Chapter Five -- Now You See Her, Now You Don’t

          “I think we better split up.”
          “Good idea.”
          “Yeah; we can do more damage that way.”
                              --Ray, Egon, and Peter, “Ghostbusters”


     “Okay everyone,” Chip asked as the Ranger Plane landed on the
roof of the Malek Research Center. “We don’t have much time.”
     “What?” Monterey asked in confusion. “We still got over eight
hours before the deadline.”
     “Please don’t say ‘deadline’, Monty,” Dale noted with a flinch.
     “We have eight hours before midnight, Monty,” Chip clarified as
they all clambered out of the Plane and onto the roof. “But we still have
to go to the A.P.F., grab Osiris, and then fly out to the meeting point.
And the J.J. Roberts Department Store Distribution Center is clear on the
other side of town.”
     Zipper pointed out that it was also a huge building, and might take a
while to find out just where they are to meet with Raset.
     Chip nodded. “All told, we only have about four hours here. Five at
the most.”
     Zipper led the way over to the main ventilation shaft, slipping up
into one of the cracks near the top. Chip tossed one end of a rope up,
which Zipper snagged from the air, then tied down securely. The others
quickly climbed up and slid down the shaft into the tall research building.
     “Where do we start?” Gadget asked as they jogged along inside of
the suspended ceiling of the top floor. “There’s a lot of ground to cover,
after all.”
     Zipper signaled that it might work best if the spilt into two teams;
one search from the bottom up, while the other works from the top down,
and they would then meet in the middle.
     Dale nodded. “Sounds good, Zip. What time should we plan to
meet, then? I mean, in case one group finds something and won’t have
time to search the rest of the floors?”
     “Good point, Dale,” Chip said thoughtfully. “Let’s shoot for eight
o’clock. That way, we have an extra hour to play with in case we need
it, before we have to leave to pick up Osiris.”
     Monterey grunted with displeasure. “Crikey. ‘Pick up Osiris’,”
he repeated. “Sounds like we’re takin’ the blighter to play practice or
somethin’.”
     Gadget smiled at him. “More like picking him up from detention.”
     “Okay gang,” Chip announced as the five crimefighters reached the
elevator shaft. “We’ll split up here. Monty; you, Gadget, and Zipper
start at the bottom. Dale and I will handle the top floors.”
     “Roger, Chip,” Monterey saluted.
     Zipper and Gadget saluted as well as they expertly hopped onto
some of the encased wiring fastened to the shaft’s walls, and began
working their way down.
     “If you can,” Chip called after them, “ring for the elevator at the
next floor, then just ride it to the basement.”
     “Got it, Chip!” Gadget’s voice echoed back up to him, her body
already hidden in the deep shadows along the walls.
     “Come on, Dale, we can slip down onto the main floor over here.”
     “Righty-o, Chipper.” Dale paused. “Hey. What exactly are we
looking for, anyway?”
     “Basically, anything that has to do with Glyph, and his
disappearance.”
     “Wouldn’t the police have most of those files?”
     “Yes, and they probably do. But the police can’t search in all the
small crevasses that we can,” Chip replied. “And, they can’t question
any of the other animals that are around here, either.” He grinned at his
best friend. “Being able to converse with the lab animals still here is
something most police units aren’t equipped for.”

*     *     *

     The security guard on the ground floor jerked his head up in
surprise as the elevator pinged, and its doors opened up. He scratched his
head. Nobody was inside, and nobody was around here who could have
pushed the button. He shrugged. Someone probably pressed the wrong
button when they got off or something. The doors closed and he didn’t
give it another thought.
     “Where to start....” Gadget pondered as she and Monterey Jack and
Zipper cautiously made their way across the floor from the elevator.
     Zipper pointed up at the directory.
     “Good idea, mate,” Monterey said with a smile. “We can narrow
our search before we even start.”
