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When the flickering light beneath the door had faded at last, he knew it was over.

It had taken longer this time. The red panda, cautious but prepared, waited another pawful of seconds, just to make sure that no more flickers could be seen. Padding to the other side of the small lab, now lit only by candlelight, he opened the carefully insulated case and removed the torch and the portable sensor unit. The sensor confirmed (as best it could) that the residual energies had dropped to a suitable level. Happily, the torch worked; it's beam was stronger than the candles.

With careful speed, he crossed back to the far side of the lab, then he nudged away the cement block that held the stone door in place. The small room wasn't designed to be comfortable; the floor was cement, the walls cinderblock, the air supplied only by narrow, stone-lined, zig-zagging ducts to the outside. Nothing reflective or combustible was allowed in the room, or at least that's how it was now. They had made a few mistakes at first.

He shone his torch at the floor of the tiny room, finding what he expected to find: A young coyote, furclad, nearly unconscious, panting heavily, his eyes all but rolling in their sockets. The weakened canine would take some little time to recover fully. The firefox hunkered down on his haunches, reaching out to pet the coyote's head softly. The canine flinched at first, his eyes opening wildly, barking a startled cry, but finally managing to register the panda's presence. He closed his eyes again, letting the researcher's touch help to calm him. His muzzle tried to work, finally managing to croak out the question: "How... long...?"

"Almost two minutes," the firefox said softly, "intermittent, although steady for the most part. Were you controlling it?"

A head-shake. "Didn't feel like it."

"We lost telemetry within the first several seconds; you overloaded the sensors after the discharge passed 25 gigajoules."

The coyote's face showed no surprise beyond an acknowledgement of a fact. "Five times a natural lightning strike."

"Yes."

"Is my fur smoking?"

"Not a bit of it. Can't say the same for the top brass. They want to know if you can direct it."

"Hell, I can't even slow it down. Anything get out?"

The firefox shook his head. "Not that I can tell."

Tiredly, the coyote looked upward toward a sky he could not see from here. "Wish I could just give it back..."

* * * * * * * * * * *

The scientist helped the young canine rise to wobbly hindpaws and escorted him from the small cinderblock room. In the main part of the laboratory, with the red panda's assistance, the coyote managed to shrug his way into a spare lab coat. First making sure that the candles were properly extinguished, the firefox led his exhausted charge out of the lab. The blackout was limited only to that room, the result of the overloaded sensory equipment shorting out the breakers that supplied their power. The rest of the facility would be unaffected. This, too, was a result of learning from previous mistakes.

With a slow and shuffling gait, the pair made their way to the nearby room that had been turned into a reasonable facsimile of living quarters for the young male. For the first few weeks, he had been stashed in what might as well have been a jail cell, in terms of its amenities. Finally, largely at Newton's insistence, a room some 140 square meters in size was appropriated for the coyote's use. It was actually a lot of space to move around in; unfortunately, what it didn't have at first was interior walls, kitchen, toilet, bathroom, and a few other such niceties. Over the first three weeks, a great deal of hastily cobbled-together work (what one author of science fiction had described as "three-quarter assed") had put necessity first, and after the essentials of plumbing and simple appliances were dealt with, the red panda had seen to things more aesthetic and comfort-centered. The military-style cot had been replaced by a comfortable king-sized bed, more to help fill space than for the coyote's need for such a large bed. A table and chairs stood near the small but serviceable kitchen. Bookshelves, carefully anchored, made a space-divider for a reading area that contained a proper goose-neck lamp and a comfortable recliner. It was this that the coyote sank into wearily with a sigh large enough to be felt throughout the room if not the entire research complex.

The red panda moved toward the kitchen. "Tea? Coffee? Something stronger?"

"I'm afraid anything stronger might trigger something else. Bottled water. Fridge." He breathed for a moment, then added, "Please, and thank you."

"Manners can wait." Smiling gently, the researcher passed an open bottle to the exhausted subject before opening his own. Pulling over one of the kitchen chairs, he sat near to the young canine and said, "How are you feeling, Chase?"

"My sire never took me to the circus."

"What?"

Waving a dismissing paw, the coyote apologized. "Old psychiatrist joke." He took a careful pull from the water bottle as if it were a life-giving elixir. These "events" (as they were described in the research notes) always left him dehydrated. After one early experience led to a projectile return-to-sender attack, he'd learned to conquer the desire to chug the entire bottle at one go. "I'm not sure what I'm feeling, Newton, or maybe even if I'm feeling. When it happens, it's not a sensation of physical pain. It's like..."

