Chapter Thirty-Six

Angela was very much on someone else's mind at that same moment. Often, sleep or unconsciousness will mercifully blot out everything and leave one quiet, so that the body can concentrate on getting the healing or the rest that it needs, but now and then it does an ugly about-face. Right now, Gadget was having one of those, and it was like being trapped in a very small room with a deadly enemy.

Gadget twitched in her half-sleep, half-daze. Angela's vicious strike to her head had nearly put her lights out for good, only Angela had checked the blow ever-so-slightly. Wanted to take me somewhere, the thought drifted through Gadget's mind, as a hazy memory of the bloody, sooty Angela blew and fluttered in her head, the cruel metal in her paws flashing toward her head like an instant replay. Replacement. Back in the treehouse, when they all hurt me so bad, I remember her saying-- Even unconscious, the memory of the way Angela had plucked Gadget's own weapon out of her shoulder and flicked it away like a used toothpick--it made Gadget shudder. But the picture was wrong somehow, and her mind grabbed onto the little maddening detail. There in the burned-out library, she had only left one mark on Angela's shoulder, but the first time they had met, Angela had three red clawmarks on her shoulder, twin to her own--

Gadget groaned, creaked her eyelids open and the candle-lit room instantly shocked her brain off-track. Someone, it seemed, had the same appreciation for the cozy, comfortable, secure feel that had made her fall in love with her new bedroom at Timmy and Tina's house. The floors were stone, but the bed was warm, with a roughly-stitched comforter and unfinished wood frame. The company was also roughly stitched, apparently with the same thick thread as the bedding--Devin nestled under the cover, one arm a mass of bandages and a patchwork of sutures. It wasn't pretty, but (as she carefully bent over him to check) it was an admirable job of field dressing. Devin's color looked awful under his fur as she brushed it back, and his breath was a bit shallow--he did not stir much as she gently prodded his good arm. He'd obviously had it worse, whatever had happened after Angela had given her that love-tap with the chisel. Whoever had patched him up had also run a rough bandage around one ear and the side of her head--from the way her head was pounding, and how the cloth pulled when she tried to shift it a bit, she knew to leave it alone.

Angela should have killed me. What stopped her?

The room had heavy doors at both ends--more like two halves of a small tree--but with Devin still out, she wasn't about to go exploring. As she pushed the cover aside (carefully tucking the remainder around Devin), she discovered another excuse to stay put. Her scrubs (snagged and torn now, as though she'd been dragged through a thornbush) were stretched tight against her stomach. Rosie Ages and the hospital staff had been careful to leave her room for the changes her body was due for, but they were anything but comfortable now. Oh, wow. How long have I been out?

Besides feeling grateful that Devin was still alive and apparently on the mend, Gadget was mainly confused. The headache didn't help. She was certain that Angela wouldn't have taken her someplace nice like this--it wasn't the sort of place someone got kidnapped to. She doubted Thorn Valley's enemies would leave her and Devin in the same room, either. There were no locks on the doors, just heavy wooden bars to the side of each door. Wobbling out of bed, she teetered to each door and shut them, in turn.

Someone was sure to come check on them soon. She quickly ran through her options--it might be Cynthia, come to tell them how she and the Guard had rescued them just in time. As comforting as that sounded, Gadget shook her head. This wasn't Thorn Valley, not any part of it she had seen, at least. The room was cozy, but had a thrown-together quality--a bit of mirror with "objects may be closer than" still visible in the pockmarked glass, a large stained spool of thread for an end-table. None of the Valley's workshop materials here. This was all obtained the old-fashioned way--someone 'borrowed' it.

The expected knock came at the door nearer the bed, accompanied by a voice she had heard before in far worse places. "Devin?" it rumbled. "Are you awake?"

"No, he's not. Who's there?" called Gadget, though she already had a pretty good idea.

"Turner," said the voice behind the door. "Good to hear you're operational. Been three days. I was pretty sure Devin would wake up before you did."

"He looks awful! What happened to him?"

"He bought you just enough time for me to show up." The voice halted a bit. "If Angela had gotten you out of there instead, it might have been even worse on you than--than last time."

Gadget winced. Holes in her memory or not, she didn't have to ask what Turner meant. And it's not just my life on the line this time, she thought, putting a protective paw to her stomach. Shuddering, she unbarred the door, and Turner stepped inside it--seeing her take a step back and nearly trip over a stool, he brushed her safely out of the way as though his paws were razor knives and he feared cutting her.

