FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Copyright 2006, Cole Rhead [email protected]

Distribute freely, so long as the text, including this header, is unaltered and never sold.

I request that I be contacted just to let me know whenever this is posted somewhere new for distribution.

I welcome and invite all comments, criticism, questions, and suggestions.

This is the third part of Aiden's Story. If you have not yet, please go read the previous two chapters:

http://www.yiffstar.com/index.php?pid=4435

http://www.yiffstar.com/index.php?pid=6982

I realize, of course, it has been an absurdly long time between the second chapter's cliffhanger and this story resolving it. I apologize for the stress this may have caused some readers. This will be the final chapter of Aiden's story. However, I welcome other writers and artists to expand on this story or make use of the world it takes place in. Just please include a link to this story and drop me an email.

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The double doors on the left side of the car suddenly buckled inward in an explosion of noise and flying glass as the truck hit them. The car flipped over, leaving its occupants in freefall for just an instant before landing near the bottom of the ditch beside the road.

Nearly three weeks had passed since the first time Aiden had been in that car, a time he treasured as one of the best in his life.

Aiden regained consciousness almost a full minute later, finding himself laying on the ceiling of the car. Blood ran down Dalia's unconscious face right in front of him. Looking back, he saw Jhoren clutching a severely broken arm to his chest, taking quick, shallow breaths as he began to go into shock.

Sam's eyes caught Aiden's a moment later. "Keep still, Aiden. Don't move. We're all going to be okay, just don't move. Put your head down." She kicked out the window behind her; the door around it was jammed shut by the crushed frame of the car.

The moment her paw broke through the glass, two brown hands closed around her ankle and pulled, roughly dragging her over the broken glass and outside. They grabbed the scruff of her neck once she was out, twisted until she began to choke, and hauled her up onto her paws.

Aiden, of course, dove out after her.

"One more step, cat, and the girl dies." A Doberman held a muscular arm around Sam's throat, squeezing until she had to struggle to breathe. With the other arm, he held a gun to her head. There was little doubt he would hesitate to use it; the driver lay dead at the Doberman's paws, his head a gory mess.

Aiden's heart skipped a beat and he froze, the Doberman's words greeting him before his eyes had a chance to adjust to the bright light outside. Without moving a paw, Aiden turned his head and looked up at them, a cold feeling running through his body at the sight.

The Doberman smiled. "Good boy. Cooperate with us and everyone comes out of this alive." He glanced down at the driver. "Well, almost everyone. That was his fault." He looked back up at Aiden, watching him carefully. He knew, of course, that Aiden was impotent to injure him, but there was still plenty he could do to interfere. Aiden nodded his understanding.

At that moment, Aiden was almost convinced that he would be able to endure any punishment his implant gave him, to use sheer rage and force of will to leap forward and tear out the dog's throat. Aiden was not afraid of dying. Given the opportunity to trade his life for her safety, he'd have taken it without an instant of hesitation. But he turned over every possibility for action he could imagine and always came to the same conclusion; his best hope to protect Sam was to cooperate for now.

Two sets of pawsteps crunched through the dry grass of the ditch, moving around the back of the car, behind Aiden. He glanced back. A German Shepard walked past him, while a Black Lab stood at the back of the car, starting a large gas-powered grinder.

Sparks showered out, arcing down in the space between where Aiden stood and where the Doberman held Sam. The Shepard was crouched behind Sam, closing the loops of a pair of heavy plastic zip-ties around her ankles before pulling them tight. He stood, roughly pulled her arms behind her back, and repeated the process with her wrists while the Doberman still held her. The Doberman released Sam and took a step back, still holding the gun level on her head, and gave a kick to her back. The Shepard just laughed as she hit the ground hard, then knelt beside her, digging a knee into her back. He pulled her ankles and wrists together behind her and fastened them together. Then one final tie was looped around her muzzle and drawn tight with a sharp yank.

Aiden struggled to control himself. His muscles tightened and twitched with rage. He bit his tongue until he tasted blood. He wanted to kill.

It was actually a relief when his turn with the Shepard was over and Aiden's wrists and ankles were bound together in front of him. He didn't know how long he would be able to control himself. Immobilized and now completely helpless, Aiden just turned his head and gazed over at Sam. She looked back across into his eyes, doing her best to give him an encouraging face.

Behind, the sound of the grinder suddenly stopped, followed moments later by the screech of twisting metal as the car's trunk was pried open. "Got it!" the Lab's voice called out. The sound of a briefcase opening, then snapping shut again. "This is it. Let's get out of here."

The Lab turned, looking at the car, then Sam and Aiden. "What about them?"

The Shepard replied first. "We're supposed to take the cat. Leave the rest. If they're lucky, someone will find them down here today or tomorrow."

The Doberman frowned, looking at them. "Kill them all. Better that there's no witnesses." He looked at just Aiden now. "He can ride in the trunk of the car." His nose wrinkled at the scent of fuel leaking from the car. He drew his gun again, firing two shots at the upturned belly of the car before the sparks caught and flames started to rise.

The worst moment of Aiden's life came soon after.

The Shepard crouched and picked up Aiden from the ground, turned away from Sam, and carried him up toward their car, parked on the side of the road. Aiden struggled against his binds and against the hold, but the Shepard just tightened his grip around Aiden's body and kept walking. Aiden couldn't see around him.

Sam screamed, the sound muffled through her bound closed mouth. Two gunshots sounded out, and everything went silent once again. Aiden was dropped roughly into the trunk of the car, slammed shut after him, and the car raced away a moment later.

Aiden could not see, but he had no doubt of the sounds' meaning.

Samantha was dead.

"Damnit!"

Aiden jerked awake, squinting his eyes nearly shut as sunlight poured in, the first light he'd seen in 37 hours. He still lay in the trunk of the car where he had been dropped just seconds after he lost Sam. Blood was smeared everywhere, soaking Aiden's fur around his wrists, ankles and muzzle where the ties dug into his skin while he struggled.

"How the hell am I going to clean this up? I told you leaving him back there was a bad idea. Almost two days he's been in there!" The Shepard looked down at me and the bloody trunk of his car.

An unfamiliar Rottweiler replied. "And just what were we supposed to do, carry a hogtied leopard up to your apartment from the parking lot, and then back out again the next day? He's fine."

The Shepard reached in with a large knife, slid the blade under the tie around Aiden's muzzle and cut off the thick plastic with a sharp yank.

Aiden snapped his jaws around the hand. He felt his fangs sink in through flesh, he felt small bones crunching between his teeth, he tasted blood. He growled and chewed until he felt his teeth grinding together.

The Shepard screamed and tried to beat Aiden off, but Aiden was barely aware of that pain. Aiden's implant punished him so harshly that he thought it was trying to kill him. It felt as if a million red-hot needles were being pushed into every inch of his body. He only had a few moments before the darkness forming at the edge of his vision closed completely around him. He felt cold gunmetal press threateningly against his head. Aiden welcomed death.

Cool, fresh night air woke Aiden again. Stars shone brightly above, partly blocked by a single silhouette. A blinding light shone from its hand into the bound leopard's face for a few seconds. When it turned off again, he couldn't see the stars anymore.

"He'll do," spoke the silhouette with an old, smooth female voice. She reached in and Aiden felt a sharp sting on his thigh, an injection. A warm, sleepy feeling came over him until he could no longer resist, could no longer care that his eyes were pulling shut to sleep.

The trunk door slammed shut again.

Questions. Dozens, no hundreds, maybe thousands of questions, spoken very slowly in that smooth voice that occupied Aiden's last moments of consciousness. Vague wisps of memory nagged at Aiden's mind, but seemed to disintegrate whenever he tried to look at them.

Aiden took a deep breath and licked his nose, mouth dry as paper. He still had no sense of his body, but it was an improvement. It felt as if he'd existed only as a bodiless consciousness, constantly tormented by questions for years on end.

Aiden opened his eyes. Maybe. He couldn't see anything. For a few moments he wondered if, in his numb and confused state, his eyes simply didn't open. He blinked. No, definitely open now. He wondered if he'd gone blind. He wondered if he was dead. He found it was difficult to care much about either possibility.

Coldness seemed to creep in from Aiden's nose, working its way slowly back along his face and head. Aiden licked his muzzle again, moving his mouth and trying to work up some saliva, with little success. He felt and tasted cold concrete beneath the left side of his head.

The memories seemed to be growing more distant. Aiden remembered speaking, replying to the questions. He told the voice all about Sam and David and Jhoren, about his home, about his travels with Sam, about his life and the hints he'd discovered of his past. He answered every one of the endless stream of questions without hesitation.

Aiden shivered. He remembered the way the voice laughed when he described the moment Sam died.

A door directly ahead creaked open, then slammed shut again. Footsteps approached. Aiden counted five steps before they stopped. "Can you see me, boy?" It was the same smooth, old voice as before. "Seems not. Your sight will recover soon."

A trickle of cold water poured over Aiden's muzzle. Too weak even to turn his head, Aiden just opened his mouth, trying to catch the water with his tongue. It tasted clean, but he would have taken anything in his severely dehydrated state. He moved his tongue, just letting the water run down his throat until it stopped hurting to swallow.

After a minute the water stopped and the footsteps moved away again. "There's more where that came from. Find the tap on the wall. When you're strong enough to get to it, I'll bring you some food as well."

The sound of the door opening, slamming shut, and then silence once again.

Aiden opened his eyes again. He blinked; he didn't remember closing them. He wasn't even sure if he'd slept or not. Aiden lifted a hand and waved it in front of his face. Either he was still blind, or the darkness in here was absolute; he couldn't see a thing.

Aiden carefully touched his wrists. They had been carefully bandaged and taped by someone with some skill; all the edges were perfectly smooth and comfortable over his fur. He curled his body and touched his ankles, finding they were bandaged the same way. His muzzle was not. The tie around his muzzle didn't dig into his skin as deeply, so a rubbery skin sealant has just been brushed into the wound. Aiden left the wounds alone.

Struggling to summon his strength, Aiden rolled himself upright and began to crawl straight ahead. It felt like he dragged his body over the cold concrete for a mile, but Aiden knew it was just five steps when his hands touched the steel door.

Aiden struggled up into a sitting position, leaned his shoulder in against the door for balance, straightened his back, and lifted his hands off the floor. He ran his fingers over the door, searching every inch he was able to reach. It was completely featureless. No handle, no hinges, no bumps, no holes, no cracks big enough for his fingers. He was not the slightest bit surprised, but it was still worth checking.

Carefully shifting his weight, Aiden lowered his hands back to the floor. He tried to stand, but his hind legs simply refused to lift his weight. So once again he lowered his body to the floor and crawled. He moved along the wall, stopping with each step to reach up and feel the wall. It felt like he crawled another few miles, but Aiden pushed himself on, determined not to give up unless he circled the room and came to the door again. Even then he would wonder if there were two doors.

Finally, Aiden's hand closed around cold metal. He crawled closer, leaned his shoulder against the wall as he had before, and felt it with both hands. He turned his body and put his mouth around the tap. It tasted like brass, but it was clean. He turned the knob on to a slow trickle and suckled for a long time.

The door slammed shut. Aiden found himself slumped against the wall, water from the tap trickling down onto his shoulder. He shivered violently, his fur soaked. He had no memory after drinking from the tap.

A sigh sounded from above, the same old voice as always. "I apologize; it seems the drugs are taking longer than I anticipated to work out of your system. It is rather concerning. It would be a terrible shame to have searched so long for you only to make you blind and forgetful forever." Her shoe slid over the concrete as she dropped into a crouch in front of Aiden. The water stopped flowing. "I have food for you, good food. If you try to bite me, though, I'm afraid I will not feed you any more. I don't think you want to starve in this place any more than I want my hand chewed off like poor Samuel." She laughed softly. "No, I don't blame you for that. I imagine I'd have done the same, in your position. I'm glad you did it, actually. That's what brought you to me, after all."

