FSE

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On the floor at the foot of the girl's bed Felicia perked her fox-like ears and sat up. Someone had entered the bedroom. She was alert for late intrusions; they sometimes meant trouble.

"Wake up, sweetie, we have to go," said the man, rubbing his daughter's shoulder. The girl made a protesting whine, half covering her head with her pillow.

The man was insistent. "Come on, I've got your bag. The special vacation bag we packed, remember?"

The girl opened her eyes. "Hmm?" she asked, still not fully alert.

He stripped the blanket from her pajama-clad form and said, "Everyone else is ready. Make a tinkle quick. You can wear your pjs in the car, ok?"

Felicia cocked her head slightly and looked from the girl to the father. There was urgency in his voice. Worry. She herself stood up and made herself ready to go without needing to be told by pulling on one of the girl's long t-shirts.

The girl sat up, rubbed her eyes in the light spilling in from the hall, then nodded. Too disoriented to question the late-night departure, she climbed out of bed to follow her father. She stopped at the doorway and looked back. "What about Felicia?" she asked.

"She's gonna stay here while we go on vacation, ok?"

Felicia had been about to follow the girl out, but froze instead when she heard that.

"I want her to come with me," pouted the girl.

"I'm sorry sweetie, but they don't allow companions at the resort."

The girl seemed on the edge of arguing further. But she turned away and asked, "Will she be OK here by herself?"

"Yes," said her father, who had already disappeared down the hall. "She's got her food, there's water, she'll be fine! Now please baby, hurry up. We're going to be late!"

Felicia swiveled her ears and listened to the family prepare to leave. No one had said anything to her about leaving on vacation, but she didn't remember this family ever going on vacation before. Other families had, but not this one. Other families had also always brought her with them.

The girl waved and said, "Bye. Be a good girl."

Felicia nodded, and stayed where she was. When the front door had closed and the house had gone silent, she climbed into the girl's bed and curled up in the warmth that remained.

***

In the early evening of the third day since they left, the lights went out. She was on the couch, half-awake but still vigilant for any sign of their return from wherever they had gone. But no sign had come, not for three days. She raised her head in the now dim light and perked her furry black ears at an odd sound. Something electronic was beeping in the kitchen. She sat all the way up and stretched, yawning despite the fact that she had done little besides doze the entire day. She could not remember having been alone for this long in her entire life. Initially she had filled the time with cleaning what she could of the residence, but had run out of tasks she knew how to perform after the first day. She got off the couch and walked into the darkened kitchen, sniffing the air as if it would help her know what had gone wrong.

The apartment had smelled dirty to her since she had been brought here. Dust and mold and the sour unwashed bedding of the four humans dominated, and now the rank fermenting smell of aging garbage grew daily. She had wanted to carry it outside to be taken away, but she was not permitted to leave the place by herself. Her ears swiveled, straining to catch any sound in the still and silent air. The beeping had trailed off in a final pitiful note and stopped before she got to the kitchen. Without the hushed white din of the home's hidden organs she could hear the evening drone of insects outside. The coarse sound of crows gathering. The muffled voices of people in the adjacent units. She had thought there was a chance the lights going out was a sign of the family's return, but she heard nothing to give her any real hope.

She used a small stool to stand tall enough to open one of the cabinets over the counter and reached inside with a hand-paw, grasping one of her plastic-wrapped biscuits. She was used to eating when the family did, but without them here she had to guess when that would be. She had been using the clock, but now the glowing numbers were gone. She was hungry, though, and already in the kitchen. She hopped down from the stool and unwrapped the biscuit. She put the wrapper in the trash bin and tried to ignore the rotting smell coming from deep down inside. Carrying the biscuit, she left the kitchen.

The window by the front door looked out on a small enclosed concrete block patio with a tall iron gate that led to the paved path between the housing units. She could see a matching gate on the other side of the path, with another patio and another home's front door beyond it. There were lights on across the way, and it didn't occur to her to wonder why her family's unit was different. She had only been outside the gate a few times with the girl, but she remembered it well enough. The paths were long and grey and all the same. There was a small park, decorated with indecipherable paint scrawls and filled with suspicious and aggressive young humans who had threatened to take her from the girl. They had managed to get away, both running from the laughing teenagers. The girl's father had been furious at the both of them and there had been very few trips outside the gate at all after that.

She ate her biscuit, making herself take small bites despite wanting to wolf it down. The taste was always the same: a mix of rich meat-infused fat with a texture like scrambled eggs, bound to a crunchy wafer on the bottom made of something that satisfied her need for vegetable nutrition. Most of the people she had been with had offered her human food, and she had eaten it, but it was almost always too strong. Too salty or too sweet, as if humans could not taste anything without assistance. Her biscuits were comforting-- a dependable constant, unlike the people themselves. She closed her eyes as she ate her biscuit and imagined she was eating it in her first house, given to her by her first girl.

