PROLOGUE

--From the recovered journals of Dr. Samuel Leonine:

A tiny, three-fingered hand reached up and clutched at my pinky. The puppy-faced newborn looked up at me from his crèche with enormous, all-too-human eyes. He crinkled his canine muzzle, as if not quite sure what to make of this giant alien creature looming above him.

The moment would was one of the most incredible in my life. To actually feel one of Mouse\x92s creations, skin on skin, to see it living and breathing and thinking behind those enormous eyes...

Maybe, just maybe, the human race had a chance after all.

"Amazing, isn\x92t he, Sam?" I glanced back at Min Hee, better known as Mouse, as she hovered close behind. I was always amazed at how such a diminutive woman could sport such an enormous smile. Yet she had every right to be proud; it was her brilliance with genetics that had made the project possible. She had worked non-stop ever since the crisis began, even with a pregnancy swelling her belly to unseemly proportions.

Dozens of attendants, many coughing and red-eyed with late stages of the Pandemic, scurried among the hundreds of cattle housed in the enormous aluminum enclosure, checking and re-checking the readouts of the dozen sensors in each stall. To most outside the project, this was simply one of a dozen such experimental farms set up by the government in the past year in an ultimately futile attempt to breed a vaccine to the Pandemic. Little did the few surviving residents in the area suspect that each of the "guinea pig" cattle in this particular facility was bringing to term the embryonic results of a year\x92s frantic efforts of genetic tinkering, like the one who now gripped my finger so tightly.

"He\x92s from the fourth group to be born here," Mouse continued. "We\x92ll be moving him to the safehouse at the Campus as soon as we\x92re finished with all the standard diagnostics." She sighed. "If only our artificial womb technology had kept pace with our genetic science. I would rather have resorted to less, um, unusual methods to gestate our little miracles. But they\x92ll need a large gene pool to remain viable, and the few artificial gestation chambers we have back at MIT just couldn\x92t handle those numbers. Even with multiple births here we\x92re cutting it close. If only we had more time to...Oh!" Her tapering fingers clutched at her abdomen. "Sorry. Just a little kick."

I frowned at her. One thing I could not understand was why such an intelligent woman would allow herself to get pregnant now, of all times. The Pandemic attacked the young mercilessly. Her child would live a few weeks at most.

But as the end of the world became a certainty this past year since the Outbreak, insanity was almost as common as infection. Who was I to judge?

At least she wasn\x92t a Doomer.

I shrugged. "At least I\x92ll have good news to tell the big bosses when I go out west tomorrow. If there\x92s any of them left, that is. But I have to ask: Why a thumb and three fingers? I thought dogs had four digits and a dewclaw..."

She gave a little laugh. "This is genetic engineering, not evolution. To many they might seem similar, but they\x92re not. We\x92re not required to use what\x92s already there, like nature. We can kind of cut and paste what we want right onto the genome. I always thought that the pinky was kind of useless. The gene sequencing for losing it was actually kind of basic, at least compared to the other mind-boggling problems we\x92ve had with this project, so out it went."

She hugged herself, tilting her head affectionately at the small creature before us. "They\x92re different enough from us so the risk of cross-infection is near zero. But I wish I had more time to make them more unique. If you ask me, they\x92re too human."

"What\x92s wrong with that?"

A half-dozen pops ripped away in the distance, cutting off her reply. Gunfire. The staff froze for a second, then scrambled as one toward the exits with surprising speed. "Doomers!" someone yelled as they ran for the racks of rifles near the door.

Mouse\x92s face went ashen. "If they get to the herd grazing outside..."

I took a step toward the weapons, only to be held back by Mouse. "Please, Sam, don\x92t. You\x92re too valuable. Hopefully this is just another nuisance raid. We\x92ll chase them off easily enough."

"I should do something..."

"I know the feeling. Buddha, I know. If I was not in this condition, I would be running for the guns myself." She sucked her lip as she regarded her distended abdomen. "But I must be careful now, more than just for myself."

"But why?" I blurted. "The child\x92s practically dead, anyway, isn\x92t it?"

She gaped for a moment at me, then shook her shoulders with a bemused chuckle. "Oh, Sam, don\x92t you know? I thought someone would have told you, or at least you\x92d be able to figure it out for yourself."

"What?" I looked at her quizzically, trying to read her inscrutable expression. "You mean the child won\x92t die? But the only way that could be is if..." My words faded to nothing as I looked around at the cows.

No. She couldn\x92t have.

Mouse reached down and picked up the small, genetically engineered newborn, cooing and comforting him until he yawned contentedly. "Really, Sam, what did you expect? Cows and plastic-walled chambers aren\x92t the only means of gestation available to us. We have to use every resource we have to make this work, and I\x92m far from the only volunteer."

She looked up at me with hard, Pandemic-red eyes, daring me to defy her. "I know to you and those officious jerks at Mausoleum they\x92re just a means to an end, but to me, to everyone who\x92s worked here, they\x92re much, much more. They\x92re our children. If I could, I\x92d bring them all into the world this way."

I opened and closed my mouth several times to reply, but no words came.

Far off, the gunshots continued unabated.

CHAPTER ONE

I hunkered low behind an ivy-choked corpse of brick wall, a quiet prayer to Saint Elvis on my lips. Appropriate, since I hid in the shadow of a crumbling human church. The wall fragments bled gold blurring into red as the sun descended behind the steeple.

I carefully slid the guass pistol from my hip holster, hoping the low whine of the magnetic coils priming would not give me away. Meters away, my pursuers, four Lupinoid mercenaries, snuffled loudly at the cool spring air for my scent. Their own unwashed wolf-smell, pungent with wet fur and rank sweat, burned in my nostrils.

Damn Roadkill and her stupid tests.

The gruff voice of the largest Lupinoid, Frostbite, boomed off the rotting buildings. "Hey, kitty! Come on out! We got some catnip right here for you!" The other Lupinoids snickered. I could imagine the lewd gesture Frostbite made to accompany his taunt. He had quite a talent for them.

My muscles tensed as I heard their feet scuffle on the rubble just beyond the wall. I would be their prey in seconds.

Doubling my legs under me and uncoiling them with all my strength, I vaulted straight up and over the two-meter high wall. I barely cleared it. By some miracle I landed nimbly on the uneven rubble, facing the Lupinoid pack. Startled, their triangular ears tapered back. Their kind always seemed so surprised at a Felinoid\x92s natural agility.

My gun roared a wide arc on full automatic fire. The needle bullets exploded through them, giving each a halo of crimson sparkling in the rays of the setting sun. They crumpled, one still trying to bring his rifle to bear.

Whistling low, I shook my head at their still-twitching carcasses. I was surprised that worked. My old Militia sergeant would have screamed my tail furless for trying such a stupid and reckless stunt. These Lupinoids were idiots anyway, falling for so basic an ambush. Being Man\x92s Best Friend once upon a time obviously didn\x92t require much in the IQ department.

Wait. Only three of them? Weren\x92t four after me?

I whirled to my left just in time to see the blur of a rifle stock and Frostbite\x92s wicked, yellow-toothed grin. A freight train slammed into my chin, and the whole world exploded into a roar of static and leaden darkness.

- - -

Gray streaks of light slowly, slowly trickled back into the world. Consciousness was trying to claim me again, and I was very sluggish to respond.

"Frostbite, what the hell do you think you were doing!" a female voice barked, close-by.

Frostbite piffed, unconcerned. "Hey, you said you wanted her sim to be realistic."

"That didn\x92t mean rifle-whipping our guide, dumb ass! You\x92ve just kissed bye-bye to a thousand credits of your pay! More if she\x92s seriously hurt! And you\x92re on latrine-pit duty for the rest of the mission!"

Frostbite growled. "What? Like hell . . ."

"Commander!" A new voice sounded, right over my ear. "She\x92s waking up!"

My eyes fluttered open, revealing a universe full of fuzzy shapes pulsing in rhythm with the throbbing in my skull. It took many long seconds for my eyes to finally focus and bring the world around me back into some semblance of clarity.

We were back at base camp, with the rest of Roadkill\x92s mercenary company. The collection of rag-tag tents was located in a decrepit, overgrown parking lot in some obscure suburb of the ancient city called Buffalo. Trees and underbrush surrounded us on all sides, but if one looked hard enough one could spot the remains of a stone foundation here, a heavily cracked sidewalk there. At the far edge of the clearing, a rusted-through chain-link fence leaned like a friendly drunk against a towering maple tree.

Five meters in front of me, framed by my boot-clad feet, were the sources of the two shouting voices. The taller Lupinoid was Frostbite, sporting a coat of pure white fur under his faded camouflage fatigues. Like all Lupinoids, he possessed an angular wolf\x92s head, made proportionately bigger than nature intended to support an enlarged bio-engineered brain. He walked upright, like all Creatura, but stood with a slight stoop to compensate for the digitigrade stance unique to his race. A bushy tail poked out of his fatigues just below his belt. He clutched his assault rifle hard in three-fingered hands to contain his boiling rage.

He still wore the VR goggles we used in the sim, flipped up onto his sloping forehead. The goggles used computer imaging to "paint over" images from the surrounding environment, to simulate gunfire and other effects of mock-combat. They could network with other goggles in use, and went completely opaque if you were shot in the sim and didn\x92t lie down and pretend you were dead. My own goggles lay orphaned and forgotten several meters away.

Facing Frostbite was a smaller Lupinoid, female, with scraggly brown fur and an eyepatch over her right eye. She stood toe-to-toe looking up at the male, nearly twice her size, with crossed arms and a nonchalant stance, like he was no threat. Only her deep scowl and twitching tail gave away just how pissed she was.

Roadkill spat. "If you have a problem with my disciplinary measures, Mr. Frostbite, you can take it up with our employers when we get back to New Albany. But right now, you better get to your new duties before I dock all of your pay and send you walking back to the Salamanca outpost in your skivvies!"