Aiden felt a long, slender hand stroking over his head. He thought about biting, but he had little doubt the woman was serious when she promised to let him starve. He doubted he had the strength to do much damage, anyway. He just lifted his head, turning his blind eyes up toward the woman. "Good boy," the woman said. He felt a dry towel spread over his body, then rubbed vigorously into his fur, working its way from head to tail. It felt good to have his fur dried, to have some warmth rubbed into his body. "I'll bring you a heater soon. For now, eat."

Aiden suddenly smelled meat and rice, then felt it touch his nose. He opened his mouth and leaned in, eating right out of the woman's hand. He almost didn't want to admit it, but the food was actually very good. It was very lightly seasoned, easy for his stomach to handle. As he ate each handful, another was brought up for him. He lost count how many handfuls he ate before he was full.

Aiden realized there was something wrong with his memory. He could remember most of the past day, but many pieces were missing. He kept waking up with no memory of going to sleep. Repetitive tasks, like eating or crawling or searching the walls for the tap seemed to go on endlessly as he did them, but once completed seemed like an instant in hindsight. He could count to keep track of time, but he always seemed to loose his place. The woman apologized about that earlier- blind and forgetful, she said. He wondered, what the hell had she given me?

After Aiden stopped eating and set his head back down, he felt the woman softly caress her hand over his head, neck and shoulder for a few minutes. It was soothing; he never quite lost the propensity to take physical pleasure from touch. He still detested this woman who had apparently bought him, locked him in a cold concrete cell and drugged him, but for now he lacked the strength and willpower to do anything about it.

Aiden imagined he was back home. He refused to move his body or open his eyes immediately this time, clinging to that pleasant place between asleep and awake. He imagined he was laying on the sleeping mat in his room, napping while Sam and David were away. He felt the slight warm breeze in the air contrasting with the cool floor below. The furnace must be on, he thought. It's winter already? I wonder if there's snow on the ground yet.

Aiden let out a sad sigh as his eyes cracked open on their own. He wondered how long he slept. He was hungry again, so he suspected it was not a short time. The room was indeed warm; there was a soft hum and orange glow by the top of the door, a small portable heater.

He blinked, realizing he could see again. He looked around, but didn't learn anything he didn't already know. The room was small and circular, five paces from one side to the other. There was a large steel door set in one wall, a brass water tap set opposite it, and nothing else. The dim light in the room came from the slightest sliver of white light under and around the door and the soft glow from the heater.

There was a message on the floor, just under the door. It looked like it had been written right onto the concrete with thick white chalk. It read, when you can read this, Aiden, knock on the door.

Aiden blinked, re-reading the single sentence three times in a row. Why knock, he wondered, would she abandon me here until I do, would she let me starve if the blindness stuck?

Aiden stood, his muscles reluctant, but now able. He walked across the room to the door, sat, and lifted a hand to knock on the steel door. The solid metal door made only the slightest of sounds under his knuckles. Aiden knocked harder. He pounded with the bottom of his fist. He hit the door with his flattened palm.

The door fell away from him and light poured into the cell. Aiden looked up, blinking away tears from the light, suddenly finding himself faced with the old woman's silhouette once again. She knelt in front of Aiden. The light shone on her face now.

She was a wolf. Aiden's first thought, idiotically, was 'how dare she', for sharing the same breed as the ones he loved. She was far from young anymore, but she had not yet lost her attractiveness. Her fur would be pure white if not for the flecks and streaks of brown and red around her eyes and muzzle, down the back of her head and around her shoulders and back.

The room behind the woman was only as wide as the door and twice as deep. On the far side was another door, securely locked. A small key hung from a fine piano wire around the woman's neck, tied in a knot so that it could not easily be slipped off her head. If he could only take the key, he could escape, but the wire around her neck would undoubtedly injure her if he tried.

Aiden glared up at her. "I'll kill you," he promised.

She just laughed. "Aiden, if you really believed you could do that, you wouldn't be warning me first, would you? You'd simply take this key, and probably most of my neck along with it. It must have taken an incredible degree of fury to break through your training and do what you did to Samuel. I believe you're the only one of your kind even capable of that. I'm betting you lack that fury now, though, don't you?"

Aiden growled, muscles tightening, willing himself to act. He wanted to bite her, to hit her, to grab the key and pull until the wire took her head clean off, but his body simply refused to do anything violent. After a minute of struggle, Aiden gave up, hanging his head.

"That's what I thought," she said. She turned her body and picked up a small leather-bound notebook from the floor behind her, handing it to Aiden. "Take a look at this for me, will you?"

Aiden frowned, hesitated, then snatched the notebook from her hand before stepping over to the far side of the cell to lay down and open it. It looked like a research journal to Aiden, each page dated, filled with handwritten notes and diagrams and graphs. The diagrams were beautifully detailed and clearly labeled, mostly of feline anatomy, mostly of the head and brain.

He flipped through the notebook, stopping when he came to a diagram of a cat's ear, tracing and labeling a complex network of nerve fibers and endings with incredible detail. He read the text on the following page.

...dissection of the female jaguar Alana will be postponed. It is difficult to do this kind of detailed analysis on frozen tissue, but I have no choice. This is a rare opportunity to study an adapted feline in the flesh, as it were, and it must be taken to the greatest advantage. Thus I must store the body in the freezer and work very carefully to preserve it as long as possible.

I have begun by taking a full set of scans of the head at maximum resolution, using both my 'Delta' and 'Epsilon' machines. I must learn as much as I possibly can before I am forced to put scalpel to flesh and possibly destroy future avenues of study.

First on my list are the ears. There is an absolutely fascinating network of nerve fiber in both ears, clear confirmation of the so called 'AMI [Animal-Machine Interface] network' mentioned briefly in the 'Feedback Loop Error Diagnosis and Treatment' document I obtained eight months ago. This will require many weeks of study, but I doubt I will ever fully understand the function of this network, especially without a live patient.

I must remember to spread the word that I am raising the bounty on Black Tech research documents. They have been coming slowly these past months.

Word has come this morning that a very special package is on it's way to me, a set of nanoelectronic devices of unknown purpose, each with what is described to me as "a sort of mechanical automatic implantation device." If it's true, the bearer will be most handsomely rewarded. I plan to keep them in the same spot as this notebook, if they're not too big.

Aiden's hands and breath shook. Each word he read was simultaneously surprising and familiar. He had the strangest sensation of falling as he struggled with the shock of reading the notebook.

"Familiar, isn't it?" Aiden looked up. He almost forgot that the woman was still crouched in front of him, watching him. "You wrote it. Just as you suspected, you once studied the technology that turned your fellow felines into pets and slaves. Yours was the greatest collection of black tech the world has ever known, until it, and you, disappeared. Legend had it that you even had a mind wipe machine, and that you would study it by wiping single minutes out of your own memory. You developed dozens of methods to resist or reverse mind wipe, adaptation and mind control, but you hardly ever had opportunity to test them."

She smiled. "What makes you so special, Aiden, is that you tested some of them on yourself. You've been studied and obviously you were broken in the end, but I believe that head of yours is just full of backdoors that they never found.

"I encourage you to read the rest of that notebook. It is yours, after all. Please be careful with it, though. It's absolutely priceless. You wouldn't believe how much I spent to reunite it with you."

She stood again and stretched out her legs. "I'll leave the inner door unlocked for you, so you can have some light to read by. Keep in mind, though, that the two doors are interlocked. One door won't open unless the other is closed, and I won't open the outer door unless you're in the cell. Come in here and close the door when I knock or you don't eat that day, simple as that." She took a small metal ring from her pocket and touched it to the door. It stuck solidly with the small, powerful magnet fastened to the edge. She stepped back and pushed the door closed to leave.

The knock came when Aiden was halfway through the notebook. Aiden was laying on the floor in the cell, facing the door to read under the light from the small lock room. He reached forward and took hold of the magnetic handle, pulling the door closed in front of him.

He waited in darkness, listening carefully. The door's lock clicked, followed by the sound of the outer door opening and slamming shut, and then the lock clicked again. The door opened away from him.

"Hello, Aiden," the old woman greeted in a pleasant tone. "I have your dinner and," she took a step aside, revealing a rolled sleeping mat, a folded blanket, and a pair of thick pillows behind her, "a reward. I thought you would appreciate some softness and warmth in here. Don't worry, if all goes as I hope, you won't have to spend much longer in here." She stepped in with Aiden and sat down on the floor beside him. Offering a soft smile, she leaned in and softly stroked a hand over his head.

Aiden growled softly, folding his ears back and pulling his head away from her hand.

The woman just smiled and looked at him. "Oh, come now, Aiden. You and I both know you enjoy it." She shrugged when Aiden's growl didn't stop. "Very well." She opened the plastic container in her lap, took a handful of the meat and rice inside and held it out to Aiden.

Aiden glared at her.

"Get used to it, boy. You eat from my hand or not at all. It's quite clean, I assure you. I'll make you something new tomorrow, I promise. You seem to be having no trouble keeping this down."

Without so much as a sigh, Aiden just leaned in and began to eat, one handful at a time.

"Tell me, are you trained to not speak, or do you just think I'm not worth the breath? A shake of your head will suffice for the former." She smiled softly as Aiden hungrily licked a stray grain of rice from her fingertips.

Aiden looked up at her when the handfuls of food stopped coming. "What do you want with me?" he asked, turning his head back down as he was rewarded with another handful of food.

"Finish reading the journal. You'll begin to understand." She scooped the last of the food from the bowl into her hand and fed it to Aiden. Without another word, she stood and stepped out, closing the door behind her.

I have obtained the most fascinating document today. It's a detailed report on naturally occurring failures of the control implants, during the later years of the War. It's obviously been edited so as not to potentially leak any information about reproducing these failures, but nonetheless there is much to learn from it. I must change my course of research immediately.

At the end, there are transcripts of interviews with implanted felines whose implants or training have in some way failed. Obviously it is a biased set, as I imagine most of the time those interviews would have been impossible, but in this case I believe that works to my advantage.

In these interviews, every feline is asked to describe the moment of failure. One described it as "an epiphany, a moment of Zen, a touch from the Cosmic Two by Four." That quotation was the most eloquent, but I believe that many of the others described the same phenomenon.

It seems in very rare cases, the control implant will suddenly revert back to its initial state after integration with the brain. Any commands given after supersede any prior. Self-command is suppressed for a short time as well, almost to the point of paralysis.

I don't believe is a random occurrence. I've known for a long time that there are connections between the brain and implant that must make conscious control of the implant possible, and I've spent a good part of the past months trying to understand the measures that have been taken to prevent it. I have never before considered, however, that they failed.

If that control is not blocked, but rather pushed down to the subconscious, it makes perfect sense that only these rare few succeed in touching it, and only by accident.

If I can only find a way to enable an ordinary person to do the same, it will be by far the greatest thing I have achieved so far.

Aiden stretched out his body, adjusting the pillows under him. He took a deep breath, closing his eyes and thinking a few moments. At times the journal was descriptive, written in language that was easy to understand. Sometimes the author was so excited by something he never covered half the details he brought up. Mostly, though, the journal was a very detailed and slow, exhausting read. He couldn't shake the feeling of familiarity he got while reading it, but he found that he still had to read and think carefully to understand it.

The easy parts were the most interesting, though. They usually seemed to serve for Aiden, when he wrote it, to make complex concepts simple in his mind, so that he could make difficult decisions.

Aiden turned his body and took a small drink of water from the tap before pulling the door closed, curling up on the mat, pulling the blanket over his shoulder, and letting sleep take him for the night.