     “Hmm...” Gadget said as she studied the directory. “The animal
research lab is up on the 16th floor. Chip and Dale are closer to it than we
are, but since they’ll be checking every floor, they might not get there
right away.”
     Plus, Zipper pointed out, there’s no way of knowing if the
information we need is just on that floor, or scattered across several of
them; best to a least do a quick check of each one.
     Gadget nodded. “Right. Well, let’s check the parking level first,
then.”
     Zipper and Monterey nodded in agreement, and the trio slipped into
a floor-level air grate, using their natural instincts to make their way
through the ventilation system until they arrived in the parking garage.
     “Okay, we’re here,” Monterey observed. “Now what?”
     “Look for some sort of clues,” Gadget replied. “Although I’m not
exactly sure what.”
     They split off in different directions, each taking one third of the
floor, and slowly made their way to the front of the parking level where
they met up again.
     “Anything?” Gadget asked.
     Zipper indicated that he had spotted a few claw markings on the
ground, similar to those they found at Sewer Al’s.
     “So we know he came out this way,” Monterey said. “It’s a start,
I--” He stopped suddenly and straightened up, head cocked to one side
and ears perked.
     Gadget waited a moment, knowing that Monterey was listening for
something. After he didn’t move for a few seconds, she prompted him.
“Monty?”
     He did not reply right away, but when he did it was in a cautious
whisper. “I dunno, luv. I really didn’t hear nothin’, but still... I jus’
had one of those feelin’s, like we were bein’ watched.”
     Zipper and Gadget carefully looked about. Being near the middle of
the day, the sun was shining in through the front of the open parking
level, making it easy to see. The floor space, itself, was free and clear of
any large debris or obstructions. There were cars and vans, of course, but
the Rangers could see clearly under each of them. Someone might be
hiding behind one of the tires, though.
     “Let’s get back to the vent,” Monterey finally suggested, a bit
wary. The fur at the base of his neck was starting to stand up. Never a
good sign. “C’mon. Move.”
     They stayed close together, Monterey leading the way, while
Gadget and Zipper maintained a watch on the sides and behind them.
They did not run, but made a swift jog back to the vent opening. After
taking a moment to listen at the front of it to make sure that no-one was
waiting inside, they quickly stepped in and headed back up, deeper into
the building’s internal structure.
     “Should we just head straight to the sixteenth floor?” Gadget asked
the others. “Or do you guys still want to check each level as we go?”
     Monty? Zipper’s expression read.
     Monterey fretted a bit. He normally didn’t mind feeling paranoid,
but something about this place was giving him the willies. He admitted to
himself that it might be because they were in a research building that used
animals in their experiments, and the prospects of being caught by the
humans did not lead to any particularly bright futures. Nevertheless, he
also didn’t like the idea of hightailing it and possibly missing something
important because they skipped a floor. Especially when he didn’t even
know if they were in any real danger, or if it was just his nerves.
     “Let’s check the floors as we go,” he finally decided. “But we stay
together, ya here?”
     Gadget and Zipper nodded in silent agreement. Bad things tended to
happen more frequently when they were on their own.

*     *     *

     “Chipper!” Dale exclaimed. “I found somethin’!”
     Chip glanced up from the stack of papers he was going through,
then scurried over with a glimmer of hope. It had been slow-going up to
this floor; all the previous ones had turned up nothing in their cursory
search. On this floor, however, they had stumbled upon a huge
assortment of research notes and reports in disarray on one of the
conference rooms tables. Just flipping through the first few sheets of
paper had revealed that they had indeed unearthed some promising leads.
Nearly all of the notes dealt with some research project that the company
was undertaking, and they had found mention that one of the test subjects
was a giant armadillo, named Glyph.
     Now, Chip was hoping to come across a report that would direct
them to the actual lab where Glyph had been held at. None of the reports
had cause to state what room he was in, but some of them had the dates,
times, and locations that the report was correlated; with any luck, Dale
had found one with the location in question.