To any true stranger, Turner would have been an imposing and frightening sight. When Gadget had seen him before, in barely remembered glimpses, he'd already been quite scarred around the face; if possible he was even more bedraggled and patchy-looking now. Looks like a prizefighter. I'd hate to see the other guys. "Thanks for saving my life," she told him. "Again."

Turner smiled, a smile that would have said 'cannibal', if Gadget hadn't known better. His teeth were needle-sharp--through extreme care on his part, they'd never torn out any throats, but they were quite capable. Turner shrugged modestly, self-consciously drawing his lips back over his fearsome set of canines and incisors. "Well, in for a penny, in for a pound. Saved you once--mostly--" his smile fell a bit, "--and it turned into a hobby. Now it's looking like a full-time job. I'm just sorry they sent Angela after you."

"Why? Don't tell me you actually like that…thing…"

Turner bit his lip, which looked very painful, no matter how lightly he did it. "Let's just say she could have turned out differently, and I'm runner-up for the patron saint of lost causes. It's not entirely her fault, but I don't think you want the details. They'd sound too familiar."

Gadget shuddered. "You mean she w-was…"

Turner winced but nodded, tugging at an ear without realizing it. He'll put a hole in that ear with those claws, Gadget gulped, and it would have a lot of company. "You're quite a fright in person. No offense."

Turner spread his paws amicably. "None taken. I have to keep up appearances. With the sort of crowd I deal with, appearances are everything. It helps that nine-tenths of them are stone stupid."

Gadget grinned nervously. She still didn't know how to feel in Turner's presence--it was like finally meeting a pen-pal and discovering he had fangs. "It's that--that last ten percent that we've got to worry about, isn't it?"

Turner nodded. "Hate runs high in the masses, but those who know how to channel it have the power. That goes for any terrorist group, but especially true with Group B."

"I've heard you, and others, call the outsiders 'Group B' before. And Arthur, he's one of you too, you said in your note that he had his heart attack because he was one of you--"

"Hmph," Turner grunted. "If I'm going to start on that one, we'd better sit down." He cast his sharp eyes about the room and lowered himself into a sizable pile of rags and stuffing in one corner. He shrugged apologetically. "Used to be a couch. I have a habit of, um, chewing on things."

"It's only natural," Gadget waved him off, sitting on the bed again and turning to check on Devin again. "Is that how you got those teeth?"

Turner shook his mangled head. "I file 'em."

"Do you use a flat-edge file or a rounded one?" she automatically asked.

"Ah, the lady does know her tools," Turner said appreciatively. "Flat-edge, of course. Gets the teeth down to that point."

"Speaking of getting to the point, what about Group B? What do they want? Where did they come from?"

Turner relaxed further into his pile of couch debris, took a deep breath, and started.

NIMH, the National Institute of Mental Health, got it into their heads to test intelligence-enhancing drugs on rats, and for comparison, a smaller number of mice. Both are quick learners by nature, hardy, breed quickly--they were looking to enhance just the mental capacity, but in the end they changed us into smarter and stronger creatures. There were even some among our group that were responding to the reading drills, beginning to recognize letters and string a few together. But in that first batch, our batch that later became known as Group B, the side-effects were sometimes crippling. Seizures, paralysis, heart trouble--yes, Gadget, like Arthur--nervous tics and other mental aberrations were far above any norm. They played around with the dosages and killed scores of us--sometimes after the injections a few of us died right on the spot. Even if you survived, there were the pattern recognition tests and mazes--fail those, and it was lights out forever. It was a constant nightmare, never knowing if we'd go crazy, or wake up the next morning at all.

But there was a whisper of hope passed from cage to cage, of a breakthrough in another section of the lab--rats and mice we'd never spoken to or had any real contact with. The lab technicians were our one source of information about them. They were all healthy, all of them progressing with the patterns--they were able to read by then, we later found out-- all of them running the mazes at breakneck speed--and none of them had been killed for failing the tests. Not one.

There were mixed reactions to this news. Jealousy from the first, of course--why fate and the scientists had spared them all when we'd seen so much death and pain--some admired the more fortunate rats and tried even harder to please the scientists--running faster, puzzling over the patterns longer and harder.

