Lights 4

Puritania


	It wasn't as if it had been some kind of hazing ritual. It was also not quite a rite-of-passage, either. Alex knew that he would have felt much worse about what happened if either of those had been the case, since he'd been egging on Jake to do it, alongside the others. The fact remained: it was simply a practical matter of always having the new guy do the dirty work.

	The P-class multipurpose isolation suit, clean suit, and hazard suit (or PMS) was jokingly referred to as a "monkey suit", for reasons that none could quite decipher the etymology of. But nobody liked putting it on. The spacesuit-like equipment was heavy, stiflingly hot, matted and curled even the shortest fur into a total mess, and in mere seconds stank like death (even worse to the canine nose) after the internal air cyclers kicked in. As the newest member of the small research team, the recently blackballed little grey fox was summarily chosen as the only one for the job.

	Eight days previously, the Others had come to Earth, briefly wreaked havoc, and then been beaten back to a stalemate by military forces. While a larger invasion by the bizarre, multidimensional aliens seemed constantly on the horizon, few outside the inner circle of scientists and soldiers knew anything of this. The public had been told the torn-apart laboratory and seventy-nine deaths were the result of an accident and explosion. Alex Ichini's motley crew of college dropouts, among them the newly recruited Jacob Tarrish, were not among those privileged few. They had been told nothing of what they now held in a biological waste container.

	Approximately twenty kilograms of unidentified gooey substance had been scraped off the walls and floor of that laboratory — the only remains of the single Other that had been killed. This substance was subjected to every test known to modern science, until there was nothing left to learn from it and it had been rendered totally inert. It was simply to be discarded. At the bequest of Doctor Claude Marillo, the remains were summarily donated to a few small scientific research teams, who would re-run some of the tests for posterity. If anything new were discovered, that team might be awarded larger contracts and responsibilities in the future. Of course, Dr. Marillo would also be handsomely awarded. One of those teams was Ichini's.

	The other scientists watched through the thick glass, smiling and giggling, as Jake lumbered around the isolation compartment in the PMS equipment. A thick cord attached to its back connected the suit to the wall. The conditions inside the compartment were like a vacuum-sealed freezer: zero millibar and almost zero Kelvin; but Jake in the suit was of course sweating, his panting audible to all over the speakers.

	"How you holding up in there, kiddo?" asked one of the researchers, a lanky brown bear, speaking directly into a microphone on the computer console.

	"Oh, -pant- just fine. -pant- Ready for irradiation exposure -pant­- test 'charlie'," Jake said.

	"He's trying too hard," said a feline girl in a nearby chair as she looked up from a clipboard.

	Alex walked up, saying: "That's called being professional. You should try it sometime."

	The girl hissed and grumbled playfully at Alex before turning back to her work.

	"Looks like another zero reaction from the sample during test 'charlie'," said the first researcher, consulting a printed readout. "You can go ahead and extract it and place it back into Container 103."

	Jacob opened up the door on the partition, pulling out the small vial from the test chamber in his comically oversized gloved paws. "Are you certain, David?" he asked. "We can still do test delta and epsilon. I can take it. I don't need a break."

	"Told you," said the feline. "Trying too haaa-ard."

	"Hey," said Alex. "You were the one who insisted on going all the way through test 'hotel' on the redox reactions."

	"While Marillo was here watching, yes?" she retorted. "He's gone for the night, and I want to be, too."

	"That doesn't mean we should stop," Alex said.

	"Shit!" came the sound of Jacob's voice over the speakers.

	Alex's fur prickled on the back of his neck and he turned to the glass wall. "What? What is it?!"

	"Nothing," said Jacob. "The vial just..." It was lying broken on the floor and a single drop of the black substance was now on the paw of the suit. He looked crestfallen through the visor of the helmet. "I swear it moved on its own."

	"Sure it did, kiddo," said David. "Just clean up the mess and you can take that break. Test delta can wait for tomorrow."

	The little fox started to carefully scrape the broken vial and splashed (now frozen solid and vaguely crystalline) gunk into a waste container, grunting from trying to stoop down in the heavy equipment. Everyone else started to pack up things for the night. One of the computers suddenly started beeping, with a lazy and casual tone.  Alex, hands full of papers, looked over at the monitor, which had a small notification regarding the PMS suit's oxygen concentration — it was falling a bit faster than the computer predicted for normal.

