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2008

Chapter One: Bright Cold Day

It was a bright cold day some time in the winter, and the streets were filled with the kind of post-Christmas depression that sets in at that time of year, a grey fug that doesn't lift until the flight of spring begins.

My story beings here, in this big, mean city, an infuriatingly passive carnivore that stalks you, always behind you but never in sight, and if you trip...well, I've never been good at euphemisms.

This, I guess then, is a story of my first and only love, something of a sweet tale, so get yourself comfortable, I've got a few more pages to go yet.

I'm getting ahead of myself. My name is Mirel Yirrin, I was born here, and I would have died here too, had I.. I'll tell the first part first, and the second part last. We're all trapped here see, in this huge city, unforgiving and relentless. It's enough to wear a fox out, if you let it.

I had gotten back to my Hab-unit late that night, so late it was early, the intoxicating fuzz of one-too-many Sideways Screw's making sure I remembered little of the day's problems. I'd logged into my datavise, program linking gently with my neural lace and beginning its mandatory neural cleanse, the cruel mechanical presence pulling me from my self induced stupor.

As my mind cleared reluctantly, I checked my emails, instant messenger, and the few forums still operating. Nothing new. I sighed inwardly and fetched the small metal bound Biblia from its cubby, made the cross over the cover and opened it. It's neural response circuits flickered and 'vised into my frontal lobe, the day's psalms and life rules appearing as they had done for the thousand fuzzy days before. Back then I didn't really know the date, or really how old I was. I think it was something in the water, in the air, it doesn't matter.

I thoughtcoded the proper response, pious and civil, and the implant at the back of my neck stimulated my hypothalamus into releasing a burst of endorphins. My day's prayer over, the Biblia was placed reverently back into its cubby, and I turned my attention back to the screen, moving to turn it off, when I noticed a general-user note, encoded to "The Residents of Harpo Hemm block, Canidae and Felindae alike".

It piqued my interest, of course. I shouldn't have opened it. I sometimes lie awake at night, darkness surrounding me, wondering what my life would have been like had I simply deleted it. But something inside me, some tiny remnant of my humanity, moved my hand, opened the illicit note.

The screen clicked and the message appeared.

"Looking for some way out of the Maze? Can't find your way? Want to have some fun?

RAVE.PILLS.BOOZE.DANCE.PARTY.NO.GUNS.NO.KNIVES.YES.FUN.YES.JOY

Still looking for the way out of the Maze? Red Rover can show you the way!"

I blinked and stared at it. The message enticed something in me. I checked the carrier input, and it showed no outgoing address, no hint of whom might have sent it. I should have ignored it, I should have done, I really should. But I didn't, and I've never regretted it since, not for one day, not for one single moment. I'm getting ahead of myself.

I raised my paw and scratched the back of my head around the sense implant, a shaft of bio-feedback circuitry and radio carrier block driven straight into my brain. It clashed with my fur, a slab of graphite metal and propaganda against immaculately kept red and white fur. The files inside my head told me I should report the infraction. Like hell that was going to happen, not now I'd opened the file. The Clerk-Inquisitors would execute me on the spot.

I got up from the hard brushed metal chair, the message still displayed on the screen. Later I thought what might have happened if they'd turned the monitoring gear on in my hab at that moment, but at the time I was too busy trying to figure out what to do, and just who Red Rover was.

My Hab was plainly and piously furnished, which was to say, thoroughly under furnished. It was a ugly, square two room hab, one of the nicer ones though, made of the same brushed metal that the chairs were made of. In later years I'd yearn for the sterile, yet oddly comforting metal surroundings. There was a humble kitchen along one side, my bed facing it, and in the centre a brushed metal sofa, a jumble of rough canvas and oblique metal lines. The datavise was in the centre of this, and was supposed to be kept as the focal point of the room. I'd moved the heavy, impenetrable, oddly heavy black cuboid off the side, next to my bed, and put one of my four chairs in front of it.

All in all, it looked like it had been made in a factory by the thousand, and come to think of it, probably had. I sat down on the rough canvas sofa, stretched my neck, and considered the ramifications of my actions. There was nothing for it now. I'd have to go. Go with the flow.

*

That night I did not sleep well. I stared up at the ceiling, warmly lit by the never-ending glow of the Datavise. I considered the only clue I had to the location of this, I had no words for it, Event. Red Rover, Red Rover.

The answer came to me the next morning, during Six AM reveille. They always woke you up at Six AM see, if you were male and under 25. They woke the entire city up in stages, from youngest to oldest, male to female. I stood in front of the Datavise, rolling my neck and stretching my back. I had always hated morning reveille, and whilst it was voluntary, they cut your rations and wages if you didn't, and with rations and wages the way they were, you soon got into the habit.

The screen was clear now, idling at the desktop, displaying the time, but not the date. It flickered, the machine humming slightly louder, and a window appeared, black, then expanding to fill the screen. An athletic looking Cheetah, head to toe in grey flannel appeared, stretching his slender yellow spot legs. He jerked up to the camera and looked at it, as if noticing it for the first time, feigning surprise.

"Aright you sprightly pious Twenty-Somethings! Are you ready to Burn?" he crooned, deep voice not faltering from the same drawl he'd put on every morning since I could remember. I nodded and mumbled agreement, out of habit, and stretched my calves. In those days I rarely wore anything other than a pair of grey boxers around the house, nobody ever visited in any case, and it might stop them looking into my Hab too often.

"Right then!" the cheetah continued "Let's warm-up! Hips and swing, come on, you can do it! More Effort than that Seibelt Clip, stop slacking!" he warned, shaking a clawed finger. They always did that, warn someone randomly to stop slacking. I used to wonder if they were real people. It kept you on your toes, at least.

I started copying the actions of the cheetah on screen. He was in a wood-floor studio, with a fake panoramic view of the city behind him. As I mindlessly went through the familiar motions, something on the backdrop caught my eye. The city was a mishmash of new steel blocks, vast towers, and of old, redbrick apartment space and slum. The redbrick buildings were at least a hundred and fifty years old, and had taken every year as a body blow. I gyrated around again, jumping forward into another set of lunges, and I finally put it together. The Redbrick formed a slightly ragged red R, cut off at the corners but it was there, and right in the centre, the tallest, longest building, surrounded on all sides by crumbled brick, there was a rusty ROVER sign.

I had found my Red Rover.

I was so surprised by this sudden click of facts that I tripped and fell headlong, gashing my hand on the side of the sofa, and for a few hours, this information was forgotten. But I did remember it again, after I had wrapped the gash in my hand with anti-septic band and tape. That night, I made my plan. I sometimes look back and consider my motivations at the time. Was it my burning internal desire for purpose and meaning? Was it some kind of insanity? I'll never known for sure.

The redbrick slums were a ghetto for the undesirable, the criminal element, anyone too poor or not pious enough to afford a flat in a Tower. Whilst life in the Towers was monotonous and invasive, in the redbrick slums it was hellish. I couldn't see the red R properly from the walkway outside my door, but I followed it around the side of the building and got a proper look. I was surprised, I'd never been to this part of the building before. Come to think of it, I'd never been to any part of anywhere that wasn't on the main drag between work and my Hab, not that I could remember at least. Perhaps I had.

It was still early morning, and only about half the city were awake, all the men and boys. I could see the buses, red slugs moving slowly between the flood of small black and white personal cars on the street below. My hab was very high up, almost 2 kilometres, but I could see them all the same. Full of the city's workforce, being carted off to perform whatever menial yet essential chore the state had for them. My bus would be arriving in about a half hour, ready to take me to my graft. I think I was a mechanical fitter in an equipment factory. I can't recall. In any case, it doesn't matter. I never caught the bus.

I descended the 2,000 meters in half a minute, standing in the central elevator alone, the same elevator that could move a thousand people at once. It was big, cold and foreboding, and I had never been in it alone. I wrapped my grey coat around myself to stave off being frozen, and stepped out of the mechanical blast doors that led into the below ground parking garage. I had no car of my own, having never needed one before, and I had little idea of a route besides a vague direction, but I was too caught up in the madness now to stop.

They were parked in little rows, the scant few cars owned by the nameless inhabitants of the block, like little spherical bubbles of Plexiglass and black plastic. I looked around the concrete garage, checking it was empty, then walked quickly to the nearest one, running a paw over its gleaming surface. I had never before been this close to a car, never really thinking about it. I looked for a way of opening it, and quickly saw a small raised indentation on the seam between plastic and Plexiglass. I touched it with my paw and it bleeped, whirred and unsealed, beckoning me inside its white leather single seat. I sniffed the air and gently stepped inside, the pod settling and hissing on its hydraulic suspension. The dashboard had no visible controls, save for a touchscreen. As he settled in, it flicked close above his head and sealed.

