"Come in," Galen heard Zana mumble absently when he knocked softly at her door. She was fighting with an unwieldy scroll and didn't look up when he entered, just waved vaguely at her already overflowing desk. "Just put it there," with an implied whatever it is, "I'll look at it later."

"I'll just sit down, then, until you're free to look at me." Galen carefully moved a stack of scrolls from the only chair to the floor, and smiled at her perplexed stare. "I'm afraid I only brought myself, you see?"

She smiled back, pleased and surprised. "Galen! What are you doing here?"

"I just wanted to see how you're doing after yesterday's excitement." And he had wanted to seize the opportunity to build a connection as long as the memory of his heroic rescue was still fresh in her mind.

"Oh, I, I'm fine. The healing power of fruity cocktails is not to be underestimated." She leaned back in her seat, visibly glad to have a reason not to look at whatever regulations she had been fighting with.

Galen smiled at her. "I'm so glad to hear that - but then you're also a formidable woman." It wasn't even a lie - when he pulled her out of the panicking crowd, she had strongly reminded him of his mother, who had mastered the art of never losing her composure. "I know a lot of people who would have taken sick leave after yesterday. It's all over the city by now - word is that Zibaya was calling for overthrowing the council. I heard Urko was chomping at the bit to arrest her. But of course the professor has connections..." He studied his fingernails.

"Urko! That Gorilla is eager to arrest everyone!" Zana sputtered with indignance. "And if he can't lock up Zibaya, he'll just club down as many of her supporters as possible! No supporters, no movement." She slumped back into her chair, her anger deflating all of a sudden. Galen suspected she had realized that she wasn't out on the streets herself, supporting the high-brow revolutionary like she ought to. It was just like her to put impossibly high expectations on herself, if that little speech she had given in the café yesterday was any indication.

"Is that right? Huh." He took care to keep his voice and expression neutral. He didn't want her to think that he would expect anything like that from her.

She leaned forward again, her face suddenly anxious. "It's almost as if he's... hoping that things will escalate. Like they did with the humans fifteen years ago." Her voice took on an urgent tone. "Galen, do you think it's possible that Urko plans something? That he intends to grab the power from the council and make himself the sole leader of the apes?"

Galen's eyes widened. That was a dangerous thought that she needed to let go of immediately. "Zana... Zana. Calm down. You're jumping to completely unfounded conclusions here. Surely you aren't... accusing General Urko of trying to depose the Council Eldest?"

"Of course not! I'm not an idiot!" She stood and wandered over to her window, staring out over the institute grounds for a moment.

Then she turned back to Galen, arms crossed. "Though between you and me, I do wonder. If Zaius doesn't get the situation with Zibaya's movement under control, people will start looking for someone who will. Or makes them believe he will."

Galen shook his head. Her sharp mind was one of the things that had attracted him to her. Unfortunately, it was currently focusing on the wrong topic. Dangerous topic. He didn't want her to maneuver herself into the line of fire. "I would try to forget that line of thought, Zana. Really, it leads to nothing; Zaius is scheming and outmaneuvering everybody else as always. Let it rest."

Zana ignored that. "Have you noticed anything out of the ordinary lately? Any, I don't know, shifts of power inside the council?"

"Well, if I had, I guess that would be classified information," Galen teased her. "And you would need to work hard to earn clearance... I've become Zaius' assistant only recently," he changed to a more serious tone when he noticed her irritation. "But I can keep my eyes and ears open for you, if it makes you feel better."

"It would make me feel better, Galen. Thank you." Her voice was still sharp with annoyance. "Do you think I should talk to Zaius about yesterday?"

Galen leaned back and regarded her with amused exasperation. "I think that you will do whatever you have set your mind on anyway, but no, you shouldn't."

"I've known him since I was a little girl..."

"And he's been a politician long before either of us was even born. I really doubt that the scheming old bastard - and I say that in the most loving way imaginable - will spill his heart to you."

"Perhaps you're right." The determination in her eyes didn't change one bit.

Galen flicked her a wry glance, but decided to let her find out for herself. He had more urgent things on his mind. "Have you already made plans for tonight?"

She sighed and waved the scroll. "Fighting with the regulations is my plan, which could well take all night. Peet asked me if I couldn't take him outside the institute for a walk - he says being confined to a cage all the time is driving him crazy. He'd even accept a leash..."

"Why wouldn't he?" Galen asked, surprised.

"He's a wildling, Galen, he's never worn a collar in his life and knowing him, I'd have sworn he'd never accept one, either. That he made that suggestion means he must be really desperate. But then no animal caught in the wild ever really tolerates captivity. You remember that tiger they had in the zoo when we were children?"

Galen nodded. Neither of them could remember how that animal had found its way into the city zoo, but the sign on its cage boasted that it had been caught in the jungles of the Eastern continent. He remembered how the beast had been pacing its cage, back and forth, back and forth, never stopping a moment to rest.

