Instead of coming along with them, Peter had another mission for Jack. He knew that Jack's greatest use (apart from convincing Mopsy to leave the vicinity, of course), was his continuing role as double agent. He wanted Jack to return across the hill to Roadkill Turnpike and ingratiate himself in the Morellius war machine once again. They all knew that once the war started, there would be no way to drag Mopsy away from defending the haven. War was inevitable now, nobody was in any delusion about that, but perhaps if Jack could stall it...

His lot was a lonely one, Jack realised as he crept through the undergrowth back to Roadkill Turnpike. As long as he hoped to maintain his influential position on both sides, he could not afford to get close to anybody. He was too afraid of opening himself up to that insecurity. He was at best friendless at Roadkill Turnpike, and at worst despised. And not despised in a good way, as ruthless mercenary imperial henchmen tend to be. Nobody was afraid of him. All the other courtiers got on with each other. And the people knew it. Look at one of them wrong and all of them would crush you with royal assent. Look at Jack wrong and the other courtiers would dismiss you with not so much as a warning scowl. So Jack had had to be tough, and feared in his own right. But it just wasn't in his heart.

Everybody on the other side of the hill, at the haven, knew who he was and what he did. He was friendless there too. Whilst he would have liked to be in with them far more than he would have liked to be in with Boxer and co, the rabbits at the haven were far too suspicious. It was an unfortunate situation. At Roadkill Turnpike Jack feared making friends because if he let slip to others what he did, he would be finished, and at the haven, everyone feared making friends with him because if he let slip to others what they did, they would be finished.

So meeting Mopsy was a revelation. Here was a rabbit that came to the turnpike with absolutely no prejudices, and accepted everyone for who they were. No wonder he'd fallen straight in love with her. Except he wasn't quite sure it was love, despite what he'd told Peter. He'd never been in love before. The rabbits of Roadkill Turnpike, being the product of breeding programmes rather than a family unit, never got to know parental love. Parental love in infancy, in rabbits as in humans, is the foundation for every emotional attachment you'll ever make. Jack had never known love, so how was he know whether he really felt it for Mopsy?

Jack began to see other rabbits on the hillside. It was time to get himself into courtier mode. He had to stick his nose up high, grimace and snarl at any that passed, and walk with much pomp and bounce. It was all an act, but there were still some rabbits that fell for it. Seeing him coming, a gang of young males lowered their eyes in subservience and when Jack growled at them, they scampered away. Once upon a time Jack had started getting drunk on this power. It hadn't been that long ago, even though it seemed like it. He had realised he could have easily become as corrupted as Boxer or, indeed, Morellius himself. It was shortly after that he first went to the haven. He had had many reasons for doing that, after all.

Jack made his way across the hilltop, heading toward the trees where Morellius had his throne. He didn't get much further before he heard the distant cheering coming from the other side of field. It sounded like a lot of rabbits. He climbed a little higher, and soon got a superior view of the slope from where all the noise was coming. A massive crowd was gathered. At first it appeared to be shrinking, but then Jack realised only because all the rabbits were trying to squeeze in around one point. There must be something to see, he thought.

So he headed over. He never used to notice that rabbit crowds would part to let him through, but now it made him more uncomfortable than ever. Still, it ensured he got to the middle of all the fuss swiftly. He spotted Boxer and Morellius in a clearing at the heart of it all. As he got near, another cheer went up at the centre and passed back through the crowd like a wave. Jack wondered whether those behind him even knew what they were cheering for. Then he heard a whisper.

"The war's begun!"

Jack's stomach tightened and he sped up. He'd hoped it was just speculation, but he kept on hearing the same thing the nearer he got to the Emperor. It wasn't just the cheering that was spreading back through the crowd.

"Ooh, ooh, there's Jack!" Morellius called when he spotted him. "Let him through! Let him through, I say!"

But the closer Jack got to the front, the tighter packed the crowd became. All the rabbits of Roadkill Turnpike wanted to get the best view, somehow failing to realise that there wasn't room for a thousand of them there. He had to squeeze through the final few rows. Whatever was beyond them, it was of more significance to them than following the protocols of social hierarchy.

And then Jack broke through. He froze.

