FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Firestorm

Danger

Silver arrived at F.O.X. after dropping Vikki off at the Combat Range to find the headquarters in chaos. Staff members were standing about in the lobby watching Sylvie Roy, the feline transition coordinator from Agriculture Canada arguing with the head of security, the chief controller, and the facilities manager, all at the same time. Form what little he saw as he crossed the lobby to break it up Silver discerned that Roy, despite being outnumbered, was winning. Still, he found it strange that none of her folk were there to back her up.

"Can we take whatever this is inside, to a less public place?" Silver demanded.

Roy turned on him with all the friendly demeanor of a KGB assassin. "It's about time that you showed up. No wonder this place is in such a shambles, with the executive wandering in whenever they please. When these employees are transferred to Ag Can we'll drill some discipline into them.

Silver noted that the head of security, a former Special Forces operator, was turning beet red and beginning to stutter. Regretting that as Chief of Staff it was his duty to protect her he grabbed Roy by the upper arm and steered her towards the security doors before things turned violent. He used his pass to unlock the doors and ushered her down the hall to his office. He noted that Tanner's office was empty, which was not unusual as he was often away attending committee meetings and briefing the Cabinet in the mornings. He felt a stab of sorrow as they passed Miss CC's equally empty desk. As of the last report her condition had remained unchanged. As one intimately familiar with operationally inflicted damage Silver knew that the longer she stayed in a coma the worse the chances were of her ever recovering.

"Now, what was that all about?" He demanded as he slammed the heavy office door shut behind him.

Roy did not respond right away, choosing to survey the room before sitting on one of the modern and not overly comfortable chairs placed to one side of the desk. She placed her briefcase on her lap.

"At your rank you are entitled to better furnishings than this." She commented. "You must not get very many visitors with this government depot stuff."

"Most of the visitors I get remain standing for the short time they are here." Silver said as he circled the desk and sat in a leather chair designed more for work than comfort. "Discipline is not an issue here, disruption is. The staff know their jobs and do them without undue interference. We depend on them using their initiative and we tolerate the odd mistake, but if someone screws up I deal with it. What I don't tolerate, however," he leaned across the desk to increase the intensity of his cold stare, "is strangers coming in here and getting everyone upset."

His stare had no effect on her. "I'm not a stranger, I'm their future employer." She stated.

"There you go again." Silver said, sitting back in his chair. "You talk as if the staff are part of the furnishings. What makes you think that any of them will want to stay here and work for you?"

"Obviously you are not keeping up with the Treasury Board announcements." She opened her briefcase, drew out a stack of papers and tossed them on Silver's desk. Looking down he saw that they were printed copies of pages from the Treasury Board Secretariat web site. That was the body that dictated government policy on personnel and facilities, and dictate they did. Their directives were law, and any bureaucrat that ignored them was not going to stay one long enough to get their pension.

With some trepidation he picked the papers up and started reading through them. They dealt with the consolidation of physical security and facilities management services into the same agency that had taken over all of the IT and IM support. Silver glanced at the dates. They were only issued about a week before, right around the time that their couriers were hit in Brussels. No wonder he had not seen them. But he had to admit that he should have known about this coming down the pipes. That`s what he got for skipping the tedious policy and infrastructure planning sessions.

"This won't apply to us." He said as he slid the papers back across the desk to her. "We are a separate employer and our folk are specially trained and vetted. We'll apply for an exemption and take most of them with us to the new facilities at Shirley's Bay. The ones that are no longer needed, the grounds keepers and such, can stay or come with us and retrain as they wish." Being mixed in among the Central Experimental Farm with its botanical gardens and livestock museum meant that they had to keep the F.O.X. property up to the same standard, but most of their grounds keepers were ex-agents and security personnel that had been injured or suffered mental stress on the job. They were trusted and loyal employees, and he was certain that they would all opt to follow F.O.X. when it moved.

"You could have, last week." Roy said with an evil grin as her thin tail swished behind her. "But I have already asked for all of your service staff to be transferred to our department, in my Deputy Minister's name, of course. The Treasury Board has already approved it, just this morning as a matter of fact. Here's a copy of the directive." She pulled another page out of her case and placed it on the desk. Silver could see the Treasury Board letterhead and did not bother reading it. It had not been folded, meaning that she had probably gone to the Treasury Board to pick it up herself.

"I assume that we will get our copy by regular post." He kept his tone even and his face relaxed, despite the urge to throw her back into the lobby where the head of security would probably rip her apart.

"Why yes, I do believe that I saw the clerk put it in the cart for mailing as I was leaving. You should have it in a few days I'm sure." She whisked her copy away.

She had outmaneuvered him for now, but the battle was not over. He decided, however, that it was best if he let her believe that it was. He let his ears droop a bit and his shoulders slumped as he crinkled his brow, the picture of fuming defeat.

"What is it you want Roy?"

"Total cooperation from your staff. They have been holding back on me, failing to schedule meetings with my transition team, refusing to give us access to certain files and buildings."

"There are things that you and you people are not cleared to see in some of those buildings." The interrogation cells in particular, he thought, wondering how she would look inside one of them.

"I understand that your agency is doing some sort of hush-hush research, but for a start, you have to at least give us the schematics for the buildings and the wiring diagrams, along with any engineering reports on their condition."

"Alright, I'll see that you get them by the end of the day." He said, knowing that Joel, the lemur that forged their IDs and travel documents could whip up a set of clean copies for them by then. "What else?"

"The IT infrastructure is of particular importance. My tech has to go over it with your Kain Algorath, but the fox keeps putting him off, claiming that he is working on some important project twenty-four and seven."

He probably is, Silver thought. He recalled seeing a meeting request from Algorath on his BlackBerry and he pulled it out to confirm. Yes, there it was, at three p.m. Silver used his privileges as Chief of Staff to move the meeting to seven p.m., that way he and Vikki could pick up Leslie and grab a diner at a restaurant before he had to come back for Algorath's briefing,

"Algorath has just had an opening in his schedule from three to six tonight." He told Roy, magnanimously. "I'll make sure he stays available. Now if you don't mind I'll show you out. I have some real work to do."

"Real work?" She laughed as he escorted her back to the lobby. "Honey at this level of government this is as real as it gets!"

Just before turning her back over to the Commissionaires she turned and said "Maybe when this is all over you show me what you really do around here."

