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FOX Academy:

Book I - The New Breed

Book II - The Werewolf of Odessa

Book II.5 - The Love Who Spied Me

Book III - The Curse of the Yellow Monkey

Book IV - Wait For No One

Book V - Dawn of Vengeance

Chapter 3 - When the Darkness Sets In

The first priority was to handle the crisis, the exposure of FOX and, to a lesser degree, Silver.

A quick brain-storming session determined that the damage was really minimal. The Academy had carefully leaked news of its existence through the less believable conspiracy nuts in the past, in hopes that when this day came the public would assume that the reporter was just dredging old rumours again. Rival intelligence agencies, like the former KGB, the Chinese Ministry of State Security, and one fronted by an international fast food chain ("no one ever suspects a clown", Silver lectured new agents, "and they are everywhere.") already knew of the Foreign Operation eXecutive and that FOX Headquarters was in Ottawa's Central Experimental Farm. Just like they knew that the CIA headquarters was in Langley Virginia and that the British Secret Intelligence Service really owned Euro Disney; a bad decision on their part.

Silver's picture was another matter. Normally once an agent's face was exposed to the public they had to retire, or get cosmetic surgery, but since Silver was no longer an active agent he would just need to lay low for a while.

"I've already got a nice, inconspicuous car arranged for you." Gus, the old racoon dispatcher advised him. He handed Silver a detail sheet from the Internet site where they bought cars the police had confiscated.

"A Yaris?" Silver almost shouted. "You bought me a Yaris?"

"It was modified with a Porsche engine and special suspension to serve as a getaway car." Gus informed him. "The former owners also added aftermarket window tinting that will keep you from being spotted on the street, a real kick-ass sound system, and" Gus added with a wink, "it's painted silver. You'll love it."

Silver was not so sure about that. Still, if there was no further trouble they should be able to ride this one out, and then he could get a real car. But best to consider all the possibilities first, just to be on the safe side.

"What if we did have to move the Academy?" Silver asked the planning team, led by the grey fox Bill 'the Professor' Hanlan. "Where could we set up?"

"We could refurbish that burnt-out television studio on Merrivale and use it for cover." The professor speculated. "We could keep the agency acronym as the station call letters, FOX TV."

"There would probably be some sort of copyright infringement there." Silver shrugged, well aware that the Professor watched only the discovery channel and HBO, but he filed the idea away in the back of his mind none the less. He wrapped up the meeting and returned to the Operations Centre. "Has everyone on the recall list reported in yet?" He asked the Duty Officer.

"The Director is still at the Privy Council Office." The DO reported. "Ruby just dropped her son off at the Academy day-care centre but our other senior agent, Sable, has not acknowledged our page yet." As Silver expected, Vikki had taken care of their son and followed him in as soon as she could, but it was strange that Marcel had not replied to the page. He could understand it if he was involved in a competition under his cover identity, but as far as he was aware Marcel was between tours at the moment. He looked over at Marcel's girl, the cheetah Geno, but she just shrugged and mouthed the words 'skate park'. Silver debated sending someone there to fetch him but decided against it. There was nothing his protégé could do in this situation and there did not appear to be a threat to any of the FOX members.

"Any clues as to who gave that bear the security cam pictures and the word on FOX yet?"

"Not yet sir."

"Keep on it."

"Chief of Staff?" A timid voice came from behind Silver. He turned to find a young ground hog, one of the junior analysts he recalled. The poor fellow looked terrified. "Sir, one of the national television networks just announced a news flash that I think you need to see." The analysts monitored the major networks for breaking news of interest to FOX and to maintain situational awareness during a crisis. Whenever a related item came up it would be recorded, and if it was important enough, displayed for the whole Ops Centre to watch on the big screen at the head of the room.

"About the shooting yesterday?" Silver asked, afraid that he would see more security camera footage of himself with new information about FOX.

"No sir. Look," the analyst pressed a button and the screen lit up with the logo of one of the national networks with the words 'Breaking News' underneath it. The room went silent.

"There has been a break in the search for the serial rapist and murderer that has been holding the city of Ottawa hostage." The announcer, a middle-aged mountain lion who normally did the evening news began as soon as his image replaced the logo. As he continued his face was replaced by a red brick apartment building that was surrounded by police cars and yellow tape. "The Slasher, as he is known on the street struck again early this morning, and the police have confirmed that they have a suspect." The building faded away to show the backs of a black canine, a fox perhaps, in a hoodie and baggy jeans with his arm around a red squirrel in short shorts and a halter top. A red ball cap turned backwards covered the back of his neck. The fur on the back of Silver's neck stood up at the sight.

While the announcer recapped the previous attacks the image changed to show the couple a meter further down the hall. Each second the scene changed and they advanced a metre each time, until they faced the last door in the hallway. The face of the male in the hoodie was blocked by the head of the squirrel, so he must not have been very tall. Then the time stamp on the security camera image jumped by almost two hours. It showed the canine exit the door, his clothes in disarray and his hat missing. The subject had looked directly into the camera and the network technicians had zoomed in on the face and enhanced it. There was a collective gasp from the Ops Centre staff as everyone else recognized Marcel.

"The police have not released the names of the victim or that of their suspect," the announcer continued, "but information received exclusively by this network indicates that it is one of Ottawa's sports celebrities that the police are seeking today." The screen split, and a publicity shot labelled 'Anthony Foxx' appeared beside that of the fleeing suspect. The match was obvious. "Anthony Foxx was seen with the alleged victim at a local skate park early this morning. The same source has identified the victim as fifteen year old Monique MacLean of Regina, who was visiting her older sister in Ottawa. The sister has not been located at this time."