	"Uh, guys?" said Jacob. "I've got a... red light blinking on my head-up. I don't know what this icon means. Is everything alright out there?"

	David pushed by Alex and looked at the screen, noticing that another indicator regarding total suit pressure was also reading an anomaly. The readout next to it showed Jacob's vital signs, and his heart rate was starting to climb.

	"Did he cut the suit on the glass?" wondered the cat as she looked, also.

	"Impossible," said Alex flatly. "It's tough enough that you could practically make a bulletproof vest out of the gloves. I'll bet it's a fault in the carbon scrubber monitors, and—"

	"Guys!" cried out Jacob. "It's burning! My paw! Something's burning inside this thing!!"

	About a dozen alarms and red lights popped up everywhere on the computer screen.

	"Suit pressure now falling!" called out the feline girl, tossing aside her purse and leaping into the nearest chair at the computers. "There's a fault in the left glove tactile feedback circuit. Cause unknown!"

	"What the hell is going on?!" yelled out Alex, dropping the handful of papers he was carrying and rushing over to another terminal.

	"Head-up-display failure, both leg rotational sensor malfunction, hydraulic pressure fluctuating...," said David. "The whole fucking suit is going nuts!"

	"Switch the suit back over to external computer," said Alex to the feline. "We can control the vital systems from here."

	She typed in the command, but it came back with an error message. "I'm locked out somehow!" she said.

	"Jake!" yelled Alex. "Don't touch any of the controls. We'll get you out of there."

	"I— I'm not doing...," Jacob said. "My whole arm is... Alex it's gone numb, I'm sc—" The voice dissolved into static.

	"...what happened? Get him back!" Alex yelled.

	"Vocal circuits are starting to fail. Oxygen concentrations are still falling, but I'm not detecting any sort of overpressure in the main chamber." David said to the feline: "Mary! Get into the secondary suit and head to the airlock. We might have to manually extract him."

She ran off down the corridor.

	"—oing on? I hear thi—" Jacob's voice came in irregularly. "—rything is blue and glowi—"

	"Don't panic, Jake! We're working on it, try to relax," Alex said, more to the glass wall than the microphone. He gritted his teeth.

	More alarms sounded. "I still can't shut down the internal computer!" said David over the noise. "I've got weird readouts on the EEG, too. Some kind of error that looks like a duplicate waveform. How is this still locking me out? Fuck!"

	"—'re in here with me! They're in he—!!" yelled Jacob.

	The lines on the EEG sputtered and jittered all over the place, and Jacob fell to the ground, his feet kicking, trying to hold his head through the helmet.

	"Jake! No!" Alex screamed, running to the glass.

	The microphone kicked back in, and the fox's screams were louder than the alarms. All over the suit, dark patches started to appear and spread like a stain, and the visor cracked and buckled.

	"No! Oh God please no! JAKE! PLEASE! JAKE!!" Alex's scratched at the glass, leaving deep gouges with his claws.

	The vital signs readout flatlined, and the face of the suit's helmet shattered.

																	* * *

	Alex shook his head, clearing the memory from his mind. His recollection of the Others was, of course, far different from his partner's. As they walked side-by-side down the hallway of the prison-turned-laboratory, escorted by the supersoldier-turned-cult-leader, he shivered.

	The substance that had contaminated Jacob's suit had come from the salvaged remains of the Others, and was later revealed to be an important intermediary between them and the dimension they came from. Composed of a self-replicating bio-mechanical nanovirus capable of surviving almost any conditions, its purpose for the Others was never fully understood. On life forms and technology from Earth, however, it was a parasite, possibly released as a precursor to invasion of other planets, to weaken the target species or brainwash them into compliance.

	The raccoon remembered, after several days had passed and Jake was brought out of the coma, how he'd mentally prepared for discussing the incident with his mate. The doctors said that it should be him, personally, that would tell Jake how he was almost mind-raped by alien goop and that he only came out alive because it went more after the suit's computers than his own brain. Knowing the fox's love for Star Trek, he'd even thought to start the conversation by saying Locutus of Borg had been un-assimilated. But Jake remembered nothing that had happened since they'd sat down to eat breakfast that morning, so Alex decided to keep him in the dark. He sometimes regretted it; he sometimes suspected Jake knew, anyway.

