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And here is where the real story starts, and at the end of it, Dukka is a fur... kinda. As before, it is setting up a senario for more furs, so please moderators, don't deleate it yet.

Sypher Island: Gods Blade

Chapter 2: Whispers and Angels

The sun rose over Sypher City and shone into Zano's room. It was a small, square room, with only a bed next to a night stand on one side, a closet on the other, and a desk across from the door as furniture. Each piece was a simple black, serine and very used, with nicks and dents all over. Every wall of the room was full of posters for martial arts tournaments and sport events that Zano had competed in and the floor was strewn with clothing. On the closet were pictures of Zano and Dukka's families, above the desk were mounted strange practice blades, staves, martial arts equipment, and above Zano's bed was a small wood cross.

Zano lay sleeping between deep red covers that matched his auburn hair as the clock on his night stand changed from five fifty nine to six. The room stayed peaceful for just one more moment, then the clock changed to six o' one. It gave an electric shriek like some digital banshee and Zano sprung from his dreams in a rush of adrenalin. The anti-Morpheus alarm got off one more scream before Zano got to the off button.

He sat in the bed for a second just to enjoy the morning. A full night of sleep and a new day gave him a new hope for Dukka. Zano could solve this problem, it would just take time; and he would have to get that book away from him, but he could deal with that later.

Zano hopped out of bead and got dressed for the day, putting on his favorite black and white jacket and white shoes over a plain blue t-shirt and denim jeans. He popped a stick of dental gum in his mouth that was made to literally eat the plaque off his teeth and he pulled his black backpack from under his bed.

He had just straightened wry spikes in his hair and found his rollerblades when he felt a sudden impression that he was forgetting something. His eyes searched the room and fell on his own Tazer rod that lay on his night stand. It was called Angel Fire, a sleeker, newer, more powerful version of the school Tazer rods, which were made before he was even born. His was the newest thing; engineered to give off blue sparks that matched the blue paint on the handle and collapsed to be easily carried or hidden. Zano paused, why would he need this? He went to leave the room again, but that urge, a thought so strong it was almost a voice, spoke to him.

"Take it." it said.

"Why?" asked Zano.

"You might need it."

He paused a second more before taking the Angel Fire and stuffing it in his back pocket. He instantly felt better and strode from his room to the kitchen. His dad was already there making eggs and toast for breakfast with a grumpy, sullen look and a messed, puffy, bald head. Unlike Zano, his dad was obviously not a morning person.

"Good morning father!" Zano exclaimed cheerfully, almost teasingly, as he took the finished dental gum from his mouth and threw it away.

His dad only grunted in response, but considering the time, that was almost a shout of joy

"Well father," Zano continued, spreading mock sunshine, "I guess I'll just watch some news until you're done with our wonderful breakfast."

He took the grunt from his dad to be a yes, and flipped on the TV above the kitchen table. The only thing that was ever on TV was news, advertisements and educational cartoons, but that meant Zano only had to flip through a few channels to find a story that interested him.

Apparently, the day before, someone who had been restricted to only the bottom two levels of Sypher for a past crime had tried to sneak up a couple levels. He had, of course, been caught by Sypher Island's police force, two Ant BUGs to be exact, but instead of surrendering, he sped off on a stolen car. The resulting chase went from the foot of Mount Diatribe on the north side of the island, to the South cliffs more than three dozen miles away. By the time it was over, he had two Pill BUG's, the armored car like transports for the Bionic Uber Guard, with six Ant BUGs apiece on his tail, and then a huge, troll like Armor BUG had to come and rip open the car wreck he ended up in.

Zano didn't recognize any of the names, Sypher was a massive city, but he was interested in this criminal. Did he really think he could escape on an island? And what kind of crime did he do to be restricted to the two lower levels? Zano's thoughts were interrupted by his dad.

"Zee, breakfast is ready."

"Kay." He answered, and flipped the news off as he got his plate. He dug into his food with gusto that only a teenage boy has, but he noticed his dad hadn't touched his food; he was just staring into space.

"What'cha thinking' about, father?" he asked

"Why don't you ever call me 'dad' Zano?" Amos replied. His stare was purposefully strong and it took Zano a second to answer under his green eyes.

