

Dangerous Lunatics
by Alex Reynard


          "Who you tryin' to get crazy with, ese? Donchu know I'm loco?"
                    -Cypress Hill, "Insane In The Brain"


*****


BOOK FOUR:
  BAD FRIDAY


     -KAREN-

Jimmy took a long, deep puff.

The black wolf plucked the thin white tube from his mouth like a dandelion and regarded it in the harsh yellow shine of the streetlight. His raven's-feather fur shimmered in places, along with his bloodshot eyes. It was chillier than normal tonight. Little tired Karen was leaning up against him as they huddled on the storefront steps. Her cheek rubbed up against his warm, scuffed leather sleeve. They had been sitting like that for hours.

"You know, Karen," Jimmy said out of the blue, quiet and contemplative, "I have two great wishes."

The young raccoon blinked. She was pretty much all talked out by now. But what else was there for them to do until the morning sun rose in her world? "What's that?"

"One; that in Hell they let you smoke as much as you want." Another puff. "And two; that in Hell they force you to quit."

She looked up, the paradox clearly confusing her.

He smiled weakly. "I don't know what I want outta these damn little things anymore. I'm bored to tears with smokin' 'em, but at the same time, I sorta doubt I can exist without havin' one in my mouth."

"You don't mean that for real do you?" she asked, a bit blurry.

He chuckled. "Naw. Just a metaphor. But hell, I died in these clothes, with this pack of cigarettes in my pocket, and you can tell my appearance's never changed a bit in all that time. Right down to these little suckers..." He reached up to scratch at his ever-fresh bullet wounds.

"You shoulda seen all the times I tried to get rid of these," he told her, giving his pack a jiggle. "For a while there I just about went nuts. I'd throw 'em off bridges, down sewer grates, into porta-potties... Then the second I stopped paying attention to my empty pocket, *bam*, there they were again. Same thing with my clothes. I think the longest I was ever able to run around naked was about thirty seconds. Then something distracted me and my clothes just _materialized_ on me before I had time to blink! Total pain in the ass, let me tell you."

He took a lengthy drag. "This place sucks, Karen. Promise me you'll try to make it to either Heaven or Hell when you die. Heaven's gotta be better. And I can't imagine they'd have anything in Hell worse than boredom like this."

She nodded solemnly. "I'll try. But why are you still here then? You already got your message to me." It was clear she didn't like the idea of him staying here and being miserable on her account.

He looked shocked that she'd even ask such a thing. "Christ, Karen! Why do you think!? It's not enough for me to just say, 'Oh, hey, your life's in danger,' then run off and split! I've waited too long for this! You can bet your ass I'm staying right here until this is all over with. I'd need to know that you and everyone else in there is safe before I could *ever* let myself move on."

Understanding now, she smiled at his bravery and gave him a small hug. His leather jacket crinkled and creaked.

He gave her two soft pats on the back of her head with his free paw. This talk of moving on reminded him of something. "Oh yeah... You asked me where all those people were who gave you messages the other night?"

Karen nodded.

He grinned. "I have no idea. But they're not here anymore."

"You mean they got to go to Heaven?" she asked joyfully.

"Hopefully. I saw the whole bunch of them walk off in the direction of the Asylum after you woke up. I assume they were all right there in the room with you when you told your friends all the stuff they wanted you to say."

Karen felt energized at the thought. It was a little creepy to think the art room might have been full of ghosts the other day, but also heartwarming to think that they had gotten to see their loved ones' reactions to her revelations. She hoped the ghost-people were all happy now, wherever they were.

Always-Jimmy-Never-James rubbed the back of his head. "And... uh, I also looked into that other thing you asked me about."

"What other thing?"

He'd need a really long drag for this one. "In Ward Zero," he said with a cough. "There's a wolf girl down there. Same age as you. And she looks like she hasn't been there for very long..."

Karen remembered now. She closed her eyes, pained, but not surprised. She could almost see the other girl, still as death in a hospital bed. Probably being fed through a tube.

Her mind's eye saw Thurston Caercase. At that moment, if she could have killed him with a thought...

"That bastard," she whimpered.

The black wolf put his arm around her and held her gently. He flicked his cigarette aside, watching it spark as it bounced on the sidewalk. He didn't have to ask who she'd been referring to.

After a while, he pointed to the horizon. "Hey, look. The sun's coming up."

Karen raised her head but couldn't see any change from the eternal blue twilight that had always surrounded them here. "What... I don't..."

He nodded. "I keep forgetting. You're a newbie. Remember, the Inbetween is just sort of a dark hologram overlapping your world. Like, if God threw a big black tarp over everything and told all us deaddies we could play around on it as long as we wanted, but we'd never be able to touch anything of our old life again so long as we chose to stay."

Karen nodded, understanding at least most of that.

"If you stay here long enough, you realize the tarp isn't 100% opaque. Sometimes you can see through it a little bit. Like right now, I know the sun's starting to rise. It's not even a light place against the darkness. More like..." He fumbled a bit, trying to find a way to express how he could sense something without using any of his five normal senses. "I guess it's like how sometimes if someone holds something up behind a sheet, you can see a little shadow of it, or a bulge. If you know what it's supposed to be anyway, you can be pretty sure what's there."

"I think I get it now. I remember when I took a nap in the afternoon, the night felt fake somehow."

"Right!" he said, rather amazed she'd picked up on that. It was normally so subtle he didn't even notice it himself most of the time. "Like putting some black cardboard over a really bright lightbulb. A little light almost always seeps through."

"Wow, this is pretty interesting," Karen said. "I'm kinda curious now how this world of yours-


     ~~~


-works?" she finished, suddenly very confused.

Holly was shaking her arm and smiling proudly. "You slept right through breakfast call!"

Still fuzzy from being brought out of sleep so suddenly, Karen managed to sit up. Then she yawned so forcefully Holly could've looked down her throat all the way to her tummy.

"Had a good night's sleep?" the carrot-topped squirrel asked. (Her candy-apple dye had begun to fade to more of a bright copper shade)

"I guess I did," Karen said. "Wow, I haven't woke up scared in days now!" she marvelled. Holly looked genuinely proud of her.

"You know..." Karen said, as if coming to the most astonishing revelation of all time, "waking up after a long night's sleep feels *good*!"

Holly laughed. "I'll bet some breakfast will too. C'mon, Karen. Let's go see how Brad's phone call worked out."

"Oh, yeah!" she remembered. Soon she was up and wide awake, and getting ready for a brand new day.


*****


     -JIMMY-

Jimmy cried out sharply and nearly fell off the stairs, startled by the sudden disappearance of the little girl in his arms. He righted himself in time and stood up. "Damn. That's annoying as hell."

One second he'd been talking to his new little revolutionary-in-training, the next he had an armful of empty air. Like someone had flipped a switch on her.

He reached in his jacket pocket for his trusty pack o' cancer. The butt he'd tossed away was right there, good as new again. He plucked out a different one for variety's sake. After smoking these same seven little beauties over and over again for the past decade, he'd gotten to the point where he'd actually memorized the exact flavor of each of them. This time he picked out exotic number six, lit it, and gave it a good suck.

He looked off through the counterfeit twilight towards the asylum.

He had a shitty feeling about today.

Thinking that Karen might need him, he started off walking. He didn't think he'd be any kind of useful to her, but at least he could watch things as they unfolded, and maybe be of some help in the aftermath.

He stopped suddenly.

"What the hell...?"

The wind whistled past his still form.

Why had he just assumed that there would *be* an aftermath?

Always-Jimmy-Never-James began to run.


*****


     -CLIFFORD-

To say that Clifford Markman wasn't the smartest rat in the world would be true.

To say he wasn't the dumbest either would also be true.

He was neither a saint nor a monster. Neither industrious nor lethargic. Neither tall nor short, neither fat nor skinny, neither this nor that. Aside from his nose, which was just about the only immediately noticeable thing about him, he was one of the most thoroughly neutral fursons in all existence. Hell, he didn't even vote.

But he was good for one thing though, and that was doing his job. He neither made friends nor enemies; he just herded the kids to and fro. He kept them from causing property damage or doing anything nasty to each other, collected his paycheck at the end of the week, then bought cigarettes. Sometimes he watched TV too.

While the inside of his head was largely a flat, dull void, he was nonetheless possessed of a keen eye for observation. He could spot some small abnormality and, nine times out of ten, defuse it quietly before it became anything big enough to warrant any strenuous activity.

Right now, as his sharp little eyes carefully scanned the line of waiting breakfasters, he noticed two of the new arrivals seemingly up to something. The raccoon girl practically bounced over to the tabby boy, then started in right away to chatting intensely about something.

Then he saw a tiny movement. He never would have caught it if he hadn't been looking in their direction anyway, and if they had taken him more seriously than they did.

'Oh, that's just Clifford. Don't mind him'. He'd heard more variations on that sentence than trees have leaves. The attitude was that he was simply so damn dull that people could go about whatever scandalous behavior they wanted with him around and he'd never bother them about it. That may have been partially true, but he chose to turn this attitude into an asset rather than an insult. The more the people around him underestimated him, the more careless they got and the more secrets they let slip, never knowing how attuned his sight and hearing were, and how *good* he'd gotten over the years at sweeping up all the little details they left behind.

Like now, for instance. The boy had handed the girl something small and with a little shine to it. Something that was obviously contraband just from their body language.

Clifford did not have time to investigate any further. After all, the kids had to get downstairs and get fed as soon as the clock struck seven thirty. But still, he kept his eyes open, on the girl especially. Looking at her, he chuckled.

She didn't even care he was there...


     ~~~


"So how'd it go?" Karen asked excitedly.

"Communication received," Brad replied.


     ~~~


Once downstairs, Clifford stood by the door, holding it open for everyone. The little furballs poured in sluggishly. But later, when they were full of food and ready to go back upstairs, they'd be bouncing off the damn walls. Clifford was a man who very firmly believed that some scientist ought to be able to come up with a remote control for children one of these days. The volume button alone would be a godsend.

There was the raccoon girl again, he noticed. She just passed him, getting in line B behind her fat roommate and the tabby boy.

The fox behind the sneeze shields said hello to them. A surprisingly friendly hello.

They chatted for a few seconds, with the cat boy adding words too, and then Clifford's keen eyes spotted something else.

When the raccoon handed her tray to the fox, she held the small, shiny thing in her paw. When she took back her food, it was gone.

Interesting.

Clifford rubbed his index finger across his lips in a thoughtful manner. Patients passing prohibited items to each other was an everyday occurrence. Sometimes just harmless stuff, but sometimes drugs and even weapons. He had seen a lot in his years that made him a little frightened of how ruthless kids were becoming these days. But to sneak something to another patient, and then sneak it to a *staff member*? That didn't add up.

As the children all filled their trays with foodlike substances and sat down to eat and socialize, Clifford kept 50% of his attention focused on the blue-haired fox at all times. He thought he was very good at paying close attention to someone while looking outwardly like he couldn't possibly have been more bored. He'd even practiced in the mirror.

Finally, his suspicions paid off. The fox walked into the kitchen, reached in his pocket...

...and pulled out a cell phone.

Jackpot.

Clifford grinned, knowing that Dr. Beatrix would be very pleased when he passed this information along to her later.


*****


     -BRAD-

"And what does this one look like?"

Dr. Jones held up a card.

Brad stared intently at the formless black mass. Then his grin lit up. "Hey! It's the beast with two backs!"

The otter doctor looked a bit flustered at that. He flipped the card around and squinted at it himself. He wasn't naive about how much little boys tended to know about the birds and the bees these days, but still, there were twenty one Rorschach cards in the pack and this definitely wasn't one of the 'sex' ones. (Those would be numbers 16 and 20.)

He held the card out to the young tomcat again. "Um, could you please try and point out how exactly you see that?"

"Sure." Brad held the card up for him. "See, the two big blobs kinda look like pigs or mammoths or something, and here's the feet in the middle, and they're joined at the nose. Like Siamese twins."

Dr. Jones rolled his eyes in comprehension. A *literal* beast with two backs. "Ahhh. I see now."

Brad got a sly look in his eyes. "Though I do know what that usually means..." he slipped in nonchalantly.

"Oh? Do you really?" Dr. Jones asked, interlocking his fingers together on the desk.

Brad nodded. "Sex," he whispered, as if passing on nuclear launch codes.

"And just how much do you know about sex, Brad?"

Brad shrugged. "Not much really. Just the stuff they show on TV. And even *I* know they probably exaggerate the hell out of it."

"Very good," Dr. Jones nodded.

"I saw a boob in a movie once," he remembered.

"And how did it make you feel?"

Brad didn't really know how to answer that. "Well, it was this real intense, grownup crime movie I begged my mom to let me see, even though it was rated R. The boob was on this girl they found in a dumpster, so it was kind of conflicting. Half of me's like 'It's a boob! Holy shit!', and the other half's like 'Eeeuuhh! She's freakin' dead!'"

"But you understood, of course, that it was just an actress in makeup, correct?" he asked gently.

"Actually, it might have been a prop. I watch a lot of 'behind the scenes' kinda special effects shows. But I know what you mean. I knew it was fake. I don't think my mom woulda even let me see the flick otherwise. Believe me, I think that if you see someone beating the shit out of someone else in a movie and then you go home and try it yourself, you're a colossal idiot."

Dr. Jones chuckled. "Excellent, Mr. Maplewood! You can feel proud to count yourself among the ranks of us that can distinguish between fantasy and reality. We are a small bunch, and seemingly growing smaller every day."

He held up another card. "Now, tell me what you see in this one..."


     ~~~


After breakfast, Brad had spent quite a while in the TV room hanging around the ping pong tables with Tyler and Keith. They had taught him how to play euchre using a battered drug store deck with badly painted daffodils on the back, and now, just a few hours later, he had forgotten absolutely everything they'd told him.

Trying to be friends with Keith was a lot like attempting communication with a thawed-out caveman. The grim young fox simply had no reference points for being nice to people. Though he really was doing his best to try. So you kinda had to just shrug it off and smile when he did things like calling you a fucktard, or suddenly punching you as hard as he could in the shoulder.

He and Tyler seemed an especially bizarre matchup. Keith did not have much tolerance for silly shit, and that was practically what Tyler's DNA was made of. Still, Tyler had more sense than appearances belied and made an admirable effort to keep his jokes in the realm of the dark and the subtle. Simply not telling jokes was as absurd an idea to him as not breathing. But he thought after a little while he'd gotten a 'feel' for Keith's sense of humor. It was a surprisingly smart one too. The fox smiled tolerantly at the standard dirty jokes that usually worked on kids like him, but actually laughed a few times at some of Tyler's slyer, more cerebral observations. The mouse appreciated that. A lot of people thought he could ONLY do goofy stuff, but he did have a sharper side to his humor that he felt he didn't get to showcase nearly enough.

After throwing cards around for a while, Brad got up the balls to come out and ask Keith what being gay was like. Not surprisingly, the fox's initial reaction was hostile. He sneered back, "What, you think it's got symptoms, like a disease?" Brad quickly did his best to reassure him that he was only just curious. He'd never met a gay furson before (that he knew of, anyway), and considering how it was always the stupidest kids in school who called everything they disliked 'gay', he'd made an educated guess that maybe that meant it really wasn't such a bad thing after all. Keith, knowing exactly what Brad was talking about, chuckled a little.

Keeping his head down, the fox hesitantly told Brad and Tyler what it was like for him to hold such a monumental secret inside. He said it felt like having a restless lizard caged up in his stomach. A writhing, churning truth he was afraid of all the time. He said sometimes it felt like he was walking around wearing a flimsy paper costume of someone normal. Everywhere he went, whenever anyone would glance at him, there'd be tiny, needle-sharp doubts as to whether they could see past his disguise. Whether they knew what he was inside and were laughing at him for it. Keith's only defense was to hide it deeper and deeper within him. His anger was very often camouflage for it.

His parents didn't even know. He'd never told anyone until now, apart from his late Uncle Randall. That was yet another reason why the man's death had hit him so hard. It was not just a best friend, but a confidante, that the world had so cruelly snatched away from him.

On the other hand, while he didn't have much to compare it to, Keith said he thought being gay probably felt exactly the same as being straight. It was just that straight people didn't have to worry about being beat up, mocked, thrown in jail and violently hated just for choosing not to ignore their souls' true desires.

Brad and Tyler were a little stunned, having never thought of it that way before. Brad admitted he couldn't imagine what it'd be like to live in a world where everyone else was gay and they all hated him for liking girls. "That... That's just crazy," he muttered.

"How do you think I feel about *this* world?" Keith shot back calmly.

Brad nodded, sobered.

Then Tyler, who had been quiet for a surprisingly long time, suddenly blurted out that he'd had homo feelings before. He looked as if some otherworldly force had just suddenly shoved the words out from inside of him. Keith didn't care much for the word 'homo', but kept quiet, wanting to hear if Tyler would elaborate.

Tyler eventually did. He said that, while he couldn't really see himself ever going out with a guy on a date, he did sometimes think that some of his classmates, or handsome dudes in magazines, were a little sexy. Brad gave him an accepting smile, not really surprised that someone like Tyler would be open to considering other options. Keith actually patted the mouse on the arm, and Tyler did not mind. Keith said there was such a thing as being bisexual and that that was okay as well. Tyler nodded. He knew the word already. But, he replied, like Keith had said about the teasing and hating, he didn't feel ashamed of how he felt sometimes; he was just afraid of how others around him would react if they knew. Keith gave him a nod of understanding.

The conversation seemed to fade out a bit then, until Tyler piped up, "Keith, can you do that fire thing again?"

The fox winced. He really didn't want to. That was another part of why his parents had sent him here. His ability didn't seem tied to his anger, so thankfully for him and the rest of the world it didn't get out of control when his emotions did. But that wasn't to say it never DID get out of control. His parents had never really let themselves notice just how many little blazes had sprung up over the house throughout the years. But they did know Keith had been sent home from school on four separate occasions for being 'uncooperative' about other small fires that had seemingly appeared from nowhere when he was nearby. His teachers couldn't actually prove he had been the cause, but they could sure as hell harass him until he confessed. Which he _never_ did.

Tyler and Brad listened to all this and nodded, saying it wasn't a big deal anyway. Brad even stretched out his index finger, tied it in a knot, and gave the 'OK' sign, which made the other two chortle.

A contemplative look came to the young fox's face, then he came to an abrupt 'oh, why not?' decision. He reached out a single claw to the surface of the tabletop, concentrated several hundred degrees of pure heat into the very tip, and made himself into the world's most efficient wood-burning kit.

Brad watched the tiny wisps of smoke ascend heavenward as Keith worked. He could tell the fox's concentration was diamond-hard, and that whatever he was doing took a lot of energy to control so precisely.

Then Keith relaxed and shook his paw, letting the heat drift away to wherever it went when he didn't need it anymore. He smiled and gestured to his handiwork.

Etched perfectly into the surface of the ping pong table, now and forevermore, were three intricate cursive initials: K, T and B.

Tyler and Brad thought it was cool as hell.

Keith felt a glowing sun of pride in his heart. He was struck in the moment by how truly extraordinary it was. Not that he'd played around a little bit with some fire, but that he was actually making *friends*. And they weren't giving up on him. They were listening, and trying to accept his brusque, self-destructive personality. And he was finding himself accepting their own particular quirks as well.

Damn, it was almost a miracle...


     ~~~


The Rorschach test was over now. Brad had seen, among other things, a duck, a melting ice cream cone, a convertible, two samurais, a wolf head, a bunch of octopuses and, lastly, a giant blue crab using the toilet.

They'd gone on to another test now. In this one, Dr. Jones held up a different series of cards and said that in each one there was something missing, and that Brad had to guess what it was. It seemed almost insultingly easy at first; a circle with a break in it, a guy without an arm, a chicken without a beak, etc.. But then the cards started getting sneakier and Brad was finding it progressively harder to spot the missing element. Like a drawing of three people facing him and the one on the left was wearing glasses. It had taken Brad a full minute to realize the guy's lenses were just hanging there, not connected to a frame. When he finally saw it, he felt a mixture of success in finally getting it and foolishness for not seeing what seemed so obvious now.

Doctor Jones held up the last card, the one that finally stumped a good percentage of those who took the test. It was a drawing of a small farmyard in winter, with a barn, a tractor, a woodpile, a fence, and snow falling everywhere. He watched Brad practically lunge at the picture, his eyes blazing with focus.

It probably would've shocked Brad to know that Doctor Jones was administering these tests without any particular reason behind them. The pudgy otter had simply gleaned from the boy's personality that he might enjoy little challenges like these. And while these were all certified psychiatric tests, they measured a wide variety of things about a furson and would give no concrete result when taken all in a jumble like this.

Still, Dr. Jones had been using them for years and knew them inside and out. He knew what the real purposes behind all of them were. And as he let Brad peruse each one, they all basically told him what he'd intuited anyway; that the boy was reckless and imaginative, but surprisingly smart for his age, even if he didn't seem to realize that about himself.

Brad scrutinized the farmyard drawing with his entire brain. He could almost _feel_ it pulsing within his skull. He knew this was the last card, which meant it was also the toughest. And dammit, he just couldn't see anything wrong with this picture! Everything looked perfectly normal and in place. Just from the sheer simplicity of it, he knew it couldn't be anything like 'a farmer' or 'some cows', because those and a hundred other things _could_ be missing. But this test was about what _was_ missing. So that meant that there was one specific thing here that should definitely be in existence, but wasn't.

Dr. Jones could see how much the boy was straining to figure this one out. Years ago when it was still new to him, he himself had spent almost fifteen minutes on it before shamefully peeking at the solution.

Brad knew the answer was right in front of him, probably so obvious it'd make him want to go jump off a cliff when Dr. Jones finally told him. But he Just Couldn't Figure It Out. He closed his eyes and slumped back in the chair, disgusted with himself.

"Are you giving up?" Dr. Jones asked sadly. He *knew* the boy could do this!

"I don't want to, but I guess so. I'm just not seeing it."

Shaking his head, the otter started to put the cards away. "Well, don't feel too bad about it. Fourteen out of fifteen is a remarkable score, especially for a boy your age."

Brad nodded grimly. It didn't matter if he'd gotten a 'good' score, he wanted the best. Because he wanted to know in his heart that he could. He knew that damn drawing of the snowy farmyard would be haunting his thoughts all day.

Wait.

Snowy farmyard.

Snowy.

SNOW!

"Lemme see that damn picture again!!!" Brad exploded.

Dr. Jones grinned. He recognized that 'eureka' moment from having seen it many, many times before. He held up card number fifteen.

Brad looked at it and grinned like he'd just won the lottery. "The SNOW!! It wasn't a specific *thing* that was missing, it was *part* of a thing! See, there's snow on the roof, snow on the fence, snow on the tractor, but No Snow On The Fucking Woodpile!!! And since there's also no footprints anywhere, we know the farmer guy didn't come out and brush it off!"

"Excellent, Brad! Absolutely excellent!" Dr. Jones gushed proudly. "I knew you could do it! This was the trickiest one of all, and you got it right! Many people just can't seem to make that mental leap to realize that they need to change the terms of their search to find what it is they're looking for. You might make a good police detective someday."

"Really? Dang!" Brad considered the thought, seeing himself in a dark blue uniform with all sortsa shiny shit on it and what practically amounted to a utility belt! He wasn't entirely sure if law enforcement was the direction he wanted to go in (after all, Bruce Wayne never became a cop because he thought the laws didn't adequately reflect true justice. And who was he to argue with Batman?), but it was certainly something worth looking into.

"How do you like these little tests so far?" Dr. Jones asked eagerly.

"They're actually a lot of fun," Brad replied.

