jeriendhal | Fic: Arc, Chapter 22 (Reply)

“My name is Whitepelt. We’re leaving,” she told him.

“Where’s Red Hydro D2?” he demanded.

She blinked in confusion. “Who?”

“My… my…” he gnashed his teeth in frustration. “My mate, the word is mate, yes?”

“I think so.” Whitepelt thought a moment. She remembered him now. “You’re Black Maintenance D2, right? You were at the meeting with Marturari Greycoat, how did you get away?”

“When the security sweep started I crawled into the air recycling ducts. I told Red to come with me but she stayed to distract the security guards.” He stared at her a long moment, finally recognizing her. “Wait, you’re White Supervisor D6. You introduced Marturari. How did you get away?”

“I didn’t, I escaped later.” The thought occurred to her that if there really was a Holy Den Mother, she was probably damning herself by giving Black D2 half-truths to spare herself from further explanation. If she told him everything at this point she wouldn’t have blamed him for stunning her in the head then grabbing her rifle to finish the job.

“Then you know where they are!” Black D2 put the gun down and shoved the barrier out of his way to get closer to her, several other vulpine pushing forward to listen. “We need you to take us to them!”

“Wait, wait, first tell me what’s going on. What happened here?”

“They took away Red. I hid in the ductwork and when I got back here no one knew what was happening. Supervisor Arsunin just said they were being transferred to another station and told us not to worry about it.”

Arsunin was a Galen supervisor, a couple of tiers above Whitepelt’s former position. She could well see the feather-headed male given out such a curt, uninformative answer. A few days ago she would have accepted it without question, or at least silently. They all would have.

TBC