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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 9 - Showdown

Marcel was approaching the headquarters building cautiously when he heard someone coming up the road behind him, moving fast. He hid in the shadows, his dark jeans and shoes, black hoodie and fur blending into the darkness. The figure approaching looked familiar, and when it was close enough, Marcel could see white Arctic fox fur and the glint of light off rimless glasses.

"Psst. Kain!" Marcel called in a low voice. "Over here." Kain joined him an instant later. "What's up?

"I have to get inside the Ops Centre and stop the caimen." Kain told him. "He's keeping the signal on the detonator attached to Leslie's chain open. The only way to shut it down completely is to get him off the system."

"How are you going to get in? They've changed all of the codes."

Kain held up a small green circuit board attached to a swipe card by a serial cable. "With this, but it might take a minute or two to get in. Can you cover me?"

"Sure." Marcel agreed. "But you better get in there before Miss CC starts her attack, otherwise you'll run right into the guards coming out." He advised.

"No problem." Kain ran for the building in a low crouch, trying to keep to the shadows. Marcel watched as he stuck the card in the slot of one of the fire exit doors and then started doing something with the circuit board.

Kain was still bent over the device when a young panda came around the corner of the nearby dorm. The bush Marcel was hiding behind screened him until he was close enough to see the fox working on the door. Marcel spotted the panda just as he raised his rifle and took aim at Kain.

A knife appeared in Marcel's paw and he brought it up by his ear. As he prepared to throw he caught the panda's expression, visible in the light cast by the dorm lights. The panda was frowning, and trembling. He was scared, Marcel realized, scared and unsure. The rifle wavered, tilted, and finally lowered. The young guard was no killer.

He was a guard, however, and he pulled his radio out to give warning.

Marcel could have thrown the knife and ended it there, but while he had killed a number of times over the years, he was not a stone-cold assassin. He re-sheathed the knife and leapt.

Although he was smaller, years of surviving on the streets and subsequent training at the Academy had made Marcel an excellent fighter. He hit the panda hard and had him down and restrained in a moment. The scuffle alerted Kain, who started to come to Marcel's assistance, but Marcel waved him off. He pulled the cord from his hood and used it to tie the struggling panda. Once restrained, he used the panda's own belt to create a gag. Then he dragged the black and white bear into the shadows at the base of the dormitory building before taking up his post again by the bushes.

Kain went back to work. From his body language Marcel could see that he was not having an easy time of it. Finally the door opened and Kain slipped inside. As he went in he signalled to Marcel that he would not let it close completely, so it would speed his escape. He let the door close to just short of latching, and he was gone.

It turned out that Kain had disappeared just in time. A pair of guards came around the corner of the headquarters less than a minute later. Marcel estimated their route, and decided that they would not be coming close enough to either the fire escape or the dorm to notice that the door was ajar or to see the panda in the shadows. He put a paw on his knife and waited for them to pass.

They were halfway down the space between the buildings when Marcel heard a soft noise coming from the dorm behind him. He turned his head slowly, the guards were more likely to notice a sudden movement. Because he was closer, and with his night vision fully developed, he could see that the panda was conscious, and struggling against his bonds. He was having no success with the knots Marcel had used on his wrists and ankles, but he had managed to get the belt part way out of his mouth by rubbing it on the rough brick of the dormitory.

"Bangzhu Wo! Bangzhu Wo!" The panda cried weakly. Marcel could barely hear him, and the guards were too far away to, for now. But if the panda got any more of the belt free or screamed they would hear, and ruin the element of surprise they needed so badly.

Marcel's mind raced, as Silver had told him it would in times of crisis when decisions need to be made instantly. Everything else seemed to slow down to a crawl in comparison. Marcel considered his options. Moving to silence the panda would expose him and have the same effect as doing nothing. Waiting for the guards to notice the panda and approach within knife-throwing range was too risky; they may radio for help instead. If even one of them hung back the game would be up. With the guards alerted the chances of mission failure were high, much higher than before. Even if they were successful some of them would likely die as a result. No, he decided before the guards had taken two steps, there was only one option.

Marcel, the espionage agent who had never killed someone who was not actively trying to kill him, drew his knife and threw it in one smooth motion. The black-anodized blade flew across the space between the bush and the Dorm in an instant. It struck the spot Marcel had aimed for instinctively, the triangle of soft flesh just above the sternum and below the larynx, where the oesophagus, windpipe and the arteries carrying blood to the brain all converged. It sank in to the hilt without a sound, and the panda went still.

Marcel could swear that he saw the panda's eyes grow wide and give an accusing stare before he slumped face-down on the grass. But that would have been impossible in this light, especially with the panda's dark eyes surrounded in black fur, wouldn't it? Marcel's vision blurred a bit as he struggled to come to terms with killing a creature barely his age, one that had itself hesitated to kill. But he blinked back the tears that threatened to flow, because the patrol was reaching its closest point, and he may have to kill again to protect his comrades.

The other guards walked by, whispering quietly to each other, and continued their patrol away from Marcel.

* * * * * * * *

Miss CC and George had managed to sneak around the headquarters and up to the interrogation wing with no trouble as they moved to fulfil their part of the plan. His natural ability to blend into the shadows and the camouflage clothes Dongo had loaned her prevented them from being spotted. George's smooth slinky way of moving was rapid and silent, and Miss CC had traded in her high heels for the fuzzy slippers she kept under her desk for those cold winter mornings, so she made hardly a sound either.

The master pass card got them into the rear of the interrogation wing as easily as it had gotten them out earlier. George checked the hallway while she covered him with one of her .357 magnums. When he signalled that the coast was clear she ran ahead and opened the next door, letting George slip through to check the next leg. They proceeded in this manner until they were in the hall with the detention cells, just a door away from the foyer where the guard station was.

One by one, Miss CC opened the cells and checked for the basset while George listened at the door for the guards.

She was at the fourth cell when it opened from the inside unexpectedly, striking her hard on the head and sending her pistol flying. Her body slumped to the ground; she was out for the count. A startled guard, a tiger, with his pants around his ankles and one paw holding his groin stood in the doorway. From behind him George could hear the angry voice of Acting Deputy Commissionaire Parker.

"Try that again and I'll rip them both off!" She yelled. George realized what was going on immediately - the guard had tried to rape Charlie! With a snarl that would have done a wolf credit George leapt at the larger mammal.

He fought like a wild creature, all fists and fury but with little skill or grace. Still, the ferocity of his attack caught the tiger off guard, and with his pants around his feet it was all that he could do to defend himself.

"Get the gun, George! The Gun!" Parker, half naked and tied to the bed, cried as she struggled to loosen the rope the tiger had bound her with. George looked around wildly, spotted the big Colt on the floor and dove for it. He brought it up as the tiger made an awkward leap, but the barrel was pointing the wrong way. As unfamiliar with guns as he was with fighting, George fumbled trying to turn it around the right way without shooting himself.

The tiger was too quick for him. The big cat hit him hard in the chest and sent George reeling back into Parker's cell. George's shirt remained behind in tatters, caught in the tiger's claws. The feline shook the cloth free and bent to pick up the pistol. He raised it and took aim at George's head as he spoke into his radio.

Having freed her arms, Charlie wrapped them around George and pulled him back protectively against her bare breasts. George had an instant to savour their softness before death visited the cell block.

The tiger smiled at the response he received over the radio and he cocked the hammer of the Colt. It closed one eye to sight in on the triangle of fur above George's snout. But just then George's eyes went wide, as did Parker's, but they were focused on something behind him. The tiger saw the danger in their expressions, and it spun with a scream. There was a loud bang and a red mist filled the space where his head had been a moment ago.

His body fell like a puppet with its strings cut. Behind him, Miss CC stood with her other Colt in her paw, a toothy snarl and a smear of blood disfiguring her pretty face. She heard a noise, and her black ears stuck straight out as she whirled to face the door to the guard station. A panda was halfway through it, raising a gun of its own. She fired while she was still turning, and her bullet caught him in the throat. He went down gurgling.

Miss CC turned back to the two in the cell. "Get her untied. The merde, she is about to hit the pan."

George did not bother to correct her, but bent to untie Charlie's legs while the basset struggled to get her bra and blouse back on. He tried to avert his eyes, but as the rope came free he felt her paws on his muzzle, lifting his head tenderly.

"Thank you George, for what you tried to do. You're my hero." She smiled down on him. George blushed. Charlie looked him over for wounds. With his loose shirt gone she could see that he had a slim but muscular physique. She traced the line of muscle running across his abdomen with the tip of one digit. "You are in very good shape George." She said appreciatively.

"Twenty five years spent walking or standing for up to eighteen hours a day, carrying a backpack full of disguises." He explained.

Miss CC shook her head and sighed. Frustré, the two of them, she thought. "Okay, mes petits. Goochy goochy time later." Miss CC hefted both of her long barrelled Colt Pythons. "The guard, she will be coming. It is time now to kick donkeys and collect appellations."

She saw the confused looks they were giving her.

"Non?"

* * * * * * * *

Just as Kain got the emergency exit door open Geno's voice came over his ear piece.

"A message for you just came over the camera network, Kain. It says: 'you are not as much of a challenge this time and I and growing bored'. Kain, do you know this guy?"

But before he could answer he had the door open and slipped inside, where the suppressors killed the signal. He heaved a sigh of relief. He really did not want to get into it on an open channel. He knew who it was all right, it was the Long Guy, the master hacker, the one who had killed Naomi Campbell and tried to force Kain to help him hack the big three American intelligence and defence agencies.

In their last encounter, when he was still a teen, the Long Guy had anticipated his every move and beat him to the punch, except for that last one. He had foiled the hacker's plans to drain the Americans of all their secrets, but had not been able to stop the Long Guy himself. Kain was more mature, more knowledgeable, and hopefully wiser now, but he still had to be careful. If the caimen caught on that it wasn't Kain on the other end of the code-war being waged over the camera network he would start looking elsewhere, and Kain would be trapped before he could get his revenge.

And it was revenge he wanted, he admitted to himself as he moved through the back hallways of the Academy. If it was just a matter of stopping the reptile he could have sent Marcel after him. With Vikki's son on the line Marcel would have walked through walls to get at the hacker. But Kain had to do this himself, for Naomi, and his own piece of mind.

He was almost at the Ops Centre, and he had not encountered any guards yet. They must be pretty sure of themselves, he thought. But they had every reason to be, hadn't they? They had removed every employee capable of recognizing what they were up to. What were they up to? This deal must have cost a fortune to set up, and he was fairly certain that Chinese public servants, especially those out of favour, did not have that kind of cash lying around. Someone back there must be bankrolling this caper, but why?

Kain stopped in his tracks, remembering the Long Guy's plot from years ago. With Kain's unwitting help, he had tried to hack into the intelligence agencies from the outside. He had to have been working for a state with enough resources to produce the tools he had used, and those would have represented years of work and a huge investment. You didn't abandon a campaign like that after one little setback. Now the Long Guy was on the inside of an allied agency, with direct links and open channels to the CIA, DIA, NSA, MI-6 and who knows who else. Sun gets his revenge, the Long Guy gets rich, and the Chinese get every secret the west had, and then some, Kain thought.

He was only a few feet from the last door separating him from his target when the alarm went off.

With no communication with the others Kain had no idea what was going on. Had the attack started already? Had he tripped some silent alarm? He hesitated by the door, listening, and was almost knocked over when it opened suddenly.

He picked himself up and shook his head. He was behind the open door, and could not see into the Ops Centre, but he did not have to. The creature that had run out was the black caimen, the Long Guy! And he was heading for the exit at a great rate of speed. Kain stood up straight, brought his pistol level, and shouted after the fleeing reptile.

"Long Guy!"

The caimen almost ran into the wall, trying to look over its shoulder and flee at the same time. Kain saw that it was clutching a laptop to its chest. He would be through the next set of doors soon, if Kain didn't do something to stop him. Kain sighted down the barrel and started to squeeze the trigger.

Before he could shoot another figure appeared in the hallway. It was a bamboo rat in grey coveralls. It was holding a gun, and turning towards Kain. Training took over and Kain's aim shifted to the more immediate threat. The rat's chest exploded as the slug caught him at close range, the force pushing him back against the far wall. Kain kicked the door shut.