	They were ushered into an open room that was arranged like a lecture hall, with a stage surrounded by semicircles of seating, some of them filled up by the other furs that were working on the Xael Project, scientists and soldiers alike. On the stage was a simple table, and on the table was a radio. Kilroy walked over and turned it on, but it was still just a quiet static. The three of them sat down in the front row of seats.

	'How could he not know?' thought Alex. It had been so obvious to him, but perhaps that was just because he knew the truth.

	The contract that Dr. Marillo hoped for was, indeed, granted to Alex Ichini's research group, and from then on they worked directly in the fight against the Others. Success was quick and miraculous, only because they personally developed multiple breakthroughs every day. Jacob was at the center of all of them. He had something of a Midas Touch: everything he thought up as a countermeasure against the Others worked perfectly; he had a solution for every problem or dilemma. It was like he knew, instinctively, how all their technology and abilities functioned, and could bring that knowledge out subconsciously.

	It was like, in some small way, he had become one of the Others and could think like them. The idea was a horrifying but unavoidable possibility. Jake was a never-ending font of ever-more-brilliant ideas after that incident, but at the same time often a shivering panicked mess of pain from a deep and unknown trauma. Xael might not be connected to the Others, but Alex knew in his heart that Jake probably was.

	The radio crackled.

	"Welcome, friends, comrades, and all beloved fursons. This is Rob Newhart of Kay-Enn-Eff-Exx, last civilian broadcast of the world, offering uncensored news and free comfort in the End Times.

	"The top news for tonight is, of course, the live broadcast of the President's statement, which will be beginning in just a few moments."

	More static. Then, a soft whine.

	The voice of the President came, soft and somber: "Ladies, gentlemen, children, citizens of the United States, and those across the world. Tonight, we stand on the edge of both extinction and immortality. Our will has been bowed, our faith tested once more, but we will not be broken. Our library has been ransacked, and 'Maria' shortly before now... fell from the sky in a fiery disaster beyond our control. I will not hide the truth: the satellite intended to preserve our legacy inside this solar system has been destroyed. The launch was a total failure.

	"All our hopes, our prayers, the weight of ourselves, now rest upon 'Futura', and on the distant place which is its destination. If it is God's will to smite it, too, than it shall be so. But I ask all of you, tonight, to offer your prayers, that it will fly true and well on its long journey to another world, to another people. Pray that we shall not be forgotten, that our efforts shall not have been wasted, that our struggles shall not be wiped clean from this universe. Ask God for forgiveness, for all the pain and sin Carnivorans have wrought on this planet, for their hatred and violence toward each other. I ask you, tonight, to come together with love and hope. If we do so, I know we will be successful.

	"The world, our world, is at an end. The last radio stations are failing, and the last telecommunication satellites going silent. Our shelters will not long last in the final months before 'Futura' takes to the sky, and we will not be able to launch until the last moments before the Great Winds come. I do not expect to be able to report on whether it succeeds or fails, and I do not expect there to be many of you left listening. But while our world will end, our collective progeny will survive, on a world far away.

	"This may well be the final time I can speak to you in life, but it will not be the final time in death. I will see all of you once again in heaven, where it is warm and peaceful always, and only a gentle breeze ruffles our fur! Until then, I will pray. Goodnight to all, good luck, and Godspeed wherever these final days shall take you."

	Alex didn't believe in God, but had nearly been moved to tears. Sitting next to him, however, Jake was practically seething, his paws shaking, his tail whisking back and forth. Nobody seemed to be listening when Newhart signed off and the radio went silent.

	"That was no accident, was it," Jacob said in a whisper through his teeth, though the acoustics of the room made it clearly audible to everyone.

	A buzz rose among the assembled persons. Kilroy silenced them with a raise of his paw, and spoke: "The hand of God may smite things from the sky, but He does so through the will of man."

	The small otter scientist stood up, saying: "Well, actually, NASA has used the same kind of fail-safe for decades, you know of course generally just a radio signal detonating a charge in the first-stage fuel — of course usually just in case of a malfunction where civilians were in danger — and, err, finding the right code is just a simple matter of infiltrating... well, I think you understand!" He scratched his head and let out a short laugh.

