Jett froze as they were plunged into inky darkness, suddenly surrounded by nothing but the twinkling lights of the cooling stacks and the data-core's display. It was like being plunged into the night sky. The bass throb of the alarm sent a million thoughts thundering in her mind and she heard confused shouts rising above the crackling hum of the stacks as the technicians in the room tried to figure out what was going on.

The others must have reached the transformer – it was the only explanation. The data core itself would doubtless be running with an emergency battery until the backup generator kicked in. With her eyes quickly adjusting to the gloom, Jett shut out the yells from the technicians and reached forward, plugging into the jack-port. A couple of seconds later lights blinked on the block-drive as it confirmed an active connection.

Mouth dry with apprehension, Jett moved to the nearest monitor, her paws resting over the dark keyboard, typing with muscle memory and nothing else as she began working through the directories, trying to hunt down the files from the containment lab. The glare of the screen hurt her eyes in the gloom but she knew their time was running out.

The sheer volume of data within the core staggered her. To call it a gold mine would have been understating things in the extreme, and its defences matched up. Firewalls cordoned off file caches with varying degrees of aggression, growing more vicious as she descended through the layers of protection. With only enough space on the block drive to take a small fraction of the information here, she needed to be very choosy about what she siphoned off.

Ignoring the high level files, she delved deeper, knowing at the very least the identity of the documents from the containment lab. Fortunately for her, secure though the core might have been, in order to navigate the electronic labyrinth the information had been meticulously catalogued and grouped into clear sub-servers within the gigantic brain.

The skitter of footpaws made her freeze for an instant. Then she spun around, dropping down into a crouch with her knife drawn.

"Hellfangs, girl, it's me!" Rapid hissed, jerking back form her, his white fur just visible in the twilight of the data core. "You got what we need?"

"No, not yet." Jett sheathed her knife and turned back to the computer. "This'll take some time."

"How much time?!"

"I don't know."

Rapid snorted in frustration. "Terrific. Don't think we've got long before the guards put two and two together and somebody comes down here lookin' for us." He glanced back down the walkway. "Techs are scarpering round the place tryin' to figure out what happened."

"Can you keep them away from the core?"

A dangerous grin flashed in the darkness. "Course I can."

Then he disappeared back down the gangway, swallowed up into the maze of stacks. Jett tried not to think about what her foxkin companion was about to do – she had probably condemned the technicians in the room to death with that simple instruction. There was no time to dwell on that now. She squinted at the monitor, continuing to dig her way deeper into the secrets of the Belforra compound.

Soon she found tranches of heavily encrypted data, held within ominously labelled sub-servers: 'Graft Rejection Protocol', 'Aggression Response Metrics', 'Control Test Case-notes 1-50' -she flagged them for download, keeping an eye on the steadily rising size of the queue she was building up.

The blue lights of the room came to life as the backup generator kicked in, and she barely stifled a yelp of surprise as she was suddenly illuminated. Her paws jerked away from the keys and she looked around, half expecting enforcers to come flying out of the shadows. Instead she heard a scream from somewhere deep in the forest of cooling stacks that rose above the thunder of the alarms.

She waited but the alarms continued. Whatever Karno and the others had done it was keeping the enforcers occupied for now. Licking dry lips, she shuddered, squared her shoulders and returned to her work.

Her jaw clenched with frustration as she ran into fresh levels of security, forcing her to detour through long-winded backdoors, rattling in dozens of bypass commands to circumvent the defensive predator codes that tried to snarl her up. If the data cores measures caught up to her the whole system would lock out and she'd have to start all over again.

At length, she worked around some of the heaviest anti-hack software and wormed her way into a deeply buried sub-server entitled 'Dissemination Timeline Modelling'. Her mind flashed back to Gallant's explanation, that releasing these genetically altered individuals would take a long time to spread the traits through the population. No prizes for guess what this portion of the data core was dedicated to. She couldn't open the files themselves without spending even more time trying to break the passwords, but the hard link to the data core meant she would be taking these with her, too. She added them to the queue.

Ninety-four percent filled. She took a breath, wondering if there would be much else they could find in the time they had. The uncertainty in exactly what she was stealing without being able to open the files here and now set her thoroughly on edge. If this huge block of data didn't contain what they needed she wasn't about to get a second shot at it.

