Jett stared at the message log, a suspicious feeling creeping through her veins. She couldn't quite pin a claw on it, but something just didn't feel quite right. It all just seemed a tiny bit too neat and tidy, too clean of a trail for her to be comfortable with.

But was it? Was she just being paranoid?

Her ordeal with Wildhearth's enforcers was still raw in her mind. Barely a year had passed since she'd lost her family, her mate, and damn near everything else along with it. She couldn't stop herself seeing enemies in the shadows – not anymore. It had taken some digging to uncover the messages. Maybe she was just judging others by her own highly-strung standards.

She couldn't shake it though. Jett ran through the pathways several times, tracing the messages back again from the shunt, back through the Gensher's personal message log. The fifth time she did it the results looked the same. Gensher sent the messages – it was the only logical inference.

"Woulda thought you'd look happier," Noelle commented, seeing the uncomfortable expression on her face. "Once Illando's dealt with those crazy mongrels you're home free, aren't you?"

"I know." Jett spared the wolfkin technician a withering glance before her attention returned to the screen.

"I know that look," Karno said around a mouthful of roasted rat meat. He swallowed it down, lounging in his chair and folding his arms, looking happy as she'd ever seen him. "Wanna share with the class?"

"I'm not sure." She shook her head, bringing up the messages again. "There's just something about all this that doesn't sit right with me, that's all." Jett idled through a couple of the records, seeing the same information she'd already looked over a dozen times already. It only caused her frustration to build.

"What's eating at you?" Noelle asked.

"I'm just thinking. What self-respecting spy sends messages to their contacts through their own personal howl-net?"

"Strictly speaking, he didn't," Karno pointed out. "We had to join a lot of dots to trace it back to his comm."

"Yeah, I know all that. I did it." She leaned back heavily, raking both paws back through her locks of white headfur. "But if it were me, if I was sneaking around in the back of an enforcer system, I'd assume somebody would figure it out sooner or later. I would have tried to do something more – some kind of misdirection."

Karno smiled thinly. "Not everybody's as paranoid as you, Jett."

"We can only work with what we've got," Noelle interjected, beginning to pace, claws tapping at the side of her mug of muskbrew. "You two are meant to be the slickest paws in the city at this sorta game. You're the ones that pointed at Gensher, not me."

"Nobody questioned it at the time."

"Facts are facts."

"Alright, then be honest with me," Jett challenged, swivelling her seat to look at the wolfkin directly. "You know him. Do you really believe Gensher's behind this? I mean really, really?"

Noelle shifted awkwardly from paw to paw, her face twisted with indecision. "I..."

"While we're young, El," Karno drawled, picking idly at his teeth with one claw.

"I don't go by 'El'." She shot him a sour look.

"Whatever. What do you think?"

"I'm not sure." The enforcer scuffed a footpaw awkwardly against the floor of the bunker.

Karno smirked. "Sounds like a 'no' to me."

"Oh, shut it."

"Well?"

"Some of it tracks, some of it doesn't," she elaborated. "I mean, you guys haven't seen him, but he can't say no to fight. He sure has some of that Savage in him. This whole 'kill first, talk later' thing the cult's got goin' on? Gensher'd fit right in, mark me."

"But?"

"But I've never seen him so much as look at a computer, let alone pull off something like this." Noelle made a flapping gesture to the screen. "Big lug could barely file a mission report properly last I looked. From what I've seen, all this creepin' around in the dark and the sparks ain't Gensh's style."

"Maybe he's just a really good actor," Karno suggested. "That's sort of the point of being a spy, ain't it?"

"Yeah, maybe."

"But if he's not acting," Jett persisted, "if he really is just a brawler who couldn't fit two plugs together, don't you think that'd make him the perfect mark for a set up?"

Karno cast a quizzical look her way. "You think somebody's submarined his messages?"

"It's what you and I'd do, isn't it? If we wanted to throw someone off the scent?"

Her friend's face creased in thought. He clasped his claws together, tongue running around the edges of his teeth as he considered her words. After almost a full minute he nodded slowly.

"What do y' mean, 'submarined'?" Noelle asked.

"Sorta like piggy-backing," Karno explained, spreading has paws amicably as though talking to a close friend. "It's not easy done, but y'could – in theory – link one personal comm to another and route your messages through the other person. They hit your mark's comm, pull their credentials in, then head on out to the world. It's like giving your messages a little disguise."

"But anyone paying attention would notice it," Jett continued. "You'd see messages shooting out that you didn't send."

Noelle pursed her lips, putting down her muskbrew. "You think someone's using Gensher's comm that way? Cos he doesn't pay attention?"

"It's one possibility."

Their conversation was cut short by an abrupt bleeping sound from Jett's monitor. She swung violently back around in her chair, brow furrowing in confusion. Her paws flashed out onto the keyboard, rattling in a command. The most recent message logs burst across the screen and she blinked, not quite believing what she was seeing.

"Jett?" Karno asked, seeing her hesitate. "What is it?"

"I... hold on a second."

A message had arrived in the shunt. It followed the same pattern as the others, bypassing the standard enforcer protocols that would have locked it into the internal comm network, instead bursting out into the city. It came from Gensher's comm.

Apparently.

"What in fangs...?" she murmured, opening the message. A short block of text blurted onto the screen.

[8.69.821 | DK2.31] Tonight is the night. Enforcer warpack will arrive at Darkfour. Key target confirmed. We can proceed as planned.

