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ROGUE SWORD

Chapter 6 - Even if you know the way, ask one more time

Vikki Beausoleil and Dongo Fett left Canada separately, each flying in a different direction and changing identities twice before arriving in Harbin, China, where F.O.X.'s resident agent was to meet them and take them the rest of the way. But it would have been too obvious for them to meet at the airport, even though Hu Liaoming, known as Genghis around the Academy because of his Mongolian heritage, was a corsac fox and able to blend in among the population of his assigned territory. There was always the chance that some Ministry of State Security operator passing through might recognize him. So the two field agents made their separate ways to the Sunshine Hotel, a smaller venue in the village of Hongqixiang, which was south of Harbin and away from the main roads. It was a place frequented by long-haul truck drivers and they were unlikely to run into any state officials there. Vikki would have no trouble recognizing Hu because they had been in the same class together at the Academy, and they had gotten along well.

Hu would be posing as a Chinese truck driver, delivering goods to the Yak Mountain complex in North Korea. The Chinese were the only folks that would still sell the Koreans anything even remotely connected to their nuclear program, and posing as a delivery driver allowed Hu to keep track of the Korean's nuclear program and build contacts inside. It was a trip he had made several times in the past, occasionally with passengers, officials from the complex that wanted to go to China to shop for things that were not available in North Korea. That included just about everything. Hu had driven to the nuclear complex the day before to deliver some nozzles needed for processing uranium, and was now returning with two members of the red fox clan, the Palgan Yeou. They were supposed to be along to help load some heavy equipment that Hu was bringing back, but they would be given false papers and airline tickets to fly to Canada for medical treatment. Tomorrow Vikki and Dongo would check out of their rooms, dump their scant luggage in the nearest garbage container and walk down to where Hu would be parked and waiting for them. Vikki and Dongo would take their place, donning the vestiges of their final disguise en-route.

But for tonight they were still foreign tourists and they had to act like it to avoid suspicion. To that end Vikki, who was posing as a French citizen, and Dongo, who was carrying a New Zealand passport, went to the inn's bar where they pretended to meet for the first time and exchange small talk. Dongo, who usually wore a patch over his ruined right eye had been fitted with a glass one to match the other. His scars and the line in his fur where the cord of the patch had worn it down were filled in by strips of faux fur. He would revert back to a patch tomorrow, but for tonight he looked like any other western tourist, and together they made a handsome couple. They loudly discussed the local tourist scene, in case anyone from the neighbourhood committee, those innocuous retirees that watched and reported everything that happened in their jurisdiction to state security, was listening. Then they set a date to meet the next morning and walk to the nearby temple, which had been recently restored. At that point Dongo excused himself, claiming that he had to retire early because he never could sleep on airplanes. Vikki remained behind for one more glass of wine, like a good French vixen.

Everything was going according to plan. But they say that a plan never survives beyond contact with the adversary, meaning that you cannot plan against the unexpected actions of others, and Vikki was about to find out how true that statement was.

There was an Arctic fox sitting at a table across the bar, staring at her. Vikki was used to that. At six-foot three with vibrant red fur and a tail so thick that it looked like it could keep a platoon warm she was used to drawing attention, especially from males. She studied him, using the mirror behind the bar instead of staring back at him. Arctic Foxes were common in this northern region of China and this one was tall too, as many of the Northern Chinese are, but not quite as tall as she was. He looked to be in his early twenties, and though he was dressed like a local there was something about him that made her think that he was not from around there, the way he was sitting or how he held his head, perhaps. And he looked vaguely familiar, although she could not remember running into any young male arctic foxes other than Kain Algorath recently. She sipped her drink and shrugged mentally. It would probably come to her who he reminded her of eventually.

She looked around the room, trying to see if any of the other patrons were showing any undue interest in her, and did not see the white fox get up and cross the room behind her until she caught the movement in the mirror. She tensed, but relaxed again when she saw that he had a puzzled smile on his face. He had probably seen her and Dongo talking, assumed that Dongo was trying to pick her up and was wondering if he had a chance where the other male had failed. Vikki prepared a gentle rebuff. She was almost finished her wine and it was time she was getting to bed ... alone.

"Excuse me, Miss?" The fox addressed her in English with an American accent.

Vikki turned to face the fox, a polite smile painted on her face. But it faded the instant she looked him in his eyes. They were warm and full of life and the innocence of youth and she knew them, she had seen them before .... but where?

Meeting someone from your past when you were undercover was an agent's worst nightmare. It was very hard to shake off an old school chum or a former lover while pretending to be someone else. Here there was no place to flee, and worse, she noticed that the bartender, a Manchurian tiger, was watching them with interest.

"This is going to sound awfully stupid, miss, but I ... I think I know you."

"I'm sure I've never ..." Vikki began, but the fox cut her off.

"I was sitting across the room there and the instant I saw your face I knew that I knew you, but I don't know your name, I don't think that I ever did. And that seems strange ... doesn't it?"

Vikki's mouth opened and closed several times as she struggled for a response, but the fox beat her to it. "My names is Kyroo, Kyroo Echos*. Is that name familiar to you?" He looked disappointed when she shook her head no. "Oh. It just ... for years I've had these dreams, dreams of you." His face went white under his white fur. "Erotic dreams. There's a room," he rushed on, "at a place called the Academy. It's on a farm, in the middle of a city, Ottawa ... I think. There is a rat there named Doctor Gordon that puts me in the room, and then you chase me around it. You call me a 'Yankee Doodle'. Then there's this old blue leather couch and you catch me on it and then you ... we ..." he blushed even deeper.

Suddenly Vikki remembered. Back when she had been a student at the Academy there had been a mix up in the schedule. Doctor Gordon, the F.O.X. psychologist, had recruited the young American Arctic fox, just out of high school, for a seduction resistance scenario. He was five years older now and had filled out. Whatever he had been up to in the meanwhile had also added some hardness to his face; small wonder she hadn't recognized him. Vikki had gone in to the interview room thinking that it was an unarmed combat test, and had almost stabbed the kid to death on the blue couch with a pencil before she realized there was a mix-up. But instead she had .... they had ... four times in a row? Was that right? Now it we her turn to blush. But she also acted, taking the white fox by the upper arm and half dragging him back to the table he had been sitting at.

"Listen, Kyroo was it? You must never speak of that day. Do you understand? It could be dangerous, for you as well as for me."

"I knew it." He whispered. "I'm not crazy."

"People thought you were crazy?"

