FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Ionized Radio Arc Decay technology was in it's infancy when the bombs fell. Requiring the element Kreytium , synthesized in special reactors, and the rare Isotope 50 of Copper, the technology was designed by Faraday Medical as a source of nearly unlimited energy for synthetic organs.

I don't remember too much of what happened after realizing my chest had been turned into a piece of hamburger, it all kind of just blended together in a haze of pain not like anything I had ever felt before, like someone was cutting into my rib cage with a literal angle grinder. Every now and again I would hear Doyle screaming at someone, them shouting back and then a twinge of pain that reminded me of being burned on a soldering iron. I wasn't sure how long this fading in and out of existence continued on for, but at some point, I did actually manage to come back to the land of the living. Since I had been a cub, whenever I would wake up from a nightmare I would lay perfectly still and breath through my nose as slowly as I could so the rising and falling of the covers with my breathing wouldn't betray my position to whatever mutant was currently hiding under my bed. Of course, there was no doing that, since I didn't have any covers to hide under and even if I did that couldn't have protected me from the stench that seemed to permeate every inch of this room, and it was a massive one. I didn't know how many feet up, I just knew it was damn huge. There were a couple of other animals in the room with me, four, no five. I could hear snoring from four of them, while the other was right near my bedside. At some point during this ordeal, I had lost feeling, and thus control, of an overall majority of my body. My legs were numb past my waist, my tail was limp and my arms were burning with that feeling of bolts underneath my skin from not having moved them from resting atop my chest for so long. What feeling I did have left said that my right leg was in some kind of metal splint, and that my torso was wrapped very, very tightly with gauze. Gritting my teeth, I opened my eyes, staring up towards an old, rusted piece of corrugated metal with a two by four framework supporting it that looked about as old as the universe itself. A couple of quick breathes, and I realized there was a hose stuck up my left nostril, yeah, no thanks, I pulled it straight out, quickly enough that it's removal left me short of breath enough to induce a short coughing fit. I still couldn't move my head, or body in general, but I could look around enough to realize that it was Doyle that was beside me, asleep in a reclining chair that had certainly seen it's fair share of abuse. His uniform was gone, replaced with nothing but ragged jeans and a sweatshirt with rolled up sleeves. His face was a mess of cuts, scrapes, bruises and burns. His arms were lacerated as well, almost looking like someone had attacked him with a whip or some kind of weighted rope. With a concerted effort, I reached out to try and get his attention, but fell short by a good foot of reach. I tried to roll over onto my side, meeting enough resistance from what at first felt like two small ropes that I was stopped. Something on a table or shelf behind me groaned in disapproval.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you", a female said from the other side of the room.

I stopped trying to reach out to Doyle, shifting my glance back towards the direction of the voice, catching a speck of blue and red. I rolled back onto my back, trying to see if I could figure out where the voice had come from. I was only met by the sight of a very old and very worn Duralast battery with two wires, one red, one blue, hooked to a pair of terminals that were so badly corroded that the corrosion was probably the only thing holding it together. The wires stretched from the terminals on the abused power source down towards the ground. I grabbed the wires, tugging on them and freezing in complete horror when the tug on the wires resulted in something moving underneath the gauze on my chest. I couldn't help but start to cry in fear as I was very quickly realizing that the wires weren't hooked to bed's metal frame, instead, they ran down, curled up some on the floor before winding their way up towards the bed, through some of the gauze wrapping and disappearing into a lump underneath the bandages. I tapped the gauze with the paw of my palm, underneath it was a rather sizable metal disc that, instead of moving when I tried to move it, seemed to tug on my rib cage. I tore at the gauze, cutting it with my claws and tearing it away, eyes locked firmly on whatever was underneath the gauze, ignoring both Doyle, who had now woken up, and the unnamed Female, both of who were trying to get me to stop. I didn't, I tore the bandages apart and threw them aside, completely locking up when I laid eyes on what the gauze was concealing.

Embedded god only knew how far into my chest was a metal disc encircled by copper wiring that was soldered together and attached to a plate via four sheet metal screws, two bolts were holding the wires to the car battery on corroded terminals. All of the scales on my chest around the metal had been pulled off and the flesh around it was starting to necrotize and die off, from either infection or the voltage going through the thing. I couldn't fathom how I wasn't being electrocuted. I couldn't stop the pounding in my chest and I immediately knew that something was very, very wrong. Growing up with what essentially amounted to a rotten heart, it beat very weakly, which was a problem when ever I would get excited in any kind of way. Now, each beat felt like a punch to the chest and it was sending strong enough jolts of current through me that it made the dying tissue around the piece of scrap iron that had been surgically shoved into my chest painfully convulse. By now, my screams of terror had stirred Doyle, who had pulled me tight and started trying to calm me down.

