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Chapter 3 â€" In The Blink Of An Eye

"I...I'm home!" shouted Jack up the stairs as he entered his home. It was late in the dusk and the sun had almost completely disappeared from the sky, creating a beautiful red visage. Jack's house was a typical suburban home in the centre of Chentrilla's residential district. In front of his house was a beautiful lake that was like a puddle amongst the row of houses.

Jack had just pulled in from his car outside, the air this evening was surprisingly sweet, a taste of cherry blossom entered his breath. However something was wrong... almost completely wrong... His muzzle twitched as he entered the house... something was in the air of the darkened hallway that he was standing in.

He walked down the hall into a modest lounge with a large television that dominated the room. The stairs were on the other side of the lounge that led up to landing that went to the upstairs rooms. He bent down, finding the pieces of glass from his coffee table on the floor and immediately drew his gun.

He was going to explain to his partner all about his affair with the Police Chief, explaining that he had pushed him into it. He knew that Osirus, his beautiful fox partner would be outraged and would cry for him to prosecute but he was going to tell him anyway.

However something had interrupted that.

"Os...!?" he shouted as he neared the stairs, his soft paws climbing them slowly. There was no response, just a strange silence.

Then it started...

"JAAAACKKKKKK!" shouted a voice coming from the bedroom. Jack rushed into the room , pointing his weapon out as he saw two black wolves pressing his fox boyfriend down on the bed.

The black wolves were unlike anything that he had ever seen before, they were pitch black, snarling with glowing red eyes and appeared to be more feral then anything else.

Jack did not have enough time to react before the wolf that was pinning Osirus down on the bed, slashed at his neck, causing the foxe's blood to spill out front his neck and all over the bed.

"NO!" shouted Jack as he shot at the wolves that appeared to just disappear and reappear as if they were fading back and forth from the shadows. The snarled at Jack, one getting ready to pounce before the other one nudged his head and they jumped out the open window.

Jack was left standing there, dropping his gun from his hand at the sight of his dead partner he collapsed to his knees. "Please... God no..." he whispered. He crawled over, tears streaming from his face to the dead bloody body of his partner. He reached out to test his pulse.

Nothing... as cold as ice.

"Please... don't do this to me!" he shouted, cradling his dead love in his arms. He could not believe what he just witnessed, what were those black wolves. The way the moved, snarled and just disappeared did not seem human to him.

In the blink of an eye... his life had been shattered.

Three Months Later....

"We are making progress in the Aesir Drug case..." smiled Natasha as she walked over to stare at Jack who was just sat at his desk staring into space. Natasha was a sleek and slender raccoon who was impulsive as she was sexy. She was black and white, with her hair a distinctive red and down in a bun to match her red lips.

"Sorry... what?" asked Jack, his voice had become a little deeper over the coming months, the sign that he had retreated deeper and deeper into himself. He was a shell of what he was and Natasha knew this this.

"We finally have a lead on the drug case..." she repeated smiling at Jack, almost in a vain effort to make him forget about his grief. Jack looked up as if he had just come back from "la-la" land. "Oh right...." he nodded. "What's up?" Jack had also learned a disturbing piece of information about his partner's murder, the wolves were actually high on the same Aesir drug that they were investigating and had somehow broken into his house and killed his partner claiming it to be part of a divine vision.

Since then Jack had personally taken over the assignment of finding who was behind this new and deadly white powder. He had learnt that the compound was actually a powerful hallucinogen that caused the user to have unusual self-visions and highs that were unrivalled by any other drug. However using it even once on a person with the wrong genetic markers could cause massive damage to the body.

"So what's that lead?" he asked, finally lounging back in his chair, putting a cigarette between his teeth as Natasha put her hands on her hips. "Not more stupid kids I hope?"

"No... actually this lead came to us..." said Natasha, dropping down a piece of paper in front of the bewildered fox. Jack let his eyes scan over the file, it was an amazingly detailed picture about the chemical formula for Aesir. He leant forward in his chair to examine it further, his cigarette also dropping out his his mouth as he stared up at Natasha.

"And this is...?" he asked, Natasha nodding to confirm it. "It's such a detailed construction of the drugs make up..."

"That suggests commercial involvement..." smiled Natasha feeling they were halfway to discovering exactly who was behind this. She had been feeling slight let down from all her work as Jack's assistant. She sympathised with his loss but at the same time she believed that he should have not have been given this case at all... with such a personal stake in it.

Jack peered at the little emblem in the corner of the document. One of the most well known commercial enterprises on Terra was behind this?

The symbol represented a flaming bird emerging from a pile of ashes embossed in a glow of a golden sun. Both Jack and Natasha knew it well... Phoenix Grace.

Phoenix Grace were a massively successful commercial enterprise led by the Baroness Cecelia Grace and her only son Ivan. Phoenix was a massive company that dealt with different major products including computer technology and pharmaceuticals but both Jack and Natasha had a hard time believing that Phoenix Grace could actually be behind this drug conspiracy.

"Hmmmm..." mumbled Jack, rubbing his chin as he got up, his bushy tail fluttering behind him. "Who's the informant then?"

"I'm not sure" replied Natasha, she walked over to a filing cabinet at the far side of the room and produced a file. "He would not give us his name, but he said that he worked in the Cryptology department... whatever that is."

"Are you sure that this is right? I mean... um... Phoenix Grace is a huge company... I can't get why they'd be involved with this?"

Natasha sighed as she sat down at her desk which was opposite Jack's. The office was uniquely theirs given them both ample workspace from the rest of the police department. Jack never understood when Chentrilla had never set up a specialised drug-team considering that substance abuse was on the rise in the city.

The raccoon took a bite of the sandwich that she had carefully unwrapped from her desk draw. Jack never understood why she always kept her lunch in there, he felt that maybe a remark he had made in the past about her being a bit "chubby" was to blame. But it was only a joke. "Well..." she said with her mouth slightly full. "Maybe we should meet him, he has requested a meeting..."

"What!?" asked Jack sitting back down again, he was about to check his e-mails when that comment from Natasha made his ears prick up. "Why exactly was that not worth telling me until now?"

"You only got the call this morning and..." complained Natasha who had always been slow to deliver messages.

If she remembered them at all.

"Look... in future I'm gonna get you a pad so you can write it down. Arn't woman su'posed to have better memories then men?" chuckled Jack as he narrowly missed the flying sandwich box which came flying in his direction. "Anyway... when and where?"

"Well" munched Natasha on her bacon and lettuce sandwich. "He wants to meet you down at the old dock car-park... I think it was about 11 o'clock tonight... or something like that."

Jack covered his face with his paw. "It's gonna be a long night" he thought.