by Tom Jones
Bocchino could hear the anthros approaching the helicopter from behind, “Is that you Kurt? I was beginning to wonder --” The tabby cat was caught off guard by the sight of four new anthros that were with Jason and Arcades. Bocchino was confused, “Who the fuck are these guys?” Arcades introduced the unit to Bocchino, “They’re South African PMCs. They’ve come into contact with Omega Foundation personnel masquerading as United Nations peacekeepers. We’re going to work together and get to the bottom of this.” Bocchino shook his head, “Well I’ll be fuckin’ damned. Where the fuck do you keep finding people to take with you anyways, Kurt?” Arcades replied, “Hey, they were held up in a small encampment just down the hill from where we landed. Apparently Omega is close enough around here.”
Jim overheard what was said, and he exited the HH-60’s cockpit, “Then I’d say my guess on where Omega was held up wasn’t too far from correct. I flew here using only what I remember from the locations of a few facilities that I’ve picked up from listening to some ISG personnel.” Arcades questioned the human, “Is that why you took us here specifically?” The human nodded, “That’s right. I heard the location when it was mentioned once or twice before, but I didn’t know exactly where it was. I guess my estimation was pretty spot-on.” Spectre was confused upon seeing the human, “One moment. Who is this human here?” Arcades spoke to Spectre, “That’s Jim MacReady. He’s our pilot. He also used to be part of the Omega Foundation.” Spectre was still confused, “What even is the Omega Foundation supposed to be?” Arcades tried to find the best way to word his description, “The Omega Foundation is an international secret society that aims to capture anthros in order to sell them to the financial elite of this world. They’re basically an anthro trafficking organization, but they do a lot of… not good things to the anthros they capture.” Spectre was skeptical, “And you’re supposed to know all this how?” The fox took a deep breath as he remembered what he went through, “I’m a witness.”
“What did you witness?” Kohei asked the fox. Arcades looked to the black cat who was holding a Vektor R6, “I’ve witnessed stuff I wish I never had. Omega destroyed my home. They destroyed my company. They destroyed so much. Not even to mention all of the lives of anthros they’ve destroyed. We’re out here because we are going to take the Omega Foundation down. Though we may not have the manpower that an international secret society has, we have one thing that most people don’t. We have knowledge of the Omega Foundation.” Kitchi made a slightly rude comment, “Heh, this is what you get when you trust a fox.” Arcades knew that Kitchi didn’t believe him, “You have to believe me.” Koh-Koh was the next to speak, “How is an international secret society supposed to function anyways? You’d think that one of them would try and expose them.” The fox turned towards the only human of the group, “Here’s our living proof.” Jim looked at the fox before looking back at the cats. Jason had an idea, “Jim, show them your Omega patch. They’ve seen it before.” Jim pulled one of the zippers down on his flight suit, and he pulled out a blue and yellow Velcro backed patch with a large yellow omega in the center. Spectre’s eyebrows raised upon seeing the patch. She spoke, “That is the patch that we saw on those UN guys.” Jim nodded, “Sounds like those peacekeepers aren’t really from the United Nations, and they ain’t really looking for peace either.” Spectre asked, “So, why are those Omega guys out here anyways?” Arcades required the female cat to answer a different question before he would be able to answer her question, “Have you seen a bunch of those UN guys concentrated in any one particular place?”
The cat gave some thought, and then she spoke her answer, “Now that you mention it, yeah. There was a little site that was all fenced off with barbed wire and everything. It had a few buildings, but we kinda assumed that was the UN’s field HQ or something like that.” Arcades realized that Spectre had seen one of the Omega Foundation’s facilities, “Do you remember how to get there? That may be exactly one of the places we came out here to look for.” Spectre then said, “Is that right? Well we aren’t really in a position to finish our contract at this current point in time. How about we help you take down that Omega place, and then you give us a way out of this country or something else in return?” Arcades looked around at the human and anthros in case one of them had an objection of some sort. After a decent amount of silence, the fox said, “Well, I guess that means we’ve got a team now. A skeleton crew and a half. That’s like, what? Eight people total?”