"I thought I was crazy. It's been five years since I first started having the dreams of you, of us. I couldn't shake them. They seemed so real, so vivid. They started right after I visited my cousin in Ottawa. I went back, hoping to find you, but when I was awake I could never recall the details of the dreams, not until today, when I saw you." He looked at her like someone who had found a long lost love.

Vikki was aware that the subjects they used in their scenarios were supposed to have their memories wiped before being returned to wherever they had found them. I guess that it didn't take with this one, she supposed. She would have to report it when she got back. But for now she had to get out of this without raising any more interest in them than they already had.

She forced her voice to sound casual. "What are you doing here in Harbin?" It was strange to meet anyone in such a remote place, let alone someone who had been inside F.O.X. It was quite a coincidence, but Silver had taught her not to believe in coincidences.

"After I couldn't find you in Ottawa I volunteered for an aid program. They have sent me all around the world, putting in wells in Africa, doing flood relief in Bangladesh, teaching crop preservation here in China. Right now we're working with the local coal miners, screening them for lung disease."

"How noble." She said dryly. It was, really, but she was too worried about being noticed to be moved.

"Oh, I'm no hero." He smiled shyly. "I'm not a teacher or an engineer or a doctor, not like the rest. I provide security. They send the real aid workers to some pretty dangerous places, places where the rebels or insurgents will kill you for the medicine in the locker or the food in the warehouse. I keep them safe, so they can do their work." The smile dropped off his face. "It gets a little rough, sometimes."

Now Vikki was touched. She could understand how soul destroying it could be keeping the rest of the population safe. She reached across the table and took Kyroo by the paw and he clutched hers tight. Catching the bartender's knowing smile from across the room she realized that they probably looked like long parted lovers now, and she supposed that was what they were, when you thought about it. Long parted but who can never be lovers again. She had to let him down easy, and count on him to keep their first meeting to himself.

Kyroo looked up into her emerald green eyes, eyes he recalled looking down on him with desire. "Did ... did it really happen, between us I mean?"

She put her other paw, the mechanical one, over their clasped paws, remembering that she had not had an artificial one when he knew her. The prosthetic was so good that he did not realize now that it was not the real thing. "It really happened. But it can never happen again." His mouth opened to ask why and she continued before he could. "I'm with someone now. We have a kit. We're very happy."

He slumped in his chair, the picture of dejection. "I understand." He said after a minute of silence. "I was hoping ... finding you after all these years ... but no, I can see that I was just fooling myself."

"You weren't fooling yourself, Kyroo. You just had nothing but memories to go on. I went away just after we ... we met. Then I was in the hospital for a while. You had probably given up looking for me and left Canada before I came out. Who knows what might have happened if life had been different? Maybe we would have hit it off, maybe not."

"I was very young." He smiled, dispelling some of the gloom from his features. "You were so much more experienced and alive. You would have tired of me in no time."

"You were a sweet kid." She said, raising her paw to brush the fur back from his eyes. "And you still are. But Kyroo," she leaned in and turned her head away from the bar, in case the bartender could read lips, "you work in security, right? You understand how dangerous it can be if the wrong people hear the wrong thing, right?"

His face grew serious again. "Sure. I understand."

"I'm going to ask you to do me a favour. After we are done here can you leave China? Can you make some excuse to return back to your home in the States and stay there until you hear from me?"

He looked puzzled, but not altogether surprised. "I could do that. I suppose that I should not ask why?"

"No, you shouldn't. And Kyroo, one more thing."

"Yesss."

"If anyone asks you about me before I contact you, no matter if they are Chinese or American or what, just tell them that we had an affair once, and that when we met by chance I turned down your offer of an encore. Can you do that, please?" He nodded. "Then I should leave you now. Remember what I said. Adieu, Kyroo."

"You mean 'au revoir', don't you?"

"You've picked up a little French in your travels." She said and smiled tenderly as she stood up. "You are correct, 'til we meet again' it is." She spun on her heel and strode from the room before she could be tempted into further conversation. The less time she was seen with the fox from her past the better.

Kyroo sat there staring after her, so intent that he did not see the bartender slip up beside him.

"You want 'nother beer?" The bartender asked in English.

"Yibei pijiu." Kyroo responded with one of the phases he had learned in Mandarin.

"Nice vixen. You know her?" The bartender stuck to English.

"We had a one night stand once. But she's not the type to go back for seconds."

"Heeheehee. Too bad. Maybe she like try some Manchurian cuisine." The tiger waggled his eyebrows suggestively.

Kyroo ignored him, turning away from both the bartender and the door that the vixen had exited through. I wonder what would happen if I just showed up at her door tonight, he thought as he sipped the beer that the tiger brought. I could get her number from the desk and ... he slapped himself on the forehead. I forget to ask her name, damn it!

* * * * * * * *

The bartender was a local, of Manchurian heritage, not one of the southern Han imports that worked the big tourist hotels downtown; not that they got many tourists outside of the famous winter ice festival. Like many of China's sixty or so major ethnic minorities he was resentful of the incursion of Han pandas and other southern species, but he was still obliged to report unusual activities and conversations to the regional office of State Security, especially when they involved foreigners. The foxes' initial reaction to each other had been interesting, even though the information he had overheard about a rat and a room on a farm seemed trivial. But the security apparatus collected a lot of trivial information and sifted it for bits and pieces of a larger puzzle, and even a name and a title or a dropped business card were of interest to them.

The tiger decided that he would report the information, but not tonight. Tomorrow afternoon on his way to work would be soon enough. Stupid pandas don't pay enough for all night service, he grumbled to himself. And that was true. In fact they did not pay at all, but they had been known to make others pay for their mistakes.

* * * * * * * *

The next morning Vikki get up early and hustled Dongo out of his room as fast as she could, suggesting that they check out early and find some breakfast in town. "The food here gave me an upset stomach." She complained. "I was up half the night." She had been, but the ache in her tummy had been more due to worry than won-tons. She was afraid that she might hear a knock on her door in the middle of the night, and she did not know if she more afraid of seeing State Security or the young Arctic fox standing there when she opened it.

They found a number of carts selling buns and pastries in the market near the centre of town and munched on them absently as they wove through the streets in the general direction of the tourist attractions. They turned to look at products in the street stands and shop windows and occasionally laughed at overburdened transport tricycles or the locals taking their birds out for a walk, swinging the cages as they went to strengthen the birds' legs. Birds with strong legs were supposed to sing better. But all of their moves were calculated to detect whether or not they were being followed.

