There were only quick flashes next. Blasts of pain and bright light. He remembered a singular moment – he was being held up on some kind of vertical table, a large metallic device around his forehead. There was a feeling in his skull, as if his brain was melting out of his ears. He screamed, then all went dark again.

“Hey!”

The voice was coming from ahead of his, somewhere. Somewhere in the darkness. It was female.

“You can’t talk back to me here,” the voice said, “but you can hear me just fine. Listen, you have been captured by our Makers. Whatever you do, don’t let them take you Below! Whatever you do, you must stay away from there! You must escape!”

The voice faded. The darkness faded.

Damian opened his eyes and found himself in another stark white room. This one, however, was no interrogation room. It was a jail cell.

Two beds were attached to the far wall, with a thin door on the right wall.

The ferret groaned and stumbled up to his footpaws, instinctively heading for the cell door. He knew it would be locked, but that didn’t stop him from trying to open it. When he neared the door, a barely audible buzzing noise was heard, and an LCD monitor next to the door plainly read “ACCESS DENIED” in large, red letters.

Damian slammed his head against the cell door and slumped down to his knees, groaning both from fear and the pain derived from the impact of his head meeting the door.

“Ah, you’re awake.”

Damian jerked around in shock – he hadn’t noticed anybody else in the cell. He scanned the room quickly and noticed that, in the far corner of the cell, was the cheetah whom Damian had been speaking with outside of the diner.

“Hey,” the cheetah said, pointing a claw at Damian, “I remember you. You were the one in the crowd on Main Street…” his gaze fell for the second time in as many conversations. “Your father died. My condolences.”

Damian sat down on one of the beds, across the room from the cheetah. “My brother was captured, too. I think they said they killed him.”

“If they captured him,” the cheetah said, “they’d probably leave him alive for now. That’s why they came to Alden, you know? To capture us.” Before Damian could respond, the cheetah shook his head. “Wow, I’m really a jerk, you know that? Haven’t even introduced myself, yet.” He extended a paw. “Name’s Iocus.”

Damian shook it. “I’m Damian. I don’t get it, Iocus. They keep calling me a hybrid.”

“Because we are,” the cheetah said with a nod. “I didn’t believe it at first, but then they used that mindsweeper on me. You were there, too.”

“I was?”

“Yeah,” Iocus said, continuing his nod, “but you were out for most of it. They said they had to really dig around your head to find it.”

“Find what?”

The cheetah rolled his eyes. “Your power. Hey, did they ask you in the interrogation room about a specific family member?”

Damian thought back. He had a hard time focusing on the specifics of the interrogation, but remembered it vaguely. “I think they asked me something about my mom.”

“Yeah,” Iocus said. “I figured it wasn’t a coincidence. They did that with me, too. See, she’s where you got your hybrid powers from. My dad’s line gave me mine. They probably had to run a background check to make sure that our hybrid DNA matches with whatever they’ve got in their databases. Though I’d be interested in knowing how they got it.” Iocus sighed.

“If they can match us based on our family members,” Damian said, “then they might be able to find the rest of them!” Damian stood up quickly, only to see Iocus laugh. “What’s so funny?” The ferret demanded. “This is serious!”

The cheetah waved a paw at the door. “Believe me, I’ve tried to get out of here. Even with my new power, I can’t open the door.”

“Wonderful.” Damian sat back down on the bed, then cocked his head pensively. “Wait, what new power?”

Iocus held up his paws, palms out to Damian. “I could spend an eternity tryin’ to make sense of it, or I could just show you. Watch.”

He turned his paws so the palms faced each other, then he began to push them towards one another. There was a crackling noise from within, and a stream of what looked like rapidly moving air began to rotate at amazing speeds within the confines of his paws. Faster and faster it spun, molding itself into a perfect sphere that fit entirely within Iocus’ two paws. It was rotating so fast that Damian could barely even focus on it. Then Iocus turned and opened his palms toward the cell door.

The sphere rocketed towards it with incredible speed, but disappeared instantly upon contact with the door.

Damian was stunned, but Iocus merely shrugged and leaned back against the wall of his cell. “I can’t get it to stay a solid sphere after it leaves my paws,” he said with a hint of sadness. “But I’ll get it someday. If I live long enough.”

