FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Lawrence sat quietly and sipped at a bottle of water. The red fox's tail twitched under the table, almost certainly getting filthy against the airport floor. Usually -- not always, but usually -- he liked airports. Always exciting though hardly anything really important (beyond the personal level) really happened. They reminded him of really expensive malls, simultaneously encouraging you to be comfortable and relaxed but at the same time so easy to pick up and leave. He much preferred them under better circumstances, though.

He sat nervously and watched the doors through which the employees would leave the airport, the security area to his back. He was probably the only person there who didn't have a phone in front of their face or the headpiece of a data visor strapped to the side of their head. Nobody noticed him much unless the opening of doors or A/C vents sent a whiff of his own natural scent at people nearby. It wasn't as unpleasant as the real thing -- the company that designed the anthropomorphic animal body he'd inherited from his parents made sure of that -- but it was noticeable enough. Like a sharper version of an unwashed dog, to normal human senses.

With his canid nose, the people around him -- almost exclusively human but with a few Converted scattered around -- didn't smell much better. So he considered it even.

His ears perked up and his tail stilled when he saw whom he was looking for. He tossed his water bottle into a garbage can, readied a small knapsack, and got up from the table.

After a long shift working at one of the fast food restaurants in the airport, the raccoon was almost too tired to notice him. She looked up and caught his wave and there was a full two seconds before she saw it was him.

"Lar," she said with a 'polite enough' smile.

"Mel." He didn't feel like dancing around it. "I'm in serious trouble. People are after me. Is there someplace where I can give you the rundown and talk you into giving me a lift to your brother's place?"

She raised an eyebrow at him, the raccoon mask seemingly crooked with the expression.

"How serious are we talking?"

"Life and death," he said without any trace of irony.

"Is it your dad?" Her ears drooped slightly. "I heard it was bad. Is he...?"

"He's part of it, but last I checked he's fine. I've... had to leave him alone at the apartment for a bit."

She sighed and waved him along to the curb where the shuttle for employee parking had just arrived. They sat in silence, each of them mentally going over all of the fights they had when they dated, the reasons why they broke up, and all of the quips and comebacks that only came in hindsight. He almost didn't notice when she got up and headed off the bus, and hurried to catch up.

"How'd you get up here if you need a ride?" she asked when they reached her car.

"I brought my motorcycle. But I'm being followed and I think they've got a bead on it."

"So you're being followed and you immediately came to me. Cute."

"Dammit, Mel, I..." He stopped and rubbed his forehead. He'd thought of that, but didn't have the energy for an argument.

The doors unlocked with a 'clunk' sound and he got in without saying anything else. He curled his tail around and held it in his lap with the knapsack of personal stuff he'd been carrying and pulled off of his motorcycle. Also the small pistol he still had from his mad escape from Charles Landau's place earlier. He fumbled with the seatbelt while she pulled out, mostly to cover up the silence.

"I don't blame you any more," Mel sighed once they were past the parking lot exit. "I mean, you were always quick to admit your part but I denied mine, and I'm... past it. Older now. More mature."

"Mel, when the day comes you're in a walker and all of your fur is gray I won't accept you as 'mature,'" he said, before wincing at the accidental reminder of recent revelations.

If she caught his wince, she didn't indicate it. "My point is that I was shitty to you when we were together. And when you started dating that human girl after we broke up, I was even shittier. And even then, we were trying so hard to be polite around Tom, we didn't actually talk to each other for a couple of years. We just talked vaguely in each others' directions. And I realize a lot of that's my fault."

"If it helps you feel any better, it's not like things worked out with Sharon."

"It does, I'll admit. More than I feel comfortable admitting. Not as much as it would have a couple of years ago." A brief pause, then a subject change. "So this has to do with your father? Tom told me he's got something like Alzheimer's."

"It's worse than that," he said as they drove, slightly relieved for the change of subject but also guilty for the relief. "His mind's started to go, but in specific ways." He opened his mouth to continue and had trouble getting the words out his breath hitching slightly. "He's forgotten he underwent Conversion to be cured of the Genehack Plague. He thinks he's supposed to be human. So there's all this stuff, all about being morphs like us, that he's having trouble with. Sensory input, balance, keeping his tail in check. Things he got used to before I was even born. And now..."