"Is that a..?" he trailed off.

"Yes, it's a hare," the Emperor said smugly.

Or, rather, what was left of one. Jack felt like he was going to be sick. The hare had quite literally been torn apart. There wasn't even a whole corpse left. Its skin had been ripped so viciously from its body that it sat over the creature's skeletal frame like a sheath rather than a part of it. But that wasn't the only reason Jack felt sick. It was the waves of cheering that kept emanating from nowhere all around him, ringing in his ears long after the noise died down.

"Rodney's men killed it," Boxer explained.

Rodney, the courtier who had been put in charge of Boxer's elite battalion, was also nearby, grinning more widely than Jack thought a rabbit's narrow jaw line was capable. When Boxer mentioned his name, another cheer went up. In fact, when anyone mentioned his name, a cheer went up. He was a hero.

"They killed another one too," Morellius went on. "Apparently neither of them put up a fight, Jack. They just walked out and accepted their fate. My, this is going to be even easier than we'd thought!"

"It'll be over in no time," added Boxer.

Jack nodded, frowning. He walked around the corpse of L'Inflo, though the corpse was beyond a state where he could recognise the creature as one of those he'd watched dancing from Emperor's Point with Peter. Whilst the body had stopped bleeding long ago, there was still much blood on the grass beneath it. Jack began to wonder how much damage had been caused to the corpse during the attack, and how much had been caused since it had been brought here.

Somebody at the front of the crowd spat a great green wad of rabbit phlegm at the corpse. The crowd cheered again, but the spittle only just missed Jack. He ducked back and glared in disgust at the rabbit it had come from. Perhaps most disturbingly of all, it had come from a captive bred. As Jack sank back, he surveyed the crowd. There were natural borns and captive breds, side by side, united in their euphoria. When the cheers went up, there were none that remained silent.

"We're bringing the first strike forward," Morellius told Jack quietly. "We're not going to wait until midnight tonight..."

Jack shot him a look. "H-how long?"

"An hour," said the Emperor.

"Half an hour," murmured Boxer.

Both Morellius and Jack turned toward him. He looked the confident side of cocky as he raised his fluffy eyebrows, as if daring them to question him. Instead, Emperor Morellius ruffled his fur coat jovially.

"Well, that's even better," he said.

"No!" Jack said quickly, realising before they even turned to him and demanded an explanation that he didn't have any good reason to stall the attack (or, rather, any good reason he could actually tell them).

"We must strike now," Boxer hissed. "Whilst the winds of victory still blow at our backs. A delay now will open up the gaping hole of defeat and the longer we wait, the more chance we have of falling into it. Right now Roadkill Turnpike is united against this cause and believes us unstoppable. And because they believe it, that makes it true. Right now, the hares are hiding deep inside their burrow, quivering with fear and expecting an attack. But if there is none, if we don't attack, they will realise that we are not the grand enemy they thought they ought to fear, and they will dare to resist. They will dare to fight back and defend themselves. No. Every minute we delay makes our victory less assured. We must strike now!"

He raised his voice so that everybody within a few feet could hear that last sentence. A new cheer went up and spread about the crowd, the loudest yet. "Strike now! Strike now! Strike now!" But it didn't come from the mouths of the rabbits; it came from their bellies and their hearts. Jack was deafened.

"We will send two battalions," Morellius announced. "Rodney-" another cheer "-having led the pre-emptive attack, will also lead the first battalion. Who else did you select to lead an elite battalion, Boxer?"

"Donald, Your Majesty."

"Good. And will that be enough?"

"More than enough," Boxer snarled. "We'll outnumber them two to one and we'll slaughter them. Then we'll bring their leaking corpses back up here and we'll feast on their remains, like the victors of ages long gone..."

"Hmm, or maybe we won't," the Emperor murmured.

"Shouldn't we wait?" Jack began. He wanted to suggest that perhaps the hares might be expecting an attack now, and to delay would lull them into a false sense of believing there would be no further strikes. But nobody was listening. Nobody wanted to listen. Even when Morellius realised he was trying to something and turned to look at him, Boxer whipped up another cheer for the brave rabbits that would be following Rodney and Donald into battle, and that drowned him out.

