Dudley hurried as he opened the apartment door. It was 15 minutes before midnight, he had just 45 minutes left. The clock was ticking. He rushed into the living room and looked around. It was empty. He cursed under his breath, maybe the bedroom. His feet send him running with such force that his upper body had to do its best to keep some kind of posture. He hoped to catch her, just for a few minutes. But as the bedroom was another dead end he sighed in defeat. He seemed to be alone.

"Dudley?" A voice came from the kitchen and the dog returned hurriedly back. Kitty stood in the doorway wearing just a slip and an old t-shirt of him. "What are you doing here?"
"Hey you are still up, great!" He smiled happily and lifted up the brown paper bag he was carrying around. "Hungry? I bought some sandwiches."
"No I am not hungry, why are you here? You should be at work right now." Kitty crossed her arms and looked sternly at him.

"I am on my break." Dudley said and looked at his watch. "Agent Rodriguez covers for me if something happens, I still have 28 minutes, then I have to leave."
"Oh…" Kitty's posture changed from angry to surprised in a split second. "But still why do you…"

"Kitty there was a reason why I changed shifts, have you looked at the plan?" He asked speaking quickly. "Next week you are on the night and I am on the day shift. We won't see each other for two weeks with the current plan."
"Wait who put… God dammit Rick." Kitty gritted her teeth.

"Exactly. And I actually would like to have some kind of relationship life from time to time so I came here." He walked past her into the kitchen and put the paper bag on the counter. "So, sandwich?"
"I am actually not hungry." She said and sat down on the kitchen table. "But I keep you company while you eat."

"Great, I just have 25 minutes left, I need to hurry." Dudley raced to the table with one of the sandwiches and gnawed it down in less than a minute.
"Careful there, I don't want you to have an aching belly again," Kitty said a little amused by the view.
"Yes, but I safe so much time." He said and panted like he tried to intake all air that he had to hold during eating.

"Dudley, can we talk about what happened today?"
The dog grimaced and looked at his watch. "No way around that, huh?"
"Not really."
"Then shot your questions." He sighed.

"In general, what were you doing there dressed like a pimp from Florida?" Kitty leaned forward in her chair.
"I thought I looked very good in that suit."
"Dudley, please."

"Fine. I am seeing someone." Dudley slowly said and as Kitty's eyes went bigger, he immediately paddled back. "No, not like that, he's a friend… I guess."
"A friend you say." Kitty tilted her head to the side. "And why did you never introduce this friend to me?"

"I'd rather not, he's one of these friends that's just trouble."
"And you two do exactly what then?"
"We mostly talk, he's very talkative…" Dudley paused for a moment and looked pensively at the tabletop. "I guess he's often alone."

"And that's it? Just a friend you talk to?"
"I also sometimes help him out of trouble… like with this biker thing." Dudley hadn't planned on lying to Kitty in that way, but he still hoped the narrative he concocted was consistent enough for her to believe. "It was about debt, his debt. I wanted to get some more time for him."

"Aha…" Kitty leaned back in her chair and looked less convinced than he hoped. "And how did that go?"
"Well, you saw how this lady screamed at me." He shrugged and stood up. Next thing Kitty knew he had his hands on her shoulders and started massaging her.

"Uh… Dudley, there are still…"
"I know I know…" He said and started moving his hands up her neck finding and kneading the tensed-up muscle fibers. "But I just have 20 minutes left with you and there is time for this the next break we share, don't you think?"

Kitty wanted to protest but his hands rubbing over her neck were too persuasive. She closed her eyes and let the relief from her neck spread through her whole body. And then something else was added to the hands. Gently placed kisses starting from her neck down to her shoulder. Kitty quivered a little with every kiss she received.

Work was tough right now, and there wasn't a lot of time for affection lately. Mostly the two of them just fall exhausted into bed after dinner or crashed on the couch while watching the same movie they had started for the tenth time. It had been a month since the last time Dudley had tried to be smooth on her. Gentle but determined he lifted her out of the chair and turned her to him to place the next kiss on her lips.

"Dudley there isn't enough time." She panted as they moved apart.
"I have 18 minutes left that's more than enough for me." He said unbuttoning his shirt with one hand while the other was still laying on her neck.

