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FOX Academy:

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

Chapter 5 - How They Move in Silence

Silver would spend the night on the move. His escort had made it abundantly clear that he was not to return to the rooms he still kept on the campus and that he was not to contact Vikki or any of the remaining agents. That meant finding a sitter for Leslie, packing a bag and leaving Vikki's apartment before she got home. Neither task had taken very long. They kept a list of emergency sitters and he always kept a travel bag ready.

He had checked into a small, seedy hotel in the west end of the city. Its attributes were the lack of security and multiple exits. It was not the kind of place you wanted to leave your laptop behind when you stepped out for a beer, but it was perfect for evading surveillance. After changing into dark clothes and taking a few items out of his bag he left, exiting through the service doors.

Silver's first stop was an old apartment building in the heart of downtown. It had once been a stately home once, but in the rush to the suburbs in the sixties it had been divided up into cheap rent-controlled apartments, suitable for low-income singles. The neighbourhood had improved lately, thanks to urban renewal and the construction of a number of condominiums nearby, but rents were still low for those who continued to renew their lease year after year.

Silver did not enter the building by the front door. He entered another building further down the street and climbed from the fire escape landing to the roof. Leaping down to the older building, he ignored the access to the stairwell and slipped down the outside wall instead. He then applied a tool from his pocket to one of the windows and disappeared inside.

Silver did not turn on any lights, and he avoided a number of alarms, trip wires, and booby traps to make his way to the kitchen of the small apartment. There he laid out some of the objects that he had brought and sat back to wait. The occupant would be returning soon enough.

Around eleven o'clock he heard familiar footsteps in the hall, followed by the turning of the key in several locks. There was a flash of light in the corridor as the creature that lived here entered quickly; robbers were known to strike at those who tarried at their door. The lights were left off, but footsteps approached the kitchen. Silver picked something up from the table in front of him and reached for the light switch with the other paw. Just as the sound of the footfall reached the open doorway he flicked the lights on.

A weasel stood frozen in the entrance, his paw half lifted as if he was going for the light switch. A bag from a nearby Chinese restaurant hung from his other paw.

"Hello George." Silver said with a chuckle. "Long time no see." The big silver fox pointed what he was holding in his paw at the trembling weasel. "Care for a game of cribbage?"

Silver fanned the deck of cards he held with one paw by twisting his digits. The cards spread evenly. He reached out with his other paw and plucked four cards at random from the deck. Flipping them over, he displayed the four aces, Hearts, Diamonds, Clubs and Spades. Placing the rest of the deck down on the table he made the cards walk across the knuckles of his other paw one at a time. When all four were held between the last two digits he revealed them again. He now held four jokers, each dressed differently.

"How about it?" Silver asked, indicating the board with the pegs already placed in their starting positions. "I'll spot you twenty points."

"How come every time you show up you have to scare the crap out of me?" The weasel complained as he set the bag of steaming Chinese food down on the table.

"Oh, come on. You haven't even peed yourself since the third time."

"That's because I've learned to avoid fluids whenever FOX is in trouble with the RCMP." George retorted, but he sat and shuffled the cards, less the four jokers Silver still had clutched in his paw. "What do you want this time?"

George was one of the RCMP's watchers, had been since the days when size and species restrictions kept all except large-breed canines off the force. Back in those days any applicant that was small and ordinary looking but with outstanding aptitude scores was approached and recruited for the semi-clandestine surveillance squad. They followed FOX agents when they were not otherwise tasked, for training purposes; theirs as well as the agent's.

Silver had been a particular challenge for the squad. Paranoid about secrecy and security he rarely left the experimental farm by the same route or means twice in a year. And he had the disturbing habit of turning the game around on the watchers. The watchers had given each of their subjects nicknames, something that related to their habits. Silver was known as 'Batman', after the fictional super hero who was half bat - half mythical human, because of his habit of seizing them and dangling them off balconies and rooftops until they promised to go follow someone else. More than one team member had required fresh underwear after being literally jerked off the street to find themselves staring into the cold blue-grey eyes of the fox that they knew had killed more creatures than the Swine Flu.

George was the best watcher on the squad, and despite his demure demeanour and unassuming looks he loved a challenge, so he was the subject of Silver's assaults more often than not. But he had his little successes too, and a friendship of sorts had grown up between them. Silver had soon discovered that George knew as much about the inner workings of the RCMP and its leaders as he did about any of his subjects. He also discovered that George enjoyed a good game of cribbage more than almost anything else in the world. When he showed up at George's apartment with a cribbage board it was a sign that he wanted some insider information.

Unfortunately for George, Silver had the nasty habit of showing up unannounced and suddenly, and George had never had strong bladder control. New locks, security windows, alarms and traps didn't even slow the big silver fox down. But like many an old friend George had learned to anticipate the visits and the rumours of an RCMP takeover at FOX was sure to bring Silver. Not only had he avoided all fluids since lunch, he had brought back twice as much Chinese food as he could consume, and an extra spring roll.

They played and ate while they talked. Silver brought up the subject of the raid and asked if had been Chief Inspector Parker's idea.

"Charlie? No way." George said. "She's not the scheming type. But if she believes in her assignment then you best watch out. She can be as stubborn as ... well as a hound dog." George went on to detail the diminutive basset's career for Silver. Parker had originally been recruited by the watchers, and was working for the surveillance team she got her nickname. "What the guys on the Force don't know is that she wasn't working a case that night." George explained. "She actually blows a pretty hot alto sax, or used to, back then. She was jamming with the band in the club when a wanted felon walked in and pulled a gun on a rival gang member. Charlie dove between them, sax first, and the bullet ricocheted off the bell. It was only a .32 calibre. She lifted that thing like she was going for high G and knocked the gun right out of his paw. When he tried to run for the door she swung her sax and hooked that crook with the crook of her axe."

"You should have been a poet George." Silver commented as he finished off the lemon chicken. He had noticed how George's eyes rolled up and to the right when he spoke of that night, indicating that he was remembering something he saw, not a story that he had been told. George had been there that night. And the dreamy tone in his voice told Silver why the skinny weasel had been there - he had a crush on Ms. Parker. He wondered if he should say anything, offer George some dating advice, but decided against it. "If she is not behind it, then who is?" Silver asked instead.

"None of the other senior staff, as much as they would love to have concocted this they would have used our own resources and we would have heard of it." George said. It was probably true, Silver reflected, watchers watch everyone, not just the ones they are paid to watch. "The new Commissionaire may have something to do with it." George admitted. "He's an outsider and has connections away from the Force."

"Where was he before he took over the RCMP?"

"His family is very wealthy and well connected to the party in power at the moment. But the Commissionaire is like, their idiot son. They keep buying political appointments for him and he keeps screwing them up. He was the Canadian head of some international development project before this, solar farms for China or something like that, with about a hundred million in taxpayer's money to spend." George pointed at the last of the garlic spare ribs with his chop sticks. Silver nodded for him to take them, and to continue talking.