“For an organization of the size you’re telling us about, you’d probably need a lot more than eight people to do anything effective,” Kohei spoke. The fox commented on his past experiences, “I’ve broken into a couple of their places before. You’d sure be right about that, though. This sure ain’t gonna be fun with only eight people on our side.” Spectre then said, “I guess I could see why not too many people would join you. How many of them actually believe this Omega Foundation exists? I’ve never even heard of it until you told us today.” Jim answered the question, “One of Omega’s main goals is to make sure as little of the general population knows of their existence. Secrecy is probably their greatest asset. Bar none.” Arcades mentioned one of his raids on Facility Five, “I even took a video of one of their compounds, and it still was extremely difficult for me to convince people of the Omega Foundation’s existence.” Kitchi was the one to reply next, “I’d say half of that is probably because you’re a fox. Who even trusts foxes anyways?”
Arcades frowned. Though he knew what Kitchi said wasn’t the nicest thing in the world to say to his face, he knew that the cat was indeed right. Arcades took a sigh before he continued to speak, “Yeah… I know… I think it’s rather unfortunate how some people think foxes are better off shut up and locked up. However, I don’t really get to make that decision… ” Jason winced upon hearing a certain phrase the fox said. The wolf was not entirely sure if Arcades was directly referring to what the wolf did, or if Arcades was indirectly mentioning other people who had attempted similar things on him. After all, Jason was not a witness to Arcades’ intrusion at Facility Eleven. Jason was not quite sure what he wanted to think. Spectre returned the discussion to the mission, “We can show you where their compound is. I’m not sure how we’d be able to take it down, but you probably know something since you know what they’re not really the United Nations.” The fox nodded, “We’re also looking for a few of the anthros they have captured. We’re looking to free them and extract them out of this country if they’re still there, that is. We don’t know if they’ve been extracted yet. We plan on using our helicopter for exfil once we’re done.” Spectre raised an eyebrow, “So, how much are you guys getting paid to do this job?” Arcades shook his head, “We’re not being paid anything. We’re trying to stop the Omega Foundation whatever the cost may be.” The female cat took a deep breath before exhaling, “Some dedication you guys got. More than we have, that’s for sure.” Bocchino made the next comment, “Though sometimes I wish I didn’t come with this damn fox.”
Arcades disregarded Bocchino’s statement, “If we’re lucky, we’ll also be able to find some information regarding some of Omega’s other facilities that they have. So far, we know about three of them. I’m not sure how many they have in total.” Jim provided input, “Omega has at least thirty facilites worldwide. I know that for a fact. I haven’t been to that many of them, though. The ones that I did visit, they never let me see much.” The female cat looked around in order to take a mental inventory of all of the resources the crew had available for use, “It’s going to take a lot more than what we have here to take down thirty facilities.” Bocchino spoke with another comment, “You got that for damn sure! At the last one we went to, we needed CDI to help us take it down.”
Spectre asked a question, “What about the anthros that were at that facility? Where did they go?” Arcades answered the question, “CDI has them. We’re not really sure where they took them. Unfortunately, we had no say in the matter.” Spectre slowly shook her head, “Th
at’s rough. What are you going to do if you find anthros that need freeing here?” The fox turned around to look at the HH-60 that was still parked in the middle of the grass, “We’ll have to take them with us. I’m pretty sure this helicopter can hold up to eleven people and two people in the pilot seats. Well, assuming all of us leave with this helicopter, we would have only room for five anthros.” Spectre frowned, “Five anthros? That’s very unfortunate. I saw those UN guys take more than five anthros into their building. How would you go about getting them out?”