"Just what I was hoping you'd say." He reached behind him to a little metal bookshelf on his left and pulled out an oversize paperback, thick as his thumb, with lots of geometric designs on the front. "Here, you may borrow this. It's a fairly complete collection of all sorts of intelligence and personality tests. The book's made for people like me, but the tests are easy enough to take. And if you can struggle though all the gigantic, windbaggy words in the back, you can see what each test is really trying to measure. Some of them may surprise you."

Brad accepted the book with reverent awe, like it was the Holy Grail. It was big and white and floppy in his hands, but he could already tell he was gonna have a blast flipping through it later on. Maybe Tyler'd even want to try some of these out with him!

The happy tom looked up to the old otter. "Thank you so much, Doctor Jones!"

He returned a happy smile. "Keep it as long as you need to. Take your time."

The tomcat nodded. "I will. And I promise I won't screw it up, like spilling pop on it or tearing any pages or-"

KNOCK KNOCK

Brad's head swiveled around almost completely backwards.

Dr. Jones did not notice Brad's impromptu owl impression. "Who could that be?" he muttered. "Come in!" he called to whoever it was.

A long, grinning brown muzzle entered the room, followed by the rest of Clifford Markman. "Sorry to cut this short, Doc, but Dr. Beatrix would like to see Brad here right away."

All of Brad's happiness died in a split-second, pile-driven by an overwhelming sense of doom. Just from the rat's grin, he could tell he was in some Serious Fucking Trouble.

'Oh shit, the phone call! They traced it or something!' he thought.

"Are you sure it can't wait? We'll be done in just a few minutes anyway," Dr. Jones asked, a little annoyed. Beatrix knew damn well what his schedule was. She probably enjoyed flaunting her superiority over him by disrupting it so impatiently like this.

Clifford shook his head. "Sorry. The boss says now."

Dr. Jones grimaced. "Yes. 'The Boss'. Well, if the boss says she must talk to one of my patients right now, then talk she must! Far be it from me to expect her to wait three minutes!" he huffed, and instantly regretted it. Mr. Markman would probably parrot back exactly what he'd just said to her and she would no doubt find some passive-aggressive way to punish him for it later on. "I guess you'd better go then, Brad."

The tomcat nodded. "Should I leave the book?"

"No no. Mr. Markman, do you think you can spare enough time for Mr. Maplewood to put something of mine in his room before you take him up the elevators?"

"Sure, sure," Clifford said. After all, it didn't really matter to him one way or the other.


     ~~~


As Brad tossed the precious book onto his unmade bed, he wondered briefly if he'd ever get to see it again.

The next thing he knew, he was stuck in an elevator with a rat who smelled like cigarettes. Riding up, not to Heaven, but to Hell...


*****


     -BEATRIX-

"Bradley!" Dr. Beatrix cried out in a chipper voice. "How nice to see you again!"

Brad's heart sank into his pawpads. If she was acting *this* happy, he had to be in some *major* shit...

"Come in, come in," the slender albino coaxed. "Don't be shy." she took a seat behind her desk and folded her paws. Her eyes were bright and alert, like two big drops of blood in the shape of rubies.

Brad hesitantly crossed the over-bright office and took a seat. The sun coming in through the huge window behind Dr. Beatrix hurt his eyes and made it hard to look at her. She'd probably arranged that on purpose; to make her royal subjects feel like they were looking into the radiant face of Almighty God.

"How have you been?" she asked, as if she really cared.

Brad hesitated before answering. She _did_ know about the cell phone, he realized with horror. It was written all over her face, plain as day. "Okay, I guess."

Her grin was bloodthirsty. He could see in her eyes that the rules of play had been established for both of them. This was not an office now, it was the Roman colosseum. They were gladiators in a silent arena. She had on full armor and was brandishing a bronze shield and a battle mace. He was in his underpants, holding a wooden sword.

But if she was brazen enough to come right out and let her body language say, 'Yes, Bradley, I enjoy hurting you more than almost anything else in the world', then that meant she was also allowing him to challenge her. Making him *want* to challenge her. All so she could savor his bloody defeat that much more when it inevitably came. What she *truly* wanted then, was for him to realize this and surrender now, thinking it would hurt less that way. She wanted him to humiliate himself and confess his crime right away and beg for forgiveness.

So maybe, Brad thought, what he needed to do *was* to challenge her. Use reverse psychology. He had no real idea why this would be a good strategy. In fact, all available evidence pointed to it being suicide. Or he could just be totally overanalyzing everything. But still, what more could she take away from him? He knew his Mom well enough that if he didn't call Sunday night, she'd know right away he was in trouble and drive like a maniac to his rescue, probably bringing twelve different kinds of cops with her if she could.

Yes, Brad decided within himself. If Dr. Beatrix wanted to fight, then they would fight. To the death.

Dr. Beatrix pretended to peruse a report on her desk. "I heard you had to be sent to the quiet room last night. What was that all about?"

Brad made a little 'does it matter?' noise. "The movie was horrible and I had a headache. I acted up so they'd put me in there and I could get some sleep," he said flatly and defiantly.

"Well!" she replied, acting as if such behavior shocked her. "If you wanted to leave so badly, why didn't you just ask for permission?"

"Because I knew they wouldn't give it to me then," he shot back. He leaned back nonchalantly in his chair, trying to look as if he wasn't as scared of her as he really was.

"You *knew* this? Oh really now?"

"Sure. First rule of dealing with air-headed grownups; if they think they know what's best for you, you gotta make them think the opposite of what you really want."

She chuckled smugly. "I see. Just like Brer Rabbit and the tar baby, hmm? You have this whole hospital figured out. All by yourself! An eleven year old boy knows more about psychology than me and the rest of my college-educated staff. Is that what you're trying to tell me, Bradley?"

He shrugged. "Yeah, that sounds about right."

For just a fraction of a second, her facade cracked and a tiny drop of fury leaked through. 'Gotcha,' Brad thought.

Dr. Beatrix took a moment to compose herself. Like any good chess player, she could respect a skilled player's move against her. Especially when she held in her heart the supreme knowledge that she would always emerge victorious. She won all her battles merely by participating in them. Every time. No matter what. After all, who was the one locked up behind concrete walls here?

She shook her head with mock-sadness. "That arrogant attitude of yours is not helping your treatment any, Bradley."

"I seem to be making friends just fine," he countered.

"Yes, but you aren't here to make friends, now are you? No. You are here to learn how to behave yourself. And if you do not behave correctly, then you will have to be _instructed_." Her words were cold and sharp as nitrogen icicles.

Brad did not flinch. "Instruct me then," he challenged.

The doctor's eyes narrowed in hate. He was not playing the game right. He was acting as if they were equals, a completely preposterous notion. She reminded herself not to get frustrated now, that this haughty attitude of his would only serve to hurt him worse in the end.

Her petite muzzle curled into a sweet grin. She decided it was time to stop fucking around and get to the meat of this meeting. They both knew what it was really about anyway . "Instruct you, Bradley? Hm. Maybe you can teach me something instead. Tell me; what do you know about cell phones?"

"Not much," he said with a shrug. He had braced himself for this and thought he'd done an admirable job of not showing a hint of surprise. "I know they're annoying as hell at the movies."

She chuckled patronizingly. "Come now, Bradley. You can do better than that. Did you honestly think I wouldn't find out?"

"About what?" he asked innocently.

"You know exactly what I mean. When I institute a punishment, I expect for it to be obeyed. I told you you were not allowed to call your mother, or anyone else for that matter, until Sunday."

"I haven't," he lied beautifully. His gamble was that she didn't have any real proof, just enough evidence to get an idea, and was hoping she could scare him into confessing the rest.

She glared daggers. "Don't you dare lie to me, Bradley. I don't like it. I don't like having my intelligence insulted by a bratty little schoolyard bully like you."

That was _cold_. She'd known exactly how to push his buttons with that one. But Brad knew he couldn't give her the satisfaction of letting her insult sink home. He forced a defiant frown to his face. "Lady, I don't have any idea what you're talking about. If you're saying I somehow snuck a phone in here and called my mom, you're crazier than I am."

Dr. Beatrix restrained the urge to sink one of her small, manicured claws deeply into the boy's eyeball. He was taking this too far. Was he that stupid, that he hadn't learned anything from her previous punishments? "You are not allowed to talk to me in that tone of voice, young man! I know exactly what you did. And the more you try to deny it, the harder I'm going to discipline you for it later!"

Brad pitched forward, clutching the armrests. "I haven't done anything wrong and you can't prove that I did," he snarled, knowing for sure now the second half was true.

"Then what was it that Mr. Markman saw you pass to Karen Willard in the breakfast line this morning? Hm? Was he just having a hallucination!?"

Brad's mouth hung open. Caught. Oh shit he was-

'NO!!!' an inner voice roared. She was NOT going to make him admit to *anything*!!

"It was a stick of gum!" he lashed back, amazed that his mind had come up with such a good lie so quickly. "That's all it was! And I remember all the things the nurse said we couldn't have when she checked me in, and gum wasn't on the list!" Which happened to be perfectly true.

Beatrix Beverley's eyes grew murderous. She could not believe this little shit had the balls to lie to her so blatantly. "Where's this 'gum' now then?" she barked.

"I have no idea!" he exploded. "Karen probably chewed it up and spat it out by now! What, you gonna go hunt for it and take a DNA sample?" he hissed as rudely as possible.

"No," she said flatly. "I have better ways to prove you're lying." She picked up the phone on her desk, stabbed 9 for an outside line, and started dialing from memory.

"Who're you gonna call? The FBI?" Brad sneered.

Her grin spread like cancer. "No. Your mother."

OH SHIT.

"But... but she's not home now!" Brad protested, beginning to feel fear for the first time.

Dr. Beatrix smiled and smiled. "Of course. That's why I'm dialing her work number."

Brad made his face into a slab of concrete, not daring to show a single emotion. He was toast now, he knew it. He hadn't even thought she might try something like this. His only hope now was that the answering machine might-

Dr. Beatrix pressed the speakerphone button and Mrs. Maplewood's voice came clearly out of the little plastic box. "Yes? Hello? Who's calling?"

Brad thought that right now might be a really good time to run straight at that big ol' glass window behind Dr. Beatrix and smash through it and fall to his splattery death. He was so screwed now, there weren't even words for it.

"Hello Mrs. Maplewood!" Dr. Beatrix said cheerfully. She had erased every last trace of hostility from her personality so cleanly it was scary. "This is Dr. Beatrix Beverley. You remember me, right?"

"Yes," Brad's mother said warily. "We talked on the phone the night before I sent him there."

"That's right. Well, I have Bradley in my office right now..."

"He's in trouble, again?" she asked with exasperation.

Beatrix chuckled. "Actually, that's what I'm calling to find out. Say hello, Bradley," she asked him, looking at him with eyes that said, 'How does it feel to be trapped so tightly you know you can't possibly escape?'

"Hi Mom," Brad said weakly.

"Hi, sweetie. What's this all about, Dr. Beverley?"

"Well, it seems your son and I are at a disagreement. I have a trusted staff member who swears he saw your son in possession of a cell phone this morning. Cell phones or any similar devices are not permitted here, Mrs. Maplewood."

"Brad's never owned a cell phone," she said, sounding confused. "I wouldn't even let him *buy* one of those things."

"Yes, but I believe he found a way to acquire one nonetheless. He says all Mr. Markman saw was a stick of gum," she tossed off dismissively, as if it was the most utterly idiotic idea anyone had ever had. "My intuition is that he used this phone to call you, in direct violation of a restriction I put on him as punishment for getting in a fight earlier this week!" the rabbit finished in triumph.

She expected corroboration.

Corroboration was not what she got.

"He most certainly did NOT call me!" Mrs. Maplewood burst out indignantly.

Brad sat bolt upright in his chair, not daring to believe he'd heard that right.

One could almost see Dr. Beatrix's confidence pop like a balloon. "What!?"

Cora Maplewood geared herself up for a rant of Biblical proportions. "I haven't gotten a single phone call from anywhere NEAR your hospital since Sunday night! And I specifically gave my son a large supply of quarters to use for the pay phones, that you _told_ me would be there, so he could call me every day. Are you saying that because of a little fight, you kept him from being able to talk to his own MOTHER!?"

"Mrs. Maplewoo-"

"Don't you Mrs. Maplewood ME! If Brad got in a fight, I can perfectly understand him needing to be punished. But to cut him off entirely from his only family!? What kind of a hospital are you running anyway? Do you have ANY idea how worried _sick_ I've been this past week? Do you have any idea how much time I've spent by the phone, waiting for my little boy to call? You could at least have had the DECENCY to call and tell me about this demented punishment of yours!"

"Now wait a-"

"I will NOT!!" the enraged feline erupted. "My son is a troublemaker, Dr. Beverley. I'm well aware of that. But what he is _not_ is a liar. He's _always_ been honest with me whenever he's gotten into trouble. And I find the fact that you obviously haven't given his word any credence whatsoever disturbing. If he says it was a stick of gum, then *I* say it was a stick of gum. And unless you can prove otherwise, I don't want to hear another word out of you!"

Dr. Beatrix did _not_ like being spoken to as if she were a naughty child. "Now w-!"

"Now *nothing*!! This is the first time I have heard my son's voice in nearly a week. I sent him to your hospital thinking you were going to help him, but it sounds to me like all you're interested in is punishing my son for something your darling Mr. Markman probably imagined! Tell me, does he drink?"

"How dare y-!"

"How dare I what, Dr. Beverley? How dare I what? How dare I be angry that you're treating my pride and joy like some prisoner!? I am going to drive up there this Monday morning, and if my boy is not waiting in the lobby for me with his bags packed, you are going to see The Hissy Fit Of The Century!!! Is that clear, Dr. Beatrix!?"

The doctor was too stunned to speak for a moment.

"Is. That. CLEAR?!?"

"Mrs. Maplewood, I think you need to go back and read the fine print. You signed the consent forms and now I have complete authority to keep Bradley here so long as I deem him unsuitable for release. And considering his horrid behavior so far, I have no doubt in my mind that he is a dangerous individual and Needs Further Treatment!!!"

"Fuck your treatment," Brad's mother spat, low and mean.

"Mrs. Maplewood!"

"You listen close, you smug bitch." Cora's anger was now so red-hot it was practically dripping out of the receiver like battery acid. "I don't believe any hospital has the right to overstep _my_ authority. I'm his mother, goddamnit. I'm his mother. And that means he's MINE, do you understand me? And if I don't want him subjected to your screwed-up ideas of treatment, then come Hell or high water, I _will_ have him out of that hospital Monday morning, and you will _not_ stand in my way.

"I probably shouldn't say this while my son is listening, but in college I slept around as much as anyone else that age. One of the men who shared a bed with me is now an unspeakably rich lawyer in California. We haven't spoken in a few years, but I know he remembers me. And he knows that I know that he still owes me a favor. When I hang up this phone, I am going to dial his number. I am going to read to him every single piece of paper you people have given me and *fuck* the long distance bill! And if he finds out you're bullshitting me, which I know he will, then I am going to see you on the six o' clock news, Dr. Beverley."

Cora paused to let it all sink in. "Are we clear _now_?"

The rabbit sat ramrod straight in her chair, her eyes staring at nothing. She did not think she had felt this much rage in years. "Perfectly clear, Mrs. Maplewood," she breathed.

"Fine then. We have nothing more to discuss."

*click*

Dr. Beatrix slowly hung up the phone, moving like an old, old woman.

Brad was blown away. He'd barely dared to hope his mom might come to his defense, but THIS!? She had practically held a gun to the receiver and blown Dr. Beatrix's brains out! Brad knew he had never felt so proud of his mother in his entire life. And on Monday morning, he was going to give her the biggest hug ever in the history of the world.

"Way to go, Mom," he spoke almost silently under his breath.

Dr. Beatrix's head swiveled like a gun turret at him.

Brad made his awestruck face change in a split-second to solid rock.

"I guess I was mistaken, Bradley," she said in a forced, brittle voice. "I apologize."

She didn't fool him for a second. She could not have meant those words less. They were practically an insult to him. But he knew this was her way of saying, 'You've won this time, you little puke. But by God, I am going to make you suffer in ways you've never dreamed of if you so much as look at me sideways from now until Monday."

"Apology accepted, Dr. Beatrix," he said, as politely as he could force himself to. No sense being rude now. That would be like handing her a loaded bazooka and saying, 'Shoot me!!'. "May I go now, please? It's almost lunchtime, and I'm hungry."

She nodded in slow motion. "Yes, Bradley, you may go..."

Her tone conveyed, perfectly clear, an unspoken '...for now.'


*****


     -CORA-

To say Brad's mother was angry would be a gross understatement. An understatement on par with, say, claiming that politicians sometimes lie, or that fecal matter does not taste very good.

A mother's instincts are incredible things. As soon as the phone rang and Cora heard that woman's voice, heard how cold and unfeeling it truly was, she knew why her boy had sounded so frightened of her the night before.

And when Dr. Beatrix had called her son 'Bradley', that was _it_. Brad had always hated it when anyone added that extra syllable to his name. Just from the way she'd spoken it, Cora was certain Dr. Beverley knew it too and had done it anyway just to taunt him. A woman who'd do something as petty as that to a child had some serious issues. In that moment, Mrs. Maplewood had known that everything her son had told her was true.

She stared at the phone now, her head in her paws, her hair frizzed out all over the place. She was sweating, and actually trembling.

Lying that much had felt *astonishingly* good. To so bold-facedly tell that bitch that her son had never called her had felt wonderful. She could just imagine the look on her face! And Brad's too. He must've been grinning his whiskers off to know his mother believed in him, and was willing to fight for him.

Of course she was. She wanted Brad to get help for his condition. Wanted it desperately. But whatever Dr. Beatrix was giving him, it most assuredly was not help.

The part about the lawyer had also been a lie. Oh, sure, she had bounced from bed to bed in her inebriated youthful years, but to the best of her knowledge there hadn't been a law student in the whole bunch. Still, it was an easy bluff to make. She truly *didn't* believe any hospital had the right to keep her from her own child.

The possibility that she might have been wrong chilled her to the bone, though.

Her co-worker, a talkative hedgehog, poked her head into the cubicle. "Geez, Cora. You look like a train came outta your computer screen and ran you over. What's up? Is Brad in trouble again?"

Mrs. Maplewood allowed herself a tiny, sick laugh. "Trouble. Yes. But not the kind you're thinking of."


*****


     -BEATRIX-

While Brad was tearing out of the elevator at mach 5, desperate to warn Karen of how the phone idea had gone tits-up, Dr. Beatrix was smoothing out her fur and trying every trick she knew of to calm herself down.

Fine. The bastard child and his mother had planned this out beforehand and stuck it to her. Right now the mother was probably giggling so hard her panties were soaked. And Bradley was undoubtedly dashing off to brag to his friends about how he'd put the bitch upstairs in her place. Fine. Let them enjoy their victory. Because Dr. Beatrix knew it would not be their victory for long. She lived her life on one very simple principle: 'I am never wrong'. And she wasn't, that was the magical part of it. Every decision she made was the right one. She won every battle she had ever fought, even if sometimes it took a little patience and cheating to get there.

If she could not hurt Brad or his mother over this, there were still plenty of other people she could. As she knew well, sometimes the very best way to cause someone pain is to cause pain in someone else they cared about.

She smiled. People who felt guilt were so easy to manipulate.

She waited until she heard the elevator return. Then one claw shot out to tap the intercom button. "Mr. Markman, send me the cook."


*****


     -ALF-

The blue-haired fox approached the head doctor's desk with trepidation. "Um, Dr. Beatrix? I was just about to start my shift. The rest of the staff will be short-handed withou-"

She waved a paw at him for him to shut up. She was sitting in her chair, facing mostly away from him. All he could see of her was her arm, the edge of her hair, and one single milk-white thigh.

"I've already sent someone down to cover for you, Mr. Johnson. Don't worry."

He let out a little puff of relief. "Oh. That's good. What exactly did you want to see me about then?" He had never been up here before. He'd met Dr. Beatrix only twice. But considering some of the stories he had overheard in the kitchen before (stories that couldn't be true, they just *couldn't*), he knew there was no way in hell she'd called him up here just to give him a raise.

She swiveled around slowly, letting the tension and uncertainty build in her prey. She steepled her fingertips and stared at them blandly. As if the purpose of this meeting was merely to clear up some minor misunderstanding, nothing more.

"Well, Mr. Johnson, it seems to me you may already have some idea of why you're here. Care to wager a guess?"

Alf gulped.

The phone.

Oh bloody hell, the phone. And there it was, bulging out his back pocket like the tell-tale heart. "Um... No, ma'am," he said, and kicked himself for letting his voice tremble as much as it did.

She looked up at him, smiling, and her eyes were catlike and hungry for pain. "Are you sure?" she purred. "Are you sure there's nothing you want to disclose before I'm forced to just come right out and say it myself?"

He very nearly did. Alfred Johnson was a brave man only in small doses. When faced with a woman whose evil he had only ever heard about before, he felt suddenly like a small and defenseless child himself. "N-no ma'am," he repeated.

Dr. Beatrix sighed theatrically. "Oh well. Too bad. You had your chance," she said, sounding almost regretful. As if she would shoulder no blame whatsoever in the events that came next.

She opened her desk drawer and pulled out a small stack of photographs.

"I suppose you're going to tell me next that you've never seen *these* before?" she cooed, and spread them on the desk before her in a loose fan.

Alf recoiled sharply.

The pictures were *unspeakable*.

He could only see fragments of what was going on in them, and for that he was grateful. It was abundantly clear what the photographs depicted though. Children. Naked children. Being forced into horrible positions. Forced to do horrible things to unseen captors who hid behind camera lenses. There were glimpses of bondage equipment. Straps. Gags. Piercings. Needles. Rubber molded in obscene shapes and put to unimaginably evil uses.

Alf very nearly threw up. His eyes shut tight in disgust so primal it felt like a stomach of railroad spikes, he turned away and gasped, "Put them AWAY!!"

Dr. Beatrix glanced at the pictures and felt nothing. Nothing at all. "Don't you like them, Mr. Johnson? After all, these did fall out of your coat pocket..."

He whirled around, his eyes red with rage. "THEY DID *NOT*!!!" he roared.

She smiled pleasantly. "Of course they didn't. Oh, you should have seen the look on your face!" she chuckled. "But the important thing is not that _you_ know they're not yours, or that _I_ know they're not yours. No, the important thing is that, as of this moment, the _police_ don't know they're not yours."

He stared at her, beginning to comprehend. "No..."

She giggled girlishly. The expression of helpless horror on his face was just the thing she needed to get over that nasty business with Brad and his whore mother. "They _will_ know, however, if you try to fuck around with me any more, Mr. Johnson," she told him softly.

"Y-you can't..." he whimpered.

That hellish giggle again. Dr. Beatrix was enjoying this so very much. "I can't? Oh, Mr. Johnson, but I think you are confused! If I were to call the police right now and tell them that one of my cafeteria staff had been caught with disgusting erotic photographs of children, whose side of the story do you think they'd believe? Hm? Me, the respected head psychiatrist of a federally-funded children's hospital? Or you, the degenerate pedophile manual laborer with hair the color of spraypaint? Take a guess, Mr. Johnson. Take a guess."

Alf shook with impotent rage. If he could have simply reached out and hurled her though that great glass window behind her...

Dr. Beatrix got up and approached him, adding a seductive little tilt to her hips with each step. "Oh, but Alf, isn't that at least partially the truth? You can tell me, can't you? I am a doctor, after all."

She sidled up to the near-crying fox and placed her arm around his shoulder like they were best pals. "That *is* the real reason you came here, isn't it? I've seen your resume. You're qualified enough for a much higher-paying position in the city hospital just a few miles away. So why did you choose to come here, hm? Here, to King's Orchard? Why here, Alf?