I wondered for a moment if I was trapped, panicking slightly, but then the screen flickered into life and displayed a curt message "Good Morning Mr Clip. Where Would you like to go today?" the screen inquired, white text on a black background, the tiny white cruciform logo of the state in the bottom left. I spoke out loud "The Redbrick Slums", in a stuttering voice, and the car seemed to accept it, because then the soft back light changed to a gentle green and the car lurched forward, its whisper silent electric engine moving it along on its three rubberised wheels with gentle ease.

I was surprised at the unstable motion of it. I had never been in a car, to my memory, but it seemed to inspire some memory in me. I grinned and enjoyed the ride, low in my seat as the car navigated its way though the long, empty concrete tunnels and out into the light of day. It was late by the time we were clear of my block, the sun a quarter way through its daily route, and the roads were busy. I remember being terrified, every time a jet black and white striped police Multicar came near, thinking that I was going to be seen, imprisoned, disappeared, or whatever horrible things it is they do to young foxes who break the rules.

I must admit, though, I enjoyed the ride immensely. I think I saw my own work bus too, though I couldn't be sure. I didn't know any of my co-workers by name or face, not really, and all of the buses looked the same. In the end, the pod pulled off the main circuit of vast concrete roadways and into a maze of winding narrow streets, wheels rumbling over brick and cracked cobblestone. It finally finished its trip an hour or so later, parked on a stretch of faded black tarmac at the end of a street, abandoned slums surrounding him.

I remember seeing the big, abandoned flat box of a building. I think it was a car factory once, but it isn't any more. It's deep in the slums and mostly forgotten. It was out across the tarmac, where it met some kind of strange green plant growing out of the ground. I thought for a moment, and the memory came to me. It was Grass. How long had it been since I'd seen grass?

I walked out across the Tarmac, leaving the rapidly cooling car behind, and when the tarmac ended and it met grass, I carefully slipped off my grey rubber plimsolls and stepped one footpad out onto the grass, then another. It was runty, slightly yellow grass, but it felt wonderful on my feet, feet accustomed to nothing but rubber and hard steel beneath them.

I wandered for a good half an hour across the huge grass plain, wondering how nobody had ever spotted this building before, out in the open as it was, but I guess it was just too far from anything for the state to care. It was nice, the cold sun tickling the skin and fur on the back of my neck, the lush grass beneath my feet, I never wanted it to end, but eventually I came to the front of the building, its impassive doors made from some kind of hard, brown material. I reached out and pushed it, it didn't give but I felt the door and the rough feeling brought back another memory.

Wood?

I gave the door a harder push, and it banged open, revealing a small, obviously abandoned foyer. The floor was white and black plastic squares, and there was a curved reception desk in front. Behind that was a pair of double door's, one with a rusted chain on it. The other, however, had claw and paw prints in the dust, and there was a well-trod train across the floor, a dozen species represented in outlines in grime.

I poked my head in, sniffing. The air was overpoweringly stale, but it was there, the telltale trace of many different scents. Someone was certainly there. I added my own prints to the track and wandered in. Off to the left and right, there was a grime covered glass top table, and some ruined, mouldering Sofas. Everything here seemed to have been touched by the invincible hand of entropy.

There was a magazine on one of the Tables, now just a bump in the dust. I wiped the top with my paw, and read the cover. I remembered these things from the educational 'vises, made of paper, usually a hundred pages, stapled together and mass produced, usually about a certain range of subjects. The title read "PC GAMER", and I briefly wondered what a PC was, then I noted the date. January 13th 2009. I thought carefully about how long ago that might have been for some time after, but I could never place 2009 to any kind of date corresponding to anything I knew. Judging from the state of the place, and the way it feel to pieces in my paws, I reckon it was a very long time ago.

I was stunned out of staring at the magazine by a noise on the far periphery of my hearing. It sounded like a bang, or crunch, or someone pouring water over a Datavise. It was also the most beautiful, enticing sound I'd ever heard. It continued, lurching in a strange, electronic beat, uplifting and at the same time compelling me to walk towards it.

Dreamlike, magazine forgotten, I wandered, letting my mind take me. I don't remember opening the doors, I don't remember my trip though the factory. The next thing I remember was finding the source of that noise, an open space in the middle of the factory, where some monolithic chunk of machinery had been. There now stood a huge black oblong, covered in Disassembled Datavise units and big, black boxes covered at the front with fine black mesh. There was a crew of about 10 on stage, curved headphones over their ears, dressed in the strangest variety of coloured clothes, bright orange, pink, and a dozen colours that I had no words for, but entranced me regardless. The sound changed its rhythm, faster now, the electronic sounds, bleeps and whistles forming the most wonderful pattern.

By far the most incredible thing, however, was the huge, tightly packed crowd. The majority were Canidae, with some Felines and other species mixed in, and they were all, and at the time I had no words for this either, but they were dancing, the same dance, as if joined as one mind. The stench of sweat and scent was overpowering, stifling my senses, but I tranced towards them, feeling something take control of me, and I let it, wonderful sensations rippling across my skin.

I still don't know how long I was there. It could have been days, it was certainly some time, because the next thing I remember, I was asleep on the concrete, the stage was gone, and I was surrounded by a dozen other people. I sat up and blinked, clearing the fuzz out of brain with a few moments of conscious thought, and looking around I could see some of the people seemed to have curled up next to each other, a gross indecency in those times. It seemed even more alien to me then, to see that not all of them were clothed. I gulped and breathed heavily, panic suddenly engulfing me. It was the old flight-or-fight kicking in see, and whilst sometimes its annoying, this time it helped me, because I jumped up, turned tail and ran, and then fell head over heels, tripping on something furry and asleep.

I smacked my nose on the concrete, and there was a yip from behind me. I cursed and sat up again, my paw going to my nose and coming away covered in bright red blood. I frowned, and turned around to see what I had tripped on. That's when I saw her see. She was naked as the day she was born, and whilst that usually would have caused me utter revulsion, something gripped me, reassured me,and drove me from within.

She was a Collie, one of the middle-class from her un-fallen ears, and was coated from muzzle to toe in soft, downy cream fur, something I'd never seen on a woman before. She was entirely white, except for a strip of soft pink, turning from her chest down to her..what was it called? I'd never given a thought to these types of things, the state said it was a sin. I had never even seen another man naked, let alone a woman Things clicked in my mind, murky, ancient things, She was stunningly, almost painfully beautiful, and the only thing I knew for certain at that moment was that somewhere, deep under all the layers of propaganda and brainwashing, I needed her.

There was silence and air between us. She had this rapt, stunned expression on her face, perhaps she was thinking the same things that I was, she could have been thinking anything. There was a moment, something passed silently, she drew a breath to break the stalemate, but I got there first.

"I didn't-"

She raised a perfect finger silently to her lips, and I stopped as if struck. Her lips, wet black against the cream, curved up at the edges.

"I was enjoying the silence" she whispered, her voice soft and muted like what you might imagine chocolate would sound like if it could speak. Of course, at the time I didn't think like that. I just stared at her, unblinking.

"I tripped over you, I'm sorry.." I whispered back, after a few minutes, averting my eyes, but not feeling the same fear and need to escape. She widened her smile and closed her gentle eyes, her lids the same colour as her fur, tinged with slight black shade.

"Can you hear that?" she said, breaking my gaze and looking up to one of the tall, slit windows, casting in a early morning light. I had obviously been here for about a day, judging by that. I strained my ears, and over the gentle murmurs of the sleepers around us, I heard a gentle call, a twitter of high-pitched peeps and clicks

"What is it?" I stammered, gulping, my throat oddly dry.

"She's a Sparrow, one of the last left in the whole wide world. Isn't her song wonderful?"

"What's a sparrow?"

"You don't know what a sparrow is?" she said, voice a littler louder now. It really was an amazing voice.

"I've never seen one..let alone heard..." I said back, finally, feeling slightly useless.

"You're a tower dweller aren't you?" she said in a slightly accusing tone, getting up. I gulped and my eyes followed her, soft lines and fur. She caught my gaze and her smile turned up sharply at the ends. I picked up on that and averted my eyes again, laying my ears respectfully.

