The alarm rang sharply in Judy's sensitive ears, announcing that her twenty minutes were up.

She opened her eyes, wishing she'd set the timer for thirty minutes, maybe even an hour, and got up from the couch in her personal quarters. Nope, twenty minutes definitely hadn't been enough. She entered her tiny yellow-white bathroom and stopped before the sink. She splashed cold water in her face. That made her feel better. For now. She gazed at her reflection in the square mirror before her. The water had made her fur spiky. Her eyes didn't shine with that energy she'd felt when she'd started her investigation on Rhamnusia. Her eyes, plus her droopy ears, plus the acid burn she'd suffered, meant there was no way she could hide her trauma from her parents. No matter how many times she'd tell them she was fine, they wouldn't believe it for a second.

Reuniting with them back on Earth was not going to be fun.

Judy left her quarters and wandered down the corridor, making her way back to the cryochamber. Ben was right where she'd left him, frozen in his glass tube. Judy strode to the monitor beside the tube, which displayed the occupant's vital signs. All looked good. Judy took manual control and looked a little deeper, instructing the cryotube to scan for any biohazardous material. It reported nothing.Plagiarus Praopotenswas still slumbering within its host.

Time to head back to the main lab and see how Flash was getting on.

Making her way back down the corridor, Judy slowed when she heard voices. Flash was one of them. The other was… it couldn't be…

"… the odds of the process reactivating the pathogen cannot be calculated without sufficient data."Minerva spoke evenly.

"I… understand…. With any… luck… Nick… and Bogo… will have… convinced Dr. Ewetani to let us know more." Flash replied, the speed of his voice shifting from sluggish to normal. "But do you think it's an acceptable option?"

"If there is a possibility of reactivation, we must not violate quarantine procedure. I recommend that the patient remains in cryosleep during the procedure, to ensure the pathogen remains dormant."

Judy burst into the main lab just as Minerva finished that sentence, to find Flash sitting at the main monitor.

"What the sweet cheese and crackers is going on here?!"

Flash turned in his seat at an excruciating pace, the chair creaking the entire time.

"Hopps…"

"How were you talking to Minerva?"

" Minerva …"

"How are you able to talk to her?!"

"… and I…"

"Answer me!"

"Were… talking."

Judy took a deep breath. "Minerva is programmed to talk to me and me alone. No-one else can without a specific override. You cannot possibly have that override." It was the only reason she'd left Minerva alone with him!

"Any… company… synthetic… with clearance… can… communicate… with company… AI." Flash punctuated the statement with a slow blink. "Did your… superiors… not tell you?"

"No. They didn't." Judy turned her attention to Minerva. "Minerva, tell me what you and Flash were talking about just now."

"Flash 120-A/2 and I were discussing a potential means of extracting Plagiarus Praopotens from the patient in cryochamber 2."

Judy's wounded ear twitched. "Go on."

"2 years, 2 months and 22 days ago, the Pawling Necropod 90i was developed for the purpose of extracting dangerous pathogens from corpses to decontaminate them without destroying the body."

Judy nodded, following. It was an impressive piece of equipment that could not only tell the difference between a pathogen and a body's natural cells, but separate them with no damage to the deceased host. The process primarily involved draining the host's affected fluids into a connected device, then filtering out the unwanted organisms while cycling the fluids back into the body. Her Pop-Pop had attended a demonstration of the machine on Mars, and come back complaining that it was just another means for the Company to gloat about their technological might.

Judy crossed her arms and glared at Flash. "If you're talking about the Necropod in the morgue, it's designed for dead bodies only. We can't just use it on a living person."

Flash moved away from the monitor to show that he too had been examining Ben's vitals. "At this moment, Clawhauser's bodily functions have been completely halted. That, I believe, will suffice."

Judy hesitated, but then another problem occurred to her. "Maybe, but the equipment is built into the Necropod. It was never meant to be used on cryotubes. We're not talking about changing a floppy disk!"

Flash smiled. "Leave that to me."

Judy gaped. "You really think you can install a Pawling Pathogen Extractor into a 337 EEV cryopod?"

"Of course I can, with Minerva's assistance."

"Andhook it up to the patient without killing him?"

"It'll be no different than installing an IV line. Or six of them."

Flash's serene smile made Judy's fur stand on end. "What kind of synthetic are you?"

"Flash 120-A/2. I admit I'm a little outdated, but not in a manner that will endanger Clawhauser's-"

"I mean what were you built for? Who were you, before theVidarfound you?"

Flash's smile twitched. "I'm sorry, I thought I made it clear. I was a Science Officer. That part of my programming is still intact, I assure you."