Her first girl's name was Rachel. She remembered the day she had been delivered to Rachel, nameless herself but trained and ready to be the perfect companion. The car from the Company had stopped in front of her family's mansion, and even through the closed car door she could hear the girl's delighted squeals.

"It's her! It's her! She's here!"

The car door opened from the outside and Rachel had climbed inside before she could even come out. The girl had hugged her with almost frightening intensity while the driver held the door open and smirked.

Rachel's father had looked on and laughed. "Let her come out, hon."

Rachel had let her go and she had stepped out into the open, wide-eyed from the ferocious affection from the girl. Rachel continued to pet and stroke her head while she stood, waiting.

"You have to give her a name, hon, and then she'll be yours."

Rachel had said to the Company man without hesitation, "Duchess! Because she is a royal fox."

The Company man had nodded and entered the name into his tablet. Duchess' collar had pinged and he said, "Congratulations, Rachel. Duchess is now your companion service animal." He had said more things to Rachel's father, but Duchess had not heard because Rachel was already pulling her along at a near run to show her her new home.

Duchess had lived with Rachel for four years. Everything she had learned from the trainers at the Company had prepared her well for being Rachel's companion. She had slept in Rachel's bedroom on her own (smaller) bed, ate with her at the table with the rest of the family, and accompanied her nearly everywhere. She had played when Rachel wished to play, and rested when Rachel did not. Rachel had clothes spun especially for her, fitting her odd almost-human proportions and sometimes even making her resemble the "vulpine royalty" that Rachel had imagined for her companion. Rachel showed Duchess off to her friends, and her extended family, and almost anyone she happened to meet. Duchess was not just a fox who walked like a girl, she would say. She could talk. She could read. Duchess would be asked to demonstrate. "My name is Duchess," she would say in a clear synthesized tone, courtesy of the voice box on her collar. "What is yours?"

The voice box had been a revolutionary new feature for service animals then, and more often than not Duchess had taken her audience by surprise. A trick, they would scoff. A recording. Rachel would shake her head and ask them to make Duchess read something. Anything. And Duchess always could.

She felt warm under her fur as she finished the biscuit and licked the last traces from her finger-pads. She wagged her bottle-brush tail. The memories of Rachel always cheered her, and reminded her of her purpose. No matter what anyone had wanted to call her afterward, inside her mind she was always Rachel's Duchess, the royal fox. She wanted to dwell in her memories of Rachel longer, but she knew they would run out. They always led to the same place. The same sad, confusing day when another car from the Company had stopped in front of the mansion and a new companion had come out. The same car would take Duchess away. She opened her eyes rather than continue to remember.

The dusk had turned to night, and amber-tinted lights had come on along the path outside the gate. A man was standing on the other side, gripping the vertical bars with both hands and peering in between.

Duchess backed away from the window, unsure if he had seen her. She had not heard him approach and she did not recognize him. She wanted him to go away. She felt a fearful growl rise in her throat, something the voice box ignored, to her relief. She quieted the feral impulse and stood still with her tail glued to the back of her legs, watching through the window from the darkness several feet back. The man reached to his right, touching something she couldn't see. He stood there, watching the door and window. After a while he motioned with the same hand to his side and began to climb the gate. Duchess whined. She wanted the family to come back. They were a sad family that wanted her to stay quiet and out of sight most of the time. The girl often cried quietly at night, holding onto Duchess (though she had named her Felicia). The father sometimes shouted at Duchess for no reason she could understand. The girl's brother had tried several times to force Duchess to touch him in ways she was not trained for-- ways that other men had made her endure before him. But even so, she wanted them very much to return. Right now. She could not stop this man from getting into the house. Could not even scare him. She had sharp canine teeth, but even the thought of using them on a human, even a bad human, made her feel sick and unbalanced from half-remembered nightmares.

She stumbled backward, then turned and fled back into the kitchen towards the back door. Before she reached it, though, she could hear it being jostled, followed by the creak of metal as someone began to pry open the frame near the latch. She stopped, frozen by panic. There was no other way out. With the metallic groaning sounds from the back door increasing, she shook herself out and dove for the cabinet underneath the sink. It smelled of a long stalemate between mildew and bleach inside, but she crawled in and closed the door behind her. She didn't know what these men wanted, but perhaps they would take it and leave.

She turned and curled around the drain pipe to try to get into a better position, soiling her fur from the leaky fixture, then waited. The door finally gave way with a sharp ping and several sets of feet entered the kitchen. She could see flashes of light around the edges of the cabinet door. They moved across the whole unit and she finally heard the front door open, though now the sound offered none of her expected relief.

