Where on Earth, Spies Ch. 18

"Nur noch ein paar Probanden zu testen. Nur ein paar, dann habe ich mein Endprodukt."

Carmen exited the Chronoskimmer just outside a large, nondescript building somewhere in the vicinity of Germany. She really hoped it wasn't near any of the darker places in Germany, she really didn't want to deal with more depressing sights than she had to that day. She was listening in on the conversation on the inside, hearing the Doktor mumbling quietly to himself, along with mingled noises of injured-sounding animals, and the ever-present hum of technology.

Carmen slipped inside and looked around. She saw kennels. Lots of empty kennels. The Doctor had gone in one direction, so she began following the corridor down the opposite way, figuring it to be an improvement on attempting to follow him. Luckily, the place was understaffed in the way of guards, so she had little fear of running into anyone else. Walking along, she found more rooms with more animals. Some alive, some barely holding on, and some she sincerely suspected to be dead. The kennels got more and more populated as she walked, but never with more than one animal per desolate cage. They had sparse food and poor water, each looking dead inside, if not out.

"Hey, Hotstuff!" Someone snapped in a very American accent. Carmen halted in her tracks and looked around. All she saw was a lively-looking mutt with curly black hair, which winked in her direction. She had seen dogs wink before, but never so intently. She crouched down to examine it.

"Normally this is where I say that dogs don't talk, but that would be the least surprising thing I have seen this week." She mused.

"Normally I'd say girls as pretty as you aren't that smart, but that would be the least surprising thing I've seen this week." The dog returned slyly.

"I will smack you on the nose with a newspaper, I swear it."

"Sorry, sorry. Look, I was captured by these bastards, unsuccessfully tortured for knowledge, and put into a kennel to have my brain transferred into a dog's. I'm a little testy, alright? Please let me out. Please please Please before I whine?"

"You don't know if I'm on your side." Carmen pointed out, amused by his eagerness.

"I also don't know if I'll ever have thumbs again. I'll take my chances." He stated.

Carmen stood up and started walking off.

"Hey! Hey hey hey! Please don't go! Please! I need to get out, I'll do anything!" He whimpered and put his ears back, giving the big puppydog eyes in a manner that may have suggested he did that a lot as a human, too.

"Hmm... Anything? Because from the way I see it, it won't be a matter of one particularly good deed. You'd owe me your life, you know." She pointed out with an amused look.

"Yeah, yeah, just get me out!" He yipped. Carmen seemed amused. She turned around,  turning back with a piece of curved wire in her hands. (if you must ask where she got the wire, kindly turn to your girlfriend, mother, or significant female friends and ask them to explain it to you slowly). She picked the lock and let the dog out, turning to replace the wire before walking down the hall. "Come on, then, mutt. I've got some papers to pick up. We'll get you fixed and debate how much you owe me later." She remarked with a smirk.

"...Fixed?" He leaned his ears back, but decided it was a figure of speech. He followed Carmen to the office, where she found several journals and copies of journals. She picked up a journal that had some dates marked out on the front, along with "Erfolg!!!" in red pen. After briefly looking through it, Carmen decided that her shoddy German picked up just enough to decide this was what she was looking for. She tucked the journal into her pocket and turned to the dog, who was peeing on the Doktor's floor.

"Charming." Carmen remarked.

"If he fed me I'd leave him a present in his shoes, too." The Dog stated flatly. Revenge comes in small packages.

Carmen let the dog lead the way out, wherupon they eventually came into a room full of large tubes containing people. The dog ran to a man with scraggly black hair and a scratched up face, in boxers (as much of the people were, in the tubes) and jumped up to put his paws on it. "This one! This one is me." The Dog stated.

Carmen picked up a chair and broke it and the tube in one solid smash, before reclaiming the man quite ungracefully. She could hear the Doktor and his guards running toward the noise.

"Up on this slab, here." The dog jumped onto one small slab with wires going to it, and Carmen set the body of the man on the other, and started connecting wires. Thankfully, the Doktor seemed to be going a bit senile, so he marked all of the cords in a way that he could remember where on the body they went. Carmen just had to remember the difference between a hippocampus and a Claustrum.

The Doctor burst in with two guards.
"Fang den Dieb!" The order from the Doktor was repeated by one of the guards in French, confirming to Carmen that they were, infact, Swiss. German and French, you see, are two of the primary languages of Switzerland, but this is no time for a geopolitical lesson!

Carmen ran to the console and flung the switch, sending cascades of sparks everywhere as underprepared bodies and nutrient-rich liquid sparked and reacted. In a plume of smoke from the green ooze catching fire and an overheating computer, Carmen and company were gone by the time the smog cleared enough for the Doktor to see. Besides, He had more pressing difficulties: the computer had quite caught the rest of the lab on fire!