Silver smiled with real pleasure at the thought. Unconsciously his paw slipped under his jacket and began to caress the butt of his Glock lovingly. "If I ever see you at our new facility," he said, "I'll give you a personal demonstration."

* * * * * * * *

Runs With Stick used the automatic door opener that she had installed to enter the farm house's garage without leaving the car. Once inside she remained in the car until the door was fully closed again. She did not expect that she was under surveillance ... not yet, but it was good practice to behave as if she was. If Bloedrye was right about the fox's reaction to the next part of his plan she may never come under scrutiny, but if he was wrong ... well, she thought, I have contingency plans for that.

The blinking green light by the door to the mud room indicated that the alarm was still set and working. Seeing no threats she opened the car door and popped the trunk open as she stepped out. Before retrieving the unconscious kit she unlocked the door leading to the basement and disabled the alarm. Then she carefully lifted him out of the trunk and carried him effortlessly down the stairs.

The basement had been converted, presumably by Bloedrye's goons, into a prison. There was a three-sided cage secured to the solid stone wall of the house's foundation. The cage ran from the concrete floor to the solid beam ceiling. Inside there was an iron bed, also secured to the wall, and a portable toilet. A small section of the door, too small for even a slender kit to squeeze through, could be opened separately to provide food and water to the cell. For extra security there was a harness attached to a chain anchored the floor. The chain was only long enough to allow the prisoner access to the bed and the toilet. Food would have to be pushed to within his reach with a broom handle.

You would think that we were locking up the father, not the son, Runs With Stick thought as she lay Leslie down on the bed and began fastening the harness around his limp torso. But then, she mused, if all goes well maybe I will have Silver in here. But I'll have to cuff his paws and his ankles together, in addition to the harness, just for good measure.

Once she had the leather straps and buckles adjusted to her liking, not too tight because Bloedrye promised to return the kit unharmed if the parents cooperated but not too loose either, she snapped a high quality padlock into the retaining ring on the back, locking them in place. She put the key in the front pocket of her slacks. Then she arranged the kit on the bed in a comfortable position and left the cell, locking the door with a second key that then joined the first in her pocket. Glancing at her watch she calculated that she had about half an hour before he would start to stir and decided to have some lunch and a shower before checking in on him again.

She made sure that the door to the garage was locked and bolted before going up the stairs that led to the foyer. There was a door at the top of them and she locked that and bolted it from the outside. Turning around she checked the front door. It was locked, as she had left it, She verified that the small security features she had added were still in place, a strand of fur stuck across the jamb, a scrap of paper trapped in the hinge, a bit of carpet curled up that would drop back into place should the door be opened. Satisfied that no one had come in the house through that entrance while she was away she passed the stairs leading to the second floor and walked down the short hallway to the kitchen at the rear of the house to check the back door. She unslung her purse, the one holding her cleaver, as she pushed the swinging door open and prepared to drop it on the table on her way to the fridge. But before she was halfway through the door way a voice froze her in her place.

"Good morning Pawstone, or should I call you Sticks?"

She let the door swing back, revealing Bloedrye leaning against the counter by the sink. He was peeling an apple while he waited for her to answer, eating the rind with the same paw that held the paring knife he had taken from a nearby drawer. He looked like he did not have a care in the world, but she noticed that the drapes on both the windows had been drawn back. Looking down she found the two red dots of light dancing around each other just above her left breast.

The red dots followed her as she stepped into the room and placed her purse carefully in the table. "I thought that we were friends." She said as she spread her arms to show that she was unarmed.

"I don't have friends so much as business acquaintances." The fluffy white Persian replied.

Runs With Stick sat down slowly, keeping her paws visible at all times. "You set me up."

Bloedrye shrugged as he nibbled the last of the apple's peel. "I merely provided a bit of insurance for me and some incentive for you. Silver is a clever opponent, how else could he have kept his involvement in the incident at Wounded Knee a secret all these years?"

Wounded Knee was where her father had been shot. The site of an 1860 massacre of Native Americans by the European invaders, it was also the scene of a 1973 civil rights protest against the corrupt Tribal President, Richard Wilson. He governed through bribery, threats and collusion, enforced by his Guardians Of the Oglala Nation, the aptly named GOONs. During the 71-day standoff two of the protestors were shot and several civil rights activists had disappeared, including her father. They were presumed dead. She spent thirty years believing that her father had been murdered and buried in an unmarked grave before the accidental meeting with the man who had once been her father, a wandering hobo whose memory had been wiped by the bullet that was supposed to end his life. She thought that she would never know whether it was the FBI, the US Marshals or Wilsons GOONs that were responsible for her father's disappearance. Until the day that Bloedrye had appeared at the truck stop she now ran with an incredible tale to tell, and official-looking documents to back it up.

Runs With Stick had not been in a stable state of mind at that meeting. The death of her mate had been followed by that of her mother, leaving her feeling lost and alone. Then, years of unfulfilled vengeance had been rekindled by the unexpected re-appearance of her father. She was susceptible to suggestion, and that was what Bloedrye provided. He had evidence that the sniper who had shot her father and left him for dead in the dessert had been a young Special Forces soldier on loan from the Canadian Government, an emotionless killer with no conscience. That soldier, he told her, had since risen to a position of importance in a clandestine Canadian intelligence agency and now had a family of his own, something she had been denied. He emphasized the unfairness of it all.

She had been looking for answers and the eloquent Persian had provided them. That his evidence was completely fabricated by his organization was a fact she was unaware of, and so eager was she to have a target for all those years frustration that she believed his evidence without question. Had she been in a better frame of mind she might have wondered why the FBI or the US Federal Marshals would use a foreigner to do their dirty work. She had not doubted him then, but she did now.

However, one does not bring up such doubts when the laser sights of a couple of sniper rifles are painting the area over your heart red.

Bloedrye would expect her to be perturbed so she allowed herself to frown. "You came all the way here to tell me that?"

"No." He said, finishing the last of the peel and slicing of a sizable wedge of the apple's flesh. "I came here to remind you of our deal. You keep Silver off my back by keeping his son on ice and you get a crack at taking him out. Whether you choose to do that when you pass his kit back or at another time of your choosing is entirely up to you. In the meantime just play the game and keep on the move in case they track you down. I've provided you with enough safe houses so you can move everyday for a week. My business with F.O.X. should be concluded by then.