     “What is it?” Chip asked eagerly as he landed next to his best
friend.
     “Check it out,” Dale pointed to the upper corner of the paper he
was holding. Sure enough, a stamp bore the phrase, “File in Animal
Studies Laboratory”.
     Dale turned to his buddy. “Think that’s what we’re looking for?”
     “Sure sounds like it, yeah,” Chip replied. He scanned over the rest
of the paper and frowned. “Still no directions to the lab, but I guess
that’s not surprising. Not many reports would need to have that.”
     “So how do we find out where it is?”
     “Well, now that we know what we’re looking for, let’s look
around; maybe a floor directory or receptionist’s desk has the answer.
Come on.”
     But before they could head off, the sound of approaching footsteps
from the outside hall caused them to halt and divert their course to hide
before the human heading to the room could spot them. They both darted
over the edge of the table, springing from the seat of a chair to the floor,
finally stopping behind one of the table legs as the door opened and a
human walked in. Rather briskly, Chip noted with interest.
     They heard some low but excited mumbling as the human shuffled
swiftly through the papers above them on the tabletop. Chip noticed that
the man’s lab coat was long enough to dangle below the table’s
surface, providing easy access to one of his pockets.
     Chip made a quick logical check, comparing what he knew thus far
to the time window they were operating in, and decided to chance it.
     “Quick!” he whispered to Dale. “In his pocket!’
     Before Dale could ask why, Chip was already sprinting off. Dale
sped off behind the Ranger leader, and the two of them smoothly slipped
unnoticed into the lab pocket just as the man wearing it snatched up the
report he had been looking for and swiftly exited the room.
     “So you wanna tell me why we hitched a ride with this guy?” Dale
asked as they rode along in the fairly spacious coat pocket to their
unknown destination.
     “Simple deduction, Dale,” Chip replied, allowing himself to include
a tinge of smugness in his tone. “This guy came in the room and started
sorting through the papers for something without even bothering to see
what they were. Ergo--”
     “Lego?” Dale asked in confusion.
     “No, ‘ergo.’ Basically what I’m saying is that this guy already
knew what those papers were before he came into the room, right?”
     Dale shrugged. “I suppose. So what?”
     “So, if he already knew what they were, then it’s likely he already
knows about Glyph’s disappearance.”
     There was a pause.
     “And...?” Dale gestured for Chip to keep explaining.
     Chip sighed. “And... I thusly surmise that this guy we are hitching a
ride with is someone who is part of the--”
     “Oh, the people in the Animal Labs!” Dale explained as
understanding finally sank in.
     Chip cheered inwardly at having made it down the home stretch.
“Exactly, Dale.”
     Dale’s smile slowly switched to one of puzzlement. “So why’d
we jump in his pocket, again?”
     “Because,” Chip said slowly as he pulled his hand down his face,
“with any luck, he is right now heading--”
     Chip stopped as the sound of a door opening and closing speedily,
followed by the man coming to a stop, alerted the two stowaways that the
man had arrived at his destination. The two chipmunks carefully peeked
up and over the lip of the pocket.
     Chip grinned. “...heading back to the Animal Studies Laboratory,”
he finished from his sentence, “and save us a lot of valuable time.”
     “Cool,” Dale nodded. “Uhm. Now what?”
     “Follow me, and keep out of sight,” Chip replied, although that was
a given. Being spotted, or worse yet, caught, in a laboratory such as this
would undoubtably be bad for their chances of making it to their
midnight appointment.
     They glanced up at their taxi driver, who was out of view, his upper
half of his body leaning over a counter, presumably reading the report he
had just retrieved. Chip and Dale gracefully hopped free from the pocket,
landing quietly on the floor and then running off to the side. They took
cover behind a protective entanglement of computer cords, cables, and
wires before taking the time to get a good look at the lab.
     It was fairly modest, with none of the ‘50s-style electro-magnetic
generators and other Hollywood imagery that Dale had been hoping for.
