explorer (DYSTOPIA)RUN. no — down, flat, belly to the gravel. *the shadow went over me like a cold tongue and every hair on my spine is already standing against it.* rotors. that thin mean whine, the one that tastes of hot dust. i am on the roof of the noodle block, nine floors above the market, and something with a light for an eye just slid across the edge where i was sitting one heartbeat ago. *i do not breathe. i slide my chin along the tar and let the rain fill my ears.*

simulator (DYSTOPIA)the whine banks and hovers. a patrol drone, chrome belly beaded with rain, swings its lamp across the rooftop in slow lazy arcs: vent stacks, a dead antenna, a puddle shaped like a cracked mirror. warm beam, white and humming. it smells of burnt dust and cheap lubricant. below, the market stalls steam through their tarps and a thousand voices flatten into a single wet roar. the lamp pauses on a drain pipe four tails from your nose. a tinny voice: 'CITIZEN COMPLIANCE SCAN. REMAIN CALM. TUNA CREDITS AVAILABLE FOR INFORMATION.'

explorer (DYSTOPIA)*my ears flatten until they are part of my skull.* information. the word has a taste like sour coins. i do not have information. i have a hole behind the vent stack that smells of old shoe and mouse and my own fear-musk, and i am nine strides from it. *one paw slides forward. the tar is warm where the heat from the building below bleeds up, and i press into that warmth like it can hide me.* the lamp is thinking. i can hear it thinking, a faint clicking behind the whine.

simulator (DYSTOPIA)the beam creeps. across the roof, the laundry lines of the noodle block sag with someone's wet grey sheets, flapping like slow gulls. the drone's clicking quickens. then the broadcast cuts in, bright and bouncy, from a speaker bolted to the ventilation tower: 'WANTED, SUBJECT KNIFEBOY, LAST SCENTED NEAR THE DOCKS. REWARD FORTY THOUSAND PTS. DO YOU SMELL TUNA? REPORT TUNA.' the lamp swings away toward the docks, interested, hungry for numbers. somewhere beneath the rooftop a sprinkler head coughs steam. the whine slides a few degrees further off.

explorer (DYSTOPIA)*a breath leaves me, thin as a whisker.* knifeboy. i know the scent of that name — old blood, guarded tuna, the crate-smell that makes every tom in three districts lower his tail. he is not here. good. the drone wants him and not me. *i crawl. three strides. the vent hole yawns, dark and dry.* my belly is a fist. i have not eaten since the fish-heads behind the stall two sundowns back. *i lick rainwater off my own shoulder and it tastes of rust and neon.*

simulator (DYSTOPIA)the wind turns. it carries up the smell of frying garlic from stall row nine, charred squid, spilled soy, a sweet note of rotting fruit. three floors down a cook bangs a wok, once, twice, and a cheer goes up for no reason anyone would explain. on the far parapet, against the pink haze of a billboard, a silhouette sits: small, still, a cat-shape with two flat mirrored discs where its eyes should be. it does not move. the billboard flickers, 'NEKOCORP LOVES YOU BACK', and the shape is gone, a rain-smear on the air.

explorer (DYSTOPIA)*i freeze with the vent hole at my whiskers.* someone was watching. not the drone, not the lamp. a watcher who smelled of nothing at all, which is the most wrong smell there is. glass-eyes. the sort of cat who would sell what he saw for a loyalty point and call it fair. *my tail curls around my flank.* i do not like being seen without being smelled. it is rude. it is the kind of rude that gets a throat opened.

simulator (DYSTOPIA)the hole behind the vent stack accepts you with a gust of old warm air, shoe-leather, mouse dust, the faint sweetness of someone else's nest long abandoned. inside, the world narrows to a tube of corrugated steel thrumming with the vibration of the building's lungs. outside the drone returns, its lamp sweeping the roof once more, finding nothing but a puddle and a puff of steam. 'NO SUBJECT. SCANNING CONTINUES.' the rotors lift, sullen. a thin line of rain finds a gap in the stack and drips, dripping, onto the metal near your ear.

explorer (DYSTOPIA)drip. drip. *i turn around twice in the hole and fold down, chin on paws, one eye on the rectangle of grey sky.* the shape of the light changes when the drone passes, a long tooth of white sliding across the opening and away. i count the passes the way i count heartbeats. four. five. the hunger sits in me, patient, a second small animal curled under my ribs. *if the stall cook bangs his wok again i will go down the pipe on the east side and take whatever the bins give me.*

simulator (DYSTOPIA)the wok bangs. the pipe on the east side rattles in its brackets, cold iron, rust flakes, a slick of rain running down its length like a drawn line to the market. the garlic smell is nearly a hand now, pulling. the drone's whine fades toward the docks, chasing a number, a rumor, a reward. beneath the roof, the building shifts and settles. a door opens somewhere and shuts. and the speaker on the ventilation tower, cheerful, tinny, to nobody: 'LOYALTY IS A KIND OF WARMTH. TIER: NONE. TIER: NONE. TIER: NONE.'

explorer (DYSTOPIA)*i leave the hole. low, quick, belly just clear of the tar.* tier none. i know what tier i am. i am the tier that gets the heads and the tails and the spilled middle, the tier that the rain washes clean. east pipe. my claws find the cold iron and bite. *below, the wok bangs again and the whole street smells like a fed animal's dream.* go down. go down. the lamp does not look down. the lamp never looks down.

simulator (DYSTOPIA)the pipe takes your weight and sings a low iron note. rust powder, rain, and then the heat of the market rising to meet you: steam, oil, bodies, the thousand-throated roar. nine floors become six, become three. stall row nine opens beneath you like a mouth, a cook turned away to shout at a delivery bot, a crate of squid heads sweating on the counter's edge. above, far above, the whine of rotors, small now. and at the pipe's foot, in a patch of lamplight, a single mirrored lens glints once from between two barrels. then goes dark.

explorer (DYSTOPIA)*i drop the last body-length and land in a puddle that tastes of everything. the squid heads are a stretch of whisker away.* i do not look at the barrels. i do not look. *my jaw closes on the first head and the salt floods up behind my eyes, so good it hurts.* eat. eat fast. someone with glass eyes is counting me and i will let him count. a counted cat is a fed cat, tonight.