The men spoke in low voices. "You sure they gone? I thought I saw something move before."

"Yeah, they cleared out days ago. Dude got his warning."

"Probably ran across the border to NovoPac by now."

"Doubt it. They don't got no dog tracks there."

The men laughed. One said, "All right, everyone take a room. Get whatever they left. Alarm's dead but we ain't got all night neither."

Duchess listened as the men dispersed into the rest of the unit. She heard drawers being pulled and things being thrown to the floor. She cracked one of the cabinet doors open a fraction to peek into the kitchen. It was dark, but she could see well enough. The back door still hung open, its frame bent and broken. She opened the cabinet door wider, hoping she would not be seen in the gloom. She poked her whiskered muzzle out into the kitchen and saw that none of the men had remained there. Seeing her chance, she took it.

Once in the back yard she stopped and looked around, panting with the liquid panic running through her veins. The back yards, like the front patios, were all the same. Just a rectangle of weedy untended grass boxed in by tall wooden fencing. There were cross-ties that a human could have easily scaled, but her limbs weren't designed for climbing. The muffled sound of the men working behind her urged her on, though. If they found her, they would take her. Take her back to the man who had kept her before she had been given to the girl's father. She ran to the back fence, and dropped to all fours, sniffing along the bottom. She found the lowest spot and began digging with her hand-paws, scrabbling at the loose earth like a wild fox after a rabbit. She tried to wriggle through twice before the gap was big enough, and she tore the girl's old t-shirt she still wore on the splinters of the fence as she forced her way through.

Between the enclosed back yards of one row of housing units and the next was a drainage ditch, filled with weeds and trash and a trickle of oily muddy water at the bottom. In the darkness she tumbled down the slope into the muck before she could stop her momentum. The filthy water soaked into her shirt and her fur. Getting back to her feet she paused, sniffing the air. She felt as if she was out on a high place, close to the edge, close to falling. She shouldn't be on this side of the fence, alone. Without her human companion. She felt a compulsion to back away from the imagined precipice, to go back into the apartment. But the girl was not there. She didn't know where she was or when she would come back. She didn't want the men to take her back to the dark places. She convinced herself that she had to find the girl, even though she did not know where to look. She picked a direction at random and ran on all fours along the fence line, following the ditch.

***

She followed the gully for a long time. When it passed through culverts under roads, she scurried across. It slipped between high chain-link fences with barbed wire at the top, so she did too. Eventually it grew large enough that it gained sloping concrete sides. Duchess trotted along, focused on following it, not knowing how she would find the girl, but having no other idea in her head.

She stopped when the water drained down and into a dark round pipe in an earthworks berm. The pipe was much larger than she was, even while standing up, but she did not want to go inside. It smelled of sewage and decay and she worried about what might be hidden in the solid black shadows within. She was far from roads and houses now, but she could see well enough outside the pipe from the glow of the nearby city. She climbed the grassy berm instead and stood up once she crested the top. The breeze picked at her torn shirt and ruffled her fur. She stared at the city.

She had lived there once. Right in the middle of that sparkling maze of glass and asphalt, with lights of every color spelling out words and pictures every hour of the day and night. That had been the home after Rachel's. High up off the ground, with enormous windows looking out on two sides, as if she were in the clouds. It had scared her when she first saw it; made her feel dizzy. She had asked if she could see Rachel's house from there, but the new girl, Heather, said no. Heather told her that her new name was Vixy, and that she was her companion now. And so she was.

Heather didn't love her like Rachel had, but Duchess, now Vixy, had done her best to be her companion. She went to school with Heather like she had with Rachel. Out shopping in the city. At home she was there to be petted, and shown off to visitors, but Heather didn't pay as much attention to her when they were alone, content to let her be a living decoration rather than a playmate. When Heather went off to a boarding school far away, it was decided that Vixy would not go with her. Another man from the Company had come and taken Vixy to her next girl, who lived outside the city, back on ground level. Vixy became Clara.

Being Clara had been a fine time, finer than being Vixy had been. Natalie, the newest girl, felt fortunate to have her, dressing her up like she was a younger sister and sharing her hopes and secrets in their room at night. But something bad had happened one day, and she never saw Natalie again. Her mother and father had cried and shouted and slept at strange times. Clara had tried to be a comfort to them, nuzzling and being there to be stroked and even helping to keep the house clean. But she reminded them too much of what they had lost, so back to the company she went, to wait for another girl.