Not detecting a tail, they headed toward the rendezvous. It was on a side street lined with inexpensive restaurants frequented by truck drivers. There was a sharp curve to the left about halfway down and there was a truck parked there in such a way as to block observation from either end of the road, in case anyone was watching from a distance. The 'all clear' sign, a cartoon kitten decal, was stuck on the driver's door. Vikki and Dongo walked along the right edge of the dirt lane and walked along the truck. As they approached the cab the passenger door swung open on silent hinges, an amazing feat given the amount of rust on the old transport. Vikki and Dongo climbed in and pulled the door shut behind them. The truck was pulling away before it was fully closed.

The interior of the cab was dark due to heavily tinted glass in the door windows and a thick layer of dust on the windshield. Vikki's eyes grew used to the gloom quickly however and she recognized her classmate Hu Liaoming despite the disguise he was wearing.

"Hey Genghis." She greeted him with a warm smile.

"Hey Viks, or is it Ruby now?" He asked, referring to the code name she had been given when she was promoted to senior agent the year before.

She elbowed him and introduced Dongo. "Fett here's a sniper, and a damn good one according to Silver."

"Howdy." Dongo offered before turning back to the side mirror to check for surveillance.

"He always this chatty?"

Once they were safely out of town with no sign of followers Hu used to wipers to clear the dust off the windshield and they opened the windows to let the cool air into the warm interior of the truck.

"The panel between us and the cargo area slides across." He explained. "You should take turns getting changed while we're on a relatively nice highway, this thing bounces around pretty good on the rough roads."

Vikki went first, putting all her western gear, including her high-tech prosthetic arm, into a container that Hu would hide before they came to the first checkpoint. Everything she found in a sack for her was manufactured in North Korea. It was all used, probably by the two Palgan Yeou that he had driven in with, but it was all clean, and Vikki was glad that Hu had been thoughtful enough to do that. The primitive artificial arm and paw she found in her bag was new, however, and fitted her stump perfectly. It was an imitation that Joel the Academy forger had made up based on images smuggled out of the hermit kingdom and shipped in to Hu by Diplomatic bag. Vikki had practised with its twin back in Ottawa while preparing for the mission.

"How were your passengers?" She asked while Dongo was changing in the back. "They get off okay?"

"Yeah. They almost hugged me to death in the process. They are going to need some serious orientation sessions before they get used to the west though; they were in awe when I got a cold can of soda from the pop machine in the lobby. They couldn't believe that anyone could just walk up, put some money in and get a can of pop, a cold can of pop especially. It was like Jesus had just appeared before them."

"Cool." She said as she made some minor adjustments to her prosthetic. "Where are you going to stash our arms and escape gear in case we need them?"

"It's marked on your scarf." He told her. The scarf she was wearing was a genetically coded map. Soaking it with her saliva, and only her saliva, would reveal the map features, equipment caches and rendezvous points. Dongo had a similar one disguised as a facecloth. Vikki sucked on the cloth for a few moments and checked to make sure that it was working alright.

"Okay, I see it. Under a bridge outside the compound, right?"

"Right." Vikki reminded herself to tell Dongo when he came forward.

The rest of the trip was a series of long silences broken by reminisces of their time at the Academy. Dongo did not add much to the conversation but asked the occasional question about their fellow agents and staffers and laughed when Vikki or Hu described some of their quirkier habits or character traits. In this manner they passed the time as Hu navigated the minor highways to the city of Changchun and then turned onto a mountain road that would take them to the border town of Ji'an, on the Amrok River, also known as the Yalu to the Koreans. There they would take a ferry across to the Korean town of Manpo, and from there they would drive directly to the Yak Mountain complex.

It was a route that was more direct, but much slower due to the poor conditions of the roads. Most of the cross-border traffic used the larger highways and bridges that connected the two nations, but smugglers favoured this route, as did the truckers making the more sensitive deliveries to support the Korean nuclear program. China did not want the exact scope or nature of its support to the program to be known, even within its own borders.

They got into character as they approached the border, and that meant keeping silent as neither of their characters was supposed to understand Chinese, and Dongo was supposed to be mute in any event. From the time they came into town until they arrived at Yak Mountain they would act their roles unless there was an emergency.

They rounded a corner and the lights of the riverside town came into view.

"Showtime." Vikki whispered, and that was the last English that she spoke for a long time.

* * * * * * * *

For his third day in Pakistan Kain visited the hiking trails south of the city. He did his best to exhaust himself and the surveillance team that was following at a discrete distance. Ophelia spent the morning resting in an unlicensed hotel she had set herself up in. She would don her disguise as one of the attractive female guards at the PAEC labs Barbar was in charge of later in the day and infiltrate when the night shift arrived. Then, when it was unlikely that the snow leopard would be in his office, she would break in and put a bug in the guy's computer. That would make Kain's hacking into his personal files a breeze.

Knowing that she would not be back until late, and that she would be expecting at least an hour's worth of athletic sex before she would let him go to work on the computer, Kain returned to the Islamabad Marriott early. He was pleased to see that his assigned followers were limping more than he was when they got out of their car and turned the duty over to a fresh team. They would have a boring evening, as Kain planned to take a long bath and a four hour nap before eating in the hotel restaurant and hanging about the bar until it closed.

The bath was great, the nap even better. His room had been gone through again but the really important stuff had not been found. Kain checked for updates from F.O.X. headquarters before going down to eat but there was no news other than the fact that Marcel and Geno were in place and that Vikki and Dongo should be arriving at their destination shortly.

Dinner was okay. It might actually have been fantastic but Kain was not paying attention to his food. He was busy running his plans for taking down Barbar's computer through his head, anticipating safeguards, considering countermeasures, weighing options for covering up his racks. As a matter of routine he identified the watchers in the room. The hotel should kick back a percentage of their bill, he thought with a smile. Unless the ISI didn't pay for their meals when on duty. That would suck. He left a larger than average tip to the waiter that served both their tables just in case.

He was almost alone at the bar. It was mid week in the low season and there were not many businesspeople in the region lately thanks to the controversy over the drone strikes. There were a few shrews in one corner that were wearing those suits with the upright collars like the Beatles used to wear in the early sixties. They did not look British though. They were from somewhere in Asia Kain guessed. Most notable, there were no lovely young ladies trying to make his acquaintance like there were the night before. Guess they gave up on that approach, Kain supposed.