Her frown deepened. "What do you mean 'play the game'?"

"Silver may not be so easily swayed, after all, he does not know of your fearsome reputation ...yet."

Runs With Stick took that to mean that Bloedrye was prepared to supply the Canadian authorities with evidence of her work as a guardian of her people. Of course the Canadian Government, created by the European invaders and based on those of their corrupt European ancestors, would look on those acts as crimes.

Bloedrye munched his apple and let the unspoken threat sink in before continuing. "So he may need some evidence of our commitment, a digit, a toe, maybe an ear."

"Or an eye?" She muttered, remembering how much like his father's Leslie's intense blue-grey orbs were.

"If it comes to that, sure. But besides that it may be necessary at some point to dispatch the kit altogether."

She was shocked, but struggled not to show it. "Wouldn't that be counterproductive?"

"Not if Silver does not succumb to the threat and continues to pursue his investigations. The grief and anger when he discovers his son's gruesome dismemberment, plus the resentment of the kit's mother, one of his senior agents, will cloud his judgement, reducing his effectiveness and that of his subordinates. And you will have had your revenge, or a form of it." He finished his apple and dropped the paring knife and the core in the sink behind him while he waited for her reply.

"One does not avenge the loss of a father by taking the life of a child." She stated.

"Well his father is already dead, a motor accident, so this is the closest you can get. You can still kill Silver afterward if you like, I don't care." He made a dismissive gesture with one paw. Then he focused on her, evaluating her through narrowed eyes. "You are still committed to getting your revenge, aren't you? Because if not, my operatives can take over this aspect of the operation." That was a bit of a lie on his part, he had no one to spare to watch the kit at the moment, nor would he until Phase II was complete.

"Meanwhile you release information about me and call in a few anonymous sightings of a mature bunny with a red fox kit in tow?"

"Of course. It will be enough to keep F.O.X. and the RCMP chasing your shadow all across the continent and that will achieve the effect I want almost as well. But I would prefer to stick to the original plan, for sake of neatness if nothing else."

Runs With Stick sat back in her chair and opened her stance to portray relaxation and compliance. She knew that her life, and that of the kit she had become unexpectedly taken with, as hanging by a thread. "Of course." She said with a nod. "I still want my vengeance, and I'm willing to do whatever it takes to make that fox suffer. Anything."

Bloedrye pinched his stubby nose and one of the red dots on her blouse disappeared. "I'm glad to hear that Ruth." Through the kitchen window she saw a large silver motor home, as big as a bus, pull out of the barn. A wolf with a sniper rifle dropped out of an overgrown apple tree and took a position between it and the house.

"Well, there's my ride." Bloedrye said jocularly. "I must be off to prepare for my chat with Silver at the appropriate time. I'd suggest that you move to one of the other safe houses tonight, and every night thereafter." His mouth smiled to match his tone but his eyes indicated that what he said was more than a suggestion.

Runs With Stick spread her paws in submission. "Yes, I'll move every night. And I'll wait for further instructions."

"Good. Until then." The white cat gathered up his puffy tail so as not to dirty it as he left the kitchen by the back door. She noted that the alarm box there switched off as he approached and turned back on after he closed the door behind him. He was wearing a proximity device to override the alarm, she realized. And since his people had set up all of the safe houses the would device would likely also work for them. They could probably turn them off remotely too if they felt the need to let F.O.X. catch her. Her safety was only an illusion.

She watched Bloedrye approach and board the bus. The wolf with the rifle covered him on the journey between house and vehicle. Once the Persian was safely aboard the last red dot on her heart went out and a second wolf appeared from out of the Azalea bushes. He stood guard until the vehicle reached the road and then jogged down the drive to get onboard himself.

So Bloedrye has at least two agents here with him, she thought, and if he shows me two he probably has three. And on top of that he can set F.O.X., the RCMP and the Canadian Cub Scouts on my fluffy little tail if the mood suits him. She turned from the window and glanced at her watch. Leslie would be regaining consciousness soon and she wanted to be there when he did, least he panic and hurt himself. But Bloedrye's last instructions were still on her mind.

Retrieving her purse she reached in and pulled out two key rings. One held seven house keys and each key had a tag with the relative alarm code for that residence. The other held three similar keys, but none of them were marked. She dropped the ring with seven keys on the table and put the other back in her purse.

I'll move alright, you miserable excuse for a fluff ball, just not where you expect me too.

* * * * * * * *

It was already late afternoon in Brussels where Gray Muzzle had just finished his physiotherapy session. Rather than go back to his lonely room he decided to go visit Miss CC. She was still showing no signs of mental activity but he believed that she could feel him holding her paw and hear him talking to her.

When he entered her room he found that one of the hospital staff was there, a tawny female mouse. The mouse wore the blue scrubs of the Physiotherapy department and she had a strange assortment of things on a cart beside Miss CC's bed. Gray saw a bowl of ice cubes, needles, perfume, smelling salts, bells, whistles, salt, sugar and a powerful looking flashlight with a set of coloured filters that could be flipped in or out from in front of the lens. She had lifted Miss CC's hospital gown up to expose her legs and was in the process of pressing one of the cubes of ice against her thigh.

"What are you doing?" Gray asked, half fascinated, half anxious.

"Sensory and nerve stimulation." The therapist replied. "Studies have shown that frequent stimulation of the five senses can kick-start the brain in comatose patients. We use contrasting sounds, a variety of lights, flavours, smells and physical stimuli for about fifteen to thirty minutes at a time, with a period of inactivity between each." She studied the monitor as she spoke, switching from the ice to a needle, which she carefully poked into the sensitive skin of the poodle's inner thigh.

"Unfortunately," the mouse sighed, pointing to the monitor with her other paw, "we are not getting much more than an automatic physical response above the waist, and none at all on her legs. Still, it's early days yet. Sometimes it takes a month to six weeks of this therapy before they wake up."

"And if they don't wake up by then."

The therapist just shook her head. "Best to focus on the positive." She pulled down Miss CC's gown and arranged her implements on the tray. "Like how it is fortunate for her that you are here. Familiar voices provide excellent mental stimulation. As does the touch of a familiar paw. But it has to be done in intervals, that's why they make you go to several sessions of physio each day and have you eat in your own room. While you're out we come in and do this kind of treatment." She picked up the patient chart and made a few notations before heading for the door, pushing the cart before her.

