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The stories I've put my greatest effort into. Here's where you'll find the characters I've spent the most time with, and often the ones I love most.", "count": "55", "submission_left_submission_id": "31690", "submission_left_file_name": "35975_AlexReynard_dangerouslunatics-p4.txt", "submission_left_thumbnail_url_huge": "https://nl1.ib.metapix.net/thumbnails/huge/35/35975_AlexReynard_dangerouslunatics-p4.jpg", "submission_left_thumbnail_url_large": "https://nl1.ib.metapix.net/thumbnails/large/35/35975_AlexReynard_dangerouslunatics-p4.jpg", "submission_left_thumbnail_url_medium": "https://nl1.ib.metapix.net/thumbnails/medium/35/35975_AlexReynard_dangerouslunatics-p4.jpg", "submission_left_thumb_huge_x": "200", "submission_left_thumb_huge_y": "200", "submission_left_thumb_large_x": "200", "submission_left_thumb_large_y": "200", "submission_left_thumb_medium_x": "120", "submission_left_thumb_medium_y": "120", "submission_right_submission_id": "31694", "submission_right_file_name": "35979_AlexReynard_dangerouslunatics-p5b.txt", "submission_right_thumbnail_url_huge": "https://nl1.ib.metapix.net/thumbnails/huge/35/35979_AlexReynard_dangerouslunatics-p5b.jpg", "submission_right_thumbnail_url_large": "https://nl1.ib.metapix.net/thumbnails/large/35/35979_AlexReynard_dangerouslunatics-p5b.jpg", "submission_right_thumbnail_url_medium": "https://nl1.ib.metapix.net/thumbnails/medium/35/35979_AlexReynard_dangerouslunatics-p5b.jpg", "submission_right_thumb_huge_x": "200", "submission_right_thumb_huge_y": "200", "submission_right_thumb_large_x": "200", "submission_right_thumb_large_y": "200", "submission_right_thumb_medium_x": "120", "submission_right_thumb_medium_y": "120" } ], "description": "A new day dawns on King's Orchard. The doors are locked. The windows are barred. The security cameras are watching. Dr. Beatrix controls every aspect and facet of the universe. Mr. Caercase is already spinning horrible scenarios involving young, tender flesh. Alf has been dealt with. Monsoon is lost inside himself. Tyler has bitten the big one. For Karen, Brad and their comrades, there is very little hope left. But sometimes, when hope is gone, fury still remains.\n\nEvents are rolling towards an inescapable conclusion. A storm of screams and blood and thunder. Some will not survive the coming night. Others will never forget it, no matter how long they live.\n\nIt's not exactly the ultimate battle between the forces of good and evil. But it's close. ", "description_bbcode_parsed": "A new day dawns on King's Orchard. The doors are locked. The windows are barred. The security cameras are watching. Dr. Beatrix controls every aspect and facet of the universe. Mr. Caercase is already spinning horrible scenarios involving young, tender flesh. Alf has been dealt with. Monsoon is lost inside himself. Tyler has bitten the big one. For Karen, Brad and their comrades, there is very little hope left. But sometimes, when hope is gone, fury still remains.

Events are rolling towards an inescapable conclusion. A storm of screams and blood and thunder. Some will not survive the coming night. Others will never forget it, no matter how long they live.