"It's okay Issac, I'm here buddy I'm here!", Doyle tried to reassure me. I couldn't move, I couldn't think, the world was crashing down around my shoulders, all I could do was sob.

After a good long while, I finally managed to regain some of my composure. Doyle hugged me again.

"How do you feel?", he asked.

I shifted uneasily at the question, not entirely sure how to answer.

"That bad huh?"

"What the hell did she do to me?", I asked still stuck on whatever the hell this thing was.

"It's more like what she did for you", Doyle said, "What she did was to save your life. That grenade did a serious number on you, tore apart lots of vital organs and completely totaled out what of a heart you did have left."

"No wonder I feel like I'm held together by fishing line", I sighed.

"You'd be surprised at the amount of Animals that come through here with wounds like that", the fox said coming over to sit down beside me. She couldn't have been any older than I was, but she was beat to absolute hell, like she'd been working in a coal mine everyday since she was a puppy. I couldn't tell what color her fur was underneath all of the black soot covering her, she had lacerations and burns all throughout her body and her paws were an absolute, mangled and mutilated mess. She only wore rags of FRC jeans and the shirt she had was torn to the point it was no longer fire resistant, but might actually spontaneously ignite. Her eyes though, one gold, one a dark purple, was one of the most pretty things that I had ever seen. It was so mesmerizing to look at that I was at a loss for words.

"What to see?", she asked handing me a glass vial with some wicked looking metal shards inside of it, "I have a souvenir. Take a look."

There had to be about 4 dozen tiny little razor blades in that bottle. They were covered in dried blood and some other substance I couldn't identify. The female sat in an old bean bag chair and picked up a steel cup from a makeshift table beside her. She took a sip of whatever was inside.

"Your friend Doyle is a hell of a doctor", She said.

"What is this?", I asked.

"That?", she answered sipping her drink again, "That is a Faraday Medical Model 1 Angel. It's an artificial heart that uses your own DNA to avoid rejection. That piece of scrap metal sticking out of your chest is a crude transformer, and it's converting the 12 volt single phase power from the battery into 575 Volt Six Phase used by the artificial heart. I've seen more Animals than I'd like come through here with injuries like yours Issac, we call them Walking Dead, because it takes about a week for the transformers to fry and stop the artificial organs. If that doesn't kill you, the guards or some random piece of falling scrap metal will."

I swallowed hard.

"So...other animals have...used this heart before?", I knew I shouldn't have asked that question the second I finished, because she reached into the bean bag chair and pulled out an old, leather bound notebook flipping through a few pages.

"Yeah...seven", she said solemnly.

I zipped up my jacket to cover it, I felt too vulnerable with it exposed.

"Count yourself lucky brother, very few animals that are targeted by these psychopaths have family survive, even fewer that manage to kill some of them. Your friend Doyle's become something of a legend in the deep mine where I'm from. Acting like he did is what got me thrown down there in the first place."

"Deep mine?", I asked.

The female looked like she was going to answer, but was cut off when someone rapped on a large double metal door and started screaming.

"Well look whose finally back from the fucking dead!", a male shouted, slamming shut a small slot in the door and then started undoing what sounded like a massive lock.

"You're about to find out", the female gulped.

"Fuck!", Doyle growled, "come on buddy, get up. Lean on me if you have to, put your paws behind your head and when they talk, listen."

Something about Doyle that you should know, the guy doesn't take orders from anyone, not even me most of the time and he and I had been friends since I was old enough to put names to faces. Hell the guy had raised me after Dad passed away, and in his own way, he kinda was a step dad to me. He was more liable to just shoot someone threatening him or someone he cared about straight through the face without a single word than to capitulate to the demands of some thug any day of the week. The fact that just the sound of that other guy's voice had him scrambling to meet some kind of compliance standard had me scared out of my mind. He helped me up and I put my paws behind my head, so did the female. The latch unlocked and the doors came open. Six, very well armed and very well uniformed animals stepped inside with a seventh animal, a black wolf, wearing a black suit, black shirt and black tie. His fur was gelled back and he looked like he had just had a shower a few minutes ago. All of his guards were carrying AWS 14.5 M4 Carbines outfitted with some of the best accessories we carried. In fact, their uniforms were the AWS Aird Woodland pattern, their carriers were AWS and all of their pouches and kit was AWS. These guys carried themselves like US Army Remnants and that in and of itself was fucking terrifying.

