FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Reunion: Chapter 6

Ralph, a Canis with white spots on top of grey fur walked down the street hunched over with his paws up to his mouth as he tried to keep warm. He was heading home for the night after another day of toiling for a wage that was barely livable. His joints ached since he worked in construction alongside hundreds of others Canis and even the occasional human who needed someplace to work. He like construction since he was good at nearly everything about it, especially the heavy lifting. On the outside, he looked average, not threatening in any way. Though, he had a secret. He was psionic and would often use his ability to help lift and move heavy objects. It was what allowed him to hold his job for several years, the man who supervised him favored him over everyone else which meant he got some benefits, not much, but enough that he knew he was doing better than most Canis'.

He was called a Mover, a Canis who could move and manipulate objects without touching them. He wasn't exceptional at it, but it was enough to make life a little easier. He could lift objects as large as several tons if he put all of his concentration into it. There were other kinds of psionics as well. There were Readers which could read the minds of anyone in sight. Scanners didn't have to have people in sight and knew where everyone was within a certain radius of them and then there were Scramblers which were often the most feared for good reason. Scramblers weren't able to read people's minds, but they could twist them to their will or if mind control wasn't what they wanted, they could just shred the mind apart and leave a person as a vegetable.

Movers were the most common and most weren't that powerful. Occasionally there would be psionics who had the ability of not only a Mover, but also some of the other abilities as well. They were call Specialists. They were considered the most dangerous, especially when it was Scanner coupled with either a Mover's ability or a Scrambler's ability since they didn't need visual contact to affect others. Ralph was just a normal Mover and knew of no other psionic and didn't want to either. Knowledge may have been power, but to him, it was just an excuse to make him a larger target.

That day, Ralph was sore because he didn't use his ability. There had been a recent increase in military activity which put him and everyone else in the slums on edge. When walking down the streets he tried to look as inconspicuous as possible. If they weren't after him, then he wasn't going to give them a reason to. The government wasn't too picky when it came to Canis, they would bring up charges for the smallest thing at random times. People rarely knew when they had been marked to be picked up.

Ralph kept his eyes ahead even though he wanted to look up at the towering buildings in case someone was watching him. He lived closer to the center than he would have liked, but he needed to stay close to work since the worker transport didn't go into the outskirt slums where there were nothing but shacks. He lived in a company provided tenement. He didn't refer to it as a home, workers were crammed in and expected to take care of themselves.

The bonus that Ralph got was a room that he only had to share with one other person who had recently garnered the favor of the supervisor. With just one other person in the room, he was actually able to stretch his legs out at night when sleeping, instead of curling up like an animal. There was still a lot to desire. The room was still pretty small and had a smell to it that was from a green pasty looking mold that had sprouted up in the upper ceiling. It was what he got and he had no plans of letting it go since it meant he would end up in one of the rooms that housed a dozen people.

The sound of blades chopping the air, got his attention and he stopped in his tracks to watch a blue craft fly overhead. It was a Dog Catcher transport vehicle and the sight of it nearly gave him a heart attack. It wasn't looking for him, instead it was flying soldiers across the city and continued on.

Blowing out a breath of relief, Ralph jogged across the street to the tenement he was housed in. The building was eight stories tall, made of cheap concrete and mortar, and housed nearly three hundred. A mangy Canis laid passed out on the grungy steps with a bottle of booze in one pay and the other draped across his chest.

Inside was loud and filthy. Ralph shouldered his way through scores of other Canis who were either standing around talking or like him, trying to get somewhere. His shared room was on the second floor which meant he needed to keep shouldering his way to the thin stairwell that in an emergency would just act as a bottle neck and trap everyone on the upper floors. Little went into safety when the building was constructed, it was just there to house workers who were considered expendable.

Ralph finally got to his room after what he would admit was too much of a struggle. He just wanted to get some rest for the next day, sadly rest wasn't going to happen anytime soon.

Sergeant Jackson watched as the spotted Canis entered the crowded building, just like Intelligence said. "The target is inside the building." He zoomed his helmet's attached binoculars to the normal magnification and moved them so they sat on top of his head and out of the way. He had been watching the street below for several hours, just waiting for the one Canis to appear. He had a dossier of the target that had all known information on him. It wasn't much, just place of work, where he lived, his known associates and his Psionics class and rank.