The newscast continued with the announcer recapping the career of the skateboarding street kid that was suspected of being the Slasher, but Silver had turned away. He found Bill Hanlan standing behind him, looking thoughtfully at the screen, too busy analysing the situation to be worried for the missing agent.

"What are you thinking Professor?" Silver asked his senior planner.

"Two days, two deaths, two senior FOX members captured on camera and two sets of images leaked to the press. This is no coincidence."

"No." Silver agreed. "It isn't. But who the hell is doing it?"

* * * * * * * *

Across town on the Vanier Parkway there was in a collection of old buildings that had once been impressive. They formed the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Headquarters, but they had become too cramped, too old and too expensive to maintain a long time ago. It would be another three years before their new Headquarters, a former high-tech firm's campus, would be ready to occupy, so the Commissionaire of the RCMP was forced to keep his offices in the old complex. It was there that he met with the officer that would help him absorb FOX and make the RCMP Intelligence arm the rival of CSIS and the military intelligence networks, and allow him to hold his head up against his colleagues in MI-5 and the FBI.

Formed in 1873, the RCMP had traditionally been exclusive to male large-breed canines; doberman pinschers, rottweilers, German shepherds, and as they pushed for more First Nations recruitment, wolves. The only exceptions were for the administrative staff and the Watchers, that mysterious group of highly-trained surveillance agents made up of ordinary-looking creatures. That had changed when the Specie's Rights Act was passed in the seventies and the Force, as they referred to themselves, had to waive the height and breed restrictions. They were forced to accept females, small breeds, and eventually non-canines as regular members. Many of the old-school officers predicted that it would be the end of the Force as an effective police agency; they were wrong.

Many of the new breeds rose quickly through the ranks. They had, however, yet to crack the uppermost echelons of the Force. None had ever been promoted to Commissionaire or Deputy Commissionaire. The highest any had attained was one rank below that, Chief Inspector. Some had risen only because of affirmative action policies, the need to be seen to be balancing the ranks, but some rose because of superior ability. Charlie Parker was one of those.

Charlie, as she was known to her few friends and many colleagues, was an argumentive, tactless, but tenacious basset hound who did not look good in uniform, or anything else for that matter. Her abrasive personality and anti-poster girl looks kept her from rising along the affirmative action chain. But her nose for wrong-doing and determined resolve in tracking down criminals elevated her to Chief Inspector despite that. If not well liked, she was still respected for her professionalism, her ethics, and her sense of fairness.

Charlie sat staring at the Commissionaire with her sad-looking red-rimmed eyes and wondered why he had called her here. He continued to ignore her while he read from a thick file. He was a west highland terrier, and although he was not a large breed he did not count in her mind as breaking the size barrier because he was not a regular officer, just a political appointee. A career bureaucrat parachuted in when the former Commissionaire refused to cooperate with the new Prime Minister by not holding his own press conferences. Like most of the senior RCMP officers, Charlie considered him an outsider. He confirmed that by addressing her by her real first name; nobody in the Force used her real first name.

"Good morning Patricia." The Commissionaire finally looked up from what he was reading to greet her. She saw now that it was her personnel file that he had in his paws.

"Everybody calls me Charlie, or Chief Inspector Parker." She informed him coldly.

"Yes, I was just reading about how when you were a constable you grabbed a saxophone to deflect a bullet and then used it to hook the leg of the fleeing suspect. Some of the investigators thought that you should have drawn your service revolver and used it instead." The westie chided.

"They were overruled by the majority of the board, who concluded, as I did, that firing a large-calibre firearm in a crowded nightclub would have resulted in unacceptable civilian casualties." She continued to glare at him in a challenging fashion. It did not disturb the Commissionaire in the least. He smiled smugly as he closed the file. From underneath it he pulled a copy of the morning tabloid and a web version of the television newsflash about the Slasher.

"As you know," he continued in a friendly tone, "there are those in the government at large that are unhappy with the cavalier way that FOX goes about its business. Many of us feel that they should be disbanded and absorbed by another agency."

She read the article in the paper for the second time that day. Although her expression did not change her heart swelled with admiration for the fox in the photo, and a bit of desire. If she was not mistaken, that would be the one they called Silver. A friend of hers in the Watchers, George the weasel, had told her about him and his sexual exploits a number of years ago. She wondered if he was still unattached.

"And you fell that the RCMP would be the perfect candidate, while you are Commissionaire anyways." She said as she switched to the print out from the web site.

"I won't deny that when you get to my level your success is measured in what you manage to accomplish in the relatively short time at each agency or department you are assigned to. But there are many on the Force that feel the same way we do." That was true enough, Charlie had to admit. A lot of the senior officers were still sore over perceived slights to the Force such as the death of Constable Hirt, a hapless victim of the assassin sent out to kill all the FOX agents a few years ago, or the embarrassment over the death of Corporal O'Malley in the affair with the mad platypus just last spring. She skimmed the article about the skater boy suspected of being the Slasher. That case was still in the paws of the Ottawa police, so she could not comment on how likely the connection was, but she wondered why the Commissionaire had included it.

"I have received some information through my government contacts to the effect that the skateboarder Anthony Foxx is really a cover identity for one of FOX's agents." The smaller dog answered, as if reading her mind. "He is a killer that this Silver fellow," he waved at the newspaper, "plucked from the streets and trained as an assassin despite our, the RCMP's, attempts to arrest him. They blatantly used the protection of the legislation that covers their agency's activities retroactively to keep him out of jail. That kind of power should not exist in such a small agency, not one run by an inexperienced and minor functionality such as Tancred Williams in any event."

