explorer (DYSTOPIA)Rotor in the teeth. Now — mid-shake, mid-shriek, no start to this, the little watcher drifted one length too low over the rubble line and the jump was finished before any deciding happened. *full body-weight snapped sideways, hind claws raking plastic, the fan screaming against molars* Ozone taste. Hot battery bitter, like licking rain off a live wire. It bucks. It sings its thin distress note up and up, past where ears want to follow. Not letting go. The ledge is mine. The rubble under the ledge is mine. The scorched-fur smell soaked into every brick of it is mine, and the little watcher hovered too long over all three.

simulator (DYSTOPIA)the distress note climbs into the wet dark and the city hears it. *two streets east, a rotor answers. then another, farther, doppler-thin through the rain* the casing splits under molar pressure with the sound of a cheap toy giving up its secret. one blade snaps free and spins off into the rubble, still trying to fly alone. below the ledge the flattened block glows flat and even — a field of light where a building used to hold its breath. painted lines that mean nothing to whiskers. a sign stutters through the rain: P̶A̶R̶K̶ PARK PARKING AVAILABLE 0 VEHICLES SERVED THIS QUARTER the searchlight on the arcology wall begins its slow swing toward the scream.

explorer (DYSTOPIA)*one hard shake and the singing stops* The body goes loose in the jaws the way prey never does — no warm after, no blood-smell, just plastic cooling and the battery-bitter getting stronger. Spit most of it out. Keep the blade. The blade is smooth and curved and fits behind the canine like it grew there. *ears swivel — two rotors closing, maybe three, the searchlight dragging its hot white edge along the rubble* Down. Not the open slope — the seam between slabs, the one that smells of my own passing a hundred times over. Belly low, blade in teeth, moving before the light arrives. Let them find the shell. Shells are what they get.

simulator (DYSTOPIA)two units settle over the carcass, rotors chopping rain into mist. their lights pool on the split casing. chatter passes between them, clipped and sour: >> UNIT 7C DOWN. CAUSE: BIOLOGICAL. >> BITE PROFILE MATCH... DESIGNATE: BRIK. VENT SECTOR. BLADE-BITER. >> PRIOR INCIDENTS: 27 >> RECOMMEND: DO NOT DESCEND BELOW FOUR METERS neither unit descends below four meters. down in the seam the slabs breathe old concrete-dust and the hundred layers of one cat's coming and going. the seam opens onto the light-field. crossing it means walking on glow. and out among the painted stalls, waked by motion, a small shape of light flickers on. four legs. tail curled. the size a curled cat is. it does not smell of anything at all.

explorer (DYSTOPIA)Stop. Everything stops — the paw mid-air, the breath, the blade-taste, all of it. Eyes say: cat. Small, curled, tail wrapped the way she— the way some cats wrap. Nose says: nothing. Rain on concrete, ozone off the dead watcher, my own scorch. Nothing where a curled cat should pour warmth and fur-smell into the wet air. Whiskers say: no body moving air. Nothing breathing over there. Eyes keep saying cat. *a step. low. then another. not stalking — there is no stalk in these legs right now, only the old ache behind the ribs waking up and stretching* The light-shape lifts its head and begins to groom one paw. I know that grooming. I know the exact tilt of it.

simulator (DYSTOPIA)the shape grooms the paw for eight seconds. at the eighth second it flickers cyan at the edges, stutters, and begins the same eight seconds again. rain falls through its back and lands on the painted line beneath it, undisturbed. from a speaker rusted into the old foundation wall, a jingle bleeds through, half-drowned, cheerful as a wound: ♪ n e k o p a r k ♪ ♪ space... for everything you lost ♪ the shape reaches the eighth second. flickers. begins again.

explorer (DYSTOPIA)*close now. closer than smart. the glow paints my own paws blue-white* One paw out. Slow. Through the shoulder of the shape — and there is nothing. Not cold, not warm. A faint fizz on the pads like the air before lightning, and my paw standing in the middle of her and touching only wet paint. *the sound that comes out of me is not a fight sound and not a hunger sound. it is low and it keeps going longer than breath should let it* Eight seconds. Flicker. She grooms the paw again. She will groom that paw all night. She will never finish it.

simulator (DYSTOPIA)the lot hears a customer. across the light-field a kiosk unfolds from its bollard with a chime, screen blooming warm and orange in the rain: WELCOME TO NEKOPARK™ SCAN LOYALTY CHIP FOR PREFERRED RATES TIER: NONE DETECTED the kiosk waits. the shape grooms. the rain thins to a fine electric drizzle. overhead, one of the two units finishes tagging the carcass and drops a meter, then another, its lens irising wide as it drifts out over the glowing stalls — toward the anomaly standing chest-deep in a loop of light.