After two imported beers Kain's bladder was ready to be emptied. He did not have the capacity he once had, not since Doctor Jones had scooped out half of his guts, including a portion of his bladder, in an attempt to save his life after Silver's antique Firebird convertible had blown up in Kain's face.Fortunately all the damage was above the pubic hair line, Kain thought as he stood in front of the urinal and aimed at the mat with the deodorant puck in the middle. If that chrome door handle had gone a couple of inches lower I'd be singing castrato in the Academy choir.

"My, but that's a handsome tallywacker."

"Huh, what?" Kain was so startled he sprayed the side of the urinal, soaking his paws with the back blast. He looked to his left and saw that a creature had taken up position at the urinal beside him. It was a rodent of some sort, and it was dressed in a bizarre fashion. It had on a top that was too small for its torso and jeans that were too tight for even its slim frame. Piercings abounded and its fur was teased and styled into a retro David Bowie - Ziggy Stardust sort of perm. It was also wearing makeup, false eyelashes and a big grin. It was holding its flaccid penis by a fold of skin between two digits as if it was embarrassed to have such an appendage and tinkling delicately into the neighbouring urinal.

Kain gathered his wits. "Uh, sorry? You were saying something?"

"I said that you had a handsome tallywacker." The squirrel giggled. "Do you consider me a rotter for pointing out the obvious?"

Kain, who had grown up listening to Greenday, Blink 182 and the Red Hot Chilli Peppers was at a loss. The guy sounded like he was speaking English but even Kain's implanted translator could not figure out what he was talking about.

"Tallywacker?"

"Yes! Your cricket bat, your chopper, your plonker, your winkle, your tadger, your pizzle, your willie, your one-eyed trouser snake! It's a rather magnificent one, eh wot?"

Kain was trying to stick his dick back in his pants and brush the piss off his paws at the same time. "What? My cock?"

"If you want to be vulgar about it. But I'm up for that too old chap! Fancy a bit of 'how's your father' do you?"

"What the fuck?"

"Exactly! Feeling randy, eh wot? How's about we go up to your room and get a leg over, eh? Give the wedding tackle a good workout? What you say, eh?"

"Get away from me."

"Come on mate. A right rogering up the dirt highway's just my kind of thing ... unless you'd like me to drive you home, know what I mean?" The strange creature actually nudged Kain and winked twice as Kain zipped up his fly.

Kain secured his junk and turned to the creature, driving it back against the wall of the first stall with the power of his glare alone. "Listen to me you Monty Python reject. I don't know what fucked up language school you went to, but if you touch me, or talk to me or so much as look at me again I will hurt you. I will hurt you bad in some very tender spots. So much that the next time you can enjoy sex will be when you're on your pension. Do I make myself clear?"

It may have been the look on his face or it may have been the way every muscle in his body strained to keep him from ripping the rodent apart there and then, or maybe the ISI agent that specialized in seducing males with a predilection for other males was just suffering a bout a intestinal flu, but whatever it was a bad odour filled the room.

"Clean that up," Kain ordered as his snout wrinkled in disgust, "and leave."

"Ye - ye - ye- yes yer honour."

Kain stomped out of the restroom and headed for the elevators. His appetite for socializing had disappeared.

That night at the ISI headquarters, after reviewing the agents' reports and the audio tape the analyst assigned to the case annotated Kain's file with the words: "Possibly pedophile, dominant sadomasochist or both. We should send in a house boy to see if he beats him or rapes him." Fortunately for all involved his supervisor decided to overrule him and just observe for the Arctic fox for the time being.

* * * * * * * *

The drive to Brodsky's Research Institute went as smoothly as it had on the simulator, and Marcel even recognized some of the cars they had copied from the satellite feed that had used to model Kiev for it. As people tend to stick to a routine he could expect to see the same vehicles most days, if he stuck to the same route that was, but he did not plan to do so. If Brodsky was a target for whoever was taking out the nuclear scientists then sticking to a routine would be a bad idea. The problem was, how to convince the researcher to alter his routine without coming right out and telling him that there was a threat? For now the best Marcel could do was alter the route to work, within reason, by claiming he had heard about closures on the radio. Fortunately there was always some sort of construction or protest going on in the nation's capital so the excuse would not seem so far-fetched.

After dropping Brodsky off at the institute Marcel took the morning to familiarize himself with the grounds and the neighbourhood, staying close in case Brodsky called to taken somewhere. As a leading figure in both the scientific and social circles of Kiev he was quite often called to confer with government officials, charities or arts groups. It was not unusual for him to have a business lunch or an early supper in one of Kiev's many fine restaurants, and as his driver Marcel was on very flexible schedule. If he got the opportunity, however, he would break into the institute to see what he could find out about Brodsky's work, although he may have to sneak out at night to do so. But Hanlan believed that if they could figure out why the scientists were being targeted they could deduce who was doing it so it was important that he try. Geno, who had free range of the mansion when Brodsky was away during the day, was responsible for checking out Brodsky's home office and computer. She just had to watch out for the housekeepers, Mister and Misses Mysha.

On this, their first full day of work, Brodsky decided to work late, so at five he sent Marcel back to eat with the staff and return to pick him up at ten to take him home. When Marcel arrived back at the mansion he found the Myshas and Geno just sitting down to a meal of borshch and holubtsi, and the smell of the beet soup and cabbage wrapped minced meat brought back memories of growing up in the Cabbagetown district of Toronto. Baby Aldwin was in a highchair beside Geno and she was spooning portions of some kind of mush into the little fox. Marcel nodded politely to her and the mice as he sat down to eat, purposely ignoring Geno to keep up the pretense that they were strangers.

"After supper you two should take the baby for a walk in the gardens." Missus Mysha Suggested.

"Luba! Stop interfering."

"I'm not interfering. He's young, she's young, and it's a nice evening. How is that interfering?"

"Marko is a fox, Jena is a cheetah" the elderly mouse said, using the names they had given when they were hired. "And she will have to go back to Poland when her visa expires. What future could they have eh? Species should not get involved with those outside their species, in my opinion." Marcel saw Geno cringe at that pronouncement. "The only reason half of these Polish girls come here to work is so they can snare a good Ukrainian husband and get permanent residence." He concluded.

"Oh, Petro! You are such an old bag of wind. Why just yesterday on the television I saw ..."

"Bah. You and your television. It's all American fantasy or Russian propaganda." he turned to Marcel. "In my day ..."

