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What do the humans want with me? Raiyev pondered as he plodded alongside the stretch of highway, keeping behind the dense row of trees, his back bent so that he wouldn't be spotted above the smaller trees. It was the dead of night, and though the highway was practically deserted, Raiyev didn't want to chance being seen by anyone--it could only cause more trouble. So the 25-foot-tall raccoon made his way silently in the direction of his home, wondering all the while about everything that had been happening.

He wasn't headed home to hide, as he was taller than the two-story apartments now, so he surely couldn't fit inside them. In fact, he was barely able to reason just why he was going home in the first place. Perhaps it was just a psychological thing, the thought and feeling of being at one's own home. Or perhaps he might hope to find clues to Brad's disappearance, even though he was sure he knew that Brad was locked up somewhere by the humans in a cell similar to the one from which Dr. Frost had freed him. Perhaps it was that tiniest, most irrational hope inside of him that he might just go home and see Brad waiting for him, everything in order, like waking up from a bad dream.

Answers. He wanted answers. To all the questions he had, like why did the humans kidnap him, Brad, and Dr. Frost? Were the humans the "they" that Toni Hawthorne had warned him about before her disappearance? Why did Dr. Paxton die? Was she connected with this somehow? Was Harper really the one that killed her? If so, why did she, and what does she know? If not, who did, and why?

And what of that...episode he had? That hallucination or dream, where he was a mile tall and did so many unspeakable things? Would he wander into the city he called home and see ruin and chaos about? It was all too much to think about, and Raiyev's head was reeling and throbbing painfully. But where would he go to get answers? Where could he go?

And then he saw it, gleaming in the distance under the soft moonlight--a cop car, parked between a couple trees, obviously waiting for a speeder to chase after, pull over, and write up. Raiyev stopped and stared at the vehicle and had an idea. He approached the car carefully, sneaking up behind it, and bending down low so that he could peer into the driver's window, he tapped softly on the glass.

The old stag that had been dozing off inside suddenly gave a start and looked around frantically, then fixed his eyes on the large raccoon face staring back at him through the window. The stag's jaw dropped, his eyes widening in terror, and he clumsily reached for the gun from his holster.

Pointing the gun at Raiyev's face with both paws on it, he yelled through the glass, "Back up! Back away now!"

Raiyev moved his head slightly back from the door and responded calmly, "Please open the door."

The stag was panting heavily in fear, and he screwed up his face as he calculated the request from such a threatening-looking beast. He ultimately decided to open the door, but still kept his gun and both eyes on Raiyev.

"Thank you," Raiyev said, and suddenly reached inside and yanked the stag from the seat. In a quick motion, Raiyev knocked the gun from the stag's grip, then sat down and folded his legs so that they encompassed the cop car, the cop held firmly in his paw. He was nervous about this, too, but made sure to show no signs of it. He continued just as calmly, staring down at the stag. "Now, I need some information. I won't hurt you, as long as you tell me what I want."

The stag struggled against Raiyev's grip, and looked as though he hadn't heard a word Raiyev had said. "Do you understand me?" Raiyev said firmly.

"Yes, yes," the stag sputtered, his panic only rising. "Please let me go! Put me down! I'll do anything!"

"Good," Raiyev said, and he set the cop on the ground by his car, still encompassed by his legs. "Now, I know that you have some little computer in there," Raiyev pointed to the car, "that has information about citizens with criminal records. I need to know where Dr. Amanda Jean Harper is being held. She has been incarcerated, and I need to know where I can find her."

The stag looked as if he had been stunned. Whatever he was expecting the giant to say or do to him, it hadn't been this. He quickly sat down in his car and typed a few things into the computer console sitting in between the driver and front passenger seats.

"I-I've got it," he said shakily to Raiyev. "She's at the Stillcreek Penitentiary, just about 55 miles down this highway," he told him, pointing in the direction that Raiyev had already been headed.

"Thank you," Raiyev said casually. "And I was never here," he added more forcefully. "If I hear of some officer's report about seeing a giant raccoon at night, I'll make sure to hunt you down. And believe me, you'll wish you were dead long before I've finished with you." Raiyev didn't like threatening the officer, but it was the only way he could stay safe, and luckily it worked, as the stag looked petrified beyond comprehension at those words.

So the raccoon lifted himself from the ground and started out again, keeping behind the dense row of trees as he had been. It was considerably further to the penitentiary where Harper was being held than to his house, but he had to get there--he needed to find out what was going on. He only hoped that Harper could be of some help to him.

****

It was a couple days, even at his size, before Raiyev finally hiked the 55 miles to Stillcreek Penitentiary. He had endured blazing heat during the day and had to go further into the wilderness a few times to look for water and food, but he kept on hiking alongside the highway, hidden by the trees, and eventually found himself looking at a set of low buildings, all the same rusty and dun color, surrounded by some open dirt fields, all surrounded by a tall barbed-wire fence that came up to Raiyev's mid-thigh.