"So you'll be back in half an hour to do it again?" Gray wondered.

She stopped in the doorway and gave him a sad look. "No. We don't have enough staff to do it as often as we like."

"Maybe I can help?"

"Not with these." She waved a paw over the tray. "You need professional training to provide the right amount of stimulation without putting the patient into shock. But feel free to talk to her and hold her paw. You can even rub her temples or massage her shoulders if that was something you did before ... before she became like this. Anything she would be familiar with."

"Okay. Thanks." She left, taking her scents and spices and lights with her. Gray found himself alone with Miss CC with nothing more stimulating than his voice and his soft bartender's paws.

"So, Marie." He said, using her first name as he did in their most intimate moments, "What do you want to talk about?" Talking to her had come naturally before but he felt awkward now that he knew it was vital to her treatment. What if I say the wrong thing? What if I bore her? Conversation was never our strong suit. Then he had a thought. "Would you like me to rub your feet Marie? You always made me do that when you had me strapped into the harness you made me wear. Remember? The one with the chrome buckles? It matched your favourite whip." He wondered if he could get Joel to send over some of Miss CC's favourite BDSM gear. Maybe the smooth feel of the familiar leather handle of her whip or the rough wood of her paddle would bring the stimulation she needed. Or maybe the dials on her transformer and the alligator clips she used to attach to his ...

"Balls." He said. "I'm not doing this right at all." He had been rubbing her feet with his paws while he his mind wandered, but that was not the way he had to do it when she was his mistress and he her slave. For one thing, his paws had always been restrained behind his back, usually painfully so. That meant that he could not caress her tender feet with them. He had to use his tongue and lips.

Checking that the door was closed, Gray moved his chair closer to the end of the bed and leaned over. Crossing his arms behind his back he began sucking the toes on the nearest foot. He took in several at a time, working his tongue in between them. When he was done he licked the sole from the heel to those now damp toes. Usually that would bring a shiver to her and her foot would jump just the slightest bit, but not today. She was as still as the dead.

That thought sent a chill through him.

He tried her other foot, paying extra attention to those spots that he knew were ticklish, but had no better luck. He moved up to her ankles, where she kept the fur long so the joints would keep warm when she wore her high heels on chilly days. He got nothing. He continued north, licking and teasing and nipping her like he knew she liked when she was in the mood to reward him. But her legs did not so much as tremble. He flipped her hospital gown up over her waist when he got past her knees, the backs of which when licked had never failed to get a rise out of her in the past. When he got to the part of her thighs where she kept her fur shaved to reduce friction as she walked in her short, tight skirts he cheated and used her paws to spread her legs, because she could not do it for him.

After five minutes of licking and sucking the tender flesh of her thighs between his lips he sat up and sighed. It seemed that the worst that the doctors had predicted had happened - she was paralyzed below the waist. He stood up. It was almost time for supper. He had to return to his room eat; meanwhile the orderlies would be coming to feed her through a tube.

Wait! He thought before he took his first step toward the door. Didn't the therapist say that she had no sensation in her legs? There were parts of the body below the waist that were not part of one's legs, some rather important parts in his opinion. And when she ordered him to suck on her toes it was just the beginning of a journey that always ended up in the same spot, a spot below the waist but definitely not part of the leg. Gray licked his lips as he stared down at her motionless body.

Why not? He shrugged. He had been less responsive that time she ran off for three days and forgot that she had left him restrained in an apartment with no air conditioning, and they had said any familiar stimulation was good stimulation.

He bent her legs and spread them, crawled onto the bed and lowered his head to her groin.

He worked some saliva up in his mouth before he began. Usually she was already damp and emitting that poodle-in-heat odour that drove him wild by this stage of the game, but he would have to do without the added stimulus for her sake. He used his paws to part her vagina as he laid a heavy coat of spit on her outer lips. It was not really cheating as she often untied him around this time, so he could use his digits on her as well. For now though he just used them to hold her open while he lubricated her for the next phase.

Once she was good and wet he parted her inner lips with his long, clever tongue, he slid it back and forth, in and out, as he tried to tease some response from her. At first he thought it was another lost cause, but them he noticed an increase in the level of warmth around his snout. Pulling his head back he was elated to see that the inner lips had swelled as blood rushed to the stimulated area. He did not know what that meant medically, as far as he knew the reaction was purely physical, but even that would be a good sign. He ducked his head and redoubled his efforts.

Before long he could smell and taste the juices flowing from her, slowly at first but with each dip of his tongue they increased. Now she was wet enough both inside and out for him to insert a digit to work her twat as he concentrated his mouth on her clit. She had a large one, and it was very sensitive. When she was excited it stuck out hard and round, but after a good orgasm it tended to retreat and had to be chased down to tease out a series of little orgasms. At the moment it was in neutral, but by wrapping his lips around it and sucking gently he was able to get his tongue on it long enough to stimulate it too.

Now her clit was rock hard and he could swear that she was pressing up on him as he pressed down on it, but it could have been his imagination. But the swelling of her tissues and the flood of poodle potion that filled his nostrils was real enough; she was practically dripping. This was the point where he would take his digit from her twat, if his paws were free, and use it to lubricate her tail hole in preparation for a double digit penetration to accompany the final tongue lashing. But for today he would stick to one hole and concentrate on giving her the orgasm of her life.

Gray was quite good at this. He knew that because Miss CC was not one to give false praise and if he could not tease an orgasm out of her on command he would not have lasted this long with the demanding poodle. So he knew that it was just a matter of time before she erupted. He used his free paw to grab a towel off the table beside her bed. Miss CC was a squirter and he did not want to leave a tell-tale stain on the bed. He folded the towel with one paw. It was a trick he learned at bartending. He rammed it in under her and tucked it in around her ass.

He could really feel her reacting. She would be cumming any time now, he knew. His oral appendage flew around her clit as his digit rubbed the sweet spot inside her twat frantically. Here it comes, he thought, any second now. Any - second - now - and ...

"WHAT THE BLOODY 'ELL IS GOING ON IN HERE?"