Charlie heard the unspoken message, that such power could exist in the paws of a much more experienced and senior bureaucrat who was in charge of a much larger agency. Such as the westie, as Commissionaire of an expanded RCMP, she supposed. In a rare show of tact she kept her maw shut and let him fill the silence with more details.

"Silver himself is suspected of bending the rules to cover his own little revenge killing. Now that Williams has been made Director he has elevated his confidant Silver to Chief of Staff and Silver in turn has promoted both his henchman and girlfriend to senior agents. It's a perverted and incestuous little group that is running the Academy now." The Commissionaire slid one last piece of paper over. On it were a number of paragraphs taken from different emails, with all identifying information removed. The extracts detailed distasteful, but not illegal, sexual activities of the FOX members the Commissionaire had mentioned. Her former desire turned into jealousy at the mention of a girl friend and then disgust as she read of the crimes the foxes were accused of covering up.

"Why are you showing me this?" Charlie asked, puzzled. Her work involved organized crime, not counter intelligence.

"I did not feel that I could trust the Deputy Commissionaires, or most of the Chief Inspectors for that matter, with this information." He said casually. "Investigating ... aberrations .... such as these is our mandate. When I show this to the Deputy Clerk I am going to suggest that FOX be put under temporary command of the RCMP while we investigate. I need someone senior enough, and competent enough, to do both. The position calls for a Deputy Commissionaire, or an acting one." He raised his brows significantly as he watched for her reaction.

Charlie realized that she was being offered the position, but she was sure that there must be some kind of catch. She raised her heavy brows inquisitively to signal that she was willing to listen to more.

"Of course if that person is a respected, professional investigator who has come up through the ranks the other senior members cannot accuse me of showing favouritism or of putting a political appointee in the job. And when that person arrests the malefactors and submits a recommendation that FOX to become a sub-agency of the RCMP, the Deputy will have no choice but to accept the recommendation."

Ah-ha, she thought, he thinks that he can use my reputation to get what he wants. Charlie had never played the political game before, but she was not unaware of it. It was true that she had never showed signs of ambition, but now that she was so close to a level where she could actually make a difference she was feeling its tug.

"When this person submits such a report," she said carefully, "and FOX becomes part of the RCMP, what would happen to this person then?"

"Well, we would need a new Deputy Commissionaire to run the agency for us, wouldn't we?"

So that was the score, do a good job and get the promotion of a lifetime. Screw up and ....she considered what she had to lose ... nothing, and made her decision.

"I'll need all the old watcher files on these ones." She tapped the list with one long, curved claw. "Including the ones sealed for the Deputy's eyes only."

"I can do that." He conceded. "But don't waste too much of your time going over old ground. Remember that the objective of this is to move quickly and decisively." He lifted her file and placed it in the top drawer of his desk. In its place he set another file. The one she had just asked for. He had that irritating little smile on his face again, the smug bastard.

"I'll also need the originals of these emails, and anything you can tell me about the source of this information." She added.

His smile disappeared. "You'll have to do without that." He began to slide the file back toward the drawer, but he stopped just when it was balanced on the edge of his desk. "Someone operating at this level must realise how important it is to protect certain sources." He held the file on the point of balance with one digit.

Charlie held out her paw for the file, silently giving in. He pushed it over to her with a smile, but not as cheery a smile as before. Charlie knew how he felt. She wasn't feeling particularly good about this deal herself.

* * * * * * * *

Dongo Fett was confused. He had reported to the military ranges west of Ottawa for a training session on the rappelling tower with his supervisor, senior agent Ruby, but she had failed to appear. Which was a good thing really, since he arrived an hour late and still half drunk. Still, he wondered where she was. It was not like her to cancel a training session without notifying him, she was a very caring and considerate boss. Thinking of that made him feel guilty about the condition he was in, and that brought back the oppressive guilt that he had gotten drunk to forget about. His good paw trembled as he sat in the tower. He needed a drink.

Dongo realized that he was spiralling downward in a cycle of depression and destructive behaviour, but there seemed to be nothing that he could do about it. He even knew why it was happening, had known even before that shrink with the pink eyes and bald tail had told him. He was feeling this way because he was responsible for a colleague's unnecessary death.

His life had been one big roller coaster this last year or so. Plucked from the US army by the CIA to assist their Canadian sister agency in Afghanistan. Almost killed by counter-sniper fire. Thinking his career was over with the damage to his right eye, especially when they removed his left arm. Then offered a job at FOX, and the promise of agent training.

Things had been looking up; he had even been selected to play a minor role in a security operation backing up Ruby, who was still just Vikki Beausoleil back then. They had stumbled onto a conspiracy to flood most of North America, and Dongo had accidentally penetrated the group behind the plot. The final perk had been hooking up with the beautiful mink, Misty, who was also deep undercover, as a prostitute no less.

But like any great roller coaster, everything looks fine when you are at the apex. Then comes the long, final descent. Swelled with pride and carried away by lust he had said the wrong thing and exposed Misty. Despite having taken his revenge on the creatures that did it he could not get the image of her naked, battered body hanging by one of her silk stockings out of his mind. He woke in the night screaming her name, unless he drank himself into a stupor first. And it was taking more and more alcohol to achieve that state.

