Author's Note : I am so very sorry for the delay in chapters, I am going through a very hard time right now. I stay almost constantly busy, and when I am not I do not feel like writing. But here we are, finally!

~Chapter 3~

Carter sat on the stiff ground, staring intensly at the screen on the wall in front of him. It was much longer than him, possibly two to three dogs in length and a clear, white light shone from it.

The Dalmatian's eyes were moving back and forth, left and right, scanning the screen and the gray words and codes and symbols scrolling down. As fast as they were going, he kept up with them, searching for anything suspiscious, mystery, out of the ordinary. His gaze locked on a single line of words and numbers.

"Screen, stop instant scroll on line 738.34." Carter said, watching the screen flicker and raise the line to the middle of the text. He stared at it and twisted his head to the side, making his ears flop.

He continued to turn his head until he was nearly upside down, his tongue now hanging out the side of his mouth. At the exact moment he tipped over and did a somersault, Arrow walked into the room.

"Carter, what on earth are you doing?" Arrow ran over and stared at the dog looking up at him. "What were you doing?"

"Well . . . I was looking at things from a different perspective," Carter grinned, thumping his tail on the hard, wood floor. "Get what I mean?"

Arrow shook his head and backed away, letting the dog bound to his feet. "What were needing to look at in a different perspective anyway?"

"This coding file stuff," Carter gestured to the screen behind him. "I found a strange line of symbols and numbers that doesn't seem to be in any of our data except on this one screen."

Arrow looked up and the line that was highlighted and in the middle of the screen.

0078.2 BLOCK EDJTA.43 -4;76 INTERRUPT INTERCEPTING SIGNALS 009.5

"What does it even mean?" Arrow turned his head to Carter, who had stopped wagging his tail and was back to staring at the computer. "EDJTA? What is that?"

"It's one of our decoders, something that goes along with the intercepting signals," said Carter casually, as if this might be everyday news. "The way we can find out Volt's next moves are through the radio waves in which he is sending information to his other hideouts. That is when we send out our spyware and get the signals as well. But if the EDJTA is blocked . . ."

The Shepherd cocked his head to the side in question, unsure what to think. He knew how the signals intercepted Volt's top secret messages, but how could they be blocked? Though he did not know as much as Carter did when it came to electronics and technology, he knew that this stuff had been programmed and could only be turned on and off by the S.S.A.O.N.A.

"In short," Carter continued. "Someone is trying to hack into our files - all files from 0078.2 to 009.5 - and block our message signals." He was quiet for half a second before reaching his conclusion to the case, "My thought is that Angel clicked something wrong when she was on duty the other day."

"Really, Carter?" Arrow looked at him skeptically. "You think Angel had something to do with this?"

"Well . . . " Carter sighed and sat down. "I give up, never mind. It'll be fine, as soon as I fix it. I just thought it was weird and all . . . but maybe I am making huge assumptions for no reason."

Arrow turned around and walked over to the other wall, to another screen on the wall, swiping his paw across it to turn it on. "It is really your choice, Carter. I wouldn't know who sent it, you're the only one who could track them down. You tell me if it is anything dangerous or not, but we do need the signals back up there. If we don't, that means Volt could attack at any given moment and somehow get Bolt."

"Until I get it up we'll have to monitor the cameras even more so than we do," Carter said, walking toward Arrow. "Is that what you're pulling up?"

"Yes."

The room got silent as Arrow activated the live cameras, picked the one closest to wherever Bolt would be as last reported, and waited for it to load. It was taking longer than usual, but it finally pulled up.

The staircase. The hallway. The rug on the floor. The bookstand on either side of the railing on the staircase. The brown wood stairs that went up and the landing on the second floor. All of it they were able to see because of the cameras that had been posted in Bolt's very own house without anyone noticing. The cameras were the size of a ladybug, a pea, and colored so it blended in with the ceiling. It also had a 360 view.

"There he is," Carter said, motioning toward the white dog that appeared at the top of the stairs. "Audio, on."