Hot, sweet female cum filled his mouth as he jumped back so hard that he hit the far wall of the room and bounced back halfway. Standing in the middle of the floor, his dripping jaw hanging open, he saw the matron, spit spraying out of her flapping bulldog jowls as she sputtered in indignation. But true to form she rushed first to Miss CC's side to check on her patient, and that left enough room for Gray to slide around her and out the door. The last she saw of him was his red tail with its streaks of grey sticking straight out behind him as he fled down the hall.

The attending physician came in the room as she was cleaning up the poodle. She was rubbing her with a cloth soaked in disinfectant in case the fox had some sort of venereal disease affecting his mind that made him assault helpless females, but it was also chilled with ice water from her bedside jug to reduce the swelling if the tissues down there. When she saw the younger doctor standing there frozen, watching her clean the nether regions of a female patient, she flipped the poodle's gown back down to preserve her decency and turned on the young whippersnapper.

"I want to report an assault." She informed him.

"I'm her doctor, I'm allowed to look, I mean, examine her."

"Not you ye ninny. The fox she was brought in with. He was sexually assaulting 'er."

"A rape?" He asked, shaking his head to clear it.

"Yes, no, something similar to that ... a perversion! That fox was 'aving 'is way with 'er ... 'er parts ... with 'is tongue."

"Hmmm. Their boss back in Canada did mention that they were a couple when he was here last week. That's why we let the fox spend so much time with her."

"He was sexually assaulting 'er!" More spit flew.

"I'm not sure it is sexual assault if you're already sleeping with someone."

Typical male,_she thought, _these doctors have the moral compass of a band of pirates. They were always trying to get into the nurses britches ... except hers for some reason. She drew a deep breath, preparing to lecture the young fool on the concept of informed consent and how by definition being in a coma meant that you could not give it, but before she could he glanced up at the monitor. With a cry he lunged past her and grabbed the printout for the last few hours from the tray below it. He flipped pages as his eyes darted back and forth, while his mouth hung open on a perfect "O".

"Oh, my God." He gasped, tracing a series of spikes in an otherwise flat set of lines. "Look at these Alpha waves, and the Betas! There's more mental activity here than half of my anatomy class ever displayed." He dropped the papers to the floor and grabbed the matron by the shoulders. Despite being half a foot taller than her and still playing Rugby on weekends he failed to budge her as he tried to turn her toward the door.

"Ere, what's got into you?" She asked as she stared hard up into his face through her half-rim eyeglasses.

"Get him back here. Find that fox and get him back. Move him into this room, and get a lock on the door, because whatever it was he was doing, she needs more of it."

"What? Ye've gone bonkers. The chief of medicine will never stand for it."

"Oh, yes he will, because the paper we'll write together will make folk stand up and take notice. This will be bigger than L-Dopa, and anyone can administer it!" He turned away, frowning, having completely forgotten about the matron's accusation. "Or can they? My God, we've got to observe, set up clinical trials, double blind tests." He spun around and retrieved the papers from the floor. The evidence would be crucial for establishing his precedence in this discovery. Straightening up he came face to face with the furious bulldog.

"What are you waiting for?" He screamed. "Find me that fox!"

* * * * * * * *

The mood in the lounge at lunch reflected the general depression everyone was suffering because of the demands on their time by the transition team and the lack of progress on finding the culprits of the courier attack. It did not help that their favourite bartender had been hurt in that incident and they had to suffer with poorly mixed martinis and sub-par highballs.

"You going to stay on when the Ministry of Agriculture takes over?" Kyroo asked the senior groundskeeper who was seated beside him.

"Sure." The older ground hog replied, tilting his ball cap back on his head so he could see his beer better. He had been an explosive ordinance disposal technician in training before an unfortunate accident that had cost him three fingers on his left paw and was therefore known as 'Stubby'. "Where else can you get a government pension and a beer in the same place? Besides, I live right down the street and it's just a short walk to work every morning."

Before Kyroo could answer Sylvie Roy swept in followed by her entourage, the F.O.X. facilities manager and the head of security. "And what exactly is this?" She sneered, looking around at a dozen agents and staff frozen with their drinks varying distances off the bar, shocked by the violation of their inner sanctum.

The Facilities Manager fiddled with his tie. "This is the, er, cafeteria." He improvised.

Roy looked pointedly at the glasses being held aloof. "I thought that the cafeteria was on the other side of the building." She purred. "You know, the one we visited yesterday? The one that was serving food?"

"Well, this is the, uh, wet cafeteria. It's an old, ah, Army mess that we were able to get an exemption to keep open because of the, ah, classified nature of the work here. The oilseed research, I mean."

"Bullshit." The feline looked around the room again, her whip-like tail twitching angrily behind her. "You're just lucky that the Treasury Board Auditors never heard of this." Then a smile filled her face, but it did not reach her eyes. "And perhaps they never will. We still have the unspent maintenance funds to discuss."

The hound threw up his arm in protest. "But we're going to need those funds to ..."

"Tut-tut. You could save nearly as much by shutting this swill-hole down, before the Auditors hear about it. It will be closed after the transition in any event." She called back over her shoulder as she and her entourage breezed out the back door. "We run a tight ship at Agriculture and we don't put up with drinking during working hours."

"That's it." Stubby said, slamming his beer down on the bar with his intact right paw. "I'm going with you guys, even if I have to bus it to get there."

Kyroo knew just how upset the ground hog must be; getting anywhere by bus in Ottawa a pain, and getting to Shirley's Bay in the far west end would mean multiple changes, long waits and a substantial walk from the nearest bus stop. "Well, at least the bus won't be crowded, going against the traffic and all."

"I should buy a car. I hear that parking is cheap out there."

"Why wouldn't it be?" Zac Ember, who was two seats down injected. "It's in the middle of nowhere."

"You think there will be a dorm for the single agents out there?" Kyroo asked the slightly more experienced Zac.

"Maybe not once Miss Tight Pussy gets through writing her report to the Auditors." The big wolf sighed.

"You mean Miss Tight Ass." Joel, the lemur, complained from the far side of the u-shaped bar. "I had to delete all my porn from the Academy servers before her IM guy could find it."

"How much was that?" Zac asked.

"Fifteen Petabytes."

Kyroo whistled. "That's a lot of porn."

"That's a lot of anything." Stubby noted.

"It was my personal collection." Joel whined. "Plus digitally re-mastered copies of every porn film ever distributed before the internet age. I was going to offer them to the Smithsonian."

"And now it's all gone." Zac commented.