Frostbite responded with a hellfire glare. But after several tense seconds he turned curtly and stalked away, grumbling to himself as he flung the VR goggles from his head. They bounced high on the cracked tarmac.

Roadkill walked over and squatted down next to me. "How you doing, kitten?"

"I\x92m fine, Roadkill." At least, that\x92s what I meant to say. It came out more like, "Urgmmphl."

Roadkill addressed the medic. "Well?"

The medic\x92s name was Twilight, a Felinoid like me, with well-groomed dark gray fur and oh-so-velvety green eyes. Unlike Lupinoids, Felinoids had very human-like head hair, but he wore his closely-cropped so it blended in seamlessly with the rest of his coat. He was a young recruit six months out of his mandatory stint in the Coalition Militia, and desperate enough for college tuition money to take a job like this.

Twilight had been the subject of discussion between Roadkill and me several times during the two-day cargo-zep trip out here. He was easily the most attractive member of the company as far as we, the only two females present, were concerned. He seemed honestly unaware of just how cute he was, which, of course, made him all the more adorable. He did seem a little shy, almost secretive at times, but that could be overcome by any sufficiently insistent female.

Myself, for instance.

"She\x92ll be fine," Twilight said, running a gauze pad over my wound. "I did a quick ultrasound with the portable. Skull and jaw infrastructure\x92s sound, and there\x92s no sign of a concussion. I\x92ve shot her up with tissue knitters and some happy juice, so she won\x92t start feeling anything until tomorrow morning. She should be fully functional by then, if a little sore. There\x92ll probably be a little bruising, though."

Roadkill nodded. "Nice work, kid. For a hacker you\x92re making a pretty good medic."

"Wannabe hacker," he corrected. "I feel I have to remind you again that medical wasn\x92t my MOS, it was my secondary, so I really hope for everyone\x92s sake that this is the worst injury I have to treat."

"I hope so too, kid." She smiled her tight, black-lipped smile at me. "Sorry, kitten. That Frostbite\x92s a bastard. Maybe I should dock him another five hundred creds. Hell, maybe I should just beat the fucking crap out of him right now and get it done and over with."

"N-naw," I stuttered. I discovered that if I took it real slow and concentrated, my mouth could form coherent syllables. "He\x92s just pissed because I \x91killed\x92 his three critters in that sim."

Roadkill chuckled. "You did frag them good, kitten. Those egotistical butt-sniffers will be days living it down. Getting mowed down by a female, and a Felinoid besides. Serves them right." Her smile disappeared as she lowered her voice. "And if I didn\x92t need Frostbite and his little three-critter crony squad, I\x92d frag them right now for what they did to you."

"Excuse me, commander," Twilight said in a hushed tone, pulling out supplies from his med-kit. "May I speak freely?"

"Of course."

He swabbed my wound some more. The gauze pad he pulled away was awash with tufts of tawny fur and small blotches of crimson. "Yes ma\x92am. That Frostbite\x92s going to be trouble. His little gang doesn\x92t talk much with the rest of us, and when they do, they\x92re usually bad-mouthing you or the mission. They especially don\x92t like having Ms. Feles here-"

"Rakshana," I mumbled. "Friends just call me \x91Shana.\x92"

"Uh, yes ma\x92am. They don\x92t like having, er, Shana here with us because she\x92s an old friend of yours. They think you\x92re playing favorites."

Roadkill scratched an old scar on her muzzles. "Damn right I\x92m playing favorites. Rakshana here is the most valuable critter we\x92ve got. She\x92s the only one who\x92s actually been to these ruins before, and if she can whip three of their asses in a training sim, then she\x92s a hell of a lot less of a liability than they are.

"Yes, ma\x92am, I have no trouble with that. But Frostbite . . ."

"Don\x92t worry about him, kid. He\x92s just big, mean and stupid. Likes to hurt critters for fun. I\x92ve seen a lot like him in this business. But I guarantee you that if he pushes me too far, he\x92ll find out there\x92s one critter in this company who\x92s a whole lot meaner than he is." She smiled broadly, making a show of baring her canines. An unsettling sight to those who didn\x92t know her well, and a terrifying one for those who did.

"You rest up, kitten," Roadkill said, patting me on the shoulder. "We need you chillin\x92 and killin\x92 the day after tomorrow. After that, we can get back to civilization and terrorize the males in New Albany like we used to." She straightened and gave me a broad wink as she walked toward her tent.

I should have never taken this job, escorting a dozen cranky mercs into the wilds surrounding Lake Erie. But Roadkill and I went way back, and we liked to think of ourselves as closer than sisters. Roadkill\x92s hastily-assembled company needed a relic hunter who was familiar with the area, and I had been through these ruins several times, years ago. Besides, Roadkill said she couldn\x92t think of anyone else she\x92d rather have along to watch her back. And I needed the money.

So here I was, lying wounded before anyone had even fired a shot. As omens from the Martyrs went, this one was pretty clear.

But some good came out of my incident with Frostbite. Twilight paid me a whole lot of attention for the rest of the night, and that was just fine with me.

CHAPTER TWO

I perched myself on a fallen tree and pitched rocks into a stream while the rest of the camp went through its pre-dawn reveille routine. I had already been up for half an hour. Discipline among the mercs was still somewhat lax, with our target not expected to arrive in the vicinity of the ruins until the afternoon of the next day. The company was not planning to start its march for the heart of the city until mid-morning.

Gray from the east smudged the starry sky, lending a graphite luminescence to the countryside. A gloomy time of day, lending itself well to my melancholy mood. I carefully positioned myself so that I could see the sun rise between two ancient buildings on the far bank of the stream, the only two that had survived semi-intact in the downtown of this forgotten little suburb. Watching the day begin this way was a ritual of mine ever since I started regularly visiting ruins as a relic hunter.

I never told this to anybody, not even Roadkill, but I had one great, goofy dream in my life.

For a few brief seconds, as the sun silhouettes the buildings, I could almost imagine them whole again, as they were before the Great Pandemic, before the year of the Six Billion Martyrs. I could almost see the city as it once was, bustling with humans, who would smile at each other in greeting and blithely go about their early-morning business. In that moment of blinding sun and deep shadows, I swear I could almost feel them, haunting their city.

My one great dream, you see, was to talk to a human being.

For just a few minutes, to understand what it was like to be who they were. To understand who created us.

But this was the closest I would ever get.

Being in the midst of ruins like this always made me dream of my father. The night before was no different.

The dream started, as it usually does, with a far-away voice in the darkness. My father\x92s voice. "Never forget, Rakshana," he called, "that the human race died for our sins."

I was alone in the shadowy void. I gasped in joy at the sound of his voice. I had not seen him for so long, since mother had driven him away, screaming and yelling and blaming like she always did.

The void melted away and I was a kitten again, snuggled securely in my Daddy\x92s lap, looking up a his friendly, mahogany-furred face. It contrasted sharply with my own tiger-style fur, dusty orange with bold black stripes, the only feature I inherited from my mother. I was glad for that quirk in genetics, because I wanted to be like my Daddy in every way. He was so much smarter than a silly kitten like me. If I had a question, any question at all, he always had just the right answer. He cradled my tiny head in his gentle three-fingered hand, and I felt warm and safe in his strength.

We sat in my family\x92s old apartment in New Albany, on the relic human couch Daddy always cherished. Mommy hated it, the way she hated everything of his. It was beaten-up and splotched with three centuries worth of stains. The soiled wooden frame was out of place with the rest of the apartment, which was furnished with modern plastics of Mommy\x92s choosing.

But I didn\x92t care what Mommy thought. Daddy didn\x92t. And what Daddy thought was the only thing that mattered to me.

"The humans made us in their image," he continued in his deep, sing-song voice, "as their last, most perfect act of creation. They died so that the One Soul could be passed onto their children, the races of Homo Creatura."

"That\x92s us, right Daddy?" I squeaked in my little kitten\x92s voice.

He nodded, standing up. I slid from his lap to the cold floor, holding his hand. He was so tall and straight, like one of those human heroes in the ancient flatvids. "Never forget what they died for, Rakshana."

"Daddy?"

Suddenly my hand was empty, his fingers slipping away like smoke. I searched and called for him desperately, but I knew, somehow, that he was not coming back.

Ever.

The void returned, its darkness enfolding me. Empty, desolate, and unforgiving.

"What\x92s up, kitten?"

I yelped and swore to every saint I could name, heart jackhammering in my chest. Roadkill smirked. She sidled up and sat down beside me on the log. "What\x92s got you so worked up?" she said.

She didn\x92t need to know about my dream. I indicated the ruins with my chin. "I was thinking about them."

"Them who? The humans?"

I nodded.

"You think about them a lot, don\x92t you?"

I drew my knees up to hug them. "I guess I do. Probably because I spend a lot of time around human things. I just wonder a lot about what they were like. Really like, as people. It\x92s weird, Roadkill. Sometimes, when I\x92m alone in the ruins, I kind of get these feelings. Like I\x92m not alone. Like maybe all the humans who died are still there, walking around and watching me."

"Sounds creepy."

"Sometimes it is, like you\x92re walking on someone\x92s grave. But other times--" I turned my head away. "I don\x92t know."

"What?"

"Well, other times it seems like they\x92re there to guide me. To help me see the right path . . ."

Roadkill rolled her eyes as she pulled a cigarette from her vest pocket. "I thought you gave up that Humanist crap years ago."

"So did I. But lately, I don\x92t know. I\x92ve been trying to work through exactly what I believe in. My father was a Humanist."

Roadkill lit her cig with a flick of her pocket torch. "And look where that got him, kitten." She puffed a few times. "Me, I never bought into that humans-were-the-agents-of-God crap. They just were who they were."

"But they were our creators. My father always said that they gave us not only our forms but our souls, the breath of life. I have a friend in the Church of the Martyrs who believes--"

Roadkill crinkled her muzzle. "Please, kitten, you\x92re giving me a headache. Humping through the woods and shooting guns, that I know. But God and souls and stuff? Give me a break. Now, that kid Twilight, I\x92m sure you can talk his tail off with it since you\x92ve completely stolen him away."

