NOVEL FROG Chapter 32: Down the Rabbit Hole
I drifted weightless in the dark. There were no sounds, no sensations, just the horrifying purity of the void. Then lights in the ceiling began to come on revealing a room filled with electrical conduits and dull textured gray walls. I was worried at first that the lights would blind me but I didn't have eyes or a body. I was a pure observer.
The room was circular, about twenty meters in diameter with ceilings six meters high. Through the center was a square pillar three meters across coated in white ceramic hexagonal tiles. Evenly spaced along the floor were a series of gray electrical boxes with red levers on the side. They were labeled with engraved steel plates that said things like “Output 01 Emergency Shutoff” in human common.
There were secondary labels written in faded pencil on blue tape that were barely legible but I was able to make out some of it. It was boring stuff like “Habitat 12 Heating” or “Secondary Radio Array”.
I willed myself forward to see what else was here, floating through the air. Most of the levers seemed to be in the off position. The boxes were also, I realized, upside down.
No, I was looking at this all wrong. The gently curving walls were actually the floor. I oriented myself accordingly, feeling my perspective shift. What a strange place, I thought.
I raged.
I felt myself slipping away as I was pulled into a memory that was not my own.
***
I was sitting in a wooden rocking chair on the porch drinking a home brewed beer and watching a little human toddler in a blue and green parka playing with the other pups. They were playing hide and seek and she was getting mad that they always seemed to find her so easily. She didn't understand that they could track her by scent.
My knees and upper back ached from a lifetime of police work and my time as a paratrooper before that. Old age had caught up to me.
The fur around my muzzle had faded to gray and my eyes, once sharp, were beginning to fail. Hunds had not been built to last this long.
I lit a cigarette with my antique silver lighter and took a drag, feeling the smoke caress my battle scarred lungs. It would be one of the last I would ever taste before I died. It was sweet, just as last things always were, and the home brewed beer was crisp.
I looked at the lighter, engraved on the side was the motto of the Möhi special forces. “He who dares wins.”
I thought about the person who had owned it before me. Ruhern, or rather Kasha, had been in my thoughts lately. Things were advancing nicely with the Bone Syndicate and soon they would be in a good position to take out the Howl once and for all. That was a loose end that I was happy to finally tie up.
My other plans were coming to fruition as well. Simon and Nemeria had been located and were on their way to Coven. GG was prepared to greet them. Everything was going according to plan. Now came the hard part, saying goodbye while I was still me.
“Hello, Eden.” I said in Döbian, knowing that this was going to be my final message to her. It felt strange speaking to someone far in the future when I was also seeing them in the present.
To me at this moment she was both a toddler in a parka and the unknown stranger receiving the message. Would she be a good person? Would she be happy? Would her life have been easy or hard? And would she love me as I loved her, or would that child's pure love have twisted itself into hatred?
I put those thoughts out of my mind. “It has been a long time, I would imagine. I hope that you are well and the years have been kind to you. I wonder if you are angry at me for leaving or if you understand why I had to go.”
No, she wouldn't understand. How could she understand? I had kept her in the dark in vague hopes that she would never have to walk the path of the warhund. I never warned her about the coming storm or told her who I was.
It had been foolish to think that I could shield her from that. But everything great I ever did had been foolish. Taking on the Bone Syndicate with Sacher had been foolish. Moving to Sühi to pursue Ani, a woman I barely knew, had been foolish as well.
But as I looked at my grandchildren playing, safe and sound, happy and oblivious, perhaps my foolishness had been the only way forward. What dull husk of a hund would I be if I hadn't taken the fool’s path?
Still, she deserved an explanation. “I could have switched bodies again but that would not have extended my life, only stretched it thinner. And if I became someone new I had no guarantees that they would feel as I do now.”
I took another drag and let it out slowly, feeling a tear forming in the corner of my eye as I thought of my wife who had just passed away. It made my heart ache thinking about her. “Ani was right. We have had a good life together and there is nothing to gain by extending it beyond our already unnaturally long lifespan. And my little love, as much as I want to be there to see you grow up, I am tired.”
I flexed my wrist, feeling the aches of arthritis. “These old bones of mine long for rest. I could stitch them together with synthetics but what then? Replace all that I am one piece at a time
until there is nothing left? No. I wish to die as the hund I have become.”