	But Jacob wasn't laughing. He stood up, growled: "You son of a bitch," and started to walk off. Before he reached the door, he turned and yelled out: "I'm not here for any of you! I don't agree with what you're doing. And after MY son is on his way, all of you can just go to Hell!"

	He stormed out, and Alex followed him back to their room, unable to look back at the others, his ears burning.

	The days continued to go by, the temperature continued to drop, and Jupiter loomed ever closer. The little fox, the raccoon, and all of the other scientists kept on working, now in silence and with glances of hatred rather than camaraderie. The final day grew near.

																	* * *

	Something had been nagging at Alex for some time — at least a few weeks, now. For a while, he had been ignoring it because his job was not as the computer programmer, and he was not even particularly good at it. Alex intended time and time again to ask Jake about the discrepancies and unknown code he had been seeing, but just never got around to it. Surrounded as they were by an ever-increasing furor of activity, there seldom was a moment of peace.

	The time was, back when the Xael Project was just an embryo, a program, and a prayer, when the two mates would share everything with each other: every change, every modification, every idea or plan. In bed, between licks on each other's muzzles, they would discuss their work; it was a balance between love and progress that satisfied both of them fully. But now that everything was proceeding as a reality, instead of just a dream, there was more to do and so many more furs involved with it. The cult had stolen production plans for the design of 'Futura', and had built a full-scale exact model of it. The mock-up probe now sat proudly at the heart of their laboratory, the center of activity and concentration. Everything was now focused on the uplinks between it and Xael, and assuring that it would function properly.

	While Alex had been consulted on a great number of matters (as he was one of the Holy Fathers) in regard to this, there were other things he did not know about. Like that extra code and some minor alterations to the physical junctions between the embryo and the probe's zero-point-energy power generators. He was certain that it had been Jake who was consulted on this, and because of how busy they were the fox must not have had time to discuss it. What little free time they had, they had been spending holding each other and making love.

	It was impossible to deny the inevitable. Even with the underground prison's powerful heating array, the temperature inside was still dropping. Where once it was possible to walk around comfortably, it now required wearing several layers of clothes, and frequently stopping work on computers to put ones paws back into warm gloves. While it was approaching 40 degrees inside, beyond the walls and above the ground it was in the mid -200's, and still dropping. There was no blizzard up there, just everything frozen and still and dead; there wasn't even a day/night cycle anymore, as Earth had stopped rotating, fortunately leaving them on the lit side. There were constant mechanical problems and atmosphere leaks, and the work crews of the cult were repairing them non-stop, just to keep up. Whole sections of the complex had been cut off to preserve the laboratory, life-support systems, and the geothermal reactor which provided all the electricity.

	In the last two months, forty-seven members of the cult (over half their number) had been killed: frozen to death while repairing breaches, or due to collapses in housing or maintenance areas. The bright-eyed and manic otter who had been the chief scientist was one of those. During an emergency evacuation of one area, he had manually closed a bulkhead in front of him after allowing the rest of his unit to escape deeper into the facility, then worked frantically to repair a vital power conduit in the condemned section. Completely alone, he had fixed the problem shortly before the cold overcame him, sacrificing himself for the others. There was, of course, no practical way to even retrieve his corpse, and no time for a funeral.

	While Jake had stubbornly refused to care, citing the man's crimes against the world, Alex had mourned him and the others. He wept sometimes when thinking of those horrific final moments, and how the dedicated otter had died before seeing the project completed. Once, he was caught by his mate crying, and asked what was the matter. He lied, saying he was scared, and then allowed himself to lose all thoughts buried in his fox's warm fur, soft touch, stiff penis. Before they came to this damned place, he never felt he had to lie to save his own feelings. The closer they came to the end, the more it he was increasingly relying on Jake's unstable strength of will to keep going.