It's not exactly the ultimate battle between the forces of good and evil. But it's close. ", "writing": "Dangerous Lunatics\nby Alex Reynard\n\n\n \"There's nothing left to do tonight\n \"But go crazy on you.\"\n -Heart, \"Crazy On You\"\n\n\n*****\n\n\nBOOK FIVE:\n MADNESS AND REBELLION\n\n\n -KURI & WILL-\n\nLet me tell you a little story...\n\n\n ~~~\n\n\nOnce upon a time, a handsome, dashing American Air Force pilot was stationed in Okinawa, Japan. He was the kind of guy that could step into a room and instantly make it feel more alive. He could charm his way into any pair of panties on Earth. His fur was tabby orange with ruddy stripes, which gave him a very tigerish aspect. His tongue was as silver as the sea.\n\nHe was stationed in the exotic and exciting Far East for four years. During that time he made the acquaintanceship of a waitress from a local restaurant that specialized in American-type fare. Many soldiers frequented this place, and almost all of them were heavily smitten with this waitress. She was a calico. Black and orange dollops chased each other through the sleekness of her milk-white fur. Her eyes were yellow and slanted seductively. Her hair was raven, pinned up in the style of a Geisha.\n\nMany males had made lewd, half-kidding comments to her over the years, but all knew in their hearts that she was simply too perfect to try for. A porcelain work of art. She was as far above them as they were above the Earth when they flew in their jets.\n\nAll but one. The handsome, dashing American pilot took one look at her and knew in a heartbeat that nothing in the world would keep him from possessing this magnificent creature.\n\nHe wooed her fiercely, as any alley cat has done since time immemorial. She resisted at first, but his charm inevitably eroded the walls she tried to build around herself. When his time in Okinawa was up, she went with him. They were married on the runway fifteen minutes after their plane had landed.\n\nThey did not, however, live happily ever after...\n\n\n ~~~\n\n\nOnce they had settled into a modest little house a stone's throw from his Air Force base, the Okinawa waitress revealed to her mate a secret she had been keeping from him. While they had been standing at the altar promising themselves to one another, she had already held life inside her.\n\n'Pregnant!?' he screamed, and went tearing around the house in a rage.\n\nFinally, when she had calmed him down with alcohol, he was able to accept the idea. The very concept of a child to care for frightened him. How could he continue to be his old rambling, joking, virile self with a kitten chaining him at home?\n\nThankfully for all concerned (or maybe not), he realized in time how selfish these thoughts were and gave his bride his blessing. She was very happy.\n\nSix months later, she bore him a beautiful little she-kitten. As she lapped the afterbirth from her tiny, mewing miracle, the waitress from Okinawa said that the child would be named after her grandmother; Kuri.\n\nFor a time, their little house was full of happiness. But as the days wore on and the father became increasingly forced to deal with the realities of kit-rearing, he grew resentful. All those nights woken out of sleep by crying. All those filthy diapers to change. All the times he had to say no to his friends when they wanted to head down to the bar or out to see a show. Just as he had feared, he was changing from a handsome, dashing Air Force pilot into a tired, rumpled, old-before-his-time _parent_. This would not do.\n\nEven his lovely bride no longer held his interest. He knew in his heart that he had married her solely for her beauty. She was a conquest, plain and simple. And now that he had her, he no longer wanted her. The baby was stealing his bride's beauty away. The gorgeous feline he had met in Japan was now a frumpy, bent housewife with drooping whiskers and bags under her eyes. (He could not have understood that *he* had been the cause of much of her wilting. She could not speak English well, but that did not mean she was stupid or unobservant. She knew exactly how many nights he would leave her alone in bed and come home the next day smelling of other females...)\n\nOver time, the two cats fell silently, completely and irreversibly out of love. The father spent as much time as possible on the base, working impossible hours and telling filthy jokes with his Air Force pals. The mother was left at home to take care of a daughter who sometimes seemed so full of energy she could fly. The situation grew steadily worse until finally, the last straw fell and broke the camel's back.\n\n'Pregnant!?' he screamed again.\n\nAnd this time he did not merely stomp around. He threw things. He hit his wife. He woke up little Kuri, then howled at her to shut her goddamned face when she would not stop crying.\n\nThat night the couple slept in separate rooms. When the bride awoke, her husband had gone. He'd simply gathered up as many of his belongings as he could, cleaned out their money, hailed a taxicab, and vanished.\n\nAppalled by their comrade's behavior, the other men on base took up a collection for the cast-away bride. The government helped her take possession of the house. She managed to find meager employment, once again as a waitress.\n\nJust a month shy of two years since she had been born, Kuri first set eyes on her new baby brother. For reasons she did not know, the waitress from Okinawa (now the waitress from Twentynine Palms) named her second child after his paternal grandfather: Will.\n\nDespite the difference in their ages, Will was almost a carbon copy of his sister. Their fur was the same color and shared the same patterns. They displayed virtually no signs of sibling rivalry. They even shared the same impossibly high energy level. The kittens were _fast_. Time and gravity did not seem to affect them the same as other children.\n\nStill, as troublesome as they were, their mother did her very best to love them.\n\n\n ~~~\n\n\nThe years passed, dull and repetitive. Kuri was six and Will was four ('and a half', he would remind you, at every possible opportunity). Their mother had been ground down by life so hard that no fragment of her former beauty remained. This strange, loud country she was trapped in had poisoned her. Because she could not speak their language with perfect diction, she was looked upon as something less than real. In her homeland she had held the same job, but it had been good work that lifted her spirits and made her proud. Here, the customers seemed to delight in robbing her of her dignity for their own gluttonous amusement. She had been called many, many filthy names. And her ultimate shame was in having to ask her coworkers what some of them meant.\n\nOne overcast afternoon, two men in dark suits came to visit. They wore sunglasses and wide hats and carried badges. The calico was terrified that they were here to take her home away, take her children away, tell her their father had returned and wanted more than he'd taken the first time.\n\nOne of them lifted his glasses, looked her in the eyes, and made her sit down and be quiet.\n\nWhile the little ones played on the livingroom floor with their toys, the men sat beside their mother and explained the nature of their visit. They were representatives of a very important, top-secret government project, they said. They had identified her children as being prime candidates for an apprenticeship in this program. The children would be well taken care of, the men assured. They would get a good education, good food and good training. \"In short,\" one of the men said, \"they'd get a better life than you could ever hope to provide them with.\"\n\nThe calico waitress looked down at her children, watching them play, fixing their innocent smiles in her memory. \"No. You cannot take them away,\" she said quietly.\n\nThe men in sunglasses looked at each other and smiled.\n\n\"Do you know what this is, Mrs. Rennault?\" one of the men asked, pulling a shiny blue card from his front breast pocket.\n\nShe nodded. She was not so ignorant as to not know what a credit card was.\n\n\"It's not just any credit card, Mrs. Rennault. It's a *magic* credit card.\"\n\nShe looked at him contemptuously. 'How stupid do you think I am?' was the unspoken meaning.\n\n\"Let me explain. If you will let us take your children and train them to become protectors of this great country of ours, we will give you this card. You can use it an unlimited amount of times. You can buy anything you set your heart upon. You will never see a single bill. It will all be taken care of for you, Mrs. Rennault. It will be like having your own personal genie.\"\n\nMrs. Rennault looked at the card.\n\nShe looked at her children.\n\nShe thought about all the pain and crashed hopes that she had endured since she had been brought to this country. She thought about how the man who'd claimed to love her had instead used her as his plaything, then discarded her when she was no longer useful to him. She thought about the people in the restaurant she worked for. She thought about all the beautiful things she saw in the possession of other, American, women. Women who sneered at her as they passed by. She thought about how hard it was to raise two wild, rambunctious children on her pathetic wages. She thought about how fiery the kittens were. Like two little bolts of lightning she could never keep up with. She thought about all the broken furniture and spilled meals and ruined clothing...\n\nMrs. Rennault looked at the card.\n\nShe looked at her children.\n\nShe chose poorly.\n\nAs the men led her squirming, screaming, thrashing children away, the waitress from Okinawa put her head in her paws and wept. She could not even bring herself to say goodbye to them.\n\n\n ~~~\n\n\nTwo years later, almost to the day, the neighbors found the woman dead on her kitchen floor, sprawled out like a throw rug. Whether it was suicide or betrayal, no one ever found out.\n\nShe had never used the magic credit card. Not even once.\n\n\n ~~~\n\n\nFor Kuri and Will, the rest of their childhood was like a dream. Not in a fantastical sense. But dreamlike, instead, in its very unreality.\n\nFor a long time, nobody seemed to say much to them. Tests were performed, both medical and psychological. The kittens were made to run on treadmills. The kittens were given shots. The kittens were given MRIs. Each and every time The Project tried to separate the pair, the kittens fought so viciously, clawing and biting and screeching like demons, that the scientists soon gave up and treated them as a single being.\n\nThe kittens lived in a tall ivory building where they never saw a single other child. The men in sunglasses had not lied though. They were well fed. They slept in warm beds. They were taught lessons in a small, brown room by a strict woman who wore only grey suits. They were fed and clothed and kept clean, but they were lonely.\n\nWhen they were old enough, they were finally told about the goals of The Project. The Project concerned itself with the approximately four point six percent of the world's population who were 'different'. Different in ways that one normally found only in science fiction and comic books. As Kuri and Will had always suspected, they were different too.\n\nIt was necessary, the man in the white coat told them, to shield society from these unnatural elements.\n\nFor many long months, the children's heads were filled with lies. Evil, heartless lies. Lies that were even then resulting in deaths all over the world. The kittens were only told what the scientists wanted them to hear. They never learned about The Project's true face. About the DNA screenings. About the hidden surveillance. About the many who vanished forever. They never learned about the other children, snatched out of their beds in the night and sent to small, dark rooms where the last sound they ever heard on Earth was that of a gunshot.\n\nThey never learned, and neither did anyone else. Just as the government wanted.\n\nInstead, Kuri and Will came to believe that they were, in a way, like superheroes. They were being trained to fight a disease. A societal aberration. They were like the scientists who discovered cures for illnesses and healed the sick. Only in this case, the kittens were being groomed to heal an entire country. To wipe the sickness clean.\n\nOf course, they were also made aware that they themselves carried this sickness within them. They felt deeply, deeply ashamed of that. But, as one doctor explained to them one day in a saintly voice, their shame could be assuaged by doing everything they could to *use* their sickness in service of the cause. It would be like penance. Like good little kittens, Kuri and Will wanted very much to be helpful. And so they cooperated.\n\nThe training began, and it was hard. The kittens were stretched to their limits. They were instructed by policemen and marines, even by a famous martial arts instructor who had worked before in movies. They learned all about fighting, speed, stealth, and most of all, obedience. As the lessons progressed and became more focused on combat, Kuri began to show proficiency with a blade, while Will made more progress with blunt instruments. The scientists were glad to see this, and encouraged the children all they could.\n\nKuri and Will did very, very well in their lessons. They exceeded expectations like wildfire. They routinely surprised and even frightened their instructors, much to the delight of those heading The Project.\n\nBut still... When the day was over and their weapons were put away, the kittens would curl up, sweaty and tired in their beds, and sometimes dream of their mother. In the beginning, they had asked continuously when they could visit her. Each and every time they were given vague, misleading answers. The very worst was the emotionally-charged 'Soon'. But 'soon' never came. And Kuri and Will eventually learned to stop asking; that the real answer was 'Never'.\n\nSo, once their training at the facility was complete, they were transported to what would become their new home. A frontline in The Project's war on abnormality: a containment center disguised as a hospital. The twins were excited, thinking this would finally be their chance to see some action. As they soon learned however, this was not to be.\n\nTheir days were spent locked up in a vault in Ward Zero. Kept in storage. They were let out only to continue training or to fulfill their duties; taking care of those who had failed to cooperate with The Project. It was a task of equal parts boredom, creepiness and disgust. But they were assured it was vitally important. And that helped a little.\n\nIt also helped that they finally found some surrogate parental affection in the form of their new caretaker. Growing up raised by a roomful of men in white coats is not exactly conducive to a healthy amount of emotional nurturing. But now they had a new replacement mommy. Dr. Beverley was beautiful and kind and soft-spoken. She brought them toys and games and books. She talked to them when they felt sad or confused. She was exactly what they needed.\n\nAnd it could have gone on like that indefinitely. Dr. Beatrix's orders were that the twins were to be kept in reserve at all times, utilized only in case of a dire emergency. An emergency like what had happened before, at the other hospital. Dr. Beatrix knew that the kittens were the Project heads' way of telling her that they still considered her competent enough to keep her job, just that they thought she could use a little help if things got messy again. At first she had resented this out of pride. But time had convinced her the action was a wise one. The twins were indeed skilled. Plus, she had actually developed a kind of fondness for them (as much as that was possible for a woman like Beatrix Beverley).\n\nSecretly, she sometimes almost wished for a cataclysm. Just to see them in action. Just to see what they could really do.\n\nAs the waitress from Okinawa could have told her, 'Be careful what you wish for'.\n\n\n*****\n\n\n -BENJAMIN-\n\nThe little fox was exhausted. His eyelids felt like lead. His arms felt weak. His fingers were brittle and wracked with soreness. His tail ached.\n\nHe had been sitting in his room, writing constantly, for nearly four hours.\n\nHis roommate didn't mind, thankfully. Benjamin had been paired up with a slow, fat groundhog with mud-dark fur and a seeming aversion to speech in any form. They had passed perhaps fifteen words between them since being assigned to each other. When Benjamin had turned on his small booklight this evening, the groundhog boy had not complained. He merely rolled over, his back to the light, and fell asleep.\n\n'Lucky fucker...' Benjamin thought to himself.\n\nThe young fox stared at the sheet of paper in his paws. His vision blurred. His eyes sparked with tiny red dots of pain. 'Almost done,' he reminded himself.\n\nAn hour ago, or maybe longer, one of the staff had come in and asked him what he was doing out of bed.\n\n\"I tried sleeping,\" the fox said. \"But I kept having nightmares about what they did to Tyler.\"\n\nThe grownup paused. Then he nodded and walked away. This little fox wasn't the only child on Ward F complaining of nightmares tonight. And at least this one was being quiet about it.\n\nBenjamin went back to his work with a sigh. Beside him on his desk were many more sheets of paper. All of them filled, back and front, with names.\n\nNames.\n\nEndless, endless names.\n\nThe information he had sucked out of Dr. Beatrix's hard drive was stored like a text file in his brain. Just sitting there, complete and perfect, not a single thing forgotten. Benjamin didn't understand how it was possible, only that it was always this way. Whatever he took in became trapped there forever. He could still recite pages 23 through 86, in their entirety, of a paperback he had once brushed the spine of in a bookstore. And that had been three years ago. Whatever his gift was, it was disturbingly anal retentive.\n\nIt was like he was still sitting in front of Dr. Beatrix's computer terminal, knowing not only every password she'd ever entered, but also every keystroke she'd ever typed. His hands were her hands. Tracking down any information he desired was virtually instinctive.\n\nSo now, in addition to novel pages, telephone numbers, addresses, web sites and trillions of megabytes worth of other useless garbage he could not figure out how to forget, there was this; a detailed, precise, emotionless, blood-chilling index of the systematic cataloging, brainwashing and murder of millions upon millions of innocent people.\n\nNearly all of them were children. Benjamin was beyond grateful that his amazing brain allowed him to access only as much of the information as he wanted, when he wanted. To see it all at once, to *feel* it all at once... He thought it might kill him. Every time he'd snuck a peek at some random page in the files, he'd regretted it. It was like seeing something so utterly disgusting, you couldn't help but keep wanting to look at it again. Benjamin did not know why people's brains were so masochistic in that regard.\n\nSo, he had all this unspeakable information now. But how much of it would actually be *useful* to him and his friends? Tyler had _died_ for this fucking data. Benjamin felt heartsick trying to figure out how to take this prize they'd won and turn it into true victory.\n\nFinally though, he'd gotten an idea. Just before bed, he'd asked the night nurse for several sheets of paper. He said that he was really shaken up over Tyler and that when he felt stressed-out, it helped a lot to write things down. She smiled and gave him what he needed. Then he went and asked another nurse for several sheets of paper. And another. And another. By lights-out he had a goodly thick chunk of the stuff stashed away in his desk drawer. Enough to write a novella on.\n\nSo, after asking his roommate if he minded the light (and not getting even a grunt for an answer), Benjamin began to write names.\n\nHe accessed the very earliest of the files and began transcribing the names, ages, genders, species and last addresses of every single furson The Project had ever sunk their talons into. At the end of each entry, he put either a B, C, D or U.\n\nB for brainwashed.\n\nC for coma.\n\nD for dead.\n\nAnd U for unknown.\n\nThe records started in 1935. Benjamin had no idea if that was truly the beginning of The Project or if that was only as far back as the records had been digitized. The latter possibility chilled him because it felt more likely.\n\nBenjamin wrote down the very first name. John Edison Germaine, a ten-year-old badger, who had been killed in March of '35. The young fox tried hard not to picture him, wonder about him, compare himself to him. No. The less he thought about this the better. Benjamin forced himself to become a machine, writing name after name without concentrating on anything other than accuracy. The names flowed quickly then. Even with his usual small, neat handwriting, he'd filled a page without even getting halfway through the records for the first year. Benjamin looked at his stack of remaining paper and wondered if it would be enough.\n\nNow, four life-draining hours later, it looked like it would. Just barely. Four solitary sheets left. All the rest were filled with names. Hundreds of names. Thousands of names. Some funny, some unfamiliar, some completely normal and boring. If he thought too long about the fact that every single one of these names belonged to an actual furson who had once been just as alive as him, he'd get the shivers. Or tears would come, and he'd have to bite the inside of his cheek to keep himself on task. His mind could store more information than science dictated was possible, but there was still a limit to the amount of suffering anyone's soul could withstand.\n\nBenjamin's whole body hurt now. He ached for sleep. It hurt even more knowing he'd probably get just three short hours before they'd wake him up again. He supposed he could eat breakfast quickly and then come back upstairs for a nap. The morning therapy instructor could go straight to hell for all he cared.\n\n'Then again,' Benjamin thought to himself with a twisted, humorless grin, 'who says I'll even be able to sleep at all? Maybe I'll just lie there till sunup with all these names running through my head, and in the morning they'll find me here completely bonkers and they'll have to scrape me up with a spatula.'\n\nHe took in a sharp breath, closed his eyes, and tried to relax. When you started having thoughts like those, it was time to take a break.\n\nBut he was so *close* now. Just a hundred more names left.\n\nBenjamin continued writing. Just ninety more.\n\nHis hand spasmed in pain. Just seventy more.\n\nSweat dripped down his bangs to land in tiny dark circles on the page. Just forty more.\n\nHis eyes felt like someone had crammed wads of sandpaper in his sockets. Just twenty more...\n\nFifteen... Ten...\n\nFive...\n\nOne...\n\nThe _last_ one. It wasn't in Beatrix's records yet, but it would be by tomorrow. Benjamin stared at the name in his mind. He stared for a long long time. When he finally wrote it down, his paw was shaking.\n\n Tyler Phillipe Lorenzo 13 M Mouse 113 East Chinook St.\n\nBenjamin felt tears come to his eyes as his pencil moved for the last time that night.\n\n C\n\nWiping his eyes on his sleeve to keep from further damaging the page with teardrops, Benjamin Zarathustra Feldman stood up, arranged his massive list as neatly as he could, tucked it away in his dresser, and crawled into bed.\n\nEvery muscle screamed in pain. His back felt like someone had slammed an aluminum baseball bat into it. His knees felt like crushed potato chips. But that didn't matter anymore. The joy of finally lying horizontal beneath his cool, smooth sheets was heaven.\n\nBenjamin turned out the lights.\n\nAnd, as if fate had decided he'd endured enough for one night, the young foxboy drifted off into a completely dreamless sleep within seconds.\n\n\n*****\n\n\n -BRAD-\n\nBrad woke up before anyone else on Ward F the next day.\n\nHe came awake with a gasp, eyes wide and pupils dilated to maximum. His fur was standing on end. His heartbeat was a jackhammer.\n\nHe could not remember the dream at first, but the feelings it had left behind suggested it wasn't one of his more pleasant ones.\n\nTiny images began to flash and fire in the darkness at the back of his skull. Eventually, enough of them attached themselves to his emotions for him to recall what the dream had been about.\n\nIt was just like one of the horror movies he'd watched last summer. He had dreamed a world where flesh-eating zombies were everywhere, and had been for long enough that the living had adapted to it. There were no more goods and services, no electricity. People were scavengers now. They wandered the world, breaking into long-empty houses looking for anything left behind that might be useful to them. In the dream, this was what Brad and his mother were doing. It felt like they'd been walking forever, through eerie, completely deserted tracts of suburbia, looking for any place that might still be intact enough to stay a few nights. They found one. Mom gently popped the lock on the door in such a way that it could be fixed again when they'd need it come nightfall. She and Brad stepped cautiously inside. Dust was everywhere. Furniture was overturned. Thankfully though, all the windows were unshattered and the doors were still standing. The two felines went down into the basement to check for supplies. They found a pantry with canned food. They ate. And then Mom told Brad to sit tight while she went back outside to make sure the area was safe. Brad hated the idea of being separated, but agreed. The rest of the dream was nothing but waiting. Terrifying, torturous waiting. The sun went down and Brad was left with nothing but a small candle for light. He'd woken up before his mother returned.\n\nIt occurred to him that even though the dream was supposed to be about zombies, he hadn't seen a single one. They were just there, something he knew existed; like how a lot of dreams started with the backstory injected directly in. But he never saw any. He just felt a total and absolutely overwhelming sense of dread, of feeling like he or his mother could die gruesomely at any moment. Plus, it was one of those dreams where time twisted and it felt as if he'd lived *years* in his nightmare. Years of being conditioned to fear every second of every day.\n\nBrad decided to forget about this dream as soon as possible.\n\nBrad sat up slowly and silently. He ran his paws over his body. He'd slept at an even worse angle than usual and now he felt like he'd dislocated his everything. A few moments of cracking and popping got most of his parts back into position though.\n\nThe grey tom wiped the gunk from his eyes and looked out the window. Nearly dawn. That meant they'd probably be waking everyone up soon anyway, and if he fell back asleep now, he'd regret it. He let out a small frustrated meow.\n\nHe glanced across the room at Tyler's bed.\n\nEmpty, of course.\n\nSeeing that perfectly made bed with no mouseboy-shaped lump under the sheets was somehow more saddening than seeing Tyler's soulless, wheelchair-bound shell the night before. That thing had been an obscenity. Too gruesome to really believe in. On the other hand, this empty bed was silent and inarguable proof that Tyler was gone. Gone forever. Brad could stare at it for the rest of his life and it would never bring Tyler back.\n\nBrad felt the anger inside him begin to wake up too. It was like the anger he'd felt the night before, but not as intense. Not yet. Still sharp, but the blade was sheathed for now.\n\nHe wanted to kill Dr. Beatrix. He wanted to jump on her and just punch and kick and bite and scream until there wasn't anything left of her. He wanted to kill her, and Thurston, and everybody else in the whole world that had ever helped them create this hospital from hell.\n\nBrad took a few deep breaths. 'Calm down,' he instructed himself. No sense letting the beast out now.\n\nHe knew a lot of people would be disgusted with him for thinking such things. He knew if he told any of the grownups about his thoughts of righteous violence, they'd be all horrified and probably restrain him with those stupid rubber cuffs and pump him full of sedatives. After all, such emotions were unhealthy and indicative of mental illness, right? Brad chuckled darkly. He could totally hear Kimberly saying that.\n\nBut it wasn't _true_. That was the thing everyone was always too frightened to acknowledge. Sometimes it was _good_ to be mad. Sometimes it was _okay_ to want to kill. Brad thought back to all the times he'd been watching the news and seen something that made his heart ache; some crime so unspeakable he couldn't even begin to imagine how anyone could have corrupted themselves enough to commit it. Murder. Rape. Kidnapping. Genocide. Political greed. Child abuse. The list went on and on. More proof than anyone could ever need that evil wins out most of the time.\n\nBrad would see this and get so angry he'd nearly pass out. And part of that anger was from wondering why in the name of God wasn't everybody else as angry as he was? Didn't anyone else in the world have a conscience? Couldn't they open their eyes and see what was going on? Were they all just too stupid to *get* it!?\n\nSometimes you _had_ to get pissed. Otherwise, things would never change. Brad thought about his teachers telling him how 'violence never solves anything!'. Then he thought about all the wars and revolutions that had *needed* to be fought. When a large group of the powerless were being oppressed and murdered by the powerful, someone *needed* to snap, stand up, and reach for a gun.\n\nObviously, there was a line. You don't just shoot a guy in the head because he parked in a handicapped spot. That would most definitely be overkill. But when Brad had heard one night on the news about a man raping and killing his two daughters and then evading the police for almost a year, he didn't think there was anything wrong with wishing that a 'concerned citizen' would find the guy first. A citizen with a baseball bat. Or maybe a power circular saw.\n\nThere were times when violence was necessary. When nothing else would work. When the outrage was too big and the laws too narrow to deal with the problem at hand. Hell, wasn't this all totally Batman-type stuff? Wasn't this the basic idea behind *most* superheroes? True, most of them didn't kill. Brad knew in his heart that he didn't really want to kill anyone, besides Dr. Beatrix. But was it wrong of him to want to _hurt_ them? To make them feel what he and all his friends had felt when they saw what they had done to Tyler?\n\nNo. There was nothing wrong with that. Nothing at all.\n\nHe just had to keep in mind the most important rule: 'Never hurt innocents, and never hurt the guilty more than they deserve'. He'd read that in a comic book once and it had resonated within him like hearing a bell from heaven.\n\nBrad looked at Tyler's bed. Stared at it.\n\n\"I'm going to hurt them for what they did to you,\" Brad said to the empty space, low and cold and hard as steel. \"I'm going to punish them all.\"\n\nBrad stood up. His paws were clenched in fists. He could feel the tips of his claws digging into his skin. He closed his eyes. He stretched his legs, then his back, then his arms, then his neck.\n\nHe felt strong. He felt _clean_.\n\nAfter years and years of denying what he felt inside, he was letting it free. He was freeing himself from guilt. Yes, he knew his mother had told him a thousand times that he needed to stop fighting. But this time, his mother was wrong. Brad loved her with all his heart, but she was wrong. And truthfully, he thought that if she knew the full story of what was going on at King's Orchard, she'd admit she was wrong too.\n\nBrad imagined her standing before him, bending over and giving him a loving kiss on the forehead.\n\n'Get 'em for me, Sweetheart,' he heard her say.\n\n\"I will,\" he promised himself.\n\nBrad stood there in the chilly, silent bedroom for a cleansing eternity. The spell was finally broken by a knock on the door and a nurse poking her head in to check up on him.\n\n\"Time to rise and... Oh. Hey, looks like you're already up.\"\n\nBrad turned his head slowly, and smiled at her.\n\nThe nurse felt goosebumps erupt all down the length of her spine.\n\n\n*****\n\n\n -HOLLY-\n\nA big paw nudged the raccoon.\n\n\"Karen, the nurses are gonna think you're in a coma.\"\n\nKaren said nothing, just balled herself up even tighter under the sheets. All Holly could see of her was two pointy black ears on the powder blue pillow.\n\nThe big squirrel growled. She understood why Karen was doing this. She'd been sucked into enough self-pity spirals before to know the territory pretty well. She'd had days when all she wanted to do was stay curled up underneath the covers too. It was warm under there, and you didn't have to think about how much life sucked if you didn't want to. That didn't mean it was the right thing to do though.\n\nKaren was silent; a shivering near-spherical bulge in the blankets. (It was an oddly frigid morning, and Holly was wondering already if something was wrong with the hospital's thermostats)\n\nHolly put both her paws on Karen's shoulder and started rolling her back and forth like bread dough. \"I'm tired of being subtle! Get up! Get up! GET UP GODDAMMITTAHELL!!!\"\n\nKaren whipped the blankets away and glared up at Holly with a face that could have turned Medusa to stone.\n\nHolly backed up, realizing she'd Gone Too Far.\n\n\"Fuck off, Holly,\" shy little soft-spoken Karen said.\n\nHolly narrowed her eyes. Her first impulse was to smack her, mostly because Karen was reminding her so much of herself at the moment. But her calmer self won out. \"Look, I don't care if you wanna feel sorry for yourself all day. I understand. But if you don't get up and get dressed, you'll get in trouble. And I probably will too. Wouldn't you agree that that's not very good strategy right about now?\"\n\nSeeing the logic in this, Karen backed off a little. Her shoulders sank. She looked down at the sheets. Holly was right, but she was feeling so utterly decimated inside she didn't want to admit it. All she wanted right now was to be left alone. Preferably forever. She didn't want to wake up, take a shower, eat breakfast, talk with other people... She just wanted to sleep. Because when you were asleep, you didn't have to think. Didn't have to think about Tyler. Didn't have to think about how you KILLED TYLER.\n\nHolly watched her roommate go from furious to weeping in the space of two seconds. It was like shattering a wine glass. Holly instinctually knelt down beside her and scooped Karen up in a hug. The little raccoon didn't seem to weigh anything more than her fur. \"There, there,\" Holly said, patting Karen on the back.\n\n\"I killed him,\" Karen sobbed.\n\nHolly stiffened. \"No you didn't,\" she barked back.\n\n\"I did!\" Karen insisted.\n\nHolly grabbed Karen's cheeks and forced her to look up. \"You say that again and I'll smack you.\"\n\nKaren froze, stunned by Holly's ferocity.\n\n\"You did not kill Tyler. That fucking bitch Beatrix did. That fucking pedophile creep Thurston did. You didn't do anything but try to help all of us, okay? Tyler volunteered. You even warned him, remember? Tyler chose to do what he did, all by himself. It's...\" She was crying now herself, and trying hard to stop it. \"It's an insult to Tyler to just sit here and blame yourself. He let this happen to him so that we'd all have a chance. I don't think he realized they were gonna turn him into a goddam zombie, but he knew he'd get in trouble. And he did it to help ALL of us. So stop crying, Karen! I'm only yelling at you because I know exactly how you feel and I've wanted to just give up a hundred billion million times before. But if you do, that just means they win. We're better than that, Karen. We're not gonna let them win. We're not gonna let them get away with hurting Tyler. He was our friend and we're gonna avenge him. We're gonna kick their fucking asses straight to hell. And we can't do that by crying, now can we?\"\n\nKaren, shuddering, looked up at her best friend. \"B-but you're crying too,\" she pointed out.\n\n\"Oh, shut up,\" Holly said, and held her tighter.\n\nThey both knew Holly was right, they both knew they couldn't give up and give in to their grief. But that was for later. Right now they had to cry. Because sometimes, you just had to.\n\nThe nurse came in again to check on them. \"Hey, you two! No-\"\n\nHolly gave her the finger. \"Eat my shit, die, go to hell and suck my cock, okay?\"\n\nThe nurse was shocked to silence for a few moments, then closed the door and went on to the next room, thinking, 'Maybe I should start sending out resumes to other hospitals...'\n\n\n*****\n\n\n -KAREN-\n\nIn the breakfast line, Karen was quiet, Holly was cautiously hopeful, Brad was revved-up and Benjamin was over at the nurses' station asking for a big tan envelope and some eye drops. Above them all, the fluorescent lights flickered much more than usual.\n\n\"You gonna be okay?\" Holly asked gently, giving Karen a little shoulder massage while the nurse wasn't looking.\n\nKaren nodded almost imperceptibly. Her body had been on autopilot all through her morning routine. She had showered without even realizing it. She didn't even know what she was wearing right now. She had retreated into her thoughts, unable to escape from them.\n\nBrad came over, still nearly vibrating from his vengeful pick-me-up. \"Hey, yo! What's up?\" He stopped abruptly, seeing Karen's hollow expression. \"Hey... You okay?\"\n\n\"Supposedly,\" Holly replied.\n\nKaren looked up slowly, peeking through the foliage of her worries long enough to register Brad's face. \"Huh?\"\n\n\"I was just asking if you're okay. You look kinda out of it.\"\n\n\"I'm thinking about Tyler,\" she replied. '...about all of us,' her inner self added.\n\n\"Me too,\" Brad said. \"I can't wait to get the fuckers who did that to him.\"\n\nHolly smiled approvingly.\n\n\"Is there, um, gonna be another meeting today?\" Brad asked.\n\nKaren paused. She hadn't even thought about that. \"Um...\" She looked to Holly for guidance.\n\nHolly shrugged.\n\n\"I don't know,\" Karen admitted. \"Prolly not. I'm still...\" She shrugged and wrapped her arms around herself. Geez, it was chilly in here... \"I don't think I can do a meeting today.\"\n\n\"You're not thinking of just giving up, are you?\" Brad said this with more shock than anger.\n\n\"No!\" Karen immediately assured. \"It's just... I think I need time to get over what happened. I need to grieve, I guess.\"\n\nBrad nodded. \"Okay.\" Even though he was ready to start the revolution now, he respected that not everyone else would feel the same way.\n\nThe trio got quiet as Clifford walked past with his clipboard, counting off heads under his breath. He got to the front of his line, looked confused, checked the list, then realized suddenly why there was one short. He shrugged. He'd decided long ago that not allowing himself to care too hard about such things made his job much, much easier.\n\nThe rat led the children into the airlock. As the door opened before them, the lights flickered.\n\n\n*****\n\n\n -KURI & WILL-\n\nWhile the children of Ward F were just sitting down to breakfast, the Rennault twins had already finished theirs. Now it was time for practice.\n\nWith the air of two furs going through a routine they knew forwards, backwards and sideways to the point where consciousness wasn't even a factor anymore, Will pulled on his leather fingerless gloves while Kuri keyed in the password to the big room's door. The box beeped, the green light went on, and there was the same *kronk* sound as always of the metal door's lock popping. Kuri gave the rusty handle a tug and she and her brother stepped inside.\n\nIt was about as long as a boxcar and painted all green on the inside. Like a tennis court, but enclosed like racquetball. There were no lines on the floor. The eye-scorchingly bright lights above were protected behind a double layer of Lexan. Like every day, they sputtered and fizzled and took their own sweet time to come on.\n\nKuri pulled her own gloves on. She didn't like them, and neither did Will, but Dr. Beatrix had caught them practicing without them once and had given them A Stern Talking To. She pressed the point home that The Project had spent quite a bit of money on the twins' talented paws and she didn't want them taking any unnecessary risks with them. Which Kuri thought was a mind-bogglingly stupid thing to say, considering what their morning practice consisted of.\n\nKuri began to do leg stretches. She felt along her limbs, feeling the taut, thick muscles tense and harden beneath her skin. She felt like a robot. A sleek, efficient cyborg.\n\nWill yawned. \"They serve us corn flakes one more time this week, I'm gougin' out somebody's eyes,\" he remarked.\n\nKuri made a small acknowledgment sound. She was sick of them too, but it didn't bother her as much. \"How's your tail?\" she asked.\n\n\"Fine.\" He'd pinched the tip between the chair and the table as he was sitting down.\n\nNow Will was doing knee-bends. \"So, who do you think it was that Dr. Beatrix zombified last night?\"\n\nHis sister sneered. \"I'm not even gonna talk to you if you say things like that.\"\n\nThe machine began to hum.\n\n\"Fine, I'm sorry,\" Will grumbled. \"Who do you think Dr. Beatrix 'used the electroshock machine' on last night?\" he corrected.\n\nKuri still sneered. She had her eyes fixed on the machine. They'd given her and her brother padding at first, then took it away in stages to give them more incentive to be perfect every time. \"I don't know. I don't have any idea what kinds of people are upstairs anyway. Why did you even ask me?\"\n\nWill looked a little sheepish. \"I dunno. Just trying to talk with you.\"\n\nKuri could hear more in his tone than his words. She sighed. \"It's okay. I know you've been stressing out a lot lately. I have too. It feels like something's getting ready to happen. I've been feeling kinda claustrophobic, even. Sometimes I wonder if-\" She stopped. Her focus tripled. At the other end of the room, the machine's humming became louder. They both knew exactly how long it took to warm up each day, so there was a finite amount of time available for small talk.\n\n\"I had a dream about Mom last night,\" Will said out of the blue.\n\nKuri looked up. Her brother's face was blank, his eyes faraway.\n\n\"I'm not sure I really remember what she looks like anymore.\"\n\nKuri knew the feeling. She was proud of her life now and her service to The Project, but that didn't stop her and her brother from caring about their past. Most of their memories of their mother were actually just memories _of_ memories. Calico fur and a soft Oriental accent. Will didn't have *any* memories of their father. And Kuri's weren't much more than vague images, like sun-bleached glimpses through a dirty glass.\n\nShe shook her head and wiped the thoughts away, clearing her internal blackboard. There would be time to talk this over later when they were tending to the bedridden. Now it was practice time, and even though they'd been through this every single day of their lives for the past gajillon years, one slip in concentration could still be potentially fatal.\n\n\"Will, snap out of it or the machine'll take your head clean off.\"\n\nWill looked down at the floor and sighed.\n\nThe machine began to slowly pivot.\n\n\"Will! It's starting up, dammit!\" She wasn't really afraid, just worried like any sister would be.\n\nHer brother still did not respond.\n\nThe long grey barrel of the machine tracked around the room. Sensors relayed data and the computer inside created a program around it. The thing looked unsettlingly like a small floor-mounted cannon. Something that might lob grenades or rockets to ward off enemy troops. Imagine an automatic pitching machine from a batting cage perched atop a robotic assembly line arm. It had been cobbled together by The Project's geek platoon from existing tech, and it did its job very, very well.\n\nIt pinpointed the kittens' heat signatures and adjusted accordingly. It chose its first target.\n\n\"Will!!\"\n\n*K'THOK*\n\nPropelled at a speed no batter could ever hope to hit, the machine fired a regulation baseball straight at Will Rennault's downturned head.\n\nKuri lunged towards him.\n\nThe impact would have reduced Will's skull to eggshell fragments, but of course he'd been anticipating it the whole time. Reaching out, he delicately caught the ball in two fingers a few inches away from his face.\n\nKuri gawked.\n\n\"Gotcha,\" he said.\n\nKuri stomped her foot and fumed. \"You rotten little turd! Don't *do* that! I thought you were-\"\n\n*K'THOK*\n\nAnother ball came screaming through the air towards Kuri. She swatted it out of the way without even needing to look. \"-distracted! I was worried about you!\"\n\n\"You underestimate me, Sis,\" Will said in a cocky tone.\n\n*K'THOK*\n\n\"My turn.\" He thrust his open palm at the next ball, sending it ricocheting across the room back towards the machine.\n\nKuri just shook her head. \"You just can't resist torturing me, can you?\"\n\n\"Don't be so dramatic, 'Mom'.\"\n\n*K'THOK*\n\nKuri lashed out, but Will was quicker and intercepted this one too. Kuri grunted and Will grinned at her. She rolled her eyes. Little brothers could be such a pain in the neck sometimes.\n\n*K'THOK*\n\nAnother one, this one fired at the ceiling so it bounced wildly before heading again in Kuri's direction.\n\nWill jumped in front of her at the last second and deflected it.\n\n\"Showoff,\" Kuri said. \"You're gonna get creamed doing stuff like that.\"\n\nHe blew a raspberry at her.\n\n*K'THOK*\n\nWill got that one too, smashing his palm against the ball and sending it to the floor with the others. (He'd learned from experience that headers were not a good idea.)\n\n*K'THOK*\n\nThe machine turned on a gyroscope and was programmed to fire in completely random directions, with no set time intervals between balls. The only pattern was that the longer it went, the faster they came.\n\n*K'THOK*\n\nKuri nabbed the next one. Knowing that often the best way to shut her brother up was to one-up him, she let out a karate yell and kicked the speeding ball straight out of the air.\n\nWill was honestly impressed. \"That was awesome!\" he said.\n\nKuri smiled appreciatively. \" Thanks. I've been wanting to try that for- Look out!!\"\n\n*K'THOK*\n\nWill turned his head and saw a baseball less than a foot away from his collarbone. It was a difficult deflection, but not too difficult. \"You worry too much, sis. I've been doing this as long as you have. You're the one doin' fancy shit anyway.\"\n\n*K'THOK*\n\nKuri growled and swatted the next ball in his direction. Annoyingly, he pawed it away with ease.\n\n*K'THOK*\n\nThis one hit the floor at a steep angle and went straight for her shin. Kuri did a forward flip and eliminated it.\n\n*K'THOK*\n\nThis one flew behind them, hit the back wall and made a beeline for Will's neck. He caught it without looking.\n\n*K'THOK*\n\nThis one flew like an arrow straight at Kuri's face. She planted her paws, held her hands in front of her, and looked straight down the machine's barrel.\n\nTime slowed cooperatively for her, as it always did.\n\nNearly everyone alive has experienced a moment where death comes within a hair's breath of claiming them. They see the truck thundering towards their car. They see the mugger's gun. They see the knife, the boiling water, the fire, the fist. Our bodies dump adrenaline in our veins and our perceptions become supercharged. Time does not really slow; instead our perceptions speed up to take in an incredible amount of detail before a critical moment that may determine life or death. We are alert to our highest degree.\n\nThe Rennault kittens could create this sensation at will.\n\nAnd unlike those of us who experience this sensation only in fleeting moments, Kuri and Will's bodies were not bound by the same paralysis that normally accompanies this hyper-sensitive slowtime. They had been born with an awareness of their physical selves that most fursons could only dream of. Athletes, ballet dancers, circus acrobats and assassins; none of them were as agile as Kuri and Will Rennault. The twins were aware at all times of every single molecule in their bodies (Though it was such a constant background sensation they never noticed it, they could actually *feel* their cells divide). Almost from birth, they had perfect balance, perfect reaction time, perfect recovery and perfect stamina. In short, they were unstoppable. Especially by something as weak as gravity.\n\nFor Kuri, it was like having a slow motion button that controlled the entire world. She stared at the ball. She could see every stitch. She could read the writing on the side. As it came closer, she could see dents in the leather.\n\nThey were really only in minimal danger from the baseball cannon. Sure, they'd been hit a few times before, but that had been way at the beginning when the training was still a new thing for them. This wasn't even a test of physical prowess anymore. This was merely a way to practice their heightened state of perception every day, to make sure they never, ever got rusty. The Project wanted them ready at a heartbeat's notice in case of emergency. It would not be wise to keep their two little contingency plans out of practice.\n\nKuri watched the ball approach until it was literally an inch from the tip of her nose.\n\nShe smiled.\n\nShe flung herself backwards into a crab-walk position and let the baseball sail past her. Almost like radar, she knew where on the wall behind her it would hit and how it would bounce. She moved through the air like a mermaid in water. Tightening her fist, she lashed out and punched the ball so hard it split a seam.\n\nThis all happened in slightly more than a second.\n\nKuri smiled smugly over at her brother.\n\n\"Top _that_ one.\"\n\n*K'THOK*\n\n\n*****\n\n\n -VICTOR-\n\nSettling down on a bench with his tray all full of food, the little skunk was just about to open his milk when something furry bumped his elbow.\n\n\"Hey-\" He turned, about to tell the other kid to be more careful, when he got a good look and flinched. \"Jeeze, you look awful.\"\n\nBenjamin had dark circles under his eyes that could be easily seen through fur. Even after a shower he still looked rumpled and dried-out. Behind his glasses, his eyes were red as cherries. \"Thanks,\" he grumbled sarcastically.\n\n\"Sorry. But you look like you didn't get any sleep last night.\"\n\nThe fox nodded. \"Hardly any, but it was worth it.\" He tore into his orange juice with gusto, draining it in a gulp. \"You gonna drink yours?\"\n\nVictor shook his head. It was easy to get more of the little plastic juice cups anyway. He watched his friend down the second one just as fast as the first.\n\n\"Throat's dry,\" he explained.\n\nVictor nodded in understanding. He caught movement out of the corner of his eye and acknowledged Brad approaching. \"Hi.\"\n\n\"Hi,\" Brad said back, settling his tray down opposite them.\n\nBenjamin croaked something.\n\nBrad looked the rumpled fox over. \"Nightmares?\"\n\nThe fox shook his head. \"Not unless you count the real ones.\" He glanced cautiously from side to side, making sure no authority figures were watching. Clifford looked half asleep over by the far wall and Thurston was still busy doling out dollops of nuclear scrambled eggs. Glancing at Victor, then Brad, Benjamin reached into the neck of his shirt and lifted out a corner of tan envelope just far enough to see.\n\n\"What is that?\" asked Victor.\n\n\"Incriminating evidence,\" Benjamin said spyishly. \"Names. Names of everyone The Project's ever gotten to. Not just here, but everywhere.\"\n\nBrad looked quizzical. \"'The Project'?\"\n\nBenjamin had forgotten that they didn't have Dr. Beatrix's computer melted onto their grey matter. \"The name for the plan to find everyone like us and eliminate us, either through death or brainwashing. They've only started putting kids in electroshock comas for the last decade or so. The technology wasn't advanced enough before, so they either drugged 'em or shot 'em.\"\n\nA shudder passed completely through Victor's body. He suddenly pictured Thurston Caercase grinding a gun barrel into his own furry forehead.\n\nBenjamin trembled. \"I haven't looked at much of what I downloaded. Just the names and a few other peeks here and there. But everything I've seen so far is so bad it almost makes me wanna die. All of it. _Everything_. These people... they're pure evil. They don't have souls. They're like the worst villains in any movie, manga or video game you've ever seen; only real.\"\n\nBrad nodded calmly, accepting this. \"We're going to hurt them for what they did to Tyler,\" he stated. A fact, not to be argued with or doubted.\n\nBenjamin gained some of his confidence back from seeing so much in his friend. \"Of course. We're going to fuck them up good. We're gonna pull their freakin' spines out through their throats.\"\n\nVictor looked down at his bacon strips. \"I can't eat now.\"\n\n\"Ooh, can I have 'em then?\" Brad asked eagerly.\n\n\n*****\n\n\n -KAREN-\n\nA few moments earlier, Karen had watched Brad walk away with his food to go join Benjamin and Victor. She'd tried her best not to make eye contact with the monster behind the sneeze shields, but now she had to.\n\nThurston's smile was wide as a semi truck grille. He wore an apron and brandished a spatula, looking for all the world like the photo on the front of a down-home country diner's menu. \"Gooood mornin', Karen! Beautiful day, huh?\"\n\nKaren's fear vaporized in the split second it took her to look up.\n\nWhen she stared back into Thurston's soulless eyes, it was with such fury it made her feel like her skin was about to split straight off her skull.\n\n'You MURDERED my friend!!!' she screamed silently.\n\nAmazingly, Thurston flinched.\n\nWithout saying anything at all, Karen stalked past him, grabbed whatever she felt like from the remainder of the line, and went to go wait by the soda machines for Holly.\n\n\n ~~~\n\n\nThurston stared google-eyed at the little ball of flame with raccoon stripes that had just done the unthinkable.\n\nShe had _intimidated_ him!\n\nWhat the hell kinda bullshit was that? Did she not understand the rules of the game? Did she not know what he was and what he had done to little pinches of girl-meat just like her? Not bothering to conceal the ugly sneer on his face, Thurston vowed to teach that uppity little cunt a lesson in respecting one's superiors.\n\nHe looked back at the breakfast line and there was Holly. She smiled cheerfully at him.\n\n\"I just wanna know where they're gonna find a coffin big enough for your fat ass,\" she said, looking as if she had never known a second's worth of fear in her whole life.\n\nAmazingly, Thurston flinched again.\n\n\"French toast, please,\" said Holly.\n\n\n ~~~\n\n\nThe cafeteria was getting quite noisy by now. Multiple conversations made the air buzz. One small boy was chanting repeatedly, \"I can puke-I can puke-I can make chocolate miiillllk outta puke!!\" much to the aggravation of everyone around him. The spacey little kangaroo girl was busy constructing vast kingdoms out of her breakfast foods instead of eating them, all while humming a lovely tune.\n\nHolly found Karen over by the boys' table.\n\n\"You can totally sit next to us if you want,\" Brad said to Karen, giving the bench next to him a pat.\n\nA tiny smile. \"That's okay. Thanks, but I think I'd like to be alone for a little while.\"\n\nHolly approached. \"I thought we were going to sit together,\" she said, sounding disappointed.\n\nKaren sighed. \"I know. But I've got stuff I wanna think about. Just by myself. Just for a little while.\"\n\n\"Well, okay,\" Holly said, setting her tray down beside Brad's.\n\n\"We can be together some more after breakfast,\" Karen said. She smiled to let Holly know she wasn't about to descend into pity again. \"I promise.\"\n\n\"Is there going to be a meeting in the art room?\" Victor asked.\n\n\"Karen told me no,\" said Brad, then looked up at her to see if that answer had changed.\n\nShe hated disappointing him too, but what could she do? \"No, guys. I'm sorry. But think about it; maybe it's even a good idea not having a meeting. Maybe it'll make them think we've given up.\"\n\nBenjamin nodded in agreement. \"Subterfuge.\"\n\n\"Maybe we can do one tomorrow,\" Karen said hopefully. Though the look in her eyes suggested that might not be true for a whole lot of tomorrows.