Then the new and improved batch of rats actually sent us--well, a pair of ambassadors. Dr. Ages--just plain Mr. Ages at the time--and Jonathan Brisby. Official Thorn Valley accounts won't say anything about that. After the pleasantries and the obvious questions--"How'd you get out?" "How many of you are there?" "Do they feed you the same crap we get?"--one of our group, probably the wisest and best, came up with a better question.

It was Arthur. His question was, "Why should we believe anything you say?" and neither Jonathan nor Mr. Ages had any idea how to answer him. The only thing to do was to send Arthur back with them to get independent verification. When they took him out of our section of the lab, Group B's fate was sealed. We'd already looked to Arthur as a leader--a sort of antidote to the other strong voice, the sly voice, the one that never let us rest for a moment. The voice of the Commander.

"The Commander?" Gadget interjected. "Who's he?"

Turner folded his paws together--Gadget thought the effect resembled a paper shredder. He clicked his toothpoints together, and with great reluctance, spoke of the fellow. "He's my father, though life and half these scars are all he ever gave me. Like Satan himself, the Commander would much rather trick someone into self-destruction, or make a friend turn traitor, than go for the easy kill--he delights in anguish. If my father has it in for someone, they'll have the rope halfway around their own neck before they stop to think."

He stopped, sinking into sudden silence, old fears making him twitch a bit. Gadget wanted more of the story, so coughed politely. "Well, I've managed to stay out of his reach so far."

"Just," he reminded her. "And with help," he nodded in Devin's direction.

Gadget nodded, and patted Devin's good arm again, making him shift a bit. "So--did Arthur find what he expected when he went to visit Group A?"

What? Oh, Arthur. He found things very cozy in Group A's "quarters". The scientists had indeed taken a shine to their greater successes. There were climbing bars and balls and dangly toys, habitats with winding tunnels snaked across the room--virtually an amusement park compared with our living conditions. At the end of the day they got put back into the cage, but they were kept much more distracted (though not enough, as the humans found out).

Arthur was tricky, and found a way to blend in with the others that took quite a bit of courage--audacity, even--and quick thinking. He actually wrote himself into the room.

Arthur already had an artistic and creative eye--we not only lost wisdom when he left Group B, but a fair amount of culture and technical know-how. He was already good enough with a pen that he faked reams of notes on his own progress and stuck them in with the others. He directed a squad of the Group A rats and showed them out how to lever an empty, unused cage into place with the others, procured a water bottle and straw, made himself up a clip-chart as though he'd been there just as long as the others, and settled in.

When the scientists came in the next morning, the extra rat caused double-takes and rounds of bickering, but the logs were all double-checked and heads scratched in unison. The general agreement was that they'd all overworked themselves and gone a little nuts, so Arthur was shrugged off. A serious mistake, because the next thing Arthur turned his mind to was escape. Escape for all of us.

He and the Group A rats didn't have as long as they thought. The same day news of the escape plan reached us, we in Group B woke up with red tags on our cages. We didn't think much about it, since they were always shifting things around in the lab, making new graphs and numbering our cages for one reason or another. But after the red tags, all the notes and tests and injections cut off like a switch--more like the fall of an axe.

A week of boredom, all to ourselves--the scientists changed our water and left us some food, but not very often. Those with any brains among us started getting jumpy, worrying they might try to split us up or move us to a new, more secure location, but the news when it came was much worse. When Arthur had to report in, he always used the scientists to pass the message--usually a line of Braille dots along the edge of their lab notes. Usually it was "changing mazes again. Watch for electric floor in section five" or "search cabinets for string". Nothing alarming.

This time, the message read, "get out now. going to kill you all."

"Oh, no! The scientists were terminating the experiment?"

"Not quite. Just Group B. It got worse, though, and the message itself was partly to blame."

To anybody rational, Arthur's message would have meant, "the scientists are going to kill you". Unfortunately for us, the intelligence-enhancing drugs Group B had been receiving were spotty and inconsistent--a fair number of lights on our Christmas tree were dim, if not burnt out completely. Our week on little food, water, or activity was not a huge plus when it came to rational thinking, either. It was the perfect time for The Commander to make his move.