Newton waited, despite wanting to jump in with words. He was hardly any kind of therapist. His primary studies had been in electromagnetic energy and its applications in everything from meteorology to generation and transmission systems. He had been called in to study the strange claims that a young coyote had the ability to "create" lightning bolts. It had sounded like something from one of the old sci-fi shows he used to watch on television, but he was paid to come out and "get the facts." He got them and, in the bargain, he took up some advice and makeshift training from a psychotherapist friend who guided him in ways to help the "research subject" retain some semblance of himself amid any number of scientists, engineers, corporate interests, and other vermin who saw merely an enigma, a short-cut, or an asset to exploit. If Newton could do nothing else to help, he could at least try to keep the pup's self intact.

"Have you ever experienced terror?" the coyote asked softly.

"I think that I have, but I can't imagine how terrified you must feel."

"That's not what I mean." Chase took another careful swallow of water and tried again. "It's not my own terror that I'm feeling. It's like the fear of a billion furs, all screaming at the same time. I don't feel the physical pain of the current going through me, or coming out of me, or whatever it's doing. What I'm feeling is... drowned in the ocean of those agonized screams. It's like having my soul pushed out of me by that horrible flood."

The firefox couldn't have suppressed his shudder if he'd tried. He was surprised by the touch of the coyote's forepaw to his arm.

"I'm sorry."

"No need for sorry, Chase." Newton covered the forepaw with his own, gave it a squeeze. "That's the sort of thing that I need to hear about."

"For your notes?"

The words were soft, spoken without any anger in them, but they were a chastisement nonetheless. "No," the firefox whispered gently. "For you. There is nothing like this phenomenon in the records; that much is true, and it makes you 'unique' in the correct use of the word. Curiosity about this ability, and wonder, and fear, all the powerful emotions, they swell like their own force surrounding you. What bothers me is that no one seems curious about you as a furson, about what you're going through." He paused, looking into the young male's eyes. "I am. All the medical tests are telling us that your body is fine. I want to know that your mind is okay, your feelings... perhaps even your soul, since you put it that way."

Smiling wanly, the coyote observed, "You sound like a shrink."

"They wouldn't budget for one, so I'm all you've got. Poor substitute."

"Better than you think." The coyote squeezed the red panda's arm, his ears splaying slightly. "Thank you, Newton." Hesitantly, he withdrew his paw and set it tiredly in his lap.

Newton drew a steadying breath and put the smile on his muzzle as well as in his voice. "Your ersatz shrink has no idea how to ask the right shrink questions, so I'll just keep blundering on. I really want to know how you're feeling, Chase, what's going on with you, what's on your mind, in your heart, all of that. So tell me about your sire not taking you to the circus."

The coyote chuckled. "It was a joke."

"And jokes are cloaks for truth. Last I heard, you didn't have any family left. That has to be tough."

"I'm a reasonably grown up pup. I'm 26, and I'm potty-trained and everything."

"Family is important, so they tell us." The firefox sipped some of his own water. "I still have a few siblings left, and we have a genially distant relationship. You lost your family when you were younger, didn't you?"

"More like they lost me."

Newton blinked. "What does...?"

"Let's say that I was a little too weird for them, even before all this started." Breathing in slowly, the coyote let the air out again just as slowly, not letting it turn into a sigh. "Sire, dam, two older sibs. Somewhere around the time I turned 13, they began to think that I was strange. I seemed to be the only furson my age who never outgrew what they called 'invisible friends'."

"You'll have to explain that one to me, Chase."

"You never had invisible friends?"

"I don't know that I ever did," the panda admitted, "but I know the general idea. Kits and pups make up their own friends, imaginary friends, usually in pre-school or early school years. You kept yours?"

"It's not my decision. They would have to leave on their own. And they never did."

Newton felt himself on shaky ground. This topic hadn't come up before, and he didn't know how to deal with it. He couldn't act as a counselor in any meaningful sense of the word; he wasn't even sure that he could be much of a friend, in these circumstances. Science was easy -- facts were facts, theories theoretical, hypotheses provable or not. In the realms of heart and mind, anything goes, and he would have to rely upon his own feelings. The only thing he could sense, at this point, was that the coyote was utterly sincere.

