[FN]Daniel glanced quick-like over his shoulder to where Margarita stood, stocky and solid, seemingly at ease but watchful as a gopher on duty. She rested her right hand on the gun at her hip while holding the taser in her left. A nod from her and he toed the front door open on rusted, screaming hinges into the house, if you could call it that. Maybe once upon a time, but no longer. It was ramshackle and dilapidated and any other word you might be able to give a place like this. Just one floor of what he assumed had once been habitable. 

The stench of decomposing flesh assaulted him and he fought the urge to retch, steeling himself against the onslaught. His lunch was doing Olympic level acrobatics. Somethiing with plenty of spinning and flipping. He had smelled worse things in twenty years of policing, most which he didn't want to think about; some he couldn't help but think about. Flies buzzed inside the darkened room and there was another sound... a faint purring, barely audible... like a cat with with the rasp of a lifelong smoker. 

Daniel focused for a moment and an orb of light began to glow, softly at first then increasing in intensity just inside the door and above where his head would be. Nothing moved in the cast light. He stepped inside until the orb of light was directly over his head and then it began to follow on its own, maintaining the distance he had set. Margarita followed him in. She was their youngest member, though most everyone else thought of her as older than her birth certificate claimed. She had seen her share of death and decay; first in Iraq as a marine and now here in Texas as a cop the last two years. 

Floorboards creaked underfoot as he shifted his weight from foot to foot; damned joints were aching again; and took in the room. It was empty of furniture but for a single disgusting chair and a standing lamp. The chair was short with cracked brown leather and the well worn imprint of someone's rear end. The lamp was unremarkable in every way of course. There would be no reason for anything else. Three stacks of books were contrasted with the rest of the house. They were piled neatly next to the chair, clean and bookmarked with sticky notes; incongruous with the rest of the decor at best. He took a slow look around the room and then inched toward the chair and books. Genetic engineering. CRISPR. Biology. Biohacking. Those were just the ones he could make out without crouching, which he did now. He studied the rest of the pile. This was some seriously heavy reading. He held the top book up for Marge to see. An Introduction to Genetic Engineering. 

On the floor to his left, leaning against the wall was the decomposing body of... something? It looked like a medium sized dog but its form and features were twisted. Grotesque. A knob protruded from the top of its shoulder covered in tiny, delicate feathers. Another body on the floor further along the wall looked looked to have once been a hare crossed with a rat. Definitely a rabbit upon first glance, but a closer look showed the bone structure to be completely wrong while having the coarser fur of a rodent. Its tail was short but of rat-like texture. He wasn't certain he could describe it to anyone. Patchy fur covered what remained of its body.

Marge looked around the room, nose wrinkled but otherwise unfazed. Other unholy hybrid-like remains of these abominationswere scattered haphazardly in a morbid menagerie. 

"It's the Island of Doctor fricking Moreau in here." It came out as a whisper even though there was no evidence of anyone or anything alive to hear, aside from that rough purr. 

"Didn't know you could read, Marge."

"I'll read your eulogy if you like?"

"They don't come printed on cereal boxes so you'll probably need help." 

"Burn..." the short exchange took place without much humor what with the rotting corpses of God knows whos science experiment all over the floor.

The cabin was well secluded deep in the woods with nothing but a muddy track for access. They wouldn't even be here if some teenagers hadn't been looking for a place to get up to trouble. The kids had come tearing into town and he'd been the unlucky putz to answer the phone. Margarite had had the misfortune of walking past his desk as he hung up. 

They'd had to walk a solid mile from where they'd left the cruiser. Mud. Muck. Mosquitos. The three "m's". It hadn't been a pleasant stroll in the woods by any means and Dan certainly had no interest in this rotting hovel but there was fuckery afoot and it was unfortunately his job today. 

"Charge your vest, Dano." She was looking around, seeking a direction for the raspy purr that continued to drone, hand on her gun, though it wasn't drawn yet. 

"Good idea." He said the words softly and slowly as he reached for the metallic tab connected to the conductive thread woven throughout his new kevlar stunvest. He had never had much talent for electricity, rembering all the times he had electrocuted himself while fixing an appliance or light switch, and it had taken some practice to charge it without zapping himself. He always preferred the old fashioned tasers but when you had no idea where a threat was, the vest was the next best thing. He concentrated and directed a charge into the vest. A tingling in his fingertips let him know it was working. Letting go absent-minded cod cause the power to rush back out, searching for the closest grounded object, which was usually your fingers. When he was done with his own he reached for her vest and gave it a charge. The hardest part was setting it so that like some damned fool you didn't zap yourself and that was the bit that Marge struggled with. She was actually pretty awful with most elements come to think of it... focus you damned fool. He silently berated himself.

Marge was falling into Marine mode as he liked to call it. He knew not to get in her way and just watch her back. "Watch the hall." she told him in a sharp whisper as her stocky frame formed her own light just above her head and began to move to the first of two doorways. 

Dan turned back to the hallway. Watching. Listening. Mind focused ahead while still keeping an ear out for trouble behind him. The purring was definitely coming from down there. While he waited he noticed one of the dead hybrids a few feet from him. It was cat-like in form but with armadillo styled segmented plates. It hadn't been dead for more than a day and unlike the others, this one wasn't some slapped together abomination. It had definitely been a larger housecat but instead of fur it had the hard plates of an armadillo covering its back and flanks. You might almost think that whatever psychopath had done all this had put some thought into it. 

"Both rooms are clear." The words startled him. He'd been so focused on the corpse he hadn't heard her heavy boots. Or maybe she was just a sneaky hobbit... "I put tripwires on all the doors. We'll know if anyone comes up on our backs." It was a little trick they had learned in a Youtube video. Not an actual wire of course, just a circuit of energy that broke when someone walked through it and the sense in your mind that it broke.