"I guess everyone else calls you 'Father Amos' because you're a priest, so I do to." He said, and went back to his eggs unfazed as Amos' stare wandered to the direction of his study. In his mind's eye he could see his sword mounted above the door. Zano finished his food, grabbed his skates and bolted to the door.

"See ya after school!" he called as he left the apartment and disappeared around the edge of the threshold. Amos just gave the same stare as he gave his study, a sort of thoughtful look that only hinted at the longing and anxiousness behind it.

*

Zano rolled into the School courtyard just as all the students in his grade were called to the busses for their field trip. He barely had enough time to get on his assigned bus, first name T through Z, let alone look for Dukka in the mass of students, so Zano just sat on the bus and listened to the constant chatter around him. He was surprised to hear that there was still talk about Dukka and his shouting match yesterday, and that some people thought that they might even fight each other.

Zano was suddenly acutely aware of the compact Angel Fire in his back pocket and the urgent need he had that morning. He remembered that Dukka had one he called Dragon Fire. For a second, he almost heard a voice from the back of his mind.

"You might need it," it said, "you might need it."

*

"Capital Medical Production Center is Dimensional Pandemonium's main producers of medical and genetic supplies, and therefore Sypher's Main Producer. The entire cluster of Capital Medical buildings includes Capital South Hospital, Capital Medical Production center, and Medical Research. This facility is one of the most prestigious places in the whole island and is the center of all of its medical Technology. Any questions?" the tour guide asked.

She beamed at the group of high school students she was leading who returned her gaze with the customary board and blank stares of the teen culture. The guide waited for several seconds before clearing her throat, and the awkward silence, with a polite cough.

"Well then," she said, trying to get back on her game, "right, this way please."

Zano wasn't really listening to the guide, this perky blond women with near perfect articulation who looked young enough to take the tour, he was looking for Dukka in the crowd. Zano thought he saw him for a second when he got off the bus, but now he was nowhere to be found.

The tour guide led them through blank hallways and huge rooms full of solar powered generators that used trees on the roofs for panels and chemical assembly lines that made medicines for everything from the common cold to the deadliest cancer. Zano hung at the back of the tour as they passed a room where they grew the bio-batteries that powered everything in Sypher and tried to spy out Dukka. He was just about to give up when he heard a whisper, so quiet it was almost non-existent, from behind a door marked employees only. He paused to listen harder, and there it was again; it was calling his name.

Zano only paused for a second before fallowing it. He followed it through the door, around corners, across hallways and the whisper stayed ahead of him, calling him as quiet and as elusive as a dream almost forgotten. Zano was just about to stop and write off the whisper as something in his head when he heard something else, a grating movement of metal on metal on the other side of a door to his right. Zano grabbed the door handle and carefully opened the door to revel what it hid.

The door led to a steel walkway barely three people wide, high over the ground in a vast room and centered above a huge vat labeled gene-mites. Zano almost couldn't believe what he saw. Dukka was on the walkway right over the vat, clad in black from his leather jacket down to his shoes. He was elbow deep in a steel bucket of blood.

"What the hell, Dukka?" cried Zano.

Dukka looked up from his bloody work and smiled, but Zano only stared back in horror and he felt himself stagger backward involuntarily. It was Dukka's face smiling at him, but it wasn't Dukka behind the smile, it was something that felt icy and wrong like frozen sin.

"Hello Zano, I was hoping you'd get here first." The Dukka-thing said, its voice layered with cold poison, like an arsenic popsicle.

"Who are you?" demanded Zano.

"It's me Zano." The thing said.

"No, Dukka's eyes don't feel like frozen sludge."

The Dukka-thing giggled.

"He let me in his head, so I might as well be him."

The Dukka thing picked up the bucket and Zano watched him toss the whole thing over the side. The thing started giggling harder as the crimson mixed with the clear gene-mites

"It's finished," he said, " all the blood and drugs I dumped in there makes this vat over a hundred gallons of uncut beast, the most addictive, deadly drug in all of Sypher, and I'm going to dump it on the children of our most powerful leaders. I'm going to dump it on our high school fieldtrip." The Dukka thing slowly turned toward a control panel at the end of the walkway.

"You're not going to dump it." Zano said defiantly as he slowly moved into a fighting stance.

"It's not like you can stop me." The thing chuckled as he turned and crouched in his own stance.