"That's our kit!", I whispered to Doyle, "how'd they get our kit!?"

"Issac be quiet!", Doyle growled.

"Welcome! Welcome!", the black suited wolf bellowed, his voice carried through the cave like thunder, "The most famous mass murderer in the wastelands, Issac Aeyrs. I'm honored to be in your presence sir."

The wolf held up his paw, a guard behind him handed him a piece of paper, he motioned for me to come to him.

"Come here please Issac, I don't bite."

Doyle snarled something I had never heard before, "if you lay a paw on that boy I'll knock your goddamn teeth down your fucking throat!"

"You're not going to touch me", the wolf's tone contained a level of mockery I didn't think a sane animal would dare to speak to Doyle with, "unless of course you wanna be perforated in front of the animal you're trying to protect. I suggest you shut the maw, next time I muzzle you it's getting welded on."

The wolf turned back to me after Doyle quieted down, "come here Aeyrs."

I took a deep breath in a way that he wouldn't see me do it, picked up the car battery and stepped over to him. This creepy dude put his arm around me and hugged me like some long lost friend. Now I don't know what the actual hell this guy showered in, or what he used as cologne, but saying that he smelled like skunk probably have had the_actual skunk_ standing behind him, who didn't smell hardly at all, in rage mode about how offensive that was and gotten my new heart ripped straight from my chest. I don't even think I could compare the stench to the Biomass because even they had better hygiene than this thing. The guy had fleas crawling all over his collar and I swear I saw bedbugs fall out of his sleeves. I didn't wanna be on the same planet with this guy, much less have him touching me. God only knew what kind of disease I'd pick up. He put his paw on my shoulder, giving me a disappointed look and slid the cart that the battery had been sitting on over towards me.

"Come on, let's see it."

I hesitated.

"Set the battery down on the cart and take off the jacket", the wolf ordered.

I still didn't move.

"Take off, the fuckin' jacket", the wolf ordered. From his sleeve came what was probably the most modified Glock 20 on the planet. It was decked out all the way with a carbon fiber body, cut and vented slide, stainless steel barrel with a Lone Wolf Industries Compensator, Merc Gear Magazines and a Trijicon SRO. Unlike most Glocks, this one had a safety lever on the slide that read "Safe, Semi, Auto. Damn did he keep the muzzle brake sharp, "I wanna see it."

Trying not to start sobbing again, I put the battery on the cart and unzipped my jacket, opening it just wide enough for him to see the piece of metal jutting out of my chest.

"I said take off the fuckin' jacket", the wolf snarled, "I'm not gonna ask again."

It took everything I had not to start balling when I shrugged that jacket off my shoulders. The wolf returned his Glock to his sleeve and started pacing around me. He ran a claw down my back in such away that the gauze protecting my perforated torso just fell to the floor. He put both his paws on my shoulders, I could feel the fleas and ticks already starting to infest my wounds.

"Now, that wasn't so hard, was it?", the wolf asked, "is it normal for the skin of a Salamander to be so damn hot? I wouldn't think so."

A chill went down my spine, holy shit this guy was creepy.

"Get your paws off my little brother you flea bag pedophile!", Doyle hissed, "I swear to god I'll fucking skin you alive with a dull rock!"

One of the guards with a shortened M30 Luftwaffe Drilling approached Doyle and put the shotgun in his face. Doyle looked right down the barrels.

"You point that at me, you had best be ready to pull that trigger brother", Doyle smiled a wicked smile at the guard, whose expression couldn't be seen under his balaclava. Doyle smirked, and in a motion too quick to track, took the M30 from the guard's paws and pointed it right back in his face, two other guards now approached Doyle, the skunk with a PPS-43 and the second with a M14, both placed their muzzles to the back of Doyle's head.

"Gimme the word boss and I'll drop him", The skunk said.

