Vulpinroid

31 September 2103

Mobotropolis, Kepler

The boy had been woken up by a loud retching which made his pointed ears rise all the way up. A brief look at the bright red numbers on his alarm clock told him it was almost six in the morning. His alarm was still set for seven and with his uniform already laid out on top of his dresser, it would only take approximately five minutes to be dressed and about another ten to twenty minutes for breakfast. Another loud retch indicated that he wasn't going to get any more sleep at this point. He pulled his blankets aside and got out of bed, walking over to the dresser to change out of his pajamas into his school clothes.

He walked into the small bathroom that was connected to his room and turned on the light, activating the rectangular LED mounted into the ceiling. The boy was vulpine, with gold coloured fur throughout most of his body, except for the white of his muzzle, chest and the tips of his two tails. He opened his mouth and stared at his teeth before grabbing his toothbrush, applying a sizable glob of toothpaste to it, taking about a minute to work the brush against the front and back of his teeth. With the help of a small disposable cup of water, he spat the remnants of the toothpaste out into the sink. Then came another retch, followed by a loud cough.

The fox walked out of the bathroom and finally let his curiosity lead him on. He ambled out into the dark second floor hallway and spotted the light coming from the open door to the master bathroom. His mother, a brown furred Keplerian fox was still dressed in the clothes that she had worn the day before, which was unlike her. As soon as he entered into the bathroom, the pungent smell of vomit hit his nose, almost making him retch as well. His mother raised her head up and away from the toilet, groaning. She blinked, eyelids baggy from a lack of sleep and fixed her eyes on her son before finally speaking in a quiet, raspy voice.

"-Sick." His mother said. Then he looked down at her clothes and noticed dried blood, and dared to look into the toilet. Blood, vomit and other things he didn't dare speak of sat in the bowl. There was also a large welt on her left leg, which originally had been a slight bruise from accidentally barreling into someone on the street a few days before. She had taken time away from work as a science teacher, incidentally at his primary school, thinking she was feeling unwell from an infection. But the boy had remained relatively well throughout. He pressed a hand to his mother's forehead and pulled it back as soon as he noticed the fever.

The fox dashed out of the bathroom, down the stairs and almost collided with a blue hedgehog. The hedgehog reached out and gently grasped the boy's shoulders to steady him. Startled, the fox looked up into the hedgehog's face but sighed with relief. He found exactly who he was wanting to look for.

"Slow down, Miles!" The hedgehog cautioned.

"Colonel Ogilvie! Mum's really sick!" The boy said anxiously.

"She'd been coughing for awhile now, Bernie told me to see what's going on." Colonel Jules Ogilvie, a retired British Army and Royal Acornian Army armor officer was the house's groundskeeper and one of his father's closest friends, his number-two man ever since Amadeus Prower had been put in charge of a tank platoon, following him up to company, battalion and regiment levels. After being wounded in his father's coup against the House of Acorn and a lengthy recuperation, Ogilvie was promoted to the rank of colonel and was medically retired from the British Army after the formation of the British Army Of Kepler (BAOK). He was offered the groundskeeper position after the Amadeus was made the commanding general of the BAOK, essentially a sinecure.

"She looks really bad, Colonel." Miles continued with urgency, going back up the stairs.

"We'll take care of it." Jules followed him up and put a hand out to keep him at the top of the stairs as he went into the bathroom. He came out of the bathroom with the boy's mother in his arms, beating a hasty retreat down the stairs. "Bernie! Call Mobotropolis General and tell them I'm bringing Rosemary into casualty. Call Amadeus at the MoD as well, please." He reached out and grabbed the keys to his car from a wooden peg on the wall. "Come on, Miles."

The trip to Mobotropolis General Hospital was an urgent rush through the main throughfares of central Mobotropolis. Fortunately, it was early enough in the morning there that Jules didn't have to be concerned so much with waiting in traffic. Rosemary was laid out in the back seat and Miles was up front beside him. She was in terrible shape but he didn't think that the ambulance service was needed, not when his own four wheels worked just as well and without tying them up. Little did either of them know, they weren't up against a severe case of influenza or pneumonia.

Once they had arrived, Jules had parked in front of the emergency department's entrance and got out. Miles looked over at his mother and noticed that patches of fur were missing from her head and what was underneath looked like there was a sunburn. A rattling sound caught his attention as two nurses wheeled a gurney to the car, opening the back doors. Carefully, the two humans got Rosemary onto the gurney. Miles unbuckled his seat belt and got out as Jules came back to the car, nodding at him.

"There's a waiting area inside, I have to park the car somewhere else." The hedgehog explained. The fox walked slowly through the sliding doors and found rows of chairs that were empty aside from a few other people, some human and some Keplerian. He clasped his hands together in his lap and looked up at a nearby television, Breakfast was on BBC One like any other morning. He bit his lower lip and lowered his ears slightly, focusing on the TV. Soon Jules was sitting down beside the fox.

"They're looking at her now. Giving her fluids, trying to figure out what's wrong." The hedgehog explained.

Emergency Department

Mobotropolis General Hospital

"All right everyone, the patient is a thirty-eight-year-old female Keplerian fox by the name of Rosemary Prower. Occupation is primary school teacher, allergic to ragweed pollen. Six years in the armed forces according to her file, a military physicist. Symptoms consist of nausea, blood both in stool and vomit, hair loss." Mr. Scott Morris lowered his tablet and examined the welt on her left leg. "Visual inspection also yields an injury to her left leg. She's barely conscious. Let's get a full blood count and start IV fluid support." Morris picked up a head mounted scanner and lowered the eyepiece down, studying her leg. "There's a foreign object of some kind in the left leg where this injury is, the field is still partially open. Excellent place for an infection to start." He picked up a set of forceps and sat down on a stool, motioning to a registrar. "Administer 10 milliliters of lidocaine subcutaneously."