"Does he recognize you at least?" Mel asked. "Well, he probably wouldn't, if he doesn't think he's supposed to be a fox..."

"The screwed up thing is that he remembers having a son -- me -- but he forgets I'm supposed to be a fox so he doesn't always recognize me. And his body is starting to... his body's trying to behave as if he was human again. Like he can't move his ears, or control his tail, and he insists he can't see in the dark any more. And..." Lawrence reached up to wipe a tear out of his cheekruff. "I keep thinking that if I was human, or if I wasn't born like this, I'd be able to do more to help him cope. He's got human friends, and he recognizes them, but he has trouble dealing with them because, well..."

"He can smell them. They're different than the humans he remembers, because the scent matters so much now. But he doesn't know why."

"Yeah, that's exactly it," Lawrence sighed, grateful for her comprehension. "So I was doing some digging into the Conversion process. How it cured him of the Plague all those years ago, who developed it, did they know something like this could happen."

"And?" She was curious now, ears perked and attentive.

"They did. They engineered it so they could sell us special care when we got older."

Tires squealed. Lawrence reached up to brace himself against the dashboard and banged his forearm.

"What the fuck?" he yelped.

"Are you kidding me?" Mel yelled. "They... what, they designed us with a time limit?"

"That was pretty much my reaction," Lawrence said, shaking his head to clear it. "And what happened?" He looked around.

"What happened is that you dropped a bombshell like that while I was driving," Mel sighed. "Just be glad nobody was behind us." She started driving again, her fur standing on end.

"But yeah. BodyShape designed the Conversion process so the people undergoing it would have a breakdown later and need special medication. But when it turned out to be a stopgap cure for the Genehack Plague, they didn't have time to modify it."

"So everyone who was converted... and their kids..."

"Yeah." Lawrence rubbed his forehead. "Yeah. There are treatments out there. Maybe a cure. I dunno. I mean, they planned all this ahead of time, they made sure they had a plan. And there are people who have these medications now."

"And you're going to find them?"

"I... I dunno. I want to. I'm not sure if I can. I don't have any hard evidence of all this. But now that I know it, somebody's after me. And they might have killed someone already. Which is why I needed a lift to your brother's place. I can't think of anywhere else I feel safe enough to plan out my next move." He leaned his head back and closed his eyes with a sigh, somewhat soothed by her familiar scent in the confined space.

Mel nodded silently and drove on, letting the fox rest until they arrived at her brother's shop.

---

When Tom locked the front door of 'Briscoe's Rebuild Refurbish and Repair,' Lawrence let out the breath he didn't know he'd been holding. Lawrence had always felt more comfortable in the familiar 'plastic and wires' smell of his friend's shop, ever since he'd spent a good chunk of his younger years working in and hanging out in the place. Right now, any sensation of safety was highly prized.

Only then was Lawrence able to fill in Tom on what had happened so far.

After telling the story, the red fox reached into his pocket and pulled out the headpiece he normally wore. His ears drooped slightly; earlier he had been using the headpiece to keep an eye on his father's medical signs and that connection had been used against him. He set the headpiece down on the counter and stared at it for a moment.

"Here, you can have this." he asked without looking up at his old friend.

The raccoon made his way around the messy counter. Any flat surface in the store was either the top of a display case, covered with junk, or both. He picked up the headpiece and immediately slid it into a cardboard box coated in duct tape.

"It's safe now. They can't get a signal off of it, but after a wipe I could probably resell it as-is. If not, well... you know my motto. 'The street finds its uses for things.' If you need any cash..." He trailed off, his ringed tail curling around his own hip nervously. "Lawrence?"

The fox looked up, ears perked.

"I'm paying attention, I'm just wrecked." Lawrence unzipped his jacket, shrugged it off, and put it on the counter. "And I could probably use a few bucks. I don't know what these people can do to me while they're waiting to kill me, but I have to assume watching or erasing my bank account is on the list."