Aiden sighed some time later, opening his eyes and rolling upright again, unable to sleep. He wished for some way to tell time in here. He never had any idea how long he'd actually slept or how long he spent awake. He couldn't even guess time of day, and the woman seemed to come in to feed him at random intervals. He guessed he'd been locked in the cell for two days, since that's how many meals he'd been given, but it could easily have been twice that.

Aiden stretched out his body and turned to go back to reading the book. He turned the page, frowned slightly, and leaned in to look closely at the pages. Almost the entire rest of the book had got wet at some time, causing the handwritten ink to run until it was completely illegible. He briefly panicked that it might have been his fault, but the pages were too dry for it to have happened since it was given to him. Only a single readable page remained at the end of the book.

Success!

I have broken the control of Davin's implant over his mind. At last, I have finally proven that it is possible. I feel like all the years of work and research are finally undeniably justified. I've wondered so many times if I would ever achieve a successful treatment.

I still have a great deal of work to do, however. Theoretical treatments, dissections and study of documents over eighty years old can only take me so far, so I had to try and fail with many approaches before my success with Davin. It took most of two days and I nearly killed Davin twice. Davin's family, which invested so much to have him brought home, assures me it was worth the risk.

I finally succeeded with one of my 'last resort' methods, direct application of the neuroelectric stimulator needles. At first I worried that I had paralyzed him, but he responded to commands exactly as I hoped. With the precious few minutes he remained in that state, I was able to nearly completely eradicate the effects of his training.

My goal is develop a treatment that can be administered by anybody, without any special skills or equipment. Preferably it should be relatively easy to manufacture in huge numbers, or- my greatest hope- infectious.

While I'm wishing, I'd also like a way to reverse the adaptation process and the mind wipe. I've all but given up on those, but the resistance treatments are showing promise.

Obviously, I'll have to get the nanofabricator working. It's a shame that such a horrendously sensitive machine has become so crucial to my work.

The journal ended there. Aiden looked carefully, but it did not look like any pages were missing. Inside the back cover, in thick white ink, was a signature and date to close the journal. Aiden couldn't read the name. He put his hand on it, as if holding the white pen, and moved his fingers along the lines. The motions came naturally; his hand remembered the signature even if his mind didn't. The date, Aiden worked out, came almost a full year before the night he was brought into the Conner family.

That last thought hit Aiden hard. Somehow, until then, he managed to keep his mind off his last moments with Sam. He realized he had always done that; if a thought bothered him, he simply avoided it. He had learned to love the blissful ignorance that was this life. But Aiden couldn't believe that he'd managed to avoid thinking about Sam, his love, the very purpose of his life.

Aiden realized he had simply felt numb over the past days. He could have sworn he felt his sanity slipping away from him during the time he spent locked in the trunk of the Shepard's car. Since he was taken by the woman, however, he found it difficult to care about his situation, and almost impossible to work up his emotions.

Aiden suddenly felt that numbness melting away. He curled up his body and squeezed his eyes closed, feeling tears roll down his face as he remembered that day. Fresh out of the six weeks of training following his mind wipe, he literally didn't know anything that hadn't been taught to him by his trainers. He remembered the look on Sam's face when she first saw him. She was just a little girl back then. He almost couldn't believe how she fell in love with him... or how quickly he fell in love with her.

There was no avoiding the thoughts now. Aiden held his head, trying to think of anything else, but the sound of that gunshot played through his mind over and over, every time accompanied with the shock of that moment's realization that it had killed Sam.

Aiden's head pounded with a headache until it began to feel like his skull would crack open with the pressure. His body trembled, his muscles slowly tightening up. His chest felt like it was tightening, until he had to struggle to take a breath.

Aiden screamed. He couldn't remember what happened next.

"Ah, there you are." Aiden blinked, looking up at the old wolf's face. "I'm sorry I had to sedate you last night. I'm afraid the crash off the drugs I'd been feeding you can be rather sudden and unpleasant."

She stroked softly over Aiden's neck, scratching softly just in front of his shoulder. They were not in the cell. Aiden was laying on his side on his sleeping mat, on top of a warm, plastic table. A pair of pawbinds were put on his hands. Wide, thickly padded leather straps were buckled securely around each of his ankles and wrists. A strap secured both of his hands together, tied off on a leg of the table. His paws were tied to the opposite leg. A muzzle had been fitted over his head, adjusted so that he could only just fractionally open his mouth, not nearly enough to bite.

Aiden glanced up, spotting a couple of monitors on a nearby table, displaying what looked like internal scans of his own body. The second screen was focused on his head, flashes and waves of color rippling inside his skull. He could see the wolf's hands stroking him, represented as bundles of muscle, bone, tendon, and nerve fiber rippling and flashing, all different colors.

"It's time to find out if your life has been wasted, Aiden." She carefully pulled a small sheet of paper from a large envelope. It was brown and brittle, obviously having survived a fire. "This is the only other piece of your journals that I've been able to locate. This is the reason I've been searching for you for so long." She held it in front of his face so he could read.

I have decided that I must do more testing of my research.

My research is fairly well known due to my black tech bounties and my success with Davin, but over all these years he is the only live patient that has ever been brought to me.

I also find myself without volunteers willing to undergo my resistance treatments. It seems I have earned somewhat of a 'mad scientist' reputation. That is unfortunate, but I still believe that when my research is more mature, it can really change our place in the world.

It saddens me how many people hand themselves over to that evil corporation BlackPaw willingly. Poverty breeds madness; I can think of no other explanation why an intelligent adult would willingly subject himself to brainwashing to become a pet. I have done my best to interfere with the propaganda broadcasts coming in from the north, but I simply lack the transmitting power to compete with their signal.

I am rambling. I have discussed this so many times before.

I have no post-adaptation patients and no pre-adaptation volunteers, so I am forced to test my work on myself. Undoubtedly this will please my supporters and critics alike.

I plan to perform on myself resistances seventeen, twenty-three, and twenty-nine. Of all the potential resistances I've developed, these are the best understood, and I believe the safest. I will perform one per week, assuming there are no unexpected reactions.

I also plan to perform the Treatment, using the preemptive technique I've been working on. Obviously this test is largely just to prove its safety to everyone, as limited scale tests will not be possible, as they are with the resistances.

It will take three weeks to develop and verify the preemptive wrapper, because the activating stimulus I have chosen is considerably more complex than the ones I have tested before. I want a stimulus that can be produced fairly easily, without any special equipment, but is still highly unlikely to be encountered accidentally, because it will work only once. The Treatment, in my case, will be activated by olfactory exposure to a blend of carrier oil, lavender, orange oil, and rosemary.

The details of the blend followed, along with a series of indecipherable notes in a variety of notations. Aiden recognized one as representing the chemistry of the fragrance, but could only guess that the others worked their way toward representing the neurological sensation of the scent.

Aiden startled when the wolf put the paper aside and showed him a tiny vial of a yellowish liquid. He growled, eyes widening with panic, turning his head away as much as he could and struggling the free himself from the straps.

The wolf simply took a firm grip on Aiden's muzzle and pinned it down to the table, easily overpowering him in that position. She opened the vial with one hand, poured its contents onto a white cloth, and put the cloth against Aiden's mouth and nose.

Lee parked his car on the side of the road. His paws crunched on the gravel and hard baked dirt off the edge of the pavement as he stood up. He took a deep breath of the hot air, his nose wrinkling slightly at the acrid smoke still hanging in the air. The wolf pulled off the jacket of his suit, carefully folded it and left it in the car before making his way down the slope into the ditch beside the road.

Lee frowned at the sight. A burned and crumpled shell of a car laid upside-down at the bottom of the slope, and the area along its far side was still dotted with evidence flags. This was far from the first time he'd seen a scene like this, but something about this one caught his attention immediately.

He walked closer, stepping over a bloodstain soaked into the ground as he made his way across the wide open rear door, crouching to peer inside. The bodies had already been taken away, and the others were probably still being questioned. He'd already read the initial police reports, but he was still waiting for the forensics reports and the interrogation reports. He still liked to visit the scene for himself, though. No number of reports could give him as clear an impression of the scene as just a few minutes of seeing it with his own eyes. And sometimes the investigators missed details.

Lee stood again, walking around to the back of the car and crouching again to look at the trunk door. He softly ran his fingers along the edge of the cut-out square in the metal. He looked up at the lock, still securely latched to the car and bordered by a square of metal matching the hole below. The metal was much thicker than normal, with strong reinforcing ribs inside, yet the attackers seemed to be prepared for that. Inside, it looked like a false floor had once hidden the briefcase-sized slot underneath, but it was melted and burned away now.

Standing up, Lee turned around and looked at the small clearing beside the car. He walked a small circle around the area, eyes picking out each detail and recalling the pictures in the police report. All the blood had already been matched. The paw prints had been identified by species and the detectives' guess of their paths already traced out. The shell casings had been gathered up and a corresponding wound or mark had been found for every single one.

It would seem to even a well-trained eye that every last detail had been looked at. Lee appreciated the work. The local police were never this thorough, but Jhoren's private security company seemed determined to justify its high cost.

Still, something nagged at the back of Lee's mind. He'd long since learned to trust that feeling, and in exchange it earned him a reputation for finding lost details that was frequently described as 'spooky'.

He turned around, walking up past the car and toward the road again, moving very slowly and looking around carefully. Only one set of paw prints had led this way. They were canine, and one detective suspected they were also carrying a heavy load.

Something in Lee's mind clicked and he stopped walking. He turned, leaning in to look closely at the bush to his side. Razorweed, he recalled, notorious around this area for its sharp-edged leaves capable of slicing open skin like a paper cut. Looking carefully at the leaves, he spotted a small tuft of short, yellow fur clinging to a leaf, glued down by a tiny volume of blood on the edge. He smiled, picking the leaf, the feeling in the back of his mind disappearing immediately.

Lee continued up the path, taking a seat in his car on the side of the road. He let out a soft sigh at the air-conditioned cool inside, taking just a moment to enjoy it and wish for an assignment in a cooler part of the world. That moment over, he took a small cloth binder out from his armrest, and unzipped the edge. Using a small pair of scissors from the kit, he cut a millimeter square from the sharp edge of the leaf and carefully placed it on the center of a sample chip. A drop of sample fluid and a glass cover went on top, and then Lee carefully loaded the chip into its reader.

Lee sighed at the results. He touched the earpiece clipped inside his left ear. "It's confirmed, Tristan is lost. No, sir, he was not the target. Yes, sir."

Aiden groaned softly, blinking his eyes open. He was still strapped down to the table just as he had been before. His muscles hurt, but he could barely move his outstretched body to try and relieve them.

The treatment had worked more or less just as the pages in his journal described. Aiden felt his heart skip a beat, felt something strange and profound click in his mind, and immediately felt the strength drain out of every muscle in his body. The effect was so powerful that at first Aiden was afraid his heart would stop or he wouldn't be able to breathe. He couldn't even turn or close his eyes, but Aiden did not die. A part of him was disappointed.

Once it was clear that the expected effect had been taken on Aiden, the woman sat down in front of him, making sure he was staring at her face, and began to read from a handwritten page. She spoke in a deliberately clear voice, careful not to make any mistakes, knowing she had just a short time and exactly one chance to make Aiden understand her wishes. In just fifteen minutes, she dashed away every word of Aiden's BlackPaw training and bound him just as surely with her own.

When she was done, she asked Aiden to repeat what she had said. He did, word for word. The implant had forced him to memorize it, just as he could still remember with absolute clarity every word of training he'd ever been given. She asked Aiden if he understood, and of course he answered 'yes.' Then she simply stood up and walked away, glancing over her shoulder just to say, "Sleep, Aiden."

Aiden blinked, turning his head, realizing what had awoken him again. The white wolf was leaning in front of his face, her nose almost touching his. She smiled softly and stole another kiss.

