Janace, Colorado had really changed over the course of the past six years. The changes were even greater when one considered that twelve years prior it only had Charlie, Sally, Nikole, Jess, Maurice, and Snowy living there. Now it was rapidly becoming a small city with a mixed human and Kat population. The new Chakat Industries had expanded to include its own labs and facilities. It was now providing both the Serum for anyone who wished to become a Kat, following the same policies that had been put in place before the Sydney outbreak. It was also the center for where the various vaccines were being developed. The discovery that the effectiveness of the Justin and Foxkat vaccines was failing came after they had gotten a delivery of some of the spent semen from the brief outbreak that ruined Danna's show in Moscow. It was a surprise and the bigger surprise was that the changes in the virus had been natural NOT engineered, but it did accelerate the research into the "dead" vaccine using a dead form of the virus as the base for the new vaccine. Flake was frequently helping Snowy, Maurice, and Jess there, and was presently working there to perfect the new vaccine, after having studied under Maurice, Snowy, and Jess for six years.
The UN offices in charge of responding to these outbreaks had also been completed with satellite communications systems, allowing them to monitor and communicate around the world in moments. Ryles and Casey both worked there, helping to coordinate things and frequently explaining how they worked to curious three year olds, even if the same questions were asked over and over. Raul and Maria Herroud ran the main coordination for these offices and had the benefit of Sammy and Gloria's help. Li Sang had been executed by lethal injection six months after his arrest at which point the Chinese government then recalled Gloria to come back to Hong Kong. Unwilling to leave their eggs, Sammy and Gloria agreed to remain in Janace, and Gloria handed in hir resignation to the Chinese government to be employed by the UN full time. They then worked to assist in running the teams, which included hand to hand combat training, specifically modified since a Kat's fore-paws could work like a second set of arms and hands. That gave them confidence that they could deal with either Kats that might have had criminal leanings, as Sally had discovered in Egypt six years ago, but strangely Li Sang's followers were silent after the Moscow and St. Petersberg Outbreaks. If Li Sang had any sort of fail-safe plan, it had fallen apart as his lieutenants were changing the plans.
The clinic that had been built to deal with the pregnancies of the Kats living in Janace had also expanded and was now a full fledged medical facility. Jess split hir time between work with finding a new vaccine with work here, but shi wasn't the only one who worked there. Shi also got help from two unlikely sources, Mina and Ronnie.
"There, there, little one," Ronnie said to a young human boy, about five years old, "that wasn't so bad, was it?"
"I don't like shots," the boy answered.
"Would the flu be better?" Ronnie quipped, "all the hacking and wheezing... having to stay in bed?"
"Not going to school sounds good," the boy said simply.
Ronnie shook hir head with a sigh, "trust me... having the flu is bad, especially when it's congesting TWO sets of lungs."
The boy shrugged and hopped off the medical table and moved over to where his mother was standing.
"Thank you Mrs. Chakat," the mother said with a smile.
"Call me Ronnie... or Ronald... Mrs. Chakat would be my mate or my sither's mate," Ronnie told hir.
The woman then quietly lead the boy out and Ronnie followed. Once into the hallway, shi made hir way to a room that was hir office, there she found hir mate, Mina shuffling a few papers to keep track of appointments.
"Hello, dear," Ronnie said to hir, "anything new?"
"Not for a little while, how about you?" Mina asked.
"Just a few flu vaccines," Ronnie shrugged and sat down.
Ronnie felt glad to have Mina in hir life. It had been a long trip for hir, and much of it trying to make up for hir jealousy and ultimately betraying Maurice prior to the Fee City Outbreak. Shi remembered walking up six years ago to find Maurice and Snowy standing over hir with Midnight and Talia standing behind them. Shi apologized to Maurice and begged forgiveness. Maurice and Snowy had both proved rather forgiving, though it took awhile for Ronnie and Maurice to truly mend the fences that their pasts had built between them. Following hir recovery from the injuries that Almeria Kartov had inflicted on hir when shi had been kidnapped in Fee shortly after running from Talia and Midnight, and then again after being transformed into a Redkat as "punishment" as part of some sort of "fail-safe," Ronnie found hirself studying medicine from Jess and an online college course. It fit in with many of Ronnie's spiritual ideas of trying to also care for the sick and the poor. Shi had finished these and a brief residency in Denver a year ago and returned to Janace to be a full time doctor two years ago.
Shi arrived to find that Mina had already become the main doctor in Janace. Following hir visit around the time that Ronnie had been freed, Mina did briefly return to Houston, but had soon become depressed after being far away from family. While Ronnie was studying to become a doctor, Mina kept hir own licenses and returned to Janace, much to Flake's joy. Mina then settled into running the clinic as Janace's doctor. Then Ronnie returned with hir own license. The two agreed to work together and in this, Ronnie found hirself more and more attracted to Mina, especially when Mina had also forgiven Ronnie for hir actions in Fee City. To Ronnie's surprise, Mina returned the affection, which actually made Ronnie feel glad at having been transformed into a Redkat. Mina's decision to become a Smilodon based Chakat cemented it, and five years after being saved from Almeria Kartov, Ronnie took hir mate.
"That's good," Mina smiled, "It means things are calm..."
"For us," Ronnie answered, "Our sithers just left to deal with an outbreak."
"I see," Mina sighed, "Well... six years of peace couldn't last forever.