"I think I know why..." she breathed in his ear.

It took every last bit of strength in his body to not move, not speak, not even look at her. She wasn't real. She couldn't be. No living being could derive so much joy from torturing someone else, he wouldn't allow himself to believe it.

She tickled under his chin. "It was the children, wasn't it? Wasn't it, Alf? The kiddies. You took a shit job in a nuthouse half an hour's drive from home, just so you could work with children. Awww, isn't that sweet?"

She traced a single finger along his cheekfur. "Do they excite you, Alf? Do you get a big, thick, meaty erection every time they smile at you?"

"I WOULD SOONER DIE THAN EVER HURT A CHILD!!!" Alf suddenly and violently screamed at the top of his lungs.

Mildly startled, but only mildly, Dr. Beatrix backed up a step. Her predatory smile never faltered a bit. "Oh sure, they all *say* that, but..."

Alf tasted blood in his mouth. He turned his head to hers, staring into her eyes with ferocity and gritted teeth. "Just what do you want from me?"

"A little information, Alf. That's all. I just want to know if you lent your cell phone out to any of the patients recently."

It felt like all his facial muscles detached at once."My... Cell phone?" he asked, in a squeaky-crazy voice he didn't recognize.

Dr. Beatrix nodded. "Just tell me, and then everything will be okay."

Alf shuddered, like a bunch of shivers all ganging up on him at once. 'So this is what it feels like to go insane,' he thought. 'Interesting.'

"My cell phone. Yes, my cell phone." He took it from his pocket and held it up. "This cell phone, you ask? Hm. Yes." With that, he hurled it at the floor as hard as he could. "No, I'm afraid I haven't let anybody borrow it lately..." He raised his foot almost to his chest. "...because..." *STOMP* "...it's..." *STOMP* "...BROKEN!!!" *STOMPSTOMPSTOMPSTOMPSTOMP*

Dr. Beatrix grinned hollowly at his theatrics. "Alright then, Mr. Johnson. That's all I wanted to know."

Huffing and puffing like the madman he felt exactly like at the moment, Alf returned her twisted, fake grin with one of his own. "Will that be all?"

"Certainly, Mr. Johnson," she said with a nod. "Just go back downstairs and gather up all your things. And if you ever come within five hundred feet of this hospital again, your life is over. Do you understand me, Mr. Johnson?"

"I understood the second I walked in here," he snarled, and stalked towards the door, not daring to cry until he was fully out of sight.

Dr. Beatrix went back to her comfortable office chair and sat back down with a sigh and a happy giggle. Just what she needed to perk up her mood again! She gathered the photographs up, not pausing to look at them any more than she had to, and placed them in a large manilla envelope. She prodded the intercom button. "Mr. Markman?"

Clifford entered seconds later. Seeing the mess of tangled wire, circuitry and plastic on the floor, he asked, "You want me to clean that up?"

"No no, Mr. Markman. I think I'll leave it there for a little while longer. It certainly makes a nice conversation piece, don't you think?" She let out a high, bubbly giggle that he couldn't possibly fathom.

The rat scratched his head. "Well, um...?"

She handed him the envelope. "Just take this down and give it back to Mr. Caercase. Tell him I said thank you."

Clifford nodded. "Will do, Dr. Beatrix."


*****


     -JIMMY-

It should be understood that the wolf who called himself Always-Jimmy-Never-James was at least slightly insane. But then again, aren't we all?

For instance, even though he knew perfectly well that he was stone dead and probably reduced by maggots to scraps of bone by now, he'd never quite gotten over his habit of going outside when he smoked. A lot of his friends, Blade especially, loathed the stench of his favorite brand. Karen hadn't though. She'd often go with him when he took a smoking break out on the basketball court, and watch the smoke rings he'd make floating on upwards to the stars.

Perhaps it was this memory that subconsciously made him leave his post in the TV room of Ward F where he was keeping watch over Karen (the *new* Karen, he thought), when the urge for nicotine, undulled by death, heated up his blood again.

Walking to the window, he simply stepped through and let himself fall seven stories to the ground. It wasn't like it hurt or anything. It was fun, actually.

And, joy of joys, it looked like he had some company. That rat guy, Clifford, was standing by one of the side doors, staring blankly off into the parking lot as he puffed.

Leather jacket zipper jangling, Jimmy moseyed on over to strike up a conversation.

He pulled number three from his omnipresent pack. "Hey there, Cliffy! Enjoying your tar?"

Clifford, of course, didn't say a damn thing.

A clink of a lighter and Jimmy was soon imitating a smokestack too. "So, I was out with your mother last night," he remarked casually. "And I noticed, she really is one fat, ugly broad isn't she, Cliffy? I mean, sure, I've banged some bombs in my day, but this was the only time I was really, really glad to be so drunk I could barely see. And the smell! I thought it was her breath at first, but then she spread her legs and all the houseplants died! Wow-ee!"

Clifford glanced at some pigeons.

"Not wanting to actually put my precious dick in there, what with it resembling Florida swampland so much, I just jammed a table lamp in and out of her cooze for an hour until my arm got tired. Then she farted and fell asleep on the floor, drooling all over the carpet and such. So I went in the bathroom and jerked off while thinking about castrating myself."

Clifford played idly with his keyring.

Jimmy took another drag. "Soooo... how was *your* day?"

Clifford yawned.


     ~~~


The black wolf smoked quickly, wanting to get this over with so he could get back to keeping an eye out for Karen. He huffed and puffed, intermittently saying the filthiest things he could imagine to Mr. Markman for his own sophomoric amusement.

Then, just as he was nearly finished, the side door opened and a fox walked straight through him.

"Hey!!" Jimmy shouted. That always felt so damn creepy!

Alf noticed nothing. Nothing except Clifford. Carrying only his jacket and a small plastic grocery bag with his few work possessions inside, he turned for an instant, just long enough to give Clifford the coldest, dirtiest look Jimmy had ever seen on another furson's face in his life.

The wolf's brow furrowed. "Jeezus! What the hell's up with that?"

Clifford displayed no reaction whatsoever. He just stared down at the pavement. None of his business anyway...

Jimmy decided to follow Alf. The blue-haired fox stalked off through the parking lot, eventually locating a rounded little red Japanese whatsit. The fox flipped through his keys for an uncomfortably long time, getting more and more frustrated as it seemed like all his keys had blurred and gotten switched with someone else's.

Finally though, he got his car door unlocked and open. He threw his bag contemptuously inside then slumped behind the wheel. Jimmy came a little closer and felt the car door swish right through him as Alf slammed it.

The fox folded his arms over the steering wheel. Then he laid his head down upon them and began to weep bitterly. His shoulders moved up and down like pistons.

Empathy filled the black wolf's usually sardonic gaze. This stank of Dr. Beatrix. It didn't take a rocket scientist to realize she'd fired this poor schnook for his part in the cell phone plot. He growled out an angry sigh. "Christ, I gotta go tell Karen. ...Somehow," he added, realizing she wasn't asleep now.

With a snarl of rage, Alf gunned his car's engine and went screeching out of the parking lot. Jimmy was too preoccupied with ramifications to notice he'd been partially run over.

Being dead sucked, he thought not for the first time. How the hell was he gonna tell Karen about this when she wasn't fucking asleep? "Dammit."

Throwing his paws up in frustration, he figured he'd just have to wing it and hope something would come up. Maybe he'd get lucky and she'd take a nap.

Glancing up to the seventh-floor window of King's Orchard, Always-Jimmy-Never-James took a few running steps and jumped to Ward F.


*****


     -ALF-

Less than a mile down the road, Alf couldn't see clearly anymore from the tears in his eyes. He had to pull over to the shoulder for a while to avoid getting in an accident. Once the car was stopped, he let himself go. He sobbed as openly as a child. He smashed his paws on the steering wheel until they hurt. His brain was full of lightning bolts and his heart felt like a panicked mouse struggling in a tightly clutched fist.

It wasn't just seeing the pictures, or losing his job, or knowing he wouldn't be there any more to keep an eye out for Karen and the other children in that hellish place. It was knowing that Dr. Beatrix had been right about him.

That was the coldest wound. She had seen so cleanly through him, had known exactly where to drive the pins into his heart to hurt him the most. Alf wiped his face off on his sleeve, covering it in tears and mucus.

He looked up at his face in the rear-view mirror. 'You knew it would happen,' he told himself.

It was true. He *could* have taken a job at the other hospital. King's Orchard was a farther drive away and the paycheck was lighter. There was only one reason he'd chosen to work there.

And...

Oh, God.

He had... *felt* things around the children before. Many, many times.

The impulses came from deep within him. He did not know why, only that he hated them. He'd worked against them endlessly to keep them from making him a monster. Sometimes he would look upon one of the young patients and his mind would flash an image, or an idea, and it would take all his strength not to fall on his knees and retch. He did not know why he'd been born with a monster in his mind, he only knew he'd do anything to kill it.

"I meant what I said," he told himself firmly, trying to regain what strength he could. "I would rather die than _ever_ hurt a child."

He had been ashamed of himself when he accepted the job at King's Orchard. All through the application process, he'd been in a tug of war. His subconscious was sweetly whispering how this job would be paradise while his rational side bellowed that the temptation was too great a risk. He did not doubt that he could keep himself from doing anything inappropriate. But what if someone somehow found out about those drawings on his computer?

_Just_ drawings, by the way. And stories. Never photos. NEVER photos. Alf knew he had to toss his desires something every now and then to placate them, lest they grow restless and decide to take over. But at least he could keep it in the realm of fantasy. Never anything real. Ink on paper couldn't hurt real children.

For the first week or so, the work had been a dream come true and a living nightmare all at the same time. Alf felt like a spy undercover. Or a member of a hostile alien race sent to live among the normal populace. He felt like some horrible 'other', and that soon enough someone would see beneath his disguise and know what he really was.

But, damn, getting to see the kids every day was *wonderful*. They were so small and beautiful. Full of life. Seeing them smile made his heart warm like nothing else. Alf went to every length imaginable to keep his thoughts pure, to love the children like a big brother or a mentor, and never anything else.

It got easier, too. The worst desires eventually seemed to give up after a while once they realized he wasn't taking the bait. Alf felt proud of that. He hoped that maybe he could somehow cure himself entirely, given enough time.

But the fear came again once he began to realize that King's Orchard was not a normal hospital. Specifically, once he began to have doubts about Thurston Caercase. Alf smelled it on him the second they first laid eyes on each other. The stink of a predator. Unlike him, Thurston did not try to deny his appetites; he *reveled* in them. He flaunted them with pride. He flirted with girls a fraction his age, and seemed delighted the more uncomfortable he made them.

All Alf could do was watch and seethe and try to think of a way to stop him. The worst part was the certainty that Thurston must have seen through him as well. He hated the very idea, but he knew deep down they were the same. Although if Thurston ever recognized on Alf the same scent he gave off, he'd never said anything about it. 

Alf shuddered at the mental image of Thurston approaching him after work someday and offering to buy him a coupla beers and chat about their mutual 'hobby'. Maybe even suggesting they swap some pho...

All of a sudden, Alf knew exactly where those pictures on Dr. Beatrix's desk had come from.

That meant she *knew* the whole time, and actually condoned it. How could he have ever hoped to combat a force so purely evil?

Alf sat in his car and cried until his back hurt and his eyes were red as flesh. He'd failed. He'd hoped to stay in that pit of insanity (and by that he did *not* mean the patients, not at all) to find a way to bring it down from the inside. Instead, his cowardice had kept him stationary, doing nothing for fear of being found out.

'At least I warned Karen,' he thought. 'At least I helped Brad call his mom. At least I did everything I could to cheer those poor kids up and make them forget for a second what a hellhole they're locked in.

'And at least I'm not like Thurston. I think like him, I know I do. But at least I made a choice never to act on those thoughts. At least I _try_.'

The blue-haired fox sniffed back his sobs and put his hands on the wheel. "I can drive," he told himself. "I can. I can do this." He turned the key in the ignition. He put his paw to the pedal.

As Alf drove off, he was certainly frightened for himself. He knew Dr. Beatrix might break her word at any second and decide to call the cops on him for her own personal amusement. He thought that when he got home, it might be a wise idea to dump his hard drive just in case.

But he was even more frightened for the children. He'd hoped to conquer his sickness by becoming a protector instead of a predator. Now he couldn't even do that.

He prayed they'd be safe. He prayed someone else was watching out for them.


*****


     -KAREN-

What Jimmy didn't realize was that Karen already knew at least half of the story. Brad had told her as much as he could while they were lining up for lunch. Once Clifford had finished his cigarette, he'd ridden the elevator all the way up to Ward F just so he could herd all the kids back down again. He felt sometimes like his life was nothing more than a series of elevators and staircases.

Standing just behind her, Brad had whispered the terrible news of Dr. Beatrix's discovery. Karen trembled with worry, knowing the evil woman would undoubtedly come after her now. And Alf! What about him? He'd only been trying to help, and who knew what that monstrous doctor was planning to do to him?

Things had seemed to be going so well just yesterday. The success of the meeting had dulled her to the obvious fact that the meeting's purpose wasn't anywhere on its way to completion. They had merely made introductions. Now came the hard part; actually getting everyone behind the idea of rebelling. And what, she suddenly wondered, would happen if any of them just up and refused? What if they walked out? What if they... *gulp* ...told on her?

With her thoughts a jumble of wide-ranging worry, it took Karen's eyes a few seconds to discern the impossible sight that met her gaze upon entering the cafeteria.

Alf was not behind the counter. Thurston Caercase was. But no, that was ridiculous. She must be hallu-

The fat bear smiled at her.

The little raccoon's flesh became ice. 'No. Oh no. What the heck's going on here!?'

Gingerly, she took a tray and approached the jolly-looking bruin.

"Well hey there, Karen!" he greeted her sunnily. "How's it goin'? We got lotsa treats for your tummy today, that's for sure!"

Her eyes betraying her fright, she asked quietly, "Where's Alf?"

Thurston shook his head in an awful parody of an 'isn't that a shame?' gesture. "S'awful. Just awful. He got fired this afternoon. Yup, right before lunch. Seems he got caught with some nasty pictures. Real nasty pictures! With kids in 'em! And people makin' 'em do all sorts of disgusting, perverted, sexual things!"

The bear's cartoonlike mask of shock did nothing to hide the grin inside of it. Karen trembled all over. It was worse than she ever could have imagined. She'd guessed that Dr. Beatrix might fire her fox friend, but to frame him for something so despicable? (And in Karen's heart, there was no doubt whatsoever that it had been a frame-up job.)

"Sick, really," Thurston observed. "A furson like that's got no business workin' in a place like this." He turned to look right in Karen's eyes, chortling obscenely at his little joke.

The world may never know what force of nature kept Karen from screaming, 'YOU LYING BASTARD!!!' and flinging her tray straight into his face like a scimitar.

Instead, gathering what little courage she could find among her shattered nerves, she said politely, "I'll have a grilled cheese sandwich, please."


*****


     -JIMMY-

Brad almost had to hold her up as she walked out of the lunch line. Karen's eyes were completely hollow. Blank as the moon. 'This is my fault,' she told herself. 'If I hadn't told Alf all that stuff about Dr. Beatrix, he never would've given me that phone. I should have given it right back to him anyway. I got him fired, and maybe Dr. Beatrix will even have him thrown in jail. She's probably done it already.'

When Jimmy had jumped back, he'd taken one look at the empty TV room and realized he'd missed the patients of Ward F by a handful of seconds. Running straight through the airlock, he burst into the stairwell and hurled himself over the rail into the inky abyss, landing light as a feather at the bottom. He ran heedlessly into the lunchroom, feeling kits' bodies pass though his as he scanned the crowd for Karen.

He spotted her, floating through the maze of tables with Brad at her arm. "Karen!!" he shouted, not really having any idea why.

She looked up halfhearted. "Leave me alone, Jimmy."

"What did you just say?" Brad asked, puzzled.

"I told Jimmy-" she started, and never finished.

She stopped in her tracks and turned all the way around. Jimmy was right there in the cafeteria with them, rushing towards her. She could see the other children pass through him in a sickeningly disorienting way. It didn't look like some Hollywood special effect. Jimmy looked as solid as anyone else, and it looked like they were fusing to him, *through* him, as they passed.

He stared at her.

She stared at him.

"Karen, can you see me?" the black wolf asked.

She nodded slowly. She was freaked-out all to heck and back. Dreams were one thing, but now she was seeing dead people with her eyes wide open.

Grimacing with concern, Brad jogged her arm. "Hey, what's going on?"

Not looking at him, Karen said, "Brad, Jimmy's standing a few feet away from me right now."

"Bullshit!" was the immediate reaction he couldn't contain.

Karen shook her head slowly. "I can see him as clearly as I can see you."

Nearly as freaked-out himself, but nonetheless grateful, Jimmy tried to smile reassuringly at her. "Weird, huh?"

"Are you guys gonna sit down or what?" Holly asked from a few tables away.

"Yeah, okay..." Karen said absently. She walked sideways, not wanting to take her eyes off Jimmy, lest he pop suddenly out of existence like a soap bubble. Bizarre as this was, she thought it couldn't possibly be happening for no reason.

Holly and Tyler were looking at her strangely as she sat down. "She's seeing Jimmy," Brad explained.

"Really? Hot shit!" Tyler exclaimed. "Right now? Totally awake!?"

"Uh huh," Karen nodded. Her eyes were so wide open he could've brushed his teeth in the reflection of her pupils.

Jimmy took a seat opposite her, just beside Holly. "I guess this is sort of a good news, bad news situation," he said somberly. "The good news being, obviously, that I don't have to wait till lights out tonight to tell you the bad news."

"What *is* the bad news?" Karen asked.

"What bad news?" Holly butted in.

Karen shushed her. "Jimmy's talking!"

Tyler elbowed Brad. "Reminds me of this kid I knew who had an imaginary friend," he whispered.

The black wolf sighed. "It looks like the head bitch upstairs just fired Alf."

"I know that," Karen replied. "Didn't you see Thurston over there? He told me. He said they found some dirty pictures on him. Kiddie porn. But I know that's not true!"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" Holly barked. "Who's got porn?"

"Alf," Brad supplied. "They fuckin' framed him."

"Oh geez!" the squirlette gasped.

"That BITCH!!" Tyler burst out. "All he did was help Brad call his mom!"

Jimmy nodded. "Damn straight she's a bitch. The biggest bitch ever in the history of bitchdom."

Karen repeated this to Tyler, who nodded darkly in agreement.

"So how'd you find out?" Karen asked her spectral ally. "What are you doing here anyway?"

"I just decided to show up and keep an eye on things. S'all I can do to feel useful anyway. I got a bad feeling about today and thought you might need someone to watch over you. That, and that streetcorner's boring as heck by now. To answer your question, I saw the fox walk out with his things a few minutes ago and drive away. The guy was in tears!"

Karen felt at least a small sliver of relief. "Well, that's good news at least."

"What, that he was crying?" Jimmy snorted.

"No, no! That he drove away! I was worried Dr. Beatrix might've called the cops on him," Karen explained.

Jimmy shook his head. "Naw, that's not like her. The cops draw too much attention. I'm almost certain she probably just threatened the guy and told him to get the hell out of Dodge."

Karen didn't quite understand that last phrase, but the context made it clear enough.

Tyler was staring at the same place Karen was. "He's actually sitting right there?" he asked Karen.

Holly looked over beside her, feeling uncomfortable. Sure, she couldn't actually feel anything, but knowing a dead guy was right there at her elbow...

"Ask him if he wants me to prove it to him," Jimmy told Karen. He was suddenly possessed of an idea. A very weird idea that was so thin and illogical, he thought he could only pull it off if he simply *believed* it into working.

Karen asked.

"How?" said Tyler. "I mean, if he's a ghost how can he-"

"Jimmy, don't!" Karen yelped.

A split-second later, Tyler shrieked and came perilously close to falling back out of his seat. Several kids turned to look at him. "What the hell WAS that!?" the mouse shouted.

"Jimmy just poked you in the forehead with a lit cigarette," Karen said sheepishly.

"I had absolutely no idea if that'd work or not," Jimmy said, looking pleasantly dazzled. He tossed the butt over his shoulder. "Neat-o!"

Tyler rubbed his forehead. The pain had only been there for a fraction of a moment, but it'd hurt like a sonofabitch. "Jimmy, if you can hear me, you're a real jerk."

"He says thank you," Karen reported.


*****


     -KAREN-

When lunch was over, Karen was first in line, first up the stairs, and first in the art room.

She watched the members of her tiny army gather around her one by one, filing in through the door with expectant looks on their faces. She knew that what they expected had to come from her. Like it or not, she was their leader. She neither knew how she had come by this title, or really, what to do with it. But right now all she really wanted to do was go in her room and cry about what Dr. Beatrix had done to Alf.

He'd been so nice to her. One of the nicest grownups Karen had ever met. Just a friendly guy trying to help. And it became clear now that Dr. Beatrix's real motivation in hurting him was to put the screws to her and Brad. Make them feel guilty about what they had 'forced her to do'.

Karen put her head down on the table and wrapped her arms around her face, swaddling herself in darkness. She sobbed. Maybe if she just sat here crying and didn't say a word, maybe they'd all leave eventually. Maybe if she just sat here and cried long enough, _everything_ would go away.

All of it...

All of it.

"Karen?" Holly asked. A soft paw jogged her shoulder.

Karen twitched at it like shooing a fly. She heard Brad say something, but not what it was. Her shirtsleeves muffled the sound.

Several others at the table began to murmur.

And then, a new voice appeared.

'Do you really want to be this pathetic?'

Karen shut her eyes tight against the rough, angry voice. It was her own, of course. But somehow twisted all around. It was her voice, but someone else's personality.

'Crying doesn't make anything go away. When you cry, the bullies just punch you harder. And they keep on punching you till you give them a reason to stop.'

'I know...'

'So it's okay for Dr. Beatrix to do this to you?'

'No. Of course not.'

'Then why are you letting her?'

'I'm not.'

'Yes, Karen, you are. As long as you sit here with your head down, you're letting her. Stop it, for God's sake! You look like an ostrich!'

'I do not!'

'You do too and you know it! Where the hell is your anger? Is this all you can do? Cry? Just cry and cry like a little damn baby and hope somebody else will fix everything for you? Karen, NOBODY is going to fix this! It's you; you're on your own!'

The voice reconsidered. 'Actually, that's not true. There's eight other kids sitting right next to you that are willing to help you. Look at Brad; HE doesn't seem to have any problems getting pissed off when bad things happen to him. Holly and Tyler don't either. And especially Keith! So where's that in you?'

'I...'

'Where's your anger, Karen? I know it's in here somewhere. I've seen it. And it's huge.'

'What do you mean?'

'Are you kidding!? What DON'T you have to be furious about? Just for starters, your parents are absolutely awful people. You know that, but you're not ready to believe it just yet.'

'No... They're just...'

'You shut up right now, Karen. You need to hear this. I'm you, I love you, and I know what's best for you. Our parents have abandoned us. It's their fault they treat us the way they do. Get that? Did you ever ask to see ghosts all night long? Huh? Do you remember asking anyone if you could wake up every single night with horrible things spinning around in your head? How dare they blame you for that! How *dare* they! What the hell is wrong with them that they'd treat you like a criminal for disturbing their freakin' beauty sleep? Have they forgotten you don't have a choice in the matter? They haven't; they just want to make themselves believe they have. Because it's so much easier to blame you than to keep on trying to help you.'

'They've tried everything...'

'Then they should have tried everything plus one. And if that didn't work, then everything plus two. They should have. It's their responsibility. Not yours. You're the little girl, they're the parents. Whose job is it to raise you and protect you and keep you safe? Whose job is it to love you? They're ignoring their job, Karen! You have every right to be angry about that!!'