"He put them in the province where their Chinese partner had family. The area was mostly rain forest, with less than a hundred days of sunshine a year. The solar collectors were built in the partner's factory, with cheap steel and iron. They all rusted out before they could generate enough power to aim themselves at the sun. There was a big stink. The Chinese sent in an investigator from state security and arrested some local bureaucrats. They arrested our future Commissionaire too, but he can talk his way out of anything. Unfortunately he usually talks himself out of the frying pan and into the fire. He seems to have lucked in this time, but everyone is watching, no pun intended, to see how he screws up this time."

"I don't believe in luck." Silver told his small friend as he picked up the containers and headed for the garbage chute. "I believe in planning, preparation and taking advantage of any opportunity that arises to defeat an enemy."

"Didn't Sun Tzu say that in his book on warfare?" George asked.

"Something like that. What do you call him?"

"Sorry?" George had been daydreaming about something, or someone.

"The west highland terrier, the Commissionaire. You guys have a nickname for everybody. Now, I know you are sworn not to tell me mine or any of the other FOX agents', but you can tell me what you call him, can't you? The secret is safe with me."

George shrugged. "His nickname is Toto."

It was the first time George could recall ever seeing Silver laugh out loud.

* * * * * * * *

The next morning found Chief Inspector 'Charlie' Parker alone in the Director's office at the Foreign Operations eXecutive. Tancred Williams, the big golden-hued fox also known as 'Tanner' according to her files, had been called downtown for a session with the Deputy Clerk. It would be a rough one for him, what with the disappearance of the little black fox Marcel and Silver as much as admitting to an unsanctioned execution. That and the fact that the Deputy, like many of the recent political appointees, was a homophobic born-again something-or-other.

Not that Charlie cared about the fox's sexuality. Live and let live was fine by her. She just hated being assumed to be a lesbian just because she was a little blocky, a little saggy, and a plain dresser. The Director was too muscle-bound for her tastes anyway. Now Silver, on the other paw ...

Charlie pushed Williams' file aside and opened Silver' for the fifth time since she took over FOX. The new Chief of Staff was tall, but not towering like Williams. Silver had wide shoulders and a broad chest, but not the bulging, intimidating, musculature of the Director. The photo record in his file showed that the white hairs had started sprouting at a young age. It gave him a mature, distinguished look, she thought. Even the vertical scar in his left brow added an air of savoir faire. Unnoticed by her, a drop of moisture leaked from the corner of her mouth. It landed on the green blotter that covered the Director's antique desk and was immediately absorbed.

While she was 'studying' the file the Director's secretary and body guard, the party poodle with the impossible name, entered without knocking. Charlie hastily closed the file. She did not approve of the poodle's polygamous sexual habits, or her revealing style of dress. She would have loved to dismiss the poodle immediately, but she needed someone who knew where all the files were.

There had been a long argument with Williams the night before over exactly what 'operational command' entailed, one that had to be settled by a call to the Deputy Clerk. Afterwards, the ruling having been in Charlie's favour, she was free to reassign personnel as she saw fit. She had immediately relieved the poodle of her bodyguard duties and assigned Williams one of her own dogs. The big fox was essentially under constant surveillance now. His being called away this morning was a ploy arranged by the Commissionaire of the RCMP to allow Charlie to work on the other senior personnel at FOX without interference.

"Are they assembled?" She asked, ignoring the display of cleavage the over-endowed French-Canadian poodle was making as she leaned over the desk to place a stack of personnel files down.

"Oui, Madame. Ils sont prêts." Charlie, who was barely bilingual enough to keep her senior position, frowned in irritation. The poodle had spoken nothing but French to her since she took over. But if she expected to become a Deputy Commissionaire she would need to improve her second language skills, so she tolerated it. She could not afford an official languages complaint on her file.

"Voir le premiere personne dans la bureau." Charlie replied in barely understandable French.

"Yes Madam, I will 'see' the first person in the office." The poodle responded with a snarky smile. Charlie's face went red in a combination of anger and embarrassment.

The first employee to be showed in was the Academy Psychologist, a white rat in a white lab coat. She wanted to get him on her side and figured that soliciting his opinion on the remaining FOX personnel would do the trick.

"Dr Gordon. I hear that you have done good work for the Force as well as for FOX." She did not offer a paw, and she had deliberately replaced the large, snug, overstuffed guest chairs the Director had with unpadded, wooden ones. It was her way of establishing dominance over the FOX members being called in.

"I have been called to consult with the RCMP profilers in the past." The rat sank into one of the uncomfortable chairs without waiting for permission to sit. His little smile told her that her attempt had failed in his case. "However, despite this latest interest in our affairs their interest in my opinion is singularly lacking."

"We have a positive match on the semen found on the victim and Sable's DNA, from blood samples provided by your infirmary. They probably did not feel the need to consult on such an obvious case of guilt." She shrugged.

"Sable, Marcel that is, is incapable of being the Slasher." Gordon said flatly.

"What makes you think that?"

"First of all, this latest murder does not fit the Slasher's MO. Sexual predators hardly ever stray from their own species and the previous victims were all canines."

"As far as we know." She countered. "There are exceptions to every rule, and from the witness reports it appears that this was more of a target of opportunity than one of his planned assaults. The interval between attacks was decreasing quickly, indicating that he was rapidly losing control. Psychotic predators like him are likely to attack anyone when they reach that state. And this 'Marcel', if that is his real name, has a history violence."

"He lived in a brutal environment, where it is often necessary to revert to violence for protection. But he was never malicious or cruel. My tests show that Marcel is capable of killing in self defence or to protect others but not for a cause or because we tell him too. It is one of his failings as an agent. And despite his and his mate's tendency to forget their surroundings, he is certainly not a sexual deviant, just a healthy young male with, uhm, extraordinary stamina. His protective personally prevents him from feeling sexual attraction to those in his charge. The Commissionaire should know this; it was all in the file I submitted last year to close out the investigation into the death of a bison."

"When was that ordered?" This was news to her, but years of interrogating mafia and street gang contacts allowed her to keep the surprise from her voice.

"Just before the new Commissionaire took over, during the transition phase. As you know only the Commissionaire can review investigations into special designated personnel such as senior officials and secret agents. Each new Commissionaire tries to close off as many outstanding files as possible before they begin their tenure. The incident happened just before we recruited Marcel. According to the statement from the young canine involved, the Bison, a construction contractor from Alberta in town for a convention, mistook her for a prostitute and became violent when she refused to accompany him back to his hotel. He was attempting to rape her in an alley near their den when Marcel heard her screams. The bison outweighed him by almost a hundred kilos, and had already drawn a hunting knife. An independent witness collaborated her claim that the bison attacked first, as Marcel was trying to back away with the terrified pup in his arms. The Alberta detachment of the RCMP confirmed that he had been involved in several assaults on sex trade workers back home." He concluded. "He never went to court there. Two of the alleged victims disappeared and a third decided not to testify."

"I'll look into it. You can go now." This interview was not going as planned, and she gave up trying to get him on side. His story about the bison and the Commissionaire's knowledge of it had caught her off guard. The rat gave her another irritating, knowing grin, and left without another word.

"Show the next one in." Charlie snapped into the intercom, not bothering to attempt speaking in French as her mood darkened.