She had always hoped Rachel would come and take her back to be Duchess again. She didn't want to think that Rachel had forgotten about her when her father had bought the new companion, but the thought was still there whether she wanted it to be or not. She shivered and hugged herself, then looked away from the city, down the other slope of the berm where she stood.

A vast field of jagged shapes stretched away down at the bottom, with meandering paths through the piles of junk strung with wires and occasional dim caged lights. She could see shapes moving along the paths. Not human shapes. Other service animals like her, perhaps. They would know how to find a Company man, she thought. She climbed down the berm only to find her way blocked by another chain-link fence with the now-familiar barbed wire at the top.

She tried to call out to the figures she could see down one of the cleared dirt paths, but her voice box was made for speaking, not shouting. She gripped the fence in both her paw-hands and shook, making it strike against the metal posts as loud as she could instead. This got the attention of at least one, who came hurrying towards the disturbance with a strange waddling gait. He wore a hard hat with a light bound to it, so she could see very little about him. She could smell him, though-- grease and rust and filth, but also of fur and something she could remember but not picture. He did not smell human at all. When he was close enough, she said with her voice box, "Hello, I have lost my companion. Can you help me?"

Instead of speaking back, the shadowed figure made a strange cheeping noise and turned tail to run back the way he came.

She waited, still hanging onto the fence, listening to more distant cheeping and chuffing sounds. He soon returned, with several others bearing tools. She backed up while they cut a section of the fence, then two of them peeled it back to allow her to pass. Once she had ducked through, they surrounded her in a ragged half-circle. In the light from their hard hats they appeared to be some rodent-derived model she had never seen before, all a bit shorter than her. Large quivering long-whiskered noses protruded into the light, while their hard hats hid their eyes and ears. They chittered and whistled quietly to each other, and occasionally at her, but she could not understand their patois, and they wore no voice boxes. She hoped they understood human speech.

"Can you take me to a Company representative?" she asked.

They all nodded, and one offered his grease-blackened hand-paw to her. She hesitated, despite how dirty she already was, but then took it. Behind her, two were already repairing the cut they had made in the fence line while the rest followed her and her guide down the path. They passed others who stopped their work to wave and converse briefly, sometimes gaining another follower for their little parade. They all had long, muscular furless tails and thick haunches. Most wore toolbelts in addition to their hard hats but nothing else. Though she could not understand them, she could hear what she recognized as laughter from time to time. It calmed her nerves to hear it. If they could laugh, there was no danger here. This was their purpose, just as being a companion was hers.

They drew closer to a long concrete building, lit up with floodlights and filled with the din of machinery. Dozens of the rodent workers were converging on it, guiding electric carts full of bits of broken metal and electronics. Her escort dwindled in number as they got closer until it was just her and the one guiding her. He led her to a human-sized door with a square window of reinforced glass set high up, lit from within. He chittered something to her, hit an illuminated yellow button off to the side of the door with his palm and waved before dropping to all fours and scampering away.

She quailed at being left alone again, but waited there on the steps with her tail between her legs. She listened to the harsh sounds of the recycling plant until the door opened, spilling the light from within over her. A man stood there in blue protective coveralls, holding a hard hat against his side. He looked down at her.

"What the hell is this?" he demanded in an exasperated tone that suggested he already had enough to deal with.

She said, "Hello, I have lost my companion. Can you help me?"

"Your companion?" he said, sounding incredulous. He turned his head and called out behind him, "Phil, is this some kind of stupid prank?"

She couldn't hear Phil's response, but the man in the doorway said over his shoulder, "There is a... I dunno, like a fox thing here. One of those fancy companion deals I think. Yeah! Damn it, just come see."

He stepped aside so the other man, Phil, could join him in the doorway and peer down at her as well.

"Shit," said Phil.

"Right? What are we supposed to do with it? How the hell did it even get into the yard?"

She said, "Can you take me to a Company representative?"

"It's some kind of test, I bet," he said to Phil.

"So what do we do?"

"We take it to the Company guy, like it asked! What do you think, numb-nuts?"

"Hell, I don't know. He won't be in until eight though. What do we do with it until then?"

"Uhm... put it in the ward with the other RMAs, I guess. He can deal with them all when he gets in."

Phil said, "You're the boss. Come on," he said to her, motioning with his hand.

She stepped inside the building and followed him. The halls inside reminded her of the concrete block walls that lined the paths around her current family's home. They offered some insulation from the noise that fought to escape the rest of the building, but she could still feel the vibration through her feet. Phil looked back at her a few times, watching her as they walked, as if he had never seen a vulpiform service animal before. Finally they reached a door that he unlocked with a scuffed security card he kept in his pocket. He pushed the steel door open and ushered her inside.

"Mark'll be here in the morning," is all he said as he took one last look and closed the door.