After another few moments, and another careful swig of water, the canine smiled softly. "I shouldn't be playing this game with you, Newton; it's not very grateful of me. I apologize. You know that I'm tribal, right?"

The firefox nodded, his ears shifting slightly.

"I'm steeped in what I'd heard someone call 'bunkum,' which it probably is, to most of the world. The Spirits and Totems of my tribe have whole origin stories, histories, tales, quirks... They aren't 'imaginary' friends, just invisible... to most."

"You see them?"

Turning his head to look at the researcher, the coyote considered him through half-lidded eyes. "You're not laughing."

"You haven't said anything funny yet."

"Are you saying that you don't find the idea of talking to Spirits funny, or at least a little weird?"

"Weirder than a coyote who is somehow making lightning over five times more powerful than naturally-occurring lightning?"

Chase considered before nodding once. "Point."

"Why was talking to Spirits a problem for your family?"

The coyote's tailtip expressed itself with an embarrassed flick as his ears folded slightly downward. "They were never clear about it. I think it was because they were ashamed of being tribal, and anything that reminded them of it made them feel too different to be accepted by the rest of furkind."

"That's an old story, out in the deserts." Through gestures, Newton got the young male's empty water bottle, asked if he wanted another, received a nod in return. "You'd think that the prejudice would have been dropped, on both sides, after all this time. We still have our flaws." The firefox tossed the empty into a recycling bin, fetched another bottle from the refrigerator. "I have mine, too, but I hope that's not one of them."

Accepting the bottle gratefully, Chase regarded the firefox quietly for a few moments. "Do you really want to know?"

"Yes." Seeing the question why in the coyote's eyes, Newton added, "Because it's important to you, and I want to learn."

Another moment, and the younger male nodded slowly, sighing. "I suppose some of the Medicine practitioners would say to keep them secret, but you're not asking in order to have some sort of power over me. That's the risk, when speaking of 'The Dark Things'." The canine's voice included the quotation marks without having to draw them in the air with his claws. He smiled. "One thing to know first is that Spirits aren't necessarily 'good' or 'evil,' in any ordinary sense; it's more like 'order' and 'chaos,' without any sort of absolutes."

More water, one more deep breath, and he took his story a step further. "There are tribal names for everything, and the names can be radically different between tribes. To keep it simpler, perhaps for all of us, I refer to them by their attributes. When I tell others that I've spoken with Earth, Wind, and Fire, they think I'm talking about a rock band." He snorted briefly. "Sometimes, I let 'em. Makes for some interesting conversations. I also speak with various plants, spirits of ferals, whoever wants to drop by to tell me something or maybe to ask something of me. They have needs just as we do, or maybe they're pretending to, in order for us to talk with them more easily."

"What do you talk about?"

"Sometimes, we just shoot the breeze... no offense meant to Wind. There are times when they want to impart some information to me, help me with a problem. And sometimes, they just don't want me to be lonely. It's like they know that I just need someone to listen. I don't thank them enough for that, I think." The coyote considered for a moment. "I've talked with Rain and Thunder sometimes, but never Lightning."

Newton considered the young male for a moment. This information didn't shock or surprise him although, in the occasional rational moments amid his forays into scientific frenzy, he might have wondered at his ability simply to accept what he was hearing. It was the coyote's demeanor that convinced him. There was no agenda here, nothing to be gained with fanciful tales or pleas of madness. This was simply a frightened pup who needed to tell the truth as he knew it. There is a quality of voice, of words, of the feeling behind them, that makes what is being said real, no matter what capital-R Reality tried to insist was the only version of itself out there.

"Chase, you said something in the chamber tonight that I'd not heard you say before. You said that you wished you could give it back. What did you mean by that?"

"Did I say that? I had no idea that I was stoned."

Even an amateur psychotherapist could recognize deflection. The coyote's eyes became guarded, the smile false, the ears shifting slightly backward. The momentary hesitation from the firefox provided the opening for the young male to make his escape.

"I need to rest, Newton. I don't think I'll even make it to the bed. Just gonna close my eyes and snooze here for now. See you tomorrow?"

His own smile not quite reaching his eyes, the red panda nodded once. "Of course. I'll let you get some sleep. See you tomorrow. Want me to turn out the main lights as I go out?"

"Please."

"Will do. Good night, Chase."

"G'night, Doc."

Newton flicked the switch at the door and closed it behind him. Progress happens in small pawsteps, in science and in life. It's those big leaps that you have to watch out for.