That was what Judy was beginning to grow afraid of. "This is too big. I'm not letting you do anything without talking to Bogo first."

If Flash was annoyed, he didn't show it. "Fair enough. But you do understand what the alternative may be."

Judy swallowed. "I know."

Nick watched as the bodybag was zipped over what was left of Lambert's face. The parts that had been cleaved from the cadaver had been gathered in a separate bag. Nick didn't want to imagine what would be done with them. Maybe floating in some preservation tank for the Bioweapons Division to admire.

Dr. Ewetani had retreated to her yurt some time ago, unable to bear the sight or the smell. Now that the body was being collected, Nick decided to do the same.

He held the motion tracker as he made the short trek back to the camp. Nothing was aside from the dots that clearly represented the guards. Either the killer was long gone or they were so still the tracker wasn't picking it up. That thought made Nick look up at the trees. He didn't stop staring at the foliage until he was back in the fake dig site.

Bogo was already in the yurt with Dr. Ewetani. She was curled up on the couch, holding a metal cup of water with both hooves.

"Bellwether really thinks she can handle these things herself?" Bogo sat on a nearby stool, glaring incredulously at the black sheep. "What planet does she think she's on?"

Dr. Ewetani looked physically ill. Nick smelled vomit, and suddenly realized what that metal cup was really for.

"She has some kind of plan… I don't know what it is, but…" She took a deep breath and looked up from the cup. "She said she's going to kill two birds with one stone. She's not stupid, she knows what they're capable of."

"Oh, your aunt is stupid, alright." Bogo grumbled. "They wear thermonuclear bombs for bracelets for god's sakes."

Nick slowly sat down beside the sheep. "Be honest, Doctor. Did you ever think digging around their private property was a good idea?"

Dr. Ewetani swallowed and put the cup down. "It was supposed to be abandoned. A couple of centuries ago, we discovered this structure on Bearvetoya Island. It was a… God, I shouldn't be saying this."

"Keep going. We'll keep this between us, I promise." Nick said.

"It was a pyramid complex, buried in a massive cavern thousands of feet beneath the ice. We sent an expedition of about three-dozen people to stake our claim, including the founder of the Company. Only two came back."

"I heard about that, or the cover story anyway. The area is a sinkhole, now." Bogo said.

"All we know is that every hundred years, the Hunters would commence some kind of ritual there. A rite of passage that included those Serpent creatures. That year, the expedition screwed it up somehow. The Serpents got out of control. There was only one way to stop it."

"Boom." Nick spoke under his breath.

"Yes." Ewetani said. "Before they died, the crew managed to document photographs of the pyramid and its interior and sent it back. There were hieroglyphs. Thousands of them. It took us decades to translate it all."

"And they led you to another remnant right here." Bogo said. "What exactly did the hieroglyphs say about this place?"
"Only that it was important. It was a repository of some kind. And it was forbidden for any Hunter to enter."

"Why?"

"We assumed it was for religious reasons."

Bogo blinked. "You assumed?"

"Speculated." Ewetani corrected herself. "We've spent hundreds of years trying to get our hands on their technology, and this is our best chance of doing so without any casualties."

"Without any casualties?" Bogo coughed out a laugh in his fury. "Are you taking the piss?"

"I'msorry, alright?!" Ewetani leapt to her feet, practically tugging at her wool. "It wasn't supposed to happen this way! But that ship crashing and releasing those things wasnotour fault! We had nothing to do with that, I swear!

"Oh, we believe you." Nick stood up as well. "But that doesn't change the fact that you are in serious shit."

Bogo stayed seated. He tapped his knee to make Ewetani turn around and look him in the eye. "The way I see it, you have two options. You can ignore the Hunters' warning, which is probably the only one they'll give you before they hunt you down and cut you up into little pieces of mutton while you're still breathing. The second option is you help us bypass Special Order 777 so we can get the answers we need. You choose option two, and we'll help you get back to Earth with your skin and all your limbs intact. You and the rest of your staff."

"You choose option two, and we'll help you get back to Earth with your skin and all of your limbs intact. You and the rest of your staff."

The Hunter could see the three of them through the yurt's window. The sheep stuck between life and death. The fox it had almost killed. The buffalo who had almost killed it.

The Hunter absent-mindedly rubbed at the ache in his arm from when the buffalo snapped it at the elbow, though was content in knowing that the pain would be gone soon. Retribution was never far from its thoughts, especially during the weeks it had spent recuperating in the Company's captivity, but the Clan leader's orders were clear; Dhi'haka must be protected, from the Company and from the Serpents that had yet to be found.

