Of Wolves And…
By: K.D.

	I love rhinos.

	I mean to say, rhinoceroses are really great. There’s certainly nobody else I’d rather have watching my back if the situation calls for careening through a horde of bad guys, or for breaking a door clean off its hinges. Among their positive traits, it’s no secret that their pain tolerance is through the roof – they’re more or less unbreakable through physical torture, and they never back down when the bullets start flying.

	But let’s be honest here. No rhino is going to become a famous rocket scientist, if you catch my drift. 

	“A hypothetical situation for you,” I said, leaning close and propping my knuckles up underneath the base of my muzzle. “Some evil terrorists have barricaded themselves inside of a warehouse, and it’s your mission to neutralize and/or capture them. How would you go about it, just generally speaking?”

	The rhino was a large and muscled creature, with a hardened hide and scars on his face and arms – war wounds of countless fights and physical hardships. Surely he was someone with experience and a mind for battle tactics. Surely, he was someone we could use in our little paramilitary squad.

	His rough face scrunched up tightly in thought. Or, at least, I hoped it was in thought. “I’d…” he dragged out the word, apparently struggling to find more to say, but failing.

	A colleague of mine sitting to my side – a draconid called Kraz – stared down at the table, not even bothering to hide his annoyance. He ran his hands slowly over his dark green, scaly snout and through the thick, white, quill-like hair on the top of his head, whispering to himself all the while. I couldn’t hear, but it was always the same thing, “Don’t say ‘Storm the front,’ don’t say ‘Storm the front’…”

	I had known Kraz for a long time. Draconids are a rare race – think “dragon”, and then have that dragon stand on two legs, like your average anthro. He doesn’t have wings, functional or otherwise, but to hold that against him would be a dire mistake. He’s always been an enigma to me, one moment sarcastic and laid back, the next moment, a stoic, ruthless commando, and the next moment, something else entirely. It was a good thing that he was on my side.

	My attention turned back to the rhino. “I’d bust in through the front and shoot ‘em all,” he finally said, smiling confidently.

	Kraz, still staring at the table, clenched his fists, apparently unable to decide whether to laugh or cry. I gave him a firm kick in the shin to get him to stop. The rhino didn’t seem to notice anything wrong at all; he just looked at me expectantly.

	 Luckily, I was a little better at keeping composure. “Thank you for taking the time to come here,” I told him. “We have a lot of applicants to consider, so we’ll let you know what we decide.”

	The rhino nodded in understanding, and an uncomfortable silence followed.

	“You can go now,” I said.

	“Oh, right,” the rhino said, standing up and pausing, looking around for the door, finding it, sauntering to it slowly, fumbling with the door handle, and finally managing the difficult task of exiting the room. Kraz and I stared at each other for a moment.

	 “Let him know what we decide?” He echoed to me incredulously. “Where’d you get that one from, Chief? He didn’t even give us his name.”

	I leaned back in my chair and put my booted feet on the desk, linking my fingers behind my head. “Oh, darn. I guess we have no way to call him in case we need someone whose prime strategy is charging headfirst into danger,” I said wistfully.

	Kraz only shook his head at me. “This is such a waste of time. I’m not going to sit around for however many more weeks just to finally get someone who’s ‘acceptable’,” he complained. “The three of us usually end up carrying all the weight anyway.”

	By “three”, Kraz was referring to himself, me, and the third member of our team who deigned not to help us screen applicants – a lizard by the name of Jeraax: a reserved technician, engineer, tinker, and inventor. Kraz was right, in a way – even a gear-head (and I say that with the utmost of respect) like Jeraax was better in a fight than most of the random people we hired.

	“You don’t have to sit here with me,” I said, giving him a sly little grin. “It’s my call that we get a fourth, after all, so I’ll listen to all the boring and absurd applicants myself. You can go extort fair maidens from innocent hamlets, or something.”

	That changed his attitude in a hurry. “Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you?” he said. “No, I don’t think so, Boss. I have to be here to stop you from doing something embarrassing, like hiring a rhino. I know how much you love rhinos.”

----------

	Kraz did stop me from doing something embarrassing, but at the same time, he stopped me from hiring anyone at all. If you asked him, he'd say it was for the best – that few had the battle-savvy to truly handle the kinds of jobs we tended to take on. While I wanted to disagree, it was undeniable that our fourth members, no matter who they were, tended to not stick around for too long… for various reasons.

	We wasted most of the day on sparse and fruitless interviews, not that we had anything else to waste time on. There wasn't much call for mercenaries in the modern world, and the possibilities were cut even shorter when one considered our most common jobs: only the most unusual and high-risk missions across the world that nobody else could take care of. Rarely did anyone like to admit they were in over their heads and ask for outside aid.

	To our benefit, at least, those jobs tended to pay extremely well. We could afford to buy the best in paramilitary gear, all the gadgets we could ever want, and still have enough left over to subsist entirely on whatever might be on sale at the penny-pinchers’ grocery store. 

	It was late in the day, and we hadn't gotten a job in about three months. That was the usual swing of things, but we were also running short on cash. Sure, if we were desperate, we could probably get jobs as something that required a bit of muscle, or as survivalist or firearm instructors, or something. But, if at all possible, we wanted to avoid that. Even we had our limits.

	Every evening, I searched for – as Kraz would put it – people who need help. We ran a website that openly advertised our “services”, although it understandably got very few takers. International news occasionally contained some promising leads for me to pursue... although most led to dead-ends of people unwilling or unable to pay the fee we  needed to keep ourselves fed.

	But that night, there was a very interesting e-mail in my inbox. I sent a reply, and received another message almost right away. It was the rare opportunity that we were constantly on the lookout for.

	I couldn't wait to tell Kraz what I had found.

----------

	“Got us a catch,” I said as I entered our 'lounging room'. It seemed that I caught Kraz doing just that; he straightened up abruptly.

	I raised my voice to say, “Jeraax, get in here.” There was a short clatter from his workshop, and our lizard friend appeared through the doorway, looking his usual indifferent self.

	A bit about Jeraax: we call him a lizard, but a more appropriate phrase might be a “reptile of ambiguous ancestry”, or, if you prefer the pejorative, a “mongrel”. I would say he looks most like an iguana with a little bit of komodo and chameleon, with shades of green and brown scales, along with spats of faint orange markings. He’s pretty darn versatile when it comes to anything electronic, computerized, or mechanical, and isn’t too bad with a submachine gun either.

