Even if I had chosen to incapacitate the two for the purpose of arrest, there would have been ample chances for him to capitalize on the diminished population and escape, becoming a repeat offender...if another Ss'sik'chtokiwij didn't find him first.

I didn't expect the man's male "wife" to be carrying a gun.

Crack! I spasmed as pain radiated from my back.

I spun to face the fur suit wearing man, drawing my own pistol, which I waved threateningly like as if loaded.

"Shit!" the man cried, diving behind the crib. "What the holy fuck!"

The man had removed the bear head and fake paws to improve his aim. His plump, sweaty face, with an unkempt mess of black hair strewn about on his head slightly resembled that of film director Peter Jackson.

"Let these children go, and I'll spare your life!"

For a fat man in a bear suit, he moved surprisingly quickly. My threat had just barely left my mouth when he had the barrel of his gun pressed to Rebecca's temple. "I have a better idea. You put down that gun, and go back to wherever the hell you came from, and I won't blow her fucking brains out."

"Go ahead. I prefer cruelty free meat."

Rebecca's eyes got really big, but the man called my bluff by cocking back the hammer. "I kinda think you don't mean that."

Sighing, I set the gun on the floor. I refused to obey the rest of the order.

The moment he moved the gun hammer to a safe position, I threw Timmy over my shoulder, carrying him to the wall I'd leapt from.

"Ah-ah! I wouldn't do that!"

His pistol hammer clicked back again. "Drop him and leave now!"

I did what he said, but rebelliously grabbed a pair of his dead "wife's" ribs on the way out.

Jeff fired several shots as I ducked back into the vent, but only ruined his rainbow striped flag and a smoke detector.

I crept back toward the opening, stripping meat off the ribs as I observed the scene below.

Even after a quick prayer of thanks, I felt a little guilty about eating my victim, but not that guilty. I had killed to save lives, to stop an evil deed, and the man was too dead to care what I did with his body afterwards. I even sensed a strange sort of ironic rightness to it, indignity for indignity.

I slurped the bone clean, peering through the slatted vent plate.

Timmy, emboldened by all the distraction, attempted to flee. Jeff quickly caught the boy.

Seemingly oblivious to the fact that Jeff was armed, Timmy kicked him right in the crotch.

The man just laughed. The suit gave him extra protective padding against such attacks. "Stupid kid! Don't you know you can't harm a bear?"

He yanked the boy's choke chain, hooked him to a leash on a nearby wall, struck him across the face.

Rebecca, in the meantime, appeared to be searching the crib for exploitable faults or discarded tools. When Jeff whirled around to check on her, she resumed cowering.

For a few moments, the man anxiously glanced between the children and the vent and back again.

He opened a cabinet, taking out a gray metal canister and an air filtration mask.

He duct taped the canister to a metal pole, then, donning the mask, he removed a pin from the device, smashing it against the vent.

A huge cloud of yellow-gray smoke filled the compartment, eliminating visibility, blocking my olfactory receptors, and even obscuring my heat vision.

When the cloud cleared, I found the room empty, the man and both children gone.

I searched the room carefully, but I couldn't find anyone. Jeff had unfastened Timmy's leash and dragged the children away from there. A quick search of the vents in adjacent rooms yielded nothing.

Although I had a strong sense of smell, I still couldn't detect floor odors from the ceiling, especially near the other end of the room, and I wanted to check the entrance.

Yet, if I followed along the ground, someone could potentially shoot me.

I tried the indirect approach first, darting up and down the air ducts, but spotted nothing of use.

I climbed back down into the room.

I guess the man didn't know my gun hadn't been loaded, for he had taken the weapon with him like it was.

I wanted to take some more of my victim `to go', but that distracted me from the smells, so I left him to rot, sniffing around the door and the hallway beyond.

No one, friend or foe.

When I sniffed a little further, to my surprise and delight, I discovered that the scent trails diverged. Someone escaped!

One path scented of an unbathed man clad in musty fake fur and a terrified boy, the diverging scent a young female.

As much as I wanted to hunt the man down first, I knew he'd be lying in wait with a gun, so it seemed more prudent to question the girl first, possibly get clues.

Rebecca sobbed in a darkened maintenance compartment behind a neighboring unit, still clad in the bear suit. "My clothes are in the locker by the door. Could you please get them?"

I nodded. "Anything for a friend."

This made her cry more. "Close the plate when you go. I don't want to be seen."

I returned to the men's den of sin, locating a high school style gym locker along the wall.

I made short work of the padlock, locating the children's clothing atop a stack of other children's outfits. I shuddered to think who they belonged to, and what happened to them.

I would have taken another appetizer off the corpse, but that's like eating messy barbecue and handling a tuxedo.

I brought the clothes back to Rebecca. "I believe the other outfit belongs to your brother. Perhaps you should hold on to it."

She frowned. "At first, I thought it was funny to see him as Goldilocks." Her expression darkened. "You have to get him away from that man."

"I know. Where were they going?"

Rebecca shrugged. "I was just trying to get away. To get help. He said something about a pirate's cave."

"Cave? Like at the far end of the base?"

She just furrowed her brow. "I'm...not sure."