He could not bring himself to believe Ruby or Doctor Gordon when they told him that her death was not his fault. They were just trying to keep him active while the Academy was still short agents, he was sure. He could not even find comfort in the successful conclusion of their mission. He had been standing on a dike, helpless to save himself or Vikki at the end. It was only Marcel's initiative and good fortune that led to his rescue. Dongo could not even take credit for the stabilizer in his mechanical arm that had led them back to Vikki, that was Rusty's doing. Even the platypus's death was due to Joel's razor-sharp surf board.

At first the drinking did not affect his performance too much. Then as it grew heavier he started to tire easily, lose his concentration quicker, and his coordination suffered. Now here he was technically drunk on duty at ten o'clock in the morning, with a splitting headache to boot. That would have been inconceivable eighteen months ago. But then again, so would impotency.

Last night Dongo was in the little Bank Street bar that he drank at because none of the other FOX employees did, drinking heavily as usual. Argumentive and belligerent, a recent development in his drinking habits, he had told the few listeners that were drunk enough to tolerate him that he was the world's greatest lover, and not just because he had two cocks, but because he knew how to handle them. Near closing time one of the hookers that frequented the place suggested that he come home with her and prove his claims. Dongo agreed on the condition that he would not have to pay when she admitted his prowess.

The session was a disaster. Dongo not only paid, he added an extra hundred out of shame. When he returned to his rooms he immediately broke out a bottle of whiskey and drank it as he tried to entice an erection from his flaccid members. At one point he grabbed a knife and contemplated self-castration; what is the use of having two pricks if neither one works? Fortunately for him he was unable to focus and had passed out on the floor before he could complete the deed. But the memory frightened him, as did the thought of impotency. And the saddest part was that he was not sure which was worse.

He sat in the shade inside the tower as the day got steadily hotter contemplating his life, speculating where Ruby was, and if he should return to the Academy. Suddenly his pager went off. It startled him because he had been forgetting to carry it lately and he thought that he had done so again today. He pulled it out of his pocket. The message was not from Ruby, but from Kain Algorath, the hacker genius and part-time agent. Was he the Duty Officer today, Dongo wondered, I thought he was on nights this week? There was no phone number to reply to the page, but a message was attached.

"I know what you are going through." It began. "Not everything is as it seems. Check out this file to learn the truth." There was a link and a password at the end of the message. Dongo recognized the link as one of the restricted files on the FOX Intranet and the password was obviously needed to open it. He would have to go back to the Academy to retrieve it, that system was closed and only accessible through workstations in the headquarters itself.

He pushed away from the wall and stood up slowly. His head was feeling a little better now. Still, he used the stairs rather than risk rappelling down the tower in his condition.

What could Algorath mean, 'learn the truth'?

* * * * * * * *

Reggie Paquin was nervous about meeting his mentor, but then he was nervous about a lot of things lately, especially since he had started living his fantasies.

Up until a couple of years ago Reggie, a black fox residing in a rural village an hour outside of Ottawa, had lead a relatively normal life. He had desires, strong ones, but the knowledge that what he felt was considered unacceptable had kept them in check. That, and the fact that you could not do so much as put a paw on anyone around here without the whole village knowing about it. Reggie avoided the public pools and beaches least he be caught staring at the little ones, but the children's attire section of the department store catalogues that came to his house were well thumbed. He was vaguely aware that more provocative material could be found at seedy shops in the inner city but he wisely avoided them for fear of desires getting out of control, of his violent urges becoming reality. When he was old enough to work he took an isolated security job, guarding a scrap yard at night. The hours were long and the pay was poor, but there was no temptation, and he felt safe.

He could have gone on like that forever, avoiding escalation by limiting his exposure, but then the Internet had come to town. Reggie, who by now had a place of his own, discovered that anything was available on the Internet ... anything. He went from looking at pictures described as 'barely legal' to soft and then hard cub porn. Scenes of straight yiffing gave way to those featuring bondage, sadism, and torture. His computer was soon full of imagery that would be considered illegal not only in Canada but in one hundred and sixty three other nations as well. In addition, he haunted several chat rooms where fellow enthusiasts traded images, video, and advice. It was in one of these that he met his future collaborator, Resolute Spawn.

Resolute Spawn was only a user name of course. Reggie's user name on these forums was Wild_Wolf_123, because one hundred and twenty-two guys before him had also thought the Wild Wolf name was cool.

Resolute Spawn had taken an interest in Reggie early on. He had advised him how to mask his identity on the web and how to avoid being traced back to his lair by the authorities. Resolute Spawn had guided him through the labyrinth of increasingly violent and perverse sites until there was literally no indignity that he had not seen performed on unwilling young subjects. But it was like a drug, no matter how much he got Reggie still wanted more. He longed to reach right into the screen and touch them himself, to participate in the action, but he was so afraid of being caught that he did not dare leave his apartment except for work. He shopped at a dingy little store run by an elderly male Romanian reptile, the least appealing creature he could imagine, and went late at night when young female customers were not likely to be about.

He chatted about his fantasies with Resolute Spawn for hours on end, detailing what he would do to the first youngster that unfortunately found themselves alone with him. His guide supplied ideas and described effects that Reggie had not seen on the sites, things that one could only pick up from actually doing it. Resolute Spawn admitted that he had one true 'experience', but had stopped after that for fear of establishing a pattern that the police could nail him with. But perhaps, he had proposed one day a few weeks ago, there was a way for them both to do what they really wanted, while establishing solid alibis at the same time.