"Spoken like a true gentleman." Kitty meant with a frown.
"You see, I plan that 10 minutes should be enough for you."
"Oh, now I want to see you try." She giggled and bit his ear. The dog howled playfully as his hands wandered upwards underneath her shirt finding and grabbing what he had searched for.

Kitty grinned, she made it easier for him and removed the shirt.
"Like what you see?" She said grinning.
"Every single time." He grinned and lifted her up, intending to sit her down on the kitchen table. But as soon he was approaching it, the very ground underneath their feet began to shake. Dudley lost his footing and fall on the ground, the almost naked Kitty on top of him.

"Are we cursed?" Moaned Dudley while Kitty got up from on top of him.
"It seems so…" She groaned and helped her boyfriend back on his feet. "What was that?"
Dudley took his phone and checked for messages. "Just in, there's an emergency in the high-energy research facility on the edge of town, they asked for T.U.F.F.'s help. I better get going." He laid the phone away and tried to readjust his wardrobe.

"Wait a moment, I'll come with you." She said and ran into the bedroom.
"But you should sl… forget it." He sighed and buttoned his shirt again. He wanted to turn around and search for his tie but stopped in his tracks as he saw Sam sitting on one of his kitchen chairs.

"I appreciate the décor of your new apartment." He commented casually and received an angry muffled hiss from Dudley
"Are you insane, what are you doing here?"
"Calm," Sam said and stood up. "I will not occupy your precious time for too long. I just want to tell you that there is work for you."
"You did this quake?"

The advisor nodded. "I saw myself constrained to intervene this time. The situation escalated."
"What's that supposed to mean?!" In this moment like lightings to his brain, Dudley was bombarded with a memory that was broken into kaleidoscopic fractures his mind couldn't just comprehend at once.
"I raised my hand against my captors."

"You what?!" he moaned holding his head. "What did you…"
"I am sorry for the things your mind is bothered with… But you need my side in this to understand and my time is too limited to conventionally explain. I will leave now. A higher jurisdiction is awaiting me, Dudley," The advisor eerily said. "As I am awaiting trial just one piece of advice. Do not act too dumb." And again, before Kitty could storm out of their bedroom dressed in her jumpsuit Sam was gone again.

"Dudley, are you alright?" She gently touched his face checking his pain contorted expression. "You look like you just saw a ghost."
"I did, kind of." He mumbled as Kitty changed her gentle touch to the face to a firm grip to his arm.
"Sure," She chuckled as she pulled him to the elevators. "What did it say?"
"That I should not act too dumb."
"Sound advice."

As the two arrived at the facility a wagon of T.U.F.F. agents was already blocking the access to the premises. Kitty waved a few times with her badge to pass through all blockades and parked her car close to where Agent Rodriguez was standing. The fox scribbled puzzled looking at her notebook while interviewing a scientist that looked like she was phasing in and out of a panic attack. Kitty jumped out of the car and walked to her.

"Status, Karla." She commanded in a demanding way.
"I do not have the slightest clue," Rodriguez mumbled scratching her neck. "You better talk to Keswick. He seems to have figured this out, or pretends to have."
"Got it, Dudley…" Kitty looked around seeing her partner standing still by the car staring at the building. He seemed, in a way, similarly frightened as the panic-stricken scientist was, even though not as severely.

"Dudley!" She called once more, and the dog blinked a few times before noticing her.
"Yeah?"
"We are going to meet Keswick. He's…" She looked expectantly over to Karla who absentmindedly pointed at the building's entrance.
"He's inside."

"He's inside the building, follow me." She started moving quickly to the building, trying to lose no time just hindered by Dudley's slow stride. Keswick, T.U.F.F.'s scientist and gadget master, stood in the entrance hall of the lab and used a clunky-looking device to check for something that probably evaded Kitty's scientific knowledge.

"Hey Keswick, what you got for me?"
"There are like… glitches in the s..s..spectrum of the background radiation," Keswick mumbled checking the display on the device that reminded Kitty of an industrial vacuum cleaner.

"So… is it safe to be here or do we need ABC suits?" Kitty's hand moved to her wristcom ready to order whatever gear they needed to get the job done.
"It should be safe, but every few seconds there is some kind of w..w..weird emission. I think my device is simply broken." Keswick tapped at the little lcd display like trying to bring the machine back to reason.

"Okay, so do you know more?"
"There was an explosion." Mumbled Dudley and stepped beside the two of them. "In one of the labs."

