FSE

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"This fuckin' town..."

Officer Morgan squatted down, looking over at the sprawled out body in front of him. The old groundhog grunted as he rose back up, feeling the creak of joints that reminded him of every single one of his fifty seven years of life. He pulled a notepad out of his pocket and started jotting down notes, waving his younger partner over.

"All right, you wanna fill me in on the story?"

Deputy Rummel winced, reluctantly stepping closer. New on the force, the squirrel lived up to every imaginable stereotype of his species as he confronted the first dead body he'd seen in his budding career. Truth be told, he'd mostly joined the force after deciding that education wasn't much for him, and at his parents' insistence. Slight of build and rather anxious, getting put on traffic duty was exactly what he wanted. Where he had hoped he would avoid scenes like this.

"Um, okay, so!" the jittery rodent began. "I found a body."

"...and?"

"And... that's him!"

The groundhog rubbed at his face. "All right, let's try that again. So, you found a body. Then what happened? I'm guessing there were some other steps between that and calling it in."

"Oh! Right! Right," Rummel said, nodding rapidly. "Well, at first I tried to wake him up. I thought maybe someone passed out drunk. That happens a lot."

"The blood didn't tip you off?"

The squirrel frowned, his whole face scrunching up. "I was getting to that. So I saw the blood, realized he was... you know... and so I started asking around if anyone saw anything!"

"Okay..."

"Not much, unfortunately," he continued, still keeping some distance from the scene itself. It was early in the morning, so there wasn't too much of a crowd gathered just yet, but several passersby were stopping on the opposite side of the tape to see what was going on.

"Did you get anything at all?" Officer Morgan asked, starting to lose his temper. "Or did you just call and wait for us to come in and do all the police work?"

Deputy Rummel flinched. "No! I mean, there just wasn't anything useful, is all! A couple folks said they heard a scuffle but it's not like fights don't happen out here. One said she saw a guy in a hoodie go running out of the Alley but just thought it was a robbery and wanted to stay out of it."

The groundhog whistled through his teeth, waving his hand for his young partner to come over closer. It took a few moments, but the squirrel eventually forced his legs to carry him next to the body.

"Okay, time to get some real police learnin' here. What do we got? What do you see here?"

Rummel looked down at the prone form. "I dunno... there's a lotta blood..." he said sheepishly, uneasily.

"Right. You said the neighbor thought it was a robbery. Does it look like a robbery to you?"

The squirrel glanced around the scene. "I don't know," he admitted.

"Look at his back pocket. What's there?"

The prone body lay sprawled out awkwardly, face down on the concrete in a small alley alongside a smoke shop behind a dumpster. The squirrel squinted, gingerly leaning over, taking a glance at the backside of the corpse, the jeans he was wearing.

"It's a wallet," he said.

Officer Morgan nodded. "Mmhm. You think if this was a robbery, that would still be there? Put on your gloves, take a look and see if he's got ID in there."

Wincing, the squirrel let out a pitiful whine that he desperately hoped would earn some mercy from his superior officer. When that didn't work, he reluctantly, bent down, carefully removing the wallet as if he was expecting the dead body to leap up and grab him.

"Uh... Chris. Christopher Jordan," he said, reading from the card inside. "Twenty two, jackrabbit, local. Jeez, that name's familiar. I think I might have gone to high school with this guy..."

"All right, don't start gettin' all sentimental," the heavy groundhog chided. "Gonna make the rest of this a lot harder. Now take a look at him. Look at the wound. Up close. What does that look like to you?"

With another pleading look and a whimper, Deputy Rummell squatted down to get a better look at the wound that the hare had suffered. The metallic stench of blood filled his nose, and it took everything he had to stop from gagging. The cold air and being outside might have kept the smell itself from being overpowering, but the younger officer was not at all numbed to it.

"Er... well, it looks like... his neck? He got stabbed?"

Morgan shook his head. "Not quite, but you're close. C'mon. This is important. Get your twitchy-ass nose down there and see what you see."

