Chapter 2

Zooty drifted into awakening many hours later with a very sore and drowsy head and his fur sopping wet. As he slowly gained more consciousness he investigated his surroundings. He found he was suspended in a bluish liquid inside a glass pod. Curious, he took a good look at himself and found a breathing apparatus firmly shoved in his mouth and all of his thermal clothing had been removed. He was glad to be alive after encountering that harvester but as his head became clearer he started to get the daunting realization it hadn’t killed him on purpose. Shivering violently both from fear and the icy coldness of the liquid Zooty wiped away the frost from the glass and peered outside.

His jaw dropped in shock! Wherever he was, he was very, very far from home. His pod was just one of hundreds, if not thousands of pods jutting out from the wall of a room so tall Zooty couldn’t even see the ceiling. It took him several minutes to get over the shock and the sickening feeling in his stomach.

“I’m inside a Cyresis Hub,” the weasel breathed.

Zooty heard an engine whistle over head and peered up as the top half of his pod was lifted off by an enormous hovering machine. The machine’s four ocular implants stared at him beneath a writhing mass of wires where its mouth should have been. On its back was a cumbersome anti-gravity pack.

“Thanks,” Zooty said as he shook his fur dry, “I don’t like being wet.”

The machine didn’t seem interested in replying to him, it took him by the scruff of the neck with one of its many limbs and prodded his ear with a glass tube shaped end piece. The weasel shifted his eyes to take a look and stared in shock as a small mechanical worm came squirming out of the tube and wriggled inside his ear. Zooty really wanted to try and pull it out but the machine restrained him too firmly.

“Yuck, that was messed up,” he huffed.

“Leechite implanted in Cyresis subject, starting cerebral scan,” the Cynid spoke in its electronically distorted voice. The machine started prodding his head, “subject name: Zooty, sex: male, species: weasel. Subject's inception: eighteen Empyrean years. Size dimensions: one hundred and twenty five centimetres tall, thirty centimetres wide. No detectable psychic ability. Commencing Cyresis.”

Zooty exclaimed as without warning, a very long needle attached to one of the machine’s limbs embedded itself into the pain reception sector in his brain. “Ouch! Some warning would‘ve been nice!” The weasel huffed as the machine withdrew the needle.

“Subject’s left eye infected with macular degeneration, administering cybernetic replacement." Uh oh, he didn’t like the sound of that!

“Damn, this is gonna hurt,” Zooty huffed. Unfortunately there was nothing he could do about it, the Cynid was holding his head in place. Much to his shock, the Cynid’s needle plunged into his left eye and pulled it right from its socket. Then if that wasn’t bad enough, the machine ate the severed eye and coughed out the remains over his fur.

“Nice… I’m gonna throw up now,” and sure enough poor little Zooty did before he passed out.

When Zooty woke up he was back in his pod. He was so groggy and cold he almost forgot his predicament. Yet it only took one look at his reflection to bring the nightmare back. His left eye was gone and replaced with a cybernetic prosthetic that almost covered the left side of his face. Apart from that it didn’t look as though he had been altered too much, but on closer inspection he could feel mechanical servomechanisms amongst his muscles and a pair of wires in his ears. Whatever they had done to him, Zooty was just thankful he had slept through the process.

“Subject is awake. Administer Brainbot,” a voice bleeped. Zooty turned his nose up and gawked as an enormous needle jutted from the pod ceiling and started moving towards him. Oh no… The Brainbot was a mind control device!

“Take them down!”

Zooty peered out of his pod curiously as a white canister suddenly came bouncing through the doors and the room was flooded with a blinding light. His ears rang and he couldn’t see for many long, disoriented moments. When he could see again he saw a squirrel in a straight jacket and a ferret armed with a Flux-Carbine led by a raccoon with an Ion-Rifle staring up at them. The Cynid guards littered the floor around them.

“Are we too late?” The raccoon asked as he surveyed the pods.

The ferret scampered over to the console, “we are, dammit!” She cursed, “They’ve already administered the brain bots.”

“Hey,” the squirrel in a straight jacket squeaked, “I think someone up there’s trying to get our attention.” They peered up at the hopeful looking Zooty tapping on the glass of his pod.

The raccoon looked up at Zooty, “Tashy, take a reading on him,” he said.

The ferret skimmed through the Cyresis log on the console until she found the one with a big “Brainbotting Failed,” message beside it.

“Here we are. According to the Cyresis log this weasel had his left eye replaced for a reflex enhancing device. That‘s a rare augmentation!" The ferret said excitedly as she read the monitor.

"Is he Cynid?" The raccoon asked.

“It depends on how you put it, he’s been assimilated but the brainbot wasn‘t implanted, the Cynids don't control him."

“Any chance he could wind up being fully Cynid?” The raccoon asked.

The ferret shook her head, “no chance.”

The raccoon nodded, "looks like we may get to rescue someone after all, Tashy let him out."

The ferret pushed the subject rejection button on the console. Zooty braced himself as his pod dropped from its holding unit and rolled to the group of curious critters. They gathered around the pod and peered inside, the raccoon broke the glass with the rear end of his gun and hauled him out by the throat. The raccoon had done that to stop him breathing in the HEX, and made sure he didn’t breathe until the ferret put on the filter mask.

"Wow, thank you," Zooty said as the ferret handed him her scarf, "I'd be done for if you guys hadn’t shown up. Who are you?"

"Unfortunately we can’t introduce ourselves right now,” the raccoon said. “We need to get out of here, the Cynids are sure to notice if one of their Cyresis facilities goes silent. Tashy, can you find a way out?"

“The rejected transfer hatch leads to Snowgear wastes; if we get far enough away we could call in a ship.”

“Perfect, open the hatch so we can get moving” Reiko said as he opened the rejected transfer hatch.

“Guys we’ve got company!” The squirrel squealed as he hurried back into the room. Just after he got through the doors a solid beam of HEX projected by a Cynid’s HEX-Rifle burst through his chest and sent him reeling on the floor. Reiko unloaded two bolts from his Ion-Rifle at the oncoming security forces and hauled the squirrel onto his back, “everyone, down the hatch, now!”