The concept was simple. Resolute Spawn had already experienced fulfillment once, as he put it, which had resulted in a body left in a certain state. Resolute Spawn would find a suitable subject in Ottawa and Reggie would come down and do her in the same manner in a specific time period. His collaborator would make sure he could prove that he was somewhere far away at that time. Resolute Spawn would do the next one, then Reggie, then Resolute and so on. If they stuck to the same modus operandi and were careful not to leave any organic evidence behind, the police would assume that there was only one suspect. Even if they closed in on one of them, that one could show alibis for at least half of the crimes. As part of the pact the other would stage one final event while the suspected partner was in the presence of the police and then they would retire, to relive their experiences through their memories.

Reggie was surprised to discover that his mentor of two years lived so close by, only an hour away, but he brushed that coincidence aside in his rush to agree. By this time he was so pumped up by the constant stream of images Resolute Spawn was sending him he was ready to drive over to the local schoolyard, grab the first female cub he saw and do her behind the old abandoned theatre. But satisfying as that would someone was sure to recognise him or his car and that would be the end of him. Resolute Spawn's plan seemed quite reasonable in comparison. He accepted eagerly.

After a month of anxious, intoxicating waiting Resolute Spawn had sent him the details. There was a young vixen at a certain address whose single parent worked nights. There was no babysitter, because she considered her kit old enough to take care of herself in a locked house. The house was isolated, there was no security system, the telephone line came into the house low enough to reach with cable cutters and they kept the spare key in the mailbox.

Reggie's next night off was Monday, the ninth. Reggie showed up at ten. She was eleven. He left at twelve. The police profilers spent weeks trying to analyse the totally coincidental number sequence.

A few weeks after what was now the defining experience of his life, another young female canine was found raped with her throat slashed. The crime had occurred while he was at work, where he had to punch into the various time stations around the scrap yard to prove that he was doing his rounds and not sleeping on the job. The papers made the connection between the two crimes. At a press conference the police confirmed that they may also be linked to another incident the year before. If it was the same perpetrator, as they believed, he was speeding up, and they expected another attack within a month. They closed the interview with a warning not to leave young children alone for any length of time.

He and Resolute Spawn did not chat so much these days, they had decided to minimize contact for safety's sake, but Reggie longed to compare notes. His friend did contact him to advise him that he would find another subject as soon as possible to reinforce the police's belief that they were dealing with a single creature that was spiralling out of control. Three weeks later he found one, and Reggie could not believe how much he was looking forward to it.

The MO was the same. Another young vixen, thirteen this time but slim, in an apartment all alone. She lived with her aunt, who worked assembling fibre optics at a plant in the west end of town. When her aunt got home from work that afternoon the apartment was unnaturally quiet. Her screams changed that soon enough. One of the local paparazzi managed to sneak in disguised as a paramedic and the victim's picture was splashed across the front pages just like her blood was splashed across her frilly yellow pillows. The papers started calling the serial killer 'the Slasher'.

Reggie had gotten back to his village after that experience with just enough time to clean up before starting work. They had deliberately avoided his night off this time to make it harder for the police to establish a pattern. He was prepared to wait for a few more weeks while Resolute Spawn found another for himself, and than a few more for his next turn. But he had not counted on the strength of his desire. He supposed that the profilers were right about his type needing to repeat the experience at shorter and shorter intervals, but Resolute Spawn had claimed to have a substitute that would allow them to break it off whenever they needed to. Reggie hoped that he was right about that, because the urge to cruise by the school was getting harder and harder to suppress.

He had gotten up at four o'clock in the afternoon, as usual, and rushed to check his email. There was nothing new from his partner. But when he signed out one of the news items they displayed on the site caught his eye. The Slasher had struck again early that morning, and the police had a suspect in mind. Resolute Spawn was due for another experience, but he had not warned Reggie this time. Reggie had gone straight home at six in the morning when he got off work, but if the attack had come any time after seven o'clock it was technically feasible for him to have driven to the city in the interval.

Reggie did a quick search of the Internet to find all the details. He was slightly relieved to find that the suspect was not him, but was surprised to see that it was someone slightly famous. He studied the photos of Anthony Foxx. He bore a certain resemblance to the diminutive skater boy. That was less surprising, he had always imagined that Resolute Spawn and he were brothers, two black foxes with the same wants and desires. But a celebrity, wow. He supposed that in a way they were both celebrities now.

While Reggie was reading about the hunt for the missing fox a chat bubble had opened up on his screen. It was Resolute Spawn, inviting him into a conversation. Reggie acknowledged with some hesitation. His system was very secure now, thanks to his mentor's knowledge of the Internet, but what if it was the police on the other end? They could have captured Foxx already and be keeping it quiet to trap him!

"Wild, there is a problem." The first chap bubble began. Resolute Spawn always called Wild_Wolf_123 'Wild' for short. "We need to meet."

"You said that we should never meet." Reggie typed back. "For security."

"Things have changed now. We need to talk face to face."

"You said that it would be safer if we never saw each other."

"I also said that we should not reveal our real names, so one can't turn the other in to the police. Didn't I Reginald?"

Reggie sat stunned, his paws frozen on the keyboard. He was unsure of many things but he was certain that he had never used his real name on the Internet.

"Too shocked to type Mister Paquin?"

Reggie came back to life with a start. He did not know how Resolute Spawn had found his name, but his collaborator knew a lot more about the Internet than he did, almost as much as those hackers he read about. He did not bother trying to bluff him.

"I saw the papers. What are you going to do?" He typed.

"Nothing, until we've had a chance to talk."