Short, succinct, and more than enough to slam a lead weight into Jett's stomach as she tried to make sense of what she was seeing. A warning would have been bad enough, but this was something more.

We can proceed as planned.

She started as Karno seemed to materialise behind her, leaning in over her shoulder and peering down at the message.

"Peace, what's this?" he asked in his grating voice.

"It just came through now."

"What?!"

"I know."

"How in the Fire is that possible?" Karno rounded on Noelle. "You said Gensher was out with Illando, didn't you? They're supposed to finding that bloody cult!"

"He is!" she replied, raising her paws defensively. "Illando checked in with me an hour ago. They confirmed the Savage Fire has a presence at the factory and they're moving in."

"Then do you wanna explain how he's sending messages from his personal comm?"

"I don't know! Maybe he managed to find a howl-net port out there to use without anybody watching him?"

"After we told Illando he was the one stabbing him in the back?" Karno's voice dripped with scepticism. "I don't think your boss could possibly be that stupid."

Noelle scowled. "Well then I don't know!"

"Unless it isn't Gensher." Jett wrenched herself back around to the screen, peering at the message, trying to see if anything marked it out as different from the others. There had to be something they'd missed.

The file path looked identical to all the rest, shunted from Gensher's personal howl-net to bypass the enforcer security. Illando allowed them to leave the path intact, in case more messages were sent, but this was the first they'd seen since discovering the hack.

Almost as though somebody knew they were being watched. Jett's muzzle twitched uneasily and a thought occurred to her.

"Can we geo-trace these messages?" she asked.

Noelle nodded. "Of course. We ran the traces on the originals, they were all sent from our main den." A sense of irritation crept into her voice as she continued. "Just like we checked all of them against out patrol logs. All the geo-traces corresponded to times when Gensher was on base. It all tracked."

"Well humour me, let's trace this one too." Jett pointed at one of the other terminals in the bunker. "I'll bounce you the message. Run your trace, now."

Noelle sprang into action, booting up the rig and pulling up the machine's trace programme. Jett bounced the message log across, where the specialised surveillance rig could go to work. Noelle's claws skittered rapidly over the keys, and Jett curled up tight on her seat, trying to keep some measure of patience. Machines could only work so fast.

Mercifully, Noelle's skill with Wildhearth's technology wasn't far behind her own. Two minutes later she looked back over her shoulder, looking more than a little queasy.

"It's from the enforcer safehouse just outside the Drambower canals," she said. "Where Illando was supposed to be meeting the others ahead of the attack."

"Can you trace where it's going to?" Karno cut in.

Noelle shook her head. "It's scent-spoofed right into the Fire. I could spend days trying to untangle that mess."

"It doesn't matter," Jett said. "It's a warning for Kendris and the rest of those nutters at Drambower. That much is clear."

"It would have to be someone with enforcer access codes to use that terminal," Noelle told them, her voice tight with anxiety. "They rotate every twelve hours – couldn't be a cultist. It... it has to be Gensher, doesn't it?"

"Does it?"

"Yeah, I mean, there's nobody-" The enforcer stopped talking suddenly, like she'd just been hit with an electric shock. A moment later she swallowed hard, her eyes widening. "Ohhhh, by the Peace and bloody Fire."

Karno's head snapped around to her. "What?"

"There is one other person out there with the right codes for access."

"Bloody fangs'n'fire," Jett swore as the implication smacked her in the brain. "Noelle, you need to get your boss on the howl-wire, right now!"

The wolfkin scrambled out of her chair and bounded across to the howl-wire. Her limbs moved in a blur as she punched in the howl-wire code for the enforcer safehouse and waited. And waited.

And waited.

"No!" She smashed the receiver back into place with a strangled howl of anger. "No-one's answering."

"Try again."

"If they were there they'd have picked up."

"We've got to do something!"

"There's nothing to do!" Noelle gasped, throwing her paws up helplessly. "Illando must already be on the way to assault that place – it's too late."

"Damn it." Jett slammed a paw down flat against the table, her mind racing. Then an idea stuck her with the violence of a thunderbolt and she shot upright, sending the chair crashing over behind her. Leaping across the room, she shoved Noelle roughly out of the way and yanked the howl-wire receiver from its mounting.

"Hey, what-?!"

"Shut up!" Jett hissed, waving the wolfkin away frantically. Her paw flashed over the keypad as she entered a howl-wire code and started praying to the Peace that someone would pick up this time.

After several stomach-turning seconds her prayers were answered.

"Palharr South-Central Law, Senior Pack-Leader Bronco speaking," came the gruff reply.

"Thank the Peace," Jett exclaimed. "Bronco, it's Jett."

"Jett? You okay?"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine. I'm still at the enforcer bunker."

"You are? Why-"

"Bronco!" she barked. "Just shut up and listen to me for a second, will you! Something's gone all the way wrong. Somebody just sent a message to that damned cult, shunted right out to that factory at Drambower."

"What does it say?"

"It's telling them that an asset is coming and they're going to proceed as planned. It's a tip off – they know the enforcers are on their way."

There was a brief crackle of static before Bronco's voice came back over the howl-wire, sounding almost sick with the realisation. "Oh, by the Peace, Jett, tell me you're joking."

"Not today, Bronc."

"Fangs."

"Yeah, and then some." Jett clenched one paw into her headfur as she spoke, battling down the rising tide of horror that threatened to burst up out of her in a geyser of utter hysterics. "You'd better gather every guard who can carry a weapon and haul your asses out to that factory, because your buddy Illando is about to jam his muzzle right into a trap!"