Aiden bared his teeth, parting his jaws the fraction the muzzle strapped around his head allowed. The woman just smiled, unbuckling the muzzle's strap and pulling it off. She licked Aiden's nose, staring across into his eyes, challenging him to do something about it.

She finally pulled her head back after Aiden did nothing but continue to growl and struggle. She frowned softly. "First, know that you will always receive a second chance from me. I have no wish to hurt you, but if you ignore me, I have no choice but to punish you. So I'm warning you now. If you continue growling, Aiden, you will be punished. Do not forget that you are mine now." She watched Aiden, letting out a soft sigh as he continued to growl, struggle against his binds and snap his jaws at the air. "Stop breathing, Aiden," she commanded.

Aiden's eyes went wide as his growl was abruptly caught in his throat. He opened his mouth wide, struggling to draw in a breath. It only took a few moments before panic began to set in. Aiden struggled, desperately trying to force his body to breathe for almost two minutes before his eyes rolled back and he finally passed out. Once unconscious, Aiden resumed breathing as normal.

She sat, waiting beside the table, softly stroking a hand over Aiden's head and neck. It was only a few minutes until she felt his muscles tighten up again, immediately panicking as Aiden found himself waking up and still unable to breathe. "Relax, Aiden. You can breathe now."

Aiden gasped, panting for breath. He lowered his face to the mat, tears streaming down.

The woman softly stroked her hand over her neck. "I'm sorry, Aiden, but you must understand. You must learn that disobedience leads only to pain, but I will try to make you as happy as I can if you do your job well." She kissed his cheek. "I honestly don't want to hurt you."

She stood, stepping over to a corner of the table. "Do not leave the surface of this table, Aiden." She first removed the pawbinds from Aiden's hands, then both of the straps around his wrists, followed finally by the straps around his ankles.

Aiden's body curled tightly, holding his aching muscles in close. He trembled softly, whimpering as his arms, legs and back only seemed to hurt worse. Now that he could move them, he found himself unwilling to.

"Roll upright, Aiden." The white wolf watched him do as he was told. "Now stand up." She lifted her hands to him, massaging her fingers firmly over the muscles in his legs and back. "I know it hurts," she said sympathetically, "but it will be over soon. Just need to get out the knots and get the blood flowing again."

She smiled to him after a few minutes of massage. "There, that's better, isn't it? I told you. You're doing very well, Aiden. You're halfway to changing this world forever. You've given us a cure. Now the world just needs some encouragement. Take your mat back into the cell and rest. I'll leave both doors unlocked for you."

Aiden, of course, did as he was told.

Lee stopped at the door marked '42'. He looked around; the hallway was empty. He leaned into the door, hearing a voice speaking softly on the other side- male, canine, a larger breed. Only half the conversation could be heard- he was on a phone.

Lee waited patiently, listening to the man ramble on about his problems. Lee gathered that one of the man's friends has been missing, and though he admitted that it might not have been a very good idea considering the kind of people his friend was going to meet, he had already reported him missing to the police. Lee waited until the phone call came to an end before knocking on the door.

"Yeah, who is it?," the voice inside called in reply.

The peephole in the door went dark as the man on the other side put his eye up to it. Lee took a fold of leather from his left jacket pocket, flipped it open and held it up, showing the man a detective's badge. At that moment Lee had four different varieties of official identification on him, and not one of them was real. Even with people like this, though, the right one tended to make his job easier. "I'm a detective," he replied. "I'd like to talk with you about your missing friend."

The Rottweiler took a step back, frowning slightly. He looked around the apartment, mind racing to remember if there was a good reason to keep the cop out.

"Sir, please open the door. I only need a few minutes of your time," Lee said politely, knocking on the door again.

The Rottweiler took a deep breath, hesitating only another moment before stepping forward and opening the door halfway. "Good morning, offi--um, Detective. How can I help you? Do you have any news about Dane?"

"I'm afraid not," Lee replied, "but I have a few more questions for you. I think they may help up narrow down the search. May I come inside?"

The Rottweiler took a step back, opening the door wide. "Sure." That instant, he remembered what it was that was nagging at the back of his mind. It was already too late to tell Lee 'no', though. "Can I get you something to drink?," he asked.

"No, thank you," Lee replied, taking a voice recorder from inside his jacket pocket. "I'm going to record this. Easier than writing. May I sit?" He caught the flash of realization in the man's eyes; there was undoubtedly something interesting to be found here.

The Rottweiler nodded. "Yes, of course." He walked over to the kitchen, pouring himself a cup of coffee before walking back over. He looked down at the little recorder on the table, its red recording indicator glowing on the top. "What do you need to know?" He took a seat across from Lee.

"When you filed the report, you mentioned that your friend was out on business before he came to visit you, last you saw him. Was he traveling with anyone? Does he have any close coworkers that you know?"

"Dane doesn't really like to talk about work. I don't know much about what he does," he replied truthfully. "I, um, think I have the number of one of the people he went out of town with. Just a minute."

The Rottweiler got up, padding off to the bedroom and closing the door behind him. Right there, in plain sight on his bed was that strange metal case that Dane brought in. He'd been trying to figure out how to get it open without leaving behind any signs that it had been broken into, hoping to find some clue of his friend's location.

He looked around frantically for a hiding place, turning himself around, finally smiling as he decided on a spot. Picking the case up, he carried it over into the closet. He had to climb up onto the shelves to push open the crawlspace door in the ceiling, trying to be as quiet as possible. He slid the case into the dark opening, carefully lowered the door back into place, and closed the closet door after stepping back into the bedroom.

Lee just relaxed, closing his eyes to concentrate on the sounds coming from the bedroom. He could hear the suppressed panic in the dog's breathing, the sound of the closet door, wood creaking and the squeak of a hinge, then that sequence reversed. A few moments of silence, and then the Rottweiler burst out through the door again. Lee was confident he could find whatever was being hidden on his own, but he needed more answers than this dog was giving him.

"Here it is! I knew I left the phone in there somewhere. Ah, here's the number. He gave it to me so I'd recognize a call coming in from it, you know? I don't answer numbers I don't recognize." He sat down on the couch diagonal from Lee, turning the phone around to show Lee the number.

Lee simply reached over, taking the phone from the dog's hand and dropping it in his own pocket. "Thank you," he said before the stunned dog had a chance to react. "Now what was it that you just hid from me?"

The Rottweiler's eyes widened, but only for the briefest instant. He abandoned his complaint about his phone before it ever left his mouth. "Hid? I didn't hide anything from you."

Lee just sighed softly. "Damn." He leaned in toward the dog, looking at him with perfectly calm eyes. "That's a problem." He lifted his hand, set it on the back of the dog's neck, and extended one claw.

The Rottweiler jumped slightly at the touch of the claw tip just been two vertebrae, but didn't move any more. Lee put his hands on the Rottweiler's shoulders, gently pushing him back into his seat, positioning his limp body so he wouldn't fall over.

Lee held his claw in front of the dog's face so he could see the fine needle glued to the bottom. "Not my problem, you see. About an hour from now, you're not going to be able to move anything above your neck, either. Two hours and it'll start getting really hard to breathe. I've seen it, nasty stuff. You can cling to life until almost the third hour." He grinned, taking a container from his pocket and shaking out a pill, setting it on the table. "But! There's an antidote. Make good use of your time now. I'm told it'll be tough to swallow in forty-five minutes."

And thus the dumb friend turns into a fountain of knowledge, Lee thought. After listening to the dog's frantic ramblings for just a few minutes, Lee got up, went into the closet and found the case inside the crawlspace, just where the dog said it would be. He took it back to the living room, setting it down on the table to work on the lock while he listened.

Despite the fancy-looking case, the lock was child's play. He held down on the lock release, carefully rolling each dial of the combination back and forth, feeling out the 'soft spot' in each one that indicated a potential correct digit. The Rottweiler went abruptly silent when the lock snapped open.

Lee glanced up. "Please continue." He turned the case away so only he could see before looking inside.

"Come on, man. I've told you everything. You even have the case. I haven't done anything. Gimmie the thing, give me the pill. Please? It's been an hour, hasn't it?"

Lee checked his watch. "Only twenty minutes, actually. Unfortunately, I lied to you. The kind of nerve damage you're taking is quite irreversible. The good news is it really won't get any worse than this." He put his hand along the dog's throat, touching his claw tip again on one spot, then again on the other side. The dog's eyes widened; he shook his head, opening and closing his mouth, struggling to speak. "This one is called the recurrent laryngeal nerve. Can't have you talking, now. I sincerely hope someone comes by and finds you before you starve, though."

"Oh, almost forgot," Lee said as he picked up the case. "Your 'antidote.'" He picked it up, tossing it in his mouth. "My favorite mints."

Aiden gasped, sitting up suddenly, covered in sweat. He shivered violently, filled with a feeling of horror. Strangely, though, Aiden couldn't remember what sort of dreams had awakened him. He groaned, setting his head down once again. He was tired of nightmares, tired of spending his life as a prisoner of some kind or another.

Aiden hadn't really had time to experience his feelings about recent events, let alone deal with them. Earlier, his drugged food kept him from feeling much of anything. Then his crash off the drugs brought them in with such intensity he thought they might kill him. Now, he just didn't know what to feel.

It must have been weeks since... he could hardly even admit to himself that it was true, that Sam was dead. For as long as Aiden was able to remember, Samantha was the entire purpose of his existence. Aiden was in love with her from the time she was little. That love matured as beautifully as she had, as had her feelings for him. Aiden would have proudly given his life for her, and only regretted that she would be saddened by his sacrifice.

Aiden sobbed, closing out the world around him to try and finally accept the truth.

Lee sat down in his car with a sigh, looking out his window, up at the apartment. With medical science as it was, it could be very difficult to fool a thorough medical examiner. Lee had a small collection of techniques, some useful for interrogation as well, but few of them were pleasant. Most of the people Lee used them on didn't deserve much better, but that made it no more pleasant for him. Even when they clearly didn't deserve it, Lee still kept cool and did his job, but afterwards he always felt like shit.

The fact here was that mercy just wasn't an option tonight. Lee had to take advantage of techniques that nobody would look for, that couldn't be detected, or that had results that happened naturally. He had to vary his methods, keep patterns from showing up in the statistics. Most importantly, he had to get the job done while everyone else was too busy wondering if his job even exists.

He had been assured that the 'By Any Means Necessary' status of this project was carefully assigned, as it always was. Most people would think that a license to do anything he can get away with would be the best part of his job, but it really meant that until it was done, his entire life became just what he hated most.

Lee moved the case onto his lap, opening it again. It was sad, to think of the terrible sequence of events triggered by a completely empty case. Lee carefully checked inside and out. He had a talent for finding hiding places, but he was convinced there were none here. He put it aside, to drop it off and have someone analyze it more carefully later.

So, the obvious question: at what point was the case emptied? If it was empty before its theft, then Lee couldn't care less what it might have once held. That just wasn't his job. If it came after that but before it came into the doomed Rottweiler's hands, it could mean everything. He doubted, though, it could have been after that. Even the Rottweiler stopped to peek inside, when he believed himself just minutes from the point of no return.

Lee sighed and started his car, hoping to find somewhere decent to sleep nearby.

Aiden opened his eyes slightly, surprised to find himself warm and dry. His heart skipped as a pair of strong lupine hands reached around from behind him and softly caressed the fur on his face, head and neck. He turned his head to look behind him, and his heart sank once again.

"Try not to look so disappointed to see me, Aiden," the old wolf spoke. "It's good to see you're feeling better. You wouldn't believe how your fur smells now, though." She smiled, leaning down to give Aiden's cheek a soft kiss. "Go have a nice bath. You deserve it. I'll bring you something to eat in about half an hour." She pointed out through the wide-open door. "Across the room, up the stairs, second door on the right. Go straight there, Aiden, and feel free to enjoy anything you find in there. This is your home now, after all."