"When will that be?" Reggie asked. He was pretty sure that there would be a cordon around Ottawa by now, checking every vehicle for the elusive Anthony Foxx.

"Since you're awake, why not now?" Resolute Spawn replied. "I'm parked right outside your building."

Somehow the fact that Resolute Spawn knew his address too did not surprise him. He did not even have time to type a reply when he heard a car door slam outside and footsteps on the walk. A moment later the lobby buzzer went off. His mentor wanted in.

Reggie's insides had turned to jello, and every step toward the intercom where the door release was made them shake uncontrollably. He felt like he would throw up any second, but he made it across the room and pressed the button to unlock the lobby door.

He heard Resolute Spawn's approach down the bare tile hallway followed by a soft knock at his door. At least he hoped it was Resolute Spawn and not a three hundred pound rottweiler with a badge. Paws trembling, he undid the latch and swung the door open.

He was expecting a short black fox. The creature standing before him with its paws in the pockets of an unseasonal trench coat was short, but only his stripes and spots were black. "You are not a fox at all." Reggie blurted out. "Are you really Resolute Spawn?"

"It's actually a translation of my real name." The creature answered as he stepped boldly in, forcing Reggie to back up enough for him to close the door behind him with his left paw. His right paw came out of the other pocket with a gun it. The barrel looked unnaturally long and thick, even to Reggie's untrained eye. The creature known as Resolute Spawn shot that eye out, and then the other for good measure.

* * * * * * * *

The creature who called himself 'Resolute Spawn' checked the paedophile on the floor for signs of life before removing the silencer and holstering his pistol. He felt no guilt over using Reggie. Having raped and killed several underage canines, not for pleasure but simply to set up the FOX agent in Ottawa, he was beyond such feelings. Reggie was doomed to commit the crimes that Resolute Spawn had steered him toward in any event, the prognosis was evident from his Internet habits. Considering what the lad was capable of if left to his own devices, he had actually done the Canadians a favour by killing him.

He removed his long water proof coat and wrapped the small fox in it. Taking a roll of duct tape that he had brought he sealed the coat around the corpse. Now to send a few emails from the lad's computer. To his boss telling him he quit, to his landlord telling him he was moving on and to his parents telling them that he was on his way out west to find a job in the oil sands and would write in a month or so when he got settled in. After that he would sink the kid's car into the nearby lake, one of the deepest in this region, and walk back for his rental.

By the time anyone came looking for Reggie Paquin this affair would be long over.

* * * * * * * *

Joel decided to get lunch at one of the taverns on nearby Preston Street rather than eat in the Academy dining hall again. It was a pleasant day and the walk would do him good. It would also give him time to think about what the badger had told him.

Joel had tried to access the files for the year of his birth, looking for a mission to the Soviet Union. There had been several, but only one, labelled Murmansk, was encrypted and restricted to the Director's and Chief of Staff's eyes only. The rest were routine assassination, sabotage and information gathering assignments. Joel knew that trying to access the restricted file without permission would set off alarms in the IT Security department, so he left the file alone.

He had then gone to see Silver to ask for access to the file, if it did indeed contain the story of his origin. He approached Silver not just because the big silver fox was Chief of Staff now, but because he had always looked on him as the father he never had.

Joel had parents, adoptive parents, Russian rabbits, one of each sex conveniently enough. But while they provided him with all the love and care that a child could wish for he never felt quite the same way about them as he did about Silver. Silver was always around checking up on the little ring tailed lemur, bringing him little nick-knacks like a chunk of brick from the Berlin Wall, a bamboo toy from North Korea, an antique silver coin from Madagascar. As he grew it was Silver that taught him how to defend himself and more importantly when to defend himself. It was Silver that showed him how to throw a slider, how to deke the goalie on the stick side and how to undo a bra with one paw without looking. Not that Joel needed any of those skills, but Silver had also taught him how to tie knots, splice rope and work leather. Initially that had been to earn a Cub Scout badge, but Joel had kept up his skills in those areas until he was regarded as Canada's foremost designer of S&M and B&D devices.

He had not told Silver about that little hobby, or about a number of other things. Still, when he fantasized about his real father he imagined that he would be a lot like Silver, tall, broad shouldered, brave, decisive and skilful ... but a lemur. His mother would be tall as well, and stunning, a femme fatale cut from the same cloth as his father. He could easily see them as Bogart and Bacall in that old film Key Largo. The missile scientists described by the badger just didn't fit with the picture that he had built up.

The thought of Silver torturing and killing his parents for their secrets conflicted mightily with his feelings for the older fox. That and the shattering of his vision of his parents were troubling his sleep even more than before. Last night he barely got two hours altogether between violent dreams. Dreams of fighting in many wars, with equipment ranging from spears and bows to laser rifles and sonic grenades. Tribal wars, trench wars, mechanized wars. War in the city, desert and jungle. Always with the ground troops, though aircraft buzzed overhead and big ships shelled the beaches he stormed. But the worst were the dreams of what happened between the wars. Dreams of changing into a monster and killing entire villages worth of sad, sick, starving peasants.

He was not at his best, and being ignored by Silver had been the last straw. He needed to clear his head so that he could think. He left the commotion and confusion of the headquarters for a peaceful stroll and a quiet lunch. The walk helped, but no sooner than had he sat down on the terrace of the first tavern he came to than his mood was again shattered by the appearance of the badger in his Indiana Jones gear, sitting on the terrace of the pub across the street. The badger saluted Joel with his glass, he was drinking water by the look of it, but did not get up. Joel was tempted to go over there and question him further but just then his pager went off.

