In the webbed cave, a rat sat on a bone watching a massive spider twitch and wriggle. The spider would periodically stiffen its extremities before curling a leg back into a resting position. The rat scratched its ear with a back paw, then set to grooming itself. After, the rat stood looking between the spider and its hole in the wall. It reached a decision, and the rat curled into a ball with its tail wrapped around its body, its eyes looking over its hind legs at the spider. The beady little structures gradually shrank, the lids covered them, and soon the rat was slumbering peacefully a few feet from the much larger predator.

  Jon was beginning the process of implementing his upgrade, and was following instructions. They were not words as much as a sense of inspiration he followed from moment to moment, like the feeling when you solved a puzzle and the pieces all fell into place. He was gathering the energy circulating in his arteries, moving it all up towards the upper brain behind his eyes.

  The physical sensation was similar to having your stomach rumble or the fluttering feeling you occasionally got from the base of your intestines. The difference was, it felt like it was moving directly behind his eyes. It was not painful or unpleasant, just disconcerting.

  He gained a better sense of the function of this region as he worked. His psionic pulse generator soaked up a specialized psychic energy made in his brain and spinal cord. The more generalized energy circulating throughout his body gradually replaced what was lost from his central nervous system, and so the net amount of psychic energy remained stable as it was absorbed by the reservoir. It acted like a dam, though there was none of the effect on upstream or downstream flow associated with dams in water.

  The energy from the feeds condensed as it gathered. Jon was making a series of rafts, organized like railroad ties floating on the lake of energy. He was also making a sluice gate which allowed him to control which way the energy flowed out from the reservoir. Each pulse of his heart beat carried more energy towards his work, condensing into pieces he carefully put in place. After what felt like moments, he was finished. He was left wondering if what he had made would work. It felt like it should? Maybe?

  Jon stopped focusing on his inner world, allowing his perception to return to normal.

  He saw the rat sleeping a few feet away from him. As he examined the rat, he activated his mental senses again. He marveled at the ease of detecting the rat’s mind; it was comparable to the change in vision from when he changed from spiderling to jumping spider.

  The mental tether he had made between them felt much more crude to his new senses, like he had looped a piece of twine over a hook on the rat’s brain by blind feel. Now Jon could see, and he felt confident he could achieve something more stable now.

  He reached out to the connection, unhooking it and then binding them back together by looping the tether several times over. While there were no exact measurements for this sort of thing, Jon had a sense this link had far better bandwidth than the prior one.

  Jon tried to finish tying off the mental connection, but there was something missing. The rat awoke with its beady eyes settled on him. It was almost as though it had been prompted. The rat slowly uncurled, then sat back on its haunches. It resembled a dog in the begging position.

  Something clicked, and the link between them went slack, no longer requiring nearly as much effort to maintain. Jon felt the rat exploring the new connection, and then it looked up at him. The vague feelings from their earlier connection were much more clear. They were not words, still just impressions of thoughts and concepts, but the images were much crisper and held more easily. The rat seemed content and well rested, though it was still hungry.

  He was unsure exactly how long he had been working. The rat felt Jon’s thoughts over the connection, and an image of him sitting still came across the link. It gave the impression it had watched him for several hours before it fell asleep. The rat tilted its head, and a question popped up in its thoughts.

  The question came in the form of an image accompanied by curiosity: a hairless, newborn rat. It felt like the rat was asking if he might be a newborn. Jon answered in the negative.

  The rat felt confused over the connection. Jon felt it pondering his response to the energy earlier, and his ignorance of using it. Another image floated up. The newborn rat grew hair, and became slightly larger. It was able to open its eyes, and then to run, but it still appeared inexperienced. As he watched, the young rat tried to jump and landed on its face. Not an infant, but a child? Jon again answered in the negative.

  The rat paused a little longer this time, then a third image appeared. This was an adult rat, larger than his new cave-mate. It was standing next to his rat friend, and its teeth and tongue protruded from its mouth slightly. A droplet of drool fell from the side of the big rat’s slack mouth, its eyes not wholly focused, a prominent scar over its left eye.

  Jon was a little annoyed this time. He answered it,

  “No, I am not an idiot.”