Aiden sighed softly. There was no use in resisting or arguing. Anyway, he couldn't imagine why he might try to refuse a bath when one sounded so wonderful. He got up, padding along the route assigned to him, soon finding himself in a spacious and rather luxurious bathroom.

He explored at first, peeking into every cabinet and drawer, looking at every bottle and item he could find. It was all ordinary things like shampoos and soaps and brushes and candles and so on. Aiden started filling the bathtub, chose a bottle of shampoo, ran just a touch of it under the tap until the tub was covered with bubbles, and then dimmed the lights.

Aiden looked down, only his head, shoulders and paws sticking out of the layer of bubbles. He lifted his hands out of the water and extended his fingers, looking at them. He could almost imagine that the body hidden under the water was different, that it stood upright, an equal with the canines.

He closed his eyes, rested his arms on the sides of the tub, and set his head back. He smiled, imagining, fantasizing about meeting Samantha for the first time. Maybe in a fair world it wouldn't be such a strange thing for a leopard and a wolf to meet and fall in love. Aiden licked his lips, drawing out the fantasy, imagining in as much detail as he could manage.

Aiden lay stretched out on the grass, enjoying the feeling of the sun drying out the fur on his naked body, half-napping while he listened to the sound of the Jaran River flowing through the city and to the sounds of the people enjoying themselves in and around its waters.

He startled as a sudden coldness at his side jerked him from his daydreams. Even before he even realized it was just his mostly-forgotten drink spilling onto his fur, he caught sight of the wolf standing over him.

She was gorgeous. Aiden had seen her around the city, using her charm, beauty and talents to earn her stay. She always caught his eye when she was near, but until that moment he hadn't given her a second thought.

"Oh!," she cried, and crouched beside him, turning the already empty cup she had tipped over upright once again. She turned her ears back, offering him a sheepish smile. "I'm so sorry. I'll get you another- what were you drinking?"

"Don't worry about it," Aiden said with a smile. He glanced down and touched the fresh wet spot on his side, then looked back up to her. "I'm going for a swim to wash this off before it gets sticky," he said. "Join me and talk a bit, and I'll call it even."

She made the briefest of hesitations at his proposal, but then smiled, and replied, "Alright. Go on ahead. I'll join you in a moment."

Aiden nodded softly, getting up and heading toward the water. Once he had a portion of the light crowd between him and her, he glanced back. She did as almost all tourists do their first time there. She glanced around, hesitated to review her feelings on public nudity, and then undressed quickly, as if not being seen to undress would maintain her modesty. Aiden quickly turned his attention back ahead and jumped into the cold water before his body could react to the sight of her nude. Not all there were so modest about such things, but that wasn't the way Aiden wanted to tell her that he was interested.

She jumped in shortly after Aiden, letting out a small cry and a laugh at the shock of the cold water. She waded over to him. "I'm Samantha," she said, offering a friendly smile.

"Aiden," he replied, and picked up the conversation from there. They talked about themselves, about each other, and about everything else. With each turn of the conversation, they just grew more interested. They waded and played in the river's water for an hour before returning to Aiden's spot on the grass to lay under the sun and continue to talk.

When it got dark, they both dressed and left the river's side together. Aiden bought her dinner. They laughed together, their fascination growing as they told each other their most personal stories.

After dinner, dessert, and a couple of hours and quite a few drinks each, they left the restaurant together. It had come out earlier that Aiden had been unable to find a room for the night, but he had bought a hammock and spent the last several nights sleeping by the river until sunrise. Sam told him that simply wouldn't do.

It wasn't until Aiden was in front of her, inside her small but comfortable room and the door closed behind her that Sam could admit to herself what her intentions really were. She bit her lip and hesitated just a moment while he wasn't looking, then strode closer to him, putting one hand around his back and the other on the back of his head, pressing her lips to his.

Aiden felt himself sobering up the instant the kiss broke. His heart racing, his breath coming quicker now, he willed up every bit of his self-control. "Sam, I.. you're--," he started, breathlessly.

She shook her head, her commitment solidifying with Aiden's response. "I'm not that drunk, Aiden." She grinned confidently, her hand stroking down his side. "I've been thinking about this for hours."

Aiden hesitated for just an instant, looking across into Sam's eyes, but he didn't need any more encouragement. He leaned in again, gently pressing his lips back to hers. The two stayed locked in a long and passionate kiss, breaking briefly on occasion as each removed another item of clothing from the other.

Of course, they had seen each other naked. Aiden had been sunbathing in the nude quite comfortably when they first met, and Sam had quickly forgotten her modesty while they played together in the water of the river. Now, though, alone together in this room, each touch on the other's bare fur seemed to carry an electric charge with it.

Still, they grinned and laughed softly on occasion, breaking down the tension while they made a sort of dance out of touching and admiring each other's bodies. Sam put her hands on Aiden's chest, softly tracing her fingers down the elongated curves of muscle on his tall, slender body. He trembled until he nearly broke down to his knees as the touch tickled and teased his excited body. Aiden slipped his hands around her back, sliding them down the feminine curves of her somewhat larger canine build until they rested just over her tail. He lowered his head, ever so gently sliding the soft rasp of his feline tongue over her nipple. She moaned softly, softly panting several breaths. And so the game played back and forth, turning their bodies together as if in some elaborate dance, until neither could stand it any longer.

They fell onto the bed together, Sam over Aiden, both laughing. They held each other tight, rubbing their bodies together and kissing intensely; the time for those tentative touches and gentle caresses had passed.

Breaking away from the kiss, Samantha grinned, eyes locked with Aiden's, and pushed herself up to her knees. She put her hands on his chest and slowly slid them down his body until they stopped on his hips. She licked her muzzle, turning her head and attention downward, between her hands.

Aiden gasped a breath as he felt Sam's warm breath on his belly. His tip already peeked from his sheath by a couple inches. His body quivered slightly as he felt her whiskers tickle over the sensitive flesh, just a moment before her tongue curled around him. A sound somewhere between a laugh and a moan escaped him with the feeling of the slick canine tongue encircling him, quickly drawing his erection out more fully. She licked again, this time her tongue only sliding alongside his sheath and up his belly until it crossed his navel, her whiskers tickling him once again.

Aiden could just watch as she slid her hands up his body, crawling over him until her hands were on his chest, gently pinning his shoulders down onto the bed, her knees on each side of his hips. She lowered her head and kissed him yet again, at the same slowly easing her body back.

Aiden gasped through the kiss at the soft, invitingly warm touch sliding over his shaft. His abdominals quivered uncontrollably as droplets of her juices rolled slowly around him and soaked into his fur below. In one smooth motion, Aiden rolled his hips down until he felt his tip settling into the proper spot, wrapped his arms tightly around Samantha, and then slowly but unyieldingly pressed his hips back up until he felt the fur on the tip of his sheath grinding against Sam's lips.

Sam broke the kiss, let go of him, and tilted her head back to moan out in pleasure. Aiden took the opportunity, holding her tight and rolling both bodies over together. He looked down at her now, planting his hands and knees on each side of her, lowering his head to lick and gently nip at her neck. They built up a slow rhythm together, their bodies rocking softly against each other until they ached with lust. Aiden moaned, one last thrust of his hips burying himself deep inside Sam. Her body quivered around him as she let out a long, breathy moan and whimper, her face contorted with ecstasy.

The moment seemed to stretch on forever at first, but then suddenly it was over all too soon. Samantha and Aiden hugged each other close, panting, bodies twitching with lingering sparks of pleasure. They rolled onto their sides together, letting sleep take them still locked in their embrace.

When Aiden opened his eyes again, the old wolf was sitting cross-legged on the tile floor the tub was set in, right next to him. She just smiled, not commenting, and turned her body to cut off a small piece of the large steak on the plate beside her. She picked it up, leaning in to hold it in front of his mouth.

Aiden looked up at her, sighed softly, and gently took the piece of meat from her fingers with his mouth. He had not noticed her arrival. He felt cold, opening his eyes from such a beautiful fantasy, only to see her and have to face this reality. Still, some pleasure lingered in his body, and he could barely resist purring for the bit of steak in his mouth. The wolf cut another piece and ate it herself, then gave the next to Aiden, taking her time working through the entire steak in small pieces.

"Aiden," she started, after some time of silence. "I hope you have some understanding of who you once were, before you can remember. You dedicated your life to preventing or reversing what BlackPaw has turned you into. I understand you have since loved your life as a pet, but you really had no choice in that matter. Almost all pets like you learn to love their lives, if they're well trained. Why do you think you're all given your incapacity for violence? Before that, there have been pets that have fought and killed for nothing more than making their masters unhappy. That's how intensely some of them grow attached.

"You may hate me now for what I'm doing with you, but I think your former self would be proud. Aiden, you were once a brilliant and well-respected man, but you lacked the capacity for action. You will probably never continue your research, but now I hope I've prepared you to act effectively."

She reached behind her, sliding an aluminum briefcase in beside her. "This, Aiden, is the Holy Grail of black technology. Several people have died for it, it's been stolen and re-stolen more times than I can recall, and most of the people who have owned it at some time have been too afraid to even open the box." She tapped in a sequence of digits on the electronic lock on the edge, smiling as the lock snapped open. She opened the case, turning it so Aiden could see from the bathtub. Nestled inside in precisely cut foam sat a simple wooden box. She opened it.

Aiden held his breath. With all that buildup, he half-expected all the plagues of Pandora to fly out as she opened the box. He breathed again when they did not.

Inside, between wooden dividers and packed tightly and carefully in cloth, were eighty glass vials. She carefully drew one out. The cloth had been packed around it so long that it held its shape, maintaining a perfect padded slot for the vial to be returned to. She held its ends between her fingers and held it out so Aiden could see.

Aiden let out a small scream, jumping back against the far wall of the tub as terror instantly gripped him. He held still, forcing himself to take a deep breath after he was ordered to be calm, but that was much easier said than done.

Inside the glass was what looked like some kind of large, frighteningly aggressive beetle. Aiden recognized it from his darkest dreams. He scratched his ear, almost able to feel it burrowing inside his skull again, on its way to deposit his control implant. Aiden couldn't relax again until it was put away, the box and the case closed around it.

The wolf smiled. "Don't worry, they're quite harmless to you. You already have one. Besides, these will ignore felines completely. They were made for canines." She patted the case. "They can live for a hundred years. Just a few drops of water and they'll come out of hibernation, ready to do their jobs. These are much better than the crudely modified version that was used on you. For one thing, they only take about five minutes to integrate themselves with the mind."

She looked Aiden in his eyes. "Your job, Aiden, is to show the world a taste of what it's been doing to your kind. In a way, you're continuing the work you did, long ago. You're going to take these," she said, patting the case, "and use them on canines. It doesn't matter who. What matters is that you train them so you can be sure the entire world will know about it very quickly. Be as creative as possible."

She stroked over Aiden's head. "I have something special for you, Aiden. A way for you to learn." She opened the case again. "Aiden," she said, her voice indicating a command, "do not be afraid." She opened the box, taking a random vial out. She removed the cap, reached over to dip a finger in the bath, and then dripped two drops of water from it into the vial. She quickly closed it again and handed it to Aiden.

He watched as the bug changed color slightly, began to twitch, and in less than a minute began to violently fight against the glass containing it. He held the vial in his fingers with a steady hand, feeling no fear.

She took it back. "Finish up, get yourself dried off and come back down to your cell when you're finished." She smiled softly. "No need to rush, though." She left Aiden alone again, carrying the case in one hand and the vial containing the awakened bug in the other.