"Uhm… he's r..r..right. I mean of course, what else should create such an e..e..earthquake." Keswick had spun to reason before even asking himself how Dudley, who wasn't known to be the quickest thinker, had made this conclusion.
Kitty on the other hand knew him, and she also knew that he sometimes needed time to join the dots on simpler things than that.

Surprised she raised an eyebrow and asked. "From where do you know that?"
But Dudley simply kept on slowly, almost zombie-like, walking to the staircase. Keswick and Kitty exchanged glances but then followed him down a long flight of stairs to its bottom where he, like this place was his second home, opened a big steel door and walked down a hallway to arrive at an even bigger steel double door.

"Dudley, where are you going?" Kitty asked confused as they stood in front of the double door.
Dudley remained silent. He held the handles of the two doors like he had been petrified at this exact moment.

"Is everything alright with him, K..K..Kitty?" Keswick whispered, he seemed weirded out by Dudley's behavior. A novum, usually the short scientist was the one that set the bar for abnormal behavior. During his long service at the Petropolis T.U.F.F. HQ Keswick had probably done every weird thing a man with a lab could have done.

Like creating a killer robot that couldn't differentiate between enemies and civilians, then building this very same robot into a girlfriend bot, that still had a very similar problem concerning pattern recognition.

Kitty slowly laid her hand on his shoulder and Dudley suddenly gasped like he was holding his breath the whole time.
"Sam, you… you madman…" he mumbled as a visible shiver traveled through his body.

"Who's Sam?" Keswick and Kitty both asked but Dudley just shook his head.
"Nothing I just… stay focused." He said and the two of them didn't know if he talked to them or to himself. Dudley pushed down the handles and opened the door giving the three of them access to the extent of the destruction.

"Oh my…" Keswick whistled through his teeth and stepped into the room. "What has happened h..h..here?"
"That's no ordinary explosion," Kitty whispered awestruck, and paced into the room. Only Dudley was quiet. He moved to the middle of the room on something that looked like a hill of molten metal and stood on it. His eyes were closed, and he looked concentrated.
"Dudley, we don't have time…"

"Quiet." He hissed and slowly moved forward. Kitty was taken aback by this, normally he didn't talk to her like that. In general, Dudley seemed even odder than he was before entering. The way he moved… It looked weird, he moved his legs like they were far longer than actually. And then the weird gesture of his hand. It looked like a mixture of a snap of his fingers and a wave.

"Seriously, what are you…" Kitty tried to inquire about whatever he was doing there but Dudley's knees simply gave in, and he fell onto the ground. She didn't hesitate a second and rushed to him kneeling down next to him.

"Dudley, are you okay?!" She started shaking him and the dog replied with a cough.
"It's okay…" he wheezed and tried getting back on his knees which was at first just possible with Kitty's aid. "It should be out of the system now."

"What? What do you mean?!" She asked and looked concerned at him.
"I'm alright, really, don't worry." He got on his shaky legs and looked around. "Look at this carnage…"
"HOLY H..H..HELL!" They heard Keswick exclaim from another corner of the room. He had found the remnants of a wall-mounted terminal and had started tinkering with it.

"What's going on?" Kitty asked as she aided Dudley in his walking attempts.
"I got access to the camera s..s..server, look at this." Keswick waved them to a laptop he had put down and then pressed play. A few-second long video was played of a thing, Kitty couldn't really describe it on the grainy video, stepping out of some kind of containment.

Then a lot of guards appear and then a white flash. The video ended after that. Kitty looked at the angle the video was shot and then into the corner of the room where the camera must have been mounted. Nothing of it was left which explained the abrupt ending of the film.
"Keswick, any idea what that was?" she asked slowly alternating her gaze between where the thing was standing, the camera and Keswick.

"Good q..q..question, it seemed like…"
"A warning," Dudley whispered staring spellbound at the screen where the clip was on repeat. "They were messing with things they could not understand…"
Kitty took a step away from Dudley as his voice sounded like the total opposite of what she knew. It was grave and dark and eerily ominous.

"Interesting Agent Puppy, and why do you r..r..reckon it is that?" Keswick probed with the interest of a scientist who felt the possibility for a paper.
"I still feel…" Suddenly, Dudley shook his head and his voice turned back to the know, light-hearted-sounding tone Kitty came to appreciate. "Sorry guys, there must be something in here making me a little dizzy." For a moment Dudley smiled and then he looked back onto the screen.