"Stolen him!"

"C\x92mon, kitten. I saw how you charmed him with your little miss injured kitty routine so you got a bunch of \x91extra medical attention\x92 from him last night."

"All we did was talk! Right out in the open!"

"Oh, sure. For now. This wouldn\x92t be the first time you hogged the best-looking one for yourself." She let a sly smile spread under her scarred muzzle. She offered me her smoke. "Want a puff?"

"No thanks."

"Your loss. This will be the last one for a while."

"Why\x92s that?"

After one final drag, she stood up and crushed the cigarette under her heel. "I\x92ll explain at assembly in fifteen minutes."

- - -

Roadkill and I stood on the bank of the stream as we watched the males strip in the cherry-colored sunrise and splash into the hip-high water. Spinner, one of the rabbit-like Lapines, arced his usually droopy ears high as his more sensitive regions contacted the chilly water. The other males weren\x92t any happier.

"And scrub everywhere," Roadkill growled at them. "Don\x92t give me that look, Twilight, Boomer. I won\x92t watch. Me and Ms. Feles will be upstream doing the same duty. And if I catch any of you brainsucks peeking on us, I\x92ll cut off your nuts and use them as bear bait. Get me?" She patted the carbon-steel knife on her hip for emphasis, the one as long as her forearm. "You got an hour to do yourselves, your bedrolls, and your uniforms. Get to it!"

Roadkill turned and tugged on my arm. "C\x92mon."

We hiked several hundred meters upstream, hugging the bank closely as Roadkill led the way. In our backpacks we carried our spare clothing, sleeping rolls, and rain tarps. The trees and underbrush closed in around us, and soon we were walking through tall grass along a deer path. Outcroppings of heavily-overgrown buildings could occasionally be seen through the trees. Birds chirped merrily overhead, and insects buzzed around us. The whole area was permeated with the lusty fertile scent of soil and aging grass. "Is it really necessary to do this so soon?" I asked Roadkill as soon as we were out of earshot of the males. "From what I remember of my Militia training, scent neutralization should only be done when . . ."

"The Militia\x92s stupid," Roadkill retorted. "They\x92re still too hide-bound to old human tactics. They don\x92t teach what\x92s practical in today\x92s world." She tapped her nose. "They simply don\x92t take the sense of smell seriously. Most Creatura got a sense of smell much, much better than the humans ever had. We know from our employers that Musteldae\x92s got at least one Lupinoid with him, and he\x92s a ferret, which is almost as good. They\x92ll smell this shit-breathed company kilometers away unless we take precautions early."

We came to a broad section of the stream, where the water was slow-moving and deep. Roadkill turned toward me. "This looks as good a spot as any."

We each laid the clear plastic tarps we brought with us on the uneven ground and emptied our packs onto them. One by one, we took each piece of clothing, dunked it in the stream, scrubbed it down with astringent soap on the plastic, dunked it again, then hung it on a nearby branch. As soon as the uniforms were dry, we sprayed them with scent neutralizers. We repeated the process with our sleeping rolls. When that was all finished we stripped and did the clothes we were wearing. I was half-way through doing my last shirt when I glanced at Roadkill.

The commander was already done and waiting for me to finish. She sat naked against a broad pine, sharpening her knife--like any of her knives really needed sharpening--with a small whetting stone. I always admired my friend for her compact, muscular frame that came from a lifetime of street brawls and military service. Numerous scars and bald patches splotched the smooth line of her fur here and there. Below her small breasts four vestigial nipples were visible through her thin stomach fur. Lupinoids had been the first of the Creatura races to be bioengineered, and were the least refined as far as human-like features were concerned. They had more numerous animal-like traits than most other races, except maybe the Myotans. Digitigrade stance, multiple nipples, long muzzles, no distinctive head hair beyond their natural fur covering, they looked almost like the Hollywood version of the classic werewolf, though of course smaller and far less homicidal.

Roadkill\x92s body was quite a contrast to my own. I was tall for a female Felinoid, nearly 160 centimeters, and a bit lankier and bustier than I\x92d like. Creatura genetics were a little more refined when the human scientists got around to my breed, and they were able to give my ancestors more human-like characteristics. Although our facial features were still very distinctively feline, the muzzle was flatter and the eyes and lips more expressive than Lupinoid specimens. We had human-style breast and legs, though of course fur-covered like the rest of our bodies.

Despite the hellion bitch image she liked to cultivate, Roadkill never lacked for bed partners, male or female, when she wanted them. In fact, when we were younger and in secondary school together, I got the feeling Roadkill wished I would be much more than just her friend. Neither of us ever had a problem going cross-species for partners, but I never found myself attracted to other females. So she and I settled on being best friends instead.

"Say," I said, sitting up from my scrubbing. "It just occurred to me that the males should have done their uniforms and stuff like us, before you ordered them into the water."

Roadkill continued her steady strokes with the whet stone, mischief sparkling in her eyes. "If I\x92d done that we couldn\x92t have watched them strip."

I snickered as I hung my shirt and ambled over to the stream. Roadkill sprang to her feet and joined me by the bank. My fur stood on end as I tentatively dipped a toe into the crystal water. It was freezing. I hated water unless it was steaming hot and coming out of a shower head.

Roadkill snuck her arm behind me and shoved me at the stream. I gyrated around and teetered on the very edge of the stream bank, my toes clenching at the muddy bank and my arms windmilling wildly. Hardly the model of legendary Felinoid grace. Roadkill, smirking, leaned over and puffed air into my face.

I tumbled backwards and splashed into the frigid water, sputtering vehemently as I broke the surface. Laughing, Roadkill cannonballed into the stream, hitting me with a tsunami of freezing water. A splash fight of epic proportions ensued, both of us giggling like we were still school girls.

It was a side of herself Roadkill rarely exposed to anyone, even me, nowadays. She would never dream of letting the rest of her troops see her like this. To them, she had to be the Commander, the snarling, scowling hellion bitch who would make even their worst nightmares huddle in a corner and cry. But for just a few minutes, secluded away from her responsibilities, she could relax enough to laugh and play a bit with her best friend.

Our ruckus eventually died down, and we got on with the serious business of scrubbing ourselves down with astringent soap and rinsing off. We tramped back onto shore, shook ourselves semi-dry, and settled down next to a tree to wait for our clothes to dry.

"So, how\x92s the relic hunting business been lately?" Roadkill asked. "We haven\x92t really had a chance to really talk since we were lifted from New Albany."

"Mostly not too good," I said. "I haven\x92t found anything more valuable than a Barbie doll in the last three months, and the market\x92s already glutted with those. That\x92s why I pounced on this job. I was one lame excuse away from being evicted from my apartment. Not that I\x92m there all that much lately, anyway."

"Travel a lot, huh? I know what that\x92s like. I pretty much bounce from one contract to the next. It\x92s mostly cake work--training private security, scouting, shotgunning supply runs, stuff like that. Once in a while we\x92re hired to root out some marauders the Militia doesn\x92t want to dirty its paws with, but most of the burr-footed yokels we go up against wouldn\x92t know their tails from tree stumps."

"Is that how we\x92re supposed to act tomorrow?" I adopted my best Gomer Pyle voice, from the old monotone flatvid I loved as a kid. "Gah-olly, sarge, which end of this here rifle do I shoot with?"

Roadkill snorted. "We\x92re supposed to look like marauders, not act like them. But to tell you the truth, Shana, there\x92s a lot about this contract that bothers me."

"Like what?"

"Like I still don\x92t know exactly who hired us. They\x92re paying extremely well and supplied us with all this top-grade equipment, but beyond the title of \x91some concerned citizens\x92 and a few scrambled vidphone images, I have no idea who our employers are. The mission seems simple enough--scare off a bunch of university types from the Buffalo ruins--but what\x92s the purpose of it? And I especially don\x92t like having most of my troops chosen for me. Except for Spinner and Black Bart, I\x92ve never worked with any of these critters before. Most of them seem pretty straight, but Frostbite and his little circle-jerk buddies--hey, what\x92s so funny?"

"You full-time mercs. Do you always have to pick such goofy working names?"

Roadkill opened her mouth to reply when her eyes suddenly narrowed. She stared intently into the forest, crouching forward onto her feet. "Wait a second." She picked up a stray fragment of ancient concrete and whipped it into a thicket of nearby bushes.

One of the bushes yelped, and I could just barely make out a gray-furred figure as he jumped up, rubbing his backside.

Instinctively, I covered myself, as well as two hands and a meter-long cat\x92s tail could cover a body like mine. But Roadkill stood straight up, starkers and all, and spat. "Twilight, what the hell did I tell you about peeking? You\x92re lucky that isn\x92t my knife buried in your ass! Now get back to camp and consider yourself docked two hundred credits!" She stabbed a finger at a nearby pine tree. "That goes for you too, Spinner!"

The tree grumbled, then went quiet. I heard footsteps crunching the leaves on the forest floor, eventually fading away.

Once we were sure the males were out of earshot, we laughed ourselves blue. We spent the walk back to camp arguing which of us Twilight had spent the most time ogling.

CHAPTER THREE

We marched single-file through the wilderness leading to the Buffalo ruins proper, strict scent discipline enforced. The pace was kept leisurely, to avoid overheating in the warm springtime afternoon. The humans who created the Creatura, as revered as they were, did make one, universally-acknowledged mistake: they gave us fur and sweat glands. The glands were inactive except where our fur was thinnest, on our faces, hands, feet, and groin, but that was enough to raise quite an odor if one wasn\x92t careful. We all knew the humans\x92 sense of smell wasn\x92t that great, but still, what were they thinking?

Spinner, the tawny-furred Lapine, was on point twenty paces ahead of our column. He nudged the tall grass aside with the muzzle of his guass rifle, clearing a path. He had his long ears tied back in a mock-pony-tail. His skull sported many old human mystical symbols shaved at random into the smooth fur, and affectation he swore brought him luck.