The distraction had allowed the Long Guy time to escape, and Kain had to take another few seconds to jam the mechanism on the door to the Ops Centre to protect his rear. As soon as he was done he turned and gave chase. There was a pounding on the door behind him, followed by the sound of gunfire as someone tried to shoot their way through. Good luck with that, Kain thought, all the doors in this building were bullet proof.

Kain saw an exit door, not the same one he had come in through, just closing up ahead. He hit it hard, rolling through on to the grass outside. He heard a single gunshot, and felt the splinters of wood that the bullet knocked off the doorframe above his head. Looking ahead quickly he spotted the reptile hiding behind a tree trunk, tapping at the keyboard of the laptop with one paw and trying to aim his pistol with the other. Kain took a snap shot in the Long Guy's direction, and was pleased to hear a yelp and see the caimen scuttle deeper into the shadows.

"Kain here." He called into the microphone. "Geno, what's the status on that signal?"

"It went dead for a minute there but it just came back up." Geno reported. "How am I going to know when it is down for good?"

"I'll let you know." Obviously the laptop was linked to the detonator on Leslie's chain, and probably the camera network too. Kain had to shut it down.

He crawled to a shadowy area and then ran forward in a crouch. He expected another shot to ring out at any moment, and he was not disappointed. Fortunately the caimen was a better hacker than a fighter, but he wasn't exposing himself for a return shot either.

Kain tried circling around, but the wily reptile had chosen a good spot, a hollow amongst the trees with the Academy building's lights to silhouette any approaching threat. Trying to sneak up just brought more gunfire, and eventually the Long Guy would get lucky and connect with one of them. Kain needed a new approach.

Gathering himself, tensing every muscle he had laboriously built back up since the explosion that almost killed him, Kain sprang up and ran full out. He dove, ducked, weaved and rolled, but he kept going in the general direction of the copse of trees the caimen was hidden in. Several shots rang out, one flicked at his shirt just under his arm, another cut a line along the muscle of his outer thigh, but Kain kept going. With a scream he launched himself into the dark depression where the Long Guy was hidden.

He had expected to land close to the caimen, but not right on him. The two of them rolled between the trees, clawing and punching, each trying to get their gun paw free to shoot the other. Kain's head caught a glancing blow from the reptile's gun barrel, but he managed to push the caimen back against a tree, knocking the gun from its paw. The gun flew up and over the edge of the hollow.

The Long Guy scrambled up the slope until he was silhouetted at the top. He had managed to hold on to the laptop, if not his gun. Kain stood up too, and kept his pistol pointed at the reptile as he climbed up also. The Long Guy held the laptop in front of his chest defensively.

"Shut off the signal." Kain demanded. The caimen scowled, but started to open the laptop. "Don't try anything funny." Kain warned him. "If I hear a bang from the cistern I'll shoot you dead before you can press another key."

"I wonder if you have the nerve?" The Long Guy snarled. "You did not back in Virginia."

"Ask the guard that tried to follow you out of the Ops Centre." Kain answered, his voice calmer than he felt.

Behind Kain, out of his sight, a figure rose up from the grass between the trees and the headquarters building. It was a feline, an Asian species, in grey guard's coveralls. It raised a rifle to its shoulder and took aim. Seeing the creature behind Kain made the caimen smile in triumph. The Long Guy closed the laptop slowly and hugged it to its chest. Kain raised his gun.

"Shoot him!" The long guy shouted. Shoot him now!"

Kain registered the smile and caimen's line of sight an instant before the reptile's words. Clues in the hacker's body language told him that the Long Guy was not bluffing; someone with a gun was behind him. Training and instinct told Kain to turn and face the immediate threat, but Kain knew what he had to do, even if it meant dying. Without flinching, or taking time to aim, he pulled the trigger three times.

The first two ripped through the laptop, driving metal, plastic and silicon into the caimen's chest. His arms flew wide, allowing what was left of the portable computer to drop to the ground. The third bullet entered the reptile's chest unimpeded, and exited his back in a bloody mess. The Long Guy's red eyes looked skyward, perhaps contemplating a place he could never go to, and he fell backwards onto the grass.

Kain waited for the shot that would end his life. He wondered if he would feel it, and if it would hurt for long. Minutes seemed to pass, but it could only be seconds. Still, they seemed to be taking their sweet time about it.

He heard soft footsteps come up behind him, saw the muzzle of rifle appear beside his head. He watched as a feline in grey coveralls passed him and poked the caimen with the sound suppressor mounted on the barrel of her rifle.

"I thought that I was going to have to shoot him for you." Ophelia said as she turned back to Kain. She held up a small black object. "He had a derringer taped to the bottom of his laptop. He probably was going to shoot you with it while you waited for him to shut of whatever signal you were talking about.

"The signal!" Kain cursed and keyed his microphone. "The signal is dead. Go Vikki go!" Vikki's acknowledgement came back. Kain turned back to Ophelia. "You were supposed to stay in the mansion."

"And leave you with no back up?" She stepped up against him and grabbed his ass. "Not likely."

Kain looked into her smiling, icy, purple eyes, and his lips parted. Then the sound of gunfire from the other side of the headquarters building reminded him of the current situation.

"I have to get back to the range and take over the camera network." He told her. "Can you, uh help out Marcel and them without being seen?"

Ophelia smiled and stepped back, one, two, three paces, enough to blend in with the shadows of the trees. Then she pulled a fine camouflage mesh mask over her head. It had the effect of making her disappear bit by bit until, like the famed Cheshire cat, only her smile remained. "That's my specialty."

He saw her block the light momentarily as she moved toward the sound of sporadic gunfire. Kain smiled too, and turned in the direction of the range.

* * * * * * * *

Vikki and Dongo had plenty of time to check out the situation at the cistern while waiting for the detonator signal to be cut. They were able to determine that the small stone building was being guarded by a pair of pandas. They were on the lookout constantly, but only one showed itself at any given time. If they tried to take one out from a distance the other may be able to detonate the explosive device with a short-range transmitter, or manually. If all else failed they could simply release the chain and lower Leslie into the maw of the shredder. And a frontal attack was out of the question; the old stone building was effectively bullet proof and the chances of hitting them through the narrow slits that provided ventilation was virtually impossible.

"We need to get both of them out into the open." Dongo said in frustration as he watched through the scope of his modified FN C1. That could be problematic, Vikki thought. The two inside had not even come out to look when the firing started over by the interrogation wing.

Just then Kain's 'All Clear' came over the radio. Maybe it was her motherly concern, but Vikki could read some urgency in his voice. Evidently Dongo did too, because he told her "We need a plan to entice those pandas out right now!"

"Did you say 'entice'?" Vikki asked, an idea forming in her head. In an instant she recalled and reviewed everything she had read or heard about the panda's culture. The one fact that came to the forefront of her mind was an obscure figure about the discrepancy between the number of males and females back in their home country. The preference for sons and the draconian one-child laws had resulted in parents aborting or abandoning female babies until there was something like seventy-five million more adult males than females in the current generation. That meant that many males would never marry, or even enjoy female companionship outside of the bordellos and dance halls of the cities.

Vikki made a decision. She moved behind the shelter of a bush and began to remove her camouflage clothing.

"Wha - what are you doing?" Dongo asked nervously.

"You just watch and shoot, Fett. Watch and shoot."

* * * * * * * *

The two guards inside the cistern were not as young as the rest of Sun's group. Their seniority and experience with delicate situations had earned them the job of disposing of the infant if necessary. But despite their rank in the civet-tiger's little group, they were still unimportant and underpaid civil servants tied to an out-of-favour mid-level manager in a country where importance was measured in influence and relationships. Their prospects for mating were slim to none, and their opportunities for casual feminine companionship were few and far between. And when it came to describing the type of female that worked in the houses of ill repute that they could afford, the word 'hideous' came to mind more often than not.

So when the older of the two, Lao Xue, saw the tall, slim, beautiful, and naked vixen dancing in the moonlight he had to rub his eyes with his paws twice before calling his partner over.

He surrendered his place at the window slit, reluctantly. "Xiao Bei," he asked his comrade. "do you see what I think I saw?"

"A tall crimson spirit dancing nude in the moonlight?" Xiao Bei offered.

"Yes. Thank you, you can go back inside now." Lao Xue tried to push the other panda aside, but Xiao Bei would not budge. "Come now, you have had your turn. Now go back and watch the kit."

"Who went to join their honourable ancestors and made you head of the family?" Xiao Bei asked rudely.

The two started to push and shove each other, fighting for space at the narrow gap, but only one at a time could see out, and the scarlet vision was getting closer, allowing them to make out details of her anatomy.

"Zaogao!" Lao Xue swore. "I'm going outside. You stay here and guard the captive."

"To hell with you Jiba." Xiao Bei retorted, using a crude term for the male organ. "He is not going anywhere. Get out of my way."

The two rough characters tumbled out of the building onto the grass. Half expecting the vision to flee at their appearance, they stopped, shocked into immobility, in the shadows of the entrance. There was not much room under the stone arch that overhung the door, but Xioa Bei was much taller than Lao Xue and he was able to stand behind him and still get a good view.

The creature was much closer now. It was a vixen all right, that much was evident at close range. She was tall, a head taller than them. The red of her fur was vibrant and the white that ran from her chin to her groin, including the full, firm breasts, seemed to absorb and reflect the moonlight at the same time. She had her long bushy tail wrapped around her hips, and when she swung it out of the way they caught a glimpse of a tiny tuft of red fur over the twin mounds of her sex.

The spirit swung her tail up between her legs and hugged it. She dipped, knees together, and then spread her legs as she slowly drew her tail back down. Xiao Bei grabbed Lao Xue's shoulders and leaned against him. Trying to get a tiny bit closer. Lao Xue, slack jawed with wonder, clutched his comrade's paw. Their mouths watered as the tip of the spirit's tail brushed over the mounds on her heavenly gate ever so lightly.

The spirit had stopped twenty feet away. Close enough to see pink protruding from the fur of her breasts, but not close enough to make out any details. They both craned their necks forward, willing her to come closer, but she only danced more seductively, licking her lips with her long, pink tongue while her dark paws roved over her body and her tail lashed back and forth. She lowered herself to her knees, extended her arms toward them, and made 'come along' gestures with her digits.

Lao Xue started to move forward. Xiao Bei held him back.

"Lao Xue, don't go. It is a daemon come to suck out our souls!"

"As long as she sucks it out through my cock." The other panda answered, reaching for his zipper as he shook Xiao Bei off.

"I had not thought of that." His colleague admitted, rushing to join him in front of the vixen. They jostled for position, each trying to block the other in their efforts to reach her first. They compromised by standing shoulder-to-shoulder before her, with their pricks and balls hanging out of their grey coveralls. Each wondering who she would pick first. She reached out with both paws, and they shivered in anticipation.

Two flashes of light erupted in the shadows, barely a second apart. They were followed by the two dull cracks, the kind a supersonic bullet makes when fired through a sound suppressor. It is debatable whether the pandas heard the shots at all since the bullets reached their targets before the sound did, and their hearing was impaired by their brains exiting the backs of their skulls.

* * * * * * * *

Vikki pulled her paws back in disgust. The guards were none too clean before being drenched in blood and brains and she was glad that she had not had to touch them. Behind her Dongo Fett came out of the bushes cradling his rifle and carrying her clothing. He stumbled a few times as he approached because he was trying to look anywhere other than at his beautiful, naked, supervisor. He held out her clothes and concentrated on the dead bodies.

Vikki began to dress in the awkward silence. "Good shooting Fett." She said to break it.

"Uh, thanks." Dongo replied. "Good, uhm, dancing." The attempt at a compliment made Vikki chuckle good naturedly, and that put Dongo more at ease. "Where did you learn to dance like that?" He asked

"Biker squad. I had to hang out in a lot of strip clubs. Not that I spent a lot of time watching the dancers." She hastened to explain. "But with all the mirrors it was kind of hard not to notice a few moves."

While she had finished dressing Dongo had searched the guards and fond a small silver key, the kind that fit handcuffs and other small locks. He held it up.

"Good, let's go get my son." Vikki said.

They entered the building quickly, but carefully. There was always the possibility of a third guard or a booby trap. When it looked like all was clear Vikki descended the small flight of stone steps that led to the old cistern.