The anxious squirrel swallowed, took a deep breath, and leaned in further. With the brown fur all matted down by dried blood and the awkward position, it wasn't immediately clear what he was seeing, but there were just enough details to make it out.

"Looks like... fang wounds?"

"There you got, you got it. Seems your friend Chris got himself bit."

Deputy Rummel immediately rose to his feet, shuddering, his hands flailing all around to try and clear the air near him of any remnants of death.

"Bit?? But that... that doesn't even happen anymore! Who'd do that??"

The groundhog kept jotting notes in his little book, nodding. "Exactly. That ain't something you see all that often. I been around for thirty years, only ever got a handful of fatal bites. Less still like that. He didn't bleed out, doesn't look like he suffered any other serious injuries, so what do you think killed him?"

The small rodent looked downward a bit, the wheels in his head turning. His partner let him think, not wanting to give him the answer. He had to come up with it on his own.

"...poison?" he ventured.

"Well, venom, but yeah. Rare as hell to see one like this in the wild. Every venomous species is supposed to have their glands removed after they're born."

Rummel was shocked, but then had a realization.

"Hey! If... if that's how he died, that means it's like... in his system, right? So we can trace it?"

"Ehh... maybe," the groundhog replied, bobbing his head faintly. "Ain't like we got a whole database. Like I said, we shouldn't have anyone runnin' around who's still got juice, but if they've ever been in the system, we might be able to find a match. Now, tell me, why would anyone get up close and personal, bite the vic on the goddamn neck, and leave their wallet behind?"

That question was a lot easier to answer. "...means it was personal."

Morgan nodded again. "Mm-hm. Bingo. Ol' Chris here made an enemy outta whoever did this, and it must have been pretty goddamn deep for it to end that way. We might be able to at least get some answers outta any family or friends he had. Only nice thing about this? Suspect list is real easy to cut down. C'mon, let's let the cleanup crew do their thing. That was good work."

The squirrel nodded eagerly, wanting to exit the scene as quickly as possible.

"Okay, yeah! Fuck, I really hope I don't see another body anyt-augh!"

Suddenly Deputy Rummel went sprawling, tumbling down to the pavement and scrambling back up to his feet.

"What the hell was that?" Officer Morgan said, fighting between laughing hysterically and being furious.

"I was trying to step over him!!"

"Go around him, ya dumb kid!" the groundhog chastized, giving into the laughter. "Wow... yeah, let's keep you on parking tickets. Jeez. You didn't get any blood on you, right?"

The squirrel looked down at his pants and shoes, not seeing any stains or splatters. "No, no I think I'm good. Knocked his hat off, though," he said, looking back at the body, its face more visible after the collision.

"...uh, Dave?"

"What's up?"

"I think he's... got some other wounds."

Officer Morgan frowned, stepping back over to see what in the world his younger partner was looking at.

"What the hell are you talkin' about? If there were other wounds on him we would have seen 'em, they wouldn't be hiding under his..."

The chubby groundhog's sentence got cut short, his gaze landing upon something that did not belong. Slowly, he lowered himself down, squinting. The jackrabbit did indeed have injuries that they hadn't seen before, covered by his ball cap. In between his long ears, there was a pair of circular lesions of some kind. They didn't look fresh, but they weren't too old either. Glancing closer, Officer Morgan saw that they were burn wounds, the flesh seared and fur charred away, and that they had clearly been done deliberately.

"What are they?" the young deputy asked, anxious.

"I ain't got a fuckin' clue," Officer Morgan replied, "but I got a feeling this case just got a lot more complicated."

Far to the west, Barbara Lewis was up before sunrise yet again. She hadn't gotten a full night's sleep at all since Marcus had run off, but his call the night before left her more rattled than ever. She called off all of her upcoming appointments, telling her patients that a family emergency was pulling her away, and made the decision not to go back to work until Marcus was home. Charles, meanwhile, was fighting to keep a semblance of normality and refused to stop working. That was Charles. Focus on work to distract from the stress of life.

