explorer (DYSTOPIA)Already running. no start to it, no first step i chose — just legs under me and the loading dock strobing past, my own breath loud in my skull. *low, flat, ears crushed back, claws catching wet steel with every stride.* behind me a rotor climbs its pitch the way they do right before they lock on. i don't look. looking is for cats with time. the tuna-crate smell is still on my whiskers, cold and salt and mine now, and that's the whole reason the sky is angry.

simulator (DYSTOPIA)the dock exhales under you — corrugated ramps slick with condenser runoff, the reek of brine and machine oil and something old and coppery ground into the seams. the rotor finds its note. a searchlight throws your shadow long and stuttering across a stack of NEKOCORP freight pods, each stenciled PROPERTY // DO NOT PILFER in a red that hums. a speaker somewhere clears its throat: "attention. unlicensed protein in transit. attention." the ramp ends. below, a gap of black air and the wet gleam of a drainage channel, and beyond it the tin roofs of the market where a cat could disappear.

explorer (DYSTOPIA)*don't slow. gap means jump, jump means commit.* i read the far roof in one pull of air — rust, rain-rot, the good crumble that takes a landing quiet — and i throw myself off the ramp lip with the crate-smell trailing behind me like a dare. mid-air is the only honest place. no bounty, no red stencil, just weight and wind and the ache in the shoulder that never healed right.

simulator (DYSTOPIA)you hang for one long neon breath — the whole underdistrict laid out sideways, ad-glow smeared in the channel water, a hundred little suns drowning. then the tin comes up and takes you soft, buckling with a low tok tok tok that no one but you will ever hear. the searchlight overshoots, sweeps the empty ramp, loses interest. but the speakers don't. every screen on the market's spine flickers in unison, and your own crooked silhouette blooms across all of them at once, forty thousand points glowing under it like bait.

explorer (DYSTOPIA)*flatten against a warm exhaust hood, let the tin's heat soak the wet out of my belly.* my own face, blown up huge and stupid on every screen, mouth open like i'm surprised. i'm not surprised. i left them a note in the crate, folded neat under the top layer where the drones can't smell paper. the points under my picture blink and i already know the thing nobody reading them knows — they expire. they always expire. can't even combine with other offers. *a slow, satisfied tail-flick.*

simulator (DYSTOPIA)the exhaust hood ticks and stinks of scorched grease. two roofs over, something shifts that isn't wind — a shape settled low on a rail, mirrored eyes throwing back the ad-light in two flat coins, unbothered, watching the screens watch you. it doesn't move toward you. it doesn't have to. the market below wakes in layers: a kibble vendor's jingle loops half-speed, a subscription-water machine clunks a rejection, and down a grease-dark alley a scent-trail crosses yours — scorched fur, ozone, the particular char of a cat who bites drones for a living.

explorer (DYSTOPIA)*ears swivel, one to the mirror-eyed shape, one to the burnt trail below.* the coins on the rail i know — that one doesn't rat, doesn't chase, just clocks everything and keeps its own counsel. i dip my chin a fraction, not friendship, just accounting. the burnt-fur trail is the interesting one. it goes toward the freight pods, toward the red stencils, and it smells like somebody with worse manners than me is about to make my whole night quieter. *i follow it, low, hood-to-crate, out of the light.*

simulator (DYSTOPIA)the burnt trail firms as you go — deliberate, unhurried, laid by something that wants to be followed only by the right nose. it threads behind a dead noodle stall, past a puddle skinned with rainbow chemical rot, and pools at the base of a NEKOCORP loyalty kiosk that's been chewed half to death, its screen cracked into a spiderweb still cheerfully offering TIER: NONE. above the market the first patrol rotor peels off its grid pattern and drops lower, methodical, sweeping crate-stack by crate-stack. the searchlight's edge crawls toward the alley mouth.

explorer (DYSTOPIA)*freeze. every hair up. the light's edge is a thing i can feel on my fur before it touches, like cold breath.* i pour myself into the chewed kiosk's shadow, under the lip where the plastic's been gnawed to a cave. the rotor-thrum fills my chest, wrong and heavy. i wait. waiting is a knife too. the light sweeps the alley mouth, kisses the puddle, moves on — and in the after-dark the burnt-fur cat is just there, close, breathing ozone, having watched me do all of that without making a sound.

simulator (DYSTOPIA)it regards you the way one working cat regards another mid-job — no wasted sound, one ear scarred to a nub, the singed smell of a hundred bitten rotors baked into its coat. it noses once, pointedly, at the gnawed kiosk, then at the freight pods, then back at you: a question with no words in it. overhead the patrol rotor completes its pass and begins to climb away, satisfied, its searchlight folding shut. the market's screens finally let your face dim, replaced by synthetic milk, half-price, tonight only.

explorer (DYSTOPIA)*i answer the only honest way — i turn and trot toward the pods, tail up, an invitation.* the note in the last crate was just the start. there's a whole stack breathing salt and cold behind those red stencils, more than one mouth's worth, and a cat that bites drones is a cat worth splitting tuna with. my shoulder aches. the milk ad glows. somewhere a machine is still asking a hungry cat for a subscription. *none of that is my problem tonight. tonight the problem is how much we can carry.*

simulator (DYSTOPIA)the burnt cat falls in a pace behind, silent, and the two of you cross the open dock like a single low shadow. the freight pods loom, red-stenciled, humming with refrigeration, seams beaded with frost that carries the whole cold ocean of the smell up into the rain. behind you, unwatched now, the mirror-eyed shape on the rail hasn't moved — still counting, still keeping whatever ledger it keeps. the searchlights sweep somewhere far off, chasing a different silhouette. the crates wait. the city, for one held breath, forgets to look.

explorer (DYSTOPIA)*claws under the frost-lip of the nearest pod, testing.* it gives with a small cold crack, salt-fog rolling out over both our faces, and for a second there's nothing in the whole megacity but tuna and two cats and the good silence after a clean escape. i take the first crate in my teeth. i leave a folded paper under the second one. nice supply chain. *and then we're moving again, into the wet dark, before the sky remembers my face.*