\n\nBrad was frustrated, but didn't want to be rude and argue with her. Part of him wanted to just storm the castle of Dr. Beatrix's office right now and send her plunging to her death through that gigantic window of hers. But there were other things to think of besides his vengeance.\n\nKaren was about to turn away when she felt a paw touch hers.\n\n\"Hey, um... You're not used to doing brave stuff, are you?\" Brad said to her.\n\nShe was confused, not sure if that was an insult at first. \"No. Not really. Why?\"\n\nThe tomcat fidgeted, knowing how much he sucked at saying nice things to people. \"I'm just saying I noticed. And I also noticed you're doing a really good job of it so far. You just kinda give off this 'vibe' like we should all listen to you 'cuz you know exactly what to do to get us all out of this. I trust you. Whatever you wanna do is okay with me.\"\n\nKaren was shocked. She pulled her paw away, barely believing she'd heard Brad right. How could he have confidence in her at a time when all she wanted to do was stick her head back under her pillow?\n\nShe looked at Victor, Benjamin and Holly. They all had the same expression Brad did. They all trusted her too.\n\nKaren came very close to screaming out, 'I don't *want* to be the leader anymore!!' and running as far away as possible. But she knew she couldn't. Not because she was locked up, but because she couldn't betray the trust they were giving her. She just _couldn't_. Simple as that. Even though part of her wanted to run away, another part wanted to work through her grief over Tyler as soon as possible so she could start honoring his memory by fighting back.\n\n\"Thanks, Brad,\" she muttered. \"Thanks, everyone.\"\n\nShe hesitated a moment, wondering if she should say anything more, then turned and sought out one of the empty tables at the back of the room near the courtyard.\n\nBrad watched her leave, hoping his little pep talk had actually done something.\n\nHe glanced back at his tray and noticed half his bacon was gone. Mysteriously, Holly suddenly had a double portion and a perfectly innocent look on her face.\n\n\"You stole my bacon, you fatbag!\" Brad shouted, brandishing a plastic fork.\n\nHolly squinted at him dangerously and held up a cast-iron fist. \"Are you sure you don't wanna apologize for saying that? Like, Right Now?\"\n\nBrad smirked. \"Go ahead and punch me. It won't do anything.\"\n\n\"Damn. I forgot.\" Holly tossed Brad's bacon back. \"I was just screwing with you,\" she said. Then she grinned thoughtfully. \"Hey, I wonder which one of us really *would* win in a fight?\"\n\nBrad's eyes lit up. \"Wanna find out?\"\n\nThey both looked excited at the idea of a friendly little no-holds-barred sparring match. \"Maybe we can sneak off during gym period!\"\n\n\"Yeah, that'd be fun to explain if they caught us. 'Uh, gosh, Mr. Staff Furson, we were only beating the shit out of each other in a *friendly* way!'\"\n\nHe and Holly guffawed.\n\n\"You guys are weird,\" Benjamin pointed out.\n\n\n*****\n\n\n -JIMMY-\n\nKaren stared down at the random food items on her tray. \"You there?\"\n\n\"I promised, didn't I?\" came a voice from beside her.\n\nWhen the little raccoon glanced up, a dark wolf in a leather jacket was seated beside her, leaning back on the table in a casual manner. While she'd still been dreaming, Karen had asked him to wait for her in the cafeteria. He was more than happy to oblige.\n\n\"What'd you wanna talk about?\" Always-Jimmy-Never-James asked.\n\nKaren sighed. \"What the heck am I gonna do, Jimmy?\"\n\nHe frowned. \"About what?\"\n\n\"About *everything*! I'm _scared_! They killed Tyler! I know they said he's in a coma, but you know they'll never let him come out of it. He's as good as dead. They could do that to every single one of us if they wanted.\"\n\nJimmy attempted to pat her on the back, which was hard since he was noncorporeal. \"They can. I won't sugarcoat it. They can do basically anything their twisted little cold hearts desire. They could shoot you in your beds. They could burn this place to the ground and claim it was an accident. But they can only do it if you let them.\"\n\n\"I know,\" she said softly. She reached for an underripe apple and took a bite. It was sour enough to make her wince.\n\n\"You're scared to try anything now. You don't want what happened to Tyler to happen to anyone else.\"\n\nKaren nodded. She took another bite of apple.\n\n\"The irony is, what happened to Tyler is almost *guaranteed* to happen to everyone else if you *don't* do anything.\"\n\nKaren looked up sharply. \"Shut up, I know that! Look, I don't need any more convincing. I know we have to get out of here as soon as possible. I'm just still messed up over the fact that I have to fight _murderers_. I don't need you to cheer me up, I need help! I need _suggestions_!!\"\n\nJimmy was both shocked and proud. \"Geez! Way to go, Karen! It's nice to see that spark back in your eyes!\"\n\n\"Thank you,\" Karen said shortly. She tossed away the apple and concentrated on unwrapping some graham crackers. \"Now, do you have any ideas or not? I can't think about anything but Tyler right now.\"\n\nHe smiled. \"That's totally understandable. In fact, it's even a good thing. The more you think about Tyler, the more you'll remember him when it comes time to strike back. Picture Tyler's face in your mind when you see Dr. Beatrix again. Remember his laugh. Remember how ALIVE he was. And then remember him in that fucking wheelchair they put him in. It's easier to give your all for someone else than it is to do it for yourself. I don't know why that is, but it's true.\"\n\nKaren pondered that. She opened a milk carton and dunked one of the graham crackers. She didn't understand why everyone called them crackers when they tasted more like cookies. \"Do you think we should have a meeting after lunch?\" she asked.\n\n\"No,\" Jimmy said straightaway.\n\nShe looked up, surprised, assuming he'd say yes.\n\n\"You made a good point about making it look like you've given up. That could give us a small advantage. It's a good idea, even if you only said it to cover up the simple fact that we shouldn't do a meeting today because you're not *ready* for one.\"\n\nKaren felt relief at hearing that. When she'd thought the exact same thing, she couldn't help wondering if she was only feeling that way out of weakness and cowardice. She'd spent a lifetime being told by her parents how her problems were all her fault because she just didn't try hard enough to solve them. Now, doing anything less than stretching herself to the breaking point felt like giving up.\n\n\"You've been wounded, Karen,\" Jimmy said. He fixed his eyes on hers and held her gaze, forcing her to listen. \"There's nothing wrong with taking some time off to recuperate. It's the same as if you'd been shot or hit with an arrow. In the movies, they always show the hero getting ripped to shreds and then leaping off the operating table to go back and fight some more. That's *bullshit*, Karen. It's dangerous bullshit too. You can get yourself killed doing that, especially when everything in your body and heart is telling you to back off. Dr. Bitch-trix won't suddenly swoop down and murder everyone the instant you take a breather. There's only so much she can do without having to at least *fake* a reason for it. You need to be at your peak performance when you and your friends confront her. Rest is as important as action.\"\n\nHe made a sound halfway between a sigh and a growl. \"One of the reasons we failed that night is that we were stupid, Karen. We rushed in without a plan, thinking our anger would be enough to protect us. Anger's important, but so are brains. And because I wasn't using mine, some of my friends lost their lives. That was going to happen no matter what. But we could have lost _less_ if we'd been smarter.\n\n\"You're going to be smarter than we were, Karen,\" Jimmy assured her.\n\nKaren stared unswervingly down at her food and clenched the edge of the table hard. She was almost crying. He'd said just what she needed to hear; reassurance of his faith in her. \"Jimmy, I really, really want to hug you right now, but I can't 'cause people will think I'm nuts and I have an imaginary friend.\"\n\nHe chuckled. \"Then you just keep eating and I'll hug you, okay?\"\n\nHe did. Even though Karen couldn't feel it in any way, it still made a difference.\n\nKaren opened a plastic tub of applesauce. \"Jimmy?\"\n\n\"Mm-hmm?\"\n\n\"There's something else I wanted to ask you about. Something I've been thinking about for a long time, and I kind of don't know how to say it.\"\n\nThe wolf made a 'lay it on me' gesture.\n\nKaren took a dainty spoonful and collected her thoughts. \"I've been thinking about how we're all crazy in here. I'm not saying that to be mean; it's just true. We've all got problems. I have my dreams...\"\n\n\"You mean _had_.\" Jimmy pointed out.\n\nShe smiled at him. \"Yeah. Thanks for that again.\"\n\n\"No problem.\"\n\n\"But, yeah, Brad fights too much. Holly tried to kill herself. Ruby's retarded. All the others have mental stuff too.\" She hesitated, knowing what she wanted to ask but finding it hard to find the words to say it. \"Doesn't it... I dunno... Seem kinda like too big a coincidence?\"\n\nHe arched an eyebrow. \"What do you mean?\"\n\nIt was coming easier now. The word 'coincidence' had been the one she was looking for. \"Okay, so, this place is supposed to look like a mental hospital, right? Somehow Dr. Beatrix's bosses or whatever search everywhere for kids that have powers and then they have them sent here. But what if the kids aren't crazy at all? Wouldn't *most* of them not be crazy? What do they do then?\"\n\n\"Ahhhh.\" Jimmy got it now. He grinned. This was something he'd puzzled over himself a few times. \"That's not the right question, Karen. But it leads us to it. The correct question is,\" and here he leaned over and whispered soft and creepy in her ear, \"'is everyone with special powers *also* mentally ill?'\"\n\nKaren shivered. \"You're saying they are!?\"\n\nJimmy sat back up, resting his elbows on the table. \"I've thought about this a lot, Karen. You came to the right dead guy to ask. I think the answer is: Probably. I think they go hand in hand. Whether or not the powers cause the craziness or the craziness brings out the powers, I don't know. Could be some of both.\"\n\n\"How?\"\n\n\"Well, okay, say that you've got some mystical ability that everyone else says only happens in fairy tales. Wouldn't keeping a secret like that drive you kinda nuts? Or, on the other paw, if you were *already* nuts, maybe that's exactly what would enable you to accept your powers as reality in the first place, as opposed to a 'sane' furson who'd just dismiss it as an overactive imagination or some other crap.\"\n\nKaren shuddered, trying to get used to the idea. \"Wow. Okay. So, you think they're linked?\"\n\n\"Damn near all the time, yes. Either the powers cause the craziness or the craziness wakes up the powers.\"\n\n\"But what about kids who *aren't* crazy? What happens to them?\"\n\nJimmy smirked and pointed across the cafeteria. \"Benjamin. He's your answer.\"\n\n\"Wha...?\" Karen didn't follow at first.\n\n\"Ben looks perfectly fine to me. Meaning he's certainly got problems, but I can't see any sign of mental illness. And believe me, having spent enough time in places like this, I've gotten pretty good at amateur diagnoses.\"\n\nSomething clicked. \"But Ben's _dad_ is a jerk!\" Karen remembered. \"When King's Orchard sent the flyers, he signed Benjamin up right away!\"\n\n\"Egg-mc-freakin'-zactly,\" said Jimmy. \"I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that probably every parent EVER has at one point looked at their kid and wondered if they needed to be put in a straitjacket. King's Orchard spots the kids with powers and sends out the fliers automatically. Sure, they do research first. They sneak in with their computers and read teachers' reports and look for hospital files. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred there's either a real mental illness there they can exploit, or one they can invent. If there's one thing a parent hates more than anything, it's admitting they're doing a shitty job. So, they blame the kid instead and say he's crazy. Happens all the time. Christ, lookit how much prescription drugs parents give their kids these days! There's a billion-dollar industry devoted to diagnosing perfectly normal kids as dangerous lunatics!!\"\n\nKaren's tail frizzed up. It hadn't hit her this hard before just how scary grownups could be. \"Um, what about the other hundredth kid?\"\n\n\"Pardon?\"\n\n\"You said ninety-nine times out of a hundred they can get them sent to the hospital. What about the ones they can't?\"\n\nAlways-Jimmy-Never-James replied without emotion. \"The ones who refuse the fliers? They simply disappear in the night. There's a million ways to make a death look like an accident.\"\n\n\"That's horrible! They can't really just...\"\n\nHis face was stone. \"They can, and do. Remember what I said about probability being on their side? If you want to get away with something barbaric, do it right out in the open on a grand enough scale that no one can see all the pieces at once and put it all together. The ones they kill are seen as just the normal cycle of accidents and mayhem in this sick country of ours. A statistic among statistics, nothing more. You forget; the vast majority of patients here go home either thinking the powers they thought they had were just silly dreams, or having completely forgotten they existed at all. They don't *need* to kill that many of us.\"\n\nKaren was silent for a moment as she took this all in. She held her soft tail tight in her paws. \"Why are they so afraid of us, Jimmy? Why can't they just leave us alone?\"\n\nJimmy sighed. \"You *know* why, Karen. Instinct. Pure, xenophobic instinct. Fear the strange and unknown because it might be dangerous. In this case, it's gone so far already that it doesn't even matter why it was started. It's just a rolling boulder too big to stop. And technology's made it even bigger. Karen... when you make a house of cards, you can't stop and think about why you're making it because you're too busy keeping it from falling down. Same thing here. It doesn't matter why. All that matters is that it's evil and we have to stop it.\"\n\nKaren nodded solemnly. She finished her applesauce. \"I asked you for ideas before.\"\n\n\"Breakfasttime isn't over yet. Let's brainstorm then.\"\n\nSo they did.\n\n\n*****\n\n\n -KEITH-\n\nWhile everyone else on Ward F ate breakfast downstairs, a handful of other children did not, for various reasons. Instead, the staff pulled a few tables together in the TV room and the children ate their meals there while being constantly monitored. There were four of them. Two of these children, a deer and a beaver, both boys, were just this side of comatose. They could walk and eat by themselves, but that was pretty much the extent of their repertoire. Then there was Keith and Ruby.\n\nKeith usually sat with his back to everyone else, eating in silence, hating the eyes that he felt on his neck. The hospital staff watched him like a criminal. Probably thinking he was planning to steal a spoon and shank somebody. He knew he was a bastard, but he didn't deserve *this*.\n\nHe got there first this morning, as he often did when he wasn't in a shitty mood and they had to force him. The two zombies were herded in afterwards. Their trays were set down in front of them. All the food was nice and soft. They started eating mechanically, expressionlessly.\n\nThen Rubiella entered, a volunteer leading her by the arm. She sat down silently at a table by herself, as far from Keith as she could.\n\nKeith glanced at her, then back down at his food. She'd looked scared. Neither of them had said anything yet about being in the same room together during Karen's art room meetings. They acted as if their first encounter had never happened. But at mealtime, she shied away from him. There was no Brad here to defend her.\n\nKeith ate his eggs and felt like everyone in the world was staring at him. Behind him he heard the clatter of a plastic tray being set on a table, then the tigress' whispered, \"Thank you.\"\n\nKeith clenched his fork harder.\n\nIt was bad enough the damn nurses were staring at him and thinking he was a monster. He didn't want some poor retarded kid thinking that of him too. It wasn't fair to let her keep fearing him. And it made him feel like garbage too.\n\nKeith stood up suddenly. The screech of his chair scooting backwards sounded like the loudest thing in the world. He picked up his tray. The staff members tensed.\n\nHe turned around and walked to where Rubiella was sitting. She glanced up for a split second, then stared down hard at her meal. She was trembling. Biceps the size of toasters, and she was trembling.\n\nThe sound of Keith setting down his tray was like a gunshot. He could see the staff out of the corners of his eyes, stepping closer, anticipating the worst.\n\nRubiella would not look up.\n\nKeith coughed. \"Hey. Um. Would you like some help cutting up your sausages?\"\n\nShe looked up at him, surprised. Something about her eyes unnerved him. She frowned. \"I can do that myse'f,\" she said firmly. \"I'm not stupid.\"\n\nKeith cringed, feeling again like nothing but a clumsy force of destruction. \"I know,\" he said.\n\nRuby took up knife and fork and demonstrated that she could indeed cut her sausages up just fine, all by herself.\n\n\"I'm sorry I acted like such a dumbshit. Y'know, the first time I saw you,\" Keith blurted quietly.\n\nRuby stopped. She looked at him, focusing everything on deciding whether or not he was telling the truth or if this was a trick. She decided he was telling the truth. \"Okay.\"\n\n\"Does that mean you forgive me?\" he asked sheepishly.\n\n\"Of course.\" She didn't even have to think about it. Her philosophy was simple; Why be enemies?\n\nKeith smiled and relaxed a little. \"Okay, cool. And I'm serious. I really am sorry. I don't think about it most of the time when I say stuff. A lot of nasty shit comes out that I don't really mean.\"\n\nShe nodded. \"You wanna be friends?\"\n\n\"Sure.\"\n\nRuby gave him one of her brightest smiles.\n\nIt was so pure and innocent, it actually startled him. He was looking into the face of someone who didn't hate him, didn't fear him, wasn't wary of him. They had agreed to be friends, and she'd turned her fear off like a switch. That was that. Keith almost envied that part of her.\n\nRuby giggled. \"Need any help cuttin' up *your* saus'ges?\" she asked.\n\nKeith laughed.\n\n\n*****\n\n\n -KAREN-\n\nAs the children of Ward F returned after breakfast, one thing that made itself immediately clear was that whatever was wrong with the electricity had gotten exponentially worse since they'd left. The lights sputtered and flashed every ten or fifteen seconds. Telephones rang for no reason. The ward felt like an icebox even though the nurses had been steadily cranking the thermostat all morning. The tornado alarms were even letting out single erroneous blasts at random. And all of it was getting worse by the second.\n\nAfter breakfast, the staff always scheduled time for a little 'recreational' therapy, which meant one of the staff members forcing all the kids to do jumping jacks and toss rubber balls at each other. Karen asked to be excused. Normally they wouldn't have let her, but all she had to do was mention Tyler and an exception was made. Not everyone working at King's Orchard had no heart.\n\nKaren sat on her bed, listening to the sounds of the other children scurrying about the Community Room. She thought about what Jimmy had said. About one thing in particular.\n\nAfter they had tossed around a few non-promising ideas, she'd glanced at the clock and noticed time was almost up. She gathered up her trash. \"I hope everything works out,\" she'd said, mostly to herself.\n\nTo her surprise, Jimmy looked angry. \"No, Karen. Don't hope.\"\n\nShe'd asked him angrily why he'd say such a thing.\n\nThe black wolf stared off into space for a moment before replying. \"Hope implies that you're not in control of the situation. Hoping means that you're giving up and wishing someone else, some higher power, will do half the work for you. Life doesn't work that way.\n\n\"When me and my friends rebelled that night, everything I did, I did by the grace of my own damned self. And them; my friends. No hope necessary. We did it all ourselves.\n\n\"Putting your faith in a higher power means you're not giving yourself credit for the things you do. Look at the world, Karen. All the evidence seems to suggest that God rewards evil and punishes good. Maybe it's all some giant test. Maybe we see evil rich bastards living in mansions and poor people starving to death by the millions, and the point is that it's all a big game. We're given every opportunity to become corrupt and grab some of that good stuff for ourselves, and then we lose our souls in the process. But if we try to keep our sense of decency, God throws boulders at us to see how long we can hold onto it. Maybe it's even simpler than that. Maybe God's not there, or is evil himself. I sure as shit don't know. But what I do know is that you shouldn't trust in anything that might not even be there. Believe all you want, but don't expect belief to haul your ass out of trouble. Don't count on spooky bullshit that isn't there. Count on real people, people you trust. And yourself. Yourself most of all.\"\n\nClifford was already rounding everybody up by then. Karen silently digested all of this, then nodded to Jimmy, thanked him, and got into line.\n\nNow, alone on her uncomfortable bed, she took out the idea that she only had herself to rely on and gave it a good, hard look. True, she had her friends. They all had each other. But that was it.\n\nHer parents certainly wouldn't help her. Alf was gone. Dr. Jones didn't have any idea what was really happening. And she was sure Monsoon was supposed to be here today, but instead some unfamiliar furson had taken his place. Maybe they'd gotten rid of him too somehow.\n\nThere wouldn't be any heroes swooping in to save them.\n\nIt was up to them. They had to be their own heroes.\n\n\n ~~~\n\n\nKaren went about the rest of the day in silence. She thought plenty, but talked as little as possible. She shut out as much of the world as she could to concentrate everything on her thoughts. She made plans and tore them apart ruthlessly. There were a thousand and one ideas that wouldn't work, and so far none that would. They were only children. Children locked in a prison where all the power was held by monsters. They couldn't overpower the grownups. They probably couldn't even outsmart them. Their greatest weapon would have to be surprise. They'd have to use the very powers the monsters were trying to stifle to shake things up and then run like hell.\n\nKaren and the other children went downstairs to the gym for a free activity period. Karen sat by herself and thought and watched. Holly and Brad found a secluded spot and vented their frustrations upon one another. Karen could see their sparring match but the staff couldn't. Good thing too, since the cat & squirrel looked like they were honestly trying to murder each other. Afterwards though, they both looked refreshed and overjoyed. They'd fought to a stalemate and were very happy with that result. Holly and Brad exchanged pats on the back and walked away sweaty and satisfied.\n\nLunch passed soon after. Turkey tetrazzini or sloppy joes. Thurston was no longer on duty, so Karen graciously asked for the turkey. She wolfed it down as soon as she found a seat. Breakfast had been unfulfilling.\n\nHalfway through her meal, she got the feeling she was being watched. She looked around, hoping none of the staff was spying on her, and suddenly came nose-to-nose with Sherri. The bunny grinned. She'd been sitting next to Karen on the bench for almost two minutes. Karen asked if Sherri got a kick out of scaring people like that. Sherri gleefully admitted that she did, but also said that Brad and the others wanted her to know about Benjamin's list of names. That made Karen's eyes get wide. She thanked Sherri vigorously. Sherri asked if she was gonna eat her green beans.\n\nThis changed things dramatically. Now they actually had *evidence*. Admittedly, it wasn't as dramatic as, say, a videotape of Tyler's execution would have been. But anyone with half a brain ought to be able to figure out what all the names meant. Like Jimmy said, the evidence was all out in the open, just too spread out to put together. This list of names was like a map. Like a game of connect-the-dots. Someone would figure it out. And then that furson would start interviewing parents, and the parents would start talking to each other, and then there was no way The Project would be able to keep it a secret anymore.\n\nThere were still problems though. Karen mulled them over while sitting in one of the bean bag chairs in the empty TV room. The TV room was empty because an hour ago the twin televisions had simply dropped dead. Just as the flickering lights had gotten worse, the reception had been poor this morning and nigh-unwatchable after lunch. Then out of the blue, the screens had turned to static on every channel. Mysteriously enough, the set the Nintendo was hooked up to konked out in a similar fashion at the same time.\n\nAll over the ward, electronics were going haywire. Phone connections were chock full of weird buzzes and hissing. The coffeemaker in the nurses' lounge was acting like it was possessed. The security monitors were still clinging to life, but the images were fuzzy at best. The hospital staff were calling everyone they could think of to fix the problem, but so far none of the technicians could find a root cause. Stranger still, there were minor problems on other wards, but Ward F was definitely bearing the brunt of it. Whatever was happening, the seventh floor of King's Orchard was ground zero.\n\nWith no TV, the TV room lost its popularity awfully fast. Most kids retreated to their rooms to nap or read or surreptitiously snarf snacks stolen from the cafeteria. Some actually used the art room for its intended purpose. Holly was one of the nappers, and was snoring just loud enough to send Karen off in search of a quieter place to think.\n\nSo here she was in a beanbag chair, listening to the white noise of the television static, trying to decide who they should give Benjamin's list to. It was maddening; no matter who she thought of, there was no guarantee the government wouldn't get to them later on. If whoever was behind The Project had the resources to find and capture every furson in the country with a hint of special abilities, what would stop them from bribing policemen, shooting journalists, or even making entire families disappear? Karen supposed it was possible they could get to *anyone*, so their best shot was to simply find someone who looked trustworthy and hope for the best. There was only so much they could do on their own. Despite what Jimmy had said, there were situations when hoping was all you could do.\n\nKaren got up to stretch. Her tail had fallen partially asleep.\n\nThe two television sets were still buzzing merrily away. Karen stared absent-mindedly into the static. You could almost see patterns in it if you relaxed your eyes.\n\n'Like that,' she thought. For a second there, the screen had flashed what looked like a big letter N.\n\nA moment later, a K appeared. It looked like when you made trails of light in the air with a sparkler on the fourth of July.\n\nActually, Karen realized, it looked like someone on the opposite side of the screen was drawing on it with their fingertips.\n\nNow a letter A appeared.\n\nAll of Karen's fur stood up. She gulped and took in a sharp breath.\n\nShe waited.\n\nA letter R appeared.\n\n'No way. Oh, please. Oh my god, if an E shows up next...'\n\nA letter E appeared.\n\nKaren bit her knuckles. Her heart was banging like a screen door in the wind. She did not dare let herself believe that this meant what she thought there was one chance in a billion it could mean...\n\nA letter N appeared.\n\nK A R E N. Karen. Someone was trying to send a message to her.\n\nKaren rushed to the closest set and knelt down beside it. Her mind raced. The TV was talking to her. No, someone *inside* the TV was talking to her. She tried to reason out who it could be. It couldn't be Jimmy. He'd just come up and say hello. It couldn't be some random dead furson from her dreams, since she knew for a fact she wasn't asleep. She could still taste her lunch in her mouth and she'd *never* tasted anything in a dream before. That left only one other explanation.\n\n\"...Tyler...?\" she whispered.\n\nAnother letter K appeared.\n\nKaren held her breath, waiting to see if the message would change. Instead, it just kept repeating. An A appeared, followed by R, E and N. But they were going faster now.\n\n\"Tyler? Please, is that you?\"\n\nThe pattern still didn't change.\n\nThen Karen got an idea. With her finger, she traced on the screen: T Y L E R ?\n\nInstantly, so fast she could barely make it out: Y E S, followed by about twenty exclamation points.\n\nKaren broke down crying with happiness. It was all she could do to keep her tears silent, lest the nurses come running and think she'd gone batshit insane. She shut her eyes for a moment and forced her heart to slow down.\n\nCarefully, she traced: Y O U ' R E A L I V E !\n\nThe response: D U H !\n\nKaren clamped a paw over her mouth to keep from laughing. That confirmed it; it was _definitely_ him! Trembling in giddy joy, she carefully replied: H O W C A N I G E T Y O U O U T O F T H E R E ?\n\nThere was a pause. Karen stared into the static for what felt like hours, hoping she hadn't lost the signal somehow.\n\nN O I D E A. Another pause, shorter. Y O U R S U P P O S E D T O K N O W A B O U T T H I S S T U F F\n\nHe had a point. She *was* the resident expert on communicating with the dead. Karen could barely think though, she was so glad to know her friend was okay. She tried to concentrate. O K A Y , H O W D I D Y O U G E T I N T H E R E ?\n\nTyler's writing got smaller and faster, but Karen could still make it out. WHENTHEYFRIEDME ITHINKIWENTINTOTHEELECTRICITY IVEBEENINHEREALLDAY ITSBORINGASHELL\n\nF R I E D Y O U ?\n\nTHEYELECTROSHOCKEDME THEFUCKERS\n\nKaren could picture that. Poor Tyler, taken to Ward Zero, strapped into some horrible machine. Maybe when he tried to leap out of his body, he'd been too late and he went into the electrical systems somehow. That would explain why Jimmy couldn't find him in either his body or in the Inbetween. Y O U ' V E B E E N M A K I N G T H E L I G H T S F L I C K E R ?\n\nA canine boy passing by the TV room peeked in and saw a raccoon girl apparently caressing one of the TVs like she was in love with it. He looked away and kept walking. He knew enough to stay away from the *really* crazy ones.\n\nOFCOURSE Tyler replied. IHADTOGETYOURATENTION\n\nKaren bit her lip and tried to think. She had to get Tyler out of Ward F's wiring as soon as possible. Not only because she couldn't stand the thought of him trapped in there, but also because she'd heard the nurses talking about how electricians were working on the problem. What if they somehow scooped Tyler up? Or even erased him! Karen knew nothing about how buildings were wired, and that made her even more scared.\n\nKAREN?\n\nI ' M T H I N K I N G\n\nOKAYILLWAIT IMONLYSTUCKINAFREAKINTVSET NOPRESSURE\n\nKaren guffawed. She couldn't help it. Tyler was funny anyway, and this situation was so ridiculous it was oddly fitting.\n\nThen she hit on something.\n\nM A Y B E Y O U C A N G O I N S I D E M E\n\nWHAT?!?\n\nL I K E P O S E S S I O N\n\nOHIGETIT LIKEDEMONS&STUFF\n\nS O R T A\n\nHOW?\n\nKaren puzzled over that. Okay, so, if Tyler was in the electricity, it seemed likely that the only way she could get him inside her was to let herself be shocked. She cringed. She didn't like the idea, but she couldn't think of anything else.\n\nY O U ' L L H A V E T O S H O C K M E\n\nBUTWHATIFIHURTYOU???\n\nKaren smiled at his compassion. I ' L L B E O K A Y she reassured. But would she? She looked all around the TV room. She saw a wall socket and imagined sticking a fork in it. No _way_. She wasn't about to do anything that could get her killed. Just then, something else occurred to her.\n\nR E M E M B E R S L E E P I N G B E A U T Y ?\n\nWTF?\n\nI ' M G O I N G T O K I S S Y O U\n\nThe static buzzed in a way that almost sounded like laughter. IDIDNTKNOWYOUHAD THEHOTSFORME\n\nKaren laughed too. I D O ' N T Y O U G O O F ! S T A T I C E L E C T R I C I T Y !\n\nA pause. GOODIDEA PUCKERUP!\n\nKaren did more than that. She scuffed her shoes on the carpet, then ruffled her hair a few times for good measure. She looked like she had a severe case of bed head now. Karen could feel a shock was imminent. R E A D Y ?\n\nYUP\n\nH E R E G O E S\n\nKaren closed her eyes and readied herself. She knew this would probably hurt like heck, but _any_ pain was worth it to get Tyler back.\n\nShe leaned in and kissed the TV...\n\n...and promptly shot backwards six feet.\n\n\n ~~~\n\n\nSomething lightly slapped her face.\n\n\"Karen? You alright, honey? Wake up!\"\n\nKaren blinked a few times, then found she was looking up into the face of the nice bobcat nurse. A few kids were clustered around her too, mostly just rubbernecking. Karen realized she was flat on her back.\n\n\"Oh thank goodness!\" Camilla said when she realized the poor girl was only dazed, not dead. \"What happened?\"\n\nKaren opened her mouth to speak, but another voice spoke up inside her head. \"Tell her the TV was broke and you thought you could kiss it and make it all better!\" Karen cracked up.\n\nCamilla looked at her like she was worried the shock might have scrambled the little one's brains.\n\nKaren sat up. \"I'm fine. I was just trying to help out and see if I could fix the TV. I got shocked, that's all.\"\n\n\"You ended up halfway across the room!\" Camilla said. \"I heard the thump next door and came running!\"\n\nKaren rubbed her head to see if everything checked out. Aside from the fact that her lips were tingling and her fur looked like she'd just come out of the dryer, she felt perfectly normal. \"I must've tripped,\" was all she could come up with.\n\n\"We need to get you downstairs and run some tests.\"\n\n\"No, really!\" Karen stood up and started smoothing out her fur. The other kids gaped warily, as if she were a vampire reawakening. \"I'm totally okay. And hey, look, it's almost dinnertime! I don't need to see a doctor, I just need some food. I'm hungry!\"\n\nCamilla didn't look entirely convinced. She took Karen's wrist in her paw and felt the girl's pulse. Normal. \"Well... I guess some food in your tummy might do some good. But don't scare us like that! Don't ever try to fix anything around here without an adult present!\"\n\nKaren nodded submissively. \"Yes, ma'am.\"\n\n\"...So they can get the shit shocked out of them too,\" Tyler added.\n\nKaren stifled a laugh so hard she nearly split her lip.\n\nCamilla looked at the clock. \"You're right. It is nearly dinnertime. Alright, you go wait in line if you want. But come see me immediately if you feel weird or your head hurts or anything else!\"\n\nKaren promised she would, not daring to speak for fear Tyler would make her laugh again. She scurried out of there as fast as she could.\n\n\n*****\n\n\n -HOLLY-\n\n\"Thank you so much for getting me the hell outta there!!\" Tyler burst out. The sound was like a tiny P.A. system inside Karen's mind (How fitting). \"It was like being wrapped in really tight bubble wrap. That's the best way I can describe it. You're much comfier.\"\n\nKaren ran to her room so no one would see her talking to herself like a weirdo. \"I'm so glad you're okay!\" she whispered to him.\n\n\"Thanks to you!\"\n\n\"But it was my fault you got electroshocked in the first place, Tyler. I am _so_ sorry. You can't beli-\"\n\nThe mouse cut her off. \"Bullshit. You didn't do anything. It was not your fault and if you say that again I'll... I'll...\" He thought. \"I'll make you fart really loud in the food line!\"\n\nShe giggled. \"Can you even do that?\"\n\n\"I dunno. Let's see.\" Tyler looked out through Karen's eyes and spotted his favorite nemesis taking a nap.\n\n\"HEY, HOLLY!!!\" Karen suddenly shouted. Her eyes went wide as saucers and she slapped her paws over her mouth. \"You jerk! You made me do that!\" she mumbled.\n\nTyler was guffawing like an evil madman. \"I had no idea if that'd really work! Awesome!\"\n\nHolly did not like to be startled out of sleep. With narrowed eyes, she advanced on her roommate. \"Why the hell couldn't you just tap me on the shoulder or something!?\"\n\n\"It wasn't me!\" Karen tried to explain.\n\nHolly did not look convinced. \"Then who, exactly? *Elves*?\"\n\nKaren's mouth opened by itself. \"Hiya, gruesome! Wow, I didn't think it was possible, but you look even *more* fucked-up when you've just gotten out of bed! Your hair looks like a sno-cone!\" Karen backed up quickly with a 'please don't kill me' look in her eyes.\n\nInstead of knocking her block off, Holly went stiff as a board. She stared at Karen's mouth. There was only one furson in the universe who had the balls to talk to her like that... \"T-tyler?\"\n\nTyler found that taking over Karen's vocal cords was surprisingly easy. \"Dingdingdingdingding! We have a correct answer! Give the lady a cigar! Oh, wait, she's underage. Give her a popsicle at least!\"\n\nAn expression of explosive joy came over Holly's face and she ran at Karen, engulfing her in a hug. \"TYLER!! Oh my God, I don't know how you got in there, but I'm so glad you're okay!! Jesuschristrock'emsock'emrobots, we were all so worried! I could barely sleep last night! You scuzzy, buttlicking retard! I thought I'd never get to insult you again!!\"\n\nKaren and Tyler both laughed at that. \"I missed you too, Holly,\" Tyler said, as sincerely as he could.\n\nHolly released Karen, who took in a big gulp of air. \"So... HOW!?\"\n\n\"He was stuck in the electricity,\" Karen told her. \"That's why everything was messing up.\"\n\n\"She French kissed the TV to get me out of there!\" Tyler added.\n\n\"I did not French kiss the TV!\" Karen insisted. \"You have to use your tongue for that, right? I'd never lick a TV screen!\"\n\n\"How are we gonna get him back in his body?\" Holly asked.\n\n\"I was just gonna suggest that!\" Tyler piped up.\n\nKaren paused, and then she smiled. A smile of ferocious triumph. \"I don't know, but we can certainly ask for suggestions ...When we have a meeting in the art room after dinner tonight.\"\n\nHolly's face lit up with unholy glee. \"_Fuck_ yeah.\"\n\n\n*****\n\n\n -TYLER-\n\nTo say it had been one of the strangest nights in Tyler's life would be a bit of an understatement.\n\nWhen the juice had speared into him, Tyler had felt a sensation that was not exactly pain. It was, however, so mind-destroyingly unpleasant that he thought he'd rather firebomb a box of kittens than ever have to feel it again. His soul thrashed at the confines of his body, spasming wildly, jerking in unthinking torment, seeking any possible way out.\n\nThe only way out was through the thing that was causing his torture.\n\nTyler's body went limp on the operating table and Tyler's soul went shooting into the wires.\n\nHe'd never felt *anything* like this before. He was completely without a body now, without even the remembered image of one. He was just a particle cloud. A little cluster of Tyler-thoughts. He was scared. So scared he could barely think. He had no idea where he was or even *what* he was.\n\nOne thing he discovered fairly quickly was that he could travel _fast_ now. He cautiously tried to move in this new formless form and his tiny effort was multiplied a hundredfold. Like pushing off from roller skates and immediately hitting 100 mph. Tyler went rocketing along at incalculable speeds through blind, twisting tunnels. He had no idea where he was going, but, damn, it was actually rather fun!\n\nTyler zipped to and fro for a while before smacking into a dead end. He was in a coffeemaker. He didn't know *how* he knew he was in a coffeemaker, he just knew. As surely as he knew he was a mouse, or was supposed to be anyway. He thought about this, decided he wasn't dreaming, hallucinating or insane, and began to puzzle out what had happened to him. He shot back across the wiring again and when he wound up in a security monitor, looking out into a corridor on Ward C, he knew for certain.\n\nTyler spent the next few hours travelling at supersonic speeds over every millimeter of King's Orchard's electrical systems. He got better at sensing where he was. He was able to 'see' every room in the hospital by looking out through shiny surfaces on anything plugged in. It actually felt more like radar than sight. Which was odd, since he couldn't hear a thing except when he was in a telephone. The rest of the time he was completely deaf.\n\nHe looked in on his friends. Not many were sleeping. He didn't know how they knew about his 'death' (or coma or whatever this was; Tyler had no idea what to call it, or if his body was even still alive), but was glad they knew. He hoped it would make them fight harder when it came time.\n\nHe looked in on Holly. She was crying. Tyler felt a hot streak of anger at that. For a moment, punishing Dr. Beatrix for making Holly cry seemed even more important than punishing her for what she'd done to him.\n\nHe looked in on Dr. Beatrix. She was sitting at her desk, one single light illuminating the huge, gaping office. Tyler was inside that light. He saw her at her computer, typing away, smiling obscenely. She had just tortured a child, almost to death, and now she was smiling. Tyler couldn't think of a word vile enough for what she was.\n\nHis anger grew and boiled like a volcano until suddenly Dr. Beatrix's office went dark. \"Hey!\" she shouted. The lightbulb had burst.\n\n'Did I do that?' Tyler wondered.\n\nHe giggled like a supervillain. 'Only one way to find out.'\n\nTyler went on a rampage. He zoomed back and forth in the hospital, causing malfunctions wherever possible. The lightbulb trick was the most spectacular thing he was able to accomplish, but he got TV screens to go staticy and fluorescents to dim. He made a few telephones ring at random. He tried making more things explode, but just didn't have the power.\n\nRandom mayhem was fun and all, but Tyler did not want to spend the rest of his existence causing minor trouble for hospital staff. He had to get out of here.\n\nThe only solution seemed to be to use what he already had. He made his way to Ward F and began every effort imaginable to get someone to notice him. At first he thought of the P.A. system, but he didn't want to give away his position to anyone other than his friends. It was moot anyway, since he'd given it a small try and found that all he could produce was static. So instead he decided on making a nuisance of himself. He raced along the lights, making them sputter and dim at his whim. He kept turning the thermostat down no matter how many times the staff turned it back up. He looked out of all the security monitors and television screens, scanning faces for any sign that anyone might believe a supernatural presence was at work. Everyone was too rational for that though. Dammit, didn't anyone believe in poltergeists anymore?\n\nBut then fate gave him a kiss on the lips. Karen was all alone in the now-defunct TV room. Karen, the one who was most likely to be able to DO something once he got her attention. He stared at her, trying to figure out how to make himself seen. He tried flashing morse code, but realized all he knew was S.O.S.. Karen didn't pick up on it.\n\nTyler was desperate. He banged his fist on the inside of the screen.\n\nHe stopped, and tried to comprehend what he'd just done.\n\nHe'd banged his _fist_!\n\nHe had a body image again, and he could *manifest* it! Hot shit!\n\nConcentrating harder than he'd ever concentrated before, Tyler drew her initial on the screen. It was so easy, it stunned him.\n\nTyler had to write Karen's name twenty times before she noticed. But eventually she did.\n\n\n ~~~\n\n\n\"The rest, as they say, is history,\" Tyler said out of Karen's mouth.\n\nBrad's jaw hung loose. \"...Wowsers.\"\n\nAfter Karen had sat down with her dinner tray, she told Tyler she would give him complete control over herself so he could tell the others what he'd been through. She even let him make the choices in the food line and do the eating for both of them. Though she did make him promise not to stuff peas up her nose or do anything like that. He solemnly swore he wouldn't, and even promised twice so she'd know he wasn't gonna be a jerk and go back on his word for comedic effect.\n\nRight now Karen *was* Tyler. It was her body, but his voice, mannerisms, expressions and body language came through so clearly the others had no problem talking to him as if he were still his normal male mouse self.\n\n\"What did it feel like, being in there?\" Benjamin asked avidly.\n\n\"I told Karen it was like being in bubble wrap, but that doesn't even come close now that I think about it.\" Tyler grimaced, not knowing how to put it into words. \"Okay, um, try and picture this: You know that feeling you get when your leg's been asleep awhile and then it starts to come back? That tingly feeling, like ants are shoving tiny, tiny needles in your skin? It didn't feel *like* that, it felt like I *was* that feeling,\" Tyler said.\n\nHolly, Brad, Benjamin and Victor all tried to conceptualize that, and couldn't.\n\n\"Oh screw it,\" Tyler said.\n\n(Ruby and Keith were eating upstairs, as always. Karen had already told them very briefly about Tyler. They were both relieved and overjoyed. Nobody was sure if Sherri was sitting with them now. Zeek, however, was listening to their conversation two tables away with his gigantic fennec ears.)\n\n\"Did you see anything that could help us?\" Brad asked.\n\n\"Not much that we don't already know,\" the mouse-in-a-raccoon replied.\n\n\"I mean, is there anything we could use against this place if we tried to escape?\" the tomcat clarified.\n\nTyler shrugged. \"I honestly don't know. I mean, I know which doors have unmarked alarms on 'em, but if we're escaping I imagine there'll probably be plenty of alarms going off anyway.\" He paused and bit his lip. \"There was one thing though that really creeped me out. The fire alarms. Beatrix has them wired up so if they go off, everything goes on lockdown. All the doors and windows bolt themselves shut.\"\n\n\"But why?\" Victor asked.\n\nTyler looked grim as he laid it out. \"Simple. They'd rather this place burn down with everyone inside it than for anyone to get out and blab what was going on in here. If there *was* a fire, reporters would show up. And cops. They'd ask questions. But if there's no one left alive to ask, and the place turns completely to ash - and yes, it's designed to; there are canisters in Ward Zero set to go off and *eradicate* everything down there when they reach a certain temperature - anyway, if everyone's dead and there's no evidence, it just looks like a terrible tragedy and the building contractor probably goes to jail.\"\n\n\"That's...\" Brad tried to find a word for it. \"That's the most cold-blooded thing I've ever heard.\" He shook his head. \"No, wait. *Everything* I hear about this place is the coldest thing I've ever heard.\"\n\nTyler decided not to tell anyone what Beatrix had said about the drinking water making everyone sterile. It seemed too implausible, even for her. He didn't want to freak everyone out if there was a chance she was only lying to spook him. He'd just make sure that if he did make it out of this, they'd all get their genitals to a doctor ASAP for some testing.\n\n\"But... wouldn't Dr. Beatrix die too if the place caught on fire?\" Holly asked.\n\n\"If she doesn't have some secret passageway outta here in case of that, I'll eat my own dookie,\" Tyler replied. (Inside him, Karen cringed) \"She's too selfish not to.\"\n\nKaren stood up in her mind and became herself for a moment. The change was so startling, everyone else knew in a heartbeat that Karen was Karen again. \"We really shouldn't be talking about this stuff out in the open where people can hear us.\" And by people, she meant Thurston Caercase, who was halfway across the room but still too close to suit her. \"That's what the meeting afterward's for. Besides, we should all be in on it. And Ruby, Keith and Sherri aren't here.\"\n\n\"I am too!\" Sherri piped up.\n\nEveryone looked, but she was still being invisible. \"You're kinda creepy,\" Benjamin said in the direction he thought she was. \"And I say that with great envy.\"\n\nShe giggled. \"Thank you.\"\n\nTyler asserted himself again. \"Um, guys? Something else I wanted to mention.\"\n\n\"What's that?\" Brad said with a mouthful of what was supposedly beef pot pie.\n\n\"As cool as it is to find out what having boobs feels like...\" Karen did an impressive job of keeping herself from shrieking, \"...I'd kinda like to get back to my own body. Sometime *soon*, y'know?. Maybe see if it still even *exists*?\"\n\n\"Yeah, geez. How are we gonna do that?\" Benjamin asked.\n\n\"Simple,\" Brad said, stabbing a green bean. \"I take Karen down to Ward Zero, and she vomits him back into himself.\"\n\n\"I am not vomiting *anyone*!\" Karen said sharply. \"Why do boys have to go out of their way to be gross!?\"\n\n\"Hey,\" Holly said, sounding offended. \"I go out of my way to be gross just as much as _any_ boy.\" And to prove it she squirted Jell-o through her teeth.\n\n\"Try that with mashed potatoes and gravy,\" Tyler suggested. \"It feels even cooler.\"\n\nShe smiled sparklingly. \"Thanks! I will!\"\n\nKaren gave Tyler a mental poke. \"If we can get down to Ward Zero without anyone seeing us or catching us, I will do everything I can to get you back where you belong. I promise.\"\n\n\"You'll probably have to kiss me on the lips,\" he told her. \"Holly will be soooo jealous.\"\n\nThe grey squirrel narrowed her eyes. \"Tyler, the only reason I'm not hurling my soda in your face is that you're wearing Karen's clothes right now.\"\n\n\"Ooh! Good one!\" Brad said.\n\n\"I know! Is it any wonder she's the goth of my dreams?\" Tyler said.\n\nHolly rolled her eyes disgustedly.\n\n\"Do you have a plan on how to get us downstairs and into Ward Zero?\" Karen asked Brad.\n\n\"No,\" he said unconcernedly. \"But we can make one after dinner.\"\n\nThurston's voice boomed suddenly across the room. \"Awright, little critters! Line up's in five minutes!\"\n\n\"...And in ten minutes we'll be plotting treason and mutiny,\" Benjamin said with glee.\n\n\n*****\n\n\n -THURSTON-\n\n\"They're at it again.\"\n\n\"The art room nonsense?\" Dr. Beatrix asked, her voice sounding uncharacteristically nasal over the walkie-talkie.\n\n\"I think so,\" Thurston replied. While the Ward F children frantically finished up their meals and disposed of their garbage, Thurston stepped back into the stairwell to report what he'd seen. \"I couldn't hear most of what they said, but they were talkin' about that mouse kid. The one we cooked.\"\n\n\"Of course. Naturally, they're going to try to pull off another crazy stunt like before to try and avenge him.\" She said this with as little concern as if she were describing a turkey sandwich that didn't have enough mayo.\n\nThurston's face split into a grin. A grin of sharp teeth set in blood-red gums. \"Is it time then?\"\n\n\"Yes, definitely. Right now would do the most damage.\"\n\n\"And I get to choose which one?\" he asked eagerly.\n\n\"Of course. You're fond of the little raccoon girl, aren't you?\" An excited squeal on the other end confirmed this. \"Go ahead, you have my permission. Rape her. Break her and let them see it afterwards. Just make sure not to leave anything behind that she could prove her story with if she talks to anyone.\"\n\nThurston Caercase chuckled heartily. \"Bea, you don't have to worry. I've been plannin' this whole thing out for days.\"\n\n\"Of course you have,\" Dr. Beatrix said with an affectionate smile on her lips. \"I can always count on you, Thurston.\"\n\n\n*****\n\n\n -KAREN-\n\nThe fat bear didn't make eye contact with her on the way back up the stairs, and Karen was grateful for that. She stood at the back of the line, as far away from him as possible, talking wordlessly in her head with Tyler.\n\n\"I know you said it wasn't my fault, but I'm still sorry. None of us had any idea she'd go that far. We _will_ get you back in your body,\" she promised again.\n\n\"Geez, am I that annoying a houseguest?\" he asked.\n\nShe giggled. \"No, of course not! Though I really wish you hadn't said that thing about my boobs. I don't even *have* any yet!\"\n\n\"Sure ya do!\" he said reassuringly. \"They're just in the larval stage now.\"\n\nKaren cringed with her entire body. \"Gack! Did you have to say it like that!?\"\n\n\"Whaaat?\"\n\n\n ~~~\n\n\nWhen the door to Ward F opened, Karen's mind was buzzing with ideas for the meeting. She didn't even know where to start! Up ahead, she could already see Victor and Benjamin heading for the art room. The others would be there soon.\n\n\"Hey, better get the Uno cards,\" Tyler reminded her.\n\n\"That's right! Monsoon said we could leave some in there and I forgot.\" Karen headed for the TV room. \"Geez, we forgot about them completely last time. That was dumb. We should've been more careful.\"\n\nTyler sighed bitterly. \"Don't worry about it. They probably know what the meetings are for by now anyway.\"\n\nThat thought had occurred to her, but she went for the bag of cards nonetheless. \"Maybe they haven't,\" she said firmly, hoping it were true even though she knew how unlikely that was. She separated about half of the cards out and left the rest in the bag. The deck had been way too big the first time.\n\nKaren left the TV room. She saw Holly in the hallway up ahead and nodded conspiratorially to her. She wondered when would be the best time for them to launch their escape. Tonight was too soon, tomorrow might be as well. But if they waited until Monday, who knew what might happen by then? She knew everyone was scared that Dr. Beatrix might fry them too, so she had to find a way to turn that fear into action. If they didn't want to get fried, the best thing to do about it was to plan for Sunday night.\n\n'Sunday night is when we'll all escape,' Karen thought.\n\nThat was when the door to quiet room #2 opened and Thurston's thick arm shot out, grabbed her shoulder, and jerked her inside.\n\nThe door locked behind her.\n\nKaren opened her mouth to scream.\n\n\"Soundproof,\" Thurston said, and laughed.\n\n\n*****\n\n\n -SHERRI-\n\n\"Where's Karen?\" Rubiella asked.\n\n\"I just saw her. She'll be here in a minute.\" Holly said.\n\nThe art room hummed with tension. Seven members of the rebellion sat around the double table anxiously waiting for the meeting to start. Ruby and Keith wanted to know more about what had happened to Tyler. Brad and Benjamin filled them in with everything he'd told them. Ruby's eyes were wide. She concentrated everything she had on making sense of the two boys' words.\n\nKeith was deeply glad to hear that Tyler wasn't dead. He'd spent much of the last night clenching his paws in rage, biting his pillow, raking his claws against the dresser and the wall. So much fury. Uncontainable. He had wanted to jump up, find Dr. Beatrix and punch her till she stopped moving. He'd thought about the three initials he'd burned into the ping pong table in the TV room. Tyler and Brad were special to him. He'd been honest with them, something rare, and they had listened to him, something even more rare. When he'd seen Tyler's limp, wet body in that wheelchair, it had felt like his eyes were filling with hot blood. First the world had taken away his uncle and now when he finally had friends, one of them was gone already. It took an unimaginable effort to keep from screaming the whole night through. Keith wanted to scream and scream until blood soaked his pillow. Calming himself was torture, but he knew he had to. In order to get what he wanted, he couldn't lash out now. He had to play it cool, wait for the right moment, wait until all of his friends were ready. Then he could scream. And make Dr. Beatrix scream too.\n\nHolly glanced up at the mirror in the hallway. She frowned. Karen had been right behind her but now the hallway was empty. 'Maybe she went back for something?' she thought.