Full Boar

Chapter 2: First Day Back

It was a good feeling, walking back to work. Adrianna missed that.

She flashed her ID at the guards, the only difference to this routine was the slight limp in her right leg. The guard nodded, smiled, and waved her on. "Welcome back," he said as she walked towards the Franklin Institute's offices.

"It's good to be back, Will," she said. "I missed this place."

"We missed you." He gave her another smile.

She chuckled. "I bet you all did. I've been keeping up on the emails." Will rolled his eyes and Adrianna continued onward, pushing through the doors and into the throng of guests and patrons.

She had to rest occasionally, the pain just above her right ankle making it nigh impossible to make the considerable trek to her office. For the first time, she took the elevator.

Her office was on the second floor, and Adrianna limped towards it. "Adrainna!" She turned, just as most of her had made it into the office. "Welcome back! It's been a while!"

There was Alec. He had the kind of voice that needled into her ears, a high-pitched whine that made him sound needy no matter what he said. "How are you holding up?" he asked. He was a slight man (though his stomach disagreed with that description), with a scraggly beard and thick glasses, and the way he leaned against the wall made him look entirely uncomfortable.

"Been better. Damn bite is taking forever to heal," Adrianna said, looking at her leg. It had been itching all day, but now it seemed to be getting a bit worse.

"Oh, that's not good," Alec said, eyes widening, though apart from that he didn't have any other reaction. "Hey, I wanted to ask you something a bit personal. I know we-"

"Could it wait?" Adrianna asked. "I need to drop my bags off and from the emails I've been keeping up with, I need to sort some things out for the newest exhibit. Let me do that first and then you can ask me. Okay?"

Alec's face grew ever so slightly glum, but he nodded. "Sure. I, uh, think I need to email the Smithsonian those files. Who would have thought some English dude's scribblings were that important?" He walked away, and Adrianna stepped into her office.

The plaque needed dusting, so Adrianna used her sleeve to wipe until the bronze proudly proclaimed Dr. Adrianna Marcionne, Curator. That done, she threw her bags on the spare chair and plopped into her seat, booting up her desktop and again resisting the urge to reach beneath the gauze and itch the bite.

Being back at her desk, though... it was a comfort. She fidgeted with the tiny fist-sized globe, turning from San Fransisco and Machu Picchu glaring at her to Singapore and Sydney. It was a gift from the previous curator, who Adrianna still recalled with some fondness. She glanced at the other curios at her desk, before opening her laptop, waiting for the pain to subside.

It never did.

She was still waiting for her landlord's explanation for why there was some rabid animal in the middle of Old City. More importantly, she was still waiting for the explanation as to how it got into her apartment building. The complex had a pretty strict no pets policy, and the only dog she ever saw there was Blackie, her neighbor five doors down's seeing eye dog. And the thing that had bitten her and left a bloody trail on the tile was definitely not Blackie.

For a moment, she was there. Maybe it was the smell outside her office; the lemon-and-antiseptic cleaner for the tiles the janitors used here seemed the same as the one in her apartment, and she remembered something from a college psych class about smell triggering memories.

Adrianna could feel the bite of the key in her hand, the muttered curse beneath her breath as she tried to get the key into her doorknob. She heard the growl, turned, and saw it for just a moment before it was upon her, a dog with more diseased and scabrous skin than fur. It was swaying, unsteady, but the bright white of its teeth seemed enough of a danger.