'I do...?'

'Yes, Karen. You not only have that right, you have a _duty_ to be angry. To yourself, and to me. You NEED to be angry. Right now, you need to be angry more than anyone else in the world.'

'I do, don't I?'

'You do. You can save the anger at your parents for later, but you need to draw on it right now and get yourself as righteously pissed off as you can possibly be at that red-eyed monster upstairs who just framed an innocent man for doing nothing more than helping a little boy call his mother!!'

'I will!'

'You will? Dammit, Karen, you have to promise me.'

'I do! I will! I WILL!!'

'Good! Now let it out! Make that anger useful! Own it! Embrace it! Make it do what you want it to! Get mad, Karen! Get mad...

...AND GET REVENGE!!!'

"I WILL!!!" Karen suddenly screamed, so loud it felt like she'd torn her vocal cords. Her eyes blazed with fury unimaginable. Her teeth even seemed to become fangs for a split instant.

The other eight children stared at her.

Shaking, burning, panting, Karen stared down the length of the table at them.

"Whoa, Karen..." Brad started.

"Shut up, Brad!" she barked.

He was impressed.

"I called everybody here for a reason," the young raccoon said, quiet but firm as steel. "Yesterday was for getting to know each other. Today is for revenge."

"Isn't that, um, cutting it a little soon?" Benjamin asked nervously. Beside him, Victor was actually trembling a little.

"No, it's not. Ten years ago, a bunch of other kids tried to break out of a place just like this. But they waited too long. And do you know what happened to them? Some of 'em escaped, but most of them were captured and some of them were killed. KILLED! Who here wants that to happen to us? Huh?" she barked, looking into all of them and demanding an answer.

No one gave one.

Karen could not believe what had come over her. It felt as if some different Karen, one from far off in the future where she was safe and assured of herself, had traveled back in time to take possession of her.

She *liked* this feeling. She *liked* how it felt to let herself be angry.

She took a deep breath, smiling now. She had reached out and grasped the squirming wet eel of her own confidence and shocked it back to life within her. "It's not gonna happen to us though. They're not gonna fry our brains, or shoot us, or make us forget all the things God gave us when we were born. It doesn't matter if we're accidents. It doesn't matter if we have these weird powers for a reason, or no reason. We have them. And it's our right to have them. No matter what they are or what they do, it's our own damn choice what we make of them."

Holly was struck speechless, almost in awe of her meek, timid roommate and of what she was becoming right before her eyes.

"Tyler, do you want some doctor in Ward Zero to suck out your brain and make you forget all about that neat spirit thing you can do?"

He pounded a fist on the table. "Hell no!"

"Benjamin, do you want to leave here and become the world's greatest hacker? Or do you want to leave here and go back to your jerk of a dad and deal with his crap till you're a grownup yourself and still living at home?"

The fox smiled thinly. "I'll take the first one."

"Keith, I know you were kinda nervous about showing off your power yesterday, but even so, don't you think that it's wrong of them to wanna steal it from you?"

Locking eyes with her, energized by her fierceness, he nodded. "Absolutely."

"Sherri, do you want to go back to the way it was before you could do anything about everyone bugging the heck out of you?"

Mildly surprised she'd even been remembered, the lapin shrieked in horror, "Oh GOD no!"

"Victor, do you... Um..."

He smiled bashfully. "I agree with you. Don't worry."

"And Ruby, I know you don't like being the way you are, and that maybe you might want to just be normal sometimes. But I know you don't want Dr. Beatrix to hurt the rest of us, right?"

The big tiger nodded emphatically. "Uh huh! ...An' I do like bein' strong sometimes," she added.

Karen looked at Brad, then Holly. She saw in her eyes what she already knew; they needed no convincing.

"The only way we're gonna stop Dr. Beatrix and that fat ugly jerk Thurston is if we attack them first. And I don't mean we go beat them up. I mean there's gotta be a way to let the whole world know what they're planning to do to us. Somebody's gotta care!"

A pair of strong, black-furred paws fell suddenly on Karen's shoulders. "It's worth a shot," said a laid-back voice that did not conceal its pride in her well.

Karen looked up long enough to see Jimmy's smile, and to draw even more hope from it. She looked back at her friends. "Um, everybody? I'd like to introduce a very special guest. I told you I can talk to dead people, right? Well, there's a dead guy standing behind me right now."

Sherri looked dubious. Benjamin did too, a little.

But Victor looked positively terrified. "I- I- I- I can see him!!"

"Whoa! Really? Holy crap, dude!" Ben said.

Karen was not only amazed, she was also a little relived to finally know she wasn't alone. "You can really see him!?"

The little skunk's eyes were perfectly round, like twin satellite dishes. "S-sorta. He's like a thick place in the air. Like a dark shape with his hands on your shoulders."

"Well hot damn! That's an encouraging sign!" Jimmy said with a grin.

"Okay, so maybe the rest of you'll believe me now," Karen said, just a little smugly. "This is Always-Jimmy-Never-James. He was one of the ones who got killed in the last escape."

"You make it sound so heroic," he snipped.

"Um, hi Jimmy," Rubiella said unsteadily.

"Tell her I said hi back," Jimmy told Karen.

"He says hi back," Karen told Ruby.

The young tiger smiled. Sometimes having a simpler brain was an asset. It made it easier to accept a reality that was getting more and more impossible by the second.

"Hey ghost-boy!" Benjamin said brashly to the open air. "How many fingers am I holding up?" He slipped his paw behind his back.

Mildly annoyed, Jimmy walked around the table once and then rejoined Karen, telling her what he'd seen.

Karen tried to reply with a straight face. "He says he's a lot older than you, you little punk, and to get your index finger out of your asscrack."

The table broke up laughing and Benjamin's cheeks went red enough to see through his fur.

"Nice, very nice," Tyler commented. "Jimmy, I'd slap you five if I had any idea where your hands were."

"He says thanks, but we really should be talking about our revenge plans," Karen relayed.

"Do we *have* any plans?" Brad asked.

Karen bit her lip. "Not yet. But we gotta do something! Does anyone have any ideas?"

"I do," Jimmy piped up.

"Great! Let's hear it," Karen said, appearing to talk to the ceiling tiles.

The others watched her expression. It went quickly from a hopeful smile to a wicked grin, and then to an out and out beam of joy.

Karen looked straight at Sherri, something the young bunny did not experience often. "Sherri, do you think you could get into the nurses' station without them seeing you?"

She was uncomfortable being on the spot like this. "Um, maybe. Actually... I don't know. Probably not. I'd be real close to them, and if they accidentally brushed up against me, I'd get caught."

Karen looked frustrated.

Sherri looked thoughtful. "Maybe if I had a distraction though..." she supplied.

Karen grinned again. "Great. We can probably do that. Benjamin!"

"Yeah?" the fox asked, a little warily.

"You can suck up information from a computer, right?"

"Of course. But I..."

She didn't let him finish. "How long does it take you?"

"What do you mean? Like, to search for something specific?"

"No, to get _all_ of it."

He paled. "Jeeze! I- I mean... I try not to do that."

"Why not?" Karen asked.

"I've tried it before and it's like the worst Slurpee headache you could ever imagine."

Karen fixed her eyes upon him, her expression stony and pleading. "What if you really, really, _really_ had to?"

A lightbulb clicked on over Brad's head. "The one in Beatrix's office..." he said.

Karen nodded at him, then looked back at Benjamin. "It's for all of us. We'll do everything we can to help you get in and get out without getting in trouble. Do you think you can touch Dr. Beatrix's computer and get everything you possibly can out of it?"

The skinny little fox went quiet. He was not a brave boy, or even an especially selfless one. But he thought suddenly about his mom. No real reason. Just that he knew he wanted her to be proud of him, and that sticking up for his friends would certainly be something she'd approve of. Plus, if if he could do it by crippling the stupid mental hospital his stupid dad had sent him to, all the better.

"Okay," he said softly.

Victor gave him a smile and a pat on the arm.

Karen sighed, thinking deeply. "We're gonna need a really big distraction. And I'm sure some of us will get in a lot of trouble over it."

Tyler felt his conscience come up and give him a little kick in the tush. "I don't mind getting in trouble," he told Karen before he could stop himself.

"You do know that I'm kinda talking about a suicide mission?" Karen told him, realizing that being the leader sometimes meant sacrificing your troops to achieve victory. "It's gotta be a distraction big enough to get Beatrix out of her office in the first place, and hopefully bring most of the security guards too."

The mouse nodded. "Yeah, okay. I understand." Part of him screamed to back out, knowing that he was basically volunteering to step right into the crosshairs of Dr. Bitch-trix's rage. But at the same time, he knew he had to. Whatever punishment she dished out would be worth it to see this freakin' place shut down and all his friends sent home to their families with their brains still unwashed.

Then Tyler got an idea of his own. "Oh Jimmy?" he called out.

"He's here," Karen assured. "In fact, he's standing right next to you."

Tyler looked around, squinting. "Okay, I'll just trust you. So, um, Mr. Dead Guy, can you just float around in the hospital wherever you want?"

Karen nodded for her unseen friend.

"Cool. Could you tell Karen exactly where to find an access to the P.A. system, plus a locked door?"

Jimmy grinned at that, guessing Tyler had grand mal mischief up his sleeve.

"He says he'll get right on it," Karen told him.

Tyler nodded and leaned back in his chair a bit. "You shall have your distraction, my fair lady."

"Wait though," Sherri said, "If he needs to get out to cause his distraction, then where's mine gonna come from?"

"Why not two?" Brad suggested.

Holly perked up. "I could pitch a fit or something!" she suggested eagerly.

Suddenly, a little mind-movie was playing inside Karen's head. She grinned Cheshirely. "I've got it! It's gonna involve every single one of us, and we'll all probably get in trouble, but I've got it."

Karen's army leaned in close to listen.


*****


     -EVERYONE-

This was their plan:

Karen would start the whole thing off like a chain reaction.

After dinner, she would come upstairs acting sleepy and go straight to her room for a 'nap'. Approximately fifteen or so minutes later, she would wake up screaming her head off, acting as terrified as she'd ever been.

Down the hall, Ruby would get agitated and start crying as loudly and annoyingly as possible.

Two loud screamers might be enough to befuddle the nurses, but Karen didn't just want them confused, she wanted them _paralyzed_.

At this point, Keith would run over to Karen's room and start hollering at her to shut up.

Holly would then loudly defend her, and she and Keith would get into the most vicious battle of insults they could possibly muster while still keeping a straight face.

The instant the nurses' station was vacant, Sherri would spring into action and open the airlock doors.

Tyler, Benjamin, Brad and Victor would then slip out. Hopefully unnoticed.

It was decided that Brad and Victor would accompany Benjamin to Dr. Beatrix's office. Not just as lookouts, but because Ben admitted that what he would be doing would quite possibly cause him so much pain he'd pass out. A passed-out fox in Dr. Beatrix's office would be a bad thing. The skunk and tabby tried dragging a limp Benjamin around the art room for a little bit and reported confidently that they'd be able to lug him back to Ward F easily enough if there was trouble. The scrawny foxboy didn't weigh a thing.

But the trio would not act at all until Tyler had begun his distraction. Unable to resist theatrics, he refused to go into any details about what he had in mind. Only that they would _definitely_ know when he began.

Brad, Benjamin and Victor would not move a muscle from their hiding spot until they saw Dr. Beatrix coming out of the elevator and vanishing safely out of sight behind the airlock doors. Then they would haul ass up to the office, get in and get out with lightning speed, and hopefully get back to the ward before they were spotted.

Meanwhile, Karen would still be screaming, Ruby would still be crying, Keith and Holly would still be arguing, Tyler would still be distracting, and none of them would stop until bodily forced to.

Everyone knew their role. Everyone put their paws in a circle and pledged to fulfill their part in the plan to the very best of their abilities, lest they spend eternity in Hell getting molten lava enemas from Lucifer.

Meeting adjourned.


*****


     -MONSOON-

Those kids again...

They were getting really blatant now. He'd watched their whole meeting and saw that this time they hadn't even bothered pretending they were in there to play cards.

He heard several shouts, but not like fighting.

He looked up in the fisheye mirror every now and then, wondering what could be the root of the obviously passionate discussion going on in there.

Maybe they really _were_ plotting rebellion...

He smirked.

If that was true, he was half tempted to see them try. He was curious how far they could go with it.

And, if he were to be completely honest with himself, even if it did display his glaring lack of job loyalty, he was sort of rooting for them.

'Go, kids, go. Whatever you're planning, good luck. You know I'll have to stop you if I catch you, but that doesn't mean I won't be willing to ignore a few things I might catch in my peripheral vision.'

The mountain leaned back against the wall and smiled to himself. He sensed great change in the air. Great change indeed.


*****


     -KAREN-

Dinner lasted eighteen million years.

Karen had completely ignored Thurston, grabbed food without looking and was now eating it without tasting. She did her best not to look at the clock. That only made time go slower.

She was locked into an almost feral nervousness. They all were.

Their plan was completely insane.

But then again, weren't they?


*****


     -CAMILLA-

Holly glanced up at the clock in their room, then over at her friend lying on the bed. Dinner had been consumed without a hitch. Daylight had faded cooperatively and the windows in their room had gone dark half an hour ago. "Now seems like as good a time as any."

Karen nodded, ready as she'd ever be. She took a very deep breath...


     ~~~


Outside, at the nurse's station, the bobcat femme who went by the name of Camilla was doing a crossword puzzle. She was hunched over the desk, staring at the hateful little numbered squares. Oooh, how they mocked her! She *knew* 29 across, she just couldn't get her brain to locate the necessary file. She tapped her pen furiously on the countertop, turning it into a little black plastic blur.

"Would you cut that out?" Kimberly asked sharply, curling her large ears inward.

The bobcat looked up. "What!?"

"That annoying noise!"

"What annoying noise?"

Before she could answer, another noise presented itself. One *much* more annoying.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!"

Camilla shot up out of her seat so fast she barked both thighs on the counter's edge. What in god's name was _THAT_!? It sounded like someone making fresh-squeezed pteranodon juice!

Other kids were peeking out of their rooms to seek out the source of the eardrum-piercing screech. Some actually stepped away from the TV.

Then, while the first wail was going on, seemingly uninterrupted by breath, another one erupted from the opposite end of the hall.

"UUURRRRRRRRR-HURRR-HURRR-HURRRRRRRRRRR!!!"

That one sounded like a bawling buffalo, or a rhinoceros rolling down a hill!

Realizing now more than ever how much she hated this job, the bobcat pointed down the hall at the second noise. "Kimberly!! You go take care of that one! I'll get this one!" She had to shout to be heard over the stereo wails of the two lunatics.

Kimberly flushed and struck an awkward, mannequin-like pose. "ME? But I'm just a volunteer! I'm not trained to-!"

"Just shut whatever it is up!!" the bobcat bellowed.

Seeing the feline's bared teeth brought forth an ancestral memory of fear. Kimberly shot around the counter and down the hall as quick as her little mouse paws could take her.

Camilla gingerly approached the door where the 'AAAAA' was coming from. A synapse fired in her brain and she now remembered that this was where that little raccoon girl was staying. The one who'd gotten so scared from a nightmare a few nights ago. That's all it was, she reassured itself. The sound seemed less scary now.

But when she opened the door, fear gripped her heart again. A different kind of fear. The poor girl was sitting bolt upright in bed, gripping her blankets so tight she was shredding them with her claws. Her tail was poofed up to the size of a watermelon. Her mouth was still blaring out that hellish, monotone shriek, sounding like a stuck air horn. But her eyes were almost worse than the noise: wide open yet seeing nothing of reality. One of them was rolled up in its socket almost completely to white. Whatever the girl was seeing, it had not come from this world.

The fat squirrel was sitting right beside her again, frantically patting her roommate's paw, her tail frizzed up as well. "Gonna yell at me for touching her again?" the girl spat.

Camilla sputtered. "No, God no! Jesus! Look at her! What the hell's wrong with her?!" She'd never seen anything quite like this. She'd seen worse, but different; never anything quite like _this_. She was worried the poor kid would simply scream so hard her lungs would burst or her heart would explode. Part of her wanted to just run and find somebody else to deal with this. But another part knew better. She was a nurse, dammit. This was her job.

Wincing terribly, Camilla eased over to the yowling raccoon and tried to put her arms around her.

Karen's head suddenly snapped towards her and she screamed even harder.

Camilla backed up so suddenly she fell right on her ass.

Karen's blank eyes stared into absolute nothing as she continued to scream and scream.

'I'm putting on the best performance of my life!' she thought proudly.


*****


     -KIMBERLY-

Meanwhile, Kimberly had skittered down the hall towards the second noise and was startled when the door it was coming from suddenly opened right in front of her. All two hundred pounds of Rubiella Dunston shuffled out, clutching a tiny stuffed bunny in her paw and crying her eyes out.

'THAT'S what that sound is!?' Kimberly thought. 'She's *crying*? It sounds like a freight train!'

Ruby was playing her part to the hilt. She was bellowing at the very tip top of her lungs. Her cheeks were sopping wet. Her nose was drooling. Through her wet triple-vision, she saw Kimberly standing there, motionless, looking more like a panicked nonev than she ever had in her life.

In a rare but delightful moment of lucidity, Ruby got a really good idea.

She shrank suddenly back, acting terrified. "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!" she howled.

'Holy fuck! She's scared of _me_!" Kimberly realized.

Comforting this bawling child-thing was just about the least pleasant thing the teenage rodent could imagine. Under stress like this, her true nature was coming out. She had taken this no-money job for one reason only; she thought it'd make a perfect shining jewel on her resume. She did not have the right temperament for a nurse. She did not even have much natural empathy. But the furson who'd interviewed her was a guy, a *straight* guy, and so she got the job. Simple as that.

She took a tiny step forward, shaking visibly. "N-now Ruby... Calm down... I'm not gonna hurt you..." 'No shit,' her mind said. She could just picture this feline She-Hulk giving her a hug and crushing her ribcage like a styrofoam cup.

"NOOOOOOO!!!" Ruby wailed again. "YOU HATE ME!!!"

That actually coaxed the tiniest bit of shame from her. "No, no... uh, sweetie. I don't hate you... I just... Well, I don't quite know what to make of you, that's all," she finished diplomatically.

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!" Ruby howled again. It was hard to keep from smiling. She was rather enjoying the chance to misbehave like this. "YOU THINK I'M UGLY AND YOU HATE ME AND MAKE KAREN STOP SCREAMIN' 'CUZ IT MAKES ME SAD!!!!"

'Oh sweet Jesus...' "Ruby! Please, listen! Someone else is helping Karen right now! She's gonna be fine!" She, of course, didn't know if any of this was true, or even who 'Karen' was, but at this point she would have said anything to make Ruby lower her voice.

"BUT YOU STILL THINK I'M UGLY!!" the tigress shouted. "I CAN TELL! UGLY, UGLY, UGLY!!!" She started jumping up and down, going into a full-blown tantrum. Her footfalls made the walls shake.

Kimberly was trembling like a leaf. She realized, with sick terror, that she was almost certainly going to have to _hug_ this thing. "N-n-now Ruby... I d-don't think that. You're a p-pretty girl..." she lied. Badly. "You just calm down now, okay?" She reached out a paw a third the size of Ruby's to gently pat the tiger on the arm.

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!" Ruby screamed. She jerked away and fell on the floor with a rumbling thud.

Kimberly grimaced. "Fucking hell..." she hissed through her teeth.


*****


     -KEITH-

Meanwhile, Karen's larynx was still going strong.

Both Holly and the bobcat nurse were holding her tight, sitting on either side of her and doing their best to soothe her. Actually, only Camilla was doing that. Holly was secretly thinking about how amazed she was that Karen could keep this up for so long.

Suddenly, a loud, grating voice slashed through the air. "Can't you shut her the fuck up!?"

Holly looked up and growled at him. "Keith, why don't you mind your own fucking business?"

The dark fox knew his role in their little charade would be a hard one. He knew it would take unprecedented self-control. He had to *appear* to get as volcanically angry as he'd ever been, but without actually going there. He'd thought of Dr. Beatrix to get his fury up, now he had to force himself to concentrate on Holly's face to keep it from overwhelming him. 'I'm mad at the bunny, not the squirrel. Bunny, not the squirrel,' he chanted internally. 

Externally however, he barked, "It IS my fucking business! I'm in my room, tryin' to read, and this crazy bitch won't shut UP!!!"

Camilla looked horrified. "Keith! How dare you! You get out of this room right now! Karen's _sick_, do you understand!? It's not her fault! Now GO!!"

"I WON'T!!" Keith blared. "Not until you get her quiet! All I want's some damn quiet!! Is that too much to fucking ask for!?" He barely hid a grin at the irony of it.

Holly jumped up off the bed and rumbled towards the door. (Keith thought briefly that this girl could be damned intimidating when she wanted to be) "Then why don't you shut YOUR mouth, you rotten little fuck? How 'bout I stuff it full of used toilet paper!?"

It seemed like a contest now; 'Who will forget to add the F word to their statements first?' Keith masked his smile with a scowl. "Don't you fuckin' talk like that to me! I'll fucking kill you!!"

"I'd like to see you try, you scrawny li'l TURD!! I'll snap you in half like a fuckin' Slim Jim!!"

"Try it, you fat fuck!!" Keith exploded. He realized too late he might have crossed a line and instantly shot Holly a 'I'm so sorry! I didn't mean that!' look.

Holly understood. They had to make it look authentic, after all. 'Don't worry,' her eyes said back. 'You have to. I get it.' "YOU PILE OF HORSE SNOT!!!" she thundered. "NOBODY CALLS ME FAT! I'LL BREAK BOTH YOUR ARMS AND SHOVE 'EM UP YOUR SKINNY ASSHOLE!!!"

While Keith and Holly were verbally jousting, while Camilla was still desperately trying anything she could think of to quiet Karen down (short of pushing a pillow over her face), and while Kimberly was now being messily and painfully hugged by Rubiella, 90% of the other Ward F kids were all standing around watching the show. The circus, it seemed, had come to town early this year. Some of the kids were cheering encouragements. Some were yelling for everyone to shut up. Others clamored for a fight. One little kangaroo piped up vengefully, "My daddy sells toasters for a living!! I like to look at the MOON!!!"

Only one of the spectators was completely silent, and she wasn't even watching the action at all. Sherri had her eyes fixed like daggers on the one lone nurse's station holdout: a twig-thin college-age marten who was cowering behind the counter. His paws were clamped on the edge and his teeth were chattering. He was just a volunteer like Kimberly. He wasn't getting paid for this shit.

Sherri tried to burn holes in him with her gaze. 'Move. Move, dammit! Move, move, move! Get the heck out of the way so I can run in and open the doors, you stupid weasel! *Move*!!'


*****


     -MONSOON-

Coming off a quick coffee break, T'halu Takaiikelawei glanced up through the double square windows of the Ward F doors and could see enough flurry of motion to tell that some godawful catastrophe was going on in there.

He cursed exotically. "I leave for five minutes, FIVE minutes, and *this* is what happens..." he rumbled.

He pounded his fist on the intercom button. "Camilla!? What's going on in there!?"

A shaky voice returned. "Um, no, sir. It's me, Zach."

"Well then Zach..." Monsoon said smoothly, "LET ME IN!!!"

"Yessir!" the tiny speaker squeaked.

There was a beep and door one opened.

Monsoon already had his 'Do Not Mess With Me' face on by the time the second door slid back.

A _wall_ of noise punched him in the face. Someone screaming, someone crying, dozens of kids all adding to the din, Zach trying to look like he hadn't just zipped out from behind the nurse's station and had been helping all along... and right in the middle of it all were Keith and Holly, looking like they were about two seconds away from ripping each other's throats out.