\n\nVictor was off in his own thoughts. He knew this meeting would decide when and how they would try and get out of here. He thought about his 'superpower' and how lame it was. Especially compared to Keith's or Benjamin's. Why couldn't he have a cool power? All he could do was control his butthole. For the longest time, he'd thought it was great, the funniest thing in the world. But seeing these other kids with the neat abilities fate had given them, Victor felt like he'd ben gypped. He felt, in a word, useless.\n\nHolly glanced up at the mirror again. \"Um, guys? I'm starting to get worried about Karen.\"\n\n\"Maybe she's taking a whiz?\" Benjamin suggested.\n\n\"I can go check,\" Sherri said out of nowhere, as usual. She made herself visible for a second, just so they'd know she was there. Though as soon as she was out the door she cloaked herself again.\n\nSherri walked brazenly down the hall towards the girl's bathroom. She waved at the nurses behind the desk. No one saw her. She giggled silently. Having a sneaky purpose behind it made being invisible even more fun. She thought about sneaking into the nurses' station the night before. It was actually quite exhilarating. She'd been using her gift mostly to give herself quiet time alone. Maybe spy stuff was something she could do more often.\n\nInside the bathroom, everything was quiet and chilly and pink. Sherri's voice echoed eerily against the tile. \"Karen?\"\n\nNo reply. Sherri checked under each stall door. Nobody there.\n\nSo where the heck had Karen gone?\n\nSherri slipped out the door, hoping no one would notice it opening seemingly by itself. Though really, what did she care if anyone did? Let 'em think the place was haunted.\n\nShe was just about to head back to the art room and tell Holly no luck when she saw something red on the floor.\n\nAn Uno card.\n\nA red six. Lying on the hallway carpet right in front of one of the quiet rooms. The door was closed. Usually they were kept open.\n\nSherri felt ice in her spine.\n\nShe took a step closer and listened carefully. She didn't believe anything was *totally* soundproof. She wished she was tall enough to just look through the little window, but it was a few taunting inches above her sightline. She took another step and pressed her long bunny ear up against the door.\n\nMuffled sounds. Someone was in there. She heard what she thought was a cry of pain. It sounded like a little girl being hurt.\n\nSherri took off down the hall as fast as she could.\n\nShe burst into the art room. \"Someone's got Karen!\" she shouted.\n\n\n*****\n\n\n -THURSTON-\n\nThe quiet room was shaped like a lowercase 'p': a short corner entrance leading into a small rectangular room. Bright fluorescent light. A plastic-covered mattress on the floor that had seen much abuse. Dropped cards were scattered all over the floor like rose petals. Best of all was the fact that if you simply did your business in the far corner, no one passing by could see what was going on through the door window.\n\nThurston didn't even have to worry about the security camera up in the ceiling. Dr. Beatrix had taken care of that. One push of a button in her office and all anyone at the nurse's station would see was an empty room. He hadn't even needed to ask.\n\nHe had the little bitch up against the padded wall. She had made a lot of noise at first, but all it took was one good hard slap to put an end to that.\n\n\"You're a bad, bad little girl, Karen,\" he told her. Smiling and smiling. Looming over her like God. \"Bad girls shouldn't sneak around tellin' lies, trying to make a fuss. Little girls should just do what they're told and shut their pretty little mouths.\"\n\nKaren's muzzle felt like it had been dipped in wasp stings from Thurston's slap. He'd come very close to breaking her nose. Her heart was beating so fast she thought it might stop at any second. She had never known fear like this. She had woken up screaming more nights than she could ever count, seeing visions in her head of death and dismemberment, gore beyond anything a child of her age should be able to handle and stay sane. But as real as it had seemed then, there was still enough unreality to hold on to herself once she woke up and realized she was safe in her bed. Now she was _not_ safe in her bed. Now the fat bear had her trapped and was going to do unspeakable things to her and there was nothing she could do to save herself.\n\n\"Bad little girls need to be taught how to act,\" Thurston said in the tone of a father about to administer righteous punishment upon a wayward child.\n\nThurston began to remove his belt.\n\n'I'm going to be raped,' Karen thought with crystal clarity.\n\nThurston slipped the leather slowly through each loop of his pants. \"Now, there's two ways we can do this. You know got-damn well what's going to happen, and you know you deserve it. If you'da just shut the fuck up and done what Dr. Beatrix told you, none of this would have to happen. It's your fault. You and your 'secret meetings'. You think we didn't know about them the whole damn time? You think we were so dumb we didn't know what was goin' on in there!?\"\n\nKaren tried to speak. She tried as hard as she could, but her throat failed her. All that came out was air.\n\nThurston pulled off the belt and held it up high by the buckle. Like brandishing a lawman's badge. \"Two ways to do this. One is where you cooperate with me and give me what I want and it's over quickly, you understand? Then you can go run tell your friends that there won't be no more meetings in the art room. Because if there is, this will happen to you Every Single Night, do you understand?\"\n\nKaren nodded, shaking uncontrollably. Tears streamed down her face like rain.\n\n\"Or,\" Thurston said, \"you can kick and scream and act like a baby. You do that, and I'll make it hurt. And you'll _still_ get it every night. Only I won't be gentle about it no more. Now turn around and stick your paws out behind you.\"\n\nHe might as well have been talking to a marble statue. Karen was too scared to even blink.\n\n\"I SAID TURN AROUND AND GIMME YOUR FUCKIN' PAWS, YOU DUMB BITCH!!!\" Thurston roared. The sound was like a fist in her face. His saliva splattered on her eyelids.\n\nKaren was not sure she *could* move. She did her best though. Thurston was right; it would be better if she just went numb and let it happen. Just black out and let it happen. She held her arms out behind her and felt his giant hands clasp them together at the wrist.\n\n\"This is so's you don't get stupid. You fuck around on me, I'll yank your arms up and pop your shoulders out, you hear me?\"\n\nKaren attempted to nod, and instead sort of twitched.\n\nHe took it as a yes. He wrapped the belt around her wrists and slipped the end into the buckle.\n\n\"You had a hard-on when you electrocuted me,\" Karen said suddenly.\n\n\"What!?\" Thurston growled.\n\nKaren turned around slowly. Her eyes were dead blank, but her muzzle was twisted up in a madman's grin. \"This kinda shit turns you on, you sick fuck. When Beatrix had me strapped down to that table in Ward Zero, you had a hard-on when you pulled the switch. I saw it.\"\n\nThurston took a step back. The belt fell out of his hands and dropped to the floor.\n\n\"You like hurting kids, don't you Mr. Caercase? It gives you a chubby. A woody. A big fat fucking erection. You love it. Admit it.\"\n\n\"Who the hell are you...?\" Thurston whispered.\n\n\"I'm the kid you murdered last night, stupid,\" the voice coming out of Karen's throat rasped.\n\nThurston stared at the child in front of him, momentarily paralyzed by confusion. He heard sounds coming from the door and turned to look. As soon as he did, something on the other side pounded on it hard enough to bulge the metal.\n\nThurston nearly slipped on the Uno cards he backed up so fast.\n\n\n*****\n\n\n -RUBY-\n\nAs soon as Sherri spoke, the others were off their tails. They followed her out of the art room and down the hall, all fearing for the young raccoon who was their leader.\n\n\"She's in there!\" Sherri shouted. She bent down and picked up the Uno card. \"I saw this and when I went to listen, I heard voices inside!\"\n\n\"Thurston,\" Holly said, so fiercely it was as if she believed she could kill him just by speaking his name.\n\nBrad grabbed the door handle and jiggled it, knowing it wouldn't work but needing to try it anyway. \"How do we get it open?\" There were no cracks around the doorframe. His finger trick wouldn't pop the lock this time.\n\n\"Should we tell the nurses?\" asked Victor.\n\n\"Fuck 'em,\" Holly said. \"Who knows? They might be in on this.\" She stared at the door, thinking, breath coming hard and fingers digging ruts into her palms. Something horrible was happening to her best friend in there and she couldn't think of anything to do about it.\n\nHolly, Brad, Keith, Benjamin, Victor and Sherri all stared at the door. Wishing they could will it open. Wishing there was something they could do to force it open and get Karen the hell out of there. All of them knew Thurston was candy-coated evil, but not all of them knew of his fondness for girl flesh.\n\n\"Maybe I could melt it...?\" Keith threw out.\n\n\"Take too long,\" Holly barked.\n\n\"What if I-\" Benjamin started.\n\nHe did not finish.\n\nRubiella Dunston, five feet and two hundred thirty pounds of muscle, stepped forward.\n\n\"Karen's gettin' hurt in there?\" she asked. She had to be absolutely sure first. 'No fighting' was the rule, but the only thing wrong with Ruby was her head, not her heart. She thought Mommy wouldn't be mad if she had to fight to save her friend.\n\n\"Karen might be getting _killed_ in there,\" Holly made it clear.\n\nThe tigress nodded. \"Okay then.\"\n\nShe planted her feet. She drew her arm back. She tensed every muscle in the body she had hated all her life until this moment.\n\nShe remembered Daddy telling her that all things happen for a reason. Ruby felt a spark of clarity. 'Maybe this is why I'm strong...'\n\nRuby let fly with a killer blow that shook the walls of King's Orchard.\n\n\n*****\n\n\n -TYLER-\n\n\"I don't know what I can do other than talk,\" Tyler told her, \"but I'm not gonna let him hurt you.\"\n\nKaren heard the strong, scared-but-confident voice in her head and snapped out of her fear like a branch breaking. She wasn't alone. She wasn't helpless. Tyler was here and he had defended her with just his words. He'd made that monster back off with just words.\n\nKaren looked down at her feet.\n\nTyler had words. Now she had a _belt_.\n\nAll thought vanished from Karen's mind. Her wild ancestors' instincts kicked in, blasting her body with adrenaline. She darted down and grabbed the belt. She wrapped it tight around her hand until it hurt. She snapped into a battle stance, ready to defend her life or take her enemy down with her.\n\nSnarling like she was rabid, rage flashing in her eyes like rubies, she lifted up the belt and gave it a hard lash like a bullwhip.\n\n\"Damn, that felt *good*!\" Tyler said. \"Do it again!\"\n\n\"You bet your ass,\" Karen hissed.\n\nThurston was still staring at the door, wondering what on Earth could have hit it hard enough to dent the metal on the inside. Did someone out there have a goddamned battering ram?\n\nBecause his head was turned, he didn't see Karen charging at him until the belt buckle sliced through the air and split his cheek like a scalpel.\n\n\"BITCH!!!\" he roared.\n\n\"You don't call me a bitch,\" Karen said. Her voice was low and her eyes were full of murder. She looked like nothing but fur and nerve endings stitched together over razor blades.\n\nThurston turned, balling his fists, ready to end this insolent little whelp's life. \"I swear to God I'll-\"\n\nHis words were cut short as Karen's makeshift whip cut across his lip, splitting it and filling his mouth with blood. \"FUGG!!!\" he gurgled.\n\n\"Hey, good thing you're so fat!\" Tyler's voice rang out. \"Your belt's nice and long. Works good as a whip, doncha think?\"\n\nKaren giggled. \"Good one!\" She was high as a kite on adrenaline and had absolutely no concept of consequences. All she knew was that the man in front of her wanted more than anything to kill her, and she wanted more than anything to spoil his fun.\n\n_WHAMMM_\n\nWhat must have been a wrecking ball hit the door again.\n\n\"Jesus, what IS that?\" Tyler yelped.\n\nKaren knew. She simply, suddenly knew. \"It's Ruby... GO RUBY!!!\" she shouted as loud as she could.\n\n\"I'MONNA SAVE YOU, KAREN!!!\" Ruby bellowed back, loud enough to hear partially through the soundproofed door and also loud enough to knock one of the nurses clean off her feet as she ran over to investigate. Ruby wasn't just strong, she had a set of pipes that could blast birds off telephone lines.\n\n\"You're so dead you don't even know it,\" Tyler told Thurston with a chuckle in his voice.\n\n\"Stop that!!\" he screamed at them. \"You can't be in her body! It doesn't make any sense!!\"\n\nTyler sneered. \"Can too. Hit him again, Karen.\"\n\nKaren grinned ferally and did.\n\n\n*****\n\n\n -RUBY-\n\nThe tigress grunted like a rhino as her massive fist hammered the quiet room's door again. The veins in her arms pulsed like miniature firehoses. There was blood on the door from where her knuckles had split. She didn't notice. She didn't feel anything.\n\nAll her thoughts were on Karen.\n\nBy now a dozen other kids had emerged from their rooms to gape dumbly at the spectacle in the hallway. Needless to say, the hospital staff was aware of the commotion too.\n\n\"Holly, get out of my way this instant!!\" Camilla ordered.\n\nHolly stared her down with the eyes of a cobra. A squirrel standing up to a bobcat. \"No,\" she said simply.\n\nThe other nurses and volunteers were trying to get past the ring Holly and the others had made around the door. The children's arms were locked and their bodies were concrete. Camilla was furious but felt bizarrely helpless. These were just kids. She was trained to deal with kids! Why were they scaring her so much!? \"That girl has gone berserk! You tell your friends to let us through or-\"\n\n\"YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT'S REALLY GOING ON HERE!!!\" Holly screeched at her. \"Now shut up and let Ruby work!!\"\n\nCamilla shut up.\n\nVictor looked behind him and saw that the tiger girl had certainly hurt the door, but she hadn't made any progress getting it open. \"The glass, Ruby! The glass!\" he called out. \"That's the weak spot!\"\n\nRuby snapped out of her focus for a second. \"Huh?\" She looked the door up and down, amazed by the dents she'd made. Not bad for a girl who always tried her best *not* to cause damage like this. She saw the little window in the middle of the door. It was just the right height for her fist.\n\n\"Thanks!\" she told Victor.\n\nHer arm drew back like a bow. She heard her knuckles crack.\n\nShe swung. Broken glass exploded and blood flew from a dozen tiny cuts.\n\nRubiella felt none of them.\n\n\n*****\n\n\n -THURSTON-\n\nKaren swung, but Thurston caught it.\n\nThis situation was out of control, and the best thing to do now was to simply ignore everything but the girl in front of him. \"Enough of this bullshit.\"\n\nHe gave the belt a sharp tug that yanked Karen right off her balance. She fell towards him and he snatched her up by the front of her shirt. Clutching it tight, he pulled her up to his face. \"I don't care who the fuck you are, I don't care who the fuck's at the door, I'm bigger and stronger than you and I'm gonna take what I've earned.\"\n\nHe gave a shove and sent Karen flying across the room into the padded wall. Before she could react, he was in front of her, driving a hard punch into her stomach.\n\nKaren doubled over, felt something hot in her mouth. Her vision winked out for a second.\n\n\"KAREN!!\" Tyler screamed.\n\nThurston grabbed up Karen's wrists in one paw and slammed them up above her head into the padding. He pressed them in hard, hard enough for her fingers to go numb. He thrust his face next to hers and spoke in a voice like blood over gravel. \"I told you what'd happen if you didn't cooperate. You must be some kinda stupid that you'd choose the hard way. Little girls who don't listen *need* this kinda treatment.\"\n\nKaren looked away from those lust-mad eyes. They blazed hotter than fire, but there was nothing at all behind them. Nothing with a soul. She shut her eyes tight and felt Thurston grab a handful of her pants. She whimpered as he snatched them off of her. When they caught on her shoes, he pulled harder, twisting Karen's ankles with pain. The fabric ripped and the pants flew off, along with one of Karen's shoes and her sock.\n\nThurston grabbed her face, covering almost half of it with one hand. He forced her to look where he wanted. \"You see this?\" he demanded, pointing with his other hand at her crotch. \"That's _mine_ now.\"\n\nKaren did not say a word as he tore off her panties.\n\nThe physical pain meant nothing compared with the emotional.\n\nTyler was frantic. \"Karen, do something! We can't let him-!\" It hit him then; if Karen got raped, he would get raped too. He could not feel her pain, but he would have to look into those eyes as it happened, and he knew if that happened he'd go crazy. Simple as that. \"KAREN!\"\n\nThurston held Karen's wrists tighter and slid her up the wall. She might as well have weighed no more than her clothes. His face was an inch away from hers, the stench of his hot breath invaded her nostrils. He pulled down his zipper.\n\n\"Your fault,\" he snorted in between breaths. \"You did this. You led me on, you li'l slut. This is all your fault.\"\n\nTears poured down Karen's cheeks. She did everything she could to block out his words. Her heart knew they weren't true, but it was still a battle to keep them from sticking in her soul and poisoning her forever.\n\nShe kicked with her feet but it wasn't enough. She couldn't do anything more than flop like a fish in this position. Her arms were held so tightly she wondered if she would ever move them again. She'd tried her best. There was nothing left for her to do...\n\nShe forced her eyes open a crack and saw Thurston reaching for his underwear. His pants were down around his ankles. Any second now, he'd flop out that ugly thing and *use* it on her.\n\nKaren's heartbeat was a jackhammer.\n\nShe trembled, making her body stone. Bracing herself for it...\n\n'NO!' her mind screamed.\n\nThere was one thing she had left that he wasn't in control of.\n\nKaren shot forward and buried her sharp teeth as hard as she could in the soft flesh of Thurston's nose.\n\nThe bear screamed like a steam whistle.\n\nThurston clenched tighter on her wrists. Karen ignored the pain. She bit down harder. Blood gushed against her gums and into her throat. The taste was awful. Thurston's free hand came up and slapped her with all its might. Karen did not let go. Her muzzle was made of steel. A steel bear trap. If he still wanted to rape her now, he'd do it with half a face.\n\n\"YOU FUGGING BIDCH!!! LET GO 'A MY FUGGIN NOOOOOOSE!!!\"\n\nKaren felt something give. Thurston's flesh tore and her head snapped back.\n\nThurston howled, clutching at his face with both hands and letting Karen drop to the floor.\n\nShe hit the tile hard, but the pain was barely worth noticing. She felt the rubbery piece of rapist in her mouth.\n\n\"If it was me, I'd swallow it,\" Tyler said.\n\nShe stood up and spat it out onto the floor. \"It tastes terrible,\" she replied.\n\n\"You're my hero forever,\" Tyler said. \"You saved us both.\"\n\n\"I know,\" Karen said, emotionless.\n\nThurston continued to roll around on his back like a baby, making the most ear-splitting wails and unintelligible threats imaginable. His curses were drowned in a flood of his own crimson.\n\nKaren watched him with eyes of steel. If he got up, he would _not_ touch her again.\n\nThurston gasped. He rolled onto his side and spat a mammoth mouthful of blood onto the white floor. \"BIDCH! BIDCH! BIDCH!\"\n\nKaren said nothing.\n\nHe planted one fat hand on the floor and tried to get to his knees. He slipped, then tried again. \"Gonna gill you...\" he slurred. \"Gonna rip your gunt off...\"\n\n\"No, you're not,\" Karen said.\n\nThurston got to his feet slowly. His chest was gleaming with red. His face was dark with hate. \"You're gonna wish I'd gilled you when I'b done.\"\n\n\"No, I won't,\" Karen said.\n\nThey stared into each other's eyes. It would have been impossible to tell which one of them hated the other more.\n\nThe world will never know which one of them would have struck first, because right then the door popped open and Ruby charged in.\n\n\n*****\n\n\n -RUBY-\n\nBreaking through the glass was child's play. She tried to reach all the way through the window hole, but it was hopeless. Her arm was simply too thick. It was like trying to stuff a salami through a straw.\n\n\"What now?\" she called out.\n\n\"Feel around for the handle!\" Victor said.\n\n\"I can't! My arm won't go in far enough!\" Ruby wailed.\n\nBrad snarled at Victor. \"Dude, think! It's the quiet room; there's no handle on the inside!\"\n\nVictor shrank back. \"I'm sorry! I've never been in there.\"\n\nBrad gave himself a mental kick in the ass for snapping at his friend. \"Sorry. I forgot all of us aren't assholes.\"\n\nVictor managed a half-smile and squeezed Brad's hand tighter. The art room rebels were still in a circle around Ruby. The hospital staff didn't look like much of a threat; they were still so stunned none of them had thought to run to the front desk and call for backup. But it couldn't hurt to be careful.\n\nRuby thought as hard as her damaged brain would allow. She stuck her hand through the window again, mewing in pain as the remaining bits of glass dug into her skin. She clenched her teeth and forced as much of her arm through the hole as she could. She thought maybe she could get a grip on it from the other side and simply yank it off the hinges. That wasn't going to happen though. The other side of the door was nothing but smooth, cold metal. There was nothing to hold on to. If she pulled now, all she'd get was deeper scratches from the glass.\n\nRuby thought of Karen and started to cry. \"I don't know what to do!!\" she wailed.\n\n\"Wait...\" Holly had an idea. \"The handle!\"\n\n\"There's no handle on the other side!\" Brad reminded her.\n\n\"Duh!! But there is one on *this* side! Just tear it off, Ruby!\"\n\n\"I'll do it!\" the tigress pledged. She clamped her paws onto the stainless steel handle and braced herself against the wall. She pulled.\n\nThe locking mechanism clunked. Ruby pulled harder.\n\nSweat trickled down her fur and stung her eyes.\n\nThe handle began to bend.\n\n\"GRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGHH!!!!!\"\n\nWith a mighty warrior's growl, Ruby put all her effort into one more good pull and the handle came off and went slashing through the air. With a *thunk* it embedded itself two inches deep in the ceiling behind her.\n\nPanting and grunting like a cave woman, Ruby attacked the lock. She banged the door furiously. She pounded it. She *murdered* it.\n\nFinally the metal gave up and declared its surrender.\n\nThe door popped open and Ruby charged in.\n\n\n ~~~\n\n\nWhen she saw what was in the room, Ruby stopped short, her jaw falling open with horror.\n\nThe fat bear man was covered in blood. Karen was half naked and half shoeless. Her clothes were lying ripped on the floor before her. Blood trickled in two tiny streaks from her nose. Her eyes were coral red and her cheeks were sopping wet from crying.\n\nRuby didn't need to see anything more.\n\nIn that instant she became more vicious and fearsome than any ten of her ancestors put together. Ruby's mind ceased to exist. She was now nothing more than a demolition machine piloted by a wild tiger's instincts.\n\nRuby fell upon Thurston. She gave him a punch in the side that ruptured his liver.\n\nThurston bent in half. More blood sprayed from his mouth like a fountain.\n\nRuby screamed, hitting him again and again, her fists causing more damage than a sledgehammer. If Thurston hadn't been so solidly built, he would have been dead already.\n\nRuby snatched up handfuls of his clothing and threw him across the room into the wall. A crack appeared in the plaster above the padding and dust rained down from the ceiling.\n\nHow Thurston kept himself on his feet is a mystery of science. His brains battered like rotten produce, he looked up through a haze of blood and double images. He coughed and a piece of himself flew out.\n\n\"I ain't gonna be gilled by do liddle girl,\" he said.\n\nHis mouth opened and a pain-drunk bellow came out. He hurled himself at Ruby. By sheer force of momentum, his fist slammed into her jaw.\n\nRuby froze.\n\nThurston barely kept himself from hitting the floor teeth-first. He grabbed a wall and dug into the padding with his claws, pulling himself upright.\n\nRubiella reached up and touched the place where he'd hit her. It hurt. It really, really hurt! She threw back her head and cried.\n\n\"WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!!!\"\n\nThurston, doubled over and seconds from death, chuckled. \"Dang! Izzat all it dakes?\"\n\nWithout even looking, Ruby grabbed at the sound of his voice. Her paws sank deep into his chest, clutching at his skin like he had clutched at Karen's shirt.\n\nThurston did not have time for any last words.\n\nRubiella swung him like a hammer. He went halfway around the room before slamming skull-first into a wall. Behind it was a support beam.\n\nThurston's head was crushed directly into his ribcage.\n\nRubiella tossed the wet, red sack of meat into a corner and fell to her knees, still crying.\n\n\n ~~~\n\n\nKaren had been huddled in a corner, watching, making herself as small as possible.\n\nShe walked over and put her arms around Ruby. She gave her friend a pat on the back. \"Good girl, Ruby. You saved my life.\"\n\nStill crying, the giant tigress hugged Karen back, gentle as a mouse.\n\n\n*****\n\n\n -KAREN-\n\nThe quiet room had finally gone quiet. Holly dared to peek inside first, and was not surprised by what she saw. She felt many other things, but not surprised. Furious at Thurston, relieved that Karen was still alive, and heartbroken that poor Ruby had done such a thing. It was entirely justified of course, but who knew what this would do to her already fragile soul?\n\nHolly approached the weeping tigress and hugged her too. \"Good work, girl.\" She looked at Karen and saw how she'd been left with just half her clothing. \"Did he... touch you?\" she asked, her jaw trembling.\n\nKaren shook her head. Her nose was bloody and her eyes were red, but her proud smile shined through. \"Not where he wanted to.\"\n\nHolly nodded, returning Karen's smile. \"Excellent.\"\n\n\"Do you think you could run back to my room and grab me some new pants and undies?\" Karen asked.\n\nHolly stood and saluted. \"Of course! Be right back.\" She was out the door in a second.\n\nBrad looked in next, then Benjamin and Victor. Victor saw all the blood and turned away instantly, paws over his mouth, trying not to vomit.\n\nCamilla glanced past the doorway and gasped. The bobcat felt her blood run cold. She pushed past the boys into the room and saw Rubiella with her arms soaked to the elbows in red.\n\n\"You monster!!\" Camilla blurted.\n\nImmediately, two strong paws grabbed the back of her shirt and turned her around. Keith stabbed a warning finger at her face, livid with rage. \"NO ONE calls Ruby a monster! You apologize to her NOW!!\"\n\nShaken so badly she could barely think, Camilla stuttered before answering. \"S-she k-k-killed Mr. Caercase!\"\n\n\"He was trying to rape Karen!\" Brad yelled at her. \"Open your eyes!!\"\n\nCamilla could barely see the raccoongirl behind Rubiella's bulk. Karen stepped out into the bobcat's view, letting her get a good, hard look.\n\n\"Oh my sweet Jesus...\" Camilla gasped. \"He was... Really? No. Oh my lord. Oh my lord.\" Her horror wasn't just from realization, but from guilt. She'd known that something about Mr. Caercase had rubbed her the wrong way ever since she'd first met him. She had seen the look in his eye when he was around the children, but she had dismissed it. She'd thought she was just being judgmental. Now she realized that she and all the rest of the staff who'd ignored the warning signs had helped this atrocity happen.\n\nRubiella was still sniffling.\n\nCamilla's tone changed to one of solace. \"You dear, sweet girl... You stuck up for your friend, didn't you? I am so sorry. So, so sorry. I didn't know...\"\n\nRuby looked up, just a little. \"S'okay,\" she mewed.\n\n\"Would you like to get cleaned up?\" Camilla asked.\n\n\"Uh huh.\"\n\n\"Let's go then.\" She reached out and took Rubiella's paw in both of hers. The tigress got to her feet and they both left the quiet room. There were varied reactions from the crowd gathered outside. Ruby looked like she'd been splashed with a gallon of red paint. Camilla cast a stern look upon them all. \"She's a hero,\" she simply said.\n\nRuby heard that and smiled a tiny bit as Camilla led her to the bathroom.\n\nKaren stood unmoving in the quiet room. By now most of her friends had gathered around her, but they were just shadows on the edge of her vision. Her entire existence was only herself, and the bloated body in the corner.\n\nBrad approached her cautiously. He had no idea how to even begin comforting her. \"Karen?\"\n\nLike coming out of a hypnotist's trance, Karen snarled and became someone completely different. She ran over to Thurston's body and began kicking it as hard as she could. Again and again and again. She screamed with uncontrolled fury. She stomped his unresponsive flesh. She screamed in rage and sorrow and disappointment that she hadn't been able to kill him herself.\n\nHer friends gathered around her. Victor even reentered the room, doing his best to keep his eyes averted from the carnage. Sherri was there too. Keith stayed by the door, watching the rest of the staff to make sure they didn't do anything stupid.\n\nKaren punched and kicked and growled like a rabid beast until she'd simply had enough. She stopped abruptly and stood there, breathing heavily and staring at him.\n\nBrad put a hand on her shoulder. \"I don't blame you. I wish I could've gotten a few punches in too.\"\n\nThe anger drained from Karen's face. She rubbed her cheek on Brad's soft paw. \"Thanks.\" She took a deep breath to calm herself. Then she hocked up a big one and spat it onto Thurston's back. The saliva sparkled in the light as it ran down the fabric and turned red.\n\n\"In your *face*, you kid-raping sonofabitch,\" she sneered.\n\nBrad grinned, impressed. \"Was that Tyler?\"\n\nKaren smiled just a little. \"No, that one was me.\"\n\n\"I couldn't have said it better,\" Tyler added. He then spoke silently, only to Karen, \"It was great watching you do that. He deserved it. He deserves worse.\"\n\n\"Thanks.\" Karen felt another tear in her eye, but this one came with a smile at knowing that her friends were there with her. Not just in this room, but emotionally as well. Karen was a little frightened of herself now. This ferocity was something alien. She hadn't thought it possible that something like this could have come out of her. Her natural inclination was to feel ashamed. Good little girls aren't supposed to stand up to grownups, much less rip their noses off. She fought this feeling off though. A small, crystalline clear voice in the back of her head was cheering for her, boundlessly proud that she'd stood up to her worst nightmare and kept him from taking that important part of her he'd wanted so badly. Not her flesh, but her submission.\n\n\"I got your pants,\" Holly shouted suddenly from the doorway. She was a bit out of breath, holding a pair of lavender jeans held out in front of her like a newsboy hawking papers. \"You like these ones, right?\"\n\nKaren nodded and took them. \"Yup. Good job, Holly. Thank you.\" Holly's gold nose ring made Karen think of a teensy little halo.\n\n\"Got your panties too,\" Holly said, and tossed the balled-up undergarment to her.\n\nKaren caught them. Brad signalled the others to turn around and give Karen some privacy while she got dressed. She did so as fast as possible. She found her other sock and shoe and put them back on as well. Good as new.\n\n\"So... Um. We're kind of screwed now, aren't we?\" Benjamin spoke up. \"I mean, we just killed Dr. Beatrix's head goon. She's not going to be happy about that.\" The waver in his voice echoed embarrassingly loud in the little room.\n\nKaren pulled her shoelace tight. \"Then we have to escape now,\" she said simply.\n\n\"Now!?\" Brad yelped. \"We're not ready! We don't have any kind of plan or anything!\"\n\nKaren stood up straight and looked him in the eye. \"Do we have a choice?\"\n\nHe opened his mouth, but couldn't think of a damn thing to say back. She was right. It was literally now or never. It was terrifying to have it happen so heart-stoppingly out of the blue like this, but that didn't change things. Every life's worst moments hit when one is least prepared to deal with them.\n\nKaren took another deep breath. She wiped her muzzle off on her arm. \"We escape tonight,\" she told her troops. Her voice was clean steel. It dared anyone to disagree with her. \"Thurston just tried to rape me because he knew we were going to have another meeting. That means they probably know everything about us. If we don't do it now, they'll either kill or brainwash us all. It has to be now. Are we agreed?\"\n\n\"Rock on,\" Holly said, holding her fist up in salute.\n\n\"I'm with you,\" Keith added with a sharp soldier's nod.\n\n\"I'm in, obviously.\" Brad looked at Ben and Vic. \"How about you guys?\"\n\nThey nodded. \"I don't wanna die,\" Benjamin said, meaning that he acknowledged that that would be the consequence of doing nothing.\n\n\"Me neither. I'll do my best,\" Victor pledged, though in his heart he felt about three seconds away from wetting himself.\n\n\"Sherri?\" Brad shouted in a random direction.\n\nShe made her presence known. \"Here,\" she said crisply. That was all that was needed to confirm she'd play her part in this.\n\n\"I'm with you. Although I sorta have to be no matter what,\" Tyler said from Karen's mouth. \"'Course, I'd still be even if I *was* in my body,\" he added with a grin.\n\n\"I know,\" she told him. \"Now first, we've gotta-\"\n\n\"DON'T!\" Keith suddenly screamed.\n\nEveryone jumped out of their skins, their heads swivelling involuntarily towards the sound. Keith was out in the hallway, pointing angrily at someone, rooting them to the spot with his gaze.\n\nThe others crowded out to see. One of the volunteers, Zach, was trying to slink back to the nurses' station. He moved slowly backwards. He looked panicky, liable to do anything. He had not come into work today expecting a shitstorm of this magnitude. \"You can't tell me what to do,\" he said, but the fear in his voice was thick as peanut butter.\n\nAnother volunteer nurse, a slender pony, was also freaking out. She was still standing in the same spot as when she'd first seen what was beyond the quiet room door. \"We have to call the police! It's _murder_!!\"\n\n\"It wasn't murder, it was necessary,\" Keith said out of the corner of his mouth, his eyes still locked on the cowardly marten. \"And *you're* not calling anybody.\"\n\nZach 'hmmph'ed with contempt. He tried to fill his voice with bravado he didn't have. \"And you're gonna stop me? I don't care how fucked-up in the head you are, kid. This is craziness. I'm calling Dr. Beatrix right now.\" He turned back towards the nurses' station.\n\n\"Don't,\" Keith said again. Quiet, but his tone was clear: last warning. He looked regretful, knowing what was about to happen.\n\nZach stopped, glaring hatefully at Keith.\n\nAll eyes were on the fox and the marten. The ward was silent.\n\nIn defiance, Zach moved towards the phones again.\n\nKeith cursed the stupid bastard for making him have to do this. He'd hated and feared his power his whole life, and now this dumbass volunteer was forcing him to use it. Keith shut his eyes and clenched his teeth.\n\nSo be it.\n\nFrom his outstretched paw, a plume of flame fifteen feet long erupted.\n\nZach screamed and jumped backwards, cracking his spine on the wall. The fire struck the nurse's station like a lightning bolt, blasting chunks of blackened plaster everywhere. A telephone flew up in the air and landed like a dead seagull three feet away.\n\n\"I told you not to!\" Keith screamed, sounding wounded. \"I fucking told you *not* to!!\"\n\nEyes wide and unthinking, Zach crab-walked out of sight, as far away from the fire and the freak kid as possible.\n\nThe nurse's station had a crater the size of a bowling ball in it with a halo of scorch marks around. The fire licked at the rest of the desk. It found some paper and began to eat.\n\nTyler saw the fire and felt a stab of fear in his heart. Something about fire... He almost remembered. It was right on the tip of his- \"Put that out! Somebody put that out right now!!\" he screamed.\n\nCompletely on instinct, Keith jerked his hand back; a gesture like casting a fishing line. The fire responded immediately, literally leaping off the desk and blazing down the hall. It vanished back into Keith's finger just like if a vacuum cleaner had sucked it up. Keith stared down at his paw. The fur on the back of his neck stood up. 'HOW!?' he thought. He'd never even *imagined* he could do that...\n\nAmazing as it was, it came too late. The smoke had already reached the ceiling.\n\nAn ear-splitting electronic pulse shattered the air, so loud it felt like an icepick.\n\nThe fire alarm.\n\nFrom all around them, the patients and staff of King's Orchard heard doors sealing and deadbolts slamming home. On Ward F as well as everywhere else. As it had been wired to, the building obediently turned itself into a colossal oven in less than seven seconds.\n\n\"We are _fucked_,\" Tyler assessed.\n\n\n*****\n\n\n -BRAD-\n\nBrad feigned confidence. \"No we're not. It just gets more challenging now.\"\n\nThe pony nurse snapped. \"What. The. Christ. Just. HAPPENED!?\" she shrieked.\n\nHolly got up in her face like a bulldozer. \"Shut up!!! You're stupid! You're useless! You have no idea what's going on and you're not gonna, so go find someplace quiet to sit and stay out of our goddam business, OKAY!?\"\n\nThe nurse burst into tears and ran off.\n\nHolly smirked. She turned back to her friends. \"What's the plan, Karen?\"\n\nKaren bit her lip. \"Um...\" She tried hard to think but she couldn't get her mind off Thurston. She kept seeing Ruby slam him into the wall again and again. It was awful, but strangely invigorating. \"I'm trying. Gimme a second.\"\n\nJust then, an immense orange and white striped head poked out of the girls' bathroom. \"Did som'pin happen?\" Ruby asked.\n\nBenjamin gave her a status report. \"Keith shot a fireball at some douchebag who was trying to call Dr. Beatrix and now all the doors 'n stuff are locked and if we don't try to escape now we're all probably gonna die.\"\n\nRuby processed that. \"Okay.\"\n\n\"Um, I've got an idea. You mind?\" Brad said to Karen.\n\nShe looked intensely relieved. \"Not at all! Please, go ahead; I totally can't think right now.\"\n\nBrad seamlessly accepted the temporary mantle of leadership. Karen was shaken up, but not out of the fight. She just needed someone to take over for a bit until she was back up to full power. Brad looked around at Ruby. \"You doin' okay?\"\n\nRuby smiled and held up her paws, front and back. \"All clean.\"\n\nBrad smiled, but his expression was serious. \"I mean, are you over ...what happened with Thurston?\"\n\nThe tigress nodded somberly. \"Uh huh. I had to. I'm not a bad girl. Karen was in t'ouble an' I had to.\"\n\nHolly beamed at the tigress. \"Exactly. You didn't do a damn thing wrong, Ruby. I'm proud of you.\"\n\nRuby was tickled pink at that.\n\nEmerging beside her, Camilla smiled. All through washing Ruby's giant paws, she had talked soothingly in the girl's ear, apologizing several more times for calling her a monster and making sure she knew that was the farthest thing from what she was. Camilla walked over to the rest of the staff, telling them with just her expression to keep quiet and try to understand what was happening before taking any action.\n\n\"Mind giving me a lift?\" Brad asked Ruby. She nodded. She lumbered over and easily lifted Brad up to sit on her shoulder. \"Wow, you make a great pedestal!\" he said.\n\nRuby didn't know what that meant, but appreciated the compliment anyway.\n\nOnce everyone could see him, Brad cleared his throat. By now all of Ward F was crowded in the hallway. Having to bellow a little over the fire alarm, Brad addressed them. \"Okay, I've got a plan. It's real simple. I'm gonna take Karen down to Ward Zero to put Tyler back in his body. Holly, you take the others and go upstairs. Get Beatrix. Don't kill her though; that's my job.\"\n\n\"Awww!\" Holly pouted.\n\nBrad compromised. \"Okay, well, after we meet back up here, we'll *all* kill her. Sound good?\"\n\nA chorus of agreement from the art room rebels.\n\nBrad sat up straighter, looking out onto the unknown faces of the other kids. \"Everyone else, you all just get downstairs! Everyone has to get out as soon as possible. Okay?\"\n\nNods and mutters from the crowd. Brad was not about to tell them that the whole building was a giant firetrap. He was not about to tell them about the canisters Tyler had seen in Ward Zero. The last thing he wanted was a stampede of panicked, mentally-ill kids all trampling each other in the stairwells.\n\n\"I'll make sure everyone gets out safely,\" Camilla said. She conveyed with her body language that she accepted that things were happening she was completely unprepared to deal with. It was best to simply agree now and hope for an answer later.\n\n\"Hey, Brad,\" Tyler piped up, \"I should tell you that Beatrix had the alarms re-wired. Normally there'd be a signal sent out to the fire department and the cops, but....\" He didn't have to say more.\n\n\"Shit,\" said Brad. He'd hoped he could count on the firemen breaking down the doors in the lobby once everyone was downstairs. That would have seemed obvious in a *normal* disaster. But of course Dr. Beatrix's whole plan for this place was for them to all die by fire long before any help could arrive. Thankfully the place wasn't burning now. Though Brad kinda suspected it would be before the night was over.\n\n\"Someone try the phones,\" he called out. He had a bad feeling that he already knew what the result would be.\n\nA porcupine girl was closest. She lifted up the receiver on one of the payphones. Then the next, then the third one. She shook her head. \"They're all dead. There's no dial tone.\"\n\nBrad snarled. \"Well that's not very goddam surprising... Anyone got any ideas on how we could call for help?\" There were a lot of mumbles, but nothing helpful.\n\nThen, from out of the crowd, a trembling wing raised.\n\n\n*****\n\n\n -VERONICA-\n\n\"Veronica?\" Holly said disbelievingly. Her bat friend, who had shut off like a lightbulb when Holly'd asked her if she could do anything special? SHE was volunteering?\n\nThe diminutive brown-furred bat looked both embarrassed and terrified to her core. \"I think, maybe...\"\n\n\"I can't hear you over the fucking fire alarms!\" Brad said, making it clear it was their fault, not hers. He could see she was almost vibrating from dread.\n\n\"I think I can call for help!\" Veronica shouted before she could stop herself. From the look on her face, it was like she'd just hollered a swear word in church.\n\nHolly came close to her and gave her a gentle smile. \"How?\"\n\nVeronica couldn't bring herself to say it out loud. She reached up and simply tapped her forehead.\n\n\"Why didn't you tell me about this before?\"\n\nThe young bat's brown eyes began to gather tears. \"I did it before when I was little. My mommy and daddy said I was bad. They said it was the devil in me. They said I shouldn't ever do it again or God would cast me out.\"\n\nHolly's heart broke. \"They're wrong,\" she said, firmly and with love. \"We've all got something like you do here. We're _all_ like that. There's _nothing_ bad or unnatural about it. It's something to be proud of no matter what any damn grownups say. If you can save us, you'll be a hero.\"\n\nThe little bat nodded solemnly. If it wasn't for her own doubts about Mommy and Daddy's cruel behavior, she never would have had the courage to speak up. Holly was helping by saying aloud almost everything she couldn't allow herself to believe from her own heart. \"I'll try.\" Her voice was grim. She looked as though she were about to attend her own funeral. \"Stand back. It might hurt if you're too close.\"\n\n\"STAND BACK!!!\" Holly roared at everyone around her.\n\nNeedless to say, they obeyed.\n\nStanding there exposed, hot tears on her fur, Veronica prepared to break the unbreakable vow she'd made to herself. She had been made to feel like she was evil for the one time she'd tried to use her ability to its full potential.\n\nWhen she was small, she had realized she could make people hear her without having to speak. She could not read minds, but she could speak into them.\n\nShe tensed herself, taking in a deep breath. She scrunched up her eyes and clenched her wings.\n\nShe thought.\n\n\n\n X X XXXXX X XXXXX X X X\n X X X X X X X X X\n XXXXX XXXX X XXXXX X X X\n X X X X X\n X X XXXXX XXXXX X X X X\n\n\n\nThe sound was so loud it nearly deafened half the hospital. Yet no one had actually *heard* it, at least not with their ears. Veronica had sent out a mindwave of incalculable power and magnitude. As it spread out like ripples in water, dozens, then hundreds of people in the surrounding area stopped what they were doing and froze, staring up at the sky. People dropped casseroles. They dropped telephone receivers. One woman nearly dropped her baby. For the instant that it lasted, every single furson in the entire city and beyond was still.\n\nAll of them knew where the voice had come from. They simply knew.\n\n\"I hope that worked,\" Veronica said shyly.\n\n\"I think people who haven't even been *born* yet heard that!\" Brad said.\n\n\"Ow,\" agreed Ruby.\n\nHolly engulfed her bat friend in a hug. \"We're gonna get _shitloads_ of people coming to find out what the hell that was! Way to go, Veronica!\"\n\nThe little bat did not smile, but she did allow a small bit of relief to creep into her soul. In that moment, with Holly's hug, she began the long road to finally accepting that she was not a monster.\n\n\n*****\n\n\n -GINNY-\n\nStill perched on Ruby's shoulder, Brad caught the crowd's attention again. \"So, okay, the cops are coming. That's good. The more people that show up the better. Now is everyone ready to get the hell out of here?\"\n\nVarious shouts of 'Yeah!' from the crowd.\n\n\"But how are we going to get out of *here*?\" Benjamin asked, pointing to the airlock doors.\n\n\"I opened them before...\" Sherri said. She ran over to the nurse's station. Most of the crowd followed her.\n\nFortunately, the button that opened them was far away from where Keith's fireblast had hit. (Zach was still out of sight.) Sherri pressed the button. The door gave a grunt but didn't move. She pushed it again. She slammed her fist down on it. Nothing. \"Aw shit,\" she said with a pout.\n\nBrad hopped down off Rubiella's shoulder. \"You think maybe you could...?\" he asked her. He hated to. The poor girl had been through enough tonight, but who else had a chance at getting those thick metal doors open?\n\n\"Let me try!\" a sprightly voice rang out.\n\nA little kangaroo girl waded through the crowd. Looks of puzzlement followed. Karen recognized her as the one who'd told her before that she didn't like raccoons because they were not, in fact, made of chocolate. No one on Ward F thought this kid was even aware what week it was.\n\nThe young roo looked up at the big white door, head cocked to the side, hands on her hips. \"Uh huh,\" she assessed.\n\nShe spat on her hands and then pressed her palms flat to the metal.\n\nNo one was prepared for what happened next.\n\nWhile the kangaroo girl smiled and sang a happy tune, thick, oily smoke began to seep out from between her fingers and around her paws. Something dark began to creep out from where she touched the door. An awful smell spread. The white paint began to curdle, turn green and fall to the floor in patches of melted goo. A horrible hissing sound came from where the door was literally rotting away.\n\nThe dark patch spread quickly. Brown and green, pitted and bubbling like something toxic. The other children covered their noses from the stench. The little roo still sang to herself. She was having fun. \"Daddy says I shouldn't do this,\" she said over her shoulder with a naughty grin. \"But Daddy's not heee-ere!\"\n\nFestering like swamp muck, what had once been the door out of Ward F finally caved in and fell in on itself. The metal had been reduced to a thick, chunky gunk that flowed outward, eating the carpet and discoloring the tile inside the airlock.\n\n\"All done!\" the roo girl sang out. She did a pirouette.\n\nSlack-jawed, Tyler used Karen's hands to start applauding. \"That was fuckinincredible!!!\"\n\nSoon everyone was applauding. The roo girl giggled and spread her arms like an actress receiving roses flung from a cheering audience. In her mind, she was queen of the universe.\n\nCamilla came forward and scooped the girl up in her arms. \"Ginny, do you think you can do that to the other door?\" she asked, pointing to the one at the end of the airlock.\n\nGinny nodded fervently. No problemo.\n\n\"Would you like to help me get *all* the doors open so we can help everyone get out of here?\" She spoke slowly and over-enunciated her words. She knew that sometimes this poor girl was tuned to a different channel than the rest of the world.\n\n\"Spoon!\" Ginny shouted, and then giggled. \"That means yes!\"\n\n\"Well okay then, Sweetheart! Let's get to it!\" Camilla set the girl down and gave her a pat on the head. Ginny ran to the remaining door and started happily rotting it away too.\n\nKnowing that this was it, that they were all getting the hell out of King's Orchard tonight, many of the children darted back to their rooms to grab important possessions before they departed. Photos, money, jewelry, clothes, books, stuffed animals. Some of them who didn't give a rat's ass what they left behind stayed to watch Ginny do her door trick again.\n\nBrad gestured for the rest of his friends to join him. \"Karen and I are gonna get down there, get Tyler and come right back up. If anyone tries to fuck with you guys while you're getting Beatrix, hurt them.\"\n\nThe others nodded. \"What happens after?\" Victor asked.\n\n\"We meet back here, in the stairwell outside. Then... Then I guess we just try to mix with everyone else once we're outside and hope there's enough confusion that we can get away.\"\n\nTyler shrugged Karen's shoulders. \"Not the best plan ever, but I can't think of anything better.\"\n\n\"What if we *have* to kill Beatrix?\" Holly asked, reasonably enough.\n\nBrad hoped it wouldn't come to that. He knew it was cold-blooded of him, but he wanted to be there when she bought it. He wanted to see that pink-eyed bitch's last moments with his own eyes so he'd always remember the moment, and know that she could _never_ hurt anyone else again. \"If you have to, you have to,\" he said. \"But make sure you leave something for me to spit on.\"\n\nKeith chuckled darkly at that.\n\n\"Everyone ready?\" Brad asked. He put his arm out in front of him.\n\nAll seven of them touched his paw. Eight, if you count Tyler.\n\n\"Ready to kick ass, mon capitaine,\" Holly said.\n\n\"We can do this,\" Karen told them all, her voice as strong and confident as ever. She was getting her second wind.\n\n\"Alright then. See you guys later.\" Brad nodded to the others and took Karen's paw. \"Let's go.\"\n\nKaren watched as Holly led Keith, Benjamin, Victor, Sherri and Ruby towards the airlock. They were swallowed up with the rest of the kids standing there waiting for Ginny to finish up. The thought crossed Karen's mind that she might not see any of them ever again. She stomped on this thought like a bug. 'I will. Everything will turn out okay,' she assured herself in her calmest voice.\n\n\"Where are we going?\" she asked Brad. He was leading her away from the stairs, seemingly back to the art room.\n\n\"I know a shortcut to Ward Zero. I went there last night.\"\n\nShe stared at him, stunned by this new information. He told her as quickly as he could about Monsoon, the beds, and Tyler.\n\nThey were at the door to the stairwell. It was locked again. Brad steeled himself as he stared at the crack between the door and the frame. \"Hold my hand tight,\" he told Karen.\n\n\"Why?\"\n\nHe flattened his hand out as much as he could. He clenched his teeth. \"Because this is really, *really* gonna hurt...\"\n\n\n*****\n\n\n -ALF-\n\nMiles away, Alf the ex-cook was just taking a bowl of popcorn out of the microwave when a single desperate word rang through his skull.\n\n H E L P !!!\n\nThe plastic bowl hit the kitchen floor and bounced under the table. Popcorn went everywhere.\n\nAlf sank instantly to the floor, his paws grasping at his ears like bicycle handles. His heart was thumping. It was a girl's voice, but it wasn't Karen's. He didn't know who it belonged to. But he did know where it had come from.\n\nBack there.\n\nAlf had been a nervous wreck since yesterday. He had stayed in his apartment with all the shades drawn, afraid to stay put, but even more afraid to leave. The fear was like a lead vest he couldn't pry off. Dr. Beatrix *owned* him with those pictures. She could sic the cops on him at any second if she chose. Alf wanted to just buy a plane ticket and fly to the other side of the Earth, but he didn't know if that would put up a big red 'I AM GUILTY' flag if that horrible woman told the fuzz.\n\nHe hadn't slept. He hadn't eaten. He'd puked though. This popcorn would have been the first meal he'd had in over twenty-four hours.\n\nHe picked up a handful of kernels off the linoleum and ate them.\n\nHe didn't know what to do. That voice was irresistible. Someone in that hellish place was in trouble. He didn't know that all the children at King's Orchard possessed special abilities, but he had suspicions about some of them. It wasn't hard for him to accept the voice for what it was; a telepathic cry for rescue.\n\n'If I go back there though... My life is over.'\n\nThe images on the photos flashed in his mind. Images he wished he could scour away, scrawl over with a permanent marker, carve out with a knife. His mind had sent him impure thoughts before. Many times. But even at their worst, his own thoughts were *nothing* like what was on those photos. Those photos were images of an ultimate evil, something nothing else could ever compare to.\n\nIf he went back there, Alf knew Dr. Beatrix would hand those photos to the police and say they were his. He would have no way to claim otherwise. The police would take him to jail. They would probably beat him with their nightsticks, or billy clubs or batons or whatever they called them. He would go on trial. The prosecutor would shove those photos in his face. He would have to look at them over and over and over. He would be convicted; there was no doubt in his mind. He would be locked away for the rest of his life. And he'd heard about what they did in prison to people who hurt kids. He knew he would be raped endlessly, and probably killed. Strangled or stabbed.\n\nSitting on the floor of the kitchen of his apartment, Alf very nearly broke down.\n\nBut then he thought about Karen.\n\nKaren, covered in mashed potatoes. Karen, giving him a hug.\n\nKaren, trusting him.\n\nHe stood up. \"You selfish fuck,\" he said out loud. \"If you don't go help them, your life will be worse than _anything_ that bitch could ever do to you because you'll have to live knowing that you let those kids suffer to save your own worthless tail.\"\n\nGrabbing his jacket, the blue-haired fox strode out the door before he could stop himself. \n\nHe never saw his apartment again.\n\n\n*****\n\n\n -MONSOON-\n\nT'halu had fallen asleep early. He had drank a few beers to try and forget what he had seen with Brad in the dungeon below the hospital. And then...\n\n HELP!!!\n\nThe mountain's head snapped up.\n\nHe didn't need to think. The keys to his SUV were in his hand before he even realized what he was doing. He knew he shouldn't drive when he was still tipsy, but certain things were more important than following traffic laws.\n\nThings like regaining your honor.\n\n\n*****", "writing_bbcode_parsed": "Dangerous Lunatics
by Alex Reynard