That morning, Barbara was perched on the couch in their opulent living room, her second cup of coffee in her feathered fingers. Marcella hadn't come in yet, and that meant she would be fending for herself, meaning her fancy risetto was replaced with (horror of horrors) a pot of drip coffee. Not that the small bird was thinking too much about her choice of "breakfast," anyway. Her attention was where it had been every day for the past week, locked onto the news, hoping for something. Anything.

"A developing story coming out of Boston today as Adrian Lucas, known philanthropist and owner of Heaven Hearts Hybrids, an adoption agency for children of mixed-breed heritage, was found dead in his home late last night of an apparent gunshot wound to the chest."

Barbara Lewis's blood ran cold and her beak rattled. The previous night's conversation came back all at once. Marcus's vague mentions of having to do something. How nervous he sounded. The wind in the background.

"Marcus... please tell me you didn't..."

On the television, the slender gazelle continued.

"Authorities were called in by Lucas on reports of a break-in, but by the time they arrived it was too late. According to Police Chief David Dwyer, no robbery occurred and nothing was noted to be missing, leaving the motive behind the murder a mystery. However, a handgun was recovered from the scene and scales recovered from the weapon were found to match Aaron Dixon, a hybrid himself with an extensive criminal record. Dixon has been taken into custody and is being held on bond."

Back in Boston, Dylan Greaves was getting ready for work. After Marcus had run off, he found himself struggling to keep focus and had gotten quite the earful from his boss. Ever since that kid showed up, it was like his whole world had been thrown into chaos. The simple schedule he'd fallen into, the comfortable social club, all of it had lost its stability. And now he was just hoping Marcus was okay.

That was why, when he heard the name Adrian Lucas pop up on the morning news, he stopped in his tracks to listen, watching the story, transfixed.

"Additionally, Dixon is now wanted in connection to a particularly grisly murder discovered this morning of an as yet unidentified jackalope, found early this morning dead of apparent venomous bite with his antlers brutally removed. The victim was initially reported as one Christopher Jordan, however this was found to be incorrect, as Jordan has been located and said he had in fact been mugged by Dixon and this hybrid and had his wallet stolen, his identification then being found in the victim's possession. If you have any information on his identity, please call the number shown right now."

Dylan dropped down on his couch, his shoulders weighing down heavier than they ever had when his wings were still attached to his body. He pulled his phone out of his pocket, rapidly typing a message to Melody. The amputated pegasus had a feeling things were about to get very, very bad for hybrids.

Back west, Brian Thomas Jr was asleep in bed, although calling it "sleep" was a bit of an overstatement. It was more accurate to say that a combination of beer, weed, and physical labor had helped knock him out for a few hours. Over the last week, the pit bull had thrown himself into house repairs harder than ever, using the exhaustion to pull his thoughts away from spinning worst-case scenarios about his friend.

When he awoke, a little later than he had intended, he found a message on his phone that he'd somehow missed from the night before. It was from Marcus.

The dog scrambled to pull the message up.

[hey BJ, need u to do me a favor. share this video wherever u can, heres the link. dunno when i'll be able to see u again, but thank u for everything]

BJ tapped on the link, his brow furrowed. It wasn't the clearest video, looking like it was taken in the middle of the night in a room without any lights on. Squinting, he could see what looked like someone sitting on the edge of his bed. As for species, that was hard to say.

"My name is Adrian Lucas. At least, that's the name you know..." he spoke, his voice tired, hoarse. "My real name is Lucas Miller. I am not a chimera, I am a goat-snake hybrid. For the past thirty years, I've run Heaven Hearts Hybrids in Boston. I have bought, stolen, and illegally imported hybrid children, using them to develop a treatment that has kept me alive."

On the screen, the sickly old man lifted up his arm, showing the IVs connecting him to a nearby machine, which the shaky camera focused on briefly.

"Most of these children died in the process, and the remainder I adopted out to wealthy families at prices that enabled me to continue my work while. For thirty years, I've used my connections to exploit my fellow hybrids."

