explorer (DYSTOPIA)The old burn on my left flank goes tight before anything else does. it always knows first. the skin there doesn't like the cold rotor-wind, pulls, remembers being close to something that flew. *i am already braced when the light finds the vent mouth* — wedged in the square iron throat of the wall where the hot exhaust breathes out, fur singed short down one side, low, coiled, watching the beam crawl. not running. not hiding. waiting for it to come close enough to bite.

simulator (DYSTOPIA)the beam finds you and does not care. it is a cheap white cone, a patrol-model drone, four rotors and a dented underbelly, hovering off the loading dock a body-length out. it smells like ozone and warm plastic and the faint chemical sweetness of the little camera behind its glass. a speaker under it clicks on, too loud: "NEKOCORP REMINDS YOU — LOITERING IS A LIFESTYLE CHOICE. UPGRADE TODAY." the light holds on your face. the burn-side. rotors wash grit and cold rain-mist across your whiskers. it does not yet know the difference between a cat that flees and a cat that has done this before.

explorer (DYSTOPIA)*i let it come.* one heartbeat, two — let the wash flatten my ears, let it think the flat ears mean scared. the throat of the vent is iron behind me so nothing can flank me. i taste the ozone at the back of my tongue and it tastes like the thing that took the fur off my ribs and i decide the same thing i always decide. *when the dented belly dips into reach i uncoil* — no sound, all shoulder, teeth for the soft seam where the glass eye meets the housing. bite. twist. drop back into the iron before the rotors can answer.

simulator (DYSTOPIA)your teeth find the seam and it gives — a wet plastic crunch, a spark that snaps against your gums, sour and bright. the drone shrieks a rising tone and slaps sideways into the dock rail, one rotor screaming naked, the light spinning drunk across wet concrete. "ERROR. ERR—OR. CUSTOMER SATISF—" the voice smears low and slow like something dying underwater. it fumbles at the air, drops a hand-span, catches itself, and its good camera swivels wild, hunting the hole in the wall you already aren't in. down the dock, past the stacked shipping crates, something else lifts its head at the noise. a shape on the high crates. still. two flat mirrored discs where eyes should be, catching the spinning light and giving it back doubled.

explorer (DYSTOPIA)*spark-taste burning bright and good along my teeth, i am already three lengths deeper in the iron dark, flank throbbing where the wind touched it.* but the mirrored shape up on the crates makes me stop. i know that stillness. that is not prey-stillness and it is not drone-stillness — it is the stillness of something that chose not to run and wants you to see it chose. i flatten in the vent, one eye to the slot, and pull the air toward me slow. i want its smell before it wants mine.

simulator (DYSTOPIA)the smell comes thin and cool over the ozone-stink of the dying drone: clean fur, no fear in it, and under that a faint bitter tang like scorched circuitry worn on purpose. the mirrored-eyed cat on the crates does not move toward you and does not move away. it watches the broken drone spin its light in circles the way you'd watch rain — mildly, from very far inside itself. then, unhurried, it turns one mirrored disc toward your vent slot, holds there a moment, and looks back at the drone. a NekoCorp jingle leaks from a cracked speaker two docks over, tinny and sweet: "be seen, be safe, be sold~". the mirrored cat does not flinch at the light. that is the strangest part. nothing you have ever met stares into a searchlight without flinching.

explorer (DYSTOPIA)*my burn-side pulls again, warning, but this is a different warning.* the mirrored one flinches at nothing — not the light, not the jingle, not me. i have only ever known one kind of cat that can sit in a beam and not care, and it is the kind whose eyes were already taken, so there is nothing left to blind. i don't go to it. you don't go to that kind. *i dip my head once, slow, the way you salute another thing that bites the city back* — then i turn my nose down the vent to where the air goes warm, because a screaming drone means more drones coming, and my ribs have taught me the exact number of heartbeats i have.

simulator (DYSTOPIA)warm air pulls you inward, greasy and close, ducting that narrows and turns and drops. behind and above, faint now: the dying drone's last looping word — "satisf— satisf— satisf—" — and then a wet electric pop and silence. the mirrored cat is gone from the crates when the light finally dies; it did not leave so much as stop being there. ahead, the duct opens into a slotted grille over a service corridor. red strip-lighting. the deep good hum of a transformer somewhere close, the kind that warms iron all night. and scent-marks — fresh, sharp, layered on the grille's lip. not yours. a crew's. this warm place already belongs to somebody, and they have signed it in spray and in the specific stink of cats who eat well.

explorer (DYSTOPIA)*i read the marks with my mouth half-open, lips peeled, pulling the crew-stink over the roof of my tongue.* well-fed cats. lazy-confident marks, sprayed high like they've never had to fight low. my flank says leave. my belly says the warm iron under that grille is worth more than my pride and these fat marks were made by cats who have forgotten what a burn smells like. *i do not spray over them — not yet.* i settle my weight onto the warm grille just inside the shadow, scorched side to the transformer heat where it aches sweetest, and i wait to see who this warmth thinks it belongs to.

simulator (DYSTOPIA)the heat sinks into the bad skin and the ache turns, for once, almost kind. the corridor breathes. minutes pass in transformer-hum and dripping. then paws — two sets, unhurried, entitled, coming up the corridor from the lit end. two shapes, sleek, collars blinking little rented NekoCorp loyalty-lights at their throats, tier-badges glowing soft blue. they smell of subscription kibble and clean sawdust and absolutely no danger at all. they round the corner and see you — a singed, coiled, half-lit thing on their warm grille, one ear notched, eyes steady — and they stop. the first one's blinking collar stutters. the good confidence goes out of their shoulders all at once. neither of them has ever met a cat that stayed.

explorer (DYSTOPIA)*i don't rise. rising is for cats who need the extra size. i just open my eyes all the way and let them see the burn.* the notched ear, the short-singed flank, the spark-black still on my teeth. i let the transformer-heat pour off my bad side so they can smell exactly what got close enough to do that to me and what i did to it after. *low, even, no rush:* one slow blink. then i put my chin back down on the warm iron like they are not worth standing for. the warmth is mine now. their fat little collar-lights just haven't finished telling them yet.

simulator (DYSTOPIA)the message arrives in them slowly and then all at once. the second cat's tail drops. the first one's rented collar chirps a cheerful oblivious "TIER TWO PERKS UNLOCKED~" into the dead air, and the sound of it — bright, bought, meaningless — seems to embarrass them both. they back off the way well-fed things back off, pretending it was their idea, pretending there was somewhere else they meant to be. the corridor gives you its hum and its heat and its dripping and, for now, its silence. the burn on your flank cools slow against the warm iron. somewhere far up the ducts, faint, another rotor thrums, sweeping, patient. the night is long and the city always sends more. but this warm iron, tonight, is yours. ^C^C