         "There's nothing left to do tonight
          "But go crazy on you."
                    -Heart, "Crazy On You"


*****


BOOK FIVE:
   MADNESS AND REBELLION


     -KURI & WILL-

Let me tell you a little story...


     ~~~


Once upon a time, a handsome, dashing American Air Force pilot was stationed in Okinawa, Japan. He was the kind of guy that could step into a room and instantly make it feel more alive. He could charm his way into any pair of panties on Earth. His fur was tabby orange with ruddy stripes, which gave him a very tigerish aspect. His tongue was as silver as the sea.

He was stationed in the exotic and exciting Far East for four years. During that time he made the acquaintanceship of a waitress from a local restaurant that specialized in American-type fare. Many soldiers frequented this place, and almost all of them were heavily smitten with this waitress. She was a calico. Black and orange dollops chased each other through the sleekness of her milk-white fur. Her eyes were yellow and slanted seductively. Her hair was raven, pinned up in the style of a Geisha.

Many males had made lewd, half-kidding comments to her over the years, but all knew in their hearts that she was simply too perfect to try for. A porcelain work of art. She was as far above them as they were above the Earth when they flew in their jets.

All but one. The handsome, dashing American pilot took one look at her and knew in a heartbeat that nothing in the world would keep him from possessing this magnificent creature.

He wooed her fiercely, as any alley cat has done since time immemorial. She resisted at first, but his charm inevitably eroded the walls she tried to build around herself. When his time in Okinawa was up, she went with him. They were married on the runway fifteen minutes after their plane had landed.

They did not, however, live happily ever after...


     ~~~


Once they had settled into a modest little house a stone's throw from his Air Force base, the Okinawa waitress revealed to her mate a secret she had been keeping from him. While they had been standing at the altar promising themselves to one another, she had already held life inside her.

'Pregnant!?' he screamed, and went tearing around the house in a rage.

Finally, when she had calmed him down with alcohol, he was able to accept the idea. The very concept of a child to care for frightened him. How could he continue to be his old rambling, joking, virile self with a kitten chaining him at home?

Thankfully for all concerned (or maybe not), he realized in time how selfish these thoughts were and gave his bride his blessing. She was very happy.

Six months later, she bore him a beautiful little she-kitten. As she lapped the afterbirth from her tiny, mewing miracle, the waitress from Okinawa said that the child would be named after her grandmother; Kuri.

For a time, their little house was full of happiness. But as the days wore on and the father became increasingly forced to deal with the realities of kit-rearing, he grew resentful. All those nights woken out of sleep by crying. All those filthy diapers to change. All the times he had to say no to his friends when they wanted to head down to the bar or out to see a show. Just as he had feared, he was changing from a handsome, dashing Air Force pilot into a tired, rumpled, old-before-his-time _parent_. This would not do.

Even his lovely bride no longer held his interest. He knew in his heart that he had married her solely for her beauty. She was a conquest, plain and simple. And now that he had her, he no longer wanted her. The baby was stealing his bride's beauty away. The gorgeous feline he had met in Japan was now a frumpy, bent housewife with drooping whiskers and bags under her eyes. (He could not have understood that *he* had been the cause of much of her wilting. She could not speak English well, but that did not mean she was stupid or unobservant. She knew exactly how many nights he would leave her alone in bed and come home the next day smelling of other females...)

Over time, the two cats fell silently, completely and irreversibly out of love. The father spent as much time as possible on the base, working impossible hours and telling filthy jokes with his Air Force pals. The mother was left at home to take care of a daughter who sometimes seemed so full of energy she could fly. The situation grew steadily worse until finally, the last straw fell and broke the camel's back.

'Pregnant!?' he screamed again.

And this time he did not merely stomp around. He threw things. He hit his wife. He woke up little Kuri, then howled at her to shut her goddamned face when she would not stop crying.

That night the couple slept in separate rooms. When the bride awoke, her husband had gone. He'd simply gathered up as many of his belongings as he could, cleaned out their money, hailed a taxicab, and vanished.

Appalled by their comrade's behavior, the other men on base took up a collection for the cast-away bride. The government helped her take possession of the house. She managed to find meager employment, once again as a waitress.

Just a month shy of two years since she had been born, Kuri first set eyes on her new baby brother. For reasons she did not know, the waitress from Okinawa (now the waitress from Twentynine Palms) named her second child after his paternal grandfather: Will.

Despite the difference in their ages, Will was almost a carbon copy of his sister. Their fur was the same color and shared the same patterns. They displayed virtually no signs of sibling rivalry. They even shared the same impossibly high energy level. The kittens were _fast_. Time and gravity did not seem to affect them the same as other children.

Still, as troublesome as they were, their mother did her very best to love them.


     ~~~


The years passed, dull and repetitive. Kuri was six and Will was four ('and a half', he would remind you, at every possible opportunity). Their mother had been ground down by life so hard that no fragment of her former beauty remained. This strange, loud country she was trapped in had poisoned her. Because she could not speak their language with perfect diction, she was looked upon as something less than real. In her homeland she had held the same job, but it had been good work that lifted her spirits and made her proud. Here, the customers seemed to delight in robbing her of her dignity for their own gluttonous amusement. She had been called many, many filthy names. And her ultimate shame was in having to ask her coworkers what some of them meant.

One overcast afternoon, two men in dark suits came to visit. They wore sunglasses and wide hats and carried badges. The calico was terrified that they were here to take her home away, take her children away, tell her their father had returned and wanted more than he'd taken the first time.

One of them lifted his glasses, looked her in the eyes, and made her sit down and be quiet.

While the little ones played on the livingroom floor with their toys, the men sat beside their mother and explained the nature of their visit. They were representatives of a very important, top-secret government project, they said. They had identified her children as being prime candidates for an apprenticeship in this program. The children would be well taken care of, the men assured. They would get a good education, good food and good training. "In short," one of the men said, "they'd get a better life than you could ever hope to provide them with."

The calico waitress looked down at her children, watching them play, fixing their innocent smiles in her memory. "No. You cannot take them away," she said quietly.

The men in sunglasses looked at each other and smiled.

"Do you know what this is, Mrs. Rennault?" one of the men asked, pulling a shiny blue card from his front breast pocket.

She nodded. She was not so ignorant as to not know what a credit card was.

"It's not just any credit card, Mrs. Rennault. It's a *magic* credit card."

She looked at him contemptuously. 'How stupid do you think I am?' was the unspoken meaning.

"Let me explain. If you will let us take your children and train them to become protectors of this great country of ours, we will give you this card. You can use it an unlimited amount of times. You can buy anything you set your heart upon. You will never see a single bill. It will all be taken care of for you, Mrs. Rennault. It will be like having your own personal genie."

Mrs. Rennault looked at the card.

She looked at her children.

She thought about all the pain and crashed hopes that she had endured since she had been brought to this country. She thought about how the man who'd claimed to love her had instead used her as his plaything, then discarded her when she was no longer useful to him. She thought about the people in the restaurant she worked for. She thought about all the beautiful things she saw in the possession of other, American, women. Women who sneered at her as they passed by. She thought about how hard it was to raise two wild, rambunctious children on her pathetic wages. She thought about how fiery the kittens were. Like two little bolts of lightning she could never keep up with. She thought about all the broken furniture and spilled meals and ruined clothing...

Mrs. Rennault looked at the card.

She looked at her children.

She chose poorly.

As the men led her squirming, screaming, thrashing children away, the waitress from Okinawa put her head in her paws and wept. She could not even bring herself to say goodbye to them.


     ~~~


Two years later, almost to the day, the neighbors found the woman dead on her kitchen floor, sprawled out like a throw rug. Whether it was suicide or betrayal, no one ever found out.

She had never used the magic credit card. Not even once.


     ~~~


For Kuri and Will, the rest of their childhood was like a dream. Not in a fantastical sense. But dreamlike, instead, in its very unreality.

For a long time, nobody seemed to say much to them. Tests were performed, both medical and psychological. The kittens were made to run on treadmills. The kittens were given shots. The kittens were given MRIs. Each and every time The Project tried to separate the pair, the kittens fought so viciously, clawing and biting and screeching like demons, that the scientists soon gave up and treated them as a single being.

The kittens lived in a tall ivory building where they never saw a single other child. The men in sunglasses had not lied though. They were well fed. They slept in warm beds. They were taught lessons in a small, brown room by a strict woman who wore only grey suits. They were fed and clothed and kept clean, but they were lonely.

When they were old enough, they were finally told about the goals of The Project. The Project concerned itself with the approximately four point six percent of the world's population who were 'different'. Different in ways that one normally found only in science fiction and comic books. As Kuri and Will had always suspected, they were different too.

It was necessary, the man in the white coat told them, to shield society from these unnatural elements.

For many long months, the children's heads were filled with lies. Evil, heartless lies. Lies that were even then resulting in deaths all over the world. The kittens were only told what the scientists wanted them to hear. They never learned about The Project's true face. About the DNA screenings. About the hidden surveillance. About the many who vanished forever. They never learned about the other children, snatched out of their beds in the night and sent to small, dark rooms where the last sound they ever heard on Earth was that of a gunshot.

They never learned, and neither did anyone else. Just as the government wanted.

Instead, Kuri and Will came to believe that they were, in a way, like superheroes. They were being trained to fight a disease. A societal aberration. They were like the scientists who discovered cures for illnesses and healed the sick. Only in this case, the kittens were being groomed to heal an entire country. To wipe the sickness clean.

Of course, they were also made aware that they themselves carried this sickness within them. They felt deeply, deeply ashamed of that. But, as one doctor explained to them one day in a saintly voice, their shame could be assuaged by doing everything they could to *use* their sickness in service of the cause. It would be like penance. Like good little kittens, Kuri and Will wanted very much to be helpful. And so they cooperated.

The training began, and it was hard. The kittens were stretched to their limits. They were instructed by policemen and marines, even by a famous martial arts instructor who had worked before in movies. They learned all about fighting, speed, stealth, and most of all, obedience. As the lessons progressed and became more focused on combat, Kuri began to show proficiency with a blade, while Will made more progress with blunt instruments. The scientists were glad to see this, and encouraged the children all they could.

Kuri and Will did very, very well in their lessons. They exceeded expectations like wildfire. They routinely surprised and even frightened their instructors, much to the delight of those heading The Project.

But still... When the day was over and their weapons were put away, the kittens would curl up, sweaty and tired in their beds, and sometimes dream of their mother. In the beginning, they had asked continuously when they could visit her. Each and every time they were given vague, misleading answers. The very worst was the emotionally-charged 'Soon'. But 'soon' never came. And Kuri and Will eventually learned to stop asking; that the real answer was 'Never'.

So, once their training at the facility was complete, they were transported to what would become their new home. A frontline in The Project's war on abnormality: a containment center disguised as a hospital. The twins were excited, thinking this would finally be their chance to see some action. As they soon learned however, this was not to be.

Their days were spent locked up in a vault in Ward Zero. Kept in storage. They were let out only to continue training or to fulfill their duties; taking care of those who had failed to cooperate with The Project. It was a task of equal parts boredom, creepiness and disgust. But they were assured it was vitally important. And that helped a little.

It also helped that they finally found some surrogate parental affection in the form of their new caretaker. Growing up raised by a roomful of men in white coats is not exactly conducive to a healthy amount of emotional nurturing. But now they had a new replacement mommy. Dr. Beverley was beautiful and kind and soft-spoken. She brought them toys and games and books. She talked to them when they felt sad or confused. She was exactly what they needed.

And it could have gone on like that indefinitely. Dr. Beatrix's orders were that the twins were to be kept in reserve at all times, utilized only in case of a dire emergency. An emergency like what had happened before, at the other hospital. Dr. Beatrix knew that the kittens were the Project heads' way of telling her that they still considered her competent enough to keep her job, just that they thought she could use a little help if things got messy again. At first she had resented this out of pride. But time had convinced her the action was a wise one. The twins were indeed skilled. Plus, she had actually developed a kind of fondness for them (as much as that was possible for a woman like Beatrix Beverley).

Secretly, she sometimes almost wished for a cataclysm. Just to see them in action. Just to see what they could really do.

As the waitress from Okinawa could have told her, 'Be careful what you wish for'.


*****


     -BENJAMIN-

The little fox was exhausted. His eyelids felt like lead. His arms felt weak. His fingers were brittle and wracked with soreness. His tail ached.

He had been sitting in his room, writing constantly, for nearly four hours.

His roommate didn't mind, thankfully. Benjamin had been paired up with a slow, fat groundhog with mud-dark fur and a seeming aversion to speech in any form. They had passed perhaps fifteen words between them since being assigned to each other. When Benjamin had turned on his small booklight this evening, the groundhog boy had not complained. He merely rolled over, his back to the light, and fell asleep.

'Lucky fucker...' Benjamin thought to himself.

The young fox stared at the sheet of paper in his paws. His vision blurred. His eyes sparked with tiny red dots of pain. 'Almost done,' he reminded himself.

An hour ago, or maybe longer, one of the staff had come in and asked him what he was doing out of bed.

"I tried sleeping," the fox said. "But I kept having nightmares about what they did to Tyler."

The grownup paused. Then he nodded and walked away. This little fox wasn't the only child on Ward F complaining of nightmares tonight. And at least this one was being quiet about it.

Benjamin went back to his work with a sigh. Beside him on his desk were many more sheets of paper. All of them filled, back and front, with names.

Names.

Endless, endless names.

The information he had sucked out of Dr. Beatrix's hard drive was stored like a text file in his brain. Just sitting there, complete and perfect, not a single thing forgotten. Benjamin didn't understand how it was possible, only that it was always this way. Whatever he took in became trapped there forever. He could still recite pages 23 through 86, in their entirety, of a paperback he had once brushed the spine of in a bookstore. And that had been three years ago. Whatever his gift was, it was disturbingly anal retentive.

It was like he was still sitting in front of Dr. Beatrix's computer terminal, knowing not only every password she'd ever entered, but also every keystroke she'd ever typed. His hands were her hands. Tracking down any information he desired was virtually instinctive.

So now, in addition to novel pages, telephone numbers, addresses, web sites and trillions of megabytes worth of other useless garbage he could not figure out how to forget, there was this; a detailed, precise, emotionless, blood-chilling index of the systematic cataloging, brainwashing and murder of millions upon millions of innocent people.

Nearly all of them were children. Benjamin was beyond grateful that his amazing brain allowed him to access only as much of the information as he wanted, when he wanted. To see it all at once, to *feel* it all at once... He thought it might kill him. Every time he'd snuck a peek at some random page in the files, he'd regretted it. It was like seeing something so utterly disgusting, you couldn't help but keep wanting to look at it again. Benjamin did not know why people's brains were so masochistic in that regard.

So, he had all this unspeakable information now. But how much of it would actually be *useful* to him and his friends? Tyler had _died_ for this fucking data. Benjamin felt heartsick trying to figure out how to take this prize they'd won and turn it into true victory.

Finally though, he'd gotten an idea. Just before bed, he'd asked the night nurse for several sheets of paper. He said that he was really shaken up over Tyler and that when he felt stressed-out, it helped a lot to write things down. She smiled and gave him what he needed. Then he went and asked another nurse for several sheets of paper. And another. And another. By lights-out he had a goodly thick chunk of the stuff stashed away in his desk drawer. Enough to write a novella on.

So, after asking his roommate if he minded the light (and not getting even a grunt for an answer), Benjamin began to write names.

He accessed the very earliest of the files and began transcribing the names, ages, genders, species and last addresses of every single furson The Project had ever sunk their talons into. At the end of each entry, he put either a B, C, D or U.

B for brainwashed.

C for coma.

D for dead.

And U for unknown.

The records started in 1935. Benjamin had no idea if that was truly the beginning of The Project or if that was only as far back as the records had been digitized. The latter possibility chilled him because it felt more likely.

Benjamin wrote down the very first name. John Edison Germaine, a ten-year-old badger, who had been killed in March of '35. The young fox tried hard not to picture him, wonder about him, compare himself to him. No. The less he thought about this the better. Benjamin forced himself to become a machine, writing name after name without concentrating on anything other than accuracy. The names flowed quickly then. Even with his usual small, neat handwriting, he'd filled a page without even getting halfway through the records for the first year. Benjamin looked at his stack of remaining paper and wondered if it would be enough.

Now, four life-draining hours later, it looked like it would. Just barely. Four solitary sheets left. All the rest were filled with names. Hundreds of names. Thousands of names. Some funny, some unfamiliar, some completely normal and boring. If he thought too long about the fact that every single one of these names belonged to an actual furson who had once been just as alive as him, he'd get the shivers. Or tears would come, and he'd have to bite the inside of his cheek to keep himself on task. His mind could store more information than science dictated was possible, but there was still a limit to the amount of suffering anyone's soul could withstand.

Benjamin's whole body hurt now. He ached for sleep. It hurt even more knowing he'd probably get just three short hours before they'd wake him up again. He supposed he could eat breakfast quickly and then come back upstairs for a nap. The morning therapy instructor could go straight to hell for all he cared.

'Then again,' Benjamin thought to himself with a twisted, humorless grin, 'who says I'll even be able to sleep at all? Maybe I'll just lie there till sunup with all these names running through my head, and in the morning they'll find me here completely bonkers and they'll have to scrape me up with a spatula.'

He took in a sharp breath, closed his eyes, and tried to relax. When you started having thoughts like those, it was time to take a break.

But he was so *close* now. Just a hundred more names left.

Benjamin continued writing. Just ninety more.

His hand spasmed in pain. Just seventy more.

Sweat dripped down his bangs to land in tiny dark circles on the page. Just forty more.

His eyes felt like someone had crammed wads of sandpaper in his sockets. Just twenty more...

Fifteen... Ten...

Five...

One...

The _last_ one. It wasn't in Beatrix's records yet, but it would be by tomorrow. Benjamin stared at the name in his mind. He stared for a long long time. When he finally wrote it down, his paw was shaking.

   Tyler Phillipe Lorenzo  13  M  Mouse  113 East Chinook St.

Benjamin felt tears come to his eyes as his pencil moved for the last time that night.

   C

Wiping his eyes on his sleeve to keep from further damaging the page with teardrops, Benjamin Zarathustra Feldman stood up, arranged his massive list as neatly as he could, tucked it away in his dresser, and crawled into bed.

Every muscle screamed in pain. His back felt like someone had slammed an aluminum baseball bat into it. His knees felt like crushed potato chips. But that didn't matter anymore. The joy of finally lying horizontal beneath his cool, smooth sheets was heaven.

Benjamin turned out the lights.

And, as if fate had decided he'd endured enough for one night, the young foxboy drifted off into a completely dreamless sleep within seconds.


*****


     -BRAD-

Brad woke up before anyone else on Ward F the next day.

He came awake with a gasp, eyes wide and pupils dilated to maximum. His fur was standing on end. His heartbeat was a jackhammer.

He could not remember the dream at first, but the feelings it had left behind suggested it wasn't one of his more pleasant ones.

Tiny images began to flash and fire in the darkness at the back of his skull. Eventually, enough of them attached themselves to his emotions for him to recall what the dream had been about.

It was just like one of the horror movies he'd watched last summer. He had dreamed a world where flesh-eating zombies were everywhere, and had been for long enough that the living had adapted to it. There were no more goods and services, no electricity. People were scavengers now. They wandered the world, breaking into long-empty houses looking for anything left behind that might be useful to them. In the dream, this was what Brad and his mother were doing. It felt like they'd been walking forever, through eerie, completely deserted tracts of suburbia, looking for any place that might still be intact enough to stay a few nights. They found one. Mom gently popped the lock on the door in such a way that it could be fixed again when they'd need it come nightfall. She and Brad stepped cautiously inside. Dust was everywhere. Furniture was overturned. Thankfully though, all the windows were unshattered and the doors were still standing. The two felines went down into the basement to check for supplies. They found a pantry with canned food. They ate. And then Mom told Brad to sit tight while she went back outside to make sure the area was safe. Brad hated the idea of being separated, but agreed. The rest of the dream was nothing but waiting. Terrifying, torturous waiting. The sun went down and Brad was left with nothing but a small candle for light. He'd woken up before his mother returned.

It occurred to him that even though the dream was supposed to be about zombies, he hadn't seen a single one. They were just there, something he knew existed; like how a lot of dreams started with the backstory injected directly in. But he never saw any. He just felt a total and absolutely overwhelming sense of dread, of feeling like he or his mother could die gruesomely at any moment. Plus, it was one of those dreams where time twisted and it felt as if he'd lived *years* in his nightmare. Years of being conditioned to fear every second of every day.

Brad decided to forget about this dream as soon as possible.

Brad sat up slowly and silently. He ran his paws over his body. He'd slept at an even worse angle than usual and now he felt like he'd dislocated his everything. A few moments of cracking and popping got most of his parts back into position though.

The grey tom wiped the gunk from his eyes and looked out the window. Nearly dawn. That meant they'd probably be waking everyone up soon anyway, and if he fell back asleep now, he'd regret it. He let out a small frustrated meow.

He glanced across the room at Tyler's bed.

Empty, of course.

Seeing that perfectly made bed with no mouseboy-shaped lump under the sheets was somehow more saddening than seeing Tyler's soulless, wheelchair-bound shell the night before. That thing had been an obscenity. Too gruesome to really believe in. On the other hand, this empty bed was silent and inarguable proof that Tyler was gone. Gone forever. Brad could stare at it for the rest of his life and it would never bring Tyler back.

Brad felt the anger inside him begin to wake up too. It was like the anger he'd felt the night before, but not as intense. Not yet. Still sharp, but the blade was sheathed for now.

He wanted to kill Dr. Beatrix. He wanted to jump on her and just punch and kick and bite and scream until there wasn't anything left of her. He wanted to kill her, and Thurston, and everybody else in the whole world that had ever helped them create this hospital from hell.

Brad took a few deep breaths. 'Calm down,' he instructed himself. No sense letting the beast out now.

He knew a lot of people would be disgusted with him for thinking such things. He knew if he told any of the grownups about his thoughts of righteous violence, they'd be all horrified and probably restrain him with those stupid rubber cuffs and pump him full of sedatives. After all, such emotions were unhealthy and indicative of mental illness, right? Brad chuckled darkly. He could totally hear Kimberly saying that.

But it wasn't _true_. That was the thing everyone was always too frightened to acknowledge. Sometimes it was _good_ to be mad. Sometimes it was _okay_ to want to kill. Brad thought back to all the times he'd been watching the news and seen something that made his heart ache; some crime so unspeakable he couldn't even begin to imagine how anyone could have corrupted themselves enough to commit it. Murder. Rape. Kidnapping. Genocide. Political greed. Child abuse. The list went on and on. More proof than anyone could ever need that evil wins out most of the time.

Brad would see this and get so angry he'd nearly pass out. And part of that anger was from wondering why in the name of God wasn't everybody else as angry as he was? Didn't anyone else in the world have a conscience? Couldn't they open their eyes and see what was going on? Were they all just too stupid to *get* it!?

Sometimes you _had_ to get pissed. Otherwise, things would never change. Brad thought about his teachers telling him how 'violence never solves anything!'. Then he thought about all the wars and revolutions that had *needed* to be fought. When a large group of the powerless were being oppressed and murdered by the powerful, someone *needed* to snap, stand up, and reach for a gun.

Obviously, there was a line. You don't just shoot a guy in the head because he parked in a handicapped spot. That would most definitely be overkill. But when Brad had heard one night on the news about a man raping and killing his two daughters and then evading the police for almost a year, he didn't think there was anything wrong with wishing that a 'concerned citizen' would find the guy first. A citizen with a baseball bat. Or maybe a power circular saw.

There were times when violence was necessary. When nothing else would work. When the outrage was too big and the laws too narrow to deal with the problem at hand. Hell, wasn't this all totally Batman-type stuff? Wasn't this the basic idea behind *most* superheroes? True, most of them didn't kill. Brad knew in his heart that he didn't really want to kill anyone, besides Dr. Beatrix. But was it wrong of him to want to _hurt_ them? To make them feel what he and all his friends had felt when they saw what they had done to Tyler?

No. There was nothing wrong with that. Nothing at all.

He just had to keep in mind the most important rule: 'Never hurt innocents, and never hurt the guilty more than they deserve'. He'd read that in a comic book once and it had resonated within him like hearing a bell from heaven.

Brad looked at Tyler's bed. Stared at it.

"I'm going to hurt them for what they did to you," Brad said to the empty space, low and cold and hard as steel. "I'm going to punish them all."

Brad stood up. His paws were clenched in fists. He could feel the tips of his claws digging into his skin. He closed his eyes. He stretched his legs, then his back, then his arms, then his neck.

He felt strong. He felt _clean_.

After years and years of denying what he felt inside, he was letting it free. He was freeing himself from guilt. Yes, he knew his mother had told him a thousand times that he needed to stop fighting. But this time, his mother was wrong. Brad loved her with all his heart, but she was wrong. And truthfully, he thought that if she knew the full story of what was going on at King's Orchard, she'd admit she was wrong too.

Brad imagined her standing before him, bending over and giving him a loving kiss on the forehead.

'Get 'em for me, Sweetheart,' he heard her say.

"I will," he promised himself.

Brad stood there in the chilly, silent bedroom for a cleansing eternity. The spell was finally broken by a knock on the door and a nurse poking her head in to check up on him.

"Time to rise and... Oh. Hey, looks like you're already up."

Brad turned his head slowly, and smiled at her.

The nurse felt goosebumps erupt all down the length of her spine.


*****


     -HOLLY-

A big paw nudged the raccoon.

"Karen, the nurses are gonna think you're in a coma."

Karen said nothing, just balled herself up even tighter under the sheets. All Holly could see of her was two pointy black ears on the powder blue pillow.

The big squirrel growled. She understood why Karen was doing this. She'd been sucked into enough self-pity spirals before to know the territory pretty well. She'd had days when all she wanted to do was stay curled up underneath the covers too. It was warm under there, and you didn't have to think about how much life sucked if you didn't want to. That didn't mean it was the right thing to do though.

Karen was silent; a shivering near-spherical bulge in the blankets. (It was an oddly frigid morning, and Holly was wondering already if something was wrong with the hospital's thermostats)

Holly put both her paws on Karen's shoulder and started rolling her back and forth like bread dough. "I'm tired of being subtle! Get up! Get up! GET UP GODDAMMITTAHELL!!!"

Karen whipped the blankets away and glared up at Holly with a face that could have turned Medusa to stone.

Holly backed up, realizing she'd Gone Too Far.

"Fuck off, Holly," shy little soft-spoken Karen said.

Holly narrowed her eyes. Her first impulse was to smack her, mostly because Karen was reminding her so much of herself at the moment. But her calmer self won out. "Look, I don't care if you wanna feel sorry for yourself all day. I understand. But if you don't get up and get dressed, you'll get in trouble. And I probably will too. Wouldn't you agree that that's not very good strategy right about now?"

Seeing the logic in this, Karen backed off a little. Her shoulders sank. She looked down at the sheets. Holly was right, but she was feeling so utterly decimated inside she didn't want to admit it. All she wanted right now was to be left alone. Preferably forever. She didn't want to wake up, take a shower, eat breakfast, talk with other people... She just wanted to sleep. Because when you were asleep, you didn't have to think. Didn't have to think about Tyler. Didn't have to think about how you KILLED TYLER.

Holly watched her roommate go from furious to weeping in the space of two seconds. It was like shattering a wine glass. Holly instinctually knelt down beside her and scooped Karen up in a hug. The little raccoon didn't seem to weigh anything more than her fur. "There, there," Holly said, patting Karen on the back.

"I killed him," Karen sobbed.

Holly stiffened. "No you didn't," she barked back.

"I did!" Karen insisted.

Holly grabbed Karen's cheeks and forced her to look up. "You say that again and I'll smack you."

Karen froze, stunned by Holly's ferocity.

"You did not kill Tyler. That fucking bitch Beatrix did. That fucking pedophile creep Thurston did. You didn't do anything but try to help all of us, okay? Tyler volunteered. You even warned him, remember? Tyler chose to do what he did, all by himself. It's..." She was crying now herself, and trying hard to stop it. "It's an insult to Tyler to just sit here and blame yourself. He let this happen to him so that we'd all have a chance. I don't think he realized they were gonna turn him into a goddam zombie, but he knew he'd get in trouble. And he did it to help ALL of us. So stop crying, Karen! I'm only yelling at you because I know exactly how you feel and I've wanted to just give up a hundred billion million times before. But if you do, that just means they win. We're better than that, Karen. We're not gonna let them win. We're not gonna let them get away with hurting Tyler. He was our friend and we're gonna avenge him. We're gonna kick their fucking asses straight to hell. And we can't do that by crying, now can we?"

Karen, shuddering, looked up at her best friend. "B-but you're crying too," she pointed out.

"Oh, shut up," Holly said, and held her tighter.

They both knew Holly was right, they both knew they couldn't give up and give in to their grief. But that was for later. Right now they had to cry. Because sometimes, you just had to.

The nurse came in again to check on them. "Hey, you two! No-"

Holly gave her the finger. "Eat my shit, die, go to hell and suck my cock, okay?"

The nurse was shocked to silence for a few moments, then closed the door and went on to the next room, thinking, 'Maybe I should start sending out resumes to other hospitals...'


*****


     -KAREN-

In the breakfast line, Karen was quiet, Holly was cautiously hopeful, Brad was revved-up and Benjamin was over at the nurses' station asking for a big tan envelope and some eye drops. Above them all, the fluorescent lights flickered much more than usual.