Zano's hand flew past his back pocket and his weapon Angel Fire blazed blue in his hand. The Dukka thing laughed. It sounded void of anything having to do with laughter.

"You know the old Dukka usually won," it taunted, "and now that I'm Dukka you don't stand a chance." The Dukka-thing's hand moved smoothly from its jacket, and his Dragon Fire extended to its twenty four inches of angry green sparks. Zano stared him down and smirked.

"At least the old Dukka wasn't such a dick."

Dukka lunged forward in a lightning smooth movement, like silk fired from a gun, the green fire in his hand already spinning in strange arks and curves that had been lost to the world for a millennium. Zano moved without thinking, blocking four cuts and batting away a final thrust. The five actions sent blazing sparks along the platform's railing and burnt air over the fight.

The Dukka-thing spun Dragon Fire in his hand and chuckled.

"Not exactly like our old sparing matches with harmless wooden staves, is it?" he spat. Zano just scowled, not someone to waist breath in a fight. He had never seen Dukka fight like that; he had never seen anyone fight like that. The Dukka thing saw the scowl and chuckled more, making Zano scold himself. He couldn't let it get into his head.

Zano started the attack again and lunged forward with Angel Fire a blazing comet. The Dukka-thing's laughter bordered on hysterical as he met the attack. Flaming vermillion arcs met blazing cobalt streaks with bursts of light and sparks as the two fought each other on the walkway.

Zano charged him with a flurry of quick jabs, and Dukka batted them away with a blur of curves, Dukka pressed Zano's left side, and Zano jumped using the walkway railing, over Dukka, and renewed his attack again. Zano's hand shot toward Dukka, who gracefully deflected it inches from his ear. He then reversed the ark of his blade into Zano's chest, who turned ever so slightly to let Dragon Fire carve through the place he was a moment ago. Both fighters pushed the other away, and then sped together, moving and flowing against each other in bursts and ebbs.

Both combatants clashed tazer rods against each others again, sending sparks and bolts of electricity across the metal walkway. Zano felt a sudden shift and shot his unarmed hand past his ear to stop a hook from Dukka, only to take a knee to the gut.

Zano crumpled like a paper bag, falling to his knees. The Dukka thing kicked Angel Fire behind him and away from him, his iced eyes marked with triumph.

"Did you know, Zano, that if you charge someone's spine with enough bio-electricity, it could do some major damage?" it taunted, "There have even been reports of death, if you can believe it."

The Dukka-thing spun Dragon Fire into a two handed grip above his head, and Zano felt the chilled death from Dukka's stare on the back of his neck. He tried to move, even just a little, but it was like every time he gasped for breath he just shoved more empty space in his chest. Dukka whispered to himself.

"You get to settle my debt with a demon."

Zano tensed for the blow, and then...

"What are you two doing up there?!"

Both Zano and Dukka looked in unison at the tour guide below, with the entire field trip in tow. The doors at ether end of the walk way burst open and several Ant BUGs, revolvers at the ready. Dukka hesitated and Zano caught his breath. He launched himself at Dukka, tackling them both over the railing.

Zano and Dukka heard their classmates scream before they landed in a hundred gallons of uncut beast.

*

Father Amos screeched his bio-powered, black car to a rubber melting stop. His black priest robes billowed behind him as he stormed from the parking lot and into the hospital. This was very unlike his usually calm demeanor, but he just found out his adopted son was in there.

"Where's Zano!" he bellowed at the receptionist, who almost fell off her expensive swivel chair in surprise.

"Where is my son!"

*

Twenty minuets later, Amos sat by a window looking into Zano's room. He lay sleeping on a medically white bed next to Dukka's identical one, with machines and monitors and tubes hooked up to them both. Amos viewed the room and felt more emotions then he could name, from the most calming relief to the bitterest regret.

The doctors told him that both patients were extremely lucky their "accident" happened so close to a hospital, in fact almost inside one. They said Zano might even recover completely unscarred, unchanged and undamaged, a result unprecedented in beast cases. The doctors might have been surprised, but Amos was a holy man, he knew a miracle when he saw it.