	It was these sorts of things that were on Alex's mind when he, once again, saw something he did not recognize. He put down his clipboard and consulted the computer monitor, eyes narrowed and rounded ears twisting this way and that. This code was part of what governed the interaction between Xael's brain and the dimension where his mind was stored. He was very well familiar with it, because the physical creation of that dimension, of the multifold brain, and of the uplinks between them was a project he and Jake had worked together on.
	But now there was a lot of extra code here. He scrolled through it carefully. It looked like it was controlling some extra uplinks, and that was strange. Previously, he had expected those new connections between Xael and the probe generator were to draw extra power for life-support. The explanation he was given in a briefing made perfect sense (and he accepted it because one of their biologists was even better than he). This, however, was something else; there seemed to be interactions directly between the battery and Xael. In fact, it was almost as if it were overwriting the controls they had put in place to purposefully isolate the cub's body from Otherspace, which was—

	"Uh, excuse me?" A timid voice interrupted Alex's thoughts. "That's, uh... my terminal. I need to get back to work."

	Alex turned, looked at him. It was a scrawny and sickly looking mouse, with thick glasses and a lab coat many sizes to large for him: one of the programmers. He was holding a giant stack of papers and folders, and was shaking, either from the weight or from being intimidated.

	"Would you mind explaining to me what this code is for?" Alex asked. "I don't recognize it."

	"Oh, uh... THAT? Uhh..." the mouse stuttered. "I told Jacob about it, oh, must have been last week. It wasn't in the briefing. It's not something, err, important at all. More of a secondary process. As a backup!"

	"This looks to be an entirely new uplink between the physical manifestation and something other than Dimension Beta for the mind drives. I want to know where it leads. It doesn't look like a backup. It's seems to be more of a copy designed to overwrite the original via a sustained cross-connection."

	"Oh, no no no. It's just a backup. I consulted Jacob. For hours. He helped me integrate the new command lines into the old sections."

	Alex's whiskers were twitching with frustration: "If it's just a backup, why would it take hours? There shouldn't BE any integration!"

	The mouse looked about ready to collapse onto his tail, and was shaking so hard that a few papers fluttered to the floor.

	A new voice boomed from behind them: "Is there a problem, Mikael? Holy Father?"

	Alex spun around. "Kilroy," he said with his teeth gritted. He looked above him to the calm face of the monk, trying to contain his fear, and said: "I was just asking him to explain what the purpose of this code is."

	"I was under the impression that Father Tarrish handled the programming sector."

	"Yes, but—"

	"We are pressed for time, Father Ichini. We all need to focus on our individual tasks. Many hands working together as one on many parts, to produce a successful whole. I am sure there is a good explanation. Mikael is one of our best, and I have full confidence in his abilities."

	Alex quivered, set his muzzle tightly, pulled his paws into tight fists: "It would only take a FEW MINUTES. I want to know what he's doing to my son."

	Kilroy reached down and placed one paw onto Alex's shoulder. Although the touch was gentle, Alex felt as if it were the weight of a mountain. He grimaced, and his heart raced with panic. He looked down at the ground.

	"It has been a long day. I am sure you are tired," said the tall calico. "Why don't you take a break? Go see your mate and relax for the evening. Supper will be ready in just another hour. Forget small matters like a few lines of code. All will turn out for the best."

	"...fine," Alex said, walking off, grateful for any reason to extract himself from Kilroy's dangerous touch.

	He did as he was told, but did not forget about the code. As the Holy Fathers, he and Jake still had their own private sleeping quarters. Tonight, instead of having sex before going to sleep, he planned to have a conversation, instead.



	"Yes, I know just what you're talking about," said Jake.

	Alex, lying naked on the bed next to him, couldn't believe his ears: "Were you ever planning on telling ME about it??" he asked.

	Jake looked up at the ceiling, the cold concrete slab above them, and closed his eyes, rubbed at them. "I suppose eventually. I don't know. I tried not to think about it because I was planning on fixing it, myself."

	"You don't mean that. Please, Jake. He's our son. What in the hell are they doing to him?"

	He took a while to come to an answer, and by the time he did, the fear and anger was threatening to explode from his throat; his words came out shaky: "They're trying to make him into an Other. Some kind of weapon."

	Alex had no answer, and his muzzle stayed open long enough for the fox to continue.

	"I wish I knew why. I wish I could confront Kilroy about it, but they'll probably kill us if they knew we knew about it."

	"There's no way they would. We're the holy-whatevers. They can't."

	"Then why would they do this without asking? Why all the sneaking? Why do they try to hide the changes and then LIE about them?"