"Not yet Trent", the wolf said, "mutt, I'll give you one chance to surrender that shotgun to it's rightful owner. Please don't, because I really would love to put you down like the dog you are."

Doyle growled, surrendering his weapon back to the guard he'd taken it from, earning a smack over the head as a reward.

"How unfortunate", the wolf sighed, "I was hoping you'd try to resist further."

He turned back to me, touching me in ways that made my skin crawl, "More animals than you'd expect come through here with injuries like that. Fortunately, Ms. Isabella here is a packaged deal. Not only is she a master electrician, she is also an expert surgeon."

"Do something enough and you get the hang of it", Isabella answered darkly.

"Now, Issac, I have but one request for you."

The paper was a greyscale photo, likely taken by an old cell phone through a sniper scope. It was of Doyle firing the Diablo Mk2.

"We have everything you need here. I want you to make a materials and tools list for this weapon and immediately start work on three of them."

I looked him dead in the eyes, "I refuse."

The wolf's smile faded, "Lemme clean the shit outta my ears, because I'm very sure I didn't hear you just tell me no."

I made sure I was looking this guy right in the eyes, "I'm not building weapons for you. AWS firearms are for honest animals, not thugs like you."

The wolf's Glock appeared in his paw again, soon it's muzzle was between both my eyes, "for a kid with a gun to his head, you seem pretty confident. How about I take the three of you to see the boss? You might reconsider once you meet him."

He put his gun away, smile returning, "yeah, we got a plan now don't we? Pick up the battery, let's you, your friend Doyle and Miss Isabella go pay the boss a visit huh?"

"No thanks", Isabella squeaked, "I'd rather go back to the deep mines."

"Aw, are you sure?", the wolf snickered, "it's no fun without you there."

"Yes, please! Anything but visiting...him!", she pleaded, coming to tears.

"Nah, we'll bring you along, you don't get off that easy", the wolf said waving her off. The guards escorted with bags over our heads and guns to the back of them through a maze of tunnels and eventually to a metal door way. The lead wolf rapped on the door.

"Boss! It's Mason! We've got a dissenter!"

"It's open", a deep voice boomed from inside.

The wolf opened the door, escorting Doyle and I inside. The room was comparable to my penthouse, at least in décor. The walls were wooden panels on the right and left hand sides that were multiple pieces made of scrap wood that was held together with a darkly stained resin. In each corner were fat trunked, short trees with bushy, well kept tops kept alive with lights directly above them, that was the only light in the room. The carpet was dark red, almost looking like it was hand made. The right side of the room had a huge king sized trophy bed with brand new looking bedspreads. The left side panel was a weapon that was home to two complete weapon sets manufactured by my company, full ballistic and full energy. Each of the weapons had fantastic engraving filled with inlay's containing precious metals. In the middle of the room was a desk with a tall backed chair facing the back wall with a tattered American fag with a large, red circle with an X splashed across it in red paint. The only thing I could glean from the situation that whoever was in the chair was a Bat.

"I must congratulate you on such a feat, Miss Isabella, I have to admit that I didn't believe even you could save Aeyrs's life."

"Thank you sir", Isabella said quietly.

"Aeyrs, won't you take a seat in front of my desk?"

The guards and the wolf who had escorted us in began exchanging glances. I didn't move.

"Aeyrs", the bat said firmly, "I don't extend such offers to dissenters, I suggest you take it while you are still in my good graces, take a seat."

I looked between Doyle and Isabella, then approached the desk, sitting down in the fancy red leather chair in front of it.

"A question", the Bat stated, or more demanded, "are you in much pain?"

I hesitated for a moment, wondering if he was looking for a specific answer. Truth be told, I had never been hurting more than I had at this exact moment, I was carrying around a good few pounds extra because of all the shrapnel lodged in my insides and had maybe about forty holes perforating my torso, plus a few good gashes pulled out of my head crest and a gouge below my right eye stitched up in such away that it hurt to blink. After a good minute of silence, the Bat spoke again.

"Aeyrs, I asked a question."

"No sir...I'm fine."

"Strange", the Bat mused, "If I had woken up with a body full of shrapnel, an artificial heart hooked up to a car battery, a shattered leg and enough bullet holes to turn me into a sponge, I'd go as far as to say I'd be in anguish at best."

