A/N: My deepest thanks and gratitute also to the guests of course for their lovely words and encouragement. Sorry for having been away for a long time, I hope you guys are still around. Now let's turn the chessboard over one more time...

CHAPTER 9

DARK FLOORS

Kowalski was filing through the papers the lemurs had left them before they'd gone to play when Clover and his brothers suddenly heard him give a loud groan of annoyance.

"Oooh no! Bad place. Big trouble. Bad place. Big trouble!"

"What's the matter, Kowalski?"

"He's here!" the tall penguin cried out. Skipper looked up from his self-made plans which he was still pondering over intently.

"What? Who?"

"Parker!" Kowalski waved the list of enemies the lemurs had made at his leader. "Parker the Platypus! You remember him, don't you? Apparently he's a resident of this zoo now…!"

Not knowing who they were talking about, Clover gave them a quizzical look.

"Is that going to be a problem?"

Skipper took a look at the list and then heaved a deep sigh. "Yeah, unfortunately. That means we have another strong enemy to worry about! Because that villain is really –."

Just then the door to the storeroom flew open and Maurice, pale and distraught, darted inside.

"Help!" he cried to them, "Please help me! Please!"

– And before Skipper could even ask him what had happened, the older lemur flung himself against his chest, breaking into bitter sobs.

Feeling the dampness of tears soak through his feathers, the leader put his flippers around him with a startled look on his face, slightly overwhelmed by the situation.

"Calm down, calm down," he murmured to Maurice at last, "What the hell is happening?!"

"They… They've got them," the older lemur finally managed to choke out, "Julien and Mort went into that hospital. These humans have got them… and now in that backyard there's… there's a dead body –!" He was sobbing so hard he could barely catch his breath. "It was so horribly mutilated, I – I couldn't tell –."

Skipper exchanged a terrified look with his brothers, and Clover's face, too, fell with consternation. Maurice shook his head as he bit his bottom lip to keep his tears at bay.

Now there was complete silence in the room.

Skipper pulled himself together as best he could, knowing he had to say something.

"Now hold up a second! As long as we haven't clearly identified the body, let's not assume the worst! This body might have very well been lying there for a much longer time than Julien and Mort have disappeared." – Even though the feathers on his neck bristled almost painfully, he tried to keep his voice steady. – "We're going to leave right now to check this out, and in case this dead one isn't one of ours – which we will assume until we've absolutely proven the opposite! – we'll have to go inside the hospital and look for them."

The others stared back at him mutely. For a moment he feared he wouldn't be able to break their terror-stricken silence. But then, although pale as a sheet, Clover straightened and saluted. "On it, Sir!" – She was by Skipper's side, ready to assist and await his orders, and so were the other penguins.

"Alright, let's roll. – No, wait. We…" – In a matter of seconds the leader mentally organized their different tasks. – "Clover, we need you to stay here to guard Clemson. If we all leave, he'll use the chance to do we don't know what, and most likely it won't be good for the rest of us."

She seemed reluctant at first – after all, as his bodyguard it was her duty to stay closely connected to her king – but then she nodded and saluted again. "Affirmative."

"…And you, too, Private." – When Skipper thought about the atrocities they'd had to see the first time they'd been in the hospital, he decided he didn't want the youngest member of their team to be with them on a mission again during which they'd probably have to endure much more of this. – "You're going to stay here and assist Clover."

The rookie stared at him with beak agape. "But Skipper…!"

"No buts, Private. You're suspended from service until further notice. – Kowalski, Rico, Maurice, you're with me. Get ready to move out and –."

Just then the door opened again, and Clemson and his android entered the storeroom to report back for work. "What are you all so excited about?" Clemson asked when he saw their group huddled in the center of the room with anxious faces.

Skipper briefed him on situation and told him who of them was going to do what.

Clemson looked at him as if he couldn't believe it. "Julien and Mort are in the Alchimus Hospital?!" Both he and Mea were grinning as they looked at each other. "Oooh, what a pity. I'm so sorry to hear that." Clemson tried his best not to grin as Skipper glared back at him, but his sparkling eyes betrayed his cruel joy. "Well, guess that's just fate for them. Don't be too terribly sad about it; believe me, it happened to a lot of animals here. Maybe they'll survive it, maybe not. – So, Kowalski, do you have a minute? We're actually here to ask you about something. Because in fact –."