He shook with fury.

"ALRIGHT!!!!!!" he erupted. "YOU ARE ALL GOING TO CALM DOWN AND GET QUIET OR I WILL BRING THE WRATH OF GOD DOWN UPON YOU!!!"

About half the kids scattered like cockroaches right away. Zach too. The really crazy ones stayed on and just kept whoopin' it up. Keith and Holly looked like they hadn't even heard him.

Snarling, Monsoon waded in and simply snatched Keith up in the air and plopped him down a few feet away. "What is WRONG with you two!?"

Both kids started snarking at him a mile a minute, each saying the other one was at fault and both of them cussing like merchant marines.

Monsoon suppressed a sudden urge to just hurl them both through a brick wall.


*****


     -SHERRI-

Sherri, elated, finally had her chance. And even better than she'd hoped, The Doors Were Already Open!!

Once the dark-furred weaselly guy ran out from behind the counter, she dashed in straight past him and slammed her little paws down on the door button before it had even moved an inch. The ward was in so much chaos by now, she thought no one would have noticed her even if she wasn't invisible. She breathed a sigh of relief and felt her heart fluttering wildly in her chest. 'Wow! Being part of an adventure like this is fun!' she realized.

The conference room door opened. A kitty head poked out questioningly.

Sherri nodded urgently. 'Go! Now!' she mouthed.

Brad did not have to be told twice. With a wave of his paw, he ordered his troops out. The four boys dashed in a perfect beeline for the airlock just as Sherri pushed the button to shut the door behind them. Tyler had to reel his tail in at the last second to keep it from getting flattened.

No one saw a thing. Everything worked like clockwork.

The boys all breathed heavily in the tiny soundproofed room.

Sherri dutifully pushed the button for the outer door and then sat back in one of the swivel chairs, nearly melting from relief. She sighed with deep satisfaction. She watched the ongoing fracas with an outsider's calm. Rubiella was now lumbering about, still crying as loud as ever. Karen was making weird wailing/gurgling noises as her throat gradually dried out. Monsoon, Holly and Keith were all shouting at each other as loud as they possibly could.

"Now _this_ is a distraction!" she muttered under her breath, and giggled.


*****


     -TYLER-

Brad's commando unit ducked out of sight behind a convenient janitor's cart the very second the airlock opened out into the rest of the hospital. They all hunkered down in the corner, getting their tails dusty. The last thing they wanted was for their plans to be foiled by some nosy staff member.

Brad looked to Tyler. "You know what you're gonna do, right?" he whispered. Just checking to be sure. He already had plenty of confidence that whatever his roommate had planned, it would be spectacular.

The little grey mouse grinned like a shark. "Of course, my horse. I've been waitin' to commit some mayhem like this for a long time." He nodded to each of the other three and gave a macho grunt. "I'll see you guys later. The quicker I split, the quicker we can get Dr. Beehive outta her office."

"Good luck," Victor said, his nervousness readily apparent.

Benjamin nodded grimly and saluted. "Take no prisoners. Fight the Man."

Brad chuckled darkly. "Don't get killed."

Tyler pouted. "Aww, you're no fun!" With that, he skittered out of sight, moving like the wind.

Each ward took up the lion's share of the floor it occupied, leaving much of the rest of the space for janitorial and storage purposes. Tyler fled to a short, dimly lit half-hallway with a lot of pipes running along the ceiling.

He caught his breath. His smile died. He thought he'd gotten way too good at letting his humor hide his true feelings. In reality, he was scared to death. He wished Brad or Ben had at least *tried* to talk him out of this. Maybe they coulda held him down and had Vic skunk him into unconsciousness. That would have been just fine.

He knew his plan would probably work, he was just worried about the consequences of it. What in God's name would Doctor B., The Death Bunny do to him when she finally caught him?

All he could do was just act like what Karen had said was real; this was a suicide mission. Tyler was sacrificing himself for the rest of the team. No matter what happened to him tonight, he was at least pretty sure he wouldn't be in any position to help the team out anymore afterwards.

He took several long, cleansing breaths. Then noticed that, appropriately enough, the little nook he was in stank of cleansing agents.

'The plan. Just go ahead and do it. Get down to the P.A. room like you told Karen. Get there and lock the doors. Get there and-'

His chest hitched with utter horror. He'd forgotten to ask Karen for Jimmy's directions.

He had absolutely no idea where to go.

"Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck..." he whispered in a single breath.

They were doomed. Everyone. He and Brad and Ben and Vic were all gonna get caught outside the ward and then everybody in their whole little rebellion would get in trouble and possibly killed or brain-vacuumed for nothing at all.

"You screwed UP, you stupid idiot!" he hissed at himself.

He held his head in his paws. This could not be happening. This was the worst failure of his entire life. He felt like he oughtta just get a gun and shoot himself right in the-

FOREHEAD! "OWW!" he shrieked.

He clamped his paws over his mouth immediately. Searing pain had all of a sudden attacked his forehead! What the HELL!? Was there a bee in here?

Tyler winced and sucked in air as a second pain, milder but still awful, touched his left paw. "What the fuck!?" he wailed. It wasn't bad enough he'd just sunk everyone's chances of getting the heck out of here, now some invisible man was giving him...

His eyes opened in understanding. "...cigarette burns. Jimmy, you asshole."

He thought that, just maybe, he'd heard a faint echo of a chuckle.

He certainly didn't want Karen's ghost pal to lead him all around the hospital, burning him in the right direction, so he tried a little experiment. If he could see Victor's ugly little nightmare creatures (and oh jesus he never wanted to think about those things ever again please never ever again), he thought he certainly ought to be able to see just a regular ol' normal-type dead guy.

He slipped down to a sitting position against the wall. Always best to be low to the ground when he 'slipped out', so if he fell over there'd be less chance of bruises. Tyler stood up out of his body and gasped.

"Y-you're a lot taller than I expected."

"Thanks. Now why didn't you think of this before, ya little feeb?" Jimmy asked.

Tyler shrugged. "I dunno. I'm not *always* a genius."

Always-Jimmy-Never-James chuckled. "Fair enough. The door you want is two floors down. Get your ass back in your body and follow me to the elevator. I'll be with you the whole way. Promise."

Tyler nodded, feeling a lot better now. Feeling *hopeful* now. He hopped back into his mortal self and darted for the elevator.

Once he pressed the button for the fifth floor and the doors closed, he leaned back into the corner just long enough to pop out of himself for a split-second.

The black wolf was right there by the door, puffing away. "Still here, amigo."

Tyler phased back, greatly reassured.

Time to stop worrying and concentrate on getting his furry little butt into as much trouble as possible.


*****


     -HOLLY-

She really didn't want to argue with Monsoon as viciously as she was. She actually thought he was a pretty cool guy. But for the sake of the plan she had to keep up her act of being wildly out of control until Tyler stepped in to take control of the confusion.

The real problem was that she was starting to get tired. She could see it in Keith's eyes too. Anger is like fire. It burns bright and hot, but it's not self-sustaining. Another few minutes of this and she'd collapse in a heap. She was already getting a bit short of breath. Who knew screaming made such good exercise?

That, and even her gifted brain was starting to run out of insults. At least, ones that made any sense. Had she *really* just called Keith a 'crosseyed, egg-laying dogfucker'?

Karen and Ruby were faring no better. Holly had been sneaking periodic peeks at them when she could. Poor Karen's throat was probably raw as driftwood by now. She was still sitting up in bed looking like a zombie, but the only sound she could produce anymore was a sort of weak 'Uh uh uhhh'. Ruby was obviously running out of ideas too. Now she was crawling around on the floor yelling nonsense syllables, looking more and more like it was all just an act. As low an opinion Holly had of Kimberly's intelligence, she thought the vapid mouse was bound to smell something fishy eventually. If the staff caught on that all this 'random chaos' had been planned, Holly didn't even want to think about the punishments that would follow.

But then...

In their darkest hour...

Tyler came to their rescue.

Nobody heard the slight crackle of the P.A. coming on; there was still much too much shouting going on for that. But they all certainly did hear (in fact, the whole building heard) the dulcet, ear-splitting tones of one mischievous grey mouse bursting into song:

"BLUU-UUUUE MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO-NUH!!!!"

Everyone in the entire hospital looked up with identical 'What the fuck?' expressions on their faces.

"YEWWW SAW ME STANDING AHLOOOOOOOOOOOOO-OH-OH-HO-OOOWWWN!!!

Just like the voice of an angel.

"WEEEEEEEEEEEEEE-THOWT A DREAM IN MY HEAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRT!!!

Well, not really.

"WEEEEEEEEE-THOWT A LUHV OF MAH OOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWNNNNN!!!"

Thankfully, Tyler did not treat them to a second chorus.

"HEYYY, all you swingin' cats and kitties out there in wacko-land! This is the rockin' sockin' Mouse In The House! I'm here to bring you awwwwlllllll the latest hits and tits and pieces of shit to hit the charts! You're listening to K-T-Y-L-E-R, comin' to you LIVE from the fabulous King's Orchard Mental Hospital! Yes that's right! The bughouse! The padded-cell hotel! The hoo-hoo house! The puzzle factory! We're all crazier than a crateload of fruitcakes dropped on their heads at birth! So let's PAARRRRRRRR-TAY!!!"

Holly looked up in awe, feeling wonder in her heart. "I love you, Tyler," she sighed.


*****


     -BEATRIX-

The white rabbit got up from her desk slowly with a look on her face that could melt titanium.

"I am going to kill that little shit," she vowed, and headed downstairs.


*****


     -BRAD-

The cat, fox and skunk had themselves pressed so tightly to the wall behind the elevator you would've guessed their spines were a straight vertical line from ears to toes.

Brad was forcing himself to breathe slow and calm. He could feel his heart beating, running around in his chest like a gerbil on an exercise wheel.

Though it was kinda hard to be *too* scared. What with Tyler's dead-on radio DJ impersonation going on at skull-vibrating volume all over the place. The tomcat was seriously impressed. Tyler was so good at this, he thought it'd be a match made in heaven if his mouse pal ever pursued a career spinning vinyl for real.

On every floor and in nearly every room, the hospital's speakers pumped out the hyper voice of a kid who knows he's using up every drop of his energy on the last and greatest performance of his life.

"...By the way, that first little ditty you heard was 'Blue Moon' by some old guys I don't know the name of! Wasn't that great, folks? Truly heart-stirring. I may cry. But seriously!! Tonight we're coming to you LIVE from somewhere hopefully no one will find me for several hours. That's right, Dr. Beatrix, you evil butt-licker, I could be *anywhere*!! Maybe on the third floor! Maybe on the first! Maybe I'm even on the roof or up your dress! Who Knows!?"

Benjamin was clamping his muzzle shut with both paws to suppress giggles.

"Now folks," Tyler went on smoothly, "here's a little number that really means a lot to me. I wrote it the other day in group therapy when I was supposed to be paying attention to something else. But who really can? Am I right? After all, it's not a lot of fun being forced to listen to a mouse with a brain the size of a shirt button."

Somewhere, Kimberly seethed.

Tyler guffawed. "Oh wait! What am I saying? That's what I'm doing to YOU right now!!"

*Massive* laughter at that.

"So, here ya go, everybody. I hope you like it. And I mean that from the very bottom of my heart..."

Silence for a few seconds, as the master of ceremonies composed himself.

Then there was the harsh sound of Tyler sucking in a deep breath, and he began to sing in possibly the most annoying voice in the history of the universe:

"Ohhhhhh, my mommy gives me ritalin,

"In a little paper cup!

"My daddy gives me lithium,

"And it sure does shut me up!"

People were already rolling around, laughing so hard they thought they'd never be able to take a breath again.

"Prozac, Codeine, Morphine,

"And everything we need...

"But if you bastards really want us mellow,

"Why the hell don't you just give us WEEEEEEED!?"

Hundreds of patients of all ages and species applauded thunderously while dozens of staff members searched madly for the irreverent little punk.

Victor had been chuckling just like everyone else, but he let out a little gasp when they all felt an unmistakable vibration hum through the walls at their backs.

"She's coming," Brad whispered.

The three boys could both hear and feel the elevator ascend to the top floor. A slight pause, then it began to lower again. Brad knew that soon he'd see Dr. Beatrix come stomping out towards the Ward F doors, mad as hell, and he could only pray she wouldn't think of looking directly behind her.

Just in case though... With only seconds left until she emerged, Brad looked around for a hiding place. ANY hiding place.

"There! Go!!" he hissed, pointing to a little broom closet nearby. Benjamin hit the door first and fiddled with the handle. Brad thought he'd probably have a heart attack if it was locked. Why hadn't he thought of this sooner!?

The door popped open with a loud screech. "Heh. Needs oil," Ben remarked.

Brad steamrollered the other two boys into the tiny dark room and eased the door not-quite-shut behind them. He didn't want to take any chance it might stick and trap them all inside. They were already elbow-to-elbow as it was.

Benjamin sniffed the air in the lightless little space. "Victor...?"

You could practically hear the young skunk blush.

"Did you skunk yourself?" the fox asked, trying to be gentle about it.

"Um... uh huh. Just a little. It happens sometimes when I'm nervous. I can't help it!"

"Understandable, 'bro. I pooped my pants at a horror movie once when I was five. My stupid dad thought it'd-"

Brad lightly stomped the fox's foot. "Shut up, Ben! The elevator just stopped!"

The three boys went dead silent.

There was a moment that lasted forever where nothing seemed to happen.

Then the doors shuffled open and the unmistakable sound of a women's shoes clip-clopped across the linoleum.

A buzz. "Somebody let me in!" Dr. Beatrix shouted.

Brad, Victor and Ben were all holding their breath.

The tap-tap-tap of an impatient shoe. "NOW, goddammit! I run this place!"

A few seconds later, the speakers burbled something too tinny to make out.

"Finally!" the rabbit snapped. Then came the sound of the airlock door sliding open.

'Yes... Yes...' Brad thought. Sweat was clinging to the fur above his eyes.

Two more clip-clops and the door slid shut.

'YESSS!'

Benjamin nudged him. "Now?"

"A few more seconds," Brad whispered back. They couldn't possibly be too cautious about this.

He counted to ten in his mind.

"Okay! *Now*!"

The boys burst out of the janitor's closet looking like a miniature version of the Three Stooges. Brad ran to the elevator in a blinding flash. He jabbed his finger into the 'up' button repeatedly.

The elevator doors took about a billion years to open.

When they did, Victor and Benjamin swooped in around him and flattened themselves to the sides. Ben pushed the eight button immediately. The doors nearly slid shut on Brad before he could slide in.

As the elevator began to carry them skyward, the boys all shivered with relief.

"No celebrations yet," Brad reminded them. "None of us are safe 'till we're back on the ward and in our rooms."

The fox and skunk nodded. None of them said anything else till the elevator reached the top.


*****


     -BENJAMIN-

The silver doors opened into an absolutely silent white hallway. Everything looked completely sterile. A long line of black-brown doors stretched all around them in a 'U' shape.

"Which one?" Victor asked, having never actually been up here before.

Ben and Brad both gestured towards the door directly in front of them.

Victor nodded.

The elevator doors shutting behind them sounded like the blade of an executioner's axe hitting the chopping block.

Brad took a few cautious steps forward. His eyes were slits and his ears were perked up to their full height. "I think we're the only ones up here," he said. A creepy feeling swept through him at the thought that maybe Dr. Beatrix kept the entire floor completely empty all the time, just so she could have it all to herself.

"Wait," Benjamin said, looking thoughtful.

The others turned to him.

The skinny little fox hit the 'down' button, then darted in and out of the car just long enough to press 7. He emerged smiling craftily.

"Whadja do that for!?" Brad hissed. "Now it'll just take longer for us to get outta here!"

Benjamin held up a finger: 'au contraire'. "What if Dr. Beatrix has to come back here for some reason? If the elevator's not right where she left it, she'll get suspicious. I saw the same thing in a movie last summer."

Victor made a little 'Impressive!' sound.

Brad did too. "Okay, good idea." He walked over to Dr. Beatrix's office and reached for the knob.

Benjamin giggled nervously. "Wouldn't it be funny if it was locked and we were all just totally screwed?"

Both Brad and Victor gave him hideously dirty looks.

"Heh."

The door opened smooth as silk.

The three boys slipped inside.

Even empty, the office still radiated an aura of doom which it had absorbed from its sole, constant occupant. Everything in here was angles. No curved lines anywhere to be seen. Boxy shapes caused steep shadows to be cast across the floor and walls. This was where a robot must live, Benjamin thought. Nothing living could. This place was freezing cold in a way that had nothing to do with temperature.

With the lights off, the boys could see clear through the giant window-wall into the grassy fields below. Tiny lights sparkled amid the indistinct black shapes of another town beyond them.

Brad had never felt more grateful for the soft leather pads on his paws that enabled him to walk in perfect silence. If the floor so much as creaked right now, he thought he'd jump to the ceiling and hang there by his claws.

Foxes are nervous creatures by nature, and Benjamin was not feeling so good. He thought he could feel every single nerve ending in his body. His heart was whamming in his ears. His jaw was trembling. He didn't like this. He didn't like pretending to be noble and brave. He knew he wasn't. Huge parts of him were screaming to just run back to the elevator and screw Brad and Victor if they got in his way.

But still he kept walking forward. He was glad for that, in a way. It meant his more moral elements were still in control of his body.

He spotted Dr. Beatrix's computer. It was waiting on her desk. A perfectly normal one, yet Benjamin could almost *sense* how much evil information it contained. Like wiggly orange space rays coming out of it. Like stink-lines in a comic book. What in God's name would he see when he put his paws on that thing? What had he let them talk him into!?

Before he knew it, he'd crossed the room and was standing in front of the hateful thing.

Brad and Victor stared at the computer too. Ben thought they looked just as afraid of it as he was.

Nobody said anything for a few moments. Their backs were to the wide window and it felt skin-crawlingly like the whole world was watching them do this. The boys' tails twitched in trepidation.

"Okay, Benjamin," Victor said softly. "Do it. We're right here. We'll catch you if you spaz out or somethin'." He gave his fox friend a reassuring pat on the shoulder.

Benjamin looked up, his fear melting a bit from the pure, innocent sincerity in the young skunk's tone. He could see that Victor was quaking a little from obvious fear, but that his eyes showed steady resolve. 'Geez... Victor's more scared than I am. But *he's* keeping it together. I guess that means I don't have any excuse not to...' He gave Victor his bravest smile. "Thanks. I know you will."

Brad nodded in agreement. He moved closer, standing just behind the fox, arms at the ready.

That made Benjamin feel doubly better. He closed his eyes and calmed himself. Even if doing this permanently fried his brain, he knew had to. It wasn't just the fact that he'd made a promise and he'd feel like a total skeeve if he backed down now. It felt like his destiny wasn't his anymore. Like he was no longer the main character in his own life story. He was serving something bigger than himself by doing this.

Benjamin reached out and touched the monitor, half expecting it to bite him. He'd found long ago through trial and error that computer monitors often made much better gateways for information retrieval than the actual CPU. He suspected it was probably because people saw what was in a computer through the screen, and it was really their *perceptions* he was assimilating.

The little fox tightened his grip. "I don't know what's gonna happen to me when I do this," he said solemnly. He did not look at his two friends. He did not look at his reflection in the black glass either. He felt like he was delivering his own eulogy. "Just try not to let me smash through the window when it's all over."

They promised.

Benjamin took another breath, wishing he could just hesitate this moment away forever.

Then he readied his mind.

He pictured a blank computer disk. A magic disk that could hold an infinite amount of information. It was bright blue, and it had his name written across the front in black marker on masking tape. 'BENJAMIN'S MAGIC DISK'. That was his brain; open and waiting for download.

Benjamin stared into the blackness of Dr. Beatrix's computer screen.