Arcades knew that he did not have another helicopter with him to extract more anthros, “I really don’t know about that. We might have to cross that bridge when we get there.” Spectre shrugged, “You still plan on doing this mission, right?” Arcades nodded, “Of course. We didn’t come all the way out here to just simply do nothing.” Jim looked to the anthros, “We should attack tomorrow. That’ll give us plenty of time to prepare and everything. I’ll be on station for a quick exfiltration just in case things get hairy over there. If there are more anthros there, then we can extract them in waves to some temporary place. You guys would have the same amount of personnel as the Alpha-Omega squad when their team had eight members.” Koh-Koh asked, “What’s the Alpha-Omega squad?” Jim answered, “Omega’s most elite group of operatives. They’re previous DEVGRU and Delta Force operators. Jason over there killed one of them.” Jim had pointed to the wolf, and this action prompted all of the anthros that were gathered to look at him. Kitchi broke the brief moment of silence, “Sounds like you’re deadly.” Jason only produced a smile of embarrassment in response.
“Do you mind if we stay here tonight with you guys?” Spectre asked. Arcades looked at the parked helicopter, “Sure, but this is where we would be staying. Probably best to let you know that now instead of later.” The female cat then said, “Do you guys not have a place you decided on staying?” The fox shook his head, “We do not. We only arrived here about an hour ago. Unless you’d rather us all stay in that little encampment we found y’all in?” Spectre turned around to view the hill, but she could not see the encampment from the helicopter, “Yeah, I don’t think so now. I say we best stay here. I feel safer up here anyways. Tomorrow, we’ll all head out to that ‘United Nations’ compound, and we’ll see what we can all find.”
Arcades looked at the R93 that was hanging from Spectre, “Would you be providing sniper support with that?” The cat nodded, “I plan on it. I have a suppressor that I can attach to it.” The fox nodded, “Alright. How do you contact the rest of your team when you’re far away from them?” Spectre answered, “I have a radio. Kohei has the other one, so he can relay whatever he needs to say to me.” Arcades looked at the other two cats that were wearing Soldier 2000 uniforms, “You two don’t have radios?” The two cats shook their heads, and Kitchi spoke, “Nope. We three stay pretty close together, so we’re never really separated from one another.” Spectre then had a question for the fox, “What do you expect to find in that compound, anyways?” Arcades began to remember what he saw in Facility Five and Facility Eleven, “I can’t be one-hundred percent sure, but I know that we definitely won’t be looking at anything good in there. That’s what I know for a fact.” Arcades took a deep breath when he finished his rather vague statement. Bocchino finally had something else to say, “I guess we all should start preparing now. It’s already getting close to sundown. We want to be sure that we’re ready tomorrow.” Arcades replied, “That’s probably our best option. We’re going to need all the preparation we can get.”
“What have you found from the anthro Alpha-Omega recovered from Facility Five?” The Site Director of Facility Nine spoke. An Internal Security Group member replied, “Anthro OF-3812 was successfully interrogated. We found out that CDI apparently did not tell the anthros where they were going to be taken. We don’t have any reason to believe that the recovered anthro is withholding information from us. Even though she was in the orange tier, she was relatively cooperative in the interrogation. We only had to use a few techniques on her.” Nine turned around in his chair to face the ISG member. The ISG member was wearing a uniform in the Universal Camouflage Pattern as did the other ISG personnel. Nine then spoke, “So basically, she knows jack shit. Is that what I’m hearing? This one knows fuck all…” The ISG member nodded, “That’s right, sir.” Nine was relatively frustrated with the news, “Damn… Well, shit.” The ISG member then asked Nine, “Sir, what would you like to happen to the recovered anthro?” The site director replied, “We’re going to hold her here for a little while until we figure out where we should take her. It would probably be best to keep her separated from other anthros in this facility for the time being. We can’t risk the anthros here knowing that CDI has liberated a facility already. I don’t want any anthros starting a rebellion.” The ISG member acknowledged the director, “Yes sir. We’ll keep an eye on her.” Nine had an idea in mind, “Say, she was in the orange tier at Facility Five, that’s correct?” The ISG member replied, “That’s right. When we scanned the number on her collar, she apparently had only recently been promoted to orange tier from red tier.” Nine was taking note of the information, “How long has she been under Omega’s control?” The ISG member responded, “Only about a month and a half now at Facility Five. She had spent all of her time at Facility Five after being brought in from Facility Eleven. It’s a typical path for an anthro to take.”