They were back and underneath a white counter top, which seemed to run
the entire length of the wall. The large amount of cords and wires snaking
their way up through pre-drilled holes in the counter indicated that a
number of pieces of electrical equipment was positioned above them. The
wall with the door had a closed cabinet next to it, as well as several file
cabinets. The wall directly across from them was taken up with cages,
each one actually set into the wall itself, with the cage door the only
actual opening. Half of the wall was a collection of smaller cages, for
small and medium-sized animals, while the other half of the wall only had
two cages, each one large enough to make any resident of an efficiency to
turn green with envy.
     Chip silently tapped Dale on the shoulder, then directed his friend to
the two large cages. Dale glanced at them and nodded in understanding.
Glyph was probably once in one of those cages. Stealthily, the two
Rangers made their way along the edge of the walls towards the cages
while the humans in the room -- there were three, including the one they
had hitched a ride on -- continued a conversation that had been going on
for a while.
     “All of our data points to the conclusion of there being a significant
amount of intelligence,” Ted pointed to the open binder that he had
retrieved from the conference room. “And the news reports that the boys
down in research have started to dig up are all pointing to the same thing.
Only it’s even bigger than we even first suspected.”
     “Now hang on, Ted,” Doug grumbled. “Some of those reports are
fairly supportive, but a lot are completely unsubstantiated. Nothing more
than rumors, and only possible ones at that. Just because we may have
stumbled on to uncovering a previously unknown subculture doesn’t
mean that we can just drop all of our scientific procedures and
automatically believe every possibility that we find.”
     Maynard nodded. “I have to go with Doug on this one, Ted. We
have to keep focused on the ones that we know for a fact actually
happened. The ones that involve the police, or were somehow recored --
we can try and verify that they actually happened, whereas the rest is just
a wild goose chase.”
     “Or a wild armadillo chase,” Ted remarked with a wry smile.
     “Whatever.” Doug flipped through a number of papers. “Look,
let’s start with the most promising leads we have, okay? We know that
Jenny and Cody are still alive and well. Maybe we can track them down
and talk to them. See if they can clue us once in on anything more. For all
we know they may have dismissed it all as just a childhood fantasy.”
     Ted blinked. “Hey... you may be right.”
     “Hmm?”
     “Well, think about it,” Ted explained as he walked over to his
colleagues. “Here we are, stunned that such a thing could exist right
under our noses without anyone ever having noticed it before. Well,
maybe a lot of people *have* noticed it before; maybe a lot more. But as
they grew up, they lost touch with it. Kind of like forgetting your
imaginary friends and putting your toys away.”
     “Growing up, you mean,” Doug said once in understanding.
     “Exactly. It would explain a lot about why this has gone on for so
long without any notice.”
     “Maybe it was meant to be that way,” Maynard added glumly. “I
don’t like this guys. Not one bit. I signed on to test the boundries of
mankind’s current knowledge, yeah, but this... this completely
challenges our world view.”
     “I know,” Ted nodded. “And it shakes me up a bit, too. But we
stumbled into it this far, and I think we’ve passed the point of no
return.”
     “Come again?” Doug asked quizzically.
     Ted sighed. “With what we already know, none of us here will ever
relax until we know for sure. Admit it. The only thing that’ll put our
minds at ease is to see this thing through, wherever it may lead us.”
     “That’s a cheerful thought,” Doug remarked dryly.
     “I’d have to agree, though,” Maynard sighed. “Fine. Let’s at
least get this over with. Is the media presentation room set-up?”
     Ted nodded. “All the videos are set and the slides are ready to roll.”
     Chip and Dale watched as the three humans wordlessly left the
room.
     “What was that about?” Dale asked as they walked out into the
open floor.
     “Who can tell with humans?” Chip shrugged. “Sounds like
they’re looking for Glyph on their own, too. But come on -- we’ve got
a deadline to work under for now. Besides, now we have the place to
ourselves. We can check for clues a lot easier.”