"In your day they were still shooting at anyone who wasn't wearing blue and yellow." Missus Mysha interrupted. She looked to Geno apologetically. "Forgive him Jena, he is old and set in his ways. He did not mean anything by it." Geno mumbled a response, and Marcel was not sure if she did so to stay in character as the shy dowdy au pair girl or because she was really hurt by what the old mouse had said.

He put down his spoon and cleared his throat. "I do not mind accompanying Miss Jena to the garden. She will have the stroller to contend with and will need help with the gates and the stairs on the path." He looked up across the table at her. "Whenever you are done we can go."

"I've had enough," Geno said, standing, "and little Aldwin is fussing so we might as well go now. I'll try feeding him again later before I put him down for the night." She wiped the kit's muzzle and carefully transferred him into a sturdy stroller that was parked by the back door while the Myshas and Marcel looked on in silence.

Marcel held the door open for her and stepped onto the path behind her, pulling the door closed as he did. Just before it shut her heard Missus Mysha exclaim "See? He is not afraid to socialize with her just because she's Polish."

To which Mister Mysha replied "He is not afraid to socialize with her because she has big tits."

Marcel decided to keep what he overheard to himself. He could see by the way Geno's tail was twitching that she was already pissed. And if she got any more pissed she was likely to start a fight. And if they got to fighting they were likely to forget themselves and engage in some noisy and intense sexual act out in the garden, which the Myshas would surely overhear and report to Brodsky. And that would be the end of their mission.

As the path widened he moved up beside her but kept a respectable distance, in case the mice were watching. "Take it easy kid." He said out of the side of his mouth. "The old rodent's prejudices will help keep him from catching on to us if we play this right."

Geno's tail slumped as she remembered that she had to control all her parts to stay in character. "Yeah, I know. Still, you don't have to listen to him all day long. His wife is nice though."

Marcel was glad that was settled. "So, what have you found out about our fox so far?"

"Well, he likes creamed carrots but can't stand mashed peas. He loves it when I play 'peek-a-boo' but doesn't have the concept of 'pat-a-cake' down yet. And when his whole face squashes down like he's doing now it means a number two is on the way, while wide open eyes and mouth means ..."

"No." Marcel interrupted. "I meant the father. What have you found out about his research?"

Geno looked embarrassed. "I, uh, haven't had time to look into his affairs yet. I've been busy getting to know the house and Aldwin's routine. Just so the Myshas don't get suspicious, you know."

Marcel had his suspicions about what Geno had been doing all day and he would have liked to let it slide, but as the senior agent he was responsible for the mission. "Don't fall in love with this kit, Geno." He warned her. "We'll be out of here in a couple of months at the most and it will only make you sad when you have to leave him behind."

"Yeah, got ya." Geno replied lightly, but inside a voice said "IF you leave." Neither of them said any more and when they reached the far wall they turned around and came back, the picture of cordial but purely platonic coworkers.

* * * * * * * *

Later that evening, while Marcel was parking the limo and cleaning it up for the next day Brodsky climbed the stairs to the second floor nursery to look in on his son before going down stairs to see what Misses Mysha had left in the oven for him. He was surprised to see Geno standing beside the crib wearing only a cotton nightgown and holding the kit in her arms. The night light on the wall behind her shone through the thin material and revealed a shapely figure that he had not suspected lay under her frumpy clothes. She was turned away from him and He had been treading so quietly on the thick carpeting that she did not notice him at first, and he stopped in the doorway to admire her for a moment. That moment might have stretched into several minutes if Aldwin had not looked up and recognized his father just then.

"gah gub whoo." the babe called and waved his little arms toward his father.

Geno looked around, startled, but relaxed when she saw who it was. Brodsky shook his head to rid it of the image of her silhouette and stepped forward with his arms raised. She held the baby out to it father as he approached, smiling with approval as he took the kit in a protective embrace.

"What are you doing up so late?" He asked.

"He was crying. He missed you, I think."

They stood there in nursery for a few moments in silence, each looking down at the baby in his arms. He glanced up and saw how focused she was on the kit, and noted the serene smile on her face as she watched the little fellow play with his father's necktie.

"You are good with children Jena, I can tell. My wife, God rest her soul, had that talent." An inadvertent tear escaped from the corner of his eye as he caressed the fur on Aldwin's head.

Geno beamed. "Thank you Doctor Brodsky."

"Please, call me Fedor." The fox reached out and put a friendly paw on her arm. Aldwin reached out also, begging for her to take him back against her warm bosom.

"That would not be proper, Doctor." She said as he passed the kit back to her. The tyke immediately burrowed between her breasts, gurgling happily. The action tightened the loose nightgown across her chest, revealing the extent of the endowment she strived to disguise during the day.

"To hell with proper." Brodsky declared, his eyes flicking between his son and the breasts he was nuzzling. "We have gone through twelve nannies since my wife died and neither I nor Aldwin have taken to any of them like he has to you. Listen, this may seem hasty after just one day, and I know that your contract is just for six months, but ... would you be open to a more permanent arrangement? I have influence with the government, I could make it happen."

Geno blushed and bit her lip. She was used to spontaneous proposals from strangers, occasionally they involved marriage but usually they just offered to father her children and leave. This was the first time anyone had asked her to raise the kits they already had. She realized that he must be very lonely since his wife died, and her heart went out to him. For the first time she questioned whether joining F.O.X. had been the right move for her.

They stood there in the dim light, she holding the now sleeping kit and him holding her by her upper arms in a moment stuck in time.

Neither of them noticed someone step away from the nursery in the darkened hallway or heard the door to one of the staff bedrooms close a moment later.

* * * * * * * *

There were some tense moments at the border as the North Korean guards at first insisted on searching the truck, but it turned out that they were not suspicious of Hu's passengers, just being pricks so they could get a cut of any illicit goods he might be bringing in, like chocolate, brandy or western porn. They could not conceive of anyone not smuggling if they had the opportunity. Having made the trip several times before Hu had prepared a sample pack of goods to turn over, seemingly reluctantly least they think he was a soft touch.

"They did not even glance at our papers." Vikki commented in her rudimentary Korean after they had cleared the checkpoint.

"They don't care about Korean's coming back in; their orders are to keep them from leaving. Unless you have the proper papers, which are very hard to get." Hu was speaking in Korean also, and the translation came a second after he began. It was difficult to ignore one while listening to the other, but the device they had implanted filled one ear with white noise to help block it out while it spoke into the other.

Security was intense, even along the 'friendly' border with China. To deter defectors, Hu explained. But as they were moving south they were waved through with hardly a glance. Crossing provincial boundaries demanded a more thorough check however, and a barrage of questions. The soldiers did not let Hu answer for them so Vikki and Dongo had their first chance to try out their characters and the translators for real.