He turned around. The guy looked like he was about a hundred years old, had snow white hair and was a mess of scars, mostly looking like bullet and stab wounds. Three of the five fingers on his right hand were gone and every one of his left digits had pieces missing off them. His eyes were an angry looking orange with narrow pupils that made him look more like a snake poised for the kill than a bat. Much like Mason, the bat wore a three piece suit, but like his fur, it was snow white and unlike his companion it had gold accents with copper buttons. The defining piece of apparel on him, however, was his necklace. It was some form of black metal that had been fantastically engraved, almost appearing done completely by hand. It was made in ornate sections that came to a point at the Black Widow spider carved out of a piece of polished obsidian. I swallowed hard, now I knew where I was.

"What's the matter Aeyrs? You look like you've just seen a Ghost?", the Bat smirked.

I didn't answer. The bat stood up, pushing his chair into the desk, walking over to his wall of weapons.

"Once upon a time, the sword was invented. With it, an Animal was afforded much more killing power than the weapons of old, forged of rock and bone. As we progressed through the years, along came the bow and arrow and for the first time, an Animal could strike out at an aggressor from a safe distance, sealing the fate of melee combat forever. For centuries, Archery reigned supreme. The bow and arrow allowed Genghis Khan to conquer much of the known world, but the face of war changed yet again when body armor stepped onto the battlefield. Bows, arrows and most blades were helpless to penetrate simple chain mail, at least at first. As weapons technology marched towards gunpowder in the 1300's, muzzle loading firearms stepped into the spotlight. The Musket would dominate weapons design for the next five hundred years, until the year 1845, when a French inventor developed the breech loading rifle, by the late 1890's, the Machine gun promised to make war a thing of the past, but instead, allowed dictators to rise and the common Animal to topple them. Since the invention of Black Power, Power has never been able to rest in the paws of those who deserve it for very long, and to those who risked keeping it for too long, well, we all know how that ended."

The Bat paused, pouring a glass of strong smelling whiskey into a small glass.

"Hmm, the history lesson seems to have left me parched. Issac, would you like a drink? You strike me as a Scotch type. Isabella, Doyle, would you like drinks? I have plenty."

The three of us exchanged glances.

"Very well", the bat said sipping his whiskey, "players come and go, but power always finds a place to rest it's head. In the past, all that was required to rule was a phone and a pen, but today he who holds the latest AWS equipment truly rules these lands, soon, it will be my turn."

The bat sat down at his desk, finishing his whiskey, "Issac, you will build me my Diablos. I want you to make a materials list and start work immediately, when you are done, I will set you free, along with Doyle and Isabella."

I knew that telling him no was suicide in my condition. There was any number of things they could do to end my life right here and now. Given that, I was still reminded of what Doyle had always told me, Live for nothing or die for something.

It was better to have them rip me to pieces than to give them the means to terrorize the wastelands.

"I find it funny that you think you can order me to give you the means to kidnap and hurt more Animals after what you've done. I don't know who at AWS is selling to you, but when I find them, I'm going to skin them alive. You'll never get a thing out of me, you lunatic."

The clicked his tongue, "Very well. Mason, take these brats to Room 25, if they still resist after 10 minutes, throw them in Sub Level 1 and leave them there."

The guards very quickly handcuffed and put the bags back on our heads. They dragged us through another maze of tunnels, ending with a door unlatching and creaking open. We were dragged inside, stripped of everything and the bags removed. The room was quite large, separated by sheets of OSB that was stained red from the many Animals who had likely died here. Hell, the rock I was being forced to kneel on felt more like clay from all of the caked on blood. The stench of the place was damn overpowering, even worse than Mason's stink. Speaking of Mason, he was crouched down with his Glock back in his paws when he pulled the bag off.

"You're in good shape kid", he grinned, "seems like you take care of yourself."

I was tempted just to spit in his face, but managed to restrain myself.

"I'm not building any weapons for you", I said, trying hard to keep my composure, as much as it was from my general, life long hatred of the Arachnids as it was wanting to just start crying.

"Come on", Mason chuckled, "yes you are."

"No, no I'm really not", I said, "by the way, it's really hard to intimidate someone that just wants to vomit when you get close. You need to work on the body odor and all of the fleas, lice and bedbugs infesting that nasty fur. How bad is the mange you must have under that suit?"

Mason stopped what he was doing at his table. He pause for a brief moment and straightened his tie, spinning around to violently pistol whip me across the face. He walked around, put one arm around my neck and the other on my waist, growling into my ear just as Isabella started screaming and Doyle shouting swear words and all the horrible things he was going to do to his torturers. Power tools were buzzing in both stalls.