	As for myself? Well, what about myself? I’m just your average, boring, everyday light grey-furred wolf that keeps some whacked-out reptilian company… and I like it. Although my fur is thick, I like to keep it nice and trim without any of that “shaggy mane” business – I always strive to look and act the part of the polite, consummate professional. Being grisly and macabre can wait until you’re actually in a firefight.

	“It's taken you long enough,” Kraz grumped, with a tone maybe-approaching sarcasm. “What is it this time, Chief? Someone's cat got stuck in a tree? Some young'un minotaur bullying some other kids? Or – I got it – slaying another one of those non-law-abiding dragons with the liberal use of modern weaponry?”

	“Kraz... a minotaur bully?” I asked. “That was terrible.” He just shrugged.

	“Luckily,” I continued, slow and pointedly, “we've got something completely normal and innocuous.”

	“Oh no,” Kraz said, rather blandly.

	“Yeah, it seems that there's been a recent abundance of kidnappings in a rural little town popularly known by the name of Gold Valley. A lot of people wandering around outside late at night have turned up missing, apparently without a trace. Last night, the daughter of one of the wealthier ... ah ... 'business owners' disappeared. All of a sudden,  there are some pretty hefty rewards for the safe return of the victims.”

	Kraz leaned back in his chair, lacing his fingers behind his head and looking very cross. “Morrik, I know we need the money and all, but since when are we detectives?”

	“Have a little faith in your furry friend,” I said, giving him a wolfish grin. “The locals have already determined where most of the people have gone missing, and they looked for clues. They're positive that the perp – or perps – are hiding out in a really old and long-since decommissioned military bunker. Problem is, the front door is a foot of solid steel, and the lock is electronic. They can't get in.”

	Jeraax crossed his arms and leaned back against the wall, but said nothing. Bypassing the lock would be a heck of a lot more covert than making a hole in the door, and we'd need him for that.

	Kraz sat up a little straighter, obviously a little more interested now. “So, aside from how suicidal it is to be assaulting a military bunker, what's the inevitable complication?” he asked.

	I sighed. My e-mail correspondent, by my prodding, had told me everything he knew: not much. “It's just weird,” I said. “Random kidnappings, with no apparent preference in age, race, anything, and with no demands, ransom money or otherwise. Nobody has any hint as to who could be behind all of this.”

	For a moment, all three of us were silent. Jeraax finally spoke up. “When do we leave?”

	I grinned. “Tomorrow morning, nice and early.”

 ----------

	Kraz helped me get our gear ready that evening. It was the usual affair for an indoor mission: our normal tactical outfits, silenced SMGs, and a small variety of grenades and explosive charges for each of us. Jeraax supplied his own gadgetry for the technical side of things; we didn’t need to worry about that.

	Kraz paused in the middle of loading one of our bags. “Say, Chief. What kind of armor do you think we should wear?”

	It was a fair question. A lighter Kevlar vest gave us more mobility if speed was an issue, but a heavier one gave us better survivability in a worst-case scenario. When it came to tight corridors, however, I thought the answer was obvious.

	“Since our intel is limited, we don’t know how many tangos there are going to be, or what kind of weapons they’re carrying, or how many alarms we’re going to set off in just getting near the place,” I listed off. “I think we should use the heaviest vests we’ve got, unless you had another idea.”

	“An idea? Oh, no, heavy vests are fine,” he said. “I just wanted to be clear on our strategy here – I mean, it sounds an awful lot like we’re going to ‘storm the front’. You know, all guns-blazing like.”

	I gave him an overly-melodramatic shrug. “It’s really just too bad that we don’t have a storming-the-front expert on hand, who might be able to give us a few tips. We’ll just have to improvise, my friend.”

	Kraz scoffed. “That’s why I love this job. We do nothing but improvise.”

----------

	It was a dull and uneventful affair to catch our plane ride, fly to the airport nearest to Gold Valley, and drive us and our gear the rest of the way in a rental car. Of course, considering our line of work, we took every dull and uneventful moment we could get. It was mid-afternoon by the time we made it to the town.

	The climate of Gold Valley was rather arid, with hot, dry air and endless, flat scrubland of earthy tan and yellow shades stretching in every direction, save for the occasional sad tree. Fortunately, our air-conditioned car protected us nicely from the harsh elements.

The town itself – if it could have rightfully been called a town – was a haphazard scattering of various small buildings placed around dirt roads with no apparent rhyme or reason to their organization: a shack here, a diner there… as if the city planners, if they even existed, had simply stopped caring after a few hours on the job.

	“Nice town, huh?” Kraz said, watching the scenery pass by. “I can just see how this place gets its name – it’s practically oozing with wealth and opulence.”

	“Yeah, wouldn’t you know that I’m actually more concerned with trying to find the place where we’re meeting our employer?” I said, trying to compare my blatantly untruthful map with the lack of visible landmarks. “They really need to invest in some street signs around here.”

	“Hey Jeraax, don’t you have a fancy GPS widget or something?” Kraz asked.

	“I didn’t bring it because it only works outdoors, and for some reason I thought we’d be inside a bunker at some point,” Jeraax said from the backseat. “Can’t you just ask somebody where this guy’s office is?”

	“The boring-but-practical approach it is, then,” I said.

	It took a couple minutes of slow driving to actually find a pedestrian on the streets, but I eventually spotted someone. He was a somewhat-muscled fox wearing loose trousers and a white muscle shirt, and was holding a large, tan backpack. Spots of dust and dirt covered his clothes and orange fur, as though he had just gone jogging in a sandstorm.

	The fox slowed his pace and regarded me with a sullen expression when he noticed that I had pulled our car up next to him on purpose. “Pardon me, sir,” I called out to him. “Do you know where we might find the office of Mr. Morgan – the notable businessperson in this town?”

	The fox stared at me for a moment with that unwavering, irritated look. I supposed that he simply might not have known, or maybe he was in a bad mood and didn’t feel like answering innocent questions. After studying us for another moment, the fox pointed in the direction opposite where he was walking. “Five blocks that way, turn right, and go on for a bit. It’s a big place. You can’t miss it.”