	Alex thought of his useless conversation with Mikael the mouse, and how the touch of Kilroy made him aware of how easily the giant man could tear off his head. He shuddered, and pressed his nose into Jake's fur, inhaled his scent.

	"You said you could fix it?" Alex finally said, his voice muffled.

	"Well, it's all theory at this point." He turned onto his side, faced his mate, and said: "All the code I've written has a certain style to it, like an invisible signature. I learned how to do this from Elle, so all her programming is the same. But these guys, they don't write code the same way I do."

	He nodded, remembering how he could tell it looked different.

	Jake went on: "So I've written a worm. Very simple. It uses a backdoor entry I put into the main program to gain access, and it will delete all the new things they put inside related to Xael's physical access to the other dimension, then run a check to make sure everything is running perfectly. I've got it on a flash drive. All we need to do is plug the thing in right before the launch, and it will roll back all these changes."

	"Are you sure it will work?"

	"I would rather it fail completely and our son never be born, than him turn into...! that- that horrible Coonfox monster from the encyclopedia."

	"...but you think it will work."

	Jake took a deep breath, wiped away some tears that were threatening to come. "Yes. It's carefully written to preserve all the code that was added for the physical interface to the probe, the life support, the alteration to the generators, everything. It also won't touch our code governing the multifold brain and its uplinks to the Beta storage dimension. All it's going to do is close the door between him and his copy."

	"Copy?" Alex shook his head. "I thought that's what it looked like, but I wasn't sure. That mouse called it a backup."

	"Backup?" Jake snarled. "That little shit! No, it's a copy. It's a copy of Xael except as an Other instead of as a fur, and it's sitting out there in Otherspace waiting, mindless and frozen in time. As soon as our son wakes up on that planet, the copy will overwrite his physical body with itself, and he will become an Other."

	"Damn."

	"Yeah, that's what I thought when I figured it out. It took weeks of spying on their coding to write this worm, but it will function. I'm sure of it. When the program is finished running, Xael will be right back to being the way we wanted him to be: a cute little walking library."

	"I can't imagine they'll just let us go right up there and plug the thing into the computer before the launch. They're not that stupid."

	"Oh, you're right," he said with a sigh, "but we can just say something like: 'As the Holy Fathers, we request that we be given a last moment of prayer with our son and greatest love' or whatever. He'll probably relent."

	"You are way too good at this sort of thing. Subterfuge, I mean," he said with a smile. "Not the timid little fox I remember."

	Jake laughed nervously, picking at the tiny balls of fluff on the bedsheet. "I've had to adapt to the circumstances."

	"Like the Borg?"

	"Ehhh, not quite like that, but you're on the right track. One of these days, we should sit down and actually watch a few episodes so you'll know more than just references. After we're done with..." he trailed off.

	"Jake, I..."

	The fox's ears folded. "Yeah. I guess there aren't too many days left, actually. Not much of anything, really. Time is almost... almost..." He started to shake and whimper.

	Alex kissed him roughly, and they cuddled into one another for a very long time, as the fox trembled and cried. He nuzzled his mate and said: "Let's get knotted."

	All the concern melted away at once from the young fox, and he growled with need. Alex did not need to ask again. He rolled onto his front, spread his legs, and lifted his tail high.

	In a few moments, neither of them could think about anything else.

																	* * *

	The promised day had arrived at last. The programming was finished; the construction was finished. The twin heavy trucks — modified with rows of tank treads for navigating the frozen land and bulky heating units for keeping the occupants alive — were loaded and ready to go. Inside one was the machine component that housed Xael, ready to simply be placed inside the 'Futura' probe and hooked up to its power units. It had enough seats for five: Kilroy, Mikael (who would be driving), Jacob, and Alex; the last was originally for the otter scientist, but would now sit empty. The other truck was to be filled with the last three-dozen MMM cultists, armed with a massive amount of firepower, to storm Cape Canaveral. Since many of the original soldiers had already died, the bulk of this fighting force was composed of the remaining scientists, who were poorly trained in the use of guns. Nerves were frayed and many paws were trembling, but everyone swallowed their fear and swore to perform their duty. Their resolve was that which could only be had by men who knew they were already dead.