     “Wouldn’t the cops have gotten all the clues by now?” Dale asked
with skepticism. He had been watching more of “The Few Detectives”
lately, after all.
     “Physical clues? Probably,” Chip replied as they reached the cages.
“But they wouldn’t be able to pick up any information from the best
possible witnesses.” His sweeping arm took once in the large cluster of
cages before them.
     “Aw man...” Dale grumbled. “We ain’t gonna have time to talk to
*all* of them!”
     “Then let’s get cracking,” Chip affirmed. “Let’s do a quick
sweep of the big cages, here, and see which one Glyph was once in.”
     “He was once in the other one,” a somewhat raspy voice called out.
     The chipmunks started a bit, then glanced in front of them and into
the large cage that the voice had emanated from. Over in the back corner,
what they had assumed was some large, weird furry ball toy for an animal
unrolled itself with a stretch and yawn. It carefully rolled over on its
stomach, looking directly at the two Rangers with a frown prominently
displayed on its lengthsome snout.
     “Uhm,” Chip cleared his throat and politely addressed the giant
anteater staring at them. “Excuse us. Were you sleeping?”
     “I was,” it replied. Hearing the voice again, the Rangers could tell it
was a female.
     “Did we wake you?” Dale asked sheepishly.
     The giant anteater looked at him for a moment, then decided that he
wasn’t being sarcastic. “Yes, you did, squirt.”
     “Oh. Sorry.”
     But the large mammal waved it aside with one massive set of claws
as it yawned. “I should have been getting up soon, anyway, kid. Besides,
I heard you mention Glyph. You know him?”
     Chip’s eyes lit up like a child first seeing their presents on
Christmas morning. “You know Glyph?” he basically echoed. “I mean,
you’ve known him for a while?”
     The giant anteater chuckled. “Boyo, we’ve been neighbors here
for over a year. He’s like a brother to me.
     Chip could hardly believe his good fortune at having such a prime
source of information practically dropped in his lap.
     Dale could hardly believe their bad luck at having their best witness
being an obvious giant armadillo sympathizer.
     “Do you mind if we ask you a few questions?” Chip asked, a
notepad and pencil magically appearing from nowhere once in his eager
paws.
     “What about?”
     “Your old neighbor, the kidnaping terrorist armadillo,” Dale replied
bluntly.
     The giant anteater blinked as she watched Dale drop to the floor
once in reaction to Chip’s fist bopping him on the head. Must be a
chipmunk thing.
     “You’ll have to forgive my colleague, here,” Chip growled.
“He’s...” Chip searched for the right word. “...stupid.”
     Dale glared at Chip as he regained his feet, rubbing his head. “Oh,
like you’d act any differently if it was Gadget who was kidnaped.”
     “I would be concerned,” Chip immediately returned. “But I know
Gadget would build something fantastic out of whatever was at hand and
either escape or knock the kidnappers out when her invention blew up by
accident.”
     “Hah!” Dale snorted. “Foxy wouldn’t even have to do that.
She’d just use that echo-thingy she has and pick a lock and *fhoom*!
She’d be out of there and on her way back lickety-split.”
     The giant anteater noticed that the chipmunks’ tone was becoming
heated in direct proportion to their increased vocal speed.
     “Well, Gadget would rig up some homing beacon for us all to
follow while she captured the crooks with a piece of twine and some used
gum!”
     “Foxy would just fly circles ‘round ‘em until the got dizzy and
fainted!”
     “Gadget’d say ‘should’ and they’d run screaming!”
     “Foxy’d give that piercing squeal and stun ‘em all!”
     “Gadget’d--”
     “Foxy’d--”
     From then on the “discussion” was undecipherable for any creature
without the required 78rpm adapter set, although the sole attendant of this
debate did think she caught a “Tastes great, less filling” quibble enter
into it at one point.