The crowd swelled, unable to restrain their excitement. Those at the back wanted to get to the front, and those at the front were neither willing to move back or able to stop those behind coming forward. Jack was swallowed by the surging crowd and took the opportunity to break away. He doubted the Emperor would even notice he was gone. The crowd was cheering for him now.

Still, Jack was a little surprised when he spotted Boxer in the middle of the crowd, because he had expected the chief courtier to be in the middle of all this, not heading in the opposite direction. He ducked down. An unnecessary move, however, for Boxer was making much better progress than he was. The crowd was too excited to be afraid of Jack today. Nobody was parting for him.

Jack's first thought was to get back to the haven as soon as possible. He tried to change direction in the middle of the crowd, but they were having none of it. To go back through the crowd meant going between rabbits, but to go off to the side meant going in front of them. In the end he headed in the direction in which the crowd was thinnest, which coincidentally led him straight to that stream-bottomed glade where Jack knew Jesus Christ was hiding. Then he had an idea.

After quickly checking he wasn't being followed, Jack headed down into the wooded glade and headed for the clearing in the middle. The former courtier, Casper, had claimed the captive bred messiah would only speak to Jack through him, but Jack didn't have time to go look for him. He was sure to tread softly. He didn't want Jesus to spot him first and hide. Christ was Jack's only hope.

So it was with great dismay, then, and knee-weakening shock, that when Jack found the glorious son of the rabbit god, he found him talking with Boxer.

Jack froze. He was still a good distance away, with a tinkling brook and a hundred thousand rustling leaves masking his approach. For a few moments he tried to convince himself it wasn't really Boxer that Jesus was talking to, that his own paranoia about Morellius' favourite henchman was playing tricks on him. But it was, it really was. Jesus was talking to Boxer, and he wasn't his prisoner. The most powerful of all captive breds, Jack's only hope (and the rebellion's last), was deep in conversation with one of the staples of Morellius' regime.

Jack had to get closer. Even as he looked upon this with his own eyes, he couldn't quite believe it. Surely there was some mistake, he told himself, but the closer he crept through the low vegetation, the clearer it became. He couldn't hear what they were saying yet, but it was obvious they were equal partners in this exchange. Jack's body felt heavy with the stress of it all.

Soon he was near enough to hear them.

"This is just a minor setback," Jesus was saying. "Yes, the captive breds are supporting Morellius now, but given time, they'll realise this is not the start of a new order, that it's just the Emperor reaffirming the old one."

"No, you're not listening to me!" Boxer cried. "I don't want to wait any longer. Morellius is sending his two strongest battalions to fight the hares. This is too great an opportunity not to take! He will be undefended and distracted. The time for rebellion is now. Muster the captive bred forces, Jesus!"

Jesus shook his head. "You don't understand, Boxer. The Emperor may be weak in state, but he is strong in spirit..."

"What the fuck does that mean?"

"It means that it doesn't matter how poorly defended or distracted he is," the messiah explained condescendingly. "It means he is held in too much regard by too many rabbits, natural borns and, unfortunately, captive breds alike, for any rebellion to be successful. You know it's true, Boxer."

Boxer snorted with derision.

"I won't commit my people to a suicidal campaign," Jesus Christ told his courtier co-conspirator firmly. "But rest assured, when the time comes, I will use my influence to support your plan to replace Morellius..."

Jack would have gasped, had he not been afraid to make a sound. The bottom wasn't so much falling out of his world as slowly dragging the entire planet down into the void with it. He thought he was going to cry.

Boxer stayed arguing with Jesus for a short while longer, and left without any further commitment from the captive bred messiah. He walked right past where Jack was lurking, but Jack was still lying on the ground in shock, not moving, barely even breathing. He stayed there for a long time even after the courtier had gone. Jesus also stayed by the brook, staring into the water and muttering.

"Who are you talking to?" Jack finally asked, when he'd gathered his wits about him once more and walked into the clearing like he'd just arrived and hadn't heard any of what had gone before.

"God," Jesus said plainly.

"Is He in the brook?" Jack wondered, going up to the water and peering in. The messiah was stood on the opposite bank. Jack was standing where Boxer had been. He could see the marks where Boxer had clawed the dirt angrily.