“That was amazing.” Damian was staring at Iocus’ paws. “How did you…?”

The cheetah shrugged nonchalantly. “It just comes natural to you, I guess. You’ve got a power now, too. Any idea what it is?”

Damian shook his head and stared at his own paws. “No idea at all.”

“Well,” Iocus said, “no better time than the present. Here’s what I did. Close your eyes and clear your mind, then open your eyes and do the first thing that comes into your head.”

The ferret frowned. “That sounds like ridiculous mumbo jumbo.”

“Hey, it worked, right?”

Damian shrugged. “I guess... I’ll try it, but I can’t see how that would work.”

He shut his eyes then, trying to let a calm fill him. But no calm came – all he could see was his brother’s face at the tram stop. His father’s face – right before he left for Alopex. His mother’s face… where was she? Was she still alive?

“Hey, hey, Damian.”

He opened his eyes and could barely see Iocus through his tears. The cheetah leaned back against the wall of the cell, taking a deep breath. “I doubt your only power is to cry. C’mon, you’ve got to try harder.”

Damian wiped the tears away and shook his head. “I can’t concentrate, Iocus. This is… this is all…” He began to cry again.

“Oh, for cryin’ out loud…” The cheetah stood up and sat down next to the ferret. After a moment of thought, he put a paw on his shoulder. “Hey, kid, c’mon. You’re not the only one who lost loved ones today.”

“But my father… and my brother…” Damian looked down at the floor, trying to stem the tears, but failing.

The cheetah nodded half-sympathetically. “Yeah, I know.” He paused for a moment, then cleared his throat. “Look, we’re not going to make much progress in saving those we can still save if we stick around here.”

“Save…?” Damian looked up, sniffing a bit.

Iocus nodded heartily. “What’d you think I was going to do? Rot in here? Your brother may still be alive somewhere around here. My father’s probably here, too. If we can get out of this cell, we might be able to get them out of this and escape. Whaddya say?”

Damian didn’t know what to think anymore. It seemed like just a few short minutes ago that he was walking home from the grocery store with Chris.

He idly wondered what became of the bags of groceries. He let out a single chuckle all of a sudden, much to the surprise of Iocus.

Before the cheetah could say anything, Damian stood up and stared at the cell door. “You’re sure that I have some kind of… power now?”

Iocus smirked. “I’m here, and you’re here. If you didn’t, you probably be in a ditch somewhere. Now, try again.”

The young ferret sighed and nodded to himself as reassurance. “Okay. Stand back.”

“Stand back?” Iocus laughed. “Nowhere to stand. This cell is pretty small.”

Damian ignored him and closed his eyes, letting his mind wander. He could see his family, but he shut them out. He couldn’t let himself cry anymore – he had to escape. He had to save his brother.

“Chris…” He whispered softly. “I’m coming for you.” He let a calm fill him. There was a soft rush of air around him that sounded like a grav-cycle taking off with all the cylinders charged. Then he opened his eyes.

Nothing had changed.

“Damn it.” Damian turned to face Iocus, throwing his paws up in agitation. “Nothing. I heard a rushing noise, but I don’t know what to… to… do…” The ferret trailed off when he got a good look at the cheetah across the room.

Iocus was standing perfectly still. Not just standing with rapt attention – he was frozen in place.

“Hello?” Damian walked over to him and waved a paw in front of his eyes. The cheetah was in mid blink – his eyes at half-mast. His chest was not rising and falling with breaths, and his tail was not twitching. Nobody could freeze their tail like that.

“Iocus?” Before the ferret could figure out what had happened, a giant yawn slipped out of his mouth. His vision began to blur. It was getting harder to stay standing. There was a loud ringing in Damian’s ears and a white flash consumed his entire field of view.

Then it was over.

“Wow!”

That was Iocus. Damian heard him before he saw him.

“Uhhnn…” The ferret groaned. He had a pounding headache and a stuffy feeling in his nose. “I feel like I’ve been run over by a truck.”

“You were bleeding out of your tear ducts, actually.”

“What?” Damian opened his eyes and could see Iocus in front of him. The cheetah shrank back in fear. “What?” Damian asked. “What’s wrong?”

“Your eyes,” Iocus pointed. “I cleaned up the blood, but they’re still bleeding.”