"Thank you..." she began to say, but the door cut her off at the end.

She was not alone in the room, at least. There were three of the rodiform service animals inside, all lying on pallets. Two of them sat up the instant the door had opened. The other lay still. The two began to chatter to each other in their patois, and she said to them, "Hello. My name is..." she paused. "Duchess," she decided.

One of them got up from their pallet and came closer. Without a hard hat or other clothing, she could see this one was a female. She had large furless ears that fanned out in rounded cups, and nearly-black round eyes. The curious rodent gave her a sniff, flexing her whiskers. Duchess returned the gesture and noticed that she held her left arm at an odd unmoving angle, close to her side. Broken, perhaps. The room smelled like blood and waste and antiseptic, and it was making her hackles rise in anxiety. She looked past the female close to her and saw that the unmoving one had a terrible open wound on the side of his head. She looked away, glad she could not understand what they had to say. She didn't want to know what had happened to him. Or what might happen to all of them when the man from the Company arrived. These were broken ones, and so was she, if she were in here with them.

Duchess was very dirty, but she did not feel broken. She could be a companion again, if they took her back to the Company and got her clean and ready again. Despite how long she had been away, she chose to believe that.

***

Duchess spent the rest of the night in fitful half-sleep, unable to relax from a combination of the frightful smell of the room and the mechanical violence she could feel through the floor. When she did sleep, she dreamed she was in a back room of the dark, smoky restaurant where she had been kept. She had slept there with the other service animals in shifts, feeling the constant thump of the music through the floor while she tried to rest. They all huddled together, waiting for one of the men to come, waiting to see who would be summoned to work for their biscuit.

In the morning when the door opened Duchess jumped, her thoughts still in that dark place. But it was not one of the restaurant men. It was Phil, looking tired at the end of his shift. He entered with a new man wearing the Company logo on the left breast of his ivory coveralls. Phil pointed at Duchess, who got to her feet, her hand-paws still shaking for a moment.

"That's it, obviously. Walked up to the yard-side door last night around midnight and hit the call button. No idea where it came from."

"Huh," said the man, presumably Mark, as he entered the ward room carrying a familiar-looking tablet. "Vulpiform CSA, looks like a series 2 or 3, but it's pretty dirty. Here--" he walked over to Duchess and took a slim black wand from his pocket, then passed it over the back of her neck. It chirped once and he looked as his tablet. "Yeah, a series 2. Should have guessed from the voice box. Hmm..."

Duchess picked that moment to use it. "Hello, I have lost my companion. Can you help me find her?"

The man raised his eyebrows. "Have you now? I bet there's a story there. First let me deal with the morning's RMAs here. What have we got, Phil?"

Phil pointed to the rodiforms in turn. "One broken arm, one plasma cutter burn, and one dead from the head injury you can see."

Mark tsked and tapped on his tablet. "You guys are way ahead of your attrition allowance this month. What gives?"

Phil shrugged. "We're not out in the yard with 'em, you know that. Just unlucky for us, I guess."

"And them," added Mark.

Phil snorted. "Yeah." After a pause he asked, "So this uhh... vulpiform one. Not a test? Randy said maybe that's what it was."

Mark shook his head. "Nah. That would be a kind of a waste. These companions are damned expensive. When this one was new, she probably went for 100k, maybe more."

Phil whistled. "How much she worth now?"

Mark shrugged. "Not my department, but she's a series 2. I heard we're up to series 6 now, so... probably not much. The people who can afford these for their kids always want the latest model." He addressed Duchess directly, asking, "Are you injured?"

She shook her head and replied, "No."

"That voice thing is creepy, man," said Phil.

"The newer ones are more natural. Mouth moves and everything."

"I'll stick with our ratties, thanks. I can almost understand 'em."

He nodded and moved to scan the rodiforms, then put the wand and his tablet under his arm. "I'll send Anton in with the cart for those three. You, come with me," he said to her. She followed him out into the hall.

When they got outside it was morning, though the machinery didn't seem to be any quieter. There was a vehicle with the Company logo waiting, but it didn't look like the cars that Duchess had been transported in before. Those had been more like the cars that her first few families owned, with rows of plush seats built for comfort. This one had a small cabin for humans up front, while the back was made up of secure compartments, each large enough for one service animal. Mark opened one and pointed inside.

"In," he ordered, once again looking at his tablet. "Strap secure, understand?"

She said, "Yes." He didn't look up.

Once she had climbed in, he shut and locked the door. There was a light on inside, so she could see the straps attached to the single split-back seat. She slipped her slim arms into the harness and clipped it together over her chest, while threading her tail down into the gap provided in the rear of the seat. She tightened the straps and waited. After a while she heard other compartments being opened and loaded, and soon after they began to move.