I was right behind Roadkill, in the lead of the main body of troops. I fiddled with my inertial locator, keeping track of our position, and occasionally gave Spinner instructions via our radio headsets of upcoming obstacles I remembered from my previous visits. Frostbite brought up the rear.

The sky was dull with gray clouds, the sun playing peek-a-boo for most of the afternoon. The landscape alternated between forest-choked ruins and ruins-choked forest. Nature was slowly winning the tug-of-war for living space against the crumbling remnants of human civilization. In another thousand years, no visible trace of the old human cities would remain on the continent, except, perhaps, what we Creatura chose to preserve.

By dusk we had reached the outskirts of the Buffalo city limits. By our best estimate, Musteldae and his expedition was still at least a half-day behind us. Even though he and his group were using wheeled ATVs, the overgrown terrain would slow them down to a relative crawl. Assuming they stopped for the night like we did, we would have plenty of time to penetrate into the main city and set up the ambush for the next morning when they were expected to pass through.

Attending to, ahem, excrement duties while under scent discipline was an adventure in itself. The routine was to dig a small trench for yourself, line it with ash collected from campfires of several previous nights, squat down, do your duty, clean up, spray the hole down with scent neutralizer, cover it back up, and, finally, spray the whole mess as well as your private parts. It was not something one could do quickly or easily, especially on the march, so basically everyone had to hold it in until we camped for the night. After camp was set up, everyone not on immediate sentry duty went into the woods to tend to their business, leaving the sentries to rub their thighs together and fidget impatiently for someone to get back and relieve them. A large, central trench toilet was suggested but nixed early on by Roadkill, as it would have been too difficult to scent-neutralize such a large concentration of waste.

I sought out Twilight when I returned from my escapade in waste extraction. Neither of us was scheduled for sentry duty until later that night, so that gave us a few hours of free time. I found him talking to the two Lapines, Spinner and Hodge-Podge. Upon seeing me, however, conversation stumbled to a halt. The two Lapines each gave Twilight a broad grin before they conspicuously ambled away, Spinner elbowing Hodge-Podge and snickering.

I knew that Twilight had caught a lot of ribbing from the others that morning, especially after being nabbed by Roadkill for peeking on us females. You simply can\x92t suppress that sort of thing in a group this small. Earlier in the day while I was talking to Roadkill on the fallen tree, Spinner, the eternal joker, snuck into my pack and stole my tampons. At the midday rest break, he promptly inserted them into ears and nostrils and wobbled a maniacal face at Twilight. Twilight blushed bright red around his eyes.

Roadkill barely looked up from her ration bar. "Good going, Spinner. Maybe now you can finally soak up some real brains."

Hodge-Podge, Spinner\x92s best friend, made a sound like he was choking on a frog and fell back on his tail laughing. The others joined in, and it was Spinner\x92s turn to blush. For the rest of the day, everyone called him Brainsuck the Wonder Bunny.

"Hey, Shana," Twilight said as I approached.

"Hey. What were you guys talking about?"

"Hodge\x92s wristcomp is on the fritz, so he asked me to take a look at it. Looks like a software glitch. I\x92ll probably have to spend half the night debugging it."

"And here I thought you were just a talented medic."

He spread his hands. "Computers were my MOS in the Militia. I guess I\x92ve always been kind of a prodigy with them. Medical was just my secondary specialty."

I sat down beside him on the fallen log next to his tarp. "So how come you went mercenary? I\x92d think someone of your talent could easily find a legitimate job."

He shifted uncomfortably. "You\x92d think so. But hackers are a credit a dozen in this job market, and the best I could do was assistant programmer at some mom-and-pop electronics shop. And my folks were getting deeper and deeper in debt trying to put my older sister through college, so I couldn\x92t go to them for money. I found out about this contract through Spinner, who was in my Militia unit. Roadkill needed someone who was at least rated a level two in Medical, and that was me. Hell, Shana, this job\x92ll net me more money than I\x92d make in six months at the electronics shop."

I wrapped my tail around the log to keep it from twitching. I wanted this conversation to go in a certain direction, and I didn\x92t want to give away how nervous I was. "So, um, what are your plans after you get back to New Albany?"

He shrugged. "Go visit my folks, I guess. Maybe try to get into the University."

"The University of New Albany? Isn\x92t that where Musteldae is from? The guy who we\x92re supposed to ambush tomorrow? Aren\x92t you afraid you\x92ll run into him someday and he\x92ll recognize you?"

"Not really. We\x92re supposed to wear those filter masks, and everyone\x92s using code names. Besides, we\x92re just supposed to scare him off, maybe steal a few things to make it look convincing. It\x92s not like we\x92re going to murder anybody, right?"

I kept quiet.

"So how about you?" Twilight asked. "What are you doing when you get back to civilization?"

"Well, I\x92ll pay off my debts, and probably invest in some new relic-hunting equipment. Maybe even get a rover. I was thinking of heading out west, setting up shop in the new San Diego Enclave for a while. There\x92s some ruins out on the west coast that have hardly ever been touched. Prime pickings, if you got the right gear." I smoothed out an imaginary crease on my fatigues. This is it, I told myself. "You know, I could, um, use a partner. When we get back from this job, you\x92d still have four months until the fall semester. That is, if you wouldn\x92t mind being alone with me for all those weeks . . ."

He blinked wide eyes at me, ears starched straight up. He was perplexed as to what to say for a number of heartbeats, and opened and closed his mouth a number of times trying to form the words. I did my best to suppress my amused smirk at his priceless expression. Obviously he wasn\x92t used to females coming on to him so blatantly, if at all.

Finally, he took a deep, steady breath and met my eyes, but anything he was about to say was drowned out by yelling from across the camp.

"Get your fucking paws off me!" someone screamed, followed by sounds of scuffing and fighting. We scrambled to our feet and ran over to see what was happening.

The others were crowding into a circle around Roadkill and one of Frostbite\x92s cronies, Random. We pushed our way through just in time to see Roadkill deliver a vicious spinning kick to his face. The thick underside of her boot thwacked him across the jaw, his blood-flecked spittle flying three meters into the air. He crashed backwards like a cut oak, bouncing hard on the carpet of rubble and roots.

To his credit, Random tried to shake it off. He attempted to clamber to his feet, but he was too hurt to do more than lurch drunkenly to his knees before collapsing back to the ground.

Frostbite pushed his way through the circle of gawkers. "What the hell is going on!"

Roadkill\x92s fur bristled. "That asshole started groping me! Ran his hands over me like I was a cheap whore!" She spat in disgust. "Tell that pervert when he wakes up that he\x92s docked half his pay and the next time he tries something that stupid, I\x92ll break every bone in his shit-smelling carcass."

Roadkill turned and stalked away. Frostbite moved to block her path. "You stupid uppity bitch!" he yelled, looming over her. "Who the hell do you think you are? Someone should beat some respect into you!"

In a blur of motion Roadkill drew her knife and hovered the point just below Frostbite\x92s chin. The big male\x92s tail froze and his ears tapered back. "Try it, asshole," she snarled. "But I know you won\x92t. You know why? Because you\x92re a whimpering coward. All males like you are. All tough and big with a gun in your hand and your ass-sniffing friends around, but if I ever got to tear into you alone your poodle-sized balls would try to hide themselves up your ass."

Frostbite snarled and his hand spasmed into a fist, but his movement was cut short when Roadkill inched her knife into the skin under his chin. A small trickle of blood meandered down the blade. "Try it, Frostbite. Go ahead. Make my life easier. If it comes down to it, yeah, you got a few people on your side, but all the others will side with me because I\x92m the meal ticket here."

Frostbite\x92s tail buried itself between his legs as he unclenched his hand. He was mean, but he wasn\x92t stupid. "This isn\x92t over. When we get back--"

She rolled her eyes. "Yeah, yeah, when we get back to New Albany you\x92re going to kill me a dozen times over and rape my smoking corpse. I\x92ve heard it all before, and from better males than you." She lowered her weapon, but not before gently poking it into his groin. "But they, at least, had weapons I had to worry about."

The other mercs snickered. Roadkill turned and walked away. Frostbite glared icy murder at her back, but in the end he stalked off toward his small band of followers. For the rest of the night they stayed to themselves, occasionally looking over the rest of us with tight, black-lipped smirks.

CHAPTER FOUR

Roadkill\x92s merc company was spread out on both sides of Buffalo\x92s old Main Street, in fire-teams of two strategically hidden in the crumbling brownstones flanking the rubble-choked road. Here, the vegetation was the thinnest for many kilometers, and Main Street was the most logical path for any vehicle to take to get to the University of Buffalo ruins, where Musteldae\x92s group was supposedly heading.

Walking on Main Street, one could get a feel for the character of the ancient city. The Buffalonians loved the old, 50s-style architecture, judging by how many block-like steel-and-glass skyscrapers dominated their downtown. So many other ruin sites were punctuated by the plasticrete asymmetrical motif that dominated the building boom in the early twenty-first century, just before the Pandemic. The older designs in their half-decayed states gave an almost gothic feel to the ruins. All we\x92d need to complete the scene would be fog rolling in and feral wolves howling in the distance.

Roadkill, Twilight and I hunkered low on the third floor of a ten-story office building, squatting in a corner next to a broad window shattered to a handful of fragments by centuries of storms. At our elbows lurched a large, synth-wood conference table heavily warped by season after season of rain and snow. Tipped against it like a lover leaning in for a kiss was a rust-encrusted coffee machine dressed in a thick chemise of spider webs. Smashed and worn chairs lay everywhere.

On our throats we wore self-adhering radio dots, equipped with microphones sensitive enough to pick up sub-vocal sounds. The signal from both the dot and accompanying earpiece was routed through a combination booster and multiplexor clipped to our belts. We could talk to each other without having to utter a noise louder than a soft breath, a definitive advantage since all Creatura races were bioengineered with better-than-human hearing.