Aiden found her half an hour later, sitting in the room just outside Aiden's cell. The door to the cell was closed. She looked up from the papers in her lap and smiled, waving him closer. "Aiden, listen carefully. You are never to purposefully and directly injure anybody, unless you believe it is necessary to defend your own safety. Understand?"

Aiden frowned softly, nodding. He had happily lived with stricter rules than that, though he appreciated the exception she offered. He had to wonder why she would mention it, though.

He didn't wonder for long. She stood, opening the door to Aiden's cell. The inner door was already wide open. Inside, a naked Shepard kneeled on the floor, his back to the far side of the cell. He had a muzzle fitted on around his head and strapped tight. His wrists were bound behind him to the water tap. Rope was wrapped around his folded legs, preventing him from straightening them. His eyes widened when he saw the two figures outside.

Aiden bared his teeth, growling fiercely. His body trembled with fury. The only thing holding him back from running in and literally tearing the dog to shreds was the old wolf's word.

She smiled, looking down at Aiden. "You recognize him. This is the man that took you away from Samantha, isn't it? He worked with the one that killed her." She crouched, giving Aiden the vial with the still furiously struggling bug. "Use this on him, Aiden. See he gets what he deserves."

Aiden took the vial, looking inside. He ground his teeth together. He could sense his terror locked away in the back of his mind, and in a moment of twisted sanity, wanted nothing more than to inflict that terror on the dog in front of him. He stepped forward, pulling the cap off of the vial and pressing the opening into the helpless dog's ear, holding it there until the bug disappeared from sight. He held onto the muzzle, holding the dog's head down while he struggled. Aiden waited patiently for the struggling to stop, then leaned in and began to whisper. Just a minute more and Aiden untied the dog's ankles and wrists, then turned and walked away, not looking back.

Aiden curled up in the far corner where he couldn't see the cell opening. The old wolf, on the other hand, fell back from her crouch to sit on the floor, her mouth hanging open in shock at the sight in front of her. It only took a minute for the sight to convince her to quickly unlock her cabinet, take her gun, load it, and put the Shepard out of his misery.

She closed both doors of the cell. She took a deep, shaky breath, looking over at Aiden. "You'll begin tomorrow."

Aiden stepped into the room as the door was opened for him. It seemed to be a simple guest room, like any reasonably large house might have, little more than a bed, dresser, and small assortment of generic decoration. The bed was a proper mattress with sheets and a pillow, a luxury compared to a standard pet sleeping mat. The room had a window, too.

Maybe, Aiden thought, I can pretend I'm not a prisoner.

Aiden jumped up onto the bed, the simple action stirring a lifetime of memories of Sam's bed. He buried his nose in the sheets, torturing himself by hoping to catch Sam's scent. Back at home, when Sam was away Aiden would sleep in her bed just to be surrounded by her scent.

Aiden sighed, flopping down on his side. "I'd give anything just to breathe her scent again," he said, tears rolling down his face.

The old wolf stepped closer, gently pulling the sheets out from under Aiden, then pulling them over him to his neck. She stroked her hand over his head and kissed his cheek. "Don't be sad. Take some pleasure when you think of her."

Aiden frowned as the pain in his chest eased away. He looked up at her, nothing left on his face but defeat. "How dare you take away my pain after everything else. Please don't tell me how to feel. I don't even know who you are."

She smiled softly to him. "Call me Mother." She turned and walked out, closing the door behind her.

Lee groaned, blinking his eyes open. His phone's screen was the only light in the room. He grabbed it, pushing a button and putting it to his ear. He said nothing, listening for several seconds before lifting it from his ear to turn it off again.

"There's another," a voice spoke before Lee's finger could touch the button. He put the phone back to his ear. "Right now. Only ten minutes' drive away. Head north on the highway, you'll see it." The call ended.

Lee groaned again, closing his eyes. Part of him wanted to sprint out the door, into his car and race north. The rest never wanted to get up again. He counted the years in his head. Almost four had passed since he started this investigation with that burned-out car wreck.

The first year was a maddening series of dead ends. The metal case he'd found, and killed for, was a fake. It was a cheap store-bought model that had probably never carried anything, certainly not the expensive case provided by the company that armored Jhoren's car. Lee's best guess was that one of the three attackers in the wreck intended to cheat the others out of their share.

It seemed clear that the three dogs, the Doberman, the German Shepard, and the Lab that were involved in the attack on Jhoren's car were not interested in any of the people inside the car. The only thing they cared about was retrieving that case, and getting away with it. Lee could plan half a dozen ways to obtain that case without having to resort to murder or such sloppiness, but sadly they did not seem to be that professional.

Lee could only guess why the pet was taken that day. It was rare, but not completely unheard of for pets to be taken and sold. Sadly, their fates in such cases were almost always short and unpleasant. However, that pet was the reason Lee spent the last years investigating this case, and he was not convinced this was anything like a typical pet abduction.

After all this time, though, he could still only guess. After countless times down the wrong track, Lee began to fear that he had been given an unsolvable case he wasn't allowed to give up on. Nobody had ever spent more than a year on a By Any Means Necessary case. They tended, after a time, to either succeed or fail. It seemed this time Lee would not be so lucky.

At the end of that first year, things got much worse. That day, a dog approached Lee on the sidewalk, took hold of Lee's shoulders, and said, "Agent Lee. Stop looking for me. We both know this has to be put to an end. There's only seventy nine to go." Then he drew a gun, and began to turn it on Lee.

Lee was faster, though. Without even thinking, in an instant of practiced reflex, Lee twisted the gun out of the dog's hand and pocketed it, stepped in to close the space between them, and had his own gun pressed in against the dog's chest with his other hand. Nobody else on the sidewalk ever noticed either gun. "Who are you?" Lee growled, eyes and ears scanning for danger.

The dog's eyes were wide, filled with terror. Yet in a perfectly calm voice, he replied, "Agent Lee. Stop looking for me. We both know this has to be put to an end. There's only seventy nine to go."

Lee blinked, shaking his head slightly at the bizarre conflict in the dog. "Seventy nine what?" He pressed the gun more firmly into the dog's chest, painfully hard now.

The dog's eyes reflected the pain and fear, but once again, he spoke in a calm voice. "Agent Lee. Stop looking for me. We both--"

Lee holstered his weapon and reached back to take the man's wallet. He didn't even react, just repeated his message again. Lee took an ID card, putting it in his pocket with the dog's gun. Lee then reached out to snatch a passerby's phone from his belt clip. The phone's owner never noticed, continuing on his way down the sidewalk. Lee dialed the police, dropped the phone in the dog's pocket and turned to walk away through the crowd.

He ducked into a dark alleyway to look at the gun he'd taken. He growled, swearing. It was a toy, meticulously altered, painted and weighted to look real. He smashed it on the wall and went back out to the sidewalk just as a police car and ambulance sped past and parked up the street.

Today, almost three years later, at least Lee felt like he knew what was going on, even if he didn't feel any closer to stopping it. Around once a month, a new case like the one that approached him appeared.

Each month, an ordinary canine would one day loose his mind. They would usually make themselves known in a very public way, sometimes deliver a message, and then... well, that varied. Later, almost all of them would be found to be carrying a control implant in their brain. Not all, of course- some people don't need any help going crazy, and those tend follow others' lead.

Most of the time, the incidents were simple and quick. Walking into a crowded place, firing a gun into the air to get everyone's attention, and then shooting himself in the head seemed a popular choice. Dictating a message first became less common when people learned that a victim wouldn't fight back if they tried to stop him.

If media attention to one of these incidents was relatively light, the next one tended to compensate to be sure it gripped everyone's minds. When the more peaceful 'Devil's Messengers', as they've come to be known, didn't catch the world's attention, more violent ones would emerge.

One dog walked into a BlackPaw pet training facility with a rifle and started taking a shot at everyone in sight, not stopping until he was shot to death by police. Incredibly, he didn't kill a single person- his shots landed on legs, arms, and paws.

Some of the scenes were too gruesome to be worth describing. Nobody was allowed to loose interest or to try and ignore the problem. The people became obsessed, waiting for new news each month.

It seemed each of the victims, the Messengers, were chosen completely at random. Nobody ever established a pattern. The Messengers seemed to go on with their lives for weeks or months after being given their implants without anybody ever noticing anything unusual about them. They each used their own means to plan and prepare for their end, and they were always very careful. By the time they made themselves known, there was usually no way to even know how long they had been implanted, let alone where or by whom.

None of the Messengers ever killed anybody but themselves. Not on purpose, anyway. There was little doubt of what they were instructed- to force attention, to incite terror, to avoid killing at any cost, and to ensure they did not survive the ordeal.

Of course, some did survive. Sometimes people shoot at their own heads and miss, or fail to make the wound fatal. A few were caught in planning. More than one collapsed with a heart attack on the way to delivering his message.

These people were studied endlessly. A special police task force was organized after the first two incidents. Over the years, it grew into a special investigation squad, then a division of the police, then almost its own department. No single person in history had ever been so sought after, arguably including during the War.

In the end, though, the survivors proved worthless to the investigation. While many of them mostly returned to their normal, but rather traumatized selves, none of them ever spoke about the last year of their lives again. They were all but physically incapable of giving away the secrets of their implantation. Several were forced to endure the worst kind of interrogation to prove that.

Faced with the reality that canines were vulnerable to implantation, medical labs around the world began researching furiously for a cure or some kind of prevention. Ironically, many of them made their starting points with the research of a feline named Tristan, discretely and anonymously provided to them without a word of explanation.

Lee paused momentarily as the cool pre-dawn air hit him. He took a deep breath, looked around the dark motel parking lot, then got in his car and headed north. It didn't take long for things to begin to catch his attention. To start with, the two helicopters circling downtown. Next, the utter emptiness of the oncoming lane of the highway. Sure, it was still before dawn and a smaller city like this was still sleeping, but that was still unusual. Finally, as Lee drove deeper into the city, he felt an eerie silence about it.

This wasn't the first time Lee has experienced that particular silence inside a city. It came from city services being shut down, of fervent preparation carefully hidden behind the scenes, and the rest of the city still oblivious of the problem.

Lee pulled off of the highway early. There were lights ahead, cars and barricades in the process of being set up. Continuing that way would surely only land him in a traffic jam from which there was no escape.

Lee drove slowly, once again heading north, coming closer to the helicopters overhead. There was another barricade ahead, nothing more than a wood barrier and a single cop to protect it. Lee turned onto a road parallel to the barricade and kept an eye out the side window. The barricades stretched on for blocks, and just a handful of cops were stretched thin to protect them. There wasn't even any effort to redirect or warn traffic. In a matter of hours, when the sun would start to come up, the city would undoubtedly be a nightmare of traffic they were ill-prepared to deal with.

Lee parked his car on the side of the road, not far outside of the barricaded area. He got out, and stepped around to the back, opening the trunk. First, he pulled on a slim backpack, adjusting the straps until it hugged close to his body. Next, he unwrapped and slipped on a full-length black trench coat, taking a moment to select and pin on the proper badge and rank insignia.

Lee closed the trunk again and strode confidently right through the line of barricades and right past the tired-looking cop nearest him. One block in past the perimeter, as Lee had spotted from his car, was a small swarm of furious activity. Lee stepped right into the thickest mass of uniformed men.

Two dogs sat in front of a row of screens, pouring over video from countless sources inside and around the building. A tactical unit of a dozen stood around blueprints, studying floor plans. Three high-ranking men from different levels of law enforcement argued around a tactical planning display. Dozens more specialists in technology, explosives, engineering, negotiation, and support staff milled around or sat on the perimeter.