She clutched the straps of her harness as the transport rolled over uneven ground before finding paved road. Duchess lost track of time, and could not see out of her compartment, but she trusted that the Company would find her girl. Or another girl. Or even Rachel, if she dared to hope for that.

They made one stop, and she could hear the others being unloaded. Another short trip later, the truck came to its final destination and shut down. The door to her compartment was opened and Mark said, "All right, come out."

She unstrapped and jumped to the ground, finding herself in a garage full of trucks like the one she had just emerged from. He turned and led the way towards an elevator and she followed, fidgeting with her torn and dirty shirt. He didn't speak to her while they rode the elevator up, so all she could do was wait and wonder. The garage had smelled like hot electric coils and dust to her, probably the vehicles, but the elevator smelled more familiar. She could detect traces of service animals like herself, but the air's scent evoked little flashes of memory from when she was trained, several years past. They exited onto a floor that only brought those memories back into clearer focus. She was sure she had been here before.

Mark led her to a door which he opened, ushering her into a small, quiet room. A training room. It had a screen terminal in one wall, with an interaction pad resting on a shelf. There were two seats for humans behind where the service animal would stand during the training sessions. One was occupied by a woman in a trainer's hospital-scrubs-green jumpsuit.

Mark asked, "Monica, right?"

She nodded and stood. They shook hands. "I'm Mark from LSA maint. And this," he pointed to Duchess. "Is Ren. I think. Her records are kind of a mess."

"So is she," said Monica. Duchess knew she was dirty. She could smell the filth that matted her fur as well as the woman could. She could do nothing about it.

"Anyway can you take it from here? I got like six more plants to visit today."

"Yes, thanks. We'll get it sorted."

"Let me know if you find out what happened with her. I'm kind of curious."

Monica nodded and waited for Mark to leave before passing her wand over the back of Duchess' neck. "Hello Ren. Where is your companion?"

She barely remembered being Ren. After she got that name, a man named Dom had taken her to the restaurant place. There were no little girls there, only adult men and women. Mostly men. She didn't like recalling most of them. Felicia was her name now. But the Company did not know that, it seemed. She paused, unsure what her name was now. She heard her voice box saying, "My name is Duchess. I have lost my companion. Can you help me?"

Monica looked at her for a long moment, then down at her tablet. "Duchess, hmm? That was your name a long time ago. Did you run away?"

She flattened her ears out to the sides, feeling the heat of shame in them. She looked away. "I ran," she admitted.

Monica sighed. "That's not good. Do you remember what happens to companions who run away?"

"Yes," she said, still not looking at the woman.

"Why did you run away?"

"There were bad men in the house. They broke the door."

Monica furrowed her brow and tilted her head. "Your family was robbed? Did your companion run away too, and you just got separated?"

"No. I was alone when the men came."

"Where was your companion?"

"They went on vacation."

"What is your companion's name?"

She almost said Rachel, but she could not lie to the woman. "Jennifer."

Monica began tapping on her tablet scanning over the information with a frustrated look on her face. "Your last companion on record was Katya Borodin. Who is Jennifer?"

"Jennifer is my companion."

"That's not what it says here. Katya's parents said you ran away."

Duchess shook her head.

"No? No what? You didn't run away from Katya?"

"I did not run away from Katya."

"Tell me how you got from Katya to Jennifer."

Duchess laid her ears back and whined. "Many... people."

"It's very important that you remember."

"Katya gave me a new name."

"Ren."

"Yes. She gave me a new name and then she went away."

"Away?"

"I did not see her again."

Monica tilted her head. "Did she not like you? Why didn't she send you back to us?"

"I don't know."

"What happened after she went away?"

"A man took me to another place, with other companions."

Monica frowned. "Others, like you?"

"Yes."

"How many?"

"I don't know. Some left, others came."

"Tell me about this place."

"It was dark. It was very loud. The music hurt. It smelled too strong. Like bad fruit and smoke that burned my eyes. There were many people."

"What did you do there?"

"I carried drinks and food to tables. I sat with men on couches. I went with the men into other rooms. I..."

Monica raised her hand up, palm out. "Ok, that's enough." She tapped at her tablet again, her mouth a tight thin line. She muttered, "What a god damned disaster."

"I am sorry. Please tell me how I can serve you better?"

"No, no, not you." She said, shaking her head. "How long were you in this place?"

"I don't know."

"Where did you go next?"

"A man took me to his house to be his companion."

"You weren't trained for that... service."

"No," said Duchess, hugging herself with her arms.

"I guess he didn't care."

"No," agreed Duchess.

"Wait, what did all these people feed you?"