The second one was the red fox with the metal arm and eye patch that she had almost run over to get into the FOX Ops Centre the day before. According to the file his name was Dongo Fett and he had been hired as a long-range sniper and general field agent. There was a reference to the file with the account of the mission he was injured on while seconded to FOX, as well as copies of his latest fitness reports. While he had initially adapted well to the Academy he appeared to be slipping lately.

He was from the States, but Charlie knew that the name Fett was originally European. She had made looking up the origins and meaning of names into a hobby. Fett could be from the Germanic family name that meant 'fat' or the British one that meant 'comely'. Seeing the scruffy, disarranged example of Vulpes vulpes that dragged its ass through the door she had to admit that while he was not fat, he was not exactly comely either.

Charlie did not think that this American late comer would have much loyalty for the former Chief of Staff, especially after reading the restricted files. That lack of commitment could be an advantage for her. If she was going to show that she could run the Academy she needed to keep a few agents that she could count on. The fox appeared to have developed a drinking problem, Charlie noted, and that made retaining him risky. But he could still be useful if they could dry him out. That would take some motivation on his part, and she believed that she had something that would not only do that but ensure Fett's loyalty at the same time.

"I see by your file here that the American Veteran's Affairs has disavowed all responsibilities for your injuries." Charlie began.

"Uh, yeah. My government did not want to acknowledge its part in the operation and ..." the fox's mind seemed to wander for a moment, "... and when FOX agreed to take me in it was unnecessary ... for them ... you know." He trailed off.

"Oh, I know. I watch all of Michael Moore's documentaries." She assured him. "Good thing that you are living in Canada now eh?"

Dongo looked confused.

Charlie leaned across the desk and tapped him on the metal arm. "Health Care, Rin Tin Tin-Man. Health care. Wouldn't want to do anything to risk that, would we?"

"Uh, no?"

"Well, let's have a little chat about that, shall we?"

It was hard getting through to him, he was severely hung over, if not actually drunk, but Charlie thought that she made her point. Be loyal to Chief Inspector Parker and stay in the land of universal health care. Piss her off and get deported back to the land of the not-so-free medical services. She dismissed him with a suggestion that he take her threat seriously and an order to report to Doctor Gordon. He had barely gotten through the door before the next interviewee pushed his way in. It was the lemur, Joel Grigori.

Charlie was determined to get rid of this one. The Academy might tolerate his hedonistic ways, but the Force had graphic artists and document experts of its own. He had a slight chance of redemption, but only if he could lead them to evidence of the silver fox's malfeasance, and only if he promised to clean up his act. Charlie explained the terms to him

"I'm not interested." The lemur answered lifelessly. "There is nothing left for me here. I'll collect my things and go today. I would have left already, but I wanted to come in and wipe all the porn I've hidden on the servers, in case, like, it's found later and someone else gets blamed."

"That is very good of you Grigori ..." Charlie started to say, but he was not finished.

"And to collect my ropes and harness from the old cafeteria in the basement. I'm going to throw them all away."

"Well, if you're sure that you don't want them anymore ..."

"And to destroy the library of yiffy DVDs I made of various employees. You don't need them, you're firing them all anyways."

"Yes, that would be bes..."

"And I should disable the hidden cameras."

"Grigori."

"And take the inflatable penguin out from under my workstation."

"I really don't need to hear ..."

"But you can keep the Kevlar dildos I made for Mademois ...."

"GET THE HELL OUT!" Charlie was up on her knuckles, leaning over the desk. Her red eyes were blazing and her wrinkled brow was furrowed in irritation.

"I, uh, can't."

"Why the hell not?"

"You, uhm, have to sign my separation slip so I can close out my pay account." The lemur held out a blue sheet of heavy gauge paper with a number of signatures on it already. Charlie snatched it from his paw. Sure enough, there was a space for the Director or their representative to sign just before the section for final clearance.

"What's this bit about having your memory wiped?" Charlie asked as she initialled the appropriate space.

"Oh, we don't do that anymore. Too many side effects. Nightmares, delusions, phantom recollections, a tendency to write bad spy fiction. We just have people sign a waiver now."

"And that keeps people quiet?"

"With Silver standing behind you examining his guns while you sign, yeah, generally." He said it with a sigh, and stared off into space. The little lemur looked so forlorn that Charlie could not help but feel pity for him.

"Where are you going to go now?" She asked him. "What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to look up a badger I know. I have the urge to travel and have an adventure or two."

The lemur sounded anything but adventuresome, but Charlie dismissed him with no further probing. He was not her problem anymore. She asked him to have the next person sent in.

That turned out to be the Polish cheetah, Geno E. Wefa. Charlie had not been able to find a surname similar to Wefa. Maybe it was a case of poor transcription at immigration when her family came over. It would not be the first time. Charlie wondered what the initial 'E' stood for, the file did not say. She glanced over it as the cat entered. Her eyes and nostrils were red, Charlie noted, like she had been crying. Not unusual when you find out your mate is a child sex killer. Charlie pretended to read for another moment however, just to make the obviously agitated feline even more nervous.

"Tell me about the one they call Sable." Charlie said from behind the file.

"He's a passionate guy," the feline sniffled and wiped her snout with the back of one paw, "but a rough one, quick to lose his temper. We live together, but just for the sex, you know?" Charlie lowered the file so that just her eyes were showing and gave the cheetah a look that said 'no, I don't know, and I don't want to'. It didn't stop the cat though.

"He yiffs around when he's out of town, like all these guys. And he's killed half of the females he's slept with, with that knife of his. Oh, it all makes sense now. The nights he disappeared, only to come back after showering at the Academy gym, asking me to wear school girl uniforms, threatening to cut me. I can't believe I slept with the guy for so long."

"I've been reading your agency file, Ms. Wefa." Charlie said as she finally put the FOX folder down on the blotter. She picked up another, one with the red RCMP logo and the word 'Secret' printed on it, as well as Wefa's name. "And our own file on you. You caused quite a stir around this town a few years back, killing a foreign agent with an antique weapon, torturing retired agents, vandalizing the Central Experimental Farm sign. You were friendly with a Polish hooker whose record was wiped, and according to our watchers, you've been laid more than the Canadian Pacific Railway tracks. You are not exactly Snow White, are you?"

"I'll admit I've got a past. I thought that I was reforming by coming here, but I can see that Silver just sucked me in with his little scheme. I wanted to be an analyst but he just wants me around to keep his little skater boy killer content. Guess that didn't work, huh?"

Charlie studied the feline, noting the piercings, the skimpy top that barely contained her bulging breasts, the denim shorts that seemed to disappear up her crotch. Only in a place like this, she thought, could someone like this actually believe they could be an analyst. Still, she could give them some insight into the little black fox's behaviour, and if she fired everyone there would be no more agency to take over. Charlie decided to keep her around, for now. She told her so.

"Oh God! Thank you! I won't let you down. I'll work hard. I'll stop sleeping around. I'll wear a bra."

"Start with a skirt." Charlie said. Just then the party poodle entered the office, unannounced again. She had on a dove grey skirt that was so tight Charlie could tell where she had gotten her last vaccination shot. The poodle dropped another file on the desk in a manner that managed to be contemptuous before she sashayed out again. Charlie saw the cheetah's eyes following the undulating buttocks out the door. "That was not a skirt." Charlie advised. "That was paint."

