The Virus Within (Original rough draft)

Chapter 86

I stared idly at the scenery while our human companions ate their breakfast. Many humans had stopped in this house. A few scents I recognized from our Stronghold, but most were strangers I had never met. That didn't surprise me considering how far we were from Ironwind Stronghold.

It was more surprising that I actually recognized three scents from Ironwind Stronghold. I took a slow deep breath as I tried to place them. Two were from a group that occasionally went trading. One was a guy I had never spoken to, but I was pretty sure he did a lot of traveling.

My instincts shifted as they picked up something out of place. I took another deep breath as I tried to figure out what tipped off my suspicious instincts. I closed my eyes as I focused on the world of scent. It wasn't anything outside, or I would have noticed it while I was outside. That narrowed it down by a fair bit.

Several more breaths didn't yield any results either. I was getting frustrated as I failed to see what my instincts were detecting. Sometimes the easiest way to find the answer was to actually focus less and just let your mind wander. I opened my eyes and took slow breaths as I just tried to loosen up my concentration.

The smell of soup was prominent. As was the rather sharp scent of the Terror that was still watching me. I could pick up hints of the mice in the walls. There were a few bats in the attic along with a bee's nest.

Nina was wearing that odd flowery perfume that somehow almost masked her human scent. Nicky was wearing her socks from yesterday and was trying to sneak a handful of peanuts out of her backpack without Nina noticing.

A bag of beans in one of our bags was at the point where it might start growing mold. My instincts flared and my mind honed in with sudden suspicion. We hadn't packed any beans. I turned as I slowly crossed the kitchen floor to a different side window while testing the air.

It was stronger halfway along my path. I peeked in the one cupboard, but as I had expected, there was no food to be found. The scent was not coming from behind the cupboard doors either. It might have just been a bag of beans, but I was determined to find them. So many people passed through here that anything edible should be long gone by now and this had to be a large bag of beans from the smell of it. It didn't make sense and contradictions like this tended to catch my interest.

Daniel noticed that something had caught my attention and he was watching me in curiosity from his seat. I slowly walked across the kitchen again toward the first window. I turned and examined the room as a hunch grew stronger. Why was the smell the strongest in the middle of the floor?

I scrutinized the floor in suspicion. The old black and white linoleum tiles were fairly dirty. My sharp eyesight saw that the gap between several tiles was larger than the rest. I walked over to the gap and a faint creak in the floor told me that my intuition was likely correct.

I doubted that this was just a squeaky board in the floor. I was quite certain that there was a well-hidden trapdoor here. There had to be a handle hold of some sort to allow people to open it. This house wasn't that fancy or expensive, so it was unlikely to have anything high tech. The creak had also told me which side of the gap the door was on. I just needed to discover which end lifted up and how to do so.

A glint of metal in the one joint caught my attention. I crouched down as I examined it. That motion caught both Nicky and Nina's attention and they watched me in confusion. Daniel was watching me intently. I probably look like a right idiot who might be watching an ant.

It looked like a paperclip was wedged into the gap. The tip of my fingernail lifted it halfway out before encountering resistance. A firm pull yielded a click and showed that a thin cord was tied to the paper clip. The click resulted in the trapdoor lifting slightly as the latch no longer held it firmly down.