"Hey! Get away from there!"

The shrill, accusatory shout wrenched her from her thoughts and Jett whirled around to see a wolfkin in the blue overalls of a technician staring at her from the far end of the walkway, confusion etched on his face. He took an uncertain step forward, beckoning her.

"I said get away," the wolfkin repeated, an edge of aggression creeping into his voice. He might not have been a guard, but he stood several inches taller than her, a heavy frame clear beneath the overalls he wore. A long screwdriver appeared in his other paw and he threw his head back, unleashing a howl that echoed through the open space, rising easily above the alarms and the hum of the data core's mechanisms.

His head dropped and he looked at her again. "Security will be here any second. If you know what's good for you, you'll give yourself up."

Jett bristled, shrugging off her lab coat. She'd fought and killed more dangerous individuals than this. With so much on the line now she was willing to take her chances with a lone technician. Slowly and deliberately she slid her longclaw from its sheathe. Not taking her eyes off the technician she reached back and pressed a key to start the download. The data core bleeped.

"No," she said simply. Then she stepped forward, barring the wolfkin's path to the core.

Indecision flickered across his face, but behind him Jett spotted movement. A shape slithered out of the half-light behind him, a shape with white fur and piercing pink-red eyes. She raised her knife, keeping the technician's attention for a fatal moment.

Rapid pounced, leaping and swinging in the same motion to crunch his axe-head into the base of the wolfkin's neck, instantly severing his spinal column. A strangled gurgle of surprise burst from the technician's foaming mouth and his body sagged like a puppet with its strings being cut. With a snarl of effort, Rapid pitched the dying wolfkin over the railing, leaving him to plunge into the freezing coolant below.

Exhaling the breath she'd been holding, Jett let her shoulders relax, spinning back to the screen as Rapid scampered over the gangway to join her.

"It's working," she told him as he looked in over her shoulder. "Download is underway."

"You get our smokin' gun?"

"I'm pretty sure."

"How long till we can tail out of here?"

Jett shot him a grim look. "Ten minutes."

"Fangs." Rapid glanced around, his eyes narrow and brow creasing in thought. "No way we've got that long. I think I got most of the techs down here, but it's only a matter of time before the heavies come to lock this place down."

She opened her mouth to reply but her words disappeared when she spotted a flitting movement in the darkness over Rapid's shoulder. Her tail curled, muscles tensing.

"What?" Her companion saw her expression; frowned. Then he turned to see what she was looking at. Jett's eyes widened and she grabbed him, wrenching him to the ground instinctively, and an instant later a bolt from an armbow went hissing overhead. The two foxkin scrambled back to their feet, only so see an enforcer come snarling out of the darkness.

The guard slammed a shoulder into Rapid's midriff, lifting him off his feet and propelling him towards the guard rail. His axe went clattering away across the platform and Rapid slammed into the heavy railing with a gasp of shock. Luckily whoever had installed the safety measures had done their job well and the sturdy metal barrier held. Rapid crashed to the ground, spluttering for breath.

Jett reeled backwards as the wolfkin rounded on her, swinging his stun-baton. The crackling edge grazed her thigh and she yelped in pain as a jolt of electricity shot through her. She toppled, crashing to the ground with spasms wracking her left leg. The guard advanced, thrusting the baton at her chest. With a squeal of panic she screwed her body sideways, slapping the flat of her knife blade against the baton's haft, steering it into the floor where it snarled on impact.

A growl of annoyance slipped from the wolfkin's throat and in a vicious motion he stamped down hard on her wrist, forcing her to let go of the knife. She let out a cry of pain and could only watch in horror as he raised the baton to swing.

Rapid hit him in the back with a feral screech of rage, sinking his teeth deep into the side of the wolfkin's neck and shaking his head wildly back and forth. The guard let out a roar of pain, staggering back and twisting left and right to try and dislodge his attacker. With the brief window of opportunity Jett swept up her knife and made an unsteady, lopsided lunge to ram the blade deep into the wolfkin's stomach.