They both stood very still and quiet, listening hard because the computer did not have very good audio, making it difficult understand a conversation. Although audio didn't matter most of the time for Arrow or a great many other members of the society - they could lip read very easily. However, Carter couldn't, being a little more on the less practical side of life.

"It isn't that late," Bolt said, glancing behind him before taking the first step. "So what if it is ten o'clock."

A black and white cat with a green collar walked behind him, scowling and upset. "For your information, hero, it is twelve-thirty whether you believe it or not!"

Bolt smiled and continued down the stairs, looking more asleep than he was awake. Arrow suspected he had slept late because of Sypher's 'training' the night before, and everything that had happened according to Sypher. Arrow might have known the reason for Bolt's sleepiness, but Carter did not and felt it was right to question it.

"Stars, why would a dog like him need to sleep until noon?" Carter scowled just as Mittens had. "That us just plain lazy if you ask me."

"I didn't, and I don't think I ever would," Arrow mumbled, switching the camera to a view of the kitchen.

Penny's mother was doing the dishes, the few that were laid in the sink, and Penny was sitting at the kitchen island, working on an essay project for school. When Bolt and Mittens entered the room, Penny smiled down at them.

"It's a good thing you finally decided to wake up, sleepyhead," said Penny, reaching down to pet Bolt as he passed to his food dish. "I thought for sure you might have been dead."

"Might as well have been," Bolt said, knowing the the humans could not understand him. Mittens, however, could understand him and just rolled her eyes, walked to Penny's mother and started purring and rubbing her legs.

Something brown and fuzzy and encased in a ball of plastic zoomed through the kitchen and skidded to a stop a Bolt's legs. Rhino was on his back, panting hard from running that fast inside his ball.

"You . . . where have you . . . been?" Rhino managed to get out, lifting a shaky, small paw to point at Bolt, who had stopped eating when Rhino nearly slammed into him. "The show . . . has almost . . . finished . . . without you!"

Bolt sighed. "Sorry, Rhino. I was delayed."

"Yeah, like sleeping in kind of delayed," Mittens said, giving up on trying to get Penny's mom's attention. "He just woke up."

"Be nice, Mitts," Bolt glared at her before returning to his food. "You wouldn't believe what I went through last night."

"I can only imagine." Mittens shot at him, leaving the room.

Arrow typed in a command and the screen went from the live stream to a blue dog paw with a lightning mark through the center and swirls on each toe pad; the Secret Spy Animals of North America.

"In a little over six months he has sure changed," Arrow whispered, staring at the computer screen. "I never thought he would adapt to normal dog life so quickly."

"He has got that cat, Arrow," Carter shook his head. The thought of living with a feline like that did not sound appealing. "That is all he needs to blend in with the rest of the world."

". . . and all the communications will shut down in less than eigtheen hours, sir. We will be ready to attack Arrow and his watch group as soon as there is no way to get help to them. And then, as your plan simply stated, we will head to the dog's house and steal him, either taking the other animals as well or disposing of them. Once we are done, we will bring them back to -"

"We will get to those steps later on," Volt snapped, swiveling to the messenger dog, a scrawny brown and black coated mutt. "And, as you said before, my plan states all of this. I need not be bothered by the mess of it all."

"Yes, sir," said the dog, backing away. "Sorry, master Volt. Is there any changes you would like to be made before we begin, sir?"

"No, that will be all," Volt watched as the terrified dog quickly left the room, eager to leave his 'master's' presence. It did not bother the black dog one bit; he rather enjoyed seeing others cower to him. It was just another step in the plan, to become the leader over everyone.

And this plan had to work, because it had to. Once Volt's dogs - which he now had named perfectly Volt's Allegiance of Dark Dogs - had found out that how the S.S.A.O.N.A retreived their attack plans, Volt had come up with an idea that was sure to succeed.

And when he did finish this next mission, his little brother and his powers would be there for him to destroy Arrow and his group.