Dan inclined his head toward the animal then looked back at her. Marge's eyebrows were deeply furrowed as she looked it over. "Looks better than the rest of them. More... complete?"

"Yeah. Practice makes perfect."

He looked back to the door at the end of the hall. There were two others on one wall wall along the way before the final door at the end of the hall; one was closed tight and the other wide open. He started forward wordlessly, the light now directly over his head illuminating a half dozen other corpses in various states of decomposition, most not as well... put together... as the one seen earlier. He stopped at the first door which was wide open and peeked inside, seeing nothing at first in the gloom, then sending the light above him in ahead to see what was the what. It was a bedroom if you could call it that. A dirty mattress on the floor and a few scattered clothes. A battery operated lantern sat next to the bed next to another stack of biology and genetics books. 

When he was certain nothing was moving he slipped into the room, stepping quiet as his heavy boots allowed, to check behind the door and in the closet on the far side. Floorboards creaked underfoot as he moved. The walls were bare. There was no dresser. Nothing. Back at the door he gave a slight head shake to Marge. 

"I'm half expecting leatherface to be in one of these rooms." He whispered it, not entirely joking. 

"No Care Bears?"

"God you're old."

They moved to the next door and found a bathroom. With flies. And cockroaches. And probably rats. Neither of them had any interest in exploring further and so with wrinkled up noses they closed the door and turned away. That left only the final room from which the raspy mewling was most certainly coming.

Margarite gestured with her head and Dan nodded in silent agreement. They moved soft and slow as they could manage, not that it mattered as floorboards creaked with each and every step to announce them. Faint light squinted at them from under the closed door as Marge pointed and dimmed her light and Dan followed suit. 

They took up positions on either side of the door and he reached for the handle. Locked. A quick glance showed it was locked from this side and he released the knob with a soft click. A slow turn and the door squealed on rusted hinges. Both officers grimaced at the sound as Dan swung the door in. An old propane Coleman lantern cast its soft yellow glow on the bare walls. A human foot. The door stiffened on its hinges and Dan had to push it open it the rest of the way. Two legs. A bare bottom. The groaning ceased at the half way point and the door swung open fully. The light was dim but the body on the floor had the shape of a woman on the smaller side of a hundred pounds soaking wet. The raspy mewling was coming from her.

Dan made to step into the room and go to her but a firm hand on his shoulder stopped him. 

"This is the police. Are you hurt? Do you need help?" Marge spoke soft as a feather with just enough firmness that the girl could be certain to hear. 

The figure on the floor pulled her knees to her chest, making no noise at all now.

He tilted his head, shifted position and squinted for a moment in the gloom before his eyes widened. "Look at her skin." Marge squinted too and he heard her shocked gasp of air. There was a fine, golden blonde fur covering most of her body while her human hair seemed to be completely gone. He edged into the room and stepped aside for Marge who followed and stepped around in the rather small room to kneel at the girls side. She leaned down, whispering low enough that he couldn't make out more than murmuring before her hands started working over the body, performing a quick first aid check, searching for injuries on the wee girl while continuing to whisper. 

"Dan, there was a blanket back in that bedroom. Go grab it." He did as he was told, not bothering to tiptoe as he had before. The blanket was filthy as he picked it up, giving it a snap and a shake while dust poofed off of it, motes illuminated in the light. "Gross...." He hurried back to the end of the hall.

Dan handed the sheet to Marge. "We need to move her. Paramedics will never get in here." He said.

"Are you gonna carry her two miles through the mud back to the car?"

"Have you seen my physique? Of course not. Allan has that truck with the big 'ol mud tires. We can get him up here. He's on shift tonight anyhow. He can start early and get some overtime."

Marge finished wrapping the girl up and then he stepped in. "I've got her." He squatted next to her and snaked an arm under knees and armpit then stood effortlessly. She was well under a hundred pounds. A wee thing made of straw and paper. Seeing her face for the first time, she couldn't have been more than sixteen or seventeen. The fine golden fur covered the sides of her face and back, leaving bare skin over her face, down her throat and under the blanket. Marge took the lead and Dan followed her out of the room as she cleared the trip wards that had been placed as they went while dialling Allan. 

Outside, he sat her on the rickety wooden stairs in the sun, leaning her gently against the rail and sat next to the tiny figure. She hadn't made so much as a peep, nor a squeak nor an oof. Margarita was inside and he could hear her on the phone giving directions. Heartedly. Alan never liked overtime. "Ten bucks says he's fishing." His tone was conspiratorial, seeking any reaction. 

"He's coming. Gotta get off the lake and drop his boat home on the way."

He leaned over to whisper, "You owe me ten bucks." There was nothing in her eyes or expression. She was vacant and he didn't know how to help. He pulled the pack of cigarettes from his breast pocket, theyd been squished somewhat when he'd carried her out, and dished out three different broken ones before finding an acceptable smoke. Inserted between his lips he went cross-eyed staring at the tip with focus as it began to smolder and then lit. He idly wondered if BIC was still in business. 

"I'm gonna take another look inside." Marge turned and stalked back through the door. 

Something shifted in her but he sensed no movement. Her head seemed to be tilted toward him ever so slightly. 

"You want me to put it out?" Nothing. "Or do you want one?" Still nothing, but something... he fished another out and put it to her lips. They parted ever so slightly and she took it. "Under the circumstances I'm willing to let it slide, but don't let me catch you with one again." He focused on lighting hers too and the cherry flared bright and red as she inhaled. "Don't worry any more kid. We've got you."