     “Hey, knock it off!” she finally ordered, putting enough annoyance
behind it to give pause to the chipmunks. “I didn’t like it when David
Seville used those annoying high voices, and I don’t like it now, either.”
     The two chipmunks both directed their ire towards the giant
anteater, but she didn’t care. It had shut them up, as she figured it
would.
     “Look... uh...” Dale’s irritation quickly evaporated in a puff of
confusion as he realized something. “What’s your name?”
     She yawned. “The guys here have called me Cyril for over a year,
so I guess that’ll do.”
     “Oh, well look, Cyril...” Dale started, then hesitated. “Uhm, what
were we talking about?”
     Chip cleared his throat and shifted back into Sam Spade mode.
“Your neighbor, Cyril; Glyph. Did you know him well?”
     “Yeah, I did,” she replied. “We were both caught down in South
America, and shipped up here together, so you might say that the trip
bonded us a bit.”
     Chip and Dale involuntarily shuddered at the mention of South
America; first Hitter came from that continent, now Glyph. If that land mass
could produce such specimens as those two, the chipmunks held a great
deal of respect for the native animals who had survived this long.
     Cyril regarded them suspiciously for a moment. “What was this
about Glyph being a kidnapper?”
     “He kidnaped Foxglove,” Dale growled.
     “He kidnaped a plant?”
     “No, Foxy’s a bat. And he kidnaped her, then trashed the rest of
us like we were just a typical squad of stormtroopers.”
     Cyril eyed them carefully. “What’d you do to tick him off?”
     “Us?!” Dale asked in shock. “Look, lady, he ambushed us! Came
up from the ground and attacked without any reason to! And he’s
working with this real piece of slime chameleon, too, helping out in some
dastardly deed or nefarious notion or whatever! We didn’t do a thing to
that dweeb! That jerk--”
     Dale never knew that a giant anteater’s reach with their tongue can
easily cover over two feet, so he had barely time to blink as Cyril’s
sticky tongue flashed out of her snout, snatching him back through the
bars. He bounced abruptly from the tip of her mouth, landing in a daze in
her massive paw. Which happened to be gripping him a bit tightly.
     “Whatever you say might have happened,” she slowly snarled,
“Glyph is still a close friend of mine. So knock off the insults before I
knock off your skull. Capicé?”
     “Touchy, touchy,” Dale wheezed, but nodded. Cyril dropped him to
the floor, where Chip quickly caught up with him.
     “Cyril,” Chip said as carefully as he could -- anteaters didn’t eat
chipmunks, but chipmunks could still be pulped by those massive
forearms, “have you known Glyph to act like that?”
     “Not at all,” she immediately replied. “I know he’s tough. He has
to be, to live out in the wild like we did. But he would never just attack
without reason.”
     “Well, he did,” Dale forlornly pointed out.
     “So what was he like, normally?” Chip asked, trying to put a more
informal spin on the investigation. “I mean, Dale’s actually right for a
change--”
     “Hey!”
     “--in that the only side we saw of Glyph was a rampaging beast of
nature.”
     Cyril chuckled. “Well, I can see him like that, I guess. He never
minded talking about his past fights and brawls. With him always
winning, you know, of course.”
     “Trust me,” Chip gave a wry grin. “We know the type.”
     “But I might be wrong,” she said, suddenly a bit saddened. “I
mean, he did leave on his own.”
     “Huh?” Dale scratched his head. “how do you mean?”
     Chip added, “Do you mean that he broke out on his own?”
     Cyril shrugged. “I don’t know. I was asleep when he left, so he
might have had help. What I meant with him leaving on his own is that he
didn’t break me out, either.”
     “He was supposed to?” Chip’s hand was writing furiously by
now.
     “Well, we never signed a blood pact or anything,” Cyril admitted.
“But we had talked about getting out of here and back home a lot. I
would have busted him out if I could. And I figured he’d do the same
for me.”