After the registrar injected the local anesthetic into Rosemary's leg, Morris widened the field with the forceps and then used the scanner to guide them to the foreign body, slowly withdrawing it. He put the object into a pan and heard an alert tone from the scanner, drawing his attention to the foreign object. Looking down at it, a notification came up in its HUD: radioactive object. Morris rose up to his feet and looked around. "Someone grab the hazmat suits and fast bleep haemotology. We need to move her into a decontamination suite." At that point, a shrill whine could be heard from the electrocardiograph monitor. "Great-" Morris studied the rhythm that ran across the screen. "Asystole. Epinephrine by the central line, start CPR."

A printout was offered to the human who studied it while flipping up the eyepiece on his scanner. According to the full blood count, severe anaemia was present. He watched the registrar push down on the fox's chest, then back at the monitor. There was no sign of any return of spontaneous circulation after two minutes of CPR. After another two minutes, Morris grabbed another ampule of epinephrine and injected it into her central line. He took over handling CPR from the registrar and watched the monitor, following the arrest timer that had been activated. At six minutes from arrest, he noted no change and kept going. The registrar gave another dose of epinephrine at the eight-minute mark before trading places with him.

At that point, ten minutes had passed with no conversion either to a shockable rhythm or to regular circulation. Morris decided to try one final dose at twelve minutes and took over CPR. Fourteen minutes from arrest, there was no change. Slowly, he raised his hands up and shook his head. A nurse stopped the arrest timer on the ECG and then turned the machine off.

"Time of death is 06:15." Morris stripped off his gloves and threw them into a bin. He walked out through the double doors and passed the haemotology registrar who had just arrived, trading a curt shake of his head. Walking out past the nursing station, he entered the waiting area and noticed the young fox and the hedgehog. Morris came to a stop in front of Jules.

"Are you Rosemary Prower's husband?" The human asked.

"No, her husband's on his way from Earth though." Jules answered.

"Is that her son?"

"Yes." Jules looked over at the boy. Morris gestured for the hedgehog to follow him. Miles started to get out of his seat but was stayed by a quick wave. He followed Morris into the emergency department, then through a door into an empty room. "What's this all about?"

"Mrs. Prower's dead. We found a radioactive pellet of some kind in her leg. According to her file she was a military physicist but then became a primary school teacher. She wasn't working with any radioactive materials still, was she?" Morris asked.

"No, not as far as what I know. She taught science yes but they certainly don't deal with anything like that at the primary school level." Jules lowered his eyes to the floor. "She didn't even mention anything about getting shot by any sort of pellet. Apparently, someone accidentally ran into her in the sidewalk but otherwise," His expression hardened. "This may sound paranoid but perhaps this was an assassination. How much of this world's history do you know, doctor?"

"I know that the Kingdom of Acorn was overthrown by a military coup after that nuclear scare that happened in 2085." Morris tilted his head. "Where's this going?"

"Rosemary Prower, Rosemary Keiden as she was known then was the one who designed the first-generation ballistic missile for the Kingdom. She convinced Colonel Prower to act in order to prevent their launch. Her work was why their son has a second tail. She gave up her commission thinking that she could just disappear into civilian life and leave the war behind. It seems to me that King Frederick's people had something in mind for her." The hedgehog felt a vibration in his pocket and grunted as he withdrew his cellular phone. "Excuse me, please." He answered the call. "Yes?"

"Colonel Ogilvie?" The voice on the other line was familiar despite the panic laden in it. "This is Captain D'Coolette."

"What is it, Antoine?" Jules asked. Antoine D'Coolette was his friend's adjutant.

"The general's going to the hospital here in Brussels. He left his meeting as soon as he was informed that his wife was sick. A bomb intended for his car prematurely detonated." D'Coolette explained. "They're certain that he's going to survive but he's lost his left eye from shrapnel. How is Rosemary?"

"She's dead, Captain." Jules said quietly. Silence followed for about ten seconds.

"According to his emergency plans, if they were both killed or incapacitated, their son is to be sent to the general's friend, Professor-"

"Geralt Robotnik, I know." Jules swallowed. "I'll make the arrangements. Thank you, Captain." After ending the call, he dropped the phone back into his pocket. Then he left Morris to go back into the waiting area. Closing his eyes for a moment, the hedgehog knelt down before the fox and then looked him in the eye.

"Is everything all right, Colonel?" Miles asked softly.

"No, son." Jules shook his head. "It's not. I-" His mouth hung open for a moment. "They tried everything that they could do here but your mother couldn't be revived. Your father was also injured, badly."

"What?" The fox's ears rose up as he jumped out of his seat. "But she was alive just twenty minutes ago! He shook his head. "She can't be dead. No-" His ears drooped along with his tails while he squeezed his eyes shut. "Please tell me she's not dead, Colonel."

"I wish I could." Jules said softly as he rose up and put his arms around the fox, whose hot tears could be felt seeping in through his shirt. "The doctors tried what they could, but she was too badly sick."

"I should have checked on her earlier-" Miles bit his lower lip. "It's all my fault."

"It's not your fault. You tried to help, what you did was both smart and courageous." Jules insisted. "None of this is your fault."

"Can we see her?" The boy asked, running gloved hands against his face.

"The doctor said that she was suffering from radiation poisoning. I don't know if we can. I need to take you home, Professor Robotnik will be coming to take you to see your father." Jules explained. He gently took the fox's left arm in hand. The boy's body felt limp and numb, even as he followed the hedgehog out, looking back at where the doctor had come from. His right hand formed into a fist as a soft anguished growl came out of his mouth.