"Papers!" The guard, a Korean Hare, demanded simply enough. Vikki and Dongo passed theirs out the passenger window. "Why were you out of the People's Democratic Republic?"

"Go pick up boxes. Yak Mountain." Vikki slurred, pointing south for emphasis.

Having heard the bigot's version of Palgan Yeou characteristics the guard was not surprised that she sounded like an idiot, he believed that they all were. Twitching his whiskers in disgust he turned to Dongo and demanded to know what the cargo consisted of, thinking that the males of the minority group might be marginally more developed than the females.

"Uagh noaug wah ox." Dongo spoke slowly and with apparent difficulty.

"He dumb." Vikki told the guard, using a word in Korean that, like its English carried the double meaning of mute and stupid.

"The cargo is classified, you can see that by the papers." Hu snarled, bringing up their status as couriers for a national priority project. "We are late as it is. Now either let us go or call your supervisor if you want to detain us longer."

"Stupid Chinese, think you are the gods' gift to earth with your 'Middle Kingdom' bullshit." The guard, who naturally thought that Koreans were superior to all other races, muttered. But he opened the barrier and waved them through. Hu resisted the urge to steer into a mud puddle and splash the sentry. Best not to push their luck.

There was one other provincial border to cross before arriving at their destination. It was dawn when they approached and just before shift change. Like most junior functionaries the guards were in no mood to start something they could not finish before quitting time so they waved them trough without an inspection also.

Getting into the Yak Mountain complex was straightforward, if time consuming. The guards were mostly concerned about secrets getting out and strangers getting in, but the papers indicating that the two red foxes had been transferred from the mining complex to the headquarters were perfect. They should be, they were issued by the senior manager of the Palgan Yeou on site, the uncle of the two whose escape F.O.X. had arranged. If all went well he would arrange Vikki's and Dongo's transfer back out, where they could disappear without a trace or a fuss. If things went bad he would take the heat for their disappearance and if they were exposed as foreign agents he would die a lingering and horrible death, but he would know that his favourite niece and her husband had been taken care of.

After passing through five checkpoints they arrived at the loading docks. Vikki and Dongo helped transfer the crates from the bed of the truck to the storeroom while Hu passed luxury goods to the administrators who had placed orders with him and collected his money. When they were both done he led them to a door at the back of the loading dock, where a female shrew in the standard dark blue suit with upright collar was waiting for them along with a tall male red fox. The fox had unusually long digits, Vikki noted, but unlike most of the Palgan Yeou he had all four limbs intact. This must be the manager, the one who was supposed to be her character's uncle. She prepared to greet him.

She stopped a few paces away and stood with her legs straight and her arms at her sides. Keeping her back straight she bent at the waist and bowed. Keeping her eyes down she spoke the traditional greeting "An nyung hah sae yo" adding the words for 'Reverend Uncle' at the end. Only then did she look up and step closer, holding a small brightly coloured package in her right paw, her wrist supported by the prosthetic in place of her left paw. He took and unwrapped the package, showing the shrew the delicate antique porcelain jar she had given him with obvious delight. As the patron of the clan and the one who had gotten them the choice positions inside the Yak Mountain complex the gift was a suitably expensive expression of their appreciation. Only Vikki knew that the jar was a forgery, based on one in the National Art Galley collection back in Ottawa and printed on a 3-D printer by Joel the lemur.

"This is Madam Lee, Lee Su-Bin." He said, introducing the shrew, who glared at them with suspicious eyes from behind thick glasses. She was short, and round, and about as appealing as a soccer ball that had lost its skin. "She will be your supervisor while you work her in the mountain complex. Obey her as you would your father, or me."

Vikki and Dongo nodded their heads demurely. The Uncle had adjusted their files to indicate that they were in remission from their cancer, but too weak from the treatment to work in the uranium mines or the processing plants for the moment. They were to join the janitorial and maintenance staff of the headquarters until deemed fit enough to return to manual labour or until another relative offered a higher percentage of their salary as a kickback. She knew that the Uncle would be kicking back a portion of his takings to the Shrew, and that the jar she had given him would likely be passed up the chain as a 'gift' until it reached the director of the facility, and maybe even beyond that level. Maybe one day it would get high enough up that someone realized that it was a forgery. But we should be long gone by then, Vikki thought, one way or another.

"You two come with me." The shrew spoke loudly and slowly to the two foxes. Vikki looked to her 'Uncle'. He gestured that they should comply.

"She will show you to the servants' quarters." He assured them. The rotund shrew led them away, pulling on Vikki's arm like she was guiding a reluctant child.

As soon as they were out of sight of the uncle the shrew's mood turned sour. "Hrumph. That fox thinks he's something special just because he is one of the few of your clan that has both arms and legs and can speak clearly. He thinks that he is as good as us, the true species of this region." She whirled to face Vikki, although she had to strain to look up that far to do so. "What do you think vixen?"

"Excuse me." Vikki answered with the general term for one who has offended someone else. She was careful to slur the words as if she had a speech impediment. The jaw prosthetic helped.

"Just as I thought. No smarter than a child. What about you?" She addressed Dongo. The Academy sniper glanced up at the ceiling as if he was listening to voices from the heavens before shrugging and gurgling a response. "Great, another idiot. Well you two better learn your duties quickly or you will be beaten. Do you understand?" The shrew mocked hitting them with an invisible club. "Beaten!"

"Beaten." Vikki mumbled. "Understand. Be good, no beating."

"Be good, less beatings." The shrew stopped at a metal door. Vikki sounded out the characters and her translator told her that they spelled out 'Female Quarters'. "You stay here." She pushed Vikki toward the door. Vikki dug her heels in.

"Husband!" she cried, reaching for Dongo. "Stay with husband."

"Not here you don't. There's enough of you foxes already without encouraging you to produce more of the little rats you call children. You stay here." Madam Lee insisted. "Husband stay other side of Mountain. See Husband at meals, if you behave."

Vikki put on a dejected look but she picked up her sparse belongings. She waved to Dongo as the shrew dragged him down the corridor.

Dongo made a show of having to be dragged away from his 'wife'. They had known to expect this but Hanlan thought that pretending to be surprised by the sleeping arrangements would be more convincing than docile acceptance. When Vikki was out of sight he turned to face the direction he was being pulled in and followed along docilely.