"Peet is climbing the walls. It's driving me slightly crazy." She laughed, a little sheepishly. "I actually wondered how Alan put up with it all day." She put down the scroll. "So far, I haven't found anything that would forbid it. But I've also found nothing that would allow it, and I'd like to have some inked backup before I put in that request."

"I'd be happy to put in a word for your human, that regulation be damned," Galen offered. "I'm sure you can handle it, no matter if it's a wildling or not. Of course, my word would have much more authority if I could say I'd actually seen them..."

They stared at each other for a moment, the expression in Zana's eyes wavering between irritation and amusement. Finally she sighed, smoothing her hair, and sat back down on her desk. She began to shuffle the papers on it around; Galen kept his mouth shut and his hands still.

"Oh, alright. Why not. I mean, you know about them anyway."

Galen suspected that there was more behind her decision than simply submitting to his flattery, but he didn't let that thought show on his face. He beamed. "Thank you, Zana. That's terrific - I can't tell you how long..."

"There's something I'd need you to do for me first, though."

Now it was Galen's turn to waver, only for him, it was a battle between amusement and cynicism. He had actually pegged her as one of the few apes who didn't press favours when they felt they had the upper hand. "Oh?"

"One of the humans had a necklace with two pendants - pictures of his wife and son. It was confiscated along with the rest of their possessions and he has asked me if he could have it back. I thought it was a small request that would hurt nobody to grant, but apparently, I underestimated our bureaucrats' capacity for pettiness." She opened her hands. "If you could find it for me, I'd be ever so grateful - and so would be the human, I'm sure."

She had managed to surprise him - favourably surprise him. That was something he hadn't thought possible anymore. Galen nodded slowly. "I agree, it's a small thing to ask for. I'm sure nobody would miss it - it doesn't sound like a vital piece of evidence." He smiled a crooked smile. "But don't judge your bureaucrats so quickly, dear - I'm quite sure they didn't refuse you out of pettiness. I think I have a pretty good idea where to look for your human's necklace."

"It would be a nice way to introduce yourself and build rapport, too." Zana smoothed out the scroll, apparently still determined to find a paragraph that would make her excursion with the human unassailable.

Galen stroked his chin thoughtfully. Fascinating as those particular humans were, he couldn't let them distract him now. "How about the day after tomorrow?"

"What about it?" Her mind was already elsewhere. Galen suppressed a sigh.

"I had asked you about your plans for tonight... and since you're busy..."

"Mmh. Tomorrow is fine." She didn't look up from the scroll.

"Because I wanted to invite you for dinner over at my parents' house," Galen casually dropped his bomb.

She froze for a moment. When she looked up, he was surprised at the apprehension showing on Zana's face. He'd have thought she was used to being asked out. But she looked almost panicked. "I'm looking forward to that," she mumbled, and Galen smiled wanly, suddenly feeling like a manipulative prick.

"Well then... around seven? I'll come by your father's house and pick you up."

"Yes. That's how we'll do it."

A moment of awkward silence.

"Great." Galen stood. "Uhm... I should be going. You are busy and I, ah... should be busy, too." He retreated to the door. "Until then, then."

She nodded, a strained smile glued on her face. "See you then."

He took a deep breath when the door had closed behind him. He shouldn't feel guilty for asking her out. She was smart, passionate, brave, and pretty.

And, well, she had been given the most fascinating assignment; from Zaius, no less. That didn't cancel out all the other reasons he wanted to get to know her better!

Why, then, did he feel like a bastard?

"How was your dog walk?"

"Fantastic." Burke grinned into the darkness. "She even bought me ice cream."

"Bastard."

He chuckled. "I would've brought you some, too, but it melted away so quickly..."

"Did you also remember your actual objective, Major?"

"Of course, sir. I spotted the council building between the banana and the strawberry scoop..."

A sigh. "Pete..."

Burke sat up again. "Oh, alright..."

~o~

"Are you sure you want to put up with all of this just for a walk down the street?" Zana held up a bunch of leather straps that looked as if she had raided a BDSM store. Her expression was as doubtful as Burke felt right now.

According to Zana, there was actually no way that either he or Al would ever be allowed to roam the streets - to her superiors, they were the vanguard of an alien invasion force, until proven otherwise. By an unspoken agreement, neither he nor Zana had discussed the impossibility of that particular proof in that moment; they had hit that impasse too many times before. Burke just wanted her to find a loophole that would allow him to get out of their cage for once.

Zana had found a way at last, though she wouldn't tell him how or where, except that it meant he had to be rendered unable to flee or attack when in public.

To that end, Zana was holding fetters, handcuffs... and a muzzle.

Where the hell did she find that loophole? In the animal control handbook?