	“Thank you, sir,” I said, and wasted no time flooring the gas pedal..

	Kraz grinned in his toothy draconic way as the fox disappeared in the distance behind us. “At least the people are as cheery as the scenery,” he commented.

	“Oh, yeah,” I said. “This place would be great for a vacation – keeps you from getting too happy and relaxed.”

	“You two are insane, you know,” Jeraax chimed in.

	Kraz and I just laughed. 

----------

	We actually saw the place from quite some distance: a dominating, uncommonly squarish building, walls painted completely white, and giant blue letters above the front door spelling out, “Morgan Gold Valley Co.” Compared to the drab landscape and run-down shacks scattered about, it was like seeing a king’s lavish throne in the middle of a second-hand furniture store.

	“If I didn’t know any better, I’d say that thing almost looks modern,” Jeraax said dryly.

	“Yeah, looks that way,” I said, pulling the car alongside a few other parked vehicles. “Only one way to find out for sure.”

	We exited the car and entered the building through its fancy revolving door. In an instant, it was like the near-desert outside didn’t even exist. Powerful overhead lights illuminated the sterile, hospital-like interior, fully carpeted in grey, and with pristine walls lined with framed news articles and typical large-business “motivational” posters preaching nonsense.

	However, all of this did nothing to hide the fact that the place was dead. A dozen or so empty folding chairs lined the walls to our left and right, and ahead, sitting behind a huge, receptionist-style desk, was a single, tired-looking employee – a badger, I recognized quickly by the characteristic stripes running through his black and white fur. Some doors with translucent windows appeared to lead to separate offices, but only one office had the lights on within.

	Mentally flicking my internal professionalism switch to “on”, we walked up to the badger’s desk all square-shouldered and businesslike. I cleared my throat loudly, and the badger looked up, eyes darting covertly between me and a (normally) physically-intimidating Kraz with complete lack of emotion. 

“Yes?” he asked tiredly. The flat part of the desk in front of him held a computer monitor and keyboard, along with many stacks of folders and papers, and with more than a few pens and pencils in every corner. It was a neat freak’s nightmare.

	“My name is Morrik, and these are my colleagues,” I said, gesturing slightly toward my two colleagues. “We need to meet with Mr. Morgan about a… job.”

	The badger eyed us suspiciously for a moment more before reaching over and flicking a few papers off of a previously hidden intercom and pushing a button on it. “Mr. Morgan,” he droned. “There are visitors here to see you about the kidnappings.”

	It struck me that the badger was a least a little insightful to figure out what we were really here for, even when I had only said “job”. Then again, the three of us probably weren’t their usual sort of employees.

	“Send them in,” a gruff voice said through the intercom.

	The receptionist pointed at the office door with lights on. “Just go through there. Mr. Morgan is waiting for you,” he said, and immediately pretended to get back to work on his computer.

----------

	Morgan’s office was much the same as the rest of the building: square, impossibly pristine, and with those same damn motivational posters on the walls. Sitting at a desk near the far wall was the Boss himself: Morgan was a wolf with jet black fur, groomed at a moderate length, with the color offset only by his piercing, icy blue eyes.

It wasn’t exactly what I expected the head honcho of a wealthy business to look like. Or… maybe it was precisely what the head honcho of a wealthy business should have looked like. I wasn’t quite sure.

As we came in through the door, Morgan glared at us with that same unimpressed stare we had been getting from everyone all day. It was really starting to irk me; usually at least someone would be a little intimidated by Kraz, what with him being a draconid and all. Heck, he scared me at times, and I had been working with him for years.

“There’s only three of you?” Morgan demanded in a harsh tone, skipping the pleasantries.

“Yes, sir. Morrik, Kraz, and Jeraax, at your service,” I said, motioning to each of us in turn.

He seemed very agitated over this fact, as evidenced by some twitching of his eyebrows and gnashing of his teeth. He sputtered, upset, “But, the fee you charge –“

“Is well spent,” Kraz said forcefully. “We’re not new to this – you can put a little more trust in us. If we were failures, we’d be dead ten times over.”

The hostility level in the office rose about ten degrees. Or maybe the room just had really poor ventilation, and cramming four people into it was just asking for trouble. Nevertheless, as much as I liked Kraz’ straightforward method of negotiating, sometimes a gentler hand was needed.

“So, we need some time to prepare, and we’ll make our move this evening,” I continued smoothly. “We could use any extra information you might have on the bunker we’re going into, and we’d also like to work with the local police.”

Morgan, however, still couldn’t seem to believe that we were for real, and not in a good way. His muzzle scrunched in at least a dozen different ways over two-dozen seconds, but at some point, he probably remembered that he did actually hire us, for better or worse.

“Fine,” he said, bitterly. “Get Flynn to help you with what you need – er, he’s the badger out there.” He flicked a hand at the door.

I nodded. It was evident that he didn’t want to talk anymore, so we made our way out the door: Kraz and Jeraax stepped out first, but I stood on the doorway to say one more thing.

“Mr. Morgan,” I said. “I promise you now: We will save your daughter.”

Without waiting for a reaction, I turned away and left.

----------

	Kraz stopped me before I took more than a couple steps. “What was all that about, Chief?” he asked. “Did you seduce his mate at the last wolf pack meeting?”

	I gave a short chortle at that, then shook my head and shrugged. “He seemed so much nicer over e-mail. He’s probably just on edge because of what’s happened. Nothing we can do about it except to do our job.”

	Jeraax chipped in, observing in his usual laid-back tone, “When it’s someone else’s kids going missing, you say the police will check into it. When it’s yours that are involved, you want an army battalion to scour the countryside, yeah?”

	“Psh!” Kraz waved a claw dismissively. “We can do whatever any battalion can do, and we can do it better.”

	“You’re not thinking big enough,” I said, grinning. “With you on our side, Kraz, we could take on the world… and win.”

	“Aww, Boss,” Kraz said, sounding embarrassed, but likely faking it. “If the skin on my face wasn’t so thick, you’d probably see me blushing right now.”