"Well, no, not really." Joel said, fidgeting a bit. "I sort of put away some backup copies.

"Where? Not on the cloud? That would be too public."

"Noooo."

"Who's got that kind of space?" Kyroo wondered. "Apart from the NSA or ... wait a second! Joel, did you ... ?"

The lemur looked stricken. "They were the only ones with enough space. Even then we had to fill up one of their data centres to do it."

"We?"

"Kain Algorath kinda found a way in during a previous case and when I checked the backdoor he created was still there."

"And you don't think that the NSA will notice that one of their data centres is now suddenly full of antique porn, plus whatever it is that you do." Stubby said.

"He does everything." The comment came from Delores "Babydoll" Johnson, who had come in the room behind Joel while the rest were questioning him. She ran a paw through the tuft of dark fur on his head. "Don't you Honey?"

Joel only smiled shyly.

"I am a little concerned about my own collection though." She said as she slid onto the stool next to the lemur. "I had trusted my last copies to you for safekeeping." Across the bar all three males smiled at the memory of the films she had made as Foxy LaTush, and how she had proven that she could still contort herself the same ways ten years later. Stubby, adrift in his memories, sniffed at his almost digitless left paw as if it may still bear the scent of the scene she had recreated with him.

"They'll keep it safe." Joel assured her, wiggling uncomfortably.

"I hear a 'but' in there."

A new voice answered her. "But the NSA has encrypted them and refuses to release them back to us."

Delores turned. Kain had come in, looking tired and weary. He had been working non-stop on the courier attack case and had hoped to get some rest after briefing Silver that afternoon. But he had just found out that he had to spend three hours with the feline from Agriculture Canada before that, and he was not sure if he was up to it. He took a seat on the other side of Joel and asked the duty bartended for a glass of white wine.

"Please explain." Delores asked after Kain had been served.

"The American Intelligence community has spent a lot of money reworking things since the WiKiLeaks revelations. Plus they lost of number of their income generating front companies when they were exposed. They see the collection as a money-making opportunity. They are demanding licensing rights for it, the classical porn that is, not Joel's personal stuff. If we don't agree then they won't decrypt it."

"They didn't want my personal stuff?" Joel sounded amazed. "Did they say why?"

"Something about their eyes bleeding." Kain said as he sipped his wine. Kain had thought that he had seen everything but he could only stand to watch five minutes of Joel's tapes before turning off the monitor and going to wash the paws he had handled them with.

"But you can crack their encryption, right?" Joel pleaded. "You're the best."

Kain thought about the information he had uncovered and the conclusions he had reached regarding a spectral organization known as GHOST. He was almost bursting with the weight of the secrets he had uncovered, and he debated telling the others some of it, but reminded himself that only Silver or Gold had the right to determine who had the "need to know".

"Yeah, I'm the best." He admitted. "But there's only one of me and operational priorities take precedence over recovering your, ah, eclectic collection."

Zac snorted. "Operational priorities my ass. Everyone's running around in circles trying to please Queen Sylvie and her transition team. They're getting into every nook and cranny."

Something about what Zac had said struck a chord in the back of Kain's mind, but he was too tired to pursue it. Also, it reminded him of the tedious afternoon he had ahead of him before he could present his findings to Silver. He glanced at his watch. He had an hour to go before meeting the finicky feline Director General.

"Give me another of the Pinot Grigio." He told the bartender, sliding his empty glass across the bar. "I still have a long day ahead of me."

* * * * * * * *

The afternoon was dragging on and lounge was thinning out. Vikki and Rusty had come and gone after chatting with everyone for a few minutes. Rusty had grumbled about transition team members snooping around his combat range but Vikki had kept off the subject of the move out of loyalty to her mate. Kain had left to prepare for his meeting with Sylvie Roy and Joel had followed him out pleading for the hacker to retrieve his personal porn collection from the NSA. The regular staff had wandered back to their duties. Kyroo, Zac and Delores were the only three left, and with no training scheduled until after dark they had the afternoon free. Kyroo found himself studying the curve of Delores' breasts through the tight material of her Academy jumpsuit. He had also been rubbing his cock unconsciously through the material of his own and it had swollen to roughly the size of an Italian sausage.

He sensed something and looked up to find her smiling ruefully at him. She glanced pointedly down at the bulge on his thigh and then she looked him in the eyes and gave her head the tiniest of shakes, telling him that he was out of luck in that department. Embarrassed, Kyroo dropped his paw to his side and concentrated on his drink.

Delores gave Zac a kick under the bar and Kyroo noticed Zac react. Pretending to be absorbed in his drink he watched them out of the corner of his eyes. He saw the buxom blond vixen wink at her subordinate and tilt her head slightly toward the door that led to the dormitory. Zac grinned and nodded slightly, and Kyroo cut his eyes away as the wolf glanced his way to see if his fellow junior agent had noticed.

"I'd better go check on my laundry." Zac said as he stood up. "I threw a load in before lunch and it should be dry by now." He threw a tip on the bar for the bartender, knowing that the cost of his drinks would be deducted automatically from his pay, and left by the door that connected the lounge to the dormitory.

Delores stood up and stretched, ending in a pose that highlighted every muscle in her curvy body through her tight jumpsuit and made her jaunty breasts point to the sky. "I should go check Zac's laundry too." She snickered as she straightened up, having picked up on Kyroo's surreptitious surveillance. "Sorry you can't join us Kyroo, but Zac's kinda self-conscious in that department. He's not a team player .... yet. Give me a few more weeks to work on him." She winked and then left by the same door as Zac.

The thought of the luscious and talented Delores between him and his buddy Zac brought a sudden hardness to Kyroo's groin. He had not been contemplating a threesome, but the possibility was intriguing. He would have to think of some way of bringing the subject up to see how Zac felt about them in general before Delores proposed anything specific. He would hate to have Zac think that he had instigated the request though, so maybe he had better leave it to Delores as she had suggested. He sipped at his drink, hoping to clear his mind before going to his room to study the scenario for tonight's exercise.

But the idle fantasies about Delores and the implanted suggestion of group sex would not leave his mind. The more he tried to ignore them the more intense they became, to the point where he would be embarrassed to stand up while the bartender was watching. What I need, he decided, is some relief from these pent-up frustrations. And who better to call than the doe that he had met several times already down by the garden pond?