"You gonna be okay?" Holly asked gently, giving Karen a little shoulder massage while the nurse wasn't looking.

Karen nodded almost imperceptibly. Her body had been on autopilot all through her morning routine. She had showered without even realizing it. She didn't even know what she was wearing right now. She had retreated into her thoughts, unable to escape from them.

Brad came over, still nearly vibrating from his vengeful pick-me-up. "Hey, yo! What's up?" He stopped abruptly, seeing Karen's hollow expression. "Hey... You okay?"

"Supposedly," Holly replied.

Karen looked up slowly, peeking through the foliage of her worries long enough to register Brad's face. "Huh?"

"I was just asking if you're okay. You look kinda out of it."

"I'm thinking about Tyler," she replied. '...about all of us,' her inner self added.

"Me too," Brad said. "I can't wait to get the fuckers who did that to him."

Holly smiled approvingly.

"Is there, um, gonna be another meeting today?" Brad asked.

Karen paused. She hadn't even thought about that. "Um..." She looked to Holly for guidance.

Holly shrugged.

"I don't know," Karen admitted. "Prolly not. I'm still..." She shrugged and wrapped her arms around herself. Geez, it was chilly in here... "I don't think I can do a meeting today."

"You're not thinking of just giving up, are you?" Brad said this with more shock than anger.

"No!" Karen immediately assured. "It's just... I think I need time to get over what happened. I need to grieve, I guess."

Brad nodded. "Okay." Even though he was ready to start the revolution now, he respected that not everyone else would feel the same way.

The trio got quiet as Clifford walked past with his clipboard, counting off heads under his breath. He got to the front of his line, looked confused, checked the list, then realized suddenly why there was one short. He shrugged. He'd decided long ago that not allowing himself to care too hard about such things made his job much, much easier.

The rat led the children into the airlock. As the door opened before them, the lights flickered.


*****


     -KURI & WILL-

While the children of Ward F were just sitting down to breakfast, the Rennault twins had already finished theirs. Now it was time for practice.

With the air of two furs going through a routine they knew forwards, backwards and sideways to the point where consciousness wasn't even a factor anymore, Will pulled on his leather fingerless gloves while Kuri keyed in the password to the big room's door. The box beeped, the green light went on, and there was the same *kronk* sound as always of the metal door's lock popping. Kuri gave the rusty handle a tug and she and her brother stepped inside.

It was about as long as a boxcar and painted all green on the inside. Like a tennis court, but enclosed like racquetball. There were no lines on the floor. The eye-scorchingly bright lights above were protected behind a double layer of Lexan. Like every day, they sputtered and fizzled and took their own sweet time to come on.

Kuri pulled her own gloves on. She didn't like them, and neither did Will, but Dr. Beatrix had caught them practicing without them once and had given them A Stern Talking To. She pressed the point home that The Project had spent quite a bit of money on the twins' talented paws and she didn't want them taking any unnecessary risks with them. Which Kuri thought was a mind-bogglingly stupid thing to say, considering what their morning practice consisted of.

Kuri began to do leg stretches. She felt along her limbs, feeling the taut, thick muscles tense and harden beneath her skin. She felt like a robot. A sleek, efficient cyborg.

Will yawned. "They serve us corn flakes one more time this week, I'm gougin' out somebody's eyes," he remarked.

Kuri made a small acknowledgment sound. She was sick of them too, but it didn't bother her as much. "How's your tail?" she asked.

"Fine." He'd pinched the tip between the chair and the table as he was sitting down.

Now Will was doing knee-bends. "So, who do you think it was that Dr. Beatrix zombified last night?"

His sister sneered. "I'm not even gonna talk to you if you say things like that."

The machine began to hum.

"Fine, I'm sorry," Will grumbled. "Who do you think Dr. Beatrix 'used the electroshock machine' on last night?" he corrected.

Kuri still sneered. She had her eyes fixed on the machine. They'd given her and her brother padding at first, then took it away in stages to give them more incentive to be perfect every time. "I don't know. I don't have any idea what kinds of people are upstairs anyway. Why did you even ask me?"

Will looked a little sheepish. "I dunno. Just trying to talk with you."

Kuri could hear more in his tone than his words. She sighed. "It's okay. I know you've been stressing out a lot lately. I have too. It feels like something's getting ready to happen. I've been feeling kinda claustrophobic, even. Sometimes I wonder if-" She stopped. Her focus tripled. At the other end of the room, the machine's humming became louder. They both knew exactly how long it took to warm up each day, so there was a finite amount of time available for small talk.

"I had a dream about Mom last night," Will said out of the blue.

Kuri looked up. Her brother's face was blank, his eyes faraway.

"I'm not sure I really remember what she looks like anymore."

Kuri knew the feeling. She was proud of her life now and her service to The Project, but that didn't stop her and her brother from caring about their past. Most of their memories of their mother were actually just memories _of_ memories. Calico fur and a soft Oriental accent. Will didn't have *any* memories of their father. And Kuri's weren't much more than vague images, like sun-bleached glimpses through a dirty glass.

She shook her head and wiped the thoughts away, clearing her internal blackboard. There would be time to talk this over later when they were tending to the bedridden. Now it was practice time, and even though they'd been through this every single day of their lives for the past gajillon years, one slip in concentration could still be potentially fatal.

"Will, snap out of it or the machine'll take your head clean off."

Will looked down at the floor and sighed.

The machine began to slowly pivot.

"Will! It's starting up, dammit!" She wasn't really afraid, just worried like any sister would be.

Her brother still did not respond.

The long grey barrel of the machine tracked around the room. Sensors relayed data and the computer inside created a program around it. The thing looked unsettlingly like a small floor-mounted cannon. Something that might lob grenades or rockets to ward off enemy troops. Imagine an automatic pitching machine from a batting cage perched atop a robotic assembly line arm. It had been cobbled together by The Project's geek platoon from existing tech, and it did its job very, very well.

It pinpointed the kittens' heat signatures and adjusted accordingly. It chose its first target.

"Will!!"

*K'THOK*

Propelled at a speed no batter could ever hope to hit, the machine fired a regulation baseball straight at Will Rennault's downturned head.

Kuri lunged towards him.

The impact would have reduced Will's skull to eggshell fragments, but of course he'd been anticipating it the whole time. Reaching out, he delicately caught the ball in two fingers a few inches away from his face.

Kuri gawked.

"Gotcha," he said.

Kuri stomped her foot and fumed. "You rotten little turd! Don't *do* that! I thought you were-"

*K'THOK*

Another ball came screaming through the air towards Kuri. She swatted it out of the way without even needing to look. "-distracted! I was worried about you!"

"You underestimate me, Sis," Will said in a cocky tone.

*K'THOK*

"My turn." He thrust his open palm at the next ball, sending it ricocheting across the room back towards the machine.

Kuri just shook her head. "You just can't resist torturing me, can you?"

"Don't be so dramatic, 'Mom'."

*K'THOK*

Kuri lashed out, but Will was quicker and intercepted this one too. Kuri grunted and Will grinned at her. She rolled her eyes. Little brothers could be such a pain in the neck sometimes.

*K'THOK*

Another one, this one fired at the ceiling so it bounced wildly before heading again in Kuri's direction.

Will jumped in front of her at the last second and deflected it.

"Showoff," Kuri said. "You're gonna get creamed doing stuff like that."

He blew a raspberry at her.

*K'THOK*

Will got that one too, smashing his palm against the ball and sending it to the floor with the others. (He'd learned from experience that headers were not a good idea.)

*K'THOK*

The machine turned on a gyroscope and was programmed to fire in completely random directions, with no set time intervals between balls. The only pattern was that the longer it went, the faster they came.

*K'THOK*

Kuri nabbed the next one. Knowing that often the best way to shut her brother up was to one-up him, she let out a karate yell and kicked the speeding ball straight out of the air.

Will was honestly impressed. "That was awesome!" he said.

Kuri smiled appreciatively. " Thanks. I've been wanting to try that for- Look out!!"

*K'THOK*

Will turned his head and saw a baseball less than a foot away from his collarbone. It was a difficult deflection, but not too difficult. "You worry too much, sis. I've been doing this as long as you have. You're the one doin' fancy shit anyway."

*K'THOK*

Kuri growled and swatted the next ball in his direction. Annoyingly, he pawed it away with ease.

*K'THOK*

This one hit the floor at a steep angle and went straight for her shin. Kuri did a forward flip and eliminated it.

*K'THOK*

This one flew behind them, hit the back wall and made a beeline for Will's neck. He caught it without looking.

*K'THOK*

This one flew like an arrow straight at Kuri's face. She planted her paws, held her hands in front of her, and looked straight down the machine's barrel.

Time slowed cooperatively for her, as it always did.

Nearly everyone alive has experienced a moment where death comes within a hair's breath of claiming them. They see the truck thundering towards their car. They see the mugger's gun. They see the knife, the boiling water, the fire, the fist. Our bodies dump adrenaline in our veins and our perceptions become supercharged. Time does not really slow; instead our perceptions speed up to take in an incredible amount of detail before a critical moment that may determine life or death. We are alert to our highest degree.

The Rennault kittens could create this sensation at will.

And unlike those of us who experience this sensation only in fleeting moments, Kuri and Will's bodies were not bound by the same paralysis that normally accompanies this hyper-sensitive slowtime. They had been born with an awareness of their physical selves that most fursons could only dream of. Athletes, ballet dancers, circus acrobats and assassins; none of them were as agile as Kuri and Will Rennault. The twins were aware at all times of every single molecule in their bodies (Though it was such a constant background sensation they never noticed it, they could actually *feel* their cells divide). Almost from birth, they had perfect balance, perfect reaction time, perfect recovery and perfect stamina. In short, they were unstoppable. Especially by something as weak as gravity.

For Kuri, it was like having a slow motion button that controlled the entire world. She stared at the ball. She could see every stitch. She could read the writing on the side. As it came closer, she could see dents in the leather.

They were really only in minimal danger from the baseball cannon. Sure, they'd been hit a few times before, but that had been way at the beginning when the training was still a new thing for them. This wasn't even a test of physical prowess anymore. This was merely a way to practice their heightened state of perception every day, to make sure they never, ever got rusty. The Project wanted them ready at a heartbeat's notice in case of emergency. It would not be wise to keep their two little contingency plans out of practice.

Kuri watched the ball approach until it was literally an inch from the tip of her nose.

She smiled.

She flung herself backwards into a crab-walk position and let the baseball sail past her. Almost like radar, she knew where on the wall behind her it would hit and how it would bounce. She moved through the air like a mermaid in water. Tightening her fist, she lashed out and punched the ball so hard it split a seam.

This all happened in slightly more than a second.

Kuri smiled smugly over at her brother.

"Top _that_ one."

*K'THOK*


*****


     -VICTOR-

Settling down on a bench with his tray all full of food, the little skunk was just about to open his milk when something furry bumped his elbow.

"Hey-" He turned, about to tell the other kid to be more careful, when he got a good look and flinched. "Jeeze, you look awful."

Benjamin had dark circles under his eyes that could be easily seen through fur. Even after a shower he still looked rumpled and dried-out. Behind his glasses, his eyes were red as cherries. "Thanks," he grumbled sarcastically.

"Sorry. But you look like you didn't get any sleep last night."

The fox nodded. "Hardly any, but it was worth it." He tore into his orange juice with gusto, draining it in a gulp. "You gonna drink yours?"

Victor shook his head. It was easy to get more of the little plastic juice cups anyway. He watched his friend down the second one just as fast as the first.

"Throat's dry," he explained.

Victor nodded in understanding. He caught movement out of the corner of his eye and acknowledged Brad approaching. "Hi."

"Hi," Brad said back, settling his tray down opposite them.

Benjamin croaked something.

Brad looked the rumpled fox over. "Nightmares?"

The fox shook his head. "Not unless you count the real ones." He glanced cautiously from side to side, making sure no authority figures were watching. Clifford looked half asleep over by the far wall and Thurston was still busy doling out dollops of nuclear scrambled eggs. Glancing at Victor, then Brad, Benjamin reached into the neck of his shirt and lifted out a corner of tan envelope just far enough to see.

"What is that?" asked Victor.

"Incriminating evidence," Benjamin said spyishly. "Names. Names of everyone The Project's ever gotten to. Not just here, but everywhere."

Brad looked quizzical. "'The Project'?"

Benjamin had forgotten that they didn't have Dr. Beatrix's computer melted onto their grey matter. "The name for the plan to find everyone like us and eliminate us, either through death or brainwashing. They've only started putting kids in electroshock comas for the last decade or so. The technology wasn't advanced enough before, so they either drugged 'em or shot 'em."

A shudder passed completely through Victor's body. He suddenly pictured Thurston Caercase grinding a gun barrel into his own furry forehead.

Benjamin trembled. "I haven't looked at much of what I downloaded. Just the names and a few other peeks here and there. But everything I've seen so far is so bad it almost makes me wanna die. All of it. _Everything_. These people... they're pure evil. They don't have souls. They're like the worst villains in any movie, manga or video game you've ever seen; only real."

Brad nodded calmly, accepting this. "We're going to hurt them for what they did to Tyler," he stated. A fact, not to be argued with or doubted.

Benjamin gained some of his confidence back from seeing so much in his friend. "Of course. We're going to fuck them up good. We're gonna pull their freakin' spines out through their throats."

Victor looked down at his bacon strips. "I can't eat now."

"Ooh, can I have 'em then?" Brad asked eagerly.


*****


     -KAREN-

A few moments earlier, Karen had watched Brad walk away with his food to go join Benjamin and Victor. She'd tried her best not to make eye contact with the monster behind the sneeze shields, but now she had to.

Thurston's smile was wide as a semi truck grille. He wore an apron and brandished a spatula, looking for all the world like the photo on the front of a down-home country diner's menu. "Gooood mornin', Karen! Beautiful day, huh?"

Karen's fear vaporized in the split second it took her to look up.

When she stared back into Thurston's soulless eyes, it was with such fury it made her feel like her skin was about to split straight off her skull.

'You MURDERED my friend!!!' she screamed silently.

Amazingly, Thurston flinched.

Without saying anything at all, Karen stalked past him, grabbed whatever she felt like from the remainder of the line, and went to go wait by the soda machines for Holly.


     ~~~


Thurston stared google-eyed at the little ball of flame with raccoon stripes that had just done the unthinkable.

She had _intimidated_ him!

What the hell kinda bullshit was that? Did she not understand the rules of the game? Did she not know what he was and what he had done to little pinches of girl-meat just like her? Not bothering to conceal the ugly sneer on his face, Thurston vowed to teach that uppity little cunt a lesson in respecting one's superiors.

He looked back at the breakfast line and there was Holly. She smiled cheerfully at him.

"I just wanna know where they're gonna find a coffin big enough for your fat ass," she said, looking as if she had never known a second's worth of fear in her whole life.

Amazingly, Thurston flinched again.

"French toast, please," said Holly.


     ~~~


The cafeteria was getting quite noisy by now. Multiple conversations made the air buzz. One small boy was chanting repeatedly, "I can puke-I can puke-I can make chocolate miiillllk outta puke!!" much to the aggravation of everyone around him. The spacey little kangaroo girl was busy constructing vast kingdoms out of her breakfast foods instead of eating them, all while humming a lovely tune.

Holly found Karen over by the boys' table.

"You can totally sit next to us if you want," Brad said to Karen, giving the bench next to him a pat.

A tiny smile. "That's okay. Thanks, but I think I'd like to be alone for a little while."

Holly approached. "I thought we were going to sit together," she said, sounding disappointed.

Karen sighed. "I know. But I've got stuff I wanna think about. Just by myself. Just for a little while."

"Well, okay," Holly said, setting her tray down beside Brad's.

"We can be together some more after breakfast," Karen said. She smiled to let Holly know she wasn't about to descend into pity again. "I promise."

"Is there going to be a meeting in the art room?" Victor asked.

"Karen told me no," said Brad, then looked up at her to see if that answer had changed.

She hated disappointing him too, but what could she do? "No, guys. I'm sorry. But think about it; maybe it's even a good idea not having a meeting. Maybe it'll make them think we've given up."

Benjamin nodded in agreement. "Subterfuge."

"Maybe we can do one tomorrow," Karen said hopefully. Though the look in her eyes suggested that might not be true for a whole lot of tomorrows.

Brad was frustrated, but didn't want to be rude and argue with her. Part of him wanted to just storm the castle of Dr. Beatrix's office right now and send her plunging to her death through that gigantic window of hers. But there were other things to think of besides his vengeance.

Karen was about to turn away when she felt a paw touch hers.

"Hey, um... You're not used to doing brave stuff, are you?" Brad said to her.

She was confused, not sure if that was an insult at first. "No. Not really. Why?"

The tomcat fidgeted, knowing how much he sucked at saying nice things to people. "I'm just saying I noticed. And I also noticed you're doing a really good job of it so far. You just kinda give off this 'vibe' like we should all listen to you 'cuz you know exactly what to do to get us all out of this. I trust you. Whatever you wanna do is okay with me."

Karen was shocked. She pulled her paw away, barely believing she'd heard Brad right. How could he have confidence in her at a time when all she wanted to do was stick her head back under her pillow?

She looked at Victor, Benjamin and Holly. They all had the same expression Brad did. They all trusted her too.

Karen came very close to screaming out, 'I don't *want* to be the leader anymore!!' and running as far away as possible. But she knew she couldn't. Not because she was locked up, but because she couldn't betray the trust they were giving her. She just _couldn't_. Simple as that. Even though part of her wanted to run away, another part wanted to work through her grief over Tyler as soon as possible so she could start honoring his memory by fighting back.

"Thanks, Brad," she muttered. "Thanks, everyone."

She hesitated a moment, wondering if she should say anything more, then turned and sought out one of the empty tables at the back of the room near the courtyard.

Brad watched her leave, hoping his little pep talk had actually done something.

He glanced back at his tray and noticed half his bacon was gone. Mysteriously, Holly suddenly had a double portion and a perfectly innocent look on her face.

"You stole my bacon, you fatbag!" Brad shouted, brandishing a plastic fork.

Holly squinted at him dangerously and held up a cast-iron fist. "Are you sure you don't wanna apologize for saying that? Like, Right Now?"

Brad smirked. "Go ahead and punch me. It won't do anything."

"Damn. I forgot." Holly tossed Brad's bacon back. "I was just screwing with you," she said. Then she grinned thoughtfully. "Hey, I wonder which one of us really *would* win in a fight?"

Brad's eyes lit up. "Wanna find out?"

They both looked excited at the idea of a friendly little no-holds-barred sparring match. "Maybe we can sneak off during gym period!"

"Yeah, that'd be fun to explain if they caught us. 'Uh, gosh, Mr. Staff Furson, we were only beating the shit out of each other in a *friendly* way!'"

He and Holly guffawed.

"You guys are weird," Benjamin pointed out.


*****


     -JIMMY-

Karen stared down at the random food items on her tray. "You there?"

"I promised, didn't I?" came a voice from beside her.

When the little raccoon glanced up, a dark wolf in a leather jacket was seated beside her, leaning back on the table in a casual manner. While she'd still been dreaming, Karen had asked him to wait for her in the cafeteria. He was more than happy to oblige.

"What'd you wanna talk about?" Always-Jimmy-Never-James asked.

Karen sighed. "What the heck am I gonna do, Jimmy?"

He frowned. "About what?"

"About *everything*! I'm _scared_! They killed Tyler! I know they said he's in a coma, but you know they'll never let him come out of it. He's as good as dead. They could do that to every single one of us if they wanted."

Jimmy attempted to pat her on the back, which was hard since he was noncorporeal. "They can. I won't sugarcoat it. They can do basically anything their twisted little cold hearts desire. They could shoot you in your beds. They could burn this place to the ground and claim it was an accident. But they can only do it if you let them."

"I know," she said softly. She reached for an underripe apple and took a bite. It was sour enough to make her wince.

"You're scared to try anything now. You don't want what happened to Tyler to happen to anyone else."

Karen nodded. She took another bite of apple.

"The irony is, what happened to Tyler is almost *guaranteed* to happen to everyone else if you *don't* do anything."

Karen looked up sharply. "Shut up, I know that! Look, I don't need any more convincing. I know we have to get out of here as soon as possible. I'm just still messed up over the fact that I have to fight _murderers_. I don't need you to cheer me up, I need help! I need _suggestions_!!"

Jimmy was both shocked and proud. "Geez! Way to go, Karen! It's nice to see that spark back in your eyes!"

"Thank you," Karen said shortly. She tossed away the apple and concentrated on unwrapping some graham crackers. "Now, do you have any ideas or not? I can't think about anything but Tyler right now."

He smiled. "That's totally understandable. In fact, it's even a good thing. The more you think about Tyler, the more you'll remember him when it comes time to strike back. Picture Tyler's face in your mind when you see Dr. Beatrix again. Remember his laugh. Remember how ALIVE he was. And then remember him in that fucking wheelchair they put him in. It's easier to give your all for someone else than it is to do it for yourself. I don't know why that is, but it's true."

Karen pondered that. She opened a milk carton and dunked one of the graham crackers. She didn't understand why everyone called them crackers when they tasted more like cookies. "Do you think we should have a meeting after lunch?" she asked.

"No," Jimmy said straightaway.

She looked up, surprised, assuming he'd say yes.

"You made a good point about making it look like you've given up. That could give us a small advantage. It's a good idea, even if you only said it to cover up the simple fact that we shouldn't do a meeting today because you're not *ready* for one."

Karen felt relief at hearing that. When she'd thought the exact same thing, she couldn't help wondering if she was only feeling that way out of weakness and cowardice. She'd spent a lifetime being told by her parents how her problems were all her fault because she just didn't try hard enough to solve them. Now, doing anything less than stretching herself to the breaking point felt like giving up.

"You've been wounded, Karen," Jimmy said. He fixed his eyes on hers and held her gaze, forcing her to listen. "There's nothing wrong with taking some time off to recuperate. It's the same as if you'd been shot or hit with an arrow. In the movies, they always show the hero getting ripped to shreds and then leaping off the operating table to go back and fight some more. That's *bullshit*, Karen. It's dangerous bullshit too. You can get yourself killed doing that, especially when everything in your body and heart is telling you to back off. Dr. Bitch-trix won't suddenly swoop down and murder everyone the instant you take a breather. There's only so much she can do without having to at least *fake* a reason for it. You need to be at your peak performance when you and your friends confront her. Rest is as important as action."

He made a sound halfway between a sigh and a growl. "One of the reasons we failed that night is that we were stupid, Karen. We rushed in without a plan, thinking our anger would be enough to protect us. Anger's important, but so are brains. And because I wasn't using mine, some of my friends lost their lives. That was going to happen no matter what. But we could have lost _less_ if we'd been smarter.

"You're going to be smarter than we were, Karen," Jimmy assured her.

Karen stared unswervingly down at her food and clenched the edge of the table hard. She was almost crying. He'd said just what she needed to hear; reassurance of his faith in her. "Jimmy, I really, really want to hug you right now, but I can't 'cause people will think I'm nuts and I have an imaginary friend."

He chuckled. "Then you just keep eating and I'll hug you, okay?"

He did. Even though Karen couldn't feel it in any way, it still made a difference.

Karen opened a plastic tub of applesauce. "Jimmy?"

"Mm-hmm?"

"There's something else I wanted to ask you about. Something I've been thinking about for a long time, and I kind of don't know how to say it."

The wolf made a 'lay it on me' gesture.

Karen took a dainty spoonful and collected her thoughts. "I've been thinking about how we're all crazy in here. I'm not saying that to be mean; it's just true. We've all got problems. I have my dreams..."

"You mean _had_." Jimmy pointed out.

She smiled at him. "Yeah. Thanks for that again."

"No problem."

"But, yeah, Brad fights too much. Holly tried to kill herself. Ruby's retarded. All the others have mental stuff too." She hesitated, knowing what she wanted to ask but finding it hard to find the words to say it. "Doesn't it... I dunno... Seem kinda like too big a coincidence?"

He arched an eyebrow. "What do you mean?"

It was coming easier now. The word 'coincidence' had been the one she was looking for. "Okay, so, this place is supposed to look like a mental hospital, right? Somehow Dr. Beatrix's bosses or whatever search everywhere for kids that have powers and then they have them sent here. But what if the kids aren't crazy at all? Wouldn't *most* of them not be crazy? What do they do then?"

"Ahhhh." Jimmy got it now. He grinned. This was something he'd puzzled over himself a few times. "That's not the right question, Karen. But it leads us to it. The correct question is," and here he leaned over and whispered soft and creepy in her ear, "'is everyone with special powers *also* mentally ill?'"

Karen shivered. "You're saying they are!?"

Jimmy sat back up, resting his elbows on the table. "I've thought about this a lot, Karen. You came to the right dead guy to ask. I think the answer is: Probably. I think they go hand in hand. Whether or not the powers cause the craziness or the craziness brings out the powers, I don't know. Could be some of both."

"How?"

"Well, okay, say that you've got some mystical ability that everyone else says only happens in fairy tales. Wouldn't keeping a secret like that drive you kinda nuts? Or, on the other paw, if you were *already* nuts, maybe that's exactly what would enable you to accept your powers as reality in the first place, as opposed to a 'sane' furson who'd just dismiss it as an overactive imagination or some other crap."

Karen shuddered, trying to get used to the idea. "Wow. Okay. So, you think they're linked?"

"Damn near all the time, yes. Either the powers cause the craziness or the craziness wakes up the powers."

"But what about kids who *aren't* crazy? What happens to them?"

Jimmy smirked and pointed across the cafeteria. "Benjamin. He's your answer."

"Wha...?" Karen didn't follow at first.

"Ben looks perfectly fine to me. Meaning he's certainly got problems, but I can't see any sign of mental illness. And believe me, having spent enough time in places like this, I've gotten pretty good at amateur diagnoses."

Something clicked. "But Ben's _dad_ is a jerk!" Karen remembered. "When King's Orchard sent the flyers, he signed Benjamin up right away!"

"Egg-mc-freakin'-zactly," said Jimmy. "I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that probably every parent EVER has at one point looked at their kid and wondered if they needed to be put in a straitjacket. King's Orchard spots the kids with powers and sends out the fliers automatically. Sure, they do research first. They sneak in with their computers and read teachers' reports and look for hospital files. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred there's either a real mental illness there they can exploit, or one they can invent. If there's one thing a parent hates more than anything, it's admitting they're doing a shitty job. So, they blame the kid instead and say he's crazy. Happens all the time. Christ, lookit how much prescription drugs parents give their kids these days! There's a billion-dollar industry devoted to diagnosing perfectly normal kids as dangerous lunatics!!"

Karen's tail frizzed up. It hadn't hit her this hard before just how scary grownups could be. "Um, what about the other hundredth kid?"

"Pardon?"

"You said ninety-nine times out of a hundred they can get them sent to the hospital. What about the ones they can't?"

Always-Jimmy-Never-James replied without emotion. "The ones who refuse the fliers? They simply disappear in the night. There's a million ways to make a death look like an accident."

"That's horrible! They can't really just..."

His face was stone. "They can, and do. Remember what I said about probability being on their side? If you want to get away with something barbaric, do it right out in the open  on a grand enough scale that no one can see all the pieces at once and put it all together. The ones they kill are seen as just the normal cycle of accidents and mayhem in this sick country of ours. A statistic among statistics, nothing more. You forget; the vast majority of patients here go home either thinking the powers they thought they had were just silly dreams, or having completely forgotten they existed at all. They don't *need* to kill that many of us."

Karen was silent for a moment as she took this all in. She held her soft tail tight in her paws. "Why are they so afraid of us, Jimmy? Why can't they just leave us alone?"

Jimmy sighed. "You *know* why, Karen. Instinct. Pure, xenophobic instinct. Fear the strange and unknown because it might be dangerous. In this case, it's gone so far already that it doesn't even matter why it was started. It's just a rolling boulder too big to stop. And technology's made it even bigger. Karen... when you make a house of cards, you can't stop and think about why you're making it because you're too busy keeping it from falling down. Same thing here. It doesn't matter why. All that matters is that it's evil and we have to stop it."

Karen nodded solemnly. She finished her applesauce. "I asked you for ideas before."

"Breakfasttime isn't over yet. Let's brainstorm then."

So they did.


*****


     -KEITH-

While everyone else on Ward F ate breakfast downstairs, a handful of other children did not, for various reasons. Instead, the staff pulled a few tables together in the TV room and the children ate their meals there while being constantly monitored. There were four of them. Two of these children, a deer and a beaver, both boys, were just this side of comatose. They could walk and eat by themselves, but that was pretty much the extent of their repertoire. Then there was Keith and Ruby.

Keith usually sat with his back to everyone else, eating in silence, hating the eyes that he felt on his neck. The hospital staff watched him like a criminal. Probably thinking he was planning to steal a spoon and shank somebody. He knew he was a bastard, but he didn't deserve *this*.

He got there first this morning, as he often did when he wasn't in a shitty mood and they had to force him. The two zombies were herded in afterwards. Their trays were set down in front of them. All the food was nice and soft. They started eating mechanically, expressionlessly.

Then Rubiella entered, a volunteer leading her by the arm. She sat down silently at a table by herself, as far from Keith as she could.

Keith glanced at her, then back down at his food. She'd looked scared. Neither of them had said anything yet about being in the same room together during Karen's art room meetings. They acted as if their first encounter had never happened. But at mealtime, she shied away from him. There was no Brad here to defend her.

Keith ate his eggs and felt like everyone in the world was staring at him. Behind him he heard the clatter of a plastic tray being set on a table, then the tigress' whispered, "Thank you."

Keith clenched his fork harder.

It was bad enough the damn nurses were staring at him and thinking he was a monster. He didn't want some poor retarded kid thinking that of him too. It wasn't fair to let her keep fearing him. And it made him feel like garbage too.

Keith stood up suddenly. The screech of his chair scooting backwards sounded like the loudest thing in the world. He picked up his tray. The staff members tensed.

He turned around and walked to where Rubiella was sitting. She glanced up for a split second, then stared down hard at her meal. She was trembling. Biceps the size of toasters, and she was trembling.

The sound of Keith setting down his tray was like a gunshot. He could see the staff out of the corners of his eyes, stepping closer, anticipating the worst.

Rubiella would not look up.

Keith coughed. "Hey. Um. Would you like some help cutting up your sausages?"

She looked up at him, surprised. Something about her eyes unnerved him. She frowned. "I can do that myse'f," she said firmly. "I'm not stupid."

Keith cringed, feeling again like nothing but a clumsy force of destruction. "I know," he said.

Ruby took up knife and fork and demonstrated that she could indeed cut her sausages up just fine, all by herself.

"I'm sorry I acted like such a dumbshit. Y'know, the first time I saw you," Keith blurted quietly.

Ruby stopped. She looked at him, focusing everything on deciding whether or not he was telling the truth or if this was a trick. She decided he was telling the truth. "Okay."

"Does that mean you forgive me?" he asked sheepishly.

"Of course." She didn't even have to think about it. Her philosophy was simple; Why be enemies?

Keith smiled and relaxed a little. "Okay, cool. And I'm serious. I really am sorry. I don't think about it most of the time when I say stuff. A lot of nasty shit comes out that I don't really mean."

She nodded. "You wanna be friends?"

"Sure."

Ruby gave him one of her brightest smiles.

It was so pure and innocent, it actually startled him. He was looking into the face of someone who didn't hate him, didn't fear him, wasn't wary of him. They had agreed to be friends, and she'd turned her fear off like a switch. That was that. Keith almost envied that part of her.

Ruby giggled. "Need any help cuttin' up *your* saus'ges?" she asked.

Keith laughed.


*****


     -KAREN-

As the children of Ward F returned after breakfast, one thing that made itself immediately clear was that whatever was wrong with the electricity had gotten exponentially worse since they'd left. The lights sputtered and flashed every ten or fifteen seconds. Telephones rang for no reason. The ward felt like an icebox even though the nurses had been steadily cranking the thermostat all morning. The tornado alarms were even letting out single erroneous blasts at random. And all of it was getting worse by the second.

After breakfast, the staff always scheduled time for a little 'recreational' therapy, which meant one of the staff members forcing all the kids to do jumping jacks and toss rubber balls at each other. Karen asked to be excused. Normally they wouldn't have let her, but all she had to do was mention Tyler and an exception was made. Not everyone working at King's Orchard had no heart.

Karen sat on her bed, listening to the sounds of the other children scurrying about the Community Room. She thought about what Jimmy had said. About one thing in particular.

After they had tossed around a few non-promising ideas, she'd glanced at the clock and noticed time was almost up. She gathered up her trash. "I hope everything works out," she'd said, mostly to herself.

To her surprise, Jimmy looked angry. "No, Karen. Don't hope."

She'd asked him angrily why he'd say such a thing.

The black wolf stared off into space for a moment before replying. "Hope implies that you're not in control of the situation. Hoping means that you're giving up and wishing someone else, some higher power, will do half the work for you. Life doesn't work that way.

"When me and my friends rebelled that night, everything I did, I did by the grace of my own damned self. And them; my friends. No hope necessary. We did it all ourselves.

"Putting your faith in a higher power means you're not giving yourself credit for the things you do. Look at the world, Karen. All the evidence seems to suggest that God rewards evil and punishes good. Maybe it's all some giant test. Maybe we see evil rich bastards living in mansions and poor people starving to death by the millions, and the point is that it's all a big game. We're given every opportunity to become corrupt and grab some of that good stuff for ourselves, and then we lose our souls in the process. But if we try to keep our sense of decency, God throws boulders at us to see how long we can hold onto it. Maybe it's even simpler than that. Maybe God's not there, or is evil himself. I sure as shit don't know. But what I do know is that you shouldn't trust in anything that might not even be there. Believe all you want, but don't expect belief to haul your ass out of trouble. Don't count on spooky bullshit that isn't there. Count on real people, people you trust. And yourself. Yourself most of all."

Clifford was already rounding everybody up by then. Karen silently digested all of this, then nodded to Jimmy, thanked him, and got into line.

Now, alone on her uncomfortable bed, she took out the idea that she only had herself to rely on and gave it a good, hard look. True, she had her friends. They all had each other. But that was it.

Her parents certainly wouldn't help her. Alf was gone. Dr. Jones didn't have any idea what was really happening. And she was sure Monsoon was supposed to be here today, but instead some unfamiliar furson had taken his place. Maybe they'd gotten rid of him too somehow.

There wouldn't be any heroes swooping in to save them.

It was up to them. They had to be their own heroes.


     ~~~


Karen went about the rest of the day in silence. She thought plenty, but talked as little as possible. She shut out as much of the world as she could to concentrate everything on her thoughts. She made plans and tore them apart ruthlessly. There were a thousand and one ideas that wouldn't work, and so far none that would. They were only children. Children locked in a prison where all the power was held by monsters. They couldn't overpower the grownups. They probably couldn't even outsmart them. Their greatest weapon would have to be surprise. They'd have to use the very powers the monsters were trying to stifle to shake things up and then run like hell.

Karen and the other children went downstairs to the gym for a free activity period. Karen sat by herself and thought and watched. Holly and Brad found a secluded spot and vented their frustrations upon one another. Karen could see their sparring match but the staff couldn't. Good thing too, since the cat & squirrel looked like they were honestly trying to murder each other. Afterwards though, they both looked refreshed and overjoyed. They'd fought to a stalemate and were very happy with that result. Holly and Brad exchanged pats on the back and walked away sweaty and satisfied.

Lunch passed soon after. Turkey tetrazzini or sloppy joes. Thurston was no longer on duty, so Karen graciously asked for the turkey. She wolfed it down as soon as she found a seat. Breakfast had been unfulfilling.

Halfway through her meal, she got the feeling she was being watched. She looked around, hoping none of the staff was spying on her, and suddenly came nose-to-nose with Sherri. The bunny grinned. She'd been sitting next to Karen on the bench for almost two minutes. Karen asked if Sherri got a kick out of scaring people like that. Sherri gleefully admitted that she did, but also said that Brad and the others wanted her to know about Benjamin's list of names. That made Karen's eyes get wide. She thanked Sherri vigorously. Sherri asked if she was gonna eat her green beans.

This changed things dramatically. Now they actually had *evidence*. Admittedly, it wasn't as dramatic as, say, a videotape of Tyler's execution would have been. But anyone with half a brain ought to be able to figure out what all the names meant. Like Jimmy said, the evidence was all out in the open, just too spread out to put together. This list of names was like a map. Like a game of connect-the-dots. Someone would figure it out. And then that furson would start interviewing parents, and the parents would start talking to each other, and then there was no way The Project would be able to keep it a secret anymore.

There were still problems though. Karen mulled them over while sitting in one of the bean bag chairs in the empty TV room. The TV room was empty because an hour ago the twin televisions had simply dropped dead. Just as the flickering lights had gotten worse, the reception had been poor this morning and nigh-unwatchable after lunch. Then out of the blue, the screens had turned to static on every channel. Mysteriously enough, the set the Nintendo was hooked up to konked out in a similar fashion at the same time.

All over the ward, electronics were going haywire. Phone connections were chock full of weird buzzes and hissing. The coffeemaker in the nurses' lounge was acting like it was possessed. The security monitors were still clinging to life, but the images were fuzzy at best. The hospital staff were calling everyone they could think of to fix the problem, but so far none of the technicians could find a root cause. Stranger still, there were minor problems on other wards, but Ward F was definitely bearing the brunt of it. Whatever was happening, the seventh floor of King's Orchard was ground zero.