Wefa thanked her profusely as Charlie waved her out the door. Once she was alone again she picked up the file that the poodle had dropped on her desk and examined it. It was an RCMP staffing file, the kind that came with a new hire. She read the information on the cover. Name, Wadsworth, Henry. Age, forty-seven. Sex, male. Height, one point nine meters. Species, black caiman. What the hell is a black caiman, she wondered?

Looking up answered her question. The newcomer was standing in the doorway. It was a tall reptile with black scaly skin, except under his chin and down his chest, which was cream coloured. At least what she could see in the 'vee' of his open-necked sports shirt. He had a long snout, like a crocodile, and several sharp teeth poked out from under his upper lip. A long, muscular tail trailed behind him. His eyes were his most startling feature, they were blood red.

"You're the IT guy the Commissionaire said he was sending over?" Charlie was puzzled. When he told her to fire the Arctic fox, Kain Algorath, he had promised to send an equally talented replacement, one that was loyal to the RCMP. She had assumed that it would be a technician that had worked for the Force for some time. According to the file in front of her, it was the Brazilian's first job in Canada, but he did have an impressive résumé.

"Wadsworth. That is Anglo-Saxon in origin, isn't it?" She asked to make conversation while she perused the file. "It must not be a common name in South America."

"That it is not." The reptile replied. "But I was raised in an American orphanage, and the missionaries there named me." Charlie could tell from his accent that he had not learned English until he was an adult.

"Wasn't there an English poet named Henry Wadsworth?" She asked idly, trying to figure out how someone so recently come to Canada could have acquired the security clearance necessary to work in the RCMP IT security division.

"American, actually, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. He was quite famous as a poet and well respected as a translator. It was he I was named for."

Charlie remembered the name now. They had read The Song of Hiawatha in High school, and the Longfellow translation of Dante's Divine Comedy in college. Something about the name was tugging at the back of Charlie's mind. She closed the file but made a mental note to make a few phone calls when she was finished with the FOX interviews.

"Well, let's hope that you are as talented an analyst as he was a linguist. I'm told that the system Algorath designed is in his own unique computer language."

"Not to fear madam. I can translate anything that the young one has devised."

"My Longfellow." Charlie muttered.

* * * * * * * *

Vikki had to wait a long time for her turn to see the basset hound that the RCMP had put in charge, temporarily she hoped. She had arrived early for her appointment, just before Marcel's girl Geno went in. She had watched in amazement as the cheetah had pulled an onion and a small knife from inside her purse. Slicing a fair chunk off it, she had then crushed a sliver under her snout, sending juice up into her nose and eyes. As a result the normally hard-as-nails feline looked like she had been crying for a week straight. Geno went into the office rubbing her face with a handkerchief and sniffling miserably, but had turned to Vikki and given her a big wink just before she stepped through the door. Vikki wondered what the sneaky cat was up to.

Before Geno came out a stranger appeared. He was escorted by one of the RCMP officers that had replaced the Academy security guards. The tall black-skinned reptile handed a note and a file to Miss CC and waited by the desk, ignoring Vikki, while the poodle took it inside and then returned to her desk. As soon as Geno left the office he moved, very quickly as caimans are capable of, and entered the Director's office.

Instinctively, Vikki jumped up to stop him, but she was too far away. Miss CC, who was quite capable of pulling one of her Colt Python .357 magnums from its hiding place under the desk and blowing his head clean off, watched him enter without reacting. She turned to Vikki with a shrug.

"The basset, she has relieved me of my guard the body duties." She said with a heavy French accent by way of explanation. "It eez not my job to protect her." She went back to playing solitaire on the computer.

"Don't you have some work to do?" Vikki asked sharply. She didn't trust the poodle around Silver and did not try to hide her dislike for the over-sexed and under-dressed canine.

"Hein! No more network access." Miss CC shrugged, looking up. "And my nails are already perfect." She held out one faultlessly manicured paw. "The polish, eet eez called 'Midnight Cheery Blossom'. Tres sexy, Non?" Vikki shook her head in disgust and sat back down to wait.

After a few minutes the intercom buzzed and Chief Inspector Parker requested an escort to take the reptile over to the document section for a building pass and temporary ID card. She asked for Ruby, Vikki's codename, to be sent in at the same time. Passing close by her way in the caiman finally made eye contact with her. She almost skipped a step and tripped at the sight of his shiny red orbs. Spooky, she thought, where do they find these guys?

Inside the Director's office, a place where Vikki seldom went, the diminutive basset was seated behind the big desk, apparently immersed in Vikki's personnel file. Vikki noted that there were also an RCMP file and an Ontario Provincial Police file on the desk with her name on them. She saw the hard wooden chair and recognized the attempt to intimate her from her own police interrogation days. She ignored the chair and stood, looming over the seated hound despite the desk being between them.

"Have a seat." It was an order, not an offer.

"I'll stand." Vikki replied, meeting her head-on. "I have the feeling I won't be around long enough for my legs to get tired."

The hound put the file down on the desk, leaned back in the leather chair that was much too big for her, and regarded her with only a bit of a frown evident.

"I have no intention of firing you Ruby, or would you prefer I call you Victoria or Miss Beausoleil?" The basset waved a paw over the files scattered on the desk. "You were a cop before you came here, and a damned good one. I have a feeling that you are still a cop at heart. There is no need to ride the tails of the senior management anymore. Those days will soon be over, when the Academy becomes a branch of the Force that is. If you play your cards right you will be able to salvage some of your career and rise on your own merit. Do you get my drift, Victoria?"

Vikki got it. The basset assumed that just because she was tall, beautiful, and sleeping with the boss that she was doing it to get ahead. Now she was asking her to abandon them and sell her loyalty to the RCMP, or go down with the ship. She wanted to crank up the power ratio on her artificial paw and rip the ears off the smug little bitch, but instead she sat down on the wooden chair and crossed her wrists on her lap, the picture of submission. Silver wanted her to stay and report on what was going on. For him, and what he had done to pull her out of a destructive and depressive downward spiral, she could suppress her rage and play along.

"What did you have in mind?" She asked adding a touch of self-loathing to her voice by dredging up the memory of how she had been before Silver had rescued her, that night in the garden.

The basset looked a little sceptical at the sudden surrender, but must have been convinced enough to proceed as she laid out Vikki's new duties. While she talked Vikki kept her eyes locked on the hound's, radiating cold hate, the kind you feel when someone has you trapped into doing something you don't want to do. She did it just so that the dog didn't get too suspicious. It wasn't hard to simulate, she did feel trapped.

By the time the basset was finished the picture was clear. Vikki would retain the title of senior agent, but none of the responsibilities. She would be in charge of the two remaining junior agents, Geno and Dongo. They would be given a couple of fairly easy assignments. Their success would show the Deputy Clerk that FOX was still effective under RCMP management. More teams would be created, made up of RCMP officers who would transfer to the new sub-agency, to take on more difficult assignments. Vikki could keep her own team or chose to follow Parker up the leadership ladder, if she desired, but she would never have any real authority in FOX.