     Chip’s mouth quirked down. “Maybe he couldn’t; it would
support the scenario of him having had someone else break him out,
rather than doing it on his own.”
     “Hey...” Dale said slowly, as his eyes widened -- a side effect of
deep thinking. “Tore -- I mean, ‘Raset’, the hypnotist formerly known
as Tore -- could put people in trances and stuff, like he did with Chris.
D’ya think he’s mind-controlling Glyph?” Dale asked Chip.
     Chip took an uneasy breath. “I couldn’t say for sure, Dale. The
only time Raset hypnotized Chris was when he set the poor mouse up to
take the fall, and even then, Chris was acting a bit unsure of himself.
From how easily Glyph trounced us, I think he was acting under his own
willpower. Hypnotism usually can only put people in trances or leave
suggestions, like Osiris did with Gadget, and I think Glyph was doing his
job a bit too well to have been ‘forced’ into it.”
     “Just be glad he didn’t kill you,” Cyril piped up. “He probably
would have if you had really upset him.”
     “He wasn’t exactly playing patty-cake with us either, y’know,”
Dale sourly responded.
     Chip jumped in before Cyril could give a terse reply. “Cyril, does
Glyph seem like the violent type to you?”
     The giant anteater snorted and rapped her impressive claws against
the floor of the cage as she answered. “By whose standards? Half of the
animals I’ve met in this country wouldn’t know how to survive five
minutes down south. What we consider basic survival skills, you’d
probably call barbaric aggression.”
     The two Rangers sighed in unison. They hadn’t considered that.
     Chip shook his head and tried a different path. “Any idea who
might have helped him escape? Or why?”
     “No clue,” she replied.
     “Is like, anyone, you know, looking for you guys?” Dale asked.
“Maybe trying to rescue you or him?”
     “Not that I know of,” Cyril said. “We didn’t have many friends
back home, and I can’t see how they’d have any clue as to where we
are now.”
     “What about the animals in the building?” Chip suggested. “Any
mice, or insects, or anything that might be living behind the walls? Ever
seen any?”
     Cyril laughed briefly. “Kiddo, I haven’t been off this floor since
we arrived. If there are any animals living here, they’re probably being
smart by avoiding the floor that holds the animal labs.” She eyed them
with a chuckle, and they had to swallow nervously. Every animal knew
that humans could always find another cage for an animal found loose in
a lab....
     Deciding to take his mind off that unpleasant possibility, Chip
glanced at his notes. Not much information. Cyril didn’t see anything,
and didn’t know of anyone who would be out to rescue Glyph in the
first place.
     Well, except for Raset.
     “You ever hear of a chameleon that called himself Raset? Or
Tore?” Chip chanced.
     But Cyril shook her head. “Nope.”
     Dejectedly, Chip flipped his notepad shut. Dale blinked. Normally
Chip would be smiling, so this was not a particularly good sign.
     “Okay, well, thanks for your time,” Chip nodded politely as he
started off.
     “Hey,” Cyril called out after him, “let me know if you find out
anything. I’m worried about him.”
     “Sure thing,” Chip said.
     “I’d be more worried about Foxy,” Dale stated evenly, casting one
last glare back at Cyril before he headed out himself.
     Cyril hesitated, then said, “I don’t think Glyph will hurt her.”
     Dale didn’t bother to stop, or even turn around as he replied, “He
hurt us, didn’t he?” It was all the proof he needed.
     Cyril frowned as the two small chipmunks left her cage and began
to work heir way up the smaller cages next to hers. She never thought
that Glyph would be launching the attacks they described, but then, she
never thought that Glyph would leave without even telling her why.
     Settling down near the back of her cage, Cyril sighed deeply, closed
her eyes, and tried to get some sleep.