Roadkill\x92s lips barely moved, but her voice erupted loudly in my ear over the common channel. "Moondog, Spinner, you guys got visual yet?" She nodded sagely as the critters on the other end of the hook-up replied negative. "Well, keep on them with the seismic detectors. Let me know as soon as you have visual."

She turned toward Twilight and me. "Spinner\x92s tracking two vehicles about three klicks east. From their rumble he thinks they\x92re tracked. Probably ATVs. If they\x92re enclosed we\x92ll have to move in after we pop the cans. Kitten, you and Twilight stay here and help me back up the others on the off chance things get hairy." Twilight, being the medic, and myself, being the guide, were considered too essential to risk in an open confrontation, even with a bunch of minimally-armed college-types, so we got to sit out the ambush in relative safety, which was all right by me. Some critters got off on firefights. I wasn\x92t one of them.

Roadkill\x92s plan was straight-forward. As soon as the ATVs were in the right spot, we would hit them with concentrated pepper gas from grenades, and then fire furiously into the air over their heads. Musteldae\x92s group would then be given a chance to surrender, which, disoriented by the gas and facing superior firepower, would be the only sane course. When they folded, we were to move in playing the role of blood-thirsty marauders. We would then confiscate everything valuable, metaphorically whack them below their tails, and send them whimpering back the way they came. End of expedition, just like our unknown employers wanted.

If they didn\x92t surrender, nastier tactics would become necessary, but no one believed it would come to that.

Roadkill\x92s attention was grabbed away by her radio link. "They got visual," she whispered. "Everyone stand by." She grinned at me. "Sit back and enjoy the show, kitten. Just try not to molest our medic while I\x92m distracted, okay?"

The commander turned away and mouthed into the air. "All right, everyone in position? Copy--copy--copy--move your ass, Frostbite!--copy. Hodge-Podge, Boomer, remember I want a full saturation of the area. Frostbite, Black Bart, Vorpal, make sure you fire over their heads. No screw-ups! Okay, everyone, here we go."

Faintly, I picked up the distinctive rubble-crunching sound of treads approaching from the east. I shifted position so that I could peer out the window past Twilight\x92s shoulders and onto the street below. Two medium-sized, open-topped ATVs were approaching at a languid speed, trailing a cloud of dust.

The vehicles were almost directly in front of our vantage point when Roadkill ordered, "Zap \x91em."

Two loud thumps sounded. An instant later the street was engulfed by a milky, billowing mist. Even three stories up, I felt the burning sting in my nostrils from the noxious gas. All three of us hastily pulled on our filter masks.

"Gunners, open fire," Roadkill said, no longer whispering. Automatic weapons fire exploded below, intermixed with screams and curses.

Over the com link, I heard Spinner yell that one of the targets, then another, had gone down, struck by guass rifle fire.

Roadkill shot to her feet, screaming venomously. "Martyrs, I said over their heads, you goddam fuck-ups! Damn! Damn! Damn!" She sprinted out of the room, her boots thudding rapidly down the stairs.

Twilight and I exchanged worried glances for a brief second before we turned to follow her.

So much for an easy pay check.

CHAPTER FIVE

"Frostbite, you\x92re fucking unbelievable!" Roadkill screamed into the huge Lupinoid\x92s face. We were back at our campsite of the night before, complete with the two captured ATVs and three surviving prisoners. We had left the bulk of our equipment here, including most of our medical supplies. Clouds had been threatening rain for hours, but it was the storm from our commander that held everyone\x92s attention. "I should ice you right now, you stupid shit! This was supposed to be a cake walk! But you fucked everything up!"

Frostbite shrugged. "It just happened."

We had a lot of company after the ambush, and, lucky me, I was assigned guard duty. Three captives, each with arms bound behind them and a noose-leash lashed securely to nearby trees, took in the scene with terrified eyes. Black flies buzzed around the two dead critters, an Ursoid and a Vulpine, who lay under sheets at the opposite edge of the campsite. Everyone conspicuously avoided looking at them.

Our surviving captives were an odd-looking group. The fat old ferret with the thick eyeglasses had to be Musteldae. I heard one of the others call him Professor. Beside him were two other older critters, a Lapine with floppy, wrinkled ears and a grizzled Sciuran with generous streaks of gray in his bushy squirrel\x92s tail.

Twilight was tending to their wounds and quietly talking to them in an effort to get them to remain calm. They were still quite terrified after seeing two of their conrades shot down in cold blood an hour earlier.

"Just happened! Just Happened!" Roadkill screamed at Frostbite. "You shit-breathed bug humper! They were just civvies!"

Frostbite did not seem to be getting as angry as he should have. As a matter of fact, he seemed very calm, almost smug. "They had guns. I had to take preventive measures."

"What? Those little popgun pistols we found with them? When they were choking on pepper gas and couldn\x92t see straight? Bullshit! You\x92re just a coward, Frostbite!"

Frostbite just smiled wickedly. The fur on the back of my neck bristled. He was planning something.

Roadkill was still shouting. "Well, as of now, this mission is over! We have to get these critters back to Salamanca and get them some proper medical care. Our employers and their \x91discretionary policy\x92 can go to hell. They can deal with the legal fallout. But you, Frostbite, are stripped of all pay, including your advance. And when we get back, I\x92m going to make sure the Merc regulatory Board hears of your insubordination and incompetence! The rest of us may get in some trouble, but I\x92m going to make sure they skin you like a steamed rabbit!"

I suddenly noticed Frostbite\x92s three cronies maneuvering themselves behind the other mercs while everyone else was occupied with watching Roadkill\x92s tirade. They pulled out their weapons.

"Roadkill!" I shouted.

"Now!" Frostbite bellowed, cutting off my warning.

The camp erupted with gunfire, Frostbite\x92s followers blasting the other mercs before they even had a chance to look startled. Spinner, standing right next to me, was hammered with a half-dozen rounds from behind, the bullets ripping out of his chest in a crimson spray. I was splashed with droplets of hot blood. He staggered forward two steps, gave a weird kind of wheezing laugh, and hit the ground with a dull thud.

I quickly unslung my weapon, but a hot rifle muzzle tapping the base of my skull made me stop. "Uh-uh, pussycat. Drop it," someone behind me growled. Reluctantly, I threw the guass rifle to the ground and slowly raised my hands.

Roadkill, caught off-guard by the gunfire like the rest of us, hesitated for only a half-second. Like an uncoiling spring she whirled back to face Frostbite, raising her rifle. "You son of a--"

Frostbite already had his pistol in hand, and caught her in a vicious uppercut with the weapon\x92s grip. Her head snapped up, her mouth trailing a thin arc of crimson through the air. She fell back hard. Before she could move, Frostbite lowered the weapon and squeezed off two shots. Her body jerked sickeningly with each one.

"Roadkill!" I screamed.

Her chest still heaved. Face contorted into a mask of pain, she struggled to get up. I saw then that Frostbite\x92s shots hadn\x92t been aimed at vital areas. One had gone into the meat of her thigh, the other into her shoulder. They were meant to immobilize, not kill. Blood pooled underneath her.

"That should keep you out of trouble, bitch," Frostbite said.

She arduously made it up onto all fours before he kicked her viciously in the ribs, dropping her again to the ground. She reached weakly for her rifle, but the big Lupinoid kicked it away before he laid into her with a half-dozen more blows. Finally, he picked her up by her uniform\x92s lapels so their muzzles hovered a mere centimeter apart.

"Leave her alone!" I shouted.

The merc behind me jammed the rifle barrel between my shoulder blades, a signal to shut up.

The white-furred lupinoid sneered at Roadkill. "I got news for you, bitch. You were never in charge here. You and the others were here only to make sure Musteldae got captured. After we get the info we want, the big boss made it very clear to me that we didn\x92t leave any witnesses behind. That\x92s going to include you. But I kept you alive so we can have a little fun with you later."

"Fuck you, asshole," she wheezed and spat blood in his face.

He twisted Roadkill around and threw her onto her stomach. He knelt on her back, oblivious to her cries of pain, and he removed anything from her that could possibly be used as a weapon. He tied her hands securely with his own belt. He picked her up and threw her into the arms of one of his followers. "Tie her up with the others. Anyone else alive?"

"Just the two Felinoids," Random said from behind me.

"Good. Just like we planned. Keep them all under guard, especially the two females. After we finish interrogating Musteldae\x92s bunch, we\x92re going to have ourselves a little party." He and his cronies laughed as they leered at Roakill and me.

Rats scrabbled up and down my spine. Martyrs, what had we gotten ourselves into?

CHAPTER SIX

"You bastards! Don\x92t! I\x92ll kill you! I--don\x92t! No! NOOOO!"

I pressed my ears flat against my head, trying to drown out Roadkill\x92s cries from the central tent with the latest of my many prayers to the Martyrs that night. I could hear the Lupinoid males laughing harder the more she howled. Yet what truly terrified me was when her screaming and yelling degenerated into pitiful mewling and begging as first one hour, then two, dragged horribly by with her in that tent. I didn\x92t even want to think of the things that could make Roadkill do that.

I was safe for tonight. At least that\x92s what they told me. They needed Twilight for his computer expertise, but exactly for what they wouldn\x92t say. They needed me because I was their best guide and knew the territory. We\x92d both remain breathing and unmolested as long as we cooperated. But I had no illusions that as soon as my usefulness was over, they\x92d want some fresh amusement once they tired of their former commander.

I had to get out of here before then. Oh, Martyrs, please.

The night was dark and overcast, the wind pungent with a potential downpour. Just enough light spilled from the campfire to allow my felinoid night vision to make out some of the details of the surrounding forest, but everyone except Twilight and myself would be blind beyond the flickering circle of light.

I pulled at the line holding my hands together. It was tight and expertly knotted, with a short lead anchored securely to a thick tree trunk. I could barely wiggle my fingers, much less use my finger claws. Most Creatura had small claws on their hands and feet, though they could not compare to those of real animals. They were more like heavily curved and thickened human fingernails, but they were more than tough enough, I was sure, to slice through the cheap plastic rope holding me fast. If I had some way of getting my boots off, I was pretty sure I was flexible enough to bend my feet back far enough to get at the ropes with my toe claws.