The curvy crimson figure that was the sheep leaned against the wall almost out of sight. A throbbing signal in the right of the helmet's vision indicated her rapid heart rate.

"What will you do with this information?" She asked.

"Save lives." The buffalo said.

The sheep stepped back into full view. "Fine. But on one condition. I give you only what you need to know, not what you want to know, and nothing else. And you tell me exactly why you need this information."

"If I tell you, will you promise me you'll keep it from Bellwether?"

"On my husband's life."

The buffalo rubbed his temple. The Hunter watched him contemplate his next choice.

"It's my fiancé. When Bellwether's people ran those tests on him, they missed something. The trace was so small, Hopps's autodoc was the only machine advanced enough to detect it."

The sheep stared at him. "Please tell me it's not contagious."

"Not according to Minerva. The facehugger didn't implant him, but it left some dormant trace of a pathogen in his body. It's what causes the parasite to form. It's called Plagiarus Praopotens."

The Hunter pressed a few buttons on its wrist computer. It swiftly began scanned its archives for all Earth knowledge involving this pathogen.

The sheep's jaw dropped. "My god. And Minerva told you about that? That information is classified under Special Order 990 and she told you about that?!"

"We had work around it, but we got her to tell us in the end." The fox said. "But don't be too mad at her. She's been pretty tight lipped about where this pathogen came from. The chemical."

The Hunter's sensors seemed to detect its own heart stopping mid-beat. The sheep's own heart did the same. Its own scanner hadn't detected it either. It hadn't known.

"That's what we're after." The buffalo said. "If you want us to save your life, you will let us access everything we need to know about the chemical so we can find a way to destroy it without killing my fiancé. And don't even think about informing Bellwether or anyone else, because if you do, you will wish the Hunters got to you first."

As the sheep slowly gave her answer, the Hunter swiftly sent a message to the Mothership. It kept the message brief, informing them about the biohazard and of the Company's plot to ambush them. The Mothership responded quickly with new orders. The Hunter set off at once, leaping from tree to tree until it was far from the false dig site. Then it dropped to the ground with a thud and continued to run, heading straight for its hidden ship.

Judy saw the alert of a new mail on her portable computer but didn't mention it to Flash. The sloth was in another part of the crime lab, hopefully far from the cryochamber. When he'd left the main lab, Judy had ordered Minerva to prohibit access to the cryochamber for anyone other than herself. If Flash noticed and asked about it, she would tell him that it was to better maintain quarantine procedure.

Judy opened the mail. The subject line was titled, FOR CARROT EYES ONLY.

"You did it, Nick." She whispered with a flush of pride. She opened the attached file and read it thoroughly. The more she read, the deeper her heart sank.

Chemical A0-3959X.91 – 15. That was what the science officer on from another expedition had called it. There was no information about the expedition other than its name: Pawmetheus. That and that fact the expedition never made it back to Earth. Judy assumed it wasn't relevant, or Bogo and Nick wouldn't have allowed Dr. Ewetani to leave it out the report. Instead the report focused entirely on the mutagenic agent they'd discovered.

She'd never heard of anything like it before. A viciously unpredictable pathogen created by an ancient alien race that was neither Xenomorph nor Hunter, designed not only to destroy life, but to create it. Samples of the pathogen had never made it back to Earth- the closest it got was when the Company somehow acquired Xenomorph genetic material and brought it to the Renaissance Space Station in the Alphupine System. The report didn't elaborate on that either, except for the fact the project ended in the catastrophic loss of the station and all traces of its research.

There was one other thing it did mention; every case of infection by Chemical A0-3959X.91 – 15 had ended in three ways; total destruction of the host's body, the development of a mutant embryo within the host, or the host themselves becoming a violent abomination. There was no cure- no scientist who had tried to study it had survived long enough to create one. It was more than capable of spreading through the air once activated. It was almost impossible to kill.

Judy glanced over her shoulder to make sure Flash hadn't quietly entered the room, then scrolled further down the report. Reading the part about there being no cure made her feel sick. She couldn't imagine how Bogo must have felt when he read that. What was going through his head right now, knowing that killing his fiancé may be the only way to protect mammalkind?

No. There may be another way. Flash's way. Judy strode to the larger screen fixed to the wall on the west side of the lab.

She pressed a few buttons on the computer panel beneath the screen, bringing up Nick's weary face. He appeared to be back inside the APC.

"Carrots. I see you got my message." His smile didn't quite reach his eyes.

"Nick, where's Bogo?" She asked.