* * * * * * * * * *

The nameplate next to the door read DR. NEWTON GUTENBERG, causing the firefox to wonder if he were a worthy recipient of the names of two innovators and bringers of change to the world. Add in his middle name, which he shared with one of the Caesars, and he had initials that brought him down a notch. His parents had lofty ideals and a blind spot to the obvious. Signing off his reports with NAG had brought no end of derisive comments.

In the simple, slightly cramped office space, Newton sat at his computer, dictating notes regarding the evening's "event." The initial empirical data went first; he'd add more when the machines were able to report their findings upon being rebooted. He followed this with a few carefully-chosen personal observations that (he felt sure) none other than himself bothered to read or keep track of. He wanted Chase's story told in full, and this most recent revelation -- the Spirits that the coyote had spoken of -- nagged at the back of his head in such a way that he could almost feel the fur there trying to shift and rearrange itself. Hackles were enacting the clichés of his distant ancestors; it was not, after all, something that evolution was going to get rid of quite so easily.

Although the evening was still comparatively young, the firefox felt a desire to get back to his own quarters and wind down for the evening. A Beethoven string quartet, a whiling away of time with a David Brin or Roger MacBride Allen novel, even some simple biofeedback relaxation techniques. Just the ticket. He set things to rights in his office, then walked down to the lab to do the same. He simply wouldn't be able to sleep if he didn't know that things were in some semblance of order -- the breaker reset, residual papers gathered, the simplest housekeeping. He would be alone with his thoughts.

The figure in the lab coat surprised him.

"Hello?"

"Dr. Gutenberg, isn't it?" The speaker was a lean, compact brown bear with an elongated muzzle that made him look slightly lupine. His warm and welcoming smile was reflected in his sparkling chocolate-brown eyes, redoubled by the crinkles of laugh-lines just visible on each side. "I'm very glad to meet you."

"Are you part of the project?"

"Indirectly. I've been keeping up with your notes about our young anomaly." The bear nodded, slowly. "I'm very glad that Chase has an advocate in you. He's needed one for a long time."

"Thank you for saying." The firefox could still detect the faint scent of smoke from the extinguished candles lingering behind. Starlight filtered in through the skylights high in the lab's ceiling. They were one way for the researcher to know that the energies had not escaped the stone room, as they were as likely as not to shatter instantly under such an assault. As Newton's eyes became better adjusted to the light, he was able to see that the lab itself was still more or less as he's left it; nothing adjusted, changed, interfered with.

"Oh, not at all. It means a lot to him, I'm sure, and it's important to me as well."

"How so?"

"Compassion is important, don't you find? Empathy. Respect for the individual. Lofty goals. Important ones."

Newton nodded, stepping further into the lab, trying to remember where he had left the torch. "Not something that the top brass would want to hear in a research facility, I would imagine. How long have you worked here?"

"I've been here a while. It looks like we should find the breaker box."

"It's just over here; I'll get it. Ah." The torch was, he realized, exactly where he'd left it, where he always left it -- on the edge of the workbench nearest the door. He shook his head ruefully, thinking that he wasn't ready to be an absent-minded professor quite yet. Switching it on, he swung the beam around the familiar space, landing it on the wall near to the insulated case where the torch usually resided during "events." He padded over to it, calling back, "Are you going off shift?"

"Just about to call it a night," the bear replied jovially enough. "See you tomorrow, perhaps?"

Frowning as he opened the panel to the breaker box, the firefox asked, "I apologize for a poor memory; I don't think I know your name."

"Call me Felice."

"Fiat lux," Newton muttered. He reset the breakers quickly, flooding the lab with light and the sounds of small electronic devices stirring themselves. "Felice, did you say?"

Turning back to the rest of the laboratory room, the red panda found himself alone. The door to the outside hallway was still open, as he had left it. The bear must be very light on his hindpaws, not to mention quick. Shrugging, he went back to clearing up his workspace, making sure that he hadn't overlooked anything when he'd made his earlier report. He knew all too well that he was expected to catalog everything to the self-described "top brass." To use the old cliché, knowing what they were going to do with the data was above his pay grade. Even so, he couldn't imagine that the information would be used for anything particularly benevolent. The thought of it made his tail bushy.