Vikki thought it over, not because she seriously considering taking the deal, but because the hound would expect her to. Jumping on the offer too eagerly would be suspicious, and there were some factors that needed careful consideration.

First of all there was her relationship with Geno. Although she acknowledged the cheetah's native analytical skills she still thought that the feline was too wild for field work. But the cat had stayed behind to take care of Vikki's son during the affair with the mad platypus last year, had even been prepared to give up field work to raise the kit if things had turned out badly. Vikki felt that she owed her something for that. And the feline was obviously up to something, pulling a fast one on the unsuspecting basset no doubt. She did have talent, Vikki had to admit. She supposed that she could stand to tutor her until Geno learned a little self-discipline.

Dongo Fett was another matter. He had been Vikki's junior agent for almost a year now, but she did not seem to be able to help him with his personal problems. He had been slowly sinking into the bottle since the affair in Saskatchewan and there seemed to be no way of stopping it. At first she thought that he would get over it after a good binge. Then she tried some friendly counselling. Finally she had referred him to the Academy Psychologist, Doctor Gordon, but Dongo was not responding to those sessions either. Vikki had finally brought the matter up with Silver, who had some experience on both ends of bottle, in hopes that he would be able to find a way to salvage the ex-sniper's career. But their current troubles had interfered with that plan.

Today Dongo looked worse than ever. Vikki had run into him, almost literally, as she arrived at the headquarters building. Dongo had been on his way out, presumably after being interviewed by Parker, and had his head down as he rushed out the main doors. Vikki had grabbed him by the arms to avoid a head-on collision and almost been overcome by the smell of old whiskey and vomit coming off him. The look in his eyes had been worse, though, like he was lost, tormented, and betrayed. He had shoved her rudely aside and stumbled down the stairs without a backwards glance.

Vikki had serious doubts about his ability to function on even the simplest of missions. But should she tell the basset that? If she recommended grounding Dongo would there still be enough agents left to convince the Deputy that all was well? If not, would Parker turf her and Geno as well and start fresh with all-police teams? Who would be left to report back to Silver then? Vikki decided not to risk it, and told the Chief Inspector that she agreed.

"Good." The hound leaned back in Williams' over-sized chair with a smile of triumph on her face. "You can call me Charlie."

* * * * * * * *

Kain and Ophelia had spent most of the night making love in the dark, behind closed curtains. Now that it was daytime he kept then closed because he was certain that he would be watched, and he did not want word of the supposedly dead cloud leopard's resurrection leaking out. He also did not anyone to know that she had brought him the only off-site laptop capable of accessing the FOX network without being detected.

It was her conduit to receive her orders from FOX and to ask permission when approached for a commercial assassination. She was also able to access the FOX databases to research her targets, both assigned and private hires. The only thing she did not use it for was to travel in the artificial confines of Talia World or to bank the fees she collected as the Perfect Stalker. She wasn't allowed to cruise porn sites on it either, because it was after all, government property and therefore under the same acceptable use policies as the computers used by thousands of bored and horny bureaucrats in Ottawa every day.

Kain had designed the system himself. As the resident genius of the keyboards he had been trusted to create an access portal for this laptop that would be completely undetectable. It was supposed to have certain restriction on its access, but Ophelia had picked up a lot from her part-time lover and managed to overcome those firewalls with a few of the tricks he had shown her. Now that he had his paws on it all of the files would be his for the taking. Provided no one had discovered the portal and closed it off, of course.

"We are going to have to be careful, Cass." He told Ophelia as she leaned over his shoulder and watched him work the system. "Neither Silver nor Gold will be anxious to expose your existence to the RCMP, but they may bring in an expert of their own to analyze the system, look for hidden files or old files that were supposedly destroyed. They have a really good forensic program they can use for the job."

"Good enough to detect you?" She asked.

"Probably, I wrote it for them. It wasn't designed to look for this kind of intrusion but they may stumble on it by ... wait a sec."

"What's up?"

"Some signal just brushed by on a parallel channel. The kind I would use to look for remote access like this. Someone is searching for a backdoor."

"Hackers looking to break in while the guard is away?" She squeezed his shoulders with her big paws and her tail came around to caress his cheek.

"No." He answered, too puzzled to notice her embrace. "It's coming from inside the system. Someone is doing exactly what I would do if I took over someone else's network from the inside, checking to make sure no one is watching before I start changing stuff."

"What would they want to do that would need that level of caution?" She wondered.

"That's what I am going to find out." Kain pushed his glasses back, wove his digits together and cracked his knuckles loudly before returning them to the keyboard. His digits flew over the keyboard as his eyes darted from one part of the screen to the next. "Come on, bastard. You can't hide and seek at the same time. Come to papa."

Ophelia saw that his tongue was sticking out of the side of his mouth. That and the mumbling meant that she had lost him for the next few hours. Anything she said or did before he was finished his little quest would just be a distraction. She patted him on the back and headed for the door.

"I'll go see what I can find out the traditional way." She called as she left the room.

"What way is that?" He asked without looking up.

"I'll talk to people."

"Won't that be dangerous? You're supposed to be dead."

"Exactly. You, Silver and everyone else will be watched, but not me. I'm a ghost." She admired the grey-on-grey cloud-like patterns of her fur as she passed a mirror in the hallway. She thought that she kind of looked like a ghost, a fit, furry, busty, and sexy ghost.

"How are you going to get out of the house?"

"I'll swim."

"Oh, okay. See you in a few hours." He said absently.

Ophelia had not been kidding. The mansion was surrounded by open land, so that robbers could not sneak up on it, and if anyone was watching Kain they would see her leaving easily enough. But the house had been built in an age when municipal water and sewage did not exist, and it had its own well and an old sewage conduit that led to the nearby Ottawa River. The pipe had been sealed off after it became illegal to dump waste straight into the river, but it had collapsed over the years, right under the greenhouse, which this generation of Algorath's did not use. Kain and his brothers used to challenge each other to see who could swim through it to the river bank the quickest, never once considering the fate in store for anyone who got stuck in the flooded cylinder. He had shown her the big wooden board that covered the hole in the pipe.

Ophelia stuffed her clothes and a towel inside a waterproof bag, one of her essential traveling accessories, and donned a tight one-piece bathing suit. There was a secluded private beach where the tube came out where she could dry off, change, and leave the bag for the return trip.

The concrete conduit was dark, but it was straight, and clean after years of disuse. She was as slim as the young Algorath males had been when they were teens and she expected that she would have no problem squeezing through. AT the entrance the fur on her shoulders barely brushed the sides, so she should be good to go.

Ophelia crawled for almost a hundred meters before her paws touched water. The river was low this year. She slipped into the water and discovered a minor miscalculation, Kain and his brothers did not have breasts that would impede the flow. She was acting like the plunger on a syringe. Only so much could get around her and she had to go slowly, otherwise it was like trying to blow all the water out of a garden hose. She backed out and took a few deep breaths to fill her lungs before attempting it again. This time she made steady progress until she felt the edge where the tube ended and then she pulled herself out and up quickly. Thank God the river was so low.