He pulled it out and frowned at it. The message was not from the Duty Officer as he had expected, but from Kain Algorath, the hacker genius and part-time agent. Was he back on duty already, Joel wondered, I thought I saw him leaving just a few hours ago? There was no phone number to reply to the page, but a message was attached.

"I know what you are going through." It began. "Not everything is as it seems. Check out this file to learn the truth." There was a link and a password at the end of the message. Joel recognized the link as the one for the restricted file he was going to talk to Silver about. The password was obviously the one needed to open it. He would have to go back to the Academy to retrieve it though, that system was closed and only accessible through workstations in the headquarters.

Joel waved off the waitress that had finally come to take his order and hurried back to the Academy with his head pounding, his eyes dropping, and his stomach growling. He avoided the chaos in the Ops Centre by going directly to the records section. There were several shared workstations there, and none of the clerks were behind the counter at this time of day. Joel picked the most private of the workstations and called up the Murmansk file. When asked for the password he typed in the word from Kain's message and the file opened. Joel began reading.

His eyes got bigger as the story unfolded. Someone came in at some point to use one of the other terminals but the lemur was rapt to the point where you could have fired a gun behind him and he would not have noticed. He could not believe what he was reading, or the fact that it had been hidden from him all these years!

The report laid out in cold clinical language how Silver, still a junior agent back then, had been suffering from depression and alcoholism after the death of his supervisor in Germany. He had been assigned the mission to go get two Russian missile scientists, ring-tailed lemurs, out of the Soviet Union because of the secrets they held. It was his last chance, if the lemur's secrets did not get back to the west he would be finished, literally.

The mission had gone bad from the start. Fist Auvert, as Silver was known then, compromised himself with a white saluki who was head of security for the project the scientists worked for. He tried to kill her but botched the job and she came after him as he spirited the lemurs away. Then he chose the longest possible route back to friendly territory. The female was eight months pregnant, but he forced her to drive a Lada a thousand kilometres across the barren wasteland of northern Finland in the dead of winter.

The car had given up the ghost twenty kilometres short of the border with Norway. The Saluki managed to catch up to the fleeing fox at that point but Auvert captured her. The report went into great detail about how Auvert decided not to drag them any further but forced them to march through more than a metre of snow to an abandoned lodge. There he forced the lemurs to build a fire and make him coffee while he raped and then killed the saluki in front of them. When he was done with her he started on the lemurs, demanding that they hand over their secrets to him.

Auvert memorized all they could tell him of the Soviet ballistic missile system. Joel knew well enough that Silver had a photographic memory. The stress had caused the mother to give birth prematurely. He let the baby live so he could threaten to kill it to coerce more information out of them. Once he could squeeze no more out of them he killed the parents. According to him they would have died anyway, form the injuries they sustained during the interrogation. But he spared the baby, because of the possibility of trading it back to the mother's family, which included a number of senior military officials.

The report ended with an account of how Auvert had burned down the lodge to destroy the evidence of torture and skied out of Finland with the baby inside his coat. He met his contact, a Canadian Forces operative named Charlie McCrea, and returned to Canada with the baby lemur in tow.

Two annexes were attached and opened with the same password. The first noted that the cold war ended before they could negotiate the trade of military secrets for the baby lemur and the second was a psychiatric report from Doctor Gordon. The rat, still new to FOX, had written a paper when he was in graduate school about how babies form attachments to the person they fist bond with physically. He speculated that since the baby's first crucial days were spent inside the coat of the agent now called Silver the lemur would develop a lasting affection for the fox. He wanted to keep the baby lemur close so he could see if his theory was correct, and so they had arranged for the sterile rabbit couple to take him in, for a big bonus of course.

Joel's brain was swirling. He was horrified. How could this be true? He sat frozen staring at the last lines of the report. He heard a chair scrape and saw Dongo Fett stumble up from behind one of the other screens and stagger out the door. He doesn't look any better than I feel, Joel noted before his eyes were drawn back to the monitor. How could FOX do a thing a like this? How could Silver? He wasn't a cold blooded killer ... but yet ... actually ... damn.

A list of the missions that Joel had been privy to since he became the Academy's forger flipped though his mind. The politician in Switzerland. The nuclear physicist in Iran. The ex-KGB agent in Mexico. The former concentration camp doctor in Germany, killed with his own dentures! And the rumours of what had happened to Ophelia Sommer, the cloud leopard that had walked into the classroom for a meeting with Silver but never walked out again. She had been a student! If you could kill one of your own students ....

Suddenly the hallway echoed with the sound of running feet. Before Joel could get up or even close the file the door burst open and a squad of big dogs in SWAT gear stormed into the room. They pulled him from his chair and made him lay on the floor with his paws behind his head and his tail under him. They secured the room while one of them, a technical exploitation expert no doubt, sat down at the computer Joel had been using and began examining the files.

All that he could see now were their boots, and he had no idea who it was that had raided the headquarters until a pair of highly polished black boots approached him and ordered him to stand up. When he did, with the assistance of a massive doberman's paw in his hair, he was nose to nose with a female basset hound wearing the blue and grey uniform of the RCMP.

She eyed Joel as if she was cataloguing a specimen; a stool specimen by her expression. She snorted in disgust and turned away from him. "Secure these Computers!" She snapped at the SWAT team. "Don't let them go to sleep or go into screen saver mode, we don't have the passwords ... yet. Keep this one segregated." She instructed the doberman holding Joel up by the fur between his ears. "I'm going to see if we have the big silver one yet."

