Vanis sat up in bed, still about as shocked at the news as she was upon hearing it. She’d left the window open, the moonlight pouring in with a cool summer breeze rustling the thin curtains. She was in the attic... Typical Uncle Stygian, never having rooms prepared in his eight bed nine bath ocean view mansion.

She was a white otter, almost seventeen in age, with two childish ponytails the same color as her fur. She didn’t have rammish horns like her uncle, although she always thought they looked super quirky and would make all the boys want to go out with her. Instead, she had golden tassels growing from behind her ears, as the females of their species all had. They were a part of her, unlike her hair, she couldn’t just cut them, in fact, they were sensitive.

With them, she could feel just as well as she could with her fingertips, but unable to control them directly, they were just pretty at that point. Although she knew some of her friends, still growing theirs in, could control them a little better, brushing them around, and she read of adult otters who could lift things with them. But for now, she was still immature.

Her cousin came to mind again. They were good friends back in the day, probably the best. Stygian, along with many others, weren’t good enough for her. Years later, they moved, and she’d only get to see him each year around her birthday when her parents went on their honeymoon, which seemed to coincide perfectly. She’d come early this year, and was expecting to see him when she arrived at the mansion. She’d not seen him for two years this time, and really missed him. Now those two years would become a lifetime.

She thought what his final minutes must have been. Kai had died, and the further she went, that fact only made her more sad.

Within a couple minutes of terrible thoughts, she found herself dizzily hobbling over to her uncle’s door, the alcohol and sleep depravity taking its effect.

It was to her surprise when she found her uncle already awake upon opening the door.

“Hmph… can’t sleep either?” he asked quietly. Vanis was unsure of whether he was giving sympathy or not.

“No…” she said disrespectfully at a normal volume.

“I don’t have a clue what I’m going to do with myself.” he muttered solemnly. This wasn’t like the Stygian Vanis remembered at all.

“Hmm.. there’s always therapy, uncle. I wouldn’t want you doing anything drastic.” the white otter suggested, pulling out her phone.

“I’m not going to commit suicide, if that is what you were thinking.” he scolded, staring into her eyes. She looked ready to fall over on the floor.

“Well, let’s get you set up with a therapist anyway.” Vanis said, flopping into a chair and tapping away at her device. The back of the phone sported an upright feather icon made of silver. “I won this free coupon for a month of sessions, I’ll let you have it.”

“What? Why do you have something like that?” Stygian asked.

“I enter a ton of promotions and contests and stuff. This guy called Lyman Leepsky wrote me personally saying I’d won.”

“Hmm… I saw that guy on TV earlier… seems like a right nutcase.” the general sighed.

“I think my mom knew him, I never met him though. He seems alright to me, just trying to sell his new product.”

“I don’t need therapy.” Stygian said stubbornly, crossing his arms.

“But it isn’t therapy, Lyman is doing some sort of new method that isn’t-”

“Why are you even up at this hour, Vanis? I don’t want it. Go to bed. We’ll worry about Kai tomorrow.” Stygian said dismissively, wanting the conversation to end.

“Fine Uncle, just know I tried to help you, but you refused it, this is why I never liked you.” the female otter said, marching out of the room.

“Vanis, wait!” Stygian gasped, reaching out a hand, but she was already gone. He slumped into bed with a frown on his face.

He was depressed at how he’d acted. Age had deteriorated his kindness, but not his hearing. As soon as he heard the clicking from his window, he turned his head in an instant as it opened, the lock fell to the floor as the glass swung open.

And in stepped Lyman Leepsky, in the flesh.

“You should have listened to your adorably annoying niece, Stygian. But I figured your stubbornness would get in the way. So I am now going to forcefully get you to visit my establishment.” the therapeutic kidnapper whispered as dramatically as possible while stuffing a white cloth doused with some type of sleeping agent into the otters little black nose.

Before he could scream, he was already knocked out. He probably didn’t hear to the end of Lyman’s sentence. And that night, nobody would know he was even missing until morning’s light.

And by then, he was already having his first, and last, session with Dr. Leepsky.

Leepsky stared at Drew on the other side of the room, unable to make a move. There was a short awkward pause without any sounds as the two made eye contact, Drew’s grin causing the false therapist to sweat.