Ophelia stripped off the suit and dried herself as best she could. She spied a few golf balls in the shallow water. The Kanata Golf and Country Club bordered the Algorath property here by the river. Hopefully no one would come looking for their balls while she was naked, but the nearby clubhouse was part of her plan. After getting dressed she checked to make sure that the way was clear and then strolled nonchalantly over to the clubhouse and into the Female's change room. Exiting on the other side she looked like just another suburban trophy wife still damp from a post-game shower. She asked the doorman to call a cab for her.

She rode the cab to the Bayshore Mall, where she could switch to the Ottawa bus system. She purchased a day pass as she had a number of stops to make that day.

* * * * * * * *

Vikki left the Director's office with a worried look on her face. How was she going to mange to stay around long enough to get information to help Silver and sabotage the basset's efforts to run the Academy at the same time? If she put a team together and conducted a couple of successful missions the RCMP would have the proof they needed to take over permanently. If she screwed up to badly she could be fired and blamed for the failure. Then they would lose their toehold on the Academy. First things first, she thought. Let's see what we have left to work with.

The building passes, which everyone had to wear inside the headquarters complex, had been modified since the takeover. Those allowed into the operational zone now had a red sticker on their pass. Vikki had been awarded one when she agreed to work for Parker, like a gold star from the teacher, she fumed. Miss CC has told her on the way out that most of the staff was no longer allowed inside the headquarters. Gus the Dispatcher was on leave. Rusty the Combat Instructor had been reassigned. Bill Hanlan was suspended pending an investigation into false statements on his application; he had claimed that he was single when he was really married. Vikki was certain that it was just an excuse, they were getting rid of or controlling everybody who had access to the restricted files and a link with Silver. She wondered where it would all end.

She showed her annotated pass to the new guard at the entrance to the Ops Centre and he allowed her to go inside. She did not recognize half of the creatures in there. A few of the lower ranking analysts remained, but the Duty Officer's desk was occupied by a massive mastiff and the scaly black reptile she had seen go into the Director's office sat at Kain Algorath's workstation. Text and code scrolled past faster than she could read, but the caiman was having no trouble keeping up by the looks of it.

In one corner there was a circle of grey jumpsuits. The cropped ears and tails of the occupants indicated that they were RCMP SWAT officers. Vikki caught a flash of white and orange from amongst them. Oh no, she thought, she wouldn't, would she?" Vikki moved in closer, where her height allowed her to peer over the shoulders of the bulky SWAT team members. There, surrounded by horny dobermans and rottweilers, stood Geno.

The cheetah was dressed in what could be called a skirt and a blouse, if one were auditioning for the role of the prostitute in Les Miserables that is. The skirt was slit high on one side, exposing a mile or so of thigh. The blouse was built like a corset on the bottom, and had plenty of ruffles and folds in it, but all of the material was positioned below the midline of her breasts. They looked like two melons trying to escape a shopping bag. From Vikki's and the dogs point of view, the cleavage ran all the way down to her navel.

"Miss WeFA: Come with me please." Vikki said sternly. Geno squeezed between two dogs that seemed unable to give her enough room, or unwilling to. Her breasts were squashed against one and the other had her ass jammed against his crotch. Vikki reached over, jerked her out from between them and hauled her from the Ops Centre.

"Hey you could be a nun with that kind of technique." Geno said lightly as Vikki dragged her down the hallway toward the exit doors. "We're not going to your office?" Geno inquired as they passed out of the restricted area. Vikki ignored her.

The tall slim vixen lugged the voluptuous feline through the cafeteria, across the lounge, out the door to the patio and through the gate in the fence to the woods behind the Academy. She led her down a narrow overgrown trail, over a ridge and down a gully until the trail ended at an old gazebo. She sat Geno down on the small bench in the middle and put a digit to her mouth to indicate silence. She spent the next five minutes searching the gazebo and its surroundings.

Satisfied that there was no surveillance devices present, Vikki sat down beside Geno, who was gazing down at a pond surrounded by several tiers of rock garden. Three-quarters of it was filled with blooms and greenery. The rest stood bare, but a wheelbarrow with a shovel leaning on it indicated that someone was still working on it.

"Is this Silver's garden?" Geno asked with wonder. "Is that the pond where he boiled the Perfect Stalker? This must be the bench where you ..."

"Yes." Vikki interrupted. "Yes it is his garden. That is the pond. And this is just a bench. I brought you here so we could talk without being overheard, not as a tourist."

"You don't have to get all pissy about it."

"Pissy about it? I'm your superior and you are supposed to take my lead. What the hell were pulling on that basset back there?"

"I figured I'd be fired by someone like Parker unless I came on as a victim. I've got her convinced that I'm the sex slave of a perverted little killer. It's what she wanted to believe anyway, she doesn't have a real high opinion of males in general, and FOX agents in particular. I figured that if I could manage to keep my job here I could get access to the network and maybe find out what was going on here. And I was almost there when you interrupted." Geno finished with a scowl.

"The only place you almost were was under the situation desk with those dobbies. How did you get into the restricted area? They didn't give you a red sticker, did they?"

"Naw, I just smooged up to some of the new guards and they gave me a little tour. A few more minutes of coming on to them and I would have had them eating out of my paw."

"I've seen how you come on to people. It's supposed to be an expression, but you take it literally." Vikki snapped back

"You have never forgiven me for that incident on the Queensway when you were teaching Marcel how to drive, have you?"

Vikki shuddered at the memory of being trapped in the passenger seat of her car, broken down on the side of the highway while Marcel and Geno yiffed in the back seat, oblivious to her, the rush hour traffic, and the horns of approving males in the cars around them. That had been a truly horrible day. But not nearly as horrible as that several days later when she was certain that her son and lover were going to die in a flood while she was being hunted down by a demented platypus. Marcel had saved her, but Geno's quick thinking had saved Ottawa and everyone Vikki held dear. She realized that she had never really forgiven Geno for that incident in the car and she felt bad because of it. The anger that filled her a moment before fled, and she slumped down on the bench beside the feisty feline.

"I'm sorry I yelled at you, Geno, and I do forgive you for the car ... thing." Vikki said as she stared at her feet. "You have been good for Marcel, you are a great analyst and you stepped in to take care of Leslie when I needed you. I'm sorry I ever doubted you or made you feel bad. I guess that I was a little jealous."

"Hey, don't mind me." Geno took Vikki's artificial paw in hers and squeezed it. She knew that the sensors would transmit the sensations like it was a real paw. "I got hard edges sometimes, I know. I've been pushing your buttons, trying to make you lose your cool cuase ... cause I just wanna be like you." Geno looked up, biting her tongue, her bright green eyes moist, and found that Vikki's orbs were brimming with tears too. With a soft cry the two embraced on the bench.

"I'm sorry." Vikki said wiping her eyes with the back of her paw. "I'm just worried about Silver and Marcel."

"Me too." Geno sniffed. "And I'm sorry for all the trouble I've given you. The thing in the car, the thing back in the Ops Centre, what we did to the crib."

"The crib? Leslie's crib?" Vikki's emerald green eyes had gone as hard as diamonds. "Leslie's five thousand dollar antique Italian crib?"