----------

	Any time you see a fictional vigilante-type on TV or in the theater, it’s always the same thing. They’re tough customers, armed to the teeth, and ready to perform any task to sate their endless greed for reward money. They always seem to be in either a bar or a dramatic firefight, and, on occasion, in a bar during a firefight.

	The reality is, we don’t have enough money to waste it in bars, and the fighting only comes after a lot of talking.

	It was a predictably boring affair to get ourselves properly situated in the town. A hotel room had to be booked, our gear had to be unpacked and readied, and I needed to get the exact details on the situation we were entangling ourselves in. For that, Flynn got me an appointment with the local chief of police.

	I learned that the chief and his officers were a good, able bunch. When it came to keeping the general peace and dealing with the aftermath of the occasional drunken fistfight, they were all over it.

	Their detectives had done well to figure out that the kidnappers were hiding in a decades-old military bunker. But they had no SWAT unit. They simply weren’t trained nor equipped to either siege or assault the place. With each day that passed, they feared for the lives of those imprisoned within, and what the cost might be if an assault failed.

	In a spot of good luck, they had actually gotten ahold of the bunker’s floor plans from the archives of whatever governing body that had, once upon a time, laid claim to the thing

	The bunker was small and simple, like a scout post, supply storage, or a staging area. The floor plans showed an entrance hallway leading to a common room, which then branched off to food and munitions storage, a barracks-like room, and another for planning, communications, and whatever else the officers needed.

	It was early evening by the time I took all of this information back to Kraz and Jeraax at our hotel room to go over the details. “The chief and some of his people are going to camp outside the entrance for us and guard it,” I said. “Our main objectives are to rescue the kidnapped civilians and, uh, ‘bring to justice’ anyone and everyone responsible for this mess. Once we have things under control, the local police will move in and take care of the rest.”

	Kraz stared at the copy of the floor plans I had brought. “I assume that ‘bringing to justice’ is a euphemism for ‘we don’t care if they’re dead or alive’, right?”

	“That’s right,” I replied. “I got the vibe that they’d prefer ‘dead’, but they’ll lock up anyone we capture alive for a very long time. And we’ll need someone alive if we need to interrogate them. The dead don’t talk, after all.”

	“Unfortunate, that,” Kraz said. “So, what’s the plan, Boss?”

	I frowned and crossed my arms very theatric-like. “There you go with that ‘Boss’ thing again. Why are you always pegging this on me? I think you should come up with the plan this time, or else you’re going to be totally helpless after I die a horrible death one of these days.”

	Kraz did kind of a funny little shrug, rolling his eyes and mumbling something I couldn’t fully hear.

	Our little act managed to goad Jeraax into speaking up. “You two!” he groaned, annoyed. He pointed at the map to punctuate as he spoke, “How ‘bout we bust in, check the side rooms, and then go into the Comm. Room here? Keep it fast and simple.”

	Kraz and I shared a short glance. “Eh, seems a good a plan as any,” I said. “Let’s get suited up – the police chief is ready to get this thing started as soon as we are.”

----------

	We drove to a point about 100 meters away from the bunker door, moving the rest of the way on foot slowly, scouting for sentries or cameras that would betray our plans. The bland, arid landscape seemed ill-equipped to provide any concealment for such things, so it seemed that they didn’t even try – we found nothing. 

	The officers accompanying us took positions behind and around the few lonely and obvious trees and bushes around, and we moved up to the bunker entrance. It was hidden pretty well: a deep hole dug into a small hill, looking much like a giant anthill or miniature volcano, led straight to a 5ft. tall metal door. From a distance, it’d be impossible to spot – whoever discovered it must have been considerably perceptive or lucky.

	As we had been informed, the door was electronically locked – by a keypad, to be precise. Jeraax quickly got to work in circumventing it, using all manner of pries and widgets to bridge the gaps between brute force and computer hacking. Or something like that, anyway – his specialty never was my forté.

	About twenty seconds passed in silence. Given that our lizard comrade hadn’t yet defeated the lock, I knew we were in for a bit of a wait. “Hey, Kraz,” I said quietly. “A question for ya’.”

	“Yeah?”

	“You dragons live a pretty long time, right?” I said. “I mean, it’s hundreds of years before you’re even considered to be ‘old’, or so I hear.”

	He sighed with a roll of his eyes. He didn’t much like being called a dragon, but I was allowed to poke a bit of fun considering how often he called me ‘Boss’. “Yeah, that’s right, Chief,” he replied with a light nod. “It varies a little, and draconids don’t generally have the same lifespan as dragons… but we’re ‘up there’.”

	“So, if you live so long, why enter a career with some of the biggest occupational hazards ever?” I pressed. “I mean, someone gets lucky and shoots you in the head, and that longevity means nothing, just like that.”

	Kraz made a sound somewhat resembling a tsk. He faced me, bearing something of an incredulous look. “We get every opportunity to chat: back at our apartment, in the plane, in the car, the hotel room, and now you want to talk philosophy with me? Here?”

	I did my best to shrug indifferently. “But why not be a librarian or something? Dragons seem to always be into sitting around and reading through dusty books, so why not you? Surely you’d live longer in the grand scheme of things.”

	“Hah! If you call that ‘living’. I sure don’t.” Kraz said, looking back to the closed door. After a pause, he said, “Fair’s fair. What about you?”

	“Oh, what about me?” I said in my best dismissive tone. “I’m already a crazy old wolf. Going on suicide missions is all I know how to do.”

	That got him to turn his head again. The draconid looked at me incredulously with his those razor-sharp golden eyes. “Old? Like hell you are,” he said.

	“All the time I’ve spent with you has aged me rapidly,” I explained. “Just look at all the grey hair on my head.” Before Kraz could try and think of a way to refute my incredible logic, I addressed our resident hacker. “Yo, Jeraax. Dealing with one of those state-of-the-art security systems? Are we going to have to blow the door open?”

	The normally-reserved lizard chuckled mirthfully, but quietly, mindful that we were still trying to keep the stealth. “If it was state-of-the-art, I would’ve have broken through a long time ago,” he said. “Just give me another minute.”

	It was a minute that passed in silence, but the door did unlock. It slid open to the side, revealing a narrow, dimly-lit hallway to another distant door. For a moment, none of us moved; I had almost expected a hail of bullets, or at least an alarm, to have greeted us immediately. 

