THE DEFINITION OF PEACE
Author's Note: Sorry it took me so long to post more. I had to figure out what I was going to do and finally had an inspiration hit me while reading Predator Games by Christine Feehan. So here it is...this chapter is the gathering of victims so there won't be that much action yet but the next chapters will have a lot so stay tuned. Please read and review.
Chapter 1: Kidnaped
Due to the alarming number of military officers being kidnapped around the world, Commander Ulysses Feral of Megakat City had been asked by the President of the Sandeval Bay's Confederation to come and meet with his top military advisors. They felt the Commander's expertise would be of some help since they had lost four of their top officers to the kidnappers. Being from a city that was a hotbed for the weird and unusual, the President felt Feral might be able to shed some insight on the problem for them.
After listening to the methods used for the kidnappings and what the Sandeval government had done to try and solve them, Feral had to conclude that his experience would be no better or worse than their own. On that depressing note, the meeting went on to discuss ways and means to capture these unknown assailants as well as try to understand their motives.
It was late, the sun was already disappearing into the bay, when Feral, accompanied by Colonel Torson and his aid Major Linscom, stepped outside the government building to go get a bite to eat and escort Feral to his hotel.
No one dared go anywhere alone since that was the M.O. of the kidnapers. Feral had been telling the Colonel about the last attack by Dr. Viper when he felt the fur on his neck rise in warning.
He ducked down, pulled his weapon and hissed a warning, "We're being watched!"
Colonel Torson and the Major quickly dropped to the ground to present a smaller target. Though they couldn't see anything, they trusted Feral's senses since he had survived some harrowing things in his life and his instincts had never been wrong.
Feral rolled under a truck nearby as the other two managed to find cover behind a row of bushes near the steps of the building. Each had their choice of weapon drawn and were searching for the threat. Nothing seemed to happen for many tense minutes. When they couldn't spot the perceived threat after some ten minutes, the Major decided to carefully stand up to get a better look.
He started to relax and say there was nothing out there when he gave a sudden gasp and slapped his paw to his neck. Seconds later he collapsed. The Colonel quickly dragged his unconscious aid to him and checked him over.
"They're using knock out darts!" The Colonel hissed a warning to Feral when he found the dart.
Feral still could not see where the sniper was. He grit his teeth. He would have called for back up by now but this wasn't his home. "Can you summon help, Colonel." He called softly.
"I tried already! My cell phone and radio are being jammed!" The Colonel growled back angrily. "Do you see anything?"
"No! Whoever it is, they're well hidden!" Feral responded grimly. Tense moments passed when, suddenly, Feral heard another gasp. He couldn't see the Colonel but had to assume it had been he that had made the sound. He growled in his throat and thought bitterly, 'Trapped like a rat!'
As he tried to think what he could possibly do to escape the situation, the sense of danger increased. The next second, he felt a sharp sting on the back of his paw. He stared in shock at the dart before consciousness deserted him.
Dark figures quickly scurried from their hiding places and collected their captives. A van appeared from an alley and pulled up beside them. They hurriedly piled the three bodies aboard and took off at the speed limit so that no one would suspect them of anything.
"Our leader will be pleased. These three are a good catch and apparently have good instincts." One of the kidnapers said, "Especially this one!" He added lightly kicking the boot of the big dark brown Kat. His cohorts nodded their agreement.
Very soon the van arrived at the VIP section of the airport. A jet with a peace symbol logo on its tail waited with its engines running and the door open. The unconscious cargo was efficiently loaded and carefully placed in seats then strapped in, their watchers sitting around them.. The group that had captured them left the plane. They still had work to do.
The flight took only about three hours. The jet was soon landing at a private airfield. Another group of kats dressed in dark blue uniforms with the peace symbol patch embroidered on it took charge of the kidnapees, unloading them and placing them in yet another van.
The jet turned around and left again as the van headed for a hidden retreat in the mountains nearby.
The unconscious kats were carried into a special laboratory and placed on beds. Lab coated strangers surrounded each kat and began taking various samples from them. Each kidnaped individual was examined and a meticulous record was made of the results. The data was compiled with the information already stolen from private files on each kat.
When the examinations were complete, the kats were injected with a strange purple liquid then taken to another room that had a line of individual cells...the cells looked like aquariums. The prisoners could see each other as well as their kidnapers. The prisoners were left alone to recover at their own pace.
Three hours later...
Feral woke stiff, his mouth was dry and his head felt like it was stuffed with wool. It took him some time to manage sitting, standing was out of the question at the moment. Shaking his head to try and clear it he looked around at his surroundings. The first thing he noted was he was completely naked, the next was his weird cell.
The walls were clear plastic of some kind all around them except the floor, back wall and ceiling. In the ceiling were four small vents where air was apparently circulated. The floor was half covered in some kind of rubberized material and half was heavily padded, a small metal toilet was in one corner and a small basin hung just above the floor with a slow dripping pipe above it. It didn't overflow, so Feral figured it had an outlet at the back to allow the water to escape thus one would have a constant flow of clean water to drink.
He looked over to his right and saw a beautiful tiger cross female staring at him. "Hello?" He called out hesitantly. She frowned unhappily at him then pointed at the wall and her ear then shook her head. He sighed, nodded back at her that he understood. One could see through the wall but not hear through it.
He turned his head to look in the other cell beside him. It was Colonel Thorson. He was just coming around. The dark tom knew how he felt as he watched the silver tom shove himself to a seated position. Beyond the Colonel, Feral could see many more kats in many more cells. His eyes widened at just how many there were. He whipped his head back toward the female and saw just as many past her.