Without a word, he flung the doors of his power open as wide as they could go...


~~~


A nanosecond later he was lying on the floor, twitching obscenely, begging his brain for unconsciousness to rid him of the horrors he had just allowed into himself.


*****


     -VICTOR-

It was like watching someone being electrocuted.

Benjamin had been fine one second, then suddenly his mouth stretched wide in a completely silent scream and he went flying backwards. Like the computer had *punched* him. Victor and Brad were so shocked, Benjamin sailed straight through their outstretched arms and slammed spine-first into the glass. It reverberated with a sound like dropping a handball into Jell-o. Poor Ben probably didn't even feel it.

Victor stared, petrified, as Benjamin writhed and convulsed on the floor of the office like an epileptic in a full-blown seizure. The fox's eyes were blind as burnt-out lightbulbs.

Brad broke out of the paralysis first. He dropped to his knees and tried to restrain the flailing fox. "Help me!!" he snapped at Victor.

Like a lightswitch, the skunk's brain turned back on and he was at Benjamin's side. He reached out shaky paws, trying to find a place to grab hold.

"You get his wrists, I'll get his ankles," Brad said. His voice was sharp but quiet.

Victor nodded. He seized his friend's paws and did his best to keep them still.

The two boys held Benjamin like that for at least a minute. Victor was mesmerized by the sight of Ben's tongue flopping out of his mouth and twitching like a fish.

Finally, the fox's struggles began to ebb.

Gradually, his small body went limp.

Victor watched Benjamin's twitching form slowly cease moving. There was just enough of a flutter in his chest to tell he was still alive. Though with his mouth hanging open and his eyes rolled up, Victor thought he looked unsettlingly like a dog who'd been hit by a car.

The young skunk felt his eyes getting warm with tears. He looked up to his remaining companion. "What if he dies, Brad?" he asked.

Brad couldn't stand the pitiful tone of the skunk's question. "He won't. See, he's still breathing. He'll be fine." He said this angrily, as if ordering Benjamin to just snap out of it and be okay. He didn't want to let his brain consider the possibility that he'd just witnessed the death of a kid his own age who'd only been trying to help them.

To his total surprise, Benjamin made a little sound.

Victor and Brad leaned in. It was like a tiny cough.

Ben did it again.

His eyes, which had been rolled up to the top of his skull in a gruesome fashion, slowly rotated down to a normal, if still sightless, position. The room was so quiet, Brad and Victor thought they'd actually heard them moving in their sockets.

"Shuh," Ben slurred.

Victor whimpered and leaned in close, patting his friend encouragingly on the shoulder. "He's talking! C'mon, Benjamin! Be okay!"

"Shuh-uh-uh. Shhff. Nuuh."

Ben's muzzle was jerking like a fluorescent light hesitating before it turns on. His throat, tongue and brain moved spasmodically, trying to figure out how to reconnect with each other. It was like he'd simply lost power and was now booting up again.

Victor was really crying now. "C'mon, Ben... You're my friend. I want you to be okay..."

Startling him, Benjamin suddenly completed a full, clear sentence.

"She's killed *hundreds*."

The cat and skunk felt their blood run cold.

Benjamin went limp again, but not in a frightening way. It was like he had exerted an impossible effort to relay that little bit of information and had used up the last of his energy in the process. His eyelids closed and he was deeply asleep within seconds. He looked peaceful now. At rest.

Victor and Brad just looked at each other. Wanting to make absolutely sure, Brad put his paw in front of Benjamin's muzzle and could feel the warm tickle of strong, clear breath. He felt a wave of relief.

"We've gotta get him downstairs and into bed," Victor said.

Brad nodded.

Just like they'd practiced in the art room, Brad stood up and wriggled his fingers under Ben's biceps. Victor tucked the fox's ankles under his armpits like wheelbarrow handles.

"Got a good grip?" Brad asked.

Victor said, "Yup."

"Okay then. One... Two..."

A loud click startled them both. It had come from the office's lone door.

The handle was turning.


*****


     -BEATRIX-

By the time Dr. Beatrix had been fully brought up to speed by Camilla, a report came in over the walkie-talkie on the nurse's station desk that the problem had been located. The white rabbit snatched it up and hollered into it that she was coming down there right now and that the little loudmouthed furball in question had damn well better be hogtied and chemically sedated when she got there.

She stomped off in a huff and Camilla was glad to see her go. All the time she'd been explaining what was happening, the rabbit had been giving her a look that made her feel like their positions of predator and prey had become momentarily reversed.

Beatrix stormed down the stairs, cursing under her breath all the way. That insufferable child's voice echoed all around like she was trapped in a giant megaphone. Tyler was singing and joking and sounding like he was having a grand old time. She kept waiting to hear the sound of the door banging open and Mr. Caercase tackling the little rat, and she was getting more and more furious with every second it didn't come.

Beatrix reached the fifth floor landing and burst out of the stairwell with a slam. In the corridors surrounding Ward D, she saw Thurston and two other security staff huddled around a door to one of the filing offices, looking dumb and perplexed.

"What the fucking bloody hell is going on here!?" Dr. Beatrix shouted over Tyler's soulful crooning of about a dozen dirty limericks. "Get in there and *stop* him!!" she fumed.

The fat bear's head shot up, looking about as pissed off as she'd ever seen him. "Dammit, Bea, I'm _trying_! Can't you see that!?"

She came closer and saw he had his keycard out. "What, it's not working?"

He snarled. "If it was I'd be in there already, now wouldn't I?"

"Don't you talk to me in that tone of voice," Beatrix snapped like an angry kindergarten teacher. "I'm still your employer. Now what's the problem?"

The bruin calmed himself down a bit but the frustration he felt was still plain on his wide face. "Every time I try to swipe the keycard, the damn thing shocks me. It's got a short circuit or something!"

"Oh, that's ridiculous!" Dr. Beatrix scoffed.

"No, ma'am," one of the other men said. He held out his paw. "We all tried it. It felt like someone jabbed a cigarette right into the end of my finger!"

The rabbit growled. It wasn't that she didn't believe them, she just needed verification. In her world, nothing was real until she made it real. "Gimme that," she said, plucking the card out of Thurston's hand with a flick of her wrist.

"I really wouldn't do that," he warned.

Too late. Dr. Beatrix rammed the plastic sliver through the slot in the door. Instantly, a burning-hot pain exploded in the fleshy web between her index finger and thumb.

She screeched and flung the card across the hall. Thurston bent to retrieve it while Dr. Beatrix suckled her paw and swore. 'It DID feel like a cigarette burn!' she thought.

All around them, Tyler laughed and laughed.

"How long do you think it'd take to bust the door in?" one of the other men asked Thurston.

"It's metal, stupid! We'd need an arc welder!"

"Never mind that," Dr. Beatrix said huffily. "I'll just go back upstairs and get my keys."


*****


     -BRAD-

Brad felt as if a pound and a half of adrenaline had been dumped in his veins all at once. With a strength and speed that actually frightened him, he snatched up Benjamin like a stuffed animal and dragged him backwards under Dr. Beatrix's desk in less than two seconds. Victor joined him a scant moment later and both of them somehow managed to get all of Benjamin's limp parts stuffed safely in with them before Beatrix stepped into the room.

Their heartbeats sounded loud as kettledrums. Brad thanked God that Ben had stopped flopping around already. He couldn't imagine him and Victor trying to wrestle with him under here.

The boys all heard the door squeak open and a harshly muttered syllable that could have only been a curse word. It seemed they had a party crasher.

'Ben, that was a really good idea you had back there about the elevator,' Brad thought. He willed himself to become a statue and wait this out. A weird kind of calm had overtaken him. He thought that this must be what *true* panic is like; when your brain realizes you're in such deep shit it just stops fighting it and goes 'Oh well!'. Either they'd get through this undetected or Dr. Beatrix would find them and drag them out by their tails and skin them alive. A fifty-fifty chance. Nothing he could do about it either way.

Brad gazed into the eerily placid eyes of his reflection and let the rest of himself slip away.

Wait a minute...

His *reflection*?!?

'OH SHIIIIIIT!!!' Brad's brain screamed.

Even with the lights off, the world outside was still dark enough to clearly show him, Ben and Victor all squished up underneath the desk like fuzzy little sardines. They were still mostly transparent, but if Dr. Beatrix turned on the lights, the great glass window would turn suddenly into a room-length mirror. 'Oh fuck. Oh fuckedy-dee,' Brad thought. Fifty-fifty? Hah! They were pretty much at 99% guaranteed certain death now.

But Dr. Beatrix _didn't_ turn on the lights. She didn't want to bother wasting time. She knew where her keys were anyway and the moonlight was enough. Every second she spent in here was another second that rotten little mouse was free to put on his rotten little show. Oh, he thought he was SOOO clever, sneaking out of the ward to entertain all his buddies. Dr. Beatrix would find out whoever had allowed him to slip through the double doors and she would destroy them. What she'd done to that cook this morning would seem like *mercy* in comparison.

Brad closed his eyes and prayed. It was the only thing he could do. His muscles were screeching from their confinement in such a tiny space (especially considering his leg was bent up in a weird angle and he was stepping on his own tail), and his heart was a miniature jackhammer. His nostrils flared, smelling his sweat and Benjamin's. Smelling the tiny perfume deposit Victor had made in his underwear. There was no way in hell Dr. Beatrix could possibly not see them AND not catch a whiff of the most distinctive odor in all of furkind...

Victor was trembling. He felt his tears drip, one by one, onto his shirt collar. He could smell himself too. Never in his life had he been more ashamed of his species.

Dr. Beatrix stopped short by the desk and hunted about for the keyring. She'd left it RIGHT THERE, damn it! She knew she had! Why did little things like that always seem to run off somewhere else when you weren't looking!?

Brad had gone rigid with terror and was amazingly thankful for that. If he was paralyzed, he couldn't make any noise. The mirror tomcat under the mirror desk stared back at him. 'Oh god she's less than a foot away from us. She's gonna look up and see us any second now.'

In her peripheral vision, Dr. Beatrix spotted several fresh paw prints on the side of her computer monitor, but the bulk of her brain was so consumed with anger she was completely unable to ascribe any significance to them.

Brad felt Benjamin's weight on him, felt the fox's sharp elbow jammed right into his gut, and thought about how lucky Ben was that he had no idea what was going on.

Dr. Beatrix Beverley's eyes were like laser beams when she was angry. They saw nothing else in the world but their intended target. In truth, Brad and Victor could have been standing right out in the open - she could have even stepped right over Benjamin's snoozing body - and she *still* probably wouldn't have noticed them. Right now, only two things existed in the universe; her keyring and Tyler. And she couldn't get to either of them. She let out a screeching growl of frustration that sounded like velcro ripping.

Then she had a flash. "Ah-HA!!" she suddenly hollered, scaring Brad so bad he made a dot of urine appear on the front of his shorts. The desk drawer!! She'd dropped the keys in with her purse! She remembered now!

Grinning ferally in triumph, she leaned way across the desk, not even caring that her name plaque was digging painfully into her stomach, and wrenched the side drawer open. She giggled as she saw her errant keyring glisten in the moonlight. "Naughty little fucker. You should have come to mommy when mommy told you to come," she cooed in an icy, demented singsong.

'Oh sweet merciful God she is going to kill me,' Brad thought, shivering fiercely. 'She is going to open her mouth like a train tunnel and *eat* me...'

Her prey ensnared, Dr. Beatrix jumped up and spun around like an Olympic ice dancer. Clutching the keys in her palm so hard they nearly drew blood, she headed for the door like a cruise missile and slammed it shut contemptuously behind her.

The office was silent.

For several seconds, Brad and Victor remained still as marble, not comprehending that it was all over and they weren't actually dead.

It had all ended so *fast*.

Victor squeaked and let out another tiny squirt of skunk juice which his clenched muscles had been holding in so far. "I'm sorry," he sobbed.

Brad reached across Benjamin's inert form and hugged the little skunk. He hugged Victor tight like they were brothers. He started to cry too. Tears of relief. "Don't be sorry. I peed my pants a little so we're even."

Victor managed a tiny gasp of a laugh.


     ~~~


All they had to do now was pick up Benjamin and haul him back down to Ward F. In light of what they'd already gone through, it seemed like a cakewalk.

And in fact, it turned out to be exactly that. The two boys lifted their fallen comrade with ease and got him to the elevator without a single hitch. Their brains were functioning in a dreamy grey half-capacity, overloaded from fear. They waited for the doors to open, lugged Ben in, and descended to the seventh floor in silence.

Brad didn't even bother checking to see if anyone was watching when they stepped out. He didn't care one way or another. That zen thing had happened to him again. If someone was there, they would get caught. If no one was there, they wouldn't. Simple as that. If they were meant to get away with this, then they would. There was nothing to worry about.

Brad let Benjamin slump on the floor while he reached up and tapped the intercom button. "It's me," he said flatly. He knew there was some code word he was supposed to have memorized, but it was long gone by now.

He waited for the outer door to open and began to remember what worry felt like. 'Oh, now I get it,' he thought. 'This is when everything screws up. Sherri's not there. She left, or forgot, or someone saw her. So we'll just stand here till Dr. Beatrix pops up in the elevator and catches us. How funny. Ha ha ha.'

"Brad?" Victor said timidly.

"Huh?"

"The door's open."

Brad looked around and his eyebrows went up in surprise. "Oh. Cool." He picked up Ben again and he and Vic stepped inside the little white room. He remembered when Monsoon had frisked him in here and found Grandpa's knife. That seemed like a million years ago.

The inner door opened and Brad and Victor schlepped Benjamin with them into the still-open conference room door. They moved horribly slow, thanks to their physical and emotional exhaustion, but luck was still with them. Everyone was still so engrossed in the Tyler Show, only a single furson had registered their entrance, and that was Sherri. 

Brad helped Victor lay their still-snoozing friend down on one of the room's brown faux-leather couches, then sat down beside him and felt himself melt. The cat and skunk both sighed contentedly at how wonderfully cushy the seats were.

"We did it," Victor said. Almost a question. Like, 'Really? Did we really do it?'

Brad grinned. "We did it. Now shut up 'n let's just relax and listen to Tyler for a while."

"Okay," the little skunk said.

"Hey, where the heck am I?" Benjamin suddenly asked. "And why does my back hurt?"


*****


     -CAMILLA-

While Brad and Victor were both joyfully pouncing Benjamin, covering him in hugs and giving him noogies for not waking up sooner when he might have actually been able to help them, Karen was still sitting up in bed, now recuperating from the living hell she'd put her throat through.

It felt like she'd swallowed six pinecones and a pineapple. Backwards. It felt like she'd poured half the Sahara desert down there. Camilla had brought her four cups of water already and it still wasn't doing any good.

But as bad as the pain was, it couldn't overpower the good feeling Karen had deep down inside her. She knew at least part of her plan had worked; Tyler's ongoing oratory was proof enough of that (Now he was doing cover versions of various Weird Al songs. The bits he remembered, at least). She also had an intuition that the rest of it had gone smoothly too. She hadn't heard sounds of anyone being caught or reprimanded. The nurses and Monsoon still seemed to think it was just a random burst of chaos. No one had broken down and squealed, at least not that she knew of. Karen couldn't wait for tomorrow when they could all get together again and compare notes on how it had all gone down.

Camilla came back with a little foil square in her hand. She sat down on Karen's bed and gave her headfur a gentle stroke. "Here, sweetheart. Try one of these. Two if you like."

"What are they?" Karen rasped.

"Just cough drops. The mentho-lyptus kind. Had 'em in my purse, actually. They seem to work for me well enough."

Karen nodded and popped three of them through the foil backing, setting one aside for later and slipping the other two in her mouth. They tasted terrible, but she thought she felt them start to work right away. "Thank you," she said softly, feeling a little bad that Camilla had no idea this was all part of her grand mutiny scheme.

"No problem, honey. Hope your throat feels better soon." She started to get up. "You sure you don't wanna tell me anything about that bad dream you had?"

Karen shook her head. She had not just been screaming at nothing. In order to bring up as much true fear as she could, she'd closed her eyes and dredged up images from all the worst nightmares she'd ever had. Severed heads. A dazed man walking around carrying his own intestines in his paws. A baby lying in a sandbox with a syringe sticking out of its face. A little girl standing in a basement with dust pouring out of her empty eye sockets...

Karen did _not_ want to talk about any of this.

The bobcat nurse nodded. "That's okay then. If you think you'll be alright now, I'm sure there's plenty more problems out there I need to mop up." She gestured towards the door. Karen could see kids still running around wildly out in the hall.

"Okay," Karen said, and Camilla left.

Just as she was heading back to the nurse's station to put her remaining cough drops away, someone tapped her on the shoulder.

The bobcat turned around and immediately stifled a yelp of mixed shock and hilarity.

Kimberly was drenched from the top of her head to just above her bellybutton with about a gallon and a half of Rubiella Dunston's mixed snot, drool and tears. She looked like an elephant had sneezed in her face.

Camilla's mouth hung open. She thought of a dozen different things to say and didn't dare speak aloud any of them. The look of absolute fury on Kimberly's face was sharp enough to kill.

The mouse ripped off her nametag and threw it somewhere past the desk. "I quit."

Camilla tried to reason with her. "K-Kimberly! C'mon now! You can't just quit in the middle of a shift like this! I still need your help!"

Kimberly said nothing. She merely walked around the desk, pressed the button to open the door, and stomped off in a huff. She flipped the bird over her shoulder as she went.

Camilla was more than a little offended at her now-erstwhile co-worker's parting gesture. Then a pleasant smile formed on her face as she realized that Kimberly had forgotten that you needed to push a second button to get *out* of the airlock.

The bobcat walked away, hoping no one else would need to come through the double doors for a good long while...


     ~~~


As for Kimberly, Friday night was the last anyone at King's Orchard ever saw of her again. Later on, while she was sitting safely at home and watching the eleven o' clock news with a look of inexpressible horror in her eyes, she would begin to grasp that her decision to quit right then and there was probably the smartest thing she had ever done in her life.


*****


     -KAREN-

Meanwhile, as Karen was feeling the nasty-tasting but effective lozenges get to work, she heard a small mumble to her right.

She turned, then jerked in surprise at finding Sherri sitting less than four inches away from her on the bedside table.

The little bunny smiled, never quite able to resist savoring the reaction that got. "Hi."

"Oh, um, hi Sherri. How'd everything go?"

"Just splendid," the bunny said proudly. "The boys got back a few minutes ago. Benjamin was passed out, so I'm assuming that means everything went according to plan."

"Is he okay!?"

"Oh, sure! Don't worry. He was talking with Victor and that cat boy when I last looked in on them. They're in the group therapy room."

Karen felt a shivery streak of pride rush through her. "It worked. I mean, wow! It really worked!"

"That was a pretty smart plan," Sherri said. She realized she'd just Given Someone A Compliment, and it actually blew her mind a little. What the heck was happening to her, she wondered?

Karen's mind was already busily considering ideas on how to use the knowledge Benjamin had just retrieved for them. She had no idea what kind of information it was, but Ben had assured her that his memory for stuff he'd gleaned was photographic. Whatever it was, he'd have plenty of specific details. Maybe there'd be names. Maybe they could call up parents who'd lost their children to places like this and try to get them all in contact with each other. Karen knew a mob of angry moms is not a force to mess with. She was sure they'd yell enough to at least get someone to look into it. And Jimmy had said the information was all out in the open for anyone smart enough to put it together.

Karen and Sherri's thoughts were suddenly shattered by a loud, fearful cry of "Oh CRAP!!"

A hundred heads looked up at the speakers where Tyler's voice was coming from. The good humor had drained out of it in a heartbeat, replaced by outright fear. "Um... Uh... It looks like we're gonna have to cut our broadcast day a little short, cats and kitties. I think I just heard a key in the lock. They've found me and I..."

Karen felt her chest hitch up. She'd forgotten all about the fact that Tyler was basically sacrificing himself for them. She'd been so amused by the mouse's patter, it had slipped her mind how inevitable it was that the hospital staff were going to catch him sooner or later. She couldn't begin to imagine what they'd do to him.

Tyler's voice was still coming through load and clear. "Th-they're coming. I know it. I think-"

His voice was cut off by the sound of a door being loudly slammed open. "THERE you are!!" another, much deeper, voice bellowed.

Tyler's voice became a tiny squeak, trembling with terror. "Please. No. I'm sorry. Don't hurt me."

The rest of the hospital had gone absolutely silent. Patients and staff alike stood glued to the sounds coming over the P.A. The abrupt shift from comedy to reality was shocking. And what was even worse was how the young boy sounded. He wasn't just afraid of being punished, he sounded like he was afraid of being _killed_.

"Get over here!!"

Small, scuffling footsteps

"No! Please! I'm sorry!! Please! Please!"

"I said Get OVER here!!"

Louder footsteps. Something large tipping over.

Tyler screams.

"Stop! Stop!! You're hurting me!! Let GO!!"

"Shut up! Shut UP!!"

A slap. Something hits the floor. The microphone falls off the table with an ear-splitting bang. Thurston's voice now sounds overly loud and muffled, like he's partially sitting on top of it.

"Stop struggling, you little whelp! You thought it was funny, huh? Thought everyone would just laugh at you and your little jokes!? Huh!? Fucking goddamned-"

More sounds of scuffling.

"I said stop *struggling*!!"

A dull snap.

Tyler shrieks sharply, then lets out a long, wavering whine of pain. One can only imagine what is being done to him. As all of King's Orchard listens, the boy begins to cry in loud, panicky gulps.

"You got nothin' to cry about. You made me do that. You MADE me do that!"

Tyler's voice suddenly changes. One can easily imagine a thick paw being held over his mouth. It does not keep all the sound out though. A muffled, reedy moaning escapes. Many of the hospital's other patients start to wonder if Thurston Caercase has broken his arm.

For nearly a minute there is only Tyler's crying and the occasional sound of shuffling fur.

Then, abruptly, Tyler's moaning becomes out and out screaming. Beneath it, we can hear another pair of shoes entering the room.

"Stop MOVING, dammit!!"

Louder sounds of struggling. Tyler yelps out short blasts behind his forced-closed muzzle. He has seen something that terrifies him.

Suddenly, for only a second, Tyler's voice rings out loud and clear: "-E'S GOT A NEEDLE!!"

There is a hard impact of flesh on flesh. The listeners correctly assume the source of the impact is Thurston's fist connecting somewhere with Tyler's body.

The struggling sounds continue for a few more seconds, then die out with bone-chilling suddenness.

The second pair of shoes steps away, then there is the faintest gasp of a whisper.

Thurston roars.

"Why didn't anyone TELL me this was still-"

Silence.

Hundreds of faces, slack with horror, stared up at the various speakers set into the hospital's walls, as if begging for some hint of a happy ending. They all knew however, that there wasn't going to be one.

Somewhere on Ward F, a young kangaroo girl said simply, "Murder."


*****


     -TYLER-

Tyler's sense of self came swimming up through a bad dream of sticky green spheres floating amid an endless plane of absolute greyness.

The first thing he was able to clearly register was pain. Great, red blotches of it had settled over his entire body. Nothing broken, thankfully, but plenty out of place. What the hell had happened after they drugged him? Had Thurston *kicked* him all the way here?

The second thing he felt was the leather restraints biting hard into the flesh of his ankles, wrists, neck and stomach. His head also seemed to be clamped in place. He could feel something shivery and metal pinching his temples uncomfortably. They certainly didn't believe in padding here.

Tyler was beginning to formulate a guess as to where 'here' actually was. He remembered Karen's voice reporting what Jimmy had told her, about what happened to the boys and girls at King's Orchard who didn't cooperate. About where they took those naughty little boys and girls. And what they did to them there. Tyler moaned. He'd wanted to believe it was all just a bunch of paranoia...

He finally dared to open his eyes, then bit back a hiss of pain as a miniature sun above his head sent a hundred hot needles into his vision.

"Freakin' lamp..." he muttered.

Carefully, he tried again. Out of the swirling blue afterimages, he had a momentary hallucination. A *strong* one.

It was the black and white movie of Frankenstein. That's where he was. He was strapped down on the operating table, just like the monster. The room was made of ancient black stones caked grey with dust. Huge, cartoonishly terrifying machinery surrounded him. There was a table nearby with unspeakable instruments on it. Two faraway forms in the doorway must have been the good doctor himself and his hunchbacked assistant.

The young mouse blinked, and the illusion faded. Though the reality of what he saw quickly conveyed that somehow, his hallucination had shown him the *true* face of the room he now found himself in.

The walls were white, not black. It was an operating room. A small one. The lighting made it feel as though it might be underground. The machinery was still there, modern instead of ancient, as well as the table with its instruments. Their eye-defying shapes were not nearly as horrible as the fact that he couldn't even begin to guess at their functions.

Standing in the doorway was not Victor Frankenstein, but Beatrix Beverley. And Thurston Caercase was far from hunchbacked.

Noticing his movement, Dr. Beatrix strode briskly forward and bent over the table. "Hmmm..." She whipped out her paw and pried Tyler's left eyelid open so she could stare into his pupil.

Tyler shrieked in perfectly understandable pain.

Dr. Beatrix spoke soft and clinical without a trace of emotion. "Good. I could have done this while you were still unconscious, you know. But I wanted you awake so I could make sure that you'd suffer. You deserve to. You know that, of course. You know you did a very bad thing, Tyler. I think you even knew exactly what kind of punishment you'd be facing when I caught you. The question is, why?"

She took her hand away and Tyler slammed his eyelids shut. Jesus, that had hurt! And even worse was having to look up into that blank, dead face while she talked to him as if all of this made complete sense.