	At the moment, the machine (nicknamed "Gadget" by one of the scientists, much to the terror of Alex who knew the history of the term as used in the test of the first atomic bomb) was being powered by a enough batteries to keep it going until they reached the launch facility, plus an additional few hours. The now-much-larger 'Hoshi no Tama' continued to sit frozen in time, and Xael continued to sleep — a dot of life suspended in a tank sized to hold a child, awaiting the countdown to his growth and millennia of education.

	The prison was about a hundred miles away from the Cape, so the journey was expected to take the better part of twelve hours. They would leave at T-Minus-Seventeen hours (4:00pm, though there was no longer an AM or PM), to allow enough room in their timetable for two hours to breach and secure the Cape, and three hours to modify the probe and check the rocket. Launch was scheduled for 9:05am: Zero Hour. If necessary, it could be pushed back for a few more hours, but not much longer; the Winds would begin to scour the planet by the end of the day.

	They walked in solemn silence down the hall toward the garage, about an hour before go time, in full cold-weather gear, their steps in unison, the puffs of white vapor from their mouths in sync. Kilroy walked in front, carrying "Volume 2 of C" of his encyclopedia in his outstretched arms, followed by Jake and Alex; these were the only ones with their faces still exposed, wearing gear in white accented with royal blue. Behind were thirty-seven soldiers, all wearing their visors down — a faceless mob like Nazi Stormtroopers, in matching pure white coats and dull-grey rifles. Their boots echoed through the concrete passage, rows of cells on either side.

	Right before they reached a doorway, Kilroy halted their procession, and said: "The rest of you move on forward and ready the Chariots. The Holy Fathers and I need a few moments alone to prepare for our final step into the Beyond."

	Alex rolled his eyes, mentally preparing for another bullshit speech.

	As the last of the soldiers filed through the door, Kilroy waved to two. "You and you, stay where you are."

	The raccoon quirked one eye in confusion, but Jake understood at once, and made a desperate lunge for the doorway, giving a shout. Kilroy's arm shot out in a blur and grabbed the back of his collar, lifting him up off the ground like a kitten. His legs kicked in the open air and his tail quivered in its long sock.

	"I won't let you do it!" he screamed. "Put me down you piece of shit!!"

	The two soldiers raised their rifles at Alex, who raised his arms slowly. He stood frozen aghast, his mouth open wide.

	Kilroy spun Jake around, pinning him against the wall, saying with a chillingly collected voice: "Let me do it? No. It is I who cannot let YOU proceed. Did you not think we would find out about your plan? Your sabotage of God's wishes?"

	"Don't talk to ME about sabotage," Jake said, struggling in vain.

	"As you are the Holy Fathers, we are grateful beyond words for your genetic contribution, however your further actions are no longer needed."

	"Put me DOWN!" Jake started punching and kicking wildly.

	The giant cat's long fingers reached to his neck, wrapped around, began to squeeze. "You cannot fight your destiny," he said. "You are but pawns. I am the Final Messenger for the delivery of the Coonfox."

	"Jake, please!" Alex cried out, his voice cracking. "Let him have it! Don't make me watch you die!!"

	The little fox went slack, and Kilroy let his neck go. Jake coughed and wheezed, breathing hard.

	"Now," said Kilroy. "Give it to me."

	"Go to Hell!" he rasped.

	He grabbed both of Jake's wrists, held them to the wall above his head, and with the claws on his other paw began to rip and tear at his clothing. Shreds of cloth and puffs of insulation scattered around, and in moments the smaller man's struggles became weak, his shouts became whimpers.

	"Stop it!" he wailed.

	Kilroy pulled away the last bits of clothing, leaving Jake completely naked in the frigid air, his tail curled up between his legs to cover his sheath. Urine trickled down his legs and to the floor. The two soldiers were laughing.

	"D— daddy, s-s-stop it!!"

	Alex didn't care about the guns anymore. He bared his teeth, let out a snarl, and jumped toward Kilroy, his rage exploding. "Get your filthy hands off my mate, you—!"

	There was no time to react to the backhand blow, and the raccoon was sent flying across the hall, the back of his head clanging into metal bars. He crumpled to the ground, his world spinning, his vision flashing stars on deep black and his ears whistling like a tea kettle, his limbs twitching uselessly. The concrete was cold, but a pool of warm blood quickly surrounded his muzzle. Alex felt himself being dragged by one leg and then tossed into a heap, and seconds later a ball of shivering fur was dropped onto him.