"Not now," the tall penguin cut him short, "We need to help the lemurs ASAP. – Skipper, remember the plans you were drawing before. Don't forget to take them along. Even if they're not hundred per cent correct, they'll surely be useful. Remember how easily we lost our way on these dark floors the last time we were there."

"Right." Skipper hurried to get the sheet of paper he'd been working on before. Clemson glanced at the scribbled sketch he'd made when he did so. "You mean the floor plans of the Alchimus Hospital? – But these aren't the real ones."

"Well, I tried to make some myself, since unfortunately we don't have them –."

"Oh, but we do have them." Clemson went to get him another sheet; it was a graph paper with a convenient scale, each square on the sheet representing one foot. The floor plans drawn on it were perfectly accurate, including the exact measurements of each room.

"There's an escape plan in Zookeeper Charlie's office, and I made a print of Mea's photographic memory after the he'd been taken there for the first time," he explained, smirking at the astonished look on Skipper's face.

"So that murder robot is good for something after all," Maurice muttered under his breath. Mea bit his lip and looked away, and Clemson shot Maurice a killing glare.

"And you couldn't have given us those earlier!" Skipper groaned.

"Well, you never asked!" Clemson countered, but then added more softly, "These plans won't be of much use anyway because they're faked. They deliberately show only rooms that are 'unobtrusive' to the public; or, to be more precise, they hide others. We've never been able to find out where exactly in the building Charlie's torture room actually is, and of course it wasn't located on that escape plan either."

"Do you know where his office is?"

"Yes. It's the 37th on the second floor. His name is on the door."

Skipper nodded. "Alright, that's better than nothing. Everyone who's with me, grab a herring and then let's move out, and real fast!"

A moment later Skipper, Kowalski, Rico, and Maurice were assembled again in front of the gate of the hospital backyard, in torrents of wind-lashed rain. They went through the little gate into the rain-choked backyard which was now covered in water, reflecting the blinding flashes of lightning while the storm raged overhead. Maurice tried not to look at the blood-smeared corpse on the ground obscured now by the darkness and rain, but Skipper and Kowalski bravely clamped their beaks shut and went to inspect it.

It was so battered and mutilated the animal's species wasn't identifiable to their eyes at first sight. A single-handed blow had butchered the body in two pieces; now it lay in two unequal halves, the left paw, head, neck, and shoulder some inches away from the main part of the body. They could see the unnatural whiteness of bone from the ribcage and some dark, bloody chunks of the innards. One strike had clearly cut the hind paw in two and sliced the head apart. A second blow had hacked a mortal gouge through sinews, bone, and organs. Dark puddles of blood spread beneath it on the cobblestones, mingling with the rain and glistening like an oil slick.

While leaving the scientific part of the autopsy to his second-in-command, Skipper was well able to see that the body showed strong signs of decomposition. His tension calmed a little; whoever this was, he or she hadn't been killed during the past hours.

Kowalski then cleared his throat. "This animal was of the canine species," he finally presented his forensic analysis in a barely audible voice. "It is, in fact, a male dog's body. The skin is waxy and translucent; the limbs are bloated; livor mortis and autolysis have already set in. Therefore, the estimated time of death is, I'd say… at least two days ago. He hasn't been killed in this place, though; the drag marks and the blood clearly show that for whatever reason his body has been brought here later on."

– Although this result didn't make the crime itself less atrocious, Maurice let out a breath of relief which he had been holding all along and batted away the tears in his eyes, murmuring a quick, silent prayer to the Sky Spirits. Skipper patted his shoulder. Although he tried to fight it, he shivered a little. The reality of death is always most present not in the process of dying, but in the strange feeling of being next to a lifeless body, he thought to himself.

"Let's go," he said then, "I'm sure it's not too late yet. If we hurry, we can still manage to save them!" – Before they left, they saluted the dead dog as a last sign of respect and honor.

The little back door of the hospital swung open at the first try; it wasn't locked.

They held their herrings tight, and then they entered the Alchimus Hospital.

"Kowalski, secure perimeters."

"All clear, Skipper."

"– And Rico, the flashlight, if you please."

"Uhuh." The rogue penguin hacked one up for him. Skipper went ahead at a careful but resolute pace, the other three following him closely. He had told them that since there was a chance they'd meet some humans left at work here, they should refrain from calling out loud for Julien and Mort and concentrate on looking for traces of them.