"Why, Tyler, would you risk me killing you for nothing more than a prank?"

"Y-you're really going to kill me?" he asked. He'd sort of known that all along though, just like she said.

"Well, not quite." Beatrix picked up one of the instruments, one that looked like an extremely long corkscrew with a blunt tip. She considered it, then sat it back down with affection. "I'm going to shock your brain with enough electricity to put you into an irreversible coma. Then I'm going to let you rot down here forever."

His worst fears were confirmed. This *was* the infamous Ward Zero. And through the window behind Beatrix, he thought he could see what looked like rows and rows of waiting beds. Some of them were occupied already.

Dr. Beatrix walked behind Tyler and placed her paw upon a fiendish apparatus. "We didn't used to have these machines, you know. They're new. We used to have to use chemicals. Much sloppier. And sometimes the subjects came out of the comas later. That was unacceptable. Of course, there's something to be said for low-tech too. Sometimes a simple paralytic nerve toxin shuts a boy like you up quite nicely..."

Tyler suddenly felt her insectile voice tickling his ear. "...and then I can do _anything_ I want to them..."

Through sheer force of will, Tyler heroically kept his bladder from emptying all over the place.

"Of course, you're just going on a permanent trip to sleepyville," Beatrix said. She walked slowly in a circle, speaking as placidly as a woman making out her grocery list. "Think about it, Tyler. Your body will just lie there for years and years and years. Your piss and shit will be sucked out through tubes that we'll attach to your openings with a special kind of glue. You'll get all your nutrients through a needle under your eye; much more efficient than one in your arm. You'll get so skinny that, once you die, we'll be able to dispose of you by sliding you down a sewer drain!" She laughed cheerfully. "How about that!"

Tyler did everything possible to turn every ounce of his fear into hate. He knew what this was all about. She was trying to scare the bejeezus out of him so he'd snitch on his friends. Fat chance. He'd resigned himself to The Big Sleep hours ago. He knew if he told her anything she'd just fry him anyway, and then Brad and Holly and everyone else would soon be joining him.

"What're you gonna tell my parents then, huh?" he snarled. "'Oops! Sorry we turned your kid into a paperweight'!?"

Dr. Beatrix smiled coquettishly. "Don't be silly, Tyler. Why, all we have to do is tell them you went into one of your narcoleptic states and wouldn't come out of it. We'd wheel you upstairs once in a while when they came to visit and we'd tell them again and again how we were doing everything possible to try to bring you back. And they'd believe us." She giggled like a schoolgirl. "How convenient, Tyler! You came with your own tailor-made alibi!"

The mouseboy gulped. It was starting to sink in that she really was going to go through with this. She really was going to, in essence, _erase_ him. And if somehow his soul got trapped within his body, it'd be like being buried alive inside of himself forever.

Tyler shivered, but then perked up.

'Wait! DUH!!' How obvious! He just had to wait until they were about to throw the switch, then slip out of his body! Sure, he'd be pretty much just a ghost at that point, but Karen might still be able to see him. Then he could be a spy for them like Jimmy! That'd be cool. He'd much prefer that to just getting swept away to Hell or wherever.

"I'm sure you've probably figured out what I'm getting at by now." Dr. Beatrix told him. She looked across the room to Thurston and gave him a nod.

Tyler watched the bear approach, grinning nastily, and then disappear somewhere behind him. 'Please,' he thought, 'let me have just *imagined* that he had an erection...' The notion that anyone could possibly be _aroused_ by threatening a child like this was so abhorrent it felt like a wet pile of spoiled cottage cheese had been shot into his brain.

"Regular voltage, Ma'am?" Came the bear's polite voice.

"Of course," she said crisply. "Just shy of lethal." She giggled.

'Jesus fucking Christ they're *both* enjoying this,' Tyler realized. What the hell kind of monsters were they!?

Dr. Beatrix stepped lightly back to Tyler's side, her heels clip-clopping on the metal floor. She leaned in as close to his face as she could. He could smell her excited sweat and a trace of her deodorant. "Now Tyler, I know you didn't put on your little radio program for no reason. I know it wasn't a prank. You were distracting me from something. Tell me, what was it?"

Tyler squeezed his paws into fists. He scowled as hatefully as he could. If they were going to just snuff him out like a candle wick, he'd go out like a man. He gathered all his defiance and outrage into a little ball inside his stomach. "My friends are going to _kill_ you, you ugly bitch," he said clearly.

He got a reaction, and that was all he was hoping for. Dr. Beatrix snorted in disgust and slapped him across the face as hard as she could. "You filthy little...! Horrible fucking piece of...! How DARE you!!"

Tyler hardly felt the pain at all. He chuckled. He was not going to let her enjoy this. He was not going to allow himself to be her scared little victim.

Beatrix growled in frustration. He was not playing the game right AT ALL!!

She surged forward and jabbed a red-painted fingernail up into the soft underside of Tyler's jaw. He could not help but wince from the immediate pain. "I already know all their names, you goddamned little disobedient *brat*. I know everything!! I know everything because this is MY hospital and I'M the one entrusted to run the program! I do a *good* job. I keep all the filthy little mutant freaks like you out of the general public so you can't fuck up everything we've worked so hard to protect!!"

"What the crap are you talking about!?" he sputtered.

Dr. Beatrix pressed the nail in harder. "I'm not just doing this because I enjoy it, Tyler. I *do* enjoy it, but that's beside the point. I'm doing it because it is my duty. Children like you are anomalies. You are logs of fecal matter floating around the gene pool. You are *mistakes*. We have to keep the world's population _clean_. We have to stop you before you can infect the rest of us."

Her rage became, momentarily, a very smug smile. "Did you know, for instance, that we've put a chemical in the drinking water here that's been steadily making you and all your little friends perfectly and completely sterile?"

Tyler hoped she was lying. That thought was simply too ugly to be true.

Dr. Beatrix pressed harder under Tyler's chin. Just hard enough to finally feel a drop of blood go sliding warmly down the length of her finger. She felt no shame at causing pain like this. Not to children like Tyler. They were unnatural. They were not like her. And that meant they were inferior. "You think I'm just a big meanie who likes to hurt little kids. Oh boo hoo hoo! You have no _idea_ how stupid you are. If you'd all just cooperate with me, I could make your lives so much easier. I could make you *normal*. I could make you *acceptable* into society. Don't you want that? What the hell is wrong with you little shits that you don't want any help!?"

Tyler stared into the utter emptiness of her eyes. "You're crazy," he whispered. "You're crazier than anyone else in this whole hospital."

She smiled. "No. I'm not."

"Yes you ARE, you demented fuckin' fruitcake!!" Tyler yelled. He felt his rage uncoil and explode inside him. "All that stuff you just said is completely nuts! You wonder why we don't want your help!? Because you're a psychopath! Duh!! Maybe we *like* being weirdos, you ever consider that? Maybe we were born like this for a reason! You talk about mutation; that's how evolution is *supposed* to work! And I wrote a paper on it for school last year, so I know what I'm talking about! Maybe we're actually *better* than you!! Maybe we're-"

"Thurston! NOW!!" Beatrix screamed.

Tyler had just enough time to be confused. Just enough time to wonder what she was talking about.

Not enough time to leap out of his body.

He heard the electricity crackle before he felt it and realized she'd tricked him. She'd gotten him so angry he'd forgotten all about his power. 'She knew everything about me all along,' he realized.

Just before the pain hit, he tried to jump. Too late. A few thousand volts speared into Tyler's brain like a hail of arrows. The lights throughout Ward Zero dimmed. The boy on the operating table made a sound halfway between a scream and a gurgle as every muscle in his body stiffened at once. Inside his skull, the lightning danced and bit and poked and chewed.

Dr. Beatrix could smell his flesh sizzle.

The mouseboy suddenly slumped, limp as a dish towel. A wisp of steam came out of his nose. Followed by a single thin line of blood.

"That should be enough," Dr. Beatrix said.

A high pitched whine filled the air, deepening slowly as the machines powered down. Thurston had one hand on the switch and another on the front of his pants.

"Check his life signs, Mr. Caercase," the white rabbit said. She stroked Tyler's cheek thoughtfully, feeling how stiff the fur had become. She gazed into his glassy, blank eyes. "Your reaction was priceless," she whispered in his ear.

Thurston checked all the digital displays on the various machines. "Breathing's steady. Heartbeat's a little erratic, but nothin' serious."

"Brainwave activity...?" she purred.

"Almost zero."

She grinned with pleasurable satisfaction. "Perfect every time. I dearly love these machines, Thurston. I want to get one for myself someday. Put it in my bedroom just so I can wake up every morning and look at it and know what it does."

"It makes 'em shut up is what it does," Thurston said with a laugh.

"Indeed," she concurred. She straightened up, sighed, and ran her fingers through her hair. She'd picked up a bit of a charge from standing so close.

Thurston came around to look at the boy. "His bed's all ready. Should I cart him over there and hook him up?"

A small shake of the head. "No. I have something different planned. Get a wheelchair and meet me at the elevator."

She looked at her reflection in the glass, composing a false expression of resigned sadness that could not have been more at odds with what she truly felt inside. "We have to make them see what it cost them to disobey me."

Her reflection smiled back at her carnally.


*****


     -BEATRIX-

Just before lights out, the nurses on Ward F were given word that the director of the facility had a very important announcement and that she wanted everyone gathered in the TV room to hear it.

There was much grumbling about this among the children. Several of them had already changed into their pajamas and were rather annoyed at having to change back. Some of them just went like that anyway.

The patients poured into the largest room in the ward, taking up seats wherever they could. The chairs filled up quick, leaving some children no choice but to perch on the air hockey and ping pong tables. Camilla took the opportunity, since everyone was already here, to pass out the evening's medications. At least eight of the children only pretended to take them, noticing that the bobcat wasn't taking the time tonight to check underneath everyone's tongues.

With only nods from Karen to guide them, the remaining art room rebels scattered out, trying to blend into the crowd and look as un-grouplike as possible. But through all the whispered wonderings of what this big announcement was about, the eight of them kept in contact nonetheless. They all swapped several quick glances amongst themselves which could only show a small fraction of their curiosity over the plan's success and their worry over Tyler.

After nearly ten minutes of waiting, the natives were getting restless. Put a bunch of tired, mentally unstable kids all in a room together and you are asking for trouble. The noise level had risen steadily from the soft hum of whispers to a dull roar of outright fidgety exasperation.

Then Dr. Beatrix stepped into the room.

Everyone quieted down in a heartbeat.

"Children," she began, looking and sounding as if her heart was broken, "I have some bad news. I'm sure you all heard the ruckus caused by a boy named Tyler this evening."

Several muffled chuckles. 'Ruckus' was not the word for it. 'Anarchic takeover' was a little closer.

Dr. Beatrix walked to the center of the room, pacing just a little as she talked. "While some of it may indeed have been amusing, I'm sure you all realize that this was an extreme case of disobedient behavior. It was dangerous too. He could have gotten lost somewhere in the building. And behind that locked door, what if he'd gotten hurt? There would have been no one there to help him."

"He only got hurt *after* the door was unlocked," Brad muttered under his breath. "We all heard it. How stupid do you think we are?"

She knew that they knew she was lying, and didn't care. She had to put up a false front, that was all. It was protocol. Her true message would come through clearly enough in the end.

"When we found Tyler, he resisted. We had to sedate him. I'm sure at least some of you know he's had several fainting spells in the past. Unfortunately, he had a rather strong negative response to the chemical we were forced to use on him."

Many of the children who still did not realize the truth of what was going on at King's Orchard nonetheless knew, just from the complete lack of real emotion in Dr. Beatrix's voice, that she had done something terrible to Tyler and wasn't even bothering to cover it up with anything more than a flimsy lie. They began imagining horrible scenarios. Just like she wanted them to.

Dr. Beatrix let them simmer a bit. Always best to nurture a nice, healthy sense of dread before dropping the axe.

"Mr. Caercase?" the white rabbit called out.

A squeaky, repetitive sound approached from outside in the hallway. Some of them recognized it before they saw it: a wheelchair.

Looking just as falsely somber as Dr. Beatrix, Thurston wheeled Tyler into the Ward F television room and let everyone get a good, hard look at him.

There were gasps, cries and screams. One girl even tried to run out of the room before Thurston shoved her back with a single, heavy paw. Victor started crying. So did Holly. Brad bit the inside of his cheek so hard it bled to keep himself from crying out in rage. Karen hid her face in her paws, not wanting to acknowledge what she knew she had caused.

What sat in the wheelchair was no longer Tyler Lorenzo. It was a bad parody of him. A numb caricature. His head tilted bonelessly to the right, his eyes wide open and unblinking. A line of saliva dripped down his chin. Fat droplets collected on the ends of his whiskers and landed one by one on the floor.

His limbs dangled from his body like a marionette. A prominent stain ran down the front of his pants and steadily darkened the wheelchair's seat. They hadn't even had the decency to clean him up first.

It might as well have been a corpse in the chair Thurston had rolled in. There was not a trace of Tyler's soul left in this blank, mindless thing.

The room had erupted in crying, whispering and sounds of impending nausea. One boy actually did get sick in his mouth and had to be rushed out of the room before he choked on it.

Dr. Beatrix smiled with gleeful satisfaction. "Now see, children, what can happen when you don't follow the rules?"

Point made, she nodded to Mr. Caercase. He nodded back. The two of them left with the ghastly thing in the chair, leaving the rest of the staff to clean up the aftereffects of their horrorshow.


     ~~~


Brad watched them go until they passed out of the range of his sight. Even over the din in the TV room, he could still hear the squeaky wheels moving down the hallway to the L bend.

He thought he had never felt hate quite like this before. A new flavor, so to speak.

It was a quiet hate. A hate that blocked out all the rest of the world. A hate that turned his vision red and sharpened his focus to a knife's edge. A hate that had effortlessly switched off all of his ethics and instincts for self-preservation.

Brad thought this new feeling could become very useful to him.


     ~~~


As the elevator descended back down to Ward Zero, Thurston yawned while Beatrix ran her fingers through Tyler's headfur in a monstrous imitation of tenderness.

"It has been a long night, hasn't it?" she said.

The bear nodded. He yawned again and scratched the side of his muzzle.

Dr. Beatrix could not suppress a yawn herself.

"So, Bea, is that it? I mean, is that all you want from me tonight?"

She nodded impassively. "Yes, yes. You can go home now."

"Great! I've been up since six. You, uh, gonna pull another all-nighter?"

She thought a bit. "Actually, I think I'll go check on the twins, then tidy up a few things upstairs."

Thurston yawned again.


*****


     -KURI & WILL-

The twins were not actually twins.

The two orange tabbies, brother and sister, were actually born almost two years apart. They acted so much like a single unit though, it was hard to think of them otherwise.

Kuri Rennault was thirteen. Will Rennault was twelve. Their orange fur was the color of goldfish and butterscotch candy. They both had white streaks on their muzzles, stomachs and tails. They also had a slight foxish look to their features, enhanced by their fur color, that hinted at a very mixed family history. About the only difference between them was that Kuri's nose was brown and Will's was pink.

Right now they were playing a card game and trying hard not to think about what that dimming light several minutes ago had meant. There were no clocks in either their room or the rest of Ward Zero, so it was hard to tell just how long ago it had actually been.

Harsh artificial light shone down on a small, low plastic table that was colored to look like wood. Playing cards fell in silence. The siblings did not look at each other or speak, but they communicated nonetheless. When two fursons have been as close to one another throughout their entire lives as Kuri and Will had, words were almost superfluous. A nod, a twitch of a tail, a silence or a sigh could say more than enough.

There was a knock at the door.

Both kittens looked up.

The thick steel door unlocked and rolled open. Dr. Beatrix poked her head inside the small bedroom. It looked almost like a military barracks; everything was painted army green. There were more books and board games scattered about the room than one could count. Necessary, since Kuri and Will hardly ever went outside. "You two doing alright?" she asked in her best imitation of kindly concern.

"Yes, Auntie Beatrix," Kuri said without much emotion. "We're fine."

"Well that's good," the white rabbit said. "Are you enjoying your game?"

They mumbled a bit. It was plain the cards were only there to distract them from thinking unpleasant thoughts.

"The light went dim," Will said quietly. He couldn't take it anymore, this feeling of 'if we don't talk about it, it will just go away'. He looked up into Dr. Beatrix's pink eyes. "You had to do it again, didn't you?"

The white rabbit came closer and sat down beside them. She put her arms around their shoulders, looking for all the world like she was deeply saddened by what she'd just done. "Yes, Will. I did. I had to. He was being bad." (She was very, very glad there were no P.A. speakers down here.)

"What'd he do?" Kuri enquired.

Dr. Beatrix considered her words. She had always been careful to limit their knowledge of reality only to what she deemed appropriate. "He was telling the other patients lies about what goes on here. Causing trouble. Stirring things up. I tried nicely to talk with him, but he got very violent. Mr. Caercase had to restrain him. It was awful." She managed a perfectly executed fake sob.

The kittens looked sad too. "It's okay, Auntie Beatrix. I know you must've not had a choice," Kuri said, placing a sympathetic paw on her caretaker's shoulder.

Will nodded. "Just like you said; it's for their own good."

"Yes, Will. That's exactly right. It was for his own good, and the good of all the other children here." She was proud of the Rennaults. They were like Tyler and the others in that they had been born abnormal, but she couldn't ever think of them as inferior. After all, she had practically raised them herself. They knew all about the program's goals and had been a big behind-the-scenes help at accomplishing them so far. Their training would soon be complete. A few more years, perhaps. Then they would be ready to become full agents of The Project and help her and her colleagues catch and contain even more nasty, unnatural children.

They were good little kittens. They believed what they were told.

Kuri and Will both hugged their beloved guardian. Dr. Beatrix nuzzled their noses, then got up and went back to the doors. They mewed with disappointment, hoping she'd stay longer. "Sorry dears, but I still have things to do. Maybe later I'll come back and tuck you in, okay?"

They nodded obediently.

"Okay, Auntie Beatrix," Will said.

"See ya later," Kuri said.

Beatrix nodded and slid the great metal door shut again. The twins listened for seemingly the millionth time as the bolt was drawn on the other side, locking them in for the night.

After a few moments of silence, Will spoke up. "I wish she'd let us DO more. I mean, it's not like we wanna escape. I'm ready. I can take on more responsibilities. I'm sick of doing nothing more than taking care of all the droolers out there!"

Kuri frowned. "Will... Don't talk like that. I know it's gross, but we have to. You don't want them all to just die, do you?"

"'Course not."

"Well then stop calling them 'droolers'! It's not fair. A lot of them, it's not even their fault they're down here. Auntie Beatrix said she'd give us more duties when we're ready. That's up to her to decide when. You can ask her about it if you want, but you know she wouldn't lie to us."

Will shrugged. "Yeah, you're right..."

"'Course I'm right," Kuri huffed.

Without another word, the Rennaults returned to their cards.


*****


     -KAREN-

Falling asleep was hard, but necessary. Karen laid silently in the dark bedroom, huddled under her covers and feeling small. She faced the closet, listening to Holly weep openly into her pillow. She had not been able to make eye contact with her roommate since the meeting in the TV room. Though her body was still and her eyes were closed, she could not get her mind to shut down long enough for sleep to claim her.

How unfair was that? She'd spent her whole life up till now avoiding sleep at every opportunity. Yet now, when she finally *needed* it...

Her cheekfur was still sticky with tears and her throat still hurt. She remembered the third cough drop she'd saved on the bed table and reached out a blind paw behind her to hunt for it.

Out from the darkness came Holly's voice. "It wasn't your fault."

Karen didn't say anything back.

She slipped the cough drop between her lips. The flavor of it hurt her nose. She felt suddenly very cold and pulled the blankets tighter around her until she looked like she'd been cocooned.

The more she tried not to think of Tyler, the more she *did* think of Tyler. How that thing in the chair had used to *be* Tyler. Until she'd ordered him to risk his life for the sake of her stupid plan.

Karen wished hard that it had been her in that wheelchair instead of him. She deserved it more, certainly. It was perfectly accurate to say that Karen hated herself in that moment. She wanted very much to simply die during the night so she wouldn't hurt anyone else she cared about ever again.

When her poor mind finally became so exhausted it could not help but drift into slumber, Karen found herself once again under the lamp across the street from the hospital.

This time, Jimmy was right there beside her. He opened his arms immediately and accepted her into a gentle hug. She began to cry loud and hard, much more than she'd allowed herself to in her waking state.

She buried her face in his dry, musky leather jacket. He patted her softly on the back. They stayed like that for quite a while.

"Is he here?" Karen finally forced herself to say.

Always-Jimmy-Never-James shook his head. "No, Karen. Believe me, I looked. I looked everywhere. He... He might have passed on."

"Did you check in his body? He's not trapped in there, is he?" she asked, feeling a very small sliver of hope.

Jimmy hated to disappoint her. "That was the first place I checked. His heart's still beating... but Tyler's gone, honey. He's somewhere else now."

Karen shuddered with a full-body sob and clutched Jimmy's jacket tighter in her small paws. "I killed him."

The wolf put his hand gently, but firmly, on the back of her neck. "No you didn't. Don't you ever let me hear that outta you ever again."

She was surprised by his anger, and finally looked up.

"You haven't killed anybody, Karen. She did. Dr. Beatrix did. She killed Tyler, not you and not anyone else. I know, because I watched it happen. I couldn't do anything to stop it. Hell, I shoved my lighter right through that bitch's face and flicked it a couple dozen times and it didn't do *anything*! I don't understand it. I guess it wore off, whatever it was..."

"You tried," Karen said consolingly.

"That's right. I tried. And when it didn't work the first time, I did it again. And again and again and again until it didn't matter anymore."

He was looking fiercely into her eyes now. He was almost scaring her.

"Just like you need to do, Karen. If you let yourself feel all guilty over this and stop trying and just give up, that'll be like spitting in Tyler's face. Do you want that? Do you want him to have died for absolutely no reason!?"

Karen whimpered. "You're holding me too tight!!" she cried.

Jimmy backed off, but did not release her entirely. "Karen, I'm sorry. But you know I'm just trying to help you. I'm not gonna let you let Dr. Beatrix get away with this. All this means is that you need to fight back even *harder* now, or else she'll do the same thing to all the rest of you. Don't you see that? I have no idea how much she knows about your art room meetings, but I'm sure she suspects by now. I heard her ask Tyler about you. She said she already knew your names, but I think she was bluffing. I fuckin' *hope* she was bluffing. What that means, Karen, is that you are running out of time."

She saw the bright red outrage in his eyes but couldn't find any left within herself. Her eyes formed fresh tears. "But... But I'm just... I can't, Jimmy! I can't! I'm *scared*!! And I'm too little! I can't DO this!!" She broke down sobbing again and clutched herself to him, feeling weak and ashamed and hating herself for not being able to overcome it.

Hearing her cry, Jimmy realized he was pushing her too hard too soon. 'You asshole, she's just a kid. You can't expect her to be a soldier. She's not a gun for you to aim and shoot. Jesus, what the hell is wrong with you?' Staring off into the emptiness of the cold night street, he absently patted the back of her head.

"I'm sorry Karen. Just forget what I said for now. You just cry. Cry as much as you want. That's what you should be doing now. I'm a stupid bastard who doesn't understand other people's feelings. You don't have to listen to everything I say."

He felt her little head nodding against his chest. She hugged him just a skosh tighter.

Together, they huddled on the streetcorner for warmth and waited for morning to come.


*****


     -BRAD-

Brad's eyes had been open for hours.

Every time he felt sleepy, he pinched himself. _Hard_. In places where it hurt the most. He could not allow himself to fall asleep, because he had something important he needed to do. He needed to go see Tyler again.

He didn't even know why, that was the weird thing. What did it matter? He'd already seen Tyler. Tyler was a vegetable. Tyler was dead meat. Tyler was fucking _gone_.

In the thin band of light sneaking in from the half-inch open door, he could see the outline of the empty bed across from him. The longer he looked at it, the more his hate grew.

It didn't *matter* why. He needed to go see Tyler, and that was it.

He'd been trying to count the seconds in his head for a while, then realized that was just making time go even slower. So then he started thinking about school stuff. Going over past tests and worksheets. Losing himself in facts. Then he thought about all of Tyler's comic books. He tried to envision them panel-by-panel, in as much detail as he could possibly remember.

Once he'd gotten through twenty issues like that, he decided he'd probably waited enough.

Cats are silent creatures of the night. Sneaky and sly. Masters of moving in darkness. His ancestors had been, so he knew he was too. That meant he would not be caught, because to be caught was simply unthinkable. He would not accept it as a rational possibility.

Brad slipped out from under his covers with nary a rustle. His paws hit the carpet and he padded to the door. His mind was a perfect blank, but strangely clear. Like he was acting completely without conscious thought. Propelled by instinct.

If the door's hinges had been on the other side, he would have had a perfect sightline to the nurse's station. They weren't, so that made things more difficult for him.