"Mama!" The plaintive cry came as she appeared. Vikki's eyes shot to the sound and she gasped. Leslie was suspended mere centimetres above the open maw of the shredder, almost inside it! The little kit began to struggle and bounce, eager to be free to rejoin his mother. Vikki watched in horror as the gyrations made the chain he was secured to slip on the big gear above, dropping him another two centimetres closer to death.

"No Leslie!" She cried as she entered the room, looking around desperately for a ladder or a chair to stand on so she could reach her kit. The closest thing she could find was an old wooden pallet. It would have to do.

"Mama, mama, mama!" The little one cried, flopping on the end of the chain like a trout on a line.

"Leslie, don't move baby." Vikki was crying in frustration as she and Dongo hauled the heavy wooden pallet toward the machine and struggled to lean it up against the side. "Just hold still and be a good boy."

"Mama, mama, mama, mama mama maaamaaaaaa!" Leslie screamed, his little legs pin wheeling madly in the dark green jumper. The chain slipped three links at once, and the laser sensor designed to start the shredder before paper could jam in the chute was tripped by a flailing foot. The machine roared to life, making Leslie squeal and his mother scream.

"The key! Take the key!" Dongo shouted above the clang of the rusty blades. He held it up to Vikki who had already climbed the pallet and could almost touch her son now. She reached back down to take the key and then braced one foot on the edge of the chute as she leaned over the sea of thrashing steel teeth to grab the chain he dangled from, but it was still out of reach.

Leslie was swinging back and forth across the opening, propelled by his struggles. Vikki put the key between her teeth and reached out with both paws, hoping to grab his tail as he went by, but it rotated out of the reach at the last moment. On the return swing she leaned out dangerously, and went for his legs. The kit was squirming so much, she could not get a grip on the material of his jumper. She could have lunged and grabbed his ankles, but did not dare put her weight on him for fear of the chain coming loose, sending them both tumbling into the jaws of the destructive device. She stretched further, challenging the laws of physics, and a flailing foot caught her in the side of the head, knocking the key from her mouth.

Vikki snatched at the key, missed, and had to swing her arms wildly to regain her balance. She watched in horror as the key fell between the blades of the shredder. The chrome-steel caught for an instant, stopping the cutters and making the engine whine in a high pitch. A moment later the hard steel below the thin layer of rust cut into the tiny key, and with a shudder and a shake the machine devoured it. After it was gone the blades continued to whirl as if nothing had happened. It may even be running smoother now that some of the rust was sheared off.

The pallet slid on the floor as her weight shifted, lowering her to a point where she could no longer hope to reach her kit. The chain was losing it grip on the gear at a steady rate now, and by the time they could reposition the pallet it would be too late. Leslie's arc had dipped below the edge of the chute, and had become shorter as it descended. Vikki could only think of the pendulum in the Edgar Allen Poe story, except it was her kit that was swinging, and the blades that would end her son's life were in the pit. Well, she thought, if she couldn't stop the swing, she may be able to stop the blades.

Vikki tore at her robotic paw, pulling it off and tossing it into the chute in one smooth motion. She gripped the edge with her remaining paw and pulled her head up far enough to see inside as it slid down the steeply sloped sides toward the spinning steel razors.

Vikki's bionic paw was the latest technology, and made of the most modern materials. It was made of plastic, silicon, and composite materials that were tough, flexible, and strong. But they were not as tough as the chromium the key had been made of, and the blades hardly slowed as they chewed it into dust.

Vikki cried out at the sight, and at the smell produced as the sensors below the shredder turned the incinerating flames to high. The odour of burning material mixed with the oil and perfume it had picked up off her body was disgusting.

The wail of anguish scared Leslie, and he started to cry too. He balled his fists and pumped his arms and legs even harder. His actions made the chain slip even more, and there was a sudden lurch as something caught in the blades, pulling him downward sharply. His cried changed pitch as they went from frustration to fear, and pain.

Vikki screamed his name, "Leslie!" and grabbed for the chain he was dangling from. She was fully extended and off balance, with his weight far beyond her point of balance. It was a forgone conclusion, with only the strength of her arm and her will to delay the inevitable descent. Vikki looked up, and for the first time in a long time, she prayed.

Her prayer was interrupted by a shiny oblong object that sailed up past her head and slowly arced over to fall narrow end first into the maw of the shredder. When it met the blades sparks flew up and there was a horrible rending of metal as the object was shaken back and forth like a rat in a terrier's jaws. Slivers and shards of steel began to shoot up from the opening. The flames came on and off down below as parts dropped off the shredder. Vikki redoubled her efforts to hold Leslie up above the destruction.

Although it seemed to go on forever, it was all over in less than a minute. The motor of the shredder stopped suddenly, and the metal parts ceased to fight each other. The loose pieces settled down, those thrown free clanged to the stone floor and were still. The metal pinged as it cooled now that the flames had died down. Smoke from the seized engine mixed with that of the burnt material, rose through the tangled mess, and made Leslie sneeze repeatedly.

Vikki's arm gave out, but Leslie was so close to the motionless and now harmless cutting blades that he could stand on them. Vikki noted that the toe of one of his jumper's footies was missing, and the claws on that foot were sheared off close to the fur. The fur itself was singed, but he did not seem to feel it. Now that the chain around his torso was slack he was beginning to wriggle out of it, a regular little Houdini.

Vikki examined the metal missile that had finally stopped the deadly blades. It was shapeless now, but it had brown leather straps and electrical components that looked familiar. She looked down at Dongo. He looked back through his good left eye. He was standing beside the shredder trying to steady the pallet she was standing on with one arm. His left sleeve hung empty. Vikki smiled down at him thankfully, at a loss for words.

"You can be rather disarming when you smile." Dongo said.

Vikki groaned. "Now I know what Silver teaches you guys when he lectures in the Academy; half-witted quips for all occasions."

"Think he'll make me pay for that?" Dongo indicated the machine where what was left of his titanium arm was wedged tightly in.

Vikki could not resist. "Naw, agents are always getting disarmed, it's an occupational hazard."

"Good one." He conceded.

"We provide new side arms routinely." She was getting the hang of this now.

"Uhm ..."

"I'll have a harder time explaining why I had to 'paw off' on the job." Vikki went on giddily.

"Ah, you should stop now." Dongo advised.

"You think so? It was starting to be fun."

"That's the shock and the residual effects of the adrenaline. We should collect you son and get out of here before more guards come."

Vikki shook her head to clear it and took several deep breaths. "You're right." She reached over the rim of the chute and scooped up her kit before jumping lightly back to the ground. "We need to get out of here. We have to go help Silver."

* * * * * * * *

Kain was the first to return to the range, and he went straight to the roof to take over the computer from Geno.

"The signal died, like you said it would." She advised him before taking up her protective station again. "But I haven't had any luck taking over the camera network. Everything seems to be frozen.

Kain tried a few routines that Geno would not have been familiar with and then he swore. Shooting the caimen's laptop had killed the command detonation signal, but it had also killed the remote interface with the academy control systems. Everything was indeed frozen in the state that it was in when the laptop was perforated. The camera's that had been displayed on the monitor showed random lawns and hallways. The doors were all locked down and inoperable to anyone who did not have a master pass card. Whatever program Colonel Sun had put the range on would continue to run until the power was cut off or until all of the mannequins were neutralized individually.

The good news was that the enemy could not use the system to their advantage, so they were blind, but so was Silver's little force. Kain was not sure if that constituted an advantage or not.

Vikki's voice came over the radio phone network. Leslie was safe and they were returning to the range. "We'll drop Leslie off with Joel and Geno and then go inside to help Silver." She stated.

"You can't." Kain explained about the doors. "Only Miss CC has a card that can open them, and I can't contact her because she has gone into the headquarters building with George and Parker to clear out the remaining enemy there. Until she comes out or goes to a building that isn't suppressed, like the garage or the range, we are on our own."

"Does that mean what I think it means?" Silver interrupted to ask.

"Yes." Kain admitted. "We can't help you at all."

"Good." Silver replied.

"Good?" Vikki's breathless voice came over stronger as he drew closer to the range. "How can that be good? It means that you are on your own."

"So is Sun." Silver replied calmly.

A sharp click came over the channel and then there was silence. Not just the absence of talking, but complete and utter silence; no static, no hum of an open line, nothing.

"Silver! Silver!" Vikki cried. "Kain, what the hell happened?"

"He turned off his radio." Kain said glumly. "Now he really is alone."

* * * * * * * *

Silver took a minute to take several deep breaths and cleanse his mind before continuing deeper into the range. His son was safe, his mate had survived the rescue mission and his agents had evened the odds inside the range; as much as they could anyway. Sun presumably knew the programming sequence and had a safe route through the crowd of armed and deadly mannequins, but at least he would have to come looking for Silver now that the cameras were neutralized. Silver wondered what other tricks and traps the wily Asian Colonel may have planted.

He looked around. With the ceiling shrouded in darkness and only the dim light from the fake candles and fires it was easy to imagine that one was in the souk of a big Middle Eastern city like Cairo or Damascus. Silver, who had been in both, had helped them design it. But the beauty of the range set-up was its flexibility. The streets were never exactly the same configuration, the safe houses were never in the same place, and hostile creatures could pop up anywhere. But Silver knew that the buildings were just facades, and the attackers just machines. The trick, as on real missions, was not to get distracted by details but to look for discrepancies, not to worry about things that you could not control so you could focus on those that you could.

Silver double checked his gun and counted his ammunition quickly. He was down to less than sixty rounds already, and he was nowhere near the end of the maze yet. Presumably that was where Sun would have set up the final showdown. He would have to be careful, the closer one got to the objective the more hostiles one was likely to run into. But he had better get moving before Sun figured out what was going on outside and tried to escape.

The alley he was following came to a fork. Both ways could potentially lead to the end. The one on the right paw was narrow and twisty, bad for line of sight but good for protection. The one on the left was straighter and wide, but it had a number of shadowy doorways along it, each a potential ambush. A waft of greasy cooking odours drifted by. Silver's snout wrinkled in distaste, there was too much oil and garlic for him. The disgusting smell had come from the narrow alley, so Silver went left, along the wider route.

This path was almost wide enough for a vehicle to pass through. Silver kept to the centre of the road, ready to dive left or right at the first sign of a threat. He kept his Glock up in front of him, level to the ground at the height that most threats would appear. Silver rarely aimed in situations like this, a turn or a twist of his torso was all that he needed to bring it onto target. But with the need to save ammo he had to get a clean kill the first time, so for now he aimed whenever he had the time to do so. And because of that he was wearing his glasses, otherwise he could not focus on the gun sights.

There was a sound behind him and to the left. Knowing that the mannequin's radar could not home in on him until it was clear of the door Silver spun into the hostile and extended his pistol toward the sound. The mannequin that appeared raised a revolver as its radar swept the street for anything that did not match the computer's model of the empty street. Silver sighted in on the kill zone of the face and head since the arm with the gun was blocking a clear shot at the chest and pulled the trigger. The mannequin's arm dropped like a stone and it flopped comically as it slid back into its recess. Silver lowered his gun and turned to continue.

He caught a hint of movement in the corner of his eye, where it was partially blocked by the rim of his glasses. He whirled and fired before dropping to the street in a heap. Another gunshot rang out and he could swear that he felt the air move around the bullet that passed over his head as he dropped. He rolled, extending his gun toward the threat at the same time and froze when he was on his stomach again, but just long enough to aim and fire. This time he got a clean kill. Another mannequin bit the dust.

Silver picked himself up and checked his weapon before checking himself. The gravel on the simulated road had scraped but not cut, nor was he hit. So far so good. But the second mannequin sliding silently out while he was engaging the first meant that the complexity had increased. If Sun had set this up earlier it was possible that the level of difficulty would raise automatically as time went by, like a game of Tetris. And now they could not change it until Kain could get to a computer terminal with access to the server. Silver calculated the odds. He would likely be dead by then.

He moved faster toward the finish. If he was going to die in a runaway range program the least he could do was to take Sun down with him.

The next attack was a double. The one after that had three hostile mannequins. Silver almost knocked the third one down trying to seek cover in its doorway. This wide road was getting to dangerous. Silver ducked down the next alley he came to and cut over to the narrow path he had ignored before. It would be difficult for them to gang up on him now, but every encounter would be close range and ever shot would be a snap shot. Silver took off his glasses and put them in his jacket pocket. He would not need them in here.