With no TV, the TV room lost its popularity awfully fast. Most kids retreated to their rooms to nap or read or surreptitiously snarf snacks stolen from the cafeteria. Some actually used the art room for its intended purpose. Holly was one of the nappers, and was snoring just loud enough to send Karen off in search of a quieter place to think.

So here she was in a beanbag chair, listening to the white noise of the television static, trying to decide who they should give Benjamin's list to. It was maddening; no matter who she thought of, there was no guarantee the government wouldn't get to them later on. If whoever was behind The Project had the resources to find and capture every furson in the country with a hint of special abilities, what would stop them from bribing policemen, shooting journalists, or even making entire families disappear? Karen supposed it was possible they could get to *anyone*, so their best shot was to simply find someone who looked trustworthy and hope for the best. There was only so much they could do on their own. Despite what Jimmy had said, there were situations when hoping was all you could do.

Karen got up to stretch. Her tail had fallen partially asleep.

The two television sets were still buzzing merrily away. Karen stared absent-mindedly into the static. You could almost see patterns in it if you relaxed your eyes.

'Like that,' she thought. For a second there, the screen had flashed what looked like a big letter N.

A moment later, a K appeared. It looked like when you made trails of light in the air with a sparkler on the fourth of July.

Actually, Karen realized, it looked like someone on the opposite side of the screen was drawing on it with their fingertips.

Now a letter A appeared.

All of Karen's fur stood up. She gulped and took in a sharp breath.

She waited.

A letter R appeared.

'No way. Oh, please. Oh my god, if an E shows up next...'

A letter E appeared.

Karen bit her knuckles. Her heart was banging like a screen door in the wind. She did not dare let herself believe that this meant what she thought there was one chance in a billion it could mean...

A letter N appeared.

K A R E N. Karen. Someone was trying to send a message to her.

Karen rushed to the closest set and knelt down beside it. Her mind raced. The TV was talking to her. No, someone *inside* the TV was talking to her. She tried to reason out who it could be. It couldn't be Jimmy. He'd just come up and say hello. It couldn't be some random dead furson from her dreams, since she knew for a fact she wasn't asleep. She could still taste her lunch in her mouth and she'd *never* tasted anything in a dream before. That left only one other explanation.

"...Tyler...?" she whispered.

Another letter K appeared.

Karen held her breath, waiting to see if the message would change. Instead, it just kept repeating. An A appeared, followed by R, E and N. But they were going faster now.

"Tyler? Please, is that you?"

The pattern still didn't change.

Then Karen got an idea. With her finger, she traced on the screen: T Y L E R ?

Instantly, so fast she could barely make it out: Y E S, followed by about twenty exclamation points.

Karen broke down crying with happiness. It was all she could do to keep her tears silent, lest the nurses come running and think she'd gone batshit insane. She shut her eyes for a moment and forced her heart to slow down.

Carefully, she traced: Y O U ' R E A L I V E !

The response: D U H !

Karen clamped a paw over her mouth to keep from laughing. That confirmed it; it was _definitely_ him! Trembling in giddy joy, she carefully replied: H O W C A N I G E T Y O U O U T O F T H E R E ?

There was a pause. Karen stared into the static for what felt like hours, hoping she hadn't lost the signal somehow.

N O I D E A. Another pause, shorter. Y O U R S U P P O S E D T O K N O W A B O U T T H I S S T U F F

He had a point. She *was* the resident expert on communicating with the dead. Karen could barely think though, she was so glad to know her friend was okay. She tried to concentrate. O K A Y , H O W D I D Y O U G E T I N T H E R E ?

Tyler's writing got smaller and faster, but Karen could still make it out. WHENTHEYFRIEDME ITHINKIWENTINTOTHEELECTRICITY IVEBEENINHEREALLDAY ITSBORINGASHELL

F R I E D Y O U ?

THEYELECTROSHOCKEDME THEFUCKERS

Karen could picture that. Poor Tyler, taken to Ward Zero, strapped into some horrible machine. Maybe when he tried to leap out of his body, he'd been too late and he went into the electrical systems somehow. That would explain why Jimmy couldn't find him in either his body or in the Inbetween. Y O U ' V E B E E N M A K I N G T H E L I G H T S F L I C K E R ?

A canine boy passing by the TV room peeked in and saw a raccoon girl apparently caressing one of the TVs like she was in love with it. He looked away and kept walking. He knew enough to stay away from the *really* crazy ones.

OFCOURSE Tyler replied. IHADTOGETYOURATENTION

Karen bit her lip and tried to think. She had to get Tyler out of Ward F's wiring as soon as possible. Not only because she couldn't stand the thought of him trapped in there, but also because she'd heard the nurses talking about how electricians were working on the problem. What if they somehow scooped Tyler up? Or even erased him! Karen knew nothing about how buildings were wired, and that made her even more scared.

KAREN?

I ' M T H I N K I N G

OKAYILLWAIT IMONLYSTUCKINAFREAKINTVSET NOPRESSURE

Karen guffawed. She couldn't help it. Tyler was funny anyway, and this situation was so ridiculous it was oddly fitting.

Then she hit on something.

M A Y B E Y O U C A N G O I N S I D E M E

WHAT?!?

L I K E P O S E S S I O N

OHIGETIT LIKEDEMONS&STUFF

S O R T A

HOW?

Karen puzzled over that. Okay, so, if Tyler was in the electricity, it seemed likely that the only way she could get him inside her was to let herself be shocked. She cringed. She didn't like the idea, but she couldn't think of anything else.

Y O U ' L L H A V E T O S H O C K M E

BUTWHATIFIHURTYOU???

Karen smiled at his compassion. I ' L L B E O K A Y she reassured. But would she? She looked all around the TV room. She saw a wall socket and imagined sticking a fork in it. No _way_. She wasn't about to do anything that could get her killed. Just then, something else occurred to her.

R E M E M B E R S L E E P I N G B E A U T Y ?

WTF?

I ' M G O I N G T O K I S S Y O U

The static buzzed in a way that almost sounded like laughter. IDIDNTKNOWYOUHAD THEHOTSFORME

Karen laughed too. I D O ' N T Y O U G O O F ! S T A T I C E L E C T R I C I T Y !

A pause. GOODIDEA PUCKERUP!

Karen did more than that. She scuffed her shoes on the carpet, then ruffled her hair a few times for good measure. She looked like she had a severe case of bed head now. Karen could feel a shock was imminent. R E A D Y ?

YUP

H E R E G O E S

Karen closed her eyes and readied herself. She knew this would probably hurt like heck, but _any_ pain was worth it to get Tyler back.

She leaned in and kissed the TV...

...and promptly shot backwards six feet.


     ~~~


Something lightly slapped her face.

"Karen? You alright, honey? Wake up!"

Karen blinked a few times, then found she was looking up into the face of the nice bobcat nurse. A few kids were clustered around her too, mostly just rubbernecking. Karen realized she was flat on her back.

"Oh thank goodness!" Camilla said when she realized the poor girl was only dazed, not dead. "What happened?"

Karen opened her mouth to speak, but another voice spoke up inside her head. "Tell her the TV was broke and you thought you could kiss it and make it all better!" Karen cracked up.

Camilla looked at her like she was worried the shock might have scrambled the little one's brains.

Karen sat up. "I'm fine. I was just trying to help out and see if I could fix the TV. I got shocked, that's all."

"You ended up halfway across the room!" Camilla said. "I heard the thump next door and came running!"

Karen rubbed her head to see if everything checked out. Aside from the fact that her lips were tingling and her fur looked like she'd just come out of the dryer, she felt perfectly normal. "I must've tripped," was all she could come up with.

"We need to get you downstairs and run some tests."

"No, really!" Karen stood up and started smoothing out her fur. The other kids gaped warily, as if she were a vampire reawakening. "I'm totally okay. And hey, look, it's almost dinnertime! I don't need to see a doctor, I just need some food. I'm hungry!"

Camilla didn't look entirely convinced. She took Karen's wrist in her paw and felt the girl's pulse. Normal. "Well... I guess some food in your tummy might do some good. But don't scare us like that! Don't ever try to fix anything around here without an adult present!"

Karen nodded submissively. "Yes, ma'am."

"...So they can get the shit shocked out of them too," Tyler added.

Karen stifled a laugh so hard she nearly split her lip.

Camilla looked at the clock. "You're right. It is nearly dinnertime. Alright, you go wait in line if you want. But come see me immediately if you feel weird or your head hurts or anything else!"

Karen promised she would, not daring to speak for fear Tyler would make her laugh again. She scurried out of there as fast as she could.


*****


     -HOLLY-

"Thank you so much for getting me the hell outta there!!" Tyler burst out. The sound was like a tiny P.A. system inside Karen's mind (How fitting). "It was like being wrapped in really tight bubble wrap. That's the best way I can describe it. You're much comfier."

Karen ran to her room so no one would see her talking to herself like a weirdo. "I'm so glad you're okay!" she whispered to him.

"Thanks to you!"

"But it was my fault you got electroshocked in the first place, Tyler. I am _so_ sorry. You can't beli-"

The mouse cut her off. "Bullshit. You didn't do anything. It was not your fault and if you say that again I'll... I'll..." He thought. "I'll make you fart really loud in the food line!"

She giggled. "Can you even do that?"

"I dunno. Let's see." Tyler looked out through Karen's eyes and spotted his favorite nemesis taking a nap.

"HEY, HOLLY!!!" Karen suddenly shouted. Her eyes went wide as saucers and she slapped her paws over her mouth. "You jerk! You made me do that!" she mumbled.

Tyler was guffawing like an evil madman. "I had no idea if that'd really work! Awesome!"

Holly did not like to be startled out of sleep. With narrowed eyes, she advanced on her roommate. "Why the hell couldn't you just tap me on the shoulder or something!?"

"It wasn't me!" Karen tried to explain.

Holly did not look convinced. "Then who, exactly? *Elves*?"

Karen's mouth opened by itself. "Hiya, gruesome! Wow, I didn't think it was possible, but you look even *more* fucked-up when you've just gotten out of bed! Your hair looks like a sno-cone!" Karen backed up quickly with a 'please don't kill me' look in her eyes.

Instead of knocking her block off, Holly went stiff as a board. She stared at Karen's mouth. There was only one furson in the universe who had the balls to talk to her like that... "T-tyler?"

Tyler found that taking over Karen's vocal cords was surprisingly easy. "Dingdingdingdingding! We have a correct answer! Give the lady a cigar! Oh, wait, she's underage. Give her a popsicle at least!"

An expression of explosive joy came over Holly's face and she ran at Karen, engulfing her in a hug. "TYLER!! Oh my God, I don't know how you got in there, but I'm so glad you're okay!! Jesuschristrock'emsock'emrobots, we were all so worried! I could barely sleep last night! You scuzzy, buttlicking retard! I thought I'd never get to insult you again!!"

Karen and Tyler both laughed at that. "I missed you too, Holly," Tyler said, as sincerely as he could.

Holly released Karen, who took in a big gulp of air. "So... HOW!?"

"He was stuck in the electricity," Karen told her. "That's why everything was messing up."

"She French kissed the TV to get me out of there!" Tyler added.

"I did not French kiss the TV!" Karen insisted. "You have to use your tongue for that, right? I'd never lick a TV screen!"

"How are we gonna get him back in his body?" Holly asked.

"I was just gonna suggest that!" Tyler piped up.

Karen paused, and then she smiled. A smile of ferocious triumph. "I don't know, but we can certainly ask for suggestions ...When we have a meeting in the art room after dinner tonight."

Holly's face lit up with unholy glee. "_Fuck_ yeah."


*****


     -TYLER-

To say it had been one of the strangest nights in Tyler's life would be a bit of an understatement.

When the juice had speared into him, Tyler had felt a sensation that was not exactly pain. It was, however, so mind-destroyingly unpleasant that he thought he'd rather firebomb a box of kittens than ever have to feel it again. His soul thrashed at the confines of his body, spasming wildly, jerking in unthinking torment, seeking any possible way out.

The only way out was through the thing that was causing his torture.

Tyler's body went limp on the operating table and Tyler's soul went shooting into the wires.

He'd never felt *anything* like this before. He was completely without a body now, without even the remembered image of one. He was just a particle cloud. A little cluster of Tyler-thoughts. He was scared. So scared he could barely think. He had no idea where he was or even *what* he was.

One thing he discovered fairly quickly was that he could travel _fast_ now. He cautiously tried to move in this new formless form and his tiny effort was multiplied a hundredfold. Like pushing off from roller skates and immediately hitting 100 mph. Tyler went rocketing along at incalculable speeds through blind, twisting tunnels. He had no idea where he was going, but, damn, it was actually rather fun!

Tyler zipped to and fro for a while before smacking into a dead end. He was in a coffeemaker. He didn't know *how* he knew he was in a coffeemaker, he just knew. As surely as he knew he was a mouse, or was supposed to be anyway. He thought about this, decided he wasn't dreaming, hallucinating or insane, and began to puzzle out what had happened to him. He shot back across the wiring again and when he wound up in a security monitor, looking out into a corridor on Ward C, he knew for certain.

Tyler spent the next few hours travelling at supersonic speeds over every millimeter of King's Orchard's electrical systems. He got better at sensing where he was. He was able to 'see' every room in the hospital by looking out through shiny surfaces on anything plugged in. It actually felt more like radar than sight. Which was odd, since he couldn't hear a thing except when he was in a telephone. The rest of the time he was completely deaf.

He looked in on his friends. Not many were sleeping. He didn't know how they knew about his 'death' (or coma or whatever this was; Tyler had no idea what to call it, or if his body was even still alive), but was glad they knew. He hoped it would make them fight harder when it came time.

He looked in on Holly. She was crying. Tyler felt a hot streak of anger at that. For a moment, punishing Dr. Beatrix for making Holly cry seemed even more important than punishing her for what she'd done to him.

He looked in on Dr. Beatrix. She was sitting at her desk, one single light illuminating the huge, gaping office. Tyler was inside that light. He saw her at her computer, typing away, smiling obscenely. She had just tortured a child, almost to death, and now she was smiling. Tyler couldn't think of a word vile enough for what she was.

His anger grew and boiled like a volcano until suddenly Dr. Beatrix's office went dark. "Hey!" she shouted. The lightbulb had burst.

'Did I do that?' Tyler wondered.

He giggled like a supervillain. 'Only one way to find out.'

Tyler went on a rampage. He zoomed back and forth in the hospital, causing malfunctions wherever possible. The lightbulb trick was the most spectacular thing he was able to accomplish, but he got TV screens to go staticy and fluorescents to dim. He made a few telephones ring at random. He tried making more things explode, but just didn't have the power.

Random mayhem was fun and all, but Tyler did not want to spend the rest of his existence causing minor trouble for hospital staff. He had to get out of here.

The only solution seemed to be to use what he already had. He made his way to Ward F and began every effort imaginable to get someone to notice him. At first he thought of the P.A. system, but he didn't want to give away his position to anyone other than his friends. It was moot anyway, since he'd given it a small try and found that all he could produce was static. So instead he decided on making a nuisance of himself. He raced along the lights, making them sputter and dim at his whim. He kept turning the thermostat down no matter how many times the staff turned it back up. He looked out of all the security monitors and television screens, scanning faces for any sign that anyone might believe a supernatural presence was at work. Everyone was too rational for that though. Dammit, didn't anyone believe in poltergeists anymore?

But then fate gave him a kiss on the lips. Karen was all alone in the now-defunct TV room. Karen, the one who was most likely to be able to DO something once he got her attention. He stared at her, trying to figure out how to make himself seen. He tried flashing morse code, but realized all he knew was S.O.S.. Karen didn't pick up on it.

Tyler was desperate. He banged his fist on the inside of the screen.

He stopped, and tried to comprehend what he'd just done.

He'd banged his _fist_!

He had a body image again, and he could *manifest* it! Hot shit!

Concentrating harder than he'd ever concentrated before, Tyler drew her initial on the screen. It was so easy, it stunned him.

Tyler had to write Karen's name twenty times before she noticed. But eventually she did.


     ~~~


"The rest, as they say, is history," Tyler said out of Karen's mouth.

Brad's jaw hung loose. "...Wowsers."

After Karen had sat down with her dinner tray, she told Tyler she would give him complete control over herself so he could tell the others what he'd been through. She even let him make the choices in the food line and do the eating for both of them. Though she did make him promise not to stuff peas up her nose or do anything like that. He solemnly swore he wouldn't, and even promised twice so she'd know he wasn't gonna be a jerk and go back on his word for comedic effect.

Right now Karen *was* Tyler. It was her body, but his voice, mannerisms, expressions and body language came through so clearly the others had no problem talking to him as if he were still his normal male mouse self.

"What did it feel like, being in there?" Benjamin asked avidly.

"I told Karen it was like being in bubble wrap, but that doesn't even come close now that I think about it." Tyler grimaced, not knowing how to put it into words. "Okay, um, try and picture this: You know that feeling you get when your leg's been asleep awhile and then it starts to come back? That tingly feeling, like ants are shoving tiny, tiny needles in your skin? It didn't feel *like* that, it felt like I *was* that feeling," Tyler said.

Holly, Brad, Benjamin and Victor all tried to conceptualize that, and couldn't.

"Oh screw it," Tyler said.

(Ruby and Keith were eating upstairs, as always. Karen had already told them very briefly about Tyler. They were both relieved and overjoyed. Nobody was sure if Sherri was sitting with them now. Zeek, however, was listening to their conversation two tables away with his gigantic fennec ears.)

"Did you see anything that could help us?" Brad asked.

"Not much that we don't already know," the mouse-in-a-raccoon replied.

"I mean, is there anything we could use against this place if we tried to escape?" the tomcat clarified.

Tyler shrugged. "I honestly don't know. I mean, I know which doors have unmarked alarms on 'em, but if we're escaping I imagine there'll probably be plenty of alarms going off anyway." He paused and bit his lip. "There was one thing though that really creeped me out. The fire alarms. Beatrix has them wired up so if they go off, everything goes on lockdown. All the doors and windows bolt themselves shut."

"But why?" Victor asked.

Tyler looked grim as he laid it out. "Simple. They'd rather this place burn down with everyone inside it than for anyone to get out and blab what was going on in here. If there *was* a fire, reporters would show up. And cops. They'd ask questions. But if there's no one left alive to ask, and the place turns completely to ash - and yes, it's designed to; there are canisters in Ward Zero set to go off and *eradicate* everything down there when they reach a certain temperature - anyway, if everyone's dead and there's no evidence, it just looks like a terrible tragedy and the building contractor probably goes to jail."

"That's..." Brad tried to find a word for it. "That's the most cold-blooded thing I've ever heard." He shook his head. "No, wait. *Everything* I hear about this place is the coldest thing I've ever heard."

Tyler decided not to tell anyone what Beatrix had said about the drinking water making everyone sterile. It seemed too implausible, even for her. He didn't want to freak everyone out if there was a chance she was only lying to spook him. He'd just make sure that if he did make it out of this, they'd all get their genitals to a doctor ASAP for some testing.

"But... wouldn't Dr. Beatrix die too if the place caught on fire?" Holly asked.

"If she doesn't have some secret passageway outta here in case of that, I'll eat my own dookie," Tyler replied. (Inside him, Karen cringed) "She's too selfish not to."

Karen stood up in her mind and became herself for a moment. The change was so startling, everyone else knew in a heartbeat that Karen was Karen again. "We really shouldn't be talking about this stuff out in the open where people can hear us." And by people, she meant Thurston Caercase, who was halfway across the room but still too close to suit her. "That's what the meeting afterward's for. Besides, we should all be in on it. And Ruby, Keith and Sherri aren't here."

"I am too!" Sherri piped up.

Everyone looked, but she was still being invisible. "You're kinda creepy," Benjamin said in the direction he thought she was. "And I say that with great envy."

She giggled. "Thank you."

Tyler asserted himself again. "Um, guys? Something else I wanted to mention."

"What's that?" Brad said with a mouthful of what was supposedly beef pot pie.

"As cool as it is to find out what having boobs feels like..." Karen did an impressive job of keeping herself from shrieking, "...I'd kinda like to get back to my own body. Sometime *soon*, y'know?. Maybe see if it still even *exists*?"

"Yeah, geez. How are we gonna do that?" Benjamin asked.

"Simple," Brad said, stabbing a green bean. "I take Karen down to Ward Zero, and she vomits him back into himself."

"I am not vomiting *anyone*!" Karen said sharply. "Why do boys have to go out of their way to be gross!?"

"Hey," Holly said, sounding offended. "I go out of my way to be gross just as much as _any_ boy." And to prove it she squirted Jell-o through her teeth.

"Try that with mashed potatoes and gravy," Tyler suggested. "It feels even cooler."

She smiled sparklingly. "Thanks! I will!"

Karen gave Tyler a mental poke. "If we can get down to Ward Zero without anyone seeing us or catching us, I will do everything I can to get you back where you belong. I promise."

"You'll probably have to kiss me on the lips," he told her. "Holly will be soooo jealous."

The grey squirrel narrowed her eyes. "Tyler, the only reason I'm not hurling my soda in your face is that you're wearing Karen's clothes right now."

"Ooh! Good one!" Brad said.

"I know! Is it any wonder she's the goth of my dreams?" Tyler said.

Holly rolled her eyes disgustedly.

"Do you have a plan on how to get us downstairs and into Ward Zero?" Karen asked Brad.

"No," he said unconcernedly. "But we can make one after dinner."

Thurston's voice boomed suddenly across the room. "Awright, little critters! Line up's in five minutes!"

"...And in ten minutes we'll be plotting treason and mutiny," Benjamin said with glee.


*****


     -THURSTON-

"They're at it again."

"The art room nonsense?" Dr. Beatrix asked, her voice sounding uncharacteristically nasal over the walkie-talkie.

"I think so," Thurston replied. While the Ward F children frantically finished up their meals and disposed of their garbage, Thurston stepped back into the stairwell to report what he'd seen. "I couldn't hear most of what they said, but they were talkin' about that mouse kid. The one we cooked."

"Of course. Naturally, they're going to try to pull off another crazy stunt like before to try and avenge him." She said this with as little concern as if she were describing a turkey sandwich that didn't have enough mayo.

Thurston's face split into a grin. A grin of sharp teeth set in blood-red gums. "Is it time then?"

"Yes, definitely. Right now would do the most damage."

"And I get to choose which one?" he asked eagerly.

"Of course. You're fond of the little raccoon girl, aren't you?" An excited squeal on the other end confirmed this. "Go ahead, you have my permission. Rape her. Break her and let them see it afterwards. Just make sure not to leave anything behind that she could prove her story with if she talks to anyone."

Thurston Caercase chuckled heartily. "Bea, you don't have to worry. I've been plannin' this whole thing out for days."

"Of course you have," Dr. Beatrix said with an affectionate smile on her lips. "I can always count on you, Thurston."


*****


     -KAREN-

The fat bear didn't make eye contact with her on the way back up the stairs, and Karen was grateful for that. She stood at the back of the line, as far away from him as possible, talking wordlessly in her head with Tyler.

"I know you said it wasn't my fault, but I'm still sorry. None of us had any idea she'd go that far. We _will_ get you back in your body," she promised again.

"Geez, am I that annoying a houseguest?" he asked.

She giggled. "No, of course not! Though I really wish you hadn't said that thing about my boobs. I don't even *have* any yet!"

"Sure ya do!" he said reassuringly. "They're just in the larval stage now."

Karen cringed with her entire body. "Gack! Did you have to say it like that!?"

"Whaaat?"


     ~~~


When the door to Ward F opened, Karen's mind was buzzing with ideas for the meeting. She didn't even know where to start! Up ahead, she could already see Victor and Benjamin heading for the art room. The others would be there soon.

"Hey, better get the Uno cards," Tyler reminded her.

"That's right! Monsoon said we could leave some in there and I forgot." Karen headed for the TV room. "Geez, we forgot about them completely last time. That was dumb. We should've been more careful."

Tyler sighed bitterly. "Don't worry about it. They probably know what the meetings are for by now anyway."

That thought had occurred to her, but she went for the bag of cards nonetheless. "Maybe they haven't," she said firmly, hoping it were true even though she knew how unlikely that was. She separated about half of the cards out and left the rest in the bag. The deck had been way too big the first time.

Karen left the TV room. She saw Holly in the hallway up ahead and nodded conspiratorially to her. She wondered when would be the best time for them to launch their escape. Tonight was too soon, tomorrow might be as well. But if they waited until Monday, who knew what might happen by then? She knew everyone was scared that Dr. Beatrix might fry them too, so she had to find a way to turn that fear into action. If they didn't want to get fried, the best thing to do about it was to plan for Sunday night.

'Sunday night is when we'll all escape,' Karen thought.

That was when the door to quiet room #2 opened and Thurston's thick arm shot out, grabbed her shoulder, and jerked her inside.

The door locked behind her.

Karen opened her mouth to scream.

"Soundproof," Thurston said, and laughed.


*****


     -SHERRI-

"Where's Karen?" Rubiella asked.

"I just saw her. She'll be here in a minute." Holly said.

The art room hummed with tension. Seven members of the rebellion sat around the double table anxiously waiting for the meeting to start. Ruby and Keith wanted to know more about what had happened to Tyler. Brad and Benjamin filled them in with everything he'd told them. Ruby's eyes were wide. She concentrated everything she had on making sense of the two boys' words.

Keith was deeply glad to hear that Tyler wasn't dead. He'd spent much of the last night clenching his paws in rage, biting his pillow, raking his claws against the dresser and the wall. So much fury. Uncontainable. He had wanted to jump up, find Dr. Beatrix and punch her till she stopped moving. He'd thought about the three initials he'd burned into the ping pong table in the TV room. Tyler and Brad were special to him. He'd been honest with them, something rare, and they had listened to him, something even more rare. When he'd seen Tyler's limp, wet body in that wheelchair, it had felt like his eyes were filling with hot blood. First the world had taken away his uncle and now when he finally had friends, one of them was gone already. It took an unimaginable effort to keep from screaming the whole night through. Keith wanted to scream and scream until blood soaked his pillow. Calming himself was torture, but he knew he had to. In order to get what he wanted, he couldn't lash out now. He had to play it cool, wait for the right moment, wait until all of his friends were ready. Then he could scream. And make Dr. Beatrix scream too.

Holly glanced up at the mirror in the hallway. She frowned. Karen had been right behind her but now the hallway was empty. 'Maybe she went back for something?' she thought.

Victor was off in his own thoughts. He knew this meeting would decide when and how they would try and get out of here. He thought about his 'superpower' and how lame it was. Especially compared to Keith's or Benjamin's. Why couldn't he have a cool power? All he could do was control his butthole. For the longest time, he'd thought it was great, the funniest thing in the world. But seeing these other kids with the neat abilities fate had given them, Victor felt like he'd ben gypped. He felt, in a word, useless.

Holly glanced up at the mirror again. "Um, guys? I'm starting to get worried about Karen."

"Maybe she's taking a whiz?" Benjamin suggested.

"I can go check," Sherri said out of nowhere, as usual. She made herself visible for a second, just so they'd know she was there. Though as soon as she was out the door she cloaked herself again.

Sherri walked brazenly down the hall towards the girl's bathroom. She waved at the nurses behind the desk. No one saw her. She giggled silently. Having a sneaky purpose behind it made being invisible even more fun. She thought about sneaking into the nurses' station the night before. It was actually quite exhilarating. She'd been using her gift mostly to give herself quiet time alone. Maybe spy stuff was something she could do more often.

Inside the bathroom, everything was quiet and chilly and pink. Sherri's voice echoed eerily against the tile. "Karen?"

No reply. Sherri checked under each stall door. Nobody there.

So where the heck had Karen gone?

Sherri slipped out the door, hoping no one would notice it opening seemingly by itself. Though really, what did she care if anyone did? Let 'em think the place was haunted.

She was just about to head back to the art room and tell Holly no luck when she saw something red on the floor.

An Uno card.

A red six. Lying on the hallway carpet right in front of one of the quiet rooms. The door was closed. Usually they were kept open.

Sherri felt ice in her spine.

She took a step closer and listened carefully. She didn't believe anything was *totally* soundproof. She wished she was tall enough to just look through the little window, but it was a few taunting inches above her sightline. She took another step and pressed her long bunny ear up against the door.

Muffled sounds. Someone was in there. She heard what she thought was a cry of pain. It sounded like a little girl being hurt.

Sherri took off down the hall as fast as she could.

She burst into the art room. "Someone's got Karen!" she shouted.


*****


     -THURSTON-

The quiet room was shaped like a lowercase 'p': a short corner entrance leading into a small rectangular room. Bright fluorescent light. A plastic-covered mattress on the floor that had seen much abuse. Dropped cards were scattered all over the floor like rose petals. Best of all was the fact that if you simply did your business in the far corner, no one passing by could see what was going on through the door window.

Thurston didn't even have to worry about the security camera up in the ceiling. Dr. Beatrix had taken care of that. One push of a button in her office and all anyone at the nurse's station would see was an empty room. He hadn't even needed to ask.

He had the little bitch up against the padded wall. She had made a lot of noise at first, but all it took was one good hard slap to put an end to that.

"You're a bad, bad little girl, Karen," he told her. Smiling and smiling. Looming over her like God. "Bad girls shouldn't sneak around tellin' lies, trying to make a fuss. Little girls should just do what they're told and shut their pretty little mouths."

Karen's muzzle felt like it had been dipped in wasp stings from Thurston's slap. He'd come very close to breaking her nose. Her heart was beating so fast she thought it might stop at any second. She had never known fear like this. She had woken up screaming more nights than she could ever count, seeing visions in her head of death and dismemberment, gore beyond anything a child of her age should be able to handle and stay sane. But as real as it had seemed then, there was still enough unreality to hold on to herself once she woke up and realized she was safe in her bed. Now she was _not_ safe in her bed. Now the fat bear had her trapped and was going to do unspeakable things to her and there was nothing she could do to save herself.

"Bad little girls need to be taught how to act," Thurston said in the tone of a father about to administer righteous punishment upon a wayward child.

Thurston began to remove his belt.

'I'm going to be raped,' Karen thought with crystal clarity.

Thurston slipped the leather slowly through each loop of his pants. "Now, there's two ways we can do this. You know got-damn well what's going to happen, and you know you deserve it. If you'da just shut the fuck up and done what Dr. Beatrix told you, none of this would have to happen. It's your fault. You and your 'secret meetings'. You think we didn't know about them the whole damn time? You think we were so dumb we didn't know what was goin' on in there!?"

Karen tried to speak. She tried as hard as she could, but her throat failed her. All that came out was air.

Thurston pulled off the belt and held it up high by the buckle. Like brandishing a lawman's badge. "Two ways to do this. One is where you cooperate with me and give me what I want and it's over quickly, you understand? Then you can go run tell your friends that there won't be no more meetings in the art room. Because if there is, this will happen to you Every Single Night, do you understand?"

Karen nodded, shaking uncontrollably. Tears streamed down her face like rain.

"Or," Thurston said, "you can kick and scream and act like a baby. You do that, and I'll make it hurt. And you'll _still_ get it every night. Only I won't be gentle about it no more. Now turn around and stick your paws out behind you."

He might as well have been talking to a marble statue. Karen was too scared to even blink.

"I SAID TURN AROUND AND GIMME YOUR FUCKIN' PAWS, YOU DUMB BITCH!!!" Thurston roared. The sound was like a fist in her face. His saliva splattered on her eyelids.

Karen was not sure she *could* move. She did her best though. Thurston was right; it would be better if she just went numb and let it happen. Just black out and let it happen. She held her arms out behind her and felt his giant hands clasp them together at the wrist.

"This is so's you don't get stupid. You fuck around on me, I'll yank your arms up and pop your shoulders out, you hear me?"

Karen attempted to nod, and instead sort of twitched.

He took it as a yes. He wrapped the belt around her wrists and slipped the end into the buckle.

"You had a hard-on when you electrocuted me," Karen said suddenly.

"What!?" Thurston growled.

Karen turned around slowly. Her eyes were dead blank, but her muzzle was twisted up in a madman's grin. "This kinda shit turns you on, you sick fuck. When Beatrix had me strapped down to that table in Ward Zero, you had a hard-on when you pulled the switch. I saw it."

Thurston took a step back. The belt fell out of his hands and dropped to the floor.

"You like hurting kids, don't you Mr. Caercase? It gives you a chubby. A woody. A big fat fucking erection. You love it. Admit it."

"Who the hell are you...?" Thurston whispered.

"I'm the kid you murdered last night, stupid," the voice coming out of Karen's throat rasped.

Thurston stared at the child in front of him, momentarily paralyzed by confusion. He heard sounds coming from the door and turned to look. As soon as he did, something on the other side pounded on it hard enough to bulge the metal.

Thurston nearly slipped on the Uno cards he backed up so fast.


*****


     -RUBY-

As soon as Sherri spoke, the others were off their tails. They followed her out of the art room and down the hall, all fearing for the young raccoon who was their leader.

"She's in there!" Sherri shouted. She bent down and picked up the Uno card. "I saw this and when I went to listen, I heard voices inside!"

"Thurston," Holly said, so fiercely it was as if she believed she could kill him just by speaking his name.

Brad grabbed the door handle and jiggled it, knowing it wouldn't work but needing to try it anyway. "How do we get it open?" There were no cracks around the doorframe. His finger trick wouldn't pop the lock this time.

"Should we tell the nurses?" asked Victor.

"Fuck 'em," Holly said. "Who knows? They might be in on this." She stared at the door, thinking, breath coming hard and fingers digging ruts into her palms. Something horrible was happening to her best friend in there and she couldn't think of anything to do about it.

Holly, Brad, Keith, Benjamin, Victor and Sherri all stared at the door. Wishing they could will it open. Wishing there was something they could do to force it open and get Karen the hell out of there. All of them knew Thurston was candy-coated evil, but not all of them knew of his fondness for girl flesh.

"Maybe I could melt it...?" Keith threw out.

"Take too long," Holly barked.

"What if I-" Benjamin started.

He did not finish.

Rubiella Dunston, five feet and two hundred thirty pounds of muscle, stepped forward.

"Karen's gettin' hurt in there?" she asked. She had to be absolutely sure first. 'No fighting' was the rule, but the only thing wrong with Ruby was her head, not her heart. She thought Mommy wouldn't be mad if she had to fight to save her friend.

"Karen might be getting _killed_ in there," Holly made it clear.

The tigress nodded. "Okay then."

She planted her feet. She drew her arm back. She tensed every muscle in the body she had hated all her life until this moment.

She remembered Daddy telling her that all things happen for a reason. Ruby felt a spark of clarity. 'Maybe this is why I'm strong...'

Ruby let fly with a killer blow that shook the walls of King's Orchard.


*****


     -TYLER-

"I don't know what I can do other than talk," Tyler told her, "but I'm not gonna let him hurt you."

Karen heard the strong, scared-but-confident voice in her head and snapped out of her fear like a branch breaking. She wasn't alone. She wasn't helpless. Tyler was here and he had defended her with just his words. He'd made that monster back off with just words.

Karen looked down at her feet.

Tyler had words. Now she had a _belt_.

All thought vanished from Karen's mind. Her wild ancestors' instincts kicked in, blasting her body with adrenaline. She darted down and grabbed the belt. She wrapped it tight around her hand until it hurt. She snapped into a battle stance, ready to defend her life or take her enemy down with her.

Snarling like she was rabid, rage flashing in her eyes like rubies, she lifted up the belt and gave it a hard lash like a bullwhip.

"Damn, that felt *good*!" Tyler said. "Do it again!"

"You bet your ass," Karen hissed.

Thurston was still staring at the door, wondering what on Earth could have hit it hard enough to dent the metal on the inside. Did someone out there have a goddamned battering ram?

Because his head was turned, he didn't see Karen charging at him until the belt buckle sliced through the air and split his cheek like a scalpel.

"BITCH!!!" he roared.

"You don't call me a bitch," Karen said. Her voice was low and her eyes were full of murder. She looked like nothing but fur and nerve endings stitched together over razor blades.

Thurston turned, balling his fists, ready to end this insolent little whelp's life. "I swear to God I'll-"

His words were cut short as Karen's makeshift whip cut across his lip, splitting it and filling his mouth with blood. "FUGG!!!" he gurgled.

"Hey, good thing you're so fat!" Tyler's voice rang out. "Your belt's nice and long. Works good as a whip, doncha think?"

Karen giggled. "Good one!" She was high as a kite on adrenaline and had absolutely no concept of consequences. All she knew was that the man in front of her wanted more than anything to kill her, and she wanted more than anything to spoil his fun.

_WHAMMM_

What must have been a wrecking ball hit the door again.

"Jesus, what IS that?" Tyler yelped.

Karen knew. She simply, suddenly knew. "It's Ruby... GO RUBY!!!" she shouted as loud as she could.

"I'MONNA SAVE YOU, KAREN!!!" Ruby bellowed back, loud enough to hear partially through the soundproofed door and also loud enough to knock one of the nurses clean off her feet as she ran over to investigate. Ruby wasn't just strong, she had a set of pipes that could blast birds off telephone lines.

"You're so dead you don't even know it," Tyler told Thurston with a chuckle in his voice.