"Still outside. Look, something's happened…"

"One second." Judy pressed the intercom beside the keyboard. "Flash, come back to the main lab right away. I want Bogo to hear your idea."

"On… my way… Miss Hopps…" The sloth replied.

Judy turned back to Nick. "Okay. What happened?"

"Something killed one of the doctor's security guards and carved a warning into his chest."

"Oh my gosh." Judy breathed. "What warning?"

"'Stay away'. From the lost temple or whatever Smellwether's looking for." Nick said. "We cut a deal with Ewetani. We help her crew escape, in exchange for the info we just sent you. Not exactly a win-win situation from the looks of it."

Judy put her concerns about the killing to one side, for now. "Just get Bogo in here. He needs to hear this."

Nick disappeared from view. Judy heard him call for his superior. A few seconds later he returned, with a mentally exhausted Bogo. She'd never seen him look so defeated since he'd heard the news about the dropship massacre. Her heart went out to the buffalo.

She heard the door open behind her. Flash strode to her side at a normal pace. "Good afternoon."

"Nothing about this afternoon is good, sloth." Bogo growled. "Hopps hasn't told you yet? There is. No. cure."

"Sir…" Nick started.

Glass was crunched as Bogo punched another screen out of sight. "No, Wilde! Where the hell do we go from here?!"

Flash raised a hand. "If we can't cure it, then we'll just have to extract it."

Bogo paused. He glared at the synthetic, not comprehending."Extract… it?"

"There may be a way to remove the mirco-organisms without harming him, but Hopps insisted that we discuss it with you first."

"… Go on."

Judy stayed silent, listening as Flash proposed using a component of Minerva's Necropod to extract the pathogen from Ben while he was still in a death-like state. Bogo and Nick listened intently, not saying a word until he was done. Then he turned his now perpetually angry gaze to Hopps. "Hopps. You've had more time to think about this. Do you think it's a good idea?"

"Minerva thinks so, so long as he stays in cryostasis for the whole thing. We'd need to open the pod, connect him to the extractor, then close it up. Flash was programmed in medicine as well as science, so he's the only one qualified to do it." Judy gave her observation on the matter honestly, except for her growing distrust of the sloth. She'd save that for when they came back from the planet. "We'll also need to place the Crime Lab in lockdown during the process, in case anything goes wrong."
Bogo's grimace gave way slightly, exposing the turmoil beneath. "If anything goes wrong, will it… change him?"

"I don't know." Judy admitted. "Plagiarus was derived from the Chemical, or so the Company's records say. Maybe it's actually the other way round. Either way, the records all agree on one thing. It's so volatile that we have no idea what will happen if it reactivates inside him."

"If it… does…" Flash slowed down briefly. "The cryostasis should at least slow down the effects long enough for us to take appropriate action."

"So I lose him if it fails, or I lose him if I do nothing." Bogo sighed and pinched his brow.

Nick gave him a pitying look and moved to the center of the screen. "The dropship will bring us back in a couple of hours. The Commander should have an answer by then. Over and out."

The screen went blank. Judy and Flash traded glances.

"He'll come around." Flash said. "He'll have realized by now that there are worse fates than having a parasite chew its way through your sternum."

Deep within the crust of Rhamnusia lay a cave system carved from centuries upon centuries of erosion. Rocks were dislodged, worn away or outright dissolved by seeping water to form tunnels, passages only a rabbit could squeeze through, or caverns as big as space shuttles.

In the impenetrable darkness of these caverns, the serpents found a passage formed through entirely different means.

They'd discovered it by chance, after sensing a change in temperature and following it to a weakness in a cavern wall. The Serpent with tusks had torn the wall apart with its bare claws, opening a hole big enough for their Queen to squeeze through. She'd been half the height of the Serpent at the time of their discovery. Now, in one of the biggest, deepest chambers of the new complex they'd uncovered, she was fully matured and with an ovipositor of her own. The wet, bulbous organ stretched along the chamber in a vague crescent moon shape, supported by thick pillars of dark resin. The Serpent watched as the trunk-like appendage at the end of the ovipositor lowered and deposited another gunk-drenched egg into a sea of other eggs. At the edge of the cluster, drones with smooth skulls carefully picked up the eggs to transfer them elsewhere in the hive, closer to the cocooned hosts. As for the warriors, they would be leaving soon, to find more hosts for the brood. The Serpent had a desire to join them, but stayed in place, waiting for its Queen to give her command.

She lowered her dripping jaws, flared her second set of arms and gave a low, nearly subsonic hiss of consent. But there was one place in particular she wanted the Serpent to go. It understood its objective and set out at once for the surface.