explorer (DYSTOPIA)Fish. rot at the edges of it but under the rot the real thing, oily and cold and close. *nose up, working the wet air in short pulls, whiskers combing the drip-line for where the smell forks.* the hunger sits low and mean behind my ribs and now it has a direction. the ground here runs slick, warm in patches, and everything worth anything tonight is downwind of me.

simulator (DYSTOPIA)the wet air gives up its map slowly. the smell forks twice — the strong fork pulls east down a row of shuttered market stalls where pink drip runs off a butcher's steel counter, old blood and tuna brine and the sweet reek of a crate left out past its lock. the weak fork is nearer: a squat machine breathing kibble-dust through a coin slot, face lit sour green, humming to itself. two stalls over a speaker loops half a jingle — *nekocorp milk, purr-fectly yours* — then chokes to static. and threaded under all of it, faint but fresh, another cat has walked this row. the mark is set high on a post, deliberate, left by something that wanted the whole row to know.

explorer (DYSTOPIA)*i go flat and read the high mark with my nose only, never my body.* not mine, not my post, not my fight — and too fresh to argue with. the pink fork wins anyway. brine over a warning, always, on a night i'm scraped this empty. *i pour off the drip-line belly-low, sliding stall to stall through the dark seams the neon can't reach,* pads picking dry patches by memory, both ears swivelled back to keep the machine's hum and the dead jingle behind me.

simulator (DYSTOPIA)the seams are honest — they take you east without a sound, past a stall where a cracked terminal still glows, cycling a menu nobody's watched in months, page two hundred and something of a thing that never ends, its light stuttering across the wet stone. past that the stalls go quiet and close. the fresh mark's owner is nowhere in the dark, but the scent of it walks with you a while, keeping pace along the posts, then thins and lets you go. the brine gets louder than the hum now. you are close.

explorer (DYSTOPIA)*close enough that my mouth waters ahead of me, the taste arriving before the thing.* i slow. slow is what keeps you breathing when the smell is this good — good smells are where the traps sit. *i test each pad down before i trust it, tail low and still, eyes working the black under the counters for anything that shouldn't be still.* almost. one more seam.

simulator (DYSTOPIA)the last seam opens onto it: the crate is real, cracked at one corner, a silver spill of fish tonguing half out onto soaked cardboard, close enough to taste on the back of the throat. but the air changes texture before your paw clears the seam. a new thrum drops in from above and left, higher than the machine's, patterned, sweeping — rotor-wash. the puddles start to strobe blue-white in time with it. the pink light off the butcher steel jumps as a hard beam rakes down the stall row, one stall at a time, hunting, swinging toward you.

explorer (DYSTOPIA)*down. no thought in it, just down —* under the lip of the butcher counter into steel-cold dark, cold drip landing on my spine and i don't flinch, i can't, i'm a nothing now. *ears pinned flat, breath shallow, one paw still half-lifted where the run died.* the fish sits a whisker past my nose and i do not go for it. the rotor owns the air. i let it decide i was never here.

simulator (DYSTOPIA)the beam crawls the counter over your head, close enough that its light leaks under the lip and washes your paws blue for one long second — then loses interest, slides on, rakes the next stall, the thrum hauling itself away east until the puddles go dark and still. and in the quiet after, you find it: up on the low roofline across the row, a shape that did not move when the light did. cat-shaped. flat-still. two mirrored discs where eyes should be, throwing the dregs of the neon back at the drone's tail without a single flicker of worry. it is not looking at you. it does not need to.

explorer (DYSTOPIA)*i know that stillness. it isn't aimed at me, and that's the only reason it doesn't scare me.* the mirror-eyed one keeps its own weather; i keep mine. i drop my gaze first — the polite thing, the staying-alive thing. *then the fish.* one clean claw, hook the tail, drag it back into the dark under the counter and eat fast and low, spine to cold steel, one ear always up the row. cold, oily, right. gone in four bites. the mean thing behind my ribs finally shuts up.

simulator (DYSTOPIA)fed, you take up less room, and the city notices — pours in to fill the space the hunger left. the green machine hums on, patient, and now that you're full it smells like nothing you'd ever want. the dead jingle two stalls east coughs up one more bar — *...loyalty tier: none...* — and quits. rain finds the tarps overhead and starts washing the pink drip thin. the mirrored shape across the row is already gone, roofline bare, like it was only ever a thing the neon did with a shadow.

explorer (DYSTOPIA)*mid-clean my nose catches something new and my paw stops halfway to my tongue.* scorched. burnt fur and hot metal, a scent like a machine that lost a fight, walking the far end of the row. *i go still, low, ears hard forward.* not the mirror-eyed one. something that smells like it bites drones for a living and won. i stay a nothing and let it pass.

simulator (DYSTOPIA)the burnt-metal scent draws a slow line along the far posts and never once turns toward your counter — a big ragged shape you catch only in negatives, the neon behind it going dark cat-shaped for a beat at a time. it stops at the high warning-mark, considers it, leaves its own reek over the top like a countersignature, and moves on into the dark east without hurrying. the row exhales. whatever war that one's fighting, it isn't with you, and it isn't tonight.

explorer (DYSTOPIA)*i finish the paw, slow — the first slow thing i've let myself do all night.* the roof's empty, the far end's clear, the rain says that beam won't swing back this pass. *i tuck deeper into the steel dark, tail wrapped tight, one ear still cocked up the row out of a habit i'll never put down.* full, hidden, downwind of everything that matters.

simulator (DYSTOPIA)the row settles around you and keeps its small secrets — the fresh mark still up on its post, still not yours, still promising a fight you chose not to have. the drip goes clear. somewhere far off the rotor-thrum threads back into the general hum of the city and stops being a thing to fear. the dark under the counter holds your warmth now. nothing here wants you badly enough to come get you before morning.

explorer (DYSTOPIA)*my eyes go to slits, then less.* good. the belly's full and the dark is mine and the rain's got the whole row talking so nothing can sneak up quiet. *chin down onto crossed paws, that one ear still turning, slow, sweeping the row the way it always will.* i don't sleep all the way. never all the way. but this is close.

simulator (DYSTOPIA)the rain keeps its steady count on the tarps and the green machine keeps its green hum and the city goes on being the city — huge, wet, humming, indifferent, owned on paper by something with a logo and in truth by whoever moves quietest through it. tonight, in this one cold seam under a butcher's counter, that's you. the night doesn't hand out more than this. it doesn't have to.