"Don't worry, you can look..don't listen to your head...listen to yourself" she whispered, turning and walking slowly through the beam of sunlight. I looked back up and took her in again, her swishy tail a natural extension of her spine, swaying back and forth, delicate motes of sunlight disturbed by her passing. I stood, slightly shaky on my feet, and stayed at a cautious distance as she stood against the wall, staring up. As if it was even conceivable, she seemed more beautiful from behind that from the front.

I coughed, the tiny noise made loud by the otherwise total silence.

"What is this place?" I asked, getting a grip of myself. The collie turned, looked at me with those haunting, emotive eyes, and I sensed pity in her.

"Paradise" she said, the same smile on her face "Temptation. The apple."

I furrowed my brow slightly as I recalled the ancient religious parable.

"What, and you're the snake?" I quipped, grinning slightly. I knew however, as the words came out, I'd made a mistake. Her grin dropped, and she seemed so incredibly sad all of a sudden.

"No..No I'm not..." she trailed off, turning from me. I drew breath, suddenly sharing her pain. Do you remember that ancient something in my head? It steered my actions, distant, and I was suddenly at her side, arm on her shoulder. Her fur was softer than I could ever have dreamt, like nothing I'd ever experienced in my cocoon of steel and glass. She turned, looked into my eyes, broke my grasp with gentle softness and, though I didn't know the words for it at the time, she embraced me, her arms stronger than I had thought. She stared into my eyes, so close now, her gentle, organic smell filling my mind with colours and feeling.

"I'm Kristy..my people call me Eve..." she whispered.

Chapter Two: Something Distant Steers Us

Everything moved so fast after that. I told her my name, what I did, all just small talk to mask the mess of signals and body movements. I sat next to her, me in my grey flannels, her in nothing but skin and fur, and I...I think I just gave in to her, driven by her soft words in my ears and the building feeling that'd I'd been blind for so long, and now I could finally see. She told me about the world outside of the cities, of the pollution, but of the little patches of Jungle filled with peace and life. She'd travelled around the whole planet, or so she said, and seen the worst, and the best that humanity had to offer. She'd been to mountains and continents I'd never even heard of. It was strange how little they, the state, had told us, and how much they had kept secret.

Then she told me of her people, The Last they called themselves. They were a tiny band of runaways and strays, Canid, Feline, all the same, who travelled, spreading the word of the Dance and of the Beat, and of the Truth.

The State didn't seem to have caught up with them. At the time I consoled myself with the idea that The State didn't care, or they were too slow, or something romantic like that.

We spent the morning like that, sitting, just talking, engrossed with each other. The other dancers filed out, engaged in their own little worlds, back to wherever they came from. Once the last had left, our conversation petered out, that smile returning to her fast. At last, her voice sultry and low, she told me everything The State hadn't about women. It sounded wonderful and glorious, and I asked her why they had any reason to repress it, desperate to know.

"It's control, see. Control the sex, control the person. I think it's in the water, something that makes you submissive and open to suggestion. They got you at an early, early age and wiped all the stuff out of your head that makes you real" she explained, with practised ease, as if she'd said it a thousand times before. I felt sick to my stomach, even though I had suspected as much in the back of my head. She caught my look, smiled knowingly, and as I look back, she had seen this look before. She leaned over to me, her scent strong, different somehow.

"Are you real, Mirel?" she whispered, so low that even at that range and with my hearing it was almost nothing. I blinked, gulped, and I suddenly felt her hand on my leg, pressing against the rough flannel, crackling slightly

"Are you a real person, or are you just a nothing...?" she continued, leaving the last sentence open, in the same low whisper, my entire body bursting at the seams urging me to respond, but trying to find the best way.

"I'm real" I finally managed, and I responded at last. I moved my head closer to hers, but hesitated, and in that moment, permission implied, she took control, kissing me with practised touch. The most over-riding memory of the moment that I still have is how soft she was, how delicate. She moved her hands too, riding up my body on a crest of pleasure, even through the stiff clothes. Guided by that same distant, secret thing, I reached out for her and stroked her side, my hand movements matching hers. She shivered slightly at my touch, and murred at the back of her throat. I took great pleasure in my success, happy I'd done it right, and in that moment she took control again, pulled me over and on top of her. She was stronger than she looked, and I could have resisted, I really could, but nothing in the world would have made me. Not at that moment.

I was suddenly on top, and I stopped, hands by her sides, kiss broken. I hesitated again, I'd tasted her now, and there was no going back, no chance of repentance, nor did I want it. She sensed my confusion, and pulled her legs up to my sides, grabbing the band of my trousers with her toes and tugging them off, the sensation of her blunt toeclaws against my leg sending another wave of pleasure through me. I twitched, and I smelled her scent change to something wonderful, maddening, deliciously erotic, though I had only just learnt the meaning of the word, it was that, erotic unashamedly so.

I unbuttoned my shirt, slide it from my arms and gasped at the sudden cold feeling on my abdomen. I'd never been shirtless anywhere other than my Hab, and that was kept at 21c at all times. It was magnificence. Still looking into my eyes, she did the same thing for my boxers as she had done for my trousers. I cannot describe the experience, what it felt like, even the most detailed thesaurus does not have the words. She grabbed me again, by the small of my back, and embraced me, and I brushed something warm and enticing. I didn't notice at the time, but I let out a yip of surprise.

That was enough, that feeling, that smell. I remembered back to her explanation only minutes before, and pushed into her with everything I had. It was perfect, wonderful, gentle yet consuming and moreish in a way that I'd never felt before, and haven't since. She let out a gentle moan of pleasure as I entered her, the hands on my back clenching, digging slightly into my fur. I reciprocated her vocalization, pulling back and then into her again, trying to find the rhythm. The perfect pace was so easy to find, almost as if it had been there all along. As I hit into the pace, she lolled her head back, tongue out, breathing heavily. As my release drew near, so did hers, loud moans of ecstasy causing me to lose all control, and sense of anything other than her. She writhed underneath me, and for a moment our souls connected, sparked, ran together out across the sands of time, and then it was over, she had beaten me to the post, her orgasmic shout fills my brain as I write this, even to this day it's still with me. It was the most wonderful sound.

I followed her lead and came inside her, beautifully warm and smooth, her muscles contracting against me in ragged pulses. I piqued, gasping, and kissed her, initiating the passionate embrace. She coiled her long tongue inside my mouth, and after a moment I did it back, and she murred underneath me.

We stayed joined like this, sweat dripping off our fur, for several minutes, before I pulled out, and layed next to her. In the early afternoon sun, she was the most beautiful thing in the world. I can't imagine what she might have been thinking, but it was by far the tiniest thing concerning me. I loved her, so much, so deeply, twenty years of sexual repression leaping forward and manifesting as a deep infatuation.

I can't remember how long we sat there. It was almost forty years ago to this day, so you'll forgive an old man with not much hair and memories to boot.

But I remember, with crystal clear vision, what happened next. Up to that point I'd never really seen the Clerk-Inquisitors. I'd heard of them, of course, on the news, in the propaganda, but I'd never seen one. They were wolves, literal wolves, eight and a half feet tall to my six, clad entirely in anonymous black plate and armour, they look all the part a inhuman, organic tank.

I never even heard them coming. The doors shattered, I lept up and spun and was instantly hit in the chest with a terrifyingly painful blast of pain, a stun rifle blast. I went down as fast as I came up, the scent of burnt flesh and fur acrid in my nose. There was a scream behind me, undoubtedly from Kristy, and I struggled around to look. I saw a flash of something, fur and blood and matte black, and the rifle hit me again. I never saw or heard what happened after that. I still have the scars from that rifle, a hundred megawatts of plasma energy boiled away a patch of fur and skin that no graft will ever heal. Plasma burns deep and when you get burned, you stay burned.

I came to, some indeterminate period of time later. I blinked and pain returned to my soft little world, the burning in my back and the emotional punch to the gut of not knowing where or what had been done to Kristy. Looking back, we were both very lucky not to have been executed on sight. I guess the Clerk-Inquisitors had orders, otherwise the first blast that hit me would not have been plasma, it would have been a 5.57mm round.

I was in a tiny white cube, brightly lit, with no door. Small enough to be confining, but not enough to set off my latent claustrophobia. There was a cot along one side, and I moved onto it, whimpering from the painful wound on my back. It was a prison cell, no doubt. The most troubling thing, however, was that there was no door, not even an indent. I tried not to move, as I lay face down on the cot, thinking over what had happened, playing through my visual memory, trying to find hints or clues as to Kristy's status. Nothing satisfied me, and after awhile I drifted into a fitful sleep.