Carmen held the dog and ran along the corridors, looking for an alternative way out. She thought she saw another flash of red from the corner of her eye, but she ignored it. She decided it must have been the fire hot on her heels, or an illusion of the poorly-prepared light, or some poor animal they had no time to rescue.

"Don't get all gushy on me, gorgeous, we don't have time! Besides, these animals are better off dead than alive." The man grumbled, stumbling along but otherwise doing decently for someone woken abruptly to reality.
"I still can't believe you saved a mutt like that."

"Yes, I saved a dog, too." Carmen stated tartly, running to the window. She jumped out carefully, followed by the clumsy climbing of her newfound "friend" if one could call him such. She pushed him into the Chronoskimmer, and laid the dog nearby him. They both were incredibly tired. Which worked fine for Carmen. She got them back home, pausing only long enough to watch the place go up in flames. She was fairly certain she saw government cars and airships flying in, which was very likely the World Spy Organization flying in to end the fight.

Carmen got them back to her home base, and tasked Alik with the job of tending to the scraggly dog. Which worked fine for Alik. He liked dogs, so long as they liked him. He was glad to feed and water the pup.

Carmen got the man she brought home some soup and let him wear an old suit she had lying around. It was a bit dirty, but it matched the man's 5 O' Clock shadow, and he seemed to like it fine. He was more interested in the soup, anyway. He sat down on the couch to eat, too weak from the lack of movement for goodness-knows-how-long and undoubtedly poor care in general. He was tired, but could at least stand to eat. Carmen waited until he'd had a bit before sitting herself over his lap to keep him from getting up, and drawing Waldo's stolen gun, to point at the man's chin.

"Now the way I see it, you owe me your life. You're a World Spy, I can see that. You knew I was a Carmen SanDiego, even if I wasn't -the- Carmen SanDiego. I can tell you recognized me. So, tell me your name, your serial number, and your partner's name. For starters." She suggested calmly, looking him in the eye and gaging the truth.

"Yes, I do owe you my life. I am a member of the World Spy Organization. I suspected you to be a wannabe, since I've met the real Carmen, and you're not her. My name is Mayhem, or that's what it says on my papers. My serial number is zero, seven, three zero... something something, I forget. Wait! Wait! Ah... My Partner is... is... I forgot. Really, I forgot!" He was trying and failing to maintain his cool, collected, flirty look with a gun being pressed into his neck.

"Oh really. Ok, tell me your mother's maiden name."

"...Uh..."

"The dog breed you were?"

"That's hardly fair."

"Tell me an Acme secret if you want to live. That makes it easy."

"I can't remember much of anything! You must've connected my brain wrong, or something. Maybe it'l come back to me, but just... just give me a bit, alright? I'm trying!" He snapped. Carmen let the gun lower down to his chest, letting the barrel slide slowly over his collar bone and to his sternum, keeping even pressure to make a point.

"Ah... The passcode to override the security cameras is two-three-zero-eleven! You can display a simple loop and get anywhere in the WSO without getting caught for at least thirty minutes before anyone notices!" He snapped, cringing and looking away a bit. Carmen considered this with an amused tone. Of course she knew about that loophole. It had been exploited and fixed before she was ever a spy. But he told her, so he was clearly desperately trying to stay alive.

"Good boy. Now, I want you to know something very important. Come closer." She beckoned to him.

He sat up, and she switched the gun to her offhand, taking his tie with her right and pulling him closer until his ear was right next to her lips.

"I own you. Got it? If you remember anything, if you hear anything, if I need anything, if I ask anything, if you even think I need anything, you come to me. You owe me your life in more ways than one, and I will gladly take that repayment with interest if I detect even a hint that you might be mutinous. If you're a good boy, you'll be rewarded, and you'll be happy with me. If you get into trouble, I will break your spine in seven places and leave you wishing for a death that won't come. You understand?" She let the cold steel of the gun slide through his hair and up to his temple at his other ear, just to make her point.

"Crystal clear. Consider me all yours, Sweetheart. Just try not to break me, I'm fragile." He said tentatively. She could tell by the way he was watching her that he was terrified. And maybe a little turned on, but that was beside the point. She removed herself and her stolen gun from his person and let him continue to eat his soup. Looking over, she saw Alik tending to the dog, who seemed to be on the way to recovery.
"I think we'll call that one Mischief. Mayhem and Mischief. ...So far, Mischief has a higher standing." She smirked and looked to Mayhem, who elected to quietly eat his soup. Carmen petted his hair like she would to the housepet, to let him know that was his place. Mayhem was her plaything for the moment. He would have to work hard for her to believe he would actually work with her for the sake of working. When he was better, she would teach him how to be on their side. After all, the Americans had their propaganda, so did VILE. It sounded horrifying, 'teaching' someone to like something. But honestly, how was that any different from public school in the States? It would probably be more pleasant than that (Which, on reflection, explained why there were a good few American VILE Agents).