His heart hammered in fear. So many! The reports they'd received hadn't indicated this many were missing. What was going on?
In a main control room above the pens, the lead scientist, Dr. Welker turned to his superior with a smile. "We are nearly finished filling the quota of subjects you set, sir. One more trip by our capture team and we'll be ready for Phase Two."
"Excellent! How soon will the DNA alteration occur?" Darius Mobar asked.
"The first group injected will begin to alter in about two more hours and the next group two hours after that in sequence until they all start the process. By tomorrow noon, all should be adjusted. By the next day, training can begin." Dr. Welker said eagerly.
Darius' eyes glittered with anticipation. His 'special army' was nearly complete. He moved to the windows that looked down at the pens of well trained soldiers. By the time he was finished with them, they would be an unstoppable army with skills no one had ever seen before. With their new special abilities and more enhanced training, his army would be well qualified to insure his plans for taking over the world would succeed.
He turned back to Dr. Welker, "Good work! I'll be back day after tomorrow to see how the training goes." He glanced one last time into the pens then took his leave.
"Yes sir." The scientist said then turned back to his monitoring equipment. The next twelve hours would see how many survived the change to their DNA. He had already calculated that there would be at least a one percent death rate, which was acceptable.
Any more than that and Mobar would be unhappy because more subjects would have to be procured and a small delay would occur before training could begin. Staggered training schedules would not be practical with this type of army so they would have to wait until all were ready before training could begin.
Only tomorrow would tell whether there would be a delay or not. He could hardly wait. He glanced at the time piece on the wall...only an hour and half until the first transformations would occur...enough time for him to run some more simulations with the computer. Nearly bouncing with excitement, Welker made his way to his huge main frame computer and set it to run probabilities on the plans success based on the present parameters.
Megakat City...next morning...
Feral's personal assistant, Sergeant Fallon hurried down the hall to the second in command's office located on the fourth floor of the Enforcer Building. He knocked briefly then opened it without waiting for a response.
Lt. Commander Steele looked up with a frown on his face.
"What?"
"Sir, we've just received word from General Genser of the Sandeval Bay Confederation that Commander Feral, Colonel Torson and Major Linscom were kidnapped as they were leaving President Baynor's building at about eight o'clock last night. They searched all night with no luck. It's assumed that ring of kidnappers are at fault." He reported grimly.
Steele felt a thrill of fear race down his back. Feral made the first officer from MegaKat City to be snatched by this mysterious group. He might be next.
"Increase security, have all officers above the rank of colonel be alerted and have them plan on staying within Enforcer Headquarters until further notice. We've got to find out who is doing this. Have Major Fendler report to the Commander's office immediately." He spat out a string of orders. The Sergeant saluted smartly then left quickly to obey.
After Sergeant Fallon left, Steele quickly gathered his work and made his way to the Commander's Office. Major Fendler was head of the special black ops team and it was possible he might have some way to get a handle on this problem though he really didn't hold out much hope since many other military units around the world were still wrestling with it and none had found a solution or a hint as to who was behind the kidnappings.
By later that afternoon, the news had leaked to the radio stations. At the Megakat Military Salvage Yard, Chance was screwing down an engine into its new chassis when he heard a news commentator break into the music with an announcement.
"Crud! Jake, that kidnap group has snatched Feral!" He called out to his partner.
Jake came out of their tiny office and listened to the news. When the music came back on, he turned the radio off.
"This is bad, buddy. Despite how we feel about the Commander, all these kidnappings are for some ulterior reason and now Feral is a part of it. I have a very bad feeling about this!" He said grimly.
"Yeah, me too. I don't think its any of our omegas doing this but I'll be damned if I know just who could be doing it and why!" The tabby said with a growl of frustration.
"I know! I've been doing some computer snooping and the only thing I've been able to come up with is someone, who knows how to cover their tracks well, has been raiding personal files and guess whose files they've been taking?" He asked.
"The ones being kidnaped!" Chance said flatly.
"Bingo!"
"Were you able to tell what kind of information they were taking?" His partner asked curiously.
"Yeah, that's the strange thing. Whoever they are wanted the medical reports and military training records of the victims and nothing else." Jake said gravely.
"That doesn't sound good at all." Chance said, shaking his head and wiping his paws off. "But right now, I don't know what we can do about it!"
"Yeah, I know. But I hate the thought of just sitting around waiting for whatever is going to happen does." Jake said in frustration.
"You and me both. But there's really no alternative." The tabby snorted then sighed. "Well we have enough work to keep our minds off it for now."
"Huh! That's for certain. I'll be out to help you as soon as I finish that pile of invoices, buddy." Jake said with a sigh as he turned back into the office.
"Right."
In a hidden laboratory...nearly dawn...
For the rest of the night, Feral, using the hand language of the special forces, 'spoke' with his fellow prisoner's on either side of him. Much to his disappointment, they knew nothing more than he did as to why they were there and who had kidnapped them. It was a very depressing state of affairs.
They weren't fed and no one visited them the whole time. The lights dimmed a bit and stayed that way, probably signifying night, and it was silent except for the constant dripping of the water in the basin.
Sighing tiredly, partly from the drug used to bring them here and partly from boredom each of the prisoners began to lay down to sleep and conserve whatever energy they could. Their one thought...escape!
Feral had been asleep for a few hours when he awakened to sharp and insistent pain over his entire body. He sat up quickly as white hot pain shot through him. It felt like something was trying to push its way out of him. He screamed in agony as his bones began to break and reshape before his horrified eyes. As the pain soared beyond tolerance, blood roaring in his ears, his mind was being pushed out of the way for something far more primitive.