Chapter Thirteen

Rescue Ranger units are almost by definition out of the loop. Off the beaten path. They make their own rules and no one bugs them. They're generally made up of decent, hard-working furry folks who get along well with each other. As a result, they're not in the gossip game. News that isn't extremely local gets to a Ranger team by visitor or by accident, unless a situation is big enough that the teams have to get together with RAS by teleconference.

The simple and natural fact that two high-ranking RAS members had gotten married was not considered a crisis, so Gadget was far more shocked than Devin when the first pictures came through on the vid-screen. Though they'd obviously taken a moment to compose themselves, the Chairmice had been sleeping a little late—when the view popped up, it was of Bernard and Bianca perched on the side of their bed. Bernard was in a nightshirt and Bianca in a tasteful nightgown (augmented by a quickly retrieved bathrobe). Devin wasn't at all shocked to see the Chairmice in such close quarters—he'd come to Rescue Aid just in time to blunder into their wedding, as a matter of fact. Gadget couldn't have known, and it was a strange experience seeing friends (besides skunks and badgers) in black and white in any case.

Artwork by Keith Elder

"Gadget! Devin! We've been just worried sick—" Bianca blinked sleepily.

"Chairman, Chairlady--I'm sorry! Did we w-wake you up?" Gadget took a step back from the camera in surprise.

"Not really. I was about to take yawn a shower," said Bernard, stretching. His movements appeared out of sync and jerky due to the slow connection.

Perhaps noticing Gadget's uncomfortable stance and averted eyes, Bianca waved a paw at her. "Oh! We didn't get a chance to tell you. Your trouble was so important we forgot to. Bernard and I, we're married!" Bernard reached out and encircled his wife with his arms, hugging her tight.

Gadget's mind went straight to Dale. She couldn't help it. That's what Dale wanted for us. That would have been just fine with me.

"As soon as we got back from Australia! We held the ceremony in the main Assembly chambers. But listen to us babble. Gadget, are you—holding up okay?" Bernard watched his question sink in. He patted Bianca on the back and they became very still and serious.

"No, I'm not. I think—" Gadget cast a glance toward Devin, who was turned almost away from the camera, a dark look on his face and fiddling with something in his pocket. "—I think if Devin weren't here, I might have really gone nuts by now."

"I'm so sorry, Gadget. Can you talk about it yet?" Bernard leaned forward, wiping a smudge off their camera. Devin decided lurking around looked bad, and came to stand in front of the camera.

"There's a lot to say," began Gadget. "The quick version is that my friends are all—all my fellow Rangers are dead, murdered." The Chairmice winced and held each other tighter. "There were a couple of squirrels named Sal and Myra along with us, and we were going to rescue their son Runner, who had fallen into a deep gap. Only it wasn't really quite like that. He didn't fall—someone pushed him, and waited for us to go after him. We almost had him out, climbing up a rock face underground, then someone cut our lines—"

And everyone tumbling through the air, weightless, then slamming into the wall, she recalled with a shudder.

"Some of us were already hurt then. Our attackers—I hate to keep calling them that; I wish I knew who they were—" Gadget slammed a fist into her other paw, the anger building in her. Devin's stomach lurched at her words—his secret was the beginning to that puzzle, and of much more trouble—

"Darling, don't beat yourself up. Just tell us what you can," Bianca gently urged Gadget, reaching for Bernard's shoulder almost subconsciously.

Gadget nodded bravely and continued, her voice quivering with the effort. "Our attackers started a rockslide down on top of us, after tossing a couple of canisters of gas in. I don't know what kind, I haven't been back to check. We shouldn't have scattered the way we did, but it was panic all over. We ran down different tunnels, all of us—" Tears rolled down her lowered face. Devin touched her arm to get her attention, and handed her a handkerchief. He's old-fashioned in some strange ways, but that's okay, she thought, and his simple gesture gave her a bit more strength to go on. "Only two of us got out. Me, and Runner--the squirrel we went in to save in the first place, and I almost killed him accidentally, dragging him out of that godawful cavern. Clumsy, clumsy—" She clenched the handkerchief in her paws, shivering.