He said, loudly and often, to anyone who would listen, that the message meant that Group A had taken Arthur hostage and planned to kill all of us in Group B. He never really believed it, but he convinced too many others. It helped his cause when a pair of rats dropped dead within minutes of each other--the Commander shrieked and ranted that Arthur had led Group A assassins in to pick us off one by one. Nice convenient way to slip in the idea that Arthur had turned traitor, which was complete nonsense--

Contagious nonsense, all the same. The Commander had all but the most level-headed of us calling for Group A's blood, and a sort of literal rat race began--you may chuckle a bit at the intentional pun, but that's the only thing funny about it. A race to get out of our section of the lab and kill Group A off before they killed us, or before something the Commander truly feared--before Group A could escape. The Commander, though he never really believed Group A was to blame for the Group B deaths, was convinced that Group A would make a break for it and leave us behind. It turned out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy, but he still put his own spin on it and has been milking it ever since.

Someone from our group--wish I'd thought to do it first--got a message to Arthur. Those of us who still had our wits about us knew that Arthur was neither kidnapped nor turned traitor. The message Arthur got, which kicked his tail into high gear and got Group A out of NIMH a week ahead of schedule was: "Group B has gone mad and is coming to kill you." If Arthur had only been so clear with his message…

Before the Commander could whip everyone up into enough of a frenzy to break out of our section and into Group A's, Arthur had stripped their section of everything useful, hurried everyone there into the ventilation ducts, out onto the roof and down a drainpipe. Vanished into thin air. Poof. Not so much as a goodbye. It was the only thing to do.

The Commander was frothing mad. He'd really just been putting it on for show before, but he didn't have to fake it anymore. "What did you expect?" I told him. "If we showed up with scalpels and miniature pitchforks, do you think they'd have taken us with them?" That earned me a few scars--he was in fighting shape back then, and could have gotten by on strength alone to lay down his version of the law.

Security was clamped down tight the second the scientists discovered Group A's escape.

On the plus side, they took the red tags off of most of the cages, and started with the injections again. We were suddenly of use to them again. The deaths, however, had not stopped when Arthur and friends took flight--slowly and steadily, the Commander's enemies did him the favor of dying. The scientists tried changing our dosages, checking for viruses and bacteria, but all in vain. As for us rats, no one was even paying attention to the politics any more--Group B, with a dwindling number of objectors, had bought into the Commander's lies.

It didn't do my nerves any good when the Commander finally calmed down, either. He gathered all his followers one evening up on the countertop--there were perhaps twenty by then, and four or five of us who were there just to keep an eye on the devil. He'd made speeches before, speeches that had made just as little sense, but it was the main drive of this one that had everyone in an uproar.

In sad and certain tones, he announced that he was going to die by morning, that he'd been singled out by Arthur and his 'pack of traitors' for a most horrible and grisly death. He then retreated to his cage and hid in the straw, complaining of violent cramps in his stomach--surely, he moaned, the first signs of a creeping, insidious poison.

In the morning, when the scientists came in, they found the Commander stretched out and twisted in his cage like a furry pretzel, without a pulse, stone cold. They bagged him up, dropped him in the incinerator chute, and even a few of his wrecking crew were relieved.

Most of them though--they howled and moaned that we were lost without him, this great leader, this one rat who had 'seen the truth' and tried to save them from certain destruction--but they howled and moaned worse when they'd had a sip or two from their water-bottles.

The water was bitter that day, like it had been left out too long in a metal cup--and from the pit of our stomachs came a wrenching, followed by a cold numbness. I don't know who was more frightened, we rats, or the scientists who dashed from cage to cage watching their sole research subjects flop helplessly like landlocked fish, and finally die.

When I grayed out, unable to breathe, twitching on the steel mesh of my cage floor, my last thought was, 'Please, quicker.'

"Poisoned?" Gadget shuddered. "But you must have had some sort of resistance, some sort of natural immunity--"

"Oh, we had something better," rumbled Turner. "And something worse. We had a hero."

I woke up in blackness, the smell of soot and less pleasant things slapping me awake. It was a smell of burnt fur, plastic, and paper, but the fur wafted on top of everything. I knew exactly where I was--in the incinerator. There were other bodies in the bag, not moving, still and cold.

I panicked at first, scrabbling at the bag--but my claws weren't these weapons you see now. They were no match for the tough material. I felt as though I were going to suffocate, my miraculous survival all for nothing.

Someone jabbed a penknife into the side of the bag and began ripping a hole in it. A paw groped inside--I took it, and it pulled me out into a small and sooty room lit by a few birthday candles.