"What do you think is going to happen to us?" Twilight whispered, lashed to the tree next to mine.

I glanced at our guard. Thankfully he wasn\x92t paying much attention to us. He\x92d already had his turn in the tent and was now concentrating on getting drunk with one of the bottles of gin Musteldae\x92s group had packed along.

"I don\x92t know, but you males are lucky." I cast a meaningful glance at the tent. "All you have to worry about is dying."

He looked away.

I sighed. That was a stupid thing for me to say. We segued into silence for many minutes. We both wanted to discuss ways of getting out of here, but that wasn\x92t a good idea with the guard so close by. "What do you think they\x92re after?" I whispered.

"I\x92ve been talking to the professor." Twilight motioned with his muzzle to Musteldae, on the other side of him in the line of prisoners. "He said they were tracking down some old human optical disk containing some important data."

"Is that what Frostbite was questioning him about earlier?"

He nodded. "Musteldae says it\x92s incredibly valuable. One of the most important finds in Creatura history. But what exactly it is he isn\x92t saying. He\x92s afraid I\x92ll spill the info to Frostbite\x92s bunch and whoever they\x92re working for."

"What?" I snarled. "Eleven critters are dead, Roadkill\x92s going through hell, and we\x92re all probably going to die for this Martyrs-cursed disk. I think that damn well gives us the right to know. Tell him that."

Twilight turned back to the professor, but the old ferret just shook his graying head resolutely. Twilight shrugged at me. "Fine," I snapped.

Twilight\x92s voice dropped an octave so that I could barely hear him. "Do you have something in mind for getting out of here?"

I looked thoughtfully at our guard. "I\x92m working on it."

Before I could say more, we were washed with light from an electric lantern as the flap from the central tent opened. Roadkill was pushed roughly out by Random, her feet stumbling on the uneven ground. Frostbite was right behind them, a satisfied grin smearing his black lips.

She looked horrible. Earlier they\x92d had Twilight bandage the worst of her wounds, but only enough to keep her functioning. Blood caked large sections on both her thigh and shoulder. Her tail looked bent, maybe broken. Her uniform was shredded and non-existent below the waist. She limped not only from her leg wound but also from the horrible bruises on her inner thighs.

Roadkill quietly shuffled forward, head bowed, her usual brazen confidence completely shattered. They had broken her.

I blinked back tears. My best friend. What had they done to her in there?

Martyrs in heaven, was that going to be me in a few days?

Frostbite\x92s critters led Roadkill to the tree next to mine, at the head of the makeshift line of prisoners, two meters away. She cried out in pain as they threw her onto a patch of exposed roots, leering and snickering about their promises for the next night as they tied her to the tree.

"You bastards!" I screamed at them. "You all deserve to rot in hell!"

Their leader lit up one of Roadkill\x92s cigarettes. "No doubt about that," Frostbite said after the first puff. He walked over to me and stroked my cheek with his rough-furred hand. "But don\x92t you worry about hell, pussycat, \x91cause I\x92m going to give you a piece of Frostbite heaven in a couple of nights!" His cronies snickered.

He yanked his fingers away when I tried to bite them. That got me a stinging backhand across the face.

"You think you\x92re so tough, don\x92t you, you Felinoid bitch," Frostbite sneered, hooking a thumb at Roadkill. She leaned against the tree, knees pulled up tight to her chest, looking hard at the ground. "She thought she was tough, too."

He laughed and walked away. Our guard chuckled like a good lackey and went back to nursing his rum flask as soon as the others were back at the fire.

I turned to Roadkill. "Are you okay?"

She didn\x92t look up. "Leave me alone."

"Roadkill, don\x92t. Let me--"

Here eyes flicked briefly in my direction. Tears matted her thin facial fur. "I said leave me alone! You don\x92t know anything!" She turned away again. Her shoulders convulsed with her quiet sobbing for a long time after.

CHAPTER SEVEN

I wished I had more time to think my plan through, but I had to get out of there. I had to get everyone out of there. Roadkill wouldn\x92t survive another night of that kind of abuse. I couldn\x92t survive one.

It was late, well after midnight. The only sounds were soft chirping from crickets and the rumbling snores from by the campfire. All but one of the mercs were asleep, and he was trying to use his long tongue to sponge the last drops of rum out of an empty bottle. They had all laid into the alcohol during their "party" with Roadkill and the others were now sleeping it off. Gully, the lowest rung on their dominance ladder, was chosen to stay awake and guard us. He rested opposite me against the grayish trunk of an oak tree. He was tired, bored, and more than a little sotted.

"Hey," I called to him as I tried to keep the nervous tremor from my voice.

He acknowledged me with a long and disgusting belch.

I sucked my lower lip and tucked my ears back, giving my best impression of an anxious cat. "I have to go."

He rolled his eyes. "Ha, ha. Real funny. What, got a hot date?"

Martyrs save me from idiots. "No, no. I have to go to the bathroom."

He cocked an eyebrow. "So go."

"With my pants on? I can\x92t get them off like this."

He loosed a long and heavy sigh, slowly climbing to his feet and lumbering over. He wasn\x92t completely brain-dead. He left his weapon by his tree, well out of my reach.

He stood over me. "All right, what do you want me to do? Don\x92t expect me to untie you."

"Well, it would be a big help if you could get my boots and pants off."

"Heh, heh. Pants off, eh?"

I held back the sudden urge to claw his eyes out. I risked a glance sideways as the guard crouched down. Twilight was sprawled out, back against the tree in seeming slumber. But I could tell with my Felinoid night vision that he watched the guard intently through slitted eyes.

The Lupinoid\x92s hands reached for my belt, but at the last second snaked around to grab me clumsily below my tail. His muzzle hovered over mine. "Tell you what, kitty. I be nice to you, you be nice to me. Let me get a jump start on you. Hell, I don\x92t think the boss\x92ll mind as long as you aren\x92t too banged up."

"S-sure," I managed to hiss, gritting my teeth at his fetid breath. I would rather have gone to bed with my great grandad\x92s rotting corpse, maggots and all, than even think of seeing my guard naked. "Um, a little later, okay? I got to take care of \x91business\x92 first. I mean, I really got to."

"Oh, hell." He grinned through black lips. "Waiting a couple of minutes won\x92t hurt." He disengaged his hands from my backside--thank the Martyrs--and began fumbling with my belt.

"Um, how about the boots first? The pants won\x92t fit over them."

"Oh, yeah. What was I thinking?"

Turning around and planting his feet on either side of my knees, he bent over my lower legs and with great effort shucked one boot off, then another. "Damn, those were on tight." He half-turned in his crouch. "Now let\x92s get those pants off--"

I quickly curled my legs back from under him. Bracing myself with one foot below my buttocks, I kicked up and out with all my strength. It was a maneuver only a Felinoid, with our superior agility, could have pulled off. The blow hooked across his thinly-furred throat, my fully-extended half-inch toe claws ripping through his windpipe. He gurgled and wheezed, eyes bulging as I was sprayed with blood for the second time that day. I tucked my leg back and kicked out again in a low arc across the back of his knees. He crumple to the ground with a dull thud. He sputtered blood as he tried to wheeze out a scream, attempting to cover the gaping slash in his throat with his hands. I snaked my legs around his flailing arms and wrapped them around his neck. Blinded by uncontrollable panic, he hardly resisted. It took nearly all the muscle power in my legs, but his neck finally snapped with a sickening crunch.

I disengaged my blood-soaked limbs, gasping from exertion. The pungent coppery smell of Gully\x92s blood flooded my senses, making me dizzy. I had been forced to kill once before, years ago when I was in the Militia. Martyrs, I\x92d forgotten how sickening it felt. I doubled over and was rewarded with an upward surge of bile from my stomach.

"Shana? You okay?" Twilight whispered, glancing furtively at the other Lupinoids. Thankfully they seemed oblivious, snoring away in their drunken bliss. When we got out of this I was going to give Musteldae a huge kiss for bringing along all that alcohol.

"Y-yeah. Just give me a minute." I couldn\x92t afford to be weak right now. Gritting my teeth, I rolled over onto my side, tucked my feet behind me and arced backward as far as I could go. I felt my foot claws scratch on the rope around my wrists, and went to work cutting through them. It took nearly ten minutes and a multitude of scratches and pulled muscles, but eventually the last strand snapped and for the first time in hours I could freely move my arms.

I bit down a yelp as a thousand needles bore into my skin as circulation resumed its normal course. I rubbed my hands vigorously, trying to shake some life back into them.

I slunk over to Twilight and within minutes had him free as well.

We stood, our voices as low as we could make them. "You take care of Musteldae and the others," I whispered. "I\x92ll take care of Roadkill. Just remember to keep everyone quiet!"

I tip-toed over to grab the guard\x92s rifle before I went to Roadkill. Having the weapon in my hands did wonders to calm my nerves.

"Roadkill?" She was curled tightly in a fetal position, deep asleep. I shook her uninjured shoulder.

She jumped like a shot rabbit. "Wha--"

I clamped a hand over her mouth. "Shh. Don\x92t worry. I\x92m going to get you out of these ropes, and then we\x92re getting out of here. Understand?"

She nodded, tears in her eyes. "Please."

As soon as I had her free, I slung her good arm over my shoulder and helped her hobble over to the others.

I glanced at the sleeping mercs. I very briefly contemplated mowing them down where they lay, but then Roadkill stumbled and I quickly put the notion out of my head. It probably would have been the smarter course, but at the time I was exhausted, sick, and terrified to the pont where it was hard to think straight. Every instinct in me screamed to just run away, the desperate need for it so strong that it churned in my gut.

