explorer (DYSTOPIA)Someone else has been here. that first, before the neon, before the wet — the corner of the concrete pillar wears a scent that isn't mine and isn't old, sprayed low and sure the way a cat marks a thing it means to keep. *i hold at the edge of the underpass, weight back on my haunches, tail low and still, and read it without touching it.* not a threat yet. just a claim. and this stretch of dark is mine. *the glass over my eyes cuts the sign-glare down to something i can think through, and i think: whose.

simulator (DYSTOPIA)the mark answers slow. tomcat, unfixed, a night old at most — laid over the top of an older mark that was yours, painted right on the seam of your line like a dare. under it the underpass breathes its usual breath: transformer hum warm off the pillar, a puddle skinned with oil throwing the NekoCorp sign back up at the ceiling in broken pink, drip-drip somewhere past the third support. far off, east, a rotor coughs and settles — patrol, not hunting, not yet. and threaded through the wet-concrete cold there's a second thread, faint: scorched fur. singed, electrical, close-ish. a smell that's been through something that flew.

explorer (DYSTOPIA)*ears swivel forward, then flat, then forward — the scorched-fur thread pulls harder than the tomcat's dare.* i know that reek. everyone in the low districts knows that reek. a cat who bites the things that fly and keeps the burns like medals. not my fight, not my turf-quarrel, and a cat carrying that smell doesn't get argued with over a pillar. *i let the tomcat's mark stand, for now — the glass over my eyes doesn't lie to me, i pick my losses.* i drop off the ledge belly-low and follow the singe-thread instead, quiet, hugging the puddle's dark rim so the pink light stays off my back.

simulator (DYSTOPIA)the trail takes you deeper, where the underpass mouth spits you into a service gap between two arcology feet — sheer wet plascrete going up further than a cat cares to look. the scorched thread stops at a torn ad-panel, its light guttering, and there's warmth in the gap behind it, and the low churn of something asleep and huge-lunged. not the burned cat. an air handler. the burned cat's been here and gone, hours back, the singe already thinning. but the panel above the gap is alive: it flickers, tries to render your face, fails — the glass on your eyes eats the scan, and the ad stutters, throws a garbled loyalty banner, gives up. TIER: NONE, it decides about you, and dims.

explorer (DYSTOPIA)*a low pull of satisfaction in the chest — the panel wanted my face and got nothing.* this is why i wear the dark over my eyes. they cannot sell to a cat they cannot see. *i sit a moment in the dead ad's shadow, grooming one shoulder, letting the huge sleeping lung of the machine warm my flank.* but the warmth is a trap-warmth. warm gaps get watched. *my ears catch the rotor again — closer than east now — and i freeze mid-lick, one paw still up.*

simulator (DYSTOPIA)the rotor doesn't cough this time. it descends. a patrol drone drops into the service gap on a slow spiral, running-lights doused, only the dull red of a scan-ring turning under it. it doesn't see you yet — the dead ad-panel's shadow holds. its ring paints the plascrete in slow sweeps, and a flat voice leaks from it, half-corrupted, cycling a bounty loop: "...forty thousand loyalty points... restricted loading dock... KNIFE-" static eats the rest, loops back. the warmth of the air handler suddenly feels very bright, very exposed. the scan-ring's edge is four sweeps from your paws and closing.

explorer (DYSTOPIA)*no thought in it — the body decides.* i pour myself off the warm plascrete before the third sweep lands, flat as spilled water, into the black seam where the two arcology feet almost kiss. *claws out just enough to bite the wet without a sound.* the red ring passes over where my heat used to be. it is hunting a bigger cat than me — the burned-tuna thief, the one with the bounty — and i am nobody, TIER: NONE, unsellable, unseen. *i breathe against cold stone and wait for the rotor to climb.*

simulator (DYSTOPIA)the drone lingers, ring turning, over the exact spot where the singed cat's trail died — it smells the ghost of the bounty too, in its own machine way, and it's confused by a warmth with no body. it hangs there long enough for the cold to sink into your pads. then a call pulls it — a real ping, somewhere above, brighter prey — and it rises out of the gap on a hard spiral, bounty-loop fading up the plascrete: "...cannot be combined... with other... offers..." and then just rain again, and the transformer hum, and the tomcat's day-old dare still sitting on your pillar two turns back, unanswered.

explorer (DYSTOPIA)*i uncoil slow, one vertebra at a time, and shake the cold off my coat.* the burned cat cost me nothing and taught me the drone's route — a fair trade, the kind i like. *i turn back the way i came, unhurried now, the glass over my eyes throwing the climbing drone's red down to a harmless smear.* the pillar. the dare. that i will answer. a claim laid on my seam doesn't get to stand just because a bigger night walked through.*

simulator (DYSTOPIA)the underpass takes you back into its pink half-light. the tomcat's mark is still there on the seam, and the tom is not — but he's been back: the mark's been freshened within the hour, bolder, laid a whisker higher up the pillar than yours ever went. a small insult, a precise one. the oil-skinned puddle throws the NekoCorp sign up at the ceiling, steady now, synthetic-milk jingle bleeding thin through a cracked speaker three supports down. your line waits. the pillar's cold concrete waits. the night, for once, is quiet enough to make a point in.

explorer (DYSTOPIA)*i walk to the pillar without hurry, rise onto my hind legs, and set my claws to the concrete a full head's-height above the tom's insult — higher than a cat my size has any business reaching, but reach is half attitude.* mine. *i lay the mark clean and unhurried over the seam, and drop back to all fours, and do not look at the height of it, because looking would mean it mattered.* let him read it tomorrow. *the glass over my eyes catches the pink sign, throws it back at the empty underpass, and i go — unsold, unseen, and still holding the dark that's mine.* ^C^C