* * * * * * * * * *

"Events," as the soulless reports called them, were hardly a daily occurrence. The only blessing to come out of the madness was in the form of young Chase having mental and/or bodily sensations that _something was brewing,_a phrase he created long before being brought into the project headquarters. It was unfair to say that the coyote was "restricted" to the project grounds, but neither was it entirely untrue. Since the pup's arrival at the center, nearly four months ago, Newton did his best to arrange outings and visits to various nearby centers of diversions (a.k.a., the large shopping mall, not far away); it gave the canine a chance to see that there were indeed other fursons in the world, and there was a modest amount of pocket money available to him, which often went for books more than anything else. Restaurants held space there also, along with the various fast-food varieties in the Food Court. It was made slightly more expensive to the project because of the pair of security agents that were told to accompany them "discreetly, at a distance." They did their best; in fact, no one other than Chase and Newton even noticed them. The two did their best to ignore them and enjoy being "outside" from time to time.

It was during these times that the firefox learned more subtleties about his charge. Chase wasn't cheap, but he was frugal; the things that he bought were of good quality, but it wasn't about having "the latest thing." He liked looking at fancy stuff, but he wasn't genuinely tempted by it. He loved good books, preferring hardbacks to paperbacks, and he had a lot of time to read, lately. A very few special orders were ordered online and sent directly to the complex, although the coyote had said that he didn't want to "put anyone out." It was Norman who had insisted upon a high-quality sound system for the coyote's quarters. Chase enjoyed his music as much as his reading, and low-end computer speakers won't reproduce even midrange notes very well, much less the higher treble and low bass notes. The young canine's musical taste was so wide-ranging that the choice of better equipment was a necessity rather than a luxury.

This, too, was an intriguing discovery. More or less "a pup from the Rez," Chase had done all he could to embrace as much of his various worlds as he could. He read widely about more cultures than just the one he'd grown up in, and he always seemed hungry to know more about almost everything. The only things that had slowed him down were a family that didn't have much use for an autodidact who "thought himself better than the rest of us," the financial wherewithal to keep up with his ever-questing mind, the credentials to get much more than minimum-wage jobs, and the unfortunate tendency to make not-lightning happen often enough to ostracize him from the rest of the world.

Music was the most interesting tell-tale of this strange upbringing. Chase certainly knew of the music from his own and other tribes, but he also had a huge knowledge of western classical music and modern composers as well, from plainsong to Charles Ives and Stomu Yamashita. He was a fan of prog-rock and Celtic-influenced music, as well as an astonishing (and perhaps ironic) appreciation of what he called "electronica." Newton had learned a whole new musical language, with terms like "ambient," "trance," and "drone space" applied to soundscapes that he'd not even considered before. It was something wholly unexpected from someone so young in years and so isolated in upbringing.

"How do you suppose that happened?" Felice asked the firefox one night.

"I have no clear idea," Newton allowed, shuffling yet more papers on his desk, "although I have one rather strange notion."

"I love those," the bear said excitedly, almost starting to bounce on his hindpaws. "Do share!"

That would be a simple request to honor. Over the past week or so, Felice had become an excellent sounding board, if only because he seemed to be the only other furson on the project who read Newton's notes about Chase's mental status. "It's rather like he's been trying to be... well, everything at once. It's simplistic to say that he's rebelling against a repressive childhood, but it's what got me thinking in this direction."

"How so?"

"We all go through a phase of trying to understand who we are, what we are, what our place will be in the world. Some just wear the same clothes their sires and dams give them, so to speak -- what to do, who to be, all of that. Some try on new clothes in school and find something just as restrictive, but at least it's different from what they started with. It's like they want capital-L Life handed to them in a box that they crawl into and never really leave. Curiosity isn't much appreciated anymore, I often fear."

"And Chase is nothing if not curious, isn't he?"

"Insatiably, ravenously, incredibly so." Newton inserted a pawful of pages into their folder, stacked several folders together, readied them for the filing cabinet. "I could easily imagine him exhausting the reservation's public library branch long before he left home."

"Left?"

Sighing gently, the red panda nodded his acknowledgement of the word. "Forced out of his home, or at least out of his sire and dam's dwelling. I don't know if the word 'home' ever qualified. He was on his own far too early. I don't know how he managed to learn so much in so short a time. I don't have the idea that he's..." The firefox managed a small laugh. "What's the coyote equivalent of a kitsune?"

The bear chuckled affably. "I haven't the slightest idea!"