The raccoon nodded, moved back around behind the counter, and dug money out of a safe.

"And Tom?" the fox asked.

"Yeah?"

"Thanks again for this. I honestly don't know where else to turn. I've got other friends, but you're the only one I can trust to understand the situation."

"So what's the rest of the situation?"

"What?" Lawrence asked with a blink.

"You told me the past and present. What's the future? What's your plan? Can I help?"

"Do you really want to get into this?"

"You just told me that our existence was engineered to eventually go all to shit for long-term profit potential," Tom said as if that's all the answer he needed. "I don't know how much I can do, but I know people and I might be able to scare you up some hardware. There's also the fact that you're my oldest friend, and even after what happened you still mean a lot to Mel."

"Where'd she go? I lost track of her after we came in, I'm practically asleep on my feet here."

"She's getting food. She should be back soon."

"Has she been gone long?"

Tom moved around the corner and put a hand on his shoulder. "Relax. She's fine. Focus on the plan."

"There isn't much of a plan," Lawrence admitted. "I mean... I mean, if this were a story of some sort I'd either hole up and hide and become a half-crazy hermit until a better protagonist comes along or I'd try to find out who's after me to figure out how to stop them. Probably by exposing all of their dirty dealings so they're forced to back off."

"The latter sounds better."

"Only slightly. In real life, revealing a corporation's secrets gets you a talk show appearance and you spend the rest of your life dodging lawyers and investigators who will dedicate their careers to finding a way to ruin you in the court of public opinion. Which basically means becoming a half-crazy hermit."

"Okay, maybe we can find a way that doesn't involve hermitude," Tom sighed, rubbing his temples. "Look, get some sleep on the couch. I'll wake you up when Mel gets back with the food. Maybe a nap and something to eat will help you come up with something."

Tom all but dragged Lawrence to his apartment up above the shop. The fox briefly considered his shoulder bag and jacket, both on the counter, and left them. There wasn't anything in there he would need tonight. Between fatigue and emotional stress Lawrence was only vaguely aware of where he was going and why. He just kept imagining horrifying scenarios of every horrible thing that could happen to his father.

Lawrence's eyes snapped open to stare at an unfamiliar ceiling. He didn't even know when he'd laid down. The only thing keeping him rational was recognition of the couch underneath him; Tom had had it for the last decade and change and Lawrence had certainly left his share of stains and scent markings on it over the years. He sniffed the air and caught a couple more familiar scents unrelated to the couch.

"You definitely needed that rest," Mel said, sitting on the floor next to the couch. She had a couple of cartons of Chinese takeout and a plastic fork that she held out to him. "I considered letting you sleep but the place I went to doesn't reheat well."

He sat up with a familiar crackling in his back that came from sleeping on the old couch, his tail sweeping aside and kicking up a bunch of old aromas. He took the carton of food and dug in with a muttered and muffled 'thanks.' Tom sat in a comfy armchair nearby with his eyes closed and the occasional glow shining through his eyelids. A scratched-up plastic box about the size of a deck of cards rested on his shoulder with a cable running into a port on the side of his neck. Lawrence hadn't seen Tom use this particular interface before but knowing his raccoon friend every stock part had been replaced with a custom component long ago.

"Should I ask who he's talking to?" Lawrence asked between bites.

"Some of his regulars," Mel said, poking at her own food. "He won't tell me who, but I can probably guess."

"He doesn't talk to you about that stuff any more?" Lawrence frowned over at his friend.

"It's because I got that job at the airport. He's worried about security checks. He doesn't want anyone to think there's any reason to ask me about it."

"I'm sure I'm not helping, with all of my conspiracy crap," the fox sighed, leaning back against the couch and staring at the ceiling. "It didn't even occur to me you had to worry about security stuff."

"Honestly, I don't. It's fine. He just worries too much." Mel placed a hand on his knee and gave it a squeeze. "I know Tom wants to help, and so do I."