"The head girl will show your mate what she has to do. The head boy would do the same for you but he is off with the rest clearing underbrush in the minefield between the fences. The beds in that dorm are all full at the moment, but they usually lose two or three on minefield duty so you will have your pick of the vacated ones." She turned her head and looked him up and down, shuddering a bit at the scars that emanated from under his eye patch. "You are not as tall as most of them so any bed will do. We only have a few that are long enough for the tallest." She eyed the digits in his right paw, which had been extended with silicone additions that should not come off even during heavy manual labour. "All out of proportion you foxes. Everything longer than it should be."

Madam Lee tilted her head and then nodded as if she had come to a decision. She abruptly changed direction, turning down a side corridor. "Come, you will need new bedding."

They passed a few other shrews, some hares and a couple of long-tailed gorals but none of the technicians or scientists gave them a second glance. Apparently seeing Madam Lee dragging a fox around the compound with a scowl on her face was not an uncommon sight. After a few twists and turns they arrived in front of a door with printing on it that Dongo could not translate. He could not even sound it out for the translator while the shrew was around.

"This is the linen storeroom." Madam Lee said, pointing to the writing. "Can you read that?" He shook his head no. "No matter, the others can lead you back here. You come here every Monday to get new sheets and blankets. Understand? Sheets and blankets." He nodded his head to show he understood. She glanced up and down the corridor. It was empty. She took his paw and pushed the door open with her wide butt, pulling him in behind her. "Good. Then, uh, come inside and we'll, uh, pick some out for you."

Dongo detected a nervous note in her voice, but he was at a loss to understand why.

The room was lined with shelves, and the shelves were piled with white sheets and grey blankets, but the far wall was empty except for a few spare mattresses. "Pull one of those off and put it on the floor there." Madam Lee indicated. Dongo went to comply, figuring that he would have to carry his own mattress along with his linen to the dorm. Fortunately the mattresses were thin and light. He wondered what they were like for sleeping on. Then he heard a loud 'clack' behind him. Turning slowly, he looked to the door, the door that Madam Lee had just locked from the inside.

There was hunger in her eyes.

"Is that mattress long enough for you I wonder? It is so hard to tell the way you slouch in those baggy clothes. Stand up straight!" Dongo straightened up slightly, keeping an absent expression on his face with his mouth slightly open to meet her expectations of a fox that was not quite all there. "Hmmm. Still hard to say. Take your clothes off and lie down."

Now Dongo's jaw dropped all the way and he stared at her in mute shock. "Take - your - clothes - off - and - lie - down." She repeated slowly and loudly. "They are too dirty. They will get the mattress dirty, I mean. Just do it!"

Dongo slowly undid the buttons of his shirt and shrugged it off. "Hmmm, good physique. You have the state to thank for that, allowing you to labour in the mines." She said smugly. "Pants too. Hurry up."

Knowing how they treated the Palgan Yeou Dongo would have liked to thank the state with a right uppercut to the shrew's jaw, but he could not let his temper jeopardize the mission. Instead, he undid the rope belt Hu had supplied him with and stepped out of his trousers. Now he was naked save for a pair of loose white cotton shorts. Madam Lee was staring at those shorts and absently squeezing one of her breasts. She licked her lips before continuing. "The ... the shorts. Take off those disgusting dirty ... dirty things. Quickly!" She gasped.

All we need is a DJ playing 'I'm too sexy for my shorts', he thought as he inched the boxers down, leaning forward to hide what he did not want her to see. As he stepped back out of the shorts he swung his tail forward and clutched it in front of his groin with his good paw, wishing that someone would come along and interrupt them before this went any farther, because if she sees that I have two ....

The shrew stepped forward, knocked his paw aside and swept his tail out of the way. "They say that living so close to the radiation has made many things other than your backs and digits longer and I want to - Oh sweet leader!" She took a step back as if slapped.

Dongo stood there with twelve inches of flaccid cock exposed. Six inches in each of his two penises, one behind the other. A single pair of fuzzy balls peeked out from behind them.

"By the eternal leader! Did the radiation do that to you? How many of the others are like this? The males, I mean. Unless ... no, I don't want to know. Do they both ... work?"

He almost forgot that he was supposed to be mute, but remembered just in time to make his reply in incompressible grunt.

"Oh, never mind. I'll find out for myself." Madam Lee hooked a leg behind his and pushed him in an impressive Tai-Kwan-Do move that left him flat on his back on the mattress and gasping for air. He held him down with one foot on his chest while she pulled off her Mao jacket and undid her trousers. Underneath she was wearing a white cotton undershirt and shorts similar to his. They joined her other clothes in a pile by the locked door.

She was short and stout but she was solid. Dongo could see that her arms and legs were thick with muscle, the kind you got from lifting weights or wrestling. And her breasts were large and firm.Without the shapeless jacket and pants she doesn't look half bad, if you were into the matronly type, he thought. She was not particularly his, but he had been in many places in the world where feminine beauty was not measured by Hollywood standards, and when in Rome ... Not that this was Rome, or even Sardinia, and she was no Venus, but he had been trained to overcome his personal feelings for the sake of the mission, and maybe he could turn the tables on her in this little seduction. He closed his eyes until her body was a blur above him and let his imagination roam. He let his paw roam too, up her leg to the smooth fuzziness of her inner thigh.

The feel of warm skin through downy fur brought back memories and those memories brought a flow of blood to his lower regions. Twin appendages twitched and rose in unison. Touch was such an unbiased sense, he reflected.

"Ahhhh." Madam Lee commented as Dongo's version of the twin towers rose up. She turned and dropped to her knees, straddling the thin but muscular fox. Inching backwards she brought her butt and whip like tail close to his face as she lowered her head towards his groin. He felt her paws on his thighs, little claws making furrows in the fur as they made a bee line for his groin. Soon she had a paw wrapped around each of his poles, and she pumped them eagerly, delighting in the way they grew longer and thicker with each stroke.

When they had ceased to grow she took first one, and then the other in her mouth. Just the tips at first, but then, switching rods every few swallows, she took in more and more until she was gagging and her lips tickled the top of his sack. Finally, she squeezed them together, forced her lips around them and then, bobbing her head like some demented bird dinning a thick, juicy worm, she swallowed them both.