	“Draco, take point. Quiet now… and serious,” I said, figuring now was as good a time as any to switch from our real names to our callsigns.

	“I’m always serious,” Kraz said.

	In near-silence we crept to the next door down the hall, our boots making only the tiniest of clanks on the metal floor. It was another door that would slide to the side, and this one wasn’t locked.

	 “If there’s anyone in there, it’d be nice to take them alive,” I reminded Kraz. He replied with a small nod and lifted a flashbang from his belt. “Whenever you’re ready.”

	Kraz, more than ready to turn stealth into action, released the pin from his grenade and pulled the door open halfway. “Yo! Pizza delivery!” he shouted into the next room, pitching the flashbang through the door with a downward slant as such that it bounced and clattered noisily, attracting attention – and therefore eyes. Three seconds later, the expected blinding flash and thundering shockwave erupted from just beyond our sight, immediately followed by a slightly more distant cry of pain and surprise.

	Kraz leaned over and peeked through the doorway, already grabbing a sting grenade from his belt – another non-lethal type that would explode in a hurricane of painful rubber balls. “Two tangos. Throwing one more, then move in,” he told us.

	Moving halfway into the doorway this time for better aim, Kraz tossed the grenade into the room and immediately pulled himself back. Another deafening explosion followed, as did a more definite wailing of pain… but not a death cry.

	Jeraax and I moved in immediately, guns at the ready. The common room was a brightly-lit and spacious area, long and wide enough to contain three medium-sized rectangular tables with a dozen chairs between them. The walls were lined with tall metal cabinets, and three doors across the room led to different areas, accurate to our map. Tiny rubber balls no more than a millimeter each in diameter, were scattered across the floor – the aftermath of our sting grenade.

	More to the point, two anthros in the center of the room were sprawled out, half on the floor and half on their chairs, groaning and squirming as the sudden shock and pain of a point-blank stinger took crippling effect.

	The door directly across from us – the one leading to what our map had said was a barracks room – slid open. The muscled anthro in a white sleeveless shirt and tan cargo shorts needed only one glance between his injured friends and us before he went for the gun on his hip, but too slowly. 

When I’m in battle, I don’t distinguish between species – only between “seconds away from killing me” and “not seconds away from killing me”. By time-trained reflex, I had already raised my submachine gun, taken aim, and fired a burst only just after the gun was gripped in his hand. The bullets spat forth in near-silence from my suppressed weapon, finding their mark and making the target topple over backward, lethally wounded. I expected someone else to pop out and try to take a shot at me, but instead, there was a frantic shout and the door slid closed again.

Nothing else happened for another few seconds, giving me the time to finally breathe again. We had to move quickly when hostages were on the line.

“Draco, Iggy, clear that room,” I ordered, and quickly they obliged, moving quickly to take position at the door. I, too, moved up to make sure our two incapacitated foes didn’t try any funny business. They had guns on hip holsters, which I liberated and tossed to a far corner.

“Take the left, Iggy. Open the door just a little,” Kraz said to Jeraax, taking up position to the right, ready to fire.

Jeraax opened the door a crack, and the sound of a gunshot boomed throughout the enclosed bunker – the enemy’s fire, since all three of us had silenced weapons. I saw Kraz flinch, grimacing slightly, but he returned fire into the room. The noises of various shouts and the ricochet of metal on metal overlapped  through the crack in the door.

“Open the door!” Kraz commanded. Jeraax complied right away, yanking the door fully open. 

Immediately, Kraz pushed on the offensive, firing shots from his weapon in rapid succession, darting into his targets’ views like lightning, only to stop immediately and take aim before they could react. There were no more audible gunshots – only the loud clicking of Kraz’ gun as he drained his weapon’s entire magazine on whoever was unlucky enough to be in his way. Then… nothing.

“Idiots,” he commented loudly to me, turning away from the room, tossing away his empty mag and loading a new one. “Every single one of them had guns drawn.”

“Are you hurt?” I asked. It looked like he had taken a hit right when the door opened.

Kraz rapped a fist on his chest. “Bulletproof. Shall we check the next room?” 

While they took their position, the two thugs on the floor, with their adrenaline starting to take effect, were squirming a little less. Their heads were probably getting to be clear enough that they were starting to think about standing up and trying to tackle me in blind vengeance for their comrades. “Move and you die, just like your friends,” I said, fully meaning it. They stopped moving.

Kraz and Jeraax checked the storage room in the same way as the other one, but no shots needed to be fired. “It’s clear, Alpha,” Kraz called out.

Noting that the third door had a keypad next to it, much the same as the entrance, I said to Jeraax, “Iggy, try the door.”

He hurried over to the door, only to immediately call out, “It’s going to take another few minutes without the code. I’ll get started on it…” He trailed off, hinting that it’d be better if we found a faster way. Time was still an issue.

Kraz had moved next to the thugs, and he arched an eyebrow at me. With the thugs facedown and unable to see my visual cue, I gave the draconid a slight nod.

“Hey, Alpha,” Kraz said loudly. “How long does it take to die of dehydration?”

“Three days,” I answered, “but you’ll wish you were dead after two.”

Kraz crouched down, pushing one of his knees down on the back of the thug nearest him, so as to speak a little more quietly and still be heard. “Listen up, you two. Normally, people in our position would get all panicky and say something like, ‘Tell us the code to that door or we’ll shoot you in the head.’ We’re not like that.

“You see, we can open that door with or without you, so I’d advise you to think of your long-term health. Think about this offer very carefully: Tell us the code to that door, or we’ll tie up your arms and legs and just leave you here.”

	Kraz paused to let the seriousness of the idea sink in. The thug closer to me spoke up, doing a fairly good job at pretending to sound brave, “We don’t know the code, damn foreigners…”

	It had to be a total lie. Even if they hadn’t been explicitly told the code, curiosity would have forced someone to covertly watch whenever it was entered. And then after one person knew? Well, what good is a secret if you don’t share it with your friends?

	I nodded to Kraz for him to proceed. He lowered his voice to that strange, gentle-yet-menacing hissing voice that only dragonkind and snakes can manage to do quite right. That’s good, because it creeps the hell out of me every time I hear it.