Devin stepped closer to her and put a paw over hers. "You can't blame yourself, Gadge. You're a survivor, in a lot of ways. You don't have to feel guilty in any way."

Gadget wiped at her eyes, shaking her head. "But I do. All the time, thinking 'what did I do wrong? Why didn't I smell a trap?'"

Someone cleared a throat. It was Bernard. He crossed his arms and cocked his head, as if sizing Gadget up, though he knew her strength ran deep. "You and the other Rangers would have gone in anyway, with Runner in danger. That's your duty, and your friends died doing it."

"Not because of anything you did or didn't," Bianca added forcefully.

Gadget raised her head to meet Bernard and Bianca's eyes. "That's good of you to say, but it's going to take me a long time to believe that."

"What in the hell happened to your headquarters, Gadget?" Bernard demanded.

Gadget stepped aside and let Devin fill them in on that. It was mostly guesswork, what with all the candles and scribbled threats, smashed lightbulbs and spoiled food. He reached the point in his telling when the pills appeared, and his voice wavered.

"Rufinol? What's that? I certainly don't like the way you say the word," Biana probed. Devin looked to Gadget now.

"I don't feel right telling them, Gadget. Do you want to?"

She nodded, and stepped back fully into view. She smoothed the tear-streaked fur of her face and stood as straight as she could, hoping she could get this said without collapsing in front of the Chairmice, even on a vid-screen. These were the mice who really had the final say on whether her career as a Ranger was over or just greatly changed. Though she knew them to be good at heart, they might decide she was too unstable to continue her work, and she respected them enough to step down if they asked her to. She had to show them that Hackwrench could still hack it.

Gadget took a deep breath. "I'll tell you myself. I don't remember, because I was drugged with that Rufinol that Devin told you about, but I was most likely—" She shut her eyes and made her mouth move. "It's Devin's medical opinion that I've been—raped by one or more of the—the sick bastards who killed my friends." She went quiet now, opened her eyes, and watched the faces of the Chairmice crumple slowly in shock and sadness.

"Oh, Gadget, I can't tell you how much that hurts me to hear," mourned Bianca, wiping away a tear with her bathrobe. Bernard just held her by her shoulders, not looking up at the camera.

"My heart is breaking for you, Hackwrench," Bernard forced out. "You're one of the best people I know, and for this to happen to you—"

"You know you're like family to me, Gadget," offered Bianca. "Maybe you even are family, if you believe that old rumor. I feel this like a knife in my stomach."

"It gets worse," said Devin, out of nowhere. The time had come. Gadget did a doubletake and perked up her ears at his words, and the Chairmice startled just as badly.

Gadget could make no sound, she was so thrown by his suggestion that something more could be wrong. "How?" she mouthed. Devin pulled the bottle of pills from his pocket—he'd carefully bagged them as soon as he'd shown them to Gadget, telling her half of the truth—the half that concerned what had been done to her and her alone.

Devin knew that two futures rode upon the words he was about to speak. In the future he would fight so hard for, a small, determined group of investigators would quietly and carefully close in on the villains who had taken away so much of this remarkable mouse Gadget's life. In the other future, the one he feared, he saw politics and confusion, maybe even open battle, and Gadget's plight forgotten in the chaos. He honestly didn't know which would come to pass, but he knew the time had come to speak the truth he'd kept as tightly bottled as the pills that proved it.

"This is already the worst disaster in the history of the Rescue Aid Society and the Rescue Ranger program, Devin," fumed Bernard. "How could it be worse?"

"Because," Devin quietly explained, feeling like he was accusing the Pope of blowing up an airliner— "someone from Thorn Valley did this."

Button images by Keith Elder