Piper could hardly believe her eyes when she peeked through the door to Lab 09, seeing rows of empty cages across the walls and one large cage right smack dab in the center of the room, containing a large furry creature.
"So this is where they do animal testing..." Piper said to herself in hushed tones.
"Mrm?"
A confused whine came from the furry creature in the cage as it looked up to see who was talking, and Piper found herself looking into a pair of yellow eyes staring back at her.
"A...a wolf?" Piper whispered. The gray and black wolf lifted its head up, stretching as it picked itself up and turned around in its cage to face her. Piper, confused but intrigue, looked to either side before slipping into the lab without notice, going to read the clipboard hanging off the cage.
"I've never seen anyone use a wolf for animal testing," Piper said to the wolf, thumbing through the report. "Especially not...'insulation testing', whatever that means." The wolf let out a low growl, as though it took offense to being told that fact. Which maybe it did, Piper thought, since it looked unusually chubby for such a normally lean creature. "This is so weird, why is most of this redacted? It can't be-"
"EEEEK!"
Piper yelped and threw the clipboard away as something slammed into the cages behind her. Nearly dropping off her feet from the shock, Piper steadied herself on a desk and turned to see a shrieking monkey pounding on the plastic walls of its cage right next to Piper's ear, clearly not at all happy with this intruder's presence in the lab.
"Stupid fucking-!" Piper swore, clutching at her chest as she controlled her breathing. Realizing she should get out of here before someone came running and caught her snooping around, she made to sprint for the door before she spotted something out of the corner of her eye. Something in the wolf's cage, resting next to its paws.
"Fuuuuck...."
Her eyes widened in realization as she felt where her placard was supposed to be on her shirt, as well as how well and truly boned she was right now. First day at a brand new high paying job, possibly something that would be a lifelong career, and she snuck into what was probably a top secret lab and dropped the evidence with her name and photo right into the cage with a hungry looking wolf. Forget losing her job; for all she knew, Piper could be thrown in jail for snooping around in here! Far fetched maybe, but tell that to the poor girl whose life appears to be collapsing in on itself right before her eyes.
With her face rapidly turning pale, Piper's mind spun as she tried to find a way out of this situation. There was literally no way she could explain this away, and no one who would dare cover for her. She had to get it back, now. The wolf seemed to bare its teeth at her, almost daring her to reach in and grab it out. Piper considered doing just that before she thought to look through the nearby drawers. It was animal testing, right? And if animals were being held here, maybe some of them had...
"Jackpot!" Piper whispered, finding a collection of rawhide bones in the drawer. Did wolves even like those? Fuck it, time to find out. Grabbing the largest one she could find, Piper crouched down next to the cage and held out the rawhide bone through the bars in the cage, prompting a curious look from the wolf.
"Heeey, wolfy. Look at this tasty bone!" Piper said, putting on an air of frantic playfulness. "Booone. Nice and tasty!" Seeing the wolf's eyes fixed on the bone, Piper slid her hand through the bars on the cage, feeling around for her placard at the beast's feet. "Good wolf..." Piper cooed as her fingers curled around the familiar plastic. "Good wolf..."
The wolf's ears suddenly curled back, and before Piper could react it lurched forward and chomped down, some of its teeth sinking into her hand.
"Yeeeoouch!"
Piper dropped the bone and scurried away from the cage, stuffing her placard into her pocket and pressing her hand over the wound, trying to stop the bleeding. "You bit me!" she spat at the wolf, now happily chewing on the rawhide bone without a care in the world.
"Is someone there?" came a voice from the side room.
Piper quickly ducked out of the lab entrance as the door began to open, running at breakneck speed for the elevator without looking back, stuffing her wounded hand in her pocket, she fast-walked out the front door just in time before the bus for home pulled away.
---
The rest of the day was a blur for Piper once she got home. By a stroke of good fortune, Harper happened to be working late that day and had left pizza money and a note detailing how proud she was of her daughter for a hard day's work, so Piper could slip inside while her big sister was asleep on the soda and clean up. Parker, somewhat miffed at how successful Piper's day at work had been and that she had, in fact, lasted longer than a day, didn't even bring up her little sister's bandaged hand. She warmed up considerably when Piper suggested splitting an extra large meat lover's pizza from the corner, however.
"Since when do you go for that?" Parker asked.
"I dunno..." Piper shrugged. "I just feel really hungry today."
Again, Parker didn't question it too much, content with just vegging out with her little sister for the rest of the evening, and neither did Piper, really. It was a long day, and she did more then her fair share at the labs, so why was it weird if she felt more peckish then usual?
As the sunset began to fade, Piper felt the day start to catch up to her. Body aching with tiredness, she polished off the last slice of her pizza and stumbled to her room, thanking heaven that she only worked every other day. Collapsing onto her mattress, Piper Black's eyes began to drift closed just as the moonlight broke...
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