Maurice stayed close to Rico's side, very grateful to have allies as strong as the penguins. There was no way he would've dared to come here all alone, much less at night. He was well aware of the fact that darkness amplified the insignificant, concentrated fear, and gave rise to eerie phantasms; yet he couldn't avoid these symptoms on himself.

Skipper's flashlight illuminated only a few feet of linoleum floor in front of them. A searing, silent flash of lightning came to their assistance for a moment, allowing them a glimpse into another ward, empty and cobwebbed – then the lightning succumbed to darkness again, and a rolling crash of thunder made Maurice flinch. His imagination played at the edge of foolish fantasies, encircling, mesmerizing, spinning its web until reality and imagination became one.

Although Skipper warned him that they might risk drawing attention to them if they turned the lights on in the rooms they came to, Maurice insisted on doing so every time he could find a light switch, which unfortunately didn't happen too often.

They looked carefully down every corridor but saw no one. Just like the wards, they were all deserted; the doctors seemed to have left in the meantime. After a thorough search on both floors they found themselves back in the entrance hall where they'd started.

"Where on earth could they be?" Maurice took out the floor plans Clemson had given them. "We've been looking everywhere in that maze. They just don't seem to be here!"

Right then Rico made a grunting noise: he'd discovered a side door that led outside the first corridor, which they hadn't noticed before. They opened it to get into a staircase.

They walked it up all the way again to the second floor, and then straight on until the end of the corridor to find another staircase leading further up. The walls formed a right angle here; the floor plans confirmed that they had reached the west corner of the building. There were windows on both walls. The sky outside was blackened; lightning was sparkling around the building.

"At least there seems to be some light here." Maurice had found another switch which actually seemed to work; bright white artificial light flooded the staircase.

However, the only way from here seemed to lead downstairs again; a red caution tape was strung across the steps leading upward. There was a small note in tidy handwriting attached to the banister. Skipper switched the flashlight off and put it down to take the note and feed it to Kowalski's communication device. The computer-generated voice read it out to them aloud, one robotic word at a time:

Attention all employees!

The third floor is now in critical condition and in need of repair. The wiring hasn't been redone yet, so it is not allowed to turn on the lights on this floor. Access to the stairs is therefore also temporarily prohibited.

Dr. C. Grady

Rico grunted something and pointed at the floor plans Maurice held in his paws.

"You're right; isn't that strange!" Skipper blinked in confusion. "He says that according to the plans, this hospital doesn't actually have a third floor. And I remember when we took that elevator last time, there was no button for it either." Rico nodded his agreement.

Maurice looked at the plans again. "That's true. Well, Clemson said they were faked, so… – Anyway, I guess if this floor is broken, they won't have taken them up there."

Skipper looked up across the caution tape again with a frown. The end of the steep stairs disappeared out of view into the gloom above. I wonder…

"Guess so," he said then, "Let's go back."

Clemson was running through the rain.

He was on his way back to the storeroom; he'd rather done anything else, but Clover had told him to get some of the bigger toolboxes as a next step in their work to fix the helicopter's skid landing gear, and he didn't want any trouble. Mea was still back at the lemur habitat, looking for some windshield glass and fuel tank parts that that were too heavy for Clemson to carry and would follow him as soon as he'd found them.

It was raining very heavily now, and he hastened his pace and hurried to get inside before he'd get too wet from the heavy downpour. As he came past one of the habitat entrances, someone suddenly stepped up to him and struck a webbed foot out in his way. Realizing this too late, Clemson tripped and fell face down into a puddle. His teeth jammed into his lip when he hit the ground. He could taste the salty blood oozing into his mouth. He cursed.

"What the –!"

The other animal reached down and hauled Clemson to his feet and then propped him against the habitat wall. "What in the world do you think you're doing, lemur?" a familiar voice with a Danish accent hissed at him, "You want to get me killed?!"

"Hans, what –."

"Why the hell did you give those penguins the plans of the hospital?!" The puffin's angry face was close in front of him, golden eyes sparkling at him with a rage Clemson couldn't quite comprehend. "You're ruining everything!"

"What the hell are you talking about?!" Clemson tried to free himself from his grip but failed. "Anyway, how do you know that I did this?"

"That's not important right now. All that matters is that it was me who lured the two lemurs into the hospital!" the puffin burst out, "And if you help the penguins to get them out again by giving them the plans, it was all in vain!"