Maybe,_he thought as he pulled out his phone to call her, _we can meet somewhere with a roof and a bed this time.

* * * * * * * *

Silver's Day went downhill after his initial meeting with Sylvie Roy. Without Miss CC there to vet the demands on his time it was just one interruption after another. The Deputy Minister for the Justice Department wanted to set up a meeting with Director Williams to discuss transferring secret funds to pay for the move. The facilities manager needed confirmation which buildings the visiting engineers were allowed to visit. The Quartermaster wanted to know if they had gotten an exemption on the directive that all departments use hybrid or electric vehicles in their fleets. Finance needed his approval for several thousand dollars of graphics hardware and software for the forging department.

Silver reviewed the list of buildings and sent the facilities manager a somewhat shorter list of those with innocuous purposes. He accessed Tanner's calendar and sent a meeting invitation to the DM for Justice. Then as an afterthought he sent in a follow-up on the staffing request for an Executive Assistant with a clearance to replace Miss CC ... temporarily, hopefully. After that he set a reminder for himself to submit the memo to the Cabinet asking for a vehicle exemption, wondering how he would explain the need for fast, well-handling cars with engines powerful enough to support heavy weapons and armour plating without getting into too many details. Finally he reviewed the acquisition request from Joel the lemur and resident Academy Forger. None of the equipment or software had any descriptions, just serial numbers. He googled a few and discovered that the items would be more useful to someone running a web-cam brothel rather than a spy agency. He sighed and stamped the requisition "Denied" before throwing it in the out-basket. Then he took that basket and began sorting the documents for filing or delivery, wishing that a new secretary would be found soon.

It took him all morning to empty his in-basket and dispose of all the documents in his out-basket. When the courier showed up to pick up the outgoing mail she dumped another twenty pounds of correspondence on his desk. His frown could have killed at ten paces. Fortunately the courier was familiar with his moods and had already retreated to the far side of the room.

"Do you want a promotion?' He asked the middle-aged skunk before she could escape through the door.

"Huh?" She stopped and looked back over her shoulder.

Silver waved a paw over the pile of envelopes and parcels. "Make all this go away and I'll bump you up a pay grade."

She shook her head slightly and turned back to the door.

"Two pay grades!"

The skunk gave him one of those looks normally reserved for crazy street people with no clothes and hurried out of the executive suite.

"I don't blame you." Silver said to himself as he spread the papers out across his desk. "I'd run too if I had more sense."

His afternoon had not gone any better. He had skipped lunch, as he often did when he was busy, and with no Miss CC to look out for him and slip a sandwich into his in-basket his stomach was rumbling when Vikki showed up at his office at four o'clock.

"You sound like you could eat a bear." She commented.

Silver recalled an incident with a female Russian Colonel that he had to seduce back in the eighties and shuddered. "Never again." He muttered.

"Sorry?"

"Nothing, just talking to myself. I do that a lot these days."

"Well, they say that you should stick to conversing with your intellectual equals, to avoid embarrassment."

"Har-har. Ready to go?"

"Yes. I saw your note about supper. How about that barbeque chicken place on Carling?"

Silver shrugged. "Sure." They had been there before, but the food was good, the prices were reasonable and Leslie enjoyed colouring in the kid's placemats with the crayons they provided. Each time they went he got better at it and Silver wondered if eventually he might not become the Michael Angelo of placemat art.

They were about to go out through the Operations Centre, but when Silver pushed open the door they saw Sylvie Roy haranguing Kain Algorath over letting her techs have full access to the Academy servers. They quickly stepped back out the door before they could be seen.

"That reminds me." Vikki said as they took the longer route through the lobby to the executive parking lot. "Leslie has to finish his end-of-year gift for Mrs. Babcock."

"What made you think of that?" Silver asked

"The way she was badgering him." She replied, referring to Roy and Algorath. "How did badgers ever get that reputation though? Everyone that I have ever met has been sweet and reasonable."

"You've never been married to one."Silver said as they reached their vehicle.

She turned to face him as he opened the car door. "And you have?"

"Briefly." He saw her look of surprise. "Only as cover for a mission. She was an MI-6 agent. She took the whole charade a bit too seriously I'm afraid."

Vikki was dying to ask him more about his temporary marriage and the mission with the badger but he had that look on his face that said he was deep in thought. But he was not making a sound, and that was a bad sign It was his habit to whistle unconsciously when his brain was occupied. If he was planning a mission he would be whistling Tchaikovsky's "Nutcracker Suite". He had other tunes he whistled when he was making a decision, plotting revenge or savouring the defeat of an enemy. But he was silent, his lips tight together and slightly pursed like he had tasted something sour.

"Hard day at the office?" She ventured.

"Mmmumgh."

Vikki refrained from further attempts at conversation and enjoyed the greenery of Ottawa in late spring as they made their way out of the city to Leslie's school.

When they arrived at the pickup area they were surprised to see the older badger, Missus Babcock. Normally one of the EAs did that duty. She could be filling in for the bunny though, Vikki thought to herself, if Pawstone had to leave early because she was sick or had an appointment.

Babcock did not notice them parking or getting out of their car because just then a pair of kittens decided to dispute the ownership of a stuffed toy. They climbed the steps to the classroom building while the badger was preoccupied pulling the spitting dervishes apart and then startled her when they called her name.

"Eh? Who? Why Mister Silver, Miss Vikki, what are the two of you doing here? Come to pick up Leslie's things, did you?"

Suspicion welled up inside Silver, not that it had far to go; Silver had developed paranoia into a survival trait. He had already noted the absence of their son in the group of youngsters waiting for their parents, and now his eyes grew narrow as he concentrated on the face of the badger.

"Where is my son?" He asked in a voice that promised fatal consequences for the wrong answer.

Missus Babcock had been teaching for more than thirty years, and a teacher did not get to her age without being confronted by angry parents occasionally. Usually it was a misunderstanding, an exaggeration or misinterpretation on the child's part, but overly protective parents had to be skillfully managed and calmed down to the point where they were willing to listen to an explanation. But the lack of emotion in his tone and the unstated threat it carried was new to her. She turned to the mother for help, but was met with eyes that burned with emerald fire and a lip already curled into a silent snarl.