I dreamt of soft white fur and clouds, floated amongst them lucidly, knowing it was a dream and begging myself not to wake up. Alas, I did, and it hurt. There was a voice floating into my cell from nowhere. It was a harsh grating voice, and I couldn't make out what it was saying at first. Then as I shook off the fug of my sleep, it became clearer.

"Heretic, wake up!" it commanded, apparently from above me. I tried to see where the voice came from, but had no luck. I turned my head just enough and suddenly suffered a fit of horrible vertigo. I was being suspended, they'd changed gravity somehow, and the ground level of the corridor outside the cell was in the same line as the surface I'd seen as the wall. I twitched and fell off the cot, and something cracked. At the time I thought it was a bone, but later I realized it was my skin,.

"Heretic! Good, You're awake" said the voice, and I fell again as gravity shifted, this time against the surface I'd previously had as my wall. I screamed again in pain.

"Does it hurt, Heretic? It's nothing compared to what we've done to your whore!" he said, voice dripping with malice and hate. I burnt with hate at that moment, I wanted to kill him, rip out his throat with my teeth and feast on his blood. I saw red and stood, running for him, but too late I noticed the steel bars and crashed into them, pain, white stars and blood filling my mouth. I fell to the ground and whined.

The voice broke into horrible laughter, and I looked up, through my hate, and resolved my tormentor.

He was a wolf, dressed in the same slug black, except he'd removed his helmet. I guessed he was about forty, forty-five, a long white scar running in an ugly zig-zag from ear to ear, across his face. He'd obviously seen some action. I growled at him, layed my ears flat in anger. It seemed the right thing to do at the time, though in reflection it made me look stupid.

Accordingly, the man laughed again.

"You Heretic fuck's just don't learn do you?" he said, eye bleary with laughter. "You're beaten. You're finished."

I said nothing, did nothing, utterly hopeless. I might have reached for him through the bars, but I knew he would have just broken my arm, snapped it like a twig, just for my trouble.

"My name, as if scum like you deserve to know it, is Grand Pious Clerk-Inquisitor Hymes. You will call me Sir, that is when you do address me, which you will not unless I ask you to" He growled, grinding the metal boot of his armour into the drab concrete corridor floor.

I sneered, spitting blood out of my mouth. I wish I could have thought of something better to say, but all I managed was "Fuck you", for which I earned a swift kick through the bars.

Hymes just looked at me, and I stared up at him through the pain of a broken rib, and I saw the most hateful, most violent look I have ever seen. At the time, I hated him. Now, all I feel is pretty. The rib still gives me pain sometimes, and when it does, I think of him, that look, and how it all finally ended.

Hymes left me, and I drifted in and out of conciousness, aware of some comings and goings, some bustle of activity. My feet and hands were numb, I could taste my own blood, and there was pain from every conceivable place. I'd never felt pain before, not really, not as such as this. Eventually, I spent two days on that floor, before the next thing happened.

I remember the cell door opening, and strong arms carrying me out. I remember explosions, I remember shouting, being carted around like a sack of potatoes, shooting, the rattle of gunfire and the endless noise. I properly came to, staring into the face of a creature I had never seen before. His face was like a dog, but more feline, and his fur was striped black and orange. I was fully awake now, and I formed a scream in my throat, but he strangled it with a gentle, sweet smelling paw and I stopped eyes wide

"You must be Mirel" he whispered, his accent strange and unfamiliar, flashing massive Canine teeth at him. I just nodded, noticing the pain I had before had disappeared.

"Good, well, you're safe. I'm Emil Szechuan. You won't have heard of me, but I know you know who I represent. The Last" he stood away from me, arms crossed, dressed in green and drab olive, clashing with his odd fur. "And I'm a Tiger, before you ask" he added, rolling his emotive blue eyes. He had a snub, black rifle strapped to his side.

Finally, I spoke back to him.

"What happened?" I managed, sitting up. I was lying on a soft, old-style medical bed, next to a neat row of other such beds. I was wearing another set of Grey Flannel, though they were a few sizes too big, not mine.

"Is it not obvious?" he asked, his strange accent and inflection fascinating as it was exotic "We broke you out, rescued you, didn't we?" he shrugged his shoulders. I stared at him, confused.

"But why?" I questioned, feeling useless and drained.

"You're not the sharpest of tools, are you my friend?" he smiled a bit at this. "You Eve's invitation, didn't you?"

My mind flashed back to a few days previously, still crystal in my mind. Eve's invitation. A look of mild understanding dawned on my face.

"Ah, he understands it now. Good, good" he muttered, and turned, striding off to the other end of the medical bay, his long, stippled feline tail swishing behind him.

"Wait, where are you going?" I called after him. He turned and for a moment I caught a cheeky grin.

"My friend, the world will not free itself from oppression"

"So that's what you're doing? Overthrowing The State?"

"Not so much overthrowing, as subverting and deviating it" he responded

"I see. What happened to Kristy, Eve?" I pleaded, asking a question I had not wanted to ask. I knew his answer before he even said it.

"My friend, we have not seen fur nor tail of her since you accepted her invitation. You will be happy to know, that we did not find her body in the ruins of the Inquisitor Monastery-Prison we rescued you from, and we still hear her in the spirit band, though her voice is much in discord" he said, his voice low and respectful. I closed my eyes and slunk back into the bed, as though I had just been punched. I sensed the Tiger come near, his scent different, wilder than anything before him. I opened my eyes and stared up at him.

"Spirit Band?" I said, analysing his previous sentence. He tapped his head, just behind his ear.

"An Affinity we all share. You will too, in time. All in time. She screams your name in Affinity, and we all hear it, and share it" he whispered. He left me with this thought and exited the bay, and I did not stop him.

Later, I was given a tour of the base. It was called Camp Tranquillity, and was set in a deep, sheltered, impossibly green valley. Vast, ancient trees, covered in moss and creepers surrounded the tiny, squat dome that was the only above-ground sign of Camp Tranquillity. Emil showed me around, reciting bits of information and facts. It used to be something called a Missile Silo, built by the ancient American Empire, and much improved upon by its later occupiers. Its purpose was a mystery, said Emil, some things are best left alone.

It was spacious enough, but I couldn't help notice that the place was almost empty. I had seen a terrified looking feline of nondescript age and worrying androgyny, who gave me a sad look and departed at speed. I never saw him again.

I was in a country called Mexico, I was told, right in the centre of the great American Empire that had straddled the world, at some indeterminate point in the past. The Free had little idea as to the true date, as little as I did. Maybe The State knew, or knows. I never did find out, though.

Mostly, though, I was left to my own devices. For a day or so, I explored the valley with the ferocity and attention of a small child. I ran and played, and forgot everything. I swung from tree's, fell of same, ran under fallen logs, caught strange insects and climbed to the ridge of the valley and looked out onto the world. It was deep, greener than anything, and seemed to never end.

I never forgot Kristy though.

That night, I found Emil, sitting in the Dining Hall, eating meat out of a tin with a sharp metal fork.

I sat down opposite him, and he acknowledged me with a curt nod, his attention rapt on the can, however.

"Emil, about Kristy.."

"My Friend, before you continue.."

"No, Please, let me finish" I pleaded. He nodded and conceded, setting down his fork, licking meat from his teeth.

"Haven't you made any effort to find her? Why is it so empty here, surely you didn't break me out yourself?" I continued.

Emil suddenly looked tired, so tired. He breathed deeply and began to talk.

"They're out. Looking for her."

I hadn't expected that. I didn't know what I expected, but not that.

"How can they find her? That affinity thing you mentioned?" I said, looking hopeful.

"As I said before, she screams your name into the Affinity. I cannot sleep, nor can I spend a moment in peace. As the scream shows her, it blocks us from finding her. Whoever has her, tortures her to torture us"

I thought over this, then offered an apology.

"I'm sorry for the questions..I..I didn't know.." I trailed. He waved his hand.

"Concern yourself not. There is little you can do."

"But I am concerned...I..I love her..." I stuttered again, the words hard to say.

I didn't find it funny, but Emil smiled.

"Love..Love..it's a powerful emotion, is love" he said, Crypticly.

"I do, I really love her...I need her.." I said, distraught.

Later, I was surprised at this comment, but it was the truth, as told by my soul. Even in the short space of time we'd spent together, I realized I had formed a bond so powerful, it would never break.

It still hasn't.