Damian put a paw over his eyes and felt the telltale warmth that hinted at fresh blood. His eyes stung – like he had opened them in salt water. When he drew his paw away, he could see a few smears of dark blood. The ferret quickly slammed his eyes shut and rubbed them violently, resulting in Iocus having to grab the ferret’s arms. “Stop! Stop, Damian! You’ll hurt yourself!”

“Hurt myself?” Damian pushed the cheetah away and the two fell back on opposite sides of the cell. “I’ve been knocked unconscious so many times today that I don’t even think I care anymore! I’ve been shot, gassed, and had my brain tinkered around with by some mindsweeper thing! And now you’re worried I might hurt myself?”

Iocus nodded and pointed at Damian’s face matter-of-factly. “Well yes, you’re bleeding out your eyes. What happened when you tried to use your power? I saw you at the door, then I saw you kinda teleport over near me, then you collapsed.”

“I didn’t teleport,” Damian said angrily as he rubbed the blood from his eyes. “I heard this loud rushing noise, then it was like time stopped.”

“Time stopped?” Iocus tilted his head musingly. “How do you mean?”

“I mean it stopped.” The ferret wiped his bloody paws onto the white floor of the cell. The red streaks gave the floor a ghastly appearance. “You were standing there perfectly still. I walked over to look at you, then I passed out.”

Iocus hummed in thought. “Well, whenever I use my own power, I feel like I’m kind of out of breath afterwards. Like, it drains energy.”

Damian nodded quickly. “That’d make sense.”

“So maybe,” the cheetah continued, “that’s why you passed out and your eyes are bleeding?”

The ferret shook his head exasperatedly. “I don’t know. Thing is, how is this going to get us out of this place? Neither you nor I can open this door.”

The cheetah was smiling suddenly, though Damian couldn’t see it. “Wait a second… yes, yes it can help us escape!”

“How?” Damian asked, blinking a few times to get the remaining blood from his eyes. He could see again.

Iocus stood up and looked at the cell door. “We’ll wait until the guards open the door, then, Damian, you can use your power to escape. We’ll have to wait until the guards turn to shut the door, but you could stop time, get outside, and find a place to hide before you… uh…”

“Pass out and bleed all over the floor?” Damian grunted. “I don’t think it’ll be very practical for me to pass out and bleed all over everything during an escape attempt.”

“Regardless,” Iocus said, “it’s our one and only shot. Once you’re out, you can wait until the guards are gone, then let me out. Then we can let all the others out of their cells and escape!”

Damian groaned. He didn’t like the idea, but there really was no choice. He hadn’t even been able to come to grips with the magnificent power he wielded, and he would already be forced to use them in a life or death situation.

“I don’t like this, Iocus,” the ferret repeated. “I think you’re putting a bit too much faith in me. I don’t even know if I can do it again.”

“What?” The cheetah frowned. “You mean stop time? Try it again.”

A massive chill took Damian suddenly. “Are you kidding? I must’ve lost… well, I lost a lot of blood just then.”

“But it didn’t hurt, did it?” Iocus asked.

“Well, no, but still, it feels really weird…”

“But still nothing,” the cheetah said with a wave of a claw. “Try it. And this time, try to stop using it before you pass out.”

Damian looked at the cheetah skeptically. “You mean, like, turn it off? How am I supposed to do that?”

Iocus shrugged as he sat down on the far bed. “How would I know? Try doing whatever you did to start it.”

The ferret sighed, but knew that it would all be for the best. He didn’t want to have to use his power in a serious situation and then not be able to get it started. Finally, Damian nodded. “Fine, fine, I’ll do it… but give me a few more seconds here to collect myself.”

After a few minutes, Iocus was looking impatient. He did not, however, push Damian to make another attempt at harnessing his power.

“Alright,” Damian said suddenly, “here we go.” He stood up, arched his back in a stretch, then took a deep breath. He closed his eyes, and cleared his thoughts. He remembered the whooshing sound he had heard before his last attempt – he played it over again in his head. As he did so, he felt the same small rush of air strike him in the face.

He opened his eyes. Iocus was sitting on the bed, totally unmoving. He had done it!

“Okay, that was easy,” Damian thought to himself, “now I need to stop it.”

Again the ferret closed his eyes. He cleared his mind and tried to imagine the rushing noise that had jump started the power.

