Lost Change

Chapter 3

I wasn't sure how long it took me to explore the facility I was in, but it felt like an hour or two. Everywhere I went showed signs of some sort of sudden disaster - papers and books had fallen onto the floor, a pot had knocked over and spilled coffee onto a carpet, a mop bucket lay on its side with a dry stain around it on the tiles. Even random articles of clothing could be found in some of the rooms, covered in some sort of slimy residue that I worried might have been some kind of toxic chemical - it would explain why so many people had stripped out of their clothes and left them lying around, but I hoped I wasn't walking through it.

The more I explored, the more unsettled I became. The halls were dark and empty. There were no noises. There was nobody else there.

I was still alone.

I got the impression I was in the 'secure' area of the building - there were a lot of doors that seemed to be sealed, with keypads or badge readers, and didn't seem like they would open if the power had been running. But a lot of the things I could get to seemed to be the type of thing somebody would want to protect - a cold room with several racks of computer hardware, other rooms with expensive looking hospital equipment, and most interestingly, a large room filled with cages like the one I had escaped.

Some of the cages had been smashed, but most looked like they had been opened from the outside. The heat lamps seemed mostly intact, but all of them were off, and the room felt cold.

All of the cages had eggs in them. A few of the eggs looked like they had been broken open from the outside, with the body of a dead creature that looked similar to me curled up inside it, and I turned away from that cage as soon as I saw that. I checked into a different cage instead and pressed my hand against the egg inside... but the shell was cold. I thought that was a bad sign, and a second later the strange 'encyclopedia' in my head confirmed it: if the egg was this cold, the dragonet inside would not have survived.

The room echoed with my mournful warble as I stepped away from the egg.

I rummaged through the rest of the room until I found what I was looking for. One of the shelves had a food bowl with a few pieces of fruit in it... but they smelled horrible, and I noticed mold growing on them. Even as hungry as my stomach told me I was, I couldn't bring myself to eat any of it.

Whatever had happened here must have taken place some time ago. At least days, maybe weeks. Nobody had come to clean up, and whatever people had taken care of these eggs and maintained this building were long gone. And if they hadn't come back by now...

I was on my own.

There was a door open at the far end of the room through which I could spot more cages, but I doubted any food in that room would be in any better condition than the food in this room. I didn't like the idea of walking through more rows of dead eggs, either.

I walked back into the hallway I had entered from and felt my tail flick behind me from an unconscious agitation at what I had seen. I shook my head and tried to ignore those emotions, instead trying to concentrate on finding something to eat. If other dragonets had been kept here, then supplies to care for them had to be nearby. If I was lucky that included some unopened canned food - I was cold, but the empty feeling in my stomach was much more pressing.

I went through three other rooms and came up empty, but when I nudged the fourth door open I discovered a storage room. Metal shelves loaded with supplies filled the room, and I began to walk through the rows. Boxes of cereal... cans of soup... boxes of jello and pudding... None of them looked particularly appetizing to me, even as hungry as I was.

I came to the next row and felt my stomach rumble in anticipation. Canned fruit filled this row of shelves, and my body definitely wanted them. My mouth was watering as I ran forward and grabbed a can of peaches off the bottom shelf. The top was thankfully one of the pull-clip tops that didn't need a can opener, and after a few tries I managed to leverage it open with a claw.

The peaches tasted delicious, in a way I knew I had never appreciated before. I slurped out each one, getting the chance to discover just how different my mouth felt and how to chew without biting my tongue with the unfamiliar teeth, and quickly drank down the juice left in the can. My stomach rumbled again, still not satisfied, and I grabbed a second can to devour too.

It wasn't until I was sitting on the floor with three empty cans of peaches that the hunger finally faded. I still felt very cold... but with my stomach satisfied, a weary feeling took hold in its place. I had been woken up early, and I had done a lot of walking to get to this point. My body was tired, and it demanded I rest.

I was still all alone, though. I didn't feel safe in the hallway, or out in the open. I poked around the room a little more until I found a slight gap underneath one of the shelves. I rolled the empty cans in front of the gap, then ducked underneath it. I immediately felt much more comfortable. It wasn't as safe as if others were there with me... but it was safe enough. It calmed the last lingering instincts of my body and left behind only the need for sleep. I yawned once, ending with a contented chirp of satisfaction, and curled up to sleep among the sweet scent of peaches.

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Author's note:

Thank you for reading so far, and I hope you are enjoying it!  I will be uploading chapters 4 - 6 tomorrow, then 7-9 on Sunday, with one chapter each day following that (assuming life and internet outages don't get in the way).

Many thanks to everyone that encouraged me to keep writing this, pointed out all the horrible mistakes I made and helped me correct them, and most importantly, to Crystal Scherer herself for writing Upon Wings of Change and A New Beginning in the first place.  I very much enjoyed both of those stories, and had a lot of fun working with the inspiration it gave me.

Thank you again for taking the time to read this story; I appreciate it very, very much.