It only took a few minutes of watching and listening for Lee to learn everything he wanted to know. A dog, the owner of a local demolition company, had apparently spent most of the last year slowly taking explosives, detonating cord and a variety of ignition systems from his own business. He had apparently also spent much of the year meticulously planning this night. He had taught himself lock picking up to a fairly advanced level, and started coming into the building at night on a regular basis. It didn't take long for him to make a collection of copied keys, uniforms and building schematics. It took the last six months to install the explosives so that nobody would notice.

Judging by the freshly compiled inventory of missing items from his business, he was planning on taking no risks. He had taken three times as much as the demolition of a building that size would normally require. The explosives he took, though, were all cutting charges. Fire-producing and concussive explosives have no place in building demolition, so tripling up quantities would make the explosion no more dramatic. The more likely answer is he probably wired up three completely independent systems, each capable of taking down the building on its own.

Also, last night he had cleaned out his company's entire stock of site security gear. Cheap, disposable motion detectors, thermal detectors and microphones typically used to ensure that nobody was in or around a demolition site, and usually left in the building during destruction. They would be wired into a computer, normally outside of the demolition area, that would monitor activity and warn an operator. Everyone around sounded very pessimistic of their ability to disable the security system and then all of the explosives without alerting the man in control of the detonators.

They discussed desperate tactics; pumping the building with CO2, having the officers fire through the windows of every floor from all the neighboring buildings, or simply firing excessive numbers of smoke grenades and flashbangs into every floor.

Lee took a slow breath, turning his head to look up at the building of interest. He turned and walked away from the crowd of people. Away from the building, at first, until he was out of the light. Then he turned and picked up his pace, keeping in the long shadows from the floodlights parked along the outer perimeter.

Lee ran for the nearest corner of the building. It was dark enough to get in without anybody outside noticing, so the only problem left was keeping the man inside from noticing. Lee had seen the inventory of security gear, and in his estimate it was only enough to protect the top level, ground level, and one additional floor.

Lee ran right for a fire door in the corner of the building without stopping. He jumped, planting a paw on the door handle and pushing off, reaching up to grab the lip above him. The windows of this building were recessed eight inches, with decorative stone sticking out to divide them. Lee climbed up into the narrow recess, and then reached up to grab the next lip and climb up again.

"Third floor ought to be safe," he told himself, slipping his knife out from the sheath on his ankle. He thrust the knife right into the glass, the blade easily shattering the glass and sliding through. Fortunately, though, these buildings used laminated glass, both sides covered in plastic to keep shards from falling to the sidewalk below. With some work, Lee cut along the edges in the corner, making a flap big enough for him to squeeze through and inside.

He found the elevator quickly enough, and working open the lock to open the doors into the elevator shaft was easy as always. He closed the doors behind him and started up the ladder. It took ten minutes of climbing to catch up with the elevator car. He climbed up and onto its roof, first releasing the mechanical lock on the door, and then carefully peeking inside the elevator car before dropping himself in.

From here, things would get tricky.

Anyone watching Lee and qualified to assess his situation would undoubtedly call his rapid infiltration and ascent pure insanity. The truth was, Lee didn't have the slightest clue where the sensors would be placed, or whether the elevator was on the right floor, or really much of anything about the situation. His operational record reads like a fantastic series of fortunate coincidences and lucky guesses.

Lee himself couldn't fully explain why these situations seemed to work out his way. What he was sure of, though, was that there was much more than dumb luck at play. Over the years, Lee had made a fine balance of trusting his gut instincts and holding himself back to think through the situation. Lee could effortlessly sense a lie being told, seemingly no matter how good the liar was. Lee could second-guess the best police profilers and often come out right. Lee could spot hiding places with almost scary consistency. Lee could guess his way through a situation and more than likely come out on top.

Lee had spent many hours pondering these seemingly impossible talents. Perhaps God guided him to make the world better. It was a nice theory, but Lee didn't believe in God. Maybe when he was focused on a job, he could read the mind of his target. Lee wished that were true, but doubted it. Perhaps he simply had an intuitive mind, highly developed toward his work (or was it the other way around?), and picked up on miniscule details subconsciously. At this point, Lee usually decided that such pondering was pointless.

Lee cracked open the elevator doors, just enough to peek outside. He spotted a motion sensor, thermal sensor, and a microphone a short distance down the hall, pointing down the stairs. He had no doubt now this was the correct floor, but some part of Lee was bothered that he couldn't find any sensors covering the elevator.

He checked the cab again, peeked through the hatch in the roof to be sure he didn't miss any sensors on the door lock or in the shaft, but he doubted anybody had been that way. Lee held himself back from opening the doors, turning over the facts in his mind, searching for what he had missed.

Motion, thermal and sound sensors were the only ones missing from the store room. Lee doubted any other sensors had been jury-rigged to work with the system- he suspected a demolitions expert couldn't help but do the job properly and meticulously. Aside from the sensors, there would be the computer monitoring all of them, connected by miles of cable. Lee thought a moment, then carefully pushed the doors open just far enough to squeeze his arm through. He pushed his shoulder right up against them and felt along the bottom of the door.

A cable, taped securely to the floor and to the door, almost pulled tight by the door's opening. Between the door and floor, something loose and rubbery was around the cable. Lee pulled the cable free from the door and re-stuck the tape to the floor, then did the same for another cable on the other half of the elevator door.

Lee pushed the doors all the way open and stepped outside. The cables had a narrow area stripped and all but a few strands of wire inside cut before being taped to the door, with the weak part in middle. If the door was carelessly opened, the wire would tear apart, surely alerting someone just as the other sensors would. Confirming Lee's suspicion for the tendency to meticulous work, the weak, exposed part of the wire had an unlubricated condom pulled around it and securely taped. The man who did this had done it many times before in his work.

Lee took a slow breath, looking around. The paths down both directions of the hallway from the elevator were covered by multiple types of sensors, and Lee doubted he would be able to disable any of them. He could not reach any other doors or windows from where he was.

Lee smiled again after a few moments of thought. He took his knife from his belt, carefully stabbing it through only the near layer of drywall. He pulled his knife down, quietly cutting open a hole big enough for him to put his head in. For the other layer of drywall, he put the tip of his knife to it and carefully turned it and whittled away at that point until a very small hole poked through. Lee put his eye up to it, grinning at his luck as he saw the inside of a storage closet.

Working quickly but as quietly as he could, Lee cut open both layers of drywall big enough that he could slip through. Once in the closet, Lee immediately got to the floor, putting his head to the carpet to peek through the large gap under the door. And there sat a dog, sitting on the floor in front of a computer, sweating profusely, rocking himself as if to try and alleviate his obvious terror. In his right hand, Lee recognized a handheld detonator control.

After a few moments, Lee also noticed the blood dripping off of the control, forming a small puddle on the floor. Lee frowned slightly. This dog had over a year to plan for everything, and he undoubtedly made good use of that time. He must have modified detonator control into a dead man's switch- made to detonate on release- and now he had been gripping the button so hard and for so long that his hand was bleeding.

Lee got up again, taking a slow breath to steady his nerves before slowly opening the door. He pushed it very carefully, just to be sure this one wasn't also rigged to detect being opened, but the slight tug of a cable ready to break never came.

Lee stepped out, very slowly, carefully controlling his breathing and movement to be absolutely silent. He crept across the room, deliberately placing each pawstep, mindful of the dangers of creaking floors, shadows or reflections to give away his presence, and of course the potential for his suspect to simply turn his head.

The dog turned his head as he caught the slightest whiff of an unfamiliar scent. He barely got a chance to see the wolf standing over him before he felt the crushing pain around his right hand. He let out a cry as Lee squeezed his hand down around the control with a strength he was at that moment convinced was breaking every bone in his hand. He did not scream. He simply reached for it with his other hand and tried to fight it away from Lee.

Lee simply smashed his elbow into the dog's face, pulling back the safety and arming switches before wrestling the control out of the dog's hand and tossing it aside. Just a few moments later, Lee had handcuffs around the dog's wrists and ankles. He'd seen others like him fight viciously, even partially restrained.

Lee let out a sigh. It was almost a shame he'd never get to take credit for this, because he was convinced the crowd of officers down on the street would never have pulled this off on their own. Professionally, he didn't really care about the building--not while he wasn't in it, anyway--but it still felt good to save something for a change.

Lee extended his claws, inspecting the yellow-tipped needle glued to the claw under his ring finger, glad to see he'd managed to keep it intact. He looked down at the dog. "Allow me to apologize in advance. I'm not entirely convinced this will work, but it's unlikely to be pleasant in any case," he said, lowering himself onto one knee.

"Agent Lee. Go to 6308 Calavera Road, right now. Alone, of course," the dog said, his eyes staring wide at Lee, at the same time frighteningly blank. The moment the last word was spoken, he let out a small scream, convulsed a few moments, and then was suddenly dead.

Lee shook, wondering what commands this poor dog could have ever been given to ever cause a reaction like that, but he held little hope of ever finding out. Lee turned and ran, working his way out through the building the same way he came in. He was outside and running through the long shadows away from the building just in time to miss the tactical teams rushing inside. Calavera Road wasn't far.

Aiden stepped quietly into Mother's room. She laid on the bed, naked and uncovered, her body slightly curled. He had been asked to sleep in that bed with her many times now, though he was thankful that she never asked for more than just sleeping.

He looked down at the book, the cover and a few of the pages marred by a splash of now dried blood. He read the title and the author's name again, feeling the emotion well up inside him again instantly, his body trembling slightly.

Aiden had come across that book for the first time just two days ago.

Aiden bit his tongue, forcing back his growl. He hated this, hated walking through the city among these dogs, himself forced by a cruel trick of biology to walk on four legs like an animal.

Aiden remembered being terrified of learning too much about his own past, afraid that such knowledge would ruin the blissful ignorance of his second life. He was, Aiden concluded, absolutely right to be so afraid. It did ruin his ignorance and his bliss.

Like most black technologies, the world had long forgotten the true workings of the memory wiping machines. The present understanding was simply wrong, right down to the name. Aiden knew the machines only constructed in the mind a block from old memories. A block which, as a result of years of self-experimentation, could be eroded in him with the right stimuli.

Aiden remembered everything now. He remembered his father, who decided one day he could no longer cope with the poverty he was forced to raise his family in. He had been taken in by the broadcasts made over the border by BlackPaw, promising lives of well cared for luxury for all who volunteered. In what he thought was an act of mercy, he included the names of his wife and son on the contract.

Aiden remembered, when he was just a child, the sound of their front door splintering open as the armored three-man squad entered their tiny home to take them away. He remembered his mother, who, in an impossible display of strength, picked up her child in her arms and outran them all.

She saved him and herself from being taken, but she never again felt safe, no matter where they ran. She did her best to raise young Aiden- Tristan, then- while every few months she grew convinced that BlackPaw was still searching for them, and then started running once again. She died when Tristan was still young.

Aiden remembered half a lifetime of swearing that he would save his race from bringing gradual genocide on itself. He remembered becoming so obsessed with his work that it took days to realize that his pregnant wife had left him.

He hated himself for willfully playing the part of the Conners' house pet for so many years. Once he remembered who he really was, his life as Aiden felt disconnected from his real life, as if he had dreamed all those years.

"Tristan," he said to himself, and repeated the word until it felt right rolling over his tongue again. It was not easy shaking off so many years of experience like a bad dream.

Tristan felt strong for the first time in ages.

An instant later, however, he felt weaker than he ever had. Aiden found himself staring into a bookstore's front display, where a stack of white hardcover books formed a neat pyramid, each copy displaying its cover to the sidewalk outside.

For long moments, Aiden stared at the titles, completely stunned. He thought his heart had truly stopped, and he was almost glad for it. He collapsed onto his haunches, the strength instantly drained from his legs. When someone stepped in closer to check on him, Aiden simply bit her reaching hand without a second thought.

Without another thought, Aiden smashed the glass of the storefront while the crowd on the sidewalk watched in stunned silence. Despite the horrendous slash across his forearm from the falling glass, Aiden stole one of the books and ran with it.