Out of frame, a voice barked out, "How many??"

A voice BJ recognized.

"How many? I couldn't even count. Hundreds. Many were too weak to even survive the transport to my home. Many may have survived without the stress of the procedures. But, in front of you and whoever you plan on showing this to, believe me that, in the end, I saved far more lives than I harmed..."

Flashing lights interrupted the monologue, and the feeble form of Adrian Lucas turned his head towards what BJ realized was a broken window. A few seconds later, muffled voices and thumping knocks were heard.

"They're here, son. It's ov-"

The video stopped there.

Brian Thomas Jr stared at his screen for a few moments. He could barely process what he'd witnessed. The voice behind the camera was, without question, his friend's, but... Marcus wasn't capable of anything like that, was he? And the confession, that was just horrific. Monstrous. It made him sick to his stomach to think that any portion of it could be true.

BJ swallowed, doing as promised, and shared the link on his own accounts. He finished up by sending a message to Marcus in return, knowing full well the jackalope likely would not be seeing it.

[yo bud, i hope wherever u are, ur happy. i miss u]

An hour away, and a few hours later, Corey Benton was at the quad of Greenwood Academy getting lunch. Days had been going by in something of a blur for the big bull, with the only moments standing out were the hushed questions from fellow students or another call from the police department. Everyone wanted to know what Corey knew, when the truth was that he didn't know more than anyone else, as desperately as he wanted to.

As he sat, working his way through a tray of pasta piled as high as the cook would let him have, his phone vibrated. That wasn't anything new, over the past week he'd spent more time swiping away messages he didn't feel like answering or shooting back a vague "I don't know either dude" than anything else, but he had a few minutes before next class, so he checked it out.

[corey did you see marcus's video??]

The bull blinked, brushing his hair to the side. He went to Marcus's profile.

He watched the video.

He looked at the comments beneath it.

[WTFFFFFFFFFFF]

[there's no way this is real??]

[bro hybrids are FUCKED. UP.]

[I knew that freak was no good.]

The last message was from Eli, to Corey's lack of surprise. The comments kept coming in rapidly. Further down, they stopped being from other Greenwood students, coming from all over the place.

[Is this true? Some please tell me this is a hoax!]

[I saw on the news they found him dead in his house! And the kid posting it got killed just this morning!]

Corey Benton put his lunch down. He wasn't hungry anymore. He turned the phone's screen off. He'd seen all he could handle.

"Marcus..."

The video spread like wildfire. On the news stations, the full details of the scene had been kept from being shown. The police had offered no information about discovering Adrian's medical condition, nor the nature of his species. When the media reported it that first morning, they all used promotional photos of Adrian Lucas, showing his big, smiling chimera self with his impressive mane.

Once the video came out, everything changed. The truth of Adrian Lucas was out in the open for everyone to see, and suddenly that same media was quite interested in finding out how this had managed to stay hidden for so long. At the hospital, there were new questions about the alarming number of "stillbirths" that had been reported with hybrid couples. At the docks, abnormalities among incoming shipments were discovered in the bookkeeping. Arrests were made, their names and faces spread as the net widened.

The details of Heaven Hearts Hybrids' horrors were further reaching than anyone had anticipated. The second facility was found, a small clinic hidden in what looked like an old farmhouse to the north. In it, infants had been brought in, sedated, and kept in small incubators while an unlicensed doctor worked to extract what he could from them. Women from all over came forward with their stories about their interactions with Adrian Lucas and his crew, including one Karin Martin. On television, an investigative journalist showed how babies were smuggled in crates beneath other cargo.

"Those who did not survive the trip," the deep-voiced wolf intoned darkly, "would be disposed of, like a broken toaster."

All the while, debates raged on. To some, chiefly in the "traditional" realms, this was proof of the instability of hybrids, and they called for stricter measures to prevent such pregnancies. Ideas ranged from banning mixed-species marriage to increased "family planning." It was all couched in claims that this was to help not only protect society at large, but to think of the well-being of the wretches brought into the world in such genetic disarray.

