came from my left. Only, it didn't actually come for another ten seconds, but by that time I'd dodged out of the way. Seeing the future so rocks.

I glanced over at Lek, who was holding her own agaisnt two or three Erasers at once. She seemed to be enjoying kicking their furry behinds. And so was I, for that matter. I mean, once you got used to the whole violence thing fighting was kinda cool. And Lek was built for this. She was so strong, and powerful. I wasn't quite as solid as that, and a good couple of hits could have me out for the count.

I dodged another blow, kicking the Eraser in the small of his back. As I was saying, a few hits in the right places could knock me out, or kill me outright, but, thanks to my powers, and my snake DNA enhanced speed, it was hard for my attackers to land a direct hit.

Even so, I felt like I'd been fighting for hours. How many of these things did the school have, anyway? A limitless supply? What, did they just make one and then clone it a million times or something?

And then I heard the cold voice of the director-lady over the hidden announcement system.

"That's enough. We have all the data we need. Erasers, leave the hybrids." The Erasers reluctantly left the fight and filed out of the door, snarling at us as they went. It was evident in their posture and in their minds that they didn't want to stop fighting.

"The termination date is set for tomorrow, at 0800 hours. That is all. Goodnight." As if the night could be good after she'd told us that.

Thanks for all the reviews guys. More would be appreciated, but thanks for reading anyway.

Blessed Be

LD.