“Yes hi, welcome to Lyman Leepsky’s Paradise Program, we are currently closed, get out.” Leepsky said, dropping Julia’s hand and waltzing up to Drew, trying to kick him out.

He forcefully grabbed the agents shoulders, turning him around and pushing him through the open door.

“I know what you came here for, but I’m with a custom-AGH!” Lyman whispered into Drew’s ear covertly as they walked. But within seconds he had a gun and badge in his surprised face.

“I’m Drew Idley with the MI6, I’ve just come to do a routine sweep of your building Mr. Leepsky, and would appreciate your cooperation.” he explained, pretending to forget what happened under a new mood.

“Oh of course! Come on in.” Lyman stuttered, sweating more, but holding his composure. Meanwhile, Julia looked upon the scene unraveling before her with abject confusion.

“Perfect! Well, show me around, I’ll only take up mere moments of your time.”

Lyman knew this was a lie. He’d seen the authorities before, and a ‘routine sweep’ meant ‘we’re gonna find false evidence and search for the next couple days looking for what we want’. But he knew Drew, even through his form. He purposefully spoke in the same accent he remembered to scare him, but Lyman wouldn’t have it. However, whatever Drew was going to do would be worse, and Lyman would do whatever he could muster to stop him.

Lyman led the agent, with Julia awkwardly watching the person she was supposed to trust show off his secrets. The backrooms were a tight mess of hallways with a couple of doors leading to friendly, yet lifeless offices with nobody in them. The three seemed to be the only ones in the building.

“Here we have our patented ‘Meditative Lyman Therapy’ rooms, where I perform the sessions that make the patients open up and learn to enjoy their month of sessions with me.” Lyman bullshited. These rooms had dust all over the tables, bookshelves, and fake plants, as fake as the scheme itself.

Drew noticed, made the connection, but said nothing. However, Lyman, as if he was reading his mind, spoke up. “The dust is just because we’ve not opened officially yet. I’ll have a cleaning crew come in on our opening day.”

“This place looks pretty finished to me, why haven’t you opened yet?” Drew asked in his ‘agent voice’, a serious tone he reserved for this job.

“It’s hard to set up a simultaneous completion of over five hundred offices world wide, and counting. I’m just trying to serve the greater good here, why not come back and check for misconduct when each of those rooms is filled with happy customers?” Lyman said, slyly advertising to Julia while he did his tour. Gotta love a multitasker.

“I already see a ‘happy customer’ right here, Mr. Leepsky. And I don’t think she’s enjoying walking around this crappy place with us.” Drew pointed out, looking at a quiet Julia walking behind them at a bit of a distance. He gave her a light smile when she perked up to him, but she didn’t smile back. This was the last thing she wanted to happen, she almost wanted to kick the agent out as well, even if Lyman was a fraud. She was sick of being on the run.

Lyman led them through the hall as it curved to the left, right past a big metal door with “Employees Only” on it. Drew took Lyman by his massive collar and pulled him backward, forcefully swinging him so he could see the door.

“So laddie, why do you have a supervillain’s door inside your therapy office?” Drew asked silently, his head perched upon Lyman’s shoulder.

Lyman stuttered for a second, looking at the door himself with a very different gaze from Drew’s.

“That’s a little lab… I do my experiments there to determine-”

“Cut the crap and open it, Leepsky!” Drew shouted, Julia jumping a little at the auditory spike.

Leepsky sighed. “Well, you see sir, I don’t have the key. And without the key, I cannot-”

“THEN FIND IT!” yelled the agent, losing his temper.

“Sure. You don’t have to raise your volume at me, sir.”

“An’ quit callin’ me that!” Drew irishly shouted back, beginning to tap his foot on the floor impatiently.

Nove and Lyman walked through the woods silently, the rain had now parted, leaving a nice fresh, but damp scent in the air. Birds chirped, fluttering from branch to branch, hunting for any stray worms that were out after the rainfall.

The Halicanth stayed quiet. Leepsky occasionally threw an icebreaker her way to lighten the mood, but she wouldn’t have any of it. Nove eventually began to drown him out, not even acknowledging his existence until they reached a road. Conveniently, there was also a plot of farmland on the opposite side of the road. It stretched outward for about a quarter of a mile until hitting another treeline. Nove had seen human farms before, and this one was no different. In fact, she knew quite a bit about the human world, despite their isolation from humanity.