"Stop that!!" he screamed at them. "You can't be in her body! It doesn't make any sense!!"

Tyler sneered. "Can too. Hit him again, Karen."

Karen grinned ferally and did.


*****


     -RUBY-

The tigress grunted like a rhino as her massive fist hammered the quiet room's door again. The veins in her arms pulsed like miniature firehoses. There was blood on the door from where her knuckles had split. She didn't notice. She didn't feel anything.

All her thoughts were on Karen.

By now a dozen other kids had emerged from their rooms to gape dumbly at the spectacle in the hallway. Needless to say, the hospital staff was aware of the commotion too.

"Holly, get out of my way this instant!!" Camilla ordered.

Holly stared her down with the eyes of a cobra. A squirrel standing up to a bobcat. "No," she said simply.

The other nurses and volunteers were trying to get past the ring Holly and the others had made around the door. The children's arms were locked and their bodies were concrete. Camilla was furious but felt bizarrely helpless. These were just kids. She was trained to deal with kids! Why were they scaring her so much!? "That girl has gone berserk! You tell your friends to let us through or-"

"YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT'S REALLY GOING ON HERE!!!" Holly screeched at her. "Now shut up and let Ruby work!!"

Camilla shut up.

Victor looked behind him and saw that the tiger girl had certainly hurt the door, but she hadn't made any progress getting it open. "The glass, Ruby! The glass!" he called out. "That's the weak spot!"

Ruby snapped out of her focus for a second. "Huh?" She looked the door up and down, amazed by the dents she'd made. Not bad for a girl who always tried her best *not* to cause damage like this. She saw the little window in the middle of the door. It was just the right height for her fist.

"Thanks!" she told Victor.

Her arm drew back like a bow. She heard her knuckles crack.

She swung. Broken glass exploded and blood flew from a dozen tiny cuts.

Rubiella felt none of them.


*****


     -THURSTON-

Karen swung, but Thurston caught it.

This situation was out of control, and the best thing to do now was to simply ignore everything but the girl in front of him. "Enough of this bullshit."

He gave the belt a sharp tug that yanked Karen right off her balance. She fell towards him and he snatched her up by the front of her shirt. Clutching it tight, he pulled her up to his face. "I don't care who the fuck you are, I don't care who the fuck's at the door, I'm bigger and stronger than you and I'm gonna take what I've earned."

He gave a shove and sent Karen flying across the room into the padded wall. Before she could react, he was in front of her, driving a hard punch into her stomach.

Karen doubled over, felt something hot in her mouth. Her vision winked out for a second.

"KAREN!!" Tyler screamed.

Thurston grabbed up Karen's wrists in one paw and slammed them up above her head into the padding. He pressed them in hard, hard enough for her fingers to go numb. He thrust his face next to hers and spoke in a voice like blood over gravel. "I told you what'd happen if you didn't cooperate. You must be some kinda stupid that you'd choose the hard way. Little girls who don't listen *need* this kinda treatment."

Karen looked away from those lust-mad eyes. They blazed hotter than fire, but there was nothing at all behind them. Nothing with a soul. She shut her eyes tight and felt Thurston grab a handful of her pants. She whimpered as he snatched them off of her. When they caught on her shoes, he pulled harder, twisting Karen's ankles with pain. The fabric ripped and the pants flew off, along with one of Karen's shoes and her sock.

Thurston grabbed her face, covering almost half of it with one hand. He forced her to look where he wanted. "You see this?" he demanded, pointing with his other hand at her crotch. "That's _mine_ now."

Karen did not say a word as he tore off her panties.

The physical pain meant nothing compared with the emotional.

Tyler was frantic. "Karen, do something! We can't let him-!" It hit him then; if Karen got raped, he would get raped too. He could not feel her pain, but he would have to look into those eyes as it happened, and he knew if that happened he'd go crazy. Simple as that. "KAREN!"

Thurston held Karen's wrists tighter and slid her up the wall. She might as well have weighed no more than her clothes. His face was an inch away from hers, the stench of his hot breath invaded her nostrils. He pulled down his zipper.

"Your fault," he snorted in between breaths. "You did this. You led me on, you li'l slut. This is all your fault."

Tears poured down Karen's cheeks. She did everything she could to block out his words. Her heart knew they weren't true, but it was still a battle to keep them from sticking in her soul and poisoning her forever.

She kicked with her feet but it wasn't enough. She couldn't do anything more than flop like a fish in this position. Her arms were held so tightly she wondered if she would ever move them again. She'd tried her best. There was nothing left for her to do...

She forced her eyes open a crack and saw Thurston reaching for his underwear. His pants were down around his ankles. Any second now, he'd flop out that ugly thing and *use* it on her.

Karen's heartbeat was a jackhammer.

She trembled, making her body stone. Bracing herself for it...

'NO!' her mind screamed.

There was one thing she had left that he wasn't in control of.

Karen shot forward and buried her sharp teeth as hard as she could in the soft flesh of Thurston's nose.

The bear screamed like a steam whistle.

Thurston clenched tighter on her wrists. Karen ignored the pain. She bit down harder. Blood gushed against her gums and into her throat. The taste was awful. Thurston's free hand came up and slapped her with all its might. Karen did not let go. Her muzzle was made of steel. A steel bear trap. If he still wanted to rape her now, he'd do it with half a face.

"YOU FUGGING BIDCH!!! LET GO 'A MY FUGGIN NOOOOOOSE!!!"

Karen felt something give. Thurston's flesh tore and her head snapped back.

Thurston howled, clutching at his face with both hands and letting Karen drop to the floor.

She hit the tile hard, but the pain was barely worth noticing. She felt the rubbery piece of rapist in her mouth.

"If it was me, I'd swallow it," Tyler said.

She stood up and spat it out onto the floor. "It tastes terrible," she replied.

"You're my hero forever," Tyler said. "You saved us both."

"I know," Karen said, emotionless.

Thurston continued to roll around on his back like a baby, making the most ear-splitting wails and unintelligible threats imaginable. His curses were drowned in a flood of his own crimson.

Karen watched him with eyes of steel. If he got up, he would _not_ touch her again.

Thurston gasped. He rolled onto his side and spat a mammoth mouthful of blood onto the white floor. "BIDCH! BIDCH! BIDCH!"

Karen said nothing.

He planted one fat hand on the floor and tried to get to his knees. He slipped, then tried again. "Gonna gill you..." he slurred. "Gonna rip your gunt off..."

"No, you're not," Karen said.

Thurston got to his feet slowly. His chest was gleaming with red. His face was dark with hate. "You're gonna wish I'd gilled you when I'b done."

"No, I won't," Karen said.

They stared into each other's eyes. It would have been impossible to tell which one of them hated the other more.

The world will never know which one of them would have struck first, because right then the door popped open and Ruby charged in.


*****


     -RUBY-

Breaking through the glass was child's play. She tried to reach all the way through the window hole, but it was hopeless. Her arm was simply too thick. It was like trying to stuff a salami through a straw.

"What now?" she called out.

"Feel around for the handle!" Victor said.

"I can't! My arm won't go in far enough!" Ruby wailed.

Brad snarled at Victor. "Dude, think! It's the quiet room; there's no handle on the inside!"

Victor shrank back. "I'm sorry! I've never been in there."

Brad gave himself a mental kick in the ass for snapping at his friend. "Sorry. I forgot all of us aren't assholes."

Victor managed a half-smile and squeezed Brad's hand tighter. The art room rebels were still in a circle around Ruby. The hospital staff didn't look like much of a threat; they were still so stunned none of them had thought to run to the front desk and call for backup. But it couldn't hurt to be careful.

Ruby thought as hard as her damaged brain would allow. She stuck her hand through the window again, mewing in pain as the remaining bits of glass dug into her skin. She clenched her teeth and forced as much of her arm through the hole as she could. She thought maybe she could get a grip on it from the other side and simply yank it off the hinges. That wasn't going to happen though. The other side of the door was nothing but smooth, cold metal. There was nothing to hold on to. If she pulled now, all she'd get was deeper scratches from the glass.

Ruby thought of Karen and started to cry. "I don't know what to do!!" she wailed.

"Wait..." Holly had an idea. "The handle!"

"There's no handle on the other side!" Brad reminded her.

"Duh!! But there is one on *this* side! Just tear it off, Ruby!"

"I'll do it!" the tigress pledged. She clamped her paws onto the stainless steel handle and braced herself against the wall. She pulled.

The locking mechanism clunked. Ruby pulled harder.

Sweat trickled down her fur and stung her eyes.

The handle began to bend.

"GRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGHH!!!!!"

With a mighty warrior's growl, Ruby put all her effort into one more good pull and the handle came off and went slashing through the air. With a *thunk* it embedded itself two inches deep in the ceiling behind her.

Panting and grunting like a cave woman, Ruby attacked the lock. She banged the door furiously. She pounded it. She *murdered* it.

Finally the metal gave up and declared its surrender.

The door popped open and Ruby charged in.


     ~~~


When she saw what was in the room, Ruby stopped short, her jaw falling open with horror.

The fat bear man was covered in blood. Karen was half naked and half shoeless. Her clothes were lying ripped on the floor before her. Blood trickled in two tiny streaks from her nose. Her eyes were coral red and her cheeks were sopping wet from crying.

Ruby didn't need to see anything more.

In that instant she became more vicious and fearsome than any ten of her ancestors put together. Ruby's mind ceased to exist. She was now nothing more than a demolition machine piloted by a wild tiger's instincts.

Ruby fell upon Thurston. She gave him a punch in the side that ruptured his liver.

Thurston bent in half. More blood sprayed from his mouth like a fountain.

Ruby screamed, hitting him again and again, her fists causing more damage than a sledgehammer. If Thurston hadn't been so solidly built, he would have been dead already.

Ruby snatched up handfuls of his clothing and threw him across the room into the wall. A crack appeared in the plaster above the padding and dust rained down from the ceiling.

How Thurston kept himself on his feet is a mystery of science. His brains battered like rotten produce, he looked up through a haze of blood and double images. He coughed and a piece of himself flew out.

"I ain't gonna be gilled by do liddle girl," he said.

His mouth opened and a pain-drunk bellow came out. He hurled himself at Ruby. By sheer force of momentum, his fist slammed into her jaw.

Ruby froze.

Thurston barely kept himself from hitting the floor teeth-first. He grabbed a wall and dug into the padding with his claws, pulling himself upright.

Rubiella reached up and touched the place where he'd hit her. It hurt. It really, really hurt! She threw back her head and cried.

"WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!!!"

Thurston, doubled over and seconds from death, chuckled. "Dang! Izzat all it dakes?"

Without even looking, Ruby grabbed at the sound of his voice. Her paws sank deep into his chest, clutching at his skin like he had clutched at Karen's shirt.

Thurston did not have time for any last words.

Rubiella swung him like a hammer. He went halfway around the room before slamming skull-first into a wall. Behind it was a support beam.

Thurston's head was crushed directly into his ribcage.

Rubiella tossed the wet, red sack of meat into a corner and fell to her knees, still crying.


     ~~~


Karen had been huddled in a corner, watching, making herself as small as possible.

She walked over and put her arms around Ruby. She gave her friend a pat on the back. "Good girl, Ruby. You saved my life."

Still crying, the giant tigress hugged Karen back, gentle as a mouse.


*****


     -KAREN-

The quiet room had finally gone quiet. Holly dared to peek inside first, and was not surprised by what she saw. She felt many other things, but not surprised. Furious at Thurston, relieved that Karen was still alive, and heartbroken that poor Ruby had done such a thing. It was entirely justified of course, but who knew what this would do to her already fragile soul?

Holly approached the weeping tigress and hugged her too. "Good work, girl." She looked at Karen and saw how she'd been left with just half her clothing. "Did he... touch you?" she asked, her jaw trembling.

Karen shook her head. Her nose was bloody and her eyes were red, but her proud smile shined through. "Not where he wanted to."

Holly nodded, returning Karen's smile. "Excellent."

"Do you think you could run back to my room and grab me some new pants and undies?" Karen asked.

Holly stood and saluted. "Of course! Be right back." She was out the door in a second.

Brad looked in next, then Benjamin and Victor. Victor saw all the blood and turned away instantly, paws over his mouth, trying not to vomit.

Camilla glanced past the doorway and gasped. The bobcat felt her blood run cold. She pushed past the boys into the room and saw Rubiella with her arms soaked to the elbows in red.

"You monster!!" Camilla blurted.

Immediately, two strong paws grabbed the back of her shirt and turned her around. Keith stabbed a warning finger at her face, livid with rage. "NO ONE calls Ruby a monster! You apologize to her NOW!!"

Shaken so badly she could barely think, Camilla stuttered before answering. "S-she k-k-killed Mr. Caercase!"

"He was trying to rape Karen!" Brad yelled at her. "Open your eyes!!"

Camilla could barely see the raccoongirl behind Rubiella's bulk. Karen stepped out into the bobcat's view, letting her get a good, hard look.

"Oh my sweet Jesus..." Camilla gasped. "He was... Really? No. Oh my lord. Oh my lord." Her horror wasn't just from realization, but from guilt. She'd known that something about Mr. Caercase had rubbed her the wrong way ever since she'd first met him. She had seen the look in his eye when he was around the children, but she had dismissed it. She'd thought she was just being judgmental. Now she realized that she and all the rest of the staff who'd ignored the warning signs had helped this atrocity happen.

Rubiella was still sniffling.

Camilla's tone changed to one of solace. "You dear, sweet girl... You stuck up for your friend, didn't you? I am so sorry. So, so sorry. I didn't know..."

Ruby looked up, just a little. "S'okay," she mewed.

"Would you like to get cleaned up?" Camilla asked.

"Uh huh."

"Let's go then." She reached out and took Rubiella's paw in both of hers. The tigress got to her feet and they both left the quiet room. There were varied reactions from the crowd gathered outside. Ruby looked like she'd been splashed with a gallon of red paint. Camilla cast a stern look upon them all. "She's a hero," she simply said.

Ruby heard that and smiled a tiny bit as Camilla led her to the bathroom.

Karen stood unmoving in the quiet room. By now most of her friends had gathered around her, but they were just shadows on the edge of her vision. Her entire existence was only herself, and the bloated body in the corner.

Brad approached her cautiously. He had no idea how to even begin comforting her. "Karen?"

Like coming out of a hypnotist's trance, Karen snarled and became someone completely different. She ran over to Thurston's body and began kicking it as hard as she could. Again and again and again. She screamed with uncontrolled fury. She stomped his unresponsive flesh. She screamed in rage and sorrow and disappointment that she hadn't been able to kill him herself.

Her friends gathered around her. Victor even reentered the room, doing his best to keep his eyes averted from the carnage. Sherri was there too. Keith stayed by the door, watching the rest of the staff to make sure they didn't do anything stupid.

Karen punched and kicked and growled like a rabid beast until she'd simply had enough. She stopped abruptly and stood there, breathing heavily and staring at him.

Brad put a hand on her shoulder. "I don't blame you. I wish I could've gotten a few punches in too."

The anger drained from Karen's face. She rubbed her cheek on Brad's soft paw. "Thanks." She took a deep breath to calm herself. Then she hocked up a big one and spat it onto Thurston's back. The saliva sparkled in the light as it ran down the fabric and turned red.

"In your *face*, you kid-raping sonofabitch," she sneered.

Brad grinned, impressed. "Was that Tyler?"

Karen smiled just a little. "No, that one was me."

"I couldn't have said it better," Tyler added. He then spoke silently, only to Karen, "It was great watching you do that. He deserved it. He deserves worse."

"Thanks." Karen felt another tear in her eye, but this one came with a smile at knowing that her friends were there with her. Not just in this room, but emotionally as well. Karen was a little frightened of herself now. This ferocity was something alien. She hadn't thought it possible that something like this could have come out of her. Her natural inclination was to feel ashamed. Good little girls aren't supposed to stand up to grownups, much less rip their noses off. She fought this feeling off though. A small, crystalline clear voice in the back of her head was cheering for her, boundlessly proud that she'd stood up to her worst nightmare and kept him from taking that important part of her he'd wanted so badly. Not her flesh, but her submission.

"I got your pants," Holly shouted suddenly from the doorway. She was a bit out of breath, holding a pair of lavender jeans held out in front of her like a newsboy hawking papers. "You like these ones, right?"

Karen nodded and took them. "Yup. Good job, Holly. Thank you." Holly's gold nose ring made Karen think of a teensy little halo.

"Got your panties too," Holly said, and tossed the balled-up undergarment to her.

Karen caught them. Brad signalled the others to turn around and give Karen some privacy while she got dressed. She did so as fast as possible. She found her other sock and shoe and put them back on as well. Good as new.

"So... Um. We're kind of screwed now, aren't we?" Benjamin spoke up. "I mean, we just killed Dr. Beatrix's head goon. She's not going to be happy about that." The waver in his voice echoed embarrassingly loud in the little room.

Karen pulled her shoelace tight. "Then we have to escape now," she said simply.

"Now!?" Brad yelped. "We're not ready! We don't have any kind of plan or anything!"

Karen stood up straight and looked him in the eye. "Do we have a choice?"

He opened his mouth, but couldn't think of a damn thing to say back. She was right. It was literally now or never. It was terrifying to have it happen so heart-stoppingly out of the blue like this, but that didn't change things. Every life's worst moments hit when one is least prepared to deal with them.

Karen took another deep breath. She wiped her muzzle off on her arm. "We escape tonight," she told her troops. Her voice was clean steel. It dared anyone to disagree with her. "Thurston just tried to rape me because he knew we were going to have another meeting. That means they probably know everything about us. If we don't do it now, they'll either kill or brainwash us all. It has to be now. Are we agreed?"

"Rock on," Holly said, holding her fist up in salute.

"I'm with you," Keith added with a sharp soldier's nod.

"I'm in, obviously." Brad looked at Ben and Vic. "How about you guys?"

They nodded. "I don't wanna die," Benjamin said, meaning that he acknowledged that that would be the consequence of doing nothing.

"Me neither. I'll do my best," Victor pledged, though in his heart he felt about three seconds away from wetting himself.

"Sherri?" Brad shouted in a random direction.

She made her presence known. "Here," she said crisply. That was all that was needed to confirm she'd play her part in this.

"I'm with you. Although I sorta have to be no matter what," Tyler said from Karen's mouth. "'Course, I'd still be even if I *was* in my body," he added with a grin.

"I know," she told him. "Now first, we've gotta-"

"DON'T!" Keith suddenly screamed.

Everyone jumped out of their skins, their heads swivelling involuntarily towards the sound. Keith was out in the hallway, pointing angrily at someone, rooting them to the spot with his gaze.

The others crowded out to see. One of the volunteers, Zach, was trying to slink back to the nurses' station. He moved slowly backwards. He looked panicky, liable to do anything. He had not come into work today expecting a shitstorm of this magnitude. "You can't tell me what to do," he said, but the fear in his voice was thick as peanut butter.

Another volunteer nurse, a slender pony, was also freaking out. She was still standing in the same spot as when she'd first seen what was beyond the quiet room door. "We have to call the police! It's _murder_!!"

"It wasn't murder, it was necessary," Keith said out of the corner of his mouth, his eyes still locked on the cowardly marten. "And *you're* not calling anybody."

Zach 'hmmph'ed with contempt. He tried to fill his voice with bravado he didn't have. "And you're gonna stop me? I don't care how fucked-up in the head you are, kid. This is craziness. I'm calling Dr. Beatrix right now." He turned back towards the nurses' station.

"Don't," Keith said again. Quiet, but his tone was clear: last warning. He looked regretful, knowing what was about to happen.

Zach stopped, glaring hatefully at Keith.

All eyes were on the fox and the marten. The ward was silent.

In defiance, Zach moved towards the phones again.

Keith cursed the stupid bastard for making him have to do this. He'd hated and feared his power his whole life, and now this dumbass volunteer was forcing him to use it. Keith shut his eyes and clenched his teeth.

So be it.

From his outstretched paw, a plume of flame fifteen feet long erupted.

Zach screamed and jumped backwards, cracking his spine on the wall. The fire struck the nurse's station like a lightning bolt, blasting chunks of blackened plaster everywhere. A telephone flew up in the air and landed like a dead seagull three feet away.

"I told you not to!" Keith screamed, sounding wounded. "I fucking told you *not* to!!"

Eyes wide and unthinking, Zach crab-walked out of sight, as far away from the fire and the freak kid as possible.

The nurse's station had a crater the size of a bowling ball in it with a halo of scorch marks around. The fire licked at the rest of the desk. It found some paper and began to eat.

Tyler saw the fire and felt a stab of fear in his heart. Something about fire... He almost remembered. It was right on the tip of his- "Put that out! Somebody put that out right now!!" he screamed.

Completely on instinct, Keith jerked his hand back; a gesture like casting a fishing line. The fire responded immediately, literally leaping off the desk and blazing down the hall. It vanished back into Keith's finger just like if a vacuum cleaner had sucked it up. Keith stared down at his paw. The fur on the back of his neck stood up. 'HOW!?' he thought. He'd never even *imagined* he could do that...

Amazing as it was, it came too late. The smoke had already reached the ceiling.

An ear-splitting electronic pulse shattered the air, so loud it felt like an icepick.

The fire alarm.

From all around them, the patients and staff of King's Orchard heard doors sealing and deadbolts slamming home. On Ward F as well as everywhere else. As it had been wired to, the building obediently turned itself into a colossal oven in less than seven seconds.

"We are _fucked_," Tyler assessed.


*****


     -BRAD-

Brad feigned confidence. "No we're not. It just gets more challenging now."

The pony nurse snapped. "What. The. Christ. Just. HAPPENED!?" she shrieked.

Holly got up in her face like a bulldozer. "Shut up!!! You're stupid! You're useless! You have no idea what's going on and you're not gonna, so go find someplace quiet to sit and stay out of our goddam business, OKAY!?"

The nurse burst into tears and ran off.

Holly smirked. She turned back to her friends. "What's the plan, Karen?"

Karen bit her lip. "Um..." She tried hard to think but she couldn't get her mind off Thurston. She kept seeing Ruby slam him into the wall again and again. It was awful, but strangely invigorating. "I'm trying. Gimme a second."

Just then, an immense orange and white striped head poked out of the girls' bathroom. "Did som'pin happen?" Ruby asked.

Benjamin gave her a status report. "Keith shot a fireball at some douchebag who was trying to call Dr. Beatrix and now all the doors 'n stuff are locked and if we don't try to escape now we're all probably gonna die."

Ruby processed that. "Okay."

"Um, I've got an idea. You mind?" Brad said to Karen.

She looked intensely relieved. "Not at all! Please, go ahead; I totally can't think right now."

Brad seamlessly accepted the temporary mantle of leadership. Karen was shaken up, but not out of the fight. She just needed someone to take over for a bit until she was back up to full power. Brad looked around at Ruby. "You doin' okay?"

Ruby smiled and held up her paws, front and back. "All clean."

Brad smiled, but his expression was serious. "I mean, are you over ...what happened with Thurston?"

The tigress nodded somberly. "Uh huh. I had to. I'm not a bad girl. Karen was in t'ouble an' I had to."

Holly beamed at the tigress. "Exactly. You didn't do a damn thing wrong, Ruby. I'm proud of you."

Ruby was tickled pink at that.

Emerging beside her, Camilla smiled. All through washing Ruby's giant paws, she had talked soothingly in the girl's ear, apologizing several more times for calling her a monster and making sure she knew that was the farthest thing from what she was. Camilla walked over to the rest of the staff, telling them with just her expression to keep quiet and try to understand what was happening before taking any action.

"Mind giving me a lift?" Brad asked Ruby. She nodded. She lumbered over and easily lifted Brad up to sit on her shoulder. "Wow, you make a great pedestal!" he said.

Ruby didn't know what that meant, but appreciated the compliment anyway.

Once everyone could see him, Brad cleared his throat. By now all of Ward F was crowded in the hallway. Having to bellow a little over the fire alarm, Brad addressed them. "Okay, I've got a plan. It's real simple. I'm gonna take Karen down to Ward Zero to put Tyler back in his body. Holly, you take the others and go upstairs. Get Beatrix. Don't kill her though; that's my job."

"Awww!" Holly pouted.

Brad compromised. "Okay, well, after we meet back up here, we'll *all* kill her. Sound good?"

A chorus of agreement from the art room rebels.

Brad sat up straighter, looking out onto the unknown faces of the other kids. "Everyone else, you all just get downstairs! Everyone has to get out as soon as possible. Okay?"

Nods and mutters from the crowd. Brad was not about to tell them that the whole building was a giant firetrap. He was not about to tell them about the canisters Tyler had seen in Ward Zero. The last thing he wanted was a stampede of panicked, mentally-ill kids all trampling each other in the stairwells.

"I'll make sure everyone gets out safely," Camilla said. She conveyed with her body language that she accepted that things were happening she was completely unprepared to deal with. It was best to simply agree now and hope for an answer later.

"Hey, Brad," Tyler piped up, "I should tell you that Beatrix had the alarms re-wired. Normally there'd be a signal sent out to the fire department and the cops, but...." He didn't have to say more.

"Shit," said Brad. He'd hoped he could count on the firemen breaking down the doors in the lobby once everyone was downstairs. That would have seemed obvious in a *normal* disaster. But of course Dr. Beatrix's whole plan for this place was for them to all die by fire long before any help could arrive. Thankfully the place wasn't burning now. Though Brad kinda suspected it would be before the night was over.

"Someone try the phones," he called out. He had a bad feeling that he already knew what the result would be.

A porcupine girl was closest. She lifted up the receiver on one of the payphones. Then the next, then the third one. She shook her head. "They're all dead. There's no dial tone."

Brad snarled. "Well that's not very goddam surprising... Anyone got any ideas on how we could call for help?" There were a lot of mumbles, but nothing helpful.

Then, from out of the crowd, a trembling wing raised.


*****


     -VERONICA-

"Veronica?" Holly said disbelievingly. Her bat friend, who had shut off like a lightbulb when Holly'd asked her if she could do anything special? SHE was volunteering?

The diminutive brown-furred bat looked both embarrassed and terrified to her core. "I think, maybe..."

"I can't hear you over the fucking fire alarms!" Brad said, making it clear it was their fault, not hers. He could see she was almost vibrating from dread.

"I think I can call for help!" Veronica shouted before she could stop herself. From the look on her face, it was like she'd just hollered a swear word in church.

Holly came close to her and gave her a gentle smile. "How?"

Veronica couldn't bring herself to say it out loud. She reached up and simply tapped her forehead.

"Why didn't you tell me about this before?"

The young bat's brown eyes began to gather tears. "I did it before when I was little. My mommy and daddy said I was bad. They said it was the devil in me. They said I shouldn't ever do it again or God would cast me out."

Holly's heart broke. "They're wrong," she said, firmly and with love. "We've all got something like you do here. We're _all_ like that. There's _nothing_ bad or unnatural about it. It's something to be proud of no matter what any damn grownups say. If you can save us, you'll be a hero."

The little bat nodded solemnly. If it wasn't for her own doubts about Mommy and Daddy's cruel behavior, she never would have had the courage to speak up. Holly was helping by saying aloud almost everything she couldn't allow herself to believe from her own heart. "I'll try." Her voice was grim. She looked as though she were about to attend her own funeral. "Stand back. It might hurt if you're too close."

"STAND BACK!!!" Holly roared at everyone around her.

Needless to say, they obeyed.

Standing there exposed, hot tears on her fur, Veronica prepared to break the unbreakable vow she'd made to herself. She had been made to feel like she was evil for the one time she'd tried to use her ability to its full potential.

When she was small, she had realized she could make people hear her without having to speak. She could not read minds, but she could speak into them.

She tensed herself, taking in a deep breath. She scrunched up her eyes and clenched her wings.

She thought.



     X         X     XXXXX     X                XXXXX      X    X    X
     X         X     X                 X                X        X      X    X    X
     XXXXX     XXXX         X                XXXXX      X    X    X
     X         X     X                 X                X
     X         X     XXXXX     XXXXX     X                 X    X    X



The sound was so loud it nearly deafened half the hospital. Yet no one had actually *heard* it, at least not with their ears. Veronica had sent out a mindwave of incalculable power and magnitude. As it spread out like ripples in water, dozens, then hundreds of people in the surrounding area stopped what they were doing and froze, staring up at the sky. People dropped casseroles. They dropped telephone receivers. One woman nearly dropped her baby. For the instant that it lasted, every single furson in the entire city and beyond was still.

All of them knew where the voice had come from. They simply knew.

"I hope that worked," Veronica said shyly.

"I think people who haven't even been *born* yet heard that!" Brad said.

"Ow," agreed Ruby.

Holly engulfed her bat friend in a hug. "We're gonna get _shitloads_ of people coming to find out what the hell that was! Way to go, Veronica!"

The little bat did not smile, but she did allow a small bit of relief to creep into her soul. In that moment, with Holly's hug, she began the long road to finally accepting that she was not a monster.


*****


     -GINNY-

Still perched on Ruby's shoulder, Brad caught the crowd's attention again. "So, okay, the cops are coming. That's good. The more people that show up the better. Now is everyone ready to get the hell out of here?"

Various shouts of 'Yeah!' from the crowd.

"But how are we going to get out of *here*?" Benjamin asked, pointing to the airlock doors.

"I opened them before..." Sherri said. She ran over to the nurse's station. Most of the crowd followed her.

Fortunately, the button that opened them was far away from where Keith's fireblast had hit. (Zach was still out of sight.) Sherri pressed the button. The door gave a grunt but didn't move. She pushed it again. She slammed her fist down on it. Nothing. "Aw shit," she said with a pout.

Brad hopped down off Rubiella's shoulder. "You think maybe you could...?" he asked her. He hated to. The poor girl had been through enough tonight, but who else had a chance at getting those thick metal doors open?

"Let me try!" a sprightly voice rang out.

A little kangaroo girl waded through the crowd. Looks of puzzlement followed. Karen recognized her as the one who'd told her before that she didn't like raccoons because they were not, in fact, made of chocolate. No one on Ward F thought this kid was even aware what week it was.

The young roo looked up at the big white door, head cocked to the side, hands on her hips. "Uh huh," she assessed.

She spat on her hands and then pressed her palms flat to the metal.

No one was prepared for what happened next.

While the kangaroo girl smiled and sang a happy tune, thick, oily smoke began to seep out from between her fingers and around her paws. Something dark began to creep out from where she touched the door. An awful smell spread. The white paint began to curdle, turn green and fall to the floor in patches of melted goo. A horrible hissing sound came from where the door was literally rotting away.

The dark patch spread quickly. Brown and green, pitted and bubbling like something toxic. The other children covered their noses from the stench. The little roo still sang to herself. She was having fun. "Daddy says I shouldn't do this," she said over her shoulder with a naughty grin. "But Daddy's not heee-ere!"

Festering like swamp muck, what had once been the door out of Ward F finally caved in and fell in on itself. The metal had been reduced to a thick, chunky gunk that flowed outward, eating the carpet and discoloring the tile inside the airlock.

"All done!" the roo girl sang out. She did a pirouette.

Slack-jawed, Tyler used Karen's hands to start applauding. "That was fuckinincredible!!!"

Soon everyone was applauding. The roo girl giggled and spread her arms like an actress receiving roses flung from a cheering audience. In her mind, she was queen of the universe.

Camilla came forward and scooped the girl up in her arms. "Ginny, do you think you can do that to the other door?" she asked, pointing to the one at the end of the airlock.

Ginny nodded fervently. No problemo.

"Would you like to help me get *all* the doors open so we can help everyone get out of here?" She spoke slowly and over-enunciated her words. She knew that sometimes this poor girl was tuned to a different channel than the rest of the world.

"Spoon!" Ginny shouted, and then giggled. "That means yes!"

"Well okay then, Sweetheart! Let's get to it!" Camilla set the girl down and gave her a pat on the head. Ginny ran to the remaining door and started happily rotting it away too.

Knowing that this was it, that they were all getting the hell out of King's Orchard tonight, many of the children darted back to their rooms to grab important possessions before they departed. Photos, money, jewelry, clothes, books, stuffed animals. Some of them who didn't give a rat's ass what they left behind stayed to watch Ginny do her door trick again.

Brad gestured for the rest of his friends to join him. "Karen and I are gonna get down there, get Tyler and come right back up. If anyone tries to fuck with you guys while you're getting Beatrix, hurt them."

The others nodded. "What happens after?" Victor asked.

"We meet back here, in the stairwell outside. Then... Then I guess we just try to mix with everyone else once we're outside and hope there's enough confusion that we can get away."

Tyler shrugged Karen's shoulders. "Not the best plan ever, but I can't think of anything better."

"What if we *have* to kill Beatrix?" Holly asked, reasonably enough.

Brad hoped it wouldn't come to that. He knew it was cold-blooded of him, but he wanted to be there when she bought it. He wanted to see that pink-eyed bitch's last moments with his own eyes so he'd always remember the moment, and know that she could _never_ hurt anyone else again. "If you have to, you have to," he said. "But make sure you leave something for me to spit on."

Keith chuckled darkly at that.

"Everyone ready?" Brad asked. He put his arm out in front of him.

All seven of them touched his paw. Eight, if you count Tyler.

"Ready to kick ass, mon capitaine," Holly said.

"We can do this," Karen told them all, her voice as strong and confident as ever. She was getting her second wind.

"Alright then. See you guys later." Brad nodded to the others and took Karen's paw. "Let's go."

Karen watched as Holly led Keith, Benjamin, Victor, Sherri and Ruby towards the airlock. They were swallowed up with the rest of the kids standing there waiting for Ginny to finish up. The thought crossed Karen's mind that she might not see any of them ever again. She stomped on this thought like a bug. 'I will. Everything will turn out okay,' she assured herself in her calmest voice.

"Where are we going?" she asked Brad. He was leading her away from the stairs, seemingly back to the art room.

"I know a shortcut to Ward Zero. I went there last night."

She stared at him, stunned by this new information. He told her as quickly as he could about Monsoon, the beds, and Tyler.

They were at the door to the stairwell. It was locked again. Brad steeled himself as he stared at the crack between the door and the frame. "Hold my hand tight," he told Karen.

"Why?"

He flattened his hand out as much as he could. He clenched his teeth. "Because this is really, *really* gonna hurt..."


*****


     -ALF-

Miles away, Alf the ex-cook was just taking a bowl of popcorn out of the microwave when a single desperate word rang through his skull.

   H E L P !!!

The plastic bowl hit the kitchen floor and bounced under the table. Popcorn went everywhere.

Alf sank instantly to the floor, his paws grasping at his ears like bicycle handles. His heart was thumping. It was a girl's voice, but it wasn't Karen's. He didn't know who it belonged to. But he did know where it had come from.

Back there.

Alf had been a nervous wreck since yesterday. He had stayed in his apartment with all the shades drawn, afraid to stay put, but even more afraid to leave. The fear was like a lead vest he couldn't pry off. Dr. Beatrix *owned* him with those pictures. She could sic the cops on him at any second if she chose. Alf wanted to just buy a plane ticket and fly to the other side of the Earth, but he didn't know if that would put up a big red 'I AM GUILTY' flag if that horrible woman told the fuzz.

He hadn't slept. He hadn't eaten. He'd puked though. This popcorn would have been the first meal he'd had in over twenty-four hours.

He picked up a handful of kernels off the linoleum and ate them.

He didn't know what to do. That voice was irresistible. Someone in that hellish place was in trouble. He didn't know that all the children at King's Orchard possessed special abilities, but he had suspicions about some of them. It wasn't hard for him to accept the voice for what it was; a telepathic cry for rescue.

'If I go back there though... My life is over.'

The images on the photos flashed in his mind. Images he wished he could scour away, scrawl over with a permanent marker, carve out with a knife. His mind had sent him impure thoughts before. Many times. But even at their worst, his own thoughts were *nothing* like what was on those photos. Those photos were images of an ultimate evil, something nothing else could ever compare to.

If he went back there, Alf knew Dr. Beatrix would hand those photos to the police and say they were his. He would have no way to claim otherwise. The police would take him to jail. They would probably beat him with their nightsticks, or billy clubs or batons or whatever they called them. He would go on trial. The prosecutor would shove those photos in his face. He would have to look at them over and over and over. He would be convicted; there was no doubt in his mind. He would be locked away for the rest of his life. And he'd heard about what they did in prison to people who hurt kids. He knew he would be raped endlessly, and probably killed. Strangled or stabbed.

Sitting on the floor of the kitchen of his apartment, Alf very nearly broke down.

But then he thought about Karen.

Karen, covered in mashed potatoes. Karen, giving him a hug.

Karen, trusting him.

He stood up. "You selfish fuck," he said out loud. "If you don't go help them, your life will be worse than _anything_ that bitch could ever do to you because you'll have to live knowing that you let those kids suffer to save your own worthless tail."

Grabbing his jacket, the blue-haired fox strode out the door before he could stop himself.

He never saw his apartment again.


*****


     -MONSOON-

T'halu had fallen asleep early. He had drank a few beers to try and forget what he had seen with Brad in the dungeon below the hospital. And then...

     HELP!!!

The mountain's head snapped up.

He didn't need to think. The keys to his SUV were in his hand before he even realized what he was doing. He knew he shouldn't drive when he was still tipsy, but certain things were more important than following traffic laws.

Things like regaining your honor.


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