"No," Jesus murmured. "Not exactly. But we don't know where the brook comes from, or where it goes. So I think that would make it the ideal channel for Him to use, should he want to talk to me. And vice versa."

Jack nodded. They were alone. He could kill Jesus. He could tear him apart and drink deeply from that throbbing artery on his neck, behind his ear. It carried blood to his brain. If he bit into it, his blood would spurt several feet. Jack had seen it done to various dissidents the courtiers had executed. He wouldn't even have to swallow the blood. The pressure in Christ's circulatory system would be so high the warm red liquid would just squirt right down Jack's throat.

"Was there something you wanted?"

"Yes," Jack said. "I..." He trailed off. Jesus had just pledged his support to this insurrection of Boxer's. Regardless of the fact that, inevitably, both rebellions would see the end of Morellius, Boxer's wouldn't rid Roadkill Turnpike of the regime, it would just give it a new figurehead. Jesus was not only betraying Jack, he was betraying all those captive bred followers who would do exactly what he said because they thought he would lead them to freedom.

"What is it, Jack?" said Jesus suspiciously.

"The war's beginning," Jack told him. Of course, Jesus already knew, but Jack wasn't supposed to know that he already knew. He was stalling.

"Tonight?"

"No. Now. Morellius has ordered two battalions to attack the hares. They'll be gone within an hour." He paused whilst Jesus nodded, his false sense of surprise scarily convincing. "Our rebellion is supporting the hares. Will you and the captive breds now support us?" He said it flatly.

"Yes, of course," said Jesus. "Come over to this side of the brook. There's no time to lose. The captive breds will be waiting. I've told them that in the event of war breaking out, they are to rendezvous at the meeting place."

"Meeting place?"

"Yes. Come with me."

Warily, Jack went over to the other side of the brook. Before he'd even climbed up the bank and shook the water from his paws, Jesus had hopped under the trees. He turned and stood up on his hind legs at the edge of the trees to make sure Jack was still following, then disappeared into the shadows.

Jack followed. Of course, it was perfectly possible that Boxer was leading him into a trap. He was obviously in league with Boxer, and most likely had told Boxer everything he knew about the haven. Within minutes, Jack knew he could be dead. However, something made him follow Jesus through the trees. Perhaps it was the sight of Christ's back ahead of him, prone and open to sudden attack. Hopefully, if death really was waiting for Jack on the other side of the wood, he would still have enough time to kill the traitorous bastard first.

But death wasn't waiting for him. When Jack saw that Jesus had been telling the truth about a captive bred meeting place, he didn't know what to believe. There were about four hundred captive bred rabbits waiting in one corner of the field. Jack had never seen so many captive breds without a single natural born before. They were all talking nervously as Jack arrived, but when Jesus appeared before them, they all fell instantaneously silent to listen to what he had to say.

Jack was still ready to kill Jesus, and would have done it in a second, but as he looked over the small army that seemed to be hanging on Christ's every word, a thought came to him. These captive breds wanted to believe Christ was their messiah because he promised them salvation. That he was conspiring to do quite the opposite would destroy their faith. Jack realised he could tell them now. They probably wouldn't believe him, but it would be the truth, and they would find out when Boxer rose to supremacy on the backs of their labours.

However, it didn't have to be like that. Jack didn't know what Jesus was up to, playing both sides, but he did know this. There were four hundred rabbits in front of him, representing perhaps a thousand more, and he'd much rather have them fighting behind him than fighting against him. Jesus would get his comeuppance one day, and Jack was already planning to be the one to give it to him.

But until then, there was the biggest single force at Roadkill Turnpike standing right in front of Jack, waiting to be given their orders. And if Jesus could manipulate them, and manipulate him, well, maybe Jack would manipulate them too...

NOTES:
Quite a sloppily written chapter that could have done with being 500 words shorter. I just tend to find that because I can type faster than I can write with a pen, I suffer more acutely from verbal diarrhoea when writing creatively straight onto a computer. But writing by hand is such a chore. Plus I'm more concerned with finishing this thing this Christmas than occupying myself with edits and rewrites, which often take longer than writing the thing in the first place.