She spun on one heel and the other toe, her uniform boots squeaking slightly on the tile of the records room floor, and was gone.

* * * * * * * *

Dongo arrived at the Academy near noon, having returned to his rooms first for a cold shower, a paw full of Tylenol and a short nap, just in case he ran into Ruby. When he saw the commotion in the Ops Centre he wisely decided that it would be better if he did not add to the confusion by going in there. He headed over to the records section where there were a few common user stations with access to the file he had been directed to.

The building was almost deserted. None of the clerks were there, it was their lunch hour, and the records cabinets behind the counter were locked tight, but Dongo just needed the computer. He saw Joel sitting behind the terminal in the corner, the most private one, engrossed in whatever he had up on the screen. Dongo chose the machine furthest from the lemur and signed on to his account.

Dongo found the file Kain had indicated with a little difficulty because he was not familiar yet with FOX's filing system. When he finally located it he selected it and entered the password Kain had also supplied. He was surprised to discover that it was the report of his first mission with fox, the one where he injured his eye and lost his arm. What gives? He wondered. I read this last year, why is it even in the restricted section?

Dongo skimmed the file anyway. It related the mission to kill a Russian arms dealer that was supplying the Taliban in the Canadian sector of Afghanistan. The Canadians had lost enough soldiers already to the crude explosives the insurgents used and did not want them to add sophisticated rockets and surface to air missiles to their arsenal. But they needed a long-distance expert for the hit, and so Dongo and his .50 calibre had been seconded from the CIA. Counter-sniper fire had almost ended the mission, and their lives, before he could fire a shot. But he had regained consciousness just long enough to kill the enemy sniper team, both with one shot, and Silver had been able to finish off the mission using a captured sniper rifle. Silver then returned to their hide and rendered first aid until the extraction team could come and fly them to the field hospital where they removed Dongo's left arm but managed to save his shooting eye, mostly.

The eye had become overdeveloped from a lifetime of shooting and was three times as powerful as his left eye, but now it could only be used for short periods of time. Dongo wore an eye patch over it to preserve it for when he really needed it. That cut down on his peripheral vision a bit, so Dongo lifted it occasionally when he really wanted to study something. He did so now, because something about the file was bothering him.

Now he could see it. The file he had just read, the same one he read a year ago, had a version code. It was the first version he was reading, but others were available. Dongo clicked the box to show the latest version.

The new version started with a note from the Chief of staff at the time, Gold, the big gay fox that was the Director now, Dongo remembered. The note explained that the releasable version was written to appease the CIA and the Russians, and that the Academy would retain the American sniper Dongo Fett despite his error.

Error?

Dongo kept the eye patch up and read the new report painstakingly. What he read horrified him.

Silver and a Russian Security Service sniper, a vixen, had teamed up to take out the arms dealer's counter-sniper team. They were on the brink of taking the last one out when Dongo woke and, mistaking the friendly agent for the enemy's spotter, shot her in the back with his .50 cal. The bullet continued on to take out a bad guy and burry itself in the landscape a mile or so away, as .50s tend to do when they hit something as insubstantial as a body or two. But the vixen was supposed to kill the arms dealer. It was her rifle that Silver was forced to use, set and calibrated for her eye and paw, and the range was extreme even for her advanced weapon. It was pure luck and Silver's instinctive shooting habits that saved the day, not Dongo.

For the last year Silver had let him believe that his shot had saved the Canadian agent and allowed him to make a fairly easy shot to take out the Russian dealer. He had lied so that the Russian government would believe the gun runners had killed their team and so the CIA would pension Dongo off as a hero. Hiring him because 'they owed it to him for saving Silver and the mission' was just a ploy to cover up an almost catastrophic error. Dongo's depression meter went down about five notches.

There was more, an annex that had been added only recently. It was from the Special Forces extraction team. It was a complaint to FOX about Silver's conduct. According to them the older fox had called for an extraction for one person only, himself, claiming that the American sniper was already dead. Over Silver's protests the extraction team leader insisted on recovering the body and it was he who discovered that Fett was still alive and administered first aid. He reported that Silver urged him to leave the 'fuck-up' behind as a lost cause. But he had discretion over matters such as this and he had over-ruled the Canadian agent. The rest was routine. They had reached the Field hospital in time to save Fett's life. Dongo's confusion meter went up seven notches.

That is where the Extraction Team commander's responsibility had ended however, and when he had recovered enough to be debriefed who had done it? Why, Silver of course. Dongo thought hard. Did he actually remember Silver giving him first aid and dragging him to the pick-up point or was it something Silver had told him he did?

Dongo's eye was aching and his head was spinning. He stood up and pushed himself back from the terminal. Conflicting thoughts and emotions swirling through his brain he stumbled to the door. He had to talk to Silver ... now. He had to have an explanation, there must be an explanation for this ... this ... fuck up.

Dongo got as far as the double doors to the Ops Centre. He could actually see Silver through the big round windows in them and saw the silver fox look up at him just then. But Silver's eyes shifted to something behind Dongo and widened, and before Dongo knew what had happened he was on the floor with his paws zap-strapped behind him, surrounded by large canines in SWAT Gear. Except for what appeared to Dongo to be a rather homely basset hound in a peak cap with a bright yellow band. Raised on iconic scarlet images from Dudley Do-right cartoons and re-runs of 'Due South' Dongo did not recognize the working uniform of the famous mounted police.

But one thing he did recognize, the hound was in charge, and she was some pissed.