The first mannequin he encountered was a young female who was unarmed, a neutral. The second was a male with a machete that erupted from a window beside him. Silver ducked the blade and fired point blank between its eyes. The next mannequin was an older female who appeared unarmed, at least until Silver passed it. Then she screamed and raised an assault rifle she had hidden in the folds of her dress. Her hidden paws had been a warning though, and Silver was ready for the attack when it came.

He went along in that manner, keeping to the narrow ways, getting ambushed, and deactivating mannequins. The number of hostile animatrons was increasing as he went, and the constant stress of battle was beginning to wear on him. Silver wondered what else the Colonel might have in mind to further break him down.

It turned out to be taunting.

"You are doing well, Silver." Sun's voice boomed over the range's loudspeakers like the voice of God. "Better than I had anticipated, but you are taking so long! I fear that you may not have a son by the time you get out. And what will be the fate of your mate if you succeed too late?" His sing-song lilt was almost soothing, but the words were designed to drill to the core.

It was a bluff, Silver surmised, designed to make him anxious and rush where he should be even more cautious. Sun was not getting any news now that his principle henchman was dead, and he probably did not anticipate George coming to Silver's aid by providing him with communications. Silver realized that he had the advantage when it came to knowing what the situation was outside the range. He proceeded cautiously.

Silver turned a sharp corner, scuttling around quickly to engage any hostiles before they detected him. The only one in sight was a small male ocelot poking a stick in a simulated fire. He was squatting and his other paw hung between his legs, out of sight. Silver raised his gun and approached cautiously. When he had circled halfway around the child-sized figure he could see that the paw was empty. He relaxed and turned to follow the alley, and that was when the tiny terrorist raised the stick he had poking the fire with and threw it. Silver reacted instinctively, dropping a shoulder to turn and lower himself as he brought his gun around.

Many agents would have let the stick hit them. In the range scenario being struck by a simulated burning stick only counted as a minor wound. But Silver's move quite possibly saved his life, as the 'stick' turned out to be tipped with blue-stained steel. It bounced harmlessly off the far wall. It had been a poisoned arrow, and another had appeared in the mannequin's paw, fed by an internal quiver no doubt. It was a smaller target, and one designed to make agents think twice about firing at its innocent features, but Silver drilled it trough the top of the head hard enough to push it down between its shoulders before it shut down.

There was another armed adult further down the alley, followed by an ancient male with a knife, two harmless females, and then a merchant with a sub-machine gun. The last one sprayed the narrow alley with bullets indiscriminately, and Silver felt a line of pain erupt at his side. After dispatching the mannequin with his third shot, he found two holes in his jacket and a rip in his shirt. Beneath it an angry red welt was filling with blood.

Silver counted his ammunition again. It was getting dangerously low. Once he had discovered that the hostiles had been given live ammunition he had anticipated picking up a few extra rounds off the ones he had deactivated, but Sun had done his homework. He must have guessed that Silver would bring his beloved Glock-17 when he was restricted to a single weapon. The Glock took nine by nineteen parabellum rounds, the size of 9mm ammunition typically used in the west since the Luger was invented. The mannequins had been armed with 5.56mm, .44 calibre, .32 calibre, 7.62mm, and a Russian variant on the 9mm that was too short to chamber properly in the Glock. Even the guns were worthless. They had no triggers, but were fired by an electric solenoid in the mannequin's paw. Silver could not fire them unless he could somehow build up enough static electricity and discharge it on demand; not a likely prospect.

Silver picked up the poisoned arrow that the child-like mannequin was about to throw and wrapped the tip in some cloth ripped from his shirt. He carefully placed it in the pocket of his jacket. It would not do to jab himself with it while tumbling away from another threat.

"Why are you not moving forward, Silver? Tired already? You are not hurt are you? That would be sad." Sun did not sound sad to Silver. His voice was dripping with sarcasm. "I remember how you looked in your cell when you were bleeding, and when the guards came for you in the night. So scared. So hopeless. The first time they tied you to that bench I thought that you were going to dislocate every joint in your body, you were struggling so. But once they had you trussed you were more cooperative, eh? Did it feel good, Silver, when you came? Of course it did. That's why you did it again and again every night when you were our guest."

Sun went on in graphic detail. Silver tried to tune out the voice. He had sat through enough sessions with Doctor Gordon over the years to know the clinical facts about what had happened. Ejaculation due to prostate stimulus was a common occurrence when a male was being raped. It was not a sign of secret desire, covert pleasure or sexual stimulation. He knew that on an intellectual level, still, it was not until he met Vikki that he began to heal inside, and really open up to a partner again.

Silver reached under his shirt and felt the lines of scar tissue on his chest. There was a matching set on his back, identical except for the bald patch where he had ripped off his infected nipple. Sun was trying to humiliate him, to elicit an emotional response that would send him tearing through the range in a blind fury, driven by shame and anger. But Sun was too late. Silver had finally come to terms with those events, and the only response the feline's words were brining was a cold anger that seemed to sharpen Silver's senses and slow down time. He left the broken animatron behind and continued deeper into the range.

Silver's heightened awareness allowed him to make good progress. He seemed to be able to anticipate the appearance of the mannequins and his shots were deadly accurate. One after another they fell before him as he wound his way toward the end. Sun's voice came and went. Silver ignored it.

The alley widened into a village square, complete with a well, and Silver realized that he was close to the end. There were mannequins visible on the street, cooking, washing, chatting with one another. A dozen windows and doors overlooked the square. Getting through this section would be difficult, but he had a feeling that he would be seeing Sun soon after, and that motivated him. Silver stepped boldly into the open, and waited.

A figure appeared at a window, it pointed a gun. Silver's bullet took it in the side of the head. Another stumbled from a doorway opposite. Silver hit it in the chest, dead centre. Two appeared simultaneously on opposite sides of him. Silver stepped between them and dropped to the ground. They deactivated each other with a hail of bullets that passed over his back. One of the females at the well raised a pistol from inside her wash bucket. Another that was braiding the hair of a third produced a poison arrow from the tresses. Silver shot the one with the gun and ducked the arrow before launching a kick that took the mannequin's head clean off.

On and on they came. Sometimes in pairs, sometime in threes. Silver fired at the ones at a distance, ducked projectiles and struck killing spots with feet and paws whenever he could to conserve ammunition. But he was running out fast.

Suddenly there was silence. Sun had stopped talking and the square was littered with deactivated mannequins. Every window and doorway was filled with an immobile animatronic peasant. Every adult in the square had attacked, and the only robotic creature that remained alive was a wiggling infant fennec in a basket by the well. Silver could see its ears sticking up and its little feet kicking, but it was swaddled so tight it could not get its arms free. Silver approached it cautiously, thinking that it was too small to have a gun, and too simple to throw and arrow.

It could, however, hold a grenade in its mouth, he discovered an instant too late.

The robotic baby opened its snout and the grenade popped up, leaving the pin and handle behind. It must have been spring loaded, Silver concluded, as he lashed out automatically with one foot. He connected with the grenade and sent it flying towards a doorway, but it never made it that far. On a short fuse, it exploded in mid-air five meters away from where Silver crouched with nowhere to hide.

Shards of shrapnel flew about. Some stuck harmlessly in the walls of the scenery. Some pierced mannequins that were already deactivated. Miraculously, not a single one touched the infant mannequin, although the blast knocked it out of its makeshift cradle. Silver was not so lucky.

At least five pieces found the old fox. One lodged in his calf. Another was a flat piece that struck sideways and broke the second digit on his left paw. A tiny one went right through his ear, slicing a small artery that bled profusely. But it was the other two that did the most damage. The forth had entered his gut and the incredible pain coming from that area spoke volumes as to the harm it had caused. The last piece had not actually struck Silver, it hit his Glock, right above the trigger where the plastic receiver and the steel slide met.

Invented by Anton Glock of Austria, the half-plastic, half-metal pistol was tough and durable. The highly stable and strong plastic did not shrink, expand, warp or soften under any type of environmental influence. In fact, about the only thing it was vulnerable to was a sharp blow from a solid object, like a ball-peen hammer, or a fast moving piece of shrapnel.

Silver looked down at his shattered gun sadly. He had bought it from Anton Glock himself, right after the Austrian army ordered theirs and before the Americans had ever heard of it. Its serial number, before he had filed it off, was only four digits long. It was, quite possibly, the first one to ever leave the European continent, and it had served him well. He would miss it, if he lived that long.

Time stood still as he evaluated the situation. The pain in his ear, leg and gut went away as numbness set in; that was not a good sign. He looked around. This would be the scene of the final showdown, he realized now. He was too badly wounded to go further, and once he had stayed in one place long enough Sun would come looking for him. He had time, but not much.

Moving as quickly as he could, Silver made a circuit of the square. He gathered everything that was not nailed down and piled them by the well, where the infant mannequin still wriggled in the dust. It was creepy, that tiny fennec squirming there with its jaws still agape from having the grenade forced in there. At least it wasn't crying, Silver thought thankfully. He did a quick inventory of his meagre possessions. He had a bucket, several yards of cloth, two poisoned arrows, a paw full of loose ammunition pried from the guns of the fallen mannequins, an ancient .44 calibre revolver still attached to a paw that had come off its owner in the explosion, several rocks, some nails, and a ribbed condom still in its foil packet, probably dropped by one of the agents featured in Joel's DVDs. It wasn't a lot to work with.

The damned baby was still twisting; how come it had not stopped when it came out of its basket? he wondered. He picked it up and searched for a switch to deactivate it. The whole back of the infant came off to reveal wires, a circuit board, and a rechargeable battery pack. He pulled the wires leading from the battery off the green board and the mannequin lay still in his paws. Algorath would be able to make a laser or a debilitating sonic weapon out of this mess, Silver was sure. His own technical education was limited to how to jump start Russian military vehicles and whether to cut the red wire or the blue wire on a time bomb. Simple stuff, either creating a circuit or cutting one. He was more comfortable with improvised weapons like cross bows or sling shots.

Silver slipped a digit under the elastic that held the clothes tight on the little robot. He looked down at the junk he had collected, especially the two poisoned arrows. Could the digits of that broken paw be shaped into a 'Y'?

A wave of dizziness suddenly overcame him. He put a paw to his side, where the numbness felt like a great empty void. It came back wet, and red. A foul smell accompanied the new blood.

Perforated intestine, he thought, got to work fast.

* * * * * * * *

Those on the roof and outside the range heard the explosion.

"Jesus, that sounded like a grenade." Geno observed.

"Kain, we have to get in there and help Silver." Vikki called over the radio phone. "Now!"

Kain swore under his breath. "I can't do it from here! Everything is frozen. I need to have access to the server." He did not bother to elaborate that it was because he had destroyed the caimen's laptop. Just then, as if on cue, Marcel's voice came over the channel.

"Kain, this is Marcel. I've joined up with Miss CC and the others. She's turned the suppressors off so we can talk from inside. With no one to direct them the guards didn't put up much of a fight. We're back in control of the headquarters, although there are a few rouge guards still wandering around the grounds"

Kain jumped up. "Joel, stay here and monitor the camera network. As soon as get the system unlocked find Silver and see how he is, then find Sun and direct Vikki and Dongo to him. Geno, you come with me. We'll take Leslie to the Headquarters and unlock the system from there. You have your gun?" She nodded affirmative. "Good, let's go." Then into the radio, "Marcel, unlock the doors, we're on our way."

"Kain." Vikki called as he and Geno scooped up Leslie and headed for the headquarters.

"Yes?" He looked over his shoulder to her as he trotted down the lane.

"Hurry."

* * * * * * * *

All was quiet inside the range. Sun Gangzhi had not heard a sound since the grenade had gone off. Could his little surprise have succeeded in killing his old nemesis? Maybe, but he could not be certain without checking the scene personally. Damn that incompetent caiman Wodsworth for losing control of the cameras and failing to relay information from outside the range. That Arctic fox Algorath must have something to do with it. Sun supposed that in retrospect, he should have had the American hacker killed outright and risked early exposure of his plot. Still, all they had managed to do was jam the system, not take it over, so they were as blind as he was. But he knew the scenario, and Silver did not, so his victory was still assured.