The fat little ferret rubbed his wrists, huffing. "Young lady, I--"

"Quiet! We don\x92t have time for that now." I handed Twilight the weapon. "Roadkill\x92s in bad shape and I\x92ve got to help her, so you\x92re elected gunner. Now everybody, c\x92mon." I led the way, helping Roadkill hobble as fast as she could into the woods. Twilight broiught up the rear. We headed toward the heart of the ruins. We had to get as far away as we could by morning, and try to lose any pursuit in the maze of ancient streets.

I only hoped Roadkill would last until then.

If any of us did.

CHAPTER EIGHT

We were luckier than we deserved.

The dark clouds that were brooding overhead all night finally loosed their rain shortly before dawn. It was the kind of gentle spring drizzle that barely registed through one\x92s fur, but it would be enough to obscure our scent trail from Frostbite\x92 gang. Chances were they had already discovered Gully\x92s body, perhaps wakened by the smell of curdling blood, but the darkness and the inclement weather would prevent them from coming after us until after sun-up. Lupinoids might have the best sense of smell of all the Creatura, but we Felinoids had a sensory trick or two ourselves, like our night vision. The overcast pre-dawn gloom was as clear to Twilight and me as early dusk would have been to a human. We were able to lead the others through the woods with minimal trouble.

Still, it was rough going for everybody, stumbling through unknown territory laden with roots and rubble and those Martyrs-cursed spider webs that always seem to thrust into your face when you walk through the woods. But it was especially bad for Roadkill. The bullet wounds and her other injuries made walking difficult for her. She hobbled along as best she could, gritting yellow teeth constantly against the pain, but not once did she ever lift her head more than a few centimeters. She stared at the muddy forest floor like she wanted to bury herself in it. When we stopped once briefly to rest, she quietly lay back on the ground as if she were going to sleep, completely unmoving, content to stay there and stare at the black sky until she stopped breathing.

Twilight and I took turns helping her.

During that harrowing hike I found myself humming a few bars of the ancient tune "Yesterday" to invoke the aid of Saint Lennon, the patron Saint of troubled groups. Our little band needed all the help it could get.

Finally, just as the eastern sky grew deep crimson with anticipation of the dawning sun, we stopped to rest again under a small copse of trees which was once somebody\x92s backyard. Twenty paces away stood a mound of collapsed, rotting wood which may have been the house. Next to it creeper vines framed an ancient swimming pool long-since transformed into a stagnant, muck-encrusted pond.

We weren\x92t far from the old city limits. Through the hazy drizzle, I could barely make out the outline of semi-intact brownstones in the distance. I moved to look at Roadkill\x92s wounds. Those bastard Lupinoids hadn\x92t allowed Twilight enough time to dress them properly. Just enough so she wouldn\x92t bleed to death until they were done with her. I frowned deeply when I saw how soaked-through Roadkill\x92s dressings were, both with blood and rainwater. We\x92d all taken wide-spectrum anamicrobial treatments before we came out into the Wilds, but if we didn\x92t get Roadkill dry soon all the innoculations in the world wouldn\x92t keep her wounds form getting infected. But we had nothing dry or clean to replace them with.

"Oh my," Professor Musteldae wheezed, his long whiskers quivering. He slumped heavily to the ground, his back against a tree, his long, thick tail swathed in fresh mud. "Oh my. I haven\x92t been this tired in years and years."

"You and me both," I said. "Unfortunately, this is far from being over, professor. Frostbite\x92s bunch will be on our trail as soon as it\x92s full light out. We have to keep moving."

"But where can we go?" One of Musteldae\x92s companions, an old floppy-eard Lapine who had introduced himself as Hans Christian Jones, wrung his hands nervously. The other survivor of the expedition, a Sciuran named Mohammed, never said a word.

"I don\x92t know," I confessed. "Maybe north. Head for Lake Erie. There\x92ll be less overgrowth there, so we\x92ll make better time, and we can walk along the water to hide our scent."

"But that\x92s also what Frostbite will probabaly expect us to do," Twilight said. "And with the ATVs they got now they could probably be on us in no time in the open like that."

I nodded. "Yeah, but there\x92s only three of them now, so they\x92ll probably only take one vehicle. They won\x92t risk one of them being seperated from the others, alone, and if they\x92re smart they\x92ll keep the other hidden as a back-up. And they\x92ll be forced to move along at walking distance, in order to look for traces of us."

Musteldae glanced back the way we came. "I don\x92t suppose there\x92s any chance they would just let us go?"

"No," I said. "If it was someone else besides Frostbite, maybe. But that bastard won\x92t rest until our bodies are being nibbled on by ants in a gully where no one will ever find us."

Musteldae shivered.

Silence stretched for long moments. Everyone was looking at me. Since I was the one who had engineered our escape, everyone assumed I was the de facto leader.

Lucky me.

Fortunately, I was thinking much more clearly by this time. The cooling rain had done wonders to clear my head. I recalled from my Militia training what had to be done in a pursuit like this. At least that\x92s what I told everybody. "We\x92ll have to split up. One or two of us are going to have to stay behind in the ruins and lay down an alternate trail for the Lupinoids to follow while the rest head north."

"Right," Twilight said. "I\x92ll do it."

I shook my head. "No. I\x92ll do it. I\x92m the one most familiar with these ruins."

"But . . ."

"This is no time for macho heroics, Twilight."

"Unless you\x92re female, apparently."

"You should both go," Musteldae said. "I would feel much better if we didn\x92t have to leave anyone alone in this Martyrs-forsaken country. We\x92ll be okay." He indicated himself and his companions. "We were all once in the Militia ourselves, like any good citizen, and we studied maps of this area pretty well before we set off from the Ithaca settlement."

"But," I protested, looking pensively at Roadkill, who hugged her knees tightly to her chest and seemed intently studying the dull crimson glow on the eastern horizon.

"We\x92ll take care of her." Musteldae pointed his snout at the Lapine. "Hans there is a fully trained doctor. He\x92ll do everything he can for her."

Hans nodded solemnly.

"All right," I reluctantly agreed. Despite the brave front I was just barely maintaining, Musteldae was right; I really didn\x92t want to be alone after the horrors of the night before. I was as afraid as any of them. I just couldn\x92t allow myself to show it. "They\x92ll be expecting a large group, and I guess we can fake that better with two people than with one." I turned toward Twilight. "Okay. Here\x92s what I\x92m planning . . ."

"One other thing," the professor interrupted. "I think I know where you can head that Frostbite would be sure to follow. The University of Buffalo campus. Do you know where that is?"

"I think I remember. But why? What\x92s there?"

"The disk he\x92s after. In fact, um, it would be really great if you two could reach it before those other mercenaries do . . ."

I snarled. "And what the hell is so important about this disk?"

He dug a hole with his toe. "I--can\x92t tell you."

I rolled my eyes. "Not this again. Look, we don\x92t have time for your games. Chances are we\x92re all going to be dead by the end of the day, anyway. If we\x92re going to be poking our heads in a noose for you, I think we deserve to know what we\x92re being hanged for."

"I--I can\x92t. If I did and you were captured, you might tell. I know this sounds melodramatic, but we can\x92t let that secret fall into the wrong hands."

"What secret?"

"I said I can\x92t tell you."

I growled and clenched my fists.

"Please try to understand, miss. This is more important than you can know."

"How important?"

Musteldae stood and walked over to me. He barely topped my shoulder, but he stood perfectly erect as he looked me square in the eye. "I can tell you this. It\x92s important enough to change the world, to change everything about Creatura society. I know it\x92s hard to take this on faith, but believe me, it\x92s true. If the information we believe to be on that disk gets to Frostbite and whoever he\x92s working for, the consequences for the world could be devastating."

Hans wrung his hands. "We learned about the disk from an old MIT file just recently unearthed. It spoke of very vital information a human medical professor, Sam leonine, had at his office at the University of Buffalo, encrypted on a special disk. I guess our find got leaked to the wrong critters, somehow."

Musteldae grabbed my arm. "Please. I wouldn\x92t ask this unless it was truly vital. You two are the only one who can find the disk and keep it safe."

There was a fire in Musteldae\x92s eyes that was hard to ignore. I glanced at Twilight, who shrugged. "All right, all right. I\x92m not going to guarantee anything, professsor, but if the opportunity comes up and it\x92s not too risky, we\x92ll see what we can do. Is that okay with you, Twilight?"

"I\x92m willing to take the risk. I got to admit to being really curious now as to what\x92s on that disk."

The old ferret looked pleased. "If you can recover the disk and somehow bring it back to the University at New Albany, I\x92m sure me or one of my colleagues could scrounge up an ample reward for you two."

I held up my hands. "The only reward I\x92m interested in right now is getting away from here with my hide intact. Now we have to get down to some unpleasant business if we\x92re going to throw Frostbite off your trail."

Musteldae twitched his whisker. "What\x92s that?"

I planted my tongue firmly in cheek. "Drop your drawers and I\x92ll tell you."

CHAPTER NINE

"Are your sure this is smart?" I asked. "I don\x92t remember seeing this on any sat map we had."

The broad opening was framed by a rusted metal arch, and crumbling concrete steps led down into darkness. An ancient subway entrance.

Twilight shrugged. "When I first learned what our mission was, I looked up the old city blueprints on the Net. You\x92d be surprised at the amount of data that\x92s flaoting around about obscure human stuff like that. If I remember right, this tunnel will take us in the direction of the campus if it isn\x92t collapsed. Besides, this way, I figure we\x92ll be hidden from view and the tunnels are bound to have some water in them after all these years, so our scent trail will be hidden."

I grimaced at his mention of water. We\x92d laid over a mile of false trail into the ruins, enough to give the others a good head start. Now I just wanted to concentrate on our getting away, but Twilight seemed pretty hot to follow the trail of Musteldae\x92s disk.

At the spot where we had stopped to rest, we all laid down as much excrement as we could, to draw the noses of the Lupinoids right to us. The professor and the others were more than a little embarassed by the activity, but with the rain dying out we had to invoke scent warfare tactics.