	“Boredom and starvation will be the least of your worries. After a full day without a sip of water, your throat will be as dry as a bone. A day and a half? Your skin will start to shrivel like a raisin. I make it sound cute and funny… you’ll wish it was a joke after you stop sweating and start to overheat in what you thought was a comfortable room temperature. Your own fur will turn your body into a pressure cooker by the end of day two.
 
“Every second of the third day will be agony as you become delirious, drifting between nightmares when you’re unconscious and seizures when you’re awake. And the worst part? Your supply room is just over there. The water you so desperately need is so close, yet just beyond your reach. You’ll beg for mercy, but we don’t care. The people of Gold Valley don’t care. You’re trash. You’re worthless. You kidnapped their children. Tell us the code.”

The two thugs were now petrified in fear. It was probably better that I couldn’t see their faces from where I was standing; it might’ve given me nightmares after two days. The one under Kraz’ knee spoke up, a little beyond defeated, “The code’s 1809.”

Jeraax overheard, entered the code, and nodded to me vigorously. It worked.

“Good boy,” Kraz said in his normal voice, patting the thug lightly on the head. “Was that really so tough?”

	Obviously, we didn’t hesitate to kill in the course of our duties, but would we really keep to our promise and sentence someone to die of dehydration? Probably not, but they didn’t have to know that. An exceptionally foolish rent-a-thug might be willing to risk death in the heat of the moment, but none to date were willing to suffer three days for a post-mortem paycheck.

“Stay here. Shoot them if they move,” I said to Kraz, and hurried to join Jeraax in front of the now-accessible command room. 

----------

	It was another long corridor leading to the command room. Had the resistance we encountered been a little more tactical and tenacious, it would have been a great way for us to get peppered by a hailstorm of bullets and grenades without any opportunity to take cover.

	The final door revealed the command room, rather anticlimactic as far as aesthetics went. Small beds, lockers, closets, and a desk were visible against various corners and walls, and a small table was off to the side. Yet two more doors to the left and right seemed to lead elsewhere still.

	I didn’t see any hostages being held at gunpoint. In fact, I didn’t see anyone except for a tan- and beige-furred wolf standing some meters in front of us as Jeraax and I entered. I didn’t know what I really expected a criminal mastermind to be wearing, but I probably wouldn’t have guessed loose sporting shorts, a T-shirt a couple sizes too large for his slim frame, and open-toed sandals.

	He held his hands behind his back; I suspected a concealed weapon. This wolf wasn’t like the others… he could have been the ringleader. Unless he put my life in imminent danger, it was better to take him down without bloodshed… so he could answer properly for his crimes.  

	“Iggy, keep a lookout,” I said to Jeraax, who responded with a little salute, unspeaking. To the wolf, I took aim at his heart and ordered, “You, put your hands up and get down on the floor.”

	The wolf scoffed and rolled his eyes. “Oh, please,” he said, far too calm and condescending. “You aren’t going to shoot me; you want to catch me alive. Why don’t you just drop the sheepdog façade?”

	“Actually, my employers weren’t specific if they wanted you in a body bag or not,” I said. “Now, get down on the floor.”

	Still keeping his hands behind his back, the wolf shrugged, incompliant. “Maybe that’s true, but you obviously care, or else you would’ve killed me already, just like you and your friends did to all my employees.”

	He knew what we did to the guards, and he knew I had friends, plural? Maybe there were hidden surveillance cameras in the other rooms. It would explain how he was standing where he was now, prepared and poised for us. I considered for a moment that he might’ve been trying to stall us and waste time, but I couldn’t imagine what for. Maybe he just wanted a chat.

	He had called my bluff anyway – I didn’t exactly make a habit of shooting unarmed targets. Throw a live sting grenade next to him, maybe, but not shoot him. “Why did you kidnap innocent people?” I demanded.

	“I’m something of a scientist – an experimenter,” he said, maintaining the casual, conversational tone. “I needed volunteers... and I ‘acquired’ some.”

	I tightened the grip on my weapon. This was potentially worse news for the hostages anything else we could have considered. “What did you do to them?” I asked.

	“I’m so glad you asked,” the wolf said with a hint of a smile. Smartly not making any sudden movements, he revealed what he had been holding behind his back – a small vial, maybe with about an ounce of capacity, filled with a strange, clear liquid with an almost-neon orange tint. “I’ve developed a formula that allows the consumer to undergo a quite… extraordinary transformation.”

	“What are you talking about?”

	The wolf hmm’ed at me, frowning, “Oh, how can I explain? You think you have such power with your guns and explosives. But our more animalistic counterparts? They do not need such tools. Their speed, their grace, their power… is natural.” He punctuated the last sentence with the clenching of his free hand.

	“Yeah?” I asked. “So, how ‘bout I drop my gun, you drop your crazy-ass potion, and we settle this like animals?”

	“Tempting, if I was an idiot,” he said. “Obviously, a soldier such as yourself would know how to fight without a weapon. ‘Martial arts’; ‘self-defense techniques’ – nothing except crutches for our weak bodies!”

	It was just insanity talking. There was no way I could believe what he was implying. “So, if one of us drinks that, we’ll start drooling and walking around on four legs,” I concluded sarcastically.

	“Fool!” the wolf said, his voice suddenly possessing a sharp edge. “Each individual formula only works on one species… but if you or I drank this? We would become wolves … True wolves.” 

It was difficult to argue with someone so insane, and I was running out of things to say. He paused for a moment of thought. “I’d quite like to meet your dragon friend in the other room – a rare breed, yes?” His next words were just barely above a whisper. “I wonder what his transformation would be like.”

	“Alright, I’ve had enough of you,” I said as harshly as I could manage. “Get down on the floor, or we’ll put you there.”

	“If this is how it must be… then my only regret is that I didn’t have enough time to develop a reverse formula.” He gave me a flicker of a wolfish grin, removed the stopper of the vial he was holding, and gulped down the contents in a fiendishly quick motion.

	Just as swiftly, I braced myself to fire, my trigger finger coming so very close to contracting fully. But the wolf before me … the criminal ringleader and primary target of our mission … collapsed to his knees, clutching his stomach.

	By my perception, it seemed like time had stopped for everyone except the wolf in front of me, or maybe I had just stopped breathing. It was subtle at first: a reduction in overall size, the shortening of his fingers and toes, but it didn’t take long before I realized what was going on.