That grenade for example. A delicate twist into the unexpected after lulling the fox into a routine of guns, knives and projectiles from the FOX inventory. Sun had hoped to use a real baby, perhaps the son of his enemy, in the ambush, but the technical details were too challenging. A live kit would simply not hold the grenade in its mouth reliably until it was time to detonate, not without choking anyways. Sun knew this for a fact; he had experimented extensively in the years since his initial humiliation at the paws of the fox called Silver.

The current silence could mean that Sun's trick had worked, but there was a five percent chance that the fox had survived the village square ambush. He could be laying in wait, pretending to be dead until Sun came strolling into the square. Not that that was likely to happen. Sun keyed the loudspeaker system.

"Time is running out, old friend. Dawn will be here soon, and when the sun breaks the horizon it will all be over for your kit. You cannot have any more children, I hear. What a shame. Do you think that the mother will forgive you if you leave this range alive when her offspring is dead? Will she stay with you as you grow old if you let her son die because you were too slow, or too scared? Come on Silver. You are almost at the end, and I am anxious to meet with you again."

There, he thought as he switched off, that should bring him if he is still able to proceed. If the fox did not move on to the final trap then Sun would have to go check on him. But just to be sure, Sun decided to wait another five minutes before changing locations.

* * * * * * * *

Kain and Geno sped toward the headquarters building. As Marcel had said they might, they encountered several stray guards along the way. In such cases Kain stayed back with Leslie while Geno went ahead to deal with them, moving on only when her 'all clear' signal came.

It was while waiting back with the kit on one such occasion that Kain heard a familiar dull 'crack' behind him. Looking back, he saw the sprawled body of a guard. Further behind, a ghostly grey figure with a suppressed rifle stepped out of the shadows momentarily and waved. Kain smiled, knowing that Cass could not see it from this distance, but he waved back. She disappeared again as someone approached from the opposite direction. It was Geno, returning from dispatching the latest lost guard.

"What's up Kain? Didn't you hear my signal?" Then Geno saw the body on the road behind him. "Oh, busy were you? Good shot for a low powered pistol, I barely heard it." Kain was still smiling, and Geno gave him a strange look. "I could see the headquarters building, and it looks clear from here to there." She continued. "I'll run ahead and draw fire from any hidden guards and whistle you forward when it's clear. You can take care of the rear area yourself, I see."

"Let's go together." Kain told her, standing up and cradling Leslie to his chest. "Time is running out.

* * * * * * * *

Colonel Sun waited a full five minutes. He was certain that the fox had not moved forward since doing so was guaranteed to be noisy. It was possible that Silver had backtracked, but going through the village square was the only way to the end of the maze, which he would have discovered soon enough. Besides, going back was almost as dangerous as going forward, so there was no advantage in it for the fox.

With the time and space constraints controlled by Sun, he was certain that he had put Silver in a position where he had to place his stones where Sun wanted them, to put it in the terms of his favourite game, Go. The silence must mean that his adversary had either decided to pass, or he was already a 'dead stone'. Sun did not care which, Silver would be dead soon enough if he wasn't already.

Sun left his comfortable perch in the shadows of the ceiling overlooking the final scene. Although he was outside the maze he was technically still inside the range, as he had promised, but the only way anyone would see him there was to shine a light straight up. You had to think outside the box, the westerners that were flocking to his country would say. But you had to keep your eyes on what was inside the box, so you couldn't get too far away. A wad of gum stuck to the girder told him that someone else had thought of this before him. He wondered how their ambush had worked for them.

The Colonel lowered himself to the floor with a rope he had rigged earlier, but he did not come down on the street where the maze ended. He alit on the other side of the facade, behind the scenes, so to speak. From there he made his way back to the second last scene, the Village Square.

Sun ducked below the open windows and kept clear of any doors propped open by inert mannequins. As he went he peered through several spy holes his crew had cut into the scenery. Although the angle changed with each peek, the picture remained the same; the FOX agent was done for.

Silver was on his knees, his arms wrapped around his abdomen with his elbows tight in at his sides in an attempt to staunch the bleeding. His ears were flat and pointing backward, his eyes were closed, and his tail was flat and lifeless on the ground. Blood trickled down his head, arm and one calf too. His expression was neutral, peaceful even, but Sun, who had tortured the best the western agencies had to offer, could see signs of tension in the corners of the fox's mouth and in the flare of his nostrils.

There were several objects on the ground around the fox, however none of them were within easy reach. Sun could see the fox's gun, the famous Glock, in pieces on the floor. There were some loose bullets to one side, and a couple of the poisoned arrows. The basket and the baby were by the well. Mannequins lay about, whole and in pieces. Sun calculated how long it would take the fox to crawl to the arrows or reassemble his gun, if it could be reassembled. It looked safe, but he would not be exposing himself to a frontal attack anyway. Sun Tzu, Clausewitz and Machiavelli all recommended against it, so who was he to argue?

Sun moved to a point almost directly behind the kneeling fox. He pulled some cotter pins from the wooden frame that the scenery was mounted on and swung back a section of wall. With his own pistol, a .44 magnum Dessert Eagle, in his paw he stepped out into the souk. Sun pointed it at the back of Silver's head and activated the laser sights. A red dot appeared on one ear and the feline adjusted his aim until it danced on the back of the fox's skull, half way between collar and crown.

The fox had not moved a muscle since Sun had first observed him. Not a blink, not a twitch, not a shiver. Except for being upright he could have been dead already. Sun could shoot him now from ten metres away and the old fox would probably not even fell it. But that would be no fun.

Sun kept his aim point and walked forward until the muzzle of his paw cannon was almost touching the back of Silver's head. He glanced at the wristwatch on his other arm.

"The sun will break the horizon in exactly seven minutes Mister Silver. And when the night dies, so do you."

* * * * * * * *

There were several bodies outside the headquarters, all in guard's grey jumpsuits. Some had small bullet holes, from a .38 calibre RCMP service revolver possibly. Some had huge exit wounds, the kind a .357 magnum with hot loads could cause. A few had narrow slits near vital organs, and one seemed to have been strangled by someone with small agile paws, a weasel perhaps.

Inside it was no different. A dozen bodies littered the way from the front doors to the Ops Centre. Kain and Geno burst in, and skidded to a halt in the face of two female canines with guns drawn. Behind them the doors slammed shut, and Kain turned to see Marcel and George leaning against them. Miss CC and Acting Deputy Commissionaire Parker lowered their guns when they saw that the two FOX agents had not been followed.

Geno made for Marcel as soon as she saw him, ready to pounce on him and yiff him on the spot no doubt. But she stopped awkwardly when Marcel held up a paw.

"Not now Geno, we have work to do. Re-lock the outer doors." Marcel instructed but no one moved. Kain remembered then that the little black fox was a senior agent, while he and Geno were junior agents and Miss CC was ... what exactly?

Kain could see that Geno was about to reply angrily. He could also see Parker storming over with fire in her eyes, ready to take charge. Miss CC looked back and forth between Kain and Marcel, watching to see if the Arctic fox who had recently been directing the efforts to overcome the caimen would assert himself.

Kain remembered the feeling of power up on the roof when everyone followed his lead and did as he said. But they had been all equals up there, and they deferred to Kain because he was the electronics expert and the problem they faced was his responsibility to solve. Now he had to get back in control of the system, but while he did that someone else had to secure the headquarters, notify the authorities, check to see what information may have been lost, call the allies, and a thousand other things. Things that were the senior agent present's responsibility.

The last thing we need now is a turf war, Kain thought to himself. He set Leslie down on the floor, pulled Geno back, stepped between the basset and Marcel and looked down into the worried face of his friend.

"I'm reporting in as Duty Officer. What are your orders, Sable?"

"Get on the computer and take control of the range first. Shut down the mannequins, open the doors and get cameras on Silver and Sun. Direct Vikki and Dongo to Sun. That's the priority."

"Roger that." Kain spun into his familiar chair, lately chilled by the cold-blooded buttocks of his worst nightmare, and set to work. Behind him Marcel got Geno working on the emergency operations checklist and had Miss CC start phoning the liaison offices to report the compromise. Before Parker could raise an objection to being frozen out he assigned her the task of getting reinforcements that they could trust.

Kain did as he was instructed in the order he had been given his tasks. Once the range was safe he opened the doors to let Vikki and Dongo in. While they sped through the maze, following the trail of broken mannequins, Kain searched from the centre out for Silver and the cat that had called him out. He found them almost instantly.

"Silver is down." He reported, forcing his voice to stay calm and clear. "It looks like he is hurt badly. Sun is approaching him from behind with a large automatic in his paw." He realized that everyone else in the Ops Centre had stopped what they were doing to listen to him. "Vikki, take the wide road at the left fork and bear right when you pass the mosque. If you and Dongo take separate alleys you can envelope him. Sun and Silver are just beyond where you'll see three mannequins piled up in the road."

Marcel reached over and switched Kain's radio off. "How does he look to you?" He asked. Kain knew that he was referring to Silver.

"No good. He's not moving and he's bleeding profusely. His gun is in pieces and Sun has the drop on him." Kain swallowed hard. "Vikki will never make it there in time."

"Do something to distract him Kain, anything." Marcel demanded. "Geno, get the plans for the range up on the big screen. Marie, call the Ottawa Civic hospital and have a surgical team put on standby. George and Par.... Charlie, I want your SWAT teams to set up a perimeter around the farm in case Sun gets past Vikki. Tell them to shoot anything that moves.

A small voice came from somewhere between Kain and Marcel.

"Weslie, job?" The little kit enquired.

Marcel looked down on the boy that he once wished had been his own. "Did your mother teach you how to pray yet, kid?"

* * * * * * * *

Sun let the silence stretch out. Used to long hours spent meditating, it did not bother him in the least. He checked his watch when he thought it was time, and was pleased to see that there was just fifteen seconds left to go.

"Good Morning Silver," he said as he steadied his aim, "and goodbye."

Just them there was a noise behind Sun. He spun with lightning speed and fired at the creature that loomed behind him. The heavy slug took it in mid-chest, driving it back against the wall, where it slowly slid down to the ground, leaving a red stain on the fake adobe of the souk.

Sun checked the fox on his knees. He had not moved. Keeping one eye on Silver and the other on his surroundings Sun stepped over to the wall to examine the body. The red stain on the wall was bright, glossy, and smelled like oil. Sun realized that it was hydraulic fluid, from the mannequin he had just shot. Its paws were empty. It was a neutral, one that Sun had left deactivated so that it would not get in the way of the armed ones as Silver neared the end of the maze.

Sun listened carefully. All around him he could hear the soft whine of machinery as mannequins shuffled about their business. But beneath that, was that the sound of running feet, getting closer? Sun turned back to Silver, stepped up behind him and placed the muzzle of his gun against the fox's head.

Your friends have taken control of the board it seems." He told his old adversary. "But they have played their key stone too soon. They expect me to forget you in the confusion, to protect myself. But they do not know me like you do, do they?"

"No, they don't know you like I do." The silver fox spoke finally, and the fact that he was conscious made Sun smile. "They do not know how much you love Go, or how much you distain the pandas that run the country. They do not know how cruel you can be, or how you smile when you see someone in pain, like I am sure that you are smiling now." The fox took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "They don't know that you are left pawed, but I remembered."

"What has that got to do with anything?" Sun asked as he checked to make sure that the Glock was still in pieces and that the arrows were still out of reach. They were, all was good.

"It means that when you came to execute me like the coward you are you would stand behind me and to the right to do it."

Sun let his mind take a second to figure out what the dying fox was trying to say as the sound of pounding feet got closer. It took another half a second for the urgent signal to fire to go from his brain to his digit; and then the big gun roared.

* * * * * * * *

Vikki's was far ahead of her junior agent, Dongo Fett, her long legs carrying her forward at a great rate, mindless of her own safety. She took the shortest route, guided by Kain, and let Dongo go around to cut off the civet-tiger's escape. She was determined to get there before Sun could harm her mate any more.

She was almost at the area where Kain had spotted Silver and Sun when she heard a shot boom out. It was from a powerful, large calibre handgun, not Silver's Glock, the sound left no doubt about that. She stumbled, and cried out "Silver!"

"It wasn't Silver!" Kain's voice came loud in her earpiece, as if he had heard her, even though she had not pressed the transmit button. "Sun shot a mannequin. I turned on all the unarmed ones, so don't let them distract you. You can still make it."