Luckily, he got there during the middle of the day, when the inmates were all enjoying some time outside (under guard supervision, of course). Raiyev hid just behind the closest edge of trees, looking around from inmate to inmate, until he spotted her--Harper, sitting down with her back against the fence, watching the other inmates roam around and socialize.

Raiyev suddenly darted out from the trees, and before anyone spotted him, he had already reached down over the fence and scooped up Harper in his paw. It was only then that a few loud shrieks let him know that he had been given away, and without a backward glance, he dashed off for the shelter of the trees, gunfire following him and a very confused and panicky Harper clutched to his chest with both paws.

He kept running for a good 45 minutes, going for miles deeper and deeper into the dense forest before he finally stopped, his legs unable to carry him any further. He panted heavily and finally looked down at the scared little rabbit that looked like she had been crying from all the sudden excitement.

"Oh, Harper...I'm so sorry!" Raiyev said in a hushed and soothing voice. "I didn't hurt you, did I?"

Harper looked up at him, gasping as she took in the sight of such a large yet familiar raccoon. "Rai-Raiyev?" she squeaked, drying her tears with a paw. "Is that really you?"

Raiyev nodded silently. "I'm VERY sorry I took you like this...it was stupid of me, I know, but I needed to talk to you."

"What's happened to you?" Harper asked breathlessly as she looked him up and down.

Raiyev set Harper down on the ground, and sat down next to her, crossing his legs. He went into a full account of everything that had happened since she had been taken away. He told her about his meeting with Toni before her sudden illness, about injecting himself accidentally, about the lab fire and about being fired, about hiding out and then of Brad's disappearance, and finally about the humans and his recent escape. He even confided in her the tale of his "dream" about wrecking a town at a massively giant size.

She took it all in silently, and sighed heavily once Raiyev had finished. As it had been with Brad, Raiyev felt a huge weight lifted from his chest as he finished telling her all of this. He needed a friend more than anything right now, and Harper had always been close to him.

"So please," he wrapped up, "I need to know what you know about all of this. Did you really kill Paxton?"

Harper cast her eyes to the ground for a moment, then looked back up into Raiyev's eyes with a knowing look. "Yes, but I didn't mean to," she said earnestly.

"Why?" Raiyev asked. "What happened?"

"Okay, here's what I know," Harper began. "I knew what was written on that note from Toni that I handed you from the start. I'm very sorry to have betrayed your trust, Raiyev, but something was fishy about it--I could just sense it, you know--and so I investigated it.

"I was hiding off to the side that evening when you and Toni met. I saw and heard the whole thing, up through Dr. Paxton dragging Toni away from you. Again, I'm really sorry to have betrayed your trust like that, but I was just wanting to make sure someone wasn't out to get you. I don't know why I'd been having that feeling--I just had. It was something that was plaguing me in the back of my head for a couple days.

"Early the next morning, I was coming into work rather early and saw Dr. Paxton talking to Thomas Ferai in our lab. I didn't enter just then--I didn't want them to see me, so I hid once again where I could still see them, and saw Thomas pouring some liquid from a beaker into a test tube and hand the test tube to Dr. Paxton. She left right after that, and I went in a couple minutes later, so as not to look conspicuous.

"Later in the day, when everyone else was busy watching the news, I took a look at that beaker and saw that it was a strong poison--not strong enough to kill, generally, but enough to put someone in the hospital for a while. So I poured a bit into a test tube for myself and went to see Dr. Paxton.

"I asked her where Toni was, and she wouldn't tell me. I threatened her, and she threatened me back, saying, 'This goes further than your little mind can fathom, Dr. Harper!' So I called her bluff and put some of that same poison in her coffee a couple days later...and well...you know what happened from there. But it was an accident, I swear! That stuff isn't supposed to be lethal, not in the dosage I gave her...she must have been allergic or something..."

Raiyev had been sitting silently, taking in every word that Harper had told him in her account, and remained silent for a moment after she finished. "So that's all you know," he said to her. It wasn't a question--just an affirmation.

"Yeah, that's all I know. I'm really sorry, Raiyev. I wish I could be of more help."

"You can," he said, with a sudden thought.

"How?"

"The base where the humans are--where I escaped from. You seem to be so good at tracking down information, maybe you can sneak around there and..." He trailed off, pausing for a moment before saying, "Forget it. I don't want to risk your life any further."

"Raiyev," Harper said consolingly, "You've broken me out of prison. I'm just going to end up back there anyway. I'd rather help you find the answers you and I are both looking for." She looked resolute, and Raiyev, for the first time in what felt like years, smiled again.

"Okay then," he said. "Let's go."