Lawrence's leg jumped and flexed slightly under her touch, the fox not sure how to respond to the gesture or if he even should. He sat up, ready to say something, but came up short when he saw the sincerity in her eyes and the tilt of her ears that seemed to ask if she'd done something wrong. He offered her an 'it's okay' smile as he dug back into his food, quietly deciding to let himself take comfort in her concern. He'd moved past his relationship with Mel years ago, but everything he'd ever appreciated about her was suddenly in the forefront of his mind. He placed a hand on hers and gave it a squeeze to thank her.

"I just wish I had a good way of checking up on my father. I was monitoring him remotely for a while, but I'm pretty sure that's how that first hit squad found me. I swung back by the apartment before coming to find you but I could tell they were watching it. I'm just hoping that if something... if something happens, they'll at least have enough decency to get him to a hospital."

"I'm sure they do." She gave his leg another squeeze, more on the thigh than the kneecap this time.

This time he opened his mouth to say something but once he did so he realized he didn't have any good words. So he pulled his own hand away and went back to his meal.

For a brief moment, he missed the period of time when he and Mel tried very hard to ignore each other. It was less confusing.

"Alright, good news," Tom said without warning, his eyes still closed.

"How good are we talking?" Lawrence asked, setting the cardboard container aside.

"I've called in some favors and I can get you some help. I can't talk specifics yet, since we don't have a plan, but it's a start. Also... I've got someone who can check in on your apartment."

"What?" The fox's eyes widened.

"I know a couple of people in the area who can get in and out, check up on your father; see if he needs anything, see if he's being watched, all that. One of them's human if it helps, given his condition and everything."

"What... what are they going to tell him?"

"You're on a road trip to one of the factories and they're some part-time care you've hired."

Lawrence had in fact done that before. He helped design medical equipment and a couple of times a year had to go out and check the places where they actually manufacture the stuff. So it was actually a pretty good cover story.

"Am I going to have to pay them?" Lawrence asked, concerned.

He jumped slightly when he felt a hand on his shoulder. He'd been so focused on Tom that he missed Mel standing up to give his shoulder a comforting squeeze. He reflexively slipped an arm around her waist, feeling her familiar fingers on his shoulder, her weight against his side. Then he realized that Tom had opened his eyes and could see them, and the awkwardness returned. Whether she felt it in his body language or simply shared in the discomfort, Mel moved to sit at the far end of the couch.

"Like I said, calling in favors," Tom explained. "So it's covered for now. Though if somehow you get the opportunity to snag something to thank them I'm sure they won't stop you. But they should have an update on your father in the morning."

"What time is it now?" The windows had opaque curtains covering them, letting through glimpses of what could have been limited sunlight or the streetlights outside.

"Almost midnight," Tom said.

It's only been a few hours since all this started, Lawrence thought to himself.

"Hey, do you need some more sleep?" Tom asked. "You're spacing out."

"I probably do need more sleep, but..." He sighed. "Given what I learned today, and that someone actually tried to kill me a few hours ago, I'm probably handling this pretty well."

"We should try to figure out what your next move is before you get back to sleep.

"And not just hiding," Mel said from her end of the couch. "Hiding's not a plan."

"I know that." Lawrence's ears laid back slightly.

"I just know you, is all. There's a part of you that thinks if you just crash on the couch for a day or two, they'll realize you're no threat and back off and it'll be over. As if it works that way."

Mel raised a hand to shush Tom, who'd been about to intervene.

"Hey," the fox growled. "Get off my ass."

"How about you get off your ass?" she snapped. "This is your fucking life! Your father's life! Maybe all of our lives, depending on what you found out and what can be done about it. You need to do something, here!"

"I'm going to!" Lawrence got up, clenching a fist with the hand not holding the takeout carton.

"Then give me an example!" Mel got up as well.

"I'm going to find out who knows what I sold, so I've got a start on who's after me, and come up with some way to put a stop to it!" he yelled.

"Good," she said, suddenly smiling. "Then we've got the beginnings of a plan."

Between the adrenaline and the fatigue, Lawrence actually staggered back a step. "Did you just..." He shook his head. "Christ." He sat back down, hard.

"Sorry, Lawrence, just..."

He cut her off with a wave of his hand.