Vikki could sense some desperation in his voice. There must be something he was not telling her. She straightened up and ran for all she was worth, twisting, turning, racing down the alleys and lane-ways of the fake souk. Up ahead she saw the entrance to the square Kain had described, with three deactivated mannequins piled one atop another in the road. Vikki raised her gun and leapt them like a hurdler, intending to shoot anything that came into sight that wasn't Silver.

As her feet left the ground the air was split by the sound of gunfire. One, two, three shots came in less than a second. Big deep booms like the earlier shot. Cold anger spread through her in an instant.

Vikki took in the scene in the moment it took her to clear the pile of mannequins. She saw the Chinese Colonel standing with his back to her, his gun still held out at arm's length. She saw Silver kneeling before him, bowed over, his paws tucked under his arms, his head and back covered with blood and gore. She landed neatly and stopped dead on the spot, her gun still centred on Sun's back. The giddy thought that all those gymnastic lessons had finally paid for themselves passed through her head. But Vikki did not fire, she waited for the Colonel to move first.

Sun turned around slowly. One cold yellow eye came into view, then his snout, wrinkled in distaste, his mouth set in a scowl. His shoulders came around and then his torso. Finally he swung one leg to bring his hips about. He opened his mouth, and a great glob of blood spilled out, joining the two red blooms that had appeared on his white shirt. His gun was out, but pointed down at a forty-five degree angle, and shaking uncontrollably. It fell from his paw and clattered to the floor. A few seconds later Sun joined it.

Vikki kicked the Dessert Eagle across the square, checked the feline for a pulse and found none. She dropped to her knees beside Silver. He looked to be in great pain.

"Silver, darling, can you speak? Where are you hurt?"

"A few places. My gut is the worst, that and the headache from when his cannon went off right beside my ear. Do you have an ambulance on standby?"

"One is on the way. Here let me look." She gently pried his arms away from his abdomen. His elbow had been holding a folded cloth, a baby's jumper by the look of it, against the entry wound in his stomach. His left paw was holding an ancient .44 calibre pistol that had no trigger. It was connected by wires to a battery pack and a switch made from two pieces of metal from his Glock, held apart by the plastic base of the magazines. A squeeze of his right paw was all that was required to close the circuit. She set everything aside as she ripped cloth from one of the fallen mannequins for fresh bandages.

"Make yourself a new gun MacGyver?" She said, eyeing his broken Glock and the contraption he had used to shoot Sun twice in the chest with.

"I didn't have time for anything fancier." He replied through gritted teeth. "Not very accurate I'll admit but it packs quite a wallop at close range. I got two off before he could pull the trigger and the impact made his shot go wild."

"It looked to me like he was going for a second try. How could you do such a crazy thing? Letting him get behind you?" Vikki's words were harsh, but her tone was soft. Silver's normally ruddy skin had gone pale under the salt and pepper fur that had given him his codename. He was not out of the woods yet.

"It's something I learned about gunfights from watching old westerns." Silver struggled to speak. The adrenaline rush that had kept him going this far was wearing off and the pain was returning.

"What's that?" Vikki asked.

"In a showdown, it's always best to have the Sun at your back."

* * * * * * * *

Vikki went in the ambulance with Silver when he was rushed to the nearby hospital, the FOX academy infirmary having been shut down during the RCMP occupation. Fortunately they had been able to locate the albino wallaby, Doctor Jones, who was very familiar with Silver's insides.

"Damn it, this is the third bleed'n time I've sewed up that intestine." He complained to Vikki as he studied the X-rays. "If he doesn't start wearing a Kevlar girdle he's going to look like a cheese grater what with all the holes in him"

The operation took several hours, and Jones advised her afterwards that although it had gone well, you couldn't expect a fox that old to spring back after suffering so much damage again and again. They intended to keep him under for at least twenty four hours. Vikki decided to stay in the hospital, and arranged for Missus Brown to take Leslie overnight.

A few of their colleagues dropped by to pass the time with her, but most were involved with the damage control and recovery effort, and any spare time was taken up giving statements to the investigators. Vikki was the only one there when Silver regained consciousness late in the afternoon of the second day. She helped clean him and feed him and sat by his side just holding his paw while he rested afterwards. Gold came by late that evening to bring them up to date.

"Parker called a friend on the Ontario Provincial Police and got them to secure the grounds of the Academy." The big golden fox informed them. "The Clerk of the Privy Council is personally handling the inquiry, but for now, we are all reinstated, because evidence of the set up is pouring in from all over. Obviously Sun didn't care what happened after he got his revenge. If he had succeeded FOX would have been finished in any event. Silver would have been dead and all our computer records, as well as those of our allied agencies, would be in Beijing now. Obviously the Chinese are denying any involvement, but two dozen dead and wounded mainlanders are hard to explain. I'm sure one of the survivors will turn, but Sun probably didn't tell them much."

"How did he set this all up?" Vikki enquired.

"The police found the badger's journal in his hotel room." He explained. "After the collapse of the Soviet Union bibles could be shipped to Russia without restriction, so he moved on to smuggling them into mainland China. It was deadly serious business, much more so than with the USSR. The Soviets might jail smugglers, but the Chinese have been known to execute anyone found to be doing it in a 'counter-revolutionary' manner. Sun caught the badger, and offered him a deal. Help alienate Joel and smuggle Sun and his crew into Canada in exchange for a free pass at the border. The ethical conflict drove the poor guy mad. He fed Joel a fake line about you kidnapping and killing his parents and that hacker, the Long Guy, reinforced it with a doctored file."

"I'm surprised that Joel believed him, but he was acting strange just before that." Silver observed. "Distracted, restless."

"Another piece in the elaborate plot Sun conceived. He had a disreputable reptile that shared one of Joel's, ah ... hobbies, switch one of his Joel's personal lub ... hygiene products for one with a mild hallucinogenic in it."

"Which product?" Silver asked innocently.

"Something called Astroglide." Williams looked a little embarrassed.

"Oh, I didn't know that Joel used hair gel." Silver commented dryly. Vikki gave him a dirty look. They had a tube of the stuff in the night table by their bed and Silver knew perfectly well what it was for. "I'll talk to Joel as soon as I'm out." Silver continued. "He has a right to hear the whole story of how his parents sacrificed themselves so he could be raised in a free society. How is Fett doing?" He directed the question to Vikki.

"He has been much better lately. Sober, confident, focused. Finding the real report had something to do with it, but I noticed that he has been hanging around Miss CC a lot lately. You wouldn't have anything to do with that, would you?"

"Well, she's been a little frustrated lately. You have not been seeing to your staff's special needs Tanner." He addressed Williams. "How inconsiderate of you."

"Anyway," Williams said to change the subject, "Sun was the same security agent that caught our current Commissionaire with dirty paws. But now that Sun is dead the Commissionaire denies any connection with him. Since the Chinese aren't about to tell us anything we have no way of proving his guilt, not in a way that would satisfy a court of law. The evidence against one Reggie Paquin, and how Sun tried to have Marcel framed as a sex killer is, however, very tight. Reggie's car, body and missing carpet were pulled out of a lake earlier today. The raccoons Sun hired had a hidden safe with records of their dealings with him."

"What's going to happen now?" Silver looked concerned. "Will FOX survive, do you think?"

Williams patted his old friend's arm reassuringly. "Don't worry. Exposure was inevitable, and we have contingency plans for this. That bear, Shelly Schultz, is being fed a line of 'confidential' information that will have her running all over the globe looking for the Ferrets Of Xanthia, a right-wing paramilitary organization dedicated to world dominance through influence and force. Algorath has run a little routine on the Internet that has found every copy of those pictures of you and changed them to look like a ferret in a fox disguise. Very effective."

"What about Marcel? Will he have to give up his Anthony Foxx cover?" Vikki asked with concern.

"Not with the truth about Paquin coming out. The resemblance is close enough to justify a 'mistake' on the part of the police. But Marcel will be transferred to Europe for a few of years to be our senior agent there. He and Geno can do some good work for us in that area."

"You sure that he is ready for an assignment like that?" Silver frowned. "There are a couple of issues with his ability to perform on demand that have to be settled first."

"He has shown some progress in that area and I have arranged a final exam for him." Williams said cryptically. Silver searched the big fox's golden eyes for a clue but gave up after a moment.

"I'll leave that to you then." Silver said as he settled back into the hospital bed. "I can feel age creeping up on me. I should get some rest."

"We all should." Williams agreed as he stood up to leave. "Everyone worked around the clock yesterday so I've ordered them all home for twelve hours of forced rest. Except for us, everyone else should be in bed by now."

He was correct, in a sense.

* * * * * * * *

In a windowless and well insulated bedroom of a former safe house on the Academy grounds, Geno's long, narrow, flexible tail curled around Marcel's black bushy one as she lowered herself down onto his waiting cock. Her legs were bent and trembled slightly from the strain of doing it so slowly. Her paws were on his shoulders and her blond hair fell over her lowered head. Marcel lay on his back, his prick pointing straight up, and fondled her pendulous breasts as he waited for her.

Geno sighed as they made contact and the tip of his cock parted the swollen lips of her vagina. She exhaled as he slid slowly into her. When her mons was pressed against his hips she leaned down and sealed his moth with hers, sucking his tongue in and crushing his lips in her desire. As the kiss tapered off she began to move on him, rocking her hips slowly and grinding her sex against his pelvis. His head lolled as sensation took over from sensibility.

Moments stretched to minutes as waves of ecstasy rose and crashed inside them. Geno moved faster, her cunt massaging his pole as she rapidly rolled her hips. They were both getting close to orgasm, and their breathing became forced and ragged as they both fought to hold it off.

"Do you think," she asked between gasps, "that there is anyone else in Ottawa doing this same thing right now, this instant?"

"Probably not." Marcel grunted as he strained to contain his cum. "We're the only ones in the world felling this right now."

But as it turned out, several others were in fact in the same position, so to speak.

* * * * * * * *

In a large opulent bedroom in a mansion just off the golf course in Kanata, Ophelia's long, narrow, flexible tail curled around Kain's bushy white one. Her legs were bent but steady, and she had no problem lowering herself ever so slowly toward his waiting cock. Her paws were on his shoulders and her icy purple eyes were locked on his. Kain lay on his back, his prick pointing straight up, and fondled her firm breasts as he waited for her.

Ophelia sighed as they made contact and the tip of his prick split the swollen lips of her vagina. She exhaled as he slid slowly into her. When her mons was pressed against his hips she leaned down and sealed his moth with hers, sucking his tongue in and crushing his lips in her desire. As the kiss tapered off she began to move on him, rocking her hips slowly and grinding her sex against his pelvis. His head lolled as sensation took over from sensibility.

"I've got to leave soon." She whispered in his ear as she moved on him. "I have a contract in India. So let's make this a good one, one to last until we see each other again in a few months."

"I'm up for it." Kain quipped. "What do you propose?"

"First one to come has to shave the other's genitals."

They had tried that technique, known as the ecstasy of the razor, once before. It meant hours of hard work for the loser, but indescribable pleasure for the recipient.

"You're on" Kain gasped, slipping a paw between them to massage her clit before she could twist away out of reach. No one could massage a clit like he could.

Or so he thought.

* * * * * * * *

In a dingy one bedroom fourth-floor walk-up apartment in downtown Ottawa, A fuzzy, narrow, flexible tail wound around a short, tapered brown one as Acting Deputy Commissionaire Parker lowered herself down onto the weasel's waiting cock. She had not imagined that she would end up like this when she started passing information through him to Silver. But George's actions in the cell, and the deceptively muscular physique he had kept hidden for all these years, had ended her infatuation with the silver fox. She had accepted his mumbled invitation to listen to some of his rare jazz recordings, and the evening had progressed quickly from there to the point they were at now.

She sighed as they made contact and the tip of his prick parted the swollen lips of her vagina. He paws were on his shoulders and her dark hair hung over her lowered head. One of his paws was busy on her clitoris, rubbing, twirling and circling it relentlessly as she neared her first non-self-inflicted orgasm in years. The other was poking her tailhole, driving in and out to the first knuckle in a way that intensified the action in her cunt and on her clit.

"Oh George," she gasped, "no one can do that like you do."

Of course, she was speaking from only limited experience.