*     *     *

     The going was fairly slow, and absent of luck as Monterey, Gadget,
and Zipper methodically made their way up from one floor to the next,
and this was complicated as moving upwards inside of the walls was
fairly tricky. They normally would prefer the ventilation system, but the
sheer metal surfaces lacked any viable handholds for them to utilize. The
interior of the walls, however, were practically the opposite. Crossbeams,
support beams, wiring, angled shafts... a veritable jungle gym that Dale
would have taken to like a duck to water.
     Only about two feet of space existed between the walls they were
currently in, but the soundproofing packed in cut down the available
space down to only a foot horizontally. Vertically, however, it was pretty
much open from the top of the building to bottom. Wires and cords ran
freely from the heater and power regulators in the basement to the
weather and climate sensory equipment positioned on the roof. And in
between was an endless set of interpositioned structual supports, insuring
that if one of the Rangers fell, it would only be a foot or two before
landing on something to halt the fall.
     Zipper was able to flit back and forth between Monterey and
Gadget, giving them a hoist up when needed, and keeping a careful eye
out the rest of the time for any residents that they might accidentally
stumble across.
     But Zipper was beginning to become suspicious. Large human
structures such as this building always had colonies of insects or groups
of animals living within the walls, no matter how thorough the
exterminators tried to be. Insects were likely split between the base of the
building, for the burrowing ones, and the top, for the winged ones. But
the space between the roof and basement were always lined with some
outcropping of rodent life, in one form or another. Maybe a small family,
maybe a large, sprawling village, but always *some* sort of animal
establishment.
     But not here. Zipper hadn’t even seen any traces of former
habitation during their entire time within the building. True, he suspected
that there wouldn’t be a large cluster of rodents, as too many living in a
building with an animal research laboratory was practically begging for
disaster. Nevertheless, there would also likely be a few animals that
escaped their cages, or relatives of the imprisoned, hoping to break them
out in the future, or at least be near their kin as much as possible.
     So where was everyone? Zipper frowned.
     It was like walking through an open, empty patch of concrete,
where one would expect to find at least the worn-out husks of abandoned
homes and businesses, only to see none. Zipper felt certain that if he
searched, he would uncover some old nests or burrows of animals who
once lived in these walls, but he also was sure he’d see no sign of
present life, and maybe even no sign of anyone having lived here for
years.
     Zipper’s uneasiness was beginning to creep him out, so he cleared
his mind of it and concentrated on his current task; still no sign of
anyone. Up ahead, Monterey was clambering to the top of a horizontal
rafter, while behind Zipper, Gadget was still slowly crawling up the steep
incline of an air conditioning vent. Zipper flew up towards Monterey
first, boosting him from underneath to get him up to the top safely, then
headed back to similarly assist Gadget.
     He couldn’t, however, as she was gone.
     Zipper balked. He had his back turned for no more than a few
seconds!
     Frantically, he yelled out Gadget’s name as he started searching
for her -- she had been in the middle of the vent, making it impossible for
her have accidentally slipped over the edge. At worst, if she had slipped,
she merely would have slid down the back to the base of the incline and
still be in sight.
     But she *wasn’t* anywhere in sight. Not on top, underneath, or on
either side.
     “Zipper!’ Monterey called out. “What happened?!” He, too,
noticed that Gadget was no longer with them. He was afraid that she had
fallen, down into the maze of supports below, but Zipper’s rapid-fire
answers dimmed that as a possibility almost instantly.
     As Zipper spiraled out in his search, Monterey added his own
bellows, calling out for the vanished inventor while peering all around
him in a hopes of spotting her. But too many things were obstructing his
view. Someone could have hidden a Volkswagen in here and he’d have
trouble seeing it until he was right on top of it.
     He leapt from his spot, landing roughly on the air vent below,
checking all around the nearby area. He knew he should feel worried, or
even panicky over this, but the absolute abruptness with which she had
disappeared had him stunned. He had just turned his back for a second....
     In the hollow space between the walls, the two desperate Rangers
continued to yell for their lost teammate.
     Over the next few hours, no answer ever came.