Aiden took a deep breath, looking back up from the book to the wolf on the bed.

That book had changed everything the instant Aiden read the title for the first time, and he felt echoes of that every time he read it since. Aiden's Story: the journals of Aiden Conner, by Samantha Conner.

Samantha was still alive.

Not once during the past years did Aiden torture himself with the thought of that possibility. He had spent years pushing down any feelings he had for his life as a pet, convincing himself that they were not his own, that he had been trained to feel that way. He embraced his first life as the only one that would ever matter to him again. The wolf- Aiden hated calling her 'Mother'- allowed him to believe a lie, ensuring he had nothing left to live for before taking it upon herself to give him a new purpose. But that single truth, the fact that Samantha had not been killed the day he was taken away from her, pulled out the foundation that Aiden had spent those years building on.

In the book, Sam had copied Aiden's own writings word for word, and between the entries she wrote in the context and her own stories of growing up with him. According to the sticker on the cover, it was a bestseller.

In the final pages, she described the night she lost Aiden. She described being dragged out of the car over the broken glass, bound at gunpoint along with Aiden, and then the horror of the car being set on fire with the others inside while Aiden was being carried away from her. Finally, she described how she watched as Jhoren crawled to the car's window on his good arm and shot the two attackers standing over her. Unfortunately, the third drove off along with Aiden before they could do anything about it. Jhoren managed to cling to consciousness long enough to cut away Sam's bindings, so she could pull everyone from the burning car.

Aiden had read the entire book twice in a row and the ending several times more, even while his hastily wrapped bandage dripped onto the pages. Now, though, as he looked across at the sleeping wolf, Aiden willed himself to remain absolutely silent even as he felt the rage welling up inside him. He took a slow breath, finally making a decision. In Aiden's repeatedly broken mind, little more now than a painful mass of irresolvable conflicts, only one thing made any sense anymore. It felt good, knowing it would all be over very soon.

Lee paused, looking at the house, a middle-upper class home among a hundred others covering the hills in this area. He hesitated. He was sure of the address, but he just couldn't make any sense of why he had been called out here.

Lee got out of his car, immediately drawing his gun. He held it in close to his body and moved at a quick walk, trying to minimize the chance that anybody looking out their window would be tempted call him in.

The front door of the home was open a crack, a clear invitation in Lee's mind. Lee pushed the door open slightly and slipped through, mind racing to work out what the hell was going on.

Of course, this was most likely a trap. When you've been chasing someone for years and suddenly he invites you to an address on zero notice with the condition that you come alone, there's just no other conclusion to come to. Lee didn't really believe that, though. He had little doubt that if Tristan wanted him dead, it would have been long since done.

The moment he was confronted by the very first Devil's Messenger was, to Lee, the most humiliating of his life. After an endless string of failures on a case Lee would not be able to abandon, that poor dog's memorized message was a clear taunting. It insulted everything Lee prided himself on for the subject of his case to know his name and his job, to be able to find him so easily, and worse of all to end up being at the root of terrorism as the world had never known it. It also promised to make his work on that case even more miserable.

Clearly, Tristan had quickly managed to get an implant into one of Lee's superiors. He was forced to cut off contact with his agency, continuing his work without support for as long as it would take.

The first floor of the house seemed clear. The people scents belonged to an older female wolf, a male leopard, and absolutely none other. The leopard's was fresher, but nobody had been on this level of the house for at least an hour. There was a smell of blood coming from upstairs. Still, Lee quickly moved through every room on the ground floor, maintaining cover as he cleared them one by one, memorizing the floor plan along the way.

That done, Lee carefully moved upstairs. He left the room the scent of blood was coming from for last, first moving down the hall to peek into each of the darkened rooms. The remaining door, the master bedroom, was cracked open, a narrow shaft of light shining out across the floor and wall. Both hands on his gun, Lee pushed the door open with a paw.

The leopard just sat there right inside the open door. He blinked and shook his head as if coming out of a trance, and looked up at Lee. He didn't show the slightest surprise; Lee nearly expected him to complain about being late.

Lee's gun was trained on the leopard's head in an instant. "I'm almost disappointed. I thought this would be a trap, Tristan." He tilted his head slightly. "Or do you still prefer 'Aiden'?"

Aiden didn't respond. He glanced over his shoulder, drawing Lee's eyes in around the edge of the doorway to see the blood-soaked bed on the other side of the room. He looked back up to Lee and just took a step closer, not even hesitating when Lee warned him by pulling back the hammer on his pistol.

Lee didn't quite know how to read the situation, so he just tried to keep his half of the conversation moving. "Saw your book the other day. Haven't read it yet, though. You?"

Aiden continued stepping closer, very slowly, until he could put his forehead to the barrel of Lee's gun. "I'm tired of this, Lee. I've ruined more lives than I care to count. Mine more than once." He took a slow breath. "Would you do me a favor, Lee?"

Lee frowned slightly, then nodded.

"You'll find a copy of Sam's book on the other side of the bed. Have it sent to her. I've written a note for her inside the cover. For now, though, please just kill me," Aiden said, his voice filled more with weariness than sadness.

Lee sighed. "First, where are the rest of the bugs? There should be eighty total, you've only..."

Aiden let out a single joyless laugh. "All gone. They'll keep coming one by one for a long time yet." Tears rolled down his face even while he smiled softly.

Lee believed him. At this point, he was desperate. "I have to stop them. Give me their names, their... anything."

Aiden shook his head. "I've only done three, myself. They're all already dead. I gave all seventy-seven remaining to the third. I can only assume that he divided them between his two, as he was told, and as he must have told them." Aiden's eyes met Lee's. "Promise you'll kill me and I'll tell you how to make it stop."

"I promise."

"When felines are no longer made into pets, when a treatment is freely published and provided to remove the effects of the implants from canine and feline, and when a pet has the legal and physical freedom to make that choice for himself, then the remaining Messengers will be free again," Aiden said. He looked at the gun expectantly.

Lee switched his grip on his pistol and clubbed the handle against the back of Aiden's neck. "Sorry I couldn't keep that promise, Aiden," he said to the now unconscious leopard. "My goal was never to kill you. Just to protect the secrets this world is better off not knowing."

Lee carefully slipped the bloodied book into his pocket, then knelt and scooped up the leopard in his arms. Aiden felt surprisingly light to him. Aiden... He decided he preferred that name over 'Tristan'. It just seemed to fit this leopard better.

Lee lied, earlier. He had read Aiden's book, even before it was published. Sam had given him the manuscript herself months ago. He'd also read everything there was to read about Tristan, from when that was still the name Aiden was known by.

Tristan was charismatic, absolutely brilliant, and in a region smothered by poverty had managed to make himself relatively wealthy, but there was a reason he was alone when he was taken from that life. He was completely obsessed with his work. Rumor was that it took days to realize his pregnant wife had left him. Rumors also said he'd broken her jaw the day she left, but she'd never been heard from again to confirm them.

Lee found it hard to believe that Tristan's life could have been a happy one, but he found himself sympathetic to what had been his life's work. Tristan was just trying to save the feline race from what was effectively extinction. Tristan would have been glad, knowing that he set in motion the events that would lead to destroying BlackPaw and releasing a cure for the control implants.

Aiden had solved the problem of breaking an implant's hold on a feline's mind years ago, before he started his life as a pet. He had only done it once, and never had a chance to confirm it a second time or to perfect the technique. Though his notes on how exactly the cure worked had been lost, he had hidden that cure in himself. The wolf female Lee found dead in that house had recorded a highly detailed internal scan of Aiden's body and mind while she unlocked that cure and then twisted it to her own advantage. That recording and copies of Aiden's own notes were sent to research labs and universities around the world to study and reproduce, timed to coincide with the demand created by the Devil's Messengers.

Aiden would never know his success, though. An unfortunate aspect of Lee's work was that rarely anybody that drew the attention of his agency could be allowed to live through the experience. People that managed to upset the balance of the world once could not be allowed a second chance. Lee was glad, though, that there was an alternative way to deal with Aiden.

Lee carefully laid Aiden down in the back seat of his car, moving his tail out of the way before closing the door. Lee thought he knew exactly what Aiden deserved.

I heard voices speaking in the darkness.

"He's told us everything there is to know. I have no doubt he was telling the truth."

"It's sad that he's going to be the last one through here."

"I don't think so. I'm still not comfortable with the idea of giving the recordings from that thing in his ear to that woman, though."

"It doesn't matter if you're comfortable with it. There are some things the world needs to forget about, but this is one thing that must be remembered. She deserves to know as much as anybody. She'll see to it that everyone is reading about it soon."

"So, he really thought she was dead all this time?"

"Yeah, said he heard the gunshots but never saw them. Never guessed it was her husband, shooting two of the people that ran them off the road. Not until he found out about that book, anyway."

"After all he's been though, it's a wonder he hasn't lost his mind."

"I'm not entirely sure he didn't. He's perfectly healthy chemically and neurologically, though, so it's nothing the Machine can't wipe clean."

"What's to keep the wipe from failing again?"

"We've made some adjustments. We'll keep a closer eye on him this time, though."

"Well, his handler is ready to welcome a new blank slate into the world. Go ahead and start the Machine."

I gasped awake, suddenly sitting up, looking around to find myself in a strange place. I shook my head, trying to make sense of the voices in my dream, but my dreams always seemed to slip from memory before I could put any thought to them. They promised me these strange dreams would stop after a couple more weeks, though.

I blinked my eyes, turning my head away as sunlight suddenly poured into the darkness as the back of the truck was opened. My handler, an aging black dog with a soft round face smiled softly and offered his hand. "C'mon. We're here. Time for you to meet your family, boy." I stood up on my four legs and hesitantly stepped forward, taking his hand. He helped me down onto the pavement and closed up the truck behind me.

Relief swept through me with my first look around. Somehow, everything felt familiar, welcoming, just somehow right. We were standing on the end of a cul-de-sac of what looked like a nice suburban neighborhood. The sun was just setting and the light was beautiful. The air smelled good, a mix of freshly cut grass, people, and distant barbecues. It was early summer and this place had a happy, relaxed feel to it. Up the street, I could see a man washing his car and a group of children playing with a ball. The children stopped their game to look over at me, clearly surprised and excited by the sight of a feline. I smiled a little. Maybe things won't be so bad after all.

I had a profound sense of déjà vu I just couldn't seem to shake off, though. The earliest thing I can remember was about two weeks ago. I've been living in a place called Blackpaw, where my handler took care of me and helped me remember how to speak, read and write, taught me how to live and how to take care of myself. It was a big place, but it was always very empty. I was once told that I was the last of my kind.

I looked up at my handler when I felt his hand touching my neck. The old dog had been good to me these last couple weeks, though I always sensed some sadness in him. His final responsibility for me was to deliver me to my new home.

He smiled to me. "Lucky cat. I wish I lived in a place like this. Follow me." I stepped after him, keeping at his heel as he walked across the path through the yard and to the house's front door.

The door opened before he even had a chance to knock or ring the bell. An old wolf opened the door, smiling widely at the sight of me. A panthress, four-legged like myself, spotted me from across the room, grinned, and ran off purposefully. In just a few moments, the panthress and a younger wolf couple joined the older wolf's side. The female wolf was clearly pregnant. She immediately dropped to her knees and wrapped her arms around my neck, hugging me close. "Spotty," she whispered, laughing through her tears.

I did not yet understand why- I didn't even know this wolf's name yet- but being held in her arms and my lungs filled with her scent was about the most wonderful feeling I could imagine.

My handler just looked over his papers once more, then up to the older wolf. "No training this time. No implant, actually. Do you have a name for him?"

The older wolf just smiled. "Of course. His name is Aiden."