"Biscuits."

"That's interesting. And when you finally ended up with Jennifer, did they feed you biscuits too?"

"Yes."

Monica looked at the door, brow furrowed, tapping her foot on the floor for a long time. Then she stood and left without a word to Duchess, leaving her confused and worried about her fate. She had run, after all, when the bad men came. And she knew what happened to runaways.

***

Left alone again, she waited in the oppressive silence for Monica to return. She sniffed at the edges of the room, seeking comfort in recalled scents from when she had done her lessons, earning praise and reward. She regarded the silent screen terminal, and touched the input pad with one finger. The screen powered on. After a moment words appeared, reading 'Scan ID chip to begin'. She didn't have a trainer's wand, though, so she could go no further. After a while, the screen blacked out again. Without anything to occupy her, time lost its meaning. She tried to sleep curled up in a corner, but failed. She thought and thought about what the trainer had said. And what she didn't say. What they never said. She thought about the dead rodiform, lying on the pallet all night in that ward with her. Had he still been alive when they brought him in there? What would they do with him now? Could they fix him? What would they do with the two who were broken? She had never wondered these things before. She had never before wondered what would happen to her. She didn't have to. Things just happened.

Before her thoughts could spiral her further into shivering existential crisis, the door opened. She scrambled to her feet, wide-eyed. Monica had returned, and with her was a man in a suit and tie. Duchess hoped he was a new father, looking for a companion for his daughter even though she had never met a new father in a training room. She clasped her hand-paws together in front of her belly, still wearing the filthy ripped t-shirt and the layer of mud and grime she had collected.

The man grinned wide and said, "I see one of our little lost lambs has come home to us." Duchess looked up at him and felt her tail wag just a little. Monica hadn't smiled once while she was talking to her earlier. The man even stroked her head, and riffled her ears before sitting down.

Monica explained to her, "This is Mr. Emerson. I want you to tell him everything you told me about what happened after you were Katya's companion."

So Duchess did. When she got to the part about the men in the back rooms of the club, and then the men in their homes, Monica did not cut her off this time. She concentrated on her tablet instead, looking as if she wished she could turn off her ears. Mr. Emerson listened, leaning forward in the chair, hands pressed together in front of his mouth, as if he were praying. When she finished recounting all the things she could remember, all the way up to when she was given to Jennifer's father, Monica spoke up.

"This has to have been going on a long time. Years. I can't understand how we've missed it. You can see why I called you."

Mr Emerson kept his focus on Duchess, "Do you remember the man who first took you to the club?"

"Yes," said Duchess, nodding for emphasis.

"What was his name?"

"Dom."

"Would you recognize him again if you saw him?"

"Yes."

"That's good. That's very good, Duchess," said Mr. Emerson, smiling.

Monica said, "Every one of them had biscuits to feed her. Even the last one, the gambler! Where did they get them, without a custody contract? Is someone making knockoffs? I wouldn't think it was possible, but I can't imagine us just losing track of..."

"Ts-ts-ts!" interrupted Mr. Emerson, waving his hand at Monica to quiet her. "Anyone can see it's someone with inside connections. But we'll find him. Duchess here will help us. Won't you, Duchess?"

"Yes," she said with enthusiasm, wagging her foxtail.

Monica frowned. She said, "I think we should alert the police. She witnessed a break-in at that housing unit. And this club or whatever it is... it can't be legal."

Mr. Emerson turned to look at Monica, no longer smiling. "You will not contact the authorities. We cannot have the brand tarnished with this sort of underground sleaziness."

"We didn't place them there!"

"Ah, but someone here helped someone who did. And in the eyes of our loyal customer base, not to mention our pet legislators, that's all that will matter."

"So what are you going to do?"

"We'll get to the bottom of this and deal with it quietly. Decisively. Don't worry about that."

Monica digested that, then looked at Duchess. "And what do we do with the other stolen service animals you find?"

"Oh, they'll all have to be destroyed. Unplaceable after what's been done to them, even if they're not obsolete models. Luckily they're all off the books as runaways already. Speaking of which, did you check her back into the system already?"

"Yes..."

"Mmm. I'll see that her record is reverted back to yesterday."

"What? You can't do that. She'll be flagged as a runaway again."

Mr. Emerson raised his eyebrows. "Monica, I admire your dedication to your charges here, but I advise that you leave the legal matters to our team. We've kept the company safe and whole through other crises. With luck, you'll be able to enjoy many more prosperous years here with us," he ended with a thin, toothless smile.

Monica froze, then dropped her eyes to her tablet and nodded, biting her bottom lip.