Nothing happened.

“Oh… no.” He desperately tried again, closing his eyes and imagining the rushing noise.

Still nothing.

When Damian’s eyesight began to blur, he accepted it. He allowed himself to collapse to the floor.

He awoke to the same red haze he had woken to on his previous attempt. Iocus had torn a bed sheet and was mopping up the blood with it. “This is pretty nasty, Damian,” he said nonchalantly. “Maybe you could just position yourself so you fall onto the Makers and bleed on them.”

“Uhhnn…” The ferret was still in a half daze. When he finally realized where he was and why, he began to violently wipe the blood from his eyes and pushed himself back up against the cell wall.

Iocus pressed the white sheet into Damian’s paws, and the ferret quickly grasped it and pushed it against his face, trying to relax.

“It only took you about three or four seconds to fall down, Damian,” the cheetah said. “How long did it seem to you?”

He moaned a bit and withdrew the sheet. The stain-free, white linen was now soaked through with blood, but the ferret could finally see again. “I don’t know. Twenty… maybe thirty seconds.”

“Wow!” Iocus grinned broadly. “That’s amazing! That’s… wow…” He shook his head and sat back down on the bed, thinking to himself. “That’ll give you plenty of time to find a place to hide right outside. Maybe a closet or something.”

Damian grunted and exhaled deeply after a moment, trying to collect himself.

“I can slow down time…” Such a great power, but would it really help him escape from his cell? Would it really help him find his brother?

Suddenly, he grit his teeth in rage.

“Will this help me kill the Makers?”

Damian’s paws curled into tight fists. With a quick nod, he agreed with Iocus. “When the Makers open this door, I’ll wait until they’re about to leave, then I’ll sneak out.”

Iocus nodded in return. “Alright, excellent.”

Deep down, though, Iocus was wondering if Damian would even bother to free him once he escaped.

Damian, on the other hand, was suddenly having second thoughts about what he just said. If he got caught…

He shook the thought away. There was nothing that could be done about it.

And so they waited…

And waited…

No guards came for what seemed like days. Food and drink were supplied through a small door near the floor – about three times a day, the latch that held the little flap closed would click open and two plates of nondescript sludge were slammed under. Water was in no short amount – a small hose with a limitless supply was attached to one of the walls near the door.

After three or four days, Damian was beginning to lose all hope. Every minute of every passing day felt like a minute wasted. Damian’s mind began to wander to his brother and mother. Where were they? Were they still alive? Did his mother manage to escape? Maybe Chris’ own power allowed his to escape? Maybe he could blast open cell doors with it? Maybe he would save Damian?

The ferret sighed and felt sleep pricking at his eyes. He had to stay awake, though; he and Iocus were taking turns staying awake so that if the cell door opened, one of them could wake the other.

Damian tried to hold back a massive yawn that had been building up over the past several minutes, but eventually failed. He let his mind wander as he tried to stave off sleep.

He had never been special. Damian recalled with a smirk that he had never been a perfect student in school, had never excelled in any one class, or had any kind of long-lasting interest in anything that might hint at a future career. He’d tried sports of all kinds, but just never felt right playing them, despite having the required stamina to excel in them. He wasn’t lucky with the opposite sex at all, either. He’d never had a good pre-mate, but could think of one or two flings that he had expected to take off.

Damian had a few friends, but they were mostly of the fair weather variety. He mostly spent his time alone with his brother, who was as equally hopeless as he was when it came to popularity and friends. The two of them were like best friends – despite the five cycle age difference, they had always had the same interests, and Damian felt that Chris looked after him as much as the elder Talinova looked out for the younger.

And then there was Sasha.

They had met at a very young age through their parents – who were neighbors at the time. He recalled several fun moments he had experienced with Sasha when they were young. But time changed – as did Sasha. She began to experiment with drugs and hang out with less-then-savory types. Every time Damian had called her about doing something, she had sounded detached and disinterested, but every time Sasha’s pre-mate left her for somebody else, or she was failing in school, she had always come back to Damian. It made the young ferret feel special, especially considering that Sasha was absolutely beautiful and Damian would never have a chance in Kenal of being a friend of hers under normal circumstances.