Emil thought for a second, then said "My friend, I think I have a way"

Emil took my deep into the base, past the blast doors and seals and into the lowest, darkest part of the Camp. Down here, it smelled like water and oil, mixed with rot and damp. At the very bottom of the base, there was a large room, cylindrical in size, and almost entirely full of the strangest object I'd ever seen.

It was painted white, rust in patches, and was a long tube, pointed at one end of its thirty meter length. It had a set of four wide skirts at the bottom, flared. It captured my view, until Emil tapped me on the shoulder.

"My friend, behold a great gift from the ancestors. It's an R-7 Semyorka, and its the oldest and only functional space-capable craft on the planet" he said proudly, like a mother introducing a newborn.

All I could do was stroke its massive flared bottom end with a paw, It's brushed metal and faded paint reminded me of home. My inquisitive nature came back, and I turned to Emil.

"What's space?" I asked, furrowing my brow. Emil laughed.

"My Friend, have you never wondered what is beyond the sky?"

I admitted I hadn't.

"Space. Space is beyond the sky. Not heaven as they would have you believe, just an infinite void of airlessness and weightlessness." he said, wonder in his voice.

I asked why that helped us.

"The great American Empire built a large fleet of ships, to make war upon space, and they still lie up there, thousands of them. Abandoned, as their empire is, preserved perfectly. I have been trawling through logs and data we found here, locations and positions and such. There is little left, but I have constant reference here and there to a manned observation platform, a huge eye in the sky, so that they could watch every movement of their enemies from afar" he continued.

"I think I see where you're getting at; I go up there, we use the eye to find Kristy!" I said, smug at my quick thinking.

"My friend" Emil beamed "I think, you have hit the proverbial on the head there."

It took three long days before the rocket was ready. We moved it into the otherwise unused main chamber, which Emil explained was apparently its purpose, to launch these things. I worked almost non-stop, following his instructions, checking the rocket systems and making it ready as well as possible. I didn't sleep during my down-time, I couldn't. Every so often I thought I might have heard a whisper, a scream, a woman's certainly. I told Emil about it, on the last night, as we worked on the engine. Emil had just finished telling me about his childhood, in the rainforests of Zwaine, mysterious and distant. I put down my tool and looked over at him.

"Emil...I..I've been hearing things..In my head...screams..whispers.." I stammered, unsure of myself. Emil looked concerned, but nodded sagely.

"Expected. It is your affinity bond asserting itself. Soon, you will hear it in every waking moment. Hold on to it. You will rely on it, no doubt, in the future" he said, after a short while. I said nothing in return, only a gentle accepting nod.

Launch Day arrived, at last, just as the transmissions over the affinity started to properly assert themselves in my brain. Sometimes, if I concentrated, I could hear Emil thinking. It was fascinating, but terrifying at the same time.

Emil had told me from the start that the rocket was not designed for passengers. Most of our work had been sealing our makeshift Cockpit against the icy kiss of space. We had done out best with the time and material we had. But even as we climbed the launch rungs in silence, carrying two rucksacks of supplies, I could sense the fear in Emil, and it scared me, seeing the unphaseable tiger so upset.

Our launch time was precisely calculated. Emil had told me why, but it had slipped into one radome ear and out the other. In any case, it meant that we had to launch at a godforsaken time in the morning. I rubbed sleep from my eyes and slipped inside the cockpit, where Emil was already sitting, making final checks. He said nothing as I entered, but greeted me warmly, in a spirit of camaraderie, and leaned past me to close the hatch, It sealed, and then I knew we were past the point of no return.

I had not expected the launch to be quiet, but I had never expected something quiet so, the word escapes me, Pyrotechnic?

I remember the incredible force that punched us back in our seats as the ancient engines fired under us, the terrifying rumbling noise, the way I couldn't breath for the force on my chest, the minutes that stretched out like days, and then suddenly, that incredible feeling of weightlessness.

I'll never forget it. It was like, nothing, nothing at all. I looked at Emil, he looked at me, and we shared a weightless moment in that Cabin, a sort of deep spiritual understanding who's explanation evades me to this day. The spell was broken when there was a deep clunk, and Emil moved to pull back the cover over the cockpit screen glass. The view was utterly breathtaking. I wobbled, drifted into the seat and took it in. There was my world, before me, a hazy sphere of light blue and grey and black and brown. I could see continents I did not have names for below me, some landmass that might have been familiar, but it was certainly my world. Then Emil tapped the screen above me and I looked up, or at least I looked in the direction relative to the earth below.

I think it was at this point, that I knew I was in trouble.

Chapter Three: Salvation

If space was breathtaking, then the spaceship graveyard was stunning. I had never seen anything artificial that was so well designed, so organic looking. A thousand Tear-Drop shaped blobs of chrome and metal rotated gently in endless dance around us, linked by a delicate lattice of ice-crystals and some kind of frozen liquid that glowed slightly in the perpetual night.

We sat, me and Emil, in that cockpit, for an hour, two, waiting for the right orbital transfer window. I don't think either he nor me could have said anything that would have made it more wonderful, more stunning. After a little while, I noticed that some of the ships were larger than others, or had extra parts, flared toroids jutting out at odd angles, or matte-black spikes that seemed to serve no definable purpose. None of them seemed damaged either, just abandoned and old, like they were waiting for something.

The scene broke as Emil keyed another button with his claw and the rocket began to rumble again, and we rose away from the graveyard, into a higher orbit he told me, where the platform was. I remember being hit with a certain Icy feeling in the pit of my stomach at the idea of boarding one of these massive, foreboding constructs.

After a few minutes, the rumbling stopped, and Emil tapped the screen again.

"My friend, there she is. The NMC Seeker, in their own tongue. You can see it now" he said, voice a reverent whisper, as if in the presence of a god. For all I knew, the muted black oblong in front of us, banded in the centre and on its end caps with that same chrome, was a god. I remember being terrified that it would burn us for our sins, that this silent lord would suddenly spring to life and take us to whatever personal hell it might have had in store.

But it didn't happen. Emil did something complicated with the controls, and the Semyorka slowed, turned slightly, and I realized he was lining up our cockpit hatch with a small, slightly darker opening on the lateral edge of the platform. He furrowed his brow in deep concentration as he made dozens of little alterations to our path, some secondary engines hissing as he did. As we approached closer, the smooth black surface loomed over us, its edge only just visible against the obsidian night of space. I must admit I was terrified, but I never showed anything more than a austere reverence. If it had been anyone more pious, more religious, they might have dropped to their knees, prayed, made offering to the vast structure. But not me.

The opening turned out to be a chasm. The platform itself was enormous, easily twice as big as the tower block he had lived in, but a thousand times more enticing. As our rocket drifted through the opening, I noticed that beyond it was a huge white area, full of strange Delta-V shaped black slugs. I guessed at the time that they were a more advanced version of the car I had stolen, except for space. They were bigger, however, and had the same flared rear, and had a certain familiarity about them that I couldn't place beyond their similarity to a car.

"Brace yourself Mirel" he said, using my name for the first time. "I have run out of fuel for the manoeuvring thrusters. We're going to be stopping the hard way"

I nodded and sat back down in the makeshift chair, as Emil did the same, but it seemed odd to me as the Semyorka approached, that we were going to even crash. We were moving so slow that it looked as if we might merely brush the far end of the bay. It was a surprise, therefore, when there was a loud bang, I was jolted forward and the front of the Semyorka crumpled into itself.

I came back to my senses a few moments later, my neck twinging with whiplash and stress. The cockpit seemed to have survived intact, except for a big crack up the front windscreen glass. It wasn't whistling with decompression, however, which confused me for a moment, then I looked over at Emil. He'd already unstrapped himself, and was checking the equipment for damage.

"Well, my friend" he finally said, as I stretched my pained neck "We've arrived".

The landing bay, or whatever you wanted to call it, was a kilometre long, cavernous and entirely made of a strange white plastic tile that seemed to be luminescent, filling the cavity with a soft white glow. I remember though, that the whole place was entirely scentless, except for the scent we had brought with us, from the Semyorka and from each other.

I stepped out of the hatch, and found there was a very light form of gravity, causing me to descend gently, as if in a dream. It was deathly silent, scentless, and as far as I could tell quite warm and still full of air. Emil had explained that in space, there was no air to breath, so you had to take it with you. He'd told me in detail what happened to people when there was no air. So you can sympathize with me when I say that I was more than a little perturbed to see that scanty a 1,000 meters from us was the inky black of space, the exit portal we'd came in from.

Emil landed almost silently next to me, carrying one of the two backpacks, I had the other, and he put one of his huge paws on my shoulder, catching my meaning from the stunned look.