Duchess had stopped wagging her tail as the meaning of what Mr. Emerson had said became clear. She remembered the other companions at the club. Some were vulpiform like her, but others were different models. They all slept in one small room when they were not working, curled up together in one corner. They were not friends-- it was something both more and less than that word could describe. And now if Duchess helped to rescue them from that dark place, they would only be destroyed because then no one would want them. Destroyed. The word froze her blood. They never spoke so plain to her during training. It was always more vague. If you were not a good service animal, they would say, you would be taken away. Sent away. No more treats, no more praise, no more companions to serve. They never said where they would be sent away to.

Duchess asked, "Will I be destroyed?"

If Mr. Emerson thought he had made a mistake by saying that word in front of her, he didn't show it. His voice changed back to the kind, indulgent tone it had before when he spoke to Duchess. "No, of course not. You'll be helping me find the bad men."

"Can I be Rachel's companion again?"

"Her first contract assignment," explained Monica in a tight, subdued voice.

"We'll see," said Mr. Emerson, promising nothing. He said to Monica, "I'll take it from here, Monica. Thanks for calling this in. I'll be sure to let your manager know."

Monica nodded and left without looking back.

When the door had closed Mr. Emerson remained sitting and pulled a slim phone from the pocket of his suit jacket. He tapped the screen a few times then held it against his cheek.

The call connected, but he didn't identify himself. He said, "I've got one of your toys here. Someone turned it in to lost and found. Yeah. No, and you need to tell your kids to be more careful where they leave their toys. Damn it, every time you say that... yeah. Look, just be here in two hours if you want it back. Same terms. No, because you lost it and caused a whole shitload of problems for me! Fine."

He stuffed the phone back into his pocket and got up. The gentle voice from before was gone. "Well, let's get you cleaned up," he muttered before opening the door and leading her out.

***

After he led her to an exam room, Duchess never saw Mr. Emerson again. A technician was there waiting. He stripped away Jennifer's shirt. She was cleaned and examined from nose to tail, then taken to the infirmary.

She shivered and cringed from the nurse when the needles were brought in on a cart, but it was only inoculations, same as she had had before.

After that, she was dressed in a new pink and white jumper, as if she were being prepared for a new companion. She was no longer sure if she would be helping to find Dom after all, especially when they took her to the hallway behind the display rooms. She had been inside them before. They were decorated and furnished as if a human girl somewhere between 11 and 14 years old lived there, with soft carpet, cheerful wall decorations and stuffed animals on the bed. One wall of each room was clear plastic with round holes at her head-level, allowing prospective buyers a view of the companions inside.

She thought they would put her inside one. She knew what to do. Wave and twirl when the people came by, speak to them if they spoke to her first. Eventually one would choose her and she would go to live with a girl again. She wagged her tail, eager to be on display.

But they walked her past those rooms. Their destination was not much further-- the technician who had examined her opened the door to a meeting room. It was a place where a prospective buyer can see a service animal up close for the final determination. Had she already been chosen? She looked up at the trainer, but he was ushering her into the room with one firm hand on her back and backing away.

The scent of the man in the meeting room hit her before she saw him. The imitation musk that humans anointed themselves with was strong, fighting for dominance with the irritating ashy scent of dead cigarettes. Her tail slunk down between her legs and she stumbled into the room as the door shut behind her. She knew who the man was. And she knew that Mr. Emerson had lied to her.

"Hello, little fox," said Dom. His deep accented voice made her hackles rise.

Duchess backed against the wall, ears back and eyes wide.

"Oh, what is that for? I no hurt you. Bring you back, give you nice job again."

Duchess shook her head. She wanted to say no, but her voice box didn't make a sound.

"No? You want stay here? Bad idea, little fox."

Duchess found her voice. "I want Rachel."

"Rachel? Who is Rachel? Some girl you served?"

Duchess nodded.

Dom leaned forward but did not get up. Duchess stayed flat against the opposite wall. He said, "I tell you truth, little fox. Rachel is gone. All girls gone. No more. You stay here, they no want you. They take you to room, put needle in arm. You no wake up again." He mimed pushing the plunger of a syringe with one hand for emphasis.

Duchess rubbed her shoulder where she had recently been inoculated with one hand-paw and looked away.

Dom growled, "Look at me!"

Duchess obeyed, shaking.

"They no want you, but I do." He sat up and raised his bushy black eyebrows. "I give you choice! Stay here, take needle, die. Or! Come back with me, keep customers happy. Is easy choice, yes?" he grinned.

Put that way, the choice sounded easy to Duchess. Staying here was the end for her. She knew Dom was not lying. With him, she could at least salvage a chance, a gap in the fence she might wriggle through again. If she found it, she would never come back here. Her hackles lowered while Dom waited. She took a step towards him.