Her tribe's people would often attack human encampments in the jungle. ‘The Slicers’ they called them, they’d just come here for wood and take down a large part of the forest before packing up and leaving. But, often they’d die before doing so, even more often they’d die in their sleep. If there was anything that Halicanth were good at, it was killing things. They’d do so with ruthless efficiency, and their innate control over fauna would allow them to murder hundreds and reap the rewards with little resistance. While Nove never learnt these tricks, the coffers her tribe returned with were always interesting.

Shiny trinkets, strange foods, and books. She’d learnt English from them, and learnt a lot about human society. More than her tribe, who never bothered with the paper and ink, did.

But she’d never heard how annoying the humans could be. Lyman kept talking about getting a bus fare, and asking her if she knew how farms, buses, public transportation and a plethora of other things you’d teach a toddler about how they worked. She was not a fucking idiot…

Either way, after they boarded a bus bound north, Nove decided to get some shut eye, despite some stares at her appearance, and surprisingly, Lyman let her. Obviously, he only did it so she’d make no attempt to escape, but she didn’t know that.

When she awoke, it was to Lyman forcefully dragging her out of her seat. They were at some sort of human port. A reasonably sized one with many massive boats, and large multicolored shipping containers stacked upon each other.

It was night, and there was a low lying bunch of clouds on the horizon, making Nove feel uneasy, it was quite eerie.

“We’ll be in England by the next dawn. Whereupon you shall accompany me to my quaint office.” Lyman said softly. Nove realized he was talking less, odd, but hardly terrible.

“Why England?” Nove replied, walking beside him after they checked in to the ferry.

“Because… I live there?” Lyman answered, confused. Nove didn’t respond to it.

They walked up a long plank to the boat. Nove looked off into the sea. Was she really this fucking stupid? To make it this far and now… good lord…

Too late to turn back now. And little did she know it, she’d not ever go back. Everything would change.

Leepsky returned with a ring of keys. Not just a couple keys though, there were around a hundred on one ring, and all of them were very different from one another. Some were bronze, silver, brass, all different shapes too, some looked straight out of some fantasy world. They jangled about as he brought them over to the door, frowning.

Hesitantly, he picked one almost instantly, as if he knew what each one did, it was silver and bulky, like the door. Slotting the key into the hole, he peered back at Drew and Julia, one much more anxious to get in than the other.

But despite what Lyman currently thought, he had no choice but to let them in, and hope he could rectify what was to come.

He unlocked it, and the door swung open.

Inside, a dark room, but when the lights automatically flared to life, the truth became obvious.

“Well Lyman, I didn’t think you were this sick, but I guess I am wrong…” Drew said, smiling as he put an arm around his back, soaking it in.

“Is that an otter?” Julia stuttered, staring at the four cryostasis pods lining the back wall, two filled, two empty.

“They aren’t dead, this is the secret of the program. They submitted themselves willingly, I can assure you.” Lyman said, showing them inside.

Two bodies were inside the pods. One of a brown otter in what looked to be a nightgown with fish and crabs polka dotted over the outfit and a mustache below his black nose. His face held a frightened expression, his eyebrows rough and old, greying a little, and he had signs of incoming wrinkles.

The other was a pale green creature with large pointy orange-inside ears on either side of her equally pointy head. Her hair was black and fairly unkempt, and she looked fairly slender, as her ragged underwear hardly stayed on, and wasn’t held close to her body. Good fashion sense.

“What is this?” asked Julia with unease, peering at Lyman frightenedly.

“Julia, dear, it would be best if you wait in my office and show no malintent. Thank you.” the apparently illegal therapist said to her in a kind but intentionally soulless voice.

“I… want to see what this is, though…” she asked. No longer afraid, more confused after remembering she had an agent next to her.

“Well then, let me explain the program a little better, and if you tell my competitors about this before it’s release, I’ll-” Leepsky paused, realizing Drew’s cold, yet utterly devious glare in his direction.

“Ahem…” He continued, pointing to the chambers like he was selling a car as he walked to the corner of the room, not breaking eye contact. There, a large velvet curtain hid something. “These chambers I’m using to hold the patients in a short term stasis until we are ready for their procedure, with this.” he smiled, sweeping away the curtain with a flourish.

Oh boy… magical item time.