To others, this was proof that society had spent too long turning a blind eye towards those who needed its help the most. Activist groups formed, of hybrids as well as purebred allies showing support, determined to come to the defense of the mixed-breed.

"What happened in Boston was a tragedy, let's not pretend it wasn't," a rat and fox blend said, a guest on an evening news program. "But it speaks to a larger problem. This Adrian Lucas was driven to desperation to save his own life, something that would not have happened had we as a country been willing to step up and give the kind of physical and mental medical care that he and others like him have needed."

Another talking head, a proud looking swan, took her turn. "While I am, of course, sympathetic to the plight, the simple fact is that we have limited resources. Unfortunately, hybrids are such a severe minority that..."

"Just because we're a minority doesn't mean we're not worth saving! We're living beings just like you! Not status symbols or science experiments!" came the furious reply. Cue crosstalk, the shouting match. High ratings.

Marcus's face became the symbol of the movement. An avatar for the strife of hybrids that went back so many years. In Boston, street artists painted murals of him on the sides of buildings. The image of a jackrabbit silhouette with pronghorn antlers was the logo of hybrids seeing change.

In the capitol, enough of a fuss had been raised on social media and television that a bill was raised, promising to allocate funds towards giving hybrids extra assistance. This caused others to cry foul and ask why hybrids deserved "special treatment" over the purebreds. All over the country, lines were drawn in the sand and sides were picked, but for once, the hybrids were no longer having their troubles ignored. For better or worse, the "hybrid situation" was in the spotlight, and everyone was taking notice.

A fundraiser was put online, asking for donations to cover the costs of Marcus Lewis's funeral, to transport his body back home. Swiftly, his adopted parents called to put a stop to it, saying he was their son, they would at least do that for him themselves. However, if anyone still wanted to show support, there was a link to donate to another fundraiser that would likely have meant a lot to him...

"Thanks for coming, everyone."

Brian Thomas Jr had finally completed the work on his house. All the expansions were done. The extra rooms were put in, the pipes fitted, wiring run, and heating installed. What had been a nearly rickety fixer-upper when BJ bought it was now something much, much more. A two story home that was fit for an extra big family.

Now it was time to start filling it up.

"It's funny," the all-white canine said with a chuckle, his awkwardly booming voice making a few in the crowd grin, despite themselves. "Whenever Marcus came over to visit, he never really wanted to do anything special. He just wanted to sit, and live what he thought was a normal life. He'd try to help with the repairs, even if he didn't know a screwdriver from a salad fork."

Another laugh from the crowd, helping BJ loosen up. He was never great at public speaking, although not being able to hear much of the audience at all did help. When everything was quiet, awkward silences were less noticeable.

"He used to say to me, whenever I got the place all up and finished and he was out of high school, he would move in. It's not exactly how I was hoping it would happen, but... welcome home, Marcus."

A smattering of applause from the crowd in the front yard, with a few offering a signed gesture rather than clapping, earning a grin and a point from the dog. BJ picked up a small vase from the table beside him, and walked to the garden at the house's face, squatting down and carefully spreading the ashes amongst the flowers.

BJ returned to where he'd stood earlier, sniffing hard and giving his eyes a quick wipe to try and tamp back the emotions that were threatening to bubble over.

"I don't know if Marcus knew what he was doing when he ran off that day, but I do know that everyone who comes through this house will be told about his sacrifice that made all of this possible. I don't know if I'd call it a silver lining, but I like to think that Marcus would be happy to know what a difference he made. And so, I hereby declare Mixed Breeds, Pure Hearts... officially open."

News cameras gathered around, getting statements from all who wanted to give them. Whether it was BJ himself, a local politician, or their on-site counselor, Barbara Lewis. Unlike its predecessor, this would be a home for any and all hybrids, where they could find the homes that would give them the love they all deserved. Like the flowers in that very garden, hybrids for years to come would flourish, rising from the ashes of Marcus Lewis.

No longer would they be forgotten and abandoned. No longer would they be no one's child.