Kitty pulled Keswick aside and made sure she was out of earshot of her partner before saying. "Keswick something is going on with Dudley."
"That's hardly i..i..ignoreable." Keswick whispered back. "Should I t..t..take a closer look at him?" he emphasized his remarks with a move that was fitting for a butcher.

"Not like that but we should keep an eye on him…"
"Are you worried that he does something s..s..stupid?" He asked sarcastically.
"I am used to stupid actions," She said and gave her boyfriend a quick look. Dudley still seemed to be fixated on the screen. "I am more afraid of… It's hard to describe… Maybe him hurting himself or something?"

"Ah, noted." Keswick grabbed a little notebook from his coat and wrote a few words down. "Okay and now?"
"Well, the usual." Kitty shrugged. "We recover the evidence and go back to HQ."
"Uhm, guys…" Dudley slowly said while eyeing the screen even closer. "What does 'Kernel panic' mean?"

Keswick rushed back to the computer and started typing things into it. "Wh… How could… I can't address any of the m..m..memory anymore! What did you do?!"
"Nothing!" Dudley said looking sheepishly to the ground. "I just pressed play on the video again, it had stopped."
"Keswick, the short version please." Kitty commanded not in the mood to hear a lot of technical termini.

"It seems like the memory is gone… I have to go to the s..s..server and grab the physical hard drives and then see in the l..l..lab what I can do." He quickly explained, detached his laptop from the wall terminal, and ran out of the room.

"Kitty I really didn't… I just clicked…" Dudley guiltily started to justify himself.
"I believe you…" Kitty said and then her eyes narrowed. "At least about that."
"What do you mean…?" He asked confused.

"Oh, your little circus number here in the room." She said and mimicked the way he moved earlier. "What is going on Dudley? Something isn't right, you can't tell me otherwise."
"I…uhm… take drugs?" Right after uttering this sentence, he looked like an imaginary paddle had hit him on the head. Kitty rolled her eyes, what kind of excuse was that?

"Sure… And what exactly?"
"Meth I think…"
"You think?" She sighed. "If you are lying to me, could you at least not try to insult my intelligence?"

"I am not, my head just feels like…" Dudley suddenly stared at a place on the wall again in this weird way. Kitty followed his gaze and saw something that reminded her of a crater.
The two of them stepped to it and looked inside. The opening was punched through several walls and at the end of it, impaled on rebar that finally didn't give in to the force, was a uniformed bunny.

"Dudley, get an ambulance, quick!" Kitty ordered and then started crossing the hurdles to get to the man. After she was at the halfway point to him the thought of how he could be anything but dead at this point crossed her mind. But still, she hurried and as she arrived by the man, she was greeted with a weak but steady pulse.

"He's still alive!" She called to the hole. "Don't worry Sir, we will get you to the hos..." Kitty almost choked on her own words as she looked down onto the ground beneath the impaled man. A single lonely teacup stood there, provoking with its tackiness. Kitty knelt down and picked it up, it was the same kind of cup she had found once before.

Two paramedics arrived after moments that felt like eternities at the hanging bunny. It took them even longer to safely pull him off the rebar and get him finally into the ambulance.
General Hobbs was barely conscious during all of that, the only thing he had perceived besides pains, which a lot more than once sent his mind into slumber, was the voice of a woman.

As his brain began to function again, shielded from the pain by a hefty dose of painkillers, the bunny found himself in a hospital bed. Shivering he blinked into the darkness trying to see something familiar. A chair and a little table, a coat rack, and next to him, a bunch of machinery which was attached to him.

At least he wasn't in the facility any longer. Safety, if you could ever be save from this thing. He leaned back in his bed and stared at his hands. What did this creature do to him? And why didn't it kill him too? It would have been so easy to just let him burn in the same light as all the others.

Under pain so great he felt it through his chemical daze he clenched his hands into fists. Was this really a warning? What sick mind warned by killing innocent people? Or had it been unable to kill him maybe? His mind demanded answers to these questions, and it demanded them now.

The D.E.U.P. was maybe in ruins but he was still General Andrew Horatio Hobbs, he could easily conjure up a new team, equally qualified as the old one. As he looked at his fist a smile began to form on his pain-tormented face. 'You never warn, advisor. Kill or get killed.