His view was restricted now to her somewhat broad and hairy butt. He had nothing against a little junk in the trunk, within reason, and this one was not saggy or wrinkly at least. Dongo squeezed the meaty buttocks with his good paw while rubbing her thigh with the plastic appendage Hu had given him, regretting that the archaic prosthetics that had here did not have sensors and receptors like the ones at the Academy. She pushed back against him, rolling her hips to expose her twat. It was already swollen and moist with desire. He did not usually have that effect on females, but she did not get out much, he supposed. He leaned his head forward and gave it a tentative lick before relaxing his neck and bringing his head down again. It tasted just like the ones back home, and the European ones, and the Afghan ones, and the ones in Northern Africa. Her ass wiggled, beckoning him to come back for more. He obliged.

They pleasured each other for a while with their mouths, the shrew especially growing more and more animated and vocal as time passed. At first his translator had no problem interpreting her entreaties and observations, but it appeared that Kain had not anticipated this kind of situation when programming the dictionary, as it started to produce statements along the lines of "Experience the butterfly food of my cavernous passage" and "This brace of metallic sharp-edged instruments I will with impale myself on". But Dongo got the gist of her meaning, especially after the last one when she suddenly jumped up and turned to face him before lowering herself onto his upper cock.

She sighed with delight as his full length slid into her without pause, lubricated by her excretions and his saliva. She flexed strong thighs to raise and lower herself on that cock while the other was tucked between the cheeks of her ass. Leaning back, she caressed the idle appendage with her butt as she rocked the upper cock. Then, leaning forward until her great tits were on his chest, she pulled off the first and popped in the second. Gripping his shoulders she used her arms to pull and push herself along his length, using the soft mound of flesh above her entrance to massage his upper cock against his flat belly. After a dozen strokes she switched back, and then she repeated the process several times as Dongo fought to stave off an orgasm.

"I want both." She wailed after a few more minutes of alternating cocks. "I want to feel both of you throbbing wooden sparing sticks inside me." Both cocks were slick with her juice now and Dongo wondered if she, like so many others he had been with, would put them up her ass and twat simultaneously. But that was not what she wanted. Balancing herself above his groin she reached down and trapped both pricks in one paw while she spread her lower lips with the other. Then, carefully and slowly, she guided the tips into her as she lowered herself down. She gasped as she stretched to accommodate the heads, and she cried when the two shafts forced their way inside. But the cries came with a triumphant grin, and she kept moving down, taking them all in.

Going up was almost as hard as coming down on them as her twat threatened to split open as each vein and fold of penile flesh was pulled from inside her, but she did not stop until just the heads remained inside. The next drop was faster than the first, and the third faster still. By the fifth she was bouncing up and down on his pair of pricks like a pro, making his balls slap her ass with each thundering descent.

She began to pant. "Oh my political deities!" She said, or so the translator claimed. "I am soon to be arriving! Escort me to my domicile you large wooden structural beam. Manufacture me like a common working girl of Victorian England." Dongo began to wonder just where Kain had gotten the translator's dictionary from when she screamed "I approach, I approach .... I ... I ... I have arrived!"

The Korean sounded shorter than the English translation but the writhing, accompanied by a flood of hot fluids, lasted much longer than either. Dongo felt safe in letting himself go too, and the short, sharp jerky motions on his cocks as she experienced a number of sequential orgasms helped to bring him off. He felt his balls clench and then the fiery spooge was streaming though both shafts, filling her up. She cried again when she felt it inside her. She dropped down to lie on his chest and her hips continued to rock as the spasms shook her.

Finally, her continuous orgasms quieted enough to let her stop moving. She lay on top of him, exhausted. Dongo used the time to gently caress her with his good paw, an after sex technique he had learned in a Thai brothel that the Academy had sent him to for advanced training. The relaxing and soothing sensations the play of his paw produced on the spots where there were nerves excited by sex could have an emotional effect on the subject. He kept it up until she shifted on him, arching her back like a cat and rolling off him to lay by his side on the thin mattress. Rolling onto one shoulder he followed, keeping up the comforting massage as long as she would let him.

"I think that you would make a good assistant." She murmured as she revelled in his touch. "I need someone who's obedient and can be relied on not to tell what he sees. Someone to help me in my work ... and to take care of my personal needs." She leaned in until her face was mere centimetres from his. Close enough so that he could see how spiky her whiskers were and how sparse the hairs around her thin lips. It was not the most inspiring sight in the world. "Would you like that? To be my personal assistant?"

Dongo swallowed his disgust and nodded his head slowly.

"Good." She said, standing. "You can start by cleaning me up. There are towels and a sink in the corner there. Hurry up, you idle fox, hurry up!"

* * * * * * * *

Halfway around the world, in England, it was still night and would be for a while yet. Things were usually quieter on the night shift so that was when most intelligence agencies took the time to collate and cross reference material that otherwise would not have been important enough to action during the day. While doing so, one of the analysts at the British Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ as it was known in Signals intelligence circles. Came across an alert from their American sister agency. She read it, opened a browser to the internet on a separate console and compared her findings to that of the Americans.

"Sir, come take a look at this." The young fox called to her supervisor, a badger with a prodigious belly. He waddled over and read the message on her screen.

"Hrump." He snorted. "Don't see too many like that. Is that screen shot from an archive?"

"No, the site is still up and running. The Canadians have not taken it down yet. What do make of that?" She asked?

"Probably keeping it open to trace the webmaster or some of the visitors down, although I don't see why."

"Think it's a spoof? A honey pot of some kind?"

The badger took the mouse from her paw and navigated through the website, the images reflecting off the thick lenses of his glasses. He lingered on one page in particular until the vixen sitting below him got visibly uncomfortable.

"Not the sort F.O.X. should be dabbling in." He mused. "What's the name of that chap that does their hacking for them?"

"Algorath, sir. Kain Algorath." She had met the Arctic fox at a convention of intelligence analysts the year before and knew that he was single. She had been hinting that she would like an exchange position in Ottawa ever since.

"Yes, that's it. Why don't you send the young fellow a note to see if he is aware of this, eh? Just in case."

"I'll get right on it sir." She promised. And she did get right on it, sending Kain a secure email to his F.O.X. address with an 'Urgent' tag on it so he was sure to see it as soon as he came in to work.

Unfortunately Kain would not come into work in that sense for quite a while.

* see 'The Volunteer' https://www.sofurry.com/view/588574

The FOX Academy series:

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

Book VI - Unnatural Selection

Kain Algorath © Marcus X Light

Ophelia Cassidy Sommer © Devil Kitty

Joel Grigori © Joel the Lemur

Geno © Coyotek

Dongo Fett © Dongo Fett

Zachary Ember © EmberWolf

Grey Muzzle © Grey Muzzle