"I see." Understanding began dawning on Clemson.

"You… you're not allied with the penguins, are you?" the puffin asked.

"Sort of. Listen, I'm sorry to mess up your plans, but I still need the penguins for something, so until they solved that for me, I need to go along with what they want and put a good face on the matter. Believe me, I'd love nothing more than seeing Julien hacked and sawn to pieces by Charlie, but if he gets lost I fear the penguins won't do anything for me, so I had to make sure they'd come back out of this maze of rooms – and therefore I had to give them the plans."

"But don't you understand?! This puts my life in danger!" There was a pathetic tone to Hans' voice and a genuine look of consternation about him. "I bought two full sets of pink for me and Lulu from Savio. I had nothing to pay, so I promised him the lives of these two lemurs instead! If the penguins are getting them back alive now, my debt to him remains outstanding until I can get him two other victims! And you know what Savio does to those who break a promise to him…!"

"Regrettable, but not my problem. Now let me go." Clemson tried to ease his grip by putting his paws over Hans' flippers, but they were clamping down too hard over his shoulders.

"Do you have any idea what you've done to me by making that move?! – What could be so important to you about them anyway that you're ready to help them like this?" – Clemson said nothing. A malicious smirk unfolded at the corners of Hans' beak. – "Oh, I know. Fixing your precious robot servant, right?"

Clemson didn't manage to hide his surprise. "How do you know about Mea?"

The puffin chuckled. "I know everything I need to know. Dearie me, you're such a pervert, Clemson. Savio forbade you to use these monsters. You're so doomed if I tell him that you kept one of them alive!"

"I'm not. Because he won't believe you. Why would he listen to someone who didn't pay his debts? Which, as you said yourself, you totally didn't, in case the penguins bring Julien and Mort back alive. And you bet they will."

"Don't get smart with me, lemur." – Suddenly Clemson felt the muzzle of a pistol pushed roughly into his neck, and he froze. – "You're the one who got me into this. So you're going to make it right again!" The puffin chuckled into his ear, softly, maliciously. "– If you can't get me my victims back, then you'll just have to serve as a replacement…"

Suddenly a slender silhouette appeared behind the puffin's back – a karate blow struck his neck with such speed and force that it was a miracle his spinal cord wasn't severed. Hans didn't even have time to scream; his eyes rolled upward into his head as his legs gave way and he crashed face down into the gutter.

"Are you alright?" A bolt of lightning lit up the sky, revealing Clover's face. Her green eyes shone out at Clemson from her face framed by strands of scarlet fur. She wore a soft smile; taking down Hans didn't seem to have cost her any effort.

Clemson breathed a sigh of relief, his mind finally grasping what was happening. "Yes. But I…" He cast his eyes down. "Thank you," he said, and this time he meant it.

"I was beginning to wonder where you were," she said.

Still trying to recover from the shock of being very nearly shot by Hans, Clemson silently watched how rain was pouring down her face, plastering red and white fur to her forehead.

"Good thing you came to look for me," he heard himself reply.

"I actually wanted to tell you to take it easy when you go back to work. You better leave the heavy things for now and treat your injured paw with care a little longer, or else I'll probably need to stitch you up again and again."

She took his injured paw in hers, and this time he returned the grip without fear. Yet he still felt strangely nervous as they held on to one another like this. "Oh no, please don't."

She laughed a little; he'd never imagined a warrior like her could laugh so softly. Her green eyes searched his. "Come on, it wasn't so bad, was it."

Cascading, heavy rain drenched them to the bones. Soaking their fur, it provided a constant running stream of water gliding down their faces, dripping on their shoulders. Yet they were standing stationary in the center of a puddle around their feet.

"No, it wasn't." Clemson returned her smile.

Clover stepped even closer and hesitantly paused. Rain ran in rivulets down her arms and dripped off her elbows. "So, where is everyone around here?" she asked, "No one seems to be in their habitats. And what's going on in the reptile house? The place is brightly lit and full of animals, and there's music, too…"

"Oh, that's Savio's party. It's Friday, you know; he hosts a party there every Friday and even invites inhabitants from other zoos over here."

Clover looked surprised. "Having wild parties while his zoo mates are in danger of losing their lives? A bit macabre, isn't it."