He'd be hobbling through the streets with a leather mask over his face. He'd be a one-man circus. Burke sighed and raked a hand through his hair.

"Yeah, I'm sure," he said finally. "I need to get out or I'll start chewing my leg off."

"I take it you don't mean that literally," Zana said dryly. "Alright then, turn around."

He couldn't tell her, but he was under orders: Get the layout of the city. Get the scoop on the fastest way out, and on their security measures. And of course, try to tease out where the apes were storing their stuff, because Al was hell-bent on finding someone who could build them a spaceship, and Burke had given up on trying to dissuade him from that crazy idea. They'd leave with the data disc, or not at all, so he'd better find a way to make Zana slip up about that little fact.

That last bit would be a bit difficult if he had to wear that thing on his face, though.

"Do we really need the muzzle? I can't breathe properly through that thing."

"I'm afraid it's all or nothing," Zana said as she reached up to pull it over his head. "Remember that this wasn't my idea." She took his leash. "Though I admit it's nice not to have to listen to your smartassery once in a while."

"Nghy!"

People stared. Naturally. People also pointed, whispered, laughed and asked silly questions. One wanted to buy him. At the third intersection, Zana pulled him into a doorway.

"This is ridiculous!" She took off the muzzle, the handcuffs, and bent down to open his fetters. Burke loosened his jaw and tried not to show his surprise.

"You're taking a pretty big risk here, y'know? I could be off in a second, and you'd never catch up with me."

She rocked back on her haunches to look up at him. "Well yes, I am taking a risk," she huffed and began to stuff his gear into her handbag. "But I like to think it's a calculated one. You wouldn't leave your friend behind." She stood and dumped the bag into his arms.

"What, am I going to carry your bag for you now?" Burke called after her.

She turned around and sniffed. "Of course you are, human. Now get moving!" She imperiously jerked her chin towards the street. "I heard they're selling ice cream at the plaza."

~o~

"It was a pretty nice afternoon, after she unmuzzled me, an' all." Burke suppressed a yawn. "But the city is... it's hard to form a map in my head. It's not designed like a human city. It's more like... a jungle, y'know? With paths and clearings... not just the green stuff - they have that too, so much that you think you've already left the city. But... you have a street, alright - but it ends in a little courtyard. And after that courtyard, there's another courtyard, and you go from courtyard to courtyard, they're all connected through archways, and you begin to ask yourself when you'll come out at the other side and walk on a street again. It's a firefighter's nightmare. Not to mention that a lot of houses are built in the trees..."

He couldn't suppress the yawn any longer. "The good thing is that it's built on the slope of a hill, so if we just go downhill, we'll hit the city walls sooner or later."

"But you didn't get to the city walls?"

"No. We had no reason to go that far downhill, and I didn't want to make her suspicious. Since I was so well-behaved, she promised me another walk. Perhaps I can persuade her that I need a change in scenery and not roam the same old streets again."

He lay down again with a satisfied groan. Walking all day had been more taxing than he'd care to admit. All those pushups and basketball sessions were no real substitute for his running routine. Perhaps he could persuade Zana to let him run laps on the institute's grounds? He should include Al, too - once they had cleared the city premises, running would be their default mode of traveling. Better train the old man now, while they still had the time.

"What do you think you're doing, Pete? Your workday isn't over yet." Alan was hovering over his cot. Burke suppressed a groan.

Then he rolled over and felt for his lockpicks.

Of course the institute hadn't been so accommodating to have some old bicycle lying around (did they even know bikes? He hadn't seen one in the city. He had to ask Zana...) whose wheel spikes he could repurpose. The best substitute he had found was a vicious looking shrub sprawling at the foot of every wall all over the institute's grounds. It had thorns as long as his middle finger that were hard as steel, and while he suspected that the shrubbery didn't grow by accident at every wall that one would need to climb if one wanted to make an unauthorised stroll into the city, they also made a handy substitute for actual lockpicks.

He had acquired several of them by claiming to follow nature's call, while Al had distracted Zana with botanical questions. According to him, the thing looked like sea buckthorn, except that its flowers were a striking blue. Zana, delighted to have found an area of interest for Virdon, had brought a book the next day, and they had spent the afternoon identifying the plants Virdon knew from home (by pointing at the pictures. The script looked like paw prints to Burke, not that he participated in the game; he was busy harvesting more thorns in case some did break when applied to actual steel).

Now was the time to put them to the test - he just hoped they wouldn't break and get stuck in the mechanic... that'd be hard to explain tomorrow. It wasn't easy anyway, fumbling around in the dark, but the fact that the locksmiths around here had reached some level of sophistication worked in his favour: the locks weren't some Middle Ages-style clunky lump of metal, but pretty delicate and light. They didn't put up much resistance to his probing.

"Got it." The door swung open.

"Excellent."