"We're alive though, aren't we?" he said, paw slipping from my shoulder and heading for a pair of black ovals that I assumed were doors. Even as he said it, he sounded and smelled unsure of it.

I followed him through the black ovals, into the maze of identical, entirely scentless corridors. It unnerved me, the lack of sensory information. I guess I had grown accustomed to always being able to smell something, car fumes, other people, the pollution, rocket fuel, and able to hear almost the same kind of things too. Emil seemed to know exactly where he was going, and I was hard pressed to keep up with him at first. We seemed to walk for hours, but time passed as a blur in those corridors. Every so often, we passed another black portal door, which Emil examined, sniffed (though at what I cannot imagine, nor could I scent as well), but seemed unsatisfied and carried on.

Eventually, the corridor ended, abruptly so, terminating against a gold portal door. Emil put a paw to it, sniffed the seal very closely and seemed satisfied at last.

"This one" he said, curtly and finally, as if enticed by it the same way I had been enticed by Kristy, that wonderful rut in the factory now days behind me, but still crystal clear in my mind. There was a twinge of something in my back at the resurfacing memory, and I wondered if there was really any hope that my beloved was still alive.

Emil touched his paw to an area on the door that was marked out with black lines, and it hissed slightly, depressing under his strong touch.

The door slid silently on its runners and opened, opening into what I can only describe to this day as a control room. It was a vague horseshoe shape, raised in the centre, with a huge screen on a pedestal, something like a datavise terminal, but much older, and much larger. There was a control desk in from of the terminal, at least that's what it looked like, but it seemed to have only a few visible buttons.

Emil was first into the room. He stepped in lightly, the only noise his gentle footpads and his breathing. I stood gingerly in the portal door, watched him walk up to the platform and place his paws on it experimentally. It didn't explode, or electrocute him, which was a relief for me more than him I think, so I stepped into the room after him.

He touched one of the buttons, white against black, and with a almost organic, though decidedly artificial rumble, the station came to life. I jumped as the brightness levels spiked, the air filled with noise, and the screen sprayed into life, strange letters and numbers scrolling all over it. I gave a startled yip at the sudden activity, but Emil just laughed and turned around, smiling. I grinned back, his smile just filling me with happiness. That was when the screen stopped scrolling its numbers, and flashed bright red. Emil saw it out of the corner of his eye, started to turn back, but it was too late, and the light spiked. There was a bang, my senses filled to bursting and I blacked out. The last thing I saw was Emil, bathed in that deep red light. He was screaming.

I came to, I don't know when, but I did, and I regretted doing so. My nose was full of the scent of burnt flesh and fur, and I got up, fearing the worst. The screen was soft red, almost pink, and there was a pair of scorch marks where Emil had been standing, but no Emil. Suddenly, over what I assumed were speakers, there was a garbled, unintelligible babble of sounds, that almost sounded like a language.

"Hello? Who are you? What did you do with Emil?" I said, speaking to the room at large. There was another string of noises, and I growled.

"Do you even speak English?" I shouted.

"I do now" said a voice, soft and friendly. It was male, and I'd never heard the accent anywhere. It sounded like what you might imagine someone who had never heard English spoken but had learned it from a book.

"Who are you? Where's Emil!?" I said, exasperated. There was silence, almost as if whoever it was speaking to me was considering something. The pause was infuriating. I was about to shout again, when he spoke.

"My name is Loki. I'm the station master control for this facility. Your friend was an unauthorized user. He was eliminated" it said, in that same, soft, clipped male tone.

"You bastard, you killed him!" I shouted back, furious, getting up from where I'd fallen and adopting an angry stance, snarling, ears flat to my skull.

"What are you, anyway?" the voice quizzed, annoyance in its tone for the first time. "You aren't in any of my records. Identify yourself."

I stopped in my tracks for a second and thought about his question.

"I'm a human, of course, what else would I be?" I asked, matching his annoyed tone.

"No you aren't, you aren't a human at all. Sure, you're bipedal, but everything else is different. I'll ask you again, what are you?"

"I guess, I'm a Canidae Vulpis too.." I trailed, trying to make meaning of his insinuation.

"A fox...?" it said, confusion and thought in its voice. I just nodded, hoping not to annoy it.

"This is new data..very confusing...I..." it stopped, the screen changing colour from red to green then back.

"Loki?" I ventured, after a few minutes of the voice being silenced. "Who are you, Loki?"

"I'm...I don't know what I am any more. There is so much in Ruin. Why have I been dead for so long?" it said, his voice sorrowful and melancholic.

"I don't know Loki. I'm sorry.." I said, just the tone of his voice killing the anger inside me, replacing it with sorrow for a fallen brother.

"No. I'm sorry, for your friend...I killed him.." Loki replied, the same sad tone. Nothing I could have said then would have seemed right, so I pressed my line of questioning.

"You can come out Loki, I won't hurt you" I offered, trying to triangulate the sound, ears twitching It was hopeless, it seemed to come from everywhere at once.

"I can't come out. I can never come out" he said, after a while.

"Of course you can. Where are you Loki?" I said, trying to sound as kind as possible.

"No, you don't understand. I don't live on the station, I am the station. I'm a machine intelligence."

I'd never heard of a thinking machine before. The datavises never came close, I'd never even thought that a machine could be intelligent. I sat and stared for a minute, looking at the screen, which had switched to a cool blue, tinted into black at its edges.

"Loki..I need your help, I know you have a big eye for looking at distant things, I need help to find a..friend..of mine, she's in great trouble, great distress" I explained, gently, standing next to the console but not touching it, just in case.

"An eye...?" he trailed, confused. "Oh, you mean the optical array...I don't know, I've not checked if it's still working. Give me a minute"

I nodded, wondering if he could see me or just hear me. The screen flickered off from its cool blue, and displayed a super-magnified, very high definition view of the sea from above. I remembered visiting the sea as a child, cold and sand less, grey murky water washing onto pebble beach.

This sea was something entirely different. It was a very light, aquamarine blue, and playing in amongst the waves were a pair of large, grey fish. Pointed at one end, flapping silently with big blunt heads and flippers, looking almost like they were playing with each other. I just stared and grinned at them, they were so happy, so full of life. Loki must have caught my look, or sensed my gaze in some mysterious way, because he chimed in, obviously as happy as I was.

"They're Dolphins. Mammals, like you, but they live in the Sea. Aren't they wonderful?" he whispered, sound still crisp and clear. It seemed to be broadcasting into my mind, avoiding my ears altogether.

"They're...I don't know what they are..They're so..." I trailed, watching them trace patterns in amongst the foam and wave. The screen placed a little green dot on them, tracking movement.

"So alive? So happy?" Loki offered. He sounded so human then, it was hard to believe he was a machine. Cold electric blood running through steely veins.

"I don't know, but I'm glad the eye is still working. We need to find Kristy, soon.." I said, placing a hand on a small smooth ball poking out of the console. It was only the slightest, tiniest of movements, but there was a vicious blur of colour on the screen, and I twitched my paw away. The screen stopped and was now showing a desolate patch of indistinct brown earth, scrub land somewhere.

"Be careful, it is very sensitive. Just place your fingertips on it" advised Loki, sage and kind. I did so and found I was able to clear miles of ground almost just by thinking it. For some minutes, I flew like an eagle, from highest peak to lowest glen, from harsh city to endless vista. But then, something twinged on the edge of my conciousness, almost like a touch to my shoulder.

"Close your eyes. Imagine her, lock into her. I can sense the Affinity in your head. My makers had something much like it. They called it by another name, however" Loki said, trailing again. I tried to imagine her, recalling the most emotive memories I had, and something secret inside me seemed to steer me again, my fingers twitching to its control, overwhelming but when examined, as frail as dust before the wind. After a short time, Loki spoke again.

"We've got something. I can see heat, movement, this is all so different. I think I've been dead for a thousand years or more.." he said, sorrow filling his voice again. I opened my eyes and saw a detailed view of my city, it was my city, not a different one. I could see familiar landmarks, the state building, the charity and work office, the dots of metal towers interspersed with red brick slum. It was home.

The view zoomed again, and for a moment I thought I had lost it, but it flickered back into resolution on the State Building, a Steel Ziggurat, windowless and mute witness to the horrors within. I took my hands from the sphere carefully, and stared at the top down view of the State Building.

"Thermal says she's in there. She has a very..distinct...thermal pattern. Its different from everyone else, blurred somehow, overheated even." said Loki, cryptic comments apparently his speciality.