Clemson nodded. "Yeah, that's so Savio. – You know, actually there's a lot of scheming and dirty deals going on, but nobody cares because he's usually in a giving mood then; and that means free pink things for all of us. At least a paw full of them." He frowned. "Actually we really have to go there. At least I should, because I'm a resident of this zoo. It's sort of a rule here in Hoboken not to miss this." – Hesitating, he added, "You can come, too, of course…"

She nodded; there was an oddly warm, affectionate look in her eyes he couldn't quite comprehend. "Do you think it's a good idea to show up there when Savio is around?"

He shrugged. "I think he'll be angrier if we don't show up there when he is around."

Clover thought about this for a moment, and then put her arms around Clemson's neck with another smile. "Alright, then why don't we –."

"What are you guys doing there?" a voice from behind them asked. Startled, they broke apart. Behind them stood Mea, carrying two heavy toolboxes in one paw and a gasoline can in the other. The android's red eyes flicked between them both, taking in the whole scene. He looked confused. "I thought you were in the storeroom working."

His gaze fell to the unconscious puffin on the ground. "What happened to that guy?"

Clemson cleared his throat. Again, for some reason, he felt strangely guilty. "Yeah. No. Um… We just decided we'll go to Savio's party instead of working tonight. You know, we… kind of have to be there…"

The android shrugged. "Well, I don't care where we go, just let it be somewhere inside. I hate rain. One tiny crack in your outer casing and you already risk a dozen of blown fuses."

Clover raised her brows. "So you… you're coming along, then?" she hesitatingly asked.

Mea's eyes narrowed as he scanned her. "Well, yes," he responded distinctly, and now a dark frown creased his brow. He cut a look at his maker and a faint flush rose from Clemson's neck when he met his questioning gaze. He turned away.

"That's fine, let's go then, all three of us," he quickly answered.

When they entered the reptile house, Savio's party was already in full swing.

Techno music and strobe lights were filling the room. Glittering light was thrown from a disco ball hanging on a rafter of the snake habitat high above a cavernous, smoke-filled dance floor. The ball spun, causing the entire room to sparkle like a swirling snow globe. The place was so crowded they had to struggle through the tight-jammed bodies of different animals in different sizes; but all of them were equally raucous, equally drunken, all of them singing, passing bad jokes across the bar.

They'd just arrived when the DJ, who was Rhonda tonight, started playing a new song, and the lighting in the club changed just slightly. Clemson looked over to Mea, mesmerized by the melody from the first note, just like he was – it was his favorite song, and so it was Mea's, since they had the same likes and dislikes in music just like in anything else. So they both smiled broadly as the words of the song began playing, the perfectly arranged notes filling the room.

Clover didn't fail to notice this. "You like this song?" she asked Clemson, and he nodded, still smiling. – "Do you want to dance?"

He looked down at his feet in embarrassment. "I can't dance."

She raised an eyebrow. "You're a lemur. Every lemur can dance. It's in our blood."

– So he agreed since the music pleased him so much, and Mea, too, was eager to go with them, but Clover said to him, "Be a buddy and guard our table until we're back, okay?"

"But…"

"After all, androids don't dance, do they." – And with that, she took Clemson by the paw and led him away. At the other end of the room someone had turned a fog machine on; they edged themselves through the crowd slowly becoming consumed by the smoke.

But just as they headed out on the dance floor, a sharp screeching sound suddenly chewed through the harmonies of the melody – a high-pitched, chittering whine.

The music ceased abruptly; the animals around them fell silent.

There was the sound again. Clemson felt something inside him freeze; a terrible weight settled across his limbs, as if gravity had increased and was anchoring his feet to the ground. In a matter of seconds that piercing sound drew his memory back to the past, back to the Alchimus Hospital, to what smelled and tasted of violence and crime and a saw blade whirring in a blur of sharp, spinning teeth of steel –

"Sorry," Rhonda's voice blared over the microphone, "Acoustic feedback problems."

A moment later she'd obviously found and corrected the mistake in the mixer console as the music started back up, and so the crowd began chattering again and everyone continued with what they'd been doing before.

Clemson, however, was frozen in place, unable to move, not seeing the faces that were in the crowd, only seeing a human's face with black eyes, dead, soulless orbs… No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't get that man's sinister grin out of his head. Those eyes, cold and empty of all human feeling, kept drilling into his soul, ripping through those few thin layers of self-preservation he had tried to reinforce over the time passing. And he hated how this small sound was enough to conjure up all those stirring images of that human's atrocities again, those jagged fragments of agonizing memories…

Then Clover brought him back into reality, her voice a protective shield against the horror of memory. "Hey, what's wrong?"