The target, Ralph Baker, was a Class 3 Mover. Psionics were put on a scale depending on how strong they were suspected to be. Class 1's were the weakest and often had little control over their abilities and were often ignored completely since the most they could do was affect object that were directly in front of them and no larger than a child. Class 5's were the strongest and most dangerous. A Class 5 Mover, if it was within sight, could theoretically pull a ship from orbit. Class 5's were only a hypothesis, none had ever been encountered, but contingencies had been made in case once was discovered. The contingencies involved the deployment of a very specialized Dog Catcher unit which was only known to exist to the Prime Minister, the Sol Dominion party leader and the top generals and admirals.

"Good." A colonel who sat at a desk in the middle of the room with his feet propped up replied. He took his feet down from the desk and stood up. There were two dozen other people in the room, half Dog Catchers and the other half were Marines that were assigned as supports for the mission. They all stopped the various small activities they were doing to pass the time and gave the colonel their full attention.

"All right gents." He spoke in a very British accent. "The target is in the building. The mission in a go. Grab your gear and move out in five."

Adrian was laying on his dingy mattress that he call a bed with a book propped up on his chest. It was a safety handbook that he had been given at his new job at the construction site for a new bank in the city. It went over basic procedures in case of an emergency, all bullshit in his opinion. In an emergency, the humans who were overlooking the project would leave and let the Canis fend for themselves. But, he was expected to know it inside and out by the end of the week so he kept reading.

Being so far in the city was unnerving to Adrian since it was the first time he had gone into the center since he was a child and it brought back bad memories. He would have gotten a different job if there were any. The construction company was hiring any able bodied person, Canis or not, to work as laborers. He needed the work so he took it.

Malcom had his own job back at the shack they had been living in. He had been hired by one of the officers at the nearby military base to be a janitor. Malcom had commented that since he was technically working for the military, even if it was by contract, he was generally left alone. There was always the few who chided him, but it was no more than he expected.

Adrian was forced to move to the company tenements which were by far the worse accommodations he had seen. Luckily he had impressed one of the supervisors enough by moving twice as much material as anyone else and was given a better room. He found that manual labor was best suited for him since he could discretely use his abilities to do all of the heavy lifting for him. He made sure not to appear super human though.

His roommate was coming in. Adrian had known that Ralph had been coming for some time now, he knew where everyone was inside the building. He could feel the presence of all of the inhabitants of the building. Two hundred and seventy three to be exact. On top of that, he also knew what they were thinking and sometimes he wished he didn't. The amount of emotions that were crammed into the building like a can of sardines was tremendous as slightly overwhelming. Happiness, Sadness, Greed, Selflessness, it was a melting pot for everything and reading helped keep his minds off of it all and let concentrate.

Ralph tiredly walked over to his own mattress and fell face first into it, turning his head at the last moment to avoid smashing his nose. He just wanted to get some rest and let his aching joints and muscles relax.

Adrian didn't pay him any attention, just because they shared the room didn't mean he had to talk to him. It was just another person living their life, a psionic as well. There were other psionics in the building other than himself. They tried to hide themselves from others out of fear that if their ability was discovered, they would be ratted on. He would respect that and had no intention of bringing their secret to light.

Flipping through yet another page of useless diagrams that showed how to properly evacuate a collapsing building, Adrian decided that he had enough of reading for the night and set the book aside on the floor that was littered with trash. He had tried to clean up, but whenever he had left, the trash seemed to magically reappear and he soon gave up. It wasn't like the place was going to be home for long. He only intended on living here until the construction job was done. The pay wasn't enough to deal with the bad living conditions for any longer than needed.

Adrian sat up on his bed and looked over at Ralph who had fallen asleep already. His mind was a flurry of activity as he dreamed of a better life on Earth. Earth was thought of some sort of Promised Land to some. Stories of how Earth was a place where both Canis and Humans lived together in harmony. Adrian scoffed at it, it was the thing of fairy tales even if it was true. He was here on Mars and it was better to focus on that rather than dream of going to a planet that had more soldiers than actual citizens on it.

There was a small tinge of alarm as Adrian felt a new set of presences came within range of his mind. They weren't the normal mix of hope and despair that he had grown accustomed to in the slums. They were confidents and honed, expertly keeping stray thoughts down and vague. They were human and had sinister intent.