All three of them went staggering drunkenly backwards in a tangled jumble of flailing limbs and claws, until they crashed into the barrier. This time the railing buckled sending the guard toppling backwards with a scream of dismay. Rapid launched himself clear, snagging the railing with one paw and leaving their attacker to tumble into the icy depths.

"F-f-f-f-angs, help me up!" Rapid gasped through chattering, bloodstained teeth, dangling over the frigid fumes of the coolant. Jett limped over, reaching around and grabbing him by the scruff of the neck. With a hoarse cry of exertion she heaved him up, helping her companion clamber over the railing whereupon they both fell backwards in a heap.

They lay there for a moment, panting for breath and staring down into the swirling, ethereal nothingness beyond the guard rail. Rapid shuddered, looking around. "There'll be more where he came from." Easing himself upright, he trudged across the platform to retrieve his axe.

Jett nodded massaging the feeling back into her leg where the baton had clipped her. "I know. We'll need to buy more time."

"And how you figure on doing that?"

"When the reinforcements get here, we'll have to stall them." She inclined her head towards the maze of stacks. "Fancy a game of hide and seek?"

Rapid's eyes lit up with realisation. "And leave your gadget to do its thing?"

"Unless you've got a better idea...?"

"No, no, I'm game." He shot her a manic grin. "Got unfinished business with these mongrels."

Jett let out a hollow chuckle. "Don't we all. Come on." Climbing to her feet, she flexed her left leg experimentally. It felt a little stiff, but the effects of the jolt were wearing off. She could run if she needed to.

She tucked the block-drive out of sight beneath the monitor, leaving only the grey cable snaking out of the jack-port and a small progress bar edging its way upward a millimetre at a time. A distant glance would show nothing untoward. If they could keep the attention of the enforcers elsewhere for long enough, they could ensure the download's completion.

Getting out afterward would be a different kind of challenge, but Jett tried not to think about that now. One step at a time. With Rapid by her side she set off, traversing the narrow gangway and circling the data core until she could see the entrance to the room. From the schematic she knew there was only one conventional way in or out of the room, and it didn't take long to spot the massive vault-like entrance even in the dim blue of the emergency lighting.

The circular slab was five meters in diameter, and she could see a wolfkin guard standing beside it, his stun-baton hanging from one paw, loaded armbow primed and ready in the other. Evidently there had been two guards stationed in the room, and they'd opted to keep the entrance covered while one of them waited for back up.

They slipped in between the stacks, edging closer to the door, watching and waiting. Sure enough moments later the grinding hiss of its hydraulic mechanisms filled the air and the massive doorway rolled ponderously aside.

Standing beyond it were six enforcers, led by Hera. The wolfkin leader's eyes shone with wrath as she crossed the threshold, listening to the hushed report from the guard. Her right paw flexed impatiently, the claws augmented with a set of wickedly curved talons that glinted in the half light. Hera nodded once the guard had finished his report and continued forward, snapping harsh commands to her subordinates. They began to spread out and Jett knew they needed to make their move.

"Time to get some attention," she muttered, laying a paw on Rapid's shoulder. "Stay here. I'll get them moving. Then you do what you do, okay?"

"I gotcha." He slipped deeper into the shadows. "Good luck, bright-eyes."

"You too."

Gulping down her apprehension, Jett stepped out into the light, standing barely twenty meters from the advancing unit of enforcers. They stopped abruptly at her appearance, and Hera's cruel features twisted with hatred when she realised just who she was looking at. Her metal claws rasped together in anticipation.

"From the first alarm, I knew it must have been you," she said, a malevolent calmness in her voice. "I am going to skin you alive, foxkin."

The sight of the wolfkin leader sent a bolt of fear up Jett's spine. There was no running away now, and the bloodlust in Hera's eyes meant only one thing no matter how calm she sounded. The enforcer commander wanted to rip her limb from limb.

But something deeper and more powerful overcame that fear. The image of her den – the place that a lifetime ago she'd called a home – filled her mind. That last gruesome picture of her family lying butchered pushed a very different emotion to the forefront of Jett's mind. Slowly she sank into a crouch, a low growl of challenge boiling in the back of her throat. She bared her teeth, holding Hera's fearsome stare.

"Come on then," she hissed. "Kill me if you can."