Clemson saw her stand in front of him again, alluringly swaying to the beat of the music. Her paws came up and cupped his cheeks, and he found himself trembling. In the end he only managed to choke out one single word, "Charlie…"

"He's not here… He's not here. It's just us now. Just try to relax…"

She interlaced her fingers with his and then gathered him into her arms and embraced him firmly. His body tingled as she did this. Something felt wrong about this… Her voice was so soft, and she was so graceful and gentle in her movements – yet there was something floating behind her eyes, something dark and frightening and swiftly veiled, which told him she was feeling the exact opposite of what she was doing and telling him, and watching it now made something inside him shrivel up in fear. You liar…! Suddenly he wished they'd never come here.

He wanted to let go of her paw but she held him tight. She bent over and whispered something into his ear, but he couldn't hear what it was; the music was so loud, the floor was vibrating and making his feet numb, and this was all so confusing…

Then he looked back to their table, looked for Mea's red eyes glowing in the crowd, looked for them for reassurance, but they were gone.

The control room was lit only by the countless TV screens piled up along the walls.

Soft disco beats resonated through the floor from the reptile house directly under them.

Hans sighed and straightened himself up on the sofa in the back of the room where he lay resting, recovering from the foreign lemur girl's vicious attack. A smirk played around his red and violet striped beak when he looked at his companion.

"…So, what do you think of my plan?"

Lulu turned away from the dozens of surveillance cameras which showed her every inch of the Hoboken Zoo and looked over to him. "This is so mean! Is that really necessary? You certainly remember what he already had to go through because of us…" Her voice trailed off, but it still held the tone of disapproval.

"Clemson's a trickster himself. He ought to know what it feels like to be tricked!"

Lulu took a sip from her champagne and then shrugged. "You're right. And then that bitch who did this to you is allied with them, too." She glanced at one of the surveillance cameras again. "– Hey, did you actually know that they have a helicopter?"

"What, really?"

"Yes, you can see it on that screen over there. It shows that little storeroom behind the Zoovenir shop. Apparently they keep the helicopter there but it doesn't seem to be working; they keep on trying to fix it."

Hans clapped his clipped wings with excitement. "Fantastic! What better means of escape could we get? Let's just wait until they finished it and then take it to get away from here once and for all!"

But Lulu didn't seem nearly as enthusiastic as he was. "And turn the rest of them over to Chainsaw Charlie, huh?" she muttered. Then she was silent for a while and concentrated on her work again. Her fingers carefully, tediously spliced the fragments of tapes lying end to end which she had been cutting for nearly an hour now while waiting for Hans to recover; in the meantime she had become downright buried in snippets.

"Look, I don't like it any more than you do," the puffin told her then, "But what choice do we have?"

Lulu looked up at him again. "Maybe it's all half bad. Savio needs followers like you, you know. He can't afford to sacrifice them all, and I'm sure you're one of those he's most favorably inclined to. Look, he even gave you champagne as a reward when you managed to fix Parker's tranquilizer gun and told Parker he owes you a favor now…"

But Hans shook his head. "I still owe him those two victims. And he won't leave me alone until he gets them, no matter how. You know how this works, don't you? You know what happens if you can't keep a promise like this to him?!" He turned to her, his eyes sparkling furiously. "Hell, it might very well be the two of us who will have to go then instead!"

"Calm down," Lulu said, but he wouldn't.

"There's no way to get out of this. In order to survive here in Hoboken, you have to turn into a killer – it's either the others, or you. See, we're not a zoo anymore. We're a parasite with an ill immune system that eats itself! But this has been Savio's game all along; and you know he always wins the games he plays. – Unless… there's someone stronger than him, and we've found that someone now. If we have that android on our side, we can finally turn the tables… the game will be ours, Lulu! We can do what we want… We'll never have to be victims again!"

She hesitated. "And then? What do you want to do? Take over the zoo yourself once you've overthrown Savio?"

But he shook his head. "No. Not over a zoo Chainsaw Charlie is working in. Let's go away from here."

She nodded eagerly. "But where? You said they'd banned you from your home country –."