Once our "lure" was set and covered so as not to look too suspicious, Musteldae\x92s group doubled back a hundred meters, then headed north like we planned. Hopefully the Lupinoids would be drawn right past their departure point by the strong scent of Creatura dung, and it was from there that Twilight and I began laying our false trail.

We had little time, so my good-bye to Roadkill had to consist of nothing more than squeezing her good shoulder and some hollow words of encouragement. Two days before she would have burst out laughing at my awkwardness and made some lewd comment or another. But now it was all she could do to bob her chin shallowly at me as the others led her away.

It was one of the most horrible moments of my life, watching her shuffle away into the underbrush with only strangers to look after her. How do you say farewell to your best friend in a few short heartbeats, not knowing if you would ever see her again?

I gave Musteldae our only rifle, to protect her.

I shook the memories away, to concentrate on the present problem. "Wait," I said to Twilight. "Did you say water?"

"Yeah. Why?"

"Nothing. Never Mind."

He gave me an odd look. "Are you one of those Felinoids who have a \x91thing\x92 about getting wet?"

"Um, no. Don\x92t be silly."

He put a foot on the topmost step. I shot a restraining arm in front of him. "What?" he asked.

I sniffed at the subway entrance deeply, cautiously. "A couple of years ago," I explained, "me and on old partner stumbled into a subway entrance just like this in the Pittsburgh ruins. Only that particular station was the lair of a very ornery bear. I don\x92t mean an Ursoid, I mean a gigantic, snarling, vicious, feral bear three times our size. It nearly clawed our heads off and chased us damn near three klicks to the edge of the ruins."

Twilight tugged his lips downward as he, too, sniffed deeply. "Wonderful. But I can\x92t smell anything unusual. Of course, I\x92m unfamiliar with the scents of ruins like this."

"Don\x92t worry. I am. It\x92s clean as far as I can tell, except for maybe some rats. C\x92mon." I led the way as we slowly made our way down the broad stone stairs, giving our eyes time to adjust from the early dawn sunlight to the deeper darkness below.

At the foot of the stairs, I yelped and jumped back several steps, bumping into Twilight. Our limbs entangled, and we had to scramble madly to keep from falling over in a heap.

"What? What is it?" he said.

"Look!" I whispered, pointing into the gloom below. "Someone\x92s watching us!"

I crouched into a fighting stance, ready for anything, ears and tail starched in fright. I met the eyes, stare for unblinking stare. Twilight peered over my shoulder, squinting into the darkness. "Wait a minute--" he mumbled as he stepped around me and descended the steps.

"Twilight!" I hissed. "What are you doing?"

Several seconds of silence ensued as he moved around in the shadows, followed by an odd squeak and a dry chuckle. "Come on down, Shana. I don\x92t think she\x92s going to hurt us."

I padded down the remaining steps. Twilight was standing beside a wide support beam, hands clasped nonchalantly behind his back as he hummed tunelessly. In the middle of the column was a rectangle of filthy glass with several fresh paw marks streaked across its width. Beneath the streaks, the eyes I had spotted before peered at me.

It was an old human poster. I smacked my forhead. "Geez, I am so stupid."

Twilight shrugged. "It\x92s and understandable mistake. We\x92re both pretty tired. Tell you what, why don\x92t you rest here a second? I\x92m going to look around a bit."

I was about to complain again about useless male bravado, but I realized I was kind of tired, so I let him do what he wanted. I watched him move into the deeper shadows of the subway station.

I glanced at the poster in front of me, wiping away more of the accumulated muck on the glass casing to see it fully. The glass was miraculously unbroken after all these centuries and formed an airtight seal, probably the secret of the poster\x92s longevity. It was unusual to find a paper artifact in such good condition. It was probably worth at least a couple of hundred credits. If we ever got away from the Lupinoids, I would have to come back someday and claim it.

The poster was an ancient advertisement, featuring a human woman with perfect, pearly teeth and sculpted hair that looked like a stream of spun gold. The brightly-colored message framing her proclaimed the catch-phrase of some long-extinct make-up manufacturer.

She stared at me from across the ages, eternally frozen in her moment of physical perfection.

An odd chill sauntered down my spine. Hers was a face I had known all my life. The face of the Six Billion Martyrs.

Maybe it was my exhaustion, but at that moment the human woman seemed unearthly beautiful, more perfect than any other human I had ever seen in any record, more stunning than any mortal could ever hope to be. Deep brown eyes, smooth, flawless skin free of fur or whiskers, with thick, expressive lips that seemed born to curve into a winsome smile.

Unbidden, a strange thought formed in my mind.

Is that what it meant to have a soul?

I looked at my own features, reflected in the glass, superimposed on hers. Angular, half-feline head, topped with triangular ears and a high-arcing mohawk brush of black and gold stripes that merged into a flowing pony-tail. A small muzzle radiating whiskers, terminating in a small, glossy black nose. Green, slitted eyes. The striped fur which covered me from head to toe was matted and tangled with the sweat and grime from our flight. My lips curved down, a direct contrast to the human woman\x92s eternal heart-melting smile.

Like all Creatura, I had grown up listening to the tales of the Humans, of reading about them almost constantly in school. When the Creatura races had emerged from the environs of the Boston Enclave, suddenly aware of their role as inheritors of the Earth, one of the first tasks they set before themselves was preserving as much of the Martyrs\x92 knowledge and art as they could, whether such were written, filmed, or taped. The Creatura were too few in number and far too busy with the day-to-day business of survival and rebuilding to create many such works of their own. Like most of my peers, I learned literature from human books, watched human movies for entertainment, and understood the world from the viewpoint of human science and philosophy. Everything I ever learned, everything I was, came from our creators.

My father, like any good Humanist, believed humans had been the instrument of God\x92s will in creating the Creatura, that their many millennia of sentience had brought them that much closer to the divine. We Creatura, barely three hundred years old, had barely begun that journey, but within us all was a spark of the divine that dwelled in all living beings across time and space. The One Soul, he called it, the amalgamation and source of all thought, God\x92s ultimate gift to the universe he created.

My Mother, however, had a very different view, one shared by many Creatura. She was an Animalist, less a religious movement than a general belief. In many of the humans\x92 religious literature, God gave souls to humans and humans alone. The Creatura were derived from animals and therefore did not have souls, nor would they ever. We were just clever animals, aping at being human.

My mother was a very negative, unhappy critter. That\x92s probably one of the major reasons why she and I never got along.

But in both philosophies, Creatura were always held in some way inferior to humans. In fact, it was a common theme in much of Creatura society when it came to portraying humans. That they had been better than us, that everything we accomplished was in truth because of them. I remembered as a kitten watching the long-dead actresses on the old human flatvid shows and could only think of how much prettier they were than me. No fur, no tail, no snout. A kind of beauty that was forever out of my reach.

Human civilization had been five thousand years old, and they had been sentient at leats two hundred thousand years before that. After three hundred years, what had the races of Homo Creatura accomplished as inheritors of Earth? Constantly squabbling amongst ourselves while living off the accomplishments of a civilization far greater than ours. An infant still suckling at the teat of its mother\x92s corpse.

The inferiority of the Creatura crashed down upon me all at once. After last night, how could I doubt the evil we were capable of? The Creatura were an empty, distorted reflection of our creators, God\x92s true children. I was a hollow vessel that wished for a soul, but would be forever denied one.

I\x92m so sorry, I silently apologized to the woman in the poster. We will never be able to live up to your legacy.

Sunlight slanted down the stairs, the warmth on my shoulders bringing me back to reality. "Twilight, we have to get moving. The sun\x92s rising higher."

My companion melted free from the deeper blackness of the staion, startling me. His dark gray fur did have an advantage beyond being responsible for his nickname. "I think I\x92ve found what we need. Only I don\x92t think you\x92re going to like it very much."

I took one last glance at the poster as my companion led me away. "Forgive us," I whispered.

Twilight gave me an odd look, but said nothing.

CHAPTER TEN

He was right. I hated it.

We felt our way along the subway tunnel, wading in frigid, belly-deep water. Untold seasons of rain and winter-run off had made the subway tunnels a series of elongated underground lakes, stagnant with mud and filth. But it was the only way we could go. The water would hide our scent, and if we got far enough away from where we entered, the pursuing Lupinoids wouldn\x92t be able to guess which branch we\x92d taken or which station we would eventually exit from.

I shivered at the constant plop-plop-plop of water leaking from cracks in the tunnel roof.

The darkness was total, the meager light playing out of the widely-seperated subway stations penetrating not more than a few dozen meters down the tunnels. In fact, we did not even know if there would be another station in the direction we were heading, or if a cave-in in the darkness would trap us in a dead-end.

Twilight had slightly better night-vision than I did, so he led. But there was so little light even the best Felinoid was effectively blind. He kept whispering that he could see the next station a couple of hundred meters down, but I had to wonder if he was only saying that so I wouldn\x92t start screaming.

It was only natural that we held hands. We didn\x92t want to get seperated. But truthfully, down there with nothing but noisome muck saturating my nostrils and eternal blackness swimming before my eyes, I was grateful beyond words for the reassuring touch of someone familiar.

The ghosts were everywhere.

Maybe my encounter with that poster just had me spooked, but I swear I felt the presence of the humans\x92 spirits more strongly down in those tunnels than at any other time of my life. I could feel them pressing in around us, their whispers just below the range of hearing.

Our feet kept encountering mounds of uneven, smooth rocks and jagged sticks, no doubt brought here by run-off. But I had a far more macabre thought. When the humans really began dying out, when they dropped by the hundreds and then by the thousands, what place in the city would make a more convenient mass grave than the subway tunnels?

Maybe those weren\x92t sticks and smooth rocks under our feet at all.

I slid close to Twilight, gripping his hand all the tighter at the thought. He didn\x92t question my action, only responded in kind. Perhaps he was having the same kind of thoughts I was.

That we were walking on a thousand, thousand graves, and the dead were as terrified of it as the living.