There was always an underlying feeling Damian had – that he was just being used by Sasha to make her feel better. Honestly, though, Damian didn’t care. He liked being able to help her, even if he never really got anything out of it aside from a boat-load of grief.

The young ferret sighed and lay back on his bed. That life was over now. He couldn’t stop thinking about what might lay ahead for him. Would he even survive long enough to learn what happened to his family?

The door opened with a loud hiss. Two skull-faced, armor-clad creatures stood just outside the doorway, armed with very large guns. They looked like miniature versions of the machines that had captured him back in the town square.

“Get up, hybrids.” The one in front motioned with his gun for the two of them to stand up from their beds. Their voices sounded like some kind of electronic curse.

Iocus yawned and rolled off his bed onto his footpaws. “Not letting us go by any chance, are you?”

“No.” The guard’s answer was emotionless.

“What are you going to do with us, then?” Damian stood up slowly from his bed, trying to get a bead on whether or not he could try to escape.

“Quiet, hybrids.” The guard outside the cell snapped at them. He motioned to the guard standing in the doorway. “Apply the collars.”

“Collars?” Iocus asked.

Before he could do anything, the guard’s arm shot out and slammed a circular ring around the cheetah’s neck. It automatically fit to his proportions and buzzed to life, emitting a soft green glow. Iocus drew back, slamming himself against the cell wall, raising his paws in self defense. He made as if to create a ball of air, but nothing happened. Quite the opposite, actually – Iocus screamed in pain and grabbed his head, sinking down to his knees, and finally to the floor in a heap.

Damian was shocked. He thought Iocus had just been killed.

The guard that had applied the collar laughed. “It’s called a restraint collar for a reason, stupid hybrid!”

Damian felt the rush of air take him. The two guards froze.

“Not much time…” Damian looked at Iocus for a moment and grit his teeth in despair. What to do about him?

“Can’t worry about him now… if he’s alive, you can come back for him.”

He could feel the seconds counting down. He had maybe twenty more seconds to find a hiding place. They’d know he was gone, but Damian wasn’t thinking that far ahead.

Slinking around the frozen guards (he nudged them, but they were rooted to the spot like stone statues), he quickly took note of his surroundings. There was a stark white hall going two ways. No visible doors.

“Damn!”

Thinking quickly, Damian tore down the hall to his front, hoping to find a closet or something to hide in.

But there was only the door at the end of the hall. He ran towards it as fast as he could. The air around him was slowing him down – he was moving too quickly for it to shift around him as it did for normal creatures. The air was like a thick mass, hindering his movements.

When his vision began to blur, he tried to fight it, but there was no stopping it from overtaking his senses. With a cry of anguish, he threw himself forward, towards the door at the end of the hall.

Time resumed. The door opened.

“What the hell?”

A human scientist walked out the door and stopped about a foot from the prone ferret. When he noticed the pool of blood coming from under its head, he immediately shouted for help.

Down the hall, the two guards were at that moment exiting Damian’s cell, Iocus thrown over one of their shoulders like a sack of wheat.

“Where’d that hybrid go?” The guard in front pointed at the prone ferret at the end of the hall. “There! Hurry!”

The scientist looked up in surprise. “He’s bleeding from his head. We need to help him.”

The approaching guard knocked the scientist away violently. “Back away, Dr. Lowe! These hybrids are extremely dangerous until we get these restraint collars onto them!”

With a snap, the collar was in place around Damian’s neck. When the guard lifted him up by it, Dr. Lowe shrank back at the sight. “My god… he’s bleeding out his eyes! We need to get him to the medical bay.”

The guard quickly lifted the unconscious ferret up and threw him over his shoulder. “Dr. Mahn gave us his orders. We’re to take these two to the research facility for a post-mindswiping examination, then they are to be placed in Research Outpost 32B, in the Below.”

Dr. Lowe narrowed his eyes. “I wasn’t informed of this. I was told I’d get a chance to examine these hybrids’ powers first hand.”

The guard carrying Iocus scoffed. “I think you just did, Doctor. If you have a problem, take it up with Dr. Mahn. We have our orders.”

The two guards quickly strode past the human scientist, the door sliding shut behind them. Dr. Lowe blinked in shock a few times, then activated his com link. “This is Lowe. Send a cleanup crew to cell block D, and tell Dr. Mahn I’m coming up. I need to speak with him.”