Nine considered the information, but he had one question in his mind that he wanted to ask, “You said she only took a few interrogation methods before she was willing to disclose all of the information to you guys?” The ISG member nodded, “Yes sir.” Nine pressed for more information, “What techniques did you use on her? What finally made her break?” The ISG member described the interrogation to Nine, “We first started with forced oral. After that proved to be ineffective, we proceed with anal. That didn’t work either, so we did anal and vaginal at the same time. We were then about to try all three at the same time, and that was about the point where she decided to finally cooperate with us. It could’ve been worse for her if she didn’t speak up.” Nine was intrigued, “Not bad for an orange tier. That’s something you’d expect from a yellow tier. However, a yellow tier would probably be more willing to give the information upfront before any techniques were even commenced.”
Nine then had another question in mind, “She’s still in that holding cell right now?” The ISG member replied, “Yes sir. It is not equipped like a regular cell is. Do you wish to have her moved to another cell?” Nine shook his head, “Nah, nah. Keep her there for now. One thing I have in mind is that we can try some experimental training methods on her. However, I’d have to fill you all in on exactly how that would work. But first, I need to know how much resistance she put up.” The ISG member replied with some details, “She was unwilling to cooperate with oral at first, so we had to put a ring gag on her. She also proceeded to squirm the entire time, but the restraints we had her in prevented her from resisting too much.” Nine considered the information, “Alright. That seems about right for someone in orange tier. She probably hasn’t been in orange tier for that long at all. I know you said she was recently promoted, but that’s still on the lower end of orange tier.” Nine looked down at his desk as he thought for a moment. He finally looked back up at the ISG member, “I’ll see to this anthro personally. Keep her in the holding cell for now, and I’ll let you know what I want to happen to her. You’re dismissed.” The ISG member nodded as he turned to take his leave. Nine sat back in his seat as he watched the other human leave his room. Nine turned on his computer’s display, and he went to access Omega’s database. The human inputted the anthro’s Omega Foundation number into the computer, and he pulled up her file before examining it.
Arcades looked up at the night sky as he was getting comfortable in his sleeping bag. The fox looked to his right, and he saw that Jason was still awake in his own sleeping bag. The wolf noticed that Arcades was looking back at him, so he decided
to speak quietly enough, “Kurt? Are you still awake?” The fox replied, “Yeah, I am awake. What’s up?” Jason decided to tell Arcades what was on his mind, “I remember when you were talking to Spectre earlier, and you mentioned how some people think foxes deserve to be locked up and shut up…” As Jason trailed off into silence, Arcades already had an idea of where this was going, “I wouldn’t use the word deserve. Everyone deserves to die because we have all sinned and fallen short of the Glory of God. I think you’d better say some people think foxes should be like that.”
Jason replied, “Right… I mean should… Anyways, what I’m getting at here is that I’m still feeling pretty guilty for what happened before… You know?” Arcades looked back up at the night sky, “Jason, you’ve already repented of that, right?” The wolf nodded, though Arcades could not see this while looking at the sky, “Yeah. but I still feel guilty about it and all.” Arcades replied, “Why are you still feeling guilty? You’ve already repented of that. Don’t forget that Jesus is willing to forgive you of that sin. That’s not an unforgivable sin. I’ve already forgiven you for that as well if that’s what you’re worried about.” The wolf shook his head as he buried his face in his hands, “Kurt, you see… The thing is that I still feel like I am unworthy of God’s forgiveness.” Arcades looked back at the wolf, and the fox noticed that Jason was noticeably distressed, “Jason, what you need to remember is that none of us are worthy of God’s grace. He loves us enough to give it away to us for free.” Jason still had his face buried in his hands, “Yeah, but what I did was so bad!”