	He began to regain his senses, his red-rimmed vision and ringing ears filled with nothing but Jake, clinging to him and sobbing. Behind them, the door to the prison cell clanged shut. Kilroy looked through the pieces of clothing on the floor, fished out the small flash drive, and held it aloft. During the melee, he had dropped his encyclopedia, and now he picked it back up as well.

	"This book contains only a strict and historical definition of a Coonfox, but that is not really what He is. Your child is a force of Nature, of what the scientists tell me is called 'entropy': of chaos and death and an end to all things."

	As he spoke, his voice raised for the first time, shaking the stone walls with its power: "Do you understand what He is?! He is not some mythical yokai; He is not a friendly woodland creature; He is not a mischievous trickster spirit; He is not a mere demigod; He is NOT A CHILD!

	"The Coonfox is flame and gale. He is incarnate of the Eternal Inferno. Hotter than the breath of dragons, than the greatest forge ever built by vorekind. He is hotter than the center of this dying world, than the heart of a star, than the core of a supernova; He is hotter than the rage of GOD! The Coonfox is hotter than the deepest furnace of Hell, itself."

	He dropped the flash drive to the ground, and crunched it to bits underneath one boot. Lifting his paws to the ceiling, his face raised upwards, eyes blazing and voice quavering with ecstasy, he began to chant:

	"Let chaos entwine
	On defenseless soil.
	Remove errors of furs
	And sweep all the weakening kind.

	"Bygone are tolerance
	And presence of grace.
	Scavengers are set out
	To cleanse the furry filth parade.

	"He is the cosmic storms.
	He is the tiny worms.
	He is fear in the night.
	He is bringer... of LIGHT..."

	Regaining his composure, Kilroy brought his arms down slowly. he closed his eyes, inhaled deep, and let out a long sigh of contentment. He strode over to the cell. Still holding onto Jake, Alex was just regaining his normal vision.

	Kilroy placed the encyclopedia on the ground, and slid it on edge between the bars. "Perhaps this will give you some comfort in the final moments. Your son will fulfill his purpose. He will swiftly bring this Universe to a state of complete entropy, of an endless unmoving perfection. This is God's will, and we, the 'Messengers of the Mammalian Messiah', shall bring it to fruition."

	He instructed the two soldiers to stand guard, and handed the fatter of the two of them an old-fashioned gilded pocketwatch on a long and bulky chain. "When the time reaches Zero Hour, kill them. Not before."

	Turning and leaving with a wave of his hand, he said: "With your death, know that your purpose, too, has been fulfilled. Go to Heaven with a smile on your face, because you will have succeeded. Farewell."

	The heavy door was pulled shut with a boom, leaving the four men alone. In moments, the sound of Kilroy's footsteps were gone, as he walked the quarter-mile or so to the garage.

	It was over. Alex joined his mate in just cuddling and crying. He didn't know if he could keep the naked fox warm and alive for the next sixteen hours in that veritable refrigerator of a cell. It didn't matter. The tears just flowed. But, suddenly, he noticed that Jake had stopped crying. In fact, his eyes were open wide, and they sparkled with ambition and vigor.

	"I need you to get it together," Jake said quietly.

	"Wh- what?"

	"We need to figure out how to get out of here."

	Alex sat up and said: "Then what? Your flash drive is a pile of splinters. All we can do now is stop them and kill Xael. I don't know if I have the heart."

	"No," Jake shook his head. "We still have the program."

	He blinked in confusion. "How??"

	"Schofield's Second Law of Computing."

	"This must be another Star Trek reference."

	"Well, no it's not." He reached up and gently wiped the streak of blood from the other man's muzzle. "I'll tell you once we get out of here. Any ideas?"

	Alex smiled, happy to have a task to keep his mind occupied from matters such as failure and death. He sat in silence for a few minutes, continuing to hold Jake close to him, and then finally spoke: "I do have one. But you're definitely not going to like it. To be honest, I don't either, but it's the only power we still have."

	"What are you talking about?"

	"It's that power still inside of you. The power... of Them."