Burke grabbed Virdon's arm in the dark. "Where you think you're going?"

"I don't think anyone here would notice the color of my hair now, Pete." Virdon sounded a bit irritated.

"Yeah, but if anyone comes by here to see if we're still tucked in nicely, they'd know something's up. It's not enough to make two bedrolls - they need to hear us breathing, too. We can't be both out at the same time!"

After a moment of silence, Virdon sighed and went back inside. "Somehow you're hogging all the fun."

Burke grinned. "'m just following your orders, remember. Oh, and try to snore, that'll mask the fact that it's only one person breathing." He gave Virdon a cheerful slap on the arm. "I know you can do it, Al - I heard you often enough."

He slipped out of their cage to Virdon's hissed "I don't snore!" and jogged down the corridor, his naked feet making no sound on the stone tiles. He knew the layout of the wing, as they were led through it to their open air enclosure every day, but tonight, he'd visit some of the off-limit areas, namely the offices on the upper floor. There was a slim chance that their stuff was locked away somewhere here... for "research purposes". Yeah, right.

The compound was silent and seemingly abandoned, but he still kept to the shadows. You just never knew; with the dangerous humans around, they might have introduced a night watch, if they didn't have one in the first place, and he wasn't taking any chances. The first building he tried held only a cafeteria and several lecture halls, but the second one looked promising - lots of offices. Maybe it also had an evidence room.

Every door was locked, which meant he had to lock it again after he had searched the room, and while that cost him precious time, the utter silence in the corridors relaxed him enough not to be bothered about it too much. Most of the offices were unproductive - just reams of paper with script he couldn't read. Some held knicknacks, but none of it belonged to him or Virdon. His nightly escapade began to look more and more like a waste of time.

He had begun to pick the next lock, stifling yet another yawn, when he heard a door open on the lower level.

Burke froze for a moment. A light was moving towards the stairs, and he heard the door handles being rattled. So they did have security on the grounds. He'd feel vindicated in a moment... after he was safely inside this room, with the door locked behind him.

He felt the thorn fold inside the lock and cursed silently. Of course this damn lock had to jam! Fortunately, the stick hadn't snapped completely. He carefully eased it loose and inserted another one.

The steps were on the stairs now, the light of a lantern dancing on the walls. Burke felt sweat collecting on his upper lip as he juggled the thorn between the pins. Come on sweetheart, move... he felt the pins line up, turned the lock just as the guard came up the stairs, and slipped inside.

Leaning heavily against the door, he quickly threaded the thorns back in. The guard was testing every door, which meant he had to lock himself in, or all hell would break loose. While Burke was reasonably sure that he could use the darkness and the element of surprise to his advantage and knock him out, they'd be the prime suspects anyway, no matter whether he lost the lockpicks on his way back. He didn't want to jeopardize the wiggle room they had so diligently worked for.

He turned the lock at the same moment he heard the guard rattle the door adjacent to his room and breathed a sigh of relief. That had been close! He wiped the sweat from his lip and jerked away from the door when the guard tested its handle.

Then he heard a key inserted into the lock.

Shit!

Had the ape heard the lock turning when he tested the other handle? Burke retreated hastily into the darkness until he felt the edge of a desk boring into his thighs. He ducked behind the desk and squeezed himself into the small space underneath.

A small sliver of light appeared as the door opened. The light of the lantern flickered over the walls as the guard peered into the room. He took a step in, and Burke held his breath.

Then the light disappeared again and he heard the lock turn. The steps went down the corridor, and he heard the next door handle rattle.

For a moment, he just sat there, until his breath came more easily. After he'd cleared this floor, he'd call it a night. No need to challenge the gods like that.

The full moon was shining through the window now, which made his search easier. It was a tiny office, the smallest he had come across so far, and it was stuffed to the ceiling with scrolls, books, and what looked like the first attempts at clay modelling by kindergarteners. Even the pictures on the walls looked like they were made by preschoolers. They showed the usual motifs: sun, trees, flowers, stick-figures and what looked like a stick-ape. Everyone was smiling, so whoever had painted those masterpieces was presumably treated well by stick-ape.

When he turned away from the wall, his gaze fell on a framed picture on the desk. He took it and went to the window to have a better look.

It showed a young Chimp woman with an elderly Orangutan smiling at whoever had taken that photo (so they already had cameras, huh? Looked like a black and white photo, though; or sepia - it was hard to tell in the moonlight). The Chimp was wearing a robe and holding a scroll; the Orangutan had draped his arms around her shoulders, fatherly pride clearly written in his face.

He was looking at Zana, Burke realized, Zana and an unknown Orangutan. The photo had probably been made at her graduation, judging by the scroll in her hand. He carefully put the picture back onto her desk.

Yeah, time to call it a night. He suddenly had no taste for sneaking into offices anymore.