"I, uh, guess Silver forgot to mention that one. But Joel fixed it, when he came to install the restraining system."

"You let that perverted little money within a hundred meters of my baby?" Geno could swear that she could see steam coming off the top of Vikki's head for moment. She closed her mouth, a little too late perhaps, and chewed her lip apprehensively.

Vikki closed her eyes and seemed to deflate. "It all ended well. What we need to do now is plan for the future." She said, almost to herself. Then she turned back to Geno. "Good work staying on the inside. It doubles our chances of finding a way out of this mess. We'll split out efforts. You work on the guards and the other new staff, see what you can find out. Check out that reptile that seems to be analysing our computer network. He gives me the creeps and I'm sure that he's up to no good."

"What will you be doing?" Geno asked as she stood, eager to get to work.

"I have to salvage what's left of our agents. Dongo Fett is going through a rough spell and I have to help him out of it."

"I heard. How are you going to do that?"

"I don't know, but there's no one else left to do it, and he's my responsibility." And he always was, she realized. So why haven't I acted sooner? The first step, she now realized, as to find him and be there for him, to intervene before he could get drunk again. Not as his supervisor, but as his friend.

"Go back to the headquarters." She told Geno. "If they ask where I am, tell them I'm conducting some dry training with one of my junior agents.

* * * * * * * *

It took Joel a few hours to clean out his office in the technical support building. Then he had to go around the Academy and retrieve a number of other items. Finally, he packed up things that he had been working on for various members of the agency. Some were work related, like a set of fake identification for Vikki Beausoleil. Most were private commissions: a new leather harness for Tancred Williams to wear when he went clubbing in the rainbow festooned district of downtown; a set of custom dildos for Miss CC, manufactured from the same Kevlar and carbon fibre material that he made Marcel's skateboards from. Thinking of Marcel's skateboards, Joel picked up one that was almost ready. It had been shaped, sanded and painted with the logo of the Academy front company that sponsored 'Anthony Foxx'. All it needed was to have the wheels mounted. Joel sighed and put it back on the workbench. Marcel won't be needing this now, he thought.

He left the Academy with his tail and head down, still determined to find the bible-thumping badger. According to the report Kain had leaked to him, the old fellow was smuggling bibles into the Soviet Union back when that could get you a life sentence in the gulag, or worse. The badger was bound to be involved in something equally dangerous and adventuresome now. Joel intended to join up with him, offer his services as a forger. Surely the badger could use a fake passport or a customs certificate or two?

By joining up with the badger Joel hoped to find the truth about his parents, about what happened in Finland, and about the disturbing dreams that continued to disrupt his sleep. There had been another one last night. In it Joel was dressed in an expensive black suit, with a black silk shirt and a black tie. He had been on the roof of a tall building, looking through the scope on a futuristic rifle. The cross hairs were centred on a heavyset Kodiak bear, a leading figure in the Russian Mafia his mind told him. The bear was lunching with his family on the balcony of his penthouse condo, in a building several stories lower than the one Joel was on. His wife was with him. His son and daughter were there too. He bounced his sole grandchild on his knee.

In his dream Joel had had pulled the trigger and watched as the head of the Russian bear exploded, splattering his shocked family. No witnesses, a voice whispered, and Joel had systematically picked off the adults one by one without remorse. The dream ended as he centred the sights on the toddler where it sat wailing amongst the bodies and he felt his digit squeezing the trigger.

Joel had woken up bathed in sweat. A neighbour was pounding on the wall that separated the two apartments, demanding that he be quiet. He must have been screaming. The neighbour probably mistook the screams for certain other activities that Joel had promised not to conduct in his place anymore. Thank God for Barney, who had an isolated and well insulated house. Joel and Barney had converted an old nautilus machine into a vertical rack with leather straps, chains, and a device Joel called the 'Anal-ilator'. Just the thought of the well-lubed protrusions sliding into his tailhole made Joel feel all gooshy inside; or it used to. Now he was ready to give it all up and dedicate his soul to whatever form of Christian God the badger worshiped in exchange for some peace of mind.

So as a cleansing act Joel disposed of all his personnel devices. He tossed out the penis enlargers, the butt plugs, the feather boa and the nurse's uniform that he kept in his locker at work. He dumped all of his leather harness, straps, whips and shackles into the Salvation Army bin in the parking lot; he knew several members there that would find good use for them. He deleted all of the porn from both his personal and work computers, and he placed his extensive collection of DVDs in a bag to be burned in the Academy incinerator. He did this not without regret. He had truly put the blood and sweat and, well, semen, of many long and hard hours into his hobbies. How would he ever live without some of his classic videos like 'Little Dungeon on the Prairie', 'The Anal-Team', 'Bound (and gagged) for Glory'?

He would just have to get used to it, he supposed. After all, if Priests could live without sex so could he. He sealed the last burn bag, placed it in the hall by the elevator to be collected later, and left without a backward glance.

Now his only problem was where to find the badger. The fellow had always found him before. Since most of the encounters occurred on Preston Street Joel decided to start there. He went up and down both sides between Dow's Lake and the Asian district several times, until his feet were sore and tired, without spotting him. Maybe he was in one of the restaurants, Joel wondered. He looked in the ones that did not have liquor licences first, the badger avoided alcohol, tobacco and most other forms of entertainment Joel recalled, but he was nowhere to be seen.

By late afternoon Joel needed a beer badly. There was a pub that had over two hundred brands near the top of Preston. It had a medieval abbey motif that Joel found appealing at the moment, so he headed there.

There were a number of folks on the patio, there always were on a sunny day like this thanks to the nearby government office buildings, but Joel was too hot to sit outside. He choose a small booth decorated like a confessional and ordered a Steam Whistle lager.

"You're gonna burn in hell for drinking the Devil's barley, ya ring-tailed little degenerate. Mad dogs and English." The outburst was followed by a loud belch. Joel looked across the room to where the voice had come from. It was the badger, sitting in a similar booth, clutching a beer jug; an empty beer jug. From the looks of him it was not his first jug today.

"Ya heard me, ya black-faced prevert ... perbert ... sinner!" The badger called loudly, then added, "Nothing new under him."

Joel rushed over to the other booth, signalling the waitress to bring his beer there and simultaneously trying to shush the belligerent badger.

"No more for him." The waitress, a blonde mink in a tight black body stocking said as she plunked Joel's beer down as far from the badger as she could. "He's had three jugs already."

"Away with ya, ya slut." The badger roared. "Going out in such indecent lack of dress, tempting a male into sin. Away with ya I said, before I lose the last of my self conprol ... compost ... before I yiff ya right here on the table!"

"I'm calling the manager if you can't keep him quiet." The mink declared as she turned away, flicking her tail insolently.

"Jesus, what got into you?" Joel exclaimed.

"Don't be adding to your time in hell by taking the lord's name in vain."

"Keep your voice down. What the hell ... heck is going on?"

The badger clutched Joel's forearm in one powerful paw. "I have somethin' to tell ya. But I can't tell ya. Loathsome canker lies in sweetest bud"

"What? You're not making any sense." Joel tried to pull his arm away but the badger was too strong for him.