"Happy Birthday, Turner," my rescuer said. Sure enough, there was my father, the Commander, lively as ever, and already standing at the center of a group of fawning, grateful rats, shredded disposal bags littering the floor. I was so glad to be alive that I nearly thanked him myself, but I put two and two together--he'd been behind our 'deaths' and brought us out alive.

"Here is my son!" he called to the hasty assembly. "Like the rest of you, I've snatched him from certain death. I went on before you, and I have returned--I am the giver and the taker of life, none other!" He went into the bag I'd come out of--this time he dragged a couple of rats out into the light. Two of my best friends, against him from the start. Their eyes were fixed wide open and their limbs already stiff. They were not among the chosen.

"These were not worthy!" he announced, and dropped them none too gently. "They plotted and planned behind my back! They were with Group A!" Murmurs of wrath spread through his audience.

I couldn't stand it any longer. I took the Commander's arm and whispered into his ear, trying to keep a look of earnest concern. "You killed them. This is all a charade."

"Yes," he whispered back, "and a good one, too."

"How," I growled softly, "did you get them put into my bag, you bastard?"

"Neat trick, eh? Hold your tongue, or I'll cut it out," he sneered.

I took his advice for the moment, and applied myself to shifting a heavy metal flap to one side of the incinerator, which finally gave and tipped us out into a bin full of ashes and bones. They were the remains of our mothers, our brothers, and friends--we mourned them a moment and then made good our escape through a basement window. Those poor relics had one advantage--they would never see the monsters that so many of us would become under the thumb of the greatest monster of them all. They would have been ashamed and horrified.

Turner trailed off. Gadget was sure there was more to the story. "But that was years ago! Why come after Group A again after all these years?"

Turner took a pitcher from the bedside table, and drained it dry. "You've got me all talked out, Gadget. I haven't had anyone to tell it to. I'm sorry you got dragged into it, and for so little." He stopped and picked up his train of thought again. "There are many things I could tell you, and few of them nice, about what we've been up to ever since. What happened to you and your friends the Rangers was terrible, Gadget, but it was only--" He winced, the words as bitter on his tongue as the Commander's potion had been. "You and your friends were just--practice."

Gadget stared at him. "Just practice? What do you mean?"

"They're a ragtag bunch, Group B. The Commander's testing their strength, seeing who's useful in combat, weeding out the weak. Your outpost wasn't entirely without defenses--it had a good security system, and valiant defenders. The raiding party that destroyed your home, r-"Turner gripped the remains of the couch he was sitting on, muscles in his arms bunching, shredding the stuffing further. "The ones that hurt you, trashed the place, killed your friends--in that order, I might add--they saw you as a small-scale operation to practice on."

Gadget leapt to her feet, fists clenched. She bristled and trembled, tendons sticking out of her neck. "Practice? PRACTICE?" Devin shifted and groaned at the sound. She sat back down on the bed and made soothing sounds until it looked like he was resting easier again. "If we were practice," she said glumly, feeling Devin's chest rise and fall with a slight hitch as though his dreams were troubled, "they must have something bigger planned. They're going after Thorn Valley, aren't they? To do the same to them?"

Turner shook his head. "You've got it half right. Even the Commander called the attack on the Rangers a complete failure. He and Group B need to take as many Thorn Valley rats alive as they can."

Gadget scratched her head. "Why? This Commander you've told me all about--he's after revenge, even if Group A only hurt him in his own mind…"

Turner winced again. "It's a little more complicated than revenge, Gadget."

"So tell me!"

"Group B," he said solemnly, "is broken, and many of us are dying. We were made strong, and smart, but we were not made to last. I was lucky--I got a fairly good batch of the serum at NIMH, but on the whole we're a sickly and degenerate mess. Mentally and physically, only myself, the Commander, and a few others have any sort of chance to live beyond a few more years."

"What does Group A have to do with--"

"Group A was made right. They are smart, strong, and healthy. To the right people--and I use people in the classical sense of the word, meaning humans--they're very valuable as well. The Commander is convinced that he can arrange a … trade."

Gadget felt a cold wave of dread for all her new Thorn Valley friends course through her. "A trade? Who with? For what?"

"With NIMH, of course. The Commander is convinced that NIMH can save Group B, and he's not about to go back empty-pawed. He wants to hand them every rat in Thorn Valley, alive if possible, but dead if they put up a fight. And you know," he looked at Gadget with grim resolution, "that Justin is going to."

Button images by Keith Elder