Jett didn't know how long she stayed there fastened to Karno, convincing herself he was still alive; that she'd really seen what she saw. Eventually her limbs uncoiled, muscles relaxing as the reality set in and she eased herself from the embrace, placing her paws on Karno's shoulders and looking him in the eye.

"You okay?" she asked softly.

"I..." He shuddered, his head flicking sharply to one side as though someone had just poured ice cold water down his spine. "I'm okay. But what..."

"What happened?"

"Yeah."

"You're a wolfkin." Jett shrugged. "Guess the treatment half-worked."

An expression of shame flickered across Karno's face and he averted his gaze, turning his pale yellow eyes to the floor. His shoulders tightened and Jett slid a paw up to the side of his neck, gripping into the thick fur there.

"It's okay," she whispered.

Then the alarm began blaring.

Jett's head snapped up at the sound of the bass throb that made her ears ache. Reluctantly she jerked her paw away from Karno and refocused on the task at hand. The cogs in her mind quickly locked into place, assessing the situation.

"We've got to move," she snapped to her stunned companions, bounding over to the computer rig. "It won't take them long to track down and kill that poor bastard. Then they'll trace him back to this holding area."

"What in the Peace happened back there?" Bronco asked, rolling his shoulder with a grimace. The vulkin was scuffed and bruised, but seemed otherwise unharmed from his close encounter.

"You heard what the braincase said," Rapid grunted as he picked up his axe. "Somthin' went wrong with their little science project – drove the big boy insane."

Gallant nodded shakily. "Side effects of the graft – it must be. Maybe they misjudged it, dug too deep and pulled out a full, unshackled predatory response. That bearkin was feral."

"Enough," Jett snapped, her claws racing across the keys as she accessed the local network of the facility. "So they screwed up – surprise, surprise. We have bigger things to worry about. This ends here, and now." Opening up the rig's operating menu she cobbled together a brute search function to pool all data associated with the Excision project, funnelling it all through this little terminal. It was inelegant, but elegance was a luxury they could not afford right now.

The result was a deluge of files and she started firing through them, searching for the smoking gun that would tear this project apart. Done without Conclave sanction, at least in any official capacity, not matter what else happened here they needed to bring home hard evidence. When proof of just how far-gone the enforcers were reached the other kin in the parliament there would be bedlam.

But she needed to find it first.

None of the easily accessible files yielded anything concrete enough – oblique references to physiological tolerances and characteristics but not much else. Much of the data was encrypted, locked with passcodes and login credentials that she had neither the time nor the inclination to track down. That didn't bother her unduly – she'd never planned on sitting in this wolves' den hacking into their systems for hours on end. That could be done later.

Pulling the block drive from her backpack, she unspooled its jack-port wire and plugged in.

"Okay," she breathed. "Let's steal something." It took a moment for the block-drive to register in the computer's system. Once it was there she set to work, ringing up a host of the most suspicious looking files and grouping them into a download queue. Exhaling, she clicked the button to initiate.

A blink of red text flashed up.

INVALID COMMAND.

Her heart slammed in her chest at the message, her eyes widening. She tried again but the same message pulsed defiantly in front of her.

"What in the...?" Jett shook her head in confusion, dancing her paws over the keyboard in a search for a different pathway to extract the files. However, plunging into the rig's directory she discovered the reason for the setback.

"Peace'n'Fire," she spat in frustration. "I can't pull the data from here."

"What?!"

"The actual file load isn't held in this console." Jett bit her lip, trying to think. "It's... it's like everything we see here is on a read-only basis. The files aren't actually held on this rig. We can't download it from here and we can't look at what's in them without proper access codes."

"Can you hack it?"

"Sure, if I had a few hours." She glared back over her shoulder at Karno, flapping an arm at her surroundings and the blaring alarm. "You think we have that kind of time?"

"Okay, okay. So what do we do?"

Jett shrugged. "Find where files are held." Swivelling in the seat she locked her eyes on the screen, reordering her thoughts. The rigs didn't hold local memory. The sheer volume of data meant that the individual rigs couldn't hold it in their paltry storage banks, which meant the files themselves were being held in some kind of central storage rig. She just had to trace it.

It was a simple matter of tracking the file pathway back through the labyrinth of the system to its origin point. She cocked her head to one side as the screen blinked through several steps until it emerged onto a truly vast directory, with huge trawls of blinking text pouring down the display. A host of numbered options lined the base of the screen, corresponding to different portions of the nexus.

It seemed the facility had the technological equivalent of a brain, a traffic control nerve centre through which all files were funnelled and stored, and from which all subsidiary consoles drew their information. On her screen it took the form of a multi-layered heap of data files, being sorted into levels of depth like sediment. Those lower down held the real data on what the wolfkin were doing out here.

"Right then..." she breathed. "Now where are you in the real world?"

Scrolling through a dozen screens, Jett eventually dredged up an unencrypted orientation floor plan – a simple blocky layout of the general parts of the facility that was thoroughly banal on its own. It did, however, finally give her a sense of the size of this place. Much as she'd suspected the structure visible on the surface was little more than the tip of the iceberg, a processing centre where kin would be funnelled into the cavernous depths below.

