***All copyrights belong to their respective owners. This contains violence, horror, gore, slash/yaoi, bad language and whatnot. If you're not disturbed yet, feel free to continue reading.***

PROLOGUE

END OF THE LINE

Maurice was running hard and getting nowhere.

These corridors all looked the same, all the more now that they were filled with black smoke.

Suddenly there was a loud bang, and the floor beneath his feet shook violently. Another and another bang followed, very nearly toppling him over. On the floors under the one he was on he could hear crowds of humans running and shouting, "Run for your lives! It's all going to blow into pieces!"

– And he, too, shouted, for Julien, for the penguins, but he could find them nowhere in this chaos. He had now managed to cross the corridor entirely but found that the door at its end was locked, and no amount of pounding, yelling, and pleading for someone to open it helped. The smoke filling the narrow corridor grew heavier. Maurice was coughing incessantly by now.

I can't breathe, he frantically thought to himself, I will choke to death!

The thought unleashed unexpected powers inside him: he succeeded in prying a one-meter plank loose from a shelf on the wall next to him and hit the door with it as hard as he could.

Finally, it gave way.

Frustration gripped him in its vice: this wasn't the way to the exit either.

He had lost his way in this maze with all these twists and dead ends, through which, it seemed, nobody without a map of the building could ever find a way out. And now he found he had walked in a circle: he was back in the operating room he'd been taken into before. Thick haze of black smoke covered the ceiling. The strange machine in its center was now destroyed; an inferno was raging from it. Fire blazed from its top, shooting jagged shards of flame to the ground below. Maurice sucked in his breath. Ash burned his throat. He wanted to turn around and leave as fast as he could –

"How could you do this?"

A soft voice, a whisper of agony, barely audible over the rising clamor around them. Maurice winced. Someone else was still around here. He quickly took a few steps ahead into the heat to glance around the machine – and froze with terror.

Clemson was kneeling on the floor, hunched over the dead body in front of him, his shoulders twitching with sobs. "How could you, Sky Spirits? How could you take away from me so much?!"

"Clemson!" Maurice's eyes widened with surprise, and then a terrible rage immediately flared up in him again at the red lemur's sight. "What happened here? – Where is everyone?" he asked brusquely, clenching his paws into fists, barely able to restrain himself.

The red lemur winced and gazed up at him, a look of pure hatred on his face. "You! – Why aren't you dead yet?!"

Maurice stared straight into Clemson's pale, tear-streaked face awash in bitter regret as he explained, "There was a fire alert before it was my turn. The doctors were all running away; I was able to escape when everything broke into chaos. – Now where are the others?!"

Clemson looked away, wiping his eyes with the back of his paw. "Gone. Out there somewhere in that hellhole, I don't know where."

"Why aren't you with them?"

He shrugged. "You, go follow them then!"

Maurice shook his head. "I tried. It's no use like that; this building is too large. I need the floor plans to find a way out. – But you, you have them with you, right?"

Clemson lifted his head again, his eyes filling with fresh tears. "What?"

At that very moment Maurice heard a cracking sound directly above his head and looked up to see a burning wooden beam collapsing from the ceiling. He jumped forward, rolling himself on the floor to avoid the blazing wood. Heat seared his cheek fur, crept down to his stomach, set his heart afire. He was chillingly conscious of how little time they had left to flee now. "The floor plans!" he panted, "We'll never find a way out of this labyrinth without them!"

The red lemur held them in his paws. His wet eyes flickered briefly over them.

"To hell with them!" – And, right in front of Maurice's horrified eyes, he tossed them into the fire.

"To hell with it! All of it!" His voice broke off in a choking gasp. "Just go!" he yelled at Maurice – hateful words of deepest grief.

"What the hell are you doing?!" the older lemur shouted at him, "We need to get out of here or we'll be roasted alive! If you refuse to help me now, you'll be dying right with me!"

Clemson looked up at him, a weird expression on his face. More tears flowed freely down his already wet cheeks. "Well, you know what? I don't care! I don't give a bloody damn!"

Maurice blinked his eyes in confusion. He had no idea what was wrong with him, but he was past caring. He ran out into the corridor again, looking for a way to escape, just any way, anything, anything –!

The building was caving in rapidly now; just as Maurice left the operating room, a section of the roof broke down, sending a part of the corridor behind him crashing right through the middle of the grand staircase. Maurice turned around to watch the last of it fall through. An icy fear gripped him.

Now he was stuck between some of the fractured floorboards above the fiery hole left in the stairway.

He could see thin columns of smoke twisting up from one the lower levels which appeared to be the underground garage. All the floors were on fire now; he would never make it down there before the building would collapse completely. He heard more shrill screams; panic reigned among the humans down in the garage. Everyone wanted to escape as fast as possible; they were hurrying to their cars parked there, eager to put a safe distance between themselves and the fire. A line of cars moved towards the exit of the garage. Unlike him, they would surely be fast enough…

Maurice bit his lip so hard that the marks of his teeth were left in it. If he failed, he would risk breaking every bone in his body, or being overrun by one of the cars, or both. He knew he would most likely die either way; there was no way to escape the flames except to dare this leap, and he preferred death by falling to being burned alive by far. He could feel the sensation of the ground shaking beneath his feet again and knew that this would be his very last opportunity to get out of here alive. He turned around one more time.

"The doctors are getting away," he called back over his shoulder, "If we manage to catch one of their cars, we could make it."

He received no answer. The red lemur made no move to follow him. It made no difference to Maurice. He gazed into the depth, trembling, clenching his fists, gritting his teeth.

This was the last chance for him, Maurice thought. What will be, will be.

Then he closed his eyes and jumped.

A/N: A happy new year 2016 to everyone who is still around. It feels so good to be back!