This story takes place three and a half years after Priya's Pain ended.
…
Perry's POV
I curse as I stare at the burnt remains of yet another facility. Bill and Dimitri must have known we were coming.
I kick a stone violently, sending it flying and nearly hitting my friend.
"Watch it!" hisses Peter.
"Give him a break," Pinky snaps. "You know why we're here."
Peter's angry face relaxes but he does not apologise.
"I hate to say it," begins Terry. "But this was the penultimate facility in this country. It seems to me like they must have gone to another country."
"But there are at least a dozen facilities spread over almost as many countries," Pinky points out. "It would take too long to find them all."
"I'll do it if it comes to that," I vow. "I will not stop until I find my baby."
"Perry, it's been three and a half years," Pinky says sympathetically. "You've searched every corner of Danville and almost every corner of this side of America. Even if Hermes is still alive—which is doubtful at this point—it will be almost impossible to find him. We don't know what he looks like now. At his first birthday, his fur colour will have changed."
"I know," I snap. "I'm not looking for Hermes, per se. I'm looking for Bill Hawkes. When I find him, I'll find Hermes." My friends show signs of interrupting so I add, "Or I'll find whatever happened to him."
I turn towards Snowfield. It's the exact opposite of a desert. Instead of there being sand and hot weather, there's snow and cold weather.
"The last one is over Snowfield," I tell my friends.
"Perry, we can't go now!" Terry says in alarm. "There's a snowstorm coming, we'll get caught right in the middle of it! Let's just go and come back later."
"But snowstorms take days to pass," I argue. "I can't wait days. I'm going now."
"We don't want another missing animal on our hands," snaps Peter.
I know what he's talking about, and it's not necessarily Priya. Lots of female animals have been going missing and reappearing a couple of weeks later. I suspected kidnapping initially, but there was nothing that linked the disappearances and they stopped after about a month.
About a week after Priya was rescued, Peter's pregnant daughter Kimi went missing for a couple of weeks, before she was found with a scar across her abdomen, having lost the baby and being unable to have any more children. Kimi's mate Luke was devastated but at least Kimi is safe and relatively unharmed. And at least they have Lokie, who is four and a half years old now.
"Well, you don't have to come with me," I snap.
"Are you crazy?" retorts Pinky. "If we don't come with you, you'll have no chance!"
"I guess…" I admit.
"You've admitted it," states Peter. "Now that you have acknowledged that you need us, I can say: you owe us."
"Whatever."
I start walking through the snow. I know that the thinness of the snow is not going to last much longer.
And it doesn't.
…
Yeah, the chapter lengths in this story are going to vary from between 500-1500 words most likely, though some might go over or under.