"Is that what I think it is?" Karno asked knowingly, leaning in over her shoulder and squinting at the screen. She nodded silently, scrolling through the levels, knowing exactly what she was looking for. Any rig big and powerful enough to process the data that flowed through this place would require massive amounts of cooling, and would need to be in a central location to provide speed of access to all outlets. It also needed to be out of sight and out of mind of the rest of the facility.

Down and down she dug into the schematic until she found what she was looking for. A network of narrow maintenance shafts and crawlways converged on a cylindrical chamber at the base of the complex, sunk a dozen levels below their paws.

"There's the central data core," she said, pointing at it on her screen as the others slowly gathered around her. "Right at the base of the facility. If I can get down there and interface directly with a block drive I can transfer the encrypted files and we can bust them open when we're hell and clear of this place."

"Wait," Gallant exclaimed, finally finding her voice after the encounter with the bearkin. "We can't just leave!"

"What?"

"What about those kin we left fighting for their lives back there? We wouldn't even have gotten this far if they hadn't thrown themselves into the grinder for us. We have to help them."

Karno looked at her sheepishly. "We can't waste this chance, Gallant. If we don't get out of here with that evidence they'll have stuck themselves on a wolfkin claw for nothing."

"And while we're off fighting with the politicians how many more of them do you think will die?" she persisted, her voice gathering strength. "What if the Conclave doesn't do anything?! It might not have been sanctioned but these are still their attack dogs down here."

Jett stiffened, her first instinct driving her to reject Gallant's proposals. She opened her mouth to give the deerkin a firm rebuke, ready to delivery a scathing lecture about the greater good. But she stopped herself. Could she really tell Gallant to think of the big picture? This was personal for them both. The only difference was that Jett knew her family was dead and buried.

Acutely conscious of the alarm still blaring through the facility around them, Jett uttered a silent curse and spun back around in the chair.

"Jett?" Karno asked incredulously.

She didn't look round. "Gallant's right. We have to help them somehow." More commands flew from her claws and into the computer as she searched through the schematic, looking for options.

Jett had helped set up more than one penal system over the course of her 'career'. That experience looked like it was about to come in handy as she hunted through the systems. On the schematic she zeroed in on a series of large rectangular rooms on the eastern side of the complex, spanning three levels that matched the layout of the average prison block. They were labelled as 'NEGATIVE GRAFT RESPONSE – PRIMARY HOLDING'.

To her horror, when she accessed the room's live directory she discovered more than a hundred occupied tanks there, their occupants kept sedated by the automated flow of sedatives, just like the bearkin had been. Reality crushed down on her. How many more test subjects had failed before these? How many had died before they got here? Her skin crawled at the thought.

"That's where they're holding the kin who don't take to the graft," she said quietly, now looking for the last piece of the puzzle. "Locking them up like exhibits until they've learned all they can."

"What do you want to do?"

Jett looked at him and smiled apologetically. "I want to let them out."

"Oh, ya what now?!" Rapid exclaimed. "You really think we need more of those crazies cutting about?"

"It'll keep the wolfkin off our back." She shrugged. "And it'll take their attention off the prisoners."

"How exactly do we do that?" Karno asked, his brow furrowing.

"There are five main transformers managing the power flow in the station." She tapped a section of the schematic with one claw. "Blow this one here. The place is built like a prison block. Without power the emergency fail-safes will kick in to unlock the doors in that section, but it will also shut off the pumps for their chemicals. You saw what happened when the sedative is removed."

"You really don't screw around, Jett." He shook his head with a wry smile.

"You think you can do it?"

"I think I can take a rough stab at it." He peered closer at the schematic. "But that transformer is in the opposite direction from the main core. We set that thing off we might not be able to work our way back through this section to get to the core again. This whole place will be a battleground."

Jett nodded. "Then I guess we're splitting up. You, Bronco and Gallant get to the transformer station and cut the power. Let those poor souls get some revenge, and do what you can to help any kin still in the holding area." She looked at Rapid. "You and me are going to the data core."

The albino foxkin grinned dangerously. "Party for two."

"Wait," Karno exclaimed. "I can go with you!"

"No." Jett stood up, turning to face him. She reached out and pressed a clenched paw against his chest. "One of us needs to go to the core and one of us has to go for the transformer. Only we can do this and we can't be in two places at once."

"Yeah but..." A helpless expression crossed his face and he shook his head, grabbing her paw in his. "Fangs, just be careful, will you?"

"I didn't come all this way to be a martyr, Karno."

"Relax, wolfie," Rapid chuckled, giving his axe an experimental twirl. "I'll keep her in one piece for you."

Jett shot the other foxkin an exasperated smile before turning back to Karno. Knowing there was nothing she could say that would make it easier for either of them, she dragged him forward into a tight hug, burying her face in his neck and inhaling long and deep, her tail curling as his arms closed around her. They stood locked together for a few, precious seconds until Jett reluctantly dragged herself away. She pressed her muzzle against his, letting her paws rest on his chest.

"Be safe," she whispered. Then she looked up, raising her voice. "All of you, be safe."