* * * * * * * *

On top of the Director's desk in the F.O.X. headquarters, a short, narrow, white tail with a tuft of fur on the end wagged happily above a bushy red one as Miss CC lowered herself down onto Dongo's twin cocks. She signed as they made contact and the swollen lips of her vagina were split by one while the other slipped into her tailhole. She had her paws on his shoulders and her black ears flopped up and down as she moved hard and fast on him. He had removed his metal arm and his eye patch, and he fondled her breasts with his remaining paw.

"What are you thinking, right now?" He asked her as she bit her lip, concentrating on holding back her orgasm he supposed.

"I am thinking of you, mon cher." She gasped. "Only of you."

Actually, she had been calculating how much overtime to charge for these morale boosting sessions with junior agent Fett. It was after all, at the request of the Chief of Staff, despite the fringe benefits. She wondered if the Director was back from visiting Silver in the hospital yet. She could leave the overtime form on the desk when they were done with it.

The thought of Williams coming back alone from the hospital made her feel sad for the big gay fox. Of all the people in the Academy he is the only one who has no one to comfort him tonight.

Or did he?

* * * * * * * *

In a dark, secluded room in the subbasement of the F.O.X. support building, while hanging from a contraption that may have been a universal gym at one point, Joel's flexible, puffy, ringed tail wound around the great golden brush of Tancred Williams. He sighed as he lowered himself down onto the fox's waiting cock. Ecstasy washed over him as they made contact and he felt the tip of the fox's large prick enter his tailhole.

"Mister Williams, Gold I mean." Joel stammered as he began to move on the muscle-bound Director of the Academy. "There is something ... I want to ask you .... a favour." He grunted, fighting to breathe as he was filled by Williams' massive prick.

Williams was enjoying the sensation coming from his groin. He was glad that he had decided to rescind the directive on employees dating supervisors. Best to keep some things in house, he thought. He was in the mood to grant a favour to his submissive little lemur.

"What is it Joel?"

"Can I call you Tanner now?"

* * * * * * * *

The investigation and Silver's recovery in the hospital both took a full week. During that time Williams spent a lot of time behind closed doors with the Prime Minister, the Clerk of the Privy Council and the Deputy Clerk. Meanwhile, the police were slowly withdrawn from the F.O.X. grounds and the old staff was reinstated. No public mention was made of the investigation, or its conclusions, but the Commissionaire of the RCMP was rumoured to be on administrative leave; no reasons were given.

At the end of the week Williams emerged from an extraordinary meeting of the Cabinet where the final decisions regarding the persons involved had been made. Instead of going back to the Academy, he walked several blocks to the Public Safety offices on Slater Street. It was neutral territory, for a meeting with one of those whose fate had been decided.

He was shown to a board room on the second floor, overlooking the busy street below. He had to wait only a few minutes for the other to arrive. He turned when he heard the door close behind him.

The Commissionaire of the RCMP stood waiting nervously for Williams to speak. The west highland terrier had been summoned to this meeting by the Solicitor General himself. There was no doubt in his mind that he was to be disciplined, but when he saw who was waiting in the room for him he had gone cold, with fright. He had feared arrest, but F.O.X. was not known for arresting their subjects, were they?

Williams just stared at the small dog from across the room. The second hand of the clock on the wall circled the face three times while they matched wills in silence. Finally, the westie could not take it anymore.

"I can't believe it. You are not actually going to kill me over this little misunderstanding, are you Gold?" His tone of voice indicated that he thought it was a real possibility.

Williams smiled coldly. "Of course not. I'm the Director of a world-class Intelligence Agency, not some crude assassin. Besides, we don't execute people for stupidity."

The westie almost collapsed with relief. He slid into one of the chairs around the conference table and sat back, waiting for the rest. Even the privileged scion of one of the country's wealthiest and most influential families could not expect to get off a situation like this completely unscathed.

"You are being allowed to resign your position as Commissionaire." Williams continued. "You will not get to choose your successor."

"Thank God for that. The Commissionaire's job was harder than I thought, what with all those Deputy Commissionaires whining and back-stabbing each other to get ahead. But what do I use as an excuse for leaving so suddenly?"

"You can tell the press that you are doing it to pursue public office."

"That is right." The canine said with a sly smile. "I can't hold a Public Service job while running for election, can I? Maybe daddy will get me elected as a Member of Parliament, then I can be made Minister of National Security and control all of the Intelligence agencies! We could be working together in the future Gold!"

Williams gave him a look that was usually reserved for noxious insects found crawling on your dinner. "I'm looking forward to it. The press is waiting in the lobby. All they know is that you have been meeting with the Solicitor General. You can improvise the rest, I'm sure." With that Williams turned back to the window, dismissing the westie. He heard the dog get up and leave the room.

The press conference did not take long. Within five minutes the westie appeared on the street below, a little flustered to discover that his RCMP car and driver was no longer waiting for him. In a huff, he headed off up the street in search of a taxi. A moment later, a small black fox in a dark jeans and a hoodie got up from the mouth of the alley he had been sitting in and pulled his hood over his red ball cap. The fox glanced up at Williams and Williams nodded to him and touched his nose to signal that the mission was a go. The senior agent known as Sable touched his nose in acknowledgement and headed off after the former Commissionaire.

Watching him through the window, Williams thought to himself, we don't execute people for being stupid, we do, however, execute them for being traitors. This was Marcel's last test before being given a prestigious foreign posting. The ability to kill on command, in cold blood with no emotional after effects, was rare but necessary skill. Silver had it, but he was still injured. Vikki probably had it, but sending her after tone of the persons responsible for putting her kit in danger could hardly be considered 'cold blood'.

The headlines tomorrow will read "Rising political star extinguished in bold daylight robbery." The Solicitor General would vow to get tough on street crime, and introduce the new Commissionaire of RCMP, Patricia Parker. The rumours of the secret agency known as F.O.X. would fade into the background, and life would go back to normal, or what passed for it around here.

At the very least, Williams smiled to himself, Silver would be able to trade in that Yaris. Hadn't he read somewhere that the now-former Commissionaire owned a classic BMW convertible? It was silver too, if he recalled correctly. There would be an estate sale coming up soon.

* * * * * * * *

Epilogue - Twenty five years later

It was a quiet, hot morning in Ottawa, the kind where the air sits heavy and it tires you out just to breathe. Half of the city was on vacation and the other half must have taken a sick day, because the streets were empty and the parks deserted. Waves of heat shimmered up from the pavement and concrete of the city, cooking anyone silly enough to be out on what would surely be a record breaking day.

In the garden surrounding the spring-fed pond hidden in the brush behind F.O.X. headquarters, it was several degrees cooler, and Silver was thankful for that. Because today was the day that he would finally finish the garden. It was exactly one hundred years since the original owner had built the gazebo that stood at one end of the pond, and fifty since Silver had stumbled upon the site. After finding a journal and reading about the plans to turn the old mica mine into a beauty spot Silver had decided to do what the original owner had not. But work, family commitments, and injuries over the years had impeded his progress. He also discovered that the more he planted the longer it took to maintain the completed sections.

He had started the year determined to finish it by September, and today, the last day of August, he was about to plant the last new plant in the last hollow in the last shelf of rock.

Ignoring the late summer heat wave, he rolled up his sleeves and took the plant carefully in his bare paws. Whistling a tune from a Russian ballet, he scooped loose rock out of the way, poured a paw full of rich black soil in the hole, and set the root ball on top of it. Then, holding it in place, he poured more dirt around it, letting it fill the nooks and crannies. When the level of dirt reached the half way up the stem, he let go of the plant and patted the soil down gently around it. He would have to remember to get his watering can from the gazebo and soak the dirt well, so that the roots would have several days of moisture to stimulate them.

Silver stood back and surveyed his work. Next year the recently planted flowers would return thicker and bloom brighter than they had in the artificial light of the plant nursery. Colour combinations would change almost weekly as early bloomers faded and new ones took their place. Behind him the spring gurgled and fed the rocky pond before slipping out the far end. Silver had added sand to the bottom so that the rocks would not cut tender feet, like those of his first grandchild.

Strange to be a grandfather, he thought. Back in his army days settling down had seemed to be in the realm of impossibility. But look at him now, married for almost twenty five years , their son married one year and with a baby of his own already. Silver enjoyed holding the squirming bundle more than he would admit, and especially enjoyed being able to pass it back when it leaked.

Being a grandfather was one of the reasons he had decided to retire on his seventy-eighth birthday, less than two weeks away. Silver had gone to visit the Clerk of the Privy Council and tendered his resignation, recommending that the current Chief of Staff, his mate Vikki, secede him. The Clerk had agreed to pass the recommendation on to the Cabinet, so it was almost a done deal. Vikki would choose her own Chief of Staff, of course, but Silver would recommend Sable, once known as Marcel, who was currently Chief Instructor at the Academy. But who would replace him at the school? Not Geno, he chuckled, he couldn't imagine having twenty or so junior agents all trying to be like her; it would be chaos. Maybe Kain would take the job.

Silver stripped off his shirt. The sun was strong, even this late in the year, and he was feeling very hot. He drank from the pond, where the water was always clear and cold and splashed some on his face and chest. The shock made his real nipple hard, but the other one, made from skin taken from his butt, stayed soft. His reflection showed the flawless expanse of his chest, and he felt for traces of scars that had once been there, but he could not find any. His back was the same, perfect, just like his garden.

Well, almost perfect, he had to admit. There was still that big rock on the path, the one that had broken free and rolled over on it in the earthquake of 2025. A five point eight on the Richter scale, the biggest the area had ever had. Silver had been meaning to move that rock back where it belonged for ten years now. It had become a joke around the house. "Don't forget to move your rock" Vikki would say to remind him not to procrastinate on a chore. Or "I left a rock on your desk" when a particularly nasty job that required the Director's authority came in.

Silver supposed that he should call Rusty, Marcel, Kain or even Tanner to help him move it, but none of them were available today. He would have to do it himself. He had vowed to finish his garden before September, and today was the last day of August, therefore the rock had to be moved today. It was simple male logic. Although Vikki would say that 'simple male logic' was a redundant statement.

Silver wiped his paws on his jeans to dry them and squatted by the rock. He wedged his digits in, tipping the big stone to work them under, ignoring the pain of almost two hundred pounds of sharp-edged granite. He straightened his back and pushed hard with his legs, letting the weight rest at the ends of his outstretched arms. The rock came up, slowly but surely, until it was almost resting on its end. Carefully, he positioned it by the hole it had left behind. Silver repositioned his paws, holding the rock up with his shoulder, while he gathered his strength for the final heave. Counting down silently to himself, his whistling ceased in order to breathe deeper, he prepared himself for the effort. The sun was so hot, best to finish this now, he thought, before it got any hotter.

"Three - two - one!" he said out loud and sprang every muscle in his body to jerk the rock clear of the ground and into the depression it belonged in. The rock came up and over, just as he had planned. It settled into the hole with a 'thunk', just as the first wave of pain hit.

The pain was so incredible that Silver wanted to scream in agony. It was coming from somewhere inside his head, behind the right temple, almost under his ear. He could not scream however, he could not work his mouth or lungs. He could not get anything to work, and he flopped to the ground on his side where the rock had laid for the last ten years. Another wave of pain hit, harder than the first, and Silver's vision went red, and then black. Sounds began to fade, the gurgling of the spring, the song of the birds, the rustle of the leaves in the tress, all gone.

* * * * * * * *

Silver woke to find that the pain was gone and that he was surrounded by fog. That had certainly not been in the forecast, he thought. The light also had an odd quality that made it difficult to tell if it was night or day, and he found it strange that the fog was neither chilly nor humid.

He started walking, because there seemed to be nothing else to do. The landscape was unremarkable, flat and featureless, marked only by the occasional rocky outcrop. He had passed a dozen or so of those before he came upon any other creatures.

The first person he encountered was a young fit walrus, dressed in a style popular in the thirties, the nineteen thirties. The walrus waved and called out to him as he approached.

"Hello Dicky old boy!"

Silver missed a step. He had not heard that nickname since grade school, when he had made Claude Leblanc eat gravel for using it. It brought back memories of the teasing he suffered because his non-English speaking parents had given him an unfortunate name combination. But the walrus had said it in such a jaunty tone that Silver could not be angry with it, and the voice sounded familiar too.