"If I hear you say anything about my condition again", Mason hissed, "I promise you that I will put a bullet between your eyes where you stand. Do you understand boy? We're in charge here."

I didn't answer, Mason moved closer and started touching me in a way that made my skin crawl.

"Few Animals survives Room 25, those who have rarely survive Sub Level 1. For the next eight minutes, I can do whatever the fuck I want to you, however I like."

He stood up and walked over to the table, picking up a jug of water, he pulled my head back by the crest and emptied the contents of the jug, an entire gallon of brine, onto my face. In that moment, I desperately wished for gills, of course, I figure if I had that Mason would have come up with an even better way to torture me. The salt in the water set my face and crest on fire when it settled into every little scrape and big gash that the grenade and destruction of the Landship had inflicted on me. Even worse, when the water struck the transformer in my chest, it sent a violent arc of electricity shooting through the water, instantly turning it into steam and causing a large enough explosion that Mason and I were both promptly placed on our backs. Every stitch in my legs and torso instantly re opened, allowing the molten salt to settle inside. That feeling, the feeling of lava under my skin wasn't like anything that I had ever experienced, nor was it something I ever wanted to experience again.

"Seems like transformers and salt water don't mix", Mason said trying to get to his feet, "didn't expect that."

The next seven minutes was just straight torture, but who was doing it to who could have been up for debate. My Dad had been a master at name calling and sarcasm, and I guessed that the apple didn't fall too far from the tree there. When it came to name calling, general insults and just generally offending people with my very presence, there was no one better. The harsher and angrier Mason got when I wouldn't give him what he wanted, the worse things I came up with to insult him with. By the time the ten minutes were over, Mason was so angry that he was shaking, couldn't finish a sentence and was stuttering like a brain dead Afghan Hound with no teeth. He was trying to hold his Glock steady enough to shoot me in the face when the Bat walked in.

"Perhaps I underestimated you", The Bat said lifting my head, "not many survive ten minutes alone with Mason here in Room 25. Are you ready to build my Diablos?"

I spit the blood out of my mouth, "you mean the worlds ugliest dog candidate? That bastard has no sense of humor."

The Bat growled, "very well. Your fate is sealed."

The bat turned to Mason, "you know what to do."

Mason undid the chain holding me to the wall and literally dragged me through the maze of tunnels. I was disoriented enough that I couldn't track where we were being taken to. I wasn't sure exactly how long we had been dragged for, but one thing I couldn't ignore was how cold it was getting the longer it went on. I had stopped bleeding some time ago, so I couldn't just chalk it up to blood loss. A loud mechanical grinding sound preceded more of Mason's shouting.

"Make yourselves at home fuckers!", he bellowed, "you're gonna be down here a long time!"

Mason dropped me on the ground, Doyle and Isabella were dumped off next to me and the door sealed behind him. Without the light from the cave to shine in, this place, wherever it was, was pitch black, I mean darker than anything I had ever seen, and I'd been in some dark situations, figuratively and literally, whenever I would strap on my M14 and head into the wastelands with Doyle. This place, the dark, the cold, it was my worst nightmare. My body was not designed to operate in these kinds of conditions, in any capacity.

"Damn guys, chill with the fucking power tools", Doyle grunted, I heard a zip tie break, "Isabella? Issac!?"

"Here Doyle!", Isabella shouted, I felt something furry touch me, "Issac's right next to me."

I rolled onto my side, pulling one of the wires way too tight for comfort and immediately rolled back to my stomach, instead, turning my head so I could see Isabella. Her eyes weren't hard to pick up in the dark, but other than that her skinny body was just an outline, slightly blacker than the rest of the cave. I supposed that was a good thing. If I couldn't see her, she couldn't see me. I didn't want her to see me nude and I was fairly certain she felt the same way.

"Such fun that was huh?", Isabella half sighed, half chuckled.

"Oh I do so love rapey wolves trying to drown me in salt water", I said, "Help me beat my strange addiction."

"Can't help you there, but, I think we can help you stay alive", a voice came from the darkness.

The cave fell silent. The sound of a contactor pulling in echoed through the frigid darkness of the cavern, purging it a second later in a halo of white light. Looking in the direction of the voice, were four animals.