"It's all lies, all lies. And I know who's doing it. I don't know why but I know who. You have to tell Auvert."

"Tell over? Tell who over what?"

The badger struggled to speak more clearly. "Au-ver-te, a French name. A big silver fox, with a scar, right here." The badger poked itself in the left eye twice before indicating a vertical cut on the brow above it.

Joel recalled reading the name somewhere. In the file Kain had leaked! Auvert was Silver's name before he became a senior agent. But he had never heard anyone call Silver that, not as long as he could remember.

"What am I supposed to tell the silver fox?" Joel asked suspiciously.

"You have to tell him who is doing this, and in the morning we will remember them. Then he'll know why, and what to do about it."

"Why don't you tell him? I'll give you his home number"

"I can't tell him. Laughter without sorrow. I swore not to go near him."

"Well, can you tell me who it is so that I can tell him?"

"No! Be ye angry and sin not!" The anguished badger almost screamed. Joel looked around to see if the waitress had heard the outcry, but the only creature in sight was a funny looking feline in tee-shirt, shorts and sandals sitting in the booth Joel had abandoned. It looked like a tiger but it was too small, the tail was too thick, and while it had stripes showing on the neck and arms it had spots on the legs. Joel could not see its eyes because it was wearing large dark glasses, even though the room was dark. It was reading the menu.

"I can't tell ya! I can't tell anyone! I swore! My mistress' eyes!" The badger said in a choked voice. "I made a deal with the devil to bring the word of God to the masses. It seemed like a reasonable deal at the time. My life and freedom, free to bring bibles in and out as long as I could get them past customs. Just shake up a few sinners in return, make them leave their evil lair of iniquity. No one was to get hurt. Tell a few lies, shake up a pervorted ... prevacated ... dirty bunch of godless heathens." The badger collapsed sobbing on the table, knocking the glass beer jug off the edge. Joel caught it deftly.

"I swore on the holy bible that I would not tell his name, mad dogs and English. My faith keeps me from uttering that one word, laughter without sorrow. Even though I know now that the nameless one, loathsome canker lies in sweetest bud, has tricked me like the devil he is. I'll burn in hell for an eon for the sins I've helped him to commit, all in the Lord's name, and I still can't bring myself to speak it, be ye angry and sin not. But if I can make ya understand," the badger grabbed Joel by the shoulders and pulled him across the table, "and in the morning we will remember them. If ya can see the light, and the silver fox can stop him, my mistress' eyes, maybe my punishment will be reduced.

"You're babbling." Joel said harshly. "You're drunk. What do your mistress' eyes have to do with this? Or mad dogs? They're all mad! The whole world has gone mad!" Lack of sleep and emotional stress were taking their toll on the poor lemur. He wanted the truth but all he found was a Baptist badger bent on quoting Shakespeare, the bible, the prayer of remembrance and God knows what else.

The badger looked forlorn at Joel's outburst, like all hope had drained from him. "My mistress' eyes ... my mistress' eyes are ... are nothing ... nothing like ... like .... Aaghhh!" He shut his eyes tight like he was in physical pain and released Joel. He slumped in the corner of the booth. "Nothing like ... nothing ... like ... the ..." his voice trailed off.

The badger started to gag like he was about to throw up. Joel checked the room again. The waitresses were still avoiding them, and had not seated anyone else nearby. Even the strange looking cat had disappeared. Joel didn't blame him, he wanted to disappear himself.

"Hey, buddy." Joel reached over and shook the badger. "If you're gonna start drinking like that you better learn where to find the nearest washroom. Come on, get yourself up. It's over that way." Joel helped the heavyset creature to his feet and pointed him in the right direction. The badger set off, bouncing off the stalls and tables like a pinball on his way to the gutter. An appropriate metaphor, Joel reflected.

Just before he turned into the hallway with the sign that read "Washrooms" above it, the badger stopped, straightened, and turned back to face Joel.

"Heed my words!" He cried, rising an arm to point like Moses on the mount. "Heed my words!"

This guy is nuttier than a squirrel's breakfast, Joel thought. He sank back down onto the bench. So much for my quest to find the truth. Now what do I do? The sense of purpose he had when he had decided to leave the Academy had fled. He finished his beer in silence.

When he was done he looked around for a waitress. They were gathered by the front door, their backs to him. He suddenly realized that several minutes had passed since the badger had gone to the washrooms. Joel thought that he had better check on the old fellow. If it was his first time drinking he may have passed out in the stall and be choking on his vomit. He could use a piss anyway.

The door was jammed and Joel had to shove hard to inch it open. When he had created a gap wide enough for his slim form he slipped through and discovered why the door had been so hard to open; the badger's body was blocking it. At first Joel thought that the bible smuggler had passed out against it, but when he tried to roll him over he saw the wire that was buried in his neck. It had cut through the flesh and muscle, exposing a pink gap in his black and white fur. There was hardly any blood. No blood meant that he was already dead before the wire cut through, Joel recalled from hearing agents talk about such things in the lounge over the years. The near decapitation later was a sign of a particularly brutal killer.

Joel heard sirens in the distance, but he ignored them, he was the first on the scene and he hadn't called 911.

Had the badger been crazy? Joel wondered. Someone certainly wanted to shut him up. What should he do now? What would Silver do? Joel was surprised to find himself calling on the image of his former mentor, but if what the badger said was true, then everything that had happened was a lie. How could that be? The files were in the most tamper-proof databank in the country. But, why would Kain have given Dongo and me access? Could someone equally as good have faked the files just to make Silver's most faithful followers hate him? Who could hate Silver enough to not only destroy the Academy he loved, but the faith of everyone who knew him?

And what about the deaths? Silver had admitted to murdering the cloud leopard. Marcel's picture was on the news. Joel knew what it took to fake a high quality video like that, and he was pretty sure that it was real. But W was still in charge when silver was supposed to have killed Ophelia without sanction, not Williams. W would never let something like that happen, Joel realized, so there must be some explanation. And just because Marcel was in the apartment where the girl was murdered didn't mean that he did it. After all, if the cops walked in here now and found me standing over this corpse they would probably assume that I had something to do with ... Joel suddenly realized that the sirens had not gone by, they had only gotten louder, much louder.

A chill ran down his spine as the certainty that the police were coming straight here settled in. The badger knew who was responsible for all this! Joel had to find the name. He pawed through the dead adventurer's pockets as quickly as he could, but they were all empty. The killer had beaten him to whatever was in there. But would he have the name written down? If he could not say it he probably couldn't write it either. What was it he was babbling about earlier? Bits of quotes and incomplete sayings, all pointing to something, some word, a word that would tell them who was behind this.

Joel grabbed a sheet of paper towel from the rack beside him and pulled a pen from the pocket of his pants. He began to scribble furiously, his mind aching to remember the exact words the badger had said to him.

"My mistress's eyes." He mumbled. "Mad dogs and English. Laughter without ... without sorrow. And in the morning we ... we shall ... we will remember them." What else? Something about flowers, something about sin. What could they all have in common? Joel stuffed the paper into his pocket as the sound of the siren died, replaced by the rush of heavy booted feet and shouts of the police.