When he got closer he recognized the walrus from an old photo he had once seen in the archives. It had been a picture of the Foreign Operations eXecutive's founder, Sir Wilbur, taken in the opening days of World War II. The walrus was his old boss, W. But W had been dead for over twenty-five years, Silver recalled. That must mean .... Oh oh. God, I hope I'm dreaming, Silver prayed.

Silver froze, afraid for the first time in a long time. W gestured for him to draw nearer, but Silver did not want to move. The walrus seemed incapable of approaching either. It looked like they were in a standoff, but then another figure came out of the mist to join the walrus.

Silver recognized her immediately; it was his first lover at the Academy, the vibrant vixen, Scarlet. She too was young again, at the height of her beauty. Another fox joined her, his first supervisor, Green, looking thirty and fit. Then a number of others appeared. More former agents, Gus the old dispatcher, a couple of army buddies, his parents; but others were notable by their absence. Gold was not there, nor was Rusty. They were both still alive, of course, but that did not prove that Silver was not dreaming, he told himself stubbornly. Former enemies were not in attendance either, regardless of whether they were friends or colleagues before they went bad. Like the senior agent turned traitor Yellow, and his assistant, Silver's former friend and classmate Kevin.

Those that were present were just standing there, smiling at him. Scarlet turned to Green, giggled behind her paw and pointed at Silver. That was when he realized that he was naked. He ran his paws over his body. It was fuller and harder than it had been at seventy-seven. More like the body he had at twenty one. Silver could see that his chest, abdomen and legs were free of scars, as was the back of his left paw where it had been burned to the bone in Finland. He felt above his left eye for the scar he had received in a street fight when he was a teenager. It was not there.

"We have to go, can't stay away too long, eh wot?" W called to him cheerily. "I suspect that you will join us shortly. Don't dawdle old chap." And with that the entire group turned and walked away into the mist. All except for a seated figure that he had not noticed amongst them.

The seated figure was cloaked, its head and face covered in a dark hood. It seemed extremely thin too, even through the fog. The figure waved to Scarlet as she passed by. She smiled back and waggled her digits.

"We have to stop meeting like this." She joked before disappearing into the haze.

Suddenly, Silver remembered the last time he had seen Scarlet. It had been in the hospital, several years after W had died. The vixen was old then, and dying of cancer, only a shadow of her former self. He had held her paw during her final hours. She had tried to tell him something just before death took her, but she was unable. It was like something was preventing her from speaking. Finally she had settled back in the bed and said: "There are fates worse than death." But Silver was certain that it was not what she had been trying to say earlier. A moment later the alarm on her monitor had gone off, as all the lines went flat.

Silver studied the seated figure for some time. How long of a time he was not sure, but it felt like hours, if not days. The creature neither moved nor spoke. It just sat there with its head turned toward Silver, waiting patiently. Silver decided that there would be no harm in going closer, as long as he stayed on this side of the rock the figure was seated on.

As he neared the figure indicated a smaller rock before it and gestured for Silver to sit. It gestured with a paw that was half bone, half dehydrated flesh. It was difficult to tell what species it belonged to. Silver sat, although he wasn't tired. He realized that he wasn't hungry or thirsty either, despite having worked all morning in the sun and then standing staring at the apparition for ... how long?

The creature in the robes seemed to be waiting for Silver to start the conversation. He opened with the obvious question.

"Am I dead, or dreaming?"

"Not exactly either." The creature replied.

"Is this some sort of limbo? A place between?" Where you are judged, Silver added to himself.

"We do not judge you here." The dark figure replied. "That was done before you arrived. Those you see here deserve to be here. That is why you do not see everyone that went before you."

"The others went where, to hell?"

"That would be telling, and you can not have all the answers on this side."

"But you can give me some of the answers." Silver concluded.

"Only if you ask the right questions, but do not feel rushed, we have all the time in the world."

Silver thought about what information would be permitted but he could not think of anything. Instead, he asked about Scarlet.

"You seemed to know the vixen that was here." Silver commented. "I suppose you have met before."

"Several times."

Silver thought about that one. After almost being decapitated Scarlet had said that she had already died once, and did not recommend it. Silver had always thought that she was referring to the pain, but the doctor had pronounced her dead and given up more than once during the operation. Silver's Glock had convinced him to try harder. After recovering she had quit the espionage business to become a nun, to atone she had said. It gave Silver the idea for another question.

"Would she be where she is now if she had not gone back the first time?"

"No." The creature said emphatically. "Germaine had to earn her way in through atonement."

"Who?" Silver had realized that the creature was talking about Scarlet, but toying with him was kind of fun.

"You know, the vixen." The cloaked figure waved a boney paw in the air, it actually sounded embarrassed. "The one with the little red heart-shaped tuft of fur just over her ... ah ... her ..."

"Vagina?"

"Yes, well I, uh, forgot what it was called. No one ingests, defecates, eliminates, or ...uh ... what is that other thing again?"

"Yiffs?"

"Fornicates. Anyway, we do not have such things as vaginas up here."

Silver looked down quickly, and then breathed a sigh of relief. "You don't know what you are missing."

"Do not get too attached to it." The creature advised. "You are not fully here yet. If you move on you will not be needing it."

"If." Silver repeated thoughtfully. "If I move on. Do you mean that I can still go back?"

"I suppose I do. Bravo. It is not often that one gets so much information out of one such as I."

"How many of 'those such as you' are there?" Silver asked with real interest, but the figure remained silent. He changed his line of inquiry. "Can you tell me anything about what lies beyond?"

"No, that is not permitted."

Silver thought about Scarlet's statement after that touch-and-go operation. Had his life been so much different than hers? Until he had net Vikki, probably not. But he had not left the business even though he had changed his lifestyle. He had continued to hunt down and eliminate those that threatened peace and order. But ... none of those had been here to greet him either.

"Can you at least tell me if I have anything to atone for?"

"I will do better than that." The creature said, grasping the sides of his hood with skeletal paws. "I will show you."

Silver sat stunned at the visage it revealed. It was his own, complete with the deadly blue-grey eyes, the knife scar, and all the white hairs that had eventually overcome the black around his muzzle. Death was wearing his face.

"Now you are mocking me." Silver said sadly.

"No, some people are instruments." The fox, if that is what it was, said with some compassion. "There is such a thing as a righteous killing, and those who you dispatched were put on a path that intersected yours for just that purpose."

"So it was all ordained." That was a letdown, Silver thought. How could you be proud of your achievements if it was all fated to be?

"The outcomes were not predetermined." The figure told him, reading his mind again. "Others had tried to stop them before you, and more would have followed if you had failed. But you never did fail, although you came close several times. Do you know how many times I have sat on this rock waiting for you? And you stood me up each time. It's irritating, when you think of it, but how were you to know?" The creature shrugged its bony shoulders. "So, what is it to be this time? Are you staying or do you want to go back?"

Do I want to go back, Silver thought, is that a trick question? I have a beautiful mate, a loving son and a new grandchild to spoil. What possible reason would I have for not going back? He opened his mouth to answer, but stopped at the last instant. He remembered Sir Wilbur's emancipated frame as he lay in his hospital bed for months waiting to die. He recalled the case of one of their junior agents who was still in a comatose state six years after a bullet nicked the artery that supplied blood to his brain. He had bled for just over ten minutes before his partner patched him up and restored the flow. He could breathe, but he could not move, speak or open his eyes, and he would never regain consciousness.

I must have had a stroke, Silver surmised. Brain damage would set in after only a few minutes without a steady flow of oxygen rich blood. Silver decided he needed a little more information before making his decision.

"If I go back now, how long before we meet again?" He asked.

"I may not tell you that. It could be five minutes, five days or five years."

"How long has it been since my heart stopped beating?"

"Time is meaningless here."

"You are just a font of information, aren't you?"

"Sarcasm is also meaningless."

This was going nowhere fast. "Can I see what is going on back there?"

"I do not know, can you?"

Silver was getting the hang of this question and answer session. The creature would never give him a straight affirmative answer, but anything that wasn't an outright 'no' was probably a 'yes', or a big 'maybe'. He considered the creature's last answer. Well, Silver thought to himself, how can I know if I don't try?

He concentrated, imagining the garden and the pond. At first there was nothing, his mind was as grey as the fog that surrounded them, but then an image started to form. He thought that it was a picture in his imagination initially, until he noticed his body lying on the path beside the pond. It looked old, limp, and fragile, not the way he imagined himself at all normally. That, and other details he had not thought of, was enough to convince him what he was seeing was real.

His perspective was roughly what he saw when standing at the head of the pond with the gazebo behind him. With a little mental effort he found that he could change that to an aerial or a ground-level view, rotate and zoom the image like the ones on the three dimensional security network they had installed several years ago. He focused on his face where he lay with it pressed against the gravel. He certainly looked dead. His eyes were closed, his tongue was hanging out and his nostrils were not flaring with breath. He turned the image to look at his wrist before he remembered that he had removed his watch and put it in his back pocket before attempting to lift the rock.

Sound came with the picture. The babbling of the spring was back, as was the sound of the wind in the leaves. The birds had stopped singing however. It could not be because he had fallen over; they were too used to his presence to let that interrupt them. He skewed the view around and changed the point of view until he could see the surrounding forest. Someone was coming up the trail that led to the garden. He zoomed in on them, the view cutting through the foliage like a hawk diving for a meal. The effect was dizzying. Good thing they don't eat here, he thought, because I feel like throwing up.

It was Vikki coming up the path. She was wearing a light sun dress and had a wicker basket on her arm. There would be white wine, cheese, and crackers in the basket. She had promised him a picnic in the gazebo to celebrate the completion of the garden and his retirement. They would eat, drink, laugh, and perhaps make love in the gazebo again, as they did on that first night together. Then they would swim in the pond and lay on the grassy slope beside the gazebo to dry off. Later they would go somewhere to eat, and finish the evening with a visit to Leslie and Susan's to play with little Kyle and ... but he was getting ahead of himself. What if he had been down too long? Vikki was not due until mid-afternoon. She could be early, but that was unlikely. Silver's mind's eye flew back to his body and examined it meticulously for clues as to how long it had been laying there.

He noticed that a line of ants from a nest he had uncovered when he moved the rock was marching up one of his arms and over to the other side. They were migrating, carrying their eggs away from the exposed nest in search of a new home. By gauging their speed and estimating the length of their column he figured that he must have collapsed at lest thirty minutes before they started their evacuation, bad odds for a complete recovery, or even a partial one. He turned the view back to the spot where Vikki would appear.

"Will I be able to look in on them from time to time from the other side?" He asked the creature that would guide him to the other side should he chose that fate.

"All will be revealed once you cross over."

"Riiiight. Helpful as always." Silver observed as he weighted his options. Go on and maybe just maybe, get to watch little Kyle grow up from afar, or return and risk being a vegetable, trapped inside his own mind, a burden on his family. He imagined the little kit being forced to stand beside a hospital bed for an hour visiting 'Pappy' Silver as he laid breathing through a tube and staring at the insides of his eyelids. If there was a fate worse than death, lying in his own waste while his grandchild grew to hate his very existence would be it.

Silver closed his mind's eye and addressed the figure in black just as Vikki came into view over the rise.

"I've made up my mind."

* * * * * * * *

A heartbeat away, on another plane of existence, Vikki Beausoleil climbed the last hill on her way to meet her mate. As she topped the rise she gasped, and broke into a run, dropping the basket she was carrying in her haste. The basket turned over in mid-air and its contents went flying in all directions. The bottle of wine she had brought to celebrate his immanent retirement stuck the upper ledge of the garden and shattered. Its contents ran down the face of the rock, across another ledge and over the rim. The sun turned the drops of wine into glistening tears as they rained down on the last plant to be placed in the garden. The soil turned dark and settled as the liquid reached the roots, soaking them and providing them with several days of moisture to stimulate their growth.

A few feet away, Vikki cradled the head of her mate in her lap, and her tears rained down on him.

The End

Kain Algorath © Marcus X Light

Ophelia Cassidy Sommer © Devil Kitty

Joel Grigori © Joel the Lemur

Geno © Coyotek

Dongo Fett © Dongo Fett

The RCMP is © to the Disney Corporation (probably)

The rest of the FOX Academy gang are © Dikran_O