	He wasn’t just making things up. He was actually transforming into something else... right before my eyes.

	As the mad scientist squirmed and writhed on the floor, his body continued to change. He still maintained his basic wolfen features, but they became sleeker, subtly more narrow and pointed. His fur, trimmed and well-groomed, bristled into a thicker, unkempt coat. Most prominent of all, however, was that the very bones and joints of his arms and legs forcibly changed their roles: shortening, bending with a series of sick crunches and pops to become fit for four-legged movement. From the grimace on the wolf’s face, it all seemed at least unpleasant, but seemingly not painful.

	With the wolf now as a misshapen freak of a creature, somewhere between anthro and beast, I remembered that I was, in fact, holding a gun. Whatever was happening here, I was still a mercenary. I had been hired to take this bastard down, alive or dead. And yet, I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

	If I had shot him dead, would he have stayed like that? Like a monstrosity stuck halfway between two legitimate forms?

	I looked over to Jeraax, who seemed to be as dumbfounded as I was. He wasn’t going to make any tough choices – not with me, the de facto leader of our little group, standing right here. He noticed me looking at him, and glanced back helplessly. It was my move.

	And it was a move that I just couldn’t make. I just wasn’t willing to shoot an unarmed, unthreatening target. Without any action on my or Jeraax’s part, the ringleader of the Gold Valley kidnappings completed his transformation into his four-legged lupine counterpart – fully genuine to my eyes, if a bit larger than your average wild animal. Now I understood why he wore such unusual clothes; it was easy to quickly shrug out of such loose and oversized garments with his moderately reduced size.

	The animal-wolf gave me a toothy wolfish grin and sprinted away and off to the side, behind the desk next to the wall. Jeraax and I tried to follow (for all the good it would do us), but behind the desk was a small hatch – given that we were in a bunker, probably an emergency backdoor – too small for us to fit through with all our gear. Without knowing where the small tunnel led to, we probably couldn’t stop him of having free range of the countryside.

	At the very least, he wouldn’t be troubling anyone any longer. Animals don’t kidnap and experiment. 

	“I think that’s well-deserving of a ‘Holy crap’.” Jeraax said in his usual mild manner, breaking our silence. I swear, nothing makes that lizard freak out.

	Me? I couldn’t stop shaking.

	“We can worry about what the hell that was later; we’ve still got a mission here,” I reminded him, sounding calmer than I felt. “Come on.”

	We checked a side room adjacent to a key attached to a peg – some kind of holding cell for POWs, I supposed. Only, the present inhabitants weren’t soldiers.

	“Animals…?” Jeraax muttered.

	There were five animals in the single cell: four various mammalian species, and one crocodile, all apparently living in safe – if rather depressing – coexistence in such confined quarters. They all took notice of our entry and stared in our direction, but my eyes were drawn to only one.

	The wolf of the group had pitch-black fur and blue eyes – two particular traits I had seen somewhere else and had not forgotten. Experimentally, grim-faced, I pointed my gun at this wolf, and instantly she cringed.

	“Jeraax, animals don’t know what guns are,” I said slowly. “They don’t cringe when you threaten them with one.”

	Jeraax is a smart lizard. He could put the pieces together. “What was that last thing the wolf said? Something about not having time to make a reverse formula? You think… they’re stuck like this permanently?”

	I lowered my gun. “With the way that bastard was talking, I doubt he’d try to reverse what he was doing,” I said. “No, give him more time and he’d just keep kidnapping, trying to transform more species against their will. Everything he said was just to screw with our heads.”

	Leaving them for now, we checked the other side room – what basically looked to be a chemistry lab. I was more concerned with a rather petite brown-furred mouse female, dressed in a standard lab coat and sitting unobtrusively in a corner, hands covering her eyes.

	“Who are you?” I demanded.

	Her reply was a barely-audible, squeaky stutter. “P-p-please … I just … I just work here. I‘m … I’m just a lab assistant … P-please don’t hurt me…”

	“Can you turn those animals back into people?” I asked.

	She replied with a firm shaking of her head.

	Unfortunate. That aside, this situation was relatively common: civilians working under immoral or criminal situations or pretexts. It was always due to blackmail, threats, or sheer desperation for money. I preferred to err on the side of mercy.

	“This place is about to swarm with police. Stay here if you want to be arrested, or use the escape hatch behind the desk if you like your freedom,” I said; she was certainly small enough to fit through. “We won’t stop you.”

	I turned away and started to walk, grabbing the radio that connected me to the police waiting outside. “This is Entry Team. The area’s clear and the hostages are secure. Please move in now. Over.”

	It was a few seconds before the reply came. “Okay, Entry Team. We’re moving in.”

	I rolled my eyes a little at the blatant disregard for radio protocol. “One more thing,” I said. “The draconid on our team took a bullet. Have him taken to a paramedic right away, by order of his team leader. Over.”

	Another few seconds. “Okay.”

	“What was that?” Jeraax asked curiously. Perceptive lizard, I’m telling you. He wanted to know why I wanted Kraz taken away.

	“There’s some freaky stuff going on here, and that wolf mentioned Kraz specifically in his little tirade,” I said, in full honesty. “I think it’s better if he doesn’t know what’s really been going on here.”

	Jeraax shrugged, as he often does. “Your call, Boss.”

----------

	Morgan charged ahead of any would-be police escorts and up to me. “Where’s my daughter?” he growled from bared teeth.

	“In there. You’ll want this key,” I said, straight-faced.

	Morgan snatched the offered key from my hand and stomped over to the room with the cell, threw open the door… and stopped dead, much as I expected.

	He spun 180° in place, fury on his face. “Is this a joke?” he snapped.

	“I’m afraid not,” I said, trying to find a good tone of voice between placating and forceful. “Your daughter was used as a test subject in an… experiment to turn anthros into animals, probably very soon after she was kidnapped.”

	“And you expect me to believe that?”

	“Take a closer look at the wolf in there.”

	Still seething, he did… and he stopped again, this time for a different reason. His hate and frustration instantly, visibly drained from his posture. He sunk to his knees, staring at the creature that once was … and still was … his daughter, looking back at him with sentient and soulful blue eyes.