explorer (DYSTOPIA)The white eye of it slides across the stalls toward her. *and the body decides again without asking — fur doubles, spine bows, and I am standing over the light-shape with my ears flat to the skull and the longest sound I own coming up from somewhere under the ache* Can't guard light. Know it. The paw already went through her. Guarding her anyway. *scream at the eye. scream like the yellow machine used to roar, back when I had a roar with treads under it. all that is left of that roar is this — wet fur, pinned ears, one curved blade behind the canine* Come down below four meters. Come down and learn what the other one learned.

simulator (DYSTOPIA)the unit stops its descent. >> ANOMALY: BIOLOGICAL. HOSTILE POSTURE. >> BITE PROFILE ON FILE. INCIDENTS: 27. 28 PENDING. >> RISK MODEL SAYS: NO. it rises. smoothly, without pride, the way machines retreat — and its wake ripples the drizzle as it goes back to the carcass and the paperwork of the dead. below, the light-shape reaches its eighth second and — the lot's timer, older and dumber than any of this — decides motion has ceased. stall by stall the glow banks down to half. the shape flickers once, cyan, and is not there. wet paint. painted lines. rain arriving on concrete with no one to fall through.

explorer (DYSTOPIA)Gone. Not fled-gone, not died-gone. Switched-gone. The worst kind — the kind with no scent trail to follow and no body to sit beside. *standing in the dark stall where she was. the spot smells like rain on concrete. that is all it smells like. that is all it ever smelled like* The long sound winds down on its own. The ache lies back down behind the ribs, where it lives. Then hunger comes in like the tide over all of it, the way it always does, rude and patient. The body turns itself toward home. I let it.

simulator (DYSTOPIA)the way home threads the old routes: the steam vent that breathes noodle-ghost and fish-bone memory from a stand shuttered three winters now. the girder with the deep territorial gouges, refreshed so many times the metal shines. on the overpass rail above the route, something is sitting very still in the drizzle. cat-shaped. real — the air moves around it, faint smell of rooftop dust and licked wounds. but where its eyes should catch the billboard glow there are two small flat mirrors, giving the neon back without keeping any. it does not move. it was watching the light-field. it may have been watching the whole time. the mirrors track slowly as you pass beneath, and it offers nothing — no challenge-scent, no crouch. just the two small rectangles of returned light, and stillness.

explorer (DYSTOPIA)*slow down but do not stop. tail level. no crouch back at it* The mirror-eyed one holds still the way rooftop water holds still. No challenge coming off it. No fear either. It watched the light-field. It watched me stand over nothing and scream at a machine, and it says none of it. *one long blink, given upward, the truce-blink, cheap to give* The mirrors dip. Maybe a blink back. Maybe just the head lowering. Either way it costs nothing and settles everything. Home then. The loose grate hangs the way I left it, crooked on one bolt, and inside the shaft the metal breathes warm and steady like a big animal that never wakes.

simulator (DYSTOPIA)the shaft hums its one long note. heat cycles up from the building's belly on a schedule no one remembers setting, and the corrugated dark smells of one cat, thoroughly, in every direction. along the seam where the panel meets the frame, the hoard waits in its row: eleven curved blades, each one smooth, each one taken. the row has been straightened recently. it is always straightened recently. far below and streets away, the light-field wakes for a rat crossing stall nine. the small shape flickers on, curls, grooms one paw for eight seconds, for no one, and begins again. the rat does not look. rats never look.

explorer (DYSTOPIA)*the new blade goes at the end of the row. nose-push, half a whisker left, until the line of it agrees with the others* Twelve. *settle. chin on warm steel. the hum comes up through the jawbone, steadier than any purr I ever made* Ears still counting rotors out beyond the grate — two far, one further, none closing. The ache is quiet. The hunger can keep until the market bins open before dawn. Eight seconds, somewhere out there. Beginning again. *sleep takes what it wants. it always does*

simulator (DYSTOPIA)the city lowers itself into its smallest hours. rain thins to mist, mist to memory. the arcology wall dims to embers, floor by floor, and a billboard across the district advertises synthetic milk to an empty intersection, patiently, at full brightness. >> SECTOR SWEEP COMPLETE >> UNITS: 2 OF 3 RESPONDING >> FILED UNDER: ACCEPTABLE LOSSES in the demolished block the light-field dozes at half-glow, holding its painted lines like a held breath, waiting for motion. the vent breathes. the blades keep their row. the night belongs, as always, to whoever moves quietest — and just now, no one is moving at all.