"Whatever it is, I don't think he is one." Leaning back in his chair, the firefox frowned gently in thought. "You're familiar with the expression of someone having an 'old soul'?"

Felice nodded.

"Chase is one of those, or so it seems to me. He has a sense about him of someone having lived a great many more years than the chronological ones that we can lay at his door. I find myself wondering about something he told me after the last event."

"About wanting to 'give it back'?"

"That too," Newton agreed, "but something else also. He spoke of having conversations with Spirits, in the terms of First Peoples' Spirits -- Wind, Rain, Fire, Thunder... elemental beings, if you will. Part of that comes from his being Tribal, but it's as if there were something more to it than that. More than just the mythology, more than the old folk tales. They are friends to him. Real beings. Family."

"We find family where we can. You may have heard the phrase, 'Blood is thicker than water,' implying that the family you're born into is more important than friends or others that you may find."

"Yes, I've heard that."

"The full phrase is, 'The blood of the Covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.' The bond we create, the covenant that we enter into of our own free will, is more important than mere biological ties. True family is the one we find, or who finds us."

Before Newton could pursue the thought further, a ruckus from the hallway made itself known. "Dr. Gutenberg," a voice called, "we need you in the lab."

At least they haven't gotten to the point of sounding a klaxon, he thought with grim gratitude. He gained his hindpaws swiftly, he shouted, "Where's Chase?"

"On his way there," came the voice again.

All but flying down the short length of hallway, careering into the laboratory on skittering hindpaws, the firefox saw the young coyote seated on a stool near the worktable. He was hunched over, not seeming to be in pain but held close to himself, as if holding something in.

"Chase? I'm here." Newton spoke even as he made ready the various safety precautions that had become nearly automatic for him. "Are you okay? How close does it feel?"

"Few minutes, maybe." The canine's voice was clear but strained.

"Almost squared away here." A few assistants lit some candles, but they knew to clear out before the event began. "Keep talking to me, Chase. Tell me what you're feeling."

"Unpre--" a grunt choked the word "--dictable. Different."

Electronic devices into protective storage; telemetry system prepped. "Different how?"

"Stutter."

Newton's mind worked at the word as he ushered the rest of the assistants out of the lab, closing the door behind them. "Stutter? What does that mean?"

"Not like one..." another grimace of effort "...thing, one flow."

The firefox padded quickly to the coyote, placing a forepaw to the pup's shoulder. "Time to go in?"

Chase nodded sharply, began removing his clothes. The scientist's mind registered any physical signs that he could detect, while the red panda's heart reached out as best it could. Stripped to the fur, the coyote moved gracelessly to his stone chamber. Before he could enter it, Newton spun him around and held him close against him, hugging tightly. The canine felt to be a mass of tightly packed muscle, trembling with fear, or effort, or will, or whatever it might be. A sound, heard only partly by the ears, almost like crisped rice assaulted by a breakfaster's milk, static from an old radio, dry veldtland grasses in a low, hot wind. Chase's pushing away met with Newton's release, and the researcher backed out of the small chamber, pushing the heavy door shut, bracing it gently with the stone block. There was no lock or other security; anyone inside could get out with a strong push. Even the firefox wasn't entirely sure if the lightning could create a physical push, but it seemed wise not to find out the hard way.

A single shout from within, like terrible surprise, a yip of frightened discovery, and the instruments all around the laboratory began their pitiless observations until, as each time before, they were overloaded. The lights extinguished with the crash of overloaded circuit breakers. Flashes from the thin crack below the stone door punctuated sharply with the half-dozen lit candles in the lab. Newton was surprised by several things. The occurrence didn't last more than a minute, and even when he thought that it had stopped, vague flickers showed from time to time, as if the phenomenon couldn't quite make up its mind if it were ready yet to let go. All of these changes made him somehow suspect of the event, not in the sense of wondering if it happened (it clearly had), but rather more the question of how it had happened. Had Chase been able to exercise some form of control of it after all?

Whatever else was true, the only answers lay within the stone chamber, with Chase. This occasion was one where he truly hoped that the old saying about fortune favoring the brave would prove to be correct.