Easing the door open so slowly it almost wasn't moving at all, he finally got it wide enough to poke his head out for a quick peek.

No one there.

'Holy crap, just GO,' his mind said. Who knew when he'd get another chance?

Praying that no one would look up, yet somehow knowing with total certainty that they wouldn't, Brad dashed from his room. He made it to the water fountain in a little more than three seconds. The door eased back into place behind him.

The wall was recessed here into a little nook. The walls and floor were covered in blue and tan tile that felt cool on his bare feet. He could hide himself here for a few seconds, get his heart to stop thumping so goddamn loud, then make a run for the L bend. That was where they'd taken Tyler, so that was where he had to go.

He started to doubt himself. At the end of a hall was a locked door. Even if he somehow got beyond that he had no idea what the rest of the hospital looked like. He had no idea where Tyler was right now. He'd get lost. And then they'd catch him.

Brad Maplewood; just an eleven-year-old tomcat in blue pajamas with video game characters on them. What did he think he could possibly accomplish?

'Shut up!!' he screamed silently at himself. He pinched his tailbase as hard as he could. The pain was like he'd driven a nail into himself. He bit his lip, but did not make a sound.

'Don't you wimp out, you dumb fucker! You're gonna find Tyler and that's that! If they fried his brain, that means they took him to that Ward Zero place Karen was telling us about, and that means he's probably there now. And since Karen said it's in the basement, all you have to do is just keep going down until you find it! It's _simple_. So shut up!!'

Turning his anger into action, he looked down the hallway for a split second, eyes alert to the slightest motion. Seeing none, he darted down the hallway and was past the bend before he even realized it.

He hugged himself to the wall, panting, scared shitless they'd seen him and would be coming for him any second now. Maybe they'd even have needles.

He waited and they didn't come. He waited a full minute, then two.

Finally sure he'd made it, Brad let himself relax. He turned to look at the door at the end of the hall. Not a fire door, that was good. If he'd seen one of those 'ALARM WILL SOUND IF OPENED' signs on it, he thought he'd probably just yank it open, run like hell and take his chances.

Lucky him though, there was no sign. Just a plain white metal door with a stainless steel handle and a little safety glass window a few inches above his sightline.

He stared at the handle. Knowing it wouldn't work anyway, he gave it a push.

Locked of course. Well, it had to be. The hospital didn't want them just walking out of here, now did they?

His mind blank and focused again, Brad scoured every inch of the door for a weak spot. He didn't even bother trying to think up any ideas. He simply waited for something to jump out at him.

He was perfectly aware that, at any given time, one of the nurses could look up at the circular mirror down the hall and get a clear view of him out of his room and trying to escape. He tried not to let that worry him.

Fifty-fifty, right? Either he'd find a way or he wouldn't. Either they'd spot him or they wouldn't.

Brad checked around the handle. His eyes scanned along the edge of the door.

He stopped.

He had it.

There was a crack between the door and the wall. About the thickness of a Saltine.. Brad stared at it.

'No way' part of him said.

'Hey. my whole arm got squished pretty thin back then. And my hand's a lot thinner than my arm.'

'Still... No fucking way.'

Brad growled a little. He rolled up his sleeve and made his right paw as flat as he could. He braced himself against the door with the other and gritted his teeth. He stared at the crack. He took deep breaths.

His paw shot forward before he had time to think about it.

Brad muffled a thick groan. The pain was _extraordinary_.

It seemed to be working though. He could feel his fingertips slowly beginning to distort, feeling like they were being run over by a steamroller. They were going in there though, that was the important thing.

But, God, it hurt so fucking much!!

Brad shut his eyes tight and let himself start to cry. His fingers slipped in millimeter by millimeter and he wept like a baby. He did not feel any shame in this. Crying was a lot quieter than screaming, and that was a very good thing.

He groaned and looked up at the ceiling tiles. He forced his paw deeper and deeper into the tiny crack. 'Gee, I wonder how many ceiling tiles are up there? Let's count them, shall we? One, two, three, four...'

His fingers were in a full inch deep now.

'...thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen...'

Two inches. The pain was unbearable. He wanted to bite his tongue off.

'...twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty...

In his mind, he was seeing Little Brad reacting in horror to the car window squishing his arm like a tube of toothpaste. He felt like a massive idiot now. What if he'd gasped in wonder instead? What if he'd accepted his gift? What if, instead of trying to convince himself it had never happened, he'd been training himself all this time? What if he'd spent years stretching his body, quite literally, to its limits?

If he had, he'd bet a million dollars his hand wouldn't be in so much goddam pain right now.

And then, his fingertips felt air. He was through!

Brad opened his eyes, breathing hard, amazed to the core. He did not dare look at his aching hand, afraid of how grossly squashed it'd look. Instead, he kept on countin' them good ol' ceiling tiles.

"Thirty-one. Thirty-two. Thirty-three. Thirty-four."

At one hundred and seventeen tiles, he was able to reach out and try the door handle on the other side.

Still locked.

Brad cried and swore and cursed God under his breath. He roughly yanked his flat hand back in, creating a pain so intense his eyelids lit up red like Christmas tree lights. He jammed his fingers inside the door mechanism and just started blindly screwing around with everything he could reach, his tears cascading down his cheek to his pajama sleeve like Niagara Falls.

All of a sudden, the lock popped.

The door swung open and Brad collapsed onto the white linoleum floor of the outer hallway, sobbing from pain and sobbing from triumph.

He laid there like that for several minutes, not caring about anything else in the world, just crying his eyes out and cradling his poor paw. He was now quite certain that this was the worst pain he had ever felt in his life. But it was going away now. Slowly, it was going away. When he finally looked down, his hand looked about as long and thin as a business envelope.

When his sobs had turned to sniffles and he'd finally dried up his whole supply of tears, Letting the door swing slowly shut behind him, Brad crawled across the floor, headed towards the stairwell.

He got to the railing and was able, slowly, to pull himself to his feet. The pain was only in his hand, but it seemed so intense as to have robbed the rest of his body of its energy.

Finally standing, Brad gulped for air and waited for the pain to subside just a little more before proceeding. He looked down again, Now his fingers just looked like skinny little hotdogs. Still alarming, but getting much better.

He looked down the stairwell. The spiral looked endless, like one of those optical illusion paintings. All those floors to go to reach the bottom.

"Tyler," Brad said softly to himself, and started down.


*****


     -ZEEK-

The young fennec in room fifteen had been sleeping soundly until a voice in his brain woke him up. Well, not exactly a voice. But it was the closest word he had. The oracle in his head never actually spoke in words, just images and feelings. Urges. Almost like instincts.

Zeek sat up. He rubbed his eyes a little. He'd been having a good dream about balloons in the park and was slightly miffed to be woken up so abruptly like this. But the force was insistent (and _always_ right, he reminded himself), so he waited patiently for further instructions. He felt a little like a carrier pigeon.

In his mind he saw himself getting up, leaving his room, and walking over to the nurse's station.

"Aw, no..." he whined. "I'll get in trouble."

The cosmic force behind Isaiah Ezekiel Porter's visions understood that it was working through a small boy who had his limits. It let him complain, knowing he would obey like a good boy in the end. It showed him the picture again.

"Okay, okay..." Zeek said sadly. "I trust you."

The diminutive fennec slipped out of bed and walked brazenly into the hallway, carrying his stuffed yellow bunny. The carpet felt nice on his bare feet.

Sure enough, he was spotted.

With Kimberly gone AWOL, Monsoon had been asked to work a double shift that night. He was not at all happy about it. He wanted to get this night over with as soon as possible so he could go home, crawl into bed and collapse. But no, when you wanted things to run smoothly, that was when the gods decided to get playful with you. ...A theory that was perfectly evidenced by this little fox boy walking towards him now. "What are you doing out of bed?" he grumbled, trying to sound just intimidating enough to let the kid know this had damn well better be serious.

Zeek stopped short. He had no idea what to say. "Um..." He held his bunny to his chest and shivered. He was _really_ gonna get in trouble now!

But wait! He felt the force tell him to open his mouth. He did, and the words flowed out of him like water from a stream. "I can't get to sleep. I think there's a ghost in my closet."

Monsoon squinched his eyes shut in aggravation. He was just about to tell the kid how ridiculous that was, when he stopped himself. Camilla had told him about what had happened to Tyler just before she went off her shift. He couldn't believe that had slipped his mind. Much as that hyperactive grey fuzzball got on his nerves, he'd always genuinely liked the little guy. Tyler may have been a smartass, but he'd always been a good kid at heart. So when he'd heard about the kid going into a coma and Dr. Beatrix showing him off in a wheelchair like he was some kinda teaching aid... He thought if he had been in the room at the time, he very likely would have leapt at the woman, clamped her head between his powerful hands, and *squeezed* until all her brains came out like toothpaste.

After what he'd seen earlier, it was no wonder this kid was seeing ghosts now.

Monsoon got up and walked around the desk. "Alright, little guy. I'll take you back to your room. If there's any ghosts there, I promise to beat the crap out of them. That sound good?"

Zeek smiled; a rare occurrence. "Okay."

The mountain took the fox by the paw and led him along the hallway. "What's your name again? I know I asked you before when you came in, but I've been up for almost nineteen hours now."

"Zeek," said Zeek. "Not my real name, but I like it better. And you're Monsoon."

"That's right. You remembered." At the door to room fifteen, Monsoon ushered the little fox in with a pat on the back, then made a big show of checking around in every single place a ghost could be lurking (all while keeping as quiet as possible to avoid waking the boy's roommate). Zeek, of course, hadn't really seen any ghosts, and felt a little bad that the oracle had made him trick his big friend like this. But he knew there must have been a good reason for it. There always was.

"All clear," Monsoon whispered when he was done. Zeek nodded, thanked him, and curled up beneath his blankets once more. The mountain gave the fennec's headfur a gentle tussle as he walked out of the room, shutting the door silently behind him.

'Poor kid,' he thought. 'He's obviously lonely. He looks like he's never had a real friend in his life.' He shook his head sadly and reminded himself to leave a note regarding that for Dr. Jones to find tomorrow morning. He trusted Artemis. He knew if anyone could help out the boy, it'd be him.

Just as he was about to head back to his chair and try to avoid falling asleep for the next several hours, Monsoon happened to glance up at the circular mirror in the corner where the hallway bent. He clearly saw The Door That Was Always Supposed To Be Locked swinging slowly shut and a flash of pajama fabric disappearing beyond it.

'What the _hell_?' he thought.


*****


     -BRAD-

The pain in his paw had faded to a steady dull pulse now, similar to the times when he'd burned his fingertips on the furnace pipe downstairs while fumbling for the lightbulb cord. He'd limped his way down six flights of stairs. Not that there was anything wrong with his feet, but the pain had taken a lot out of him and he was cold and terrified as well. The metal borders of each stair were like ice on his paw pads.

On the way back, he thought, he would definitely take the elevator.

'Almost there,' he told himself. 'A few flights more and you'll be on the ground floor.' It was funny, actually. He'd gone up and down the stairs on the opposite side of the building twice a day for four days now, yet this time it seemed to be taking forever.

Four days? That couldn't possibly be right. He'd been in here for four _years_, it felt like.

There, finally, he saw the end of the stairwell. He hadn't really expected the stairs to go all the way to the bottom. They wouldn't just have a sign saying, 'Welcome to Ward Zero! Abandon hope, all ye who enter here!'. That meant he'd have to hunt for it.

Well, he was doing okay so far. Maybe it wouldn't be that hard.

He stopped at the door, taking a moment to catch his breath, then reached for the handle. He thought briefly that right now might be his only opportunity to just bolt out of here and try to hitchhike home. The thought was admittedly appealing, but he certainly wasn't going to listen to it for real. He had friends he'd made commitments to. And Tyler-

Brad opened the door and found Monsoon standing there glaring at him.

The kitten shrank back, shuddered once, and his eyes went wide as saucers.

Monsoon scowled with every ounce of kid-terrifying power he possessed. He had seen Brad descending the stairs and had taken the elevator on the other side down to head him off at the pass. He was pissed to be dragged away from his post, pissed that he had to be here when he should have been at home in bed and dreaming of the ocean, and pissed at the fact that he'd had faith in this kid that he wouldn't do something so stupid.

"If you will turn around and march right back up those stairs *this instant* without speaking a single word to me, I will *consider* not telling anyone about this," he said.

Brad stared at the mountain, feeling like an iron spike had just been driven into his heart. He'd been so lucky tonight! He'd come so far! And to be caught NOW, when he was so CLOSE!?

His shock became anger. Brad reacquainted himself with his rage. "_No_," he said firmly.

Monsoon growled. "God damn it, Brad. I like you. I don't want to have to be the bad guy and *force* you to go back upstairs. But I will. And if I have to, that means I'll also have to tell Dr. Beatrix you tried to escape and-"

A surge of anger flared in Brad's eyes. "Fuck YOU! I wasn't trying to escape!!"

Startled, Monsoon actually drew back a little. He'd only seen anger of that intensity in Keith before. "You think because I've let you get away with shit before I'm just gonna turn my back on this and let you lose my job for me? Jesus, what the hell has gotten into you? I thought you were smarter than this!"

Brad did not back down. "This doesn't have anything to do with me. Now get the hell out of my way."

The mountain laughed. "You're out of your mind, Brad. If you've forgotten, I'm a few decades older than you and a few hundred times stronger. You're *going* back upstairs. And I'm sorry you're too screwed up right now to just do this the easy way like I asked."

Monsoon took a step forward and Brad sprung instantly into his playground brawler's stance. His fight-winning record had remained unbroken through seven schools and uncountable bullies. He wasn't gonna let it end now.

The mountain looked down at this eleven-year-old boy in his pajamas with his dukes up and could not believe his eyes. Brad was _serious_ about this. He actually meant to fight him. Monsoon remembered when they'd first met, how he'd asked if Brad wanted to fight. The boy had said yes then, as a joke, but now he meant to do it for real.

"Come on," Brad said. "Hit me. Try it. I don't give a shit anymore."

He could see the fire in the kid's eyes. They were glowing hot like molten steel.

As a boy, his father had taught him how to box. He had said that if your opponent has that look of fire in his eyes, and you do not, back down. Because you will not ever come out the victor in such a fight. To even try is suicide.

So, Monsoon backed down. "What the hell is this all about, Brad?" he asked gently.

Brad did not relax his muscles. He kept his guard and his fists up, just in case this was a trick. "I'm not trying to escape. I need to see Tyler."

"Tyler's not down here, Brad. The neurology ward shares space with Ward C."

"He is too down here!" Brad spat. Then he realized... "You don't know anything about Ward Zero, do you?"

Monsoon arched an eyebrow. "There _is_ no Ward Zero, Brad. It goes from A to F, you already know that. Did you get the wrong medication tonight or what?"

Brad unflexed his fists, figuring Monsoon would've probably tackled him by now if he was going to. "It's in the basement. That's where they keep all the kids like Tyler that they've put in comas with the electroshock."

The mountain was actually getting a little frightened now. Whoever this kid was, he was not acting like the Brad he'd known since Tuesday.

"I don't care if you don't believe me," Brad said, "it's true. Just like before this place even opened there was another hospital where a whole bunch of other kids broke out, and some of them got killed."

Monsoon gulped. He knew that part was true at least. He'd heard it from Clifford while they were on break once. The rat assured him it had really happened because he'd been there and witnessed it firsthand (the riot, he was careful to point out, not any of the deaths). "Where did you hear that?"

"Same furson who told me about Ward Zero," Brad said calmly.

The two of them stared at each other for a while.

"Say I believe you," Monsoon said at last. "The hospital really is putting kids in comas and I don't know anything about it, even though I happen to work here. Why? What purpose would that serve?"

Brad knew suddenly that the only way to convince him would be to spill it all and just pray that Monsoon really was as honorable a furson as Brad wanted to believe he was. "They only do that to kids who resist. We're all freaks. Mutants. They search for us and send our parents pamphlets about what a wonderful place this is. Then they try to make us think we're crazy and we don't really have any weird powers."

Monsoon stifled a laugh. He understood now. He'd run into a few kids before who suffered from paranoid delusions. Usually the best thing to do was just humor them until their guard was down, then pounce. "Okay. I believe you. Really! So, Tyler had weird powers and that's why they put him in a coma?"

Brad did not like the patronizing tone in Monsoon's voice, but he understood it. "Yeah," he nodded. "He could walk out of his body. Like astral projection. Karen can talk to dead people. Benjamin can touch stuff and get psychic vibes from it."

"Oh?" It was getting harder now not to laugh.

"...And I can do this," Brad said calmly. Before he could think too hard about it, he reached up, grabbed his head, and spun it around nearly two hundred and seventy degrees.

Monsoon felt his brain melt in his skull.

Brad turned a few steps to look in the mountain's eyes. His chin had passed his left shoulder and was now nearly touching his right.

Monsoon backed up several steps in rapid succession. His mouth was opening and closing, with only a gibbering sort of drone coming out of it.

"Now, are you gonna help me find the door to Ward Zero or not?" Brad asked.


*****


     -MONSOON-

The mountain had needed to sit down for a long while after seeing Brad's little performance. He stumbled out to the lobby, Brad following, and plopped down in one of the waiting room chairs so hard he heard it crack. As he sat there, clutching his head in his hands and staring down at the floor, Brad stood beside him and calmly explained everything he knew about himself, his friends, and Dr. Beatrix's true plans.

At first, Monsoon didn't want to let any of it in at all. He just wanted to drown it out, then snatch Brad up, drag him upstairs, strap him into bed and go home. But he couldn't. Because he knew that everything the boy was saying was true.

He had felt something wrong with this place almost since his first day on the job. He'd seen things that were odd enough to notice, but not so much that they couldn't be explained away rationally. And he knew that he hated Dr. Beatrix more than almost any other furson he had ever met, yet he'd never understood why he hated her quite so _much_. Sure, her personality was cold and repulsive. But normally he would have dismissed that long ago. It was not in his nature to hate. Yet something about her, about this hospital, had set his every instinct afire with loathing.

All the little things he'd denied in the past were all adding up to make Brad's wild, impossible story impossible not to believe. And there was no way he could deny that the boy had just spun his head around like something out of a horror movie.

"Fine!!" he looked up suddenly and roared. "I'll help you find this fucking door!" He had never swore at a child before. _Never_. He shoved a thick finger in Brad's face and spoke in a voice like black, sludgy oil. "But if it doesn't exist, I am going to hand you over to Dr. Beatrix *myself* and I am going to ask her to *double* whatever punishments she'd have in mind for you!!"

"That's fair," Brad said calmly.

So, they had searched. And Monsoon's worst fears about his sanity were confirmed when the very first locked door they'd checked (Monsoon always kept his keyring on his belt loop), led to a little secret staircase.

They went down in silence, staying close together. Neither of them had any real idea of what they'd find at the bottom and neither of them were ashamed to admit that they were scared stiff.

The door at the end of the stairs was just like any other in the hospital. Except it lacked a window. That was somehow terrifying in and of itself. As if whoever designed this place had been told that what was to lie beyond this door needed to be kept hidden.

Monsoon reached out and turned the handle. Brad saw his hand shake.

Inside, all of their nightmares came to life.

It was a room so hollow and soulless it felt as big as an airplane hangar. In reality, it was only as large as the gymnasium upstairs. But the size didn't matter nearly as much as the *feel* of the place. The air was cold and had a smell of unreality to it. A secret scent that snuck into your brain and whispered, 'This is what the paranoids see when they close their eyes at night'.

The floor was concrete. The walls were grey-painted cinder block. No one had bothered putting a ceiling in, knowing the occupants of this room could stare and stare at it forever and never see anything. Tubes, pipes and wires spread out across Brad and Monsoon's head like a pit of sleeping snakes. Somewhere above, they heard the low hum of air conditioning.

And in the room were beds.

Dozens upon dozens of beds. Only a fraction were occupied now; the hospital had only been open for a few months. But the extra beds sent a clear message. It was expected, and planned for, that they would *need* this many eventually.

In the bed closest to the door, Brad saw something that would haunt his sleep for years. It had once been a child. He guessed that this one must have been brought over from one of the other hospitals. This much decay could not possibly have happened in mere weeks. The kid in the bed (Brad couldn't even tell what gender) was clad in a sea-green hospital johnny just like all the rest, but inside was something one would expect to see only in a sarcophagus at a museum exhibit. Most of the fur had fallen out. The skin looked like old, crumpled paper. One eye was open. The other was closed with a needle-hose going into the tear duct. The open eye's pupil had shrank to a pinpoint from continuous exposure to light. There were tubes coming out of the kid. Tubes that had been Glued On.

Brad turned away and held a paw fiercely over his mouth to keep from vomiting.

Monsoon held him gently as the boy shuddered. His eyes would not stop scanning the hideous room around him. It was like he'd been hypnotised not to blink.

They were all like that. Staring and silent and dead as rotted wood. These had once been children. They had laughed and dreamed. They had played in sandboxes, drawn with crayons, swung on swings and kissed their mommies goodnight. Now they were husks. Dried, lifeless rags. There was no obscenity on Earth greater than this.

After a brief search (neither of them wanted to look TOO close at what was in the other beds), it was Monsoon who finally located Tyler.

The young mouse didn't look quite as bad as he had before. He just looked like he was sleeping. And thankfully, they hadn't gotten around to gluing the tubes on him yet.

Brad stepped gingerly forward and stood beside his friend whom he'd known for much too short a time. He and Tyler might have been roommates for only a few days, but the nutty mouse had been a much better friend to him than a lot of other kids he'd known ten times as long.

Slowly, gently, Brad leaned over and hugged the silent mouse.

Monsoon watched Brad cry quietly for several minutes. He himself could feel almost nothing. It was too much to take. Later, when he was out of this room and breathing clean air again, he knew it would hit him like a torpedo and he would break down wherever he stood.

When Brad had finished, he gave Tyler one last squeeze and whispered in his ear, "I'll get her for doing this to you. I promise. I might even kill her."

He thought Tyler would appreciate that.

"Goodbye," he said.

Brad turned and nodded to Monsoon, and they left.

What else could they do? As they ascended the short, secret staircase and emerged once more into the lobby, both of them were so overwhelmed with horror that the thought that, right then, they could have called the police and ended the whole thing then and there, never even entered their minds. It was simply too big and too horrific for either of them to believe they could really do anything to put an end to it. 

Still not speaking to each other, afraid to put words to the atrocity they had jointly witnessed, Monsoon led Brad to the elevator and took him back upstairs. They walked together to Brad's room on Ward F.

Inside, they both cast looks at Tyler's empty bed. But still they said nothing.

Monsoon helped the young tomcat into bed and even tucked him in. Brad looked up at him questioningly. Monsoon knew he didn't have any answers. He kissed the boy on the forehead lovingly and turned to leave.

"Thank you," Brad said, just as Monsoon had turned off the light.

"No, Brad," the mountain said, "Thank *you*."

With that, he closed the door and walked away. A glance at the clock told him that whoever was working the Saturday morning shift would be there to relieve him in about an hour. Monsoon didn't like leaving the children unattended for any length of time, but he thought they'd be safe in their beds for at least a little while longer. If he left right this instant, he thought, there was a good chance he might not be seen.

Monsoon went back downstairs, snuck out a side door, locked it behind him, and crept to the parking lot. He got in his SUV and drove home without incident.

He had planned to sleep, but instead he went straight to his bedroom, fully intending to pack up his belongings and drive to the airport. He'd buy a one-way ticket back to his homeland and leave his fancy American apartment behind. Leave his fancy American car behind. Leave his fancy American _everything_ behind. He'd get a job as a bartender, or a bouncer, somewhere on the beach. He'd spend every day in a pre-set routine and with luck, one day all of this would be gone forever from his memory.

He had just gotten his duffel bag out from the bottom drawer and was about to start filling it with clothing when his eyes fell upon the family photos lined up in frames on his dresser.

'They would be ashamed of you if you left now,' he told himself. 'And you would too. You know it. Stop acting like a coward right now or you will hate yourself for the rest of your life and have every reason to.'

Monsoon put the bag away and shut the drawer.

He went over to his bed and sat down. He took off his shoes and socks and fell almost instantly into sleep when his head hit the pillow.

He dreamed that night of all the children at King's Orchard that he loved and protected. Gentle Ruby. Troubled Keith. Courageous Brad.

Them, and hundreds more...

All lying still and lifeless in Ward Zero. Just like Tyler.

When the morning came, his cheeks were soaked with tears and he had no idea what to do.


*****


END OF BOOK FOUR