"Yes, but I bet the android will be able to make us some fake passports." He got off the sofa but still felt a bit dizzy, so he sat down on the floor next to her. "– Let's go to Denmark, Lulu," he said softly, "I know many beautiful places there. I know if we stayed, we could be as rich as we've always wanted to be, and everyone would be under our command, but the Alchimus Hospital… This place is just too terrible. I can't stand to be here a second longer than I'm forced to." – He took her by the shoulders and then embraced her warmly. – "And I certainly can't stand to think about you being one of Charlie's victims ever again…!"

She smiled as he leaned over and kissed her. Then she closed the shell of the cassette over the finished tape, cleared away the remnants on the floor and rearranged the film reels so they looked as if they'd never been touched. Everything it had taken to do this was some patience and a pair of thumbs, which unlike the puffin, she had.

"This is it," she whispered into his ear and then put the tape in his flippers, caressing them gently as she did so.

"Do with it what we need to do, my charming Dane… Do what has to be done."

They walked back into a corridor on the second floor at whose end they found another door. The room number was 37. There was a sign next to the door which Skipper made the communication device read out: Doctor's Office, and the name Charles Grady right below it.

To their surprise the door gave way easily to their pull. The office behind it was dark and empty. Once inside, their eyes were drawn to the windows tilted open; vivid flashes of lightning were reflected on the white surface of the walls, creating an eerie luminescence, as if these walls were suddenly illumined in a series of startling phantasms.

Maurice felt his nerves jump with each bolt. "They're not here," he said, struggling to keep his voice from trembling, "No one's here. Let's go look somewhere else."

"No, wait." Skipper belly-slid up to Charlie's desk. He knew that they had no time to lose; yet he couldn't refuse to take at least a quick look around the cruel zookeeper's office, hoping to find something useful, something that would reveal to him whatever could possibly be a weak point of the enemy.

To his great surprise he found a document on the desk that had a photo of Hans attached to it. He gave it to the communication device to read out:

Tests of Preparation #7B33D3C

Subject: Puffin, given name 'Hans'

The new psychoactive preparation causes extensive hallucinations and paranoia. The subject

- sees everyone as enemies

- suffers from a distorted perception of the physical world

- acts aggressively towards other animals

Furthermore the preparation increases the blood pressure and practically doubles the heart rate.

These symptoms may result in cardiac arrest. Preparation #7B33D3C has been denied approval for further use, for none of the desired signs appeared.

Dr. C. Grady

None of the desired signs…? Skipper thought about their very first encounter with Hans just after they'd arrived here, and about the armadillo boy he'd seen in the examination room the first time they'd been in this hospital. What he was holding in his flippers right now was without the shadow of a doubt related to his strange behavior. As the full extent of the peril dawned on him, a feeling of numbness began creeping over him, paralyzing his muscles. It seemed that this time Clemson hadn't lied. So they ARE experimenting on us for some reason!

"What have you got there?" Maurice came up to his side. "You found something?"

Skipper put the document down again quickly. "No, nothing important." In the back of his mind a dark thought began forming – what if we're too late, what if they've done something like this to the lemurs as well – but he pushed it away. Maurice was already worried enough about the two of them; Skipper had no intentions of increasing his concerns even more.

Then, at the back of the room, they noticed a wardrobe which was a little out of place; someone must have moved it. When they moved it further aside they found a low, hidden corrugated steel door behind it. Maurice discovered something on the floor nearby: a little woolen cap that looked familiar to him. "Oh dear Frank. That's… that's Mort's!"

His voice was shaking. He picked up the little cap and put it to his heart.

Kowalski examined the door through narrowed eyes. "Do you think the lemurs were in this room and then went on through there?"

Skipper tried the handle. "Maybe. It isn't locked."

They opened the door and looked downward into a sunken room that was in utter darkness – a secret passageway. Feeling the walls on either side of the room, they could find no electric switch. Maurice sensed it was a large room but he couldn't be sure. Skipper wanted to pull up his flashlight again – only to realize he didn't have it anymore.

"My flashlight!" – The others turned their heads and looked at him. – "Hoover Dam, I must've left it in the staircase when we were reading that note! Wait, I'll go get it."

He wanted to hurry off, but Kowalski took him by the flipper. "Are you sure it's safe to go alone, Skipper?"

"Yeah, it's just back that corridor we came along a minute ago. I'll be back in a second."

Before his second-in-command could stop him, he turned and belly-slid out of the room.

He had scarcely reached the corridor –

Then the door behind him slammed shut.