"Miss Vikki ... I ... you ... the hospital called Mister McNabb and Ruth took ... I mean ..." It dawned on her that neither Silver or Vikki looked like they had been in an accident of any sort, let alone one that had required medical attention. And for some reason she felt that she would be the one who would wind up in the hospital if she could not satisfy them.

"Mister McNabb!" She called to the Administrator who had just left the building across the lane and looked to be heading for the staff parking lot. He altered his course when he heard his name. "Mister McNabb, I'm afraid that we may have an ... an incident!"

McNabb proved that he had earned his position by taking it all in at a glance; the confused and distraught teacher, the parents that looked ready to kill, the absence of a child which until turned over safely to said parents was still the school's responsibility. He correctly concluded that this was a case of a missing kit, although wrongly assumed that the child was merely misplaced for the moment, as was so often the case; the little tykes did like to wander. Other parents were showing up to pick up their offspring. The grey squirrel saw one of the other teachers exiting the school and he ordered her to take over here. Quickly, least the school's reputation suffer during the immanent outburst, he led up away from the entrance to a quieter spot.

"Now, tell me what is going on." He asked in a soft tone meant to mollify temporarily distraught parents.

Missus Babcock spoke of how her EA, Ruth Pawstone, had taken Leslie from the class after receiving a call from the Administrator. By the time she had finished her first sentence Silver had concluded that it was a kidnapping. Giving Vikki the signal to take over, he stepped back away from the group so that he could think before McNabb had a chance to deny ever calling the class. At that point Vikki took over the questioning and extracted the time of day of the bunny's exit, what she had been wearing and what kind of car she drove. She was about to call 911 when Silver put a paw on her arm.

"Don't." He said.

"But we have to put out an APB for Pawstone before she harms Leslie."

"We have to think." He replied with a calmness he did not feel. "Someone has taken the time to set this up very carefully and they should be making their next move any time now."

Vikki's anger flared. "You think that Pawstone was planted here? That someone planned on taking our son? But that would mean ... Oh my God! Miss Cohen!" Anger turned to shock at the realization.

The administrator had missed their exchange because he was also trying to make a call, to his secretary. He had hoped to reach her before she left for the day to get her to pull the file on Pawstone. "That's funny." McNabb commented, looking at his own phone as it lay in his paw. "I'm getting a signal but whenever I try to call out I get dead air."

Silver pulled out his cellular, an older flip-up model that had no camera, no gadgets, no internal memory and no features, but it was very, very secure. He did not bother opening it, he just waited. After fifteen seconds it rang.

He flipped it open and put it to his ear, pressing a button that started an automatic trace on the call. He waited without speaking. Vikki slid up beside him and leaned down to put her ear near the phone. He tilted it so she could hear too, making a paw signal that she should stay quiet and let him take the lead.

"Good Afternoon Silver." The voice was full and rich, with just a trace of an accent.

"Who do I have the pleasure of speaking with?" Silver's voice expressed nothing like pleasure.

"You can call me Silk, yes, that's a good name. Silk." Silver could hear that the speaker was pleased with himself. He sounded almost jolly.

"Not Silky, or Silky-Poo perhaps?"

"Silk will do." The speaker tried to sound nonchalant, but Silver detected a note of irritation. Despite being desperate for news of his son he waited, allowing the silence to stretch in their long-distance game of wills. The caller broke first.

"Your son is fine, should you care to know. He is in good paws."

"What interests me is why you took him." Silver said. Beside him Vikki trembled as she fought to remain silent.

"My, you are a cold-hearted bastard, aren't you? I'd heard that about you but experiencing it firstpaw is so much better. Well, if you don't care about the kit I'll just dispose of him and try to figure out another way of getting your attention."

"Oh, you have my attention. But I'm still waiting for you to tell my why you want it ... Silk."

"Oh-ho, a fox who likes to get down to business." The caller laughed. "I approve." There was a short silence and Silver imagined the caller getting comfortable in his chair. A siren and a car horn beeping could be heard dimly in the background. Silver filed the information away for later.

When the caller came back on his tone was all business. "Alright Silver, this is what I want. One of your analysts, Algorath, is investigating some friends of mine. I want you to put a stop to that investigation. In fact I want you to send your analyst away so he won't be tempted to, ah, misuse his spare time. Send him far away, where he cannot access the F.O.X. servers. You and the kit's mother will go about your business as if nothing was wrong. Go home after you speak to Algorath. Go to work the next day or call in sick, but sure that no one takes up the investigation where Algorath left off. We will be watching so keep everyone busy with other things until we are done."

"How will I know when you are done?"

The caller gave a low chuckle. "Oh, you'll know. It will warm your heart to see what we have in mind for Canada, and the world. Now I see that your trace is already up to the third cut cut-out in my private cellular system so I'll say goodbye for now. But I'll be in touch. Tootles." And with that the line went dead.

Silver flipped the phone shut without bothering to check the results of the trace; he had no doubt that someone who could set this up would be able to cover the tracks of a simple phone call. "Do not call the police." He ordered McNabb and Babcock. "You will only endanger Leslie if you do. Try to go about your business as if nothing was wrong if you can. If not call in sick. But under no circumstances must you discuss this with anyone. As far as anyone else here at the school is concerned Leslie has joined us on an early summer vacation. Do you understand?"

Subdued into compliance by the authority in his voice the two school staff nodded their heads in unison. Silver turned on his heel and strode back to their car with Vikki right behind him. She looked stricken, torn between white-hot anger and an aching hole in her gut. "Silver, what are we going to do?" She asked.

"We are going to do as he says." He replied, unwilling to divulge his real plans here because he was unsure of whether their phones or the car had been bugged. "But I assure you," he said, in the hopes that this Silk character was listening in, "when this is all over, I will skin the creature responsible alive."

The FOX Academy series:

Book I - The New Breed

Book II - The Werewolf of Odessa

Book II.5 - The Love who Spied Me

Book III - The Curse of the Yellow Monkey

Book IV - Wait for No One

Book V - Dawn of Vengeance

Book VI - Unnatural Selection

Book VII - Rogue Sword

Kain Algorath © Marcus X Light

Ophelia Cassidy Sommer © Devil Kitty

Joel Grigori © Joel the Lemur

Geno © Coyotek

Dongo Fett © Dongo Fett

Zachary Ember © EmberWolf

Gray Muzzle © Gray Muzzle

Ruth Pawstone/Runs With Stick © Bunners