He couldn't pull anymore from them so he stood up and walked over to the small window that was between the two mattresses and looked over the street below. The lighting from the few working street lamps was just enough for Adrian to catch a glimpse of a dozen blue armored figures blast the front doors of the tenement down with a small explosive.

The building shook and the people on the bottom floor who were caught in the blast began to shriek in confusion. Those who only felt the blast of the doors were left in a state of disarray and some went to investigate to source of the disturbance.

Adrian had not such plan. Only Dog Catchers wore blue armor and Dog Catchers only came to the slums for one reason, to get someone.

Woken from his sleep, Ralph bolted up and scrambled onto his feet. "What the hell was that?" He asked with a growl, more annoyed than worried.

"Dog Catchers." Adrian responded as he tried to determine if he could slip through the window. It was a small drop, being on the second floor and the window was large enough, that with some effort, he would be able to get through.

Upon hearing his roommate's words, Ralph bolted out of the room without thinking. He didn't make it that far. On his way down the stairs, he surprised a Dog Catcher who had been shoving his way through the sea of Canis that were all trying to get past him. The Dog Catcher saw his target and immediately fired his weapon which was loaded with a specialized tranquilizer that interfered with the part of the brain that allowed psionics to use their power. One of the darts hit Ralph in the arm and in defense, Ralph tossed the man back with enough force to shatter three of his ribs.

All other Dog Catchers were alerted to the assault on one of their comrades and doubled their efforts to get to Ralph who was now being tracked though the dart that had implanted a small tracking chip that would remain even if the dart was removed.

Adrian felt the sudden increase in alertness and hopped up to the windows sill. He looked down and a dizzying feeling of vertigo took him. He hesitated to jump long enough to see Ralph stumble back into the room with his arm bleeding where he had torn out the dart. He stumbled before collapsing from the mixture of drugs that were coursing through his veins.

Feeling that he was slightly responsible for panicking the dog, Adrian hopped down from the window sill and kneeled next to the unconscious figure to check him. His lapse concentration caused him to not notice the group of four Dog Catchers that were bearing down on his room.

They burst in with weapons at the ready, catching Adrian completely by surprise. In a natural case of fight or flight, Adrian lashed out at the obvious threats. Their weapons flew out of their hands and shattered on the walls with enough force to crack the concrete.

Relying on their training, they rushed the new target, hoping that their numbers would give them the advantage.

With another thought, Adrian flinged the closest one back in the others and they tumbled out of the room like bowling pins.

Adrian didn't want to kill them, he didn't think of himself as that kind of person in any way. He didn't want a repeat of his childhood. He looked down at Ralph who was breathing slow and calmly with his eyes closed. He looked peaceful, but he needed to be left behind. Even though he could lift him mentally with no problem, it would still slow him down.

With the Dog Catchers picking themselves up and notifying other teams that there was a new target, Adrian jumped out of the window. He slowed his fall so that he landed without needing to bend his knees. He looked down both ways of the street and there were people in the green armor of the Marines coming at him from both side.

Unlike the Dog Catchers, Marines were only equipped with lethal weapons and had orders to use them if a psionic was escaping.

One of the Marines fired and barely missed Adrian's head, causing him to duck and fling the man like a doll into the side of the building. This only caused several other Marines to open up as they closed the distance.

A realization hit Adrian as he dove into a dark alley way, he would need to kill to defend himself. He hated the idea of spilling blood no matter what. He wasn't a pacifist by any means in these kinds of situations, but not a murderer.

"Is it murder?" He asked himself. They had attacked him first, anything he did was out of self-defense. It was a poor justification and he knew it, but it was all he could come up with at the moment.

From his location, Adrian could feel the Marines closing in on his hiding spot. Each one was focused on the mission at hand, but they had a tinge of fear. They were afraid of him. They saw what he did to that one soldier who was sprawled across the ground with a broken femur and arm.

They did this to themselves. Adrian told himself and lifted them all into the air before slamming them into the ground as hard as he could. It was a strange feeling, to be concentrated on so many people and then to have them simply vanish.

He didn't need nor want to look back into the street. They were dead, no doubt about that crossed his mind. With no one around to see him, he ran like he did so many years ago.