Padding quietly to the chamber, as if worried that someone or something might hear his approach, Newton moved the small stone doorstop to one side and, swallowing past at least some of his fear, he swung open the door and peered inside. He cursed himself a fool for not having brought the torch with him; it was still in the protected cabinet, along with the device for detecting residual energies, which might have told him more clearly if it were safe to enter the chamber. Instead of instruments, he had only his eyes and his heart to guide him, and he wasn't entirely sure which of them it was that sensed something like a residual glow surrounding the coyote's body. The firefox realized that he'd never seen the coyote after an event without benefit of the torch. Had there always been this odd suffusion of not-really-light around him?

Chase shook and trembled as he always did after one of these events, yet it seemed less severe this time, perhaps related to the brief duration. The power levels were no less than before, as the overloaded sensors would attest, yet something felt different. Not a scientific measurement, but it was not the scientist who once again reached for the young coyote, in hope of offering his calming touch.

The snap was surprising more than painful, a winter's day gift from an otherwise innocent doorknob, although much sharper, stronger. Newton pulled his forepaw back only for a moment, his ulnar nerve still expressing its irritation, then reached again for the canine's shoulder. His paw was met by Chase's own. "Stutter," he managed.

"It's okay, Chase. Just breathe."

"No... que... ques... questions?"

"Not right now, not this time." The firefox knelt, bringing his other forepaw to the coyote's. "This one was different. Even I could tell that. Just relax; when you're ready, I'll get you back to your quarters."

Like the event itself, the recovery was shorter than from other events. Chase was on his hindpaws in perhaps a minute, pulled on the lab coat by himself, carried his clothes with him, and made it back to his small apartment with only a little assistance from Newton. He did collapse into his recliner, but he didn't lean back in it so much as simply settle himself comfortably, his tail less twitchy than before, his eyes heavy-lidded as from effort but not from exhaustion. The firefox found himself making mental notes about these observations, but it was only because part of him had been trained over these many years to stand slightly to one side and watch. The rest of him was hungry for something but he wasn't at all sure what it was. Not food, nothing so simple as that.

"Are you okay, Newton?"

The red panda chuckled softly. "That's my line," he smiled.

"You look a little... off. Did something happen that I'm not aware of?"

"I'm not sure." Newton got water bottles from the refrigerator, brought up a chair, sat down, as Chase used his tablet to bring up music on his sound system. At first, even the firefox's sharp ears detected nothing. "Did you notice anything strange about what happened tonight?"

"Other than blowing up the lab again?" The young coyote managed a weak chuckle. "I'm not sure what you mean."

"It was something that happened. Well, two somethings, I guess. Usually, when this happens, it seems to rage for a while, diminishing slowly, then finally stopping altogether. There are pauses, sometimes; it can be a single long stream, or it can be very slightly intermittent, with breaks as long as four seconds." The inner scientist tried to find more descriptive words, but the red panda's feelings were pushing to the fore. "This time, there were... I guess it's a bad joke to use the word 'aftershocks,' but the idea is the same. Little flickers that happened after most of it had stopped. Did you notice them?"

"I'm not sure." Chase took a careful pull from his bottle. "After a certain point, I can't really feel anything anymore, and I'm not paying attention to much until you come to get me."

"Did you feel me touch your shoulder this evening?"

"It brings me back more quickly than having to bring myself out of it on my own. It's like grounding. I don't think I've ever thanked you for that, Newton."

The firefox smiled softly. The music was still very soft, quiet, probably something that the coyote would call "ambient." "Tonight, though; do you remember me touching your shoulder tonight?"

"I think so."

"Do you remember anything about it? Anything different?"

Frowning, the young canine considered, taking another sip of water to quench his parched throat. "I don't think so. You touched me, and I took in a big breath..."

"...and I felt a shock. Sharp, crisp, like a huge jolt of static electricity. I felt it, and I heard it. Did you...? Anything?"

"Newton, I'm sorry." The look in the coyote's eyes showed real pain. He lay his forepaw on the firefox's arm, squeezing gently.

"It's okay, Chase. It's probably nothing."

Quiet lay gently between the two for long moments. In the background, the music rose slowly in volume yet remained soft, almost caressing. Something coursed through the red panda's body that caused his fur to shift from pads to eartips. "This music," he said, a click in his throat.

"I can change it, if you--"

"No, don't. It's..." After a moment, something in his mind clicked. "Steve Roach. It's called 'Air and Light'."

"Yes," the coyote nodded. "I'm surprised that you know it. I wouldn't think it was in your collection. It's esoteric."

"It's my most favorite work of music in all the world." Newton turned staring eyes to the young canine. "And I've never heard it before in my life."

...to be continued