So, you’ve seen a vacuum, right? I’m sure you have if you live inside a house, or else you must be a slob. Or homeless, like Julia, and for that I am sorry and hope you do find a house soon.

Where was I? Oh yes, vacuum. Well think of that, but much bigger, big enough to fit a human inside. It had a tube leading up to a sci-fi inspired main terminal which was ten times more neon than it had any right to be.

“This is the S.U.C.C.!” Lyman exclaimed, marveling at his creation.

“Is that an acronym or something?” Julia asked innocently.

“No. It’s the S.U.C.C. Or the Suck for short.” the therapist deadpanned.

“You literally said the same provocative word twice.” Drew moaned. Oh great now I’m doing it.

“Well, it’s on the nose, and I do think that is best, because it’s such a complicated machine, it could use some simplicity.” Lyman tried to follow through. “But not only does it suck, but-”

“It can blow?” Drew snickered.

“NO! It can fix your mental problems though!” shouted Lyman, running over to the controls.

“Excuse me Lyman, but why the FUCK did you build a giant ass vacuum that fixes mental problems?” the agent asked. Julia was starting to get the vibe Drew knew Lyman a little better than he was letting on, odd…

“It came to me in a dream…” he replied whimsically, fanning his hands outward. Drew remained enthused, but unimpressed at the whole thing Lyman had going here.

“Basically, people get sucked inside and then it spits them out good as new up in the head. Don’t ask about the semantics.” Leepsky continued.

“You know, I’m thinkin’ I will, jackass. Is it ethical? If you’re doin’ CRISPR or gene editin’ shit, I’m fuckin’ you up here and now.” Drew said angrily, he became a lot more irish when pissed off, apparently.

“Gene editing is sooooo 2019… I have better methods which are state of the art and infinitely better than last year’s fads.” grinned Lyman, clearly in his own little world of amusement.

“And those methods are?” the agent said, stepping forward to take a look at the machination.

“No you don’t!” gasped the therapist.

“I have a search warrant, Lyman.” he replied, keeping his path.

“Can I see it?” was something that should have left Lyman’s mouth before he decided to pull out his pistol and shoot Drew in his leg, narrowly missing his kneecap. He fell to the floor and Lyman turned on the machine, aiming the vacuum directly onto Drew, it instantly began to create wind currents which rusted papers on a desk yonder, and leaves on the potted plant. With resistance, he was slurped into the S.U.C.C.

Julia watched in horror, she wanted to run, but something held her in place…

“Sorry to make you watch that, dearie. He’s gone now.” Lyman said, turning off the suction and staring at the mess on the carpet in disgust. “God, why do people have to bleed on the fabrics…” He ignored what he’d done and immediately walked over to Julia.

“Now then, how about we fix that head of yours, hmm?” Lyman smiled, then turning to the cryostasis capsules and unlocking them.

There would be a lot more S.U.C.C.-ing in this room within the next two minutes.

Around that time later, Lyman sat in a comfy seat as he waited for Nove’s body to thaw a little. The cryostasis was a bit messy, but despite the clunkiness, it hadn’t failed him yet.

Until now, at least. But not in the way he thought it would.

Nove began to show signs of life, much earlier than anticipated. He thought she was warm blooded, but maybe not? That may be messing with it.

Slowly Lyman got up and approached the groggy Nove, ready to drag her into the S.U.C.C.

But then, she opened her eyes. Her orange bloodshot pupils peered into his frightened gaze for only a moment, only a mere moment… before he booked it over to the controls, leaping over her.

“What the hell is going on?” she exclaimed, turning to Lyman as the suction turned on.

“Sorry Halicanth, but I personally don’t feel like-” but he said nothing else. Nove grabbed him in her struggle, pulling him in with her, gobbled up by the mysterious device.

And over the following hours, all five of them would indeed leave the building. At least their bodies would, but their consciousness and very soul wouldn’t be seen back here for a long, long time…

April 5th, 2021, 6:46 AM: Just Outside Ravensdale, Washington State

The early morning hours were eclipsing the night with small, delicate rays of sun passing through the morning fog. It was beautiful to a young man, who walked through the forest to his job as a park ranger. He was heading up to his watchtower, but first was making some rounds through the forest. But little did he know, he’d find some unconscious bodies lying in a pile in the middle of the woods within the next five minutes.

And little did he know he’d just been roped into their scheme.