"No, no, I needed that." He ran his fingers through the fur between his ears. "I needed to stop thinking about it so hard."

"I need a drink," Tom muttered, leaving the two of them alone in the room.

"I think that is going to be my next move, though," the fox thought aloud. "I mean, I need to know why they're after me so I know who it is. And maybe if I know who it is, we can work something out."

Tom came back with three bottles of beer, handing one each to Lawrence and Mel.

"That's how you want to play this?" Tom asked, sipping his beer. "You want to start with whatever it is that got you attacked? I mean, we might be able to trace back whomever was tracking you with data from the headpiece."

"That's too dangerous and too likely to bring things back to you," the fox said. "Also, I have to assume they covered their tracks. But something set off a red flag somewhere. Assuming I didn't just draw the attention of some random psychos on a fox hunt, something I've done lately led to this. That's an objective fact. And I can't possibly have done that many things lately. I mean, it's kind of a short list."

"Well, I've got some friends that can probably help with that," Tom said. "It's all out there on the net someplace. Following your traces should be easier than locating theirs." He sipped his beer again. "I hope."

"Well, if your friends are trustworthy and competent, we'll be able to figure something out." Lawrence sipped his own beer before setting it aside and finishing up the last of his takeout. "So do you have a time and a place where I'm meeting these folks?"

---

Sunrise was still an hour away as Lawrence picked his way through the semi-abandoned shopping mall and its corridors of makeshift kiosks and tables between temporarily-used, otherwise-empty storefronts. The mall barely made ends meet on regular tenants, but there was still money to be had in letting people set up, swap meet-style, a few nights a week with no questions asked. To Lawrence's vulpine nose, old insulation and the telltale scents of neglected water damage mixed with people who'd been up most of the night on bad food and cheap coffee.

For a certain type, the world worked easier if you were up all night, worked from sunrise to mid-afternoon, and slept through the early evenings. There were enough of this type to make these modern bazaars worthwhile even before adding in people whose job realities required a degree of shadiness and temporal flexibility. Lawrence, until very recently, hadn't been that type in a long time, whereas Tom got started in places like this.

He kept his tail as still as possible. He was having enough trouble making his way through without accidentally whacking anyone with it, but he didn't want to look nervous. Some people treated it like a farmer's market, selling food and produce and visibly tensing when they noticed someone who could conceivably shed on their wares or leave an aroma. Others blatantly hawked bootlegged software and music or even some legal indie stuff. One storefront held a bank of 3D printers where pre-ordered items could be picked up or new orders could be placed for pickup in a couple of hours.

Mel remained close behind. He'd tried to ditch her at least once for her own safety, but she insisted on not only following but on carrying that gun he'd gotten from Landau's place. She insisted that they'd spent too long together over the years for her to just drop him off outside and hope for the best. Neither of them were regulars at his place, but they had differing opinions as to what that meant; he wanted her outside and safe, she wanted to protect him.

Lawrence mentally went over the directions he'd been given as best he could, but kept getting distracted by what appeared to be familiar faces in the crowd. The original first-generation Converts were based on templates, as they'd never been intended for mass production, and as a result most older fox morphs had much of the same structure but with different fur colors. So every time Lawrence saw another fox in the crowd -- not many, but a few -- he had to stop for a moment. His father had been sick for a while, and with everything going on he couldn't get him out of his head.

Mel tapped him on the shoulder, pointing out an arctic fox morph losing the last of her winter coat to reveal the brown summer coat beneath selling jewelry made from old electronics in front of a rented store space. She had green streaks dyed into the fur on her head, which is what Lawrence knew to look out for. Behind her array of tables and racks, a curtain covered up the store space behind her as if it were unsuitable for its original purpose. As they approached her setup, Lawrence noted the security cameras and transmitters hidden among the decorations. Mel got his attention and made sure he saw a few jewelry pieces that concealed self-defense items like knives and one-shot stunners.

"Good morning," she said with a bright smile and that all-too-chipper voice that often inspired thoughts of violence against morning people. "I'm Elizabeth. Can I help you find anything?"