	“But, what can I…? How can I…? If she’s like…” the normally-sharp business owner mumbled.

	“You can still give her a good life,” I offered gently.

	Evidently, I should have been forceful when I said that, for Morgan whipped around again, back on his feet and furious once again. “What place is it of yours to say that?!” he snarled. “I’m not paying you for this… this travesty. Get out of my sight!”

	Wordlessly, I obeyed. He was still my employer.

----------

	We drove back to our hotel room. Kraz was waiting for us there, sitting on one of the beds, having already hitched a ride with one of the officers.

	“How’s your injury?” I asked, pre-empting him and keeping up the charade I had started.

	“You bastard,” the draconid replied flatly. “If a small-caliber bullet hits one of the heaviest bulletproof vests in the world, worn by a member of the second-toughest race in the world, what do you think is going to happen?”

	“You can never be too sure, buddy,” I said, trying to sound serious.

	Kraz just looked at me for a moment. We had known each other long enough to know when the other was lying or trying to hide something. Likely, he suspected it, but couldn’t imagine what my reasons were.

	“Whatever,” he said. “Since you called the cavalry in – along with our best friend, Mr. Morgan – I assume everything went well. When do we get our money?”

	I cleared my throat. “Yeah, about that… Morgan made it clear to me that we’re not getting paid.”

	“Damn it,” Kraz sighed, rubbing a hand across his muzzle. “I knew he was the type to stiff us, but I was really hoping that he wouldn’t. You did find the hostages in there, right?”

	“Of course,” I said, grateful to say something at least partially honest for once. “I have no intention to leave without our money. We’ll figure something out.”

	“Yeah, well, I can’t just sit around right now,” Kraz said, emphasizing the point by standing up. “Maybe someone in the town will know how to deal with this joker.”

	“Just one thing,” I said, pulling the car key out of my pocket and offering it to him. “Before you do anything drastic, dangerous, and illegal… tell me. I’ll help out.”

	The draconid gave me a single, solemn nod, took the offered key, and exited silently.

	After Kraz left, Jeraax sighed audibly. With his frequent quietness, it was easy to forget he was there.

	“Something on your mind?” I asked him.

	The lizard shook his head and stared into the nearest wall. “What happened in there, Boss? What did we accomplish?”

	“We stopped a very dangerous person from hurting anyone else,” I said immediately. “Yeah, the Big Bad technically got away, and there are five innocents whose lives are changed forever. Sometimes these things… just don’t work out perfectly. At least we stopped it from getting worse.”

	 He turned to look at me – earnestly, seriously. “So we did good, huh?”

	“Good enough to earn a little time to relax,” I said. “After what we saw … Just knowing that something like that is even possible … This mission is one I’m going to remember for a long time.”

----------

	About an hour later, there was a knock at the door. It wasn’t Kraz.

	“Flynn, what a surprise,” I said, recognizing the badger from Morgan’s office. He was still as tired- and bored-looking as ever. In his hand was a short-handled satchel of simple, practical design. “What’s the occasion?”

	“The police told me about what they found in the bunker,” Flynn said, stepping fully into the room and closing the door behind him. “It sounds like you racked up quite an impressive body count, and even captured two alive.”

	“We try our best,” I said, going for modesty.

	“Look, I don’t know what happened in there, and I don’t want to know,” Flynn continued, speaking very deliberately and choosing his words carefully. “It seems that, due to circumstances beyond your control, you completed your job in a manner that our shared employer, Mr. Morgan, did not expect. Therefore, he decided that you were not to be paid.”

	He didn’t seem to expect a reply, so I let him continue with his speech. “In the interest of not aggravating you and your militarily-inclined comrades, I have decided that you are to be paid for your services. You endangered your lives at our behest, and you deserve compensation.”

	Flynn offered the satchel to me, which I took. It had a surprising bit of heft to it. I opened it up, and inside…? Inside, the satchel was filled with gold nuggets. Carefully, I sifted through the contents. It was no trick – there weren’t any mundane pebbles or other small objects in the mix. The satchel was filled quite generously with genuine gold.

	But I was suspicious about one thing. “How can you get away with doing this?”

	“Because I’m Mr. Morgan’s accountant… among other things,” the badger said blandly. “Gold Valley has one of the most productive gold mines in the world, and Mr. Morgan has a long history of overworking and underpaying his employees. I fudge the records every day to make sure everyone receives a fair sum for their work. Officially, your team is a broken drill that needs to be replaced. Got it?”

	The sheer volume of gold I held could certainly be traded for a substantial amount of funds. Did it match or exceed our fee? Well, there was no way to know for sure at the time, but it was probably good enough. I nodded to the badger. “We appreciate it, Flynn. Thank you.”

	“Good day, then,” he gave Jeraax and me a slight bow, and exited.

----------

	It wasn’t much later before Kraz returned.

	“Morrik!” he said with a mischievous dragon-gleam in his eyes, too excited to say Boss or Chief. “I talked with some of the residents here – they all agree that Morgan is a crook! We could make a plan with the police, something to overthrow this guy…”

	“Kraz!” I shouted to interrupt. “I like insane and desperate plans just as much as you, but take a look at this, first.” I pulled the satchel into view and opened it in front of him. 

Quickly, his demeanor changed to seriousness, and his eyes squinted. “That’s… that’s real,” he said, seemingly by reflex. When it comes to gold, it’s smart to take a dragon’s or draconid’s word for it. 

“And it’s our payment,” I said, closing the satchel again and setting it down. “I know that Morgan is a crook… but the people know it too. This isn’t our fight anymore.”

Unspoken, I also knew that Morgan still had his daughter to care for, who still obviously maintained the sentience and able mind of an anthro. If our actions got Morgan jailed or thrown out of town, what would he do next? He might run out of money, and our thoughtless actions would end up condemning two people to poverty… or worse.

“Let’s just take it easy until we can catch the next plane out of this hellhole, eh?” I said.

Kraz chortled and flashed me a toothy dragon-grin. “Sure thing, Chief. I, for one, am ready to get back to our place and start interviewing rhinos again.”

I shook my head at him. “You really do hate rhinos, don’t you?”

	“What are you talking about?” Kraz asked, sounding hurt. “I love rhinos!”