The doctors and nurses were almost stunned when they found that the father of a boy found in the largest single amount of beast in one spot was a priest. They told him, and continually whispered behind his back about all the consequences. Zano could come out of his coma a schizophrenic, an instant addict, or even a human vegetable. Dukka, who Amos made clear he was responsible for, showed signs of gene-mutation on top of the same mental problems that might plague Zano. Even ignoring the medical effects, they were found literally swimming in enough beast to buy the hospital at the lowest street value. They could easily be blamed, and even restricted or jailed. Amos was most worried by the whispers of official action and the Bionic Uber Guard.

He turned his worried gaze back on the boys. As they lay in the same beds, Amos fancied they almost looked like two opposite sides of the same person. They had completely opposite faces, Dukka's sharp nose and angular jaw next to Zano's strong, square features, but they had always been the same.

They could both be brutally blunt and honest, like they just couldn't lie about anything, and they were both so alive, always competing in sports and martial arts and anything else they could think about.

Amos studied their faces, and he saw worry lines on Dukka's brow. He remembered what Zano told him about Dukka's family, and he remembered the nurses' account on how they fell into the beast. Then he looked at Zano, his face almost set in his usual determined scowl without even being awake.

If anyone could fix Dukka's problems, they'd have to wait for Zano to take a shot.

*

Zano was dreaming.

He sat at the very top of Sypher's only mountain called Mt. Diatribe. He knew he was dreaming because he didn't feel cold, even though it was snow capped all year long, and he could breathe normally, even though it was a good hundred yards higher then Mnt. Everest. So he was dreaming, but it was a magnificent dream.

He could see forever up here, all the way past the southern cliffs on the other side of Sypher to the ring of small mountain islands that made a ring around Sypher.

"Beautiful view, isn't it?"

Zano jumped back in surprise, the mist and clouds to his right suddenly formed into a man dressed entirely in white, from his snowy hair to his blank duster jacket and his white pants and shoes. He also had the purest white angel wings that spread twice as wide as the man was tall.

"Gaaaa!" was all Zano could say; he was understandably startled.

"Hello Zano, nice to meet you." The man said.

"Who are you?" Zano yelled, still in the realm of completely clueless.

"I'm Zerlom, your guardian angel."

Zano looked him over again. Apart from the wings, Zerlom had no remarkable features. He was an average height, maybe five ten, with slightly shaggy hair. His face was simple, with no wasted flesh to it, like God decided to make a man with a little of his clay as possible. He also had no signs of beast on him, no depleted muscles, no feathers on his face or hands, or any slotted eyes or claws, so he really was an angel.

Zano tried to make sense of it all and say something intelligent.

"What?"

Zerlom sighed. , "It's alright, I'm here to help you." He said, "I'm here to help you and your friend Dukka."

Zano suddenly remembered why he was dreaming.

"God, what happened to Dukka?"

*

Amos sat in a chair in Zano and Dukka's room, he was allowed now that they were sure to make it. While he had been there, the room had been visited by a man in a plain grey suit who presented himself as one Mr. Killinger, operative of the Sypher Intelligence Organization, who asked him everything about Zano and Dukka and what happened the last two days. Father Amos told him everything he knew, but he saw Mr. Killinger's eyes glaze over as soon as Amos told him he was Zano's adopted father.

He was just thinking over what this could mean for Zano and Dukka; when he saw the former stir, and start to wake up, Amos quickly went to his bedside.

"Zano, Zano are you awake?" asked Amos.

"Father?" Zano asked, still muddled from the hospital's drugs.

"Zano you're in the hospital. Can you tell me what happened?"

Zano struggled to think through the medical haze.

"Father I... I went on the field trip and, and I followed a whisper. The whisper led me to Dukka and... but it wasn't him. He... He was going to hurt the fieldtrip, and we fought and, and it wasn't him, there was something in his head. That's what the angel said, that something's inside of him, and you can help him father, you gotta help him." Zano grabbed his father's wrist and held on tight, "you gotta help Dukka, father. You just gotta."

Amos could see his son was still dreaming, and he had to let him go to sleep.

"It's OK now, you can go to sleep again." he assured him.

"No," Zano demanded, "It's not Dukka's fault, there's something in his head, and you can help him, you gotta." Zano was urgent and he gripped his fathers arm tighter and tighter.

"OK Zano, I'll help him, I promise." Amos assured him and gave him a kindly smile. Zano suddenly calmed, and let go of his fathers arm as he went back to sleep.