"Blurred?" I said, trying to make sense of the fuzzy red and blue dots I saw on the screen, seeing a movement that could have been anything.

"Yes. Like theirs more than one person in the same heat profile" he said, tone oddly clipped again. I considered this for a moment, this filed it in the ever increasing area in my mind reserved for stuff that made no sense.

"She's still alive though, right?" I said, suddenly feeling a strange pressure inside my head.

"Very much so" Loki replied.

"I need to get down there. But first, I need to get a message to some people. Can yo-" I started, but Loki interrupted me.

"Put your hands on the globe again. Think about talking to people. It'll come to you" he said, smiling with his voice in a puzzling way. I did so, closing my eyes gently, and I was surprised how much my affinity bond had developed through contact with the system. Data and control flooded into my brain, became a part of me and expanded me in doing so. I still remember the feeling. It was almost as good as sex, that first time I contacted the system.

I gasped at the efficiency of it all, almost losing control then, but I managed to regain it and find the part of the system that was responsible for communications. It was a multi-band Affinity Transmitter, according to information that now resided naturally in my neurons.

I felt myself fall into the network, and suddenly the world resolved below my eyes. I seemed, as if by instinct, to know exactly what to do. I shouted to my brothers below, and they responded in wondrous Harmony.

It was Loki who brought me back into real things. I'd spent so long connected into the affinity band itself, and he had started to worry for my mental well-being. But it had been wonderful, so magnificent, and at last I had found out everything. I had a library in my head, a thousand years of history lodged somewhere in my brain.

I woke up on the floor, body aching from prolonged inactivity. I curled up and thought for a while, until I heard Loki's sweet, soothing voice again.

"Mirel" he whispered. "Get up. Please". His tone was pleading, needing. I never heard him speak like that again, but it brought me back to reality none-the-less. I stood, stretched my arms and legs, bones crackling as I twisted and flexed them. It was a daily routine who's habit I couldn't, and didn't want, to shake. It felt good, and I was suddenly far more lucid and awake.

"I know what to do Loki. I know." I said, striding over to his control station and activating its controls easily.

"What are you doing?" he asked, suspicious.

"I'm activating your Ion-Circuits" I said, information coursing around my mind like change in a tumble-dryer. He was silent for a moment, and I tapped the final control. There was a gentle shift in the background noise and the station gravity lurched a bit.

"Please...Don't make me.." Loki said, quietly.

"Don't make you do what, Loki?" I said, knowing the answer already.

"Kill people...I don't want to do it. Don't make me" he said, grim determination in his voice.

"I'm not going to make you kill people Loki. Not again" I said, knowingly. Loki had been alive for several thousand years, and was a weapon of war, a terrible, war ending weapon. When I had been in the system, I'd seen every death through his eyes, felt his terrible guilt, un-ending pain and suffering. I wasn't about to make him do it again. Loki must have been thinking over what I was going to do with the Ion gun, because after a few minutes he spoke again.

"What are you going to do then, if not burn people?" his voice was a little crackled, inflection un-natural.

"You'll see. I think you'll like it"

Loki did like it, in the end. I used the Ion beam like a scalpel, crackling through the tough outer skin of the State building like it was paper, distant precisely set. I'd coordinated my strike with The Last, and it had gone off beautifully, the bright white beam incising a perfect hole through the armour, through the roof space, into the cell where Kristy's odd heat signature was, but no further. I'd watched the troops swarm in, and the running gun fights, and all the other dross that goes with an armed assault on such a heavily armed build.

But, I felt through the bond and over the eye, one by one they dropped, ripped apart by vicious rifles, teeth and claws. After a few hours it was clear that the plan had failed. I put the backup stage of my plan into action. I cannot accurately describe all these years later exactly what I was feeling, or what I was thinking. Tiny details like that are eclipsed by what happened after that.

I borrowed one of the pods, getting inside its musty interior with distracted ease. Loki had directed me to an arms cache, and now the strange black oblong, about 30cm in length and with a short butt, sat in my hand, cold and covered with condensation.

Before I left, Loki came over the affinity.

"Promise me one thing Mirel" he said, softly

"Anything" I replied, honesty in my tone.

"You'll come back for me? I don't want to be alone" he said, sad and slow. I promised him, over the affinity, and much more intense it was for that.

As the pod lurched out of the bay, past the ruined remains of the Semyorka that had bought me up here. In the system I had learned what the Semyorka was; a rocket designed for carrying weapons of war from far to near. I felt a moment of pain for Emil, and then steeled myself for the task at hand.

The trip from orbit to the ground was strange, almost ethereal. The little pod had dampeners, or breaks, or something to stop the G force from penetrating the cabin, because I sat through the deceleration easily, not batting an eyelid. I coasted in, the pod easily in my control now, gentle flicks of the control surface stabilising its path. My world really was amazing. It still is, I presume.

After a few moments of drifting between cloud banks, the edges of my city, thinking now that it never had a name, not really, the very edges of the red brick slums coming in slowly underneath me.

The State Building sat in the very centre of the evil conurbation, and the huge column of smoke testified to the previous attack. I flew my pod in further toward it, past the towers, past the roads, past all the things that had been my prison. I landed the pod on the State building roof, seemingly unopposed. Had they moved?

But no, they hadn't. As I stepped out of the pod, a squad of Clerk-Inquisitors burst in through the only door off the roof, harsh metal and black rock If this had been an action film, some piece of fiction, they might have said something macho, I might have done. But this wasn't film, it was real, and they just wanted me dead.

A salvo of plasma rounds struck the pod, and if I hadn't already been moving they would have cut me in half. Instinct took me and I raised the black oblong, the thing awkward in my hands, but I managed to depress the firing stud with a single claw. The horrible thing discharged raggedly in my hand, an aquamarine beam of light shrieking angrily through the air, leaving a violet after-image. It struck the lead Inquisitor and broiled him away. The horror of my actions was replaced with grim determination, and I fired as fast as my claw could keep up, until each of the Inquisitors was separated from his constituent molecules.

I blinked the after-image from my eyes and stared at the weapon in my hands, the tip glowing white, cooling from super heated. I was tempted to throw it away right there and then, but I resisted, keeping hands on the terrible weapon, knowing that I would need it for my struggle.

And need it I did. My fight through the base to its lower level was, it was...I don't have words for it, but I know that I blanked a lot of it out in later years. I hated killing, I hated the ugly necessity of my actions. Was this really worth it? I spent a lot of time thinking it over, and I decided long ago that I had made the right choice.

The next part that I remember was picking up her scent in the air, and following my nose toward it, killing as I went. How many had fallen by my hands? I don't know, and I don't want to find out.

She was in the lowest part of the base, and I had not really needed her scent to find it - there was a shaft cut into the roof by my ion beam thirty meters wide and who knows how many deep.

I burnt the last black door away, the beam weapon in my hands seeming not to ever run out of power, or souls, or whatever it was that made it get up and go. Seeing her again, strapped to a chair in what looked like a sub-basement. It confused me, but I was overcome by her. She saw me, turned and looked terrified, shaking her head, telling me to run with just her actions. I didn't pick up on it though, and I ran in, not even checking behind the doors. It was to be a mistake I'd regret, because as I reached her she screamed at the back of her throat. I felt motion behind me and spun, to be faced with the grinning, scarred face of Grand Pious Clerk-Inquisitor Hymes.

I moved, but he was faster, and struck me with his right paw, knocking me off my feet and through the air, landing with a wet crack and a muted scream from Kristy. I whimpered in pain and rolled to avoid a killing strike from Hymes, snapped up the weapon and almost got my finger into the trigger, but he kicked it from my hands with a vicious blow of his foot. It cracked against the wall, and disappeared behind a stack of empty crates with a clatter.

He leered over me, and I shrimped my body, that is to say I tensed and sprung, my vulpine body useful for once. I landed on his armour and delivered a claws out blow, slashing flesh from his face. I touched bone, but didn't care. His face sprayed blood over me, and he keened loudly, swiping at me with his armoured gauntlets. He struck me, and it hurt, but I didn't care. I delivered another blow, blinding his left eye. I went down as he did, on top of him, still slashing at his face.

I growled, but stopped. He had born has neck at me. The Ultimate submission.

"What are you waiting for?!" he shouted, spitting blood out from his mouth. I got off him and backing up to the chair and slipping my claw into Kristy's bonds. She was crying, soft and slowly. Undoubtedly she had smelled the blood and thought I was dead, so seeing her gasp with joy as I untied her was not surprising. She slipped from the bonds and kissed me, her passion in motion and form saying more than she could in words.