Not very helpful, but I thanked her anyway. "Stay out of sight. Keep inside the ducts so he can't get you."

Rebecca gave me a solemn nod. By the weary look on her face, I could tell she didn't want to see or speak to another grownup for as long as she lived.

I departed from there, searching for the `cave.' I could have gone south, to check actual caves, but decided I'd be no better off than if I just tracked my prey like I had been doing before.

I followed the man's trail with the utmost care. Although some time had passed since our encounter, I kept alert, darting around corners at the slightest sound, sometimes rushing up to the ceiling.

`Pirate's cave:' Not a cave at all, just a dilapidated old dwelling on the north end of the base. Situated near the far wall of the compound, it stood close to the peace and freedom of the stormy outside world, but not enough for light to penetrate its oppressive gloom.

Lots of run down dwellings in this area, rusted, poorly cleaned and maintained. The lighting fixtures had been burned out in sections. Not a soul anywhere, no one who could have sighted a child in distress and lifted a finger to help.

I could tell which door the man had entered. Considering the fact he already knew how I generally entered rooms, I for a moment considered barging in the main entrance, but then decided that pressure doors draw ten times more attention when opening than a ventilation register.

I climbed up the wall of the dwelling next door to this `cave', removing the cover plate. I had to hang upside down to get inside, but it worked. The panel a few yards down afforded a view into the neighboring unit.

A sallow, bored looking woman in a silk lingerie teddy and nylons sat smoking on a bed. The bed seemed a poor fit for the room, and the woman, for it had a fine polished wood frame, thick padding, and luxurious silk coverings. The rest of the room, the desk, table and chairs, lamps, all looked dingy by comparison. She didn't even have pictures on the wall.

I stared at the bony figure, wondering if I could possibly solicit her aid in rescuing the children, but then a balding pot bellied man in a blue shirt continued a conversation with her.

"Why the hell not?"

The woman exhaled a cloud of smoke. "You still owe me for last time."

She slid a hand over her left thigh, gesturing suggestively to her lacy underwear. "The moment you settle a few unpaid debts, they're yours."

The man slammed his fist down on a dresser. "How am I supposed to afford all that? And those things keep killing people! I can't do business with all that shit going on!"

She offered no sympathy. "Figure it out."

[0000]

I'd read parts of the bible regarding prostitutes, though I confess I never really understood the appeal of such a practice, any more than I understood the strange performance of Goldilocks and The Three Bears I'd interrupted. If anyone whored themselves out to a Ss'sik'chtokiwij, they wouldn't be able to enjoy the profit for more than a few days, even if we did happen to carry around money.

"Ciera, give me another week. That's all I ask."

"That's what you said last week."

And on it went. The two were too busy arguing about payment for sexual favors to be of any help. I hurried away from there.

The passage ahead proved to be curiously dark. When I got to the register, I discovered why.

Though the man hadn't had that much time to prepare, he'd still hatched a plan two steps ahead of me.

The darkness resulted from the man affixing a piece of metal over the cover.

I melted a small hole through its surface, attempting to peer into the room beyond, but the moment I did this, a gun barrel came poking through the opening.

The muzzle flashed at the ceiling, filling the tiny compartment with deafening noise.

The glistening steel tube moved downwards, pointing directly at my face.

Bang.

I pressed my body flat against the `floor' just seconds before the gun went off.

Gathering a large glob of saliva in my mouth, I spat at the end of the weapon as it commenced firing a third time.

The shot did not project.

Something exploded behind the panel. A voice shouted a loud stream of profanity.

Deciding that the proverbial iron would never get hotter than this, strike I did, with everything I could muster.

Making use of my weight, my fists, and liberal amounts of acidic saliva, I bashed open the panel, and whatever the man had used to block it, spilling blindly into the room below.

The room did appear to be a treasure hoard...of sorts. The room contained dozens of storage crates and shipping containers, but I guess the contents had not been of great value, or too illegal or stolen to sell, or they wouldn't have plotted that parenting scheme. The open containers of fabric and random machine parts indicated this may have been the case.

The unit resembled the rusted interior of a garbage dumpster. No kitchen or much of anything else. A beat up messily made bed lay in the corner.

The boy, now with ripped stockings, lay leashed to a pipe along a wall, looking quite miserable.

A cereal bowl full of water had been set next to him, like some kind of dog...or me in a lab.

Jeff had changed out of his bear suit, preferring the flexibility of denim jeans and a Lion King t-shirt. I caught him in the middle of chambering rounds into a shotgun.

The stock snapped shut, but before he could aim, I pounced, ripping the weapon from his hands.

I could have killed him, either by a point blank shot or my claws, but I was no glutton. I merely swung the stock at his head like hitting a home run. He collapsed to the floor, unconscious.

I immediately snatched up every weapon I could find, as well as ammunition, shoving them into a dufflebag I found. Knives, a ninja sai, a second shotgun, two handguns (one of them mine), boxes of bullets, and a taser.

I would have taken the man's samurai sword, but...too impractical to be a serious threat. The man did not strike me as the type who had enough self control to seriously apply himself to such a study.

I rushed to Timmy's side, melting through his restraints. "Are you okay?"

The boy shook his head, looking rather sick.

"I...don't think I'll ever be okay again."