"Hi, I'm Lawrence, I'm a friend of Tom's. Is Steve here?"

"And this is...?" she asked, nodding to the raccoon next to him.

"I'm Melody, Tom's sister."

The vixen nodded and waved them back through the curtain.

They stepped through to find two walls of boxes of jewelry made from reclaimed electronics in the front with a path between. It smelled of old, threadbare carpet and ancient insulation and was lit by a handful of still-functioning fluorescent light fixtures likely older than Lawrence was. Between the curtain placement and the boxes, it was virtually impossible for anyone outside to see the small chamber set up where a shirtless human with light skin and bleach-blond hair sat at a computer monitor. He wore interface goggles and poked at a keypad about half the size of a keyboard with one hand while the other, sheathed in a glove covered in wires, waved and gestured at something only he could see. The goggles connected to something made of flexible plastic about the size and shape of a large boomerang resting behind his neck and across his shoulders

"You're Steve?" Mel asked, looking for a place to set her backpack.

He swiped the air with his glove a few times and lifted up the goggles. "Yeah, you're Lawrence and Melody?"

"Yeah," Lawrence said. He nodded to the device on the man's shoulders. "Is that a 400Q Murphy Neuro-feedback module you're using as part of that interface?" he asked.

"Heavily modified, yeah." Steve gave the fox an appraising look. "Tom did most of the hardware work, but I wrote a lot of the code. Does that interest you?" he asked, sounding slightly suspicious.

"I knew that it'd be technically possible to mod it for that purpose, I've just never seen it before." He turned to Melody. "The 400 series is used to help people acclimate to cybernetics and prosthetics. This one's been modified for feedback from a virtual interface instead. Not as fast as directly jacking in, but a hell of a lot safer if you're getting into the more dangerous hacking."

"You know a lot about this for someone who's just seen it," Steve said, still wary.

"I designed it," Lawrence said matter-of-factly. "Once this is over, I might be able to help you with some upgrades based on next year's model. Maybe even a job, if I still have a career after all this."

Steve snorted. "Yeah, good luck with that, if what I've heard holds up."

Lawrence's ears laid back. "And what have you heard?"

"You have kill teams coming after you because of corp espionage. Noble reasons, sure, but even still."

"Look, let's just get this over with," Lawrence said with a shake of his head. He pulled up a chair and sat down where he could see the monitor. He dug a piece of paper out of his pocket. "Here's the Alley coordinates and date for where I made contact."

Steve accepted the piece of paper and scanned it with a module on the front of his interface goggles. On the nearby monitor, a setup like an endless multi-level shopping mall filled the screen. Animated signs advertised various national and local brands while shoulder-height boxes that looked like old newspaper vendors scrolled headlines and news updates. Blurry humanoid shapes made their way through the brightly-colored corridors of the virtual network interface known as the Hub. The contrast between the Hub's normal setup and the night market outside the curtain made Lawrence smirk despite himself.

Steve lowered the interface goggles, giving him a HUD that the others couldn't see and likely wouldn't need to. He hit a button on the keypad and the view suddenly turned to face a blank wall in the shopping mall motif. It pushed forward through the wall into a dark passageway with boxy openings lining the sides, like a storage unit center with the lights out. Each opening had a serial number over the entrance and something like a curtain blocking the view of whatever lay beyond.

The Alley, one of the hidden and thus darker parts of the modern Hub, stretched on for who knows how far. Once off the grid of the main networks, there were no functional limits as to where virtual space could stretch. Steve made a gesture with the glove and the viewpoint presented on the monitor zoomed forward for several moments before it stopped and turned. A crude wireframe of a bay door stood before them.

A number glowed on top that matched one of the numbers on the piece of paper Lawrence had handed over. A keypad appeared on the front of the door and a floating hand appeared as Steve typed in a numerical code. The keypad vanished and the door opened, revealing an empty space behind.

"Okay, this transaction happened a while ago, but these coordinates didn't see much use," Steve said, flexing his shoulders in preparation. An icon of a magnifying glass appeared in the corner and then the virtual hand reached up to take it. He swept it along the walls and floor, turning up swirls of color and patterns that looked like they could have been bar codes and the like.