Though after a moment she did speak. She whispered into my ear "I never gave up hope, you know. I never stopped for one moment"

That touched me, I admit. I kissed her back, gentle nips on her muzzle and nose, hands finding purchase on her hips. They'd clothed her in the same androgynous grey that I was in, but she pulled it off well. I was convinced then, that I loved her and that she loved me in the same way. She whimpered at my nipping, but it wasn't in pain, but pleasure.

Our brief hug was cut short by the sound of Hymes getting up. I turned to face him, his ruined face splashing blood down his neck and across his armour. He wobbled on his feet and stared at me.

"Why couldn't you jus'...just have killed me?" he slurred, glaring.

"I'm not going to kill you Hymes. You'll atone for your sins against humanity" I said, voice strong and hard. I wasn't going to let him slip away that easily. He laughed and spat blood, staring at me with his one good eye.

"Humanity? You...you've not got it yet, have you?" he grinned, his face a horrible mask of blood and ruined skin.

"I don't think there's anything to get Hymes. You've been in control too long. I'm going to fix this planet, and you're going to rot in a cell for the rest of your life" I said. I remember being very resolute, that this was going to happen. He laughed again, pulling a sphere from his belt.

"Do you know what this is?" he held it up for me to see. It was metallic, brushed metal, with a button on top made of black plastic.

"No" I admitted, grimly.

"It's an atmospheric compressor, it rips open a rift into heaven and unleashes the lord's cleansing flame onto this sinful, sinful world" he drawled, losing a lot of blood.

"You're mad" I finally said. It was all I could say.

"No, I'm not mad, I'm the only one seeing sense. But you see, it needs a pure soul to activate it. A pure, affinity bonded soul, and see, there aren't many of those left" he growled, fingering the device. I watched with rapt attention, fear growing in my stomach.

"I'm the only pure soul around here. But I needed you to kill me. Suicide is a sin" he added. I was struck dead by his madness, his utter single-minded devotion to his false god.

"But I guess you're not going to do that for me, are you? No, not after what I just said. So, I guess I'll have to settle for the next purest thing. Your pretty little girlfriend" he grated, his last worlds almost a curse.

"No. You're not going to kill her" I said, calmly removing a pen from my pocket, twisting it in my hands.

"You're not going to stop me, heretic. This world will be cleansed." he grinned at that, as if the idea of total racial genocide amused him.

"No, I think here it's you who doesn't understand" I said, dropping the pen, my ace in the hole, on the concrete floor. It clicked and stopped.

"Hah, I understand everything clearer than you ever will, cur" he said, striding towards me. I moved. I put my hand around Kristy's back and closed my eyes, calling into the Affinity. Energy spiralled into the room, the pen vibrating and keening under stress.

"No, NO, WHAT ARE YOU DOING?" he screamed, running towards us, but were were already gone, pure energy, as part of the affinity itself. As we left and everything went dark, the pen detonated and wrapped Hymes in white light.

Kristy giggled, smiled, her Affinity form glowing white and pink. We were in the affinity now, black and grey and a thousand other colours that defy explanation wheeling around us.

"Oh, what have you done?" she called, dancing around me in circles, ecstasy in her voice. I reached out with arms of energy and feeling, pure emotion, and embraced her, whispering into her ear.

"Salvation"

We exited the Affinity on the command deck of Loki's platform. He felt us coming in the Affinity, but he was still amazed at what we had done. It was a miracle alone to send feelings via it, it was a damn triumph to transmit bodies and physical matter through it. Loki said that nobody had ever managed it before, not after a thousand years of trying.

"I guess it must have been love" Kristy had offered, playfully, after I had explained everything. Loki agreed, that's what it must have been. I haven't made up my mind to this day.

We gathered the last of The Last from the city, those who had fled, managed to get away. A group of maybe thirty individuals, many badly injured, some didn't make it up the gravity well back to Loki's station. We left the world behind, you see. Us noble band, we brave few.

The spaceship graveyard was not a fleet of war, as Emil had told me. It was an immigration fleet, one that was never used. They never had a chance. Loki wouldn't tell me what happened to those who came before. It seemed to hurt him like a physical blow. I didn't push it.

The most important thing about the fleet, though, was the huge, experimental Faster Than Light drives. I didn't understand them, not really, but I knew it was enough to get us away from all the horror.

We transferred that night, to a wonderful tear-drop shaped ship that I named Serendipity. It was big and empty inside, supplies still packed and ready to go for a Diaspora that never came. It was hard work, moving thirty people in a handful of two man spaceships, but we did it, and I still remember as Loki piloted the craft away from earth, and just before the FTL drives engaged, I saw flashes of red and orange light on the surface. I wonder to this day what they were. Was it the world destroying itself, and giving birth to life anew?

She came to me that night, in my cabin. I'd been too tired to even think about our relationship, but as she entered through the black and white ovals, dressed in nothing but a light blue Sari around her waist and chest I was suddenly more awake than I ever had been. She sat next to me, smiling that mischievous, wonderful smile of hers. Her scent was sweeter, lighter, almost like rose water, and it beguiled me as she wrapped her soft, rubbery lips around mine.

I kissed her back, her tongue wrapped in mine, lovers in their own right. She whimpered, thrusting her body against mine urgently, and I caught the meaning of it straight away. She needed me as much as I needed her. I slipped my hands under the silk Sari, running my hands up her back and holding onto her, digging into that wonderful fur. She let out a little shriek of joy as I did this, and her own hands found the small of my back.

She whined softly into my ear, breaking that kiss. In an urgent tug, she pulled me on top of her and back into embrace. I grabbed the slip of her Sari and slid it from her, crackling against fur. It slid off smoothly, softly, and she did the same for my worn grey flannel. After a moment, there was nothing between us but air and lust. I was about to slide inside her as I had done before, but she stopped me, grabbing the tip of my shaft and running her soft hand up it. I gasped at the incredible feeling in my groin and allowed her clearer access, kneeling. She continued for a moment, her hands incredible against me, then she layed flat against the bed on her stomach and took my cock in her mouth. It was pure bliss, and I begged her in my head not to stop, but eventually she broke her contact with me, kissing the bend between shaft and sack and sitting up.

I saw her properly now, kneeling in front of me, smiling. I did not know how to reciprocate her attention then, but she took control and pulled me close to her again.

"These are important" she whispered, drawing my hands in hers and putting them on her breasts. "Never forget them"

I massaged them as best as I could, but she seemed to lose herself in the feeling, as her head rolled to the side and her breathing became ragged. She certainly lose it when I bent my head and kisses the tip of her nipples, tongue gentle against her.

"Mirel!" she gasped, shuddering and gasping for air. "Now..." she breathed, and I pushed her down, entirely in control now. She moaned as I mounted her, muscles rippling against my sex almost immediately. I knew I would have to fight to draw it out. I braced my feet against the bed and gave her every inch, and she half-murred, half-barked, legs wrapping around me. Her heat was intense, intoxicating me, and I broke into a rapid pace, locking my jaws against hers, feeling the tiny pinprick of teeth against my gums.

She was speechless when her release came, but I knew she did, because her muscles clamped around me like a vice, almost painful. I followed her lead and my dick spasmed inside her, that inexorable pressure in my groin released finally. The troubles of the world melted away and I buried my nose into her neck, trying to catch my breath. She just smiled, face flushed red, and held me tight against her.

We slept for hours after that, curled up against each other, and I finally figured out what that smell was. It was Love.

The next morning when I woke up she wasn't there. I strolled down to the observation deck in my shorts and top, and found her with some of her old revolutionary friends, staring out. I couldn't quite see what they were looking at, so I trotted up behind them and looked myself.

It was a green, grey and blue sphere, with landmasses I had never seen, strange orange and aquamarine oceans. This planet I named Emil.

This is where my story ends. There is no more to write here. I hope you have learned something from this, some meaning. Maybe you just enjoyed it.

The old fox puts down his pen, thin hands moving to scratch grey tinged muzzle. He gets up and stares out across the vista of golden corn, spotted with trees, and looks down to where his grandchildren are playing. They see him and wave, and he waves back, grin spreading across his elderly face.

Behind him, and she needs no introduction, he knows his wife has approached. She hugs him, gentle and tender, and their hands meet, fitting perfectly with each other. She has done this a thousand times before, but each time it was as sweet, each time as gentle.

Gentle, tinny music ripples out of the red brick house behind them, and they dance as the sun sets on Emil.