  The rat looked back at him, affronted, then began chittering at him angrily, its hair raised along its back. He didn’t know if the rat understood the words, but it definitely understood the pejorative connotation of the word “idiot” when he replied. The rat sent another image, one of a rat making feces with an especially offensive odor, comparing him to the offal and the orifice which produced it.

  If Jon could have blinked, he probably would have. He was pretty sure he had just been called out for being ableist by a rat. It had also literally called him a rat asshole. Jon wasn’t mad, it had a point. Thinking back on the image, he realized something.

  “Relative?” he asked, accompanying the image of the drooling rat.

  The rat stopped chitterring, although he felt it was still giving him a scathing look. It was hard to tell without prominent eyebrows, but the emotion was there in the gaze. The rat seemed to be trying to tell if he was still insulting the drooling rat from the image, or if the question was genuine curiosity. A few moments later it relented. A series of images.

  A small group of newborns, feeding at their mother’s side. Two of the baby rats, older, sleeping next to one another in a pile.

  Brother.

  Later, playing, wrestling near a high ledge. One of the rats, falling off the edge, landing hard against a rock as its distressed companion squealed at the top of the cliff. The smell of blood. A scar, a change. Sorrow. Guilt. Anger.

  Jon staggered as the emotions washed over him. An overwhelming sense of loss accompanied them. The rat paused again. It continued.

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  The scarred rat being bullied, food stolen. Fierce anger. Teeth and claws. The food returned, the thieves rebuked. The pile abandoned. Brother enough, cold together. Many fights, many feeds. They grew strong, taking what they needed. Larger than other rats, but protecting all. Shared their energy.

  Brother grows strong. I grow cunning.

  Jon almost thought the words were spoken, they were so clear. He thought a minute, unsure how to proceed.

  Jon sent a series of impressions of his own:

  “Sorrow. Regret. Failure.” A brief pause:

  “I am idiot. He is strong.”

  The rat looked at him for a long moment. He saw a breath leave its body, and much of the tension left with it. The rat’s whiskers drooped, and it stared back towards the hole it had tried to escape to earlier. Jon felt a deep longing ache through the new mental link. He had had some sudden suspicions about why this rat was alone. He decided not to think too deeply on them for now, recognizing the complicated grief in his new companion. Jon had no desire to open that wound any further.

  The rat finally turned back to him. More images. The young rat jumping for a ledge that was too high, falling, not understanding it was not strong enough. It came with emotional connotations. The helplessness and ignorance of youth. Foolishness. Another young rat, nipping a friend too hard during play, the loud squeak of distress startling it. The contrite look after.

  He parsed the message together gradually. It seemed he was forgiven; the rat had deemed him thoughtless rather than intentionally cruel.

  These felt like a practiced set of thoughts; the rat was used to explaining things to a foolish companion. It was used to letting go of frustrations. It was missing something, a piece of what made it itself. Jon felt a moment of inspiration, a connection to the creature. He focused on his missing family, of being taken from them, confused. A change. A new body.

  The rat turned its head quizzically, trying to sort the images. Comprehension dawned. A new image appeared for Jon.

  An empty nest, recently made from fresh vegetation. A cold night, alone.

  Jon shook his head,

  “No.”

  He sent another impression: the nest was not empty, but impossibly distant. Taken. But still filled with warmth. Determination, an impossible journey. A step. Another. Another. Closer each time, no matter how many were needed.

  Again, the rat took several seconds before responding. It looked back to its hole. There was a slight tinge of envy in its thoughts as it indicated understanding. The rat’s loss was final. It looked back towards him, impressions floating to Jon over the link.

  The rat was conflicted. Then came a decision. It sent him a picture of it walking by Jon’s side to the far-away nest. The rat would accompany him. Help him back to his nest. Another message, easily summarized:

  “Where?”

  Jon was unsure how to answer. He concentrated on the spot where the I.O.U. from Herman was tucked on his chest, and a light shown out from the plating between his front legs. It shown brightly in his mind’s eye, and he felt a tug, out of the cave.