"Alright, looking for the trace of the transaction," Steve explained. "Like reading a footprint of what happened that day. We'll know who's been here, where they were standing, what they were doing, so forth. But since this node doesn't see a lot of... ah-hah." Steve put away the magnifying glass and the hand on the screen produced something like a syringe. He jabbed it into the wall, pulled back on the plunger, and then pulled the needle free. He pushed down on the plunger and 'squirted' a massive three-dimensional matrix of numbers into mid-air.

"Okay, so what am I looking for exactly?" Steve asked as he manipulated the matrix one-handed, the other punching at the keypad.

"Well, I doubt you'll be able to trace back my contact at NUBio, though I won't complain if you find the time to try. I'm more concerned about what data they got on me, what they could have used to track me down. If I know exactly how they pinned me down, if they got some sort of profile on me or a tracer on my connection or what." As he talked, Steve's fingers frantically worked at the keypad and at the air as he worked through the matrix of numbers looking for some sort of data which was beyond Lawrence's and Melody's comprehension.

"Is it possible anyone else saw the transfer?" Mel asked, watching the screen even if she didn't quite get what was going on.

"That... that is an interesting thought, Steve commented. "I've got auto-skimmers checking the data for a few things, but lemme see if I can find any traces of a third party."

He appeared to disassemble the matrix like it was a children's block structure. He turned some of the blocks over. Even though the HUD wasn't visible on the monitor, the way the screen zoomed in on and clarified some of the 'blocks' showed them what Steve was focusing on.

"Melody, you're a genius," Steve said with a toothy smile. "There are traces of something else here. Not a direct observer, but something... I dunno, some sort of tracker or... imagine the digital equivalent of a button cam. Lawrence, I think that data you sold NUBio was being monitored. I think RothPharm knows what you did."

"Son of a..." Lawrence muttered.

"Now, it doesn't mean they're the ones after you. I mean, it's probably them. No dancing around that. But this may be how someone got to watching and following your movements."

"Which means I don't think there's anything I could reveal that would necessarily get them off my back." Lawrence's ears and tail drooped. "I mean, technically, I ripped them off. And I'm being directly punished for it."

"You're being punished for something, hon, but I don't think it's necessarily for the crime," Mel said, poking him in the shoulder. "They could have just arrested you. They sent a kill squad after you, though." She turned to Steve. "Is there any way to figure out who might have followed up on the tracer?"

"Maybe. Given time. In the meantime, this is turning out to be pretty dense. I'll download it to my terminal and take my time combing through it. Whether I think you've got this coming or not, I'd rather go slow and be completely sure if this is something they're trying to kill you over."

"Any idea how long that will take?" the fox asked with a sigh.

"A full, useful analysis? I'll check in with you at Tom's tomorrow and update you. Worst case scenario, I've found the tip of the iceberg and at least know the shape of the rest."

"Great," Lawrence sighed. "Thanks, Steve, it was a pleasure meeting you."

"Likewise," the human said as he turned his full attention to his computer rig.

They pushed out through the curtain, now once more aware of the crowd milling about in the night market. Lawrence made a beeline for the racks of jewelry. He plucked a bracelet made of old thumb drives off a hook and paid the arctic vixen out front for it.

"Who's that for?" Mel asked as they walked away, past tables of questionable electronics and knockoff foreign toys.

"To thank you for coming out and being the smart one," Lawrence said, handing it to her.

"Awww, thanks. Though you shouldn't have, since I'm not done being smart yet." Rather than accept it, she held her arm up with a bright smile.

"What do you mean?" He carefully affixed it to her wrist, fingers shaking lightly as some part of him tried to figure out whether the look in her eye just meant she was pleased at the gift, or if there was more to it.

"Well, one question we still need to answer." She fiddled with the bracelet as she talked. "If RothPharm knew you sold their data and decided it was worth killing you over... Why did they wait until you found Dr. Landau to do it?"

Lawrence bit his lip with frustration, unable to think of a good answer as they headed back to Melody's car.