Amos looked at his sons now sleeping face, wondering what kind of dreams he had to make him so worried. He pondered what Zano said, and looked at Dukka sleeping on the bead next. His hands were on top of the sheets and his face was twitching in his sleep. Already, his fingers were becoming harder and sharper, and two nubs of bone had begun to poke out from underneath the skin of his forehead, two side affects that the doctors had been unable to prevent.

Amos thought that maybe Zano's dreams weren't that far off.

*

Dukka hoped like hell he was dreaming.

He sat chained to a black, craggy wall in an endless, dark cavern. The rock behind him radiated as much heat on his naked back as the ring of molten lava around him did on his bare chest.

Flames leaped out of the circle of fire and brimstone and soon formed a large, mocking face. It laughed at him and a shiver ran down his spine despite the constant heat.

"How do you like your torment?" it asked, "Is your revenge worth it?" the face laughed as the chains that held Dukka pulled him tighter against the rock face. He screamed as he felt the jagged rock burn and tear into his skin before the chains loosed again.

"Why do you torture me?" Dukka demanded, "Why did you make me attack Zano, and why do you control me? You have my soul, leave my body be!"

"Foolish child," the demon chuckled, "you did not know what you paid me." The demon laughed in its chilling smile as the chains once again pulled on Dukka. He screamed until they went loose once more.

"Stop talking in riddles!" Dukka bellowed, and the demon suddenly turned on him with a terrible fury.

"Your soul is your spirit and body together and you belong to ME!"

Dukka stared the flaming face down.

"Let me go." He demanded, "I don't have my revenge yet and I haven't killed an innocent man, I don't belong to you yet."

The demon only smiled and chuckled more.

"Your revenge and debt are the only reasons you are still alive, but until you wake..."

Dukka felt the chains tighten again. The demon started laughing, and Dukka started screaming.

*

Amos still sat in Zano and Dukka's room reading his scriptures late at night when almost no one else was there. The nurses had stopped checking on the boys and had told Amos that their first diagnosis, as miraculous as it seemed, was right.

He finished Saint Peter for the last time and closed the book. Amos looked at his son, asleep on the hospital bead, and wished for the last time that they looked more related, just so others could see them as father and son. For the last time, he kissed Zano's head the way he did every night when he was asleep; and then Dukka fell from his bed screaming.

Amos jumped backward and Zano jumped awake as Dukka held his head in agony. There was the sudden sound of ripping flesh, and he sprouted horns on his head and claws on his fingertips. He felt himself stop screaming and slowly pick himself off the floor, blood dripping down his forehead and off his new claws. Dukka suddenly dashed for the door, but Amos met him their and grabbed his shoulders; Zano couldn't find the strength to follow and only fell off the bed onto the floor. He watched helplessly as his Dukka plunged his clawed hand into Amos's gut and pull out a piece of his spine.

"No!" Yelled Zano as Amos fell wordlessly to the ground and Dukka fled the room with a single twisted smile on his face. He stumbled off the ground and went to his father's side.

"Father," he cried, "stay with me."

"Zano," he said, dazed. "I'm glad I could be your father, even if I wasn't your dad." He smiled a pained smile and started coughing up blood on Zano's hospital gown.

"What do you mean; you're the best father I could ask for."

Amos gave a small grimaced again.

"Promise me you'll keep my name," he urged, "and promise you'll remember that I loved you."

Zano's eyes started to blur and he hugged his father closer.

"I promise Dad," he told him, "I promise."

Zano felt his father die in his arms at the same time he heard a nurse scream. He soon felt nurses and doctors take his father away, but Zano knew he wasn't coming back. He just lay on the hospital floor alone and crying for the longest time. He just lay on the floor and felt empty and lost and alone.

Zano sat there for hours, oblivious to the activity around him.

He had hit the bottom, and he felt like it couldn't possibly get worse. Then a hand reached through the emptiness and grabbed Zano's shoulder tightly. Zano turned to see that the hand belonged to a middle aged man with smoky grey hair and in an official looking uniform. He was flanked by two Ant BUGs and he carried one of Zano's Duffle bags. His name tag said Officer Sid.

"Zano?" he asked, questioning.

Zano's empty eyes stared blankly ahead.

Sid looked right in his face and lied.

"Zano, I'm sorry."