  As he considered the next steps, he heard a familiar screeching cry. The quilled rabbits, the Cuniculus spina, were coming. Jon felt his surprise reflected in the rat next to him, followed by a flare of incomprehensible rage and hate.

  The series of impressions came rapidly, disorganized, the burning fury accompanying each with an almost visible light and heat.

  Leaving the nest for food. Ranging a little further than usual. Returning to the nest. The front entrance too large, dug out. The claw marks surrounding the previously neat lines. The two large rabbits emerging, leaving, their mouths with blood-tinged fur. They departed. The race into the nest. Another smaller quilled rabitt, its back to him, attacking his brother, who still stood strong over one of the females and its young. He leapt at the back of the bunny’s head, aiming for the base of its neck, a stinging sensation from the needles coating its back, then white fire running through his veins. His brother attacking from the front. Falling. A powerful kick from nowhere tossing him down the tunnel. His muscles not following his commands, the white fire spreading ever further, till he could barely breath. Emerging later from the tunnel. The empty nest. Cold, made with freshly woven vegetation. Blood and scraps of fur on the ground all that remained. Gone. All gone. Alone.

  As Jon processed the message, he heard the screeches growing ever closer. They sounded twice as loud as they had when they started. Another image came through from the rat, crystal clear and lined in red fire.

  Its teeth at their necks.

  Jon paused, thinking quickly. He made a decision.

  “Our teeth at their necks,” he returned.

  His message lacked the fire of the rat’s, and he felt calm again.

  “Face towards the flame,” he thought.

  It was something one of the nurses had said to him when he was a newly minted doc in the emergency department. She was an older woman, and Jon had been quick to judge based on her ‘I need to speak to the manager’ haircut.

  He had been completely wrong. She was a kind woman underneath a very gruff exterior, and she had somehow made it through over thirty years of emergency department nursing. At least five half-lives for a normal E.R. nurse.

  She had watched him leaving the room of a young man who died after a car accident. He had sat at his desk, a little listless after being on his feet for forty five minutes in an unsuccessful bid to resuscitate the man. His shift had ended fifteen minutes earlier, but he still had to document and sign out his remaining patients to a colleague. She had walked up and tapped him on the shoulder, then said,

  “You know, you do this stuff long enough and you realize there are two kinds of docs and nurses working these departments. Those who run towards the flames, and those who run away. You always seem to be going towards them. Keep it up! Face towards the flame.”

  It had stuck with him. He had never been in fire, though he had been on many ambulance runs in college when he ran EMS. Those had mostly been transport runs. But Jon liked the image, and it gave him a little courage every time he walked into a difficult situation: seizing children, nearly dead or already dead people, disclosing a cancer diagnosis to a young woman. Face towards the flame.

  He shared the sentiment with the rat, and the serenity which accompanied the mantra. At first it brushed him off, but he followed it up with a plan, and the need for calm heads to give them the best chance during their attack.

  Even if running away was an option, Jon wouldn’t take it right now. The rabbits were complete dicks, and they apparently had slaughtered his new buddy’s whole little clan. They fucked with the wrong rat. Jon was not sure if it was the mental link, his strange situation, or his recent losses, but he felt extremely attached to the little thing already. He needed to give it a name, but now was not the time.

  He felt confident as he turned his mind back to the coming fight. He had been able to fight the rabbits at a disadvantage previously, without knowing their capabilities. They relied on speed and the poison from their quills. He suspected the poison was effective against fellow mammals, or maybe vertebrates in general, but it had no effect on him. The needles had been a painful nuisance, nothing more.

  Jon was not going to linger in the webbed cave. Forcing the rabbits into tight quarters might give him a slight advantage, but he felt he could do better by ambushing from the outside.

  He gathered up his new buddy, who was trembling with barely contained blood lust, and held him against his chest plating with a foreclaw. Jon scuttled out of the webbed entrance, easily stepping between the sticky bits and then climbing out and onto the side of the tunnel. He held the rat still as he ascended to the ceiling.

  Jon looked around for a hiding place, spotting a dense patch of larger crystals next to the stalactite covering the cave. He communicated the need for absolute silence to the rat, and moved over to the patch.